England -- Social life and customs -- Fiction; Lawyers -- Fiction; Man-woman relationships -- Fiction; Young men -- Fiction
Revolving Time had brought round the Easter vacation again. The last
case heard in the Court of Appeal that sittings was _Crewdson v. The
Great Southern Railway Company_, on appeal from Knaresby, J.'s, judgment
on the findings of the jury. (The subsequent history of the great Dog
Case lay still in the future.) It was a time of political excitement;
Sir Humphrey Fynes, K.C., M.P., had chanced the case being reached, and
gone off to rouse the country to a proper sense of its imminent peril if
the Government continued so much as a day longer in office. Consequently
he was not there to argue Miss Crewdson's case. Mr. Tracy Darton, K.C.,
was there, but he was also in the fashionable divorce case of the
moment, and had to address the jury on the respondent's behalf. He cut
his argument before the Court of Appeal suspiciously short, and left to
his learned friend Mr. Lisle the task of citing authorities bearing on
tricky points relating to the subject of Common Carriers. Arthur was in
a tremor when he rose--nearly as much frightened as he had been before
Lance and Pretyman, JJ., a year ago--but his whole heart was with his
dog; he grew excited, he stuck to his guns; they should have those
authorities if he died for it! He was very tenacious--and in the end
rather long perhaps. But the Court listened attentively, smiling now and
then at his youthful ardour, but letting him make his points. When they
came to give judgment against his contention, they went out of the way
to compliment him. The Master of the Rolls said the Court was indebted
to Mr. Lisle for his able argument. Leonard, L.J., confessed that he had
been for a moment shaken by Mr. Lisle's ingenious argument. Pratt, L.J.,
quite agreed with what had fallen from My Lord and his learned Brother
concerning Mr. Lisle's conduct of his case. Even Miss Crewdson herself,
whose face had been black as thunder at Sir Humphrey's desertion and Mr.
Darton's unseemly brevity, and whose shoulders had shrugged scornfully
when Arthur rose, found a smile for him in the hour of temporary defeat;
that she would lose in the end never entered the indomitable woman's
head. Then--out in the corridor, when all was over--Tom Mayne patted him
on the back, and almost danced round him for joy and pride--it was
impossible to recognise in him the melancholy Mr. Beverley--Norton Ward,
hurrying off to another case, called out, "Confound your cheek!" and, to
crown all, the august solicitor of the Great Southern Railway Company,
his redoubtable opponents, gave him a friendly nod, saying, "I was
afraid you were going to turn 'em at the last moment, Mr. Lisle!" That
his appreciation was genuine Arthur's table proved. There, newly
deposited by triumphant Henry, lay a case to advise the Great Southern
Railway Company itself.
"Once you get in with them, sir----!" Henry had said, rubbing his hands
together and leaving the rest to the imagination.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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