Inheritance and succession -- Fiction; Marriage -- Fiction
Solomonson and Isaacs, however, were sharp practitioners, and one of
their first proceedings was to subpoena Doctor Jolly, who had attended
Susan so long as her medical adviser, and who, of course, would be a
very material witness: this was in order to prevent the other side from
getting hold of him; and Miss Kingscott was also favoured with a little
oblong slip of paper and a guinea in order to insure her attendance to
the same end.
They were sharp enough, as Mr Trump found out to his cost; for before
the day fixed for the trial, the dowager's lawyers were at their wits
end how to support their case. They had got hold of Joseph Begg, who
had witnessed the marriage, and the curate who solemnised it, to bear
out the alleged charge of conspiracy against Markworth, but beyond that
they felt they could do nothing. If Susan were placed in the
witness-box, and stood her cross-examination so as to prove her sanity,
the case would be all put out of court, or, as Mr Trump graphically
expressed it, "it would be all up."
Indeed, Mr Trump had such very serious thoughts about the termination
of the case, after he had thoroughly gone into the evidence _pro_ and
_con_, that he took upon himself to advise Mrs Hartshorne to compromise
the matter before it came on for trial. This was just after Tom came
back from his visit to Susan and reported how happy and changed she was.
But the dowager would not hear a word of compromise. She was determined
to "fight it out on that line," as General Grant is reported to have
said when besieging Richmond in the Southern States, not only "if it
took all the summer," but the winter too.
Accordingly the case of "Markworth _versus_ Hartshorne," was regularly
put down for trial; and Sergeants Thickhyde, Q.C., and Silvertong
retained for the defence. The Jew lawyers had got hold of the
well-known Brassy, considered A1 at the criminal bar, and Serjeant
Interpleader, to conduct their case on Markworth's behalf.
Volume 2, Chapter XI.
"THE GIRL I LEFT BEHIND ME."
"_Partant pour la Syrie_" should have been the proper title for this
chapter, only instead of _la Syrie_, read _l'Abysinne_; but as "The girl
I left behind me" is more appropriate to the matter, if not to the
motive of what follows, the latter heading has been adopted in
preference. "The Girl I left behind me!" That would-be jovial and yet
melancholy air, with its dreary rub-a-dub-dub which the band plays when
the regiment is marching out so gaily oh! with the route for foreign
service. The Light Brigade played it when they started off to the
Crimea; the Royals when they sailed for India, to avenge the deaths of
our murdered kinswomen at Cawnpore: how many that departed so gallantly
marching to the strains of that sad hackneyed tune, saw their native
land again, or met the welcome of the girls they left behind them!
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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