Domestic fiction; Inheritance and succession -- Fiction
First there came two policemen, then a surgeon, and then a sergeant. "I
will do anything that you suggest, Mr. Constable," said the Dean,
"though I hope it may not be necessary that I should remain in custody.
I am the Dean of Brotherton." The sergeant made a sign of putting his
finger up to his cap. "This, man, as you know, is the Marquis of
Brotherton." The sergeant bowed to the groaning nobleman. "My daughter
is married to his brother. There have been family quarrels, and he just
now applied a name to his own sister-in-law, to my child,--which I will
not utter because there are women here. Fouler slander never came from
a man's mouth. I took him from his chair and threw him beneath the
grate. Now you know it all. Were it to do again, I would do it again."
"She is a ----," said the imprudent prostrate Marquis. The sergeant,
the doctor who was now present, and Mrs. Walker suddenly became the
Dean's friends. The Marquis was declared to be much shaken, to have a
cut head, and to be very badly bruised about the muscles of the back.
But a man who could so speak of his sister-in-law deserved to have his
head cut and his muscles bruised. Nevertheless the matter was too
serious to be passed over without notice. The doctor could not say that
the unfortunate nobleman had received no permanent injury;--and the
sergeant had not an opportunity of dealing with deans and marquises
every day of his life. The doctor remained with his august patient and
had him put to bed, while the Dean and the sergeant together went off
in a cab to the police-office which lies in the little crowded streets
between the crooked part of Regent Street and Piccadilly. Here
depositions were taken and forms filled, and the Dean was allowed to
depart with an understanding that he was to be forthcoming immediately
when wanted. He suggested that it had been his intention to go down to
Brotherton on the following day, but the Superintendent of Police
recommended him to abandon that idea. The superintendent thought that
the Dean had better make arrangements to stay in London till the end of
the week.
CHAPTER XLII.
"NOT GO!"
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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