Domestic fiction; Sisters -- Fiction; Women -- England -- Fiction
Samuel's emergence stirred the multitude. But Samuel passed up the
Square with a rapt expression; he might have been under an illusion,
caused by the extreme gravity of his preoccupations, that he was
crossing a deserted Square. He hurried past the Bank and down the
Turnhill Road, to the private residence of 'Young Lawton,' son of the
deceased 'Lawyer Lawton.' Young Lawton followed his father's
profession; he was, as his father had been, the most successful
solicitor in the town (though reputed by his learned rivals to be a
fool), but the custom of calling men by their occupations had died out
with horse-cars. Samuel caught young Lawton at his breakfast, and
presently drove with him, in the Lawton buggy, to the police-station,
where their arrival electrified a crowd as large as that in St. Luke's
Square. Later, they drove together to Hanbridge, informally to brief a
barrister; and Samuel, not permitted to be present at the first part of
the interview between the solicitor and the barrister, was humbled
before the pomposity of legal etiquette.
It seemed to Samuel a game. The whole rigmarole of police and
police-cells and formalities seemed insincere. His cousin's case was
not like any other case, and, though formalities might be necessary, it
was rather absurd to pretend that it was like any other case. In what
manner it differed from other cases Samuel did not analytically
inquire. He thought young Lawton was self-important, and Daniel too
humble, in the colloquy of these two, and he endeavoured to indicate,
by the dignity of his own demeanour, that in his opinion the proper
relative tones had not been set. He could not understand Daniel's
attitude, for he lacked imagination to realize what Daniel had been
through. After all, Daniel was not a murderer; his wife's death was due
to accident, was simply a mishap.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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