'I--I believe I am being kept from his lordship!' Mr. Fishwick

persisted, stuttering nervously. 'And there are people whose interest it

is to keep me from his lordship. I warn you, sir, that if anything

happens in the meantime--' The doctor rang the bell.

'I shall hold you responsible!' Mr. Fishwick cried passionately. 'I

consider this a most mysterious illness. I repeat, I--' But apparently that was the last straw. 'Mysterious?' the doctor cried,

his face purple with indignation. 'Leave the room, sir! You are not

sane, sir! By God, you ought to be shut up, sir! You ought not to be

allowed to go about. Do you think that you are the only person who wants

to see His Majesty's Minister? Here is a courier come to-day from His

Grace the Duke of Grafton, and to-morrow there will be a score, and a

king's messenger from His Majesty among them--and all this trouble is

given by a miserable, little, paltry, petti--Begone, sir, before I say

too much!' he continued trembling with anger. And then to the servant,

'John, the door! the door! And see that this person does not trouble me

again. Be good enough to communicate in writing, sir, if you have

anything to say.' With which poor Mr. Fishwick was hustled out, protesting but not

convinced. It is seldom the better side of human nature that lawyers

see; nor is an attorney's office, or a barrister's chamber, the soil in

which a luxuriant crop of confidence is grown. In common with many

persons of warm feelings, but narrow education, Mr. Fishwick was ready

to believe on the smallest evidence--or on no evidence at all--that the

rich and powerful were leagued against his client; that justice, if he

were not very sharp, would be denied him; that the heavy purse had a

knack of outweighing the righteous cause, even in England and in the

eighteenth century. And the fact that all his hopes were staked on this

case, that all his resources were embarked in it, that it had fallen, as

it were, from heaven into his hands--wherefore the greater the pity if

things went amiss--rendered him peculiarly captious and impracticable.

After this every day, nay, every hour, that passed without bringing him

to Lord Chatham's presence augmented his suspense and doubled his

anxiety. To be put off, not one day, but two days, three days--what

might not happen in three days!--was a thing intolerable, insufferable;

a thing to bring the heavens down in pity on his head! What wonder if he

rebelled hourly; and being routed, as we have seen him routed, muttered

dark hints in Julia's ear, and, snubbed in that quarter also, had no

resource but to shut himself up in his sleeping-place, and there brood

miserably over his suspicions and surmises?




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