“Everybody takes what anybody leaves them by will.”
“I will be an exception to the rule, Lady Glen. Don’t you think that your friendship is more to me than all the diamonds in London?”
“You shall have both, my dear,” said the Duchess—quite in earnest in her promise. Madame Goesler shook her head. “Nobody ever repudiates legacies. The Queen would take the jewels if they were left to her.”
“I am not the Queen. I have to be more careful what I do than any queen. I will take nothing under the Duke’s will. I will ask a boon which I have already named, and if it be given me as a gift by the Duke’s heir, I will wear it till I die. You will write to Mr. Palliser?”
“I couldn’t do it,” said the Duchess.
“Then I will write myself.” And she did write, and of all the rich things which the Duke of Omnium had left to her, she took nothing but the little ring with the black stone which he had always worn on his finger.
XXVII
An Editor’s Wrath
On that Sunday evening in London Mr. Low was successful in finding the Vice-Chancellor, and the great judge smiled and nodded, listened to the story, and acknowledged that the circumstances were very peculiar. He thought that an injunction to restrain the publication might be given at once upon Mr. Finn’s affidavit; and that the peculiar circumstances justified the peculiarity of Mr. Low’s application. Whether he would have said as much had the facts concerned the families of Mr. Joseph Smith and his son-in-law Mr. John Jones, instead of the Earl of Brentford and the Right Honourable Robert Kennedy, some readers will perhaps doubt, and may doubt also whether an application coming from some newly-fledged barrister would have been received as graciously as that made by Mr. Low, Q.C. and M.P.—who would probably himself soon sit on some lofty legal bench. On the following morning Phineas and Mr. Low—and no doubt also Mr. Vice-Chancellor Pickering—obtained early copies of the People’s Banner, and were delighted to find that Mr. Kennedy’s letter did not appear in it. Mr. Low had made his calculation rightly. The editor, considering that he would gain more by having the young member of Parliament and the Standish family, as it were, in his hands than by the publication of a certain libellous letter, had resolved to put the document back for at least twenty-four hours, even though the young member neither came nor wrote as he had promised. The letter did not appear, and before ten o’clock Phineas Finn had made his affidavit in a dingy little room behind the Vice-Chancellor’s Court. The injunction was at once issued, and was of such potency that should any editor dare to publish any paper therein prohibited, that editor and that editor’s newspaper would assuredly be crumpled up in a manner very disagreeable, if not altogether destructive. Editors of newspapers are self-willed, arrogant, and stiff-necked, a race of men who believe much in themselves and little in anything else, with no feelings of reverence or respect for matters which are august enough to other men;—but an injunction from a Court of Chancery is a power which even an editor respects. At about noon Vice-Chancellor Pickering’s injunction was served at the office of the People’s Banner in Quartpot Alley, Fleet Street. It was done in duplicate—or perhaps in triplicate—so that there should be no evasion; and all manner of crumpling was threatened in the event of any touch of disobedience. All this happened on Monday, March the first, while the poor dying Duke was waiting impatiently for the arrival of his friend at Matching. Phineas was busy all the morning till it was time that he should go down to the House. For as soon as he could leave Mr. Low’s chambers in Lincoln’s Inn he had gone to Judd Street, to inquire as to the condition of the man who had tried to murder him. He there saw Mr. Kennedy’s cousin, and received an assurance from that gentleman that Robert Kennedy should be taken down at once to Loughlinter. Up to that moment not a word had been said to the police as to what had been done. No more notice had been taken of the attempt to murder than might have been necessary had Mr. Kennedy thrown a clothes-brush at his visitor’s head. There was the little hole in the post of the door with the bullet in it, just six feet above the ground; and there was the pistol, with five chambers still loaded, which Macpherson had cunningly secured on his return from church, and given over to the cousin that same evening. There was certainly no want of evidence, but nobody was disposed to use it.
At noon the injunction was served in Quartpot Alley, and was put into Mr. Slide’s hands on his arrival at the office at three o’clock. That gentleman’s duties required his attendance from three till five in the afternoon, and then again from nine in the evening till any hour in the morning at which he might be able to complete the People’s Banner for that day’s use. He had been angry with Phineas when the Sunday night passed without a visit or letter at the office, as a promise had been made that there should be either a visit or a letter; but he had felt sure, as he walked into the city from his suburban residence at Camden Town, that he would now find some communication on the great subject. The matter was one of most serious importance. Such a letter as that which was in his possession would no doubt create much surprise, and receive no ordinary attention. A People’s Banner could hardly ask for a better bit of good fortune than
