DICK FIBBINS, my more or less "learned" instructor in practical law,
goes out to a good many evening parties, I find. Casually remarks that
he "danced three square dances, the other night, with old DAVIS's ugly
daughter, the Solor (legal slang for Solicitor), in Caraway Street."
It's DAVIS himself, not the daughter, that is the Solicitor, and, it
seems she introduced the gay FIBBINS to her Papa. Hence another brief,
a rather complicated one, on some dispute about a mortgage.
[Illustration]
On the morning when the case is to come into Court, DICK the
Brief-hunter, who has promised to take me there, seems nervous. Yet he
is still confident that, if "old PROSER" is the judge, he will "pull
the thing off." It will be, apparently, a case of "Pull FIBBINS, pull
PROSER."
In Court I occupy a seat just behind him, because--as he
observes--I've been "grinding away at the case, and know the subject
down to the ground"--which I don't think _he_ does. I therefore am to
act as his reserves, also as his prompter, and to supply him with the
names of cases which he has forgotten, and which he wishes to quote.
Rather a responsible position. Should feel more confidence in result
if FIBBINS had told me of this prompter arrangement before the very
morning when the trial comes on.
"Old PROSER," appears to my untutored gaze to be rather a dignified
occupant of the Bench. I don't know whether he cherishes any personal
or professional animosity against DICK FIBBINS, but directly the
latter opens his mouth to begin, PROSER seems inclined to jump down
it.
"A complicated case of foreclosure?" he growls. "You needn't tell us
that. All foreclosure cases are complicated. _I_ ever saw one yet that
wasn't."
FIBBINS goes along unimpeded for a minute or two, PROSER having thrown
himself back with an air of resigned inattention, one of the other
Judges taking furtive notes, and the third resting his elbows on his
desk, and his head on his elbows, and eyeing _me_ with a stony and
meaningless stare. Can he suddenly have gone mad?
I have no time to consider this interesting point, as FIBBINS is again
in difficulties about some precedent that he wants to quote, but which
he has forgotten, and turns sharply round on me, saying, in a fierce
whisper--
"What the doose _is_ that case?"
I look hurriedly down on the sheet of paper on which (as I fancy) I
have jotted down the authorities bearing on the subject, and reply,
also in a whisper--"_Cookson and Gedge_."
"The Court, m'luds," FIBBINS airily proceeds, as if he were indebted
entirely to his own memory for the information, "held in _Cookson and
Gedge_ that a mortgagor who desires to foreclose--"
"Where is the case you mention?" suddenly asks the Judge who was
staring at me a moment ago. He is now engaged in first looking at my
instructor suspiciously, and then at me, as if he thought that there
was some horrible secret between us, which he is determined to probe
to the bottom.
"Volume Six of the _Law Reports_, m'lud."
"Page?" snaps PROSER.
"Page 184, m'lud. As I was saying, the Court there held that the right
to foreclose at any reasonable time is not taken away--"
This time the interruption comes from the Judge who I thought was
going mad, but who now seems to be preternaturally and offensively
sane.
"It would be odd," he observes, cuttingly, "if any Court _had_ decided
a point about mortgages in _Cookson versus Gedge_, because on looking
at the page to which you have referred us, find that _Cookson and
Gedge_ was _a running-down case_!"
I glance at the paper before me in consternation; another moment, and
the horrifying fact is revealed to me that the sheet of "authorities"
I have brought with me bears, not on the mortgage case now before the
Court, but on that previous six-guinea matter on which I had given
ROGERS & Co. my valuable Opinion gratis.
I hear DICK FIBBINS, in this trying position, with the eyes of three
Judges fixed on him, swearing at me under his breath in the most awful
manner. But why did he depend on _me_? Why didn't he get up the case
himself?
Deprived at one blow of most of his precedents, "shorn"--as the Breach
of Promise Reports puts it--"of its usual attractions," FIBBINS's
speech becomes an impotent affair. He has to quote such cases as he
can remember, and as neither his memory nor his legal knowledge is
great, he presents them all wrongly, and prematurely sits down. I
see PROSER's wrinkled countenance illumined with an exultant smile.
Just as I am moving out of Court (FIBBINS has to "move" _in_ Court),
because I am desirous of avoiding FIBBINS's wrath,--though I feel that
this _fiasco_ is more his fault than mine,--I hear the presiding judge
(the mad one) say to the Defendant's Counsel that he need not trouble
to address them. I know what _that_ means--judgment for the Defendant!
Chancing half-an-hour later to enter a Strand Restaurant, part of
which, I regret to say, is also a drinking-bar, I am startled at
beholding the identical form and features of FIBBINS himself. He
appears flushed--has two companions with him, to whom he is talking
excitedly. I hear the words--"idiot"--"jackass of a pupil"--"regular
sell"--and; but no, perhaps I had better not repeat all that I _did_
hear. I decide to seek refreshment elsewhere.
Over the subsequent scene in FIBBINS's Chambers I prefer to draw a
veil. It is sufficient to say that I was obliged to leave FIBBINS, and
thereafter received a solid half-year's instruction in the Chambers of
a learned Counsel who was not a briefless impostor.
I heard afterwards that he had added the story to his fund of legal
dining-out anecdotes, and had considerably amplified it. It came out
in a shape which made FIBBINS a hero, myself an imbecile of a rather
malicious kind, PROSER helplessly cowering under FIBBINS's wealth of
arguments, and the other two Judges reduced to admiring silence. I
take this opportunity of stating that if anybody "cowered" in Court on
that memorable occasion, it was certainly not poor old PROSER.
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