‘What’s this?’
Analytical Chemist bends and whispers.
‘Who?’ Says Mortimer.
Analytical Chemist again bends and whispers.
Mortimer stares at him, and unfolds the paper.
Reads it, reads it twice, turns it over to look at
the blank outside, reads it a third time.
‘This arrives in an extraordinarily opportune
manner,’ says Mortimer then, looking with an
altered face round the table: ’this is the
conclusion of the story of the identical man.’
‘Already married?’ one guesses.
‘Declines to marry?’ another guesses.
‘Codicil among the dust?’ another guesses.
‘Why, no,’ says Mortimer; ’remarkable
thing, you are all wrong. The story is completer
and rather more exciting than I supposed. Man’s
drowned!’
ANOTHER MAN
As the disappearing skirts of the ladies ascended
the Veneering staircase, Mortimer, following them
forth from the dining-room, turned into a library
of bran-new books, in bran-new bindings liberally gilded,
and requested to see the messenger who had brought
the paper. He was a boy of about fifteen.
Mortimer looked at the boy, and the boy looked at
the bran-new pilgrims on the wall, going to Canterbury
in more gold frame than procession, and more carving
than country.
‘Whose writing is this?’
‘Mine, sir.’
‘Who told you to write it?’
‘My father, Jesse Hexam.’
‘Is it he who found the body?’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘What is your father?’
The boy hesitated, looked reproachfully at the pilgrims
as if they had involved him in a little difficulty,
then said, folding a plait in the right leg of his
trousers, ‘He gets his living along-shore.’
‘Is it far?’
‘Is which far?’ asked the boy, upon his
guard, and again upon the road to Canterbury.
‘To your father’s?’
’It’s a goodish stretch, sir. I come
up in a cab, and the cab’s waiting to be paid.
We could go back in it before you paid it, if you liked.
I went first to your office, according to the direction
of the papers found in the pockets, and there I see
nobody but a chap of about my age who sent me on here.’
There was a curious mixture in the boy, of uncompleted
savagery, and uncompleted civilization. His voice
was hoarse and coarse, and his face was coarse, and
his stunted figure was coarse; but he was cleaner than
other boys of his type; and his writing, though large
and round, was good; and he glanced at the backs of
the books, with an awakened curiosity that went below
the binding. No one who can read, ever looks
at a book, even unopened on a shelf, like one who cannot.
’Were any means taken, do you know, boy, to
ascertain if it was possible to restore life?’
Mortimer inquired, as he sought for his hat.
’You wouldn’t ask, sir, if you knew his
state. Pharaoh’s multitude that were drowned
in the Red Sea, ain’t more beyond restoring to
life. If Lazarus was only half as far gone, that
was the greatest of all the miracles.’
