Our Mutual Friend
Same Buffer, emboldened by success, says: ‘When?’
‘The other day. Ten or twelve months ago.’
Same Buffer inquires with smartness, ‘What of?’ But herein perishes a
melancholy example; being regarded by the three other Buffers with a
stony stare, and attracting no further attention from any mortal.
‘Venerable parent,’ Mortimer repeats with a passing remembrance that
there is a Veneering at table, and for the first time addressing
him—‘dies.’
The gratified Veneering repeats, gravely, ‘dies’; and folds his arms,
and composes his brow to hear it out in a judicial manner, when he finds
himself again deserted in the bleak world.
‘His will is found,’ said Mortimer, catching Mrs Podsnap’s
rocking-horse’s eye. ‘It is dated very soon after the son’s flight. It
leaves the lowest of the range of dust-mountains, with some sort of a
dwelling-house at its foot, to an old servant who is sole executor, and
all the rest of the property—which is very considerable—to the son.
He directs himself to be buried with certain eccentric ceremonies and
precautions against his coming to life, with which I need not bore you,
and that’s all—except—’ and this ends the story.
The Analytical Chemist returning, everybody looks at him. Not because
anybody wants to see him, but because of that subtle influence in nature
which impels humanity to embrace the slightest opportunity of looking at
anything, rather than the person who addresses it.
‘—Except that the son’s inheriting is made conditional on his marrying
a girl, who at the date of the will, was a child of four or five years
old, and who is now a marriageable young woman. Advertisement and
inquiry discovered the son in the man from Somewhere, and at the present
moment, he is on his way home from there—no doubt, in a state of great
astonishment—to succeed to a very large fortune, and to take a wife.’
Mrs Podsnap inquires whether the young person is a young person of
personal charms? Mortimer is unable to report.
Mr Podsnap inquires what would become of the very large fortune, in the
event of the marriage condition not being fulfilled? Mortimer replies,
that by special testamentary clause it would then go to the old servant
above mentioned, passing over and excluding the son; also, that if
the son had not been living, the same old servant would have been sole
residuary legatee.
Mrs Veneering has just succeeded in waking Lady Tippins from a snore, by
dexterously shunting a train of plates and dishes at her knuckles across
the table; when everybody but Mortimer himself becomes aware that the
Analytical Chemist is, in a ghostly manner, offering him a folded paper.
Curiosity detains Mrs Veneering a few moments.
Mortimer, in spite of all the arts of the chemist, placidly refreshes
himself with a glass of Madeira, and remains unconscious of the Document
which engrosses the general attention, until Lady Tippins (who has a
habit of waking totally insensible), having remembered where she is, and
recovered a perception of surrounding objects, says: ‘Falser man than
Don Juan; why don’t you take the note from the commendatore?’ Upon
which, the chemist advances it under the nose of Mortimer, who looks
round at him, and says:
‘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!’
Chapter 3
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.’
‘Halloa!’ cried Mortimer, turning round with his hat upon his head, ‘you
seem to be at home in the Red Sea, my young friend?’
‘Read of it with teacher at the school,’ said the boy.
‘And Lazarus?’
‘Yes, and him too. But don’t you tell my father! We should have no peace
in our place, if that got touched upon. It’s my sister’s contriving.’
‘You seem to have a good sister.’
‘She ain’t half bad,’ said the boy; ‘but if she knows her letters it’s
the most she does—and them I learned her.’
The gloomy Eugene, with his hands in his pockets, had strolled in and
assisted at the latter part of the dialogue; when the boy spoke these
words slightingly of his sister, he took him roughly enough by the chin,
and turned up his face to look at it.
‘Well, I’m sure, sir!’ said the boy, resisting; ‘I hope you’ll know me
again.’
Eugene vouchsafed no answer; but made the proposal to Mortimer, ‘I’ll
go with you, if you like?’ So, they all three went away together in the
vehicle that had brought the boy; the two friends (once boys together at
a public school) inside, smoking cigars; the messenger on the box beside
the driver.
‘Let me see,’ said Mortimer, as they went along; ‘I have been, Eugene,
upon the honourable roll of solicitors of the High Court of Chancery,
and attorneys at Common Law, five years; and—except gratuitously taking
instructions, on an average once a fortnight, for the will of Lady
Tippins who has nothing to leave—I have had no scrap of business but
this romantic business.’
‘And I,’ said Eugene, ‘have been “called” seven years, and have had no
business at all, and never shall have any. And if I had, I shouldn’t
know how to do it.’
‘I am far from being clear as to the last particular,’ returned
Mortimer, with great composure, ‘that I have much advantage over you.’
‘I hate,’ said Eugene, putting his legs up on the opposite seat, ‘I hate
my profession.’
‘Shall I incommode you, if I put mine up too?’ returned Mortimer. ‘Thank
you. I hate mine.’
‘It was forced upon me,’ said the gloomy Eugene, ‘because it was
understood that we wanted a barrister in the family. We have got a
precious one.’
‘It was forced upon me,’ said Mortimer, ‘because it was understood that
we wanted a solicitor in the family. And we have got a precious one.’
‘There are four of us, with our names painted on a door-post in right of
one black hole called a set of chambers,’ said Eugene; ‘and each of us
has the fourth of a clerk—Cassim Baba, in the robber’s cave—and Cassim
is the only respectable member of the party.’
‘I am one by myself, one,’ said Mortimer, ‘high up an awful staircase
commanding a burial-ground, and I have a whole clerk to myself, and he
has nothing to do but look at the burial-ground, and what he will turn
out when arrived at maturity, I cannot conceive. Whether, in that shabby
rook’s nest, he is always plotting wisdom, or plotting murder; whether
he will grow up, after so much solitary brooding, to enlighten his
fellow-creatures, or to poison them; is the only speck of interest that
presents itself to my professional view. Will you give me a light? Thank
you.’
‘Then idiots talk,’ said Eugene, leaning back, folding his arms, smoking
with his eyes shut, and speaking slightly through his nose, ‘of Energy.
If there is a word in the dictionary under any letter from A to Z that
I abominate, it is energy. It is such a conventional superstition, such
parrot gabble! What the deuce! Am I to rush out into the street, collar
the first man of a wealthy appearance that I meet, shake him, and say,
“Go to law upon the spot, you dog, and retain me, or I’ll be the death
of you”? Yet that would be energy.’
‘Precisely my view of the case, Eugene. But show me a good opportunity,
show me something really worth being energetic about, and I’ll show you
energy.’
‘And so will I,’ said Eugene.
And it is likely enough that ten thousand other young men, within the
limits of the London Post-office town delivery, made the same hopeful
remark in the course of the same evening.
The wheels rolled on, and rolled down by the Monument and by the Tower,
and by the Docks; down by Ratcliffe, and by Rotherhithe; down by where
accumulated scum of humanity seemed to be washed from higher grounds,
like so much moral sewage, and to be pausing until its own weight forced
it over the bank and sunk it in the river. In and out among vessels
that seemed to have got ashore, and houses that seemed to have got
afloat—among bowsprits staring into windows, and windows staring
into ships—the wheels rolled on, until they stopped at a dark corner,
river-washed and otherwise not washed at all, where the boy alighted and
opened the door.
‘You must walk the rest, sir; it’s not many yards.’ He spoke in the
singular number, to the express exclusion of Eugene.
‘This is a confoundedly out-of-the-way place,’ said Mortimer, slipping
over the stones and refuse on the shore, as the boy turned the corner
sharp.
‘Here’s my father’s, sir; where the light is.’
The low building had the look of having once been a mill. There was a
rotten wart of wood upon its forehead that seemed to indicate where
the sails had been, but the whole was very indistinctly seen in the
obscurity of the night. The boy lifted the latch of the door, and they
passed at once into a low circular room, where a man stood before a red
fire, looking down into it, and a girl sat engaged in needlework. The
fire was in a rusty brazier, not fitted to the hearth; and a common
lamp, shaped like a hyacinth-root, smoked and flared in the neck of a
stone bottle on the table. There was a wooden bunk or berth in a corner,
and in another corner a wooden stair leading above—so clumsy and steep