Our Mutual Friend. Чарльз Диккенс

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