[Literature] Charles Dickens: Our Mutual Friend #8/413

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!’

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