“Later, sir, later, we shall be happy to discuss with you the foibles of our society, but what we are interested in now is how this party, in this here truncated coffin, came to be travelling through Zionville in this here noncommittal manner; also, as to what may be the names, titles, pretensions, antecedents, residences, of yourself and friend; also of the noncommittal party aforesaid; also what may be your connection with that party. These, sir, are the points on which Zionville desires to be informed. But perhaps this other gentleman can give us some succinct statement, some short cut to the information this community is after.”
I gave Louisa our names, and told him the party he referred to was a foreign lady that went by the name of “Hannah Atkins,” at least lately she been so called though I had reason to believe it was an alias, or a corruption of her title and pretension.
“I thank you, sir,” said Louisa, sweetly. “We progress, and your statements reasonably agree with the information we already have. And now possibly Dr. Ulswater will entertain us with some still eloquent but more pertinent remarks, some exhilarating but not too gruesome anecdotes, illustrating the immediate causes of this lady's decease.”
The doctor took a new start. He made some flourishing archaeological statements about the Incas and the antiseptic qualities of the Andean climate, and then he sailed off on the high seas of South-American lore and his own enthusiasm over Hannah Atkins. But he was still somewhat flustered and confused. There was a growing tumult round about. I judged Zionville didn't follow him. Louisa said it wouldn't do, and William C. Jones rose up gloomy and bleak, and his forefinger started arguing up and down like a walking beam. He wanted to know:
—Whether them hideous words, unaccounted for by any civilised alphabet, was the names of Mrs. Atkins' ancestors, or of the last heathen jurymen that had tried him (Dr. Ulswater) for some previous harrowing crime; and if so, whether remarks made in the Choctaw language on insurance statistics, such as his (Dr. Ulswater's) remarks appeared to him (the speaker) to be, were not likely to impress an intelligent jury as intended to mislead and deceive; and if so, whether he (Dr. Ulswater) didn't mean,—before justice was summarily executed upon him by the aroused public spirit of Zionville,—to brush his hair and procure a set of whiskers less weedy and revolting; and if so, whether he meant to depose that this here deceased party came by her death naturally or not; and if so, whether he hadn't no better account to give of his possession of the same than incoherent statements, which plainly was meant to evade inquiry with irrelevant excursions into doubtful tradition——
“Doctor,” said Louisa, “I grieve to have misled you. I intended to make plain the desire of the jury for information, not on the subject of this lady's remote ancestry, but as to how she came by her death, and why she was travelling around, not as an authenticated corpse, but as an inorganic freight, addressed to some more or less mythological institution, some abstract idea on the other side of the continent. Do I now make myself clear, sir? Do I understand you to depose her death to have been violent or natural?”
“How the blazes should I know?” cried the doctor, exasperated.
“The defendant, gentlemen, deposes that he don't know. The defendant, in fact, declines to testify on the point.”
“She's a mummy!” shouted the doctor. “A mummy! What's the matter with this maniac of a town? If you don't know what a mummy is, I'm telling you. I know all about her that anybody knows,” and he went on to tell what he knew, but William C. Jones bore him down, inquiring with the voice of calamity:
—Whether them figures he (Dr. Ulswater) was giving was the dimensions of the city of Cuzco, or the age of Mrs. Atkins' parents at the time of her death, or the geography of the Andes, or the story of Mrs. Atkins' young romance; and if so, whether he (Dr. Ulswater) was acquainted with her in youth; and if so, whether she was as yellow at that time or affected since by a fever of that colour; and if so, inasmuch as his (Dr. Ulswater's) statements seemed to imply that he was no relative but only an admirer of Mrs. Atkins, whether his (Dr. Ulswater's) manifestly false and absurd statement that she was upwards of four hundred years old and her complexion complicated with considerable paint, wasn't an unchivalrous statement, that throwed doubts on the genuineness of his (Dr. Ulswater's) boasted admiration; and if so, and there was any museum in Connecticut unscrupulous enough for such barbarous inhumanity, and Mrs. Atkins and Dr. Ulswater ever arrived there—in defeat of justice—whether they was intended to be exhibited in the same show case; and if so, whether the promiscuous and opprobrious language he (Dr. Ulswater) was at present using was by him thought calculated to benefit his case——