“Too late,” you will say if I offer you a Messenger now. But it was not thus that Mrs. Batch and Katie greeted Clarence when, lamentably soaked with rain, that Messenger appeared on the threshold of the kitchen. Katie was laying the table-cloth for seven o’clock supper. Neither she nor her mother was clairvoyante. Neither of them knew what had been happening. But, as Clarence had not come home since afternoon-school, they had assumed that he was at the river; and they now assumed from the look of him that something very unusual had been happening there. As to what this was, they were not quickly enlightened. Our old Greek friend, after a run of twenty miles, would always reel off a round hundred of graphic verses unimpeachable in scansion. Clarence was of degenerate mould. He collapsed on to a chair, and sat there gasping; and his recovery was rather delayed than hastened by his mother, who, in her solicitude, patted him vigorously between the shoulders.
“Let him alone, mother, do,” cried Katie, wringing her hands.
“The Duke, he’s drowned himself,” presently gasped the Messenger.
Blank verse, yes, so far as it went; but delivered without the slightest regard for rhythm, and composed in stark defiance of those laws which should regulate the breaking of bad news. You, please remember, were carefully prepared by me against the shock of the Duke’s death; and yet I hear you still mumbling that I didn’t let the actual fact be told you by a Messenger. Come, do you really think your grievance against me is for a moment comparable with that of Mrs. and Miss Batch against Clarence? Did you feel faint at any moment in the foregoing chapter? No. But Katie, at Clarence’s first words, fainted outright. Think a little more about this poor girl senseless on the floor, and a little less about your own paltry discomfort.
Mrs. Batch herself did not faint, but she was too much overwhelmed to notice that her daughter had done so.
“No! Mercy on us! Speak, boy, can’t you?”
“The river,” gasped Clarence. “Threw himself in. On purpose. I was on the towing-path. Saw him do it.”
Mrs. Batch gave a low moan.
“Katie’s fainted,” added the Messenger, not without a touch of personal pride.
“Saw him do it,” Mrs. Batch repeated dully. “Katie,” she said, in the same voice, “get up this instant.” But Katie did not hear her.