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 We had this story in the high school CBSE English lesson. I have made it easy to comprehend. Read on…

The Face on the Wall…

A man stays in a house in Great Ormond Street, of London. The walls of the room were painted but were damp and patchy. The man found it strange that one of the patch never grew bigger like any other damp patch. It remained the same. The patch resembled….. a face of a man!

As days passed, the face became real..real with the lines of a human face..real and uncommon with a face of remarkable features. The man was convinced this face on the wall existed in real life.

 A curious want to meet the man with the face grew in him. He went searching for the face. He wandered from one crowd of people to another-from Churches to Railway stations…Cinemas to shopping streets.

 The tired man seemed about to give up the search when he saw the face in the crowd. He was in a social gathering… The lines on the face were exactly the same as the face on the wall. This man seemed to be a millionaire, he thought. He had to meet him. He followed the man with the face. He waited for his turn to speak to him. He waited for hours but just managed to ask for his business card.

 He was shocked to read the name on the card. It said … Mr Ormond Wall, with an address in the USA.!!!!

He tried to find out more details about Mr Ormond Wall from various sources, but all in vain.

 Time passed by. The face on the wall became a roomie for the man. But it remained a mystery to him that a patch on the wall of a house in London could resemble a face of man who lived in the USA!!

One fine morning the man woke up and saw that the face on the wall had faded. It was bright and clear the previous evening!! He got up confused.

As a routine he browsed the Daily. The headlines in the Newspaper said, Mr Ormond Wall, a millionaire from the USA had met with a Motor accident in Italy the previous night. His condition was critical.

The man was dumb-struck. He sat staring at the face on the wall… Suddenly it completely disappeared…

 Later he found that at this same moment, Mr Ormond Wall had died of his injuries…

 Next time you make imaginary designs of clouds and patches, you will remember this all time favorite by E.V.Lucas.

Tata.

Filed under: Short Stories