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diff --git a/old/10911.txt b/old/10911.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..9d9466a --- /dev/null +++ b/old/10911.txt @@ -0,0 +1,7403 @@ +Project Gutenberg's Buried Alive: A Tale of These Days, by Arnold Bennett + +This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with +almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + +Title: Buried Alive: A Tale of These Days + +Author: Arnold Bennett + +Release Date: February 2, 2004 [EBook #10911] +[Date last updated: January 9, 2005] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ASCII + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK BURIED ALIVE: A TALE OF THESE DAYS *** + + + + +Produced by John Hagerson, Kevin Handy and the Online Distributed +Proofreading Team + + + + + +BURIED ALIVE +A Tale of These Days + +BY +ARNOLD BENNETT + + + + + To + JOHN FREDERICK FARRAR + M.R.C.S., L.R.C.P. + MY COLLABORATOR + IN THIS AND MANY OTHER BOOKS + A GRATEFUL EXPRESSION + OF OLD-ESTABLISHED REGARD + + + + +CONTENTS + + +I. THE PUCE DRESSING-GOWN + +II. A PAIL + +III. THE PHOTOGRAPH + +IV. A SCOOP + +V. ALICE ON HOTELS + +VI. A PUTNEY MORNING + +VII. THE CONFESSION + +VIII. AN INVASION + +IX. A GLOSSY MALE + +X. THE SECRET + +XI. AN ESCAPE + +XII. ALICE'S PERFORMANCES + + + + + +CHAPTER I + + +_The Puce Dressing-gown_ + + +The peculiar angle of the earth's axis to the plane of the ecliptic-- +that angle which is chiefly responsible for our geography and therefore +for our history--had caused the phenomenon known in London as summer. +The whizzing globe happened to have turned its most civilized face away +from the sun, thus producing night in Selwood Terrace, South Kensington. +In No. 91 Selwood Terrace two lights, on the ground-floor and on the +first-floor, were silently proving that man's ingenuity can outwit +nature's. No. 91 was one of about ten thousand similar houses between +South Kensington Station and North End Road. With its grimy stucco +front, its cellar kitchen, its hundred stairs and steps, its perfect +inconvenience, and its conscience heavy with the doing to death of +sundry general servants, it uplifted tin chimney-cowls to heaven and +gloomily awaited the day of judgment for London houses, sublimely +ignoring the axial and orbital velocities of the earth and even the +reckless flight of the whole solar system through space. You felt that +No. 91 was unhappy, and that it could only be rendered happy by a 'To +let' standard in its front patch and a 'No bottles' card in its +cellar-windows. It possessed neither of these specifics. Though of late +generally empty, it was never untenanted. In the entire course of its +genteel and commodious career it had never once been to let. + +Go inside, and breathe its atmosphere of a bored house that is generally +empty yet never untenanted. All its twelve rooms dark and forlorn, save +two; its cellar kitchen dark and forlorn; just these two rooms, one on +the top of the other like boxes, pitifully struggling against the +inveterate gloom of the remaining ten! Stand in the dark hall and get +this atmosphere into your lungs. + +The principal, the startling thing in the illuminated room on the +ground-floor was a dressing-gown, of the colour, between heliotrope and +purple, known to a previous generation as puce; a quilted garment +stuffed with swansdown, light as hydrogen--nearly, and warm as the smile +of a kind heart; old, perhaps, possibly worn in its outlying regions and +allowing fluffs of feathery white to escape through its satin pores; but +a dressing-gown to dream of. It dominated the unkempt, naked apartment, +its voluptuous folds glittering crudely under the sun-replacing oil lamp +which was set on a cigar-box on the stained deal table. The oil lamp had +a glass reservoir, a chipped chimney, and a cardboard shade, and had +probably cost less than a florin; five florins would have purchased the +table; and all the rest of the furniture, including the arm-chair in +which the dressing-gown reclined, a stool, an easel, three packets of +cigarettes and a trouser-stretcher, might have been replaced for another +ten florins. Up in the corners of the ceiling, obscure in the eclipse of +the cardboard shade, was a complicated system of cobwebs to match the +dust on the bare floor. + +Within the dressing-gown there was a man. This man had reached the +interesting age. I mean the age when you think you have shed all the +illusions of infancy, when you think you understand life, and when you +are often occupied in speculating upon the delicious surprises which +existence may hold for you; the age, in sum, that is the most romantic +and tender of all ages--for a male. I mean the age of fifty. An age +absurdly misunderstood by all those who have not reached it! A thrilling +age! Appearances are tragically deceptive. + +The inhabitant of the puce dressing-gown had a short greying beard and +moustache; his plenteous hair was passing from pepper into salt; there +were many minute wrinkles in the hollows between his eyes and the fresh +crimson of his cheeks; and the eyes were sad; they were very sad. Had he +stood erect and looked perpendicularly down, he would have perceived, +not his slippers, but a protuberant button of the dressing-gown. +Understand me: I conceal nothing; I admit the figures written in the +measurement-book of his tailor. He was fifty. Yet, like most men of +fifty, he was still very young, and, like most bachelors of fifty, he +was rather helpless. He was quite sure that he had not had the best of +luck. If he had excavated his soul he would have discovered somewhere in +its deeps a wistful, appealing desire to be taken care of, to be +sheltered from the inconveniences and harshness of the world. But he +would not have admitted the discovery. A bachelor of fifty cannot be +expected to admit that he resembles a girl of nineteen. Nevertheless it +is a strange fact that the resemblance between the heart of an +experienced, adventurous bachelor of fifty and the simple heart of a +girl of nineteen is stronger than girls of nineteen imagine; especially +when the bachelor of fifty is sitting solitary and unfriended at two +o'clock in the night, in the forlorn atmosphere of a house that has +outlived its hopes. Bachelors of fifty alone will comprehend me. + +It has never been decided what young girls do meditate upon when they +meditate; young girls themselves cannot decide. As a rule the lonely +fancies of middle-aged bachelors are scarcely less amenable to +definition. But the case of the inhabitant of the puce dressing-gown was +an exception to the rule. He knew, and he could have said, precisely +what he was thinking about. In that sad hour and place, his melancholy +thoughts were centred upon the resplendent, unique success in life of a +gifted and glorious being known to nations and newspapers as Priam +Farll. + + +_Riches and Renown_ + + +In the days when the New Gallery was new, a picture, signed by the +unknown name of Priam Farll, was exhibited there, and aroused such +terrific interest that for several months no conversation among cultured +persons was regarded as complete without some reference to it. That the +artist was a very great painter indeed was admitted by every one; the +only question which cultured persons felt it their duty to settle was +whether he was the greatest painter that ever lived or merely the +greatest painter since Velasquez. Cultured persons might have continued +to discuss that nice point to the present hour, had it not leaked out +that the picture had been refused by the Royal Academy. The culture of +London then at once healed up its strife and combined to fall on the +Royal Academy as an institution which had no right to exist. The affair +even got into Parliament and occupied three minutes of the imperial +legislature. Useless for the Royal Academy to argue that it had +overlooked the canvas, for its dimensions were seven feet by five; it +represented a policeman, a simple policeman, life-size, and it was not +merely the most striking portrait imaginable, but the first appearance +of the policeman in great art; criminals, one heard, instinctively fled +before it. No! The Royal Academy really could not argue that the work +had been overlooked. And in truth the Royal Academy did not argue +accidental negligence. It did not argue about its own right to exist. It +did not argue at all. It blandly went on existing, and taking about a +hundred and fifty pounds a day in shillings at its polished turnstiles. +No details were obtainable concerning Priam Farll, whose address was +Poste Restante, St. Martin's-le-Grand. Various collectors, animated by +deep faith in their own judgment and a sincere desire to encourage +British art, were anxious to purchase the picture for a few pounds, and +these enthusiasts were astonished and pained to learn that Priam Farll +had marked a figure of L1,000--the price of a rare postage stamp. + +In consequence the picture was not sold; and after an enterprising +journal had unsuccessfully offered a reward for the identification of +the portrayed policeman, the matter went gently to sleep while the +public employed its annual holiday as usual in discussing the big +gooseberry of matrimonial relations. + +Every one naturally expected that in the following year the mysterious +Priam Farll would, in accordance with the universal rule for a +successful career in British art, contribute another portrait of another +policeman to the New Gallery--and so on for about twenty years, at the +end of which period England would have learnt to recognize him as its +favourite painter of policemen. But Priam Farll contributed nothing to +the New Gallery. He had apparently forgotten the New Gallery: which was +considered to be ungracious, if not ungrateful, on his part. Instead, he +adorned the Paris salon with a large seascape showing penguins in the +foreground. Now these penguins became the penguins of the continental +year; they made penguins the fashionable bird in Paris, and also (twelve +months later) in London. The French Government offered to buy the +picture on behalf of the Republic at its customary price of five hundred +francs, but Priam Farll sold it to the American connoisseur Whitney C. +Whitt for five thousand dollars. Shortly afterwards he sold the +policeman, whom he had kept by him, to the same connoisseur for ten +thousand dollars. Whitney C. Whitt was the expert who had paid two +hundred thousand dollars for a Madonna and St. Joseph, with donor, of +Raphael. The enterprising journal before mentioned calculated that, +counting the space actually occupied on the canvas by the policeman, the +daring connoisseur had expended two guineas per square inch on the +policeman. + +At which stage the vast newspaper public suddenly woke up and demanded +with one voice: + +"Who is this Priam Farll?" + +Though the query remained unanswered, Priam Farll's reputation was +henceforward absolutely assured, and this in spite of the fact that he +omitted to comply with the regulations ordained by English society for +the conduct of successful painters. He ought, first, to have taken the +elementary precaution of being born in the United States. He ought, +after having refused all interviews for months, to have ultimately +granted a special one to a newspaper with the largest circulation. He +ought to have returned to England, grown a mane and a tufted tail, and +become the king of beasts; or at least to have made a speech at a +banquet about the noble and purifying mission of art. Assuredly he ought +to have painted the portrait of his father or grandfather as an artisan, +to prove that he was not a snob. But no! Not content with making each of +his pictures utterly different from all the others, he neglected all the +above formalities--and yet managed to pile triumph on triumph. There are +some men of whom it may be said that, like a punter on a good day, they +can't do wrong. Priam Farll was one such. In a few years he had become a +legend, a standing side-dish of a riddle. No one knew him; no one saw +him; no one married him. Constantly abroad, he was ever the subject of +conflicting rumours. Parfitts themselves, his London agents, knew naught +of him but his handwriting--on the backs of cheques in four figures. +They sold an average of five large and five small pictures for him every +year. These pictures arrived out of the unknown and the cheques went +into the unknown. + +Young artists, mute in admiration before the masterpieces from his brush +which enriched all the national galleries of Europe (save, of course, +that in Trafalgar Square), dreamt of him, worshipped him, and quarrelled +fiercely about him, as the very symbol of glory, luxury and flawless +accomplishment, never conceiving him as a man like themselves, with +boots to lace up, a palette to clean, a beating heart, and an +instinctive fear of solitude. + +Finally there came to him the paramount distinction, the last proof that +he was appreciated. The press actually fell into the habit of mentioning +his name without explanatory comment. Exactly as it does not write "Mr. +A.J. Balfour, the eminent statesman," or "Sarah Bernhardt, the renowned +actress," or "Charles Peace, the historic murderer," but simply "Mr. +A.J. Balfour," "Sarah Bernhardt" or "Charles Peace"; so it wrote simply +"Mr. Priam Farll." And no occupant of a smoker in a morning train ever +took his pipe out of his mouth to ask, "What is the johnny?" Greater +honour in England hath no man. Priam Farll was the first English painter +to enjoy this supreme social reward. + +And now he was inhabiting the puce dressing-gown. + + +_The Dreadful Secret_ + + +A bell startled the forlorn house; its loud old-fashioned jangle came +echoingly up the basement stairs and struck the ear of Priam Farll, who +half rose and then sat down again. He knew that it was an urgent summons +to the front door, and that none but he could answer it; and yet he +hesitated. + +Leaving Priam Farll, the great and wealthy artist, we return to that far +more interesting person, Priam Farll the private human creature; and +come at once to the dreadful secret of his character, the trait in him +which explained the peculiar circumstances of his life. + +As a private human creature, he happened to be shy. + +He was quite different from you or me. We never feel secret qualms at +the prospect of meeting strangers, or of taking quarters at a grand +hotel, or of entering a large house for the first time, or of walking +across a room full of seated people, or of dismissing a servant, or of +arguing with a haughty female aristocrat behind a post-office counter, +or of passing a shop where we owe money. As for blushing or hanging +back, or even looking awkward, when faced with any such simple, everyday +acts, the idea of conduct so childish would not occur to us. We behave +naturally under all circumstances--for why should a sane man behave +otherwise? Priam Farll was different. To call the world's attention +visually to the fact of his own existence was anguish to him. But in a +letter he could be absolutely brazen. Give him a pen and he was +fearless. + +Now he knew that he would have to go and open the front door. Both +humanity and self-interest urged him to go instantly. For the visitant +was assuredly the doctor, come at last to see the sick man lying +upstairs. The sick man was Henry Leek, and Henry Leek was Priam Farll's +bad habit. While somewhat of a rascal (as his master guessed), Leek was +a very perfect valet. Like you and me, he was never shy. He always did +the natural thing naturally. He had become, little by little, +indispensable to Priam Farll, the sole means of living communication +between Priam Farll and the universe of men. The master's shyness, +resembling a deer's, kept the pair almost entirely out of England, and, +on their continuous travels, the servant invariably stood between that +sensitive diffidence and the world. Leek saw every one who had to be +seen, and did everything that involved personal contacts. And, being a +bad habit, he had, of course, grown on Priam Farll, and thus, year after +year, for a quarter of a century, Farll's shyness, with his riches and +his glory, had increased. Happily Leek was never ill. That is to say, he +never had been ill, until this day of their sudden incognito arrival in +London for a brief sojourn. He could hardly have chosen a more +inconvenient moment; for in London of all places, in that inherited +house in Selwood Terrace which he so seldom used, Priam Farll could not +carry on daily life without him. It really was unpleasant and disturbing +in the highest degree, this illness of Leek's. The fellow had apparently +caught cold on the night-boat. He had fought the approaches of insidious +disease for several hours, going forth to make purchases and +incidentally consulting a doctor; and then, without warning, in the very +act of making up Farll's couch, he had abandoned the struggle, and, +since his own bed was not ready, he had taken to his master's. He always +did the natural thing naturally. And Farll had been forced to help him +to undress! + +From this point onwards Priam Farll, opulent though he was and +illustrious, had sunk to a tragic impotence. He could do nothing for +himself; and he could do nothing for Leek, because Leek refused both +brandy and sandwiches, and the larder consisted solely of brandy and +sandwiches. The man lay upstairs there, comatose, still, silent, waiting +for the doctor who had promised to pay an evening visit. And the summer +day had darkened into the summer night. + +The notion of issuing out into the world and personally obtaining food +for himself or aid for Leek, did genuinely seem to Priam Farll an +impossible notion; he had never done such things. For him a shop was an +impregnable fort garrisoned by ogres. Besides, it would have been +necessary to 'ask,' and 'asking' was the torture of tortures. So he had +wandered, solicitous and helpless, up and down the stairs, until at +length Leek, ceasing to be a valet and deteriorating into a mere human +organism, had feebly yet curtly requested to be just let alone, +asserting that he was right enough. Whereupon the envied of all +painters, the symbol of artistic glory and triumph, had assumed the +valet's notorious puce dressing-gown and established himself in a hard +chair for a night of discomfort. + +The bell rang once more, and there was a sharp impressive knock that +reverberated through the forlorn house in a most portentous and +terrifying manner. It might have been death knocking. It engendered the +horrible suspicion, "Suppose he's _seriously_ ill?" Priam Farll sprang +up nervously, braced to meet ringers and knockers. + + +_Cure for Shyness_ + + +On the other side of the door, dressed in frock coat and silk hat, there +stood hesitating a tall, thin, weary man who had been afoot for exactly +twenty hours, in pursuit of his usual business of curing imaginary +ailments by means of medicine and suggestion, and leaving real ailments +to nature aided by coloured water. His attitude towards the medical +profession was somewhat sardonic, partly because he was convinced that +only the gluttony of South Kensington provided him with a livelihood, +but more because his wife and two fully-developed daughters spent too +much on their frocks. For years, losing sight of the fact that he was an +immortal soul, they had been treating him as a breakfast-in-the-slot +machine: they put a breakfast in the slot, pushed a button of his +waistcoat, and drew out banknotes. For this, he had neither partner, nor +assistant, nor carriage, nor holiday: his wife and daughters could not +afford him these luxuries. He was able, conscientious, chronically +tired, bald and fifty. He was also, strange as it may seem, shy; though +indeed he had grown used to it, as a man gets used to a hollow tooth or +an eel to skinning. No qualities of the young girl's heart about the +heart of Dr. Cashmore! He really did know human nature, and he never +dreamt of anything more paradisaical than a Sunday Pullman escapade to +Brighton. + +Priam Farll opened the door which divided these two hesitating men, and +they saw each other by the light of the gas lamp (for the hall was in +darkness). + +"This Mr. Farll's?" asked Dr. Cashmore, with the unintentional asperity +of shyness. + +As for Priam, the revelation of his name by Leek shocked him almost into +a sweat. Surely the number of the house should have sufficed. + +"Yes," he admitted, half shy and half vexed. "Are you the doctor?" + +"Yes." + +Dr. Cashmore stepped into the obscurity of the hall. + +"How's the invalid going on?" + +"I can scarcely tell you," said Priam. "He's in bed, very quiet." + +"That's right," said the doctor. "When he came to my surgery this +morning I advised him to go to bed." + +Then followed a brief awkward pause, during which Priam Farll coughed +and the doctor rubbed his hands and hummed a fragment of melody. + +"By Jove!" the thought flashed through the mind of Farll. "This chap's +shy, I do believe!" + +And through the mind of the doctor, "Here's another of 'em, all nerves!" + +They both instantly, from sheer good-natured condescension the one to +the other, became at ease. It was as if a spring had been loosed. Priam +shut the door and shut out the ray of the street lamp. + +"I'm afraid there's no light here," said he. + +"I'll strike a match," said the doctor. + +"Thanks very much," said Priam. + +The flare of a wax vesta illumined the splendours of the puce +dressing-gown. But Dr. Cashmore did not blench. He could flatter himself +that in the matter of dressing-gowns he had nothing to learn. + +"By the way, what's wrong with him, do you think?" Priam Farll inquired +in his most boyish voice. + +"Don't know. Chill! He had a loud cardiac murmur. Might be anything. +That's why I said I'd call anyhow to-night. Couldn't come any sooner. +Been on my feet since six o'clock this morning. You know what it +is--G.P.'s day." + +He smiled grimly in his fatigue. + +"It's very good of you to come," said Priam Farll with warm, vivacious +sympathy. He had an astonishing gift for imaginatively putting himself +in the place of other people. + +"Not at all!" the doctor muttered. He was quite touched. To hide the +fact that he was touched he struck a second match. "Shall we go +upstairs?" + +In the bedroom a candle was burning on a dusty and empty dressing-table. +Dr. Cashmore moved it to the vicinity of the bed, which was like an +oasis of decent arrangement in the desert of comfortless chamber; then +he stooped to examine the sick valet. + +"He's shivering!" exclaimed the doctor softly. + +Henry Leek's skin was indeed bluish, though, besides blankets, there was +a considerable apparatus of rugs on the bed, and the night was warm. His +ageing face (for he was the third man of fifty in that room) had an +anxious look. But he made no movement, uttered no word, at sight of the +doctor; just stared, dully. His own difficult breathing alone seemed to +interest him. + +"Any women up?" + +The doctor turned suddenly and fiercely on Priam Farll, who started. + +"There's only ourselves in the house," he replied. + +A person less experienced than Dr. Cashmore in the secret strangenesses +of genteel life in London might have been astonished by this +information. But Dr. Cashmore no more blenched now than he had blenched +at the puce garment. + +"Well, hurry up and get some hot water," said he, in a tone dictatorial +and savage. "Quick, now! And brandy! And more blankets! Now don't stand +there, please! Here! I'll go with you to the kitchen. Show me!" He +snatched up the candle, and the expression of his features said, "I can +see you're no good in a crisis." + +"It's all up with me, doctor," came a faint whisper from the bed. + +"So it is, my boy!" said the doctor under his breath as he tumbled +downstairs in the wake of Priam Farll. "Unless I get something hot into +you!" + + +_Master and Servant_ + + +"Will there have to be an inquest?" Priam Farll asked at 6 a.m. + +He had collapsed in the hard chair on the ground-floor. The +indispensable Henry Leek was lost to him for ever. He could not imagine +what would happen to his existence in the future. He could not conceive +himself without Leek. And, still worse, the immediate prospect of +unknown horrors of publicity in connection with the death of Leek +overwhelmed him. + +"No!" said the doctor, cheerfully. "Oh no! I was present. Acute double +pneumonia! Sometimes happens like that! I can give a certificate. But of +course you will have to go to the registrar's and register the death." + +Even without an inquest, he saw that the affair would be unthinkably +distressing. He felt that it would kill him, and he put his hand to his +face. + +"Where are Mr. Farll's relatives to be found?" the doctor asked. + +"Mr. Farll's relatives?" Priam Farll repeated without comprehending. + +Then he understood. Dr. Cashmore thought that Henry Leek's name was +Farll! And all the sensitive timidity in Priam Farll's character seized +swiftly at the mad chance of escape from any kind of public appearance +as Priam Farll. Why should he not let it be supposed that he, and not +Henry Leek, had expired suddenly in Selwood Terrace at 5 a.m. He would +be free, utterly free! + +"Yes," said the doctor. "They must be informed, naturally." + +Priam's mind ran rapidly over the catalogue of his family. He could +think of no one nearer than a certain Duncan Farll, a second cousin. + +"I don't think he had any," he replied in a voice that trembled with +excitement at the capricious rashness of what he was doing. "Perhaps +there were distant cousins. But Mr. Farll never talked of them." + +Which was true. + +He could scarcely articulate the words 'Mr Farll.' But when they were +out of his mouth he felt that the deed was somehow definitely done. + +The doctor gazed at Priam's hands, the rough, coarsened hands of a +painter who is always messing in oils and dust. + +"Pardon me," said the doctor. "I presume you are his valet--or--" + +"Yes," said Priam Farll. + +That set the seal. + +"What was your master's full name?" the doctor demanded. + +And Priam Farll shivered. + +"Priam Farll," said he weakly. + +"Not _the_--?" loudly exclaimed the doctor, whom the hazards of life in +London had at last staggered. + +Priam nodded. + +"Well, well!" The doctor gave vent to his feelings. The truth was that +this particular hazard of life in London pleased him, flattered him, +made him feel important in the world, and caused him to forget his +fatigue and his wrongs. + +He saw that the puce dressing-gown contained a man who was at the end of +his tether, and with that good nature of his which no hardships had been +able to destroy, he offered to attend to the preliminary formalities. +Then he went. + + +_A Month's Wages_ + + +Priam Farll had no intention of falling asleep; his desire was to +consider the position which he had so rashly created for himself; but he +did fall asleep--and in the hard chair! He was awakened by a tremendous +clatter, as if the house was being bombarded and there were bricks +falling about his ears. When he regained all his senses this bombardment +resolved itself into nothing but a loud and continued assault on the +front door. He rose, and saw a frowsy, dishevelled, puce-coloured figure +in the dirty mirror over the fireplace. And then, with stiff limbs, he +directed his sleepy feet towards the door. + +Dr. Cashmore was at the door, and still another man of fifty, a +stern-set, blue-chinned, stoutish person in deep and perfect mourning, +including black gloves. + +This person gazed coldly at Priam Farll. + +"Ah!" ejaculated the mourner. + +And stepped in, followed by Dr. Cashmore. + +In achieving the inner mat the mourner perceived a white square on the +floor. He picked it up and carefully examined it, and then handed it to +Priam Farll. + +"I suppose this is for you," said he. + +Priam, accepting the envelope, saw that it was addressed to "Henry Leek, +Esq., 91 Selwood Terrace, S.W.," in a woman's hand. + +"It _is_ for you, isn't it?" pursued the mourner in an inflexible voice. + +"Yes," said Priam. + +"I am Mr. Duncan Farll, a solicitor, a cousin of your late employer," +the metallic voice continued, coming through a set of large, fine, white +teeth. "What arrangements have you made during the day?" + +Priam stammered: "None. I've been asleep." + +"You aren't very respectful," said Duncan Farll. + +So this was his second cousin, whom he had met, once only, as a boy! +Never would he have recognized Duncan. Evidently it did not occur to +Duncan to recognize him. People are apt to grow unrecognizable in the +course of forty years. + +Duncan Farll strode about the ground-floor of the house, and on the +threshold of each room ejaculated "Ah!" or "Ha!" Then he and the doctor +went upstairs. Priam remained inert, and excessively disturbed, in the +hall. + +At length Duncan Farll descended. + +"Come in here, Leek," said Duncan. + +And Priam meekly stepped after him into the room where the hard chair +was. Duncan Farll took the hard chair. + +"What are your wages?" + +Priam sought to remember how much he had paid Henry Leek. + +"A hundred a year," said he. + +"Ah! A good wage. When were you last paid?" + +Priam remembered that he had paid Leek two days ago. + +"The day before yesterday," said he. + +"I must say again you are not very respectful," Duncan observed, drawing +forth his pocket-book. "However, here is L8 7_s_., a month's wages in +lieu of notice. Put your things together, and go. I shall have no +further use for you. I will make no observations of any kind. But be +good enough to _dress_--it is three o'clock--and leave the house at +once. Let me see your box or boxes before you go." + +When, an hour later, in the gloaming, Priam Farll stood on the wrong +side of his own door, with Henry Leek's heavy kit-bag and Henry Leek's +tin trunk flanking him on either hand, he saw that events in his career +were moving with immense rapidity. He had wanted to be free, and free he +was. Quite free! But it appeared to him very remarkable that so much +could happen, in so short a time, as the result of a mere momentary +impulsive prevarication. + + * * * * * + + + + +CHAPTER II + + +_A Pail_ + + +Sticking out of the pocket of Leek's light overcoat was a folded copy of +the _Daily Telegraph_. Priam Farll was something of a dandy, and like +all right-thinking dandies and all tailors, he objected to the suave +line of a garment being spoilt by a free utilization of pockets. The +overcoat itself, and the suit beneath, were quite good; for, though they +were the property of the late Henry Leek, they perfectly fitted Priam +Farll and had recently belonged to him, Leek having been accustomed to +clothe himself entirely from his master's wardrobe. The dandy absently +drew forth the _Telegraph_, and the first thing that caught his eye was +this: "A beautiful private hotel of the highest class. Luxuriously +furnished. Visitor's comfort studied. Finest position in London. Cuisine +a speciality. Quiet. Suitable for persons of superior rank. Bathroom. +Electric light. Separate tables. No irritating extras. Single rooms from +2-1/2 guineas, double from 4 guineas weekly. 250 Queen's Gate." And +below this he saw another piece of news: "Not a boarding-house. A +magnificent mansion. Forty bedrooms by Waring. Superb public saloons by +Maple. Parisian chef. Separate tables. Four bathrooms. Card-room, +billiard-room, vast lounge. Young, cheerful, musical society. Bridge +(small). Special sanitation. Finest position in London. No irritating +extras. Single rooms from 2-1/2 guineas, double from 4 guineas weekly. +Phone 10,073 Western. Trefusis Mansion, W." + +At that moment a hansom cab came ambling down Selwood Terrace. + +Impulsively he hailed it. + +"'Ere, guv'nor," said the cabman, seeing with an expert eye that Priam +Farll was unaccustomed to the manipulation of luggage. "Give this 'ere +Hackenschmidt a copper to lend ye a hand. You're only a light weight." + +A small and emaciated boy, with the historic remains of a cigarette in +his mouth, sprang like a monkey up the steps, and, not waiting to be +asked, snatched the trunk from Priam's hands. Priam gave him one of +Leek's sixpences for his feats of strength, and the boy spat generously +on the coin, at the same time, by a strange skill, clinging to the +cigarette with his lower lip. Then the driver lifted the reins with a +noble gesture, and Priam had to be decisive and get into the cab. + +"250 Queen's Gate," said he. + +As, keeping his head to one side to avoid the reins, he gave the +direction across the roof of the cab to the attentive cocked ear of the +cabman, he felt suddenly that he had regained his nationality, that he +was utterly English, in an atmosphere utterly English. The hansom was +like home after the wilderness. + +He had chosen 250 Queen's Gate because it appeared the abode of +tranquillity and discretion. He felt that he might sink into 250 Queen's +Gate as into a feather bed. The other palace intimidated him. It +recalled the terrors of a continental hotel. In his wanderings he had +suffered much from the young, cheerful and musical society of bright +hotels, and bridge (small) had no attraction for him. + +As the cab tinkled through canyons of familiar stucco, he looked further +at the _Telegraph_. He was rather surprised to find more than a column +of enticing palaces, each in the finest position in London; London, in +fact, seemed to be one unique, glorious position. And it was so welcome, +so receptive, so wishful to make a speciality of your comfort, your +food, your bath, your sanitation! He remembered the old boarding-houses +of the eighties. Now all was changed, for the better. The _Telegraph_ +was full of the better, crammed and packed with tight columns of it. The +better burst aspiringly from the tops of columns on the first page and +outsoared the very title of the paper. He saw there, for instance, to +the left of the title, a new, refined tea-house in Piccadilly Circus, +owned and managed by gentlewomen, where you had real tea and real +bread-and butter and real cakes in a real drawing-room. It was +astounding. + +The cab stopped. + +"Is this it?" he asked the driver. + +"This is 250, sir." + +And it was. But it did not resemble even a private hotel. It exactly +resembled a private house, narrow and tall and squeezed in between its +sister and its brother. Priam Farll was puzzled, till the solution +occurred to him. "Of course," he said to himself. "This is the quietude, +the discretion. I shall like this." He jumped down. + +"I'll keep you," he threw to the cabman, in the proper phrase (which he +was proud to recall from his youth), as though the cabman had been +something which he had ordered on approval. + +There were two bell-knobs. He pulled one, and waited for the portals to +open on discreet vistas of luxurious furniture. No response! Just as he +was consulting the _Telegraph_ to make sure of the number, the door +silently swung back, and disclosed the figure of a middle-aged woman in +black silk, who regarded him with a stern astonishment. + +"Is this----?" he began, nervous and abashed by her formidable stare. + +"Were you wanting rooms?" she asked. + +"Yes," said he. "I was. If I could just see----" + +"Will you come in?" she said. And her morose face, under stringent +commands from her brain, began an imitation of a smile which, as an +imitation, was wonderful. It made you wonder how she had ever taught her +face to do it. + +Priam Farll found himself blushing on a Turkey carpet, and a sort of +cathedral gloom around him. He was disconcerted, but the Turkey carpet +assured him somewhat. As his eyes grew habituated to the light he saw +that the cathedral was very narrow, and that instead of the choir was a +staircase, also clothed in Turkey carpet. On the lowest step reposed an +object whose nature he could not at first determine. + +"Would it be for long?" the lips opposite him muttered cautiously. + +His reply--the reply of an impulsive, shy nature--was to rush out of the +palace. He had identified the object on the stairs. It was a slop-pail +with a wrung cloth on its head. + +He felt profoundly discouraged and pessimistic. All his energy had left +him. London had become hard, hostile, cruel, impossible. He longed for +Leek with a great longing. + + +_Tea_ + + +An hour later, having at the kind suggestion of the cabman deposited +Leek's goods at the cloak-room of South Kensington Station, he was +wandering on foot out of old London into the central ring of new London, +where people never do anything except take the air in parks, lounge in +club-windows, roll to and fro in peculiar vehicles that have ventured +out without horses and are making the best of it, buy flowers and +Egyptian cigarettes, look at pictures, and eat and drink. Nearly all the +buildings were higher than they used to be, and the street wider; and at +intervals of a hundred yards or so cranes that rent the clouds and +defied the law of gravity were continually swinging bricks and marble +into the upper layers of the air. Violets were on sale at every corner, +and the atmosphere was impregnated with an intoxicating perfume of +methylated spirits. Presently he arrived at an immense arched facade +bearing principally the legend 'Tea,' and he saw within hundreds of +persons sipping tea; and next to that was another arched facade bearing +principally the word 'Tea,' and he saw within more hundreds sipping tea; +and then another; and then another; and then suddenly he came to an open +circular place that seemed vaguely familiar. + +"By Jove!" he said. "This is Piccadilly Circus!" + +And just at that moment, over a narrow doorway, he perceived the image +of a green tree, and the words, 'The Elm Tree.' It was the entrance to +the Elm Tree Tea Rooms, so well spoken of in the _Telegraph_. In certain +ways he was a man of advanced and humane ideas, and the thought of +delicately nurtured needy gentlewomen bravely battling with the world +instead of starving as they used to starve in the past, appealed to his +chivalry. He determined to assist them by taking tea in the advertised +drawing-room. Gathering together his courage, he penetrated into a +corridor lighted by pink electricity, and then up pink stairs. A pink +door stopped him at last. It might have hid mysterious and questionable +things, but it said laconically 'Push,' and he courageously pushed... He +was in a kind of boudoir thickly populated with tables and chairs. The +swift transmigration from the blatant street to a drawing-room had a +startling effect on him: it caused him to whip off his hat as though his +hat had been red hot. Except for two tall elegant creatures who stood +together at the other end of the boudoir, the chairs and tables had the +place to themselves. He was about to stammer an excuse and fly, when one +of the gentlewomen turned her eye on him for a moment, and so he sat +down. The gentlewomen then resumed their conversation. He glanced +cautiously about him. Elm-trees, firmly rooted in a border of Indian +matting, grew round all the walls in exotic profusion, and their topmost +branches splashed over on to the ceiling. A card on the trunk of a tree, +announcing curtly, "Dogs not allowed," seemed to enhearten him. After a +pause one of the gentlewomen swam haughtily towards him and looked him +between the eyes. She spoke no word, but her firm, austere glance said: + +"Now, out with it, and see you behave yourself!" + +He had been ready to smile chivalrously. But the smile was put to sudden +death. + +"Some tea, please," he said faintly, and his intimidated tone said, "If +it isn't troubling you too much." + +"What do you want with it?" asked the gentlewoman abruptly, and as he +was plainly at a loss she added, "Crumpets or tea-cake?" + +"Tea-cake," he replied, though he hated tea-cake. But he was afraid. + +"You've escaped this time," said the drapery of her muslins as she swam +from his sight. "But no nonsense while I'm away!" + +When she sternly and mutely thrust the refection before him, he found +that everything on the table except the tea-cakes and the spoon was +growing elm-trees. + +After one cup and one slice, when the tea had become stewed and +undrinkable, and the tea-cake a material suitable for the manufacture of +shooting boots, he resumed, at any rate partially, his presence of mind, +and remembered that he had done nothing positively criminal in entering +the boudoir or drawing-room and requesting food in return for money. +Besides, the gentlewomen were now pretending to each other that he did +not exist, and no other rash persons had been driven by hunger into the +virgin forest of elm-trees. He began to meditate, and his meditations +taking--for him--an unusual turn, caused him surreptitiously to examine +Henry Leek's pocket-book (previously only known to him by sight). He had +not for many years troubled himself concerning money, but the discovery +that, when he had paid for the deposit of luggage at the cloak-room, a +solitary sovereign rested in the pocket of Leek's trousers, had +suggested to him that it would be advisable sooner or later to consider +the financial aspect of existence. + +There were two banknotes for ten pounds each in Leek's pocket-book; also +five French banknotes of a thousand francs each, and a number of Italian +banknotes of small denominations: the equivalent of two hundred and +thirty pounds altogether, not counting a folded inch-rule, some postage +stamps, and a photograph of a pleasant-faced woman of forty or so. This +sum seemed neither vast nor insignificant to Priam Farll. It seemed to +him merely a tangible something which would enable him to banish the +fiscal question from his mind for an indefinite period. He scarcely even +troubled to wonder what Leek was doing with over two years of Leek's +income in his pocket-book. He knew, or at least he with certainty +guessed, that Leek had been a rascal. Still, he had had a sort of grim, +cynical affection for Leek. And the thought that Leek would never again +shave him, nor tell him in accents that brooked no delay that his hair +must be cut, nor register his luggage and secure his seat on +long-distance expresses, filled him with very real melancholy. He did +not feel sorry for Leek, nor say to himself "Poor Leek!" Nobody who had +had the advantage of Leek's acquaintance would have said "Poor Leek!" +For Leek's greatest speciality had always been the speciality of looking +after Leek, and wherever Leek might be it was a surety that Leek's +interests would not suffer. Therefore Priam Farll's pity was mainly +self-centred. + +And though his dignity had been considerably damaged during the final +moments at Selwood Terrace, there was matter for congratulation. The +doctor, for instance, had shaken hands with him at parting; had shaken +hands openly, in the presence of Duncan Farll: a flattering tribute to +his personality. But the chief of Priam Farll's satisfactions in that +desolate hour was that he had suppressed himself, that for the world he +existed no more. I shall admit frankly that this satisfaction nearly +outweighed his grief. He sighed--and it was a sigh of tremendous relief. +For now, by a miracle, he would be free from the menace of Lady Sophia +Entwistle. Looking back in calmness at the still recent Entwistle +episode in Paris--the real originating cause of his sudden flight to +London--he was staggered by his latent capacity for downright, impulsive +foolishness. Like all shy people he had fits of amazing audacity--and +his recklessness usually took the form of making himself agreeable to +women whom he encountered in travel (he was much less shy with women +than with men). But to propose marriage to a weather-beaten haunter of +hotels like Lady Sophia Entwistle, and to reveal his identity to her, +and to allow her to accept his proposal--the thing had been unimaginably +inept! + +And now he was free, for he was dead. + +He was conscious of a chill in the spine as he dwelt on the awful fate +which he had escaped. He, a man of fifty, a man of set habits, a man +habituated to the liberty of the wild stag, to bow his proud neck under +the solid footwear of Lady Sophia Entwistle! + +Yes, there was most decidedly a silver lining to the dark cloud of +Leek's translation to another sphere of activity. + +In replacing the pocket-book his hand encountered the letter which had +arrived for Leek in the morning. Arguing with himself whether he ought +to open it, he opened it. It ran: "Dear Mr. Leek, I am so glad to have +your letter, and I think the photograph is most gentlemanly. But I do +wish you would not write with a typewriter. You don't know how this +affects a woman, or you wouldn't do it. However, I shall be so glad to +meet you now, as you suggest. Suppose we go to Maskelyne and Cook's +together to-morrow afternoon (Saturday). You know it isn't the Egyptian +Hall any more. It is in St. George's Hall, I think. But you will see it +in the _Telegraph_; also the time. I will be there when the doors open. +You will recognize me from my photograph; but I shall wear red roses in +my hat. So _au revoir_ for the present. Yours sincerely, Alice Challice. +P.S.--There are always a lot of dark parts at Maskelyne and Cook's. I +must ask you to behave as a gentleman should. Excuse me. I merely +mention it in case.--A. C." + +Infamous Leek! Here was at any rate one explanation of a mysterious +little typewriter which the valet had always carried, but which Priam +had left at Selwood Terrace. + +Priam glanced at the photograph in the pocket-book; and also, strange to +say, at the _Telegraph_. + +A lady with three children burst into the drawing-room, and instantly +occupied the whole of it; the children cried "Mathaw!" "Mathah!" +"Mathaw!" in shrill tones of varied joy. As one of the gentlewomen +passed near him, he asked modestly-- + +"How much, please?" + +She dropped a flake of paper on to his table without arresting her +course, and said warningly: + +"You pay at the desk." + +When he hit on the desk, which was hidden behind a screen of elm-trees, +he had to face a true aristocrat--and not in muslins, either. If the +others were the daughters of earls, this was the authentic countess in a +tea-gown. + +He put down Leek's sovereign. + +"Haven't you anything smaller?" snapped the countess. + +"I'm sorry I haven't," he replied. + +She picked up the sovereign scornfully, and turned it over. + +"It's very awkward," she muttered. + +Then she unlocked two drawers, and unwillingly gave him eighteen and +sixpence in silver and copper, without another word and without looking +at him. + +"Thank you," said he, pocketing it nervously. + +And, amid reiterated cries of "Mathah!" "Mathaw!" "Mathah!" he hurried +away, unregarded, unregretted, splendidly repudiated by these delicate +refined creatures who were struggling for a livelihood in a great city. + + +_Alice Challice_ + + +"I suppose you are Mr. Leek, aren't you?" a woman greeted him as he +stood vaguely hesitant outside St. George's Hall, watching the afternoon +audience emerge. He started back, as though the woman with her trace of +Cockney accent had presented a revolver at his head. He was very much +afraid. It may reasonably be asked what he was doing up at St. George's +Hall. The answer to this most natural question touches the deepest +springs of human conduct. There were two men in Priam Farll. One was the +shy man, who had long ago persuaded himself that he actually preferred +not to mix with his kind, and had made a virtue of his cowardice. The +other was a doggish, devil-may-care fellow who loved dashing adventures +and had a perfect passion for free intercourse with the entire human +race. No. 2 would often lead No. 1 unsuspectingly forward to a difficult +situation from which No. 1, though angry and uncomfortable, could not +retire. + +Thus it was No. 2 who with the most casual air had wandered up Regent +Street, drawn by the slender chance of meeting a woman with red roses in +her hat; and it was No. 1 who had to pay the penalty. Nobody could have +been more astonished than No. 2 at the fulfillment of No. 2's secret +yearning for novelty. But the innocent sincerity of No. 2's astonishment +gave no aid to No. 1. + +Farll raised his hat, and at the same moment perceived the roses. He +might have denied the name of Leek and fled, but he did not. Though his +left leg was ready to run, his right leg would not stir. + +Then he was shaking hands with her. But how had she identified him? + +"I didn't really expect you," said the lady, always with a slight +Cockney accent. "But I thought how silly it would be for me to miss the +vanishing trick just because you couldn't come. So in I went, by +myself." + +"Why didn't you expect me?" he asked diffidently. + +"Well," she said, "Mr. Farll being dead, I knew you'd have a lot to do, +besides being upset like." + +"Oh yes," he said quickly, feeling that he must be more careful; for he +had quite forgotten that Mr. Farll was dead. "How did you know?" + +"How did I know!" she cried. "Well, I like that! Look anywhere! It's all +over London, has been these six hours." She pointed to a ragged man who +was wearing an orange-coloured placard by way of apron. On the placard +was printed in large black letters: "Sudden death of Priam Farll in +London. Special Memoir." Other ragged men, also wearing aprons, but of +different colours, similarly proclaimed by their attire that Priam Farll +was dead. And people crowding out of St. George's Hall were continually +buying newspapers from these middlemen of tidings. + +He blushed. It was singular that he could have walked even half-an-hour +in Central London without noticing that his own name flew in the summer +breeze of every street. But so it had been. He was that sort of man. Now +he understood how Duncan Farll had descended upon Selwood Terrace. + +"You don't mean to say you didn't _see_ those posters?" she demanded. + +"I didn't," he said simply. + +"That shows how you must have been thinking!" said she. "Was he a good +master?" + +"Yes, very good," said Priam Farll with conviction. + +"I see you're not in mourning." + +"No. That is----" + +"I don't hold with mourning myself," she proceeded. "They say it's to +show respect. But it seems to me that if you can't show your respect +without a pair of black gloves that the dye's always coming off... I +don't know what you think, but I never did hold with mourning. It's +grumbling against Providence, too! Not but what I think there's a good +deal too much talk about Providence. I don't know what you think, +but----" + +"I quite agree with you," he said, with a warm generous smile which +sometimes rushed up and transformed his face before he was aware of the +occurrence. + +And she smiled also, gazing at him half confidentially. She was a little +woman, stoutish--indeed, stout; puffy red cheeks; a too remarkable white +cotton blouse; and a crimson skirt that hung unevenly; grey cotton +gloves; a green sunshade; on the top of all this the black hat with red +roses. The photograph in Leek's pocket-book must have been taken in the +past. She looked quite forty-five, whereas the photograph indicated +thirty-nine and a fraction. He gazed down at her protectively, with a +good-natured appreciative condescension. + +"I suppose you'll have to be going back again soon, to arrange things +like," she said. It was always she who kept the conversation afloat. + +"No," he said. "I've finished there. They've dismissed me." + +"Who have?" + +"The relatives." + +"Why?" + +He shook his head. + +"I hope you made them pay you your month," said she firmly. + +He was glad to be able to give a satisfactory answer. + +After a pause she resumed bravely: + +"So Mr. Farll was one of these artists? At least so I see according to +the paper." + +He nodded. + +"It's a very funny business," she said. "But I suppose there's some of +them make quite a nice income out of it. _You_ ought to know about that, +being in it, as it were." + +Never in his life had he conversed on such terms with such a person as +Mrs. Alice Challice. She was in every way a novelty for him--in clothes, +manners, accent, deportment, outlook on the world and on paint. He had +heard and read of such beings as Mrs. Alice Challice, and now he was in +direct contact with one of them. The whole affair struck him as +excessively odd, as a mad escapade on his part. Wisdom in him deemed it +ridiculous to prolong the encounter, but shy folly could not break +loose. Moreover she possessed the charm of her novelty; and there was +that in her which challenged the male in him. + +"Well," she said, "I suppose we can't stand here for ever!" + +The crowd had frittered itself away, and an attendant was closing and +locking the doors of St. George's Hall. He coughed. + +"It's a pity it's Saturday and all the shops closed. But anyhow suppose +we walk along Oxford Street all the same? Shall we?" This from her. + +"By all means." + +"Now there's one thing I should like to say," she murmured with a calm +smile as they moved off. "You've no occasion to be shy with me. There's +no call for it. I'm just as you see me." + +"Shy!" he exclaimed, genuinely surprised. "Do I seem shy to you?" He +thought he had been magnificently doggish. + +"Oh, well," she said. "That's all right, then, if you _aren't._ I should +take it as a poor compliment, being shy with me. Where do you think we +can have a good talk? I'm free for the evening. I don't know about you." + +Her eyes questioned his. + + +_No Gratuities_ + + +At a late hour, they were entering, side by side, a glittering +establishment whose interior seemed to be walled chiefly in bevelled +glass, so that everywhere the curious observer saw himself and twisted +fractions of himself. The glass was relieved at frequent intervals by +elaborate enamelled signs which repeated, 'No gratuities.' It seemed +that the directors of the establishment wished to make perfectly clear +to visitors that, whatever else they might find, they must on no account +expect gratuities. + +"I've always wanted to come here," said Mrs. Alice Challice vivaciously, +glancing up at Priam Farll's modest, middle-aged face. + +Then, after they had successfully passed through a preliminary pair of +bevelled portals, a huge man dressed like a policeman, and achieving a +very successful imitation of a policeman, stretched out his hand, and +stopped them. + +"In line, please," he said. + +"I thought it was a restaurant, not a theatre," Priam whispered to Mrs. +Challice. + +"So it is a restaurant," said his companion. "But I hear they're obliged +to do like this because there's always such a crowd. It's very 'andsome, +isn't it?" + +He agreed that it was. He felt that London had got a long way in front +of him and that he would have to hurry a great deal before he could +catch it up. + +At length another imitation of a policeman opened more doors and, with +other sinners, they were released from purgatory into a clattering +paradise, which again offered everything save gratuities. They were +conducted to a small table full of dirty plates and empty glasses in a +corner of the vast and lofty saloon. A man in evening dress whose eye +said, "Now mind, no insulting gratuities!" rushed past the table and in +one deft amazing gesture swept off the whole of its contents and was +gone with them. It was an astounding feat, and when Priam recovered from +his amazement he fell into another amazement on discovering that by some +magic means the man in evening dress had insinuated a gold-charactered +menu into his hands. This menu was exceedingly long--it comprised +everything except gratuities--and, evidently knowing from experience +that it was not a document to be perused and exhausted in five minutes, +the man in evening dress took care not to interrupt the studies of Priam +Farll and Alice Challice during a full quarter of an hour. Then he +returned like a bolt, put them through an examination in the menu, and +fled, and when he was gone they saw that the table was set with a clean +cloth and instruments and empty glasses. A band thereupon burst into gay +strains, like the band at a music-hall after something very difficult on +the horizontal bar. And it played louder and louder; and as it played +louder, so the people talked louder. And the crash of cymbals mingled +with the crash of plates, and the altercations of knives and forks with +the shrill accents of chatterers determined to be heard. And men in +evening dress (a costume which seemed to be forbidden to sitters at +tables) flitted to and fro with inconceivable rapidity, austere, +preoccupied conjurers. And from every marble wall, bevelled mirror, and +Doric column, there spoke silently but insistently the haunting legend, +'No gratuities.' + +Thus Priam Farll began his first public meal in modern London. He knew +the hotels; he knew the restaurants, of half-a-dozen countries, but he +had never been so overwhelmed as he was here. Remembering London as a +city of wooden chop-houses, he could scarcely eat for the thoughts that +surged through his brain. + +"Isn't it amusing?" said Mrs. Challice benignantly, over a glass of +lager. "I'm so glad you brought me here. I've always wanted to come." + +And then, a few minutes afterwards, she was saying, against the immense +din-- + +"You know, I've been thinking for years of getting married again. And if +you really _are_ thinking of getting married, what are you to do? You +may sit in a chair and wait till eggs are sixpence a dozen, and you'll +be no nearer. You must do something. And what is there except a +matrimonial agency? I say--what's the matter with a matrimonial agency, +anyhow? If you want to get married, you want to get married, and it's no +use pretending you don't. I do hate pretending, I do. No shame in +wanting to get married, is there? I think a matrimonial agency is a very +good, useful thing. They say you're swindled. Well, those that are +deserve to be. You can be swindled without a matrimonial agency, seems +to me. Not that I've ever been. Plain common-sense people never are. No, +if you ask me, matrimonial agencies are the most sensible things--after +dress-shields--that's ever been invented. And I'm sure if anything comes +of this, I shall pay the fees with the greatest pleasure. Now don't you +agree with me?" + +The whole mystery stood explained. + +"Absolutely!" he said. + +And felt the skin creeping in the small of his back. + + * * * * * + + + + +CHAPTER III + + +_The Photograph_ + + +From the moment of Mrs. Challice's remarks in favour of matrimonial +agencies Priam Farll's existence became a torture to him. She was what +he had always been accustomed to think of as "a very decent woman"; but +really...! The sentence is not finished because Priam never finished it +in his own mind. Fifty times he conducted the sentence as far as +'really,' and there it dissolved into an uncomfortable cloud. + +"I suppose we shall have to be going," said she, when her ice had been +eaten and his had melted. + +"Yes," said he, and added to himself, "But where?" + +However, it would be a relief to get out of the restaurant, and he +called for the bill. + +While they were waiting for the bill the situation grew more strained. +Priam was aware of a desire to fling down sovereigns on the table and +rush wildly away. Even Mrs. Challice, vaguely feeling this, had a +difficulty in conversing. + +"You _are_ like your photograph!" she remarked, glancing at his face +which--it should be said--had very much changed within half-an-hour. He +had a face capable of a hundred expressions per day. His present +expression was one of his anxious expressions, medium in degree. It can +be figured in the mask of a person who is locked up in an iron +strongroom, and, feeling ill at ease, notices that the walls are getting +red-hot at the corners. + +"Like my photograph?" he exclaimed, astonished that he should resemble +Leek's photograph. + +"Yes," she asseverated stoutly. "I knew you at once. Especially by the +nose." + +"Have you got it here?" he asked, interested to see what portrait of +Leek had a nose like his own. + +And she pulled out of her handbag a photograph, not of Leek, but of +Priam Farll. It was an unmounted print of a negative which he and Leek +had taken together for the purposes of a pose in a picture, and it had +decidedly a distinguished appearance. But why should Leek dispatch +photographs of his master to strange ladies introduced through a +matrimonial agency? Priam Farll could not imagine--unless it was from +sheer unscrupulous, careless bounce. + +She gazed at the portrait with obvious joy. + +"Now, candidly, don't _you_ think it's very, very good?" she demanded. + +"I suppose it is," he agreed. He would probably have given two hundred +pounds for the courage to explain to her in a few well-chosen words that +there had been a vast mistake, a huge impulsive indiscretion. But two +hundred thousand pounds would not have bought that courage. + +"I love it," she ejaculated fervently--with heat, and yet so nicely! And +she returned the photograph to her little bag. + +She lowered her voice. + +"You haven't told me whether you were ever married. I've been waiting +for that." + +He blushed. She was disconcertingly personal. + +"No," he said. + +"And you've always lived like that, alone like; no home; travelling +about; no one to look after you, properly?" There was distress in her +voice. + +He nodded. "One gets accustomed to it." + +"Oh yes," she said. "I can understand that." + +"No responsibilities," he added. + +"No. I can understand all that." Then she hesitated. "But I do feel so +sorry for you... all these years!" + +And her eyes were moist, and her tone was so sincere that Priam Farll +found it quite remarkably affecting. Of course she was talking about +Henry Leek, the humble valet, and not about Leek's illustrious master. +But Priam saw no difference between his lot and that of Leek. He felt +that there was no essential difference, and that, despite Leek's +multiple perfections as a valet, he never had been looked +after--properly. Her voice made him feel just as sorry for himself as +she was sorry for him; it made him feel that she had a kind heart, and +that a kind heart was the only thing on earth that really mattered. Ah! +If Lady Sophia Entwistle had spoken to him in such accents...! + +The bill came. It was so small that he was ashamed to pay it. The +suppression of gratuities enabled the monarch of this bevelled palace to +offer a complete dinner for about the same price as a thimbleful of tea +and ten drachms of cake a few yards away. Happily the monarch, +foreseeing his shame, had arranged a peculiar method of payment through +a little hole, where the receiver could see nothing but his blushing +hands. As for the conjurers in evening dress, they apparently never +soiled themselves by contact with specie. + +Outside on the pavement, he was at a loss what to do. You see, he was +entirely unfamiliar with Mrs. Challice's code of etiquette. + +"Would you care to go to the Alhambra or somewhere?" he suggested, +having a notion that this was the correct thing to say to a lady whose +presence near you was directly due to her desire for marriage. + +"It's very good of you," said she. "But I'm sure you only say it out of +kindness--because you're a gentleman. It wouldn't be quite nice for you +to go to a music-hall to-night. I know I said I was free for the +evening, but I wasn't thinking. It wasn't a hint--no, truly! I think I +shall go home--and perhaps some other----" + +"I shall see you home," said he quickly. Impulsive, again! + +"Would you really like to? Can you?" In the bluish glare of an +electricity that made the street whiter than day, she blushed. Yes, she +blushed like a girl. + +She led him up a side-street where was a kind of railway station +unfamiliar to Priam Farll's experience, tiled like a butcher's shop and +as clean as Holland. Under her direction he took tickets for a station +whose name he had never heard of, and then they passed through steel +railings which clacked behind them into a sort of safe deposit, from +which the only emergence was a long dim tunnel. Painted hands, pointing +to the mysterious word 'lifts,' waved you onwards down this tunnel. +"Hurry up, please," came a voice out of the spectral gloom. Mrs. +Challice thereupon ran. Now up the tunnel, opposing all human progress +there blew a steady trade-wind of tremendous force. Immediately Priam +began to run the trade-wind removed his hat, which sailed buoyantly back +towards the street. He was after it like a youth of twenty, and he +recaptured it. But when he reached the extremity of the tunnel his +amazed eyes saw nothing but a great cage of human animals pressed +tightly together behind bars. There Was a click, and the whole cage sank +from his sight into the earth. + +He felt that there was more than he had dreamt of in the city of +miracles. In a couple of minutes another cage rose into the tunnel at a +different point, vomited its captives and descended swiftly again with +Priam and many others, and threw him and the rest out into a white mine +consisting of numberless galleries. He ran about these interminable +galleries underneath London, at the bidding of painted hands, for a +considerable time, and occasionally magic trains without engines swept +across his vision. But he could not find even the spirit of Mrs. Alice +Challice in this nether world. + + +_The Nest_ + + +On letter-paper headed "Grand Babylon Hotel, London," he was writing in +a disguised backward hand a note to the following effect: "Duncan Farll, +Esq. Sir,--If any letters or telegrams arrive for me at Selwood Terrace, +be good enough to have them forwarded to me at once to the above +address.--Yours truly, H. Leek." It cost him something to sign the name +of the dead man; but he instinctively guessed that Duncan Farll might be +a sieve which (owing to its legal-mindedness) would easily get clogged +up even by a slight suspicion. Hence, in order to be sure of receiving a +possible letter or telegram from Mrs. Challice, he must openly label +himself as Henry Leek. He had lost Mrs. Challice; there was no address +on her letter; he only knew that she lived at or near Putney, and the +sole hope of finding her again lay in the fact that she had the Selwood +Terrace address. He wanted to find her again; he desired that ardently, +if merely to explain to her that their separation was due to a sudden +caprice of his hat, and that he had searched for her everywhere in the +mine, anxiously, desperately. She would surely not imagine that he had +slipped away from her on purpose? No! And yet, if incapable of such an +enormity, why had she not waited for him on one of the platforms? +However, he hoped for the best. The best was a telegram; the second-best +a letter. On receipt of which he would fly to her to explain.... And +besides, he wanted to see her--simply. Her answer to his suggestion of a +music-hall, and the tone of it, had impressed him. And her remark, "I do +feel so sorry for you all these years," had--well, somewhat changed his +whole outlook on life. Yes, he wanted to see her in order to satisfy +himself that he had her respect. A woman impossible socially, a woman +with strange habits and tricks of manner (no doubt there were millions +such); but a woman whose respect one would not forfeit without a +struggle! + +He had been pushed to an extremity, forced to act with swiftness, upon +losing her. And he had done the thing that comes most naturally to a +life-long traveller. He had driven to the best hotel in the town. (He +had seen in a flash that the idea of inhabiting any private hotel +whatever was a silly idea.) And now he was in a large bedroom +over-looking the Thames--a chamber with a writing-desk, a sofa, five +electric lights, two easy-chairs, a telephone, electric bells, and a +massive oak door with a lock and a key in the lock; in short, his +castle! An enterprise of some daring to storm the castle: but he had +stormed it. He had registered under the name of Leek, a name +sufficiently common not to excite remark, and the floor-valet had proved +to be an admirable young man. He trusted to the floor-valet and to the +telephone for avoiding any rough contact with the world. He felt +comparatively safe now; the entire enormous hotel was a nest for his +shyness, a conspiracy to keep him in cotton-wool. He was an autocratic +number, absolute ruler over Room 331, and with the right to command the +almost limitless resources of the Grand Babylon for his own private +ends. + +As he sealed the envelope he touched a bell. + +The valet entered. + +"You've got the evening papers?" asked Priam Farll. + +"Yes, sir." The valet put a pile of papers respectfully on the desk. + +"All of them?" + +"Yes, sir." + +"Thanks. Well, it's not too late to have a messenger, is it?" + +"Oh _no_, sir." ("'Too late' in the Grand Babylon, oh Czar!" said the +valet's shocked tone.) + +"Then please get a messenger to take this letter, at once." + +"In a cab, sir?" + +"Yes, in a cab. I don't know whether there will be an answer. He will +see. Then let him call at the cloak-room at South Kensington Station and +get my luggage. Here's the ticket." + +"Thank you, sir." + +"I can rely on you to see that he goes at once?" + +"You can, sir," said the valet, in such accents as carry absolute +conviction. + +"Thank you. That will do, I think." + +The man retired, and the door was closed by an expert in closing doors, +one who had devoted his life to the perfection of detail in valetry. + + +_Fame_ + + +He lay on the sofa at the foot of the bed, with all illumination +extinguished save one crimson-shaded light immediately above him. The +evening papers--white, green, rose, cream, and yellow--shared his couch. +He was about to glance at the obituaries; to glance at them in a +careless, condescending way, just to see the _sort_ of thing that +journalists had written of him. He knew the value of obituaries; he had +often smiled at them. He knew also the exceeding fatuity of art +criticism, which did not cause him even to smile, being simply a bore. +He recollected, further, that he was not the first man to read his own +obituary; the adventure had happened to others; and he could recall how, +on his having heard that owing to an error it had happened to the great +so-and-so, he, in his quality of philosopher, had instantly decided what +frame of mind the great so-and-so ought to have assumed for the perusal +of his biography. He carefully and deliberately adopted that frame of +mind now. He thought of Marcus Aurelius on the futility of fame; he +remembered his life-long attitude of gentle, tired scorn for the press; +he reflected with wise modesty that in art nothing counts but the work +itself, and that no quantity of inept chatter could possibly affect, for +good or evil, his value, such as it might be, to the world. + +Then he began to open the papers. + +The first glimpse of their contents made him jump. In fact, the physical +result of it was quite extraordinary. His temperature increased. His +heart became audible. His pulse quickened. And there was a tingling as +far off as his toes. He had felt, in a dim, unacknowledged way, that he +must be a pretty great painter. Of course his prices were notorious. And +he had guessed, though vaguely, that he was the object of widespread +curiosity. But he had never compared himself with Titanic figures on the +planet. It had always seemed to him that _his_ renown was different from +other renowns, less--somehow unreal and make-believe. He had never +imaginatively grasped, despite prices and public inquisitiveness, that +he too was one of the Titanic figures. He grasped it now. The aspect of +the papers brought it home to him with tremendous force. + +Special large type! Titles stretching across two columns! Black borders +round the pages! "Death of England's greatest painter." "Sudden death +of Priam Farll." "Sad death of a great genius." "Puzzling career +prematurely closed." "Europe in mourning." "Irreparable loss to the +world's art." "It is with the most profound regret." "Our readers will +be shocked." "The news will come as a personal blow to every lover of +great painting." So the papers went on, outvying each other in +enthusiastic grief. + +He ceased to be careless and condescending to them. The skin crept along +his spine. There he lay, solitary, under the crimson glow, locked in his +castle, human, with the outward semblance of a man like other men, and +yet the cities of Europe were weeping for him. He heard them weeping. +Every lover of great painting was under a sense of personal bereavement. +The very voice of the world was hushed. After all, it was something to +have done your best; after all, good stuff _was_ appreciated by the mass +of the race. The phenomena presented by the evening papers was certainly +prodigious, and prodigiously affecting. Mankind was unpleasantly stunned +by the report of his decease. He forgot that Mrs. Challice, for +instance, had perfectly succeeded in hiding her grief for the +irreparable loss, and that her questions about Priam Farll had been +almost perfunctory. He forgot that he had witnessed absolutely no sign +of overwhelming sorrow, or of any degree of sorrow, in the thoroughfares +of the teeming capital, and that the hotels did not resound to sobbing. +He knew only that all Europe was in mourning! + +"I suppose I was rather wonderful--_am_, I mean"--he said to himself, +dazed and happy. Yes, happy. "The fact is, I've got so used to my own +work that perhaps I don't think enough of it." He said this as modestly +as he could. + +There was no question now of casually glancing at the obituaries. He +could not miss a single line, a single word. He even regretted that the +details of his life were so few and unimportant. It seemed to him that +it was the business of the journalists to have known more, to have +displayed more enterprise in acquiring information. Still, the tone was +right. The fellows meant well, at any rate. His eyes encountered nothing +but praise. Indeed the press of London had yielded itself up to an +encomiastic orgy. His modesty tried to say that this was slightly +overdone; but his impartiality asked, "Really, what _could_ they say +against me?" As a rule unmitigated praise was nauseous but here they +were undoubtedly genuine, the fellows; their sentences rang true! + +Never in his life had he been so satisfied with the scheme of the +universe! He was nearly consoled for the dissolution of Leek. + +When, after continued reading, he came across a phrase which discreetly +insinuated, apropos of the policeman and the penguins, that +capriciousness in the choice of subject was perhaps a pose with him, the +accusation hurt. + +"Pose!" he inwardly exclaimed. "What a lie! The man's an ass!" + +And he resented the following remark which concluded a 'special memoir' +extremely laudatory in matter and manner, by an expert whose books he +had always respected: "However, contemporary judgments are in the large +majority of cases notoriously wrong, and it behooves us to remember this +in choosing a niche for our idol. Time alone can settle the ultimate +position of Priam Farll." + +Useless for his modesty to whisper to him that contemporary judgments +_were_ notoriously wrong. He did not like it. It disturbed him. There +were exceptions to every rule. And if the connoisseur meant anything at +all, he was simply stultifying the rest of the article. Time be d----d! + +He had come nearly to the last line of the last obituary before he was +finally ruffled. Most of the sheets, in excusing the paucity of +biographical detail, had remarked that Priam Farll was utterly unknown +to London society, of a retiring disposition, hating publicity, a +recluse, etc. The word "recluse" grated on his sensitiveness a little; +but when the least important of the evening papers roundly asserted it +to be notorious that he was of extremely eccentric habits, he grew +secretly furious. Neither his modesty nor his philosophy was influential +enough to restore him to complete calm. + +Eccentric! He! What next? Eccentric, indeed! + +Now, what conceivable justification------? + + +_The Ruling Classes_ + + +Between a quarter-past and half-past eleven he was seated alone at a +small table in the restaurant of the Grand Babylon. He had had no news +of Mrs. Challice; she had not instantly telegraphed to Selwood Terrace, +as he had wildly hoped. But in the boxes of Henry Leek, safely retrieved +by the messenger from South Kensington Station, he had discovered one of +his old dress-suits, not too old, and this dress-suit he had donned. The +desire to move about unknown in the well-clad world, the world of the +frequenters of costly hotels, the world to which he was accustomed, had +overtaken him. Moreover, he felt hungry. Hence he had descended to the +famous restaurant, whose wide windows were flung open to the illuminated +majesty of the Thames Embankment. The pale cream room was nearly full of +expensive women, and expending men, and silver-chained waiters whose +skilled, noiseless, inhuman attentions were remunerated at the rate of +about four-pence a minute. Music, the midnight food of love, floated +scarce heard through the tinted atmosphere. It was the best imitation of +Roman luxury that London could offer, and after Selwood Terrace and the +rackety palace of no gratuities, Priam Farll enjoyed it as one enjoys +home after strange climes. + +Next to his table was an empty table, set for two, to which were +presently conducted, with due state, a young man, and a magnificent +woman whose youth was slipping off her polished shoulders like a cloak. +Priam Farll then overheard the following conversation:-- + +_Man_: Well, what are you going to have? + +_Woman_: But look here, little Charlie, you can't possibly afford to pay +for this! + +_Man_: Never said I could. It's the paper that pays. So go ahead. + +_Woman_: Is Lord Nasing so keen as all that? + +_Man_: It isn't Lord Nasing. It's our brand new editor specially +imported from Chicago. + +_Woman_: Will he last? + +_Man_: He'll last a hundred nights, say as long as the run of your +piece. Then he'll get six months' screw and the boot. + +_Woman_: How much is six months' screw? + +_Man_: Three thousand. + +_Woman_: Well, I can hardly earn that myself. + +_Man_: Neither can I. But then you see we weren't born in Chicago. + +_Woman_: I've been offered a thousand dollars a week to go there, +anyhow. + +_Man_: Why didn't you tell me that for the interview? I've spent two +entire entr'actes in trying to get something interesting out of you, and +there you go and keep a thing like that up your sleeve. It's not fair to +an old and faithful admirer. I shall stick it in. Poulet chasseur? + +_Woman_: Oh no! Couldn't dream of it. Didn't you know I was dieting? +Nothing saucy. No sugar. No bread. No tea. Thanks to that I've lost +nearly a stone in six months. You know I _was_ getting enormous. + +_Man_: Let me put _that_ in, eh? + +_Woman_: Just try, and see what happens to you! + +_Man_: Well, shall we say a lettuce salad, and a Perrier and soda? I'm +dieting, too. + +_Waiter_: Lettuce salad, and a Perrier and soda? Yes, sir. + +_Woman_: You aren't very gay. + +_Man_: Gay! You don't know all the yearnings of my soul. Don't imagine +that because I'm a special of the _Record_ I haven't got a soul. + +_Woman_: I suppose you've been reading that book, Omar Khayyam, that +every one's talking about. Isn't that what it's called? + +_Man_: Has Omar Khayyam reached the theatrical world? Well, there's no +doubt the earth does move, after all. + +_Woman_: A little more soda, please. And just a trifle less impudence. +What book ought one to be reading, then? + +_Man_: Socialism's the thing just now. Read Wells on Socialism. It'll be +all over the theatrical world in a few years' time. + +_Woman_: No fear! I can't bear Wells. He's always stirring up the dregs. +I don't mind froth, but I do draw the line at dregs. What's the band +playing? What have you been doing to-day? _Is_ this lettuce? No, no! No +bread. Didn't you hear me tell you? + +_Man_: I've been busy with the Priam Farll affair. + +_Woman_: Priam Farll? + +_Man_: Yes. Painter. _You_ know. + +_Woman_: Oh yes. _Him_! I saw it on the posters. He's dead, it seems. +Anything mysterious? + +_Man_: You bet! Very odd! Frightfully rich, you know! Yet he died in a +wretched hovel of a place down off the Fulham Road. And his valet's +disappeared. We had the first news of the death, through our arrangement +with all the registrars' clerks in London. By the bye, don't give that +away--it's our speciality. Nasing sent me off at once to write up the +story. + +_Woman_: Story? + +_Man_: The particulars. We always call it a story in Fleet Street. + +_Woman_: What a good name! Well, did you find out anything interesting? + +_Man_: Not very much. I saw his cousin, Duncan Farll, a money-lending +lawyer in Clement's Lane--he only heard of it because we telephoned to +him. But the fellow would scarcely tell me anything at all. + +_Woman_: Really! I do hope there's something terrible. + +_Man_: Why? + +_Woman_: So that I can go to the inquest or the police court or whatever +it is. That's why I always keep friendly with magistrates. It's so +frightfully thrilling, sitting on the bench with them. + +_Man_: There won't be any inquest. But there's something queer in it. +You see, Priam Farll was never in England. Always abroad; at those +foreign hotels, wandering up and down. + +_Woman (after a pause)_: I know. + +_Man_: What do you know? + +_Woman_: Will you promise not to chatter? + +_Man_: Yes. + +_Woman_: I met him once at an hotel at Ostend. He--well, he wanted most +tremendously to paint my portrait. But I wouldn't let him. + +_Man_: Why not? + +_Woman_: If you knew what sort of man he was you wouldn't ask. + +_Man_: Oh! But look here, I say! You must let me use that in my story. +Tell me all about it. + +_Woman_: Not for worlds. + +_Man_: He--he made up to you? + +_Woman_: Rather! + +_Priam Farll (to himself)_: What a barefaced lie! Never was at Ostend in +my life. + +_Man_: Can't I use it if I don't print your name--just say a +distinguished actress. + +_Woman_: Oh yes, you can do _that_. You might say, of the musical comedy +stage. + +_Man_: I will. I'll run something together. Trust me. Thanks awfully. + +At this point a young and emaciated priest passed up the room. + +_Woman_: Oh! Father Luke, is that you? Do come and sit here and be nice. +This is Father Luke Widgery--Mr. Docksey, of the _Record_. + +_Man_: Delighted. + +_Priest_: Delighted. + +_Woman_: Now, Father Luke, I've just _got_ to come to your sermon +to-morrow. What's it about? + +_Priest_: Modern vice. + +_Woman_: How charming! I read the last one--it was lovely. + +_Priest_: Unless you have a ticket you'll never be able to get in. + +_Woman_: But I must get in. I'll come to the vestry door, if there is a +vestry door at St. Bede's. + +_Priest_: It's impossible. You've no idea of the crush. And I've no +favourites. + +_Woman_: Oh yes, you have! You have me. + +_Priest_: In my church, fashionable women must take their chance with +the rest. + +_Woman_: How horrid you are. + +_Priest_: Perhaps. I may tell you, Miss Cohenson, that I've seen two +duchesses standing at the back of the aisle of St. Bede's, and glad to +be. + +_Woman_: But _I_ shan't flatter you by standing at the back of your +aisle, and you needn't think it. Haven't I given you a box before now? + +_Priest_: I only accepted the box as a matter of duty; it is part of my +duty to go everywhere. + +_Man_: Come with me, Miss Cohenson. I've got two tickets for the +_Record_. + +_Woman_: Oh, so you do send seats to the press? + +_Priest_: The press is different. Waiter, bring me half a bottle of +Heidsieck. + +_Waiter_: Half a bottle of Heidsieck? Yes, sir. + +_Woman_: Heidsieck. Well, I like that. _We're_ dieting. + +_Priest: I_ don't like Heidsieck. But I'm dieting too. It's my doctor's +orders. Every night before retiring. It appears that my system needs it. +Maria Lady Rowndell insists on giving me a hundred a year to pay for it. +It is her own beautiful way of helping the good cause. Ice, please, +waiter. I've just been seeing her to-night. She's staying here for the +season. Saves her a lot of trouble. She's very much cut up about the +death of Priam Farll, poor thing! So artistic, you know! The late Lord +Rowndell had what is supposed to be the finest lot of Farlls in England. + +_Man_: Did you ever meet Priam Farll, Father Luke? + +_Priest_: Never. I understand he was most eccentric. I hate +eccentricity. I once wrote to him to ask him if he would paint a Holy +Family for St. Bede's. + +_Man_: And what did he reply? + +_Priest_: He didn't reply. Considering that he wasn't even an R.A., I +don't think that it was quite nice of him. However, Maria Lady Rowndell +insists that he must be buried in Westminster Abbey. She asked me what I +could do. + +_Woman_: Buried in Westminster Abbey! I'd no idea he was so big as all +that! Gracious! + +_Priest_: I have the greatest confidence in Maria Lady Rowndell's taste, +and certainly I bear no grudge. I may be able to arrange something. My +uncle the Dean---- + +_Man_: Pardon me. I always understood that since you left the Church---- + +_Priest_: Since I joined the Church, you mean. There is but one. + +_Man_: Church of England, I meant. + +_Priest_: Ah! + +_Man_: Since you left the Church of England, there had been a breach +between the Dean and yourself. + +_Priest_: Merely religious. Besides my sister is the Dean's favourite +niece. And I am her favourite brother. My sister takes much interest in +art. She has just painted a really exquisite tea-cosy for me. Of course +the Dean ultimately settles these questions of national funerals, +Hence... + +At this point the invisible orchestra began to play "God save the King." + +_Woman_: Oh! What a bore! + +Then nearly all the lights were extinguished. + +_Waiter_: Please, gentlemen! Gentlemen, please! + +_Priest_: You quite understand, Mr. Docksey, that I merely gave these +family details in order to substantiate my statement that I may be able +to arrange something. By the way, if you would care to have a typescript +of my sermon to-morrow for the _Record_, you can have one by applying at +the vestry. + +_Waiter_: Please, gentlemen! + +_Man_: So good of you. As regards the burial in Westminster Abbey, I +think that the _Record_ will support the project. I say I _think_. + +_Priest_: Maria Lady Rowndell will be grateful. + +Five-sixths of the remaining lights went out, and the entire company +followed them. In the foyer there was a prodigious crush of opera +cloaks, silk hats, and cigars, all jostling together. News arrived from +the Strand that the weather had turned to rain, and all the intellect of +the Grand Babylon was centred upon the British climate, exactly as if +the British climate had been the latest discovery of science. As the +doors swung to and fro, the stridency of whistles, the throbbing of +motor-cars, and the hoarse cries of inhabitants of box seats mingled +strangely with the delicate babble of the interior. Then, lo! as by +magic, the foyer was empty save for the denizens of the hotel who could +produce evidence of identity. It had been proved to demonstration, for +the sixth time that week, that in the metropolis of the greatest of +Empires there is not one law for the rich and another for the poor. + +Deeply affected by what he had overheard, Priam Farll rose in a lift and +sought his bed. He perceived clearly that he had been among the +governing classes of the realm. + + * * * * * + + + + +CHAPTER IV + + +_A Scoop_ + + +Within less than twelve hours after that conversation between members of +the governing classes at the Grand Babylon Hotel, Priam Farll heard the +first deep-throated echoes of the voice of England on the question of +his funeral. The voice of England issued on this occasion through the +mouth of the _Sunday News_, a newspaper which belonged to Lord Nasing, +the proprietor of the _Daily Record_. There was a column in the _Sunday +News_, partly concerning the meeting of Priam Farll and a celebrated +star of the musical comedy stage at Ostend. There was also a leading +article, in which it was made perfectly clear that England would stand +ashamed among the nations, if she did not inter her greatest painter in +Westminster Abbey. Only the article, instead of saying Westminster +Abbey, said National Valhalla. It seemed to make a point of not +mentioning Westminster Abbey by name, as though Westminster Abbey had +been something not quite mentionable, such as a pair of trousers. The +article ended with the word 'basilica,' and by the time you had reached +this majestic substantive, you felt indeed, with the _Sunday News_, that +a National Valhalla without the remains of a Priam Farll inside it, +would be shocking, if not inconceivable. + +Priam Farll was extremely disturbed. + +On Monday morning the _Daily Record_ came nobly to the support of the +_Sunday News_. It had evidently spent its Sunday in collecting the +opinions of a number of famous men--including three M.P.'s, a banker, a +Colonial premier, a K.C., a cricketer, and the President of the Royal +Academy--as to whether the National Valhalla was or was not a suitable +place for the repose of the remains of Priam Farll; and the unanimous +reply was in the affirmative. Other newspapers expressed the same view. +But there were opponents of the scheme. Some organs coldly inquired what +Priam Farll had _done_ for England, and particularly for the higher life +of England. He had not been a moral painter like Hogarth or Sir Noel +Paton, nor a worshipper of classic legend and beauty like the unique +Leighton. He had openly scorned England. He had never lived in England. +He had avoided the Royal Academy, honouring every country save his own. +And was he such a great painter, after all? Was he anything but a clever +dauber whose work had been forced into general admiration by the efforts +of a small clique of eccentric admirers? Far be it from them, the +organs, to decry a dead man, but the National Valhalla was the National +Valhalla.... And so on. + +The penny evening papers were pro-Farll, one of them furiously so. You +gathered that if Priam Farll was not buried in Westminster Abbey the +penny evening papers would, from mere disgust, wipe their boots on Dover +cliffs and quit England eternally for some land where art was +understood. You gathered, by nightfall, that Fleet Street must be a +scene of carnage, full of enthusiasts cutting each other's throats for +the sake of the honour of art. However, no abnormal phenomenon was +superficially observable in Fleet Street; nor was martial law proclaimed +at the Arts Club in Dover Street. London was impassioned by the question +of Farll's funeral; a few hours would decide if England was to be shamed +among the nations: and yet the town seemed to pursue its jog-trot way +exactly as usual. The Gaiety Theatre performed its celebrated nightly +musical comedy, "House Full"; and at Queen's Hall quite a large audience +was collected to listen to a violinist aged twelve, who played like a +man, though a little one, and whose services had been bought for seven +years by a limited company. + +The next morning the controversy was settled by one of the _Daily +Record's_ characteristic 'scoops.' In the nature of the case, such +controversies, if they are not settled quickly, settle themselves +quickly; they cannot be prolonged. But it was the _Daily Record_ that +settled this one. The _Daily Record_ came out with a copy of the will of +Priam Farll, in which, after leaving a pound a week for life to his +valet, Henry Leek, Priam Farll bequeathed the remainder of his fortune +to the nation for the building and up-keep of a Gallery of Great +Masters. Priam Farll's own collection of great masters, gradually made +by him in that inexpensive manner which is possible only to the finest +connoisseurs, was to form the nucleus of the Gallery. It comprised, said +the _Record_, several Rembrandts, a Velasquez, six Vermeers, a +Giorgione, a Turner, a Charles, two Cromes, a Holbein. (After Charles +the _Record_ put a note of interrogation, itself being uncertain of the +name.) The pictures were in Paris--had been for many years. The leading +idea of the Gallery was that nothing not absolutely first-class should +be admitted to it. The testator attached two conditions to the bequest. +One was that his own name should be inscribed nowhere in the building, +and the other was that none of his own pictures should be admitted to +the gallery. Was not this sublime? Was not this true British pride? Was +not this magnificently unlike the ordinary benefactor of his country? +The _Record_ was in a position to assert that Priam Farll's estate would +amount to about a hundred and forty thousand pounds, in addition to the +value of the pictures. After that, was anybody going to argue that he +ought not to be buried in the National Valhalla, a philanthropist so +royal and so proudly meek? + +The opposition gave up. + +Priam Farll grew more and more disturbed in his fortress at the Grand +Babylon Hotel. He perfectly remembered making the will. He had made it +about seventeen years before, after some champagne in Venice, in an hour +of anger against some English criticisms of his work. Yes, English +criticisms! It was his vanity that had prompted him to reply in that +manner. Moreover, he was quite young then. He remembered the youthful +glee with which he had appointed his next-of-kin, whoever they might be, +executors and trustees of the will. He remembered his cruel joy in +picturing their disgust at being compelled to carry out the terms of +such a will. Often, since, he had meant to destroy the will; but +carelessly he had always omitted to do so. And his collection and his +fortune had continued to increase regularly and mightily, and now--well, +there the thing was! Duncan Farll had found the will. And Duncan Farll +would be the executor and trustee of that melodramatic testament. + +He could not help smiling, serious as the situation was. + +During that day the thing was settled; the authorities spoke; the word +went forth. Priam Farll was to be buried in Westminster Abbey on the +Thursday. The dignity of England among artistic nations had been saved, +partly by the heroic efforts of the _Daily Record_, and partly by the +will, which proved that after all Priam Farll had had the highest +interests of his country at heart. + + +_Cowardice_ + + +On the night between Tuesday and Wednesday Priam Farll had not a moment +of sleep. Whether it was the deep-throated voice of England that had +spoken, or merely the voice of the Dean's favourite niece--so skilled in +painting tea-cosies--the affair was excessively serious. For the nation +was preparing to inter in the National Valhalla the remains of just +Henry Leek! Priam's mind had often a sardonic turn; he was assuredly +capable of strange caprices: but even he could not permit an error so +gigantic to continue. The matter must be rectified, and instantly! And +he alone could rectify it. The strain on his shyness would be awful, +would be scarcely endurable. Nevertheless he must act. Quite apart from +other considerations, there was the consideration of that hundred and +forty thousand pounds, which was his, and which he had not the slightest +desire to leave to the British nation. And as for giving his beloved +pictures to the race which adored Landseer, Edwin Long, and Leighton-- +the idea nauseated him. + +He must go and see Duncan Farll! And explain! Yes, explain that he was +not dead. + +Then he had a vision of Duncan Farll's hard, stupid face, and +impenetrable steel head; and of himself being kicked out of the house, +or delivered over to a policeman, or in some subtler way unimaginably +insulted. Could he confront Duncan Farll? Was a hundred and forty +thousand pounds and the dignity of the British nation worth the bearding +of Duncan Farll? No! His distaste for Duncan Farll amounted to more than +a hundred and forty millions of pounds and the dignity of whole planets. +He felt that he could never bring himself to meet Duncan Farll. Why, +Duncan might shove him into a lunatic asylum, might...! + +Still he must act. + +Then it was that occurred to him the brilliant notion of making a clean +breast of it to the Dean. He had not the pleasure of the Dean's personal +acquaintance. The Dean was an abstraction; certainly much more abstract +than Priam Farll. He thought he could meet the Dean. A terrific +enterprise, but he must accomplish it! After all, a Dean--what was it? +Nothing but a man with a funny hat! And was not he himself Priam Farll, +the authentic Priam Farll, vastly greater than any Dean? + +He told the valet to buy black gloves, and a silk hat, sized seven and a +quarter, and to bring up a copy of _Who's Who_. He hoped the valet would +be dilatory in executing these commands. But the valet seemed to fulfill +them by magic. Time flew so fast that (in a way of speaking) you could +hardly see the fingers as they whirled round the clock. And almost +before he knew where he was, two commissionaires were helping him into +an auto-cab, and the terrific enterprise had begun. The auto-cab would +easily have won the race for the Gordon Bennett Cup. It was of about two +hundred h.p., and it arrived in Dean's Yard in less time than a fluent +speaker would take to say Jack Robinson. The rapidity of the flight was +simply incredible. + +"I'll keep you," Priam Farll was going to say, as he descended, but he +thought it would be more final to dismiss the machine; so he dismissed +it. + +He rang the bell with frantic haste, lest he should run away ere he had +rung it. And then his heart went thumping, and the perspiration damped +the lovely lining of his new hat; and his legs trembled, literally! + +He was in hell on the Dean's doorstep. + +The door was opened by a man in livery of prelatical black, who eyed +him inimically. + +"Er----" stammered Priam Farll, utterly flustered and craven. "Is this +Mr. Parker's?" + +Now Parker was not the Dean's name, and Priam knew that it was not. +Parker was merely the first name that had come into Priam's cowardly +head. + +"No, it isn't," said the flunkey with censorious lips. "It's the +Dean's." + +"Oh, I beg pardon," said Priam Farll. "I thought it was Mr. Parker's." + +And he departed. + +Between the ringing of the bell and the flunkey's appearance, he had +clearly seen what he was capable, and what he was incapable, of doing. +And the correction of England's error was among his incapacities. He +could not face the Dean. He could not face any one. He was a poltroon in +all these things; a poltroon. No use arguing! He could not do it. + +"I thought it was Mr. Parker's!" Good heavens! To what depths can a +great artist fall. + +That evening he received a cold letter from Duncan Farll, with a +nave-ticket for the funeral. Duncan Farll did not venture to be sure +that Mr. Henry Leek would think proper to attend his master's interment; +but he enclosed a ticket. He also stated that the pound a week would be +paid to him in due course. Lastly he stated that several newspaper +representatives had demanded Mr. Henry Leek's address, but he had not +thought fit to gratify this curiosity. + +Priam was glad of that. + +"Well, I'm dashed!" he reflected, handling the ticket for the nave. + +There it was, large, glossy, real as life. + + +_In the Valhalla_ + + +In the vast nave there were relatively few people--that is to say, a few +hundred, who had sufficient room to move easily to and fro under the +eyes of officials. Priam Farll had been admitted through the cloisters, +according to the direction printed on the ticket. In his nervous fancy, +he imagined that everybody must be gazing at him suspiciously, but the +fact was that he occupied the attention of no one at all. He was with +the unprivileged, on the wrong side of the massive screen which +separated the nave from the packed choir and transepts, and the +unprivileged are never interested in themselves; it is the privileged +who interest them. The organ was wafting a melody of Purcell to the +furthest limits of the Abbey. Round a roped space a few ecclesiastical +uniforms kept watch over the ground that would be the tomb. The sunlight +of noon beat and quivered in long lances through crimson and blue +windows. Then the functionaries began to form an aisle among the +spectators, and emotion grew tenser. The organ was silent for a moment, +and when it recommenced its song the song was the supreme expression of +human grief, the dirge of Chopin, wrapping the whole cathedral in heavy +folds of sorrow. And as that appeal expired in the pulsating air, the +fresh voices of little boys, sweeter even than grief, rose in the +distance. + +It was at this point that Priam Farll descried Lady Sophia Entwistle, a +tall, veiled figure, in full mourning. She had come among the +comparatively unprivileged to his funeral. Doubtless influence such as +hers could have obtained her a seat in the transept, but she had +preferred the secluded humility of the nave. She had come from Paris for +his funeral. She was weeping for her affianced. She stood there, +actually within ten yards of him. She had not caught sight of him, but +she might do so at any moment, and she was slowly approaching the spot +where he trembled. + +He fled, with nothing in his heart but resentment against her. She had +not proposed to him; he had proposed to her. She had not thrown him +aside; he had thrown her aside. He was not one of her mistakes; she was +one of his mistakes. Not she, but he, had been capricious, impulsive, +hasty. Yet he hated her. He genuinely thought she had sinned against +him, and that she ought to be exterminated. He condemned her for all +manner of things as to which she had had no choice: for instance, the +irregularity of her teeth, and the hollow under her chin, and the little +tricks of deportment which are always developed by a spinster as she +reaches forty. He fled in terror of her. If she should have a glimpse of +him, and should recognize him, the consequence would be absolutely +disastrous--disastrous in every way; and a period of publicity would +dawn for him such as he could not possibly contemplate either in cold +blood or warm. He fled blindly, insinuating himself through the crowd, +until he reached a grille in which was a gate, ajar. His strange stare +must have affrighted the guardian of the gate, for the robed fellow +stood away, and Priam passed within the grille, where were winding +steps, which he mounted. Up the steps ran coils of fire-hose. He heard +the click of the gate as the attendant shut it, and he was thankful for +an escape. The steps led to the organ-loft, perched on the top of the +massive screen. The organist was seated behind a half-drawn curtain, +under shaded electric lights, and on the ample platform whose parapet +overlooked the choir were two young men who whispered with the organist. +None of the three even glanced at Priam. Priam sat down on a windsor +chair fearfully, like an intruder, his face towards the choir. + +The whispers ceased; the organist's fingers began to move over five rows +of notes, and over scores of stops, while his feet groped beneath, and +Priam heard music, afar off. And close behind him he heard rumblings, +steamy vibrations, and, as it were, sudden escapes of gas; and +comprehended that these were the hoarse responses of the 32 and 64 foot +pipes, laid horizontally along the roof of the screen, to the summoning +fingers of the organist. It was all uncanny, weird, supernatural, +demoniacal if you will--it was part of the secret and unsuspected +mechanism of a vast emotional pageant and spectacle. It unnerved Priam, +especially when the organist, a handsome youngish man with lustrous +eyes, half turned and winked at one of his companions. + +The thrilling voices of the choristers grew louder, and as they grew +louder Priam Farll was conscious of unaccustomed phenomena in his +throat, which shut and opened of itself convulsively. To divert his +attention from his throat, he partially rose from the windsor chair, and +peeped over the parapet of the screen into the choir, whose depths were +candlelit and whose altitudes were capriciously bathed by the +intermittent splendours of the sun. High, high up, in front of him, at +the summit of a precipice of stone, a little window, out of the +sunshine, burned sullenly in a gloom of complicated perspectives. And +far below, stretched round the pulpit and disappearing among the forest +of statuary in the transept, was a floor consisting of the heads of the +privileged--famous, renowned, notorious, by heredity, talent, +enterprise, or hazard; he had read many of their names in the _Daily +Telegraph_. The voices of the choristers had become piercing in their +beauty. Priam frankly stood up, and leaned over the parapet. Every gaze +was turned to a point under him which he could not see. And then +something swayed from beneath into the field of his vision. It was a +tall cross borne by a beadle. In the wake of the cross there came to +view gorgeous ecclesiastics in pairs, and then a robed man walking +backwards and gesticulating in the manner of some important, excited +official of the Salvation Army; and after this violet robe arrived the +scarlet choristers, singing to the beat of his gesture. And then swung +into view the coffin, covered with a heavy purple pall, and on the pall +a single white cross; and the pall-bearers--great European names that +had hurried out of the corners of Europe as at a peremptory mandate-- +with Duncan Farll to complete the tale! + +Was it the coffin, or the richness of its pall, or the solitary +whiteness of its cross of flowers, or the august authority of the +bearers, that affected Priam Farll like a blow on the heart? Who knows? +But the fact was that he could look no more; the scene was too much for +him. Had he continued to look he would have burst uncontrollably into +tears. It mattered not that the corpse of a common rascally valet lay +under that pall; it mattered not that a grotesque error was being +enacted; it mattered not whether the actuating spring of the immense +affair was the Dean's water-colouring niece or the solemn deliberations +of the Chapter; it mattered not that newspapers had ignobly misused the +name and honour of art for their own advancement--the instant effect was +overwhelmingly impressive. All that had been honest and sincere in the +heart of England for a thousand years leapt mystically up and made it +impossible that the effect should be other than overwhelmingly +impressive. It was an effect beyond argument and reason; it was the +magic flowering of centuries in a single moment, the silent awful sigh +of a nation's saecular soul. It took majesty and loveliness from the +walls around it, and rendered them again tenfold. It left nothing +common, neither the motives nor the littleness of men. In Priam's mind +it gave dignity to Lady Sophia Entwistle, and profound tragedy to the +death of Leek; it transformed even the gestures of the choir-leader into +grave commands. + +And all that was for him! He had brushed pigments on to cloth in a way +of his own, nothing more, and the nation to which he had always denied +artistic perceptions, the nation which he had always fiercely accused of +sentimentality, was thus solemnizing his committal to the earth! Divine +mystery of art! The large magnificence of England smote him! He had not +suspected his own greatness, nor England's. + +The music ceased. He chanced to look up at the little glooming window, +perched out of reach of mankind. And the thought that the window had +burned there, patiently and unexpectantly, for hundreds of years, like +an anchorite above the river and town, somehow disturbed him so that he +could not continue to look at it. Ineffable sadness of a mere window! +And his eye fell--fell on the coffin of Henry Leek with its white cross, +and the representative of England's majesty standing beside it. And +there was the end of Priam Farll's self-control. A pang like a pang of +parturition itself seized him, and an issuing sob nearly ripped him in +two. It was a loud sob, undisguised, unashamed, reverberating. Other +sobs succeeded it. Priam Farll was in torture. + + +_A New Hat_ + + +The organist vaulted over his seat, shocked by the outrage. + +"You really mustn't make that noise," whispered the organist. + +Priam Farll shook him off. + +The organist was apparently at a loss what to do. + +"Who is it?" whispered one of the young men. + +"Don't know him from Adam!" said the organist with conviction, and then +to Priam Farll: "Who are you? You've no right to be here. Who gave you +permission to come up here?" + +And the rending sobs continued to issue from the full-bodied ridiculous +man of fifty, utterly careless of decorum. + +"It's perfectly absurd!" whispered the youngster who had whispered +before. + +There had been a silence in the choir. + +"Here! They're waiting for you!" whispered the other young man excitedly +to the organist. + +"By----!" whispered the alarmed organist, not stopping to say by what, +but leaping like an acrobat back to his seat. His fingers and boots were +at work instantly, and as he played he turned his head and whispered-- + +"Better fetch some one." + +One of the young men crept quickly and creakingly down the stairs. +Fortunately the organ and choristers were now combined to overcome the +sobbing, and they succeeded. Presently a powerful arm, hidden under a +black cassock, was laid on Priam's shoulder. He hysterically tried to +free himself, but he could not. The cassock and the two young men thrust +him downwards. They all descended together, partly walking and partly +falling. And then a door was opened, and Priam discovered himself in the +unroofed air of the cloisters, without his hat, and breathing in gasps. +His executioners were also breathing in gasps. They glared at him in +triumphant menace, as though they had done something, which indeed they +had, and as though they meant to do something more but could not quite +decide what. + +"Where's your ticket of admission?" demanded the cassock. + +Priam fumbled for it, and could not find it. + +"I must have lost it," he said weakly. + +"What's your name, anyhow?" + +"Priam Farll," said Priam Farll, without thinking. + +"Off his nut, evidently!" murmured one of the young men contemptuously. +"Come on, Stan. Don't let's miss that anthem, for this cuss." And off +they both went. + +Then a youthful policeman appeared, putting on his helmet as he quitted +the fane. + +"What's all this?" asked the policeman, in the assured tone of one who +had the forces of the Empire behind him. + +"He's been making a disturbance in the horgan loft," said the cassock, +"and now he says his name's Priam Farll." + +"Oh!" said the policeman. "Ho! And how did he get into the organ loft?" + +"Don't arsk me," answered the cassock. "He ain't got no ticket." + +"Now then, out of it!" said the policeman, taking zealously hold of +Priam. + +"I'll thank you to leave me alone," said Priam, rebelling with all the +pride of his nature against this clutch of the law. + +"Oh, you will, will you?" said the policeman. "We'll see about that. We +shall just see about that." + +And the policeman dragged Priam along the cloister to the muffled music +of "He will swallow up death in victory." They had not thus proceeded +very far when they met another policeman, an older policeman. + +"What's all this?" demanded the older policeman. + +"Drunk and disorderly in the Abbey!" said the younger. + +"Will you come quietly?" the older policeman asked Priam, with a touch +of commiseration. + +"I'm not drunk," said Priam fiercely; he was unversed in London, and +unaware of the foolishness of reasoning with the watch-dogs of justice. + +"Will you come quietly?" the older policeman repeated, this time without +any touch of commiseration. + +"Yes," said Priam. + +And he went quietly. Experience may teach with the rapidity of +lightning. + +"But where's my hat?" he added after a moment, instinctively stopping. + +"Now then!" said the older policeman. "Come _on_." + +He walked between them, striding. Just as they emerged into Dean's Yard, +his left hand nervously exploring one of his pockets, on a sudden +encountered a piece of cardboard. + +"Here's my ticket," he said. "I thought I'd lost it. I've had nothing at +all to drink, and you'd better let me go. The whole affair's a mistake." + +The procession halted, while the older policeman gazed fascinated at the +official document. + +"Henry Leek," he read, deciphering the name. + +"He's been a-telling every one as he's Priam Farll," grumbled the +younger policeman, looking over the other's shoulder. + +"I've done no such thing," said Priam promptly. + +The elder carefully inspected the prisoner, and two little boys arrived +and formed a crowd, which was immediately dispersed by a frown. + +"He don't look as if he'd had 'ardly as much drink as 'ud wash a bus, +does he?" murmured the elder critically. The younger, afraid of his +senior, said nothing. "Look here, Mr. Henry Leek," the elder proceeded, +"do you know what I should do if I was you? I should go and buy myself a +new hat, if I was you, and quick too!" + +Priam hastened away, and heard the senior say to the junior, "He's a +toff, that's what he is, and you're a fool. Have you forgotten as you're +on point duty?" + +And such is the effect of a suggestion given under certain circumstances +by a man of authority, that Priam Farll went straight along Victoria +Street and at Sowter's famous one-price hat-shop did in fact buy himself +a new hat. He then hailed a taximeter from the stand opposite the Army +and Navy Stores, and curtly gave the address of the Grand Babylon Hotel. +And when the cab was fairly at speed, and not before, he abandoned +himself to a fit of candid, unrestrained cursing. He cursed largely and +variously and shamelessly both in English and in French. And he did not +cease cursing. It was a reaction which I do not care to characterize; +but I will not conceal that it occurred. The fit spent itself before he +reached the hotel, for most of Parliament Street was blocked for the +spectacular purposes of his funeral, and his driver had to seek devious +ways. The cursing over, he began to smooth his plumes in detail. At the +hotel, out of sheer nervousness, he gave the cabman half-a-crown, which +was preposterous. + +Another cab drove up nearly at the exact instant of his arrival. And, as +a capping to the day, Mrs. Alice Challice stepped out of it. + + * * * * * + + + + +CHAPTER V + + +_Alice on Hotels_ + + +She was wearing the same red roses. + +"Oh!" she said, very quickly, pouring out the words generously from the +inexhaustible mine of her good heart. "I'm so sorry I missed you +Saturday night. I can't tell you how sorry I am. Of course it was all my +fault. I oughtn't to have got into the lift without you. I ought to have +waited. When I was in the lift I wanted to get out, but the lift-man was +too quick for me. And then on the platforms--well, there was such a +crowd it was useless! I knew it was useless. And you not having my +address either! I wondered whatever you would think of me." + +"My dear lady!" he protested. "I can assure you I blamed only myself. My +hat blew off, and----" + +"Did it now!" she took him up breathlessly. "Well, all I want you to +understand really is that I'm not one of those silly sort of women that +go losing themselves. No. Such a thing's never happened to me before, +and I shall take good care----" + +She glanced round. He had paid both the cabmen, who were departing, and +he and Mrs. Alice Challice stood under the immense glass portico of the +Grand Babylon, exposed to the raking stare of two commissionaires. + +"So you _are_ staying here!" she said, as if laying hold of a fact which +she had hitherto hesitated to touch. + +"Yes," he said. "Won't you come in?" + +He took her into the rich gloom of the Grand Babylon dashingly, fighting +against the demon of shyness and beating it off with great loss. They +sat down in a corner of the principal foyer, where a few electric lights +drew attention to empty fauteuils and the blossoms on the Aubusson +carpet. The world was at lunch. + +"And a fine time I had getting your address!" said she. "Of course I +wrote at once to Selwood Terrace, as soon as I got home, but I had the +wrong number, somehow, and I kept waiting and waiting for an answer, and +the only answer I received was the returned letter. I knew I'd got the +street right, and I said, 'I'll find that house if I have to ring every +bell in Selwood Terrace, yes', and knock every knocker!' Well, I did +find it, and then they wouldn't _give_ me your address. They said +'letters would be forwarded,' if you please. But I wasn't going to have +any more letter business, no thank you! So I said I wouldn't go without +the address. It was Mr. Duncan Farll's clerk that I saw. He's living +there for the time being. A very nice young man. We got quite friendly. +It seems Mr. Duncan Farll _was_ in a state when he found the will. The +young man did say that he broke a typewriter all to pieces. But the +funeral being in Westminster Abbey consoled him. It wouldn't have +consoled me--no, not it! However, he's very rich himself, so that +doesn't matter. The young man said if I'd call again he'd ask his master +if he might give me your address. A rare fuss over an address, thought I +to myself. But there! Lawyers! So I called again, and he gave it me. I +could have come yesterday. I very nearly wrote last night. But I thought +on the whole I'd better wait till the funeral was over. I thought it +would be nicer. It's over now, I suppose?" + +"Yes," said Priam Farll. + +She smiled at him with grave sympathy, comfortably and sensibly. "And +right down relieved you must be!" she murmured. "It must have been very +trying for you." + +"In a way," he answered hesitatingly, "it was." + +Taking off her gloves, she glanced round about her, as a thief must +glance before opening the door, and then, leaning suddenly towards him, +she put her hands to his neck and touched his collar. "No, no!" she +said. "Let me do it. I can do it. There's no one looking. It's +unbuttoned; the necktie was holding it in place, but it's got quite +loose now. There! I can do it. I see you've got two funny moles on your +neck, close together. How lucky! That's it!" A final pat! + +Now, no woman had ever patted Priam Farll's necktie before, much less +buttoned his collar, and still much less referred to the two little +moles, one hirsute, the other hairless, which the collar hid--when it +was properly buttoned! The experience was startling for him in the +extreme. It might have made him very angry, had the hands of Mrs. +Challice not been--well, nurse's hands, soft hands, persuasive hands, +hands that could practise impossible audacities with impunity. Imagine a +woman, uninvited and unpermitted, arranging his collar and necktie for +him in the largest public room of the Grand Babylon, and then talking +about his little moles! It would have been unimaginable! Yet it +happened. And moreover, he had not disliked it. She sat back in her +chair as though she had done nothing in the least degree unusual. + +"I can see you must have been very upset," she said gently, "though he +_has_ only left you a pound a week. Still, that's better than a bat in +the eye with a burnt stick." + +A bat in the eye with a burnt stick reminded him vaguely of encounters +with the police; otherwise it conveyed no meaning to his mind. + +"I hope you haven't got to go on duty at once," she said after a pause. +"Because you really do look as if you needed a rest, and a cup of tea or +something of that, I'm quite ashamed to have come bothering you so +soon." + +"Duty?" he questioned. "What duty?" + +"Why," she exclaimed, "haven't you got a new place?" + +"New place!" he repeated after. "What do you mean?" + +"Why, as valet." + +There was certainly danger in his tendency to forget that he was a +valet. He collected himself. + +"No," he said, "I haven't got a new place." + +"Then why are you staying here?" she cried. "I thought you were simply +here with a new master, Why are you staying here alone?" + +"Oh," he replied, abashed, "it seemed a convenient place. It was just by +chance that I came here." + +"Convenient place indeed!" she said stoutly. "I never heard of such a +thing!" + +He perceived that he had shocked her, pained her. He saw that some +ingenious defence of himself was required; but he could find none. So he +said, in his confusion-- + +"Suppose we go and have something to eat? I do want a bit of lunch, as +you say, now I come to think of it. Will you?" + +"What? Here?" she demanded apprehensively. + +"Yes," he said. "Why not?" + +"Well--!" + +"Come along!" he said, with fine casualness, and conducted her to the +eight swinging glass doors that led to the _salle a manger_ of the Grand +Babylon. At each pair of doors was a living statue of dignity in cloth +of gold. She passed these statues without a sign of fear, but when she +saw the room itself, steeped in a supra-genteel calm, full of gowns and +hats and everything that you read about in the _Lady's Pictorial,_ and +the pennoned mast of a barge crossing the windows at the other end, she +stopped suddenly. And one of the lord mayors of the Grand Babylon, +wearing a mayoral chain, who had started out to meet them, stopped also. + +"No!" she said. "I don't feel as if I could eat here. I really +couldn't." + +"But why?" + +"Well," she said, "I couldn't fancy it somehow. Can't we go somewhere +else?" + +"Certainly we can," he agreed with an eagerness that was more than +polite. + +She thanked him with another of her comfortable, sensible smiles--a +smile that took all embarrassment out of the dilemma, as balm will take +irritation from a wound. And gently she removed her hat and gown, and +her gestures and speech, and her comfortableness, from those august +precincts. And they descended to the grill-room, which was relatively +noisy, and where her roses were less conspicuous than the helmet of +Navarre, and her frock found its sisters and cousins from far lands. + +"I'm not much for these restaurants," she said, over grilled kidneys. + +"No?" he responded tentatively. "I'm sorry. I thought the other +night----" + +"Oh yes," she broke in, "I was very glad to go, the other night, to that +place, very glad. But, you see, I'd never been in a restaurant before." + +"Really?" + +"No," she said, "and I felt as if I should like to try one. And the +young lady at the post office had told me that _that_ one was a splendid +one. So it is. It's beautiful. But of course they ought to be ashamed to +offer you such food. Now do you remember that sole? Sole! It was no more +sole than this glove's sole. And if it had been cooked a minute, it had +been cooked an hour, and waiting. And then look at the prices. Oh yes, I +couldn't help seeing the bill." + +"I thought it was awfully cheap," said he. + +"Well, _I_ didn't!" said she. "When you think that a good housekeeper +can keep everything going on ten shillings a head a _week_.... Why, it's +simply scandalous! And I suppose this place is even dearer?" + +He avoided the question. "This is a better place altogether," he said. +"In fact, I don't know many places in Europe where one can eat better +than one does here." + +"Don't you?" she said indulgently, as if saying, "Well, I know one, at +any rate." + +"They say," he continued, "that there is no butter used in this place +that costs less than three shillings a pound." + +"_No_ butter costs them three shillings a pound," said she. + +"Not in London," said he. "They have it from Paris." + +"And do you believe that?" she asked. + +"Yes," he said. + +"Well, I don't. Any one that pays more than one-and-nine a pound for +butter, _at the most_, is a fool, if you'll excuse me saying the word. +Not but what this is good butter. I couldn't get as good in Putney for +less than eighteen pence." + +She made him feel like a child who has a great deal to pick up from a +kindly but firm sister. + +"No, thank you," she said, a little dryly, to the waiter who proffered a +further supply of chip potatoes. + +"Now don't say they're cold," Priam laughed. + +And she laughed also. "Shall I tell you one thing that puts me against +these restaurants?" she went on. "It's the feeling you have that you +don't know where the food's _been_. When you've got your kitchen close +to your dining-room and you can keep an eye on the stuff from the moment +the cart brings it, well, then, you do know a bit where you are. And you +can have your dishes served hot. It stands to reason," she said. "Where +is the kitchen here?" + +"Somewhere down below," he replied apologetically. + +"A cellar kitchen!" she exclaimed. "Why, in Putney they simply can't let +houses with cellar kitchens. No! No restaurants and hotels for me--not +for _choice_--that is, regularly." + +"Still," he said, with a judicial air, "hotels are very convenient." + +"Are they?" she said, meaning, "Prove it." + +"For instance, here, there's a telephone in every room." + +"You don't mean in the bedrooms?" + +"Yes, in every bedroom." + +"Well," she said, "you wouldn't catch me having a telephone in my +bedroom. I should never sleep if I knew there was a telephone in the +room! Fancy being forced to telephone every time you want--well! I And +how is one to know who there is at the other end of the telephone? No, I +don't like that. All that's all very well for gentlemen that haven't +been used to what I call _com_fort in a way of speaking. But----" + +He saw that if he persisted, nothing soon would be left of that noble +pile, the Grand Babylon Hotel, save a heap of ruins. And, further, she +genuinely did cause him to feel that throughout his career he had always +missed the very best things of life, through being an uncherished, +ingenuous, easily satisfied man. A new sensation for him! For if any +male in Europe believed in his own capacity to make others make him +comfortable Priam Farll was that male. + +"I've never been in Putney," he ventured, on a new track. + + +_Difficulty of Truth-telling_ + + +As she informed him, with an ungrudging particularity, about Putney, and +her life at Putney, there gradually arose in his brain a vision of a +kind of existence such as he had never encountered. Putney had clearly +the advantages of a residential town in a magnificent situation. It lay +on the slope of a hill whose foot was washed by a glorious stream +entitled the Thames, its breast covered with picturesque barges and +ornamental rowing boats; an arched bridge spanned this stream, and you +went over the bridge in milk-white omnibuses to London. Putney had a +street of handsome shops, a purely business street; no one slept there +now because of the noise of motors; at eventide the street glittered in +its own splendours. There were theatre, music-hall, assembly-rooms, +concert hall, market, brewery, library, and an afternoon tea shop +exactly like Regent Street (not that Mrs. Challice cared for their +alleged China tea); also churches and chapels; and Barnes Common if you +walked one way, and Wimbledon Common if you walked another. Mrs. +Challice lived in Werter Road, Werter Road starting conveniently at the +corner of the High Street where the fish-shop was--an establishment +where authentic sole was always obtainable, though it was advisable not +to buy it on Monday mornings, of course. Putney was a place where you +lived unvexed, untroubled. You had your little house, and your +furniture, and your ability to look after yourself at all ends, and your +knowledge of the prices of everything, and your deep knowledge of human +nature, and your experienced forgivingness towards human frailties. You +did not keep a servant, because servants were so complicated, and +because they could do nothing whatever as well as you could do it +yourself. You had a charwoman when you felt idle or when you chose to +put the house into the back-yard for an airing. With the charwoman, a +pair of gloves for coarser work, and gas stoves, you 'made naught' of +domestic labour. You were never worried by ambitions, or by envy, or by +the desire to know precisely what the wealthy did and to do likewise. +You read when you were not more amusingly occupied, preferring +illustrated papers and magazines. You did not traffic with art to any +appreciable extent, and you never dreamed of letting it keep you awake +at night. You were rich, for the reason that you spent less than you +received. You never speculated about the ultimate causes of things, or +puzzled yourself concerning the possible developments of society in the +next hundred years. When you saw a poor old creature in the street you +bought a box of matches off the poor old creature. The social phenomenon +which chiefly roused you to just anger was the spectacle of wealthy +people making money and so taking the bread out of the mouths of people +who needed It. The only apparent blots on existence at Putney were the +noise and danger of the High Street, the dearth of reliable laundries, +the manners of a middle-aged lady engaged at the post office (Mrs. +Challice liked the other ladies in the post office), and the absence of +a suitable man in the house. + +Existence at Putney seemed to Priam Farll to approach the Utopian. It +seemed to breathe of romance--the romance of common sense and kindliness +and simplicity. It made his own existence to that day appear a futile +and unhappy striving after the impossible. Art? What was it? What did it +lead to? He was sick of art, and sick of all the forms of activity to +which he had hitherto been accustomed and which he had mistaken for life +itself. + +One little home, fixed and stable, rendered foolish the whole concourse +of European hotels. + +"I suppose you won't be staying here long," demanded Mrs. Challice. + +"Oh no!" he said. "I shall decide something." + +"Shall you take another place?" she inquired. + +"Another place?" + +"Yes." Her smile was excessively persuasive and inviting. + +"I don't know," he said diffidently. + +"You must have put a good bit by," she said, still with the same smile. +"Or perhaps you haven't. Saving's a matter of chance. That's what I +always do say. It just depends how you begin. It's a habit. I'd never +really blame anybody for not saving. And men----!" She seemed to wish to +indicate that men were specially to be excused if they did not save. + +She had a large mind: that was sure. She understood--things, and human +nature in particular. She was not one of those creatures that a man +meets with sometimes--creatures who are for ever on the watch to pounce, +and who are incapable of making allowances for any male frailty--smooth, +smiling creatures, with thin lips, hair a little scanty at the front, +and a quietly omniscient 'don't-tell-_me_' tone. Mrs. Alice Challice had +a mouth as wide as her ideas, and a full underlip. She was a woman who, +as it were, ran out to meet you when you started to cross the dangerous +roadway which separates the two sexes. She comprehended because she +wanted to comprehend. And when she could not comprehend she would +deceive herself that she did: which amounts to the equivalent. + +She was a living proof that in her sex social distinctions do not +effectively count. Nothing counted where she was concerned, except a +distinction far more profound than any social distinction--the historic +distinction between Adam and Eve. She was balm to Priam Farll. She might +have been equally balm to King David, Uriah the Hittite, Socrates, +Rousseau, Lord Byron, Heine, or Charlie Peace. She would have understood +them all. They would all have been ready to cushion themselves on her +comfortableness. Was she a lady? Pish! She was a woman. + +Her temperament drew Priam Farll like an electrified magnet. To wander +about freely in that roomy sympathy of hers seemed to him to be the +supreme reward of experience. It seemed like the good inn after the +bleak high-road, the oasis after the sandstorm, shade after glare, the +dressing after the wound, sleep after insomnia, surcease from +unspeakable torture. He wanted, in a word, to tell her everything, +because she would not demand any difficult explanations. She had given +him an opening, in her mention of savings. In reply to her suggestion, +"You must have put a good bit by," he could casually answer: + +"Yes, a hundred and forty thousand pounds." + +And that would lead by natural stages to a complete revealing of the fix +in which he was. In five minutes he would have confided to her the +principal details, and she would have understood, and then he could +describe his agonizing and humiliating half-hour in the Abbey, and she +would pour her magic oil on that dreadful abrasion of his sensitiveness. +And he would be healed of his hurts, and they would settle between them +what he ought to do. + +He regarded her as his refuge, as fate's generous compensation to him +for the loss of Henry Leek (whose remains now rested in the National +Valhalla). + +Only, it would be necessary to begin the explanation, so that one thing +might by natural stages lead to another. On reflection, it appeared +rather abrupt to say: + +"Yes, a hundred and forty thousand pounds." + +The sum was too absurdly high (though correct). The mischief was that, +unless the sum did strike her as absurdly high, it could not possibly +lead by a natural stage to the remainder of the explanation. + +He must contrive another path. For instance-- + +"There's been a mistake about the so-called death of Priam Farll." + +"A mistake!" she would exclaim, all ears and eyes. + +Then he would say-- + +"Yes. Priam Farll isn't really dead. It's his valet that's dead." + +Whereupon she would burst out-- + +"But _you_ were his valet!" + +Whereupon he would simply shake his head, and she would steam forwards-- + +"Then who are you?" + +Whereupon he would say, as calmly as he could-- + +"I'm Priam Farll. I'll tell you precisely how it all happened." + +Thus the talk might happen. Thus it would happen, immediately he began. +But, as at the Dean's door in Dean's Yard, so now, he could not begin. +He could not utter the necessary words aloud. Spoken aloud, they would +sound ridiculous, incredible, insane--and not even Mrs. Challice could +reasonably be expected to grasp their import, much less believe them. + +"_There's been a mistake about the so-called death of Priam Farll._" + +"_Yes, a hundred and forty thousand pounds._" + +No, he could enunciate neither the one sentence nor the other. There are +some truths so bizarre that they make you feel self-conscious and guilty +before you have begun to state them; you state them apologetically; you +blush; you stammer; you have all the air of one who does not expect +belief; you look a fool; you feel a fool; and you bring disaster on +yourself. + +He perceived with the most painful clearness that he could never, never +impart to her the terrific secret, the awful truth. Great as she was, +the truth was greater, and she would never be able to swallow it. + +"What time is it?" she asked suddenly. + +"Oh, you mustn't think about time," he said, with hasty concern. + + +_Results of Rain_ + + +When the lunch was completely finished and the grill-room had so far +emptied that it was inhabited by no one except themselves and several +waiters who were trying to force them to depart by means of thought +transference and uneasy, hovering round their table, Priam Farll began +to worry his brains in order to find some sane way of spending the +afternoon in her society. He wanted to keep her, but he did not know how +to keep her. He was quite at a loss. Strange that a man great enough and +brilliant enough to get buried in Westminster Abbey had not sufficient +of the small change of cleverness to retain the company of a Mrs. Alice +Challice! Yet so it was. Happily he was buoyed up by the thought that +she understood. + +"I must be moving off home," she said, putting her gloves on slowly; and +sighed. + +"Let me see," he stammered. "I think you said Werter Road, Putney?" + +"Yes. No. 29." + +"Perhaps you'll let me call on you," he ventured. + +"Oh, do!" she encouraged him. + +Nothing could have been more correct, and nothing more banal, than this +part of their conversation. He certainly would call. He would travel +down to the idyllic Putney to-morrow. He could not lose such a friend, +such a balm, such a soft cushion, such a comprehending intelligence. He +would bit by bit become intimate with her, and perhaps ultimately he +might arrive at the stage of being able to tell her who he was with some +chance of being believed. Anyhow, when he did call--and he insisted to +himself that it should be extremely soon--he would try another plan with +her; he would carefully decide beforehand just what to say and how to +say it. This decision reconciled him somewhat to a temporary parting +from her. + +So he paid the bill, under her sagacious, protesting eyes, and he +managed to conceal from those eyes the precise amount of the tip; and +then, at the cloak-room, he furtively gave sixpence to a fat and wealthy +man who had been watching over his hat and stick. (Highly curious, how +those common-sense orbs of hers made all such operations seem +excessively silly!) And at last they wandered, in silence, through the +corridors and antechambers that led to the courtyard entrance. And +through the glass portals Priam Farll had a momentary glimpse of the +reflection of light on a cabman's wet macintosh. It was raining. It was +raining very heavily indeed. All was dry under the glass-roofed +colonnades of the courtyard, but the rain rattled like kettledrums on +that glass, and the centre of the courtyard was a pond in which a few +hansoms were splashing about. Everything--the horses' coats, the +cabmen's hats and capes, and the cabmen's red faces, shone and streamed +in the torrential summer rain. It is said that geography makes history. +In England, and especially in London, weather makes a good deal of +history. Impossible to brave that rain, except under the severest +pressure of necessity! They were in shelter, and in shelter they must +remain. + +He was glad, absurdly and splendidly glad. + +"It can't last long," she said, looking up at the black sky, which +showed an edge towards the east. + +"Suppose we go in again and have some tea?" he said. + +Now they had barely concluded coffee. But she did not seem to mind. + +"Well," she said, "it's always tea-time for _me_." + +He saw a clock. "It's nearly four," he said. + +Thus justified of the clock, in they went, and sat down in the same +seats which they had occupied at the commencement of the adventure in +the main lounge. Priam discovered a bell-push, and commanded China tea +and muffins. He felt that he now, as it were, had an opportunity of +making a fresh start in life. He grew almost gay. He could be gay +without sinning against decorum, for Mrs. Challice's singular tact had +avoided all reference to deaths and funerals. + +And in the pause, while he was preparing to be gay, attractive, and in +fact his true self, she, calmly stirring China tea, shot a bolt which +made him see stars. + +"It seems to me," she observed, "that we might go farther and fare +worse--both of us." + +He genuinely did not catch the significance of it in the first instant, +and she saw that he did not. + +"Oh," she proceeded, benevolently and reassuringly, "I mean it. I'm not +gallivanting about. I mean that if you want my opinion I fancy we could +make a match of it." + +It was at this point that he saw stars. He also saw a faint and +delicious blush on her face, whose complexion was extraordinarily fresh +and tender. + +She sipped China tea, holding each finger wide apart from the others. + +He had forgotten the origin of their acquaintance, forgotten that each +of them was supposed to have a definite aim in view, forgotten that it +was with a purpose that they had exchanged photographs. It had not +occurred to him that marriage hung over him like a sword. He perceived +the sword now, heavy and sharp, and suspended by a thread of appalling +fragility. He dodged. He did not want to lose her, never to see her +again; but he dodged. + +"I couldn't think----" he began, and stopped. + +"Of course it's a very awkward situation for a man," she went on, toying +with muffin. "I can quite understand how you feel. And with most folks +you'd be right. There's very few women that can judge character, and if +you started to try and settle something at once they'd just set you down +as a wrong 'un. But I'm not like that. I don't expect any fiddle-faddle. +What I like is plain sense and plain dealing. We both want to get +married, so it would be silly to pretend we didn't, wouldn't it? And it +would be ridiculous of me to look for courting and a proposal, and all +that sort of thing, just as if I'd never seen a man in his +shirt-sleeves. The only question is: shall we suit each other? I've told +you what I think. What do you think?" + +She smiled honestly, kindly, but piercingly. + +What could he say? What would you have said, you being a man? It is +easy, sitting there in your chair, with no Mrs. Alice Challice in front +of you, to invent diplomatic replies; but conceive yourself in Priam's +place! Besides, he did think she would suit him. And most positively he +could not bear the prospect of seeing her pass out of his life. He had +been through that experience once, when his hat blew off in the Tube; +and he did not wish to repeat it. + +"Of course you've got no _home_!" she said reflectively, with such +compassion. "Suppose you come down and just have a little peep at mine?" + +So that evening, a suitably paired couple chanced into the fishmonger's +at the corner of Werter Road, and bought a bit of sole. At the newspaper +shop next door but one, placards said: "Impressive Scenes at Westminster +Abbey," "Farll funeral, stately pageant," "Great painter laid to rest," +etc. + + * * * * * + + + + +CHAPTER VI + + +_A Putney Morning_ + + +Except that there was marrying and giving in marriage, it was just as +though he had died and gone to heaven. Heaven is the absence of worry +and of ambition. Heaven is where you want nothing you haven't got. +Heaven is finality. And this was finality. On the September morning, +after the honeymoon and the settling down, he arose leisurely, long +after his wife, and, putting on the puce dressing-gown (which Alice much +admired), he opened the window wider and surveyed that part of the +universe which was comprised in Werter Road and the sky above. A sturdy +old woman was coming down the street with a great basket of assorted +flowers; he took an immense pleasure in the sight of the old woman; the +sight of the old woman thrilled him. Why? Well, there was no reason, +except that she was vigorously alive, a part of the magnificent earth. +All life gave him joy; all life was beautiful to him. He had his warm +bath; the bath-room was not of the latest convenience, but Alice could +have made a four-wheeler convenient. As he passed to and fro on the +first-floor he heard the calm, efficient activities below stairs. She +was busy in the mornings; her eyes would seem to say to him, "Now, +between my uprising and lunch-time please don't depend on me for +intellectual or moral support. I am on the spot, but I am also at the +wheel and must not be disturbed." + +Then he descended, fresh as a boy, although the promontory which +prevented a direct vision of his toes showed accretions. The front-room +was a shrine for his breakfast. She served it herself, in her-white +apron, promptly on his arrival! Eggs! Toast! Coffee! It was nothing, +that breakfast; and yet it was everything. No breakfast could have been +better. He had probably eaten about fifteen thousand hotel breakfasts +before Alice taught him what a real breakfast was. After serving it she +lingered for a moment, and then handed him the _Daily Telegraph_, which +had been lying on a chair. + +"Here's your _Telegraph_," she said cheerfully, tacitly disowning any +property or interest in the _Telegraph_. For her, newspapers were men's +toys. She never opened a paper, never wanted to know what was going on +in the world. She was always intent upon her own affairs. Politics--and +all that business of the mere machinery of living: she perfectly ignored +it! She lived. She did nothing but live. She lived every hour. Priam +felt truly that he had at last got down to the bed-rock of life. + +There were twenty pages of the _Telegraph_, far more matter than a man +could read in a day even if he read and read and neither ate nor slept. +And all of it so soothing in its rich variety! It gently lulled you; it +was the ideal companion for a poached egg; upstanding against the +coffee-pot, it stood for the solidity of England in the seas. Priam +folded it large; he read all the articles down to the fold; then turned +the thing over, and finished all of them. After communing with the +_Telegraph_, he communed with his own secret nature, and wandered about, +rolling a cigarette. Ah! The first cigarette! His wanderings led him to +the kitchen, or at least as far as the threshold thereof. His wife was +at work there. Upon every handle or article that might soil she put soft +brown paper, and in addition she often wore house-gloves; so that her +hands remained immaculate; thus during the earlier hours of the day the +house, especially in the region of fireplaces, had the air of being in +curl-papers. + +"I'm going out now, Alice," he said, after he had drawn on his finely +polished boots. + +"Very well, love," she replied, preoccupied with her work. "Lunch as +usual." She never demanded luxuriousness from him. She had got him. She +was sure of him. That satisfied her. Sometimes, like a simple woman who +has come into a set of pearls, she would, as it were, take him out of +his drawer and look at him, and put him back. + +At the gate he hesitated whether to turn to the left, towards High +Street, or to the right, towards Oxford Road. He chose the right, but he +would have enjoyed himself equally had he chosen the left. The streets +through which he passed were populated by domestic servants and +tradesmen's boys. He saw white-capped girls cleaning door-knobs or +windows, or running along the streets, like escaped nuns, or staring in +soft meditation from bedroom windows. And the tradesmen's boys were +continually leaping in and out of carts, or off and on tricycles, busily +distributing food and drink, as though Putney had been a beleaguered +city. It was extremely interesting and mysterious--and what made it the +most mysterious was that the oligarchy of superior persons for whom +these boys and girls so assiduously worked, remained invisible. He +passed a newspaper shop and found his customary delight in the placards. +This morning the _Daily Illustrated_ announced nothing but: "Portrait of +a boy aged 12 who weighs 20 stone." And the _Record_ whispered in +scarlet: "What the German said to the King. Special." The _Journal_ +cried: "Surrey's glorious finish." And the _Courier_ shouted: "The +Unwritten Law in the United States. Another Scandal." + +Not for gold would he have gone behind these placards to the organs +themselves; he preferred to gather from the placards alone what wonders +of yesterday the excellent staid _Telegraph_ had unaccountably missed. +But in the _Financial Times_ he saw: "Cohoon's Annual Meeting. Stormy +Scenes." And he bought the _Financial Times_ and put it into his pocket +for his wife, because she had an interest in Cohoon's Brewery, and he +conceived the possibility of her caring to glance at the report. + + +_The Simple Joy of Life_ + + +After crossing the South-Western Railway he got into the Upper Richmond +Road, a thoroughfare which always diverted and amused him. It was such a +street of contrasts. Any one could see that, not many years before, it +had been a sacred street, trod only by feet genteel, and made up of +houses each christened with its own name and each standing in its own +garden. And now energetic persons had put churches into it, vast red +things with gigantic bells, and large drapery shops, with blouses at +six-and-eleven, and court photographers, and banks, and cigar-stores, +and auctioneers' offices. And all kinds of omnibuses ran along it. And +yet somehow it remained meditative and superior. In every available +space gigantic posters were exhibited. They all had to do with food or +pleasure. There were York hams eight feet high, that a regiment could +not have eaten in a month; shaggy and ferocious oxen peeping out of +monstrous teacups in their anxiety to be consumed; spouting bottles of +ale whose froth alone would have floated the mail steamers pictured on +an adjoining sheet; and forty different decoctions for imparting +strength. Then after a few score yards of invitation to debauch there +came, with characteristic admirable English common sense, a cure for +indigestion, so large that it would have given ease to a mastodon who +had by inadvertence swallowed an elephant. And then there were the calls +to pleasure. Astonishing, the quantity of palaces that offered you +exactly the same entertainment twice over on the same night! +Astonishing, the reliance on number in this matter of amusement! +Authenticated statements that a certain performer had done a certain +thing in a certain way a thousand and one times without interruption +were stuck all over the Upper Richmond Road, apparently in the sure hope +that you would rush to see the thousand and second performance. These +performances were invariably styled original and novel. All the +remainder of free wall space was occupied by philanthropists who were +ready to give away cigarettes at the nominal price of a penny a packet. + +Priam Farll never tired of the phantasmagoria of Upper Richmond Road. +The interminable, intermittent vision of food dead and alive, and of +performers performing the same performance from everlasting to +everlasting, and of millions and millions of cigarettes ascending from +the mouths of handsome young men in incense to heaven--this rare vision, +of which in all his wanderings he had never seen the like, had the +singular effect of lulling his soul into a profound content. Not once +did he arrive at the end of the vision. No! when he reached Barnes +Station he could see the vision still stretching on and on; but, filled +to the brim, he would get into an omnibus and return. The omnibus awoke +him to other issues: the omnibus was an antidote. In the omnibus +cleanliness was nigh to godliness. On one pane a soap was extolled, and +on another the exordium, "For this is a true saying and worthy of all +acceptation," was followed by the statement of a religious dogma; while +on another pane was an urgent appeal not to do in the omnibus what you +would not do in a drawing-room. Yes, Priam Farll had seen the world, but +he had never seen a city so incredibly strange, so packed with curious +and rare psychological interest as London. And he regretted that he had +not discovered London earlier in his life-long search after romance. + +At the corner of the High Street he left the omnibus and stopped a +moment to chat with his tobacconist. His tobacconist was a stout man in +a white apron, who stood for ever behind a counter and sold tobacco to +the most respected residents of Putney. All his ideas were connected +either with tobacco or with Putney. A murder in the Strand to that +tobacconist was less than the breakdown of a motor bus opposite Putney +Station; and a change of government less than a change of programme at +the Putney Empire. A rather pessimistic tobacconist, not inclined to +believe in a First Cause, until one day a drunken man smashed Salmon and +Gluckstein's window down the High Street, whereupon his opinion of +Providence went up for several days! Priam enjoyed talking to him, +though the tobacconist was utterly impervious to ideas and never gave +out ideas. This morning the tobacconist was at his door. At the other +corner was the sturdy old woman whom Priam had observed from his window. +She sold flowers. + +"Fine old woman, that!" said Priam heartily, after he and the +tobacconist had agreed upon the fact that it was a glorious morning. + +"She used to be at the opposite corner by the station until last May but +one, when the police shifted her," said the tobacconist. + +"Why did the police shift her?" asked Priam. + +"I don't know as I can tell you," said the tobacconist. "But I remember +her this twelve year." + +"I only noticed her this morning," said Priam. "I saw her from my +bedroom window, coming down the Werter Road. I said to myself, 'She's +the finest old woman I ever saw in my life!'" + +"Did you now!" murmured the tobacconist. "She's rare and dirty." + +"I like her to be dirty," said Priam stoutly. "She ought to be dirty. +She wouldn't be the same if she were clean." + +"I don't hold with dirt," said the tobacconist calmly. "She'd be better +if she had a bath of a Saturday night like other folks." + +"Well," said Priam, "I want an ounce of the usual." + +"Thank _you_, sir," said the tobacconist, putting down three-halfpence +change out of sixpence as Priam thanked him for the packet. + +Nothing whatever in such a dialogue! Yet Priam left the shop with a +distinct feeling that life was good. And he plunged into High Street, +lost himself in crowds of perambulators and nice womanly women who were +bustling honestly about in search of food or raiment. Many of them +carried little red books full of long lists of things which they and +their admirers and the offspring of mutual affection had eaten or would +shortly eat. In the High Street all was luxury: not a necessary in the +street. Even the bakers' shops were a mass of sultana and Berlin +pancakes. Illuminated calendars, gramophones, corsets, picture +postcards, Manilla cigars, bridge-scorers, chocolate, exotic fruit, and +commodious mansions--these seemed to be the principal objects offered +for sale in High Street. Priam bought a sixpenny edition of Herbert +Spencer's _Essays_ for four-pence-halfpenny, and passed on to Putney +Bridge, whose noble arches divided a first storey of vans and omnibuses +from a ground-floor of barges and racing eights. And he gazed at the +broad river and its hanging gardens, and dreamed; and was wakened by the +roar of an electric train shooting across the stream on a red causeway a +few yards below him. And, miles off, he could descry the twin towers of +the Crystal Palace, more marvellous than mosques! + +"Astounding!" he murmured joyously. He had not a care in the world; and +Putney was all that Alice had painted it. In due time, when bells had +pealed to right and to left of him, he went home to her. + + +_Collapse of the Putney System_ + + +Now, just at the end of lunch, over the last stage of which they usually +sat a long time, Alice got up quickly, in the midst of her Stilton, and, +going to the mantelpiece, took a letter therefrom. + +"I wish you'd look at that, Henry," she said, handing him the letter. +"It came this morning, but of course I can't be bothered with that sort +of thing in the morning. So I put it aside." + +He accepted the letter, and unfolded it with the professional +all-knowing air which even the biggest male fool will quite successfully +put on in the presence of a woman if consulted about business. When he +had unfolded the thing--it was typed on stiff, expensive, quarto +paper--he read it. In the lives of beings like Priam Farll and Alice a +letter such as that letter is a terrible event, unique, earth-arresting; +simple recipients are apt, on receiving it, to imagine that the +Christian era has come to an end. But tens of thousands of similar +letters are sent out from the City every day, and the City thinks +nothing of them. + +The letter was about Cohoon's Brewery Company, Limited, and it was +signed by a firm of solicitors. It referred to the verbatim report, +which it said would be found in the financial papers, of the annual +meeting of the company held at the Cannon Street Hotel on the previous +day, and to the exceedingly unsatisfactory nature of the Chairman's +statement. It regretted the absence of Mrs. Alice Challice (her change +of condition had not yet reached the heart of Cohoon's) from the +meeting, and asked her whether she would be prepared to support the +action of a committee which had been formed to eject the existing board +and which had already a following of 385,000 votes. It finished by +asserting that unless the committee was immediately lifted to absolute +power the company would be quite ruined. + +Priam re-read the letter aloud. + +"What does it all mean?" asked Alice quietly. + +"Well," said he, "that's what it means." + +"Does it mean--?" she began. + +"By Jove!" he exclaimed, "I forgot. I saw something on a placard this +morning about Cohoon's, and I thought it might interest you, so I bought +it." So saying, he drew from his pocket the _Financial Times_, which he +had entirely forgotten. There it was: a column and a quarter of the +Chairman's speech, and nearly two columns of stormy scenes. The Chairman +was the Marquis of Drumgaldy, but his rank had apparently not shielded +him from the violence of expletives such as "Liar!" "Humbug!" and even +"Rogue!" The Marquis had merely stated, with every formula of apology, +that, owing to the extraordinary depreciation in licensed property, the +directors had not felt justified in declaring any dividend at all on the +Ordinary Shares of the company. He had made this quite simple assertion, +and instantly a body of shareholders, less reasonable and more +avaricious even than shareholders usually are, had begun to turn the +historic hall of the Cannon Street Hotel into a bear garden. One might +have imagined that the sole aim of brewery companies was to make money, +and that the patriotism of old-world brewers, that patriotism which +impelled them to supply an honest English beer to the honest English +working-man at a purely nominal price, was scorned and forgotten. One +was, indeed, forced to imagine this. In vain the Marquis pointed out +that the shareholders had received a fifteen per cent, dividend for +years and years past, and that really, for once in a way, they ought to +be prepared to sacrifice a temporary advantage for the sake of future +prosperity. The thought of those regular high dividends gave rise to no +gratitude in shareholding hearts; it seemed merely to render them the +more furious. The baser passions had been let loose in the Cannon Street +Hotel. The directors had possibly been expecting the baser passions, for +a posse of policemen was handy at the door, and one shareholder, to save +him from having the blood of Marquises on his soul, was ejected. +Ultimately, according to the picturesque phrases of the _Financial +Times_ report, the meeting broke up in confusion. + +"How much have you got in Cohoon's?" Priam asked Alice, after they had +looked through the report together. + +"All I have is in Cohoon's," said she, "except this house. Father left +it like that. He always said there was nothing like a brewery. I've +heard him say many and many a time a brewery was better than consols. I +think there's 200 L5 shares. Yes, that's it. But of course they're worth +much more than that. They're worth about L12 each. All I know is they +bring me in L150 a year as regular as the clock. What's that there, +after 'broke up in confusion'?" + +She pointed with her finger to a paragraph, and he read in a low voice +the fluctuations of Cohoon's Ordinary Shares during the afternoon. They +had finished at L6 5s. Mrs. Henry Leek had lost over L1,000 in about +half-a-day. + +"They've always brought me in L150 a year," she insisted, as though she +had been saying: "It's always been Christmas Day on the 25th of +December, and of course it will be the same this year." + +"It doesn't look as if they'd bring you in anything this time," said he. + +"Oh, but Henry!" she protested. + +Beer had failed! That was the truth of it. Beer had failed. Who would +have guessed that beer could fail in England? The wisest, the most +prudent men in Lombard Street had put their trust in beer, as the last +grand bulwark of the nation; and even beer had failed. The foundations +of England's greatness were, if not gone, going. Insufficient to argue +bad management, indiscreet purchases of licences at inflated prices! In +the excellent old days a brewery would stand an indefinite amount of bad +management! Times were changed. The British workman, caught in a wave of +temperance, could no longer be relied upon to drink! It was the crown of +his sins against society. Trade unions were nothing to this latest +caprice of his, which spread desolation in a thousand genteel homes. +Alice wondered what her father would have said, had he lived. On the +whole, she was glad that he did not happen to be alive. The shock to him +would have been too rude. The floor seemed to be giving way under Alice, +melting into a sort of bog that would swallow up her and her husband. +For years, without any precise information, but merely by instinct, she +had felt that England, beneath the surface, was not quite the island it +had been--and here was the awful proof. + +She gazed at her husband, as a wife ought to gaze at her husband in a +crisis. His thoughts were much vaguer than hers, his thoughts about +money being always extremely vague. + +"Suppose you went up to the City and saw Mr. What's-his-name?" she +suggested, meaning the signatory of the letter. + +"_Me_!" + +It was a cry of the soul aghast, a cry drawn out of him sharply, by a +most genuine cruel alarm. Him to go up to the City to interview a +solicitor! Why, the poor dear woman must be demented! He could not have +done it for a million pounds. The thought of it made him sick, raising +the whole of his lunch to his throat, as by some sinister magic. + +She saw and translated the look on his face. It was a look of horror. +And at once she made excuses for him to herself. At once she said to +herself that it was no use pretending that her Henry was like other men. +He was not. He was a dreamer. He was, at times, amazingly peculiar. But +he was her Henry. In any other man than her Henry a hesitation to take +charge of his wife's financial affairs would have been ridiculous; it +would have been effeminate. But Henry was Henry. She was gradually +learning that truth. He was adorable; but he was Henry. With magnificent +strength of mind she collected herself. + +"No," she said cheerfully. "As they're my shares, perhaps I'd better go. +Unless we _both_ go!" She encountered his eye again, and added quietly: +"No, I'll go alone." + +He sighed his relief. He could not help sighing his relief. + +And, after meticulously washing-up and straightening, she departed, and +Priam remained solitary with his ideas about married life and the fiscal +question. + +Alice was assuredly the very mirror of discretion. Never, since that +unanswered query as to savings at the Grand Babylon, had she subjected +him to any inquisition concerning money. Never had she talked of her own +means, save in casual phrase now and then to assure him that there was +enough. She had indeed refused banknotes diffidently offered to her by +him, telling him to keep them by him till need of them arose. Never had +she discoursed of her own past life, nor led him on to discourse of his. +She was one of those women for whom neither the past nor the future +seems to exist--they are always so occupied with the important present. +He and she had both of them relied on their judgment of character as +regarded each other's worthiness and trustworthiness. And he was the +last man in the world to be a chancellor of the exchequer. To him, money +was a quite uninteresting token that had to pass through your hands. He +had always had enough of it. He had always had too much of it. Even at +Putney he had had too much of it. The better part of Henry Leek's two +hundred pounds remained in his pockets, and under his own will he had +his pound a week, of which he never spent more than a few shillings. His +distractions were tobacco (which cost him about twopence a day), walking +about and enjoying colour effects and the oddities of the streets (which +cost him nearly nought), and reading: there were three shops of Putney +where all that is greatest in literature could be bought for +fourpence-halfpenny a volume. Do what he could, he could not read away +more than ninepence a week. He was positively accumulating money. You +may say that he ought to have compelled Alice to accept money. The idea +never occurred to him. In his scheme of things money had not been a +matter of sufficient urgency to necessitate an argument with one's wife. +She was always welcome to all that he had. + +And now suddenly, money acquired urgency in his eyes. It was most +disturbing. He was not frightened: he was merely disturbed. If he had +ever known the sensation of wanting money and not being able to obtain +it, he would probably have been frightened. But this sensation was +unfamiliar to him. Not once in his whole career had he hesitated to +change gold from fear that the end of gold was at hand. + +All kinds of problems crowded round him. + +He went out for a stroll to escape the problems. But they accompanied +him. He walked through exactly the same streets as had delighted him in +the morning. And they had ceased to delight him. This surely could not +be ideal Putney that he was in! It must be some other place of the same +name. The mismanagement of a brewery a hundred and fifty miles from +London; the failure of the British working-man to drink his customary +pints in several scattered scores of public-houses, had most +unaccountably knocked the bottom out of the Putney system of practical +philosophy. Putney posters were now merely disgusting, Putney trade +gross and futile, the tobacconist a narrow-minded and stupid bourgeois; +and so on. + +Alice and he met on their doorstep, each in the act of pulling out a +latchkey. + +"Oh!" she said, when they were inside, "it's done for! There's no +mistake--it's done for! We shan't get a penny this year, not one penny! +And he doesn't think there'll be anything next year either! And the +shares'll go down yet, he says. I never heard of such a thing in all my +life! Did you?" + +He admitted sympathetically that he had not. + +After she had been upstairs and come down again her mood suddenly +changed. "Well," she smiled, "whether we get anything or not, it's +tea-time. So we'll have tea. I've no patience with worrying. I said I +should make pastry after tea, and I will too. See if I don't!" + +The tea was perhaps slightly more elaborate than usual. + +After tea he heard her singing in the kitchen. And he was moved to go +and look at her. There she was, with her sleeves turned back, and a +large pinafore apron over her rich bosom, kneading flour. He would have +liked to approach her and kiss her. But he never could accomplish feats +of that kind at unusual moments. + +"Oh!" she laughed. "You can look! _I'm_ not worrying. I've no patience +with worrying." + +Later in the afternoon he went out; rather like a person who has reasons +for leaving inconspicuously. He had made a great, a critical resolve. He +passed furtively down Werter Road into the High Street, and then stood a +moment outside Stawley's stationery shop, which is also a library, an +emporium of leather-bags, and an artists'-colourman's. He entered +Stawley's blushing, trembling--he a man of fifty who could not see his +own toes--and asked for certain tubes of colour. An energetic young lady +who seemed to know all about the graphic arts endeavoured to sell to him +a magnificent and complicated box of paints, which opened out into an +easel and a stool, and contained a palette of a shape preferred by the +late Edwin Long, R.A., a selection of colours which had been approved by +the late Lord Leighton, P.R.A., and a patent drying-oil which (she said) +had been used by Whistler. Priam Farll got away from the shop without +this apparatus for the confection of masterpieces, but he did not get +away without a sketching-box which he had had no intention of buying. +The young lady was too energetic for him. He was afraid of being too +curt with her lest she should turn on him and tell him that pretence was +useless--she knew he was Priam Farll. He felt guilty, and he felt that +he looked guilty. As he hurried along the High Street towards the river +with the paint-box it appeared to him that policemen observed him +inimically and cocked their helmets at him, as who should say: "See +here; this won't do. You're supposed to be in Westminster Abbey. You'll +be locked up if you're too brazen." + +The tide was out. He sneaked down to the gravelly shore a little above +the steamer pier, and hid himself between the piles, glancing around him +in a scared fashion. He might have been about to commit a crime. Then he +opened the sketch-box, and oiled the palette, and tried the elasticity +of the brushes on his hand. And he made a sketch of the scene before +him. He did it very quickly--in less than half-an-hour. He had made +thousands of such colour 'notes' in his life, and he would never part +with any of them. He had always hated to part with his notes. Doubtless +his cousin Duncan had them now, if Duncan had discovered his address in +Paris, as Duncan probably had. + +When it was finished, he inspected the sketch, half shutting his eyes +and holding it about three feet off. It was good. Except for a few +pencil scrawls done in sheer absent-mindedness and hastily destroyed, +this was the first sketch he had made since the death of Henry Leek. But +it was very good. "No mistake who's done that!" he murmured; and added: +"That's the devil of it. Any expert would twig it in a minute. There's +only one man that could have done it. I shall have to do something worse +than that!" He shut up the box and with a bang as an amative couple came +into sight. He need not have done so, for the couple vanished instantly +in deep disgust at being robbed of their retreat between the piles. + +Alice was nearing the completion of pastry when he returned in the dusk; +he smelt the delicious proof. Creeping quietly upstairs, he deposited +his brushes in an empty attic at the top of the house. Then he washed +his hands with especial care to remove all odour of paint. And at dinner +he endeavoured to put on the mien of innocence. + +She was cheerful, but it was the cheerfulness of determined effort. They +naturally talked of the situation. It appeared that she had a reserve of +money in the bank--as much as would suffice her for quite six months. He +told her with false buoyancy that there need never be the slightest +difficulty as to money; he had money, and he could always earn more. + +"If you think I'm going to let you go into another situation," she said, +"you're mistaken. That's all." And her lips were firm. + +This staggered him. He never could remember for more than half-an-hour +at a time that he was a retired valet. And it was decidedly not her +practice to remind him of the fact. The notion of himself in a situation +as valet was half ridiculous and half tragical. He could no more be a +valet than he could be a stockbroker or a wire-walker. + +"I wasn't thinking of that," he stammered. + +"Then what were you thinking of?" she asked. + +"Oh! I don't know!" he said vaguely. + +"Because those things they advertise--homework, envelope addressing, or +selling gramophones on commission--they're no good, you know!" + +He shuddered. + +The next morning he bought a 36 x 24 canvas, and more brushes and tubes, +and surreptitiously introduced them into the attic. Happily it was the +charwoman's day and Alice was busy enough to ignore him. With an old +table and the tray out of a travelling-trunk, he arranged a substitute +for an easel, and began to try to paint a bad picture from his sketch. +But in a quarter of an hour he discovered that he was exactly as fitted +to paint a bad picture as to be a valet. He could not sentimentalize the +tones, nor falsify the values. He simply could not; the attempt to do so +annoyed him. All men are capable of stooping beneath their highest +selves, and in several directions Priam Farll could have stooped. But +not on canvas! He could only produce his best. He could only render +nature as he saw nature. And it was instinct, rather than conscience, +that prevented him from stooping. + +In three days, during which he kept Alice out of the attic partly by +lies and partly by locking the door, the picture was finished; and he +had forgotten all about everything except his profession. He had become +a different man, a very excited man. + +"By Jove," he exclaimed, surveying the picture, "I can paint!" + +Artists do occasionally soliloquize in this way. + +The picture was dazzling! What atmosphere! What poetry! And what +profound fidelity to nature's facts! It was precisely such a picture as +he was in the habit of selling for L800 or a L1,000, before his burial +in Westminster Abbey! Indeed, the trouble was that it had 'Priam Farll' +written all over it, just as the sketch had! + + * * * * * + + + + +CHAPTER VII + + +_The Confession_ + + +That evening he was very excited, and he seemed to take no thought to +disguise his excitement. The fact was, he could not have disguised it, +even if he had tried. The fever of artistic creation was upon him--all +the old desires and the old exhausting joys. His genius had been lying +idle, like a lion in a thicket, and now it had sprung forth ravening. +For months he had not handled a brush; for months his mind had +deliberately avoided the question of painting, being content with the +observation only of beauty. A week ago, if he had deliberately asked +himself whether he would ever paint again, he might have answered, +"Perhaps not." Such is man's ignorance of his own nature! And now the +lion of his genius was standing over him, its paw on his breast, and +making a great noise. + +He saw that the last few months had been merely an interlude, that he +would be forced to paint--or go mad; and that nothing else mattered. He +saw also that he could only paint in one way--Priam Farll's way. If it +was discovered that Priam Farll was not buried in Westminster Abbey; if +there was a scandal, and legal unpleasantness--well, so much the worse! +But he must paint. + +Not for money, mind you! Incidentally, of course, he would earn money. +But he had already quite forgotten that life has its financial aspect. + +So in the sitting-room in Werter Road, he walked uneasily to and fro, +squeezing between the table and the sideboard, and then skirting the +fireplace where Alice sat with a darning apparatus upon her knees, and +her spectacles on--she wore spectacles when she had to look fixedly at +very dark objects. The room was ugly in a pleasant Putneyish way, with a +couple of engravings after B.W. Leader, R.A., a too realistic +wall-paper, hot brown furniture with ribbed legs, a carpet with the +characteristics of a retired governess who has taken to drink, and a +black cloud on the ceiling over the incandescent burners. Happily these +surroundings did not annoy him. They did not annoy him because he never +saw them. When his eyes were not resting on beautiful things, they were +not in this world of reality at all. His sole idea about +house-furnishing was an easy-chair. + +"Harry," said his wife, "don't you think you'd better sit down?" + +The calm voice of common sense stopped him in his circular tour. He +glanced at Alice, and she, removing her spectacles, glanced at him. The +seal on his watch-chain dangled free. He had to talk to some one, and +his wife was there--not only the most convenient but the most proper +person to talk to. A tremendous impulse seized him to tell her +everything; she would understand; she always did understand; and she +never allowed herself to be startled. The most singular occurrences, +immediately they touched her, were somehow transformed into credible +daily, customary events. Thus the disaster of the brewery! She had +accepted it as though the ruins of breweries were a spectacle to be +witnessed at every street-corner. + +Yes, he should tell her. Three minutes ago he had no intention of +telling her, or any one, anything. He decided in an instant. To tell her +his secret would lead up naturally to the picture which he had just +finished. + +"I say, Alice," he said, "I want to talk to you." + +"Well," she said, "I wish you'd talk to me sitting down. I don't know +what's come over you this last day or two." + +He sat down. He did not feel really intimate with her at that moment. +And their marriage seemed to him, in a way, artificial, scarcely a fact. +He did not know that it takes years to accomplish full intimacy between +husband and wife. + +"You know," he said, "Henry Leek isn't my real name." + +"Oh, isn't it?" she said. "What does that matter?" + +She was not in the least surprised to hear that Henry Leek was not his +real name. She was a wise woman, and knew the strangeness of the world. +And she had married him simply because he was himself, because he +existed in a particular manner (whose charm for her she could not have +described) from hour to hour. + +"So long as you haven't committed a murder or anything," she added, with +her tranquil smile. + +"My real name is Priam Farll," he said gruffly. The gruffness was caused +by timidity. + +"I thought Priam Farll was your gentleman's name." + +"To tell you the truth," he said nervously, "there was a mistake. That +photograph that was sent to you was my photograph." + +"Yes," she said. "I know it was. And what of it?" + +"I mean," he blundered on, "it was my valet that died--not me. You see, +the doctor, when he came, thought that Leek was me, and I didn't tell +him differently, because I was afraid of all the bother. I just let it +slide--and there were other reasons. You know how I am...." + +"I don't know what you're talking about," she said. + +"Can't you understand? It's simple enough. I'm Priam Farll, and I had a +valet named Henry Leek, and he died, and they thought it was me. Only it +wasn't." + +He saw her face change and then compose itself. + +"Then it's this Henry Leek that is buried in Westminster Abbey, instead +of you?" Her voice was very soft and soothing. And the astonishing woman +resumed her spectacles and her long needle. + +"Yes, of course." + +Here he burst into the whole story, into the middle of it, continuing to +the end, and then going back to the commencement. He left out nothing, +and nobody, except Lady Sophia Entwistle. + +"I see," she observed. "And you've never said a word?" + +"Not a word." + +"If I were you I should still keep perfectly silent about it," she +almost whispered persuasively. "It'll be just as well. If I were you, I +shouldn't worry myself. I can quite understand how it happened, and I'm +glad you've told me. But don't worry. You've been exciting yourself +these last two or three days. I thought it was about my money business, +but I see it wasn't. At least that may have brought it on, like. Now the +best thing you can do is to forget it." + +She did not believe him! She simply discredited the whole story; and, +told in Werter Road, like that, the story did sound fantastic; it did +come very near to passing belief. She had always noticed a certain +queerness in her husband. His sudden gaieties about a tint in the sky or +the gesture of a horse in the street, for example, were most uncanny. +And he had peculiar absences of mind that she could never account for. +She was sure that he must have been a very bad valet. However, she did +not marry him for a valet, but for a husband; and she was satisfied with +her bargain. What if he did suffer under a delusion? The exposure of +that delusion merely crystallized into a definite shape her vague +suspicions concerning his mentality. Besides, it was a harmless +delusion. And it explained things. It explained, among other things, why +he had gone to stay at the Grand Babylon Hotel. That must have been the +inception of the delusion. She was glad to know the worst. + +She adored him more than ever. + +There was a silence. + +"No," she repeated, in the most matter-of-fact tone, "I should say +nothing, in your place. I should forget it." + +"You would?" He drummed on the table. + +"I should! And whatever you do, don't worry." Her accents were the +coaxing accents of a nurse with a child--or with a lunatic. + +He perceived now with the utmost clearness that she did not believe a +word of what he had said, and that in her magnificent and calm sagacity +she was only trying to humour him. He had expected to disturb her soul +to its profoundest depths; he had expected that they would sit up half +the night discussing the situation. And lo!--"I should forget it," +indulgently! And a mild continuance of darning! + +He had to think, and think hard. + + +_Tears_ + + +"Henry," she called out the next morning, as he disappeared up the +stairs. "What _are_ you doing up there?" + +She had behaved exactly as if nothing had happened; and she was one of +those women whose prudent policy it is to let their men alone even to +the furthest limit of patience; but she had nerves, too, and they were +being affected. For three days Henry had really been too mysterious! + +He stopped, and put his head over the banisters, and in a queer, moved +voice answered: + +"Come and see." + +Sooner or later she must see. Sooner or later the already distended +situation must get more and more distended until it burst with a loud +report. Let the moment be sooner, he swiftly decided. + +So she went and saw. + +Half-way up the attic stairs she began to sniff, and as he turned the +knob of the attic door for her she said, "What a smell of paint! I +fancied yesterday----" + +If she had been clever enough she would have said, "What a smell of +masterpieces!" But her cleverness lay in other fields. + +"You surely haven't been aspinalling that bath-room chair?... Oh!" + +This loud exclamation escaped from her as she entered the attic and saw +the back of the picture which Priam had lodged on the said bath-room +chair--filched by him from the bath-room on the previous day. She +stepped to the vicinity of the window and obtained a good view of the +picture. It was brilliantly shining in the light of morn. It looked +glorious; it was a fit companion of many pictures from the same hand +distributed among European galleries. It had that priceless quality, at +once noble and radiant, which distinguished all Priam's work. It +transformed the attic; and thousands of amateurs and students, from St. +Petersburg to San Francisco, would have gone into that attic with their +hats off and a thrill in the spine, had they known what was there and +had they been invited to enter and worship. Priam himself was pleased; +he was delighted; he was enthusiastic. And he stood near the picture, +glancing at it and then glancing at Alice, nervously, like a mother +whose sister-in-law has come to look at the baby. As for Alice, she said +nothing. She had first of all to take in the fact that her husband had +been ungenerous enough to keep her quite in the dark as to the nature of +his secret activities; then she had to take in the fact of the picture. + +"Did you do that?" she said limply. + +"Yes," said he, with all the casualness that he could assume. "How does +it strike you?" And to himself: "This'll make her see I'm not a mere +lunatic. This'll give her a shaking up." + +"I'm sure it's beautiful," she said kindly, but without the slightest +conviction. "What is it? Is that Putney Bridge?" + +"Yes," he said. + +"I thought it was. I thought it must be. Well, I never knew you could +paint. It's beautiful--for an amateur." She said this firmly and yet +endearingly, and met his eyes with her eyes. It was her tactful method +of politely causing him to see that she had not accepted last night's +yarn very seriously. His eyes fell, not hers. + +"No, no, no!" he expostulated with quick vivacity, as she stepped +towards the canvas. "Don't come any nearer. You're at just the right +distance." + +"Oh! If you don't _want_ me to see it close," she humoured him. "What a +pity you haven't put an omnibus on the bridge!" + +"There is one," said he. "_That's_ one." He pointed. + +"Oh yes! Yes, I see. But, you know, I think it looks rather more like a +Carter Paterson van than an omnibus. If you could paint some letters on +it--'Union Jack' or 'Vanguard,' then people would be sure. But it's +beautiful. I suppose you learnt to to paint from your--" She checked +herself. "What's that red streak behind?" + +"That's the railway bridge," he muttered. + +"Oh, of course it is! How silly of me! Now if you were to put a train on +that. The worst of trains in pictures is that they never seem to be +going along. I've noticed that on the sides of furniture vans, haven't +you? But if you put a signal, against it, then people would understand +that the train had stopped. I'm not sure whether there _is_ a signal on +the bridge, though." + +He made no remark. + +"And I see that's the Elk public-house there on the right. You've just +managed to get it in. I can recognize that quite easily. Any one would." + +He still made no remark. + +"What are you going to do with it?" she asked gently. + +"Going to sell it, my dear," he replied grimly. "It may surprise you to +know that that canvas is worth at the very least L800. There would be a +devil of a row and rumpus in Bond Street and elsewhere if they knew I +was painting here instead of rotting in Westminster Abbey. I don't +propose to sign it--I seldom did sign my pictures--and we shall see what +we shall see.... I've got fifteen hundred for little things not so good +as that. I'll let it go for what it'll fetch. We shall soon be wanting +money." + +The tears rose to Alice's eyes. She saw that he was more infinitely more +mad than she imagined--with his L800 and his L1,500 for daubs of +pictures that conveyed no meaning whatever to the eye! Why, you could +purchase real, professional pictures, of lakes, and mountains, +exquisitely finished, at the frame-makers in High Street for three +pounds apiece! And here he was rambling in hundreds and thousands! She +saw that that extraordinary notion about being able to paint was a +natural consequence of the pathetic delusion to which he had given +utterance yesterday. And she wondered what would follow next. Who could +have guessed that the seeds of lunacy were in such a man? Yes, harmless +lunacy, but lunacy nevertheless! She distinctly remembered the little +shock with which she had learned that he was staying at the Grand +Babylon on his own account, as a wealthy visitor. She thought it +bizarre, but she certainly had not taken it for a sign of lunacy. And +yet it had been a sign of madness. And the worst of harmless lunacy was +that it might develop at any moment into harmful lunacy. + +There was one thing to do, and only one: keep him quiet, shield him from +all troubles and alarms. It was disturbance of spirit which induced +these mental derangements. His master's death had upset him. And now he +had been upset by her disgraceful brewery company. + +She made a step towards him, and then hesitated. She had to form a plan +of campaign all in a moment! She had to keep her wits and to use them! +How could she give him confidence about his absurd picture? She noticed +that naive look that sometimes came into his eyes, a boyish expression +that gave the He to his greying beard and his generous proportions. + +He laughed, until, as she came closer, he saw the tears on her eyelids. +Then he ceased laughing. She fingered the edge of his coat, cajolingly. + +"It's a beautiful picture!" she repeated again and again. "And if you +like I will see if I can sell it for you. But, Henry----" + +"Well?" + +"Please, please don't bother about money. We shall have _heaps_. There's +no occasion for you to bother, and I won't _have_ you bothering." + +"What are you crying for?" he asked in a murmur. + +"It's only--only because I think it's so nice of you trying to earn +money like that," she lied. "I'm not really crying." + +And she ran away, downstairs, really crying. It was excessively comic, +but he had better not follow her, lest he might cry too.... + + +_A Patron of the Arts_ + + +A lull followed this crisis in the affairs of No. 29 Werter Road. Priam +went on painting, and there was now no need for secrecy about it. But +his painting was not made a subject of conversation. Both of them +hesitated to touch it, she from tact, and he because her views on the +art seemed to him to be lacking in subtlety. In every marriage there is +a topic--there are usually several--which the husband will never broach +to the wife, out of respect for his respect for her. Priam scarcely +guessed that Alice imagined him to be on the way to lunacy. He thought +she merely thought him queer, as artists _are_ queer to non-artists. And +he was accustomed to that; Henry Leek had always thought him queer. As +for Alice's incredulous attitude towards the revelation of his identity, +he did not mentally accuse her of treating him as either a liar or a +madman. On reflection he persuaded himself that she regarded the story +as a bad joke, as one of his impulsive, capricious essays in the absurd. + +Thus the march of evolution was apparently arrested in Werter Road +during three whole days. And then a singular event happened, and +progress was resumed. Priam had been out since early morning on the +riverside, sketching, and had reached Barnes, from which town he +returned over Barnes Common, and so by the Upper Richmond Road to High +Street. He was on the south side of Upper Richmond Road, whereas his +tobacconist's shop was on the north side, near the corner. An unfamiliar +peculiarity of the shop caused him to cross the street, for he was not +in want of tobacco. It was the look of the window that drew him. He +stopped on the refuge in the centre of the street. There was no +necessity to go further. His picture of Putney Bridge was in the middle +of the window. He stared at it fixedly. He believed his eyes, for his +eyes were the finest part of him and never deceived him; but perhaps if +he had been a person with ordinary eyes he would scarce have been able +to believe them. The canvas was indubitably there present in the window. +It had been put in a cheap frame such as is used for chromographic +advertisements of ships, soups, and tobacco. He was almost sure that he +had seen that same frame, within the shop, round a pictorial +announcement of Taddy's Snuff. The tobacconist had probably removed the +eighteenth-century aristocrat with his fingers to his nose, from the +frame, and replaced him with Putney Bridge. In any event the frame was +about half-an-inch too long for the canvas, but the gap was scarcely +observable. On the frame was a large notice, 'For sale.' And around it +were the cigars of two hemispheres, from Syak Whiffs at a penny each to +precious Murias; and cigarettes of every allurement; and the +multitudinous fragments of all advertised tobaccos; and meerschaums and +briars, and patent pipes and diagrams of their secret machinery; and +cigarette-and cigar-holders laid on plush; and pocket receptacles in +aluminium and other precious metals. + +Shining there, the picture had a most incongruous appearance. He blushed +as he stood on the refuge. It seemed to him that the mere incongruity of +the spectacle must inevitably attract crowds, gradually blocking the +street, and that when some individual not absolutely a fool in art, had +perceived the quality of the picture--well, then the trouble of public +curiosity and of journalistic inquisitiveness would begin. He wondered +that he could ever have dreamed of concealing his identity on a canvas. +The thing simply shouted 'Priam Farll,' every inch of it. In any +exhibition of pictures in London, Paris, Rome, Milan, Munich, New York +or Boston, it would have been the cynosure, the target of ecstatic +admirations. It was just such another work as his celebrated 'Pont +d'Austerlitz,' which hung in the Luxembourg. And neither a frame of +'chemical gold,' nor the extremely variegated coloration of the other +merchandise on sale could kill it. + +However, there were no signs of a crowd. People passed to and fro, just +as though there had not been a masterpiece within ten thousand miles of +them. Once a servant girl, a loaf of bread in her red arms, stopped to +glance at the window, but in an instant she was gone, running. + +Priam's first instinctive movement had been to plunge into the shop, and +demand from his tobacconist an explanation of the phenomenon. But of +course he checked himself. Of course he knew that the presence of his +picture in the window could only be due to the enterprise of Alice. + +He went slowly home. + +The sound of his latchkey in the keyhole brought her into the hall ere +he had opened the door. + +"Oh, Henry," she said--she was quite excited--"I must tell you. I was +passing Mr. Aylmer's this morning just as he was dressing his window, +and the thought struck me that he might put your picture in. So I ran in +and asked him. He said he would if he could have it at once. So I came +and got it. He found a frame, and wrote out a ticket, and asked after +you. No one could have been kinder. You must go and have a look at it. I +shouldn't be at all surprised if it gets sold like that." + +Priam answered nothing for a moment. He could not. + +"What did Aylmer say about it?" he asked. + +"Oh!" said his wife quickly, "you can't expect Mr. Aylmer to understand +these things. It's not in his line. But he was glad to oblige us. I saw +he arranged it nicely." + +"Well," said Priam discreetly, "that's all right. Suppose we have +lunch?" + +Curious--her relations with Mr. Aylmer! It was she who had recommended +him to go to Mr. Aylmer's when, on the first morning of his residence in +Putney, he had demanded, "Any decent tobacconists in this happy region?" +He suspected that, had it not been for Aylmer's beridden and incurable +wife, Alice's name might have been Aylmer. He suspected Aylmer of a +hopeless passion for Alice. He was glad that Alice had not been thrown +away on Aylmer. He could not imagine himself now without Alice. In spite +of her ideas on the graphic arts, Alice was his air, his atmosphere, his +oxygen; and also his umbrella to shield him from the hail of untoward +circumstances. Curious--the process of love! It was the power of love +that had put that picture in the tobacconist's window. + +Whatever power had put it there, no power seemed strong enough to get it +out again. It lay exposed in the window for weeks and never drew a +crowd, nor caused a sensation of any kind! Not a word in the newspapers! +London, the acknowledged art-centre of the world, calmly went its ways. +The sole immediate result was that Priam changed his tobacconist, and +the direction of his promenades. + +At last another singular event happened. + +Alice beamingly put five sovereigns into Priam's hand one evening. + +"It's been sold for five guineas," she said, joyous. "Mr. Aylmer didn't +want to keep anything for himself, but I insisted on his having the odd +shillings. I think it's splendid, simply splendid! Of course I always +_did_ think it was a beautiful picture," she added. + +The fact was that this astounding sale for so large a sum as five +pounds, of a picture done in the attic by her Henry, had enlarged her +ideas of Henry's skill. She could no longer regard his painting as the +caprice of a gentle lunatic. There was something _in_ it. And now she +wanted to persuade herself that she had known from the first there was +something in it. + +The picture had been bought by the eccentric and notorious landlord of +the Elk Hotel, down by the river, on a Sunday afternoon when he was--not +drunk, but more optimistic than the state of English society warrants. +He liked the picture because his public-house was so unmistakably plain +in it. He ordered a massive gold frame for it, and hung it in his +saloon-bar. His career as a patron of the arts was unfortunately cut +short by an order signed by his doctors for his incarceration in a +lunatic asylum. All Putney had been saying for years that he would end +in the asylum, and all Putney was right. + + * * * * * + + + + +CHAPTER VIII + + +_An Invasion_ + + +One afternoon, in December, Priam and Alice were in the sitting-room +together, and Alice was about to prepare tea. The drawn-thread cloth was +laid diagonally on the table (because Alice had seen cloths so laid on +model tea-tables in model rooms at Waring's), the strawberry jam +occupied the northern point of the compass, and the marmalade was +antarctic, while brittle cakes and spongy cakes represented the occident +and the orient respectively. Bread-and-butter stood, rightly, for the +centre of the universe. Silver ornamented the spread, and Alice's two +tea-pots (for she would never allow even Chinese tea to remain on the +leaves for more than five minutes) and Alice's water-jug with the patent +balanced lid, occupied a tray off the cloth. At some distance, but still +on the table, a kettle moaned over a spirit-lamp. Alice was cutting +bread for toast. The fire was of the right redness for toast, and a +toasting-fork lay handy. As winter advanced, Alice's teas had a tendency +to become cosier and cosier, and also more luxurious, more of a +ritualistic ceremony. And to avoid the trouble and danger of going +through a cold passage to the kitchen, she arranged matters so that the +entire operation could be performed with comfort and decency in the +sitting-room itself. + +Priam was rolling cigarettes, many of them, and placing them, as he +rolled them, in order on the mantelpiece. A happy, mild couple! And a +couple, one would judge from the richness of the tea, with no immediate +need of money. Over two years, however, had passed since the catastrophe +to Cohoon's, and Cohoon's had in no way recovered therefrom. Yet money +had been regularly found for the household. The manner of its finding +was soon to assume importance in the careers of Priam and Alice. But, +ere that moment, an astonishing and vivid experience happened to them. +One might have supposed that, in the life of Priam Farll at least, +enough of the astonishing and the vivid had already happened. +Nevertheless, what had already happened was as customary and unexciting +as addressing envelopes, compared to the next event. + +The next event began at the instant when Alice was sticking the long +fork into a round of bread. There was a knock at the front door, a knock +formidable and reverberating, the knock of fate, perhaps, but fate +disguised as a coalheaver. + +Alice answered it. She always answered knocks; Priam never. She shielded +him from every rough or unexpected contact, just as his valet used to +do. The gas in the hall was not lighted, and so she stopped to light it, +darkness having fallen. Then she opened the door, and saw, in the gloom, +a short, thin woman standing on the step, a woman of advanced +middle-age, dressed with a kind of shabby neatness. It seemed impossible +that so frail and unimportant a creature could have made such a noise on +the door. + +"Is this Mr. Henry Leek's?" asked the visitor, in a dissatisfied, rather +weary tone. + +"Yes," said Alice. Which was not quite true. 'This' was assuredly hers, +rather than her husband's. + +"Oh!" said the woman, glancing behind her; and entered nervously, +without invitation. + +At the same moment three male figures sprang, or rushed, out of the +strip of front garden, and followed the woman into the hall, lunging up +against Alice, and breathing loudly. One of the trio was a strong, +heavy-faced heavy-handed, louring man of some thirty years (it seemed +probable that he was the knocker), and the others were curates, with the +proper physical attributes of curates; that is to say, they were of +ascetic habit and clean-shaven and had ingenuous eyes. + +The hall now appeared like the antechamber of a May-meeting, and as +Alice had never seen it so peopled before, she vented a natural +exclamation of surprise. + +"Yes," said one of the curates, fiercely. "You may say 'Lord,' but we +were determined to get in, and in we have got. John, shut the door. +Mother, don't put yourself about." + +John, being the heavy-faced and heavy-handed man, shut the door. + +"Where is Mr. Henry Leek?" demanded the other curate. + +Now Priam, whose curiosity had been excusably excited by the unusual +sounds in the hall, was peeping through a chink of the sitting-room +door, and the elderly woman caught the glint of his eyes. She pushed +open the door, and, after a few seconds' inspection of him, said: + +"There you are, Henry! After thirty years! To think of it!" + +Priam was utterly at a loss. + +"I'm his wife, ma'am," the visitor continued sadly to Alice. "I'm sorry +to have to tell you. I'm his wife. I'm the rightful Mrs. Henry Leek, and +these are my sons, come with me to see that I get justice." + +Alice recovered very quickly from the shock of amazement. She was a +woman not easily to be startled by the vagaries of human nature. She had +often heard of bigamy, and that her husband should prove to be a +bigamist did not throw her into a swoon. She at once, in her own mind, +began to make excuses for him. She said to herself, as she inspected the +real Mrs. Henry Leek, that the real Mrs. Henry Leek had certainly the +temperament which manufactures bigamists. She understood how a person +may slide into bigamy. And after thirty years!... She never thought of +bigamy as a crime, nor did it occur to her to run out and drown herself +for shame because she was not properly married to Priam! + +No, it has to be said in favour of Alice that she invariably took things +as they were. + +"I think you'd better all come in and sit down quietly," she said. + +"Eh! It's very kind of you," said the mother of the curates, limply. + +The last thing that the curates wanted to do was to sit down quietly. +But they had to sit down. Alice made them sit side by side on the sofa. +The heavy, elder brother, who had not spoken a word, sat on a chair +between the sideboard and the door. Their mother sat on a chair near the +table. Priam fell into his easy-chair between the fireplace and the +sideboard. As for Alice, she remained standing; she showed no +nervousness except in her handling of the toasting-fork. + +It was a great situation. But unfortunately ordinary people are so +unaccustomed to the great situation, that, when it chances to come, they +feel themselves incapable of living up to it. A person gazing in at the +window, and unacquainted with the facts, might have guessed that the +affair was simply a tea party at which the guests had arrived a little +too soon and where no one was startlingly proficient in the art of +small-talk. + +Still, the curates were apparently bent on doing their best. + +"Now, mother!" one of them urged her. + +The mother, as if a spring had been touched in her, began: "He married +me just thirty years ago, ma'am; and four months after my eldest was +born--that's John there"--(pointing to the corner near the door)--"he +just walked out of the house and left me. I'm sorry to have to say it. +Yes, sorry I am! But there it is. And never a word had I ever given him! +And eight months after that my twins were born. That's Harry and +Matthew"--(pointing to the sofa)--"Harry I called after his father +because I thought he was like him, and just to show I bore no +ill-feeling, and hoping he'd come back! And there I was with these +little children! And not a word of explanation did I ever have. I heard +of Harry five years later--when Johnnie was nearly five--but he was on +the Continent and I couldn't go traipsing about with three babies. +Besides, if I _had_ gone!... Sorry I am to say it, ma'am; but many's the +time he's beaten me, yes, with his hands and his fists! He's knocked me +about above a bit. And I never gave him a word back. He was my husband, +for better for worse, and I forgave him and I still do. Forgive and +forget, that's what I say. We only heard of him through Matthew being +second curate at St. Paul's, and in charge of the mission hall. It was +your milkman that happened to tell Matthew that he had a customer same +name as himself. And you know how one thing leads to another. So we're +here!" + +"I never saw this lady in my life," said Priam excitedly, "and I'm +absolutely certain I never married her. I never married any one; except, +of course, you, Alice!" + +"Then how do you explain this, sir?" exclaimed Matthew, the younger +twin, jumping up and taking a blue paper from his pocket. "Be so good as +to pass this to father," he said, handing the paper to Alice. + +Alice inspected the document. It was a certificate of the marriage of +Henry Leek, valet, and Sarah Featherstone, spinster, at a registry +office in Paddington. Priam also inspected it. This was one of Leek's +escapades! No revelations as to the past of Henry Leek would have +surprised him. There was nothing to be done except to give a truthful +denial of identity and to persist in that denial. Useless to say +soothingly to the lady visitor that she was the widow of a gentleman who +had been laid to rest in Westminster Abbey! + +"I know nothing about it," said Priam doggedly. + +"I suppose you'll not deny, sir, that your name is Henry Leek," said +Henry, jumping up to stand by Matthew. + +"I deny everything," said Priam doggedly. How could he explain? If he +had not been able to convince Alice that he was not Henry Leek, could he +hope to convince these visitors? + +"I suppose, madam," Henry continued, addressing Alice in impressive +tones as if she were a crowded congregation, "that at any rate you and +my father are--er--living here together under the name of Mr. and Mrs. +Henry Leek?" + +Alice merely lifted her eyebrows. + +"It's all a mistake," said Priam impatiently. Then he had a brilliant +inspiration. "As if there was only one Henry Leek in the world!" + +"Do you really recognize my husband?" Alice asked. + +"Your husband, madam!" Matthew protested, shocked. + +"I wouldn't say that I recognized him as he _was_," said the real Mrs. +Henry Leek. "No more than he recognizes me. After thirty years!....Last +time I saw him he was only twenty-two or twenty-three. But he's the same +sort of man, and he has the same eyes. And look at Henry's eyes. +Besides, I heard twenty-five years ago that he'd gone into service with +a Mr. Priam Farll, a painter or something, him that was buried in +Westminster Abbey. And everybody in Putney knows that this gentleman----" + +"Gentleman!" murmured Matthew, discontented. + +"Was valet to Mr. Priam Farll. We've heard that everywhere." + +"I suppose you'll not deny," said Henry the younger, "that Priam Farll +wouldn't be likely to have _two_ valets named Henry Leek?" + +Crushed by this Socratic reasoning, Priam kept silence, nursing his +knees and staring into the fire. + +Alice went to the sideboard where she kept her best china, and took out +three extra cups and saucers. + +"I think we'd all better have some tea," she said tranquilly. And then +she got the tea-caddy and put seven teaspoonfuls of tea into one of the +tea-pots. + +"It's very kind of you, I'm sure," whimpered the authentic Mrs. Henry +Leek. + +"Now, mother, don't give way!" the curates admonished her. + +"Don't you remember, Henry," she went on whimpering to Priam, "how you +said you wouldn't be married in a church, not for anybody? And how I +gave way to you, like I always did? And don't you remember how you +wouldn't let poor little Johnnie be baptized? Well, I do hope your +opinions have altered. Eh, but it's strange, it's strange, how two of +your sons, and just them two that you'd never set eyes on until this +day, should have made up their minds to go into the church! And thanks +to Johnnie there, they've been able to. If I was to tell you all the +struggles we've had, you wouldn't believe me. They were clerks, and they +might have been clerks to this day, if it hadn't been for Johnnie. But +Johnnie could always earn money. It's that engineering! And now +Matthew's second curate at St. Paul's and getting fifty pounds a year, +and Henry'll have a curacy next month at Bermondsey--it's been promised, +and all thanks to Johnnie!" She wept. + +Johnnie, in the corner, who had so far done nought but knock at the +door, maintained stiffly his policy of non-interference. + +Priam Farll, angry, resentful, and quite untouched by the recital, +shrugged his shoulders. He was animated by the sole desire to fly from +the widow and progeny of his late valet. But he could not fly. The +Herculean John was too close to the door. So he shrugged his shoulders a +second time. + +"Yes, sir," said Matthew, "you may shrug your shoulders, but you can't +shrug us out of existence. Here we are, and you can't get over us. You +are our father, and I presume that a kind of respect is due to you. Yet +how can you hope for our respect? Have you earned it? Did you earn it +when you ill-treated our poor mother? Did you earn it when you left her, +with the most inhuman cruelty, to fend for herself in the world? Did you +earn it when you abandoned your children born and unborn? You are a +bigamist, sir; a deceiver of women! Heaven knows--" + +"Would you mind just toasting this bread?" Alice interrupted his +impassioned discourse by putting the loaded toasting-fork into his +hands, "while I make the tea?" + +It was a novel way of stopping a mustang in full career, but it +succeeded. + +While somewhat perfunctorily holding the fork to the fire, Matthew +glared about him, to signify his righteous horror, and other sentiments. + +"Please don't burn it," said Alice gently. "Suppose you were to sit down +on this foot-stool." And then she poured boiling water on the tea, put +the lid on the pot, and looked at the clock to note the exact second at +which the process of infusion had begun. + +"Of course," burst out Henry, the twin of Matthew, "I need not say, +madam, that you have all our sympathies. You are in a----" + +"Do you mean me?" Alice asked. + +In an undertone Priam could be heard obstinately repeating, "Never set +eyes upon her before! Never set eyes on the woman before!" + +"I do, madam," said Henry, not to be cowed nor deflected from his +course. "I speak for all of us. You have our sympathies. You could not +know the character of the man you married, or rather with whom you went +through the ceremony of marriage. However, we have heard, by inquiry, +that you made his acquaintance through the medium of a matrimonial +agency; and indirectly, when one does that sort of thing, one takes +one's chance. Your position is an extremely delicate one; but it is not +too much to say that you brought it on yourself. In my work, I have +encountered many sad instances of the result of lax moral principles; +but I little thought to encounter the saddest of all in my own family. +The discovery is just as great a blow to us as it is to you. We have +suffered; my mother has suffered. And now, I fear, it is your turn to +suffer. You are not this man's wife. Nothing can make you his wife. You +are living in the same house with him--under circumstances--er--without +a chaperon. I hesitate to characterize your situation in plain words. It +would scarcely become me, or mine, to do so. But really no lady could +possibly find herself in a situation more false than--I am afraid there +is only one word, open immorality, and--er--to put yourself right with +society there is one thing, and only one, left for you to--er--do. I--I +speak for the family, and I--" + +"Sugar?" Alice questioned the mother of curates. + +"Yes, please." + +"One lump, or two?" + +"Two, please." + +"Speaking for the family--" Henry resumed. + +"Will you kindly pass this cup to your mother?" Alice suggested. + +Henry was obliged to take the cup. Excited by the fever of eloquence, he +unfortunately upset it before it had reached his mother's hands. + +"Oh, Henry!" murmured the lady, mournfully aghast. "You always were so +clumsy! And a clean cloth, too!" + +"Don't mention it, please," said Alice, and then to _her_ Henry: "My +dear, just run into the kitchen, and bring me something to wipe this up. +Hanging behind the door--you'll see." + +Priam sprang forward with astonishing celerity. And the occasion +brooking no delay, the guardian of the portal could not but let him +pass. In another moment the front door banged. Priam did not return. And +Alice staunched the flow of tea with a clean, stiff serviette taken from +the sideboard drawer. + + +_A Departure_ + + +The family of the late Henry Leek, each with a cup in hand, experienced +a certain difficulty in maintaining the interview at the pitch set by +Matthew and Henry. Mrs. Leek, their mother, frankly gave way to soft +tears, while eating bread-and-butter, jam and zebra-like toast. John +took everything that Alice offered to him in gloomy and awkward silence. + +"Does he mean to come back?" Matthew demanded at length. He had risen +from the foot-stool. + +"Who?" asked Alice. + +Matthew paused, and then said, savagely and deliberately: "Father." + +Alice smiled. "I'm afraid not. I'm afraid he's gone out. You see, he's a +rather peculiar man. It's not the slightest use me trying to drive him. +He can only be led. He has his good points--I can speak candidly as he +isn't here, and I _will_--he has his good points. When Mrs. Leek, as I +suppose she calls herself, spoke about his cruelty to her--well, I +understood that. Far be it from me to say a word against him; he's often +very good to me, but--another cup, Mr. John?" + +John advanced to the table without a word, holding his cup. + +"You don't mean to say, ma'am," said Mrs. Leek "that he--?" + +Alice nodded grievously. + +Mrs. Leek burst into tears. "When Johnnie was barely five weeks old," +she said, "he would twist my arm. And he kept me without money. And once +he locked me up in the cellar. And one morning when I was ironing he +snatched the hot iron out of my hand and--" + +"Don't! Don't!" Alice soothed her. "I know. I know all you can tell me. +I know because I've been through--" + +"You don't mean to say he threatened _you_ with the flat-iron?" + +"If threatening was only all!" said Alice, like a martyr. + +"Then he's not changed, in all these years!" wept the mother of curates. + +"If he has, it's for the worse," said Alice. "How was I to tell?" she +faced the curates. "How could I know? And yet nobody, nobody, could be +nicer than he is at times!" + +"That's true, that's true," responded the authentic Mrs. Henry Leek. "He +was always so changeable. So queer." + +"Queer!" Alice took up the word. "That's it Queer! I don't think he's +_quite_ right in his head, not quite right. He has the very strangest +fancies. I never take any notice of them, but they're there. I seldom +get up in the morning without thinking, 'Well, perhaps to-day he'll have +to be taken off.'" + +"Taken off?" + +"Yes, to Hanwell, or wherever it is. And you must remember," she said +gazing firmly at the curates, "you've got his blood in your veins. Don't +forget that. I suppose you want to make him go back to you, Mrs. Leek, +as he certainly ought." + +"Ye-es," murmured Mrs. Leek feebly. + +"Well, if you can persuade him to go," said Alice, "if you can make him +see his duty, you're welcome. But I'm sorry for you. I think I ought to +tell you that this is my house, and my furniture. He's got nothing at +all. I expect he never could save. Many's the blow he's laid on me in +anger, but all the same I pity him. I pity him. And I wouldn't like to +leave him in the lurch. Perhaps these three strong young men'll be able +to do something with him. But I'm not sure. He's very strong. And he has +a way of leaping out so sudden like." + +Mrs. Leek shook her head as memories of the past rose up in her mind. + +"The fact is," said Matthew sternly, "he ought to be prosecuted for +bigamy. That's what ought to be done." + +"Most decidedly," Henry concurred. + +"You're quite right! You're quite right!" said Alice. "That's only +justice. Of course he'd deny that he was the same Henry Leek. He'd deny +it like anything. But in the end I dare say you'd be able to prove it. +The worst of these law cases is they're so expensive. It means private +detectives and all sorts of things, I believe. Of course there'd be the +scandal. But don't mind me! I'm innocent. Everybody knows me in Putney, +and has done this twenty years. I don't know how it would suit you, Mr. +Henry and Mr. Matthew, as clergymen, to have your own father in prison. +That's as may be. But justice is justice, and there's too many men going +about deceiving simple, trusting women. I've often heard such tales. Now +I know they're all true. It's a mercy my own poor mother hasn't lived to +see where I am to-day. As for my father, old as he was, if he'd been +alive, there'd have been horsewhipping that I do know." + +After some rather pointless and disjointed remarks from the curates, a +sound came from the corner near the door. It was John's cough. + +"Better clear out of this!" John ejaculated. Such was his first and last +oral contribution to the scene. + + +_In the Bath_ + + +Priam Farll was wandering about the uncharted groves of Wimbledon +Common, and uttering soliloquies in language that lacked delicacy. He +had rushed forth, in his haste, without an overcoat, and the weather was +blusterously inclement. But he did not feel the cold; he only felt the +keen wind of circumstance. + +Soon after the purchase of his picture by the lunatic landlord of a +fully licensed house, he had discovered that the frame-maker in High +Street knew a man who would not be indisposed to buy such pictures as he +could paint, and transactions between him and the frame-maker had +developed into a regular trade. The usual price paid for canvases was +ten pounds, in cash. By this means he had earned about two hundred a +year. No questions were put on either side. The paintings were delivered +at intervals, and the money received; and Priam knew no more. For many +weeks he had lived in daily expectation of an uproar, a scandal in the +art-world, visits of police, and other inconveniences, for it was +difficult to believe that the pictures would never come beneath the eye +of a first-class expert. But nothing had occurred, and he had gradually +subsided into a sense of security. He was happy; happy in the +untrammelled exercise of his gift, happy in having all the money that +his needs and Alice's demanded; happier than he had been in the errant +days of his glory and his wealth. Alice had been amazed at his power of +earning; and also, she had seemed little by little to lose her +suspicions as to his perfect sanity and truthfulness. In a word, the dog +of fate had slept; and he had taken particular care to let it lie. He +was in that species of sheltered groove which is absolutely essential to +the bliss of a shy and nervous artist, however great he may be. + +And now this disastrous irruption, this resurrection of the early sins +of the real Leek! He was hurt; he was startled; he was furious. But he +was not surprised. The wonder was that the early sins of Henry Leek had +not troubled him long ago. What could he do? He could do nothing. That +was the tragedy: he could do nothing. He could but rely upon Alice. +Alice was amazing. The more he thought of it, the more masterly her +handling of these preposterous curates seemed to him. And was he to be +robbed of this incomparable woman by ridiculous proceedings connected +with a charge of bigamy? He knew that bigamy meant prison, in England. +The injustice was monstrous. He saw those curates, and their mute +brother, and the aggrieved mother of the three dogging him either to +prison or to his deathbed! And how could he explain to Alice? Impossible +to explain to Alice!... Still, it was conceivable that Alice would not +desire explanation. Alice somehow never did desire an explanation. She +always said, "I can quite understand," and set about preparing a meal. +She was the comfortablest cushion of a creature that the evolution of +the universe had ever produced. + +Then the gusty breeze dropped and it began to rain. He ignored the rain. +But December rain has a strange, horrid quality of chilly persistence. +It is capable of conquering the most obstinate and serious mental +preoccupation, and it conquered Priam's. It forced him to admit that his +tortured soul had a fleshly garment and that the fleshly garment was +soaked to the marrow. And his soul gradually yielded before the attack +of the rain, and he went home. + +He put his latchkey into the door with minute precautions against noise, +and crept into his house like a thief, and very gently shut the door. +Then, in the hall, he intently listened. Not a sound! That is to say, +not a sound except the drippings of his hat on the linoleum. The +sitting-room door was ajar. He timidly pushed it, and entered. Alice was +darning stockings. + +"Henry!" she exclaimed. "Why, you're wet through!" She rose. + +"Have they cleared off?" he demanded. + +"And you've been out without an overcoat! Henry, how could you? Well, I +must get you into bed at once--instantly, or I shall have you down with +pneumonia or something to-morrow!" + +"Have they cleared off?" he repeated. + +"Yes, of course," she said. + +"When are they coming back?" he asked. + +"I don't think they'll come back," she replied. "I think they've had +enough. I think I've made them see that it's best to leave well alone. +Did you ever see such toast as that curate made?" + +"Alice, I assure you," he said, later--he was in a boiling bath--"I +assure you it's all a mistake, I've never seen the woman before." + +"Of course you haven't," she said calmingly. "Of course you haven't. +Besides, even if you had, it serves her right. Every one could see she's +a nagging woman. And they seemed quite prosperous. They're hysterical-- +that's what's the matter with them, all of them--except the eldest, the +one that never spoke. I rather liked him." + +"But I _haven't!_" he reiterated, splashing his positive statement into +the water. + +"My dear, I know you haven't." + +But he guessed that she was humouring him. He guessed that she was +determined to keep him at all costs. And he had a disconcerting glimpse +of the depths of utter unscrupulousness that sometimes disclose +themselves in the mind of a good and loving woman. + +"Only I hope there won't be any more of them!" she added dryly. + +Ah! That was the point! He conceived the possibility of the rascal Leek +having committed scores and scores of sins, all of which might come up +against him. His affrighted vision saw whole regions populated by +disconsolate widows of Henry Leek and their offspring, ecclesiastical +and otherwise. He knew what Leek had been. Westminster Abbey was a +strange goal for Leek to have achieved. + + * * * * * + + + + +CHAPTER IX + + +_A Glossy Male_ + + +The machine was one of those electric contrivances that do their work +noiselessly and efficiently, like a garrotter or the guillotine. No +odour, no teeth-disturbing grind of rack-and-pinion, no trumpeting, with +that machine! It arrived before the gate with such absence of sound that +Alice, though she was dusting in the front-room, did not hear it. She +heard nothing till the bell discreetly tinkled. Justifiably assuming +that the tinkler was the butcher's boy, she went to the door with her +apron on, and even with the duster in her hand. A handsome, smooth man +stood on the step, and the electric carriage made a background for him. +He was a dark man, with curly black hair, and a moustache to match, and +black eyes. His silk hat, of an incredible smooth newness, glittered +over his glittering hair and eyes. His overcoat was lined with astrakan, +and this important fact was casually betrayed at the lapels and at the +sleeves. He wore a black silk necktie, with a small pearl pin in the +mathematical centre of the perfect rhomboid of the upper part of a +sailor's knot. His gloves were of slate colour. The chief characteristic +of his faintly striped trousers was the crease, which seemed more than +mortal. His boots were of _glace_ kid and as smooth as his cheeks. The +cheeks had a fresh boyish colour, and between them, over admirable snowy +teeth, projected the hooked key to this temperament. It _is_ possible +that Alice, from sheer thoughtlessness, shared the vulgar prejudice +against Jews; but certainly she did not now feel it. The man's personal +charm, his exceeding niceness, had always conquered that prejudice, +whenever encountered. Moreover, he was only about thirty-five in years, +and no such costly and beautiful male had ever yet stood on Alice's +doorstep. + +She at once, in her mind, contrasted him with the curates of the +previous week, to the disadvantage of the Established Church. She did +not know that this man was more dangerous than a thousand curates. + +"Is this Mr. Leek's?" he inquired smilingly, and raised his hat. + +"Yes," said Alice with a responsive smile. + +"Is he in?" + +"Well," said Alice, "he's busy at his work. You see in this weather he +can't go out much--not to work--and so he--" + +"Could I see him in his studio?" asked the glossy man, with the air of +saying, "Can you grant me this supreme favour?" + +It was the first time that Alice had heard the attic called a studio. +She paused. + +"It's about pictures," explained the visitor. + +"Oh!" said Alice. "Will you come in?" + +"I've run down specially to see Mr. Leek," said the visitor with +emphasis. + +Alice's opinion as to the seriousness of her husband's gift for painting +had of course changed in two years. A man who can make two or three +hundred a year by sticking colours anyhow, at any hazard, on canvases-- +by producing alleged pictures that in Alice's secret view bore only a +comic resemblance to anything at all--that man had to be taken seriously +in his attic as an artisan. It is true that Alice thought the payment he +received miraculously high for the quality of work done; but, with this +agreeable Jew in the hall, and the _coupe_ at the kerb, she suddenly +perceived the probability of even greater miracles in the matter of +price. She saw the average price of ten pounds rising to fifteen, or +even twenty, pounds--provided her husband was given no opportunity to +ruin the affair by his absurd, retiring shyness. + +"Will you come this way?" she suggested briskly. + +And all that elegance followed her up to the attic door: which door she +threw open, remarking simply-- + +"Henry, here is a gentleman come to see you about pictures." + + +_A Connoisseur_ + + +Priam recovered more quickly than might have been expected. His first +thought was naturally that women are uncalculated, if not incalculable, +creatures, and that the best of them will do impossible things--things +inconceivable till actually done! Fancy her introducing a stranger, +without a word of warning, direct into his attic! However, when he rose +he saw the visitor's nose (whose nostrils were delicately expanding and +contracting in the fumes of the oil-stove), and he was at once +reassured. He knew that he would have to face neither rudeness, nor +bluntness, nor lack of imagination, nor lack of quick sympathy. Besides, +the visitor, with practical assurance, set the tone of the interview +instantly. + +"Good-morning, _maitre_," he began, right off. "I must apologize for +breaking in upon you. But I've come to see if you have any work to sell. +My name is Oxford, and I'm acting for a collector." + +He said this with a very agreeable mingling of sincerity, deference, and +mercantile directness, also with a bright, admiring smile. He showed no +astonishment at the interior of the attic. + +_Maitre_! + +Well, of course, it would be idle to pretend that the greatest artists +do not enjoy being addressed as _maitre_. 'Master' is the same word, but +entirely different. It was a long time since Priam Farll had been called +_maitre_. Indeed, owing to his retiring habits, he had very seldom been +called _maitre_ at all. A just-finished picture stood on an easel near +the window; it represented one of the most wonderful scenes in London: +Putney High Street at night; two omnibus horses stepped strongly and +willingly out of a dark side street, and under the cold glare of the +main road they somehow took on the quality of equestrian sculpture. The +altercation of lights was in the highest degree complex. Priam +understood immediately, from the man's calm glance at the picture, and +the position which he instinctively took up to see it, that he was +accustomed to looking at pictures. The visitor did not start back, nor +rush forward, nor dissolve into hysterics, nor behave as though +confronted by the ghost of a murdered victim. He just gazed at the +picture, keeping his nerve and holding his tongue. And yet it was not an +easy picture to look at. It was a picture of an advanced +experimentalism, and would have appealed to nothing but the sense of +humour in a person not a connoisseur. + +"Sell!" exclaimed Priam. Like all shy men he could hide his shyness in +an exaggerated familiarity. "What price this?" And he pointed to the +picture. + +There were no other preliminaries. + +"It is excessively distinguished," murmured Mr. Oxford, in the accents +of expert appreciation. "Excessively distinguished. May I ask how much?" + +"That's what I'm asking you," said Priam, fiddling with a paint rag. + +"Hum!" observed Mr. Oxford, and gazed in silence. Then: "Two hundred and +fifty?" + +Priam had virtually promised to deliver that picture to the +picture-framer on the next day, and he had not expected to receive a +penny more than twelve pounds for it. But artists are strange organisms. + +He shook his head. Although two hundred and fifty pounds was as much as +he had earned in the previous twelve months, he shook his grey head. + +"No?" said Mr. Oxford kindly and respectfully, putting his hands behind +his back. "By the way," he turned with eagerness to Priam, "I presume +you have seen the portrait of Ariosto by Titian that they've bought for +the National Gallery? What is your opinion of it, _maitre_?" He stood +expectant, glowing with interest. + +"Except that it isn't Ariosto, and it certainly isn't by Titian, it's a +pretty high-class sort of thing," said Priam. + +Mr. Oxford smiled with appreciative content, nodding his head. "I hoped +you would say so," he remarked. And swiftly he passed on to Segantini, +then to J.W. Morrice, and then to Bonnard, demanding the _maitre's_ +views. In a few moments they were really discussing pictures. And it was +years since Priam had listened to the voice of informed common sense on +the subject of painting. It was years since he had heard anything but +exceeding puerility concerning pictures. He had, in fact, accustomed +himself not to listen; he had excavated a passage direct from one ear to +the other for such remarks. And now he drank up the conversation of Mr. +Oxford, and perceived that he had long been thirsty. And he spoke his +mind. He grew warmer, more enthusiastic, more impassioned. And Mr. +Oxford listened with ecstasy. Mr. Oxford had apparently a natural +discretion. He simply accepted Priam, as he stood, for a great painter. +No reference to the enigma why a great painter should be painting in an +attic in Werter Road, Putney! No inconvenient queries about the great +painter's previous history and productions. Just the frank, full +acceptance of his genius! It was odd, but it was comfortable. + +"So you won't take two hundred and fifty?" asked Mr. Oxford, hopping +back to business. + +"No," said Priam sturdily. "The truth is," he added, "I should rather +like to keep that picture for myself." + +"Will you take five hundred, _maitre_?" + +"Yes, I suppose I will," and Priam sighed. A genuine sigh! For he would +really have liked to keep the picture. He knew he had never painted a +better. + +"And may I carry it away with me?" asked Mr. Oxford. + +"I expect so," said Priam. + +"I wonder if I might venture to ask you to come back to town with me?" +Mr. Oxford went on, in gentle deference. "I have one or two pictures I +should very much like you to see, and I fancy they might give you +pleasure. And we could talk over future business. If possibly you could +spare an hour or so. If I might request----" + +A desire rose in Priam's breast and fought against his timidity. The +tone in which Mr. Oxford had said "I fancy they might give you pleasure" +appeared to indicate something very much out of the common. And Priam +could scarcely recollect when last his eyes had rested on a picture that +was at once unfamiliar and great. + + +_Parfitts' Galleries_ + + +I have already indicated that the machine was somewhat out of the +ordinary. It was, as a fact, exceedingly out of the ordinary. It was +much larger than electric carriages usually are. It had what the writers +of 'motoring notes' in papers written by the wealthy for the wealthy +love to call a 'limousine body.' And outside and in, it was miraculously +new and spotless. On the ivory handles of its doors, on its soft yellow +leather upholstery, on its cedar woodwork, on its patent blind +apparatus, on its silver fittings, on its lamps, on its footstools, on +its silken arm-slings--not the minutest trace of usage! Mr. Oxford's car +seemed to show that Mr. Oxford never used a car twice, purchasing a new +car every morning, like stockbrokers their silk hats, or the Duke of +Selsea his trousers. There was a table in the 'body' for writing, and +pockets up and down devised to hold documents, also two arm-chairs, and +a suspended contrivance which showed the hour, the temperature, and the +fluctuations of the barometer; there was also a speaking-tube. One felt +that if the machine had been connected by wireless telegraphy with the +Stock Exchange, the leading studios and the Houses of Parliament, and if +a little restaurant had been constructed in the rear, Mr. Oxford might +never have been under the necessity of leaving the car; that he might +have passed all his days in it from morn to latest eve. + +The perfection of the machine and of Mr. Oxford's attire and complexion +caused Priam to look rather shabby. Indeed, he was rather shabby. +Shabbiness had slightly overtaken him in Putney. Once he had been a +dandy; but that was in the lamented Leek's time. And as the car glided, +without smell and without noise, through the encumbered avenues of +London towards the centre, now shooting forward like a star, now +stopping with gentle suddenness, now swerving in a swift curve round a +vehicle earthy and leaden-wheeled, Priam grew more and more +uncomfortable. He had sunk into a groove at Putney. He never left +Putney, save occasionally to refresh himself at the National Gallery, +and thither he invariably went by train and tube, because the tube +always filled him with wonder and romance, and always threw him up out +of the earth at the corner of Trafalgar Square with such a strange +exhilaration in his soul. So that he had not seen the main avenues of +London for a long time. He had been forgetting riches and luxury, and +the oriental cigarette-shops whose proprietors' names end in 'opoulos,' +and the haughtiness of the ruling classes, and the still sterner +haughtiness of their footmen. He had now abandoned Alice in Putney. And +a mysterious demon seized him and gripped him, and sought to pull him +back in the direction of the simplicity of Putney, and struggled with +him fiercely, and made him writhe and shrink before the brilliant +phenomena of London's centre, and indeed almost pitched him out of the +car and set him running as hard as legs would carry to Putney. It was +the demon which we call habit. He would have given a picture to be in +Putney, instead of swimming past Hyde Park Corner to the accompaniment +of Mr. Oxford's amiable and deferential and tactful conversation. + +However, his other demon, shyness, kept him from imperiously stopping +the car. + +The car stopped itself in Bond Street, in front of a building with a +wide archway, and the symbol of empire floating largely over its roof. +Placards said that admission through the archway was a shilling; but Mr. +Oxford, bearing Priam's latest picture as though it had cost fifty +thousand instead of five hundred pounds, went straight into the place +without paying, and Priam accepted his impressive invitation to follow. +Aged military veterans whose breasts carried a row of medals saluted Mr. +Oxford as he entered, and, within the penetralia, beings in silk hats as +faultless as Mr. Oxford's raised those hats to Mr. Oxford, who did not +raise his in reply. Merely nodded, Napoleonically! His demeanour had +greatly changed. You saw here the man of unbending will, accustomed to +use men as pawns in the chess of a complicated career. Presently they +reached a private office where Mr. Oxford, with the assistance of a +page, removed his gloves, furs, and hat, and sent sharply for a man who +at once brought a frame which fitted Priam's picture. + +"Do have a cigar," Mr. Oxford urged Priam, with a quick return to his +earlier manner, offering a box in which each cigar was separately +encased in gold-leaf. The cigar was such as costs a crown in a +restaurant, half-a-crown in a shop, and twopence in Amsterdam. It was a +princely cigar, with the odour of paradise and an ash as white as snow. +But Priam could not appreciate it. No! He had seen on a beaten copper +plate under the archway these words: 'Parfitts' Galleries.' He was in +the celebrated galleries of his former dealers, whom by the way he had +never seen. And he was afraid. He was mortally apprehensive, and had a +sickly sensation in the stomach. + +After they had scrupulously inspected the picture, through the clouds of +incense, Mr. Oxford wrote out a cheque for five hundred pounds, and, +cigar in mouth, handed it to Priam, who tried to take it with a casual +air and did not succeed. It was signed 'Parfitts'.' + +"I dare say you have heard that I'm now the sole proprietor of this +place," said Mr. Oxford through his cigar. + +"Really!" said Priam, feeling just as nervous as an inexperienced youth. + +Then Mr. Oxford led Priam over thick carpets to a saloon where electric +light was thrown by means of reflectors on to a small but incomparable +band of pictures. Mr. Oxford had not exaggerated. They did give pleasure +to Priam. They were not the pictures one sees every day, nor once a +year. There was the finest Delacroix of its size that Priam had ever met +with; also a Vermeer that made it unnecessary to visit the Ryks Museum. +And on the more distant wall, to which Mr. Oxford came last, in a place +of marked honour, was an evening landscape of Volterra, a hill-town in +Italy. The bolts of Priam's very soul started when he caught sight of +that picture. On the lower edge of the rich frame were two words in +black lettering: 'Priam Farll.' How well he remembered painting it! And +how masterfully beautiful it was! + +"Now that," said Mr. Oxford, "is in my humble opinion one of the finest +Farlls in existence. What do you think, Mr. Leek?" + +Priam paused. "I agree with you," said he. + +"Farll," said Mr. Oxford, "is about the only modern painter that can +stand the company that that picture has in this room, eh?" + +Priam blushed. "Yes," he said. + +There is a considerable difference, in various matters, between Putney +and Volterra; but the picture of Volterra and the picture of Putney High +Street were obviously, strikingly, incontestably, by the same hand; one +could not but perceive the same brush-work, the same masses, the same +manner of seeing and of grasping, in a word the same dazzling and +austere translation of nature. The resemblance jumped at one and shook +one by the shoulders. It could not have escaped even an auctioneer. Yet +Mr. Oxford did not refer to it. He seemed quite blind to it. All he said +was, as they left the room, and Priam finished his rather monosyllabic +praise-- + +"Yes, that's the little collection I've just got together, and I am very +proud to have shown it to you. Now I want you to come and lunch with me +at my club. Please do. I should be desolated if you refused." + +Priam did not care a halfpenny about the desolation of Mr. Oxford; and +he most sincerely objected to lunch at Mr. Oxford's club. But he said +"Yes" because it was the easiest thing for his shyness to do, Mr. Oxford +being a determined man. Priam was afraid to go. He was disturbed, +alarmed, affrighted, by the mystery of Mr. Oxford's silence. + +They arrived at the club in the car. + + +_The Club_ + + +Priam had never been in a club before. The statement may astonish, may +even meet with incredulity, but it is true. He had left the land of +clubs early in life. As for the English clubs in European towns, he was +familiar with their exteriors, and with the amiable babble of their +supporters at _tables d'hote,_ and his desire for further knowledge had +not been so hot as to inconvenience him. Hence he knew nothing of clubs. + +Mr. Oxford's club alarmed and intimidated him; it was so big and so +black. Externally it resembled a town-hall of some great industrial +town. As you stood on the pavement at the bottom of the flight of giant +steps that led to the first pair of swinging doors, your head was +certainly lower than the feet of a being who examined you sternly from +the other side of the glass. Your head was also far below the sills of +the mighty windows of the ground-floor. There were two storeys above the +ground-floor, and above them a projecting eave of carven stone that +threatened the uplifted eye like a menace. The tenth part of a slate, +the merest chip of a corner, falling from the lofty summit of that pile, +would have slain elephants. And all the facade was black, black with +ages of carbonic deposit. The notion that the building was a town-hall +that had got itself misplaced and perverted gradually left you as you +gazed. You perceived its falseness. You perceived that Mr. Oxford's club +was a monument, a relic of the days when there were giants on earth, +that it had come down unimpaired to a race of pigmies, who were making +the best of it. The sole descendant of the giants was the scout behind +the door. As Mr. Oxford and Priam climbed towards it, this unique giant, +with a giant's force, pulled open the gigantic door, and Mr. Oxford and +Priam walked imperceptibly in, and the door swung to with a large +displacement of air. Priam found himself in an immense interior, under a +distant carved ceiling, far, far upwards, like heaven. He watched Mr. +Oxford write his name in a gigantic folio, under a gigantic clock. This +accomplished, Mr. Oxford led him past enormous vistas to right and left, +into a very long chamber, both of whose long walls were studded with +thousands upon thousands of massive hooks--and here and there upon a +hook a silk hat or an overcoat. Mr. Oxford chose a couple of hooks in +the expanse, and when they had divested themselves sufficiently he led +Priam forwards into another great chamber evidently meant to recall the +baths of Carcalla. In gigantic basins chiselled out of solid granite, +Priam scrubbed his finger-nails with a nail-brush larger than he had +previously encountered, even in nightmares, and an attendant brushed his +coat with a utensil that resembled a weapon of offence lately the +property of Anak. + +"Shall we go straight to the dining-room now," asked Mr. Oxford, "or +will you have a gin and angostura first?" + +Priam declined the gin and angostura, and they went up an overwhelming +staircase of sombre marble, and through other apartments to the +dining-room, which would have made an excellent riding-school. Here one +had six of the gigantic windows in a row, each with curtains that fell +in huge folds from the unseen into the seen. The ceiling probably +existed. On every wall were gigantic paintings in thick ornate frames, +and between the windows stood heroic busts of marble set upon columns of +basalt. The chairs would have been immovable had they not run on castors +of weight-resisting rock, yet against the tables they had the air of +negligible toys. At one end of the room was a sideboard that would not +have groaned under an ox whole, and at the other a fire, over which an +ox might have been roasted in its entirety, leaped under a mantelpiece +upon which Goliath could not have put his elbows. + +All was silent and grave; the floors were everywhere covered with heavy +carpets which hushed all echoes. There was not the faintest sound. +Sound, indeed, seemed to be deprecated. Priam had already passed the +wide entrance to one illimitable room whose walls were clothed with +warnings in gigantic letters: 'Silence.' And he had noticed that all +chairs and couches were thickly padded and upholstered in soft leather, +and that it was impossible to produce in them the slightest creak. At a +casual glance the place seemed unoccupied, but on more careful +inspection you saw midgets creeping about, or seated in easy-chairs that +had obviously been made to hold two of them; these midgets were the +members of the club, dwarfed into dolls by its tremendous dimensions. A +strange and sinister race! They looked as though in the final stages of +decay, and wherever their heads might rest was stretched a white cloth, +so that their heads might not touch the spots sanctified by the heads of +the mighty departed. They rarely spoke to one another, but exchanged +regards of mutual distrust and scorn; and if by chance they did converse +it was in tones of weary, brusque disillusion. They could at best descry +each other but indistinctly in the universal pervading gloom--a gloom +upon which electric lamps, shining dimly yellow in their vast lustres, +produced almost no impression. The whole establishment was buried in the +past, dreaming of its Titantic yore, when there were doubtless giants +who could fill those fauteuils and stick their feet on those +mantelpieces. + +It was in such an environment that Mr. Oxford gave Priam to eat and to +drink off little ordinary plates and out of tiny tumblers. No hint of +the club's immemorial history in that excessively modern and excellent +repast--save in the Stilton cheese, which seemed to have descended from +the fine fruity days of some Homeric age, a cheese that Ulysses might +have inaugurated. I need hardly say that the total effect on Priam's +temperament was disastrous. (Yet how could the diplomatic Mr. Oxford +have guessed that Priam had never been in a club before?) It induced in +him a speechless anguish, and he would have paid a sum as gigantic as +the club--he would have paid the very cheque in his pocket--never to +have met Mr. Oxford. He was a far too sensitive man for a club, and his +moods were incalculable. Assuredly Mr. Oxford had miscalculated the +result of his club on Priam's humour; he soon saw his error. + +"Suppose we take coffee in the smoking-room?" he said. + +The populous smoking-room was the one part of the club where talking +with a natural loudness was not a crime. Mr. Oxford found a corner +fairly free from midgets, and they established themselves in it, and +liqueurs and cigars accompanied the coffee. You could actually see +midgets laughing outright in the mist of smoke; the chatter narrowly +escaped being a din; and at intervals a diminutive boy entered and +bawled the name of a midget at the top of his voice, Priam was suddenly +electrified, and Mr. Oxford, very alert, noticed the electrification. + +Mr. Oxford drank his coffee somewhat quickly, and then he leaned forward +a little over the table, and put his moon-like face nearer to Priam's, +and arranged his legs in a truly comfortable position beneath the table, +and expelled a large quantity of smoke from his cigar. It was clearly +the preliminary to a scene of confidence, the approach to the crisis to +which he had for several hours been leading up. + +Priam's heart trembled. + +"What is your opinion, _maitre_," he asked, "of the ultimate value of +Farll's pictures?" + +Priam was in misery. Mr. Oxford's manner was deferential, amiable and +expectant. But Priam did not know what to say. He only knew what he +would do if he could have found the courage to do it: run away, +recklessly, unceremoniously, out of that club. + +"I--I don't know," said Priam, visibly whitening. + +"Because I've bought a goodish few Farlls in my time," Mr. Oxford +continued, "and I must say I've sold them well. I've only got that one +left that I showed you this morning, and I've been wondering whether I +should stick to it and wait for a possible further rise, or sell it at +once." + +"How much can you sell it for?" Priam mumbled. + +"I don't mind telling you," said Mr. Oxford, "that I fancy I could sell +it for a couple of thousand. It's rather small, but it's one of the +finest in existence." + +"I should sell it," said Priam, scarcely audible. + +"You would? Well, perhaps you're right. It's a question, in my mind, +whether some other painter may not turn up one of these days who would +do that sort of thing even better than Farll did it. I could imagine the +possibility of a really clever man coming along and imitating Farll so +well that only people like yourself, _maitre_, and perhaps me, could +tell the difference. It's just the kind of work that might be +brilliantly imitated, if the imitator was clever enough, don't you +think?" + +"But what do you mean?" asked Priam, perspiring in his back. + +"Well," said Mr. Oxford vaguely, "one never knows. The style might be +imitated, and the market flooded with canvases practically as good as +Farll's. Nobody might find it out for quite a long time, and then there +might be confusion in the public mind, followed by a sharp fall in +prices. And the beauty of it is that the public wouldn't really be any +the worse. Because an imitation that no one can distinguish from the +original is naturally as good as the original. You take me? There's +certainly a tremendous chance for a man who could seize it, and that's +why I'm inclined to accept your advice and sell my one remaining Farll." + +He smiled more and more confidentially. His gaze was charged with a +secret meaning. He seemed to be suggesting unspeakable matters to Priam. +That bright face wore an expression which such faces wear on such +occasions--an expression cheerfully insinuating that after all there is +no right and no wrong--or at least that many things which the ordinary +slave of convention would consider to be wrong are really right. So +Priam read the expression. + +"The dirty rascal wants me to manufacture imitations of myself for him!" +Priam thought, full of sudden, hidden anger. "He's known all along that +there's no difference between what I sold him and the picture he's +already had. He wants to suggest that we should come to terms. He's +simply been playing a game with me up to now." And he said aloud, "I +don't know that I _advise_ you to do anything. I'm not a dealer, Mr. +Oxford." + +He said it in a hostile tone that ought to have silenced Mr. Oxford for +ever, but it did not. Mr. Oxford curved away, like a skater into a new +figure, and began to expatiate minutely upon the merits of the Volterra +picture. He analyzed it in so much detail, and lauded it with as much +justice, as though the picture was there before them. Priam was +astonished at the man's exactitude. "Scoundrel! He knows a thing or +two!" reflected Priam grimly. + +"You don't think I overpraise it, do you, _cher maitre?_ Mr. Oxford +finished, still smiling. + +"A little," said Priam. + +If only Priam could have run away! But he couldn't! Mr. Oxford had him +well in a corner. No chance of freedom! Besides, he was over fifty and +stout. + +"Ah! Now I was expecting you to say that! Do you mind telling me at what +period you painted it?" Mr. Oxford inquired, very blandly, though his +hands were clasped in a violent tension that forced the blood from the +region of the knuckle-joints. + +This was the crisis which Mr. Oxford had been leading up to! All the +time Mr. Oxford's teethy smile had concealed a knowledge of Priam's +identity! + + * * * * * + + + + +CHAPTER X + + +_The Secret_ + + +"What do you mean?" asked Priam Farll. But he put the question weakly, +and he might just as well have said, "I know what you mean, and I would +pay a million pounds or so in order to sink through the floor." A few +minutes ago he would only have paid five hundred pounds or so in order +to run simply away. Now he wanted Maskelyne miracles to happen to him. +The universe seemed to be caving in about the ears of Priam Farll. + +Mr. Oxford was still smiling; smiling, however, as a man holds his +breath for a wager. You felt that he could not keep it up much longer. + +"You _are_ Priam Farll, aren't you?" said Mr. Oxford in a very low +voice. + +"What makes you think I'm Priam Farll?" + +"I think you are Priam Farll because you painted that picture I bought +from you this morning, and I am sure that no one but Priam Farll could +have painted it." + +"Then you've been playing a game with me all morning!" + +"Please don't put it like that, _cher maitre_," Mr. Oxford whisperingly +pleaded. "I only wished to feel my ground. I know that Priam Farll is +supposed to have been buried in Westminster Abbey. But for me the +existence of that picture of Putney High Street, obviously just painted, +is an absolute proof that he is not buried in Westminster Abbey, and +that he still lives. It is an amazing thing that there should have been +a mistake at the funeral, an utterly amazing thing, which involves all +sorts of consequences! But that's not my business. Of course there must +be clear reasons for what occurred. I am not interested in them--I mean +not professionally. I merely argue, when I see a certain picture, with +the paint still wet on it: 'That picture was painted by a certain +painter. I am an expert, and I stake my reputation on it' It's no use +telling me that the painter in question died several years ago and was +buried with national honours in Westminster Abbey. I say it couldn't +have been so. I'm a connoisseur. And if the facts of his death and +burial don't agree with the result of my connoisseurship, I say they +aren't facts. I say there's been a--a misunderstanding about--er-- +corpses. Now, _cher maitre_, what do you think of my position?" +Mr. Oxford drummed lightly on the table. + +"I don't know," said Priam. Which was another lie. + +"You _are_ Priam Farll, aren't you?" Mr. Oxford persisted. + +"Well, if you will have it," said Priam savagely, "I am. And now you +know!" + +Mr. Oxford let his smile go. He had held it for an incredible time. He +let it go, and sighed a gentle and profound relief. He had been skating +over the thinnest ice, and had reached the bank amid terrific crackings, +and he began to appreciate the extent of the peril braved. He had been +perfectly sure of his connoisseurship. But when one says one is +perfectly sure, especially if one says it with immense emphasis, one +always means 'imperfectly sure.' So it was with Mr. Oxford. And really, +to argue, from the mere existence of a picture, that a tremendous deceit +had been successfully practised upon the most formidable of nations, +implies rather more than rashness on the part of the arguer. + +"But I don't want it to get about," said Priam, still in a savage +whisper. "And I don't want to talk about it." He looked at the nearest +midgets resentfully, suspecting them of eavesdropping. + +"Precisely," said Mr. Oxford, but in a tone that lacked conviction. + +"It's a matter that only concerns me," said Priam. + +"Precisely," Mr. Oxford repeated. "At least it _ought_ to concern only +you. And I can't assure you too positively that I'm the last person in +the world to want to pry; but--" + +"You must kindly remember," said Priam, interrupting, "that you bought +that picture this morning simply _as_ a picture, on its merits. You have +no authority to attach my name to it, and I must ask you not to do so." + +"Certainly," agreed Mr. Oxford. "I bought it as a masterpiece, and I'm +quite content with my bargain. I want no signature." + +"I haven't signed my pictures for twenty years," said Priam. + +"Pardon me," said Mr. Oxford. "Every square inch of every one is +unmistakably signed. You could not put a brush on a canvas without +signing it. It is the privilege of only the greatest painters not to put +letters on the corners of their pictures in order to keep other painters +from taking the credit for them afterwards. For me, all your pictures +are signed. But there are some people who want more proof than +connoisseurship can give, and that's where the trouble is going to be." + +"Trouble?" said Priam, with an intensification of his misery. + +"Yes," said Mr. Oxford. "I must tell you, so that you can understand the +situation." He became very solemn, showing that he had at last reached +the real point. "Some time ago a man, a little dealer, came to me and +offered me a picture that I instantly recognized as one of yours. I +bought it." + +"How much did you pay for it?" Priam growled. + +After a pause Mr. Oxford said, "I don't mind giving you the figure. I +paid fifty pounds for it." + +"Did you!" exclaimed Priam, perceiving that some person or persons had +made four hundred per cent. on his work by the time it had arrived at a +big dealer. "Who was the fellow?" + +"Oh, a little dealer. Nobody. Jew, of course." Mr. Oxford's way of +saying 'Jew' was ineffably ironic. Priam knew that, being a Jew, the +dealer could not be his frame-maker, who was a pure-bred Yorkshireman +from Ravensthorpe. Mr. Oxford continued, "I sold that picture and +guaranteed it to be a Priam Farll." + +"The devil you did!" + +"Yes. I had sufficient confidence in my judgment." + +"Who bought it?" + +"Whitney C. Witt, of New York. He's an old man now, of course. I expect +you remember him, _cher maitre_." Mr. Oxford's eyes twinkled. "I sold it +to him, and of course he accepted my guarantee. Soon afterwards I had +the offer of other pictures obviously by you, from the same dealer. And +I bought them. I kept on buying them. I dare say I've bought forty +altogether." + +"Did your little dealer guess whose work they were?" Priam demanded +suspiciously. + +"Not he! If he had done, do you suppose he'd have parted with them for +fifty pounds apiece? Mind, at first I thought I was buying pictures +painted before your supposed death. I thought, like the rest of the +world, that you were--in the Abbey. Then I began to have doubts. And one +day when a bit of paint came off on my thumb, I can tell you I was +startled. However, I stuck to my opinion, and I kept on guaranteeing the +pictures as Farlls." + +"It never occurred to you to make any inquiries?" + +"Yes, it did," said Mr. Oxford. "I did my best to find out from the +dealer where he got the pictures from, but he wouldn't tell me. Well, I +sort of scented a mystery. Now I've got no professional use for +mysteries, and I came to the conclusion that I'd better just let this +one alone. So I did." + +"Well, why didn't you keep on leaving it alone?" Priam asked. + +"Because circumstances won't let me. I sold practically all those +pictures to Whitney C. Witt. It was all right. Anyhow I thought it was +all right. I put Parfitts' name and reputation on their being yours. And +then one day I heard from Mr. Witt that on the back of the canvas of one +of the pictures the name of the canvas-makers, and a date, had been +stamped, with a rubber stamp, and that the date was after your supposed +burial, and that his London solicitors had made inquiries from the +artist's-material people here, and these people were prepared to prove +that the canvas was made after Priam Farll's funeral. You see the fix?" + +Priam did. + +"My reputation--Parfitts'--is at stake. If those pictures aren't by you, +I'm a swindler. Parfitts' name is gone for ever, and there'll be the +greatest scandal that ever was. Witt is threatening proceedings. I +offered to take the whole lot back at the price he paid me, without any +commission. But he won't. He's an old man; a bit of a maniac I expect, +and he won't. He's angry. He thinks he's been swindled, and what he says +is that he's going to see the thing through. I've got to prove to him +that the pictures are yours. I've got to show him what grounds I had for +giving my guarantee. Well, to cut a long story short, I've found you, +I'm glad to say!" + +He sighed again. + +"Look here," said Priam. "How much has Witt paid you altogether for my +pictures?" + +After a pause, Mr. Oxford said, "I don't mind giving you the figure. +He's paid me seventy-two thousand pounds odd." He smiled, as if to +excuse himself. + +When Priam Farll reflected that he had received about four hundred +pounds for those pictures--vastly less than one per cent, of what the +shiny and prosperous dealer had ultimately disposed of them for, the +traditional fury of the artist against the dealer--of the producer +against the parasitic middleman--sprang into flame in his heart. Up till +then he had never had any serious cause of complaint against his +dealers. (Extremely successful artists seldom have.) Now he saw dealers, +as the ordinary painters see them, to be the authors of all evil! Now he +understood by what methods Mr. Oxford had achieved his splendid car, +clothes, club, and minions. These things were earned, not by Mr. Oxford, +but _for_ Mr. Oxford in dingy studios, even in attics, by shabby +industrious painters! Mr. Oxford was nothing but an opulent thief, a +grinder of the face of genius. Mr. Oxford was, in a word, the spawn of +the devil, and Priam silently but sincerely consigned him to his proper +place. + +It was excessively unjust of Priam. Nobody had asked Priam to die. +Nobody had asked him to give up his identity. If he had latterly been +receiving tens instead of thousands for his pictures, the fault was his +alone. Mr. Oxford had only bought and only sold; which was his true +function. But Mr. Oxford's sin, in Priam's eyes, was the sin of having +been right. + +It would have needed less insight than Mr. Oxford had at his disposal to +see that Priam Farll was taking the news very badly. + +"For both our sakes, _cher maitre_," said Mr. Oxford persuasively, "I +think it will be advisable for you to put me in a position to prove that +my guarantee to Witt was justified." + +"Why for both our sakes?" + +"Because, well, I shall be delighted to pay you, say thirty-six thousand +pounds in acknowledgment of--er--" He stopped. + +Probably he had instantly perceived that he was committing a disastrous +error of tact. Either he should have offered nothing, or he should have +offered the whole sum he had received less a small commission. To +suggest dividing equally with Priam was the instinctive impulse, the +fatal folly, of a born dealer. And Mr. Oxford was a born dealer. + +"I won't accept a penny," said Priam. "And I can't help you in any way. +I'm afraid I must go now. I'm late as it is." + +His cold resistless fury drove him forward, and, without the slightest +regard for the amenities of clubs, he left the table, Mr. Oxford, +becoming more and more the dealer, rose and followed him, even directed +him to the gigantic cloak-room, murmuring the while soft persuasions and +pacifications in Priam's ear. + +"There may be an action in the courts," said Mr. Oxford in the grand +entrance hall, "and your testimony would be indispensable to me." + +"I can have nothing to do with it. Good-day!" + +The giant at the door could scarce open the gigantic portal quickly +enough for him. He fled--fled, surrounded by nightmare visions of +horrible publicity in a law-court. Unthinkable tortures! He damned Mr. +Oxford to the nethermost places, and swore that he would not lift a +finger to save Mr. Oxford from penal servitude for life. + + +_Money-getting_ + + +He stood on the kerb of the monument, talking to himself savagely. At +any rate he was safely outside the monument, with its pullulating +population of midgets creeping over its carpets and lounging +insignificant on its couches. He could not remember clearly what had +occurred since the moment of his getting up from the table; he could not +remember seeing anything or anyone on his way out; but he could remember +the persuasive, deferential voice of Mr. Oxford following him +persistently as far as the giant's door. In recollection that club was +like an abode of black magic to him; it seemed so hideously alive in its +deadness, and its doings were so absurd and mysterious. "Silence, +silence!" commanded the white papers in one vast chamber, and, in +another, babel existed! And then that terrible mute dining-room, with +the high, unscalable mantelpieces that no midget could ever reach! He +kept uttering the most dreadful judgments on the club and on Mr. Oxford, +in quite audible tones, oblivious of the street. He was aroused by a +rather scared man saluting him. It was Mr. Oxford's chauffeur, waiting +patiently till his master should be ready to re-enter the wheeled salon. +The chauffeur apparently thought him either demented or inebriated, but +his sole duty was to salute, and he did nothing else. + +Quite forgetting that this chauffeur was a fellow-creature, Priam +immediately turned upon his heel, and hurried down the street. At the +corner of the street was a large bank, and Priam, acquiring the reckless +courage of the soldier in battle, entered the bank. He had never been in +a London bank before. At first it reminded him of the club, with the +addition of an enormous placard giving the day of the month as a +mystical number--14--and other placards displaying solitary letters of +the alphabet. Then he saw that it was a huge menagerie in which highly +trained young men of assorted sizes and years were confined in stout +cages of wire and mahogany. He stamped straight to a cage with a hole in +it, and threw down the cheque for five hundred pounds--defiantly. + +"Next desk, please," said a mouth over a high collar and a green tie, +behind the grating, and a disdainful hand pushed the cheque back towards +Priam. + +"Next desk!" repeated Priam, dashed but furious. + +"This is the A to M desk," said the mouth. + +Then Priam understood the solitary letters, and he rushed, with a new +accession of fury, to the adjoining cage, where another disdainful hand +picked up the cheque and turned it over, with an air of saying, "Fishy, +this!" + +And, "It isn't endorsed!" said another mouth over another high collar +and green tie. The second disdainful hand pushed the cheque back again +to Priam, as though it had been a begging circular. + +"Oh, if that's all!" said Priam, almost speechless from anger. "Have you +got such a thing as a pen?" + +He was behaving in an extremely unreasonable manner. He had no right to +visit his spleen on a perfectly innocent bank that paid twenty-five per +cent to its shareholders and a thousand a year each to its directors, +and what trifle was left over to its men in rages. But Priam was not +like you or me. He did not invariably act according to reason. He could +not be angry with one man at once, nor even with one building at once. +When he was angry he was inclusively and miscellaneously angry; and the +sun, moon, and stars did not escape. + +After he had endorsed the cheque the disdainful hand clawed it up once +more, and directed upon its obverse and upon its reverse a battery of +suspicions; then a pair of eyes glanced with critical distrust at so +much of Priam's person as was visible. Then the eyes moved back, the +mouth opened, in a brief word, and lo! there were four eyes and two +mouths over the cheque, and four for an instant on Priam. Priam expected +some one to call for a policeman; in spite of himself he felt guilty--or +anyhow dubious. It was the grossest insult to him to throw doubt on the +cheque and to examine him in that frigid, shamelessly disillusioned +manner. + +"You _are_ Mr. Leek?" a mouth moved. + +"Yes" (very slowly). + +"How would you like this?" + +"I'll thank you to give it me in notes," answered Priam haughtily. + +When the disdainful hand had counted twice every corner of a pile of +notes, and had dropped the notes one by one, with a peculiar snapping +sound of paper, in front of Priam, Priam crushed them together and +crammed them without any ceremony and without gratitude to the giver, +into the right pocket of his trousers. And he stamped out of the +building with curses on his lips. + +Still, he felt better, he felt assuaged. To cultivate and nourish a +grievance when you have five hundred pounds in your pocket, in cash, is +the most difficult thing in the world. + + +_A Visit to the Tailors'_ + + +He gradually grew calmer by dint of walking--aimless, fast walking, with +a rapt expression of the eyes that on crowded pavements cleared the way +for him more effectually than a shouting footman. And then he debouched +unexpectedly on to the Embankment. Dusk was already falling on the noble +curve of the Thames, and the mighty panorama stretched before him in a +manner mysteriously impressive which has made poets of less poetic men +than Priam Farll. Grand hotels, offices of millionaires and of +governments, grand hotels, swards and mullioned windows of the law, +grand hotels, the terrific arches of termini, cathedral domes, houses of +parliament, and grand hotels, rose darkly around him on the arc of the +river, against the dark violet murk of the sky. Huge trams swam past him +like glass houses, and hansoms shot past the trams and automobiles past +the hansoms; and phantom barges swirled down on the full ebb, threading +holes in bridges as cotton threads a needle. It was London, and the roar +of London, majestic, imperial, super-Roman. And lo! earlier than the +earliest municipal light, an unseen hand, the hand of destiny, printed a +writing on the wall of vague gloom that was beginning to hide the +opposite bank. And the writing said that Shipton's tea was the best. And +then the hand wiped largely out that message and wrote in another spot +that Macdonnell's whisky was the best; and so these two doctrines, in +their intermittent pyrotechnics, continued to give the lie to each other +under the deepening night. Quite five minutes passed before Priam +perceived, between the altercating doctrines, the high scaffold-clad +summit of a building which was unfamiliar to him. It looked serenely and +immaterially beautiful in the evening twilight, and as he was close to +Waterloo Bridge, his curiosity concerning beauty took him over to the +south bank of the Thames. + +After losing himself in the purlieus of Waterloo Station, he at last +discovered the rear of the building. Yes, it was a beautiful thing; its +tower climbed in several coloured storeys, diminishing till it expired +in a winged figure on the sky. And below, the building was broad and +massive, with a frontage of pillars over great arched windows. Two +cranes stuck their arms out from the general mass, and the whole +enterprise was guarded in a hedge of hoardings. Through the narrow +doorway in the hoarding came the flare and the hissing of a Wells's +light. Priam Farll glanced timidly within. The interior was immense. In +a sort of court of honour a group of muscular, hairy males, silhouetted +against an illuminated latticework of scaffolding, were chipping and +paring at huge blocks of stone. It was a subject for a Rembrandt. + +A fat untidy man meditatively approached the doorway. He had a roll of +tracing papers in his hand, and the end of a long, thick pencil in his +mouth. He was the man who interpreted the dreams of the architect to the +dreamy British artisan. Experience of life had made him somewhat +brusque. + +"Look here," he said to Priam; "what the devil do you want?" + +"What the devil do I want?" repeated Priam, who had not yet altogether +fallen away from his mood of universal defiance. "I only want to know +what the h-ll this building is." + +The fat man was a little startled. He took his pencil from his mouth, +and spit. + +"It's the new Picture Gallery, built under the will of that there Priam +Farll. I should ha' thought you'd ha' known that." Priam's lips trembled +on the verge of an exclamation. "See that?" the fat man pursued, +pointing to a small board on the hoarding. The board said, "No hands +wanted." + +The fat man coldly scrutinized Priam's appearance, from his greenish hat +to his baggy creased boots. + +Priam walked away. + +He was dumbfounded. Then he was furious again. He perfectly saw the +humour of the situation, but it was not the kind of humour that induced +rollicking laughter. He was furious, and employed the language of fury, +when it is not overheard. Absorbed by his craft of painting, as in the +old Continental days, he had long since ceased to read the newspapers, +and though he had not forgotten his bequest to the nation, he had never +thought of it as taking architectural shape. He was not aware of his +cousin Duncan's activities for the perpetuation of the family name. The +thing staggered him. The probabilities of the strange consequences of +dead actions swept against him and overwhelmed him. Once, years ago and +years ago, in a resentful mood, he had written a few lines on a piece of +paper, and signed them in the presence of witnesses. Then +nothing--nothing whatever--for two decades! The paper slept... and now +this--this tremendous concrete result in the heart of London! It was +incredible. It passed the bounds even of lawful magic. + +His palace, his museum! The fruit of a captious hour! + +Ah! But he was furious. Like every ageing artist of genuine +accomplishment, he knew--none better--that there is no satisfaction save +the satisfaction of fatigue after honest endeavour. He knew--none +better--that wealth and glory and fine clothes are nought, and that +striving is all. He had never been happier than during the last two +years. Yet the finest souls have their reactions, their rebellions +against wise reason. And Priam's soul was in insurrection then. He +wanted wealth and glory and fine clothes once more. It seemed to him +that he was out of the world and that he must return to it. The covert +insults of Mr. Oxford rankled and stung. And the fat foreman had +mistaken him for a workman cadging for a job. + +He walked rapidly to the bridge and took a cab to Conduit Street, where +dwelt a firm of tailors with whose Paris branch he had had dealings in +his dandiacal past. + +An odd impulse perhaps, but natural. + +A lighted clock-tower--far to his left as the cab rolled across the +bridge--showed that a legislative providence was watching over Israel. + + +_Alice on the Situation_ + + +"I bet the building alone won't cost less than seventy thousand pounds," +he said. + +He was back again with Alice in the intimacy of Werter Road, and +relating to her, in part, the adventures of the latter portion of the +day. He had reached home long after tea-time; she, with her natural +sagacity, had not waited tea for him. Now she had prepared a rather +special tea for the adventurer, and she was sitting opposite to him at +the little table, with nothing to do but listen and refill his cup. + +"Well," she said mildly, and without the least surprise at his figures, +"I don't know what he could have been thinking of--your Priam Farll! I +call it just silly. It isn't as if there wasn't enough picture-galleries +already. When what there are are so full that you can't get in--then it +will be time enough to think about fresh ones. I've been to the National +Gallery twice, and upon my word I was almost the only person there! And +it's free too! People don't _want_ picture-galleries. If they did they'd +go. Who ever saw a public-house empty, or Peter Robinson's? And you have +to pay there! Silly, I call it! Why couldn't he have left his money to +you, or at any rate to the hospitals or something of that? No, it isn't +silly. It's scandalous! It ought to be stopped!" + +Now Priam had resolved that evening to make a serious, gallant attempt +to convince his wife of his own identity. He was approaching the +critical point. This speech of hers intimidated him, rather complicated +his difficulties, but he determined to proceed bravely. + +"Have you put sugar in this?" he asked. + +"Yes," she said. "But you've forgotten to stir it. I'll stir it for +you." + +A charming wifely attention! It enheartened him. + +"I say, Alice," he said, as she stirred, "you remember when first I told +you I could paint?" + +"Yes," she said. + +"Well, at first you thought I was daft. You thought my mind was +wandering, didn't you?" + +"No," she said, "I only thought you'd got a bee in your bonnet." She +smiled demurely. + +"Well, I hadn't, had I?" + +"Seeing the money you've made, I should just say you hadn't," she +handsomely admitted. "Where we should be without it I don't know." + +"You were wrong, weren't you? And I was right?" + +"Of course," she beamed. + +"And do you remember that time I told you I was really Priam Farll?" + +She nodded, reluctantly. + +"You thought I was absolutely mad. Oh, you needn't deny it! I could see +well enough what your thoughts were." + +"I thought you weren't quite well," she said frankly. + +"But I was, my child. Now I've got to tell you again that I am Priam +Farll. Honestly I wish I wasn't, but I am. The deuce of it is that that +fellow that came here this morning has found it out, and there's going +to be trouble. At least there has been trouble, and there may be more." + +She was impressed. She knew not what to say. + +"But, Priam----" + +"He's paid me five hundred to-day for that picture I've just finished." + +"Five hund----" + +Priam snatched the notes from his pocket, and with a gesture pardonably +dramatic he bade her count them. + +"Count them," he repeated, when she hesitated. + +"Is it right?" he asked when she had finished. + +"Oh, it's right enough," she agreed. "But, Priam, I don't like having +all this money in the house. You ought to have called and put it in the +bank." + +"Dash the bank!" he exclaimed. "Just keep on listening to me, and try to +persuade yourself I'm not mad. I admit I'm a bit shy, and it was all on +account of that that I let that d--d valet of mine be buried as me." + +"You needn't tell me you're shy," she smiled. "All Putney knows you're +shy." + +"I'm not so sure about that!" He tossed his head. + +Then he began at the beginning and recounted to her in detail the +historic night and morning at Selwood Terrace, with a psychological +description of his feelings. He convinced her, in less than ten minutes, +with the powerful aid of five hundred pounds in banknotes, that he in +truth was Priam Farll. + +And he waited for her to express an exceeding astonishment and +satisfaction. + +"Well, of course if you are, you are," she observed simply, regarding +him with benevolent, possessive glances across the table. The fact was +that she did not deal in names, she dealt in realities. He was her +reality, and so long as he did not change visibly or actually--so long +as he remained he--she did not much mind who he was. She added, "But I +really don't know what you were _dreaming_ of, Henry, to do such a +thing!" + +"Neither do I," he muttered. + +Then he disclosed to her the whole chicanery of Mr. Oxford. + +"It's a good thing you've ordered those new clothes," she said. + +"Why?" + +"Because of the trial." + +"The trial between Oxford and Witt. What's that got to do with me?" + +"They'll make you give evidence." + +"But I shan't give evidence. I've told Oxford I'll have nothing to do +with it at all." + +"Suppose they make you? They can, you know, with a sub--sub something, I +forget its name. Then you'll _have_ to go in the witness-box." + +"Me in the witness-box!" he murmured, undone. + +"Yes," she said. "I expect it'll be very provoking indeed. But you'd +want a new suit for it. So I'm glad you ordered one. When are you going +to try on?" + + * * * * * + + + + +CHAPTER XI + + +_An Escape_ + + +One night, in the following June, Priam and Alice refrained from going +to bed. Alice dozed for an hour or so on the sofa, and Priam read by her +side in an easy-chair, and about two o'clock, just before the first +beginnings of dawn, they stimulated themselves into a feverish activity +beneath the parlour gas. Alice prepared tea, bread-and-butter, and eggs, +passing briskly from room to room. Alice also ran upstairs, cast a few +more things into a valise and a bag already partially packed, and, +locking both receptacles, carried them downstairs. Meantime the whole of +Priam's energy was employed in having a bath and in shaving. Blood was +shed, as was but natural at that ineffable hour. While Priam consumed +the food she had prepared, Alice was continually darting to and fro in +the house. At one moment, after an absence, she would come into the +parlour with a mouthful of hatpins; at another she would rush out to +assure herself that the indispensable keys of the valise and bag with +her purse were on the umbrella-stand, where they could not be forgotten. +Between her excursions she would drink thirty drops of tea. + +"Now, Priam," she said at length, "the water's hot. Haven't you +finished? It'll be getting light soon." + +"Water hot?" he queried, at a loss. + +"Yes," she said. "To wash up these things, of course. You don't suppose +I'm going to leave a lot of dirty things in the house, do you? While I'm +doing that you might stick labels on the luggage." + +"They won't need to be labelled," he argued. "We shall take them with us +in the carriage." + +"Oh, Priam," she protested, "how tiresome you are!" + +"I've travelled more than you have." He tried to laugh. + +"Yes, and fine travelling it must have been, too! However, if you don't +mind the luggage being lost, I don't." + +During this she was collecting the crockery on a tray, with which tray +she whizzed out of the room. + +In ten minutes, hatted, heavily veiled, and gloved, she cautiously +opened the front door and peeped forth into the lamplit street She +peered to right and to left. Then she went as far as the gate and peered +again. + +"Is it all right?" whispered Priam, who was behind her. + +"Yes, I think so," she whispered. + +Priam came out of the house with the bag in one hand and the valise in +the other, a pipe in his mouth, a stick under his arm, and an overcoat +on his shoulder. Alice ran up the steps, gazed within the house, pulled +the door to silently, and locked it. Then beneath the summer stars she +and Priam hastened furtively, as though the luggage had contained swag, +up Werter Road towards Oxford Road. When they had turned the corner they +felt very much relieved. + +They had escaped. + +It was their second attempt. The first, made in daylight, had completely +failed. Their cab had been followed to Paddington Station by three other +cabs containing the representatives and the cameras of three Sunday +newspapers. A journalist had deliberately accompanied Priam to the +booking office, had heard him ask for two seconds to Weymouth, and had +bought a second to Weymouth himself. They had gone to Weymouth, but as +within two hours of their arrival Weymouth had become even more +impossible than Werter Road, they had ignominiously but wisely come +back. + +Werter Road had developed into the most celebrated thoroughfare in +London. Its photograph had appeared in scores of newspapers, with a +cross marking the abode of Priam and Alice. It was beset and infested by +journalists of several nationalities from morn till night. Cameras were +as common in it as lamp-posts. And a famous descriptive reporter of the +_Sunday News_ had got lodgings, at a high figure, exactly opposite No. +29. Priam and Alice could do nothing without publicity. And if it would +be an exaggeration to assert, that evening papers appeared with +Stop-press News: "5.40. Mrs. Leek went out shopping," the exaggeration +would not be very extravagant. For a fortnight Priam had not been beyond +the door during daylight. It was Alice who, alarmed by Priam's pallid +cheeks and tightened nerves, had devised the plan of flight before the +early summer dawn. + +They reached East Putney Station, of which the gates were closed, the +first workman's train being not yet due. And there they stood. Not +another human being was abroad. Only the clock of St. Bude's was +faithfully awakening every soul within a radius of two hundred yards +each quarter of an hour. Then a porter came and opened the gate--it was +still exceedingly early--and Priam booked for Waterloo in triumph. + +"Oh," cried Alice, as they mounted the stairs, "I quite forgot to draw +up the blinds at the front of the house." And she stopped on the stairs. + +"What did you want to draw up the blinds for?" + +"If they're down everybody will know instantly that we've gone. Whereas +if I--" + +She began to descend the stairs. + +"Alice!" he said sharply, in a strange voice. The muscles of his white +face were drawn. + +"What?" + +"D--n the blinds. Come along, or upon my soul I'll kill you." + +She realized that his nerves were in active insurrection, and that a +mere nothing might bring about the fall of the government. + +"Oh, very well!" She soothed him by her amiable obedience. + +In a quarter of an hour they were safely lost in the wilderness of +Waterloo, and the newspaper train bore them off to Bournemouth for a few +days' respite. + + +_The Nation's Curiosity_ + + +The interest of the United Kingdom in the unique case of Witt _v_. +Parfitts had already reached apparently the highest possible degree of +intensity. And there was reason for the kingdom's passionate curiosity. +Whitney Witt, the plaintiff, had come over to England, with his +eccentricities, his retinue, his extreme wealth and his failing +eyesight, specially to fight Parfitts. A half-pathetic figure, this +white-haired man, once a connoisseur, who, from mere habit, continued to +buy expensive pictures when he could no longer see them! Whitney Witt +was implacably set against Parfitts, because he was convinced that Mr. +Oxford had sought to take advantage of his blindness. There he was, +conducting his action regardless of his blindness. There he was, +conducting his action regardless of expense. His apartments and his +regal daily existence at the Grand Babylon alone cost a fabulous sum +which may be precisely ascertained by reference to illustrated articles +in the papers. Then Mr. Oxford, the youngish Jew who had acquired +Parfitts, who was Parfitts, also cut a picturesque figure on the face of +London. He, too, was spending money with both hands; for Parfitts itself +was at stake. Last and most disturbing, was the individual looming +mysteriously in the background, the inexplicable man who lived in Werter +Road, and whose identity would be decided by the judgment in the case of +Witt _v_. Parfitts. If Witt won his action, then Parfitts might retire +from business. Mr. Oxford would probably go to prison for having sold +goods on false pretences, and the name of Henry Leek, valet, would be +added to the list of adventurous scoundrels who have pretended to be +their masters. But if Witt should lose--then what a complication, and +what further enigmas to be solved! If Witt should lose, the national +funeral of Priam Farll had been a fraudulent farce. A common valet lay +under the hallowed stones of the Abbey, and Europe had mourned in vain! +If Witt should lose, a gigantic and unprecedented swindle had been +practised upon the nation. Then the question would arise, Why? + +Hence it was not surprising that popular interest, nourished by an +indefatigable and excessively enterprising press, should have mounted +till no one would have believed that it could mount any more. But the +evasion from Werter Road on that June morning intensified the interest +enormously. Of course, owing to the drawn blinds, it soon became known, +and the bloodhounds of the Sunday papers were sniffing along the +platforms of all the termini in London. Priam's departure greatly +prejudiced the cause of Mr. Oxford, especially when the bloodhounds +failed and Priam persisted in his invisibility. If a man was an honest +man, why should he flee the public gaze, and in the night? There was but +a step from the posing of this question to the inevitable inference that +Mr. Oxford's line of defence was really too fantastic for credence. +Certainly organs of vast circulation, while repeating that, as the +action was _sub judice_, they could say nothing about it, had already +tried the action several times in their impartial columns, and they now +tried it again, with the entire public as jury. And in three days Priam +had definitely become a criminal in the public eye, a criminal flying +from justice. Useless to assert that he was simply a witness subpoenaed +to give evidence at the trial! He had transgressed the unwritten law of +the English constitution that a person prominent in a _cause celebre_ +belongs for the time being, not to himself, but to the nation at large. +He had no claim to privacy. In surreptitiously obtaining seclusion he +was merely robbing the public and the public's press of their +inalienable right. + +Who could deny now the reiterated statement that _he_ was a bigamist? + +It came to be said that he must be on his way to South America. Then the +public read avidly articles by specially retained barristers on the +extradition treaties with Brazil, Argentina, Ecuador, Chili, Paraguay +and Uruguay. + +The curates Matthew and Henry preached to crowded congregations at +Putney and Bermondsey, and were reported verbatim in the _Christian +Voice Sermon Supplement_, and other messengers of light. + +And gradually the nose of England bent closer and closer to its +newspaper of a morning. And coffee went cold, and bacon fat congealed, +from the Isle of Wight to Hexham, while the latest rumours were being +swallowed. It promised to be stupendous, did the case of Witt _v_. +Parfitts. It promised to be one of those cases that alone make life +worth living, that alone compensate for the horrors of climate, in +England. And then the day of hearing arrived, and the afternoon papers +which appear at nine o'clock in the morning announced that Henry Leek +(or Priam Farll, according to your wish) and his wife (or his female +companion and willing victim) had returned to Werter Road. And England +held its breath; and even Scotland paused, expectant; and Ireland +stirred in its Celtic dream. + + +_Mention of Two Moles_ + + +The theatre in which the emotional drama of Witt Parfitts was to be +played, lacked the usual characteristics of a modern place of +entertainment. It was far too high for its width and breadth; it was +badly illuminated; it was draughty in winter and stuffy in summer, being +completely deprived of ventilation. Had it been under the control of the +County Council it would have been instantly condemned as dangerous in +case of fire, for its gangways were always encumbered and its exits of a +mediaeval complexity. It had no stage, no footlights, and all its seats +were of naked wood except one. + +This unique seat was occupied by the principal player, who wore a +humorous wig and a brilliant and expensive scarlet costume. He was a +fairly able judge, but he had mistaken his vocation; his rare talent for +making third-rate jokes would have brought him a fortune in the world of +musical comedy. His salary was a hundred a week; better comedians have +earned less. On the present occasion he was in the midst of a double row +of fashionable hats, and beneath the hats were the faces of fourteen +feminine relatives and acquaintances. These hats performed the function +of 'dressing' the house. The principal player endeavoured to behave as +though under the illusion that he was alone in his glory, but he failed. + +There were four other leading actors: Mr. Pennington, K.C., and Mr. +Vodrey, K.C., engaged by the plaintiff, and Mr. Cass, K.C., and Mr. +Crepitude, K.C., engaged by the defendant. These artistes were the stars +of their profession, nominally less glittering, but really far more +glittering than the player in scarlet. Their wigs were of inferior +quality to his, and their costumes shabby, but they did not mind, for +whereas he got a hundred a week, they each got a hundred a day. Three +junior performers received ten guineas a day apiece: one of them held a +watching brief for the Dean and Chapter of the Abbey, who, being members +of a Christian fraternity, were pained and horrified by the defendants' +implication that they had given interment to a valet, and who were +determined to resist exhumation at all hazards. The supers in the drama, +whose business it was to whisper to each other and to the players, +consisted of solicitors, solicitors' clerks, and experts; their combined +emoluments worked out at the rate of a hundred and fifty pounds a day. +Twelve excellent men in the jury-box received between them about as much +as would have kept a K.C. alive for five minutes. The total expenses of +production thus amounted to something like six or seven hundred pounds a +day. The preliminary expenses had run into several thousands. The +enterprise could have been made remunerative by hiring for it Convent +Garden Theatre and selling stalls as for Tettrazzini and Caruso, but in +the absurd auditorium chosen, crammed though it was to the perilous +doors, the loss was necessarily terrific. Fortunately the affair was +subsidized; not merely by the State, but also by those two wealthy +capitalists, Whitney C. Witt and Mr. Oxford; and therefore the +management were in a position to ignore paltry financial considerations +and to practise art for art's sake. + +In opening the case Mr. Pennington, K.C., gave instant proof of his +astounding histrionic powers. He began calmly, colloquially, treating +the jury as friends of his boyhood, and the judge as a gifted uncle, and +stated in simple language that Whitney C. Witt was claiming seventy-two +thousand pounds from the defendants, money paid for worthless pictures +palmed off upon the myopic and venerable plaintiff as masterpieces. He +recounted the life and death of the great painter Priam Farll, and his +solemn burial and the tears of the whole world. He dwelt upon the genius +of Priam Farll, and then upon the confiding nature of the plaintiff. +Then he inquired who could blame the plaintiff for his confidence in the +uprightness of a firm with such a name as Parfitts. And then he +explained by what accident of a dating-stamp on a canvas it had been +discovered that the pictures guaranteed to be by Priam Farll were +painted after Priam Farll's death. + +He proceeded with no variation of tone: "The explanation is simplicity +itself. Priam Farll was not really dead. It was his valet who died. +Quite naturally, quite comprehensibly, the great genius Priam Farll +wished to pass the remainder of his career as a humble valet. He +deceived everybody; the doctor, his cousin, Mr. Duncan Farll, the public +authorities, the Dean and Chapter of the Abbey, the nation--in fact, the +entire world! As Henry Leek he married, and as Henry Leek he recommenced +the art of painting--in Putney; he carried on the vocation several years +without arousing the suspicions of a single person; and then--by a +curious coincidence immediately after my client threatened an action +against the defendant--he displayed himself in his true identity as +Priam Farll. Such is the simple explanation," said Pennington, K.C., and +added, "which you will hear presently from the defendant. Doubtless it +will commend itself to you as experienced men of the world. You cannot +but have perceived that such things are constantly happening in real +life, that they are of daily occurrence. I am almost ashamed to stand up +before you and endeavour to rebut a story so plausible and so +essentially convincing. I feel that my task is well-nigh hopeless. +Nevertheless, I must do my best." + +And so on. + +It was one of his greatest feats in the kind of irony that appeals to a +jury. And the audience deemed that the case was already virtually +decided. + +After Whitney C. Witt and his secretary had been called and had filled +the court with the echoing twang of New York (the controlled fury of the +aged Witt was highly effective), Mrs. Henry Leek was invited to the +witness-box. She was supported thither by her two curates, who, however, +could not prevent her from weeping at the stern voice of the usher. She +related her marriage. + +"Is that your husband?" demanded Vodrey, K.C. (who had now assumed the +principal _role_, Pennington, K.C., being engaged in another play in +another theatre), pointing with one of his well-conceived dramatic +gestures to Priam Farll. + +"It is," sobbed Mrs. Henry Leek. + +The unhappy creature believed what she said, and the curates, though +silent, made a deep impression on the jury. In cross-examination, when +Crepitude, K.C., forced her to admit that on first meeting Priam in his +house in Werter Road she had not been quite sure of his identity, she +replied-- + +"It's all come over me since. Shouldn't a woman recognize the father of +her own children?" + +"She should," interpolated the judge. There was a difference of opinion +as to whether his word was jocular or not. + +Mrs. Henry Leek was a touching figure, but not amusing. It was Mr. +Duncan Farll who, quite unintentionally, supplied the first relief. + +Duncan pooh-poohed the possibility of Priam being Priam. He detailed all +the circumstances that followed the death in Selwood Terrace, and showed +in fifty ways that Priam could not have been Priam. The man now +masquerading as Priam was not even a gentleman, whereas Priam was +Duncan's cousin! Duncan was an excellent witness, dry, precise, +imperturbable. Under cross-examination by Crepitude he had to describe +particularly his boyish meeting with Priam. Mr. Crepitude was not +inquisitive. + +"Tell us what occurred," said Crepitude. + +"Well, we fought." + +"Oh! You fought! What did you two naughty boys fight about?" (Great +laughter.) + +"About a plum-cake, I think." + +"Oh! Not a seed-cake, a plum-cake?" (Great laughter.) + +"I think a plum-cake." + +"And what was the result of this sanguinary encounter?" (Great +laughter.) + +"My cousin loosened one of my teeth." (Great laughter, in which the +court joined.) + +"And what did you do to him?" + +"I'm afraid I didn't do much. I remember tearing half his clothes off." +(Roars of laughter, in which every one joined except Priam and Duncan +Farll.) + +"Oh! You are sure you remember that? You are sure that it wasn't he who +tore _your_ clothes off?" (Lots of hysteric laughter.) + +"Yes," said Duncan, coldly dreaming in the past. His eyes had the 'far +away' look, as he added, "I remember now that my cousin had two little +moles on his neck below the collar. I seem to remember seeing them. I've +just thought of it." + +There is, of course, when it is mentioned in a theatre, something +exorbitantly funny about even one mole. Two moles together brought the +house down. + +Mr. Crepitude leaned over to a solicitor in front of him; the solicitor +leaned aside to a solicitor's clerk, and the solicitor's clerk whispered +to Priam Farll, who nodded. + +"Er----" Mr. Crepitude was beginning again, but he stopped and said to +Duncan Farll, "Thank you. You can step down." + +Then a witness named Justini, a cashier at the Hotel de Paris, Monte +Carlo, swore that Priam Farll, the renowned painter, had spent four days +in the Hotel de Paris one hot May, seven years ago, and that the person +in the court whom the defendant stated to be Priam Farll was not that +man. No cross-examination could shake Mr. Justini. Following him came +the manager of the Hotel Belvedere at Mont Pelerin, near Vevey, +Switzerland, who related a similar tale and was equally unshaken. + +And after that the pictures themselves were brought in, and the experts +came after them and technical evidence was begun. Scarcely had it begun +when a clock struck and the performance ended for the day. The principal +actors doffed their costumes, and snatched up the evening papers to make +sure that the descriptive reporters had been as eulogistic of them as +usual. The judge, who subscribed to a press-cutting agency, was glad to +find, the next morning, that none of his jokes had been omitted by any +of the nineteen chief London dailies. And the Strand and Piccadilly were +quick with Witt _v_. Parfitts--on evening posters and in the strident +mouths of newsboys. The telegraph wires vibrated to Witt _v_. Parfitts. +In the great betting industrial towns of the provinces wagers were laid +at scientific prices. England, in a word, was content, and the principal +actors had the right to be content also. Very astute people in clubs and +saloon bars talked darkly about those two moles, and Priam's nod in +response to the whispers of the solicitor's clerk: such details do not +escape the modern sketch writer at a thousand a year. To very astute +people the two moles appeared to promise pretty things. + + +_Priam's Refusal_ + + +"Leek in the box." + +This legend got itself on to the telegraph wires and the placards within +a few minutes of Priam's taking the oath. It sent a shiver of +anticipation throughout the country. Three days had passed since the +opening of the case (for actors engaged at a hundred a day for the run +of the piece do not crack whips behind experts engaged at ten or twenty +a day; the pace had therefore been dignified), and England wanted a +fillip. + +Nobody except Alice knew what to expect from Priam. Alice knew. She knew +that Priam was in an extremely peculiar state which might lead to +extremely peculiar results; and she knew also that there was nothing to +be done with him! She herself had made one little effort to bathe him in +the light of reason; the effort had not succeeded. She saw the danger of +renewing it. Pennington, K.C., by the way, insisted that she should +leave the court during Priam's evidence. + +Priam's attitude towards the whole case was one of bitter resentment, a +resentment now hot, now cold. He had the strongest possible objection to +the entire affair. He hated Witt as keenly as he hated Oxford. All that +he demanded from the world was peace and quietness, and the world would +not grant him these inexpensive commodities. He had not asked to be +buried in Westminster Abbey; his interment had been forced upon him. And +if he chose to call himself by another name, why should he not do so? If +he chose to marry a simple woman, and live in a suburb and paint +pictures at ten pounds each, why should he not do so? Why should he be +dragged out of his tranquillity because two persons in whom he felt no +interest whatever, had quarrelled over his pictures? Why should his life +have been made unbearable in Putney by the extravagant curiosity of a +mob of journalists? And then, why should he be compelled, by means of a +piece of blue paper, to go through the frightful ordeal and flame of +publicity in a witness-box? That was the crowning unmerited torture, the +unthinkable horror which had broken his sleep for many nights. + +In the box he certainly had all the appearance of a trapped criminal, +with his nervous movements, his restless lowered eyes, and his faint, +hard voice that he could scarcely fetch up from his throat. Nervousness +lined with resentment forms excellent material for the plastic art of a +cross-examining counsel, and Pennington, K.C., itched to be at work. +Crepitude, K.C., Oxford's counsel, was in less joyous mood. Priam was +Crepitude's own witness, and yet a horrible witness, a witness who had +consistently and ferociously declined to open his mouth until he was in +the box. Assuredly he had nodded, in response to the whispered question +of the solicitor's clerk, but he had not confirmed the nod, nor breathed +a word of assistance during the three days of the trial. He had merely +sat there, blazing in silence. + +"Your name is Priam Farll?" began Crepitude. + +"It is," said Priam sullenly, and with all the external characteristics +of a liar. At intervals he glanced surreptitiously at the judge, as +though the judge had been a bomb with a lighted fuse. + +The examination started badly, and it went from worse to worse. The idea +that this craven, prevaricating figure in the box could be the +illustrious, the world-renowned Priam Farll, seemed absurd. Crepitude +had to exercise all his self-control in order not to bully Priam. + +"That is all," said Crepitude, after Priam had given his preposterous +and halting explanations of the strange phenomena of his life after the +death of Leek. None of these carried conviction. He merely said that the +woman Leek was mistaken in identifying him as her husband; he inferred +that she was hysterical; this inference alienated him from the audience +completely. His statement that he had no definite reason for pretending +to be Leek--that it was an impulse of the moment--was received with mute +derision. His explanation, when questioned as to the evidence of the +hotel officials, that more than once his valet Leek had gone about +impersonating his master, seemed grotesquely inadequate. + +People wondered why Crepitude had made no reference to the moles. The +fact was, Crepitude was afraid to refer to the moles. In mentioning the +moles to Priam he might be staking all to lose all. + +However, Pennington, K.C., alluded to the moles. But not until he had +conclusively proved to the judge, in a cross-questioning of two hours' +duration, that Priam knew nothing of Priam's own youth, nor of painting, +nor of the world of painters. He made a sad mess of Priam. And Priam's +voice grew fainter and fainter, and his gestures more and more +self-incriminating. + +Pennington, K.C., achieved one or two brilliant little effects. + +"Now you say you went with the defendant to his club, and that he told +you of the difficulty he was in!" + +"Yes." + +"Did he make you any offer of money?" + +"Yes." + +"Ah! What did he offer you?" + +"Thirty-six thousand pounds." (Sensation in court.) + +"So! And what was this thirty-six thousand pounds to be for?" + +"I don't know." + +"You don't know? Come now." + +"I don't know." + +"You accepted the offer?" + +"No, I refused it." (Sensation in court.) + +"Why did you refuse it?" + +"Because I didn't care to accept it." + +"Then no money passed between you that day?" + +"Yes. Five hundred pounds." + +"What for?" + +"A picture." + +"The same kind of picture that you had been selling at ten pounds?" + +"Yes." + +"So that on the very day that the defendant wanted you to swear that you +were Priam Farll, the price of your pictures rose from ten pounds to +five hundred?" + +"Yes." + +"Doesn't that strike you as odd?" + +"Yes." + +"You still say--mind, Leek, you are on your oath!--you still say that +you refused thirty-six thousand pounds in order to accept five hundred." + +"I sold a picture for five hundred." + +(On the placards in the Strand: "Severe cross-examination of Leek.") + +"Now about the encounter with Mr. Duncan Farll. Of course, if you are +really Priam Farll, you remember all about that?" + +"Yes." + +"What age were you?" + +"I don't know. About nine." + +"Oh! You were about nine. A suitable age for cake." (Great laughter.) +"Now, Mr. Duncan Farll says you loosened one of his teeth." + +"I did." + +"And that he tore your clothes." + +"I dare say." + +"He says he remembers the fact because you had two moles." + +"Yes." + +"Have you two moles?" + +"Yes." (Immense sensation.) + +Pennington paused. + +"Where are they?" + +"On my neck just below my collar." + +"Kindly place your hand at the spot." + +Priam did so. The excitement was terrific. + +Pennington again paused. But, convinced that Priam was an impostor, he +sarcastically proceeded-- + +"Perhaps, if I am not asking too much, you will take your collar off and +show the two moles to the court?" + +"No," said Priam stoutly. And for the first time he looked Pennington in +the face. + +"You would prefer to do it, perhaps, in his lordship's room, if his +lordship consents." + +"I won't do it anywhere," said Priam. + +"But surely--" the judge began. + +"I won't do it anywhere, my lord," Priam repeated loudly. All his +resentment surged up once more; and particularly his resentment against +the little army of experts who had pronounced his pictures to be clever +but worthless imitations of himself. If his pictures, admittedly painted +after his supposed death, could not prove his identity; if his word was +to be flouted by insulting and bewigged beasts of prey; then his moles +should not prove his identity. He resolved upon obstinacy. + +"The witness, gentlemen," said Pennington, K.C., in triumph to the jury, +"has two moles on his neck, exactly as described by Mr. Duncan Farll, +but he will not display them!" + +Eleven legal minds bent nobly to the problem whether the law and justice +of England could compel a free man to take his collar off if he refused +to take his collar off. In the meantime, of course, the case had to +proceed. The six or seven hundred pounds a day must be earned, and there +were various other witnesses. The next witness was Alice. + + * * * * * + + + + +CHAPTER XII + + +_Alice's Performances_ + + +When Alice was called, and when she stood up in the box, and, smiling +indulgently at the doddering usher, kissed the book as if it had been a +chubby nephew, a change came over the emotional atmosphere of the court, +which felt a natural need to smile. Alice was in all her best clothes, +but it cannot be said that she looked the wife of a super-eminent +painter. In answer to a question she stated that before marrying Priam +she was the widow of a builder in a small way of business, well known in +Putney and also in Wandsworth. This was obviously true. She could have +been nothing but the widow of a builder in a small way of business well +known in Putney and also in Wandsworth. She was every inch that. + +"How did you first meet your present husband, Mrs. Leek?" asked Mr. +Crepitude. + +"Mrs. Farll, if you please," she cheerfully corrected him. + +"Well, Mrs. Farll, then." + +"I must say," she remarked conversationally, "it seems queer you should +be calling me Mrs. Leek, when they're paying you to prove that I'm Mrs. +Farll, Mr.----, excuse me, I forget your name." + +This nettled Crepitude, K.C. It nettled him, too, merely to see a +witness standing in the box just as if she were standing in her kitchen +talking to a tradesman at the door. He was not accustomed to such a +spectacle. And though Alice was his own witness he was angry with her +because he was angry with her husband. He blushed. Juniors behind him +could watch the blush creeping like a tide round the back of his neck +over his exceedingly white collar. + +"If you'll be good enough to reply----" said he. + +"I met my husband outside St. George's Hall, by appointment," said she. + +"But before that. How did you make his acquaintance?" + +"Through a matrimonial agency," said she. + +"Oh!" observed Crepitude, and decided that he would not pursue that +avenue. The fact was Alice had put him into the wrong humour for making +the best of her. She was, moreover, in a very difficult position, for +Priam had positively forbidden her to have any speech with solicitors' +clerks or with solicitors, and thus Crepitude knew not what pitfalls for +him her evidence might contain. He drew from her an expression of +opinion that her husband was the real Priam Farll, but she could give no +reasons in support--did not seem to conceive that reasons in support +were necessary. + +"Has your husband any moles?" asked Crepitude suddenly. + +"Any what?" demanded Alice, leaning forward. + +Vodrey, K.C., sprang up. + +"I submit to your lordship that my learned friend is putting a leading +question," said Vodrey, K.C. + +"Mr. Crepitude," said the judge, "can you not phrase your questions +differently?" + +"Has your husband any birthmarks--er--on his body?" Crepitude tried +again. + +"Oh! _Moles_, you said? You needn't be afraid. Yes, he's got two moles, +close together on his neck, here." And she pointed amid silence to the +exact spot. Then, noticing the silence, she added, "That's all that I +_know_ of." + +Crepitude resolved to end his examination upon this impressive note, and +he sat down. And Alice had Vodrey, K.C., to face. + +"You met your husband through a matrimonial agency?" he asked. + +"Yes." + +"Who first had recourse to the agency?" + +"I did." + +"And what was your object?" + +"I wanted to find a husband, of course," she smiled. "What _do_ people +go to matrimonial agencies for?" + +"You aren't here to put questions to me," said Vodrey severely. + +"Well," she said, "I should have thought you would have known what +people went to matrimonial agencies for. Still, you live and learn." She +sighed cheerfully. + +"Do you think a matrimonial agency is quite the nicest way of----" + +"It depends what you mean by 'nice,'" said Alice. + +"Womanly." + +"Yes," said Alice shortly, "I do. If you're going to stand there and +tell me I'm unwomanly, all I have to say is that you're unmanly." + +"You say you first met your husband outside St George's Hall?" + +"Yes." + +"Never seen him before?" + +"No." + +"How did you recognize him?" + +"By his photograph." + +"Oh, he'd sent you his photograph?" + +"Yes." + +"With a letter?" + +"Yes." + +"In what name was the letter signed?" + +"Henry Leek." + +"Was that before or after the death of the man who was buried in +Westminster Abbey?" + +"A day or two before." (Sensation in court.) + +"So that your present husband was calling himself Henry Leek before the +death?" + +"No, he wasn't. That letter was written by the man that died. My husband +found my reply to it, and my photograph, in the man's bag afterwards; +and happening to be strolling past St. George's Hall just at the moment +like--" + +"Well, happening to be strolling past St. George's Hall just at the +moment like--" (Titters.) + +"I caught sight of him and spoke to him. You see, I thought then that he +was the man who wrote the letter." + +"What made you think so?" + +"I had the photograph." + +"So that the man who wrote the letter and died didn't send his own +photograph. He sent another photograph--the photograph of your husband?" + +"Yes, didn't you know that? I should have thought you'd have known +that." + +"Do you really expect the jury to believe that tale?" + +Alice turned smiling to the jury. "No," she said, "I'm not sure as I do. +I didn't believe it myself for a long time. But it's true." + +"Then at first you didn't believe your husband was the real Priam +Farll?" + +"No. You see, he didn't exactly tell me like. He only sort of hinted." + +"But you didn't believe?" + +"No." + +"You thought he was lying?" + +"No, I thought it was just a kind of an idea he had. You know my husband +isn't like other gentlemen." + +"I imagine not," said Vodrey. "Now, when did you come to be perfectly +sure that, your husband was the real Priam Farll?" + +"It was the night of that day when Mr. Oxford came down to see him. He +told me all about it then." + +"Oh! That day when Mr. Oxford paid him five hundred pounds?" + +"Yes." + +"Immediately Mr. Oxford paid him five hundred pounds you were ready to +believe that your husband was the real Priam Farll. Doesn't that strike +you as excessively curious?" + +"It's just how it happened," said Alice blandly. + +"Now about these moles. You pointed to the right side of your neck. Are +you sure they aren't on the left side?" + +"Let me think now," said Alice, frowning. "When he's shaving in a +morning--he get up earlier now than he used to--I can see his face in +the looking-glass, and in the looking-glass the moles are on the left +side. So on _him_ they must be on the right side. Yes, the right side. +That's it." + +"Have you never seen them except in a mirror, my good woman?" +interpolated the judge. + +For some reason Alice flushed. "I suppose you think that's funny," she +snapped, slightly tossing her head. + +The audience expected the roof to fall. But the roof withstood the +strain, thanks to a sagacious deafness on the part of the judge. If, +indeed, he had not been visited by a sudden deafness, it is difficult to +see how he would have handled the situation. + +"Have you any idea," Vodrey inquired, "why your husband refuses to +submit his neck to the inspection of the court?" + +"I didn't know he had refused." + +"But he has." + +"Well," said Alice, "if you hadn't turned me out of the court while he +was being examined, perhaps I could have told you. But I can't as it is. +So it serves you right." + +Thus ended Alice's performances. + + +_The Public Captious_ + + +The court rose, and another six or seven hundred pounds was gone into +the pockets of the celebrated artistes engaged. It became at once +obvious, from the tone of the evening placards and the contents of +evening papers, and the remarks in crowded suburban trains, that for the +public the trial had resolved itself into an affair of moles. Nothing +else now interested the great and intelligent public. If Priam had those +moles on his neck, then he was the real Priam. If he had not, then he +was a common cheat. The public had taken the matter into its own hands. +The sturdy common sense of the public was being applied to the affair. +On the whole it may be said that the sturdy common sense of the public +was against Priam. For the majority, the entire story was fishily +preposterous. It must surely be clear to the feeblest brain that if +Priam possessed moles he would expose them. The minority, who talked of +psychology and the artistic temperament, were regarded as the cousins of +Little Englanders and the direct descendants of pro-Boers. + +Still, the thing ought to be proved or disproved. + +Why didn't the judge commit him for contempt of court? He would then be +sent to Holloway and be compelled to strip--and there you were! + +Or why didn't Oxford hire some one to pick a quarrel with him in the +street and carry the quarrel to blows, with a view to raiment-tearing? + +A nice thing, English justice--if it had no machinery to force a man to +show his neck to a jury! But then English justice _was_ notoriously +comic. + +And whole trainfuls of people sneered at their country's institution in +a manner which, had it been adopted by a foreigner, would have plunged +Europe into war and finally tested the blue-water theory. Undoubtedly +the immemorial traditions of English justice came in for very severe +handling, simply because Priam would not take his collar off. + +And he would not. + +The next morning there were consultations in counsel's rooms, and the +common law of the realm was ransacked to find a legal method of +inspecting Priam's moles, without success. Priam arrived safely at the +courts with his usual high collar, and was photographed thirty times +between the kerb and the entrance hall. + +"He's slept in it!" cried wags. + +"Bet yer two ter one it's a clean 'un!" cried other wags. "His missus +gets his linen up." + +It was subject to such indignities that the man who had defied the +Supreme Court of Judicature reached his seat in the theatre. When +solicitors and counsel attempted to reason with him, he answered with +silence. The rumour ran that in his hip pocket he was carrying a +revolver wherewith to protect the modesty of his neck. + +The celebrated artistes, having perceived the folly of losing six or +seven hundred pounds a day because Priam happened to be an obstinate +idiot, continued with the case. For Mr. Oxford and another army of +experts of European reputation were waiting to prove that the pictures +admittedly painted after the burial in the National Valhalla, were +painted by Priam Farll, and could have been painted by no other. They +demonstrated this by internal evidence. In other words, they proved by +deductions from squares of canvas that Priam had moles on his neck. It +was a phenomenon eminently legal. And Priam, in his stiff collar, sat +and listened. The experts, however, achieved two feats, both +unintentionally. They sent the judge soundly to sleep, and they wearied +the public, which considered that the trial was falling short of its +early promise. This _expertise_ went on to the extent of two whole days +and appreciably more than another thousand pounds. And on the third day +Priam, somewhat hardened to renown, reappeared with his mysterious neck, +and more determined than ever. He had seen in a paper, which was +otherwise chiefly occupied with moles and experts, a cautious statement +that the police had collected the necessary _prima facie_ evidence of +bigamy, and that his arrest was imminent. However, something stranger +than arrest for bigamy happened to him. + + +_New Evidence_ + + +The principal King's Bench corridor in the Law Courts, like the other +main corridors, is a place of strange meetings and interviews. A man may +receive there a bit of news that will change the whole of the rest of +his life, or he may receive only an invitation to a mediocre lunch in +the restaurant underneath; he never knows beforehand. Priam assuredly +did not receive an invitation to lunch. He was traversing the crowded +thoroughfares--for with the exception of match and toothpick sellers the +corridor has the characteristics of a Strand pavement in the forenoon-- +when he caught sight of Mr. Oxford talking to a woman. Now, he had +exchanged no word with Mr. Oxford since the historic scene in the club, +and he was determined to exchange no word; however, they had not gone +through the formality of an open breach. The most prudent thing to do, +therefore, was to turn and take another corridor. And Priam would have +fled, being capable of astonishing prudence when prudence meant the +avoidance of unpleasant encounters; but, just as he was turning, the +woman in conversation with Mr. Oxford saw him, and stepped towards him +with the rapidity of thought, holding forth her hand. She was tall, +thin, and stiffly distinguished in the brusque, Dutch-doll motions of +her limbs. Her coat and skirt were quite presentable; but her feet were +large (not her fault, of course, though one is apt to treat large feet +as a crime), and her feathered hat was even larger. She hid her age +behind a veil. + +"How do you do, Mr. Farll?" she addressed him firmly, in a voice which +nevertheless throbbed. + +It was Lady Sophia Entwistle. + +"How do you do?" he said, taking her offered hand. + +There was nothing else to do, and nothing else to say. + +Then Mr. Oxford put out his hand. + +"How do you do, Mr. Farll?" + +And, taking Mr. Oxford's hated hand, Priam said again, "How do you do?" + +It was all just as if there had been no past; the past seemed to have +been swallowed up in the ordinariness of the crowded corridor. By all +the rules for the guidance of human conduct, Lady Sophia ought to have +denounced Priam with outstretched dramatic finger to the contempt of the +world as a philanderer with the hearts of trusting women; and he ought +to have kicked Mr. Oxford along the corridor for a scheming Hebrew. But +they merely shook hands and asked each other how they did, not even +expecting an answer. This shows to what extent the ancient qualities of +the race have deteriorated. + +Then a silence. + +"I suppose you know, Mr. Farll," said Lady Sophia, rather suddenly, +"that I have got to give evidence in this case." + +"No," he said, "I didn't." + +"Yes, it seems they have scoured all over the Continent in vain to find +people who knew you under your proper name, and who could identify you +with certainty, and they couldn't find one--doubtless owing to your +peculiar habits of travel." + +"Really," said Priam. + +He had made love to this woman. He had kissed her. They had promised to +marry each other. It was a piece of wild folly on his part; but, in the +eyes of an impartial person, folly could not excuse his desertion of +her, his flight from her intellectual charms. His gaze pierced her veil. +No, she was not quite so old as Alice. She was not more plain than +Alice. She certainly knew more than Alice. She could talk about pictures +without sticking a knife into his soul and turning it in the wound. She +was better dressed than Alice. And her behaviour on the present +occasion, candid, kind, correct, could not have been surpassed by Alice. +And yet... Her demeanour was without question prodigiously splendid in +its ignoring of all that she had gone through. And yet... Even in that +moment of complicated misery he had enough strength to hate her because +he had been fool enough to make love to her. No excuse whatever for him, +of course! + +"I was in India when I first heard of this case," Lady Sophia continued. +"At first I thought it must be a sort of Tichborne business over again. +Then, knowing you as I did, I thought perhaps it wasn't." + +"And as Lady Sophia happens to be in London now," put in Mr. Oxford, +"she is good enough to give her invaluable evidence on my behalf." + +"That is scarcely the way to describe it," said Lady Sophia coldly. "I +am only here because you compel me to be here by subpoena. It is all due +to your acquaintanceship with my aunt." + +"Quite so, quite so!" Mr. Oxford agreed. "It naturally can't be very +agreeable to you to have to go into the witness-box and submit to +cross-examination. Certainly not. And I am the more obliged to you for +your kindness, Lady Sophia." + +Priam comprehended the situation. Lady Sophia, after his supposed death, +had imparted to relatives the fact of his engagement, and the +unscrupulous scoundrel, Mr. Oxford, had got hold of her and was forcing +her to give evidence for him. And after the evidence, the joke of every +man in the street would be to the effect that Priam Farll, rather than +marry the skinny spinster, had pretended to be dead. + +"You see," Mr. Oxford added to him, "the important point about Lady +Sophia's evidence is that in Paris she saw both you and your valet--the +valet obviously a servant, and you obviously his master. There can, +therefore, be no question of her having been deceived by the valet +posing as the master. It is a most fortunate thing that by a mere +accident I got on the tracks of Lady Sophia in time. In the nick of +time. Only yesterday afternoon!" + +No reference by Mr. Oxford to Priam's obstinacy in the matter of +collars. He appeared to regard Priam's collar as a phenomenon of nature, +such as the weather, or a rock in the sea, as something to be accepted +with resignation! No sign of annoyance with Priam! He was the prince of +diplomatists, was Mr. Oxford. + +"Can I speak to you a minute?" said Lady Sophia to Priam. + +Mr. Oxford stepped away with a bow. + +And Lady Sophia looked steadily at Priam. He had to admit again that she +was stupendous. She was his capital mistake; but she was stupendous. + +At their last interview he had embraced her. She had attended his +funeral in Westminster Abbey. And she could suppress all that from her +eyes! She could stand there calm and urbane in her acceptance of the +terrific past. Apparently she forgave. + +Said Lady Sophia simply, "Now, Mr. Farll, shall I have to give evidence +or not? You know it depends on you?" + +The casualness of her tone was sublime; it was heroic; it made her feet +small. + +He had sworn to himself that he would be cut in pieces before he would +aid the unscrupulous Mr. Oxford by removing his collar in presence of +those dramatic artistes. He had been grossly insulted, disturbed, +maltreated, and exploited. The entire world had meddled with his private +business, and he would be cut in pieces before he would display those +moles which would decide the issue in an instant. + +Well, she had cut him in pieces. + +"Please don't worry," said he in reply. "I will attend to things." + +At that moment Alice, who had followed him by a later train, appeared. + +"Good-morning, Lady Sophia," he said, raising his hat, and left her. + + +_Thoughts on Justice_ + + +"Farll takes his collar off." "Witt _v_. Parfitts. Result." These and +similar placards flew in the Strand breezes. Never in the history of +empires had the removal of a starched linen collar (size 16-1/2) created +one-thousandth part of the sensation caused by the removal of this +collar. It was an epoch-making act. It finished the drama of Witt _v_. +Parfitts. The renowned artistes engaged did not, of course, permit the +case to collapse at once. No, it had to be concluded slowly and +majestically, with due forms and expenses. New witnesses (such as +doctors) had to be called, and old ones recalled. Duncan Farll, for +instance, had to be recalled, and if the situation was ignominious for +Priam it was also ignominious for Duncan. Duncan's sole advantage in his +defeat was that the judge did not skin him alive in the summing up, nor +the jury in their verdict. England breathed more freely when the affair +was finally over and the renowned artistes engaged had withdrawn +enveloped in glory. The truth was that England, so proud of her systems, +had had a fright. Her judicial methods had very nearly failed to make a +man take his collar off in public. They had really failed, but it had +all come right in the end, and so England pretended that they had only +just missed failing. A grave injustice would have been perpetrated had +Priam chosen not to take off his collar. People said, naturally, that +imprisonment for bigamy would have included the taking-off of collars; +but then it was rumoured that prosecution for bigamy had not by any +means been a certainty, as since leaving the box Mrs. Henry Leek had +wavered in her identification. However, the justice of England had +emerged safely. And it was all very astounding and shocking and +improper. And everybody was exceedingly wise after the event. And with +one voice the press cried that something painful ought to occur at once +to Priam Farll, no matter how great an artist he was. + +The question was: How could Priam be trapped in the net of the law? He +had not committed bigamy. He had done nothing. He had only behaved in a +negative manner. He had not even given false information to the +registrar. And Dr. Cashmore could throw no light on the episode, for he +was dead. His wife and daughters had at last succeeded in killing him. +The judge had intimated that the ecclesiastical wrath of the Dean and +Chapter might speedily and terribly overtake Priam Farll; but that +sounded vague and unsatisfactory to the lay ear. + +In short, the matter was the most curious that ever was. And for the +sake of the national peace of mind, the national dignity, and the +national conceit, it was allowed to drop into forgetfulness after a few +days. And when the papers announced that, by Priam's wish, the Farll +museum was to be carried to completion and formally conveyed to the +nation, despite all, the nation decided to accept that honourable amend, +and went off to the seaside for its annual holiday. + + +_The Will to Live_ + + +Alice insisted on it, and so, immediately before their final departure +from England, they went. Priam pretended that the visit was undertaken +solely to please her; but the fact is that his own morbid curiosity +moved in the same direction. They travelled by an omnibus past the +Putney Empire and the Walham Green Empire as far as Walham Green, and +there changed into another one which carried them past the Chelsea +Empire, the Army and Navy Stores, and the Hotel Windsor to the doors of +Westminster Abbey. And they vanished out of the October sunshine into +the beam-shot gloom of Valhalla. It was Alice's first view of Valhalla, +though of course she had heard of it. In old times she had visited +Madame Tussaud's and the Tower, but she had not had leisure to get round +as far as Valhalla. It impressed her deeply. A verger pointed them to +the nave; but they dared not demand more minute instructions. They had +not the courage to ask for _It_. Priam could not speak. There were +moments with him when he could not speak lest his soul should come out +of his mouth and flit irrecoverably away. And he could not find the +tomb. Save for the outrageous tomb of mighty Newton, the nave seemed to +be as naked as when it came into the world. Yet he was sure he was +buried in the nave--and only three years ago, too! Astounding, was it +not, what could happen in three years? He knew that the tomb had not +been removed, for there had been an article in the _Daily Record_ on the +previous day asking in the name of a scandalized public whether the Dean +and Chapter did not consider that three months was more than long enough +for the correction of a fundamental error in the burial department. He +was gloomy; he had in truth been somewhat gloomy ever since the trial. +Perhaps it was the shadow of the wrath of the Dean and Chapter on him. +He had ceased to procure joy in the daily manifestations of life in the +streets of the town. And this failure to discover the tomb intensified +the calm, amiable sadness which distinguished him. + +Alice, gazing around, chiefly with her mouth, inquired suddenly-- + +"What's that printing there?" + +She had detected a legend incised on one of the small stone flags which +form the vast floor of the nave. They stooped over it. "PRIAM FARLL," it +said simply, in fine Roman letters and then his dates. That was all. +Near by, on other flags, they deciphered other names of honour. This +austere method of marking the repose of the dead commended itself to +him, caused him to feel proud of himself and of the ridiculous England +that somehow keeps our great love. His gloom faded. And do you know what +idea rushed from his heart to his brain? "By Jove! I will paint finer +pictures than any I've done yet!" And the impulse to recommence the work +of creation surged over him. The tears started to his eyes. + +"I like that!" murmured Alice, gazing at the stone. "I do think that's +nice." + +And _he_ said, because he truly felt it, because the will to live raged +through him again, tingling and smarting: + +"I'm glad I'm not there." + +They smiled at each other, and their instinctive hands fumblingly met. + +A few days later, the Dean and Chapter, stung into action by the +majestic rebuke of the _Daily Record_, amended the floor of Valhalla and +caused the mortal residuum of the immortal organism known as Henry Leek +to be nocturnally transported to a different bed. + + +_On Board_ + + +A few days later, also, a North German Lloyd steamer quitted Southampton +for Algiers, bearing among its passengers Priam and Alice. It was a +rough starlit night, and from the stern of the vessel the tumbled white +water made a pathway straight to receding England. Priam had come to +love the slopes of Putney with the broad river at the foot; but he +showed what I think was a nice feeling in leaving England. His sojourn +in our land had not crowned him with brilliance. He was not a being +created for society, nor for cutting a figure, nor for exhibiting tact +and prudence in the crises of existence. He could neither talk well nor +read well, nor express himself in exactly suitable actions. He could +only express himself at the end of a brush. He could only paint +extremely beautiful pictures. That was the major part of his vitality. +In minor ways he may have been, upon occasions, a fool. But he was never +a fool on canvas. He said everything there, and said it to perfection, +for those who could read, for those who can read, and for those who will +be able to read five hundred years hence. Why expect more from him? Why +be disappointed in him? One does not expect a wire-walker to play fine +billiards. You yourself, mirror of prudence that you are, would have +certainly avoided all Priam's manifold errors in the conduct of his +social career; but, you see, he was divine in another way. + +As the steamer sped along the lengthening pathway from England, one +question kept hopping in and out of his mind: + +"_I wonder what they'll do with me next time_?" + +Do not imagine that he and Alice were staring over the stern at the +singular isle. No! There were imperative reasons, which affected both of +them, against that. It was only in the moments of the comparative calm +which always follows insurrections, that Priam had leisure to wonder, +and to see his own limitations, and joyfully to meditate upon the +prospect of age devoted to the sole doing of that which he could so +supremely, in a sweet exile with the enchantress, Alice. + + + + + +End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Buried Alive: A Tale of These Days +by Arnold Bennett + +*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK BURIED ALIVE: A TALE OF THESE DAYS *** + +***** This file should be named 10911.txt or 10911.zip ***** +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: + https://www.gutenberg.org/1/0/9/1/10911/ + +Produced by John Hagerson, Kevin Handy and the Online Distributed +Proofreading Team + + +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions +will be renamed. + +Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no +one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation +(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without +permission and without paying copyright royalties. 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