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Buried Alive: A Tale of These Days, a novel by Arnold Bennett |
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Chapter 10. The Secret |
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_ 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?" _ |
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