Buried Alive: a Tale of These Days by Arnold Bennett (books to read now .TXT) 📕

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!

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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