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

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,