Buried Alive: A Tale of These Days - Arnold Bennett
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.