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.
"Youarelike 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'tyouthink 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.
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?"
"Ohno, 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.
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 thesortof 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 thathisrenown 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 stuffwasappreciated 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, whatcouldthey 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 judgmentswerenotoriously 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------?
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 Iwasgetting enormous.
Man: Let me putthatin, 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 theRecordI 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?Isthis 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.Youknow.
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 dothat. 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 theRecord.
Man: Delighted.
Priest: Delighted.
Woman: Now, Father Luke, I've justgotto 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: ButIshan'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 theRecord.
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'redieting.
Priest: Idon'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 theRecord, 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 theRecordwill support the project. I say Ithink.
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.
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 theSunday News, a newspaper which belonged to Lord Nasing, the proprietor of theDaily Record. There was a column in theSunday 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 theSunday 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 theDaily Recordcame nobly to the support of theSunday 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 haddonefor 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 theDaily Record'scharacteristic '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 theDaily Recordthat settled this one. TheDaily Recordcame 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 theRecord, several Rembrandts, a Velasquez, six Vermeers, a Giorgione, a Turner, a Charles, two Cromes, a Holbein. (After Charles theRecordput 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? TheRecordwas 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 theDaily Record, and partly by the will, which proved that after all Priam Farll had had the highest interests of his country at heart.
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 ofWho'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 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 theDaily 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.
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. "Comeon."
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.