Читать книгу Buried Alive + The Old Wives' Tale + The Card (3 Classics by Arnold Bennett) - Arnold Bennett - Страница 19

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 of Who'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.