Читать книгу Buried Alive + The Old Wives' Tale + The Card (3 Classics by Arnold Bennett) - Arnold Bennett - Страница 44

The theatre in which the emotional drama of Witt Parfitts was to be played, lacked the usual characteristics of a modern place of entertainment. It was far too high for its width and breadth; it was badly illuminated; it was draughty in winter and stuffy in summer, being completely deprived of ventilation. Had it been under the control of the County Council it would have been instantly condemned as dangerous in case of fire, for its gangways were always encumbered and its exits of a mediaeval complexity. It had no stage, no footlights, and all its seats were of naked wood except one.

This unique seat was occupied by the principal player, who wore a humorous wig and a brilliant and expensive scarlet costume. He was a fairly able judge, but he had mistaken his vocation; his rare talent for making third-rate jokes would have brought him a fortune in the world of musical comedy. His salary was a hundred a week; better comedians have earned less. On the present occasion he was in the midst of a double row of fashionable hats, and beneath the hats were the faces of fourteen feminine relatives and acquaintances. These hats performed the function of 'dressing' the house. The principal player endeavoured to behave as though under the illusion that he was alone in his glory, but he failed.

There were four other leading actors: Mr. Pennington, K.C., and Mr. Vodrey, K.C., engaged by the plaintiff, and Mr. Cass, K.C., and Mr. Crepitude, K.C., engaged by the defendant. These artistes were the stars of their profession, nominally less glittering, but really far more glittering than the player in scarlet. Their wigs were of inferior quality to his, and their costumes shabby, but they did not mind, for whereas he got a hundred a week, they each got a hundred a day. Three junior performers received ten guineas a day apiece: one of them held a watching brief for the Dean and Chapter of the Abbey, who, being members of a Christian fraternity, were pained and horrified by the defendants' implication that they had given interment to a valet, and who were determined to resist exhumation at all hazards. The supers in the drama, whose business it was to whisper to each other and to the players, consisted of solicitors, solicitors' clerks, and experts; their combined emoluments worked out at the rate of a hundred and fifty pounds a day. Twelve excellent men in the jury-box received between them about as much as would have kept a K.C. alive for five minutes. The total expenses of production thus amounted to something like six or seven hundred pounds a day. The preliminary expenses had run into several thousands. The enterprise could have been made remunerative by hiring for it Convent Garden Theatre and selling stalls as for Tettrazzini and Caruso, but in the absurd auditorium chosen, crammed though it was to the perilous doors, the loss was necessarily terrific. Fortunately the affair was subsidized; not merely by the State, but also by those two wealthy capitalists, Whitney C. Witt and Mr. Oxford; and therefore the management were in a position to ignore paltry financial considerations and to practise art for art's sake.

In opening the case Mr. Pennington, K.C., gave instant proof of his astounding histrionic powers. He began calmly, colloquially, treating the jury as friends of his boyhood, and the judge as a gifted uncle, and stated in simple language that Whitney C. Witt was claiming seventy-two thousand pounds from the defendants, money paid for worthless pictures palmed off upon the myopic and venerable plaintiff as masterpieces. He recounted the life and death of the great painter Priam Farll, and his solemn burial and the tears of the whole world. He dwelt upon the genius of Priam Farll, and then upon the confiding nature of the plaintiff. Then he inquired who could blame the plaintiff for his confidence in the uprightness of a firm with such a name as Parfitts. And then he explained by what accident of a dating-stamp on a canvas it had been discovered that the pictures guaranteed to be by Priam Farll were painted after Priam Farll's death.

He proceeded with no variation of tone: "The explanation is simplicity itself. Priam Farll was not really dead. It was his valet who died. Quite naturally, quite comprehensibly, the great genius Priam Farll wished to pass the remainder of his career as a humble valet. He deceived everybody; the doctor, his cousin, Mr. Duncan Farll, the public authorities, the Dean and Chapter of the Abbey, the nation--in fact, the entire world! As Henry Leek he married, and as Henry Leek he recommenced the art of painting--in Putney; he carried on the vocation several years without arousing the suspicions of a single person; and then--by a curious coincidence immediately after my client threatened an action against the defendant--he displayed himself in his true identity as Priam Farll. Such is the simple explanation," said Pennington, K.C., and added, "which you will hear presently from the defendant. Doubtless it will commend itself to you as experienced men of the world. You cannot but have perceived that such things are constantly happening in real life, that they are of daily occurrence. I am almost ashamed to stand up before you and endeavour to rebut a story so plausible and so essentially convincing. I feel that my task is well-nigh hopeless. Nevertheless, I must do my best."

And so on.

It was one of his greatest feats in the kind of irony that appeals to a jury. And the audience deemed that the case was already virtually decided.

After Whitney C. Witt and his secretary had been called and had filled the court with the echoing twang of New York (the controlled fury of the aged Witt was highly effective), Mrs. Henry Leek was invited to the witness-box. She was supported thither by her two curates, who, however, could not prevent her from weeping at the stern voice of the usher. She related her marriage.

"Is that your husband?" demanded Vodrey, K.C. (who had now assumed the principal rôle, Pennington, K.C., being engaged in another play in another theatre), pointing with one of his well-conceived dramatic gestures to Priam Farll.

"It is," sobbed Mrs. Henry Leek.

The unhappy creature believed what she said, and the curates, though silent, made a deep impression on the jury. In cross-examination, when Crepitude, K.C., forced her to admit that on first meeting Priam in his house in Werter Road she had not been quite sure of his identity, she replied--

"It's all come over me since. Shouldn't a woman recognize the father of her own children?"

"She should," interpolated the judge. There was a difference of opinion as to whether his word was jocular or not.

Mrs. Henry Leek was a touching figure, but not amusing. It was Mr. Duncan Farll who, quite unintentionally, supplied the first relief.

Duncan pooh-poohed the possibility of Priam being Priam. He detailed all the circumstances that followed the death in Selwood Terrace, and showed in fifty ways that Priam could not have been Priam. The man now masquerading as Priam was not even a gentleman, whereas Priam was Duncan's cousin! Duncan was an excellent witness, dry, precise, imperturbable. Under cross-examination by Crepitude he had to describe particularly his boyish meeting with Priam. Mr. Crepitude was not inquisitive.

"Tell us what occurred," said Crepitude.

"Well, we fought."

"Oh! You fought! What did you two naughty boys fight about?" (Great laughter.)

"About a plum-cake, I think."

"Oh! Not a seed-cake, a plum-cake?" (Great laughter.)

"I think a plum-cake."

"And what was the result of this sanguinary encounter?" (Great laughter.)

"My cousin loosened one of my teeth." (Great laughter, in which the court joined.)

"And what did you do to him?"

"I'm afraid I didn't do much. I remember tearing half his clothes off." (Roars of laughter, in which every one joined except Priam and Duncan Farll.)

"Oh! You are sure you remember that? You are sure that it wasn't he who tore your clothes off?" (Lots of hysteric laughter.)

"Yes," said Duncan, coldly dreaming in the past. His eyes had the 'far away' look, as he added, "I remember now that my cousin had two little moles on his neck below the collar. I seem to remember seeing them. I've just thought of it."

There is, of course, when it is mentioned in a theatre, something exorbitantly funny about even one mole. Two moles together brought the house down.

Mr. Crepitude leaned over to a solicitor in front of him; the solicitor leaned aside to a solicitor's clerk, and the solicitor's clerk whispered to Priam Farll, who nodded.

"Er----" Mr. Crepitude was beginning again, but he stopped and said to Duncan Farll, "Thank you. You can step down."

Then a witness named Justini, a cashier at the Hôtel de Paris, Monte Carlo, swore that Priam Farll, the renowned painter, had spent four days in the Hôtel de Paris one hot May, seven years ago, and that the person in the court whom the defendant stated to be Priam Farll was not that man. No cross-examination could shake Mr. Justini. Following him came the manager of the Hôtel Belvedere at Mont Pélerin, near Vevey, Switzerland, who related a similar tale and was equally unshaken.

And after that the pictures themselves were brought in, and the experts came after them and technical evidence was begun. Scarcely had it begun when a clock struck and the performance ended for the day. The principal actors doffed their costumes, and snatched up the evening papers to make sure that the descriptive reporters had been as eulogistic of them as usual. The judge, who subscribed to a press-cutting agency, was glad to find, the next morning, that none of his jokes had been omitted by any of the nineteen chief London dailies. And the Strand and Piccadilly were quick with Witt v. Parfitts--on evening posters and in the strident mouths of newsboys. The telegraph wires vibrated to Witt v. Parfitts. In the great betting industrial towns of the provinces wagers were laid at scientific prices. England, in a word, was content, and the principal actors had the right to be content also. Very astute people in clubs and saloon bars talked darkly about those two moles, and Priam's nod in response to the whispers of the solicitor's clerk: such details do not escape the modern sketch writer at a thousand a year. To very astute people the two moles appeared to promise pretty things.