Читать книгу Buried Alive + The Old Wives' Tale + The Card (3 Classics by Arnold Bennett) - Arnold Bennett - Страница 45

"Leek in the box."

This legend got itself on to the telegraph wires and the placards within a few minutes of Priam's taking the oath. It sent a shiver of anticipation throughout the country. Three days had passed since the opening of the case (for actors engaged at a hundred a day for the run of the piece do not crack whips behind experts engaged at ten or twenty a day; the pace had therefore been dignified), and England wanted a fillip.

Nobody except Alice knew what to expect from Priam. Alice knew. She knew that Priam was in an extremely peculiar state which might lead to extremely peculiar results; and she knew also that there was nothing to be done with him! She herself had made one little effort to bathe him in the light of reason; the effort had not succeeded. She saw the danger of renewing it. Pennington, K.C., by the way, insisted that she should leave the court during Priam's evidence.

Priam's attitude towards the whole case was one of bitter resentment, a resentment now hot, now cold. He had the strongest possible objection to the entire affair. He hated Witt as keenly as he hated Oxford. All that he demanded from the world was peace and quietness, and the world would not grant him these inexpensive commodities. He had not asked to be buried in Westminster Abbey; his interment had been forced upon him. And if he chose to call himself by another name, why should he not do so? If he chose to marry a simple woman, and live in a suburb and paint pictures at ten pounds each, why should he not do so? Why should he be dragged out of his tranquillity because two persons in whom he felt no interest whatever, had quarrelled over his pictures? Why should his life have been made unbearable in Putney by the extravagant curiosity of a mob of journalists? And then, why should he be compelled, by means of a piece of blue paper, to go through the frightful ordeal and flame of publicity in a witness-box? That was the crowning unmerited torture, the unthinkable horror which had broken his sleep for many nights.

In the box he certainly had all the appearance of a trapped criminal, with his nervous movements, his restless lowered eyes, and his faint, hard voice that he could scarcely fetch up from his throat. Nervousness lined with resentment forms excellent material for the plastic art of a cross-examining counsel, and Pennington, K.C., itched to be at work. Crepitude, K.C., Oxford's counsel, was in less joyous mood. Priam was Crepitude's own witness, and yet a horrible witness, a witness who had consistently and ferociously declined to open his mouth until he was in the box. Assuredly he had nodded, in response to the whispered question of the solicitor's clerk, but he had not confirmed the nod, nor breathed a word of assistance during the three days of the trial. He had merely sat there, blazing in silence.

"Your name is Priam Farll?" began Crepitude.

"It is," said Priam sullenly, and with all the external characteristics of a liar. At intervals he glanced surreptitiously at the judge, as though the judge had been a bomb with a lighted fuse.

The examination started badly, and it went from worse to worse. The idea that this craven, prevaricating figure in the box could be the illustrious, the world-renowned Priam Farll, seemed absurd. Crepitude had to exercise all his self-control in order not to bully Priam.

"That is all," said Crepitude, after Priam had given his preposterous and halting explanations of the strange phenomena of his life after the death of Leek. None of these carried conviction. He merely said that the woman Leek was mistaken in identifying him as her husband; he inferred that she was hysterical; this inference alienated him from the audience completely. His statement that he had no definite reason for pretending to be Leek--that it was an impulse of the moment--was received with mute derision. His explanation, when questioned as to the evidence of the hotel officials, that more than once his valet Leek had gone about impersonating his master, seemed grotesquely inadequate.

People wondered why Crepitude had made no reference to the moles. The fact was, Crepitude was afraid to refer to the moles. In mentioning the moles to Priam he might be staking all to lose all.

However, Pennington, K.C., alluded to the moles. But not until he had conclusively proved to the judge, in a cross-questioning of two hours' duration, that Priam knew nothing of Priam's own youth, nor of painting, nor of the world of painters. He made a sad mess of Priam. And Priam's voice grew fainter and fainter, and his gestures more and more self-incriminating.

Pennington, K.C., achieved one or two brilliant little effects.

"Now you say you went with the defendant to his club, and that he told you of the difficulty he was in!"

"Yes."

"Did he make you any offer of money?"

"Yes."

"Ah! What did he offer you?"

"Thirty-six thousand pounds." (Sensation in court.)

"So! And what was this thirty-six thousand pounds to be for?"

"I don't know."

"You don't know? Come now."

"I don't know."

"You accepted the offer?"

"No, I refused it." (Sensation in court.)

"Why did you refuse it?"

"Because I didn't care to accept it."

"Then no money passed between you that day?"

"Yes. Five hundred pounds."

"What for?"

"A picture."

"The same kind of picture that you had been selling at ten pounds?"

"Yes."

"So that on the very day that the defendant wanted you to swear that you were Priam Farll, the price of your pictures rose from ten pounds to five hundred?"

"Yes."

"Doesn't that strike you as odd?"

"Yes."

"You still say--mind, Leek, you are on your oath!--you still say that you refused thirty-six thousand pounds in order to accept five hundred."

"I sold a picture for five hundred."

(On the placards in the Strand: "Severe cross-examination of Leek.")

"Now about the encounter with Mr. Duncan Farll. Of course, if you are really Priam Farll, you remember all about that?"

"Yes."

"What age were you?"

"I don't know. About nine."

"Oh! You were about nine. A suitable age for cake." (Great laughter.) "Now, Mr. Duncan Farll says you loosened one of his teeth."

"I did."

"And that he tore your clothes."

"I dare say."

"He says he remembers the fact because you had two moles."

"Yes."

"Have you two moles?"

"Yes." (Immense sensation.)

Pennington paused.

"Where are they?"

"On my neck just below my collar."

"Kindly place your hand at the spot."

Priam did so. The excitement was terrific.

Pennington again paused. But, convinced that Priam was an impostor, he sarcastically proceeded--

"Perhaps, if I am not asking too much, you will take your collar off and show the two moles to the court?"

"No," said Priam stoutly. And for the first time he looked Pennington in the face.

"You would prefer to do it, perhaps, in his lordship's room, if his lordship consents."

"I won't do it anywhere," said Priam.

"But surely--" the judge began.

"I won't do it anywhere, my lord," Priam repeated loudly. All his resentment surged up once more; and particularly his resentment against the little army of experts who had pronounced his pictures to be clever but worthless imitations of himself. If his pictures, admittedly painted after his supposed death, could not prove his identity; if his word was to be flouted by insulting and bewigged beasts of prey; then his moles should not prove his identity. He resolved upon obstinacy.

"The witness, gentlemen," said Pennington, K.C., in triumph to the jury, "has two moles on his neck, exactly as described by Mr. Duncan Farll, but he will not display them!"

Eleven legal minds bent nobly to the problem whether the law and justice of England could compel a free man to take his collar off if he refused to take his collar off. In the meantime, of course, the case had to proceed. The six or seven hundred pounds a day must be earned, and there were various other witnesses. The next witness was Alice.