Читать книгу Buried Alive + The Old Wives' Tale + The Card (3 Classics by Arnold Bennett) - Arnold Bennett - Страница 47

The court rose, and another six or seven hundred pounds was gone into the pockets of the celebrated artistes engaged. It became at once obvious, from the tone of the evening placards and the contents of evening papers, and the remarks in crowded suburban trains, that for the public the trial had resolved itself into an affair of moles. Nothing else now interested the great and intelligent public. If Priam had those moles on his neck, then he was the real Priam. If he had not, then he was a common cheat. The public had taken the matter into its own hands. The sturdy common sense of the public was being applied to the affair. On the whole it may be said that the sturdy common sense of the public was against Priam. For the majority, the entire story was fishily preposterous. It must surely be clear to the feeblest brain that if Priam possessed moles he would expose them. The minority, who talked of psychology and the artistic temperament, were regarded as the cousins of Little Englanders and the direct descendants of pro-Boers.

Still, the thing ought to be proved or disproved.

Why didn't the judge commit him for contempt of court? He would then be sent to Holloway and be compelled to strip--and there you were!

Or why didn't Oxford hire some one to pick a quarrel with him in the street and carry the quarrel to blows, with a view to raiment-tearing?

A nice thing, English justice--if it had no machinery to force a man to show his neck to a jury! But then English justice was notoriously comic.

And whole trainfuls of people sneered at their country's institution in a manner which, had it been adopted by a foreigner, would have plunged Europe into war and finally tested the blue-water theory. Undoubtedly the immemorial traditions of English justice came in for very severe handling, simply because Priam would not take his collar off.

And he would not.

The next morning there were consultations in counsel's rooms, and the common law of the realm was ransacked to find a legal method of inspecting Priam's moles, without success. Priam arrived safely at the courts with his usual high collar, and was photographed thirty times between the kerb and the entrance hall.

"He's slept in it!" cried wags.

"Bet yer two ter one it's a clean 'un!" cried other wags. "His missus gets his linen up."

It was subject to such indignities that the man who had defied the Supreme Court of Judicature reached his seat in the theatre. When solicitors and counsel attempted to reason with him, he answered with silence. The rumour ran that in his hip pocket he was carrying a revolver wherewith to protect the modesty of his neck.

The celebrated artistes, having perceived the folly of losing six or seven hundred pounds a day because Priam happened to be an obstinate idiot, continued with the case. For Mr. Oxford and another army of experts of European reputation were waiting to prove that the pictures admittedly painted after the burial in the National Valhalla, were painted by Priam Farll, and could have been painted by no other. They demonstrated this by internal evidence. In other words, they proved by deductions from squares of canvas that Priam had moles on his neck. It was a phenomenon eminently legal. And Priam, in his stiff collar, sat and listened. The experts, however, achieved two feats, both unintentionally. They sent the judge soundly to sleep, and they wearied the public, which considered that the trial was falling short of its early promise. This expertise went on to the extent of two whole days and appreciably more than another thousand pounds. And on the third day Priam, somewhat hardened to renown, reappeared with his mysterious neck, and more determined than ever. He had seen in a paper, which was otherwise chiefly occupied with moles and experts, a cautious statement that the police had collected the necessary primâ facie evidence of bigamy, and that his arrest was imminent. However, something stranger than arrest for bigamy happened to him.