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Buried Alive

<h1>CHAPTER II</h1> <h2>A Pail</h2> Sticking out of the pocket of Leek's light overcoat was a folded copy of the Daily Telegraph. Priam Farll was something of a dandy, and like all right-thinking dandies and all tailors, he objected to the suave line of a garment being spoilt by a free utilization of pockets. The overcoat itself, and the suit beneath, were quite good; for, though they were the property of the late Henry Leek, they perfectly fitted Priam Farll and had recently belonged to him, Leek having been accustomed to clothe himself entirely from his master's wardrobe. The dandy absently drew forth the Telegraph, and the first thing that caught his eye was this: "A beautiful private hotel of the highest class. Luxuriously furnished. Visitor's comfort studied. Finest position in London. Cuisine a speciality. Quiet. Suitable for persons of superior rank. Bathroom. Electric light. Separate tables. No irritating extras. Single rooms from 2-1/2 guineas, double from 4 guineas weekly. 250 Queen's Gate." And below this he saw another piece of news: "Not a boarding-house. A magnificent mansion. Forty bedrooms by Waring. Superb public saloons by Maple. Parisian chef. Separate tables. Four bathrooms. Card-room, billiard-room, vast lounge. Young, cheerful, musical society. Bridge (small). Special sanitation. Finest position in London. No irritating extras. Single rooms from 2-1/2 guineas, double from 4 guineas weekly. Phone 10,073 Western. Trefusis Mansion, W." At that moment a hansom cab came ambling down Selwood Terrace. Impulsively he hailed it. "'Ere, guv'nor," said the cabman, seeing with an expert eye that Priam Farll was unaccustomed to the manipulation of luggage. "Give this 'ere Hackenschmidt a copper to lend ye a hand. You're only a light weight." A small and emaciated boy, with the historic remains of a cigarette in his mouth, sprang like a monkey up the steps, and, not waiting to be asked, snatched the trunk from Priam's hands. Priam gave him one of Leek's sixpences for his feats of strength, and the boy spat generously on the coin, at the same time, by a strange skill, clinging to the cigarette with his lower lip. Then the driver lifted the reins with a noble gesture, and Priam had to be decisive and get into the cab. "250 Queen's Gate," said he. As, keeping his head to one side to avoid the reins, he gave the direction across the roof of the cab to the attentive cocked ear of the cabman, he felt suddenly that he had regained his nationality, that he was utterly English, in an atmosphere utterly English. The hansom was like home after the wilderness. He had chosen 250 Queen's Gate because it appeared the abode of tranquillity and discretion. He felt that he might sink into 250 Queen's Gate as into a feather bed. The other palace intimidated him. It recalled the terrors of a continental hotel. In his wanderings he had suffered much from the young, cheerful and musical society of bright hotels, and bridge (small) had no attraction for him. As the cab tinkled through canyons of familiar stucco, he looked further at the Telegraph. He was rather surprised to find more than a column of enticing palaces, each in the finest position in London; London, in fact, seemed to be one unique, glorious position. And it was so welcome, so receptive, so wishful to make a speciality of your comfort, your food, your bath, your sanitation! He remembered the old boarding-houses of the eighties. Now all was changed, for the better. The Telegraph was full of the better, crammed and packed with tight columns of it. The better burst aspiringly from the tops of columns on the first page and outsoared the very title of the paper. He saw there, for instance, to the left of the title, a new, refined tea-house in Piccadilly Circus, owned and managed by gentlewomen, where you had real tea and real bread-and butter and real cakes in a real drawing-room. It was astounding. The cab stopped. "Is this it?" he asked the driver. "This is 250, sir." And it was. But it did not resemble even a private hotel. It exactly resembled a private house, narrow and tall and squeezed in between its sister and its brother. Priam Farll was puzzled, till the solution occurred to him. "Of course," he said to himself. "This is the quietude, the discretion. I shall like this." He jumped down. "I'll keep you," he threw to the cabman, in the proper phrase (which he was proud to recall from his youth), as though the cabman had been something which he had ordered on approval. There were two bell-knobs. He pulled one, and waited for the portals to open on discreet vistas of luxurious furniture. No response! Just as he was consulting the Telegraph to make sure of the number, the door silently swung back, and disclosed the figure of a middle-aged woman in black silk, who regarded him with a stern astonishment. "Is this----?" he began, nervous and abashed by her formidable stare. "Were you wanting rooms?" she asked. "Yes," said he. "I was. If I could just see----" "Will you come in?" she said. And her morose face, under stringent commands from her brain, began an imitation of a smile which, as an imitation, was wonderful. It made you wonder how she had ever taught her face to do it. Priam Farll found himself blushing on a Turkey carpet, and a sort of cathedral gloom around him. He was disconcerted, but the Turkey carpet assured him somewhat. As his eyes grew habituated to the light he saw that the cathedral was very narrow, and that instead of the choir was a staircase, also clothed in Turkey carpet. On the lowest step reposed an object whose nature he could not at first determine. "Would it be for long?" the lips opposite him muttered cautiously. His reply--the reply of an impulsive, shy nature--was to rush out of the palace. He had identified the object on the stairs. It was a slop-pail with a wrung cloth on its head. He felt profoundly discouraged and pessimistic. All his energy had left him. London had become hard, hostile, cruel, impossible. He longed for Leek with a great longing. <h2>Tea</h2> An hour later, having at the kind suggestion of the cabman deposited Leek's goods at the cloak-room of South Kensington Station, he was wandering on foot out of old London into the central ring of new London, where people never do anything except take the air in parks, lounge in club-windows, roll to and fro in peculiar vehicles that have ventured out without horses and are making the best of it, buy flowers and Egyptian cigarettes, look at pictures, and eat and drink. Nearly all the buildings were higher than they used to be, and the street wider; and at intervals of a hundred yards or so cranes that rent the clouds and defied the law of gravity were continually swinging bricks and marble into the upper layers of the air. Violets were on sale at every corner, and the atmosphere was impregnated with an intoxicating perfume of methylated spirits. Presently he arrived at an immense arched façade bearing principally the legend 'Tea,' and he saw within hundreds of persons sipping tea; and next to that was another arched façade bearing principally the word 'Tea,' and he saw within more hundreds sipping tea; and then another; and then another; and then suddenly he came to an open circular place that seemed vaguely familiar. "By Jove!" he said. "This is Piccadilly Circus!" And just at that moment, over a narrow doorway, he perceived the image of a green tree, and the words, 'The Elm Tree.' It was the entrance to the Elm Tree Tea Rooms, so well spoken of in the Telegraph. In certain ways he was a man of advanced and humane ideas, and the thought of delicately nurtured needy gentlewomen bravely battling with the world instead of starving as they used to starve in the past, appealed to his chivalry. He determined to assist them by taking tea in the advertised drawing-room. Gathering together his courage, he penetrated into a corridor lighted by pink electricity, and then up pink stairs. A pink door stopped him at last. It might have hid mysterious and questionable things, but it said laconically 'Push,' and he courageously pushed... He was in a kind of boudoir thickly populated with tables and chairs. The swift transmigration from the blatant street to a drawing-room had a startling effect on him: it caused him to whip off his hat as though his hat had been red hot. Except for two tall elegant creatures who stood together at the other end of the boudoir, the chairs and tables had the place to themselves. He was about to stammer an excuse and fly, when one of the gentlewomen turned her eye on him for a moment, and so he sat down. The gentlewomen then resumed their conversation. He glanced cautiously about him. Elm-trees, firmly rooted in a border of Indian matting, grew round all the walls in exotic profusion, and their topmost branches splashed over on to the ceiling. A card on the trunk of a tree, announcing curtly, "Dogs not allowed," seemed to enhearten him. After a pause one of the gentlewomen swam haughtily towards him and looked him between the eyes. She spoke no word, but her firm, austere glance said: "Now, out with it, and see you behave yourself!" He had been ready to smile chivalrously. But the smile was put to sudden death. "Some tea, please," he said faintly, and his intimidated tone said, "If it isn't troubling you too much." "What do you want with it?" asked the gentlewoman abruptly, and as he was plainly at a loss she added, "Crumpets or tea-cake?" "Tea-cake," he replied, though he hated tea-cake. But he was afraid. "You've escaped this time," said the drapery of her muslins as she swam from his sight. "But no nonsense while I'm away!" When she sternly and mutely thrust the refection before him, he found that everything on the table except the tea-cakes and the spoon was growing elm-trees. After one cup and one slice, when the tea had become stewed and undrinkable, and the tea-cake a material suitable for the manufacture of shooting boots, he resumed, at any rate partially, his presence of mind, and remembered that he had done nothing positively criminal in entering the boudoir or drawing-room and requesting food in return for money. Besides, the gentlewomen were now pretending to each other that he did not exist, and no other rash persons had been driven by hunger into the virgin forest of elm-trees. He began to meditate, and his meditations taking--for him--an unusual turn, caused him surreptitiously to examine Henry Leek's pocket-book (previously only known to him by sight). He had not for many years troubled himself concerning money, but the discovery that, when he had paid for the deposit of luggage at the cloak-room, a solitary sovereign rested in the pocket of Leek's trousers, had suggested to him that it would be advisable sooner or later to consider the financial aspect of existence. There were two banknotes for ten pounds each in Leek's pocket-book; also five French banknotes of a thousand francs each, and a number of Italian banknotes of small denominations: the equivalent of two hundred and thirty pounds altogether, not counting a folded inch-rule, some postage stamps, and a photograph of a pleasant-faced woman of forty or so. This sum seemed neither vast nor insignificant to Priam Farll. It seemed to him merely a tangible something which would enable him to banish the fiscal question from his mind for an indefinite period. He scarcely even troubled to wonder what Leek was doing with over two years of Leek's income in his pocket-book. He knew, or at least he with certainty guessed, that Leek had been a rascal. Still, he had had a sort of grim, cynical affection for Leek. And the thought that Leek would never again shave him, nor tell him in accents that brooked no delay that his hair must be cut, nor register his luggage and secure his seat on long-distance expresses, filled him with very real melancholy. He did not feel sorry for Leek, nor say to himself "Poor Leek!" Nobody who had had the advantage of Leek's acquaintance would have said "Poor Leek!" For Leek's greatest speciality had always been the speciality of looking after Leek, and wherever Leek might be it was a surety that Leek's interests would not suffer. Therefore Priam Farll's pity was mainly self-centred. And though his dignity had been considerably damaged during the final moments at Selwood Terrace, there was matter for congratulation. The doctor, for instance, had shaken hands with him at parting; had shaken hands openly, in the presence of Duncan Farll: a flattering tribute to his personality. But the chief of Priam Farll's satisfactions in that desolate hour was that he had suppressed himself, that for the world he existed no more. I shall admit frankly that this satisfaction nearly outweighed his grief. He sighed--and it was a sigh of tremendous relief. For now, by a miracle, he would be free from the menace of Lady Sophia Entwistle. Looking back in calmness at the still recent Entwistle episode in Paris--the real originating cause of his sudden flight to London--he was staggered by his latent capacity for downright, impulsive foolishness. Like all shy people he had fits of amazing audacity--and his recklessness usually took the form of making himself agreeable to women whom he encountered in travel (he was much less shy with women than with men). But to propose marriage to a weather-beaten haunter of hotels like Lady Sophia Entwistle, and to reveal his identity to her, and to allow her to accept his proposal--the thing had been unimaginably inept! And now he was free, for he was dead. He was conscious of a chill in the spine as he dwelt on the awful fate which he had escaped. He, a man of fifty, a man of set habits, a man habituated to the liberty of the wild stag, to bow his proud neck under the solid footwear of Lady Sophia Entwistle! Yes, there was most decidedly a silver lining to the dark cloud of Leek's translation to another sphere of activity. In replacing the pocket-book his hand encountered the letter which had arrived for Leek in the morning. Arguing with himself whether he ought to open it, he opened it. It ran: "Dear Mr. Leek, I am so glad to have your letter, and I think the photograph is most gentlemanly. But I do wish you would not write with a typewriter. You don't know how this affects a woman, or you wouldn't do it. However, I shall be so glad to meet you now, as you suggest. Suppose we go to Maskelyne and Cook's together to-morrow afternoon (Saturday). You know it isn't the Egyptian Hall any more. It is in St. George's Hall, I think. But you will see it in the Telegraph; also the time. I will be there when the doors open. You will recognize me from my photograph; but I shall wear red roses in my hat. So au revoir for the present. Yours sincerely, Alice Challice. P.S.--There are always a lot of dark parts at Maskelyne and Cook's. I must ask you to behave as a gentleman should. Excuse me. I merely mention it in case.--A. C." Infamous Leek! Here was at any rate one explanation of a mysterious little typewriter which the valet had always carried, but which Priam had left at Selwood Terrace. Priam glanced at the photograph in the pocket-book; and also, strange to say, at the Telegraph. A lady with three children burst into the drawing-room, and instantly occupied the whole of it; the children cried "Mathaw!" "Mathah!" "Mathaw!" in shrill tones of varied joy. As one of the gentlewomen passed near him, he asked modestly-- "How much, please?" She dropped a flake of paper on to his table without arresting her course, and said warningly: "You pay at the desk." When he hit on the desk, which was hidden behind a screen of elm-trees, he had to face a true aristocrat--and not in muslins, either. If the others were the daughters of earls, this was the authentic countess in a tea-gown. He put down Leek's sovereign. "Haven't you anything smaller?" snapped the countess. "I'm sorry I haven't," he replied. She picked up the sovereign scornfully, and turned it over. "It's very awkward," she muttered. Then she unlocked two drawers, and unwillingly gave him eighteen and sixpence in silver and copper, without another word and without looking at him. "Thank you," said he, pocketing it nervously. And, amid reiterated cries of "Mathah!" "Mathaw!" "Mathah!" he hurried away, unregarded, unregretted, splendidly repudiated by these delicate refined creatures who were struggling for a livelihood in a great city. <h2>Alice Challice</h2> "I suppose you are Mr. Leek, aren't you?" a woman greeted him as he stood vaguely hesitant outside St. George's Hall, watching the afternoon audience emerge. He started back, as though the woman with her trace of Cockney accent had presented a revolver at his head. He was very much afraid. It may reasonably be asked what he was doing up at St. George's Hall. The answer to this most natural question touches the deepest springs of human conduct. There were two men in Priam Farll. One was the shy man, who had long ago persuaded himself that he actually preferred not to mix with his kind, and had made a virtue of his cowardice. The other was a doggish, devil-may-care fellow who loved dashing adventures and had a perfect passion for free intercourse with the entire human race. No. 2 would often lead No. 1 unsuspectingly forward to a difficult situation from which No. 1, though angry and uncomfortable, could not retire. Thus it was No. 2 who with the most casual air had wandered up Regent Street, drawn by the slender chance of meeting a woman with red roses in her hat; and it was No. 1 who had to pay the penalty. Nobody could have been more astonished than No. 2 at the fulfillment of No. 2's secret yearning for novelty. But the innocent sincerity of No. 2's astonishment gave no aid to No. 1. Farll raised his hat, and at the same moment perceived the roses. He might have denied the name of Leek and fled, but he did not. Though his left leg was ready to run, his right leg would not stir. Then he was shaking hands with her. But how had she identified him? "I didn't really expect you," said the lady, always with a slight Cockney accent. "But I thought how silly it would be for me to miss the vanishing trick just because you couldn't come. So in I went, by myself." "Why didn't you expect me?" he asked diffidently. "Well," she said, "Mr. Farll being dead, I knew you'd have a lot to do, besides being upset like." "Oh yes," he said quickly, feeling that he must be more careful; for he had quite forgotten that Mr. Farll was dead. "How did you know?" "How did I know!" she cried. "Well, I like that! Look anywhere! It's all over London, has been these six hours." She pointed to a ragged man who was wearing an orange-coloured placard by way of apron. On the placard was printed in large black letters: "Sudden death of Priam Farll in London. Special Memoir." Other ragged men, also wearing aprons, but of different colours, similarly proclaimed by their attire that Priam Farll was dead. And people crowding out of St. George's Hall were continually buying newspapers from these middlemen of tidings. He blushed. It was singular that he could have walked even half-an-hour in Central London without noticing that his own name flew in the summer breeze of every street. But so it had been. He was that sort of man. Now he understood how Duncan Farll had descended upon Selwood Terrace. "You don't mean to say you didn't see those posters?" she demanded. "I didn't," he said simply. "That shows how you must have been thinking!" said she. "Was he a good master?" "Yes, very good," said Priam Farll with conviction. "I see you're not in mourning." "No. That is----" "I don't hold with mourning myself," she proceeded. "They say it's to show respect. But it seems to me that if you can't show your respect without a pair of black gloves that the dye's always coming off... I don't know what you think, but I never did hold with mourning. It's grumbling against Providence, too! Not but what I think there's a good deal too much talk about Providence. I don't know what you think, but----" "I quite agree with you," he said, with a warm generous smile which sometimes rushed up and transformed his face before he was aware of the occurrence. And she smiled also, gazing at him half confidentially. She was a little woman, stoutish--indeed, stout; puffy red cheeks; a too remarkable white cotton blouse; and a crimson skirt that hung unevenly; grey cotton gloves; a green sunshade; on the top of all this the black hat with red roses. The photograph in Leek's pocket-book must have been taken in the past. She looked quite forty-five, whereas the photograph indicated thirty-nine and a fraction. He gazed down at her protectively, with a good-natured appreciative condescension. "I suppose you'll have to be going back again soon, to arrange things like," she said. It was always she who kept the conversation afloat. "No," he said. "I've finished there. They've dismissed me." "Who have?" "The relatives." "Why?" He shook his head. "I hope you made them pay you your month," said she firmly. He was glad to be able to give a satisfactory answer. After a pause she resumed bravely: "So Mr. Farll was one of these artists? At least so I see according to the paper." He nodded. "It's a very funny business," she said. "But I suppose there's some of them make quite a nice income out of it. You ought to know about that, being in it, as it were." Never in his life had he conversed on such terms with such a person as Mrs. Alice Challice. She was in every way a novelty for him--in clothes, manners, accent, deportment, outlook on the world and on paint. He had heard and read of such beings as Mrs. Alice Challice, and now he was in direct contact with one of them. The whole affair struck him as excessively odd, as a mad escapade on his part. Wisdom in him deemed it ridiculous to prolong the encounter, but shy folly could not break loose. Moreover she possessed the charm of her novelty; and there was that in her which challenged the male in him. "Well," she said, "I suppose we can't stand here for ever!" The crowd had frittered itself away, and an attendant was closing and locking the doors of St. George's Hall. He coughed. "It's a pity it's Saturday and all the shops closed. But anyhow suppose we walk along Oxford Street all the same? Shall we?" This from her. "By all means." "Now there's one thing I should like to say," she murmured with a calm smile as they moved off. "You've no occasion to be shy with me. There's no call for it. I'm just as you see me." "Shy!" he exclaimed, genuinely surprised. "Do I seem shy to you?" He thought he had been magnificently doggish. "Oh, well," she said. "That's all right, then, if you aren't. I should take it as a poor compliment, being shy with me. Where do you think we can have a good talk? I'm free for the evening. I don't know about you." Her eyes questioned his. <h2>No Gratuities</h2> At a late hour, they were entering, side by side, a glittering establishment whose interior seemed to be walled chiefly in bevelled glass, so that everywhere the curious observer saw himself and twisted fractions of himself. The glass was relieved at frequent intervals by elaborate enamelled signs which repeated, 'No gratuities.' It seemed that the directors of the establishment wished to make perfectly clear to visitors that, whatever else they might find, they must on no account expect gratuities. "I've always wanted to come here," said Mrs. Alice Challice vivaciously, glancing up at Priam Farll's modest, middle-aged face. Then, after they had successfully passed through a preliminary pair of bevelled portals, a huge man dressed like a policeman, and achieving a very successful imitation of a policeman, stretched out his hand, and stopped them. "In line, please," he said. "I thought it was a restaurant, not a theatre," Priam whispered to Mrs. Challice. "So it is a restaurant," said his companion. "But I hear they're obliged to do like this because there's always such a crowd. It's very 'andsome, isn't it?" He agreed that it was. He felt that London had got a long way in front of him and that he would have to hurry a great deal before he could catch it up. At length another imitation of a policeman opened more doors and, with other sinners, they were released from purgatory into a clattering paradise, which again offered everything save gratuities. They were conducted to a small table full of dirty plates and empty glasses in a corner of the vast and lofty saloon. A man in evening dress whose eye said, "Now mind, no insulting gratuities!" rushed past the table and in one deft amazing gesture swept off the whole of its contents and was gone with them. It was an astounding feat, and when Priam recovered from his amazement he fell into another amazement on discovering that by some magic means the man in evening dress had insinuated a gold-charactered menu into his hands. This menu was exceedingly long--it comprised everything except gratuities--and, evidently knowing from experience that it was not a document to be perused and exhausted in five minutes, the man in evening dress took care not to interrupt the studies of Priam Farll and Alice Challice during a full quarter of an hour. Then he returned like a bolt, put them through an examination in the menu, and fled, and when he was gone they saw that the table was set with a clean cloth and instruments and empty glasses. A band thereupon burst into gay strains, like the band at a music-hall after something very difficult on the horizontal bar. And it played louder and louder; and as it played louder, so the people talked louder. And the crash of cymbals mingled with the crash of plates, and the altercations of knives and forks with the shrill accents of chatterers determined to be heard. And men in evening dress (a costume which seemed to be forbidden to sitters at tables) flitted to and fro with inconceivable rapidity, austere, preoccupied conjurers. And from every marble wall, bevelled mirror, and Doric column, there spoke silently but insistently the haunting legend, 'No gratuities.' Thus Priam Farll began his first public meal in modern London. He knew the hotels; he knew the restaurants, of half-a-dozen countries, but he had never been so overwhelmed as he was here. Remembering London as a city of wooden chop-houses, he could scarcely eat for the thoughts that surged through his brain. "Isn't it amusing?" said Mrs. Challice benignantly, over a glass of lager. "I'm so glad you brought me here. I've always wanted to come." And then, a few minutes afterwards, she was saying, against the immense din-- "You know, I've been thinking for years of getting married again. And if you really are thinking of getting married, what are you to do? You may sit in a chair and wait till eggs are sixpence a dozen, and you'll be no nearer. You must do something. And what is there except a matrimonial agency? I say--what's the matter with a matrimonial agency, anyhow? If you want to get married, you want to get married, and it's no use pretending you don't. I do hate pretending, I do. No shame in wanting to get married, is there? I think a matrimonial agency is a very good, useful thing. They say you're swindled. Well, those that are deserve to be. You can be swindled without a matrimonial agency, seems to me. Not that I've ever been. Plain common-sense people never are. No, if you ask me, matrimonial agencies are the most sensible things--after dress-shields--that's ever been invented. And I'm sure if anything comes of this, I shall pay the fees with the greatest pleasure. Now don't you agree with me?" The whole mystery stood explained. "Absolutely!" he said. And felt the skin creeping in the small of his back. <hr /> <div style="break-after:column;"></div>

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