Buried Alive: a Tale of These Days Part 16

So in the sitting-room in Werter Road, he walked uneasily to and fro, squeezing between the table and the sideboard, and then skirting the fireplace where Alice sat with a darning apparatus upon her knees, and her spectacles on--she wore spectacles when she had to look fixedly at very dark objects. The room was ugly in a pleasant Putneyish way, with a couple of engravings after B.W. Leader, R.A., a too realistic wall-paper, hot brown furniture with ribbed legs, a carpet with the characteristics of a retired governess who has taken to drink, and a black cloud on the ceiling over the incandescent burners. Happily these surroundings did not annoy him. They did not annoy him because he never saw them. When his eyes were not resting on beautiful things, they were not in this world of reality at all. His sole idea about house-furnis.h.i.+ng was an easy-chair.

"Harry," said his wife, "don't you think you'd better sit down?"

The calm voice of common sense stopped him in his circular tour. He glanced at Alice, and she, removing her spectacles, glanced at him. The seal on his watch-chain dangled free. He had to talk to some one, and his wife was there--not only the most convenient but the most proper person to talk to. A tremendous impulse seized him to tell her everything; she would understand; she always did understand; and she never allowed herself to be startled. The most singular occurrences, immediately they touched her, were somehow transformed into credible daily, customary events. Thus the disaster of the brewery! She had accepted it as though the ruins of breweries were a spectacle to be witnessed at every street-corner.

Yes, he should tell her. Three minutes ago he had no intention of telling her, or any one, anything. He decided in an instant. To tell her his secret would lead up naturally to the picture which he had just finished.

"I say, Alice," he said, "I want to talk to you."

"Well," she said, "I wish you'd talk to me sitting down. I don't know what's come over you this last day or two."

He sat down. He did not feel really intimate with her at that moment.

And their marriage seemed to him, in a way, artificial, scarcely a fact.

He did not know that it takes years to accomplish full intimacy between husband and wife.

"You know," he said, "Henry Leek isn't my real name."

"Oh, isn't it?" she said. "What does that matter?"

She was not in the least surprised to hear that Henry Leek was not his real name. She was a wise woman, and knew the strangeness of the world.

And she had married him simply because he was himself, because he existed in a particular manner (whose charm for her she could not have described) from hour to hour.

"So long as you haven't committed a murder or anything," she added, with her tranquil smile.

"My real name is Priam Farll," he said gruffly. The gruffness was caused by timidity.

"I thought Priam Farll was your gentleman's name."

"To tell you the truth," he said nervously, "there was a mistake. That photograph that was sent to you was my photograph."

"Yes," she said. "I know it was. And what of it?"

"I mean," he blundered on, "it was my valet that died--not me. You see, the doctor, when he came, thought that Leek was me, and I didn't tell him differently, because I was afraid of all the bother. I just let it slide--and there were other reasons. You know how I am...."

"I don't know what you're talking about," she said.

"Can't you understand? It's simple enough. I'm Priam Farll, and I had a valet named Henry Leek, and he died, and they thought it was me. Only it wasn't."

He saw her face change and then compose itself.

"Then it's this Henry Leek that is buried in Westminster Abbey, instead of you?" Her voice was very soft and soothing. And the astonis.h.i.+ng woman resumed her spectacles and her long needle.

"Yes, of course."

Here he burst into the whole story, into the middle of it, continuing to the end, and then going back to the commencement. He left out nothing, and n.o.body, except Lady Sophia Entwistle.

"I see," she observed. "And you've never said a word?"

"Not a word."

"If I were you I should still keep perfectly silent about it," she almost whispered persuasively. "It'll be just as well. If I were you, I shouldn't worry myself. I can quite understand how it happened, and I'm glad you've told me. But don't worry. You've been exciting yourself these last two or three days. I thought it was about my money business, but I see it wasn't. At least that may have brought it on, like. Now the best thing you can do is to forget it."

She did not believe him! She simply discredited the whole story; and, told in Werter Road, like that, the story did sound fantastic; it did come very near to pa.s.sing belief. She had always noticed a certain queerness in her husband. His sudden gaieties about a tint in the sky or the gesture of a horse in the street, for example, were most uncanny.

And he had peculiar absences of mind that she could never account for.

She was sure that he must have been a very bad valet. However, she did not marry him for a valet, but for a husband; and she was satisfied with her bargain. What if he did suffer under a delusion? The exposure of that delusion merely crystallized into a definite shape her vague suspicions concerning his mentality. Besides, it was a harmless delusion. And it explained things. It explained, among other things, why he had gone to stay at the Grand Babylon Hotel. That must have been the inception of the delusion. She was glad to know the worst.

She adored him more than ever.

There was a silence.

"No," she repeated, in the most matter-of-fact tone, "I should say nothing, in your place. I should forget it."

"You would?" He drummed on the table.

"I should! And whatever you do, don't worry." Her accents were the coaxing accents of a nurse with a child--or with a lunatic.

He perceived now with the utmost clearness that she did not believe a word of what he had said, and that in her magnificent and calm sagacity she was only trying to humour him. He had expected to disturb her soul to its profoundest depths; he had expected that they would sit up half the night discussing the situation. And lo!--"I should forget it,"

indulgently! And a mild continuance of darning!

He had to think, and think hard.

_Tears_

"Henry," she called out the next morning, as he disappeared up the stairs. "What _are_ you doing up there?"

She had behaved exactly as if nothing had happened; and she was one of those women whose prudent policy it is to let their men alone even to the furthest limit of patience; but she had nerves, too, and they were being affected. For three days Henry had really been too mysterious!

He stopped, and put his head over the banisters, and in a queer, moved voice answered:

"Come and see."

Sooner or later she must see. Sooner or later the already distended situation must get more and more distended until it burst with a loud report. Let the moment be sooner, he swiftly decided.

So she went and saw.

Half-way up the attic stairs she began to sniff, and as he turned the k.n.o.b of the attic door for her she said, "What a smell of paint! I fancied yesterday----"

If she had been clever enough she would have said, "What a smell of masterpieces!" But her cleverness lay in other fields.

"You surely haven't been aspinalling that bath-room chair?... Oh!"

This loud exclamation escaped from her as she entered the attic and saw the back of the picture which Priam had lodged on the said bath-room chair--filched by him from the bath-room on the previous day. She stepped to the vicinity of the window and obtained a good view of the picture. It was brilliantly s.h.i.+ning in the light of morn. It looked glorious; it was a fit companion of many pictures from the same hand distributed among European galleries. It had that priceless quality, at once n.o.ble and radiant, which distinguished all Priam's work. It transformed the attic; and thousands of amateurs and students, from St.

Petersburg to San Francisco, would have gone into that attic with their hats off and a thrill in the spine, had they known what was there and had they been invited to enter and wors.h.i.+p. Priam himself was pleased; he was delighted; he was enthusiastic. And he stood near the picture, glancing at it and then glancing at Alice, nervously, like a mother whose sister-in-law has come to look at the baby. As for Alice, she said nothing. She had first of all to take in the fact that her husband had been ungenerous enough to keep her quite in the dark as to the nature of his secret activities; then she had to take in the fact of the picture.

"Did you do that?" she said limply.

"Yes," said he, with all the casualness that he could a.s.sume. "How does it strike you?" And to himself: "This'll make her see I'm not a mere lunatic. This'll give her a shaking up."