Arnold Bennett - Arnold Bennett - Buried Alive, The Old Wives' Tale & The Card (3 Books in One Edition)

Priam was rolling cigarettes, many of them, and placing them, as he rolled them, in order on the mantelpiece. A happy, mild couple! And a couple, one would judge from the richness of the tea, with no immediate need of money. Over two years, however, had passed since the catastrophe to Cohoon's, and Cohoon's had in no way recovered therefrom. Yet money had been regularly found for the household. The manner of its finding was soon to assume importance in the careers of Priam and Alice. But, ere that moment, an astonishing and vivid experience happened to them. One might have supposed that, in the life of Priam Farll at least, enough of the astonishing and the vivid had already happened. Nevertheless, what had already happened was as customary and unexciting as addressing envelopes, compared to the next event.

The next event began at the instant when Alice was sticking the long fork into a round of bread. There was a knock at the front door, a knock formidable and reverberating, the knock of fate, perhaps, but fate disguised as a coalheaver.

Alice answered it. She always answered knocks; Priam never. She shielded him from every rough or unexpected contact, just as his valet used to do. The gas in the hall was not lighted, and so she stopped to light it, darkness having fallen. Then she opened the door, and saw, in the gloom, a short, thin woman standing on the step, a woman of advanced middle-age, dressed with a kind of shabby neatness. It seemed impossible that so frail and unimportant a creature could have made such a noise on the door.

"Is this Mr. Henry Leek's?" asked the visitor, in a dissatisfied, rather weary tone.

"Yes," said Alice. Which was not quite true. 'This' was assuredly hers, rather than her husband's.

"Oh!" said the woman, glancing behind her; and entered nervously, without invitation.

At the same moment three male figures sprang, or rushed, out of the strip of front garden, and followed the woman into the hall, lunging up against Alice, and breathing loudly. One of the trio was a strong, heavy-faced heavy-handed, louring man of some thirty years (it seemed probable that he was the knocker), and the others were curates, with the proper physical attributes of curates; that is to say, they were of ascetic habit and clean-shaven and had ingenuous eyes.

The hall now appeared like the antechamber of a May-meeting, and as Alice had never seen it so peopled before, she vented a natural exclamation of surprise.

"Yes," said one of the curates, fiercely. "You may say 'Lord,' but we were determined to get in, and in we have got. John, shut the door. Mother, don't put yourself about."

John, being the heavy-faced and heavy-handed man, shut the door.

"Where is Mr. Henry Leek?" demanded the other curate.

Now Priam, whose curiosity had been excusably excited by the unusual sounds in the hall, was peeping through a chink of the sitting-room door, and the elderly woman caught the glint of his eyes. She pushed open the door, and, after a few seconds' inspection of him, said:

"There you are, Henry! After thirty years! To think of it!"

Priam was utterly at a loss.

"I'm his wife, ma'am," the visitor continued sadly to Alice. "I'm sorry to have to tell you. I'm his wife. I'm the rightful Mrs. Henry Leek, and these are my sons, come with me to see that I get justice."

Alice recovered very quickly from the shock of amazement. She was a woman not easily to be startled by the vagaries of human nature. She had often heard of bigamy, and that her husband should prove to be a bigamist did not throw her into a swoon. She at once, in her own mind, began to make excuses for him. She said to herself, as she inspected the real Mrs. Henry Leek, that the real Mrs. Henry Leek had certainly the temperament which manufactures bigamists. She understood how a person may slide into bigamy. And after thirty years!... She never thought of bigamy as a crime, nor did it occur to her to run out and drown herself for shame because she was not properly married to Priam!

No, it has to be said in favour of Alice that she invariably took things as they were.

"I think you'd better all come in and sit down quietly," she said.

"Eh! It's very kind of you," said the mother of the curates, limply.

The last thing that the curates wanted to do was to sit down quietly. But they had to sit down. Alice made them sit side by side on the sofa. The heavy, elder brother, who had not spoken a word, sat on a chair between the sideboard and the door. Their mother sat on a chair near the table. Priam fell into his easy-chair between the fireplace and the sideboard. As for Alice, she remained standing; she showed no nervousness except in her handling of the toasting-fork.

It was a great situation. But unfortunately ordinary people are so unaccustomed to the great situation, that, when it chances to come, they feel themselves incapable of living up to it. A person gazing in at the window, and unacquainted with the facts, might have guessed that the affair was simply a tea party at which the guests had arrived a little too soon and where no one was startlingly proficient in the art of small-talk.

Still, the curates were apparently bent on doing their best.

"Now, mother!" one of them urged her.

The mother, as if a spring had been touched in her, began: "He married me just thirty years ago, ma'am; and four months after my eldest was born--that's John there"--(pointing to the corner near the door)--"he just walked out of the house and left me. I'm sorry to have to say it. Yes, sorry I am! But there it is. And never a word had I ever given him! And eight months after that my twins were born. That's Harry and Matthew"--(pointing to the sofa)--"Harry I called after his father because I thought he was like him, and just to show I bore no ill-feeling, and hoping he'd come back! And there I was with these little children! And not a word of explanation did I ever have. I heard of Harry five years later--when Johnnie was nearly five--but he was on the Continent and I couldn't go traipsing about with three babies. Besides, if I had gone!... Sorry I am to say it, ma'am; but many's the time he's beaten me, yes, with his hands and his fists! He's knocked me about above a bit. And I never gave him a word back. He was my husband, for better for worse, and I forgave him and I still do. Forgive and forget, that's what I say. We only heard of him through Matthew being second curate at St. Paul's, and in charge of the mission hall. It was your milkman that happened to tell Matthew that he had a customer same name as himself. And you know how one thing leads to another. So we're here!"

"I never saw this lady in my life," said Priam excitedly, "and I'm absolutely certain I never married her. I never married any one; except, of course, you, Alice!"

"Then how do you explain this, sir?" exclaimed Matthew, the younger twin, jumping up and taking a blue paper from his pocket. "Be so good as to pass this to father," he said, handing the paper to Alice.

Alice inspected the document. It was a certificate of the marriage of Henry Leek, valet, and Sarah Featherstone, spinster, at a registry office in Paddington. Priam also inspected it. This was one of Leek's escapades! No revelations as to the past of Henry Leek would have surprised him. There was nothing to be done except to give a truthful denial of identity and to persist in that denial. Useless to say soothingly to the lady visitor that she was the widow of a gentleman who had been laid to rest in Westminster Abbey!

"I know nothing about it," said Priam doggedly.

"I suppose you'll not deny, sir, that your name is Henry Leek," said Henry, jumping up to stand by Matthew.

"I deny everything," said Priam doggedly. How could he explain? If he had not been able to convince Alice that he was not Henry Leek, could he hope to convince these visitors?