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

Hence it was not surprising that popular interest, nourished by an indefatigable and excessively enterprising press, should have mounted till no one would have believed that it could mount any more. But the evasion from Werter Road on that June morning intensified the interest enormously. Of course, owing to the drawn blinds, it soon became known, and the bloodhounds of the Sunday papers were sniffing along the platforms of all the termini in London. Priam's departure greatly prejudiced the cause of Mr. Oxford, especially when the bloodhounds failed and Priam persisted in his invisibility. If a man was an honest man, why should he flee the public gaze, and in the night? There was but a step from the posing of this question to the inevitable inference that Mr. Oxford's line of defence was really too fantastic for credence. Certainly organs of vast circulation, while repeating that, as the action was sub judice , they could say nothing about it, had already tried the action several times in their impartial columns, and they now tried it again, with the entire public as jury. And in three days Priam had definitely become a criminal in the public eye, a criminal flying from justice. Useless to assert that he was simply a witness subpoenaed to give evidence at the trial! He had transgressed the unwritten law of the English constitution that a person prominent in a cause célèbre belongs for the time being, not to himself, but to the nation at large. He had no claim to privacy. In surreptitiously obtaining seclusion he was merely robbing the public and the public's press of their inalienable right.

Who could deny now the reiterated statement that he was a bigamist?

It came to be said that he must be on his way to South America. Then the public read avidly articles by specially retained barristers on the extradition treaties with Brazil, Argentina, Ecuador, Chili, Paraguay and Uruguay.

The curates Matthew and Henry preached to crowded congregations at Putney and Bermondsey, and were reported verbatim in the Christian Voice Sermon Supplement , and other messengers of light.

And gradually the nose of England bent closer and closer to its newspaper of a morning. And coffee went cold, and bacon fat congealed, from the Isle of Wight to Hexham, while the latest rumours were being swallowed. It promised to be stupendous, did the case of Witt v . Parfitts. It promised to be one of those cases that alone make life worth living, that alone compensate for the horrors of climate, in England. And then the day of hearing arrived, and the afternoon papers which appear at nine o'clock in the morning announced that Henry Leek (or Priam Farll, according to your wish) and his wife (or his female companion and willing victim) had returned to Werter Road. And England held its breath; and even Scotland paused, expectant; and Ireland stirred in its Celtic dream.

The theatre in which the emotional drama of Witt Parfitts was to be played, lacked the usual characteristics of a modern place of entertainment. It was far too high for its width and breadth; it was badly illuminated; it was draughty in winter and stuffy in summer, being completely deprived of ventilation. Had it been under the control of the County Council it would have been instantly condemned as dangerous in case of fire, for its gangways were always encumbered and its exits of a mediaeval complexity. It had no stage, no footlights, and all its seats were of naked wood except one.

This unique seat was occupied by the principal player, who wore a humorous wig and a brilliant and expensive scarlet costume. He was a fairly able judge, but he had mistaken his vocation; his rare talent for making third-rate jokes would have brought him a fortune in the world of musical comedy. His salary was a hundred a week; better comedians have earned less. On the present occasion he was in the midst of a double row of fashionable hats, and beneath the hats were the faces of fourteen feminine relatives and acquaintances. These hats performed the function of 'dressing' the house. The principal player endeavoured to behave as though under the illusion that he was alone in his glory, but he failed.

There were four other leading actors: Mr. Pennington, K.C., and Mr. Vodrey, K.C., engaged by the plaintiff, and Mr. Cass, K.C., and Mr. Crepitude, K.C., engaged by the defendant. These artistes were the stars of their profession, nominally less glittering, but really far more glittering than the player in scarlet. Their wigs were of inferior quality to his, and their costumes shabby, but they did not mind, for whereas he got a hundred a week, they each got a hundred a day. Three junior performers received ten guineas a day apiece: one of them held a watching brief for the Dean and Chapter of the Abbey, who, being members of a Christian fraternity, were pained and horrified by the defendants' implication that they had given interment to a valet, and who were determined to resist exhumation at all hazards. The supers in the drama, whose business it was to whisper to each other and to the players, consisted of solicitors, solicitors' clerks, and experts; their combined emoluments worked out at the rate of a hundred and fifty pounds a day. Twelve excellent men in the jury-box received between them about as much as would have kept a K.C. alive for five minutes. The total expenses of production thus amounted to something like six or seven hundred pounds a day. The preliminary expenses had run into several thousands. The enterprise could have been made remunerative by hiring for it Convent Garden Theatre and selling stalls as for Tettrazzini and Caruso, but in the absurd auditorium chosen, crammed though it was to the perilous doors, the loss was necessarily terrific. Fortunately the affair was subsidized; not merely by the State, but also by those two wealthy capitalists, Whitney C. Witt and Mr. Oxford; and therefore the management were in a position to ignore paltry financial considerations and to practise art for art's sake.

In opening the case Mr. Pennington, K.C., gave instant proof of his astounding histrionic powers. He began calmly, colloquially, treating the jury as friends of his boyhood, and the judge as a gifted uncle, and stated in simple language that Whitney C. Witt was claiming seventy-two thousand pounds from the defendants, money paid for worthless pictures palmed off upon the myopic and venerable plaintiff as masterpieces. He recounted the life and death of the great painter Priam Farll, and his solemn burial and the tears of the whole world. He dwelt upon the genius of Priam Farll, and then upon the confiding nature of the plaintiff. Then he inquired who could blame the plaintiff for his confidence in the uprightness of a firm with such a name as Parfitts. And then he explained by what accident of a dating-stamp on a canvas it had been discovered that the pictures guaranteed to be by Priam Farll were painted after Priam Farll's death.

He proceeded with no variation of tone: "The explanation is simplicity itself. Priam Farll was not really dead. It was his valet who died. Quite naturally, quite comprehensibly, the great genius Priam Farll wished to pass the remainder of his career as a humble valet. He deceived everybody; the doctor, his cousin, Mr. Duncan Farll, the public authorities, the Dean and Chapter of the Abbey, the nation--in fact, the entire world! As Henry Leek he married, and as Henry Leek he recommenced the art of painting--in Putney; he carried on the vocation several years without arousing the suspicions of a single person; and then--by a curious coincidence immediately after my client threatened an action against the defendant--he displayed himself in his true identity as Priam Farll. Such is the simple explanation," said Pennington, K.C., and added, "which you will hear presently from the defendant. Doubtless it will commend itself to you as experienced men of the world. You cannot but have perceived that such things are constantly happening in real life, that they are of daily occurrence. I am almost ashamed to stand up before you and endeavour to rebut a story so plausible and so essentially convincing. I feel that my task is well-nigh hopeless. Nevertheless, I must do my best."