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Buried Alive

<h1>CHAPTER VIII</h1> <h2>An Invasion</h2> One afternoon, in December, Priam and Alice were in the sitting-room together, and Alice was about to prepare tea. The drawn-thread cloth was laid diagonally on the table (because Alice had seen cloths so laid on model tea-tables in model rooms at Waring's), the strawberry jam occupied the northern point of the compass, and the marmalade was antarctic, while brittle cakes and spongy cakes represented the occident and the orient respectively. Bread-and-butter stood, rightly, for the centre of the universe. Silver ornamented the spread, and Alice's two tea-pots (for she would never allow even Chinese tea to remain on the leaves for more than five minutes) and Alice's water-jug with the patent balanced lid, occupied a tray off the cloth. At some distance, but still on the table, a kettle moaned over a spirit-lamp. Alice was cutting bread for toast. The fire was of the right redness for toast, and a toasting-fork lay handy. As winter advanced, Alice's teas had a tendency to become cosier and cosier, and also more luxurious, more of a ritualistic ceremony. And to avoid the trouble and danger of going through a cold passage to the kitchen, she arranged matters so that the entire operation could be performed with comfort and decency in the sitting-room itself. 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? "I suppose, madam," Henry continued, addressing Alice in impressive tones as if she were a crowded congregation, "that at any rate you and my father are--er--living here together under the name of Mr. and Mrs. Henry Leek?" Alice merely lifted her eyebrows. "It's all a mistake," said Priam impatiently. Then he had a brilliant inspiration. "As if there was only one Henry Leek in the world!" "Do you really recognize my husband?" Alice asked. "Your husband, madam!" Matthew protested, shocked. "I wouldn't say that I recognized him as he was," said the real Mrs. Henry Leek. "No more than he recognizes me. After thirty years!....Last time I saw him he was only twenty-two or twenty-three. But he's the same sort of man, and he has the same eyes. And look at Henry's eyes. Besides, I heard twenty-five years ago that he'd gone into service with a Mr. Priam Farll, a painter or something, him that was buried in Westminster Abbey. And everybody in Putney knows that this gentleman----" "Gentleman!" murmured Matthew, discontented. "Was valet to Mr. Priam Farll. We've heard that everywhere." "I suppose you'll not deny," said Henry the younger, "that Priam Farll wouldn't be likely to have two valets named Henry Leek?" Crushed by this Socratic reasoning, Priam kept silence, nursing his knees and staring into the fire. Alice went to the sideboard where she kept her best china, and took out three extra cups and saucers. "I think we'd all better have some tea," she said tranquilly. And then she got the tea-caddy and put seven teaspoonfuls of tea into one of the tea-pots. "It's very kind of you, I'm sure," whimpered the authentic Mrs. Henry Leek. "Now, mother, don't give way!" the curates admonished her. "Don't you remember, Henry," she went on whimpering to Priam, "how you said you wouldn't be married in a church, not for anybody? And how I gave way to you, like I always did? And don't you remember how you wouldn't let poor little Johnnie be baptized? Well, I do hope your opinions have altered. Eh, but it's strange, it's strange, how two of your sons, and just them two that you'd never set eyes on until this day, should have made up their minds to go into the church! And thanks to Johnnie there, they've been able to. If I was to tell you all the struggles we've had, you wouldn't believe me. They were clerks, and they might have been clerks to this day, if it hadn't been for Johnnie. But Johnnie could always earn money. It's that engineering! And now Matthew's second curate at St. Paul's and getting fifty pounds a year, and Henry'll have a curacy next month at Bermondsey--it's been promised, and all thanks to Johnnie!" She wept. Johnnie, in the corner, who had so far done nought but knock at the door, maintained stiffly his policy of non-interference. Priam Farll, angry, resentful, and quite untouched by the recital, shrugged his shoulders. He was animated by the sole desire to fly from the widow and progeny of his late valet. But he could not fly. The Herculean John was too close to the door. So he shrugged his shoulders a second time. "Yes, sir," said Matthew, "you may shrug your shoulders, but you can't shrug us out of existence. Here we are, and you can't get over us. You are our father, and I presume that a kind of respect is due to you. Yet how can you hope for our respect? Have you earned it? Did you earn it when you ill-treated our poor mother? Did you earn it when you left her, with the most inhuman cruelty, to fend for herself in the world? Did you earn it when you abandoned your children born and unborn? You are a bigamist, sir; a deceiver of women! Heaven knows--" "Would you mind just toasting this bread?" Alice interrupted his impassioned discourse by putting the loaded toasting-fork into his hands, "while I make the tea?" It was a novel way of stopping a mustang in full career, but it succeeded. While somewhat perfunctorily holding the fork to the fire, Matthew glared about him, to signify his righteous horror, and other sentiments. "Please don't burn it," said Alice gently. "Suppose you were to sit down on this foot-stool." And then she poured boiling water on the tea, put the lid on the pot, and looked at the clock to note the exact second at which the process of infusion had begun. "Of course," burst out Henry, the twin of Matthew, "I need not say, madam, that you have all our sympathies. You are in a----" "Do you mean me?" Alice asked. In an undertone Priam could be heard obstinately repeating, "Never set eyes upon her before! Never set eyes on the woman before!" "I do, madam," said Henry, not to be cowed nor deflected from his course. "I speak for all of us. You have our sympathies. You could not know the character of the man you married, or rather with whom you went through the ceremony of marriage. However, we have heard, by inquiry, that you made his acquaintance through the medium of a matrimonial agency; and indirectly, when one does that sort of thing, one takes one's chance. Your position is an extremely delicate one; but it is not too much to say that you brought it on yourself. In my work, I have encountered many sad instances of the result of lax moral principles; but I little thought to encounter the saddest of all in my own family. The discovery is just as great a blow to us as it is to you. We have suffered; my mother has suffered. And now, I fear, it is your turn to suffer. You are not this man's wife. Nothing can make you his wife. You are living in the same house with him--under circumstances--er--without a chaperon. I hesitate to characterize your situation in plain words. It would scarcely become me, or mine, to do so. But really no lady could possibly find herself in a situation more false than--I am afraid there is only one word, open immorality, and--er--to put yourself right with society there is one thing, and only one, left for you to--er--do. I--I speak for the family, and I--" "Sugar?" Alice questioned the mother of curates. "Yes, please." "One lump, or two?" "Two, please." "Speaking for the family--" Henry resumed. "Will you kindly pass this cup to your mother?" Alice suggested. Henry was obliged to take the cup. Excited by the fever of eloquence, he unfortunately upset it before it had reached his mother's hands. "Oh, Henry!" murmured the lady, mournfully aghast. "You always were so clumsy! And a clean cloth, too!" "Don't mention it, please," said Alice, and then to her Henry: "My dear, just run into the kitchen, and bring me something to wipe this up. Hanging behind the door--you'll see." Priam sprang forward with astonishing celerity. And the occasion brooking no delay, the guardian of the portal could not but let him pass. In another moment the front door banged. Priam did not return. And Alice staunched the flow of tea with a clean, stiff serviette taken from the sideboard drawer. <h2>A Departure</h2> The family of the late Henry Leek, each with a cup in hand, experienced a certain difficulty in maintaining the interview at the pitch set by Matthew and Henry. Mrs. Leek, their mother, frankly gave way to soft tears, while eating bread-and-butter, jam and zebra-like toast. John took everything that Alice offered to him in gloomy and awkward silence. "Does he mean to come back?" Matthew demanded at length. He had risen from the foot-stool. "Who?" asked Alice. Matthew paused, and then said, savagely and deliberately: "Father." Alice smiled. "I'm afraid not. I'm afraid he's gone out. You see, he's a rather peculiar man. It's not the slightest use me trying to drive him. He can only be led. He has his good points--I can speak candidly as he isn't here, and I will--he has his good points. When Mrs. Leek, as I suppose she calls herself, spoke about his cruelty to her--well, I understood that. Far be it from me to say a word against him; he's often very good to me, but--another cup, Mr. John?" John advanced to the table without a word, holding his cup. "You don't mean to say, ma'am," said Mrs. Leek "that he--?" Alice nodded grievously. Mrs. Leek burst into tears. "When Johnnie was barely five weeks old," she said, "he would twist my arm. And he kept me without money. And once he locked me up in the cellar. And one morning when I was ironing he snatched the hot iron out of my hand and--" "Don't! Don't!" Alice soothed her. "I know. I know all you can tell me. I know because I've been through--" "You don't mean to say he threatened you with the flat-iron?" "If threatening was only all!" said Alice, like a martyr. "Then he's not changed, in all these years!" wept the mother of curates. "If he has, it's for the worse," said Alice. "How was I to tell?" she faced the curates. "How could I know? And yet nobody, nobody, could be nicer than he is at times!" "That's true, that's true," responded the authentic Mrs. Henry Leek. "He was always so changeable. So queer." "Queer!" Alice took up the word. "That's it Queer! I don't think he's quite right in his head, not quite right. He has the very strangest fancies. I never take any notice of them, but they're there. I seldom get up in the morning without thinking, 'Well, perhaps to-day he'll have to be taken off.'" "Taken off?" "Yes, to Hanwell, or wherever it is. And you must remember," she said gazing firmly at the curates, "you've got his blood in your veins. Don't forget that. I suppose you want to make him go back to you, Mrs. Leek, as he certainly ought." "Ye-es," murmured Mrs. Leek feebly. "Well, if you can persuade him to go," said Alice, "if you can make him see his duty, you're welcome. But I'm sorry for you. I think I ought to tell you that this is my house, and my furniture. He's got nothing at all. I expect he never could save. Many's the blow he's laid on me in anger, but all the same I pity him. I pity him. And I wouldn't like to leave him in the lurch. Perhaps these three strong young men'll be able to do something with him. But I'm not sure. He's very strong. And he has a way of leaping out so sudden like." Mrs. Leek shook her head as memories of the past rose up in her mind. "The fact is," said Matthew sternly, "he ought to be prosecuted for bigamy. That's what ought to be done." "Most decidedly," Henry concurred. "You're quite right! You're quite right!" said Alice. "That's only justice. Of course he'd deny that he was the same Henry Leek. He'd deny it like anything. But in the end I dare say you'd be able to prove it. The worst of these law cases is they're so expensive. It means private detectives and all sorts of things, I believe. Of course there'd be the scandal. But don't mind me! I'm innocent. Everybody knows me in Putney, and has done this twenty years. I don't know how it would suit you, Mr. Henry and Mr. Matthew, as clergymen, to have your own father in prison. That's as may be. But justice is justice, and there's too many men going about deceiving simple, trusting women. I've often heard such tales. Now I know they're all true. It's a mercy my own poor mother hasn't lived to see where I am to-day. As for my father, old as he was, if he'd been alive, there'd have been horsewhipping that I do know." After some rather pointless and disjointed remarks from the curates, a sound came from the corner near the door. It was John's cough. "Better clear out of this!" John ejaculated. Such was his first and last oral contribution to the scene. <h2>In the Bath</h2> Priam Farll was wandering about the uncharted groves of Wimbledon Common, and uttering soliloquies in language that lacked delicacy. He had rushed forth, in his haste, without an overcoat, and the weather was blusterously inclement. But he did not feel the cold; he only felt the keen wind of circumstance. Soon after the purchase of his picture by the lunatic landlord of a fully licensed house, he had discovered that the frame-maker in High Street knew a man who would not be indisposed to buy such pictures as he could paint, and transactions between him and the frame-maker had developed into a regular trade. The usual price paid for canvases was ten pounds, in cash. By this means he had earned about two hundred a year. No questions were put on either side. The paintings were delivered at intervals, and the money received; and Priam knew no more. For many weeks he had lived in daily expectation of an uproar, a scandal in the art-world, visits of police, and other inconveniences, for it was difficult to believe that the pictures would never come beneath the eye of a first-class expert. But nothing had occurred, and he had gradually subsided into a sense of security. He was happy; happy in the untrammelled exercise of his gift, happy in having all the money that his needs and Alice's demanded; happier than he had been in the errant days of his glory and his wealth. Alice had been amazed at his power of earning; and also, she had seemed little by little to lose her suspicions as to his perfect sanity and truthfulness. In a word, the dog of fate had slept; and he had taken particular care to let it lie. He was in that species of sheltered groove which is absolutely essential to the bliss of a shy and nervous artist, however great he may be. And now this disastrous irruption, this resurrection of the early sins of the real Leek! He was hurt; he was startled; he was furious. But he was not surprised. The wonder was that the early sins of Henry Leek had not troubled him long ago. What could he do? He could do nothing. That was the tragedy: he could do nothing. He could but rely upon Alice. Alice was amazing. The more he thought of it, the more masterly her handling of these preposterous curates seemed to him. And was he to be robbed of this incomparable woman by ridiculous proceedings connected with a charge of bigamy? He knew that bigamy meant prison, in England. The injustice was monstrous. He saw those curates, and their mute brother, and the aggrieved mother of the three dogging him either to prison or to his deathbed! And how could he explain to Alice? Impossible to explain to Alice!... Still, it was conceivable that Alice would not desire explanation. Alice somehow never did desire an explanation. She always said, "I can quite understand," and set about preparing a meal. She was the comfortablest cushion of a creature that the evolution of the universe had ever produced. Then the gusty breeze dropped and it began to rain. He ignored the rain. But December rain has a strange, horrid quality of chilly persistence. It is capable of conquering the most obstinate and serious mental preoccupation, and it conquered Priam's. It forced him to admit that his tortured soul had a fleshly garment and that the fleshly garment was soaked to the marrow. And his soul gradually yielded before the attack of the rain, and he went home. He put his latchkey into the door with minute precautions against noise, and crept into his house like a thief, and very gently shut the door. Then, in the hall, he intently listened. Not a sound! That is to say, not a sound except the drippings of his hat on the linoleum. The sitting-room door was ajar. He timidly pushed it, and entered. Alice was darning stockings. "Henry!" she exclaimed. "Why, you're wet through!" She rose. "Have they cleared off?" he demanded. "And you've been out without an overcoat! Henry, how could you? Well, I must get you into bed at once--instantly, or I shall have you down with pneumonia or something to-morrow!" "Have they cleared off?" he repeated. "Yes, of course," she said. "When are they coming back?" he asked. "I don't think they'll come back," she replied. "I think they've had enough. I think I've made them see that it's best to leave well alone. Did you ever see such toast as that curate made?" "Alice, I assure you," he said, later--he was in a boiling bath--"I assure you it's all a mistake, I've never seen the woman before." "Of course you haven't," she said calmingly. "Of course you haven't. Besides, even if you had, it serves her right. Every one could see she's a nagging woman. And they seemed quite prosperous. They're hysterical--that's what's the matter with them, all of them--except the eldest, the one that never spoke. I rather liked him." "But I haven't!" he reiterated, splashing his positive statement into the water. "My dear, I know you haven't." But he guessed that she was humouring him. He guessed that she was determined to keep him at all costs. And he had a disconcerting glimpse of the depths of utter unscrupulousness that sometimes disclose themselves in the mind of a good and loving woman. "Only I hope there won't be any more of them!" she added dryly. Ah! That was the point! He conceived the possibility of the rascal Leek having committed scores and scores of sins, all of which might come up against him. His affrighted vision saw whole regions populated by disconsolate widows of Henry Leek and their offspring, ecclesiastical and otherwise. He knew what Leek had been. Westminster Abbey was a strange goal for Leek to have achieved. <hr /> <div style="break-after:column;"></div>

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