Buried Alive: a Tale of These Days Part 6

"You've got the evening papers?" asked Priam Farll.

"Yes, sir." The valet put a pile of papers respectfully on the desk.

"All of them?"

"Yes, sir."

"Thanks. Well, it's not too late to have a messenger, is it?"

"Oh _no_, sir." ("'Too late' in the Grand Babylon, oh Czar!" said the valet's shocked tone.)

"Then please get a messenger to take this letter, at once."

"In a cab, sir?"

"Yes, in a cab. I don't know whether there will be an answer. He will see. Then let him call at the cloak-room at South Kensington Station and get my luggage. Here's the ticket."

"Thank you, sir."

"I can rely on you to see that he goes at once?"

"You can, sir," said the valet, in such accents as carry absolute conviction.

"Thank you. That will do, I think."

The man retired, and the door was closed by an expert in closing doors, one who had devoted his life to the perfection of detail in valetry.

_Fame_

He lay on the sofa at the foot of the bed, with all illumination extinguished save one crimson-shaded light immediately above him. The evening papers--white, green, rose, cream, and yellow--shared his couch.

He was about to glance at the obituaries; to glance at them in a careless, condescending way, just to see the _sort_ of thing that journalists had written of him. He knew the value of obituaries; he had often smiled at them. He knew also the exceeding fatuity of art criticism, which did not cause him even to smile, being simply a bore.

He recollected, further, that he was not the first man to read his own obituary; the adventure had happened to others; and he could recall how, on his having heard that owing to an error it had happened to the great so-and-so, he, in his quality of philosopher, had instantly decided what frame of mind the great so-and-so ought to have a.s.sumed for the perusal of his biography. He carefully and deliberately adopted that frame of mind now. He thought of Marcus Aurelius on the futility of fame; he remembered his life-long att.i.tude of gentle, tired scorn for the press; he reflected with wise modesty that in art nothing counts but the work itself, and that no quant.i.ty of inept chatter could possibly affect, for good or evil, his value, such as it might be, to the world.

Then he began to open the papers.

The first glimpse of their contents made him jump. In fact, the physical result of it was quite extraordinary. His temperature increased. His heart became audible. His pulse quickened. And there was a tingling as far off as his toes. He had felt, in a dim, unacknowledged way, that he must be a pretty great painter. Of course his prices were notorious. And he had guessed, though vaguely, that he was the object of widespread curiosity. But he had never compared himself with t.i.tanic figures on the planet. It had always seemed to him that _his_ renown was different from other renowns, less--somehow unreal and make-believe. He had never imaginatively grasped, despite prices and public inquisitiveness, that he too was one of the t.i.tanic figures. He grasped it now. The aspect of the papers brought it home to him with tremendous force.

Special large type! t.i.tles stretching across two columns! Black borders round the pages! "Death of England's greatest painter." "Sudden death of Priam Farll." "Sad death of a great genius." "Puzzling career prematurely closed." "Europe in mourning." "Irreparable loss to the world's art." "It is with the most profound regret." "Our readers will be shocked." "The news will come as a personal blow to every lover of great painting." So the papers went on, outvying each other in enthusiastic grief.

He ceased to be careless and condescending to them. The skin crept along his spine. There he lay, solitary, under the crimson glow, locked in his castle, human, with the outward semblance of a man like other men, and yet the cities of Europe were weeping for him. He heard them weeping.

Every lover of great painting was under a sense of personal bereavement.

The very voice of the world was hushed. After all, it was something to have done your best; after all, good stuff _was_ appreciated by the ma.s.s of the race. The phenomena presented by the evening papers was certainly prodigious, and prodigiously affecting. Mankind was unpleasantly stunned by the report of his decease. He forgot that Mrs. Challice, for instance, had perfectly succeeded in hiding her grief for the irreparable loss, and that her questions about Priam Farll had been almost perfunctory. He forgot that he had witnessed absolutely no sign of overwhelming sorrow, or of any degree of sorrow, in the thoroughfares of the teeming capital, and that the hotels did not resound to sobbing.

He knew only that all Europe was in mourning!

"I suppose I was rather wonderful--_am_, I mean"--he said to himself, dazed and happy. Yes, happy. "The fact is, I've got so used to my own work that perhaps I don't think enough of it." He said this as modestly as he could.

There was no question now of casually glancing at the obituaries. He could not miss a single line, a single word. He even regretted that the details of his life were so few and unimportant. It seemed to him that it was the business of the journalists to have known more, to have displayed more enterprise in acquiring information. Still, the tone was right. The fellows meant well, at any rate. His eyes encountered nothing but praise. Indeed the press of London had yielded itself up to an encomiastic orgy. His modesty tried to say that this was slightly overdone; but his impartiality asked, "Really, what _could_ they say against me?" As a rule unmitigated praise was nauseous but here they were undoubtedly genuine, the fellows; their sentences rang true!

Never in his life had he been so satisfied with the scheme of the universe! He was nearly consoled for the dissolution of Leek.

When, after continued reading, he came across a phrase which discreetly insinuated, apropos of the policeman and the penguins, that capriciousness in the choice of subject was perhaps a pose with him, the accusation hurt.

"Pose!" he inwardly exclaimed. "What a lie! The man's an a.s.s!"

And he resented the following remark which concluded a 'special memoir'

extremely laudatory in matter and manner, by an expert whose books he had always respected: "However, contemporary judgments are in the large majority of cases notoriously wrong, and it behooves us to remember this in choosing a niche for our idol. Time alone can settle the ultimate position of Priam Farll."

Useless for his modesty to whisper to him that contemporary judgments _were_ notoriously wrong. He did not like it. It disturbed him. There were exceptions to every rule. And if the connoisseur meant anything at all, he was simply stultifying the rest of the article. Time be d----d!

He had come nearly to the last line of the last obituary before he was finally ruffled. Most of the sheets, in excusing the paucity of biographical detail, had remarked that Priam Farll was utterly unknown to London society, of a retiring disposition, hating publicity, a recluse, etc. The word "recluse" grated on his sensitiveness a little; but when the least important of the evening papers roundly a.s.serted it to be notorious that he was of extremely eccentric habits, he grew secretly furious. Neither his modesty nor his philosophy was influential enough to restore him to complete calm.

Eccentric! He! What next? Eccentric, indeed!

Now, what conceivable justification------?

_The Ruling Cla.s.ses_

Between a quarter-past and half-past eleven he was seated alone at a small table in the restaurant of the Grand Babylon. He had had no news of Mrs. Challice; she had not instantly telegraphed to Selwood Terrace, as he had wildly hoped. But in the boxes of Henry Leek, safely retrieved by the messenger from South Kensington Station, he had discovered one of his old dress-suits, not too old, and this dress-suit he had donned. The desire to move about unknown in the well-clad world, the world of the frequenters of costly hotels, the world to which he was accustomed, had overtaken him. Moreover, he felt hungry. Hence he had descended to the famous restaurant, whose wide windows were flung open to the illuminated majesty of the Thames Embankment. The pale cream room was nearly full of expensive women, and expending men, and silver-chained waiters whose skilled, noiseless, inhuman attentions were remunerated at the rate of about four-pence a minute. Music, the midnight food of love, floated scarce heard through the tinted atmosphere. It was the best imitation of Roman luxury that London could offer, and after Selwood Terrace and the rackety palace of no gratuities, Priam Farll enjoyed it as one enjoys home after strange climes.

Next to his table was an empty table, set for two, to which were presently conducted, with due state, a young man, and a magnificent woman whose youth was slipping off her polished shoulders like a cloak.

Priam Farll then overheard the following conversation:--

_Man_: Well, what are you going to have?

_Woman_: But look here, little Charlie, you can't possibly afford to pay for this!

_Man_: Never said I could. It's the paper that pays. So go ahead.

_Woman_: Is Lord Nasing so keen as all that?

_Man_: It isn't Lord Nasing. It's our brand new editor specially imported from Chicago.

_Woman_: Will he last?

_Man_: He'll last a hundred nights, say as long as the run of your piece. Then he'll get six months' screw and the boot.

_Woman_: How much is six months' screw?

_Man_: Three thousand.

_Woman_: Well, I can hardly earn that myself.

_Man_: Neither can I. But then you see we weren't born in Chicago.

_Woman_: I've been offered a thousand dollars a week to go there, anyhow.