_A Scoop_
Within less than twelve hours after that conversation between members of
the governing classes at the Grand Babylon Hotel, Priam Farll heard the
first deep-throated echoes of the voice of England on the question of
his funeral. The voice of England issued on this occasion through the
mouth of the _Sunday News_, a newspaper which belonged to Lord Nasing,
the proprietor of the _Daily Record_. There was a column in the _Sunday
News_, partly concerning the meeting of Priam Farll and a celebrated
star of the musical comedy stage at Ostend. There was also a leading
article, in which it was made perfectly clear that England would stand
ashamed among the nations, if she did not inter her greatest painter in
Westminster Abbey. Only the article, instead of saying Westminster
Abbey, said National Valhalla. It seemed to make a point of not
mentioning Westminster Abbey by name, as though Westminster Abbey had
been something not quite mentionable, such as a pair of trousers. The
article ended with the word 'basilica,' and by the time you had reached
this majestic substantive, you felt indeed, with the _Sunday News_, that
a National Valhalla without the remains of a Priam Farll inside it,
would be shocking, if not inconceivable.
Priam Farll was extremely disturbed.
On Monday morning the _Daily Record_ came nobly to the support of the
_Sunday News_. It had evidently spent its Sunday in collecting the
opinions of a number of famous men--including three M.P.'s, a banker, a
Colonial premier, a K.C., a cricketer, and the President of the Royal
Academy--as to whether the National Valhalla was or was not a suitable
place for the repose of the remains of Priam Farll; and the unanimous
reply was in the affirmative. Other newspapers expressed the same view.
But there were opponents of the scheme. Some organs coldly inquired what
Priam Farll had _done_ for England, and particularly for the higher life
of England. He had not been a moral painter like Hogarth or Sir Noel
Paton, nor a worshipper of classic legend and beauty like the unique
Leighton. He had openly scorned England. He had never lived in England.
He had avoided the Royal Academy, honouring every country save his own.
And was he such a great painter, after all? Was he anything but a clever
dauber whose work had been forced into general admiration by the efforts
of a small clique of eccentric admirers? Far be it from them, the
organs, to decry a dead man, but the National Valhalla was the National
Valhalla.... And so on.
The penny evening papers were pro-Farll, one of them furiously so. You
gathered that if Priam Farll was not buried in Westminster Abbey the
penny evening papers would, from mere disgust, wipe their boots on Dover
cliffs and quit England eternally for some land where art was
understood. You gathered, by nightfall, that Fleet Street must be a
scene of carnage, full of enthusiasts cutting each other's throats for
the sake of the honour of art. However, no abnormal phenomenon was
superficially observable in Fleet Street; nor was martial law proclaimed
at the Arts Club in Dover Street. London was impassioned by the question
of Farll's funeral; a few hours would decide if England was to be shamed
among the nations: and yet the town seemed to pursue its jog-trot way
exactly as usual. The Gaiety Theatre performed its celebrated nightly
musical comedy, "House Full"; and at Queen's Hall quite a large audience
was collected to listen to a violinist aged twelve, who played like a
man, though a little one, and whose services had been bought for seven
years by a limited company.
The next morning the controversy was settled by one of the _Daily
Record's_ characteristic 'scoops.' In the nature of the case, such
controversies, if they are not settled quickly, settle themselves
quickly; they cannot be prolonged. But it was the _Daily Record_ that
settled this one. The _Daily Record_ came out with a copy of the will of
Priam Farll, in which, after leaving a pound a week for life to his
valet, Henry Leek, Priam Farll bequeathed the remainder of his fortune
to the nation for the building and up-keep of a Gallery of Great
Masters. Priam Farll's own collection of great masters, gradually made
by him in that inexpensive manner which is possible only to the finest
connoisseurs, was to form the nucleus of the Gallery. It comprised, said
the _Record_, several Rembrandts, a Velasquez, six Vermeers, a
Giorgione, a Turner, a Charles, two Cromes, a Holbein. (After Charles
the _Record_ put a note of interrogation, itself being uncertain of the
name.) The pictures were in Paris--had been for many years. The leading
idea of the Gallery was that nothing not absolutely first-class should
be admitted to it. The testator attached two conditions to the bequest.
One was that his own name should be inscribed nowhere in the building,
and the other was that none of his own pictures should be admitted to
the gallery. Was not this sublime? Was not this true British pride? Was
not this magnificently unlike the ordinary benefactor of his country?
The _Record_ was in a position to assert that Priam Farll's estate would
amount to about a hundred and forty thousand pounds, in addition to the
value of the pictures. After that, was anybody going to argue that he
ought not to be buried in the National Valhalla, a philanthropist so
royal and so proudly meek?
The opposition gave up.
Priam Farll grew more and more disturbed in his fortress at the Grand
Babylon Hotel. He perfectly remembered making the will. He had made it
about seventeen years before, after some champagne in Venice, in an hour
of anger against some English criticisms of his work. Yes, English
criticisms! It was his vanity that had prompted him to reply in that
manner. Moreover, he was quite young then. He remembered the youthful
glee with which he had appointed his next-of-kin, whoever they might be,
executors and trustees of the will. He remembered his cruel joy in
picturing their disgust at being compelled to carry out the terms of
such a will. Often, since, he had meant to destroy the will; but
carelessly he had always omitted to do so. And his collection and his
fortune had continued to increase regularly and mightily, and now--well,
there the thing was! Duncan Farll had found the will. And Duncan Farll
would be the executor and trustee of that melodramatic testament.
He could not help smiling, serious as the situation was.
During that day the thing was settled; the authorities spoke; the word
went forth. Priam Farll was to be buried in Westminster Abbey on the
Thursday. The dignity of England among artistic nations had been saved,
partly by the heroic efforts of the _Daily Record_, and partly by the
will, which proved that after all Priam Farll had had the highest
interests of his country at heart.
_Cowardice_
On the night between Tuesday and Wednesday Priam Farll had not a moment
of sleep. Whether it was the deep-throated voice of England that had
spoken, or merely the voice of the Dean's favourite niece--so skilled in
painting tea-cosies--the affair was excessively serious. For the nation
was preparing to inter in the National Valhalla the remains of just
Henry Leek! Priam's mind had often a sardonic turn; he was assuredly
capable of strange caprices: but even he could not permit an error so
gigantic to continue. The matter must be rectified, and instantly! And
he alone could rectify it. The strain on his shyness would be awful,
would be scarcely endurable. Nevertheless he must act. Quite apart from
other considerations, there was the consideration of that hundred and
forty thousand pounds, which was his, and which he had not the slightest
desire to leave to the British nation. And as for giving his beloved
pictures to the race which adored Landseer, Edwin Long, and Leighton--
the idea nauseated him.
He must go and see Duncan Farll! And explain! Yes, explain that he was
not dead.
Then he had a vision of Duncan Farll's hard, stupid face, and
impenetrable steel head; and of himself being kicked out of the house,
or delivered over to a policeman, or in some subtler way unimaginably
insulted. Could he confront Duncan Farll? Was a hundred and forty
thousand pounds and the dignity of the British nation worth the bearding
of Duncan Farll? No! His distaste for Duncan Farll amounted to more than
a hundred and forty millions of pounds and the dignity of whole planets.
He felt that he could never bring himself to meet Duncan Farll. Why,
Duncan might shove him into a lunatic asylum, might...!
Still he must act.
Then it was that occurred to him the brilliant notion of making a clean
breast of it to the Dean. He had not the pleasure of the Dean's personal
acquaintance. The Dean was an abstraction; certainly much more abstract
than Priam Farll. He thought he could meet the Dean. A terrific
enterprise, but he must accomplish it! After all, a Dean--what was it?
Nothing but a man with a funny hat! And was not he himself Priam Farll,
the authentic Priam Farll, vastly greater than any Dean?
He told the valet to buy black gloves, and a silk hat, sized seven and a
quarter, and to bring up a copy of _Who's Who_. He hoped the valet would
be dilatory in executing these commands. But the valet seemed to fulfill
them by magic. Time flew so fast that (in a way of speaking) you could
hardly see the fingers as they whirled round the clock. And almost
before he knew where he was, two commissionaires were helping him into
an auto-cab, and the terrific enterprise had begun. The auto-cab would
easily have won the race for the Gordon Bennett Cup. It was of about two
hundred h.p., and it arrived in Dean's Yard in less time than a fluent
speaker would take to say Jack Robinson. The rapidity of the flight was
simply incredible.
"I'll keep you," Priam Farll was going to say, as he descended, but he
thought it would be more final to dismiss the machine; so he dismissed
it.
He rang the bell with frantic haste, lest he should run away ere he had
rung it. And then his heart went thumping, and the perspiration damped
the lovely lining of his new hat; and his legs trembled, literally!
He was in hell on the Dean's doorstep.
The door was opened by a man in livery of prelatical black, who eyed
him inimically.
"Er----" stammered Priam Farll, utterly flustered and craven. "Is this
Mr. Parker's?"
Now Parker was not the Dean's name, and Priam knew that it was not.
Parker was merely the first name that had come into Priam's cowardly
head.
"No, it isn't," said the flunkey with censorious lips. "It's the
Dean's."
"Oh, I beg pardon," said Priam Farll. "I thought it was Mr. Parker's."
And he departed.
Between the ringing of the bell and the flunkey's appearance, he had
clearly seen what he was capable, and what he was incapable, of doing.
And the correction of England's error was among his incapacities. He
could not face the Dean. He could not face any one. He was a poltroon in
all these things; a poltroon. No use arguing! He could not do it.
"I thought it was Mr. Parker's!" Good heavens! To what depths can a
great artist fall.
That evening he received a cold letter from Duncan Farll, with a
nave-ticket for the funeral. Duncan Farll did not venture to be sure
that Mr. Henry Leek would think proper to attend his master's interment;
but he enclosed a ticket. He also stated that the pound a week would be
paid to him in due course. Lastly he stated that several newspaper
representatives had demanded Mr. Henry Leek's address, but he had not
thought fit to gratify this curiosity.
Priam was glad of that.
"Well, I'm dashed!" he reflected, handling the ticket for the nave.
There it was, large, glossy, real as life.
_In the Valhalla_
In the vast nave there were relatively few people--that is to say, a few
hundred, who had sufficient room to move easily to and fro under the
eyes of officials. Priam Farll had been admitted through the cloisters,
according to the direction printed on the ticket. In his nervous fancy,
he imagined that everybody must be gazing at him suspiciously, but the
fact was that he occupied the attention of no one at all. He was with
the unprivileged, on the wrong side of the massive screen which
separated the nave from the packed choir and transepts, and the
unprivileged are never interested in themselves; it is the privileged
who interest them. The organ was wafting a melody of Purcell to the
furthest limits of the Abbey. Round a roped space a few ecclesiastical
uniforms kept watch over the ground that would be the tomb. The sunlight
of noon beat and quivered in long lances through crimson and blue
windows. Then the functionaries began to form an aisle among the
spectators, and emotion grew tenser. The organ was silent for a moment,
and when it recommenced its song the song was the supreme expression of
human grief, the dirge of Chopin, wrapping the whole cathedral in heavy
folds of sorrow. And as that appeal expired in the pulsating air, the
fresh voices of little boys, sweeter even than grief, rose in the
distance.
It was at this point that Priam Farll descried Lady Sophia Entwistle, a
tall, veiled figure, in full mourning. She had come among the
comparatively unprivileged to his funeral. Doubtless influence such as
hers could have obtained her a seat in the transept, but she had
preferred the secluded humility of the nave. She had come from Paris for
his funeral. She was weeping for her affianced. She stood there,
actually within ten yards of him. She had not caught sight of him, but
she might do so at any moment, and she was slowly approaching the spot
where he trembled.
He fled, with nothing in his heart but resentment against her. She had
not proposed to him; he had proposed to her. She had not thrown him
aside; he had thrown her aside. He was not one of her mistakes; she was
one of his mistakes. Not she, but he, had been capricious, impulsive,
hasty. Yet he hated her. He genuinely thought she had sinned against
him, and that she ought to be exterminated. He condemned her for all
manner of things as to which she had had no choice: for instance, the
irregularity of her teeth, and the hollow under her chin, and the little
tricks of deportment which are always developed by a spinster as she
reaches forty. He fled in terror of her. If she should have a glimpse of
him, and should recognize him, the consequence would be absolutely
disastrous--disastrous in every way; and a period of publicity would
dawn for him such as he could not possibly contemplate either in cold
blood or warm. He fled blindly, insinuating himself through the crowd,
until he reached a grille in which was a gate, ajar. His strange stare
must have affrighted the guardian of the gate, for the robed fellow
stood away, and Priam passed within the grille, where were winding
steps, which he mounted. Up the steps ran coils of fire-hose. He heard
the click of the gate as the attendant shut it, and he was thankful for
an escape. The steps led to the organ-loft, perched on the top of the
massive screen. The organist was seated behind a half-drawn curtain,
under shaded electric lights, and on the ample platform whose parapet
overlooked the choir were two young men who whispered with the organist.
None of the three even glanced at Priam. Priam sat down on a windsor
chair fearfully, like an intruder, his face towards the choir.
The whispers ceased; the organist's fingers began to move over five rows
of notes, and over scores of stops, while his feet groped beneath, and
Priam heard music, afar off. And close behind him he heard rumblings,
steamy vibrations, and, as it were, sudden escapes of gas; and
comprehended that these were the hoarse responses of the 32 and 64 foot
pipes, laid horizontally along the roof of the screen, to the summoning
fingers of the organist. It was all uncanny, weird, supernatural,
demoniacal if you will--it was part of the secret and unsuspected
mechanism of a vast emotional pageant and spectacle. It unnerved Priam,
especially when the organist, a handsome youngish man with lustrous
eyes, half turned and winked at one of his companions.
The thrilling voices of the choristers grew louder, and as they grew
louder Priam Farll was conscious of unaccustomed phenomena in his
throat, which shut and opened of itself convulsively. To divert his
attention from his throat, he partially rose from the windsor chair, and
peeped over the parapet of the screen into the choir, whose depths were
candlelit and whose altitudes were capriciously bathed by the
intermittent splendours of the sun. High, high up, in front of him, at
the summit of a precipice of stone, a little window, out of the
sunshine, burned sullenly in a gloom of complicated perspectives. And
far below, stretched round the pulpit and disappearing among the forest
of statuary in the transept, was a floor consisting of the heads of the
privileged--famous, renowned, notorious, by heredity, talent,
enterprise, or hazard; he had read many of their names in the _Daily
Telegraph_. The voices of the choristers had become piercing in their
beauty. Priam frankly stood up, and leaned over the parapet. Every gaze
was turned to a point under him which he could not see. And then
something swayed from beneath into the field of his vision. It was a
tall cross borne by a beadle. In the wake of the cross there came to
view gorgeous ecclesiastics in pairs, and then a robed man walking
backwards and gesticulating in the manner of some important, excited
official of the Salvation Army; and after this violet robe arrived the
scarlet choristers, singing to the beat of his gesture. And then swung
into view the coffin, covered with a heavy purple pall, and on the pall
a single white cross; and the pall-bearers--great European names that
had hurried out of the corners of Europe as at a peremptory mandate--
with Duncan Farll to complete the tale!
Was it the coffin, or the richness of its pall, or the solitary
whiteness of its cross of flowers, or the august authority of the
bearers, that affected Priam Farll like a blow on the heart? Who knows?
But the fact was that he could look no more; the scene was too much for
him. Had he continued to look he would have burst uncontrollably into
tears. It mattered not that the corpse of a common rascally valet lay
under that pall; it mattered not that a grotesque error was being
enacted; it mattered not whether the actuating spring of the immense
affair was the Dean's water-colouring niece or the solemn deliberations
of the Chapter; it mattered not that newspapers had ignobly misused the
name and honour of art for their own advancement--the instant effect was
overwhelmingly impressive. All that had been honest and sincere in the
heart of England for a thousand years leapt mystically up and made it
impossible that the effect should be other than overwhelmingly
impressive. It was an effect beyond argument and reason; it was the
magic flowering of centuries in a single moment, the silent awful sigh
of a nation's saecular soul. It took majesty and loveliness from the
walls around it, and rendered them again tenfold. It left nothing
common, neither the motives nor the littleness of men. In Priam's mind
it gave dignity to Lady Sophia Entwistle, and profound tragedy to the
death of Leek; it transformed even the gestures of the choir-leader into
grave commands.
And all that was for him! He had brushed pigments on to cloth in a way
of his own, nothing more, and the nation to which he had always denied
artistic perceptions, the nation which he had always fiercely accused of
sentimentality, was thus solemnizing his committal to the earth! Divine
mystery of art! The large magnificence of England smote him! He had not
suspected his own greatness, nor England's.
The music ceased. He chanced to look up at the little glooming window,
perched out of reach of mankind. And the thought that the window had
burned there, patiently and unexpectantly, for hundreds of years, like
an anchorite above the river and town, somehow disturbed him so that he
could not continue to look at it. Ineffable sadness of a mere window!
And his eye fell--fell on the coffin of Henry Leek with its white cross,
and the representative of England's majesty standing beside it. And
there was the end of Priam Farll's self-control. A pang like a pang of
parturition itself seized him, and an issuing sob nearly ripped him in
two. It was a loud sob, undisguised, unashamed, reverberating. Other
sobs succeeded it. Priam Farll was in torture.
_A New Hat_
The organist vaulted over his seat, shocked by the outrage.
"You really mustn't make that noise," whispered the organist.
Priam Farll shook him off.
The organist was apparently at a loss what to do.
"Who is it?" whispered one of the young men.
"Don't know him from Adam!" said the organist with conviction, and then
to Priam Farll: "Who are you? You've no right to be here. Who gave you
permission to come up here?"
And the rending sobs continued to issue from the full-bodied ridiculous
man of fifty, utterly careless of decorum.
"It's perfectly absurd!" whispered the youngster who had whispered
before.
There had been a silence in the choir.
"Here! They're waiting for you!" whispered the other young man excitedly
to the organist.
"By----!" whispered the alarmed organist, not stopping to say by what,
but leaping like an acrobat back to his seat. His fingers and boots were
at work instantly, and as he played he turned his head and whispered--
"Better fetch some one."
One of the young men crept quickly and creakingly down the stairs.
Fortunately the organ and choristers were now combined to overcome the
sobbing, and they succeeded. Presently a powerful arm, hidden under a
black cassock, was laid on Priam's shoulder. He hysterically tried to
free himself, but he could not. The cassock and the two young men thrust
him downwards. They all descended together, partly walking and partly
falling. And then a door was opened, and Priam discovered himself in the
unroofed air of the cloisters, without his hat, and breathing in gasps.
His executioners were also breathing in gasps. They glared at him in
triumphant menace, as though they had done something, which indeed they
had, and as though they meant to do something more but could not quite
decide what.
"Where's your ticket of admission?" demanded the cassock.
Priam fumbled for it, and could not find it.
"I must have lost it," he said weakly.
"What's your name, anyhow?"
"Priam Farll," said Priam Farll, without thinking.
"Off his nut, evidently!" murmured one of the young men contemptuously.
"Come on, Stan. Don't let's miss that anthem, for this cuss." And off
they both went.
Then a youthful policeman appeared, putting on his helmet as he quitted
the fane.
"What's all this?" asked the policeman, in the assured tone of one who
had the forces of the Empire behind him.
"He's been making a disturbance in the horgan loft," said the cassock,
"and now he says his name's Priam Farll."
"Oh!" said the policeman. "Ho! And how did he get into the organ loft?"
"Don't arsk me," answered the cassock. "He ain't got no ticket."
"Now then, out of it!" said the policeman, taking zealously hold of
Priam.
"I'll thank you to leave me alone," said Priam, rebelling with all the
pride of his nature against this clutch of the law.
"Oh, you will, will you?" said the policeman. "We'll see about that. We
shall just see about that."
And the policeman dragged Priam along the cloister to the muffled music
of "He will swallow up death in victory." They had not thus proceeded
very far when they met another policeman, an older policeman.
"What's all this?" demanded the older policeman.
"Drunk and disorderly in the Abbey!" said the younger.
"Will you come quietly?" the older policeman asked Priam, with a touch
of commiseration.
"I'm not drunk," said Priam fiercely; he was unversed in London, and
unaware of the foolishness of reasoning with the watch-dogs of justice.
"Will you come quietly?" the older policeman repeated, this time without
any touch of commiseration.
"Yes," said Priam.
And he went quietly. Experience may teach with the rapidity of
lightning.
"But where's my hat?" he added after a moment, instinctively stopping.
"Now then!" said the older policeman. "Come _on_."
He walked between them, striding. Just as they emerged into Dean's Yard,
his left hand nervously exploring one of his pockets, on a sudden
encountered a piece of cardboard.
"Here's my ticket," he said. "I thought I'd lost it. I've had nothing at
all to drink, and you'd better let me go. The whole affair's a mistake."
The procession halted, while the older policeman gazed fascinated at the
official document.
"Henry Leek," he read, deciphering the name.
"He's been a-telling every one as he's Priam Farll," grumbled the
younger policeman, looking over the other's shoulder.
"I've done no such thing," said Priam promptly.
The elder carefully inspected the prisoner, and two little boys arrived
and formed a crowd, which was immediately dispersed by a frown.
"He don't look as if he'd had 'ardly as much drink as 'ud wash a bus,
does he?" murmured the elder critically. The younger, afraid of his
senior, said nothing. "Look here, Mr. Henry Leek," the elder proceeded,
"do you know what I should do if I was you? I should go and buy myself a
new hat, if I was you, and quick too!"
Priam hastened away, and heard the senior say to the junior, "He's a
toff, that's what he is, and you're a fool. Have you forgotten as you're
on point duty?"
And such is the effect of a suggestion given under certain circumstances
by a man of authority, that Priam Farll went straight along Victoria
Street and at Sowter's famous one-price hat-shop did in fact buy himself
a new hat. He then hailed a taximeter from the stand opposite the Army
and Navy Stores, and curtly gave the address of the Grand Babylon Hotel.
And when the cab was fairly at speed, and not before, he abandoned
himself to a fit of candid, unrestrained cursing. He cursed largely and
variously and shamelessly both in English and in French. And he did not
cease cursing. It was a reaction which I do not care to characterize;
but I will not conceal that it occurred. The fit spent itself before he
reached the hotel, for most of Parliament Street was blocked for the
spectacular purposes of his funeral, and his driver had to seek devious
ways. The cursing over, he began to smooth his plumes in detail. At the
hotel, out of sheer nervousness, he gave the cabman half-a-crown, which
was preposterous.
Another cab drove up nearly at the exact instant of his arrival. And, as
a capping to the day, Mrs. Alice Challice stepped out of it.
* * * * *