_The Secret_
"What do you mean?" asked Priam Farll. But he put the question weakly,
and he might just as well have said, "I know what you mean, and I would
pay a million pounds or so in order to sink through the floor." A few
minutes ago he would only have paid five hundred pounds or so in order
to run simply away. Now he wanted Maskelyne miracles to happen to him.
The universe seemed to be caving in about the ears of Priam Farll.
Mr. Oxford was still smiling; smiling, however, as a man holds his
breath for a wager. You felt that he could not keep it up much longer.
"You _are_ Priam Farll, aren't you?" said Mr. Oxford in a very low
voice.
"What makes you think I'm Priam Farll?"
"I think you are Priam Farll because you painted that picture I bought
from you this morning, and I am sure that no one but Priam Farll could
have painted it."
"Then you've been playing a game with me all morning!"
"Please don't put it like that, _cher maître_," Mr. Oxford whisperingly
pleaded. "I only wished to feel my ground. I know that Priam Farll is
supposed to have been buried in Westminster Abbey. But for me the
existence of that picture of Putney High Street, obviously just painted,
is an absolute proof that he is not buried in Westminster Abbey, and
that he still lives. It is an amazing thing that there should have been
a mistake at the funeral, an utterly amazing thing, which involves all
sorts of consequences! But that's not my business. Of course there must
be clear reasons for what occurred. I am not interested in them--I mean
not professionally. I merely argue, when I see a certain picture, with
the paint still wet on it: 'That picture was painted by a certain
painter. I am an expert, and I stake my reputation on it' It's no use
telling me that the painter in question died several years ago and was
buried with national honours in Westminster Abbey. I say it couldn't
have been so. I'm a connoisseur. And if the facts of his death and
burial don't agree with the result of my connoisseurship, I say they
aren't facts. I say there's been a--a misunderstanding about--er--
corpses. Now, _cher maître_, what do you think of my position?"
Mr. Oxford drummed lightly on the table.
"I don't know," said Priam. Which was another lie.
"You _are_ Priam Farll, aren't you?" Mr. Oxford persisted.
"Well, if you will have it," said Priam savagely, "I am. And now you
know!"
Mr. Oxford let his smile go. He had held it for an incredible time. He
let it go, and sighed a gentle and profound relief. He had been skating
over the thinnest ice, and had reached the bank amid terrific crackings,
and he began to appreciate the extent of the peril braved. He had been
perfectly sure of his connoisseurship. But when one says one is
perfectly sure, especially if one says it with immense emphasis, one
always means 'imperfectly sure.' So it was with Mr. Oxford. And really,
to argue, from the mere existence of a picture, that a tremendous deceit
had been successfully practised upon the most formidable of nations,
implies rather more than rashness on the part of the arguer.
"But I don't want it to get about," said Priam, still in a savage
whisper. "And I don't want to talk about it." He looked at the nearest
midgets resentfully, suspecting them of eavesdropping.
"Precisely," said Mr. Oxford, but in a tone that lacked conviction.
"It's a matter that only concerns me," said Priam.
"Precisely," Mr. Oxford repeated. "At least it _ought_ to concern only
you. And I can't assure you too positively that I'm the last person in
the world to want to pry; but--"
"You must kindly remember," said Priam, interrupting, "that you bought
that picture this morning simply _as_ a picture, on its merits. You have
no authority to attach my name to it, and I must ask you not to do so."
"Certainly," agreed Mr. Oxford. "I bought it as a masterpiece, and I'm
quite content with my bargain. I want no signature."
"I haven't signed my pictures for twenty years," said Priam.
"Pardon me," said Mr. Oxford. "Every square inch of every one is
unmistakably signed. You could not put a brush on a canvas without
signing it. It is the privilege of only the greatest painters not to put
letters on the corners of their pictures in order to keep other painters
from taking the credit for them afterwards. For me, all your pictures
are signed. But there are some people who want more proof than
connoisseurship can give, and that's where the trouble is going to be."
"Trouble?" said Priam, with an intensification of his misery.
"Yes," said Mr. Oxford. "I must tell you, so that you can understand the
situation." He became very solemn, showing that he had at last reached
the real point. "Some time ago a man, a little dealer, came to me and
offered me a picture that I instantly recognized as one of yours. I
bought it."
"How much did you pay for it?" Priam growled.
After a pause Mr. Oxford said, "I don't mind giving you the figure. I
paid fifty pounds for it."
"Did you!" exclaimed Priam, perceiving that some person or persons had
made four hundred per cent. on his work by the time it had arrived at a
big dealer. "Who was the fellow?"
"Oh, a little dealer. Nobody. Jew, of course." Mr. Oxford's way of
saying 'Jew' was ineffably ironic. Priam knew that, being a Jew, the
dealer could not be his frame-maker, who was a pure-bred Yorkshireman
from Ravensthorpe. Mr. Oxford continued, "I sold that picture and
guaranteed it to be a Priam Farll."
"The devil you did!"
"Yes. I had sufficient confidence in my judgment."
"Who bought it?"
"Whitney C. Witt, of New York. He's an old man now, of course. I expect
you remember him, _cher maître_." Mr. Oxford's eyes twinkled. "I sold it
to him, and of course he accepted my guarantee. Soon afterwards I had
the offer of other pictures obviously by you, from the same dealer. And
I bought them. I kept on buying them. I dare say I've bought forty
altogether."
"Did your little dealer guess whose work they were?" Priam demanded
suspiciously.
"Not he! If he had done, do you suppose he'd have parted with them for
fifty pounds apiece? Mind, at first I thought I was buying pictures
painted before your supposed death. I thought, like the rest of the
world, that you were--in the Abbey. Then I began to have doubts. And one
day when a bit of paint came off on my thumb, I can tell you I was
startled. However, I stuck to my opinion, and I kept on guaranteeing the
pictures as Farlls."
"It never occurred to you to make any inquiries?"
"Yes, it did," said Mr. Oxford. "I did my best to find out from the
dealer where he got the pictures from, but he wouldn't tell me. Well, I
sort of scented a mystery. Now I've got no professional use for
mysteries, and I came to the conclusion that I'd better just let this
one alone. So I did."
"Well, why didn't you keep on leaving it alone?" Priam asked.
"Because circumstances won't let me. I sold practically all those
pictures to Whitney C. Witt. It was all right. Anyhow I thought it was
all right. I put Parfitts' name and reputation on their being yours. And
then one day I heard from Mr. Witt that on the back of the canvas of one
of the pictures the name of the canvas-makers, and a date, had been
stamped, with a rubber stamp, and that the date was after your supposed
burial, and that his London solicitors had made inquiries from the
artist's-material people here, and these people were prepared to prove
that the canvas was made after Priam Farll's funeral. You see the fix?"
Priam did.
"My reputation--Parfitts'--is at stake. If those pictures aren't by you,
I'm a swindler. Parfitts' name is gone for ever, and there'll be the
greatest scandal that ever was. Witt is threatening proceedings. I
offered to take the whole lot back at the price he paid me, without any
commission. But he won't. He's an old man; a bit of a maniac I expect,
and he won't. He's angry. He thinks he's been swindled, and what he says
is that he's going to see the thing through. I've got to prove to him
that the pictures are yours. I've got to show him what grounds I had for
giving my guarantee. Well, to cut a long story short, I've found you,
I'm glad to say!"
He sighed again.
"Look here," said Priam. "How much has Witt paid you altogether for my
pictures?"
After a pause, Mr. Oxford said, "I don't mind giving you the figure.
He's paid me seventy-two thousand pounds odd." He smiled, as if to
excuse himself.
When Priam Farll reflected that he had received about four hundred
pounds for those pictures--vastly less than one per cent, of what the
shiny and prosperous dealer had ultimately disposed of them for, the
traditional fury of the artist against the dealer--of the producer
against the parasitic middleman--sprang into flame in his heart. Up till
then he had never had any serious cause of complaint against his
dealers. (Extremely successful artists seldom have.) Now he saw dealers,
as the ordinary painters see them, to be the authors of all evil! Now he
understood by what methods Mr. Oxford had achieved his splendid car,
clothes, club, and minions. These things were earned, not by Mr. Oxford,
but _for_ Mr. Oxford in dingy studios, even in attics, by shabby
industrious painters! Mr. Oxford was nothing but an opulent thief, a
grinder of the face of genius. Mr. Oxford was, in a word, the spawn of
the devil, and Priam silently but sincerely consigned him to his proper
place.
It was excessively unjust of Priam. Nobody had asked Priam to die.
Nobody had asked him to give up his identity. If he had latterly been
receiving tens instead of thousands for his pictures, the fault was his
alone. Mr. Oxford had only bought and only sold; which was his true
function. But Mr. Oxford's sin, in Priam's eyes, was the sin of having
been right.
It would have needed less insight than Mr. Oxford had at his disposal to
see that Priam Farll was taking the news very badly.
"For both our sakes, _cher maître_," said Mr. Oxford persuasively, "I
think it will be advisable for you to put me in a position to prove that
my guarantee to Witt was justified."
"Why for both our sakes?"
"Because, well, I shall be delighted to pay you, say thirty-six thousand
pounds in acknowledgment of--er--" He stopped.
Probably he had instantly perceived that he was committing a disastrous
error of tact. Either he should have offered nothing, or he should have
offered the whole sum he had received less a small commission. To
suggest dividing equally with Priam was the instinctive impulse, the
fatal folly, of a born dealer. And Mr. Oxford was a born dealer.
"I won't accept a penny," said Priam. "And I can't help you in any way.
I'm afraid I must go now. I'm late as it is."
His cold resistless fury drove him forward, and, without the slightest
regard for the amenities of clubs, he left the table, Mr. Oxford,
becoming more and more the dealer, rose and followed him, even directed
him to the gigantic cloak-room, murmuring the while soft persuasions and
pacifications in Priam's ear.
"There may be an action in the courts," said Mr. Oxford in the grand
entrance hall, "and your testimony would be indispensable to me."
"I can have nothing to do with it. Good-day!"
The giant at the door could scarce open the gigantic portal quickly
enough for him. He fled--fled, surrounded by nightmare visions of
horrible publicity in a law-court. Unthinkable tortures! He damned Mr.
Oxford to the nethermost places, and swore that he would not lift a
finger to save Mr. Oxford from penal servitude for life.
_Money-getting_
He stood on the kerb of the monument, talking to himself savagely. At
any rate he was safely outside the monument, with its pullulating
population of midgets creeping over its carpets and lounging
insignificant on its couches. He could not remember clearly what had
occurred since the moment of his getting up from the table; he could not
remember seeing anything or anyone on his way out; but he could remember
the persuasive, deferential voice of Mr. Oxford following him
persistently as far as the giant's door. In recollection that club was
like an abode of black magic to him; it seemed so hideously alive in its
deadness, and its doings were so absurd and mysterious. "Silence,
silence!" commanded the white papers in one vast chamber, and, in
another, babel existed! And then that terrible mute dining-room, with
the high, unscalable mantelpieces that no midget could ever reach! He
kept uttering the most dreadful judgments on the club and on Mr. Oxford,
in quite audible tones, oblivious of the street. He was aroused by a
rather scared man saluting him. It was Mr. Oxford's chauffeur, waiting
patiently till his master should be ready to re-enter the wheeled salon.
The chauffeur apparently thought him either demented or inebriated, but
his sole duty was to salute, and he did nothing else.
Quite forgetting that this chauffeur was a fellow-creature, Priam
immediately turned upon his heel, and hurried down the street. At the
corner of the street was a large bank, and Priam, acquiring the reckless
courage of the soldier in battle, entered the bank. He had never been in
a London bank before. At first it reminded him of the club, with the
addition of an enormous placard giving the day of the month as a
mystical number--14--and other placards displaying solitary letters of
the alphabet. Then he saw that it was a huge menagerie in which highly
trained young men of assorted sizes and years were confined in stout
cages of wire and mahogany. He stamped straight to a cage with a hole in
it, and threw down the cheque for five hundred pounds--defiantly.
"Next desk, please," said a mouth over a high collar and a green tie,
behind the grating, and a disdainful hand pushed the cheque back towards
Priam.
"Next desk!" repeated Priam, dashed but furious.
"This is the A to M desk," said the mouth.
Then Priam understood the solitary letters, and he rushed, with a new
accession of fury, to the adjoining cage, where another disdainful hand
picked up the cheque and turned it over, with an air of saying, "Fishy,
this!"
And, "It isn't endorsed!" said another mouth over another high collar
and green tie. The second disdainful hand pushed the cheque back again
to Priam, as though it had been a begging circular.
"Oh, if that's all!" said Priam, almost speechless from anger. "Have you
got such a thing as a pen?"
He was behaving in an extremely unreasonable manner. He had no right to
visit his spleen on a perfectly innocent bank that paid twenty-five per
cent to its shareholders and a thousand a year each to its directors,
and what trifle was left over to its men in rages. But Priam was not
like you or me. He did not invariably act according to reason. He could
not be angry with one man at once, nor even with one building at once.
When he was angry he was inclusively and miscellaneously angry; and the
sun, moon, and stars did not escape.
After he had endorsed the cheque the disdainful hand clawed it up once
more, and directed upon its obverse and upon its reverse a battery of
suspicions; then a pair of eyes glanced with critical distrust at so
much of Priam's person as was visible. Then the eyes moved back, the
mouth opened, in a brief word, and lo! there were four eyes and two
mouths over the cheque, and four for an instant on Priam. Priam expected
some one to call for a policeman; in spite of himself he felt guilty--or
anyhow dubious. It was the grossest insult to him to throw doubt on the
cheque and to examine him in that frigid, shamelessly disillusioned
manner.
"You _are_ Mr. Leek?" a mouth moved.
"Yes" (very slowly).
"How would you like this?"
"I'll thank you to give it me in notes," answered Priam haughtily.
When the disdainful hand had counted twice every corner of a pile of
notes, and had dropped the notes one by one, with a peculiar snapping
sound of paper, in front of Priam, Priam crushed them together and
crammed them without any ceremony and without gratitude to the giver,
into the right pocket of his trousers. And he stamped out of the
building with curses on his lips.
Still, he felt better, he felt assuaged. To cultivate and nourish a
grievance when you have five hundred pounds in your pocket, in cash, is
the most difficult thing in the world.
_A Visit to the Tailors'_
He gradually grew calmer by dint of walking--aimless, fast walking, with
a rapt expression of the eyes that on crowded pavements cleared the way
for him more effectually than a shouting footman. And then he debouched
unexpectedly on to the Embankment. Dusk was already falling on the noble
curve of the Thames, and the mighty panorama stretched before him in a
manner mysteriously impressive which has made poets of less poetic men
than Priam Farll. Grand hotels, offices of millionaires and of
governments, grand hotels, swards and mullioned windows of the law,
grand hotels, the terrific arches of termini, cathedral domes, houses of
parliament, and grand hotels, rose darkly around him on the arc of the
river, against the dark violet murk of the sky. Huge trams swam past him
like glass houses, and hansoms shot past the trams and automobiles past
the hansoms; and phantom barges swirled down on the full ebb, threading
holes in bridges as cotton threads a needle. It was London, and the roar
of London, majestic, imperial, super-Roman. And lo! earlier than the
earliest municipal light, an unseen hand, the hand of destiny, printed a
writing on the wall of vague gloom that was beginning to hide the
opposite bank. And the writing said that Shipton's tea was the best. And
then the hand wiped largely out that message and wrote in another spot
that Macdonnell's whisky was the best; and so these two doctrines, in
their intermittent pyrotechnics, continued to give the lie to each other
under the deepening night. Quite five minutes passed before Priam
perceived, between the altercating doctrines, the high scaffold-clad
summit of a building which was unfamiliar to him. It looked serenely and
immaterially beautiful in the evening twilight, and as he was close to
Waterloo Bridge, his curiosity concerning beauty took him over to the
south bank of the Thames.
After losing himself in the purlieus of Waterloo Station, he at last
discovered the rear of the building. Yes, it was a beautiful thing; its
tower climbed in several coloured storeys, diminishing till it expired
in a winged figure on the sky. And below, the building was broad and
massive, with a frontage of pillars over great arched windows. Two
cranes stuck their arms out from the general mass, and the whole
enterprise was guarded in a hedge of hoardings. Through the narrow
doorway in the hoarding came the flare and the hissing of a Wells's
light. Priam Farll glanced timidly within. The interior was immense. In
a sort of court of honour a group of muscular, hairy males, silhouetted
against an illuminated latticework of scaffolding, were chipping and
paring at huge blocks of stone. It was a subject for a Rembrandt.
A fat untidy man meditatively approached the doorway. He had a roll of
tracing papers in his hand, and the end of a long, thick pencil in his
mouth. He was the man who interpreted the dreams of the architect to the
dreamy British artisan. Experience of life had made him somewhat
brusque.
"Look here," he said to Priam; "what the devil do you want?"
"What the devil do I want?" repeated Priam, who had not yet altogether
fallen away from his mood of universal defiance. "I only want to know
what the h-ll this building is."
The fat man was a little startled. He took his pencil from his mouth,
and spit.
"It's the new Picture Gallery, built under the will of that there Priam
Farll. I should ha' thought you'd ha' known that." Priam's lips trembled
on the verge of an exclamation. "See that?" the fat man pursued,
pointing to a small board on the hoarding. The board said, "No hands
wanted."
The fat man coldly scrutinized Priam's appearance, from his greenish hat
to his baggy creased boots.
Priam walked away.
He was dumbfounded. Then he was furious again. He perfectly saw the
humour of the situation, but it was not the kind of humour that induced
rollicking laughter. He was furious, and employed the language of fury,
when it is not overheard. Absorbed by his craft of painting, as in the
old Continental days, he had long since ceased to read the newspapers,
and though he had not forgotten his bequest to the nation, he had never
thought of it as taking architectural shape. He was not aware of his
cousin Duncan's activities for the perpetuation of the family name. The
thing staggered him. The probabilities of the strange consequences of
dead actions swept against him and overwhelmed him. Once, years ago and
years ago, in a resentful mood, he had written a few lines on a piece of
paper, and signed them in the presence of witnesses. Then
nothing--nothing whatever--for two decades! The paper slept... and now
this--this tremendous concrete result in the heart of London! It was
incredible. It passed the bounds even of lawful magic.
His palace, his museum! The fruit of a captious hour!
Ah! But he was furious. Like every ageing artist of genuine
accomplishment, he knew--none better--that there is no satisfaction save
the satisfaction of fatigue after honest endeavour. He knew--none
better--that wealth and glory and fine clothes are nought, and that
striving is all. He had never been happier than during the last two
years. Yet the finest souls have their reactions, their rebellions
against wise reason. And Priam's soul was in insurrection then. He
wanted wealth and glory and fine clothes once more. It seemed to him
that he was out of the world and that he must return to it. The covert
insults of Mr. Oxford rankled and stung. And the fat foreman had
mistaken him for a workman cadging for a job.
He walked rapidly to the bridge and took a cab to Conduit Street, where
dwelt a firm of tailors with whose Paris branch he had had dealings in
his dandiacal past.
An odd impulse perhaps, but natural.
A lighted clock-tower--far to his left as the cab rolled across the
bridge--showed that a legislative providence was watching over Israel.
_Alice on the Situation_
"I bet the building alone won't cost less than seventy thousand pounds,"
he said.
He was back again with Alice in the intimacy of Werter Road, and
relating to her, in part, the adventures of the latter portion of the
day. He had reached home long after tea-time; she, with her natural
sagacity, had not waited tea for him. Now she had prepared a rather
special tea for the adventurer, and she was sitting opposite to him at
the little table, with nothing to do but listen and refill his cup.
"Well," she said mildly, and without the least surprise at his figures,
"I don't know what he could have been thinking of--your Priam Farll! I
call it just silly. It isn't as if there wasn't enough picture-galleries
already. When what there are are so full that you can't get in--then it
will be time enough to think about fresh ones. I've been to the National
Gallery twice, and upon my word I was almost the only person there! And
it's free too! People don't _want_ picture-galleries. If they did they'd
go. Who ever saw a public-house empty, or Peter Robinson's? And you have
to pay there! Silly, I call it! Why couldn't he have left his money to
you, or at any rate to the hospitals or something of that? No, it isn't
silly. It's scandalous! It ought to be stopped!"
Now Priam had resolved that evening to make a serious, gallant attempt
to convince his wife of his own identity. He was approaching the
critical point. This speech of hers intimidated him, rather complicated
his difficulties, but he determined to proceed bravely.
"Have you put sugar in this?" he asked.
"Yes," she said. "But you've forgotten to stir it. I'll stir it for
you."
A charming wifely attention! It enheartened him.
"I say, Alice," he said, as she stirred, "you remember when first I told
you I could paint?"
"Yes," she said.
"Well, at first you thought I was daft. You thought my mind was
wandering, didn't you?"
"No," she said, "I only thought you'd got a bee in your bonnet." She
smiled demurely.
"Well, I hadn't, had I?"
"Seeing the money you've made, I should just say you hadn't," she
handsomely admitted. "Where we should be without it I don't know."
"You were wrong, weren't you? And I was right?"
"Of course," she beamed.
"And do you remember that time I told you I was really Priam Farll?"
She nodded, reluctantly.
"You thought I was absolutely mad. Oh, you needn't deny it! I could see
well enough what your thoughts were."
"I thought you weren't quite well," she said frankly.
"But I was, my child. Now I've got to tell you again that I am Priam
Farll. Honestly I wish I wasn't, but I am. The deuce of it is that that
fellow that came here this morning has found it out, and there's going
to be trouble. At least there has been trouble, and there may be more."
She was impressed. She knew not what to say.
"But, Priam----"
"He's paid me five hundred to-day for that picture I've just finished."
"Five hund----"
Priam snatched the notes from his pocket, and with a gesture pardonably
dramatic he bade her count them.
"Count them," he repeated, when she hesitated.
"Is it right?" he asked when she had finished.
"Oh, it's right enough," she agreed. "But, Priam, I don't like having
all this money in the house. You ought to have called and put it in the
bank."
"Dash the bank!" he exclaimed. "Just keep on listening to me, and try to
persuade yourself I'm not mad. I admit I'm a bit shy, and it was all on
account of that that I let that d--d valet of mine be buried as me."
"You needn't tell me you're shy," she smiled. "All Putney knows you're
shy."
"I'm not so sure about that!" He tossed his head.
Then he began at the beginning and recounted to her in detail the
historic night and morning at Selwood Terrace, with a psychological
description of his feelings. He convinced her, in less than ten minutes,
with the powerful aid of five hundred pounds in banknotes, that he in
truth was Priam Farll.
And he waited for her to express an exceeding astonishment and
satisfaction.
"Well, of course if you are, you are," she observed simply, regarding
him with benevolent, possessive glances across the table. The fact was
that she did not deal in names, she dealt in realities. He was her
reality, and so long as he did not change visibly or actually--so long
as he remained he--she did not much mind who he was. She added, "But I
really don't know what you were _dreaming_ of, Henry, to do such a
thing!"
"Neither do I," he muttered.
Then he disclosed to her the whole chicanery of Mr. Oxford.
"It's a good thing you've ordered those new clothes," she said.
"Why?"
"Because of the trial."
"The trial between Oxford and Witt. What's that got to do with me?"
"They'll make you give evidence."
"But I shan't give evidence. I've told Oxford I'll have nothing to do
with it at all."
"Suppose they make you? They can, you know, with a sub--sub something, I
forget its name. Then you'll _have_ to go in the witness-box."
"Me in the witness-box!" he murmured, undone.
"Yes," she said. "I expect it'll be very provoking indeed. But you'd
want a new suit for it. So I'm glad you ordered one. When are you going
to try on?"
* * * * *