Buried Alive: a Tale of These Days - Arnold Bennett (books to read for self improvement txt) 📗

keep her. He was quite at a loss. Strange that a man great enough and brilliant enough to get buried in Westminster Abbey had not sufficient of the small change of cleverness to retain the company of a Mrs. Alice Challice! Yet so it was. Happily he was buoyed up by the thought that she understood.

"I must be moving off home," she said, putting her gloves on slowly; and sighed.

"Let me see," he stammered. "I think you said Werter Road, Putney?"

"Yes. No. 29."

"Perhaps you'll let me call on you," he ventured.

"Oh, do!" she encouraged him.

Nothing could have been more correct, and nothing more banal, than this part of their conversation. He certainly would call. He would travel down to the idyllic Putney to-morrow. He could not lose such a friend, such a balm, such a soft cushion, such a comprehending intelligence. He would bit by bit become intimate with her, and perhaps ultimately he might arrive at the stage of being able to tell her who he was with some chance of being believed. Anyhow, when he did call--and he insisted to himself that it should be extremely soon--he would try another plan with her; he would carefully decide beforehand just what to say and how to say it. This decision reconciled him somewhat to a temporary parting from her.

So he paid the bill, under her sagacious, protesting eyes, and he managed to conceal from those eyes the precise amount of the tip; and then, at the cloak-room, he furtively gave sixpence to a fat and wealthy man who had been watching over his hat and stick. (Highly curious, how those common-sense orbs of hers made all such operations seem excessively silly!) And at last they wandered, in silence, through the corridors and antechambers that led to the courtyard entrance. And through the glass portals Priam Farll had a momentary glimpse of the reflection of light on a cabman's wet macintosh. It was raining. It was raining very heavily indeed. All was dry under the glass-roofed colonnades of the courtyard, but the rain rattled like kettledrums on that glass, and the centre of the courtyard was a pond in which a few hansoms were splashing about. Everything--the horses' coats, the cabmen's hats and capes, and the cabmen's red faces, shone and streamed in the torrential summer rain. It is said that geography makes history. In England, and especially in London, weather makes a good deal of history. Impossible to brave that rain, except under the severest pressure of necessity! They were in shelter, and in shelter they must remain.

He was glad, absurdly and splendidly glad.

"It can't last long," she said, looking up at the black sky, which showed an edge towards the east.

"Suppose we go in again and have some tea?" he said.

Now they had barely concluded coffee. But she did not seem to mind.

"Well," she said, "it's always tea-time for me."

He saw a clock. "It's nearly four," he said.

Thus justified of the clock, in they went, and sat down in the same seats which they had occupied at the commencement of the adventure in the main lounge. Priam discovered a bell-push, and commanded China tea and muffins. He felt that he now, as it were, had an opportunity of making a fresh start in life. He grew almost gay. He could be gay without sinning against decorum, for Mrs. Challice's singular tact had avoided all reference to deaths and funerals.

And in the pause, while he was preparing to be gay, attractive, and in fact his true self, she, calmly stirring China tea, shot a bolt which made him see stars.

"It seems to me," she observed, "that we might go farther and fare worse--both of us."

He genuinely did not catch the significance of it in the first instant, and she saw that he did not.

"Oh," she proceeded, benevolently and reassuringly, "I mean it. I'm not gallivanting about. I mean that if you want my opinion I fancy we could make a match of it."

It was at this point that he saw stars. He also saw a faint and delicious blush on her face, whose complexion was extraordinarily fresh and tender.

She sipped China tea, holding each finger wide apart from the others.

He had forgotten the origin of their acquaintance, forgotten that each of them was supposed to have a definite aim in view, forgotten that it was with a purpose that they had exchanged photographs. It had not occurred to him that marriage hung over him like a sword. He perceived the sword now, heavy and sharp, and suspended by a thread of appalling fragility. He dodged. He did not want to lose her, never to see her again; but he dodged.

"I couldn't think----" he began, and stopped.

"Of course it's a very awkward situation for a man," she went on, toying with muffin. "I can quite understand how you feel. And with most folks you'd be right. There's very few women that can judge character, and if you started to try and settle something at once they'd just set you down as a wrong 'un. But I'm not like that. I don't expect any fiddle-faddle. What I like is plain sense and plain dealing. We both want to get married, so it would be silly to pretend we didn't, wouldn't it? And it would be ridiculous of me to look for courting and a proposal, and all that sort of thing, just as if I'd never seen a man in his shirt-sleeves. The only question is: shall we suit each other? I've told you what I think. What do you think?"

She smiled honestly, kindly, but piercingly.

What could he say? What would you have said, you being a man? It is easy, sitting there in your chair, with no Mrs. Alice Challice in front of you, to invent diplomatic replies; but conceive yourself in Priam's place! Besides, he did think she would suit him. And most positively he could not bear the prospect of seeing her pass out of his life. He had been through that experience once, when his hat blew off in the Tube; and he did not wish to repeat it.

"Of course you've got no home!" she said reflectively, with such compassion. "Suppose you come down and just have a little peep at mine?"

So that evening, a suitably paired couple chanced into the fishmonger's at the corner of Werter Road, and bought a bit of sole. At the newspaper shop next door but one, placards said: "Impressive Scenes at Westminster Abbey," "Farll funeral, stately pageant," "Great painter laid to rest," etc.

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CHAPTER VI


A Putney Morning

Except that there was marrying and giving in marriage, it was just as though he had died and gone to heaven. Heaven is the absence of worry and of ambition. Heaven is where you want nothing you haven't got. Heaven is finality. And this was finality. On the September morning, after the honeymoon and the settling down, he arose leisurely, long after his wife, and, putting on the puce dressing-gown (which Alice much admired), he opened the window wider and surveyed that part of the universe which was comprised in Werter Road and the sky above. A sturdy old woman was coming down the street with a great basket of assorted flowers; he took an immense pleasure in the sight of the old woman; the sight of the old woman thrilled him. Why? Well, there was no reason, except that she was vigorously alive, a part of the magnificent earth. All life gave him joy; all life was beautiful to him. He had his warm bath; the bath-room was not of the latest convenience, but Alice could have made a four-wheeler convenient. As he passed to and fro on the first-floor he heard the calm, efficient activities below stairs. She was busy in the mornings; her eyes would seem to say to him, "Now, between my uprising and lunch-time please don't depend on me for intellectual or moral support. I am on the spot, but I am also at the wheel and must not be disturbed."

Then he descended, fresh as a boy, although the promontory which prevented a direct vision of his toes showed accretions. The front-room was a shrine for his breakfast. She served it herself, in her-white apron, promptly on his arrival! Eggs! Toast! Coffee! It was nothing, that breakfast; and yet it was everything. No breakfast could have been better. He had probably eaten about fifteen thousand hotel breakfasts before Alice taught him what a real breakfast was. After serving it she lingered for a moment, and then handed him the Daily Telegraph, which had been lying on a chair.

"Here's your Telegraph," she said cheerfully, tacitly disowning any property or interest in the Telegraph. For her, newspapers were men's toys. She never opened a paper, never wanted to know what was going on in the world. She was always intent upon her own affairs. Politics--and all that business of the mere machinery of living: she perfectly ignored it! She lived. She did nothing but live. She lived every hour. Priam felt truly that he had at last got down to the bed-rock of life.

There were twenty pages of the Telegraph, far more matter than a man could read in a day even if he read and read and neither ate nor slept. And all of it so soothing in its rich variety! It gently lulled you; it was the ideal companion for a poached egg; upstanding against the coffee-pot, it stood for the solidity of England in the seas. Priam folded it large; he read all the articles down to the fold; then turned the thing over, and finished all of them. After communing with the Telegraph, he communed with his own secret nature, and wandered about, rolling a cigarette. Ah! The first cigarette! His wanderings led him to the kitchen, or at least as far as the threshold thereof. His wife was at work there. Upon every handle or article that might soil she put soft brown paper, and in addition she often wore house-gloves; so that her hands remained immaculate; thus during the earlier hours of the day the house, especially in the region of fireplaces, had the air of being in curl-papers.

"I'm going out now, Alice," he said, after he had drawn on his finely polished boots.

"Very well, love," she replied, preoccupied with her work. "Lunch as usual." She never demanded luxuriousness from him. She had got him. She was sure of him. That satisfied her. Sometimes, like a simple woman who has come into a set of pearls, she would, as it were, take him out of his drawer and look at him, and put him back.

At the gate he hesitated whether to turn to the left, towards High Street, or to the right, towards Oxford Road. He chose the right, but he would have enjoyed himself equally had he chosen the left. The streets through which he passed were populated by domestic servants and tradesmen's boys. He saw white-capped girls cleaning door-knobs or windows, or running along the streets, like escaped nuns, or staring in soft meditation from bedroom windows. And the tradesmen's boys were continually leaping in and out of carts, or off and on tricycles, busily distributing food and drink, as though Putney had been a beleaguered city. It was extremely interesting and mysterious--and