Buried Alive: a Tale of These Days Part 4

"I didn't really expect you," said the lady, always with a slight c.o.c.kney accent. "But I thought how silly it would be for me to miss the vanishing trick just because you couldn't come. So in I went, by myself."

"Why didn't you expect me?" he asked diffidently.

"Well," she said, "Mr. Farll being dead, I knew you'd have a lot to do, besides being upset like."

"Oh yes," he said quickly, feeling that he must be more careful; for he had quite forgotten that Mr. Farll was dead. "How did you know?"

"How did I know!" she cried. "Well, I like that! Look anywhere! It's all over London, has been these six hours." She pointed to a ragged man who was wearing an orange-coloured placard by way of ap.r.o.n. On the placard was printed in large black letters: "Sudden death of Priam Farll in London. Special Memoir." Other ragged men, also wearing ap.r.o.ns, but of different colours, similarly proclaimed by their attire that Priam Farll was dead. And people crowding out of St. George's Hall were continually buying newspapers from these middlemen of tidings.

He blushed. It was singular that he could have walked even half-an-hour in Central London without noticing that his own name flew in the summer breeze of every street. But so it had been. He was that sort of man. Now he understood how Duncan Farll had descended upon Selwood Terrace.

"You don't mean to say you didn't _see_ those posters?" she demanded.

"I didn't," he said simply.

"That shows how you must have been thinking!" said she. "Was he a good master?"

"Yes, very good," said Priam Farll with conviction.

"I see you're not in mourning."

"No. That is----"

"I don't hold with mourning myself," she proceeded. "They say it's to show respect. But it seems to me that if you can't show your respect without a pair of black gloves that the dye's always coming off... I don't know what you think, but I never did hold with mourning. It's grumbling against Providence, too! Not but what I think there's a good deal too much talk about Providence. I don't know what you think, but----"

"I quite agree with you," he said, with a warm generous smile which sometimes rushed up and transformed his face before he was aware of the occurrence.

And she smiled also, gazing at him half confidentially. She was a little woman, stoutish--indeed, stout; puffy red cheeks; a too remarkable white cotton blouse; and a crimson skirt that hung unevenly; grey cotton gloves; a green sunshade; on the top of all this the black hat with red roses. The photograph in Leek's pocket-book must have been taken in the past. She looked quite forty-five, whereas the photograph indicated thirty-nine and a fraction. He gazed down at her protectively, with a good-natured appreciative condescension.

"I suppose you'll have to be going back again soon, to arrange things like," she said. It was always she who kept the conversation afloat.

"No," he said. "I've finished there. They've dismissed me."

"Who have?"

"The relatives."

"Why?"

He shook his head.

"I hope you made them pay you your month," said she firmly.

He was glad to be able to give a satisfactory answer.

After a pause she resumed bravely:

"So Mr. Farll was one of these artists? At least so I see according to the paper."

He nodded.

"It's a very funny business," she said. "But I suppose there's some of them make quite a nice income out of it. _You_ ought to know about that, being in it, as it were."

Never in his life had he conversed on such terms with such a person as Mrs. Alice Challice. She was in every way a novelty for him--in clothes, manners, accent, deportment, outlook on the world and on paint. He had heard and read of such beings as Mrs. Alice Challice, and now he was in direct contact with one of them. The whole affair struck him as excessively odd, as a mad escapade on his part. Wisdom in him deemed it ridiculous to prolong the encounter, but shy folly could not break loose. Moreover she possessed the charm of her novelty; and there was that in her which challenged the male in him.

"Well," she said, "I suppose we can't stand here for ever!"

The crowd had frittered itself away, and an attendant was closing and locking the doors of St. George's Hall. He coughed.

"It's a pity it's Sat.u.r.day and all the shops closed. But anyhow suppose we walk along Oxford Street all the same? Shall we?" This from her.

"By all means."

"Now there's one thing I should like to say," she murmured with a calm smile as they moved off. "You've no occasion to be shy with me. There's no call for it. I'm just as you see me."

"Shy!" he exclaimed, genuinely surprised. "Do I seem shy to you?" He thought he had been magnificently doggish.

"Oh, well," she said. "That's all right, then, if you _aren't._ I should take it as a poor compliment, being shy with me. Where do you think we can have a good talk? I'm free for the evening. I don't know about you."

Her eyes questioned his.

_No Gratuities_

At a late hour, they were entering, side by side, a glittering establishment whose interior seemed to be walled chiefly in bevelled gla.s.s, so that everywhere the curious observer saw himself and twisted fractions of himself. The gla.s.s was relieved at frequent intervals by elaborate enamelled signs which repeated, 'No gratuities.' It seemed that the directors of the establishment wished to make perfectly clear to visitors that, whatever else they might find, they must on no account expect gratuities.

"I've always wanted to come here," said Mrs. Alice Challice vivaciously, glancing up at Priam Farll's modest, middle-aged face.

Then, after they had successfully pa.s.sed through a preliminary pair of bevelled portals, a huge man dressed like a policeman, and achieving a very successful imitation of a policeman, stretched out his hand, and stopped them.

"In line, please," he said.

"I thought it was a restaurant, not a theatre," Priam whispered to Mrs.

Challice.

"So it is a restaurant," said his companion. "But I hear they're obliged to do like this because there's always such a crowd. It's very 'andsome, isn't it?"

He agreed that it was. He felt that London had got a long way in front of him and that he would have to hurry a great deal before he could catch it up.

At length another imitation of a policeman opened more doors and, with other sinners, they were released from purgatory into a clattering paradise, which again offered everything save gratuities. They were conducted to a small table full of dirty plates and empty gla.s.ses in a corner of the vast and lofty saloon. A man in evening dress whose eye said, "Now mind, no insulting gratuities!" rushed past the table and in one deft amazing gesture swept off the whole of its contents and was gone with them. It was an astounding feat, and when Priam recovered from his amazement he fell into another amazement on discovering that by some magic means the man in evening dress had insinuated a gold-charactered menu into his hands. This menu was exceedingly long--it comprised everything except gratuities--and, evidently knowing from experience that it was not a doc.u.ment to be perused and exhausted in five minutes, the man in evening dress took care not to interrupt the studies of Priam Farll and Alice Challice during a full quarter of an hour. Then he returned like a bolt, put them through an examination in the menu, and fled, and when he was gone they saw that the table was set with a clean cloth and instruments and empty gla.s.ses. A band thereupon burst into gay strains, like the band at a music-hall after something very difficult on the horizontal bar. And it played louder and louder; and as it played louder, so the people talked louder. And the crash of cymbals mingled with the crash of plates, and the altercations of knives and forks with the shrill accents of chatterers determined to be heard. And men in evening dress (a costume which seemed to be forbidden to sitters at tables) flitted to and fro with inconceivable rapidity, austere, preoccupied conjurers. And from every marble wall, bevelled mirror, and Doric column, there spoke silently but insistently the haunting legend, 'No gratuities.'

Thus Priam Farll began his first public meal in modern London. He knew the hotels; he knew the restaurants, of half-a-dozen countries, but he had never been so overwhelmed as he was here. Remembering London as a city of wooden chop-houses, he could scarcely eat for the thoughts that surged through his brain.

"Isn't it amusing?" said Mrs. Challice benignantly, over a gla.s.s of lager. "I'm so glad you brought me here. I've always wanted to come."

And then, a few minutes afterwards, she was saying, against the immense din--

"You know, I've been thinking for years of getting married again. And if you really _are_ thinking of getting married, what are you to do? You may sit in a chair and wait till eggs are sixpence a dozen, and you'll be no nearer. You must do something. And what is there except a matrimonial agency? I say--what's the matter with a matrimonial agency, anyhow? If you want to get married, you want to get married, and it's no use pretending you don't. I do hate pretending, I do. No shame in wanting to get married, is there? I think a matrimonial agency is a very good, useful thing. They say you're swindled. Well, those that are deserve to be. You can be swindled without a matrimonial agency, seems to me. Not that I've ever been. Plain common-sense people never are. No, if you ask me, matrimonial agencies are the most sensible things--after dress-shields--that's ever been invented. And I'm sure if anything comes of this, I shall pay the fees with the greatest pleasure. Now don't you agree with me?"