Buried Alive

A free download from http://www.dertz.in


Buried Alive

Project Gutenberg's Buried Alive: A Tale of These Days, by Arnold
Bennett This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and
with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away
or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.net
Title: Buried Alive: A Tale of These Days
Author: Arnold Bennett
Release Date: February 2, 2004 [EBook #10911] [Date last updated:
January 9, 2005]
Language: English
Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK BURIED
ALIVE: A TALE OF THESE DAYS ***

Produced by John Hagerson, Kevin Handy and the Online Distributed
Proofreading Team

BURIED ALIVE A Tale of These Days

BY ARNOLD BENNETT

To JOHN FREDERICK FARRAR M.R.C.S., L.R.C.P. MY
COLLABORATOR IN THIS AND MANY OTHER BOOKS A
GRATEFUL EXPRESSION OF OLD-ESTABLISHED REGARD

CONTENTS
I. THE PUCE DRESSING-GOWN
II. A PAIL
III. THE PHOTOGRAPH
IV. A SCOOP
V. ALICE ON HOTELS
VI. A PUTNEY MORNING
VII. THE CONFESSION
VIII. AN INVASION
IX. A GLOSSY MALE
X. THE SECRET
XI. AN ESCAPE
XII. ALICE'S PERFORMANCES
CHAPTER I
_The Puce Dressing-gown_

The peculiar angle of the earth's axis to the plane of the ecliptic-- that
angle which is chiefly responsible for our geography and therefore for
our history--had caused the phenomenon known in London as summer.
The whizzing globe happened to have turned its most civilized face
away from the sun, thus producing night in Selwood Terrace, South
Kensington. In No. 91 Selwood Terrace two lights, on the ground-floor
and on the first-floor, were silently proving that man's ingenuity can
outwit nature's. No. 91 was one of about ten thousand similar houses
between South Kensington Station and North End Road. With its grimy
stucco front, its cellar kitchen, its hundred stairs and steps, its perfect
inconvenience, and its conscience heavy with the doing to death of
sundry general servants, it uplifted tin chimney-cowls to heaven and
gloomily awaited the day of judgment for London houses, sublimely
ignoring the axial and orbital velocities of the earth and even the
reckless flight of the whole solar system through space. You felt that
No. 91 was unhappy, and that it could only be rendered happy by a 'To
let' standard in its front patch and a 'No bottles' card in its
cellar-windows. It possessed neither of these specifics. Though of late
generally empty, it was never untenanted. In the entire course of its
genteel and commodious career it had never once been to let.
Go inside, and breathe its atmosphere of a bored house that is generally
empty yet never untenanted. All its twelve rooms dark and forlorn, save
two; its cellar kitchen dark and forlorn; just these two rooms, one on
the top of the other like boxes, pitifully struggling against the inveterate
gloom of the remaining ten! Stand in the dark hall and get this
atmosphere into your lungs.
The principal, the startling thing in the illuminated room on the
ground-floor was a dressing-gown, of the colour, between heliotrope
and purple, known to a previous generation as puce; a quilted garment
stuffed with swansdown, light as hydrogen--nearly, and warm as the
smile of a kind heart; old, perhaps, possibly worn in its outlying regions
and allowing fluffs of feathery white to escape through its satin pores;
but a dressing-gown to dream of. It dominated the unkempt, naked
apartment, its voluptuous folds glittering crudely under the
sun-replacing oil lamp which was set on a cigar-box on the stained deal

table. The oil lamp had a glass reservoir, a chipped chimney, and a
cardboard shade, and had probably cost less than a florin; five florins
would have purchased the table; and all the rest of the furniture,
including the arm-chair in which the dressing-gown reclined, a stool, an
easel, three packets of cigarettes and a trouser-stretcher, might have
been replaced for another ten florins. Up in the corners of the ceiling,
obscure in the eclipse of the cardboard shade, was a complicated
system of cobwebs to match the dust on the bare floor.
Within the dressing-gown there was a man. This man had reached the
interesting age. I mean the age when you think you have shed all the
illusions of infancy, when you think you understand life, and when you
are often occupied in speculating upon the delicious surprises which
existence may hold for you; the age, in sum, that is the most romantic
and tender of all ages--for a male. I mean the age of fifty. An age
absurdly misunderstood by all those who have not reached it! A
thrilling age! Appearances are tragically deceptive.
The inhabitant of the puce dressing-gown had a short greying beard