Buried Alive | Page 2

and
moustache; his plenteous hair was passing from pepper into salt; there
were many minute wrinkles in the hollows between his eyes and the
fresh crimson of his cheeks; and the eyes were sad; they were very sad.
Had he stood erect and looked perpendicularly down, he would have
perceived, not his slippers, but a protuberant button of the
dressing-gown. Understand me: I conceal nothing; I admit the figures
written in the measurement-book of his tailor. He was fifty. Yet, like
most men of fifty, he was still very young, and, like most bachelors of
fifty, he was rather helpless. He was quite sure that he had not had the
best of luck. If he had excavated his soul he would have discovered
somewhere in its deeps a wistful, appealing desire to be taken care of,
to be sheltered from the inconveniences and harshness of the world.
But he would not have admitted the discovery. A bachelor of fifty
cannot be expected to admit that he resembles a girl of nineteen.
Nevertheless it is a strange fact that the resemblance between the heart
of an experienced, adventurous bachelor of fifty and the simple heart of
a girl of nineteen is stronger than girls of nineteen imagine; especially
when the bachelor of fifty is sitting solitary and unfriended at two

o'clock in the night, in the forlorn atmosphere of a house that has
outlived its hopes. Bachelors of fifty alone will comprehend me.
It has never been decided what young girls do meditate upon when they
meditate; young girls themselves cannot decide. As a rule the lonely
fancies of middle-aged bachelors are scarcely less amenable to
definition. But the case of the inhabitant of the puce dressing-gown was
an exception to the rule. He knew, and he could have said, precisely
what he was thinking about. In that sad hour and place, his melancholy
thoughts were centred upon the resplendent, unique success in life of a
gifted and glorious being known to nations and newspapers as Priam
Farll.
Riches and Renown
In the days when the New Gallery was new, a picture, signed by the
unknown name of Priam Farll, was exhibited there, and aroused such
terrific interest that for several months no conversation among cultured
persons was regarded as complete without some reference to it. That
the artist was a very great painter indeed was admitted by every one;
the only question which cultured persons felt it their duty to settle was
whether he was the greatest painter that ever lived or merely the
greatest painter since Velasquez. Cultured persons might have
continued to discuss that nice point to the present hour, had it not
leaked out that the picture had been refused by the Royal Academy.
The culture of London then at once healed up its strife and combined to
fall on the Royal Academy as an institution which had no right to exist.
The affair even got into Parliament and occupied three minutes of the
imperial legislature. Useless for the Royal Academy to argue that it had
overlooked the canvas, for its dimensions were seven feet by five; it
represented a policeman, a simple policeman, life-size, and it was not
merely the most striking portrait imaginable, but the first appearance of
the policeman in great art; criminals, one heard, instinctively fled
before it. No! The Royal Academy really could not argue that the work
had been overlooked. And in truth the Royal Academy did not argue
accidental negligence. It did not argue about its own right to exist. It
did not argue at all. It blandly went on existing, and taking about a

hundred and fifty pounds a day in shillings at its polished turnstiles. No
details were obtainable concerning Priam Farll, whose address was
Poste Restante, St. Martin's-le-Grand. Various collectors, animated by
deep faith in their own judgment and a sincere desire to encourage
British art, were anxious to purchase the picture for a few pounds, and
these enthusiasts were astonished and pained to learn that Priam Farll
had marked a figure of £1,000--the price of a rare postage stamp.
In consequence the picture was not sold; and after an enterprising
journal had unsuccessfully offered a reward for the identification of the
portrayed policeman, the matter went gently to sleep while the public
employed its annual holiday as usual in discussing the big gooseberry
of matrimonial relations.
Every one naturally expected that in the following year the mysterious
Priam Farll would, in accordance with the universal rule for a
successful career in British art, contribute another portrait of another
policeman to the New Gallery--and so on for about twenty years, at the
end of which period England would have learnt to recognize him as its
favourite painter of policemen. But Priam Farll contributed nothing to
the New Gallery. He