Buried Alive | Page 9

a man of advanced and humane
ideas, and the thought of delicately nurtured needy gentlewomen
bravely battling with the world instead of starving as they used to
starve in the past, appealed to his chivalry. He determined to assist
them by taking tea in the advertised drawing-room. Gathering together
his courage, he penetrated into a corridor lighted by pink electricity,

and then up pink stairs. A pink door stopped him at last. It might have
hid mysterious and questionable things, but it said laconically 'Push,'
and he courageously pushed... He was in a kind of boudoir thickly
populated with tables and chairs. The swift transmigration from the
blatant street to a drawing-room had a startling effect on him: it caused
him to whip off his hat as though his hat had been red hot. Except for
two tall elegant creatures who stood together at the other end of the
boudoir, the chairs and tables had the place to themselves. He was
about to stammer an excuse and fly, when one of the gentlewomen
turned her eye on him for a moment, and so he sat down. The
gentlewomen then resumed their conversation. He glanced cautiously
about him. Elm-trees, firmly rooted in a border of Indian matting, grew
round all the walls in exotic profusion, and their topmost branches
splashed over on to the ceiling. A card on the trunk of a tree,
announcing curtly, "Dogs not allowed," seemed to enhearten him. After
a pause one of the gentlewomen swam haughtily towards him and
looked him between the eyes. She spoke no word, but her firm, austere
glance said:
"Now, out with it, and see you behave yourself!"
He had been ready to smile chivalrously. But the smile was put to
sudden death.
"Some tea, please," he said faintly, and his intimidated tone said, "If it
isn't troubling you too much."
"What do you want with it?" asked the gentlewoman abruptly, and as
he was plainly at a loss she added, "Crumpets or tea-cake?"
"Tea-cake," he replied, though he hated tea-cake. But he was afraid.
"You've escaped this time," said the drapery of her muslins as she
swam from his sight. "But no nonsense while I'm away!"
When she sternly and mutely thrust the refection before him, he found
that everything on the table except the tea-cakes and the spoon was
growing elm-trees.

After one cup and one slice, when the tea had become stewed and
undrinkable, and the tea-cake a material suitable for the manufacture of
shooting boots, he resumed, at any rate partially, his presence of mind,
and remembered that he had done nothing positively criminal in
entering the boudoir or drawing-room and requesting food in return for
money. Besides, the gentlewomen were now pretending to each other
that he did not exist, and no other rash persons had been driven by
hunger into the virgin forest of elm-trees. He began to meditate, and his
meditations taking--for him--an unusual turn, caused him
surreptitiously to examine Henry Leek's pocket-book (previously only
known to him by sight). He had not for many years troubled himself
concerning money, but the discovery that, when he had paid for the
deposit of luggage at the cloak-room, a solitary sovereign rested in the
pocket of Leek's trousers, had suggested to him that it would be
advisable sooner or later to consider the financial aspect of existence.
There were two banknotes for ten pounds each in Leek's pocket-book;
also five French banknotes of a thousand francs each, and a number of
Italian banknotes of small denominations: the equivalent of two
hundred and thirty pounds altogether, not counting a folded inch-rule,
some postage stamps, and a photograph of a pleasant-faced woman of
forty or so. This sum seemed neither vast nor insignificant to Priam
Farll. It seemed to him merely a tangible something which would
enable him to banish the fiscal question from his mind for an indefinite
period. He scarcely even troubled to wonder what Leek was doing with
over two years of Leek's income in his pocket-book. He knew, or at
least he with certainty guessed, that Leek had been a rascal. Still, he
had had a sort of grim, cynical affection for Leek. And the thought that
Leek would never again shave him, nor tell him in accents that brooked
no delay that his hair must be cut, nor register his luggage and secure
his seat on long-distance expresses, filled him with very real
melancholy. He did not feel sorry for Leek, nor say to himself "Poor
Leek!" Nobody who had had the advantage of Leek's acquaintance
would have said "Poor Leek!" For Leek's greatest speciality had always
been the speciality of looking after Leek, and wherever Leek might be
it was a surety that Leek's interests would not suffer. Therefore Priam
Farll's pity was mainly