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Such were the opinions passed on Learoyd by the farm labourers round about Holmton, and it was little wonder that, as the years went by, the condition of his farm grew steadily worse. When the Parfitts had been married fifteen years, a strange rumour reached their cottage of a spiritual change that had been wrought in the soul of Samuel Learoyd.
Parfitts and Co. grabbed it eh? Or was it that fellow Warner . . . " "I I don't know," she said quite scared by the twitching of his lips. "Don't know!" he exclaimed softly. Hadn't her cousin told her? Oh yes. She had left them of course. Why did she? It was his first question about herself but she did not answer it. She did not want to talk of these horrors. They were impossible to describe.
And gradually the nose of England bent closer and closer to its newspaper of a morning. And coffee went cold, and bacon fat congealed, from the Isle of Wight to Hexham, while the latest rumours were being swallowed. It promised to be stupendous, did the case of Witt v. Parfitts.
He recounted the life and death of the great painter Priam Farll, and his solemn burial and the tears of the whole world. He dwelt upon the genius of Priam Farll, and then upon the confiding nature of the plaintiff. Then he inquired who could blame the plaintiff for his confidence in the uprightness of a firm with such a name as Parfitts.
No one knew him; no one saw him; no one married him. Constantly abroad, he was ever the subject of conflicting rumours. Parfitts themselves, his London agents, knew naught of him but his handwriting on the backs of cheques in four figures. They sold an average of five large and five small pictures for him every year. These pictures arrived out of the unknown and the cheques went into the unknown.
Parfitts on evening posters and in the strident mouths of newsboys. The telegraph wires vibrated to Witt v. Parfitts. In the great betting industrial towns of the provinces wagers were laid at scientific prices. England, in a word, was content, and the principal actors had the right to be content also.
The theatre in which the emotional drama of Witt Parfitts was to be played, lacked the usual characteristics of a modern place of entertainment. It was far too high for its width and breadth; it was badly illuminated; it was draughty in winter and stuffy in summer, being completely deprived of ventilation.
He, too, was spending money with both hands; for Parfitts itself was at stake. Last and most disturbing, was the individual looming mysteriously in the background, the inexplicable man who lived in Werter Road, and whose identity would be decided by the judgment in the case of Witt v. Parfitts. If Witt won his action, then Parfitts might retire from business. Mr.
You see the fix?" Priam did. "My reputation Parfitts' is at stake. If those pictures aren't by you, I'm a swindler. Parfitts' name is gone for ever, and there'll be the greatest scandal that ever was. Witt is threatening proceedings. I offered to take the whole lot back at the price he paid me, without any commission. But he won't. He's an old man; a bit of a maniac I expect, and he won't.
The interest of the United Kingdom in the unique case of Witt v. Parfitts had already reached apparently the highest possible degree of intensity. And there was reason for the kingdom's passionate curiosity. Whitney Witt, the plaintiff, had come over to England, with his eccentricities, his retinue, his extreme wealth and his failing eyesight, specially to fight Parfitts.
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