«You’ve no idea, sir,» said Boreham deprecatingly to Spode you’ve no idea how easy things get stained with grease and gravy and what not. However careful you are, sir—however careful.
«I should imagine so.» Spode was sympathetic.
«However careful, sir.»
«But in artificial light they’ll look all right.»
«Perfectly all right,» Lord Badgery repeated. «Thank you, Boreham; you shall have them back on Thursday.»
«You re welcome, my lord, I’m sure.» And the old man bowed and disappeared.
On the afternoon of the great day Spode carried up to Holloway a parcel containing Boreham’s retired evening-suit and all the necessary appurtenances in the way of shirts and collars. Owing to the darkness and his own feeble sight Mr. Tillotson was happily unaware of the defects in the suit. He was in a state of extreme nervous agitation. It was with some difficulty that Spode could prevent him, although it was only three o’clock, from starting his toilet on the spot.
«Take it easy, Mr. Tillotson, take it easy. We needn’t start till half-past seven, you know.»
Spode left an hour later, and as soon as he was safely out of the room Mr. Tillotson began to prepare himself for the banquet. He lighted the gas and a couple of candles, and, blinking myopically at the image that fronted him in the tiny looking-glass that stood on his chest of drawers, he set to work, with all the ardour of a young girl preparing for her first ball. At six o’clock, when the last touches had been given, he was not unsatisfied.
He marched up and down his cellar, humming to himself the gay song which had been so popular in his middle years:
«Oh, oh, Anna, Maria Jones!
Queen of the tambourine, the cymbals, and the bones!»
Spode arrived an hour later in Lord Badgery’s second Rolls-Royce. Opening the door of the old man’s dungeon, he stood for a moment, wide-eyed with astonishment, on the threshold. Mr. Tillotson was standing by the empty grate, one elbow resting on the mantelpiece, one leg crossed over the other in a jaunty and gentlemanly attitude. The effect of the candlelight shining on his face was to deepen every line and wrinkle with intense black shadow; he looked immeasurably old. It was a noble and pathetic head. On the other hand, Boreham’s out-worn evening-suit was simply buffoonish. The coat was too long in the sleeves and the tail; the trousers bagged in elephantine creases about his ankles.
Some of the grease-spots were visible even in candlelight. The white tie, over which Mr. Tillotson had taken infinite pains and which he believed in his purblindness to be perfect, was fantastically lop-sided. He had buttoned up his waistcoat in such a fashion that one button was widowed of its hole and one hole of its button. Across his shirt front lay the broad green ribbon of some unknown Order.
«Queen of the tambourine, the cymbals, and the bones,» Mr. Tillotson concluded in a gnat-like voice before welcoming his visitor.
«Well, Spode, here you are. I’m dressed already, you see. The suit, I flatter myself, fits very well, almost as though it had been made for me. I am all gratitude to the gentleman who was kind enough to lend it to me; I shall take the greatest care of it. It’s a dangerous thing to lend clothes. For loan oft loseth both itself and friend. The Bard is always right.»
«Just one thing,» said Spode. «A touch to your waistcoat.» He unbuttoned the dissipated garment and did it up again more symmetrically.
Mr. Tillotson was a little piqued at being found so absurdly in the wrong.
«Thanks, thanks,» he said, protestingly, trying to edge away from his valet. «It’s all right, you know; I can do it myself. Foolish oversight. I flatter myself the suit fits very well.»
«And perhaps the tie might….» Spode began tentatively. But the old man would not hear of it.
«No, no. The tie’s all right. I can tie a tie, Mr. Spode. The tie’s all right. Leave it as it is, I beg.»
«I like your Order.»
Mr. Tillotson looked down complacently at his shirt front. «Ah, you’ve noticed my Order. It’s a long time since I wore that. It was given me by the Grand Porte, you know, for services rendered in the Russo-Turkish War. It’s the Order of Chastity, the second class. They only give the first class to crowned heads, you know—browned heads and ambassadors. And only Pashas of the highest rank get the second. Mine’s the second. They only give the first class to crowned heads….»
«Of course, of course,» said Spode.
«Do you think I look all right, Mr. Spode?» Mr. Tillotson asked, a little anxiously.
«Splendid, Mr. Tillotson—splendid. The Order’s, magnificent.»
The old man’s face brightened once more. «I flatter myself,» he said, «that this borrowed suit fits me very well. But I don’t like borrowing clothes. For loan oft loseth both itself and friend, you know. And the Bard is always right.»
«Ugh, there’s one of those horrible beetles!» Spode exclaimed.
Mr. Tillotson bent down and stared at the floor. «I see it,» he said, and stamped on a small piece of coal, which crunched to powder under his foot. «I shall certainly buy a hedgehog.»
It was time for them to start. A crowd of little boys and girls had collected round Lord Badgery’s enormous car. The chauffeur, who felt that honour and dignity were at stake, pretended not to notice the children, but sat gazing, like a statue, into eternity. At the sight of Spode and Mr. Tillotson emerging from the house a yell of mingled awe and derision went up. It subsided to an astonished silence as they climbed into the car. «Bomba’s,» Spode directed. The Rolls-Royce gave a faintly stertorous sigh and began to move. The children yelled again, and ran along beside the car, waving their arms in a frenzy of excitement. It was then that Mr. Tillotson, with an incomparably noble gesture, leaned forward and tossed among the seething crowd of urchins his three last coppers.
IV
In Bomba’s big room the company was assembling. The long gilt-edged mirrors reflected a singular collection of people. Middle-aged Academicians shot suspicious glances at youths whom they suspected, only too correctly, of being iconoclasts, organisers of Post-Impressionist Exhibitions. Rival art critics, brought suddenly face to face, quivered with restrained hatred. Mrs. Nobes, Mrs. Cayman, and Mrs. Mandragore, those indefatigable hunters of artistic big game, came on one another all unawares in this well-stored menagerie, where each had expected to hunt alone, and were filled with rage. Through this crowd of mutually repellent vanities Lord Badgery moved with a suavity that seemed unconscious of all the feuds and hatreds. He was enjoying himself immensely. Behind the heavy waxen mask of his face, ambushed behind the Hanoverian nose, the little lustreless pig’s eyes, the pale thick lips, there lurked a small devil of happy malice that rocked with laughter.
«So nice of you to have come, Mrs. Mandragore, to do honour to England’s artistic past. And I’m so glad to see you’ve brought dear Mrs. Cayman. And is that Mrs. Nobes, too? So it is! I hadn’t noticed her before. How delightful! I knew we could depend on your love of art.»
And he hurried away to seize the opportunity of introducing that eminent sculptor, Sir Herbert Herne, to the bright young critic who had called him, in the public prints, a monumental mason.
A moment later the Maître d’Hôtel came to the door of the gilded saloon and announced, loudly and impressively, «Mr. Walter Tillotson.» Guided from behind by young Spode, Mr. Tillotson came into the room slowly and hesitatingly. In the glare of the lights his eyelids beat heavily, painfully, like the wings of an imprisoned moth, over his filmy eyes. Once inside the door he halted and drew himself up with a conscious assumption of dignity. Lord Badgery hurried forward and seized his hand.
«Welcome, Mr. Tillotson—welcome in the name of English art!»
Mr. Tillotson inclined his head in silence. He was too full of emotion to be able to reply.
«I should like to introduce you to a few of your younger colleagues, who have assembled here to do you honour.»
Lord Badgery presented everyone in the room to the old painter, who bowed, shook hands, made little noises in his throat, but still found himself unable to speak. Mrs. Nobes, Mrs. Cayman, and Mrs. Mandragore all said charming things.
Dinner was served; the party took their places. Lord Badgery sat at the head of the table, with Mr. Tillotson on his right hand and Sir Herbert Herne on his left. Confronted with Bomba’s succulent cooking and Bomba’s wines, Mr. Tillotson ate and drank a good deal. He had the appetite of one who has lived on greens and potatoes for ten years among the blackbeetles. After the second glass of wine he began to talk, suddenly and in a flood, as though a sluice had been pulled up.
«In Asia Minor,» he began, «it is the custom when one goes to dinner, to hiccough as a sign of appreciative fullness. Eructavit cor meum, as the Psalmist has it; he was an Oriental himself.»
Spode had arranged to sit next to Mrs. Cayman; he had designs upon her. She was an impossible woman, of course, but rich and useful; he wanted to bamboozle her into buying some of his young friends’ pictures.
«In a cellar?» Mrs. Cayman was saying, «with, blackbeetles? Oh, how dreadful! Poor old man! And he’s ninety-seven, didn’t you say? Isn’t that shocking! I only hope the subscription will be a large one. Of course, one wishes one could have given more oneself. But then, you know, one
