I
Young Spode was not a snob; he was too intelligent for that, too
fundamentally decent. Not a snob; but all the same he could not help
feeling very well pleased at the thought that he was dining, alone and
intimately, with Lord Badgery. It was a definite event in his life, a
step forward, he felt, towards that final success, social, material, and
literary, which he had come to London with the fixed intention of
making. The conquest and capture of Badgery was an almost essential
strategical move in the campaign.
Edmund, forty-seventh Baron Badgery, was a lineal descendant of that
Edmund, surnamed Le Blayreau, who landed on English soil in the train of
William the Conqueror. Ennobled by William Rufus, the Badgerys had been
one of the very few baronial families to survive the Wars of the Roses
and all the other changes and chances of English history. They were a
sensible and philoprogenitive race. No Badgery had ever fought in any
war, no Badgery had ever engaged in any kind of politics. They had been
content to live and quietly to propagate their species in a huge
machicolated Norman castle, surrounded by a triple moat, only sallying
forth to cultivate their property and to collect their rents. In the
eighteenth century, when life had become relatively secure, the Badgerys
began to venture forth into civilised society. From boorish squires they
blossomed into _grands seigneurs_, patrons of the arts, virtuosi. Their
property was large, they were rich; and with the growth of industrialism
their riches also grew. Villages on their estate turned into
manufacturing towns, unsuspected coal was discovered beneath the surface
of their barren moorlands. By the middle of the nineteenth century the
Badgerys were among the richest of English noble families. The
forty-seventh baron disposed of an income of at least two hundred
thousand pounds a year. Following the great Badgery tradition, he had
refused to have anything to do with politics or war. He occupied himself
by collecting pictures; he took an interest in theatrical productions;
he was the friend and patron of men of letters, of painters, and
musician. A personage, in a word, of considerable consequence in that
particular world in which young Spode had elected to make his success.
Spode had only recently left the university. Simon Gollamy, the editor
of the _World's Review_ (the "Best of all possible Worlds"), had got to
know him--he was always on the look out for youthful talent--had seen
possibilities in the young man, and appointed him art critic of his
paper. Gollamy liked to have young and teachable people about him. The
possession of disciples flattered his vanity, and he found it easier,
moreover, to run his paper with docile collaborators than with men grown
obstinate and case-hardened with age. Spode had not done badly at his
new job. At any rate, his articles had been intelligent enough to arouse
the interest of Lord Badgery. It was, ultimately, to them that he owed
the honour of sitting to night in the dining-room of Badgery House.
Fortified by several varieties of wine and a glass of aged brandy, Spode
felt more confident and at ease than he had done the whole evening.
Badgery was rather a disquieting host. He had an alarming habit of
changing the subject of any conversation that had lasted for more than
two minutes. Spode had found it, for example, horribly mortifying when
his host, cutting across what was, he prided himself, a particularly
subtle and illuminating disquisition on baroque art, had turned a
wandering eye about the room and asked him abruptly whether he liked
parrots. He had flushed and glanced suspiciously towards him, fancying
that the man was trying to be offensive. But no; Badgery's white,
fleshy, Hanoverian face wore an expression of perfect good faith. There
was no malice in his small greenish eyes. He evidently did genuinely
want to know if Spode liked parrots. The young man swallowed his
irritation and replied that he did. Badgery then told a good story about
parrots. Spode was on the point of capping it with a better story, when
his host began to talk about Beethoven. And so the game went on. Spode
cut his conversation to suit his host's requirements. In the course of
ten minutes he had made a more or less witty epigram on Benvenuto
Cellini, Queen Victoria, sport, God, Stephen Phillips, and Moorish
architecture. Lord Badgery thought him the most charming young man, and
so intelligent.
"If you've quite finished your coffee," he said, rising to his feet as
he spoke, "we'll go and look at the pictures."
Spode jumped up with alacrity, and only then realised that he had drunk
just ever so little too much. He would have to be careful, talk
deliberately, plant his feet consciously, one after the other.
"This house is quite cluttered up with pictures," Lord Badgery
complained. "I had a whole wagon-load taken away to the country last
week; but there are still far too many. My ancestors would have their
portraits painted by Romney. Such a shocking artist, don't you think?
Why couldn't they have chosen Gainsborough, or even Reynolds? I've had
all the Romneys hung in the servants' hall now. It's such a comfort to
know that one can never possibly see them again. I suppose you know all
about the ancient Hittites?"
"Well...." the young man replied, with befitting modesty.
"Look at that, then." He indicated a large stone head which stood in a
case near the dining-room door. "It's not Greek, or Egyptian, or
Persian, or anything else; so if it isn't ancient Hittite, I don't know
what it is. And that reminds me of that story about Lord George Sanger,
the Circus King...." and, without giving Spode time to examine the
Hittite relic, he led the way up the huge staircase, pausing every now
and then in his anecdote to point out some new object of curiosity or
beauty.
"I suppose you know Deburau's pantomimes?" Spode rapped out as soon as
the story was over. He was in an itch to let out his information about
Deburau. Badgery had given him a perfect opening with his ridiculous
Sanger. "What a perfect man, isn't he? He used to...."
"This is my main gallery," said Lord Badgery, throwing open one leaf of
a tall folding door. "I must apologise for it. It looks like a
roller-skating rink." He fumbled with the electric switches and there
was suddenly light--light that revealed an enormous gallery, duly
receding into distance according to all the laws of perspective. "I dare
say you've heard of my poor father," Lord Badgery continued. "A little
insane, you know; sort of mechanical genius with a screw loose. He used
to have a toy railway in this room. No end of fun he had, crawling about
the floor after his trains. And all the pictures were stacked in the
cellars. I can't tell you what they were like when I found them:
mushrooms growing out of the Botticellis. Now I'm rather proud of this
Poussin; he painted it for Scarron."
"Exquisite!" Spode exclaimed, making with his hand a gesture as though
he were modelling a pure form in the air. "How splendid the onrush of
those trees and leaning figures is! And the way they re caught up, as it
were, and stemmed by that single godlike form opposing them with his
contrary movement! And the draperies...."
But Lord Badgery had moved on, and was standing in front of a little
fifteenth-century Virgin of carved wood.
"School of Rheims," he explained.
They "did" the gallery at high speed. Badgery never permitted his guest
to halt for more than forty seconds before any work of art. Spode would
have liked to spend a few moments of recollection and tranquillity in
front of some of these lovely things. But it was not permitted.
The gallery done, they passed into a little room leading out of it. At
the sight of what the lights revealed, Spode gasped.
"It's like something out of Balzac," he exclaimed. "Un de ces salons
dorés où se déploie un luxe insolent. You know."
"My nineteenth-century chamber," Badgery explained. "The best thing of
its kind, I flatter myself, outside the State Apartments at Windsor."
Spode tiptoed round the room, peering with astonishment at all the
objects in glass, in gilded bronze, in china, in leathers, in
embroidered and painted silk, in beads, in wax, objects of the most
fantastic shapes and colours, all the queer products of a decadent
tradition, with which the room was crowded. There were paintings on the
walls--a Martin, a Wilkie, an early Landseer, several Ettys, a big
Haydon, a slight pretty water-colour of a girl by Wainewright, the pupil
of Blake and arsenic poisoner, a score of others. But the picture which
arrested Spode's attention was a medium sized canvas representing
Troilus riding into Troy among the flowers and plaudits of an admiring
crowd, and oblivious (you could see from his expression) of everything
but the eyes of Cressida, who looked down at him from a window, with
Pandarus smiling over her shoulder.
"What an absurd and enchanting picture!" Spode exclaimed.
"Ah, you've spotted my Troilus." Lord Badgery was pleased.
"What bright harmonious colours! Like Etty's, only stronger, not so
obviously pretty. And there's an energy about it that reminds one of
Haydon. Only Haydon could never have done anything so impeccable in
taste. Who is it by?" Spode turned to his host inquiringly.
"You were right in detecting Haydon," Lord Badgery answered, "It's by
his pupil, Tillotson. I wish I could get hold of more of his work. But
nobody seems to know anything about him. And he seems to have done so
little."
This time it was the younger man who interrupted.
"Tillotson, Tillotson...." He put his hand to his forehead. A frown
incongruously distorted his round, floridly curved face. No ... yes, I
have it. He looked up triumphantly with serene and childish brows.
"Tillotson, Walter Tillotson--the man's still alive."