"Well, that's all right. Say he was born in 1820, painted his
masterpiece when he was twenty-six, and it's 1913 now; that's to say
he's only ninety-three. Not as old as Titian yet."
"But he's not been heard of since 1860," Lord Badgery protested.
"Precisely. Your mention of his name reminded me of the discovery I made
the other day when I was looking through the obituary notices in the
archives of the _World's Review_.(One has to bring them up to date every
year or so for fear of being caught napping if one of these t old birds
chooses to shuffle off suddenly.) Well, there, among them--I remember my
astonishment at the time--there I found Walter Tillotson's biography.
Pretty full to 1860, and then a blank, except for a pencil note in the
early nineteen hundreds to the effect that he had returned from the
East. The obituary has never been used or added to. I draw the obvious
conclusion: the old chap isn't dead yet. He's just been overlooked
somehow."
"But this is extraordinary," Lord Badgery exclaimed. "You must find him,
Spode--you must find him. I'll commission him to paint frescoes round
this room. It's just what I've always vainly longed for a real
nineteenth-century artist to decorate this place for me. Oh, we must
find him at once--at once."
Lord Badgery strode up and down in a state of great excitement.
"I can see how this room could be made quite perfect," he went on. "We'd
clear away all these cases and have the whole of that wall filled by a
heroic fresco of Hector and Andromache, or 'Distraining for Rent', or
Fanny Kemble as Belvidera in 'Venice Preserved' anything like that,
provided it's in the grand manner of the 'thirties and 'forties. And
here I'd have a landscape with lovely receding perspectives, or else
something architectural and grand in the style of Belshazzar's feast.
Then we'll have this Adam fireplace taken down and replaced by something
Mauro-Gothic. And on these walls I'll have mirrors, or no! let me
see...."
He sank into meditative silence, from which he finally roused himself to
shout:
"The old man, the old man! Spode, we must find this astonishing old
creature. And don't breathe a word to anybody. Tillotson shall be our
secret. Oh, it's too perfect, it's incredible! Think of the frescoes."
Lord Badgery's face had become positively animated. He had talked of a
single subject for nearly a quarter of an hour.