Three weeks later Lord Badgery was aroused from his usual after-luncheon
somnolence by the arrival of a telegram. The message was a short one.
"Found.--SPODE." A look of pleasure and intelligence made human Lord
Badgery's clayey face of surfeit. "No answer," he said. The footman
padded away on noiseless feet.
Lord Badgery closed his eyes and began to contemplate. Found! What a
room he would have! There would be nothing like it in the world. The
frescoes, the fireplace, the mirrors, the ceiling.... And a small,
shrivelled old man clambering about the scaffolding, agile and quick
like one of those whiskered little monkeys at the Zoo, painting away,
painting away.... Fanny Kemble as Belvidera, Hector and Andromache, or
why not the Duke of Clarence in the Butt, the Duke of Malmsey, the Butt
of Clarence. ... Lord Badgery was asleep.
Spode did not lag long behind his telegram. He was at Badgery House by
six o'clock. His lordship was in the nineteenth-century chamber,
engaged in clearing away with his own hands the bric-à-brac. Spode found
him looking hot and out of breath.
"Ah, there you are," said Lord Badgery. You see me already preparing for
the great man's coming. Now you must tell me all about him.
"He's older even than I thought," said Spode. "He's ninety-seven this
year. Born in 1816. Incredible, isn't it! There, I'm beginning at the
wrong end."
"Begin where you like," said Badgery genially.
"I won't tell you all the incidents of the hunt. You've no idea what a
job I had to run him to earth. It was like a Sherlock Holmes story,
immensely elaborate, too elaborate. I shall write a book about it some
day. At any rate, I found him at last."
"Where?"
"In a sort of respectable slum in Holloway, older and poorer and
lonelier than you could have believed possible. I found out how it was
he came to be forgotten, how he came to drop out of life in the way he
did. He took it into his head, somewhere about the 'sixties, to go to
Palestine to get local colour for his religious pictures--scapegoats and
things, you know. Well, he went to Jerusalem and then on to Mount
Lebanon and on and on, and then, somewhere in the middle of Asia Minor,
he got stuck. He got stuck for about forty years."
"But what did he do all that time?"
"Oh, he painted, and started a mission, and converted three Turks, and
taught the local Pashas the rudiments of English, Latin, and
perspective, and God knows what else. Then, in about 1904, it seems to
have occurred to him that he was getting rather old and had been away
from home for rather a long time. So he made his way back to England,
only to find that everyone he had known was dead, that the dealers had
never heard of him and wouldn't buy his pictures, that he was simply a
ridiculous old figure of fun. So he got a job as a drawing-master in a
girl's school in Holloway, and there he's been ever since, growing older
and older, and feebler and feebler, and blinder and deafer, and
generally more gaga, until finally the school has given him the sack. He
had about ten pounds in the world when I found him. He lives in a kind
of black hole in a basement full of beetles. When his ten pounds are
spent, I suppose he'll just quietly die there."
Badgery held up a white hand. "No more, no more. I find literature quite
depressing enough. I insist that life at least shall be a little gayer.
Did you tell him I wanted him to paint my room?"
"But he can't paint. He's too blind and palsied."
"Can't paint?" Badgery exclaimed in horror. "Then what's the good of the
old creature?"
"Well, if you put it like that...." Spode began.
"I shall never have my frescoes. Ring the bell, will you?"
Spode rang.
"What right has Tillotson to go on existing if he can't paint?" went on
Lord Badgery petulantly. "After all, that was his only justification for
occupying a place in the sun."
"He doesn't have much sun in his basement."
The footman appeared at the door.
"Get someone to put all these things back in their places," Lord Badgery
commanded, indicating with a wave of the hand the ravaged cases, the
confusion of glass and china with which he had littered the floor, the
pictures unhooked. "We'll go to the library, Spode; it's more
comfortable there."
He led the way through the long gallery and down the stairs.
"I'm sorry old Tillotson has been such a disappointment," said Spode
sympathetically.
"Let us talk about something else; he ceases to interest me.
"But don't you think we ought to do something about him? He's only got
ten pounds between him and the workhouse. And if you'd seen the
black-beetles in his basement!"
"Enough enough. I'll do everything you think fitting."
"I thought we might get up a subscription amongst lovers of the arts."
"There aren't any," said Badgery.
"No; but there are plenty of people who will subscribe out of snobbism."
"Not unless you give them something for their money."
"That's true. I hadn't thought of that." Spode was silent for a moment.
"We might have a dinner in his honour. The Great Tillotson Banquet.
Doyen of the British Art. A Link with the Past. Can't you see it in the
papers? I'd make a stunt of it in the _World's Review_. That ought to
bring in the snobs."
"And we'll invite a lot of artists and critics--all the ones who can't
stand one another. It will be fun to see them squabbling." Badgery
laughed. Then his face darkened once again. "Still," he added, "it'll
be a very poor second best to my frescoes. You'll stay to dinner, of
course."
"Well, since you suggest it. Thanks very much."