The Tillotson Banquet was fixed to take place about three weeks later.
Spode, who had charge of the arrangements, proved himself an excellent
organiser. He secured the big banqueting-room at the Café Bomba, and was
successful in bullying and cajoling the manager into giving fifty
persons dinner at twelve shillings a head, including wine. He sent out
invitations and collected subscriptions. He wrote an article on
Tillotson in the _World's Review_--one of those charming, witty articles
couched in the tone of amused patronage and contempt with which one
speaks of the great men of 1840. Nor did he neglect Tillotson himself.
He used to go to Holloway almost every day to listen to the old man's
endless stories about Asia Minor and the Great Exhibition of '51 and
Benjamin Robert Haydon. He was sincerely sorry for this relic of another
age.
Mr. Tillotson's room was about ten feet below the level of the soil of
South Holloway. A little grey light percolated through the area bars,
forced a difficult passage through panes opaque with dirt, and spent
itself, like a drop of milk that falls into an inkpot, among the
inveterate shadows of the dungeon. The place was haunted by the spur
smell of damp plaster and of woodwork that has begun to moulder secretly
at the heart. A little miscellaneous furniture, including a bed, a
washstand and chest of drawers, a table and one or two chairs, lurked in
the obscure corners of the den or ventured furtively out into the open.
Hither Spode now came almost every day, bringing the old man news of the
progress of the banquet scheme. Every day he found Mr. Tillotson sitting
in the same place under the window, bathing, as it were, in his tiny
puddle of light. "The oldest man that ever wore grey hairs," Spode
reflected as he looked at him. Only there were very few hairs left on
that bald, unpolished head. At the sound of the visitor's knock Mr.
Tillotson would turn in his chair, stare in the direction of the door
with blinking, uncertain eyes. He was always full of apologies for being
so slow in recognising who was there.
"No discourtesy meant," he would say, after asking. "It's not as if I
had forgotten who you were. Only it's so dark and my sight isn't what it
was."
After that he never failed to give a little laugh, and, pointing out of
the window at the area railings, would say:
"Ah, this is the plate for somebody with good sight. It's the place for
looking at ankles. It's the grand stand."
It was the day before the great event. Spode came as usual, and Mr.
Tillotson punctually made his little joke about the ankles, and Spode,
as punctually laughed.
"Well, Mr. Tillotson," he said, after the reverberation of the joke had
died away, "to-morrow you make your re-entry into the world of art and
fashion. You'll find some changes."
"I've always had such extraordinary luck," said Mr. Tillotson, and Spode
could see by his expression that he genuinely believed it, that he had
forgotten the black hole and the black-beetles and the almost exhausted
ten pounds that stood between him and the workhouse. "What an amazing
piece of good fortune, for instance, that you should have found me just
when you did. Now, this dinner will bring me back to my place in the
world. I shall have money, and in a little while--who knows?--I shall be
able to see well enough to paint again. I believe my eyes are getting
better, you know. Ah, the future is very rosy."
Mr. Tillotson looked up, his face puckered into a smile, and nodded his
head in affirmation of his words.
"You believe in the life to come?" said Spode, and immediately flushed
for shame at the cruelty of the words.
But Mr. Tillotson was in far too cheerful a mood to have caught their
significance.
"Life to come," he repeated. "No, I don't believe in any of that stuff
not since 1859. The 'Origin of Species' changed my views, you know. No
life to come for me, thank you! You don't remember the excitement of
course. You re very young Mr. Spode."
"Well, I'm not so old as I was," Spode replied. "You know how
middle-aged one is as a schoolboy and undergraduate. Now I'm old enough
to know I'm young."
Spode was about to develop this little paradox further, but he noticed
that Mr. Tillotson had not been listening. He made a note of the gambit
for use in companies that were more appreciative of the subtleties.
"You were talking about the 'Origin of Species,'" he said.
"Was I?" said Mr. Tillotson, waking from reverie.
"About its effect on your faith, Mr. Tillotson."
"To be sure, yes. It shattered my faith. But I remember a fine thing by
the Poet Laureate, something about there being more faith in honest
doubt, believe me, than in all the ... all the ...: I forget exactly
what; but you see the train of thought. Oh, it was a bad time for
religion. I am glad my master Haydon never lived to see it. He was a man
of fervour. I remember him pacing up and down his studio in Lisson
Grove, singing and shouting and praying all at once. It used almost to
frighten me. Oh, but he was a wonderful man, a great man. Take him for
all in all, we shall not look upon his like again. As usual, the Bard is
right. But it was all very long ago, before your time, Mr. Spode."
"Well, I'm not as old as I was," said Spode, in the hope of having his
paradox appreciated this time. But Mr. Tillotson went on without
noticing the interruption.
"It's a very, very long time. And yet, when I look back on it, it all
seems but a day or two ago. Strange that each day should seem so long
and that many days added together should be less than an hour. How
clearly I can see old Haydon pacing up and down! Much more clearly,
indeed, than I see you, Mr. Spode. The eyes of memory don t grow dim.
But my sight is improving, I assure you; it's improving daily. I shall
soon be able to see those ankles." He laughed like a cracked bell--one
of those little old bells, Spode fancied, that ring, with much rattling
of wires, in the far-off servants quarters of ancient houses. "And very
soon," Mr. Tillotson went on, "I shall be painting again. Ah, Mr. Spode,
my luck is extraordinary. I believe in it, I trust in it. And after all,
what is luck? Simply another name for Providence, in spite of the Origin
of Species and the rest of it. How right the Laureate was when he said
that there was more faith in honest doubt, believe me, than in all the
... er, the ... er ... well, you know. I regard you, Mr. Spode, as the
emissary of Providence. Your coming marked a turning-point in my life,
and the beginning, for me, of happier days. Do you know, one of the
first things I shall do when my fortunes are restored will be to buy a
hedgehog."
"A hedgehog, Mr. Tillotson?"
"For the blackbeetles. There's nothing like a hedgehog for beetles. It
will eat blackbeetles till it's sick, till it dies of surfeit. That
reminds me of the time when I told my poor great master Haydon--in joke,
of course--that he ought to send in a cartoon of King John dying of a
surfeit of lampreys for the frescoes in the new Houses of Parliament. As
I told him, it's a most notable event in the annals of British
liberty--the providential and exemplary removal of a tyrant."
Mr. Tillotson laughed again--the little bell in the deserted house; a
ghostly hand pulling the cord in the drawing-room, and phantom footmen
responding to the thin, flawed note.
"I remember he laughed, laughed like a bull in his old grand manner. But
oh, it was a terrible blow when they rejected his design, a terrible
blow. It was the first and fundamental cause of his suicide."
Mr. Tillotson paused. There was a long silence. Spode felt strangely
moved, he hardly knew why, in the presence of this man, so frail, so
ancient, in body three parts dead, in the spirit so full of life and
hopeful patience. He felt ashamed. What was the use of his own youth and
cleverness? He saw himself suddenly as a boy with a rattle scaring birds
rattling his noisy cleverness, waving his arms in ceaseless and futile
activity, never resting in his efforts to scare away the birds that were
always trying to settle in his mind. And what birds! widewinged and
beautiful, all those serene thoughts and faiths and emotions that only
visit minds that have humbled themselves to quiet. Those gracious
visitants he was for ever using all his energies to drive away. But this
old man, with his hedgehogs and his honest doubts and all the rest of
it--his mind was like a field made beautiful by the free coming and
going, the unafraid alightings of a multitude of white, bright-winged
creatures. He felt ashamed. But then, was it possible to alter one's
life? Wasn't it a little absurd to risk a conversion? Spode shrugged his
shoulders.
"I'll get you a hedgehog at once," he said. "They're sure to have some
at Whiteley's."
Before he left that evening Spode made an alarming discovery. Mr.
Tillotson did not possess a dress-suit. It was hopeless to think of
getting one made at this short notice, and, besides, what an unnecessary
expense!
"We shall have to borrow a suit, Mr. Tillotson. I ought to have thought
of that before."
"Dear me, dear me." Mr. Tillotson was a little chagrined by this unlucky
discovery. "Borrow a suit?"
Spode hurried away for counsel to Badgery House. Lord Badgery
surprisingly rose to the occasion. "Ask Boreham to come and see me," he
told the footman, who answered his ring.
Boreham was one of those immemorial butlers who linger on, generation
after generation, in the houses of the great. He was over eighty now,
bent, dried up, shrivelled with age.
"All old men are about the same size," said Lord Badgery. It was a
comforting theory. "Ah, here he is. Have you got a spare suit of evening
clothes, Boreham?"
"I have an old suit, my lord, that I stopped wearing in let me see was
it nineteen seven or eight?"
"That's the very thing. I should be most grateful, Boreham, if you could
lend it to me for Mr. Spode here for a day."
The old man went out, and soon reappeared carrying over his arm a very
old black suit. He held up the coat and trousers for inspection. In the
light of day they were deplorable.
"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.