He rang the bell with frantic haste, lest he should run away ere he had rung it. And then his heart went thumping, and the perspiration damped the lovely lining of his new hat; and his legs trembled, literally!
He was in hell on the Dean's doorstep.
The door was opened by a man in livery of prelatical black, who eyed him inimically.
"Er----" stammered Priam Farll, utterly flustered and craven. "Is this Mr. Parker's?"
Now Parker was not the Dean's name, and Priam knew that it was not. Parker was merely the first name that had come into Priam's cowardly head.
"No, it isn't," said the flunkey with censorious lips. "It's the Dean's."
"Oh, I beg pardon," said Priam Farll. "I thought it was Mr. Parker's."
And he departed.
Between the ringing of the bell and the flunkey's appearance, he had clearly seen what he was capable, and what he was incapable, of doing. And the correction of England's error was among his incapacities. He could not face the Dean. He could not face any one. He was a poltroon in all these things; a poltroon. No use arguing! He could not do it.
"I thought it was Mr. Parker's!" Good heavens! To what depths can a great artist fall.