“That, my lord, was the trouble,” replied Timms. “If your lordship will permit me, I will adjust this buckle. When I left Lord Devenish I was with young Mr. Harry Cheston for a space. Shoulders, legs, waist — all very passable. He wore his clothes very well, my lord; never a crease, nor a pin out of place, though he favoured vellum-hole waistcoats more than I could like. It was Mr. Cheston’s hands that were his undoing. Do what one would, my lord, they were such as to render the perfection of his attire quite negligible. He slept every night in chicken-skin gloves, but it was of no use, they remained a vulgar red.”
Vidal cast himself down in the chair by the dressing-table, and leaned back in it, surveying his valet with a half-smile curling his lips. “You alarm me, Timms, positively you alarm me.”
Mr. Timms smiled indulgently. “Your lordship has no need to feel alarm. I could wish that we wore a ring — not a profusion, sir, but one ring, possibly an emerald, which is a stone designed to set off the whiteness of a gentleman’s hand — but since your lordship has a strong aversion from jewels we must forgo the adornment. The hands themselves, if your lordship will not think it impertinent, are all that I could wish.”
His lordship, quite unnerved by this encomium, thrust them both into his breeches pockets. “Come, let me have it, Timms!” he said. “Where do I fall short of your devilish high standards? Let me know the worst.”
Mr. Timms bent to dust one of his lordship’s shining boots. “Your lordship can hardly fail to be aware of the elegance of your lordship’s whole figure. In the twenty-five years during which I have been a gentleman’s valet I have always had to fight against odds, as it were. Your lordship would be surprised to know how one inferior feature can ruin the most modish toilet. There was the Honourable Peter Hailing, sir, whose coats were so exactly cut to his figure that it needed myself and two lackeys to coax him into them. He had a leg such as is seldom seen, and his countenance was by no means contemptible. But it all went for nothing, my lord, Mr. Hailing’s neck was so short that no neckcloth could be made to disguise it. I could tell your lordship of a dozen such cases. Sometimes it’s the shoulders, at others the legs; once I served a gentleman with a fatal tendency to corpulence. We did what we could with tight-lacing, but it was not successful. Yet he was as handsome as your lordship, if I may say so.”
“Spare my blushes, Timms,” said the Marquis sardonically. “I don’t aspire to be an Adonis. Out with it! What’s my fault?”
Mr. Timms said simply: “Your lordship has none.”
The Marquis was startled. “Eh?”
“None whatsoever, my lord. One could wish for greater care in the arrangement of the cravat, and a more frequent use of the curling-irons and pounce-box; but we have nothing to conceal. Your lordship will understand that a constant struggle against nature disheartens one. When your lordship found yourself in need of a valet, I applied for the post, being confident — with all respect, my lord — that though your lordship might affect a carelessness that one is bound to deplore, the figure, face, hands — your lordship’s whole person, in short — were so exactly proportioned as to render the apparelling of your lordship a work of pleasure unmarred by any feeling of dissatisfaction.”
“Good God!” said the Marquis.