Mr. Simon Treadwell, my aunt wrote, would be delighted to dine on the date named. Thinking of our after-dinner entertainment, I looked out in my morning paper the most classical concert I could find advertised for that date, and took tickets for it. Then I went to the Coburg, and in consultation with the manager ordered a dinner which I thought should suit my guest, accepting the item of petite marmite with resignation:—
Caviar.
Petite marmite.
Filets de soles Waleska.
Tournedos Niçoise.
Pommes Anna.
Perdreau Périgourdine.
Salade Victoria.
Bombe Patricienne.
Friandises.
On the appointed evening I waited in the lounge which leads off from the entrance-hall, rather wondering as to whether my stock of conversation would last out a dinner with the very grave person I had to entertain. The lounge is a very comfortable room, painted oak-colour, with warm red curtains and a warm red carpet. From it one looks through a white arch into the white panelled hall, with its dead gold roof and the oak staircase, which, through its white arch, with a plentiful supply of palms to break the straight lines, would appeal to any artist's eye.
I heard my name spoken in the hall, and went out to receive my venerable guest. I was astonished, however, to find a young gentleman, black of hair, clean-shaven, with an eyeglass, and in the most modern cut of dress clothes. I am afraid that my face showed my astonishment, for my guest said, "I am Mr. Simon Treadwell, junior. Did you expect to see my father?"
I wondered how the classical concert would suit my new acquaintance, as I piloted him down the white-panelled passage, where a little fountain in a recess lets fall a tinkling stream of water, and into the dining-room. We were quiet, as I expected to be. The room, with its panelling of deep red wood, with a frieze of tapestry, its pillared overmantel, its recess curtained in, its soft red carpet, its high-backed chairs of dark-green leather with a golden C on them, its clusters of electric globes filling the room with a soft, luminous glow, is all in keeping with a certain sensation of stateliness, and the perfect silence of the service, a very good point, adds to this feeling.
The diners at the other tables were, I should say, all guests staying at the hotel. I had not the curiosity to ask who they were, but I should have expected to be told that their names were all to be found in "Debrett."
Mr. Treadwell was taking stock of me, as I was doing of him, and when the caviar in its bowl of ice and the petite marmite, strong and hot, had been served, he told me of the very simple business as to which he had been instructed to ask my advice, and that matter satisfactorily disposed of, we, with the sole Waleska, which, with its accompanying slices of truffle, is always a favourite dish of mine, fell on to general subjects, and I tentatively asked Mr. Treadwell whether he had a taste for classical music.
"Not so much for classical music as for a good song," said Mr. Treadwell, urbanely; and after a short pause he mentioned that he had heard that Arthur Roberts was very amusing. I mentally tore up the tickets for the classical concert.
With the tournedos Mr. Treadwell told me that he had wired down to the Palace for two seats for the next night in order to hear Marie Lloyd's new songs, and asked my advice as to where he had better dine à deux, and whether Romano's, or Princes', or the Savoy was the most chic place to take a lady to supper at. I filled up Mr. Treadwell's glass from the nicely chilled bottle of Perrier-Jouët, and he almost winked at me as he told me of my cousin John's delinquencies: how, after he, John, had hypocritically warned my aunt Tabitha that I took a delight in theatrical performances and attempted to raise the ready smile in journalism, he had been so indiscreet as to appear before my aunt on an occasion when he had evidently come home with the milk. Mr. Treadwell went so far as to call him a "garden jackass"; and, my heart warming to the young solicitor, I told him of the Covent Garden ball and how I had discovered my cousin there, and of the tracts that had been sent to me by my aunt to give him.