Lace for Milady by Joan Smith

best. There was the same panelling high up on the walls, roughly the same dimensions, though it looked smaller after his own huge saloons, and was not so well windowed. My new rose draperies, too, made my own saloon appear more elegant than this one we stood in. Our attention was called to some carving by someone named Grinling Gibbons, who had also done the carving at Seaview, not for my house actually. It had originally decorated a bedchamber at Belview and been physically prised from there to decorate my saloon. A singularly futile arrangement, in my view, but I assume Miss Tilbridge had admired Grinling Gibbons a good deal more than I did myself.
    “But it is really my collection I want you to see,” he said, when we had looked our fill at the study.
    “Another collection?” I asked, hoping to convey the idea I did not approve of all this amassing of possessions. “My, you will have to begin collecting more houses to store so much treasure.”
    I could see the muscle in his jaw work with the effort of being civil at this taunt, but when he spoke he maintained his calm. “My Roman things. I keep them in the library, for lack of a better spot.”
    They made a great mess of his library. The room would have been very well if not littered with broken bits of rubbish. Smashed heads of statues, some minus a nose, some with a whole chin knocked off, legs, feet, arms, and hands were spread over tables much too good for this rough usage. What anyone could want with this marble anatomy passed imagining. Bits and pieces other than human were there, too, pridefully displayed as though they were objets d’art. There were pots and jugs with and without handles and in various states of disrepair. One very large and ugly piece sat alone in state on a pedestal that would more properly have held an unbroken piece of statuary. This piece was a head, even dirty and encrusted with moss—of an old soldier, I thought.
    “I believe this is a head of Mithras,” he said, looking at us for praise.
    “Very handsome,” Slack humoured him. “Who was Mithras?”
    “A Persian sun god.”
    “I thought it was Roman— things you collected?” I hardly knew what word to apply to his debris.
    “He was discovered in Persia by the legionnaires and became the soldiers’ deity. He came right along to Britain with them.”
    "Imagine that; it came all the way from Persia!”
    Slack said, craning her neck the better to view the oddity.
    “No, no, it was rather the idea they brought with them. This was carved in Britain—it is native stone,” he said, offended.
    “I didn’t think anyone would have bothered carrying it all the way from Persia,” I said. Again the jaws twitched, and again he contained his spleen.
    The only piece in the entire collection that had the least approval from me was a brass statue of a young girl. Slack cast only a cursory glance at it, since the young girl was undraped. “Stark naked” she later described it to me, shocked. But it was neither chipped nor broken nor bent, and it was better than most of his treasures in my estimation.
    “I have much more in the attics,” he told us. I hurriedly proclaimed there was not the least necessity to have them brought down. He spoke for some time of coins and swords and “artifacts,” which appeared to be everyday carpentry tools, surgical instruments, and farming implements, of which a nearly exact replica could be bought today in any shop.
    “They really ought to be available for the public to see,” he finished up his lecture.
    I was quite simply amazed that he would speak of sharing his things with anyone, let alone the unwashed public. Crowds of curious gawkers tramping through Belview could not be what he had in mind. “How would you do it?” I asked. “You wouldn’t want anyone here.”
    “Well, I wouldn’t want everyone here, in my home,” he said, with just a glint of understanding, I think. “In fact, I have a confession to make. Help me, Miss