Cressage haughtily consented to paint Sir Jee’s portrait on his usual conditions; namely, that the sitter should go to the little village in Bedfordshire where Cressage had his principal studio, and that the painting should be exhibited at the Royal Academy before being shown anywhere else. (Cressage was an R.A., but no one thought of putting R.A. after his name.  He was so big, that instead of the Royal Academy conferring distinction on him, he conferred distinction on the Royal Academy.)

Sir Jee went to Bedfordshire and was rapidly painted, and he came back gloomy.  The presentation committee went to Bedfordshire later to inspect the portrait, and they, too, came back gloomy.

Then the Academy Exhibition opened, and the portrait, showing Sir Jee in his robe and chain and in a chair, was instantly hailed as possibly the most glorious masterpiece of modern times.  All the critics were of one accord.  The committee and Sir Jee were reassured, but only partially, and Sir Jee rather less so than the committee.  For there was something in the enthusiastic criticism which gravely disturbed him.  An enlightened generation, thoroughly familiar with the dazzling yearly succession of Cressage’s portraits, need not be told what this something was.  One critic wrote that Cressage displayed even more than his ’customary astounding insight into character....’  Another critic wrote that Cressage’s observation was, as usual, ‘calmly and coldly hostile’.  Another referred to the ’typical provincial mayor, immortalized for the diversion of future ages.’

Inhabitants of the Five Towns went to London to see the work for which they had subscribed, and they saw a mean, little, old man, with thin lips and a straggling grey beard, and shifty eyes, and pushful snob written all over him; ridiculous in his gewgaws of office.  When you looked at the picture close to, it was a meaningless mass of coloured smudges, but when you stood fifteen feet away from it the portrait was absolutely lifelike, amazing, miraculous.  It was so wondrously lifelike that some of the inhabitants of the Five Towns burst out laughing.  Many people felt sorry—­not for Sir Jee—­but for Lady Dain.  Lady Dain was beloved and genuinely respected.  She was a simple, homely, sincere woman, her one weakness being that she had never been able to see through Sir Jee.

Of course, at the presentation ceremony the portrait had been ecstatically referred to as a possession precious for ever, and the recipient and his wife pretended to be overflowing with pure joy in the ownership of it.

It had been hanging in the dining-room of Sneyd Castle about sixteen months, when Lady Dain told her husband that it would ultimately drive her into the lunatic asylum.

‘Don’t be silly, wife,’ said Sir Jee.  ’I wouldn’t part with that portrait for ten times what it cost.’

This was, to speak bluntly, a downright lie.  Sir Jee secretly hated the portrait more than anyone hated it.  He would have been almost ready to burn down Sneyd Castle in order to get rid of the thing.  But it happened that on the previous evening, in the conversation with the magistrates’ clerk, his receptive brain had been visited by a less expensive scheme than burning down the castle.