THE SILVER SPOON 647
Except in her house, the diggers-up of old civilisations in
JBeluchistan never encountered the levellers of modern
civilisation in London. Nor was there any chance for
lights of the Palace to meet those lights of the Halls—
Madame Nemesia and Top Nobby. Nowhere else could
a Russian dancer go in to supper with Sir Walter Peddel,
M.D., F.R.S.T.R., P.M.V.S., « R.I.P.' as Michael would
add. Even a bowler with the finest collection of ducks'
eggs in first-class cricket was not without a chance of
wringing the hand of the great Indian economist Sir
Banerjee Bath Babore. Mrs. Magussie's, in fine, was a
house of chief consequence ; and her long face, as of the
guardian of some first principle, moving above the waters
of celebrity, was wrinkled in a great cause. To meet or
not to meet ? She had answered the question for good
and all.
The e met' or ' meetee ' for her opening rout in 1925
was the great Italian violinist Luigi Sporza, who had just
completed his remarkable tour of the world, having in
half the time played more often than any two previous
musicians. The prodigious feat had been noted in the
Press of all countries with every circumstance—the five
violins he had tired out, the invitation he had received
to preside over a South American Republic, the special
steamer he had chartered to keep an engagement in North
America, and his fainting fit in Moscow after the Beethoven
and Brahms concertos, the Bach chaconne, and seventeen
encores. During the lingering year of his great effort, his
fame had been established. As an artist he had been known
to a few, as an athlete he was now known to all.
Michael and Fleur, passing up the centre stairway, saw a
man ' not 'arf like a bull'—Michael muttered—whose hand
people were seizing, one after the other, to move away after-
wards with a look of pain.