The Outcry Part 31

"Won't you at any rate," his hostess asked, "wait for Bender?"

His lords.h.i.+p cast it to the winds. "What have I to do with him now?"

"Why surely if he'll accept your own price--!"

Lord Theign thought--he wondered; and then as if fairly amused at himself: "Hanged if I know what _is_ my own price!" After which he went for his hat. "But there's one thing," he remembered as he came back with it: "where's my too, _too_ unnatural daughter?"

"If you mean Grace and really want her I'll send and find out."

"Not now"--he bethought himself. "But does she _see_ that chatterbox?"

"Mr. Crimble? Yes, she sees him."

He kept his eyes on her. "Then how far has it gone?"

Lady Sandgate overcame an embarra.s.sment. "Well, not even yet, I think, so far as they'd like."

"They'd 'like'--heaven save the mark!--to marry?"

"I suspect them of it. What line, if it should come to that," she asked, "would you then take?"

He was perfectly prompt. "The line that for Grace it's simply ign.o.ble."

The force of her deprecation of such language was qualified by tact.

"Ah, darling, as dreadful as _that?_"

He could but view the possibility with dark resentment. "It lets us so down--from what we've always been and done; so down, down, down that I'm amazed you don't feel it!"

"Oh, I feel there's still plenty to keep you up!" she soothingly laughed.

He seemed to consider this vague amount--which he apparently judged, however, not so vast as to provide for the whole yearning of his nature.

"Well, my dear," he thus more blandly professed, "I shall need all the extra _agrement_ that your affection can supply."

If nothing could have been, on this, richer response, nothing could at the same time have bee more pleasing than her modesty. "Ah, my affectionate Theign, is, as I think you know, a fountain always in flood; but in any more worldly element than that--as you've ever seen for yourself--a poor strand with my own sad affairs, a broken reed; not 'great' as they used so finely to call it! You _are_--with the natural sense of greatness and, for supreme support, the instinctive grand man doing and taking things."

He sighed, none the less, he groaned, with his thoughts of trouble, for the strain he foresaw on these resolutions. "If you mean that I hold up my head, on higher grounds, I grant that I always have. But how much longer possible when my children commit such vulgarities? Why in the name of goodness are such children? What the devil has got into them, and is it really the case that when Grace offers as a proof of her license and a specimen of her taste a son-in-law as you tell me I'm in danger of helplessly to swallow the dose?"

"Do you find Mr. Crimble," Lady Sandgate as if there might really be something to say, "so utterly out of the question?"

"I found him on the two occasions before I went away in the last degree offensive and outrageous; but even if he charged one and one's poor dear decent old defences with less rabid a fury everything about him would forbid _that_ kind of relation."

What kind of relation, if any, Hugh's deficiencies might still render thinkable Lord Theign was kept from going on to mention by the voice of Mr. Gotch, who had thrown open the door to the not altogether a.s.sured sound of "Mr. Breckenridge Bender." The guest in possession gave a cry of impatience, but Lady Sandgate said "Coming up?"

"If his lords.h.i.+p will see him."

"Oh, he's beyond his time," his lords.h.i.+p p.r.o.nounced--"I can't see him now!"

"Ah, but _mustn't_ you--and mayn't _I_ then?" She waited, however, for no response to signify to her servant "Let him come," and her companion could but exhale a groan of reluctant accommodation as if he wondered at the point she made of it. It enlightened him indeed perhaps a little that she went on while Gotch did her bidding. "Does the kind of relation you'd be condemned to with Mr. Crimble let you down, down, down, as you say, more than the relation you've been having with Mr. Bender?"

Lord Theign had for it the most uninforming of stares. "Do you mean don't I hate 'em equally both?"

She cut his further reply short, however, by a "Hus.h.!.+" of warning--Mr.

Bender was there and his introducer had left them.

Lord Theign, full of his purpose of departure, sacrificed hereupon little to ceremony. "I've but a moment, to my regret, to give you, Mr.

Bender, and if you've been unavoidably detained, as you great bustling people are so apt to be, it will perhaps still be soon enough for your comfort to hear from me that I've just given order to close our exhibition. From the present hour on, sir"--he put it with the firmness required to settle the futility of an appeal.

Mr. Bender's large surprise lost itself, however, promptly enough, in Mr. Bender's larger ease. "Why, do you really mean it, Lord Theign?--removing already from view a work that gives innocent gratification to thousands?"

"Well," said his lords.h.i.+p curtly, "if thousands have seen it I've done what I wanted, and if they've been gratified I'm content--and invite _you_ to be."

Mr. Bender showed more keenness for this richer implication. "In other words it's I who may remove the picture?"

"Well--if you'll take it on my estimate."

"But what, Lord Theign, all this time," Mr. Bender almost pathetically pleaded, "_is_ your estimate?"

The parting guest had another pause, which prolonged itself, after he had reached the door, in a deep solicitation of their hostess's conscious eyes. This brief pa.s.sage apparently inspired his answer. "Lady Sandgate will tell you." The door closed behind him.

The charming woman smiled then at her other friend, whose comprehensive presence appeared now to demand of her some account of these strange proceedings. "He means that your own valuation is much too shockingly high."

"But how can I know _how_ much unless I find out what he'll take?"

The great collector's spirit had, in spite of its volume, clearly not reached its limit of expansion. "Is he crazily waiting for the thing to be proved _not_ what Mr. Crimble claims?"

"No, he's waiting for nothing--since he holds that claim demolished by Pappend.i.c.k's tremendous negative, which you wrote to tell him of."

Vast, undeveloped and suddenly grave, Mr. Bender's countenance showed like a barren tract under a black cloud. "I wrote to _report_, fair and square, on Pap-pend.i.c.k, but to tell him I'd take the picture just the same, negative and all."

"Ah, but take it in that way not for what it is but for what it isn't."

"We know nothing about what it 'isn't,'" said Mr. Bender, "after all that has happened--we've only learned a little better every day what it is."

"You mean," his companion asked, "the biggest bone of artistic contention----?"

"Yes,"--he took it from her--"the biggest that has been thrown into the arena for quite a while. I guess I can do with it for _that_."

Lady Sandgate, on this, after a moment, renewed her personal advance; it was as if she had now made sure of the soundness of her main bridge.

"Well, if it's the biggest bone I won't touch it; I'll leave it to be mauled by my betters. But since his lords.h.i.+p has asked me to name a price, dear Mr. Bender, I'll name one--and as you prefer big prices I'll try to make it suit you. Only it won't be for the portrait of a person n.o.body is agreed about. The whole world is agreed, you know, about my great-grandmother."

"Oh, shucks, Lady Sandgate!"--and her visitor turned from her with the hunch of overcharged shoulders.

But she apparently felt that she held him, or at least that even if such a conviction might be fatuous she must now put it to the touch. "You've been delivered into my hands--too charmingly; and you won't really pretend that you don't recognise that and in fact rather like it."

He faced about to her again as to a case of coolness unparalleled--though indeed with a quick lapse of real interest in the question of whether he had been artfully practised upon; an indifference to bad debts or peculation like that of some huge hotel or other business involving a margin for waste. He could afford, he could work waste too, clearly--and what was it, that term, you might have felt him ask, but a mean measure, anyway? quite as the "artful," opposed to his larger game, would be the hiding and pouncing of children at play. "Do I gather that those uncanny words of his were just meant to put me off?" he inquired. And then as she but boldly and smilingly shrugged, repudiating responsibility, "Look here, Lady Sandgate, ain't you honestly going to help me?" he pursued.

This engaged her sincerity without affecting her gaiety. "Mr. Bender, Mr. Bender, I'll help you if you'll help _me!_"

"You'll really get me something from him to go on with?"