The Outcry Read online

  Produced by David Widger

  THE OUTCRY

  By Henry James

  1911

  BOOK FIRST

  I

  "NO, my lord," Banks had replied, "no stranger has yet arrived. ButI'll see if any one has come in--or who has." As he spoke, however, heobserved Lady Sandgate's approach to the hall by the entrance givingupon the great terrace, and addressed her on her passing the threshold."Lord John, my lady." With which, his duty majestically performed, heretired to the quarter--that of the main access to the spacious centreof the house--from which he had ushered the visitor.

  This personage, facing Lady Sandgate as she paused there a moment framedby the large doorway to the outer expanses, the small pinkish paper ofa folded telegram in her hand, had partly before him, as an immediateeffect, the high wide interior, still breathing the quiet air and thefair pannelled security of the couple of hushed and stored centuries, inwhich certain of the reputed treasures of Dedborough Place beautifullydisposed themselves; and then, through ample apertures and beyondthe stately stone outworks of the great seated and supportedhouse--uplifting terrace, balanced, balustraded steps and containingbasins where splash and spray were at rest--all the rich composedextension of garden and lawn and park. An ancient, an assured eleganceseemed to reign; pictures and preserved "pieces," cabinets andtapestries, spoke, each for itself, of fine selection and highdistinction; while the originals of the old portraits, in more or lessdeserved salience, hung over the happy scene as the sworn members of agreat guild might have sat, on the beautiful April day, at one of theirannual feasts.

  Such was the setting confirmed by generous time, but the handsome womanof considerably more than forty whose entrance had all but coincidedwith that of Lord John either belonged, for the eye, to no suchcomplacent company or enjoyed a relation to it in which the odd twistsand turns of history must have been more frequent than any dull avenueor easy sequence. Lady Sandgate was shiningly modern, and perhaps at nopoint more so than by the effect of her express repudiation of a mundanefuture certain to be more and more offensive to women of real qualityand of formed taste. Clearly, at any rate, in her hands, the clue tothe antique confidence had lost itself, and repose, however founded, hadgiven way to curiosity--that is to speculation--however disguised. Shemight have consented, or even attained, to being but gracefully stupid,but she would presumably have confessed, if put on her trial forrestlessness or for intelligence, that she _was_, after all, almostclever enough to be vulgar. Unmistakably, moreover, she had still, withher fine stature, her disciplined figure, her cherished complexion, herbright important hair, her kind bold eyes and her large constant smile,the degree of beauty that might pretend to put every other question by.

  Lord John addressed her as with a significant manner that he might havehad--that of a lack of need, or even of interest, for any explanationabout herself: it would have been clear that he was apt to discriminatewith sharpness among possible claims on his attention. "I luckily find_you_ at least, Lady Sandgate--they tell me Theign's off somewhere."

  She replied as with the general habit, on her side, of blandreassurance; it mostly had easier consequences--for herself--than theperhaps more showy creation of alarm. "Only off in the park--open to-dayfor a school-feast from Dedborough, as you may have made out from theavenue; giving good advice, at the top of his lungs, to four hundred andfifty children."

  It was such a scene, and such an aspect of the personage so accountedfor, as Lord John could easily take in, and his recognition familiarlysmiled. "Oh he's so great on such occasions that I'm sorry to be missingit."

  "I've _had_ to miss it," Lady Sandgate sighed--"that is to miss theperoration. I've just left them, but he had even then been going on fortwenty minutes, and I dare say that if you care to take a look you'llfind him, poor dear victim of duty, still _at_ it."

  "I'll warrant--for, as I often tell him, he makes the idea of one's dutyan awful thing to his friends by the extravagance with which he alwaysoverdoes it." And the image itself appeared in some degree to promptthis particular edified friend to look at his watch and consider. "Ishould like to come in for the grand _finale_, but I rattled over in agreat measure to meet a party, as he calls himself--and calls, if youplease, even me!--who's motoring down by appointment and whom I think Ishould be here to receive; as well as a little, I confess, in the hopeof a glimpse of Lady Grace: if you can perhaps imagine _that!_"

  "I can imagine it perfectly," said Lady Sandgate, whom evidently noperceptions of that general order ever cost a strain. "It quite sticksout of you, and every one moreover has for some time past been waitingto see. But you haven't then," she added, "come from town?"

  "No, I'm for three days at Chanter with my mother; whom, as she kindlylent me her car, I should have rather liked to bring."

  Lady Sandgate left the unsaid, in this connection, languish nolonger than was decent. "But whom you doubtless had to leave, by herpreference, just settling down to bridge."

  "Oh, to sit down would imply that my mother at some moment of the daygets up----!"

  "Which the Duchess never does?"--Lady Sand-gate only asked to be allowedto show how she saw it. "She fights to the last, invincible; gatheringin the spoils and only routing her friends?" She abounded genially inher privileged vision. "Ah yes--we know something of that!"

  Lord John, who was a young man of a rambling but not of an idle eye,fixed her an instant with a surprise that was yet not steeped incompassion. "You too then?"

  She wouldn't, however, too meanly narrow it down. "Well, in this housegenerally; where I'm so often made welcome, you see, and where----"

  "Where," he broke in at once, "your jolly good footing quite sticks outof _you_, perhaps you'll let me say!"

  She clearly didn't mind his seeing her ask herself how she should dealwith so much rather juvenile intelligence; and indeed she could onlydecide to deal quite simply. "You can't say more than I feel--and amproud to feel!--at being of comfort when they're worried."

  This but fed the light flame of his easy perception--which lighted forhim, if she would, all the facts equally. "And they're worried now,you imply, because my terrible mother is capable of heavy gains and ofmaking a great noise if she isn't paid? I ought to mind speaking ofthat truth," he went on as with a practised glance in the direction ofdelicacy; "but I think I should like you to know that I myself am not abit ignorant of why it has made such an impression here."

  Lady Sandgate forestalled his knowledge. "Because poor Kitty Imber--whoshould either never touch a card or else learn to suffer in silence, asI've had to, goodness knows!--has thrown herself, with her impossiblebig debt, upon her father? whom she thinks herself entitled to 'look to'even more as a lovely young widow with a good jointure than she formerlydid as the mere most beautiful daughter at home."

  She had put the picture a shade interrogatively, but this was as nothingto the note of free inquiry in Lord John's reply. "You mean that ourlovely young widows--to say nothing of lovely young wives--ought by thistime to have made out, in predicaments, how to turn round?"

  His temporary hostess, even with his eyes on her, appeared to decideafter a moment not wholly to disown his thought. But she smiled for it."Well, in that set----!"

  "My mother's set?" However, if she could smile he could laugh. "I'm muchobliged!"

  "Oh," she qualified, "I don't criticise her Grace; but the ways andtraditions and tone of this house----"

  "Make it"--he took her sense straight from her--"the house in Englandwhere one feels most the false note of a dishevelled and bankrupt elderdaughter breaking in with a list of her gaming debts--to say nothing ofothers!--and wishing to have at least those wiped out in the interest ofher reputation? Exactly so," he went on before she could meet it with adiplomatic ambiguity; "and just that, I assure y
ou, is a large part ofthe reason I like to come here--since I personally don't come with anysuch associations."

  "Not the association of bankruptcy--no; as you represent the payee!"

  The young man appeared to regard this imputation for a moment almostas a liberty taken. "How do you know so well, Lady Sandgate, what Irepresent?"

  She bethought herself--but briefly and bravely. "Well, don't yourepresent, by your own admission, certain fond aspirations? Don'tyou represent the belief--very natural, I grant--that more than _one_perverse and extravagant flower will be unlikely on such a fine healthyold stem; and, consistently with that, the hope of arranging with ouradmirable host here that he shall lend a helpful hand to your commendingyourself to dear Grace?"

  Lord John might, in the light of these words, have felt any latentinfirmity in such a pretension exposed; but as he stood there facinghis chances he would have struck a spectator as resting firmly enough onsome felt residuum of advantage: whether this were cleverness or luck,the strength of his backing or that of his sincerity. Even with theyoung woman to whom our friends' reference thus broadened still avague quantity for us, you would have taken his sincerity as quitepossible--and this despite an odd element in him that you might havedescribed as a certain delicacy of brutality. This younger son ofa noble matron recognised even by himself as terrible enjoyed inno immediate or aggressive manner any imputable private heritageor privilege of arrogance. He would on the contrary have irradiatedfineness if his lustre hadn't been a little prematurely dimmed. Activeyet insubstantial, he was slight and short and a trifle too punctually,though not yet quite lamentably, bald. Delicacy was in the arch of hiseyebrow, the finish of his facial line, the economy of "treatment"by which his negative nose had been enabled to look important and hismeagre mouth to smile its spareness away.

  He had pleasant but hard little eyes--they glittered, handsomely,without promise--and a neatness, a coolness and an ease, a clearinstinct for making point take, on his behalf, the place of weight andimmunity that of capacity, which represented somehow the art of livingat a high pitch and yet at a low cost. There was that in his satisfiedair which still suggested sharp wants--and this was withal theambiguity; for the temper of these appetites or views was certainly,you would have concluded, not such as always to sacrifice to form. If hereally, for instance, wanted Lady Grace, the passion or the sense of hisinterest in it would scarce have been considerately irritable.

  "May I ask what you mean," he inquired of Lady Sandgate, "by thequestion of my 'arranging'?"

  "I mean that you're the very clever son of a very clever mother."

  "Oh, I'm less clever than you think," he replied--"if you really thinkit of me at all; and mamma's a good sight cleverer!"

  "Than I think?" Lady Sandgate echoed. "Why, she's the person in all ourworld I would gladly most resemble--for her general ability to put whatshe wants through." But she at once added: "That is _if_--!" pausing onit with a smile.

  "If what then?"

  "Well, if I could be absolutely certain to have all in her kinds ofcleverness without exception--and to have them," said Lady Sandgate, "tothe very end."

  He definitely, he almost contemptuously declined to follow her. "Thevery end of what?"

  She took her choice as amid all the wonderful directions there might be,and then seemed both to risk and to reserve something. "Say of her sowonderfully successful _general_ career."

  It doubtless, however, warranted him in appearing to cut insinuationsshort. "When you're as clever as she you'll be as good." To which hesubjoined: "You don't begin to have the opportunity of knowing how goodshe is." This pronouncement, to whatever comparative obscurity it mightappear to relegate her, his interlocutress had to take--he was so promptwith a more explicit challenge. "What is it exactly that you supposeyourself to know?"

  Lady Sandgate had after a moment, in her supreme good humour, decidedto take everything. "I always proceed on the assumption that I knoweverything, because that makes people tell me."

  "It wouldn't make we," he quite rang out, "if I didn't want to! But asit happens," he allowed, "there's a question it would be convenientto me to put to you. You must be, with your charming unconventionalrelation with him, extremely in Theign's confidence."

  She waited a little as for more. "Is that your question--_whether_ Iam?"

  "No, but if you are you'll the better answer it"

  She had no objection then to answering it beautifully. "We're the bestfriends in the world; he has been really my providence, as a lone womanwith almost nobody and nothing of her own, and I feel my footing here,as so frequent and yet so discreet a visitor, simply perfect But I'mhappy to say that--for my pleasure when I'm really curious--this doesn'tclose to me the sweet resource of occasionally guessing things."

  "Then I hope you've ground for believing that if I go the right wayabout it he's likely to listen to me."

  Lady Sandgate measured her ground--which scarce seemed extensive. "Theperson he most listens to just now--and in fact at any time, as you musthave seen for yourself--is that arch-tormentor, or at least beautifulwheedler, his elder daughter."

  "Lady Imber's _here?_" Lord John alertly asked.

  "She arrived last night and--as we've other visitors--seems to have setup a side-show in the garden."

  "Then she'll 'draw' of course immensely, as she always does. But hersister won't be in that case with her," the young man supposed.

  "Because Grace feels herself naturally an independent show? So she wellmay," said Lady Sandgate, "but I must tell you that when I last noticedthem there Kitty was in the very act of leading her away."

  Lord John figured it a moment. "Lady Imber"--he ironically enlarged thefigure--"_can_ lead people away."

  "Oh, dear Grace," his companion returned, "happens fortunately to befirm!"

  This seemed to strike him for a moment as equivocal. "Not against_me_, however--you don't mean? You don't think she has a beastlyprejudice----?"

  "Surely you can judge about it; as knowing best what may--or whatmayn't--have happened between you."

  "Well, I try to judge"--and such candour as was possible to Lord Johnseemed to sit for a moment on his brow. "But I'm in fear of seeing hertoo much as I want to see her."

  There was an appeal in it that Lady Sandgate might have been moved tomeet "Are you absolutely in earnest about her?"

  "Of course I am--why shouldn't I be? But," he said with impatience, "Iwant help."

  "Very well then, that's what Lady Imber's giving you." And as itappeared to take him time to read into these words their full sense,she produced others, and so far did help him--though the effort was ina degree that of her exhibiting with some complacency her own unassistedcontrol of stray signs and shy lights. "By telling her, by bringing ithome to her, that if she'll make up her mind to accept you the Duchesswill do the handsome thing. Handsome, I mean, by Kitty."

  Lord John, appropriating for his convenience the truth in this, yetregarded it as open to a becoming, an improving touch from himself."Well, and by _me_." To which he added with more of a challenge in it:"But you really know what my mother will do?"

  "By my system," Lady Sandgate smiled, "you see I've guessed. What yourmother will do is what brought you over!"

  "Well, it's that," he allowed--"and something else."

  "Something else?" she derisively echoed. "I should think 'that,' for anardent lover, would have been enough."

  "Ah, but it's all one Job! I mean it's one idea," he hastened toexplain--"if you think Lady Imber's really acting on her."

  "Mightn't you go and see?"

  "I would in a moment if I hadn't to look out for another matter too."And he renewed his attention to his watch. "I mean getting straight atmy American, the party I just mentioned------"

  But she had already taken him up. "You too have an American and a'party,' and yours also motors down----?"

  "Mr. Breckenridge Bender." Lord John named him with a shade of elation.

  She gaped at the fuller light "You _know_ my B
reckenridge?--who I hopedwas coming for me!"

  Lord John as freely, but more gaily, wondered. "Had he told you so?"

  She held out, opened, the telegram she had kept folded in her hand sinceher entrance. "He has sent me that--which, delivered to me ten minutesago out there, has brought me in to receive him."

  The young man read out this missive. "'Failing to find you in BrutonStreet, start in pursuit and hope to overtake you about four.'" It didinvolve an ambiguity. "Why, he has been engaged these three daysto coincide with myself, and not to fail of him has been part of mybusiness."

  Lady Sandgate, in her demonstrative way, appealed to the general richscene. "Then why does he say it's me he's pursuing?"

  He seemed to recognise promptly enough in her the sense of a menacedmonopoly. "My dear lady, he's pursuing expensive works of art."

  "By which you imply that I'm one?" She might have been wound up by herdisappointment to almost any irony.

  "I imply--or rather I affirm--that every handsome woman is! But what hearranged with me about," Lord John explained, "was that he shouldsee the Dedborough pictures in general and the great Sir Joshua inparticular--of which he had heard so much and to which I've been thusglad to assist him."

  This news, however, with its lively interest, but deepened thelistener's mystification. "Then why--this whole week that I've been inthe house--hasn't our good friend here mentioned to me his coming?"

  "Because our good friend here has had no reason"--Lord John could treatit now as simple enough. "Good as he is in all ways, he's so best ofall about showing the house and its contents that I haven't even thoughtnecessary to write him that I'm introducing Breckenridge."

  "I should have been happy to introduce him," Lady Sandgate justquavered--"if I had at all known he wanted it."

  Her companion weighed the difference between them and appeared topronounce it a trifle he didn't care a fig for. "I surrender you thatprivilege then--of presenting him to his host--if I've seemed to youto snatch it from you." To which Lord John added, as with liberalityunrestricted, "But I've been taking him about to see what's worthwhile--as only last week to Lady Lappington's Longhi."

  This revelation, though so casual in its form, fairly drew from LadySandgate, as she took it in, an interrogative wail. "Her Longhi?"

  "Why, don't you know her great Venetian family group, theWhat-do-you-call-'ems?--seven full-length figures, each one a gem, forwhich he paid her her price before he left the house."

  She could but make it more richly resound--almost stricken, lost in herwistful thought: "Seven full-length figures? Her price?"

  "Eight thousand--slap down. Bender knows," said Lord John, "what hewants."

  "And does he want only"--her wonder grew and grew--

  "What-do-you-call-'ems'?"

  "He most usually wants what he can't have." Lord John made scarce moreof it than that. "But, awfully hard up as I fancy her, Lady Lappingtonwent _at_ him."

  It determined in his friend a boldly critical attitude. "Howhorrible--at the rate things are leaving us!" But this was far from theend of her interest. "And is that the way he pays?"

  "Before he leaves the house?" Lord John lived it amusedly over. "Well,_she_ took care of that."

  "How incredibly vulgar!" It all had, however, for Lady Sandgate, stillother connections--which might have attenuated Lady Lappington'scase, though she didn't glance at this. "He makes the most scandalouseyes--the ruffian!--at my great-grandmother." And then as richly toenlighten any blankness: "My tremendous Lawrence, don't you know?--inher wedding-dress, down to her knees; with such extraordinarilyspeaking eyes, such lovely arms and hands, such wonderful flesh-tints:universally considered the masterpiece of the artist."

  Lord John seemed to look a moment not so much at the image evoked, inwhich he wasn't interested, as at certain possibilities lurking behindit. "And are you going to _sell_ the masterpiece of the artist?"

  She held her head high. "I've indignantly refused--for all his pressingme so hard."

  "Yet that's what he nevertheless pursues you to-day to keep up?"

  The question had a little the ring of those of which the occupant of awitness-box is mostly the subject, but Lady Sandgate was so far as thiswent an imperturbable witness. "I need hardly fear it perhaps if--inthe light of what you tell me of your arrangement with him--his pursuitbecomes, where I am concerned, a figure of speech."

  "Oh," Lord John returned, "he kills two birds with one stone--he seesboth Sir Joshua and you."

  This version of the case had its effect, for the moment, on his fairassociate. "Does he want to buy _their_ pride and glory?"

  The young man, however, struck on his own side, became at first but thebright reflector of her thought. "Is that wonder for sale?"

  She closed her eyes as with the shudder of hearing such words. "Not,surely, by _any_ monstrous chance! Fancy dear, proud Theign------!"

  "I can't fancy him--no!" And Lord John appeared to renounce the effort."But a cat may look at a king and a sharp funny Yankee at anything."

  These things might be, Lady Sandgate's face and gesture apparentlysignified; but another question diverted her. "You're clearly awonderful showman, but do you mind my asking you whether you're on suchan occasion a--well, a closely interested one?"

  "'Interested'?" he echoed; though it wasn't to gain time, he showed, forhe would in that case have taken more. "To the extent, you mean, of mylittle percentage?" And then as in silence she but kept a slightly grimsmile on him: "Why do you ask if--with your high delicacy about yourgreat-grandmother--you've nothing to place?"

  It took her a minute to say, while her fine eye only rolled; but whenshe spoke that organ boldly rested and the truth vividly appeared."I ask because people like you, Lord John, strike me as dangerous tothe--how shall I name it?--the common weal; and because of my generalstrong feeling that we don't want any more of our national treasures(for I regard my great-grandmother as national) to be scattered aboutthe world."

  "There's much in this country and age," he replied in an off-handmanner, "to be said about _that_," The present, however, was not thetime to say it all; so he said something else instead, accompanying itwith a smile that signified sufficiency. "To my friends, I need scarcelyremark to you, I'm all the friend."

  She had meanwhile seen the butler reappear by the door that opened tothe terrace, and though the high, bleak, impersonal approach of thisfunctionary was ever, and more and more at every step, a process to defyinterpretation, long practice evidently now enabled her to suggest, asshe turned again to her fellow-visitor a reading of it. "It's the friendthen clearly who's wanted in the park."

  She might, by the way Banks looked at her, have snatched from his handa missive addressed to another; though while he addressed himself to hercompanion he allowed for her indecorum sufficiently to take it up whereshe had left it. "By her ladyship, my lord, who sends to hope you'lljoin them below the terrace."

  "Ah, Grace hopes," said Lady Sandgate for the young man's encouragement."There you are!"

  Lord John took up the motor-cap he had lain down on coming in. "I rushto Lady Grace, but don't demoralise Bender!" And he went forth to theterrace and the gardens.

  Banks looked about as for some further exercise of his high function."Will you have tea, my lady?"

  This appeared to strike her as premature. "Oh, thanks--when they allcome in."

  "They'll scarcely _all_, my lady"--he indicated respectfully that heknew what he was talking about. "There's tea in her ladyship's tent;but," he qualified, "it has also been ordered for the saloon."

  "Ah then," she said cheerfully, "Mr. Bender will be glad--!" And shebecame, with this, aware of the approach of another visitor. Banksconsidered, up and down, the gentleman ushered in, at the left, by thefootman who had received him at the main entrance to the house. "Herehe must be, my lady." With which he retired to the spacious oppositequarter, where he vanished, while the footman, his own office performed,retreated as he had come, and Lady Sandgate, all hospitality, receivedt
he many-sided author of her specious telegram, of Lord John'sirritating confidence and of Lady Lappington's massive cheque.