The Outcry: -1911 Page 9

  Lady Sandgate's fair flush of diplomacy had meanwhile not faded. "Couldn't you, with your immense cleverness and power, get the Government to do something?"

  "About your picture?" Hugh betrayed on this head a graceless detachment. "You too then want to sell?"

  Oh she righted herself. "Never to a private party!"

  "Mr. Bender's not after it?" he asked—though scarce lighting his reluctant interest with a forced smile.

  "Most intensely after it. But never," cried the proprietress, "to a bloated alien!"

  "Then I applaud your patriotism. Only why not," he asked, "carrying that magnanimity a little further, set us all an example as splendid as the object itself?"

  "Give it you for nothing?" She threw up shocked hands. "Because I'm an aged female pauper and can't make every sacrifice."

  Hugh pretended—none too convincingly—to think. "Will you let them have it very cheap?"

  "Yes—for less than such a bribe as Bender's."

  "Ah," he said expressively, "that might be, and still——!"

  "Well," she had a flare of fond confidence. "I'll find out what he'll offer—if you'll on your side do what you can—and then ask them a third less." And she followed it up—as if suddenly conceiving him a prig. "See here, Mr. Crimble, I've been—and this very first time I—charming to you."

  "You have indeed," he returned; "but you throw back on it a lurid light if it has all been for that!"

  "It has been—well, to keep things as I want them; and if I've given you precious information mightn't you on your side—"

  "Estimate its value in cash?"—Hugh sharply took her up. "Ah, Lady Sandgate, I am in your debt, but if you really bargain for your precious information I'd rather we assume that I haven't enjoyed it."

  She made him, however, in reply, a sign for silence; she had heard Lady Grace enter the other room from the back landing, and, reaching the nearer door, she disposed of the question with high gay bravery. "I won't bargain with the Treasury!"—she had passed out by the time Lady Grace arrived.

  II

  As Hugh recognised in this friend's entrance and face the light of welcome he went, full of his subject, straight to their main affair. "I haven't been able to wait, I've wanted so much to tell you—I mean how I've just come back from Brussels, where I saw Pappen-dick, who was free and ready, by the happiest chance, to start for Verona, which he must have reached some time yesterday."

  The girl's responsive interest fairly broke into rapture. "Ah, the dear sweet thing!"

  "Yes, he's a brick—but the question now hangs in the balance. Allowing him time to have got into relation with the picture, I've begun to expect his wire, which will probably come to my club; but my fidget, while I wait, has driven me"—he threw out and dropped his arms in expression of his soft surrender—"well, just to do this: to come to you here, in my fever, at an unnatural hour and uninvited, and at least let you know I've 'acted.'"

  "Oh, but I simply rejoice," Lady Grace declared, "to be acting with you."

  "Then if you are, if you are," the young man cried, "why everything's beautiful and right!"

  "It's all I care for and think of now," she went on in her bright devotion, "and I've only wondered and hoped!"

  Well, Hugh found for it all a rapid, abundant lucidity. "He was away from home at first, and I had to wait—but I crossed last week, found him and settled incoming home by Paris, where I had a grand four days' jaw with the fellows there and saw their great specimen of our master: all of which has given him time."

  "And now his time's up?" the girl eagerly asked.

  "It must be—and we shall see." But Hugh postponed that question to a matter of more moment still. "The thing is that at last I'm able to tell you how I feel the trouble I've brought you."

  It made her, quickly colouring, rest grave eyes on him. "What do you know—when I haven't told you—about my 'trouble'?"

  "Can't I have guessed, with a ray of intelligence?"—he had his answer ready. "You've sought asylum with this good friend from the effects of your father's resentment."

  "'Sought asylum' is perhaps excessive," Lady Grace returned—"though it wasn't pleasant with him after that hour, no," she allowed. "And I couldn't go, you see, to Kitty."

  "No indeed, you couldn't go to Kitty." He smiled at her hard as he added: "I should have liked to see you go to Kitty! Therefore exactly is it that I've set you adrift—that I've darkened and poisoned your days. You're paying with your comfort, with your peace, for having joined so gallantly in my grand remonstrance."

  She shook her head, turning from him, but then turned back again—as if accepting, as if even relieved by, this version of the prime cause of her state. "Why do you talk of it as 'paying'—if it's all to come back to my being paid? I mean by your blest success—if you really do what you want."

  "I have your word for it," he searchingly said, "that our really pulling it off together will make up to you——?"

  "I should be ashamed if it didn't, for everything!"—she took the question from his mouth. "I believe in such a cause exactly as you do—and found a lesson, at Dedborough, in your frankness and your faith."

  "Then you'll help me no end," he said all simply and sincerely.

  "You've helped me already"—that she gave him straight back. And on it they stayed a moment, their strenuous faces more intensely communing.

  "You're very wonderful—for a girl!" Hugh brought out.

  "One has to be a girl, naturally, to be a daughter of one's house," she laughed; "and that's all I am of ours—but a true and a right and a straight one."

  He glowed with his admiration. "You're splendid!"

  That might be or not, her light shrug intimated; she gave it, at any rate, the go-by and more exactly stated her case. "I see our situation."

  "So do I, Lady Grace!" he cried with the strongest emphasis. "And your father only doesn't."

  "Yes," she said for intelligent correction—"he sees it, there's nothing in life he sees so much. But unfortunately he sees it all wrong."

  Hugh seized her point of view as if there had been nothing of her that he wouldn't have seized. "He sees it all wrong then! My appeal the other day he took as a rude protest. And any protest——"

  "Any protest," she quickly and fully agreed, "he takes as an offence, yes. It's his theory that he still has rights," she smiled, "though he is a miserable peer."

  "How should he not have rights," said Hugh, "when he has really everything on earth?"

  "Ah, he doesn't even know that—he takes it so much for granted." And she sought, though as rather sadly and despairingly, to explain. "He lives all in his own world."

  "He lives all in his own, yes; but he does business all in ours—quite as much as the people who come up to the city in the Tube." With which Hugh had a still sharper recall of the stiff actual. "And he must be here to do business to-day."

  "You know," Lady Grace asked, "that he's to meet Mr. Bender?"

  "Lady Sandgate kindly warned me, and," her companion saw as he glanced at the clock on the chimney, "I've only ten minutes, at best. The 'Journal' won't have been good for him," he added—"you doubtless have seen the 'Journal'?"

  "No"—she was vague. "We live by the 'Morning Post.'"

  "That's why our friend here didn't speak then," Hugh said with a better light—"which, out of a dim consideration for her, I didn't do, either. But they've a leader this morning about Lady Lappington and her Longhi, and on Bender and his hauls, and on the certainty—if we don't do something energetic—of more and more Benders to come: such a conquering horde as invaded the old civilisation, only armed now with huge cheque-books instead of with spears and battle-axes. They refer to the rumour current—as too horrific to believe—of Lord Theign's putting up his Moretto; with the question of how properly to qualify any such sad purpose in him should the further report prove true of a new and momentous opinion about the picture entertained by several eminent authorities."

  "Of whom," said the girl, intensely attac
hed to this recital, "you're of course seen as not the least."

  "Of whom, of course, Lady Grace, I'm as yet—however I'm 'seen'—the whole collection. But we've time"—he rested on that "The fat, if you'll allow me the expression, is on the fire—which, as I see the matter, is where this particular fat should be."

  "Is the article, then," his companion appealed, "very severe?"

  "I prefer to call it very enlightened and very intelligent—and the great thing is that it immensely 'marks,' as they say. It will have made a big public difference—from this day; though it's of course aimed not so much at persons as at conditions; which it calls upon us all somehow to tackle."

  "Exactly"—she was full of the saving vision; "but as the conditions are directly embodied in persons——"

  "Oh, of course it here and there bells the cat; which means that it bells three or four."

  "Yes," she richly brooded—"Lady Lappington is a cat!"

  "She will have been 'belled,' at any rate, with your father," Hugh amusedly went on, "to the certainty of a row; and a row can only be good for us—I mean for us in particular." Yet he had to bethink himself. "The case depends a good deal of course on how your father takes such a resounding rap."

  "Oh, I know how he'll take it!"—her perception went all the way.

  "In the very highest and properest spirit?"

  "Well, you'll see." She was as brave as she was clear. "Or at least I shall!"

  Struck with all this in her he renewed his homage. "You are, yes, splendid!"

  "I even," she laughed, "surprise myself."

  But he was already back at his calculations. "How early do the papers get to you?"

  "At Dedborough? Oh, quite for breakfast—which isn't, however, very early."

  "Then that's what has caused his wire to Bender."

  "But how will such talk strike him?" the girl asked.

  Hugh meanwhile, visibly, had not only followed his train of thought, he had let it lead him to certainty. "It will have moved Mr. Bender to absolute rapture."

  "Rather," Lady Grace wondered, "than have put him off?"

  "It will have put him prodigiously on! Mr. Bender—as he said to me at Dedborough of his noble host there," Hugh pursued—"is 'a very nice man'; but he's a product of the world of advertisment, and advertisement is all he sees and aims at. He lives in it as a saint in glory or a fish in water."

  She took it from him as half doubting. "But mayn't advertisement, in so special a case, turn, on the whole, against him?"

  Hugh shook a negative forefinger with an expression he might have caught from foreign comrades. "He rides the biggest whirlwind—he has got it saddled and bitted."

  She faced the image, but cast about "Then where does our success come in?"

  "In our making the beast, all the same, bolt with him and throw him." And Hugh further pointed the moral. "If in such proceedings all he knows is publicity the thing is to give him publicity, and it's only a question of giving him enough. By the time he has enough for himself, you see, he'll have too much for every one else—so that we shall 'up' in a body and slay him."

  The girl's eyebrows, in her wondering face, rose to a question. "But if he has meanwhile got the picture?"

  "We'll slay him before he gets it!" He revelled in the breadth of his view. "Our own policy must be to organise to that end the inevitable outcry. Organise Bender himself—organise him to scandal." Hugh had already even pity to spare for their victim. "He won't know it from a boom."

  Though carried along, however, Lady Grace could still measure. "But that will be only if he wants and decides for the picture."

  "We must make him then want and decide for it—decide, that is, for 'ours.' To save it we must work him up—he'll in that case want it so indecently much. Then we shall have to want it more!"

  "Well," she anxiously felt it her duty to remind him, "you can take a horse to water——!"

  "Oh, trust me to make him drink!"

  There appeared a note in this that convinced her. "It's you, Mr. Crimble, who are 'splendid'!"

  "Well, I shall be—with my jolly wire!" And all on that scent again, "May I come back to you from the club with Pappendick's news?" he asked.

  "Why, rather, of course, come back!"

  "Only not," he debated, "till your father has left."

  Lady Grace considered too, but sharply decided. "Come when you have it. But tell me first," she added, "one thing." She hung fire a little while he waited, but she brought it out. "Was it you who got the 'Journal' to speak?"

  "Ah, one scarcely 'gets' the 'Journal'!"

  "Who then gave them their 'tip'?"

  "About the Mantovano and its peril?" Well, he took a moment—but only not to say; in addition to which the butler had reappeared, entering from the lobby. "I'll tell you," he laughed, "when I come back!"

  Gotch had his manner of announcement while the visitor was mounting the stairs. "Mr. Breckenridge Bender!"

  "Ah then I go," said Lady Grace at once.

  "I'll stay three minutes." Hugh turned with her, alertly, to the easier issue, signalling hope and cheer from that threshold as he watched her disappear; after which he faced about with as brave a smile and as ready for immediate action as if she had there within kissed her hand to him. Mr. Bender emerged at the same instant, Gotch withdrawing and closing the door behind him; and the former personage, recognising his young friend, threw up his hands for friendly pleasure.

  III

  "Ah, Mr. Crimble," he cordially inquired, "you've come with your great news?"

  Hugh caught the allusion, it would have seemed, but after a moment. "News of the Moretto? No, Mr. Bender, I haven't news yet." But he added as with high candour for the visitor's motion of disappointment: "I think I warned you, you know, that it would take three or four weeks."

  "Well, in my country," Mr. Bender returned with disgust, "it would take three or four minutes! Can't you make 'em step more lively?"

  "I'm expecting, sir," said Hugh good-humouredly, "a report from hour to hour."

  "Then will you let me have it right off?"

  Hugh indulged in a pause; after which very frankly: "Ah, it's scarcely for you, Mr. Bender, that I'm acting!"

  The great collector was but briefly checked. "Well, can't you just act for Art?"

  "Oh, you're doing that yourself so powerfully," Hugh laughed, "that I think I had best leave it to you!"

  His friend looked at him as some inspector on circuit might look at a new improvement. "Don't you want to go round acting with me?"

  "Go 'on tour,' as it were? Oh, frankly, Mr. Bender," Hugh said, "if I had any weight——!"

  "You'd add it to your end of the beam? Why, what have I done that you should go back on me—after working me up so down there? The worst I've done," Mr. Bender continued, "is to refuse that Moretto."

  "Has it deplorably been offered you?" our young man cried, unmistakably and sincerely affected. After which he went on, as his fellow-visitor only eyed him hard, not, on second thoughts, giving the owner of the great work away: "Then why are you—as if you were a banished Romeo—so keen for news from Verona?" To this odd mixture of business and literature Mr. Bender made no reply, contenting himself with but a large vague blandness that wore in him somehow the mark of tested utility; so that Hugh put him another question: "Aren't you here, sir, on the chance of the Mantovano?"

  "I'm here," he then imperturbably said, "because Lord Theign has wired me to meet him. Ain't you here for that yourself?"

  Hugh betrayed for a moment his enjoyment of a "big" choice of answers. "Dear, no! I've but been in, by Lady Sandgate's leave, to see that grand Lawrence."

  "Ah yes, she's very kind about it—one does go 'in.'" After which Mr. Bender had, even in the atmosphere of his danger, a throb of curiosity. "Is any one after that grand Lawrence?"

  "Oh, I hope not," Hugh laughed, "unless you again dreadfully are: wonderful thing as it is and so just in its right place there."

  "You call it," Mr. Bender imp
artially inquired, "a very wonderful thing?"

  "Well, as a Lawrence, it has quite bowled me over"—Hugh spoke as for the strictly aesthetic awkwardness of that. "But you know I take my pictures hard." He gave a punch to his hat, pressed for time in this connection as he was glad truly to appear to his friend. "I must make my little rapport." Yet before it he did seek briefly to explain. "We're a band of young men who care—and we watch the great things. Also—for I must give you the real truth about myself—we watch the great people."

  "Well, I guess I'm used to being watched—if that's the worst you can do." To which Mr. Bender added in his homely way: "But you know, Mr. Crimble, what I'm really after."

  Hugh's strategy on this would again have peeped out for us. "The man in this morning's 'Journal' appears at least to have discovered."

  "Yes, the man in this morning's 'Journal' has discovered three or four weeks—as it appears to take you here for everything—after my beginning to talk. Why, they knew I was talking that time ago on the other side."

  "Oh, they know things in the States," Hugh cheerfully agreed, "so independently of their happening! But you must have talked loud."

  "Well, I haven't so much talked as raved," Mr. Bender conceded—"for I'm afraid that when I do want a thing I rave till I get it. You heard me at Ded-borough, and your enterprising daily press has at last caught the echo."

  "Then they'll make up for lost time! But have you done it," Hugh asked, "to prepare an alibi?"

  "An alibi?"

  "By 'raving,' as you say, the saddle on the wrong horse. I don't think you at all believe you'll get the Sir Joshua—but meanwhile we shall have cleared up the question of the Moretto."

  Mr. Bender, imperturbable, didn't speak till he had done justice to this picture of his subtlety. "Then, why on earth do you want to boom the Moretto?"

  "You ask that," said Hugh, "because it's the boomed thing that's most in peril."

  "Well, it's the big, the bigger, the biggest things, and if you drag their value to the light why shouldn't we want to grab them and carry them off—the same as all of you originally did?"