Chapter 8

“‘Consents’?” Hugh almost derisively echoed; “why, he’ll propose it himself, he’ll insist on it, he’ll put it through, once he’s angry enough--as angry, I mean, as almost any public criticism of a personal act of his will be sure to make him; and I’m afraid the striking criticism, or at least animadversion, of this morning, will have blown on his flame of bravado.”

Inevitably a student of character, Mr. Bender rose to the occasion. “Yes, I guess he’s pretty mad.”

“They’ve imputed to him”--Hugh but wanted to abound in that sense--“an intention of which after all he isn’t guilty.”

“So that”--his listener glowed with interested optimism--“if they don’t look out, if they impute it to him again, I guess he’ll just go and be guilty!”

Hugh might at this moment have shown to an initiated eye as fairly elated by the sense of producing something of the effect he had hoped. “You entertain the fond vision of lashing them up to that mistake, oh fisher in troubled waters?” And then with a finer art, as his companion, expansively bright but crudely acute, eyed him in turn as if to sound _him_: “The strongest thing in such a type--one does make out--is his resentment of a liberty taken; and the most natural furthermore is quite that he should feel almost anything you do take uninvited from the groaning board of his banquet of life to _be_ such a liberty.”

Mr. Bender participated thus at his perceptive ease in the exposed aristocratic illusion. “Yes, I guess he has always lived as he likes, the way those of you who have got things fixed for them _do_, over here; and to have to quit it on account of unpleasant remark--”

But he gave up thoughtfully trying to express what this must be; reduced to the mere synthetic interjection “My!”

“That’s it, Mr. Bender,” Hugh said for the consecration of such a moral; “he won’t quit it without a hard struggle.”

Mr. Bender hereupon at last gave himself quite gaily away as to his high calculation of impunity. “Well, I guess he won’t struggle too hard for me to hold on to him if I _want_ to!”

“In the thick of the conflict then, however that may be,” Hugh returned, “don’t forget what I’ve urged on you--the claim of our desolate country.”

But his friend had an answer to this. “My natural interest, Mr. Crimble--considering what I do for it--is in the claim of ours. But I wish you were on my side!”

“Not so much,” Hugh hungrily and truthfully laughed, “as I wish you were on mine!” Decidedly, none the less, he had to go. “Good-bye--for another look here!”

He reached the doorway of the second room, where, however, his companion, freshly alert at this, stayed him by a gesture. “How much is she really worth?”

“‘She’?” Hugh, staring a moment, was miles at sea. “Lady Sandgate?”

“Her great-grandmother.”

A responsible answer was prevented--the butler was again with them; he had opened wide the other door and he named to Mr. Bender the personage under his convoy. “Lord John!”

Hugh caught this from the inner threshold, and it gave him his escape. “Oh, ask _that_ friend!” With which he sought the further passage to the staircase and street, while Lord John arrived in charge of Mr. Gotch, who, having remarked to the two occupants of the front drawing-room that her ladyship would come, left them together.

IV

“Then Theign’s not yet here!” Lord John had to resign himself as he greeted his American ally. “But he told me I should find you.”

“He has kept me waiting,” that gentleman returned--“but what’s the matter with him anyway?”

“The matter with him”--Lord John treated such ignorance as irritating--“must of course be this beastly thing in the ‘Journal.’”

Mr. Bender proclaimed, on the other hand, his incapacity to seize such connections. “What’s the matter with the beastly thing?”

“Why, aren’t you aware that the stiffest bit of it is a regular dig at you?”

“If you call _that_ a regular dig you can’t have had much experience of the Papers. I’ve known them to dig much deeper.”

“I’ve had _no_ experience of such horrid attacks, thank goodness; but do you mean to say,” asked Lord John with the surprise of his own delicacy, “that you don’t unpleasantly feel it?”

“Feel it where, my dear sir?”

“Why, God bless me, such impertinence, everywhere!”

“All over me at once?”--Mr. Bender took refuge in easy humour. “Well, I’m a large man--so when I want to feel so much I look out for something good. But what, if he suffers from the blot on his ermine--ain’t that what you wear?--does our friend propose to do about it?”

Lord John had a demur, which was immediately followed by the apprehension of support in his uncertainty. Lady Sandgate was before them, having reached them through the other room, and to her he at once referred the question. “What _will_ Theign propose, do you think, Lady Sandgate, to do about it?”

She breathed both her hospitality and her vagueness. “To ‘do’----?”

“Don’t you know about the thing in the ‘Journal’--awfully offensive all round?”

“There’d be even a little pinch for _you_ in it,” Mr. Bender said to her--“if you were bent on fitting the shoe!”

Well, she met it all as gaily as was compatible with a firm look at her elder guest while she took her place with them. “Oh, the shoes of such monsters as that are much too big for poor _me!_” But she was more specific for Lord John. “I know only what Grace has just told me; but since it’s a question of footgear dear Theign will certainly--what you may call--take his stand!”

Lord John welcomed this assurance. “If I know him he’ll take it splendidly!”

Mr. Bender’s attention was genial, though rather more detached. “And what--while he’s about it--will he take it particularly _on?_”

“Oh, we’ve plenty of things, thank heaven,” said Lady Sandgate, “for a man in Theign’s position to hold fast by!”

Lord John freely confirmed it. “Scores and scores--rather! And I will say for us that, with the rotten way things seem going, the fact may soon become a real convenience.”

Mr. Bender seemed struck--and not unsympathetic. “I see that your system would be rather a fraud if you hadn’t pretty well fixed _that!_”

Lady Sandgate spoke as one at present none the less substantially warned and convinced. “It doesn’t, however, alter the fact that we’ve thus in our ears the first growl of an outcry.”

“Ah,” Lord John concurred, “we’ve unmistakably the first growl of an outcry!”

Mr. Bender’s judgment on the matter paused at sight of Lord Theign, introduced and announced, as Lord John spoke, by Gotch; but with the result of his addressing directly the person so presenting himself. “Why, they tell me that what this means, Lord Theign, is the first growl of an outcry!”

The appearance of the most eminent figure in the group might have been held in itself to testify to some such truth; in the sense at least that a certain conscious radiance, a gathered light of battle in his lordship’s aspect would have been explained by his having taken the full measure--an inner success with which he glowed--of some high provocation. He was flushed, but he bore it as the ensign of his house; he was so admirably, vividly dressed, for the morning hour and for his journey, that he shone as with the armour of a knight; and the whole effect of him, from head to foot, with every jerk of his unconcern and every flash of his ease, was to call attention to his being utterly unshaken and knowing perfectly what he was about. It was at this happy pitch that he replied to the prime upsetter of his peace.

“I’m afraid I don’t know what anything means to _you_, Mr. Bender--but it’s exactly to find out that I’ve asked you, with our friend John, kindly to meet me here. For a very brief conference, dear lady, by your good leave,” he went on to Lady Sandgate; “at which I’m only too pleased that you yourself should assist. The ‘first growl’ of any outcry, I may mention to you all, affects me no more than the last will----!”

“So I’m delighted to gather”--Lady Sandgate took him straight up--“that you don’t let go your inestimable Cure.”

He at first quite stared superior--“‘Let go’?”--but then treated it with a lighter touch. “Upon my honour I might, you know--that dose of the daily press has made me feel so fit! I arrive at any rate,” he pursued to the others and in particular to Mr. Bender, “I arrive with my decision taken--which I’ve thought may perhaps interest you. If that tuppeny rot _is_ an attempt at an outcry I simply nip it in the bud.”

Lord John rejoicingly approved. “Absolutely the only way--with the least self-respect--to treat it!”

Lady Sandgate, on the other hand, sounded a sceptical note. “But are you sure it’s so easy, Theign, to hush up a _real_ noise?”

“It ain’t what I’d call a real one, Lady Sandgate,” Mr. Bender said; “you can generally distinguish a real one from the squeak of two or three mice! But granted mice do affect you, Lord Theign, it will interest me to hear what sort of a trap--by what you say--you propose to set for them.”

“You must allow me to measure, myself, Mr. Bender,” his lordship replied, “the importance of a gross freedom publicly used with my absolutely personal proceedings and affairs; to the cause and origin of any definite report of which--in such circles!--I’m afraid I rather wonder if you yourself can’t give me a clue.”

It took Mr. Bender a minute to do justice to these stately remarks. “You rather wonder if I’ve talked of how I feel about your detaining in your hands my Beautiful Duchess----?”

“Oh, if you’ve already published her as ‘yours’--with your _power_ of publication!” Lord Theign coldly laughed,--“of course I trace the connection!”

Mr. Benders acceptance of responsibility clearly cost him no shade of a pang. “Why, I haven’t for quite a while talked of a blessed other thing--and I’m capable of growing more profane over my _not_ getting her than I guess any one would dare to be if I did.”

“Well, you’ll certainly not ‘get’ her, Mr. Bender,” Lady Sandgate, as for reasons of her own, bravely trumpeted; “and even if there were a chance of it don’t you see that your way wouldn’t be publicly to abuse our noble friend?”

Mr. Bender but beamed, in reply, upon that personage. “Oh, I guess our noble friend knows I _have_ to talk big about big things. You understand, sir, the scream of the eagle!”

“I’ll forgive you,” Lord Theign civilly returned, “all the big talk you like if you’ll now understand _me_. My retort to that hireling pack shall be at once to dispose of a picture.”

Mr. Bender rather failed to follow. “But that’s what you wanted to do before.”

“Pardon me,” said his lordship--“I make a difference. It’s what you wanted me to do.”

The mystification, however, continued. “And you were _not_--as you seemed then--willing?”

Lord Theign waived cross-questions. “Well, I’m willing _now_--that’s all that need concern us. Only, once more and for the last time,” he added with all authority, “you can’t have our Duchess!”

“You can’t have our Duchess!”--and Lord John, as before the altar of patriotism, wrapped it in sacrificial sighs.

“You can’t have our Duchess!” Lady Sandgate repeated, but with a grace that took the sting from her triumph. And she seemed still all sweet sociability as she added: “I wish he’d tell you too, you dreadful rich thing, that you can’t have anything at all!”

Lord Theign, however, in the interest of harmony, deprecated that rigour. “Ah, what then would become of my happy retort?”

“And what--as it _is_,” Mr. Bender asked--“becomes of my unhappy grievance?”

“Wouldn’t a really great capture make up to you for that?”

“Well, I take more interest in what I want than in what I have--and it depends, don’t you see, on how you measure the size.”

Lord John had at once in this connection a bright idea. “Shouldn’t you like to go back there and take the measure yourself?”

Mr. Bender considered him as through narrowed eyelids. “Look again at that tottering Moretto?”

“Well, its size--as you say--isn’t in _any_ light a negligible quantity.”

“You mean that--big as it is--it hasn’t yet stopped growing?”

The question, however, as he immediately showed, resided in what Lord Theign himself meant “It’s more to the purpose,” he said to Mr. Bender, “that I should mention to you the leading feature, or in other words the very essence, of my plan of campaign--which is to put the picture at once on view.” He marked his idea with a broad but elegant gesture. “On view as a thing definitely disposed of.”

“I say, I say, I say!” cried Lord John, moved by this bold stroke to high admiration.

Lady Sandgate’s approval was more qualified. “But on view, dear Theign, how?”

“With one of those pushing people in Bond Street.” And then as for the crushing climax of his policy: “As a Mantovano pure and simple.”

“But my dear man,” she quavered, “if it _isn’t_ one?”

Mr. Bender at once anticipated; the wind had suddenly risen for him and he let out sail. “Lady Sand-gate, it’s going, by all that’s--well, interesting, to _be_ one!”

Lord Theign took him up with pleasure. “You seize me? We _treat_ it as one!”

Lord John eagerly borrowed the emphasis. “We _treat_ it as one!”

Mr. Bender meanwhile fed with an opened appetite on the thought--he even gave it back larger. “As the long-lost Number Eight!”

Lord Theign happily seized _him_. “That will be it--to a charm!”

“It will make them,” Mr. Bender asked, “madder than anything?”

His patron--if not his client--put it more nobly. “It will markedly affirm my attitude.”

“Which will in turn the more markedly create discussion.”

“It may create all it will!”

“Well, if _you_ don’t mind it, _I_ don’t!” Mr. Bender concluded. But though bathed in this high serenity he was all for the rapid application of it elsewhere. “You’ll put the thing on view right off?”

“As soon as the proper arrangement----”

“You put off your journey to _make_ it?” Lady Sand-gate at once broke in.

Lord Theign bethought himself--with the effect of a gracious confidence in the others. “Not if these friends will act.”

“Oh, I guess we’ll _act!_” Mr. Bender declared.

“Ah, _won’t_ we though!” Lord John re-echoed.

“You understand then I have an interest?” Mr. Bender went on to Lord Theign.

His lordship’s irony met it. “I accept that complication--which so much simplifies!”

“And yet also have a liberty?”

“Where else would be those you’ve taken? The point is,” said Lord Theign, “that _I_ have a show.”

It settled Mr. Bender. “Then I’ll _fix_ your show.” He snatched up his hat. “Lord John, come right round!”

Lord John had of himself reached the door, which he opened to let the whirlwind tremendously figured by his friend pass out first. Taking leave of the others he gave it even his applause. “The fellow can do anything anywhere!” And he hastily followed.

V

Lady Sandgate, left alone with Lord Theign, drew the line at their companion’s enthusiasm. “That may be true of Mr. Bender--for it’s dreadful how he bears one down. But I simply find him a terror.”

“Well,” said her friend, who seemed disposed not to fatigue the question, “I dare say a terror will help me.” He had other business to which he at once gave himself. “And now, if you please, for that girl.”

“I’ll send her to you,” she replied, “if you can’t stay to luncheon.”

“I’ve three or four things to do,” he pleaded, “and I lunch with Kitty at one.”

She submitted in that case--but disappointedly. “With Berkeley Square then you’ve time. But I confess I don’t quite grasp the so odd inspiration that you’ve set those men to carry out.”

He showed surprise and regret, but even greater decision. “Then it needn’t trouble you, dear--it’s enough that I myself go straight.”

“Are you so very convinced it’s straight?”--she wouldn’t be a bore to him, but she couldn’t not be a blessing.

“What in the world else is it,” he asked, “when, having good reasons, one acts on ‘em?”

“You must have an immense array,” she sighed, “to fly so in the face of Opinion!”

“‘Opinion’?” he commented--“I fly in its face? Why, the vulgar thing, as I’m taking my quiet walk, flies in mine! I give it a whack with my umbrella and send it about its business.” To which he added with more reproach: “It’s enough to have been dished by Grace--without _your_ falling away!”

Sadly and sweetly she defended herself. “It’s only my great affection--and all that these years have been for us: _they_ it is that make me wish you weren’t so proud.”

“I’ve a perfect sense, my dear, of what these years have been for us--a very charming matter. But ‘proud’ is it you find me of the daughter who does her best to ruin me, or of the one who does her best to humiliate?”

Lady Sandgate, not undiscernibly, took her choice of ignoring the point of this. “Your surrenders to Kitty are your own affair--but are you sure you can really bear to see Grace?”

“I seem expected indeed to bear much,” he said with more and more of his parental bitterness, “but I don’t know that I’m yet in a funk before my child. Doesn’t she _want_ to see me, with any contrition, after the trick she has played me?” And then as his companion’s answer failed: “In spite of which trick you suggest that I should leave the country with no sign of her explaining--?”

His hostess raised her head. “She does want to see you, I know; but you must recall the sequel to that bad hour at Dedborough--when it was you who declined to see _her_.”

“Before she left the house with you, the next day, for this?”--he was entirely reminiscent. “What I recall is that even if I had condoned--that evening--her deception of _me_ in my folly, I still loathed, for my friend’s sake, her practical joke on poor John.”

Lady Sandgate indulged in the shrug conciliatory. “It was your very complaint that your own appeal to her _became_ an appeal from herself.”

“Yes,” he returned, so well he remembered, “she was about as civil to me then--picking a quarrel with me on such a trumped-up ground!--as that devil of a fellow in the newspaper; the taste of whose elegant remarks, for that matter, she must now altogether enjoy!”

His good friend showily balanced and might have been about to reply with weight; but what she in fact brought out was only: “I see you’re right about it: I must let her speak for herself.”

“That I shall greatly prefer to her speaking--as she did so extraordinarily, out of the blue, at Dedborough, upon my honour--for the wonderful friends she picks up: the picture-man introduced by her (what was his name?) who regularly ‘cheeked’ me, as I suppose he’d call it, in my own house, and whom I hope, by the way, that under this roof she’s not able to be quite so thick with!”

If Lady Sandgate winced at that vain dream she managed not to betray it, and she had, in any embarrassment on this matter, the support, as we know, of her own tried policy. “She leads her life under this roof very much as under yours; and she’s not of an age, remember, for me to pretend either to watch her movements or to control her contacts.” Leaving him however thus to perform his pleasure the charming woman had before she went an abrupt change of tone. “Whatever your relations with others, dear friend, don’t forget that _I’m_ still here.”

Lord Theign accepted the reminder, though, the circumstances being such, it scarce moved him to ecstasy. “That you’re here, thank heaven, is of course a comfort--or would be if you understood.”

“Ah,” she submissively sighed, “if I don’t always ‘understand’ a spirit so much higher than mine and a situation so much more complicated, certainly, I at least always defer, I at least always--well, what can I say but worship?” And then as he remained not other than finely passive, “The old altar, Theign,” she went on--“and a spark of the old fire!”

He had not looked at her on this--it was as if he shrank, with his preoccupations, from a tender passage; but he let her take his left hand. “So I feel!” he was, however, kind enough to answer.

“Do feel!” she returned with much concentration. She raised the hand to her pressed lips, dropped it and with a rich “Good-bye!” reached the threshold of the other room.

“May I smoke?” he asked before she had disappeared.

“Dear, yes!”

He had meanwhile taken out his cigarette case and was looking about for a match. But something else occurred to him. “You must come to Victoria.”

“Rather!” she said with intensity; and with that she passed away.

VI

Left alone he had a moment’s meditation where he stood; it found issue in an articulate “Poor dear thing!”--an exclamation marked at once with patience and impatience, with resignation and ridicule. After which, waiting for his daughter, Lord Theign slowly and absently roamed, finding matches at last and lighting his cigarette--all with an air of concern that had settled on him more heavily from the moment of his finding himself alone. His luxury of gloom--if gloom it was--dropped, however, on his taking heed of Lady Grace, who, arriving on the scene through the other room, had had just time to stand and watch him in silence.

“Oh!” he jerked out at sight of her--which she had to content herself with as a parental greeting after separation, his next words doing little to qualify its dryness. “I take it for granted that you know I’m within a couple of hours of leaving England under a necessity of health.” And then as drawing nearer, she signified without speaking her possession of this fact: “I’ve thought accordingly that before I go I should--on this first possible occasion since that odious occurrence at Dedborough--like to leave you a little more food for meditation, in my absence, on the painfully false position in which you there placed me.” He carried himself restlessly even perhaps with a shade of awkwardness, to which her stillness was a contrast; she just waited, wholly passive--possibly indeed a trifle portentous. “If you had plotted and planned it in advance,” he none the less firmly pursued, “if you had acted from some uncanny or malignant motive, you couldn’t have arranged more perfectly to incommode, to disconcert and, to all intents and purposes, make light of me and insult me.” Even before this charge she made no sign; with her eyes now attached to the ground she let him proceed. “I had practically guaranteed to our excellent, our charming friend, your favourable view of his appeal--which you yourself too, remember, had left him in so little doubt of!--so that, having by your performance so egregiously failed him, I have the pleasure of their coming down on me for explanations, for compensations, and for God knows what besides.”

Lady Grace, looking up at last, left him in no doubt of the rigour of her attention. “I’m sorry indeed, father, to have done you any wrong; but may I ask whom, in such a connection, you refer to as ‘they’?”

“‘They’?” he echoed in the manner of a man who has had handed back to his more careful eye, across the counter, some questionable coin that he has tried to pass. “Why, your own sister to begin with--whose interest in what may make for your happiness I suppose you decently recognise; and _his_ people, one and all, the delightful old Duchess in particular, who only wanted to be charming to you, and who are as good people, and as pleasant and as clever, damn it, when all’s said and done, as any others that are likely to come your way.” It clearly did his lordship good to work out thus his case, which grew more and more coherent to him and glowed with irresistible colour. “Letting alone gallant John himself, most amiable of men, about whose merits and whose claims you appear to have pretended to agree with me just that you might, when he presumed, poor chap, ardently to urge them, deal him with the more cruel effect that calculated blow on the mouth!”

It was clear that in the girl’s great gravity embarrassment had no share. “They so come down on you I understand then, father, that you’re obliged to come down on _me?_”

“Assuredly--for some better satisfaction than your just moping here without a sign!”