Mr. Bender indeed, formidably advancing, scarce had use for this
assistance. “Happy to meet you--especially in your beautiful home,
Lord Theign.” To which he added while the master of Dedborough stood
good-humouredly passive to his approach: “I’ve been round, by your kind
permission and the light of nature, and haven’t required support; though
if I had there’s a gentleman there who seemed prepared to allow me any
amount.” Mr. Bender, out of his abundance, evoked as by a suggestive
hand this contributory figure. “A young, spare, nervous gentleman with
eye-glasses--I guess he’s an author. A friend of yours too?” he asked of
Lord John.
The answer was prompt and emphatic. “No, the gentleman is no friend at
all of mine, Mr. Bender.”
“A friend of my daughter’s,” Lord Theign easily explained. “I hope
they’re looking after him.”
“Oh, they took care he had tea and bread and butter to any extent; and
were so good as to move something,” Mr. Bender conscientiously added,
“so that he could get up on a chair and see straight into the Moretto.”
This was a touch, however, that appeared to affect Lord John
unfavourably. “Up on a chair? I say!”
Mr. Bender took another view. “Why, I got right up myself--a little more
and I’d almost have begun to paw it! He got me quite interested”--the
proprietor of the picture would perhaps care to know--“in that Moretto.”
And it was on these lines that Mr. Bender continued to advance. “I take
it that your biggest value, however, Lord Theign, is your splendid Sir
Joshua. Our friend there has a great deal to say about that too--but it
didn’t lead to our moving any more furniture.” On which he paused as to
enjoy, with a show of his fine teeth, his host’s reassurance. “It _has_
yet, my impression of that picture, sir, led to something else. Are you
prepared, Lord Theign, to entertain a proposition?”
Lord Theign met Mr. Bender’s eyes while this inquirer left these few
portentous words to speak for themselves. “To the effect that I part to
you with ‘The Beautiful Duchess of Waterbridge’? No, Mr. Bender, such a
proposition would leave me intensely cold.”
Lord John had meanwhile had a more headlong cry. “My dear Bender, I
_envy_ you!”
“I guess you don’t envy me,” his friend serenely replied, “as much as I
envy Lord Theign.” And then while Mr. Bender and the latter continued to
face each other searchingly and firmly: “What I allude to is an overture
of a strong and simple stamp--such as perhaps would shed a softer light
on the difficulties raised by association and attachment. I’ve had some
experience of first shocks, and I’d be glad to meet you as man to man.”
Mr. Bender was, quite clearly, all genial and all sincere; he intended
no irony and used, consciously, no great freedom. Lord Theign, not less
evidently, saw this, and it permitted him amusement. “As rich man to
poor man is how I’m to understand it? For me to meet _you_,” he added,
“I should have to be tempted--and I’m not even temptable. So there we
are,” he blandly smiled.
His blandness appeared even for a moment to set an example to Lord John.
“‘The Beautiful Duchess of Waterbridge,’ Mr. Bender, is a golden apple
of one of those great family trees of which respectable people don’t lop
off the branches whose venerable shade, in this garish and denuded age,
they so much enjoy.”
Mr. Bender looked at him as if he had cut some irrelevant caper. “Then
if they don’t sell their ancestors where in the world are all the
ancestors bought?”
“Doesn’t it for the moment sufficiently answer your question,” Lord
Theign asked, “that they’re definitely not bought at Dedborough?”
“Why,” said Mr. Bender with a wealthy patience, “you talk as if it were
my interest to be _reasonable_--which shows how little you understand.
I’d be ashamed--with the lovely ideas I have--if I didn’t make you
kick.” And his sturdy smile for it all fairly proclaimed his faith.
“Well, I guess I can wait!”
This again in turn visibly affected Lord John: marking the moment from
which he, in spite of his cultivated levity, allowed an intenser and
more sustained look to keep straying toward their host. “Mr. Bender’s
bound to _have_ something!”
It was even as if after a minute Lord Theign had been reached by his
friend’s mute pressure. “‘Something’?”
“Something, Mr. Bender?” Lord John insisted.
It made their visitor rather sharply fix him. “Why, have _you_ an
interest, Lord John?”
This personage, though undisturbed by the challenge, if such it was,
referred it to Lord Theign. “Do you authorise me to speak--a little--as
if I have an interest?”
Lord Theign gave the appeal--and the speaker--a certain attention, and
then appeared rather sharply to turn away from them. “My dear fellow,
you may amuse yourself at my expense as you like!”
“Oh, I don’t mean at your expense,” Lord John laughed--“I mean at Mr.
Bender’s!”
“Well, go ahead, Lord John,” said that gentleman, always easy, but
always too, as you would have felt, aware of everything--“go ahead, but
don’t sweetly hope to create me in any desire that doesn’t already exist
in the germ. The attempt has often been made, over here--has in fact
been organised on a considerable scale; but I guess I’ve got some
peculiarity, for it doesn’t seem as if the thing could be done. If the
germ is there, on the other hand,” Mr. Bender conceded, “it develops
independently of all encouragement.”
Lord John communicated again as in a particular sense with Lord Theign.
“He thinks I really mean to _offer_ him something!”
Lord Theign, who seemed to wish to advertise a degree of detachment from
the issue, or from any other such, strolled off, in his restlessness,
toward the door that opened to the terrace, only stopping on his way
to light a cigarette from a matchbox on a small table. It was but after
doing so that he made the remark: “Ah, Mr. Bender may easily be too much
for you!”
“That makes me the more sorry, sir,” said his visitor, “not to have been
enough for _you!_”
“I risk it, at any rate,” Lord John went on--“I put you, Bender, the
question of whether you wouldn’t Move,’ as you say, to acquire that
Moretto.”
Mr. Bender’s large face had a commensurate gaze. “As I say? I haven’t
said anything of the sort!”
“But you do ‘love’ you know,” Lord John slightly overgrimaced.
“I don’t when I don’t want to. I’m different from most people--I can
love or not as I like. The trouble with that Moretto,” Mr. Bender
continued, “is that it ain’t what I’m after.”
His “after” had somehow, for the ear, the vividness of a sharp whack
on the resisting surface of things, and was concerned doubtless in Lord
John’s speaking again across to their host. “The worst he can do for me,
you see, is to refuse it.”
Lord Theign, who practically had his back turned and was fairly dandling
about in his impatience, tossed out to the terrace the cigarette he had
but just lighted. Yet he faced round to reply: “It’s the very first time
in the history of this house (a long one, Mr. Bender) that a picture, or
anything else in it, has been offered----!”
It was not imperceptible that even if he hadn’t dropped Mr. Bender
mightn’t have been markedly impressed. “Then it must be the very first
time such an offer has failed.”
“Oh, it isn’t that we in the least press it!” Lord Theign quite
naturally laughed.
“Ah, I beg your pardon--I press it very hard!” And Lord John, as taking
from his face and manner a cue for further humorous license, went so far
as to emulate, though sympathetically enough, their companion’s native
form. “You don’t mean to say you don’t feel the interest of that
Moretto?”
Mr. Bender, quietly confident, took his time to reply. “Well, if you had
seen me up on that chair you’d have thought I did.”
“Then you must have stepped down from the chair properly impressed.”
“I stepped down quite impressed with that young man.”
“Mr. Crimble?”--it came after an instant to Lord John. “With _his_
opinion, really? Then I hope he’s aware of the picture’s value.”
“You had better ask him,” Mr. Bender observed.
“Oh, we don’t depend here on the Mr. Crimbles!” Lord John returned.
Mr. Bender took a longer look at him. “Are you aware of the value
yourself?”
His friend resorted again, as for the amusement of the thing, to their
entertainer. “Am I aware of the value of the Moretto?”
Lord Theign, who had meanwhile lighted another cigarette, appeared,
a bit extravagantly smoking, to wish to put an end to his effect of
hovering aloof.
“That question needn’t trouble us--when I see how much Mr. Bender
himself knows about it.”
“Well, Lord Theign, I only know what that young man puts it at.” And
then as the others waited, “Ten thousand,” said Mr. Bender.
“Ten thousand?” The owner of the work showed no emotion.
“Well,” said Lord John again in Mr. Bender’s style, “what’s the matter
with ten thousand?”
The subject of his gay tribute considered. “There’s nothing the matter
with ten thousand.”
“Then,” Lord Theign asked, “is there anything the matter with the
picture?”
“Yes, sir--I guess there is.”
It gave an upward push to his lordship’s eyebrows. “But what in the
world----?”
“Well, that’s just the question!”
The eyebrows continued to rise. “Does he pretend there’s a question of
whether it _is_ a Moretto?”
“That’s what he was up there trying to find out.”
“But if the value’s, according to himself, ten thousand----?”
“Why, of course,” said Mr. Bender, “it’s a fine work anyway.”
“Then,” Lord Theign brought good-naturedly out, “what’s the matter with
_you_, Mr. Bender?”
That gentleman was perfectly clear. “The matter with me, Lord Theign, is
that I’ve no use for a ten thousand picture.”
“‘No use?’”--the expression had an oddity. “But what’s it your idea to
do with such things?”
“I mean,” Mr. Bender explained, “that a picture of that rank is not what
I’m after.”
“The figure,” said his noble host--speaking thus, under pressure,
commercially--“is beyond what you see your way to?”
But Lord John had jumped at the truth. “The matter with Mr. Bender is
that he sees his way much further.”
“Further?” their companion echoed.
“The matter with Mr. Bender is that he wants to give millions.”
Lord Theign sounded this abyss with a smile. “Well, there would be no
difficulty about _that_, I think!”
“Ah,” said his guest, “you know the basis, sir, on which I’m ready to
pay.”
“On the basis then of the Sir Joshua,” Lord John inquired, “how far
would you go?”
Mr. Bender indicated by a gesture that on a question reduced to a moiety
by its conditional form he could give but semi-satisfaction. “Well, I’d
go all the way.”
“He wants, you see,” Lord John elucidated, “an _ideally_ expensive
thing.”
Lord Theign appeared to decide after a moment to enter into the pleasant
spirit of this; which he did by addressing his younger friend. “Then why
shouldn’t I make even the Moretto as expensive as he desires?”
“Because you can’t do violence to _that_ master’s natural modesty,” Mr.
Bender declared before Lord John had time to speak. And conscious at
this moment of the reappearance of his fellow-explorer, he at once
supplied a further light. “I guess this gentleman at any rate can tell
you.”