I
LADY SANDGATE, on a morning late in May, entered her drawing-room by
the door that opened at the right of that charming retreat as a person
coming in faced Bruton Street; and she met there at this moment Mr.
Gotch, her butler, who had just appeared in the much wider doorway
forming opposite the Bruton Street windows an apartment not less ample,
lighted from the back of the house and having its independent connection
with the upper floors and the lower. She showed surprise at not
immediately finding the visitor to whom she had been called.
“But Mr. Crimble------?”
“Here he is, my lady.” And he made way for that gentleman, who
emerged from the back room; Gotch observing the propriety of a prompt
withdrawal.
“I went in for a minute, with your servant’s permission,” Hugh
explained, “to see your famous Lawrence--which is splendid; he was so
good as to arrange the light.” The young man’s dress was of a form less
relaxed than on the occasion of his visit to Dedborough; yet the soft
felt hat that he rather restlessly crumpled as he talked marked the
limit of his sacrifice to vain appearances.
Lady Sandgate was at once interested in the punctuality of his reported
act. “Gotch thinks as much of my grandmother as I do--and even seems to
have ended by taking her for his very own.”
“One sees, unmistakably, from her beauty, that you at any rate are of
her line,” Hugh allowed himself, not without confidence, the amusement
of replying; “and I must make sure of another look at her when I’ve a
good deal more time.”
His hostess heard him as with a lapse of hope. “You hadn’t then come
_for_ the poor dear?” And then as he obviously hadn’t, but for something
quite else: “I thought, from so prompt an interest, that she might be
coveted--!” It dropped with a yearning sigh.
“You imagined me sent by some prowling collector?” Hugh asked. “Ah, I
shall never do their work--unless to betray them: _that_ I shouldn’t in
the least mind!--and I’m here, frankly, at this early hour, to ask your
consent to my seeing Lady Grace a moment on a particular business, if
she can kindly give me time.”
“You’ve known then of her being with me?”
“I’ve known of her coming to you straight on leaving Dedborough,”
he explained; “of her wishing not to go to her sister’s, and of Lord
Theign’s having proceeded, as they say, or being on the point of
proceeding, to some foreign part.”
“And you’ve learnt it from having seen her--these three or four weeks?”
“I’ve met her--but just barely--two or three times: at a ‘private view’
at the opera, in the lobby, and that sort of thing. But she hasn’t told
you?”
Lady Sandgate neither affirmed nor denied; she only turned on him her
thick lustre. “I wanted to see how much _you’d_ tell.” She waited even
as for more, but this not coming she helped herself. “Once again at
dinner?”
“Yes, but alas not near her!”
“Once then at a private view?--when, with the squash they usually are,
you might have been very near her indeed!”
The young man, his hilarity quickened, took but a moment for the truth.
“Yes--it _was_ a squash!”
“And once,” his hostess pursued, “in the lobby of the opera?”
“After ‘Tristan’--yes; but with some awful grand people I didn’t know.”
She recognised; she estimated the grandeur. “Oh, the Pennimans are
nobody! But now,” she asked, “you’ve come, you say, on ‘business’?”
“Very important, please--which accounts for the hour I’ve ventured and
the appearance I present.”
“I don’t ask you too much to ‘account,’” Lady Sandgate kindly said; “but
I can’t not wonder if she hasn’t told you what things have happened.”
He cast about. “She has had no chance to tell me anything--beyond the
fact of her being here.”
“Without the reason?”
“‘The reason’?” he echoed.
She gave it up, going straighter. “She’s with me then as an old firm
friend. Under my care and protection.”
“I see”--he took it, with more penetration than enthusiasm, as a hint in
respect to himself. “She puts you on your guard.”
Lady Sandgate expressed it more graciously. “She puts me on my
honour--or at least her father does.”
“As to her seeing _me_”
“As to _my_ seeing at least--what may happen to her.”
“Because--you say--things _have_ happened?”
His companion fairly sounded him. “You’ve only talked--when you’ve
met--of ‘art’?”
“Well,” he smiled, “‘art is long’!”
“Then I hope it may see you through! But you should know first that Lord
Theign is presently due--”
“_Here_, back already from abroad?”--he was all alert.
“He has not yet gone--he comes up this morning to start.”
“And stops here on his way?”
“To take the _train de luxe_ this afternoon to his annual Salsomaggiore.
But with so little time to spare,” she went on reassuringly, “that,
to simplify--as he wired me an hour ago from Dedborough--he has given
rendezvous here to Mr. Bender, who is particularly to wait for him.”
“And who may therefore arrive at any moment?”
She looked at her bracelet watch. “Scarcely before noon. So you’ll just
have your chance--”
“Thank the powers then!”--Hugh grasped at it. “I shall have it best if
you’ll be so good as to tell me first--well,” he faltered, “what it is
that, to my great disquiet, you’ve further alluded to; what it is that
has occurred.”
Lady Sandgate took her time, but her good-nature and other sentiments
pronounced. “Haven’t you at least guessed that she has fallen under her
father’s extreme reprobation?”
“Yes, so much as that--that she must have greatly annoyed him--I have
been supposing. But isn’t it by her having asked me to act for her? I
mean about the Mantovano--which I _have_ done.”
Lady Sandgate wondered. “You’ve ‘acted’?”
“It’s what I’ve come to tell her at last--and I’m all impatience.”
“I see, I see”--she had caught a clue. “He hated that--yes; but you
haven’t really made out,” she put to him, “the _other_ effect of your
hour at Dedborough?” She recognised, however, while she spoke, that
his divination had failed, and she didn’t trouble him to confess it.
“Directly you had gone she ‘turned down’ Lord John. Declined, I mean,
the offer of his hand in marriage.”
Hugh was clearly as much mystified as anything else. “He proposed
there--?”
“He had spoken, that day, _before_--before your talk with Lord Theign,
who had every confidence in her accepting him. But you came, Mr.
Crimble, you went; and when her suitor reappeared, just after you _had_
gone, for his answer--”
“She wouldn’t have him?” Hugh asked with a precipitation of interest.
But Lady Sandgate could humour almost any curiosity. “She wouldn’t look
at him.”
He bethought himself. “But had she said she would?”
“So her father indignantly considers.”
“That’s the _ground_ of his indignation?”
“He had his reasons for counting on her, and it has determined a painful
crisis.”
Hugh Crimble turned this over--feeling apparently for something he
didn’t find. “I’m sorry to hear such things, but where’s the connection
with me?”
“Ah, you know best yourself, and if you don’t see any---!” In that case,
Lady Sandgate’s motion implied, she washed her hands of it.
Hugh had for a moment the air of a young man treated to the sweet chance
to guess a conundrum--which he gave up. “I really don’t see any, Lady
Sandgate. But,” he a little inconsistently said, “I’m greatly obliged to
you for telling me.”
“Don’t mention it!--though I think it _is_ good of me,” she smiled, “on
so short an acquaintance.” To which she added more gravely: “I leave you
the situation--but I’m willing to let you know that I’m all on Grace’s
side.”
“So am I, _rather!_--please let me frankly say.”
He clearly refreshed, he even almost charmed her. “It’s the very least
you can say!--though I’m not sure whether you say it as the simplest
or as the very subtlest of men. But in case you don’t know as I do how
little the particular candidate I’ve named----”
“Had a right or a claim to succeed with her?” he broke in--all quick
intelligence here at least. “No, I don’t perhaps know as well as you
do--but I think I know as well as I just yet require.”
“There you are then! And if you did prevent,” his hostess maturely
pursued, “what wouldn’t have been--well, good or nice, I’m quite on your
side too.”
Our young man seemed to feel the shade of ambiguity, but he reached at
a meaning. “You’re with me in my plea for our defending at any cost of
effort or ingenuity--”
“The precious picture Lord Theign exposes?”--she took his presumed sense
faster than he had taken hers. But she hung fire a moment with her reply
to it. “Well, will you keep the secret of everything I’ve said or say?”
“To the death, to the stake, Lady Sandgate!”
“Then,” she momentously returned, “I only want, too, to make Bender
impossible. If you ask me,” she pursued, “how I arrange that with my
deep loyalty to Lord Theign----”
“I don’t ask you anything of the sort,” he interrupted--“I wouldn’t ask
you for the world; and my own bright plan for achieving the _coup_ you
mention------”
“You’ll have time, at the most,” she said, consulting afresh her
bracelet watch, “to explain to Lady Grace.” She reached an electric
bell, which she touched--facing then her visitor again with an abrupt
and slightly embarrassed change of tone. “You do think _my_ great
portrait splendid?”
He had strayed far from it and all too languidly came back. “Your
Lawrence there? As I said, magnificent.”
But the butler had come in, interrupting, straight from the lobby; of
whom she made her request. “Let her ladyship know--Mr. Crimble.”
Gotch looked hard at Hugh and the crumpled hat--almost as if having an
option. But he resigned himself to repeating, with a distinctness that
scarce fell short of the invidious, “Mr. Crimble,” and departed on his
errand.
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.