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 attached 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.