The Outcry

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 impartially 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?”

“Ah, not quite the same,” Hugh smiled—“that I will say for you!”

“Yes, you stick it on now—you have got an eye for the rise in values. But I grant you your unearned increment, and you ought to be mighty glad that, to such a time, I’ll pay it you.”

Our young man kept, during a moment’s thought, his eyes on his companion, and then resumed with all intensity and candour: “You may easily, Mr. Bender, be too much for me—as you appear too much for far greater people. But may I ask you, very earnestly, for your word on this, as to any case in which that happens—that when precious things, things we are to lose here, are knocked down to you, you’ll let us at least take leave of them, let us have a sight of them in London, before they’re borne off?”

Mr. Bender’s big face fell almost with a crash. “Hand them over, you mean, to the sandwich men on Bond Street?”

“To one or other of the placard and poster men—I don’t insist on the inserted human slice! Let the great values, as a compensation to us, be on view for three or four weeks.”