The 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.