The Outcry

Hugh had got hold of it now. “And that, you mean, he couldn’t stomach?”

“So little that when you had gone (and how you had to go you remember) he at once proposed, rather than that I should deceive you in a way so different from his own–”

“To do all we want of him?”

“To do all I did at least.”

“And it was then,” he took in, “that you wouldn’t deal?”

“Well”—try though she might to keep the colour out, it all came straighter and straighter now—“those moments had brought you home to me as they had also brought him; making such a difference, I felt, for what he veered round to agree to.”

“The difference”—Hugh wanted it so adorably definite—“that you didn’t see your way to accepting–?”

“No, not to accepting the condition he named.”

“Which was that he’d keep the picture for you if you’d treat me as too ‘low’–?”

“If I’d treat you,” said Lady Grace with her eyes on his fine young face, “as impossible.”

He kept her eyes—he clearly liked so to make her repeat it. “And not even for the sake of the picture—?” After he had given her time, however, her silence, with her beautiful look in it, seemed to admonish him not to force her for his pleasure; as if what she had already told him didn’t make him throb enough for the wonder of it. He had it, and let her see by his high flush how he made it his own—while, the next thing, as it was but part of her avowal, the rest of that illumination called for a different intelligence. “Your father’s reprobation of me personally is on the ground that you’re all such great people?”

She spared him the invidious answer to this as, a moment before, his eagerness had spared her reserve; she flung over the “ground” that his question laid bare the light veil of an evasion, “‘Great people,’ I’ve learned to see, mustn’t—to remain great—do what my father’s doing.”

“It’s indeed on the theory of their not so behaving,” Hugh returned, “that we see them—all the inferior rest of us—in the grand glamour of their greatness!”

If he had spoken to meet her admirable frankness half-way, that beauty in her almost brushed him aside to make at a single step the rest of the journey. “You won’t see them in it for long—if they don’t now, under such tests and with such opportunities, begin to take care.”

This had given him, at a stroke, he clearly felt, all freedom for the closer criticism. “Lord Theign perhaps recognises some such canny truth, but ‘takes care,’ with the least trouble to himself and the finest short cut—does it, if you’ll let me say so, rather on the cheap—by finding ‘the likes’ of me, as his daughter’s trusted friend, out of the question.”

“Well, you won’t mind that, will you?” Lady Grace asked, “if he finds his daughter herself, in any such relation to you, quite as much so.”

“Different enough, from position to position and person to person,” he brightly brooded, “is the view that gets itself most comfortably taken of the implications of Honour!”

“Yes,” the girl returned; “my father, in the act of despoiling us all, all who are interested, without apparently the least unpleasant consciousness, keeps the balance showily even, to his mostly so fine, so delicate sense, by suddenly discovering that he’s scandalised at my caring for your friendship.”

Hugh looked at her, on this, as with the gladness verily of possession promised and only waiting—or as if from that moment forth he had her assurance of everything that most concerned him and that might most inspire. “Well, isn’t the moral of it all simply that what his perversity of pride, as we can only hold it, will have most done for us is to bring us—and to keep us—blessedly together?”

She seemed for a moment to question his “simply.” “Do you regard us as so much ‘together’ when you remember where, in spite of everything, I’ve put myself?”

“By telling him to do what he likes?” he recalled without embarrassment. “Oh, that wasn’t in spite of ‘everything’—it was only in spite of the Manto-vano.”

“‘Only’?” she flushed—“when I’ve given the picture up?”

“Ah,” Hugh cried, “I don’t care a hang for the picture!” And then as she let him, closer, close to her with this, possess himself of her hands: “We both only care, don’t we, that we’re given to each other thus? We both only care, don’t we, that nothing can keep us apart?”

“Oh, if you’ve forgiven me—!” she sighed into his fond face.

“Why, since you gave the thing up for me,” he pleadingly laughed, “it isn’t as if you had given me up–!”

“For anything, anything? Ah never, never!” she breathed.

“Then why aren’t we all right?”

“Well, if you will–!”

“Oh for ever and ever and ever!”—and with this ardent cry of his devotion his arms closed in their strength and she was clasped to his breast and to his lips.

The next moment, however, she had checked him with the warning “Amy Sandgate!”—as if she had heard their hostess enter the other room. Lady Sand-gate was in fact almost already upon them—their disjunction had scarce been effected and she had reached the nearer threshold. They had at once put the widest space possible between them—a little of the flurry of which transaction agitated doubtless their clutch at composure. They gave back a shade awkwardly and consciously, on one side and the other, the speculative though gracious attention she for a few moments made them and their recent intimate relation the subject of; from all of which indeed Lady Grace sought and found cover in a prompt and responsible address to Hugh. “Mustn’t you go without more delay to Clifford Street?”

He came back to it all alert “At once!” He had recovered his hat and reached the other door, whence he gesticulated farewell to the elder lady. “Please pardon me”—and he disappeared.

Lady Sandgate hereupon stood for a little silently confronted with the girl. “Have you freedom of mind for the fact that your father’s suddenly at hand?”

“He has come back?”—Lady Grace was sharply struck.

“He arrives this afternoon and appears to go straight to Kitty—according to a wire that I find downstairs on coming back late from my luncheon. He has returned with a rush—as,” said his correspondent in the elation of triumph, “I was sure he would!”

Her young friend was more at sea. “Brought back, you mean, by the outcry—even though he so hates it?”

But she was more and more all lucidity—save in so far as she was now almost all authority. “Ah, hating still more to seem afraid, he has come back to face the music!”

Lady Grace, turning away as in vague despair for the manner in which the music might affect him, yet wheeled about again, after thought, to a positive recognition and even to quite an inconsequent pride. “Yes—that’s dear old father!”

And what was Lady Sandgate moreover but mistress now of the subject? “At the point the row has reached he couldn’t stand it another day; so he has thrown up his cure and—lest we should oppose him!—not even announced his start.”

“Well,” her companion returned, “now that I’ve done it all I shall never oppose him again!”

Lady Sandgate appeared to show herself as still under the impression she might have received on entering. “He’ll only oppose you!”

“If he does,” said Lady Grace, “we’re at present two to bear it.”

“Heaven save us then”—the elder woman was quick, was even cordial, for the sense of this—“your good friend is clever!”

Lady Grace honoured the remark. “Mr. Crim-ble’s remarkably clever.”

“And you’ve arranged–?”

“We haven’t arranged—but we’ve understood. So that, dear Amy, if you understand—!” Lady Grace paused, for Gotch had come in from the hall.

“His lordship has arrived?” his mistress immediately put to him.

“No, my lady, but Lord John has—to know if he’s expected here, and in that case, by your ladyship’s leave, to come up.”

Her ladyship turned to the girl. “May Lord John—as we do await your father—come up?”

“As suits you, please!”

“He may come up,” said Lady Sandgate to Gotch. “His lordship’s expected.” She had a pause till they were alone again, when she went on to her companion: “You asked me just now if I understood. Well—I do understand!”