The Outcry

Mr. Bender saw him vanish, but all to a greater bewilderment. “What the h– then (I beg your pardon!) is he talking about, and what ‘sentiments’ did he report round there that Lord Theign had been expressing?”

His hostess faced it not otherwise than if she had resolved not to recognise the subject of his curiosity—for fear of other recognitions. “They put everything on me, my dear man—but I haven’t the least idea.”

He looked at her askance. “Then why does the fellow say you have?”

Much at a loss for the moment, she yet found her way. “Because the fellow’s so agog that he doesn’t know what he says!” In addition to which she was relieved by the reappearance of Gotch, who bore on a salver the object he had been sent for and to which he duly called attention.

“The large red morocco case.”

Lady Sandgate fairly jumped at it. “Your blessed cheque-book. Lay it on my desk,” she said to Gotch, though waiting till he had departed again before she resumed to her visitor: “Mightn’t we conclude before he comes?”

“The Prince?” Mr. Bender’s imagination had strayed from the ground to which she sought to lead it back, and it but vaguely retraced its steps. “Will he want your great-grandmother?”

“Well, he may when he sees her!” Lady Sandgate laughed. “And Theign, when he comes, will give you on his own question, I feel sure, every information. Shall I fish it out for you?” she encouragingly asked, beside him by her secretary-desk, at which he had arrived under her persuasive guidance and where she sought solidly to establish him, opening out the gilded crimson case for his employ, so that he had but to help himself. “What enormous cheques! You can never draw one for two-pound-ten!”

“That’s exactly what you deserve I should do!” He remained after this solemnly still, however, like some high-priest circled with ceremonies; in consonance with which, the next moment, both her hands held out to him the open and immaculate page of the oblong series much as they might have presented a royal infant at the christening-font.

He failed, in his preoccupation, to receive it; so she placed it before him on the table, coming away with a brave gay “Well, I leave it to you!” She had not, restlessly revolving, kept her discreet distance for many minutes before she found herself almost face to face with the recurrent Gotch, upright at the door with a fresh announcement.

“Mr. Crimble, please—for Lady Grace.”

“Mr. Crimble again?”—she took it discomposedly.

It reached Mr. Bender at the secretary, but to a different effect. “Mr. Crimble? Why he’s just the man I want to see!”

Gotch, turning to the lobby, had only to make way for him. “Here he is, my lady.”

“Then tell her ladyship.”

“She has come down,” said Gotch while Hugh arrived and his companion withdrew, and while Lady Grace, reaching the scene from the other quarter, emerged in bright equipment—in her hat, scarf and gloves.

IV

These young persons were thus at once confronted across the room, and the girl explained her preparation. “I was listening hard—for your knock and your voice.”

“Then know that, thank God, it’s all right!”—Hugh was breathless, jubilant, radiant.

“A Mantovano?” she delightedly cried.

“A Mantovano!” he proudly gave back.

“A Mantovano!”—it carried even Lady Sandgate away.

“A Mantovano—a sure thing?” Mr. Bender jumped up from his business, all gaping attention to Hugh.

“I’ve just left our blest Bardi,” said that young man—“who hasn’t the shadow of a doubt and is delighted to publish it everywhere.”

“Will he publish it right here to me?” Mr. Bender hungrily asked.

“Well,” Hugh smiled, “you can try him.”

“But try him how, where?” The great collector, straining to instant action, cast about for his hat “Where is he, hey?”

“Don’t you wish I’d tell you?” Hugh, in his personal elation, almost cynically answered.

“Won’t you wait for the Prince?” Lady Sandgate had meanwhile asked of her friend; but had turned more inspectingly to Lady Grace before he could reply. “My dear child—though you’re lovely!—are you sure you’re ready for him?”

“For the Prince!”—the girl was vague. “Is he coming?”

“At five-forty-five.” With which she consulted her bracelet watch, but only at once to wail for alarm. “Ah, it is that, and I’m not dressed!” She hurried off through the other room.

Mr. Bender, quite accepting her retreat, addressed himself again unabashed to Hugh: “It’s your blest Bardi I want first—I’ll take the Prince after.”

The young man clearly could afford indulgence now. “Then I left him at Long’s Hotel.”

“Why, right near! I’ll come back.” And Mr. Bender’s flight was on the wings of optimism.

But it all gave Hugh a quick question for Lady Grace. “Why does the Prince come, and what in the world’s happening?”

“My father has suddenly returned—it may have to do with that.”

The shadow of his surprise darkened visibly to that of his fear. “Mayn’t it be more than anything else to give you and me his final curse?”

“I don’t know—and I think I don’t care. I don’t care,” she said, “so long as you’re right and as the greatest light of all declares you are.”

“He is the greatest”—Hugh was vividly of that opinion now: “I could see it as soon as I got there with him, the charming creature! There, before the holy thing, and with the place, by good luck, for those great moments, practically to ourselves—without Macintosh to take in what was happening or any one else at all to speak of—it was but a matter of ten minutes: he had come, he had seen, and I had conquered.”

“Naturally you had!”—the girl hung on him for it; “and what was happening beyond everything else was that for your original dear divination, one of the divinations of genius—with every creature all these ages so stupid—you were being baptized on the spot a great man.”

“Well, he did let poor Pappendick have it at least-he doesn’t think he’s one: that that eminent judge couldn’t, even with such a leg up, rise to my level or seize my point. And if you really want to know,” Hugh went on in his gladness, “what for us has most particularly and preciously taken place, it is that in his opinion, for my career—”

“Your reputation,” she cried, “blazes out and your fortune’s made?”

He did a happy violence to his modesty. “Well, Bardi adores intelligence and takes off his hat to me.”

“Then you need take off yours to nobody!”—such was Lady Grace’s proud opinion. “But I should like to take off mine to him,” she added; “which I seem to have put on—to get out and away with you—expressly for that.”

Hugh, as he looked her over, took it up in bliss. “Ah, we’ll go forth together to him then—thanks to your happy, splendid impulse!—and you’ll back him gorgeously up in the good he thinks of me.”

His friend yet had on this a sombre second thought. “The only thing is that our awful American–!”

But he warned her with a raised hand. “Not to speak of our awful Briton!”

For the door had opened from the lobby, admitting Lord Theign, unattended, who, at sight of his daughter and her companion, pulled up and held them a minute in reprehensive view—all at least till Hugh undauntedly, indeed quite cheerfully, greeted him.

“Since you find me again in your path, my lord, it’s because I’ve a small, but precious document to deliver you, if you’ll allow me to do so; which I feel it important myself to place in your hand.” He drew from his breast a pocket-book and extracted thence a small unsealed envelope; retaining the latter a trifle helplessly in his hand while Lord Theign only opposed to this demonstration an unmitigated blankness. He went none the less bravely on. “I mentioned to you the last time we somewhat infelicitously met that I intended to appeal to another and probably more closely qualified artistic authority on the subject of your so-called Moretto; and I in fact saw the picture half an hour ago with Bardi of Milan, who, there in presence of it, did absolute, did ideal justice, as I had hoped, to the claim I’ve been making. I then went with him to his hotel, close at hand, where he dashed me off this brief and rapid, but quite conclusive, Declaration, which, if you’ll be so good as to read it, will enable you perhaps to join us in regarding the vexed question as settled.”

His lordship, having faced this speech without a sign, rested on the speaker a somewhat more confessed intelligence, then looked hard at the offered note and hard at the floor—all to avert himself actively afterward and, with his head a good deal elevated, add to his distance, as it were, from every one and everything so indelicately thrust on his attention. This movement had an ambiguous makeshift air, yet his companions, under the impression of it, exchanged a hopeless look. His daughter none the less lifted her voice. “If you won’t take what he has for you from Mr. Crimble, father, will you take it from me?” And then as after some apparent debate he appeared to decide to heed her, “It may be so long again,” she said, “before you’ve a chance to do a thing I ask.”