The Outcry
Book II
Chapter 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."
"You ask me," Mr. Bender returned, "for a general assurance to that
effect?"
"Well, a particular one—so it be particular enough," Hugh said—"will
do just for now. Let me put in my plea for the issue—well, of the value
that's actually in the scales."
"The Mantovano-Moretto?"
"The Moretto-Mantovano!"
Mr. Bender carnivorously smiled. "Hadn't we better know which it is
first?"
Hugh had a motion of practical indifference for this. "The public
interest—playing so straight on the question—may help to settle it.
By which I mean that it will profit enormously—the question of
probability, of identity itself will—by the discussion it will create.
The discussion will promote certainty——"
"And certainty," Mr. Bender massively mused, "will kick up a row."
"Of course it will kick up a row!"—Hugh thoroughly guaranteed that.
"You'll be, for the month, the best-abused man in England—if you
venture to remain here at all; except, naturally, poor Lord Theign."
"Whom it won't be my interest, at the same time, to worry into backing
down."
"But whom it will be exceedingly mine to practise on"—and Hugh
laughed as at the fun before them—"if I may entertain the sweet hope
of success. The only thing is—from my point of view," he went on—"that
backing down before what he will call vulgar clamour isn't in the least
in his traditions, nothing less so; and that if there should be really
too much of it for his taste or his nerves he'll set his handsome face
as a stone and never budge an inch. But at least again what I appeal to
you for will have taken place—the picture will have been seen by a lot
of people who'll care."
"It will have been seen," Mr. Bender amended—"on the mere contingency
of my acquisition of it—only if its present owner consents."
"'Consents'?" Hugh almost derisively echoed; "why, he'll propose it
himself, he'll insist on it, he'll put it through, once he's angry
enough—as angry, I mean, as almost any public criticism of a personal
act of his will be sure to make him; and I'm afraid the striking
criticism, or at least animadversion, of this morning, will have blown
on his flame of bravado."
Inevitably a student of character, Mr. Bender rose to the occasion.
"Yes, I guess he's pretty mad."
"They've imputed to him"—Hugh but wanted to abound in that sense—"an
intention of which after all he isn't guilty."
"So that"—his listener glowed with interested optimism—"if they don't
look out, if they impute it to him again, I guess he'll just go and be
guilty!"
Hugh might at this moment have shown to an initiated eye as fairly
elated by the sense of producing something of the effect he had hoped.
"You entertain the fond vision of lashing them up to that mistake, oh
fisher in troubled waters?" And then with a finer art, as his companion,
expansively bright but crudely acute, eyed him in turn as if to sound
him: "The strongest thing in such a type—one does make out—is his
resentment of a liberty taken; and the most natural furthermore is
quite that he should feel almost anything you do take uninvited from the
groaning board of his banquet of life to be such a liberty."
Mr. Bender participated thus at his perceptive ease in the exposed
aristocratic illusion. "Yes, I guess he has always lived as he likes,
the way those of you who have got things fixed for them do, over here;
and to have to quit it on account of unpleasant remark—"
But he gave up thoughtfully trying to express what this must be; reduced
to the mere synthetic interjection "My!"
"That's it, Mr. Bender," Hugh said for the consecration of such a moral;
"he won't quit it without a hard struggle."
Mr. Bender hereupon at last gave himself quite gaily away as to his high
calculation of impunity. "Well, I guess he won't struggle too hard for
me to hold on to him if I want to!"
"In the thick of the conflict then, however that may be," Hugh returned,
"don't forget what I've urged on you—the claim of our desolate
country."
But his friend had an answer to this. "My natural interest, Mr.
Crimble—considering what I do for it—is in the claim of ours. But I
wish you were on my side!"
"Not so much," Hugh hungrily and truthfully laughed, "as I wish you were
on mine!" Decidedly, none the less, he had to go. "Good-bye—for another
look here!"
He reached the doorway of the second room, where, however, his
companion, freshly alert at this, stayed him by a gesture. "How much is
she really worth?"
"'She'?" Hugh, staring a moment, was miles at sea. "Lady Sandgate?"
"Her great-grandmother."
A responsible answer was prevented—the butler was again with them; he
had opened wide the other door and he named to Mr. Bender the personage
under his convoy. "Lord John!"
Hugh caught this from the inner threshold, and it gave him his escape.
"Oh, ask that friend!" With which he sought the further passage to the
staircase and street, while Lord John arrived in charge of Mr. Gotch,
who, having remarked to the two occupants of the front drawing-room that
her ladyship would come, left them together.