If he said of the thing, as you recognise," Lord John went on, ""It"s going to be a Mantovano," why you can bet your life that it _is_--that it has _got_ to be some kind of a one."
His fellow-guest, at this, drew nearer again, irritated, you would have been sure, by the unconscious infelicity of the pair--worked up to something quite openly wilful and pa.s.sionate. "No kind of a furious flaunting one, under _my_ patronage, that I can prevent, my boy! The Dedborough picture in the market--owing to horrid little circ.u.mstances that regard myself alone--is the Dedborough picture at a decent, sufficient, civilised Dedborough price, and nothing else whatever; which I beg you will take as my last word on the subject."
Lord John, trying whether he _could_ take it, momentarily mingled his hushed state with that of their hostess, to whom he addressed a helpless look; after which, however, he appeared to find that he could only rea.s.sert himself. "May I nevertheless reply that I think you"ll not be able to prevent _anything?_--since the discussed object will completely escape your control in New York!"
"And almost any discussed object"--Lady Sand-gate rose to the occasion also--"is in New York, by what one hears, easily _worth_ a Hundred Thousand!"
Lord Theign looked from one of them to the other. "I sell the man a Hundred Thousand worth of swagger and advertis.e.m.e.nt; and of fraudulent swagger and objectionable advertis.e.m.e.nt at that?"
"Well"--Lord John was but briefly baffled--"when the picture"s his you can"t help its doing what it can and what it will for him anywhere!"
"Then it isn"t his yet," the elder man retorted--"and I promise you never will be if he has _sent_ you to me with his big drum!"
Lady Sandgate turned sadly on this to her a.s.sociate in patience, as if the case were now really beyond them. "Yes, how indeed can it ever _become_ his if Theign simply won"t let him pay for it?"
Her question was unanswerable. "It"s the first time in all my life I"ve known a man feel insulted, in such a piece of business, by happening _not_ to be, in the usual way, more or less swindled!"
"Theign is unable to take it in," her ladyship explained, "that--as I"ve heard it said of all these money-monsters of the new type--Bender simply can"t _afford_ not to be cited and celebrated as the biggest buyer who ever lived."
"Ah, cited and celebrated at my _expense_--say it at once and have it over, that I may enjoy what you all want to do to me!"
"The dear man"s inimitable--at his "expense"!" It was more than Lord John could bear as he fairly flung himself off in his derisive impotence and addressed his wail to Lady Sandgate.
"Yes, at my expense is exactly what I mean," Lord Theign a.s.severated--"at the expense of my modest claim to regulate my behaviour by my own standards. There you perfectly _are_ about the man, and it"s precisely what I say--that he"s to hustle and harry me _because_ he"s a money-monster: which I never for a moment dreamed of, please understand, when I let you, John, thrust him at me as a pecuniary resource at Dedborough. I didn"t put my property on view that _he_ might blow about it------!"
"No, if you like it," Lady Sandgate returned; "but you certainly didn"t so arrange"--she seemed to think her point somehow would help--"that you might blow about it yourself!"
"n.o.body wants to "blow,"" Lord John more stoutly interposed, "either hot or cold, I take it; but I really don"t see the harm of Bender"s liking to be known for the scale of his transactions--actual or merely imputed even, if you will; since that scale is really so magnificent."
Lady Sandgate half accepted, half qualified this plea. "The only question perhaps is why he doesn"t try for some precious work that somebody--less delicious than dear Theign--_can_ be persuaded on bended knees to accept a hundred thousand for."
""Try" for one?"--her younger visitor took it up while her elder more attentively watched him. "That was exactly what he did try for when he pressed you so hard in vain for the great Sir Joshua."
"Oh well, he mustn"t come back to _that_--must he, Theign?" her ladyship cooed.
That personage failed to reply, so that Lord John went on, unconscious apparently of the still more suspicious study to which he exposed himself. "Besides which there _are_ no things of that magnitude knocking about, don"t you know?--they"ve _got_ to be worked up first if they"re to reach the grand publicity of the Figure! Would you mind," he continued to his n.o.ble monitor, "an agreement on some such basis as _this_?--that you shall resign yourself to the biggest equivalent you"ll squeamishly consent to take, if it"s at the same time the smallest he"ll squeamishly consent to offer; but that, that done, you shall leave him free----"
Lady Sandgate took it up straight, rounding it off, as their companion only waited. "Leave him free to talk about the sum offered and the sum taken as practically one and the same?"
"Ah, you know," Lord John discriminated, "he doesn"t "talk" so much himself--there"s really nothing blatant or crude about poor Bender. It"s the rate at which--by the very way he"s "fixed": an awful way indeed, I grant you!--a perfect army of reporter-wretches, close at his heels, are always talking for him and of him."
Lord Theign spoke hereupon at last with the air as of an impulse that had been slowly gathering force. "_You_ talk for him, my dear chap, pretty well. You urge his case, my honour, quite as if you were a.s.sured of a commission on the job--on a fine ascending scale! Has he put you up to that proposition, eh? _Do_ you get a handsome percentage and _are_ you to make a good thing of it?"
The young man coloured under this stinging pleasantry--whether from a good conscience affronted or from a bad one made worse; but he otherwise showed a bold front, only bending his eyes a moment on his watch.
"As he"s to come to you himself--and I don"t know why the mischief he doesn"t come!--he will answer you that graceful question."
"Will he answer it," Lord Theign asked, "with the veracity that the suggestion you"ve just made on his behalf represents him as so beautifully adhering to?" On which he again quite fiercely turned his back and recovered his detachment, the others giving way behind him to a blanker dismay.
Lord John, in spite of this however, pumped up a tone. "I don"t see why you should speak as if I were urging some abomination."
"Then I"ll tell you why!"--and Lord Theign was upon him again for the purpose. "Because I had rather give the cursed thing away outright and for good and all than that it should hang out there another day in the interest of such equivocations!"
Lady Sandgate"s dismay yielded to her wonder, and her wonder apparently in turn to her amus.e.m.e.nt. ""Give it away," my dear friend, to a man who only longs to smother you in gold?"
Her dear friend, however, had lost patience with her levity. "Give it away--just for a luxury of protest and a stoppage of chatter--to some cause as unlike as possible that of Mr. Bender"s power of sound and his splendid reputation: to the Public, to the Authorities, to the Thingumbob, to the Nation!"
Lady Sandgate broke into horror while Lord John stood sombre and stupefied. "Ah, my dear creature, you"ve flights of extravagance----!"
"One thing"s very certain," Lord Theign quite heedlessly pursued--"that the thought of my property on view there does give intolerably on my nerves, more and more every minute that I"m conscious of it; so that, hang it, if one thinks of it, why shouldn"t I, for my relief, do again, damme, _what I like_?--that is bang the door in their faces, have the show immediately stopped?" He turned with the attraction of this idea from one of his listeners to the other. "It"s _my_ show--it isn"t Bender"s, surely!--and I can do just as I choose with it."
"Ah, but isn"t that the very point?"--and Lady Sandgate put it to Lord John. "Isn"t it Bender"s show much more than his?"
Her invoked authority, however, in answer to this, made but a motion of disappointment and disgust at so much rank folly--while Lord Theign, on the other hand, followed up his happy thought. "Then if it"s Bender"s show, or if he claims it is, there"s all the more reason!" And it took his lordship"s inspiration no longer to flower. "See here, John--do this: go right round there this moment, please, and tell them from me to shut straight down!"
""Shut straight down"?" the young man abhorrently echoed.
"Stop it _to-night_--wind it up and end it: see?" The more the entertainer of that vision held it there the more charm it clearly took on for him. "Have the picture removed from view and the incident closed."
"You seriously ask _that_ of me!" poor Lord John quavered.
"Why in the world shouldn"t I? It"s a jolly lot less than you asked of me a month ago at Dedborough."
"What then am I to say to them?" Lord John spoke but after a long moment, during which he had only looked hard and--an observer might even then have felt--ominously at his taskmaster.
That personage replied as if wholly to have done with the matter. "Say anything that comes into your clever head. I don"t really see that there"s anything else _for_ you!" Lady Sandgate sighed to the messenger, who gave no sign save of positive stiffness.
The latter seemed still to weigh his displeasing obligation; then he eyed his friend significantly--almost portentously. "Those are absolutely your sentiments?"
"Those are absolutely my sentiments"--and Lord Theign brought this out as with the force of a physical push.
"Very well then!" But the young man, indulging in a final, a fairly sinister, study of such a dealer in the arbitrary, made sure of the extent, whatever it was, of his own wrong. "Not one more day?"
Lord Theign only waved him away. "Not one more hour!"
He paused at the door, this reluctant spokesman, as if for some supreme protest; but after another prolonged and decisive engagement with the two pairs of eyes that waited, though differently, on his performance, he clapped on his hat as in the rage of his resentment and departed on his mission.
III
"He can"t bear to do it, poor man!" Lady Sand-gate ruefully remarked to her remaining guest after Lord John had, under extreme pressure, dashed out to Bond Street.
"I dare say not!"--Lord Theign, flushed with the felicity of self-expression, made little of that. "But he goes too far, you see, and it clears the air--pouah! Now therefore"--and he glanced at the clock--"I must go to Kitty."
"Kitty--with what Kitty wants," Lady Sandgate opined--"won"t thank you for _that!_"
"She never thanks me for anything"--and the fact of his resignation clearly added here to his bitterness. "So it"s no great loss!"