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."
"The chance will depend on yourself!" he returned with high dry emphasis. But he held out his hand for the note Hugh had given her and with which she approached him; and though face to face they seemed more separated than brought near by this contact without commerce. She turned away on one side when he had taken the missive, as Hugh had turned away on the other; Lord Theign drew forth the contents of the envelope and broodingly and inexpressively read the few lines; after which, as having done justice to their sense, he thrust the paper forth again till his daughter became aware and received it. She restored it to her friend while her father dandled off anew, but coming round this time, almost as by a circuit of the room, and meeting Hugh, who took advantage of it to repeat by a frank gesture his offer of Bardi"s attestation. Lord Theign pa.s.sed with the young man on this a couple of mute minutes of the same order as those he had pa.s.sed with Lady Grace in the same connection; their eyes dealt deeply with their eyes--but to the effect of his lordship"s accepting the gift, which after another minute he had slipped into his breast-pocket. It was not till then that he brought out a curt but resonant "Thank you!" While the others awaited his further pleasure he again bethought himself--then he addressed Lady Grace. "I must let Mr. Bender know----"
"Mr. Bender," Hugh interposed, "does know. He"s at the present moment with the author of that note at Long"s Hotel."
"Then I must now write him"--and his lordship, while he spoke and from where he stood, looked in refined disconnectedness out of the window.
"Will you write _there?_"--and his daughter indicated Lady Sandgate"s desk, at which we have seen Mr. Bender so importantly seated.
Lord Theign had a start at her again speaking to him; but he bent his view on the convenience awaiting him and then, as to have done with so tiresome a matter, took advantage of it. He went and placed himself, and had reached for paper and a pen when, struck apparently with the display of some incongruous object, he uttered a sharp "Hallo!"
"You don"t find things?" Lady Grace asked--as remote from him in one quarter of the room as Hugh was in another.
"On the contrary!" he oddly replied. But plainly suppressing any further surprise he committed a few words to paper and put them into an envelope, which he addressed and brought away.
"If you like," said Hugh urbanely, "I"ll carry him that myself."
"But how do you know what it consists of?"
"I don"t know. But I risk it."
His lordship weighed the proposition in a high impersonal manner--he even nervously weighed his letter, shaking it with one hand upon the finger-tips of the other; after which, as finally to acquit himself of any measurable obligation, he allowed Hugh, by a surrender of the interesting object, to redeem his offer of service. "Then you"ll learn,"
he simply said.
"And may _I_ learn?" asked Lady Grace.
"You?" The tone made so light of her that it was barely interrogative.
"May I go _with_ him?"
Her father looked at the question as at some cup of supreme bitterness--a nasty and now quite regular dose with which his lips were familiar, but before which their first movement was always tightly to close. "_With_ me, my lord," said Hugh at last, thoroughly determined they should open and intensifying the emphasis.
He had his effect, and Lord Theign"s answer, addressed to Lady Grace, made indifference very comprehensive. "You may do what ever you dreadfully like!"
At this then the girl, with an air that seemed to present her choice as absolutely taken, reached the door which Hugh had come across to open for her.
Here she paused as for another, a last look at her father, and her expression seemed to say to him unaidedly that, much as she would have preferred to proceed to her act without this gross disorder, she could yet find inspiration too in the very difficulty and the old faiths themselves that he left her to struggle with. All this made for depth and beauty in her serious young face--as it had indeed a force that, not indistinguishably, after an instant, his lordship lost any wish for longer exposure to. His shift of his att.i.tude before she went out was fairly an evasion; if the extent of the levity of one of his daughter"s made him afraid, what might have been his present strange sense but a fear of the other from the extent of her gravity? Lady Grace pa.s.ses from us at any rate in her laced and pearled and plumed slimness and her pale concentration--leaving her friend a moment, however, with his hand on the door.
"You thanked me just now for Bardi"s opinion after all," Hugh said with a smile; "and it seems to me that--after all as well--I"ve grounds for thanking you!" On which he left his benefactor alone.
"t.i.t for tat!" There broke from Lord Theign, in his solitude, with the young man out of earshot, that vague ironic comment; which only served his turn, none the less, till, bethinking himself, he had gone back to the piece of furniture used for his late scribble and come away from it again the next minute delicately holding a fair slip that we naturally recognise as Mr. Bender"s forgotten cheque. This apparently surprising value he now studied at his ease and to the point of its even drawing from him an articulate "What in d.a.m.nation--?" His speculation dropped before the return of his hostess, whose approach through the other room fell upon his ear and whom he awaited after a quick thrust of the cheque into his waistcoat.
Lady Sandgate appeared now in due--that is in the most happily adjusted--splendour; she had changed her dress for something smarter and more appropriate to the entertainment of Princes, "Tea will be downstairs," she said. "But you"re alone?"
"I"ve just parted," her friend replied, "with Grace and Mr. Crimble."
""Parted" with them?"--the ambiguity struck her.
"Well, they"ve gone out together to flaunt their monstrous connection!"
"You speak," she laughed, "as if it were too gross--I They"re surely coming back?"
"Back to you, if you like--but not to me."
"Ah, what are you and I," she tenderly argued, "but one and the same quant.i.ty? And though you may not as yet absolutely rejoice in--well, whatever they"re doing," she cheerfully added, "you"ll get beautifully used to it."
"That"s just what I"m afraid of--what such horrid matters make of one!"
"At the worst then, you see"--she maintained her optimism--"the recipient of royal attentions!"
"Oh," said her companion, whom his honour seemed to leave comparatively cold, "it"s simply as if the gracious Personage were coming to condole!"
Impatient of the lapse of time, in any case, she a.s.sured herself again of the hour. "Well, if he only does come!"
"John--the wretch!" Lord Theign returned--"will take care of that: he has nailed him and will bring him."
"What was it then," his friend found occasion in the particular tone of this reference to demand, "what was it that, when you sent him off, John spoke of you in Bond Street as specifically intending?"
Oh he saw it now all lucidly--if not rather luridly--and thereby the more tragically. "He described me in his nasty rage as consistently--well, heroic!"
"His rage"--she pieced it sympathetically out--"at your destroying his cherished credit with Bender?"
Lord Theign was more and more possessed of this view of the manner of it. "I had come between him and some profit that he doesn"t confess to, but that made him viciously and vindictively serve me up there, as he caught the chance, to the Prince--and the People!"
She cast about, in her intimate interest, as for some closer conception of it. "By saying that you had remarked here that you offered the People the picture--?"
"As a sacrifice--yes!--to morbid, though respectable scruples." To which he sharply added, as if struck with her easy grasp of the scene: "But I hope you"ve nothing to call a memory for any such extravagance?"
Lady Sandgate waited--then boldly took her line. "None whatever! You had reacted against Bender--but you hadn"t gone so far as _that!_"
He had it now all vividly before him. "I had reacted--like a gentleman; but it didn"t thereby follow that I acted--or spoke--like a demagogue; and my mind"s a complete blank on the subject of my having done so."
"So that there only flushes through your conscience," she suggested, "the fact that he has forced your hand?"
Fevered with the sore sense of it his lordship wiped his brow. "He has played me, for spite, his d.a.m.ned impertinent trick!"
She found but after a minute--for it wasn"t easy--the right word, or the least wrong, for the situation. "Well, even if he did so diabolically commit you, you still don"t want--do you?--to back out?"
Resenting the suggestion, which restored all his n.o.bler form, Lord Theign fairly drew himself up. "When did I ever in all my life back out?"
"Never, never in all your life of course!"--she dashed a bucketful at the flare. "And the picture after all----!"
"The picture after all"--he took her up in cold grim gallant despair--"has just been p.r.o.nounced definitely priceless." And then to meet her gaping ignorance: "By Mr. Crimble"s latest and apparently greatest adviser, who strongly stamps it a Mantovano and whose practical affidavit I now possess."
Poor Lady Sandgate gaped but the more--she wondered and yearned.
"Definitely priceless?"