He kept his eyes on her till he had made sure--and this deep exchange between them had a beauty. "So you"re now _with_ me?"
"I"m now _with_ you!"
"Then," said Hugh, "shake hands on it"
He offered her his hand, she took it, and their grasp became, as you would have seen in their fine young faces, a pledge in which they stood a minute locked. Lord Theign came upon them from the saloon in the midst of the process; on which they separated as with an air of its having consisted but of Hugh"s leave-taking. With some such form of mere civility, at any rate, he appeared, by the manner in which he addressed himself to Hugh, to have supposed them occupied.
"I"m sorry my daughter can"t keep you; but I must at least thank you for your interesting view of my picture."
Hugh indulged in a brief and mute, though very grave, acknowledgment of this expression; presently speaking, however, as on a resolve taken with a sense of possibly awkward consequences: "May I--before you"re sure of your indebtedness--put you rather a straight question, Lord Theign?" It sounded doubtless, and of a sudden, a little portentous--as was in fact testified to by his lordship"s quick stiff stare, full of wonder at so free a note. But Hugh had the courage of his undertaking. "If I contribute in ny modest degree to establishing the true authorship of the work you speak of, may I have from you an a.s.surance that my success isn"t to serve as a basis for any peril--or possibility--of its leaving the country?"
Lord Theign was visibly astonished, but had also, independently of this, turned a shade pale. "You ask of me an "a.s.surance"?"
Hugh had now, with his firmness and his strained smile, quite the look of having counted the cost of his step. "I"m afraid I _must_, you see."
It pressed at once in his host the spring of a very grand manner. "And pray by what right here do you do anything of the sort?"
"By the right of a person from whom you, on your side, are accepting a service."
Hugh had clearly determined in his opponent a rise of what is called spirit. "A service that you half an hour ago thrust on me, sir--and with which you may take it from me that I"m already quite prepared to dispense."
"I"m sorry to appear indiscreet," our young man returned; "I"m sorry to have upset you in any way. But I can"t overcome my anxiety--"
Lord Theign took the words from his lips. "And you therefore invite me--at the end of half an hour in this house!--to account to you for my personal intentions and my private affairs and make over my freedom to your hands?"
Hugh stood there with his eyes on the black and white pavement that stretched about him--the great loz-enged marble floor that might have figured that ground of his own vision which he had made up his mind to "stand." "I can only see the matter as I see it, and I should be ashamed not to have seized any chance to appeal to you." Whatever difficulty he had had shyly to face didn"t exist for him now. "I entreat you to think again, to think _well_, before you deprive us of such a source of just envy."
"And you regard your entreaty as helped," Lord Theign asked, "by the beautiful threat you are so good as to attach to it?" Then as his monitor, arrested, exchanged a searching look with Lady Grace, who, showing in her face all the pain of the business, stood off at the distance to which a woman instinctively retreats when a scene turns to violence as precipitately as this one appeared to strike her as having turned: "I ask you that not less than I should like to know whom you speak of as "deprived" of property that happens--for reasons that I don"t suppose you also quarrel with!--to be mine."
"Well, I know nothing about threats, Lord Theign," Hugh said, "but I speak of _all_ of us--of all the people of England; who would deeply deplore such an act of alienation, and whom, for the interest they bear you, I beseech you mercifully to consider."
"The interest they bear me?"--the master of Dedborough fairly bristled with wonder. "Pray how the devil do they show it?"
"I think they show it in all sorts of ways"--and Hugh"s critical smile, at almost any moment hovering, played over the question in a manner seeming to convey that he meant many things.
"Understand then, please," said Lord Theign with every inch of his authority, "that they"ll show it best by minding their own business while I very particularly mind mine."
"You simply do, in other words," Hugh explicitly concluded, "what happens to be convenient to you."
"In very distinct preference to what happens to be convenient to _you!_ So that I need no longer detain you," Lord Theign added with the last dryness and as if to wind up their brief and thankless connection.
The young man took his dismissal, being able to do no less, while, unsatisfied and unhappy, he looked about mechanically for the cycling-cap he had laid down somewhere in the hall on his arrival.
"I apologise, my lord, if I seem to you to have ill repaid your hospitality. But," he went on with his uncommended cheer, "my interest in your picture remains."
Lady Grace, who had stopped and strayed and stopped again as a mere watchful witness, drew nearer hereupon, breaking her silence for the first time. "And please let me say, father, that mine also grows and grows."
It was obvious that this parent, surprised and disconcerted by her tone, judged her contribution superfluous. "I"m happy to hear it, Grace--but yours is another affair."
"I think on the contrary that it"s quite the same one," she returned--"since it"s on my hint to him that Mr. Crimble has said to you what he has." The resolution she had gathered while she awaited her chance sat in her charming eyes, which met, as she spoke, the straighter paternal glare. "I let him know that I supposed you to think of profiting by the importance of Mr. Bender"s visit."
"Then you might have spared, my dear, your--I suppose and hope well-meant--interpretation of my mind." Lord Theign showed himself at this point master of the beautiful art of righting himself as without having been in the wrong. "Mr. Bender"s visit will terminate--as soon as he has released Lord John--without my having profited in the smallest particular."
Hugh meanwhile evidently but wanted to speak for his friend. "It was Lady Grace"s anxious inference, she will doubtless let me say for her, that my idea about the Moretto would add to your power--well," he pushed on not without awkwardness, "of "realising" advantageously on such a prospective rise."
Lord Theign glanced at him as for positively the last time, but spoke to Lady Grace. "Understand then, please, that, as I detach myself from any a.s.sociation with this gentleman"s ideas--whether about the Moretto or about anything else--his further application of them ceases from this moment to concern us."
The girl"s rejoinder was to address herself directly to Hugh, across their companion. "Will you make your inquiry for _me_ then?"
The light again kindled in him. "With all the pleasure in life!" He had found his cap and, taking them together, bowed to the two, for departure, with high emphasis of form. Then he marched off in the direction from which he had entered.
Lord Theign scarce waited for his disappearance to turn in wrath to Lady Grace. "I denounce the indecency, wretched child, of your public defiance of me!"
They were separated by a wide interval now, and though at her distance she met his reproof so unshrinkingly as perhaps to justify the terms into which it had broken, she became aware of a reason for his not following it up. She p.r.o.nounced in quick warning "Lord John!"--for their friend, released from among the pictures, was rejoining them, was already there.
He spoke straight to his host on coming into sight. "Bender"s at last off, but"--he indicated the direction of the garden front--"you may still find him, out yonder, prolonging the agony with Lady Sand-gate."
Lord Theign remained a moment, and the heat of his resentment remained.
He looked with a divided discretion, the pain of his indecision, from his daughter"s suitor and his approved candidate to that contumacious young woman and back again; then choosing his course in silence he had a gesture of almost desperate indifference and pa.s.sed quickly out by the door to the terrace.
It had left Lord John gaping. "What on earth"s the matter with your father?"
"What on earth indeed?" Lady Grace unaidingly asked. "Is he discussing with that awful man?"
"Old Bender? Do you think him so awful?" Lord John showed surprise--which might indeed have pa.s.sed for harmless amus.e.m.e.nt; but he shook everything off in view of a nearer interest. He quite waved old Bender away. "My dear girl, what do _we_ care--?"
"I care immensely, I a.s.sure you," she interrupted, "and I ask of you, please, to tell me!"
Her perversity, coming straight and which he had so little expected, threw him back so that he looked at her with sombre eyes. "Ah, it"s not for such a matter I"m here, Lady Grace--I"m here with that fond question of my own." And then as she turned away, leaving him with a vehement motion of protest: "I"ve come for your kind answer--the answer your father instructed me to count on."
"I"ve no kind answer to give you!"--she raised forbidding hands. "I entreat you to leave me alone."
There was so high a spirit and so strong a force in it that he stared as if stricken by violence. "In G.o.d"s name then what has happened--when you almost gave me your word?"
"What has happened is that I"ve found it impossible to listen to you."
And she moved as if fleeing she scarce knew whither before him.
He had already hastened around another way, however, as to meet her in her quick circuit of the hall. "That"s all you"ve got to say to me after what has pa.s.sed between us?"
He had stopped her thus, but she had also stopped him, and her pa.s.sionate denial set him a limit. "I"ve got to say--sorry as I am--that if you _must_ have an answer it"s this: that never, Lord John, never, can there be anything more between us." And her gesture cleared her path, permitting her to achieve her flight. "Never, no, never," she repeated as she went--"never, never, never!" She got off by the door at which she had been aiming to some retreat of her own, while aghast and defeated, left to make the best of it, he sank after a moment into a chair and remained quite pitiably staring before him, appealing to the great blank splendour.
BOOK SECOND
I