Of course I amwhy shouldnt I be? But, he said with impatience, I want help.
Very well then, thats what Lady Imbers giving you. And as it appeared to take him time to read into these words their full sense, she produced others, and so far did help himthough the effort was in a degree that of her exhibiting with some complacency her own unassisted control of stray signs and shy lights. By telling her, by bringing it home to her, that if shell make up her mind to accept you the Duchess will do the handsome thing. Handsome, I mean, by Kitty.
Lord John, appropriating for his convenience the truth in this, yet regarded it as open to a becoming, an improving touch from himself. Well, and by me. To which he added with more of a challenge in it: But you really know what my mother will do?
By my system, Lady Sandgate smiled, you see Ive guessed. What your mother will do is what brought you over!
Well, its that, he allowedand something else.
Something else? she derisively echoed. I should think that, for an ardent lover, would have been enough.
Ah, but its all one Job! I mean its one idea, he hastened to explainif you think Lady Imbers really acting on her.
Mightnt you go and see?
I would in a moment if I hadnt to look out for another matter too. And he renewed his attention to his watch. I mean getting straight at my American, the party I just mentioned
But she had already taken him up. You too have an American and a party, and yours also motors down?
Mr. Breckenridge Bender. Lord John named him with a shade of elation.
She gaped at the fuller light You know my Breckenridge?who I hoped was coming for me!
Lord John as freely, but more gaily, wondered. Had he told you so?
She held out, opened, the telegram she had kept folded in her hand since her entrance. He has sent me thatwhich, delivered to me ten minutes ago out there, has brought me in to receive him.
The young man read out this missive. Failing to find you in Bruton Street, start in pursuit and hope to overtake you about four. It did involve an ambiguity. Why, he has been engaged these three days to coincide with myself, and not to fail of him has been part of my business.
Lady Sandgate, in her demonstrative way, appealed to the general rich scene. Then why does he say its me hes pursuing?
He seemed to recognise promptly enough in her the sense of a menaced monopoly. My dear lady, hes pursuing expensive works of art.
By which you imply that Im one? She might have been wound up by her disappointment to almost any irony.
I implyor rather I affirmthat every handsome woman is! But what he arranged with me about, Lord John explained, was that he should see the Dedborough pictures in general and the great Sir Joshua in particularof which he had heard so much and to which Ive been thus glad to assist him.
This news, however, with its lively interest, but deepened the listeners mystification. Then whythis whole week that Ive been in the househasnt our good friend here mentioned to me his coming?
Because our good friend here has had no reasonLord John could treat it now as simple enough. Good as he is in all ways, hes so best of all about showing the house and its contents that I havent even thought necessary to write him that Im introducing Breckenridge.
I should have been happy to introduce him, Lady Sandgate just quaveredif I had at all known he wanted it.
Her companion weighed the difference between them and appeared to pronounce it a trifle he didnt care a fig for. I surrender you that privilege thenof presenting him to his hostif Ive seemed to you to snatch it from you. To which Lord John added, as with liberality unrestricted, But Ive been taking him about to see whats worth whileas only last week to Lady Lappingtons Longhi.
This revelation, though so casual in its form, fairly drew from Lady Sandgate, as she took it in, an interrogative wail. Her Longhi?
Why, dont you know her great Venetian family group, the What-do-you-call-ems?seven full-length figures, each one a gem, for which he paid her her price before he left the house.
She could but make it more richly resoundalmost stricken, lost in her wistful thought: Seven full-length figures? Her price?
Eight thousandslap down. Bender knows, said Lord John, what he wants.
And does he want onlyher wonder grew and grew
What-do-you-call-ems?
He most usually wants what he cant have. Lord John made scarce more of it than that. But, awfully hard up as I fancy her, Lady Lappington went at him.
It determined in his friend a boldly critical attitude. How horribleat the rate things are leaving us! But this was far from the end of her interest. And is that the way he pays?
Before he leaves the house? Lord John lived it amusedly over. Well, she took care of that.
How incredibly vulgar! It all had, however, for Lady Sandgate, still other connectionswhich might have attenuated Lady Lappingtons case, though she didnt glance at this. He makes the most scandalous eyesthe ruffian!at my great-grandmother. And then as richly to enlighten any blankness: My tremendous Lawrence, dont you know?in her wedding-dress, down to her knees; with such extraordinarily speaking eyes, such lovely arms and hands, such wonderful flesh-tints: universally considered the masterpiece of the artist.
Lord John seemed to look a moment not so much at the image evoked, in which he wasnt interested, as at certain possibilities lurking behind it. And are you going to sell the masterpiece of the artist?
She held her head high. Ive indignantly refusedfor all his pressing me so hard.
Yet thats what he nevertheless pursues you to-day to keep up?
The question had a little the ring of those of which the occupant of a witness-box is mostly the subject, but Lady Sandgate was so far as this went an imperturbable witness. I need hardly fear it perhaps ifin the light of what you tell me of your arrangement with himhis pursuit becomes, where I am concerned, a figure of speech.
Oh, Lord John returned, he kills two birds with one stonehe sees both Sir Joshua and you.
This version of the case had its effect, for the moment, on his fair associate. Does he want to buy their pride and glory?
The young man, however, struck on his own side, became at first but the bright reflector of her thought. Is that wonder for sale?
She closed her eyes as with the shudder of hearing such words. Not, surely, by any monstrous chance! Fancy dear, proud Theign!
I cant fancy himno! And Lord John appeared to renounce the effort. But a cat may look at a king and a sharp funny Yankee at anything.
These things might be, Lady Sandgates face and gesture apparently signified; but another question diverted her. Youre clearly a wonderful showman, but do you mind my asking you whether youre on such an occasion awell, a closely interested one?
Interested? he echoed; though it wasnt to gain time, he showed, for he would in that case have taken more. To the extent, you mean, of my little percentage? And then as in silence she but kept a slightly grim smile on him: Why do you ask ifwith your high delicacy about your great-grandmotheryouve nothing to place?
It took her a minute to say, while her fine eye only rolled; but when she spoke that organ boldly rested and the truth vividly appeared. I ask because people like you, Lord John, strike me as dangerous to thehow shall I name it?the common weal; and because of my general strong feeling that we dont want any more of our national treasures (for I regard my great-grandmother as national) to be scattered about the world.
Theres much in this country and age, he replied in an off-hand manner, to be said about that, The present, however, was not the time to say it all; so he said something else instead, accompanying it with a smile that signified sufficiency. To my friends, I need scarcely remark to you, Im all the friend.
She had meanwhile seen the butler reappear by the door that opened to the terrace, and though the high, bleak, impersonal approach of this functionary was ever, and more and more at every step, a process to defy interpretation, long practice evidently now enabled her to suggest, as she turned again to her fellow-visitor a reading of it. Its the friend then clearly whos wanted in the park.
She might, by the way Banks looked at her, have snatched from his hand a missive addressed to another; though while he addressed himself to her companion he allowed for her indecorum sufficiently to take it up where she had left it. By her ladyship, my lord, who sends to hope youll join them below the terrace.
Ah, Grace hopes, said Lady Sandgate for the young mans encouragement. There you are!
Lord John took up the motor-cap he had lain down on coming in. I rush to Lady Grace, but dont demoralise Bender! And he went forth to the terrace and the gardens.
Banks looked about as for some further exercise of his high function. Will you have tea, my lady?
This appeared to strike her as premature. Oh, thankswhen they all come in.
Theyll scarcely all, my ladyhe indicated respectfully that he knew what he was talking about. Theres tea in her ladyships tent; but, he qualified, it has also been ordered for the saloon.
Ah then, she said cheerfully, Mr. Bender will be glad! And she became, with this, aware of the approach of another visitor. Banks considered, up and down, the gentleman ushered in, at the left, by the footman who had received him at the main entrance to the house. Here he must be, my lady. With which he retired to the spacious opposite quarter, where he vanished, while the footman, his own office performed, retreated as he had come, and Lady Sandgate, all hospitality, received the many-sided author of her specious telegram, of Lord Johns irritating confidence and of Lady Lappingtons massive cheque.
II
Having greeted him with an explicitly gracious welcome and both hands out, she had at once gone on: Youll of course have tea?in the saloon.
But his mechanism seemed of the type that has to expand and revolve before sounding. Why; the very first thing?
She only desired, as her laugh showed, to accommodate. Ah, have it the last if you like!
You see your English teas! he pleaded as he looked about him, so immediately and frankly interested in the place and its contents that his friend could only have taken this for the very glance with which he must have swept Lady Lappingtons inferior scene.
Theyre too much for you?
Well, theyre too many. I think Ive had two or three on the roadat any rate my man did. I like to do business before But his sequence dropped as his eye caught some object across the wealth of space.
She divertedly picked it up. Before tea, Mr. Bender?
Before everything, Lady Sandgate. He was immensely genial, but a queer, quaint, rough-edged distinctness somehow kept it safefor himself.
Then youve come to do business? Her appeal and her emphasis melted as into a caresswhich, however, spent itself on his large high person as he consented, with less of demonstration but more of attention, to look down upon her. She could therefore but reinforce it by an intenser note. To tell me you will treat?
Mr. Bender had six feet of stature and an air as of having received benefits at the hands of fortune. Substantial, powerful, easy, he shone as with a glorious cleanness, a supplied and equipped and appointed sanity and security; aids to action that might have figured a pair of very ample wingswide pinions for the present conveniently folded, but that he would certainly on occasion agitate for great efforts and spread for great flights. These things would have made him quite an admirable, even a worshipful, image of full-blown life and character, had not the affirmation and the emphasis halted in one important particular. Fortune, felicity, nature, the perverse or interfering old fairy at his cradle-sidewhatever the ministering power might have beenhad simply overlooked and neglected his vast wholly-shaven face, which thus showed not so much for perfunctorily scamped as for not treated, as for neither formed nor fondled nor finished, at all. Nothing seemed to have been done for it but what the razor and the sponge, the tooth-brush and the looking-glass could officiously do; it had in short resisted any possibly finer attrition at the hands of fifty years of offered experience. It had developed on the lines, if lines they could be called, of the mere scoured and polished and initialled mug rather than to any effect of a composed physiognomy; though we must at the same time add that its wearer carried this featureless disk as with the warranted confidence that might have attended a warning headlight or a glaring motor-lamp. The object, however one named it, showed you at least where he was, and most often that he was straight upon you. It was fearlessly and resistingly across the path of his advance that Lady Sandgate had thrown herself, and indeed with such success that he soon connected her demonstration with a particular motive. For your grandmother, Lady Sandgate? he then returned.
For my grandmothers mother, Mr. Benderthe most beautiful woman of her time and the greatest of all Lawrences, no matter whose; as you quite acknowledged, you know, in our talk in Bruton Street.
Mr. Bender bethought himself furtheryet drawing it out; as if the familiar fact of his being made up to had never had such special softness and warmth of pressure. Do you want very, very much?
She had already caught him up. Very, very much for her? Well, Mr. Bender, she smilingly replied, I think I should like her full value.
I meanhe kindly discriminateddo you want so badly to work her off?
It would be an intense convenience to meso much so that your telegram made me at once fondly hope youd be arriving to conclude.
Such measure of response as he had good-naturedly given her was the mere frayed edge of a mastering detachment, the copious, impatient range elsewhere of his true attention. Somehow, however, he still seemed kind even while, turning his back upon her, he moved off to look at one of the several, the famous Dedborough picturesstray specimens, by every presumption, lost a little in the whole bright bigness. Conclude? he echoed as he approached a significantly small canvas. You ladies want to get there before the roads so much as laid or the countrys safe! Do you know what this here is? he at once went on.
Oh, you cant have that! she cried as with full authorityand you must really understand that you cant have everything. You mustnt expect to ravage Dedborough.