The Outcry Part 21

"If you call _that_ a regular dig you can't have had much experience of the Papers. I've known them to dig much deeper."

"I've had _no_ experience of such horrid attacks, thank goodness; but do you mean to say," asked Lord John with the surprise of his own delicacy, "that you don't unpleasantly feel it?"

"Feel it where, my dear sir?"

"Why, G.o.d bless me, such impertinence, everywhere!"

"All over me at once?"--Mr. Bender took refuge in easy humour. "Well, I'm a large man--so when I want to feel so much I look out for something good. But what, if he suffers from the blot on his ermine--ain't that what you wear?--does our friend propose to do about it?"

Lord John had a demur, which was immediately followed by the apprehension of support in his uncertainty. Lady Sandgate was before them, having reached them through the other room, and to her he at once referred the question. "What _will_ Theign propose, do you think, Lady Sandgate, to do about it?"

She breathed both her hospitality and her vagueness. "To 'do'----?"

"Don't you know about the thing in the 'Journal'--awfully offensive all round?"

"There'd be even a little pinch for _you_ in it," Mr. Bender said to her--"if you were bent on fitting the shoe!"

Well, she met it all as gaily as was compatible with a firm look at her elder guest while she took her place with them. "Oh, the shoes of such monsters as that are much too big for poor _me!_" But she was more specific for Lord John. "I know only what Grace has just told me; but since it's a question of footgear dear Theign will certainly--what you may call--take his stand!"

Lord John welcomed this a.s.surance. "If I know him he'll take it splendidly!"

Mr. Bender's attention was genial, though rather more detached. "And what--while he's about it--will he take it particularly _on?_"

"Oh, we've plenty of things, thank heaven," said Lady Sandgate, "for a man in Theign's position to hold fast by!"

Lord John freely confirmed it. "Scores and scores--rather! And I will say for us that, with the rotten way things seem going, the fact may soon become a real convenience."

Mr. Bender seemed struck--and not unsympathetic. "I see that your system would be rather a fraud if you hadn't pretty well fixed _that!_"

Lady Sandgate spoke as one at present none the less substantially warned and convinced. "It doesn't, however, alter the fact that we've thus in our ears the first growl of an outcry."

"Ah," Lord John concurred, "we've unmistakably the first growl of an outcry!"

Mr. Bender's judgment on the matter paused at sight of Lord Theign, introduced and announced, as Lord John spoke, by Gotch; but with the result of his addressing directly the person so presenting himself.

"Why, they tell me that what this means, Lord Theign, is the first growl of an outcry!"

The appearance of the most eminent figure in the group might have been held in itself to testify to some such truth; in the sense at least that a certain conscious radiance, a gathered light of battle in his lordship's aspect would have been explained by his having taken the full measure--an inner success with which he glowed--of some high provocation. He was flushed, but he bore it as the ensign of his house; he was so admirably, vividly dressed, for the morning hour and for his journey, that he shone as with the armour of a knight; and the whole effect of him, from head to foot, with every jerk of his unconcern and every flash of his ease, was to call attention to his being utterly unshaken and knowing perfectly what he was about. It was at this happy pitch that he replied to the prime upsetter of his peace.

"I'm afraid I don't know what anything means to _you_, Mr. Bender--but it's exactly to find out that I've asked you, with our friend John, kindly to meet me here. For a very brief conference, dear lady, by your good leave," he went on to Lady Sandgate; "at which I'm only too pleased that you yourself should a.s.sist. The 'first growl' of any outcry, I may mention to you all, affects me no more than the last will----!"

"So I'm delighted to gather"--Lady Sandgate took him straight up--"that you don't let go your inestimable Cure."

He at first quite stared superior--"'Let go'?"--but then treated it with a lighter touch. "Upon my honour I might, you know--that dose of the daily press has made me feel so fit! I arrive at any rate," he pursued to the others and in particular to Mr. Bender, "I arrive with my decision taken--which I've thought may perhaps interest you. If that tuppeny rot _is_ an attempt at an outcry I simply nip it in the bud."

Lord John rejoicingly approved. "Absolutely the only way--with the least self-respect--to treat it!"

Lady Sandgate, on the other hand, sounded a sceptical note. "But are you sure it's so easy, Theign, to hush up a _real_ noise?"

"It ain't what I'd call a real one, Lady Sandgate," Mr. Bender said; "you can generally distinguish a real one from the squeak of two or three mice! But granted mice do affect you, Lord Theign, it will interest me to hear what sort of a trap--by what you say--you propose to set for them."

"You must allow me to measure, myself, Mr. Bender," his lordship replied, "the importance of a gross freedom publicly used with my absolutely personal proceedings and affairs; to the cause and origin of any definite report of which--in such circles!--I'm afraid I rather wonder if you yourself can't give me a clue."

It took Mr. Bender a minute to do justice to these stately remarks. "You rather wonder if I've talked of how I feel about your detaining in your hands my Beautiful d.u.c.h.ess----?"

"Oh, if you've already published her as 'yours'--with your _power_ of publication!" Lord Theign coldly laughed,--"of course I trace the connection!"

Mr. Benders acceptance of responsibility clearly cost him no shade of a pang. "Why, I haven't for quite a while talked of a blessed other thing--and I'm capable of growing more profane over my _not_ getting her than I guess any one would dare to be if I did."

"Well, you'll certainly not 'get' her, Mr. Bender," Lady Sandgate, as for reasons of her own, bravely trumpeted; "and even if there were a chance of it don't you see that your way wouldn't be publicly to abuse our n.o.ble friend?"

Mr. Bender but beamed, in reply, upon that personage. "Oh, I guess our n.o.ble friend knows I _have_ to talk big about big things. You understand, sir, the scream of the eagle!"

"I'll forgive you," Lord Theign civilly returned, "all the big talk you like if you'll now understand _me_. My retort to that hireling pack shall be at once to dispose of a picture."

Mr. Bender rather failed to follow. "But that's what you wanted to do before."

"Pardon me," said his lordship--"I make a difference. It's what you wanted me to do."

The mystification, however, continued. "And you were _not_--as you seemed then--willing?"

Lord Theign waived cross-questions. "Well, I'm willing _now_--that's all that need concern us. Only, once more and for the last time," he added with all authority, "you can't have our d.u.c.h.ess!"

"You can't have our d.u.c.h.ess!"--and Lord John, as before the altar of patriotism, wrapped it in sacrificial sighs.

"You can't have our d.u.c.h.ess!" Lady Sandgate repeated, but with a grace that took the sting from her triumph. And she seemed still all sweet sociability as she added: "I wish he'd tell you too, you dreadful rich thing, that you can't have anything at all!"

Lord Theign, however, in the interest of harmony, deprecated that rigour. "Ah, what then would become of my happy retort?"

"And what--as it _is_," Mr. Bender asked--"becomes of my unhappy grievance?"

"Wouldn't a really great capture make up to you for that?"

"Well, I take more interest in what I want than in what I have--and it depends, don't you see, on how you measure the size."

Lord John had at once in this connection a bright idea. "Shouldn't you like to go back there and take the measure yourself?"

Mr. Bender considered him as through narrowed eyelids. "Look again at that tottering Moretto?"

"Well, its size--as you say--isn't in _any_ light a negligible quant.i.ty."

"You mean that--big as it is--it hasn't yet stopped growing?"

The question, however, as he immediately showed, resided in what Lord Theign himself meant "It's more to the purpose," he said to Mr. Bender, "that I should mention to you the leading feature, or in other words the very essence, of my plan of campaign--which is to put the picture at once on view." He marked his idea with a broad but elegant gesture. "On view as a thing definitely disposed of."

"I say, I say, I say!" cried Lord John, moved by this bold stroke to high admiration.

Lady Sandgate's approval was more qualified. "But on view, dear Theign, how?"

"With one of those pushing people in Bond Street." And then as for the crushing climax of his policy: "As a Mantovano pure and simple."