The Outcry Part 3

She joyously registered the vow. "Only meanwhile then, please, never a word!"

"Never a word, certainly. But where all this time," Mr. Bender asked, "is Lord John?"

Lady Sandgate, as he spoke, found her eyes meeting those of a young woman who, presenting herself from without, stood framed in the doorway to the terrace; a slight fair grave young woman, of middle, stature and simply dressed, whose brow showed clear even under the heavy shade of a large hat surmounted with big black bows and feathers. Her eyes had vaguely questioned those of her elder, who at once replied to the gentleman forming the subject of their inquiry: "Lady Grace must know."

At this the young woman came forward, and Lady Sandgate introduced the visitor. "My dear Grace, this is Mr. Breckenridge Bender."

The younger daughter of the house might have arrived in preoccupation, but she had urbanity to spare. "Of whom Lord John has told me," she returned, "and whom I'm glad to see. Lord John," she explained to his waiting friend, "is detained a moment in the park, open to-day to a big Temperance school-feast, where our party is mostly gathered; so that if you care to go out--!" She gave him in fine his choice.

But this was clearly a thing that, in the conditions, Mr. Bender wasn't the man to take precipitately; though his big useful smile disguised his prudence. "Are there any pictures in the park?"

Lady Grace's facial response represented less humour perhaps, but more play. "We find our park itself rather a picture."

Mr. Bender's own levity at any rate persisted. "With a big Temperance school-feast?"

"Mr. Bender's a great judge of pictures," Lady Sandgate said as to forestall any impression of excessive freedom.

"Will there be more tea?" he pursued, almost presuming on this.

It showed Lady Grace for comparatively candid and literal. "Oh, there'll be plenty of tea."

This appeared to determine Mr. Bender. "Well, Lady Grace, I'm after pictures, but I take them 'neat.' May I go right round here?"

"Perhaps, love," Lady Sandgate at once said, "you'll let me show him."

"A moment, dear"--Lady Grace gently demurred. "Do go round," she conformably added to Mr. Bender; "take your ease and your time.

Everything's open and visible, and, with our whole company dispersed, you'll have the place to yourself."

He rose, in his genial ma.s.s, to the opportunity. "I'll be in clover--sure!" But present to him was the richest corner of the pasture, which he could fluently enough name. "And I'll find 'The Beautiful d.u.c.h.ess of Waterbridge'?"

She indicated, off to the right, where a stately perspective opened, the quarter of the saloon to which we have seen Mr. Banks retire. "At the very end of _those_ rooms."

He had wide eyes for the vista. "About thirty in a row, hey?" And he was already off. "I'll work right through!"

III

Left with her friend, Lady Grace had a prompt question. "Lord John warned me he was 'funny'--but you already know him?"

There might have been a sense of embarra.s.sment in the way in which, as to gain time, Lady Sandgate pointed, instead of answering, to the small picture p.r.o.nounced upon by Mr. Bender. "He thinks your little Cuyp a fraud."

"That one?" Lady Grace could but stare. "The wretch!" However, she made, without alarm, no more of it; she returned to her previous question.

"You've met him before?"

"Just a little--in town. Being 'after pictures'" Lady Sandgate explained, "he has been after my great-grandmother."

"She," said Lady Grace with amus.e.m.e.nt, "must have found him funny! But he can clearly take care of himself, while Kitty takes care of Lord John, and while you, if you'll be so good, go back to support father--in the hour of his triumph: which he wants you so much to witness that he complains of your desertion and goes so far as to speak of you as sneaking away."

Lady Sandgate, with a slight flush, turned it over. "I delight in his triumph, and whatever I do is at least above board; but if it's a question of support, aren't you yourself failing him quite as much?"

This had, however, no effect on the girl's confidence. "Ah, my dear, I'm not at all the same thing, and as I'm the person in the world he least misses--" Well, such a fact spoke for itself.

"You've been free to return and wait for Lord John?"--that was the sense in which the elder woman appeared to prefer to understand it as speaking.

The tone of it, none the less, led her companion immediately, though very quietly, to correct her. "I've not come back to wait for Lord John."

"Then he hasn't told you--if you've talked--with what idea he has come?"

Lady Grace had for a further correction the same shade of detachment.

"Kitty has told me--what it suits her to pretend to suppose."

"And Kitty's pretensions and suppositions always go with what happens--at the moment, among all her wonderful happenings--to suit her?"

Lady Grace let that question answer itself--she took the case up further on. "What I can't make out is why this _should_ so suit her!"

"And what _I_ can't!" said Lady Sandgate without gross honesty and turning away after having watched the girl a moment. She nevertheless presently faced her again to follow this speculation up. "Do you like him enough to risk the chance of Kitty's being for once right?"

Lady Grace gave it a thought--with which she moved away. "I don't know how much I like him!"

"Nor how little!" cried her friend, who evidently found amus.e.m.e.nt in the tone of it. "And you're not disposed to take the time to find out? He's at least better than the others."

"The 'others'?"--Lady Grace was blank for them.

"The others of his set."

"Oh, his set! That wouldn't be difficult--by what I imagine of some of them. But he means well enough," the girl added; "he's very charming and does me great honour."

It determined in her companion, about to leave her, another brief arrest. "Then may I tell your father?"

This in turn brought about in Lady Grace an immediate drop of the subject. "Tell my father, please, that I'm expecting Mr. Crimble; of whom I've spoken to him even if he doesn't remember, and who bicycles this afternoon ten miles over from where he's staying--with some people we don't know--to look at the pictures, about which he's awfully keen."

Lady Sandgate took it in. "Ah, like Mr. Bender?"

"No, not at all, I think, like Mr. Bender."

This appeared to move in the elder woman some deeper thought "May I ask then--if one's to meet him--who he is?"

"Oh, father knows--or ought to--that I sat next him, in London, a month ago, at dinner, and that he then told me he was working, tooth and nail, at what he called the wonderful modern science of Connoisseurship--which is upsetting, as perhaps you're not aware, all the old-fashioned canons of art-criticism, everything we've stupidly thought right and held dear; that he was to spend Easter in these parts, and that he should like greatly to be allowed some day to come over and make acquaintance with our things. I told him," Lady Grace wound up, "that nothing would be easier; a note from him arrived before dinner----"

Lady Sandgate jumped the rest "And it's for him you've come in."

"It's for him I've come in," the girl a.s.sented with serenity.

"Very good--though he sounds most detrimental! But will you first just tell me _this_--whether when you sent in ten minutes ago for Lord John to come out to you it was wholly of your own movement?" And she followed it up as her young friend appeared to hesitate. "Was it because you knew why he had arrived?"

The young friend hesitated still. "'Why '?"

"So particularly to speak to you."