VI
Left alone he had a moment's meditation where he stood; it found issuein an articulate "Poor dear thing!"--an exclamation marked at once withpatience and impatience, with resignation and ridicule. After which,waiting for his daughter, Lord Theign slowly and absently roamed,finding matches at last and lighting his cigarette--all with an airof concern that had settled on him more heavily from the moment of hisfinding himself alone. His luxury of gloom--if gloom it was--dropped,however, on his taking heed of Lady Grace, who, arriving on the scenethrough the other room, had had just time to stand and watch him insilence.
"Oh!" he jerked out at sight of her--which she had to content herselfwith as a parental greeting after separation, his next words doinglittle to qualify its dryness. "I take it for granted that you knowI'm within a couple of hours of leaving England under a necessity ofhealth." And then as drawing nearer, she signified without speaking herpossession of this fact: "I've thought accordingly that before I go Ishould--on this first possible occasion since that odious occurrence atDedborough--like to leave you a little more food for meditation, in myabsence, on the painfully false position in which you there placed me."He carried himself restlessly even perhaps with a shade of awkwardness,to which her stillness was a contrast; she just waited, whollypassive--possibly indeed a trifle portentous. "If you had plotted andplanned it in advance," he none the less firmly pursued, "if you hadacted from some uncanny or malignant motive, you couldn't have arrangedmore perfectly to incommode, to disconcert and, to all intents andpurposes, make light of me and insult me." Even before this chargeshe made no sign; with her eyes now attached to the ground she let himproceed. "I had practically guaranteed to our excellent, our charmingfriend, your favourable view of his appeal--which you yourself too,remember, had left him in so little doubt of!--so that, having by yourperformance so egregiously failed him, I have the pleasure of theircoming down on me for explanations, for compensations, and for God knowswhat besides."
Lady Grace, looking up at last, left him in no doubt of the rigour ofher attention. "I'm sorry indeed, father, to have done you any wrong;but may I ask whom, in such a connection, you refer to as 'they'?"
"'They'?" he echoed in the manner of a man who has had handed back tohis more careful eye, across the counter, some questionable coin that hehas tried to pass. "Why, your own sister to begin with--whose interestin what may make for your happiness I suppose you decently recognise;and _his_ people, one and all, the delightful old Duchess in particular,who only wanted to be charming to you, and who are as good people, andas pleasant and as clever, damn it, when all's said and done, as anyothers that are likely to come your way." It clearly did his lordshipgood to work out thus his case, which grew more and more coherent tohim and glowed with irresistible colour. "Letting alone gallant Johnhimself, most amiable of men, about whose merits and whose claims youappear to have pretended to agree with me just that you might, when hepresumed, poor chap, ardently to urge them, deal him with the more crueleffect that calculated blow on the mouth!"
It was clear that in the girl's great gravity embarrassment had noshare. "They so come down on you I understand then, father, that you'reobliged to come down on _me?_"
"Assuredly--for some better satisfaction than your just moping herewithout a sign!"
"But a sign of what, father?" she asked--as helpless as a lone islanderscanning the horizon for a sail.
"Of your appreciating, of your in some degree dutifully considering, thepredicament into which you've put me!"
"Hasn't it occurred to you in the least that you've rather put _me_ intoone?"
He threw back his head as from exasperated nerves. "I put you certainlyin the predicament of your receiving by my care a handsome settlementin life--which all the elements that would make for your enjoying ithad every appearance of successfully commending to you." The perfectreadiness of which on his lips had, like a higher wave, the virtueof lifting and dropping him to still more tangible ground. "And if Iunderstand you aright as wishing to know whether I apologise for thatzeal, why you take a most preposterous view of our relation as fatherand daughter."
"You understand me no better than I fear I understand you," Lady Gracereturned, "if what you expect of me is really to take back my words toLord John." And then as he didn't answer, while their breach gaped likea jostled wound, "Have you seriously come to propose--and from _him_again," she added--"that I shall reconsider my resolute act and lendmyself to your beautiful arrangement?"
It had so the sound of unmixed ridicule that he could only, for hisdignity, not give way to passion. "I've come, above all, for _this_, Imay say, Grace: to remind you of whom you're addressing when you jibe atme, and to make of you assuredly a plain demand--exactly as to whetheryou judged us to have actively _incurred_ your treatment of our unhappyfriend, to have brought it upon us, he and I, by my refusal to discusswith you at such a crisis the question of my disposition of a particularitem of my property. I've only to look at you, for that matter," LordTheign continued--always with a finer point and a higher consistency ashis rehearsal of his wrongs broadened--"to have my inquiry, as it seemsto me, eloquently answered. You flounced away from poor John, you took,as he tells me, 'his head off,' just to repay me for what you chose toregard as my snub on the score of your challenging my entertainment ofa possible purchaser; a rebuke launched at me, practically, in thepresence of a most inferior person, a stranger and an intruder, fromwhom you had all the air of taking your cue for naming me the greatcondition on which you'd gratify my hope. Am I to understand, in otherwords,"--and his lordship mounted to a climax--"that you sent usabout our business because I failed to gratify _your_ hope: that of myknocking under to your sudden monstrous pretension to lay down the lawfor my choice of ways and means of raising, to my best convenience, aconsiderable sum of money? You'll be so good as to understand, oncefor all, that I recognise there no right of interference from anyquarter--and also to let that knowledge govern your behaviour in myabsence."
Lady Grace had thus for some minutes waited on his words--waited even asalmost with anxiety for the safe conduct he might look to from some ofthe more extravagant of them. But he at least felt at the end--if itwas an end--all he owed them; so that there was nothing for her but toaccept as achieved his dreadful felicity. "You're very angry withme, and I hope you won't feel me simply 'aggravating' if I say that,thinking everything over, I've done my best to allow for that. But I_can_ answer your question if I do answer it by saying that my discoveryof your possible sacrifice of one of our most beautiful things didn'tpredispose me to decide in favour of a person--however 'backed' byyou--for whose benefit the sacrifice was to take place. Frankly," thegirl pushed on, "I did quite hate, for the moment, everything that mightmake for such a mistake; and took the darkest view, let me also confess,of every one, without exception, connected with it I interceded withyou, earnestly, for our precious picture, and you wouldn't on any terms_have_ my intercession. On top of that Lord John blundered in, withouttimeliness or tact--and I'm afraid that, as I hadn't been the least inlove with him even before, he did have to take the consequence."
Lord Theign, with an elated swing of his person, greeted this as allhe could possibly want. "You recognise then that your reception of him_was_ purely vindictive!--the meaning of which is that unless my conductof my private interests, of which you know nothing whatever, happens tosquare with your superior wisdom you'll put me under boycott all round!While you chatter about mistakes and blunders, and about our charmingfriend's lack of the discretion of which you yourself set so grand anexample, what account have you to offer of the scene you made methere before that fellow--your confederate, as he had all the air ofbeing!--by giving it me with such effrontery that, if I had eminentlydone with him after his remarkable display, you at least were but themore determined to see him keep it up?"
The girl's justification, clearly, was very present to her, and notless obviously the truth that to make it strong she must, avoiding everyside-issue, keep it very simple, "The only
account I can give you, Ithink, is that I could but speak at such a moment as I felt, and that Ifelt--well, how can I say how deeply? If you can really bear to know,I feel so still I care in fact more than ever that we shouldn't do suchthings. I care, if you like, to indiscretion--I care, if you like, tooffence, to arrogance, to folly. But even as my last word to you beforeyou leave England on the conclusion of such a step, I'm ready to cry outto you that you oughtn't, you oughtn't, you oughtn't!"
Her father, with wonder-moved, elevated brows and high commanding hand,checked her as in an act really of violence--save that, like an inflamedyoung priestess, she had already, in essence, delivered her message."Hallo, hallo, hallo, my distracted daughter--no 'crying out,' if youplease!" After which, while arrested but unabashed, she still kept herlighted eyes on him, he gave back her conscious stare for a minute,inwardly and rapidly turning things over, making connections, taking,as after some long and lamentable lapse of observation, a new strangemeasure of her: all to the upshot of his then speaking with a differenceof tone, a recognition of still more of the odious than he had supposed,so that the case might really call for some coolness. "You keep badcompany, Grace--it pays the devil with your sense of proportion. If youmake this row when I sell a picture, what will be left to you when Iforge a cheque?"
"If you had arrived at the necessity of forging a cheque," she answered,"I should then resign myself to that of your selling a picture."
"But not short of that!"
"Not short of that. Not one of ours."
"But I couldn't," said his lordship with his best and coldest amusement,"sell one of somebody else's!"
She was, however, not disconcerted. "Other people do other things--theyappear to have done them, and to be doing them, all about us. But _we_have been so decently different--always and ever. We've never doneanything disloyal."
"'Disloyal'?"--he was more largely amazed and even interested now.
Lady Grace stuck to her word. "That's what it seems to _me!_"
"It seems to you"--and his sarcasm here was easy--"more disloyal to sella picture than to buy one? Because we didn't paint 'em all ourselves,you know!"
She threw up impatient hands. "I don't ask you either to paint or tobuy----!"
"Oh, _that's_ a mercy!" he interrupted, riding his irony hard; "andI'm glad to hear you at least let me off _such_ efforts! However, if itstrikes you as gracefully filial to apply to your father's conduct soinvidious a word," he went on less scathingly, "you must takefrom him, in your turn, his quite other view of what makesdisloyalty--understanding distinctly, by the same token, that he enjoinson you not to give an odious illustration of it, while he's away, bydiscussing and deploring with any _one_ of your extraordinaryfriends any aspect or feature whatever of his walk and conversation.That--pressed as I am for time," he went on with a glance at his watchwhile she remained silent--"is the main sense of what I have to say toyou; so that I count on your perfect conformity. When you have told methat I _may_ so count"--and casting about for his hat he espied it andwent to take it up--"I shall more cordially bid you good-bye."
His daughter looked as if she had been for some time expecting the lawthus imposed upon her--had been seeing where he must come out; butin spite of this preparation she made him wait for his reply in suchtension as he had himself created. "To Kitty I've practically saidnothing--and she herself can tell you why: I've in fact scarcely seenher this fortnight. Putting aside then Amy Sandgate, the only person towhom I've spoken--of your 'sacrifice,' as I suppose you'll let mecall it?--is Mr. Hugh Crimble, whom you talk of as my 'confederate' atDedborough."
Lord Theign recovered the name with relief. "Mr. Hugh Crimble--that'sit!--whom you so amazingly caused to be present, and apparently invitedto be active, at a business that so little concerned him."
"He certainly took upon himself to be interested, as I had hoped hewould. But it was because I had taken upon _my_ self--"
"To act, yes," Lord Theign broke in, "with the grossest want ofdelicacy! Well, it's from that exactly that you'll now forbear;and 'interested' as he may be--for which I'm deucedly obliged tohim!--you'll not speak to Mr. Crimble again."
"Never again?"--the girl put it as for full certitude.
"Never of the question that I thus exclude. You may chatter your fill,"said his lordship curtly, "about any others."
"Why, the particular question you forbid," Grace returned with greatforce, but as if saying something very reasonable--"that question is_the_ question we care about: it's our very ground of conversation."
"Then," her father decreed, "your conversation will please to _dispense_with a ground; or you'll perhaps, better still--if that's the onlyway!--dispense with your conversation."
Lady Grace took a moment as if to examine this more closely. "Yourequire of me not to communicate with Mr. Crimble at all?"
"Most assuredly I require it--since it's to that you insist onreducing me." He didn't look reduced, the master of Dedborough, as hespoke--which was doubtless precisely because he held his head so highto affirm what he suffered. "Is it so essential to your comfort," hedemanded, "to hear him, or to make him, abuse me?"
"'Abusing' you, father dear, has nothing whatever to do with it!"--hisdaughter had fairly lapsed, with a despairing gesture, to the tendernessinvolved in her compassion for his perversity. "We look at the thing ina much larger way," she pursued, not heeding that she drew from hima sound of scorn for her "larger." "It's of our Treasure itself wetalk--and of what can be _done_ in such cases; though with a closeapplication, I admit, to the case that you embody."
"Ah," Lord Theign asked as with absurd curiosity, "I embody a case?"
"Wonderfully, father--as you do everything; and it's the fact of itsbeing exceptional," she explained, "that makes it so difficult to dealwith."
His lordship had a gape for it. "'To deal with'? You're undertaking to'deal' with me?"
She smiled more frankly now, as for a rift in the gloom. "Well, how canwe help it if you _will_ be a case?" And then as her tone but visiblydarkened his wonder: "What we've set our hearts on is saving thepicture."
"What you've set your hearts on, in other words, is working straightagainst me?"
But she persisted without heat. "What we've set our hearts on is workingfor England."
"And pray who in the world's 'England,'" he cried in his stupefaction,"unless I am?"
"Dear, dear father," she pleaded, "that's all we _want_ you to be! Imean"--she didn't fear firmly to force it home--"in the real, the right,the grand sense; the sense that, you see, is so intensely ours."
"'Ours'?"--he couldn't but again throw back her word at her. "Isn't it,damn you, just _in_ ours--?"
"No, no," she interrupted--"not in _ours!_" She smiled at him still,though it was strained, as if he really ought to perceive.
But he glared as at a senseless juggle. "What and who the devil are youtalking about? What are 'we,' the whole blest lot of us, pray, butthe best and most English thing in the country: people walking--andriding!--straight; doing, disinterestedly, most of the difficult and allthe thankless jobs; minding their own business, above all, and expectingothers to mind theirs?" So he let her "have" the stout sound truth, asit were--and so the direct force of it clearly might, by his view, havemade her reel. "You and I, my lady, and your two decent brothers, God bethanked for them, and mine into the bargain, and all the rest, the jollylot of us, take us together--make us numerous enough without any foreignaid or mixture: if that's what I understand you to mean!"
"You don't understand me at all--evidently; and above all I see youdon't want to!" she had the bravery to add, "By 'our' sense of what'sdue to the nation in such a case I mean Mr. Crimble's and mine--andnobody's else at all; since, as I tell you, it's only with him I'vetalked."
It gave him then, every inch of him showed, the full, the grotesquemeasure of the scandal he faced. "So that 'you and Mr. Crimble'represent the standard, for me, in your opinion, of the proprieties andduties of our house?"
Well, she was too earn
est--as she clearly wished to let him see--to mindhis perversion of it. "I express to you the way we feel."
"It's most striking to hear, certainly, what you express"--hehad positively to laugh for it; "and you speak of him, with yourinsufferable 'we,' as if you were presenting him as your--God knowswhat! You've enjoyed a large exchange of ideas, I gather, to havearrived at such unanimity." And then, as if to fall into no trap hemight somehow be laying for her, she dropped all eagerness and rebuttednothing: "You must see a great deal of your fellow-critic not to be ableto speak of yourself without him!"
"Yes, we're fellow-critics, father"--she accepted this opening. "Iperfectly adopt your term." But it took her a minute to go further. "Isaw Mr. Crim-ble here half an hour ago."
"Saw him 'here'?" Lord Theign amazedly asked. "He _comes_ to youhere--and Amy Sandgate has been silent?"
"It wasn't her business to tell you--since, you see, she could leave itto me. And I quite expect," Lady Grace then produced, "that he'll comeagain."
It brought down with a bang all her father's authority. "Then I simplyexact of you that you don't see him."
The pause of which she paid it the deference was charged like a brimmingcup. "Is that what you _really_ meant by your condition just now--thatwhen I do see him I shall not speak to him?"
"What I 'really meant' is what I really mean--that you bow to the law Ilay upon you and drop the man altogether."
"Have nothing to do with him at all?"
"Have nothing to do with him at all."
"In fact"--she took it in--"give him wholly up."
He had an impatient gesture. "You sound as if I asked you to give upa fortune!" And then, though she had phrased his idea withoutconsternation--verily as if it had been in the balance for her--hemight have been moved by something that gathered in her eyes. "You'reso wrapped up in him that the precious sacrifice is like _that_ sort ofthing?"
Lady Grace took her time--but showed, as her eyes continued to hold him,what _had_ gathered. "I like Mr. Crimble exceedingly, father--I thinkhim clever, intelligent, good; I want what he wants--I want it, I think,really, as much; and I don't at all deny that he has helped to make meso want it. But that doesn't matter. I'll wholly cease to see him, I'llgive him up forever, if--if--!" She faltered, however, she hung firewith a smile that anxiously, intensely appealed. Then she beganand stopped again, "If--if--!" while her father caught her up withirritation.
"'If,' my lady? If _what_, please?"
"If you'll withdraw the offer of our picture to Mr. Bender--and nevermake another to any one else!"
He stood staring as at the size of it--then translated it into his ownterms. "If I'll obligingly announce to the world that I've made an assof myself you'll kindly forbear from your united effort--the charmingpair of you--to show me up for one?"
Lady Grace, as if consciously not caring or attempting to answer this,simply gave the first flare of his criticism time to drop. It wasn'ttill a minute passed that she said: "You don't agree to my compromise?"
Ah, the question but fatally sharpened at a stroke the stiffness of hisspirit. "Good God, I'm to 'compromise' on top of everything?--I'm tolet you browbeat me, haggle and bargain with me, over a thing that I'mentitled to settle with you as things have ever _been_ settled among us,by uttering to you my last parental word?"
"You don't care enough then for what you name?"--she took it up asscarce heeding now what he said.
"For putting an end to your odious commerce--? I give you the measure,on the contrary," said Lord Theign, "of how much I care: as you give me,very strangely indeed, it strikes me, that of what it costs you--!" Buthis other words were lost in the hard long look at her from which hebroke off in turn as for disgust.
It was with an effect of decently shielding herself--the unutteredmeaning came so straight--that she substituted words of her own. "Ofwhat it costs me to redeem the picture?"
"To lose your tenth-rate friend"--he spoke without scruple now.
She instantly broke into ardent deprecation, pleading at once andwarning. "Father, father, oh--! You hold the thing in your hands."
He pulled up before her again as to thrust the responsibility straightback. "My orders then are so much rubbish to you?"
Lady Grace held her ground, and they remained face to face in oppositionand accusation, neither making the other the sign of peace. But the girlat least _had_, in her way, held out the olive-branch, while Lord Theignhad but reaffirmed his will. It was for her acceptance of this that hesearched her, her last word not having yet come. Before it had done so,however, the door from the lobby opened and Mr. Gotch had regainedtheir presence. This appeared to determine in Lady Grace a view of theimportance of delay, which she signified to her companion in a "Well--Imust think!" For the butler positively resounded, and Hugh was there.
"Mr. Crimble!" Mr. Gotch proclaimed--with the further extravagance ofprojecting the visitor straight upon his lordship.