VII
Our young man showed another face than the face his friend had latelyseen him carry off, and he now turned it distressfully from that sourceof inspiration to Lord Theign, who was flagrantly, even from this firstmoment, no such source at all, and then from his noble adversary backagain, under pressure of difficulty and effort, to Lady Grace, whom hedirectly addressed. "Here I am again, you see--and I've got my news,worse luck!" But his manner to her father was the next instant morebrisk. "I learned you were here, my lord; but as the case is important Itold them it was all right and came up. I've been to my club," headded for the girl, "and found the tiresome thing--!" But he broke downbreathless.
"And it isn't good?" she cried with the highest concern.
Ruefully, yet not abjectly, he confessed, "Not so good as I hoped. For Iassure you, my lord, I counted--"
"It's the report from Pappendick about the picture at Verona," LadyGrace interruptingly explained.
Hugh took it up, but, as we should well have seen, under embarrassmentdismally deeper; the ugly particular defeat he had to announce showingthus, in his thought, for a more awkward force than any revivingpossibilities that he might have begun to balance against them. "The manI told _you_ about also," he said to his formidable patron; "whom Iwent to Brussels to talk with and who, most kindly, has gone for us toVerona. He has been able to get straight at _their_ Mantovano, but thebrute horribly wires me that he doesn't quite see the thing; see, Imean"--and he gathered his two hearers together now in his overflowof chagrin, conscious, with his break of the ice, more exclusively ofthat--"my vivid vital point, the absolute screaming identity of the twopersons represented. I still hold," he persuasively went on, "thatour man is their man, but Pappendick decides that he isn't--and asPappendick has so _much_ to be reckoned with of course I'm awfullyabashed."
Lord Theign had remained what he had begun by being, immeasurably andinaccessibly detached--only with his curiosity more moved than hecould help and as, on second thought, to see what sort of a still moreoffensive fool the heated youth would really make of himself. "Yes--youseem indeed remarkably abashed!"
Hugh clearly was thrown again, by the cold "cut" of this, colder thanany mere social ignoring, upon a sense of the damnably poor figure hedid offer; so that, while he straightened himself and kept a mastery ofhis manner and a control of his reply, we should yet have felt his cheektingle. "I backed my own judgment strongly, I know--and I've got mysnub. But I don't in the least knock under."
"Only the first authority in Europe doesn't care, I suppose, whether youdo or not!"
"He isn't _the_ first authority in Europe, thank God," the young manreturned--"though he is, I admit, one of the three or four first. AndI mean to appeal--I've another shot in my locker," he went on with hisrather painfully forced smile to Lady Grace. "I had already written, yousee, to dear old Bardi."
"Bardi of Milan?"--she recognised, it was admirably manifest, the appealof his directness to her generosity, awkward as their predicament wasalso for her herself, and spoke to him as she might have spoken withouther father's presence.
It would have shown for beautiful, on the spot, had there been any oneto perceive it, that he devoutly recorded her intelligence. "You know ofhim?--how delightful of you! For the Italians, I now feel," he quicklyexplained, "he must have _most_ the instinct--and it has come over mesince that he'd have been more our man. Besides of course his so knowingthe Verona picture."
She had fairly hung on his lips. "But does he know ours?"
"No--not ours yet. That is"--he consciously and quickly took himselfup--"not yours! But as Pap-pendick went to Verona for us I've askedBardi to do us the great favour to come here--if Lord Theign will be sogood," he said, bethinking himself with a turn, "as to let him examinethe Moretto." He faced again to the personage he mentioned, who,simply standing off and watching, in concentrated interest as well asdetachment, this interview of his cool daughter and her still coolerguest, had plainly "elected," as it were, to give them rope to hangthemselves. Staring very hard at Hugh he met his appeal, but in asilence clearly calculated; against which, however, the young man,bearing up, made such head as he could. He offered his next word, thatis, equally to the two companions. "It's not at all impossible--for suchcurious effects have been!--that the Dedborough picture seen _after_the Verona will point a different moral from the Verona seen after theDedborough."
"And so awfully _long_ after--wasn't it?" Lady Grace asked.
"Awfully long after--it was years ago that Pappen-dick, being in thiscountry for such purposes, was kindly admitted to your house when noneof you were there, or at least visible."
"Oh of course we don't see _every one!_"--she heroically kept it up.
"You don't see every one," Hugh bravely laughed, "and that makes it allthe more charming that you did, and that you still do, see me. I shallreally get Bardi," he pursued, "to go again to Verona----"
"The last thing before coming here?"--she had guessed before he couldsay it; and still she sustained it, so that he could shine at her forassent. "How happy they should like so to work for you!"
"Ah, we're a band of brothers," he returned--"'we few, we happyfew'--from country to country"; to which he added, gaining more ease foran eye at Lord Theign: "though we do have our little rubs and disputes,like Pappendick and me now. The thing, you see, is the ripping_interest_ of it all; since," he developed and explained, for his elderfriend's benefit, with pertinacious cheer and an assurance superficiallyat least recovered, "when we're really 'hit' over a case we'll do almostanything in life."
Lady Grace, recklessly throbbing in the breath of it all, immediatelyappropriated what her father let alone. "It must be so lovely to _feel_so hit!"
"It does spoil one," Hugh laughed, "for milder joys. Of course what Ihave to consider is the chance--putting it at the _merest_ chance--ofBardi's own wet blanket! But that's again so very small--though," hepulled up with a drop to the comparative dismal, which he offered as analmost familiar tribute to Lord Theign, "you'll retort upon me naturallythat I promised you the possibility of Pappendick's veto would be: allon the poor dear old basis, you'll claim, of the wish father to thethought. Well, I do wish to be right as much as I believe I am. Onlygive me time!" he sublimely insisted.
"How can we prevent your using it?" Lady Grace again interrupted; "orthe fact either that if the worst comes to the worst--"
"The thing"--he at once pursued--"will always be at the least thegreatest of Morettos? Ah," he cried so cheerily that there was still afreedom in it toward any it might concern, "the worst sha'n't come tothe worst, but the best to the best: my conviction of which it is thatsupports me in the deep regret I have to express"--and he faced LordTheign again--"for any inconvenience I may have caused you by myabortive undertaking. That, I vow here before Lady Grace, I will yetmore than make up!"
Lord Theign, after the longest but the blankest contemplation ofhim, broke hereupon, for the first time, that attitude of completelysustained and separate silence which he had yet made compatible with hisair of having deeply noted every element of the scene--so that it was ofthis full view his participation had effectively consisted, "I haven'tthe least idea, sir, what you're talking about!" And he squarely turnedhis back, strolling toward the other room, the threshold of which he thenext moment had passed, remaining scantily within, however, and insight of the others, not to say of ourselves; even though averted andostensibly lost in some scrutiny that might have had for its object thegreat enshrined Lawrence.
There ensued upon his words and movement a vivid mute passage, therichest of commentaries, between his companions; who, deeply divided bythe width of the ample room, followed him with their eyes and then usedfor their own interchange these organs of remark, eloquent now overHugh's unmistakable dismissal at short order, on which obviously he mustat once act. Lady Grace's young arms conveyed to him by a despairingcontrite motion of surrender that she had done for him all she could doin his presence and that, however sharply doubtful the result, he was to
leave the rest to herself. They communicated thus, the strenuous pair,for their full moment, without speaking; only with the prolonged,the charged give and take of their gaze and, it might well havebeen imagined, of their passion. Hugh had for an instant a show ofhesitation--of the arrested impulse, while he kept her father withinrange, to launch at that personage before going some final remonstrance.It was the girl's raised hand and gesture of warning that waved awayfor him such a mistake; he decided, under her pressure, and after a lastsearching and answering look at her reached the door and let himselfout. The stillness was then prolonged a minute by the further wait ofthe two others, Lord Theign where he had been standing and his daughteron the spot from which she had not moved. It presently ended in hislordship's turn about as if inferring by the silence that the intruderhad withdrawn.
"Is that young man your lover?" he said as he drew again near.
Lady Grace waited a little, but spoke as quietly as if she had beenprepared. "Has the question a bearing on the promise you a short timeago demanded of me?"
"It has a bearing on the so extraordinary appearance of your intimacywith him!"
"You mean that if he _should_ be--what you ask me about--your exactionwould then be modified?"
"My request that you break it short off? That request would, on thecontrary," Lord Theign pronounced, "rest on an immense new ground.Therefore I insist on your telling me the truth."
"Won't the truth be before you, father, if you'll _think_ amoment--without extravagance?" After which, while, as stiffly asever--and it probably seemed to her impatience as stupidly--he didn'trise to it, she went on: "If I _offered_ you not again to see him, doesthat make for you the appearance--?"
"If you offered it, you mean, on your condition--my promising not tosell? I promised," said Lord Theign, "absolutely nothing at all!"
She took him up with all expression. "So I promised as little! Butthat I should have been able to say what I did sufficiently meets yourcuriosity."
She might, wronged as she held herself, have felt him stupid not to see_how_ wronged; but he was in any case acute for an evasion. "You riskedyour offer for the great equivalent over which you've so wildly workedyourself up."
"Yes, I've worked myself--that, I grant you and don't blush for! Buthardly so much as to renounce my 'lover'--if," she prodigiously smiled,"I were so fortunate as to have one!"
"You renounced poor John mightily easily--whom you were so fortunate asto have!"
Her brows rose as high as his own had ever done. "Do you call Lord Johnmy lover?"
"He was your suitor most assuredly," Lord Theign inimitably said,though without looking at her; "and as strikingly encouraged as he wasrespectfully ardent!"
"Encouraged by _you_, dear father, beyond doubt!"
"Encouraged--er--by every one: because you were (yes, you _were!_)encouraging. And what I ask of you now is a word of common candour asto whether you didn't, on your honour, turn him off because of your justthen so stimulated views on the person who has been with us."
Grace replied but after an instant, as moved by more things than shecould say--moved above all, in her trouble and her pity for him, byother things than harshness: "Oh father, father, father----!"
He searched her through all the compassion of her cry, but appeared togive way to her sincerity. "Well then if I _have_ your denial I takeit as answering my whole question--in a manner that satisfies me. Ifthere's nothing, on your word, of that sort between you, you can all themore drop him."
"But you said a moment ago that I should all the more in the othercase--that of there _being_ something!"
He brushed away her logic-chopping. "If you're so keen then for pastremarks I take up your own words--I accept your own terms for yourputting an end to Mr. Crimble." To which, while, turning pale, she saidnothing, he added: "You recognise that you profess yourself ready----"
"Not again to see him," she now answered, "if you tell me the picture'ssafe? Yes, I recognise that I _was_ ready--as well as how scornfullylittle you then were!"
"Never mind what I then was--the question's of what I actually am, sinceI close with you on it The picture's therefore as safe as you please,"Lord Theign pursued, "if you'll do what you just now engaged to."
"I engaged to do nothing," she replied after a pause; and the face sheturned to him had grown suddenly tragic. "I've no word to take back, fornone passed between us; but I _won't_ do what I mentioned and what youat once laughed at Because," she finished, "the case is different."
"Different?" he almost shouted--"_how_, different?"
She didn't look at him for it, but she was none the less stronglydistinct "He has _been_ here--and that has done it He knows," sheadmirably emphasised.
"Knows what I think of him, no doubt--for a brazen young prevaricator!But what else?"
She still kept her eyes on a far-off point. "What he will haveseen--that I feel we're too good friends."
"Then your denial of it's false," her father fairly thundered--"and you_are_ infatuated?"
It made her the more quiet. "I like him very much."
"So that your row about the picture," he demanded with passion, "hasbeen all a blind?" And then as her quietness still held her: "And his ablind as much--to help him to get _at_ you?"
She looked at him again now. "He must speak for himself. I've said whatI mean."
"But what the devil _do_ you mean?" Lord Theign, taking in the hour, hadreached the door as in supremely baffled conclusion and with a sense oftime lamentably lost.
Their eyes met upon it all dreadfully across the wide space, and,hurried and incommoded as she saw him, she yet made him still stand aminute. Then she let everything go. "Do what you like with the picture!"
He jerked up his arm and guarding hand as before a levelled blow at hisface, and with the other hand flung open the door, having done with hernow and immediately lost to sight. Left alone she stood a moment lookingbefore her; then with a vague advance, held apparently by a quicklygrowing sense of the implication of her act, reached a table where sheremained a little, deep afresh in thought--only the next thing to fallinto a chair close to it and there, with her elbows on it, yield to theimpulse of covering her flushed face with her hands.
BOOK THIRD