by Henry James
II
Lord John, reannounced the next instant from the nearest quarter andquite waiving salutations, left no doubt of the high pitch of hiseagerness and tension as soon as the door had closed behind him. "Whaton earth then do you suppose he has come back to _do_--?" To which headded while his hostess's gesture impatiently disclaimed conjecture:"Because when a fellow really finds himself the centre of acyclone----!"
"Isn't it just at the centre," she interrupted, "that you keepremarkably still, and only in the suburbs that you feel the rage? Icount on dear Theign's doing nothing in the least foolish--!"
"Ah, but he can't have chucked everything for nothing," Lord Johnsharply returned; "and wherever you place him in the rumpus he can'tnot meet somehow, hang it, such an assault on his character as a greatnobleman and good citizen."
"It's his luck to have become with the public of the newspapers thescapegoat-in-chief: for the sins, so-called, of a lot of people!" LadySandgate inconclusively sighed.
"Yes," Lord John concluded for her, "the mercenary millions on whosetraffic in their trumpery values--when they're so lucky as to haveany!--_this_ isn't a patch!"
"Oh, there are cases _and_ cases: situations and responsibilities sointensely differ!"--that appeared on the whole, for her ladyship, themoral to be gathered.
"Of course everything differs, all round, from everything," Lord Johnwent on; "and who in the world knows anything of his own case but thevictim of circumstances exposing himself, for the highest and purestmotives, to be literally torn to pieces?"
"Well," said Lady Sandgate as, in her strained suspense, she freshlyconsulted her bracelet watch, "I hope he isn't already torn--if you tellme you've been to Kitty's."
"Oh, he was all right so far: he had arrived and gone out again," theyoung man explained, "as Lady Imber hadn't been at home."
"Ah cool Kitty!" his hostess sighed again--but diverted, as she spoke,by the reappearance of her butler, this time positively preceding LordTheign, whom she met, when he presently stood before her, his garbof travel exchanged for consummate afternoon dress, with yearningtenderness and compassionate curiosity. "At last, dearest friend--what ajoy! But with Kitty not at home to receive you?"
That young woman's parent made light of it for the indulged creature'ssake. "Oh I knew my Kitty! I dressed and I find her at five-thirty."To which he added as he only took in further, without expression, LordJohn: "But Bender, who came there before my arrival--he hasn't tried forme here?"
It was a point on which Lord John himself could at least be expressive."I met him at the club at luncheon; he had had your letter--but forwhich chance, my dear man, I should have known nothing. You'll see himall right at this house; but I'm glad, if I may say so, Theign," thespeaker pursued with some emphasis--"I'm glad, you know, to get hold ofyou first."
Lord Theign seemed about to ask for the meaning of this remark, but hisother companion's apprehension had already overflowed. "You haven't comeback, have you--to whatever it may be!--for _trouble_ of any sort withBreckenridge?"
His lordship transferred his penetration to this fair friend, "Haveyou become so intensely absorbed--these remarkable days!--in'Breckenridge'?"
She felt the shadow, you would have seen, of his claimed right, or atleast privilege, of search--yet easily, after an instant, emerged clear."I've thought and dreamt but of _you_--suspicious man!--in proportion asthe clamour has spread; and Mr. Bender meanwhile, if you want to know,hasn't been near me once!"
Lord John came in a manner, and however unconsciously, to her aid."You'd have seen, if he had been, what's the matter with him, Ithink--and what perhaps Theign has seen from his own letter: since," hewent on to his fellow-visitor, "I understood him a week ago to have beenmuch taken up with writing you."
Lord Theign received this without comment, only again with an air ofexpertly sounding the speaker; after which he gave himself afresh fora moment to Lady Sandgate. "I've not come home for any clamour, as yousurely know me well enough to believe; or to notice for a minute thecheapest insolence and aggression--which frankly scarce reached me outthere; or which, so far as it did, I was daily washed clean of by thoseblest waters. I returned on Mr. Bender's letter," he then vouchsafedto Lord John--"three extraordinarily vulgar pages about the egregiousPap-pendick!"
"About his having suddenly turned up in person, yes, and, asBreckenridge says, marked the picture down?"--the young man was clearlyall-knowing. "That _has_ of course weighed on Bender--being confirmedapparently, on the whole, by the drift of public opinion."
Lord Theign took, on this, with a frank show of reaction from some ofhis friend's terms, a sharp turn off; he even ironically indicated thebabbler or at least the blunderer in question to Lady Sandgate. "He toohas known me so long, and he comes here to talk to me of 'the drift ofpublic opinion'!" After which he quite charged at his vain informant."Am I to tell you again that I snap my fingers at the drift of publicopinion?--which is but another name for the chatter of all the fools onedoesn't know, in addition to all those (and plenty of 'em!) one damnablydoes."
Lady Sandgate, by a turn of the hand, dropped oil from her golden cruse."Ah, you did _that_, in your own grand way, before you went abroad!"
"I don't speak of the matter, my dear man, in the light of its effect on_you_," Lord John importantly explained--"but in the light of its effecton Bender; who so consumedly wants the picture, if he _is_ to have it,to be a Mantovano, but seems unable to get it taken at last for anythingbut the fine old Moretto that of course it has always been."
Lord Theign, in growing disgust at the whole beastly complication,betrayed more and more the odd pitch of the temper that had abruptlyrestored him with such incalculable weight to the scene of action."Well, isn't a fine old Moretto good enough for him; confound him?"
It pulled up not a little Lord John, who yet made his point. "A fine oldMoretto, you know, was exactly what he declined at Dedborough--for itscomparative, strictly comparative, insignificance; and he only thoughtof the picture when the wind began to rise for the enormous rarity--"
"That that mendacious young cad who has bamboozled Grace," Lord Theignbroke in, "tried to befool us, for his beggarly reasons, into claimingfor it?"
Lady Sandgate renewed her mild influence. "Ah, the knowing peoplehaven't had their last word--the possible Mantovano isn't exploded_yet!_" Her noble friend, however, declined the offered spell. "I'vehad enough of the knowing people--the knowing people are serpents! Mypicture's to take or to leave--and it's what I've come back, if youplease, John, to say to your man to his face."
This declaration had a report as sharp and almost as multiplied as thesuccessive cracks of a discharged revolver; yet when the light smokecleared Lady Sand-gate at least was still left standing and smiling."Yes, why in mercy's name can't he choose _which?_--and why does hewrite him, dreadful Breckenridge, such tiresome argumentative letters?"
Lord John took up her idea as with the air of something that had beenworking in him rather vehemently, though under due caution too, as aconsequence of this exchange, during which he had apprehensively watchedhis elder. "I don't think I quite see _how_, my dear Theign, the poorchap's letter was so offensive."
In that case his dear Theign could tell him. "Because it was a tissueof expressions that may pass current--over counters and in awfulnewspapers--in _his_ extraordinary world or country, but that I declineto take time to puzzle out here."
"If he didn't make himself understood," Lord John took leave to laugh,"it must indeed have been an unusual production for Bender."
"Oh, I often, with the wild beauty, if you will, of so many of histurns, haven't a notion," Lady Sandgate confessed with an equal gaiety,"of what he's talking about."
"I think I never miss his weird sense," her younger guest again loyallycontended--"and in fact as a general thing I rather like it!"
"I happen to like nothing that I don't enjoy," Lord Theign rejoined withsome asperity--"and so far as I do follow the fellow he assumes on mypart an interest in his expenditure of pur
chase-money that I neitherfeel nor pretend to. He doesn't want--by what I spell out--the picturehe refused at Dedborough; he may possibly want--if one reads it so--thepicture on view in Bond Street; and he yet appears to make, with greatemphasis, the stupid ambiguous point that these two 'articles' (thegreatest of Morettos an 'article'!) haven't been 'by now' proveddifferent: as if I engaged with him that I myself would so prove them!"
Lord John indulged in a pause--but also in a suggestion. "He mustallude to your hoping--when you allowed us to place the picture withMackintosh--that it would show to all London in the most precious lightconceivable."
"Well, if it hasn't so shown"--and Lord Theign stared as ifmystified--"what in the world's the meaning of this preposterousracket?"
"The racket is largely," his young friend explained, "the vociferationof the people who contradict each other about it."
On which their hostess sought to enliven the gravity of the question."Some--yes--shouting on the housetops that's a Mantovano of theMantovanos, and others shrieking back at them that they're donkeys ifnot criminals."
"He may take it for whatever he likes," said Lord Theign, heedless ofthese contributions, "he may father it on Michael Angelo himself ifhe'll but clear out with it and let me alone!"
"What he'd _like_ to take it for," Lord John at this point saw his wayto remark, "is something in the nature of a Hundred Thousand."
"A Hundred Thousand?" cried his astonished friend.
"Quite, I dare say, a Hundred Thousand"--the young man enjoyed clearlyhandling even by the lips so round a sum.
Lady Sandgate disclaimed however with agility any appearance of havinggaped. "Why, haven't you yet realised, Theign, that those are theAmerican figures?"
His lordship looked at her fixedly and then did the same by Lord John,after which he waited a little. "I've nothing to do with the Americanfigures--which seem to me, if you press me, you know, quite intolerablyvulgar."
"Well, I'd be as vulgar as anybody for a Hundred Thousand!" LadySandgate hastened to proclaim.
"Didn't he let us know at Dedborough," Lord John asked of the master ofthat seat, "that he had no use, as he said, for lower values?"
"I've heard him remark myself," said their companion, rising to themonstrous memory, "that he wouldn't take a cheap picture--even though a'handsome' one--as a present."
"And does he call the thing round the corner a cheap picture?" theproprietor of the work demanded.
Lord John threw up his arms with a grin of impatience. "All he wants todo, don't you see? is to prevent your _making_ it one!"
Lord Theign glared at this imputation to him of a low ductility. "Ioffered the thing, as it was, at an estimate worthy of it--and of _me_."
"My dear reckless friend," his young adviser protested, "you named nofigure _at all_ when it came to the point----!"
"It _didn't_ come to the point! Nothing came to the point but that I puta Moretto on view; as a thing, yes, perfectly"--Lord Theign accepted thereminding gesture--"on which a rich American had an eye and in which hehad, so to speak, an interest. That was what I wanted, and so we leftit--parting each of us ready but neither of us bound."
"Ah, Mr. Bender's bound, as he'd say," Lady Sand-gateinterposed--"'bound' to make you swallow the enormous luscious plum thatyour appetite so morbidly rejects!"
"My appetite, as morbid as you like"--her old friend had shrewdly turnedon her--"is my own affair, and if the fellow must deal in enormities Iwarn him to carry them elsewhere!"
Lord John, plainly, by this time, was quite exasperated at the absurdityof him. "But how can't you see that it's only a plum, as she says, fora plum and an eye for an eye--since the picture itself, with this hugeventilation, is now quite a different affair?"
"How the deuce a different affair when just what the man himselfconfesses is that, in spite of all the chatter of the prigs and pedants,there's no really established ground for treating it as anything butthe same?" On which, as having so unanswerably spoken, Lord Theign shookhimself free again, in his high petulance, and moved restlessly to wherethe passage to the other room appeared to offer his nerves an issue; allmoreover to the effect of suggesting to us that something still otherthan what he had said might meanwhile work in him behind and beneaththat quantity. The spectators of his trouble watched him, for the time,in uncertainty and with a mute but associated comment on the perversityand oddity he had so suddenly developed; Lord John giving a shrug ofalmost bored despair and Lady Sandgate signalling caution and tact fortheir action by a finger flourished to her lips, and in fact at onceproceeding to apply these arts. The subject of her attention had stillremained as in worried thought; he had even mechanically taken up a bookfrom a table--which he then, after an absent glance at it, tossed down.
"You're so detached from reality, you adorable dreamer," she began--"andunless you stick to _that_ you might as well have done nothing. Whatyou call the pedantry and priggishness and all the rest of it is exactlywhat poor Breckenridge asked almost on his knees, wonderful man, tobe _allowed_ to pay you for; since even if the meddlers and chatterershaven't settled anything for those who know--though which of the electthemselves after all _does_ seem to know?--it's a great service renderedhim to have started such a hare to run!"
Lord John took freedom to throw off very much the same idea. "Certainlyhis connection with the whole question and agitation makes no end forhis glory."
It didn't, that remark, bring their friend back to him, but it at leastmade his indifference flash with derision. "His 'glory'--Mr. Bender'sglory? Why, they quite universally loathe him--judging by the stuff theyprint!"
"Oh, here--as a corrupter of our morals and a promoter of our decay,even though so many are flat on their faces to him--yes! But it'sanother affair over there where the eagle screams like a thousandsteam-whistles and the newspapers flap like the leaves of the forest:_there_ he'll be, if you'll only let him, the biggest thing going; sincesound, in that air, seems to mean size, and size to be all that counts.If he said of the thing, as you recognise," Lord John went on, "'It'sgoing to be a Mantovano,' why you can bet your life that it _is_--thatit has _got_ to be some kind of a one."
His fellow-guest, at this, drew nearer again, irritated, you wouldhave been sure, by the unconscious infelicity of the pair--worked upto something quite openly wilful and passionate. "No kind of a furiousflaunting one, under _my_ patronage, that I can prevent, my boy! TheDedborough picture in the market--owing to horrid little circumstancesthat regard myself alone--is the Dedborough picture at a decent,sufficient, civilised Dedborough price, and nothing else whatever; whichI beg you will take as my last word on the subject."
Lord John, trying whether he _could_ take it, momentarily mingled hishushed state with that of their hostess, to whom he addressed a helplesslook; after which, however, he appeared to find that he could onlyreassert himself. "May I nevertheless reply that I think you'll not beable to prevent _anything?_--since the discussed object will completelyescape your control in New York!"
"And almost any discussed object"--Lady Sand-gate rose to the occasionalso--"is in New York, by what one hears, easily _worth_ a HundredThousand!"
Lord Theign looked from one of them to the other. "I sell the man aHundred Thousand worth of swagger and advertisement; and of fraudulentswagger and objectionable advertisement at that?"
"Well"--Lord John was but briefly baffled--"when the picture's his youcan't help its doing what it can and what it will for him anywhere!"
"Then it isn't his yet," the elder man retorted--"and I promise younever will be if he has _sent_ you to me with his big drum!"
Lady Sandgate turned sadly on this to her associate in patience, asif the case were now really beyond them. "Yes, how indeed can it ever_become_ his if Theign simply won't let him pay for it?"
Her question was unanswerable. "It's the first time in all my life I'veknown a man feel insulted, in such a piece of business, by happening_not_ to be, in the usual way, more or less swindled!"
"Theign is unable to take
it in," her ladyship explained, "that--as I'veheard it said of all these money-monsters of the new type--Bender simplycan't _afford_ not to be cited and celebrated as the biggest buyer whoever lived."
"Ah, cited and celebrated at my _expense_--say it at once and have itover, that I may enjoy what you all want to do to me!"
"The dear man's inimitable--at his 'expense'!" It was more than LordJohn could bear as he fairly flung himself off in his derisive impotenceand addressed his wail to Lady Sandgate.
"Yes, at my expense is exactly what I mean," Lord Theignasseverated--"at the expense of my modest claim to regulate my behaviourby my own standards. There you perfectly _are_ about the man, and it'sprecisely what I say--that he's to hustle and harry me _because_ he's amoney-monster: which I never for a moment dreamed of, please understand,when I let you, John, thrust him at me as a pecuniary resource atDedborough. I didn't put my property on view that _he_ might blow aboutit------!"
"No, if you like it," Lady Sandgate returned; "but you certainly didn'tso arrange"--she seemed to think her point somehow would help--"thatyou might blow about it yourself!"
"Nobody wants to 'blow,'" Lord John more stoutly interposed, "either hotor cold, I take it; but I really don't see the harm of Bender's likingto be known for the scale of his transactions--actual or merely imputedeven, if you will; since that scale is really so magnificent."
Lady Sandgate half accepted, half qualified this plea. "The onlyquestion perhaps is why he doesn't try for some precious work thatsomebody--less delicious than dear Theign--_can_ be persuaded on bendedknees to accept a hundred thousand for."
"'Try' for one?"--her younger visitor took it up while her elder moreattentively watched him. "That was exactly what he did try for when hepressed you so hard in vain for the great Sir Joshua."
"Oh well, he mustn't come back to _that_--must he, Theign?" her ladyshipcooed.
That personage failed to reply, so that Lord John went on, unconsciousapparently of the still more suspicious study to which he exposedhimself. "Besides which there _are_ no things of that magnitude knockingabout, don't you know?--they've _got_ to be worked up first if they'reto reach the grand publicity of the Figure! Would you mind," hecontinued to his noble monitor, "an agreement on some such basis as_this_?--that you shall resign yourself to the biggest equivalent you'llsqueamishly consent to take, if it's at the same time the smallest he'llsqueamishly consent to offer; but that, that done, you shall leave himfree----"
Lady Sandgate took it up straight, rounding it off, as their companiononly waited. "Leave him free to talk about the sum offered and the sumtaken as practically one and the same?"
"Ah, you know," Lord John discriminated, "he doesn't 'talk' so muchhimself--there's really nothing blatant or crude about poor Bender. It'sthe rate at which--by the very way he's 'fixed': an awful way indeed, Igrant you!--a perfect army of reporter-wretches, close at his heels, arealways talking for him and of him."
Lord Theign spoke hereupon at last with the air as of an impulse thathad been slowly gathering force. "_You_ talk for him, my dear chap,pretty well. You urge his case, my honour, quite as if you were assuredof a commission on the job--on a fine ascending scale! Has he put youup to that proposition, eh? _Do_ you get a handsome percentage and _are_you to make a good thing of it?"
The young man coloured under this stinging pleasantry--whether from agood conscience affronted or from a bad one made worse; but he otherwiseshowed a bold front, only bending his eyes a moment on his watch."As he's to come to you himself--and I don't know why the mischief hedoesn't come!--he will answer you that graceful question."
"Will he answer it," Lord Theign asked, "with the veracity thatthe suggestion you've just made on his behalf represents him as sobeautifully adhering to?" On which he again quite fiercely turned hisback and recovered his detachment, the others giving way behind him to ablanker dismay.
Lord John, in spite of this however, pumped up a tone. "I don't see whyyou should speak as if I were urging some abomination."
"Then I'll tell you why!"--and Lord Theign was upon him again for thepurpose. "Because I had rather give the cursed thing away outright andfor good and all than that it should hang out there another day in theinterest of such equivocations!"
Lady Sandgate's dismay yielded to her wonder, and her wonder apparentlyin turn to her amusement. "'Give it away,' my dear friend, to a man whoonly longs to smother you in gold?"
Her dear friend, however, had lost patience with her levity. "Give itaway--just for a luxury of protest and a stoppage of chatter--to somecause as unlike as possible that of Mr. Bender's power of sound andhis splendid reputation: to the Public, to the Authorities, to theThingumbob, to the Nation!"
Lady Sandgate broke into horror while Lord John stood sombre andstupefied. "Ah, my dear creature, you've flights of extravagance----!"
"One thing's very certain," Lord Theign quite heedlessly pursued--"thatthe thought of my property on view there does give intolerably on mynerves, more and more every minute that I'm conscious of it; so that,hang it, if one thinks of it, why shouldn't I, for my relief, do again,damme, _what I like_?--that is bang the door in their faces, have theshow immediately stopped?" He turned with the attraction of this ideafrom one of his listeners to the other. "It's _my_ show--it isn'tBender's, surely!--and I can do just as I choose with it."
"Ah, but isn't that the very point?"--and Lady Sandgate put it to LordJohn. "Isn't it Bender's show much more than his?"
Her invoked authority, however, in answer to this, made but a motion ofdisappointment and disgust at so much rank folly--while Lord Theign, onthe other hand, followed up his happy thought. "Then if it's Bender'sshow, or if he claims it is, there's all the more reason!" And it tookhis lordship's inspiration no longer to flower. "See here, John--dothis: go right round there this moment, please, and tell them from me toshut straight down!"
"'Shut straight down'?" the young man abhorrently echoed.
"Stop it _to-night_--wind it up and end it: see?" The more theentertainer of that vision held it there the more charm it clearlytook on for him. "Have the picture removed from view and the incidentclosed."
"You seriously ask _that_ of me!" poor Lord John quavered.
"Why in the world shouldn't I? It's a jolly lot less than you asked ofme a month ago at Dedborough."
"What then am I to say to them?" Lord John spoke but after a longmoment, during which he had only looked hard and--an observer might eventhen have felt--ominously at his taskmaster.
That personage replied as if wholly to have done with the matter. "Sayanything that comes into your clever head. I don't really see thatthere's anything else _for_ you!" Lady Sandgate sighed to the messenger,who gave no sign save of positive stiffness.
The latter seemed still to weigh his displeasing obligation; thenhe eyed his friend significantly--almost portentously. "Those areabsolutely your sentiments?"
"Those are absolutely my sentiments"--and Lord Theign brought this outas with the force of a physical push.
"Very well then!" But the young man, indulging in a final, a fairlysinister, study of such a dealer in the arbitrary, made sure of theextent, whatever it was, of his own wrong. "Not one more day?"
Lord Theign only waved him away. "Not one more hour!"
He paused at the door, this reluctant spokesman, as if for some supremeprotest; but after another prolonged and decisive engagement with thetwo pairs of eyes that waited, though differently, on his performance,he clapped on his hat as in the rage of his resentment and departed onhis mission.