The Outcry: -1911

continued amusedly to Hugh: 'It began to work in you, sir, like very strong drink!'

'Do I understand you to suggest,' Lord Theign asked of the startling young man, 'that my precious picture isn't genuine?'

Well, Hugh knew exactly what he suggested. 'As a picture, Lord Theign, as a great portrait, one of the most genuine things in Europe. But it strikes me as probable that from far back—for reasons!—there has been a wrong attribution; that the work has been, in other words, traditionally, obstinately miscalled. It has passed for a Moretto, and at first I quite took it for one; but I suddenly, as I looked and looked and saw and saw, began to doubt, and now I know why I doubted.'

Lord Theign had during this speech kept his eyes on the ground; but he raised them to Mr. Crimble's almost palpitating presence for the remark: 'I'm bound to say that I hope you've some very good grounds!'

'I've three or four, Lord Theign; they seem to me of the best—as yet. They made me wonder and wonder—and then light splendidly broke.'

His lordship didn't stint his attention. 'Reflected, you mean, from other Mantovanos —that I don't know?'

'I mean from those I know myself,' said Hugh; 'and I mean from fine analogies with one in particular.'

'Analogies that in all these years, these centuries, have so remarkably not been noticed?'

'Well,' Hugh competently explained, 'they're a sort of thing the very sense of, the value and meaning of, are a highly modern—in fact a quite recent growth.'

Lord John at this professed with cordiality that he at least quite understood. 'Oh, we know a lot more about our pictures and things than ever our ancestors did!'

'Well, I guess it's enough for me,' Mr. Bender contributed, 'that your ancestors knew enough to get 'em!'

'Ah, that doesn't go so far,' cried Hugh, 'unless we ourselves know enough to keep 'em!'

The words appeared to quicken in a manner Lord Theign's view of the speaker. 'Were your ancestors, Mr. Crimble, great collectors?'

Arrested, it might be, in his general assurance, Hugh wondered and smiled. 'Mine—collectors? Oh, I'm afraid I haven't any—to speak of. Only it has seemed to me for a long time,' he added, 'that on that head we should all feel together.'

Lord Theign looked for a moment as if these were rather large presumptions; then he put them in their place a little curtly. 'It's one thing to keep our possessions for ourselves—it's another to keep them for other people.'

'Well,' Hugh good-humouredly returned, 'I'm perhaps not so absolutely sure of myself, if you press me, as that I sha'n't be glad of a higher and wiser opinion—I mean than my own. It would be awfully interesting, if you'll allow me to say so, to have the judgment of one or two of the great men.'

'You're not yourself, Mr. Crimble, one of the great men?' his host asked with tempered irony.

'Well, I guess he's going to be, anyhow,' Mr. Bender cordially struck in; 'and this remarkable exhibition of intelligence may just let him loose on the world, mayn't it?'

'Thank you, Mr. Bender!'—and Hugh obviously tried to look neither elated nor snubbed. 'I've too much still to learn, but I'm learning every day, and I shall have learnt immensely this afternoon.'

'Pretty well at my expense, however,' Lord Theign laughed, 'if you demolish a name we've held for generations so dear.'

'You may have held the name dear, my lord,' his young critic answered; 'but my whole point is that, if I'm right, you've held the picture itself cheap.'

'Because a Mantovano,' said Lord John, 'is so much greater a value?'

Hugh met his eyes a moment 'Are you talking of values pecuniary?'

'What values are not pecuniary?'

Hugh might, during his hesitation, have been imagined to stand off a little from the question. 'Well, some things have in a higher degree that one, and some have the associational or the factitious, and some the clear artistic.'

'And some,' Mr. Bender opined, 'have them all—in the highest degree. But what you mean,' he went on, 'is that a Mantovano would come higher under the hammer than a Moretto?'

'Why, sir,' the young man returned, 'there aren't any, as I've just stated, to 'come.' I account—or I easily can—for every one of the very small number.'

'Then do you consider that you account for this one?'

'I believe I shall if you'll give me time.'

'Oh, time!' Mr. Bender impatiently sighed. 'But we'll give you all we've got—only I guess it isn't much.' And he appeared freely to invite their companions to join in this estimate. They listened to him, however, they watched him, for the moment, but in silence, and with the next he had gone on: 'How much higher—if your idea is correct about it—would Lord Theign's picture come?'

Hugh turned to that nobleman. 'Does Mr. Bender mean come to him, my lord?'

Lord Theign looked again hard at Hugh, and then harder than he had done yet at his other invader. 'I don't know what Mr. Bender means!' With which he turned off.

'Well, I guess I mean that it would come higher to me than to any one! But how much higher?' the American continued to Hugh.

'How much higher to you?'

'Oh, I can size that. How much higher as a Mantovano?'