The Outcry: -1911

'Mr. Crimble is sure—because if he isn't,' Lord John added, 'he's a wretch.'

'Well,' she returned, 'as he's certainly not a wretch it must be true. And fancy,' she exclaimed further, though as more particularly for herself, 'our having suddenly incurred this immense debt to him!'

'Oh, I shall pay Mr. Crimble!' said her father, who had turned round.

The whole question appeared to have provoked in Lord John a rise of spirits and a flush of humour. 'Don't you let him stick it on.'

His host, however, bethinking himself, checked him. 'Go you to Mr. Bender straight!'

Lord John saw the point. 'Yes—till he leaves. But I shall find you here, shan't I?' he asked with all earnestness of Lady Grace.

She had an hesitation, but after a look at her father she assented. 'I'll wait for you.'

'Then a tantot!' It made him show for happy as, waving his hand at her, he proceeded to seek Mr. Bender in presence of the object that most excited that gentleman's appetite—to say nothing of the effect involved on Lord John's own.

IX

Lord Theign, when he had gone, revolved—it might have been nervously—about the place a little, but soon broke ground. 'He'll have told you, I understand, that I've promised to speak to you for him. But I understand also that he has found something to say for himself.'

'Yes, we talked—a while since,' the girl said. 'At least he did.'

'Then if you listened I hope you listened with a good grace.'

'Oh, he speaks very well—and I've never disliked him.'

It pulled her father up. 'Is that all—when I think so much of him?'

She seemed to say that she had, to her own mind, been liberal and gone far; but she waited a little. 'Do you think very, very much?'

'Surely I've made my good opinion clear to you!'

Again she had a pause. 'Oh yes, I've seen you like him and believe in him—and I've found him pleasant and clever.'

'He has never had,' Lord Theign more or less ingeniously explained, 'what I call a real show.' But the character under discussion could after all be summed up without searching analysis. 'I consider nevertheless that there's plenty in him.'

It was a moderate claim, to which Lady Grace might assent. 'He strikes me as naturally quick and—well, nice. But I agree with you than he hasn't had a chance.'

'Then if you can see your way by sympathy and confidence to help him to one I dare say you'll find your reward.'

For a third time she considered, as if a certain curtness in her companion's manner rather hindered, in such a question, than helped. Didn't he simplify too much, you would have felt her ask, and wasn't his visible wish for brevity of debate a sign of his uncomfortable and indeed rather irritated sense of his not making a figure in it? 'Do you desire it very particularly?' was, however, all she at last brought out.

'I should like it exceedingly—if you act from conviction. Then of course only; but of one thing I'm myself convinced—of what he thinks of yourself and feels for you.'

'Then would you mind my waiting a little?' she asked. 'I mean to be absolutely sure of myself.' After which, on his delaying to agree, she added frankly, as to help her case: 'Upon my word, father, I should like to do what would please you.'

But it determined in him a sharper impatience. 'Ah, what would please me! Don't put it off on 'me'! Judge absolutely for yourself'—he slightly took himself up—'in the light of my having consented to do for him what I always hate to do: deviate from my normal practice of never intermeddling. If I've deviated now you can judge. But to do so all round, of course, take—in reason!—your time.'

'May I ask then,' she said, 'for still a little more?'

He looked for this, verily, as if it was not in reason. 'You know,' he then returned, 'what he'll feel that a sign of.'

'Well, I'll tell him what I mean.'

'Then I'll send him to you.'

He glanced at his watch and was going, but after a 'Thanks, father,' she had stopped him. 'There's one thing more.' An embarrassment showed in her manner, but at the cost of some effect of earnest abruptness she surmounted it. 'What does your American—Mr. Bender—want?'

Lord Theign plainly felt the challenge. ''My' American? He's none of mine!'

'Well then Lord John's.'

'He's none of his either—more, I mean, than any one else's. He's every one's American, literally—to all appearance; and I've not to tell you, surely, with the freedom of your own visitors, how people stalk in and out here.'

'No, father—certainly,' she said. 'You're splendidly generous.'

His eyes seemed rather sharply to ask her then how he could improve on that; but he added as if it were enough: 'What the man must by this time want more than anything else is his car.'

'Not then anything of ours?' she still insisted.