The Outcry: -1911

'Lady Sandgate kindly warned me, and,' her companion saw as he glanced at the clock on the chimney, 'I've only ten minutes, at best. The 'Journal' won't have been good for him,' he added—'you doubtless have seen the 'Journal'?'

'No'—she was vague. 'We live by the 'Morning Post.''

'That's why our friend here didn't speak then,' Hugh said with a better light—'which, out of a dim consideration for her, I didn't do, either. But they've a leader this morning about Lady Lappington and her Longhi, and on Bender and his hauls, and on the certainty—if we don't do something energetic—of more and more Benders to come: such a conquering horde as invaded the old civilisation, only armed now with huge cheque-books instead of with spears and battle-axes. They refer to the rumour current—as too horrific to believe—of Lord Theign's putting up his Moretto; with the question of how properly to qualify any such sad purpose in him should the further report prove true of a new and momentous opinion about the picture entertained by several eminent authorities.'

'Of whom,' said the girl, intensely attached to this recital, 'you're of course seen as not the least.'

'Of whom, of course, Lady Grace, I'm as yet—however I'm 'seen'—the whole collection. But we've time'—he rested on that 'The fat, if you'll allow me the expression, is on the fire—which, as I see the matter, is where this particular fat should be.'

'Is the article, then,' his companion appealed, 'very severe?'

'I prefer to call it very enlightened and very intelligent—and the great thing is that it immensely 'marks,' as they say. It will have made a big public difference—from this day; though it's of course aimed not so much at persons as at conditions; which it calls upon us all somehow to tackle.'

'Exactly'—she was full of the saving vision; 'but as the conditions are directly embodied in persons——'

'Oh, of course it here and there bells the cat; which means that it bells three or four.'

'Yes,' she richly brooded—'Lady Lappington is a cat!'

'She will have been 'belled,' at any rate, with your father,' Hugh amusedly went on, 'to the certainty of a row; and a row can only be good for us—I mean for us in particular.' Yet he had to bethink himself. 'The case depends a good deal of course on how your father takes such a resounding rap.'

'Oh, I know how he'll take it!'—her perception went all the way.

'In the very highest and properest spirit?'

'Well, you'll see.' She was as brave as she was clear. 'Or at least I shall!'

Struck with all this in her he renewed his homage. 'You are, yes, splendid!'

'I even,' she laughed, 'surprise myself.'

But he was already back at his calculations. 'How early do the papers get to you?'

'At Dedborough? Oh, quite for breakfast—which isn't, however, very early.'

'Then that's what has caused his wire to Bender.'

'But how will such talk strike him?' the girl asked.

Hugh meanwhile, visibly, had not only followed his train of thought, he had let it lead him to certainty. 'It will have moved Mr. Bender to absolute rapture.'

'Rather,' Lady Grace wondered, 'than have put him off?'

'It will have put him prodigiously on! Mr. Bender—as he said to me at Dedborough of his noble host there,' Hugh pursued—'is 'a very nice man'; but he's a product of the world of advertisment, and advertisement is all he sees and aims at. He lives in it as a saint in glory or a fish in water.'

She took it from him as half doubting. 'But mayn't advertisement, in so special a case, turn, on the whole, against him?'

Hugh shook a negative forefinger with an expression he might have caught from foreign comrades. 'He rides the biggest whirlwind—he has got it saddled and bitted.'

She faced the image, but cast about 'Then where does our success come in?'

'In our making the beast, all the same, bolt with him and throw him.' And Hugh further pointed the moral. 'If in such proceedings all he knows is publicity the thing is to give him publicity, and it's only a question of giving him enough. By the time he has enough for himself, you see, he'll have too much for every one else—so that we shall 'up' in a body and slay him.'

The girl's eyebrows, in her wondering face, rose to a question. 'But if he has meanwhile got the picture?'

'We'll slay him before he gets it!' He revelled in the breadth of his view. 'Our own policy must be to organise to that end the inevitable outcry. Organise Bender himself—organise him to scandal.' Hugh had already even pity to spare for their victim. 'He won't know it from a boom.'

Though carried along, however, Lady Grace could still measure. 'But that will be only if he wants and decides for the picture.'

'We must make him then want and decide for it—decide, that is, for 'ours.' To save it we must work him up— he'll in that case want it so indecently much. Then we shall have to want it more!'

'Well,' she anxiously felt it her duty to remind him, 'you can take a horse to water——!'

'Oh, trust me to make him drink!'

There appeared a note in this that convinced her. 'It's you, Mr. Crimble, who are 'splendid'!'

'Well, I shall be—with my jolly wire!' And all on that scent again, 'May I come back to you from the club with Pappendick's news?' he asked.

'Why, rather, of course, come back!'