The Outcry: -1911

But his friend had an answer to this. 'My natural interest, Mr. Crimble—considering what I do for it—is in the claim of ours. But I wish you were on my side!'

'Not so much,' Hugh hungrily and truthfully laughed, 'as I wish you were on mine!' Decidedly, none the less, he had to go. 'Good-bye—for another look here!'

He reached the doorway of the second room, where, however, his companion, freshly alert at this, stayed him by a gesture. 'How much is she really worth?'

''She'?' Hugh, staring a moment, was miles at sea. 'Lady Sandgate?'

'Her great-grandmother.'

A responsible answer was prevented—the butler was again with them; he had opened wide the other door and he named to Mr. Bender the personage under his convoy. 'Lord John!'

Hugh caught this from the inner threshold, and it gave him his escape. 'Oh, ask that friend!' With which he sought the further passage to the staircase and street, while Lord John arrived in charge of Mr. Gotch, who, having remarked to the two occupants of the front drawing-room that her ladyship would come, left them together.

IV

'Then Theign's not yet here!' Lord John had to resign himself as he greeted his American ally. 'But he told me I should find you.'

'He has kept me waiting,' that gentleman returned—'but what's the matter with him anyway?'

'The matter with him'—Lord John treated such ignorance as irritating—'must of course be this beastly thing in the 'Journal.''

Mr. Bender proclaimed, on the other hand, his incapacity to seize such connections. 'What's the matter with the beastly thing?'

'Why, aren't you aware that the stiffest bit of it is a regular dig at you?'

'If you call that a regular dig you can't have had much experience of the Papers. I've known them to dig much deeper.'

'I've had no experience of such horrid attacks, thank goodness; but do you mean to say,' asked Lord John with the surprise of his own delicacy, 'that you don't unpleasantly feel it?'

'Feel it where, my dear sir?'

'Why, God bless me, such impertinence, everywhere!'

'All over me at once?'—Mr. Bender took refuge in easy humour. 'Well, I'm a large man—so when I want to feel so much I look out for something good. But what, if he suffers from the blot on his ermine—ain't that what you wear?—does our friend propose to do about it?'

Lord John had a demur, which was immediately followed by the apprehension of support in his uncertainty. Lady Sandgate was before them, having reached them through the other room, and to her he at once referred the question. 'What will Theign propose, do you think, Lady Sandgate, to do about it?'

She breathed both her hospitality and her vagueness. 'To 'do'——?'

'Don't you know about the thing in the 'Journal'—awfully offensive all round?'

'There'd be even a little pinch for you in it,' Mr. Bender said to her—'if you were bent on fitting the shoe!'

Well, she met it all as gaily as was compatible with a firm look at her elder guest while she took her place with them. 'Oh, the shoes of such monsters as that are much too big for poor me!' But she was more specific for Lord John. 'I know only what Grace has just told me; but since it's a question of footgear dear Theign will certainly—what you may call—take his stand!'

Lord John welcomed this assurance. 'If I know him he'll take it splendidly!'

Mr. Bender's attention was genial, though rather more detached. 'And what—while he's about it—will he take it particularly on?'

'Oh, we've plenty of things, thank heaven,' said Lady Sandgate, 'for a man in Theign's position to hold fast by!'

Lord John freely confirmed it. 'Scores and scores—rather! And I will say for us that, with the rotten way things seem going, the fact may soon become a real convenience.'

Mr. Bender seemed struck—and not unsympathetic. 'I see that your system would be rather a fraud if you hadn't pretty well fixed that!'

Lady Sandgate spoke as one at present none the less substantially warned and convinced. 'It doesn't, however, alter the fact that we've thus in our ears the first growl of an outcry.'

'Ah,' Lord John concurred, 'we've unmistakably the first growl of an outcry!'

Mr. Bender's judgment on the matter paused at sight of Lord Theign, introduced and announced, as Lord John spoke, by Gotch; but with the result of his addressing directly the person so presenting himself. 'Why, they tell me that what this means, Lord Theign, is the first growl of an outcry!'

The appearance of the most eminent figure in the group might have been held in itself to testify to some such truth; in the sense at least that a certain conscious radiance, a gathered light of battle in his lordship's aspect would have been explained by his having taken the full measure—an inner success with which he glowed—of some high provocation. He was flushed, but he bore it as the ensign of his house; he was so admirably, vividly dressed, for the morning hour and for his journey, that he shone as with the armour of a knight; and the whole effect of him, from head to foot, with every jerk of his unconcern and every flash of his ease, was to call attention to his being utterly unshaken and knowing perfectly what he was about. It was at this happy pitch that he replied to the prime upsetter of his peace.

'I'm afraid I don't know what anything means to you, Mr. Bender—but it's exactly to