The Outcry: -1911

he had even mechanically taken up a book from a table—which he then, after an absent glance at it, tossed down.

'You're so detached from reality, you adorable dreamer,' she began—'and unless you stick to that you might as well have done nothing. What you call the pedantry and priggishness and all the rest of it is exactly what poor Breckenridge asked almost on his knees, wonderful man, to be allowed to pay you for; since even if the meddlers and chatterers haven't settled anything for those who know—though which of the elect themselves after all does seem to know?—it's a great service rendered him to have started such a hare to run!'

Lord John took freedom to throw off very much the same idea. 'Certainly his connection with the whole question and agitation makes no end for his glory.'

It didn't, that remark, bring their friend back to him, but it at least made his indifference flash with derision. 'His 'glory'—Mr. Bender's glory? Why, they quite universally loathe him—judging by the stuff they print!'

'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's another affair over there where the eagle screams like a thousand steam-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; since sound, 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's going to be a Mantovano,' why you can bet your life that it is—that it has got to be some kind of a one.'

His fellow-guest, at this, drew nearer again, irritated, you would have been sure, by the unconscious infelicity of the pair—worked up to something quite openly wilful and passionate. 'No kind of a furious flaunting one, under my patronage, that I can prevent, my boy! The Dedborough picture in the market—owing to horrid little circumstances that regard myself alone—is the Dedborough picture at a decent, sufficient, civilised Dedborough price, and nothing else whatever; which I beg you will take as my last word on the subject.'

Lord John, trying whether he could take it, momentarily mingled his hushed state with that of their hostess, to whom he addressed a helpless look; after which, however, he appeared to find that he could only reassert himself. 'May I nevertheless reply that I think you'll not be able to prevent anything?—since the discussed object will completely escape your control in New York!'

'And almost any discussed object'—Lady Sand-gate rose to the occasion also—'is in New York, by what one hears, easily worth a Hundred Thousand!'

Lord Theign looked from one of them to the other. 'I sell the man a Hundred Thousand worth of swagger and advertisement; and of fraudulent swagger and objectionable advertisement at that?'

'Well'—Lord John was but briefly baffled—'when the picture's his you can'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 you never will be if he has sent you to me with his big drum!'

Lady Sandgate turned sadly on this to her associate in patience, as if 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've known 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've heard it said of all these money-monsters of the new type—Bender simply can't afford not to be cited and celebrated as the biggest buyer who ever lived.'

'Ah, cited and celebrated at my expense—say it at once and have it over, that I may enjoy what you all want to do to me!'

'The dear man's inimitable—at his 'expense'!' It was more than Lord John could bear as he fairly flung himself off in his derisive impotence and addressed his wail to Lady Sandgate.

'Yes, at my expense is exactly what I mean,' Lord Theign asseverated—'at the expense of my modest claim to regulate my behaviour by my own standards. There you perfectly are about the man, and it's precisely what I say—that he's to hustle and harry me because he's a money- monster: which I never for a moment dreamed of, please understand, when I let you, John, thrust him at me as a pecuniary resource at Dedborough. I didn't put my property on view that he might blow about it———!'

'No, if you like it,' Lady Sandgate returned; 'but you certainly didn't so arrange'—she seemed to think her point somehow would help—'that you might blow about it yourself!'

'Nobody wants to 'blow,'' Lord John more stoutly interposed, 'either hot or cold, I take it; but I really don't see the harm of Bender's liking to be known for the scale of his transactions—actual or merely imputed even, if you will; since that scale is really so magnificent.'

Lady Sandgate half accepted, half qualified this plea. 'The only question perhaps is why he doesn't try for some precious work that somebody—less delicious than dear Theign—can be persuaded on bended knees to accept a hundred thousand for.'

''Try' for one?'—her younger visitor took it up while her elder more attentively watched him. 'That was exactly what he did try for when he pressed you so hard in vain for the great Sir Joshua.'

'Oh well, he mustn't come back to that—must he, Theign?' her ladyship cooed.

That personage failed to reply, so that Lord John went on, unconscious apparently of the still more suspicious study to which he exposed himself. 'Besides which there are no things of that magnitude knocking about, don't you know?—they've got to be worked up first if they're to reach the grand publicity of the Figure! Would you mind,' he continued to his noble monitor, 'an agreement on some such basis as this?—that you shall resign yourself to the biggest equivalent you'll squeamishly consent to take, if it's at the same time the smallest he'll squeamishly consent to offer; but that, that done, you shall leave him free——'

Lady Sandgate took it up straight, rounding it off, as their companion only waited. 'Leave him free to talk about the sum offered and the sum taken as practically one and the same?'

'Ah, you know,' Lord John discriminated, 'he doesn't 'talk' so much himself—there's really nothing blatant or crude about poor Bender. It's the rate at which—by the very way he's 'fixed': an awful way indeed, I grant you!—a