II
Having greeted him with an explicitly gracious welcome and both handsout, she had at once gone on: "You'll of course have tea?--in thesaloon."
But his mechanism seemed of the type that has to expand and revolvebefore sounding. "Why; the very first thing?"
She only desired, as her laugh showed, to accommodate. "Ah, have it thelast if you like!"
"You see your English teas--!" he pleaded as he looked about him, soimmediately and frankly interested in the place and its contents thathis friend could only have taken this for the very glance with which hemust have swept Lady Lappington's inferior scene.
"They're too much for you?"
"Well, they're too many. I think I've had two or three on the road--atany rate my man did. I like to do business before--" But his sequencedropped as his eye caught some object across the wealth of space.
She divertedly picked it up. "Before tea, Mr. Bender?"
"Before everything, Lady Sandgate." He was immensely genial, but aqueer, quaint, rough-edged distinctness somehow kept it safe--forhimself.
"Then you've _come_ to do business?" Her appeal and her emphasis meltedas into a caress--which, however, spent itself on his large high personas he consented, with less of demonstration but more of attention, tolook down upon her. She could therefore but reinforce it by an intensernote. "To tell me you _will_ treat?"
Mr. Bender had six feet of stature and an air as of having receivedbenefits at the hands of fortune. Substantial, powerful, easy, he shoneas with a glorious cleanness, a supplied and equipped and appointedsanity and security; aids to action that might have figured a pair ofvery ample wings--wide pinions for the present conveniently folded, butthat he would certainly on occasion agitate for great efforts and spreadfor great flights. These things would have made him quite an admirable,even a worshipful, image of full-blown life and character, had notthe affirmation and the emphasis halted in one important particular.Fortune, felicity, nature, the perverse or interfering old fairy at hiscradle-side--whatever the ministering power might have been--had simplyoverlooked and neglected his vast wholly-shaven face, which thus showednot so much for perfunctorily scamped as for not treated, as for neitherformed nor fondled nor finished, at all. Nothing seemed to have beendone for it but what the razor and the sponge, the tooth-brush andthe looking-glass could officiously do; it had in short resistedany possibly finer attrition at the hands of fifty years of offeredexperience. It had developed on the lines, if lines they could becalled, of the mere scoured and polished and initialled "mug" ratherthan to any effect of a composed physiognomy; though we must at thesame time add that its wearer carried this featureless disk as with thewarranted confidence that might have attended a warning headlight ora glaring motor-lamp. The object, however one named it, showed you atleast where he was, and most often that he was straight upon you. Itwas fearlessly and resistingly across the path of his advance that LadySandgate had thrown herself, and indeed with such success that hesoon connected her demonstration with a particular motive. "For yourgrandmother, Lady Sandgate?" he then returned.
"For my grandmother's _mother_, Mr. Bender--the most beautiful womanof her time and the greatest of all Lawrences, no matter whose; as youquite acknowledged, you know, in our talk in Bruton Street."
Mr. Bender bethought himself further--yet drawing it out; as if thefamiliar fact of his being "made up to" had never had such specialsoftness and warmth of pressure. "Do you want very, _very_ much----?"
She had already caught him up. "'Very, very much' for her? Well, Mr.Bender," she smilingly replied, "I think I should like her full value."
"I mean"--he kindly discriminated--"do you want so badly to work heroff?"
"It would be an intense convenience to me--so much so that your telegrammade me at once fondly hope you'd be arriving to conclude."
Such measure of response as he had good-naturedly given her was themere frayed edge of a mastering detachment, the copious, impatient rangeelsewhere of his true attention. Somehow, however, he still seemed kindeven while, turning his back upon her, he moved off to look at one ofthe several, the famous Dedborough pictures--stray specimens, by everypresumption, lost a little in the whole bright bigness. "'Conclude'?" heechoed as he approached a significantly small canvas. "You ladies wantto get there before the road's so much as laid or the country's safe! Doyou know what this _here_ is?" he at once went on.
"Oh, you can't have _that!_" she cried as with full authority--"andyou must really understand that you can't have everything. You mustn'texpect to ravage Dedborough."
He had his nose meanwhile close to the picture. "I guess it's a bogusCuyp--but I know Lord Theign _has_ things. He won't do business?"
"He's not in the least, and can never be, in my tight place," LadySandgate replied; "but he's as proud as he's kind, dear man, andas solid as he's proud; so that if you came down under a differentimpression--!" Well, she could only exhale the folly of his error withan unction that represented, whatever he might think of it, all hercompetence to answer for their host.
He scarce thought of it enough, on any side, however, to be divertedfrom prior dispositions. "I came on an understanding that I should findmy friend Lord John, and that Lord Theign would, on his introduction,kindly let me look round. But being before lunch in Bruton Street Iknocked at your door----"
"For another look," she quickly interposed, "at my Lawrence?"
"For another look at _you_, Lady Sandgate--your great-grandmother wasn'trequired. Informed you were here, and struck with the coincidence of mybeing myself presently due," he went on, "I despatched you my wire, oncoming away, just to keep up your spirits."
"You _don't_ keep them up, you depress them to anguish," she almostpassionately protested, "when you don't tell me you'll treat!"
He paused in his preoccupation, his perambulation, conscious evidentlyof no reluctance that was worth a scene with so charming and so hungrya woman. "Well, if it's a question of your otherwise suffering torments,may I have another interview with the old lady?"
"Dear Mr. Bender, she's in the flower of her youth; she only yearns forinterviews, and you may have," Lady Sandgate earnestly declared, "asmany as you like."
"Oh, you must be there to protect me!"
"Then as soon as I return----!"
"Well,"--it clearly cost him little to say--"I'll come right round."
She joyously registered the vow. "Only meanwhile then, please, never aword!"
"Never a word, certainly. But where all this time," Mr. Bender asked,"is Lord John?"
Lady Sandgate, as he spoke, found her eyes meeting those of a youngwoman who, presenting herself from without, stood framed in the doorwayto the terrace; a slight fair grave young woman, of middle, stature andsimply dressed, whose brow showed clear even under the heavy shade ofa large hat surmounted with big black bows and feathers. Her eyeshad vaguely questioned those of her elder, who at once replied to thegentleman forming the subject of their inquiry: "Lady Grace must know."At this the young woman came forward, and Lady Sandgate introduced thevisitor. "My dear Grace, this is Mr. Breckenridge Bender."
The younger daughter of the house might have arrived in preoccupation,but she had urbanity to spare. "Of whom Lord John has told me," shereturned, "and whom I'm glad to see. Lord John," she explained to hiswaiting friend, "is detained a moment in the park, open to-day to a bigTemperance school-feast, where our party is mostly gathered; so that ifyou care to go out--!" She gave him in fine his choice.
But this was clearly a thing that, in the conditions, Mr. Bender wasn'tthe man to take precipitately; though his big useful smile disguised hisprudence. "Are there any pictures in the park?"
Lady Grace's facial response represented less humour perhaps, but moreplay. "We find our park itself rather a picture."
Mr. Bender's own levity at any rate persisted. "With a big Temperanceschool-feast?"
"Mr. Bender's a great judge of pictures," Lady Sandgate said as toforestall any impression of excessive freedom.
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bsp; "Will there be more tea?" he pursued, almost presuming on this.
It showed Lady Grace for comparatively candid and literal. "Oh, there'llbe plenty of tea."
This appeared to determine Mr. Bender. "Well, Lady Grace, I'm afterpictures, but I take them 'neat.' May I go right round here?"
"Perhaps, love," Lady Sandgate at once said, "you'll let me show him."
"A moment, dear"--Lady Grace gently demurred. "Do go round," sheconformably added to Mr. Bender; "take your ease and your time.Everything's open and visible, and, with our whole company dispersed,you'll have the place to yourself."
He rose, in his genial mass, to the opportunity. "I'll be inclover--sure!" But present to him was the richest corner of the pasture,which he could fluently enough name. "And I'll find 'The BeautifulDuchess of Waterbridge'?"
She indicated, off to the right, where a stately perspective opened, thequarter of the saloon to which we have seen Mr. Banks retire. "At thevery end of _those_ rooms."
He had wide eyes for the vista. "About thirty in a row, hey?" And he wasalready off. "I'll work right through!"