VI
Face to face with his visitor the master of Dedborough betrayed theimpression his daughter appeared to have given him. "She didn't wantto go?" And then before Lord John could reply: "What the deuce is thematter with her?"
Lord John took his time. "I think perhaps a little Mr. Crimble."
"And who the deuce is a little Mr. Crimble?"
"A young man who was just with her--and whom she appears to haveinvited."
"Where is he then?" Lord Theign demanded.
"Off there among the pictures--which he seems partly to have come for."
"Oh!"--it made his lordship easier. "Then he's all right--on such aday."
His companion could none the less just wonder. "Hadn't Lady Grace toldyou?"
"That he was coming? Not that I remember." But Lord Theign, perceptiblypreoccupied, made nothing of this. "We've had other fish to fry, and youknow the freedom I allow her."
His friend had a vivid gesture. "My dear man, I only ask to profit byit!" With which there might well have been in Lord John's face a lightof comment on the pretension in such a quarter to allow freedom.
Yet it was a pretension that Lord Theign sustained--as to show himselffar from all bourgeois narrowness. "She has her friends by the score--atthis time of day." There was clearly a claim here also--to _know_ thetime of day. "But in the matter of friends where, by the way, is yourown--of whom I've but just heard?"
"Oh, off there among the pictures too; so they'll have met and takencare of each other." Accounting for this inquirer would be clearly theleast of Lord John's difficulties. "I mustn't appear to Bender to havefailed him; but I must at once let you know, before I join him, that,seizing my opportunity, I have just very definitely, in fact verypressingly, spoken to Lady Grace. It hasn't been perhaps," he continued,"quite the pick of a chance; but that seemed never to come, and ifI'm not too fondly mistaken, at any rate, she listened to me withoutabhorrence. Only I've led her to expect--for our case--that you'll beso good, without loss of time, as to say the clinching word to heryourself."
"Without loss, you mean, of--a--my daughter's time?" Lord Theign,confessedly and amiably interested, had accepted these intimations--yetwith the very blandness that was not accessible to hustling and wasnever forgetful of its standing privilege of criticism. He had come infrom his public duty, a few minutes before, somewhat flushed and blown;but that had presently dropped--to the effect, we should have guessed,of his appearing to Lord John at least as cool as the occasion required.His appearance, we ourselves certainly should have felt, was in allrespects charming--with the great note of it the beautiful restless,almost suspicious, challenge to you, on the part of deep and mixedthings in him, his pride and his shyness, his conscience, his taste andhis temper, to deny that he was admirably simple. Obviously, at thisrate, he had a passion for simplicity--simplicity, above all, ofrelation with you, and would show you, with the last subtlety ofdispleasure, his impatience of your attempting anything more withhimself. With such an ideal of decent ease he would, confound you,"sink" a hundred other attributes--or the recognition at least and theformulation of them--that you might abjectly have taken for granted inhim: just to show you that in a beastly vulgar age you had, and smallwonder, a beastly vulgar imagination. He sank thus, surely, in defianceof insistent vulgarity, half his consciousness of his advantages,flattering himself that mere facility and amiability, a true effective,a positively ideal suppression of reference in any one to anything thatmight complicate, alone floated above. This would be quite his religion,you might infer--to cause his hands to ignore in whatever contact anyopportunity, however convenient, for an unfair pull. Which habit it wasthat must have produced in him a sort of ripe and radiant fairness; ifit be allowed us, that is, to figure in so shining an air a nobleman offifty-three, of an undecided rather than a certified frame or outline,of a head thinly though neatly covered and not measureably massive, ofan almost trivial freshness, of a face marked but by a fine inwroughtline or two and lighted by a merely charming expression. You mightsomehow have traced back the whole character so presented to an idealprivately invoked--that of his establishing in the formal garden of hissuffered greatness such easy seats and short perspectives, such windingpaths and natural-looking waters, as would mercifully break up thescale. You would perhaps indeed have reflected at the same time that thethought of so much mercy was almost more than anything else the thoughtof a great option and a great margin--in fine of fifty alternatives.Which remarks of ours, however, leave his lordship with his lastimmediate question on his hands.
"Well, yes--_that_, of course, in all propriety," his companion hasmeanwhile replied to it. "But I was thinking a little, you understand,of the importance of our own time."
Divinably Lord Theign put himself out less, as we may say, forthe comparatively matter-of-course haunters of his garden than forinterlopers even but slightly accredited. He seemed thus not at all tostrain to "understand" in this particular connection--it would be hisfamiliarly amusing friend Lord John, clearly, who must do most of thework for him. "'Our own' in the sense of yours and mine?"
"Of yours and mine and Lady Imber's, yes--and a good bit, last notleast, in that of my watching and waiting mother's." This struck noprompt spark of apprehension from his listener, so that Lord John wenton: "The last thing she did this morning was to remind me, with her fineold frankness, that she would like to learn without more delay where, onthe whole question, she _is_, don't you know? What she put to me"--theyounger man felt his ground a little, but proceeded further--"what sheput to me, with her rather grand way of looking _all_ questions straightin the face, you see, was: Do we or don't we, decidedly, take uppractically her very handsome offer--'very handsome' being, I mean,what _she_ calls it; though it strikes even me too, you know, as ratherdecent."
Lord Theign at this point resigned himself to know. "Kitty has of courserubbed into me how decent she herself finds it. She hurls herself againon me--successfully!--for everything, and it suits her down to theground. She pays her beastly debt--that is, I mean to say," and he tookhimself up, though it was scarce more than perfunctory, "dischargesher obligations--by her sister's fair hand; not to mention a few othertrifles for which I naturally provide."
Lord John, a little unexpectedly to himself on the defensive, was yetbut briefly at a loss. "Of course we take into account, don't we? notonly the fact of my mother's desire (intended, I assure you, to be mostflattering) that Lady Grace shall enter our family with all honours, buther expressed readiness to facilitate the thing by an understanding overand above----"
"Over and above Kitty's release from her damnable payment?"--Lord Theignreached out to what his guest had left rather in the air. "Of coursewe take _everything_ into account--or I shouldn't, my dear fellow, bediscussing with you at all a business one or two of whose aspects solittle appeal to me: especially as there's nothing, you easily conceive,that a daughter of mine can come in for by entering even your family,or any other (as a family) that she wouldn't be quite as sure of by juststaying in her own. The Duchess's idea, at any rate, if I've followedyou, is that if Grace does accept you she settles on you twelvethousand; with the condition--"
Lord John was already all there. "Definitely, yes, of your settling theequivalent on Lady Grace."
"And what do you call the equivalent of twelve thousand?"
"Why, tacked on to a value so great and so charming as Lady Graceherself, I dare say such a sum as nine or ten would serve."
"And where the mischief, if you please, at this highly inconvenienttime, am I to pick up nine or ten thousand?"
Lord John declined, with a smiling, a fairly irritating eye for hisfriend's general resources, to consider that question seriously. "Surelyyou can have no difficulty whatever--!"
"Why not?--when you can see for yourself that I've had this year tolet poor dear old Hill Street! Do you call it the moment for me to have_liked_ to see myself all but cajoled into planking down even such amatter as the very much lower figure of Kitty's horrid incubus?"
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"Ah, but the inducement and the _quid pro quo_," Lord John brightlyindicated, "are here much greater! In the case you speak of you willonly have removed the incubus--which, I grant you, she must and you mustfeel as horrid. In this other you pacify Lady Imber _and_ marry LadyGrace: marry her to a man who has set his heart on her and of whom shehas just expressed--to himself--a very kind and very high opinion."
"She has expressed a very high opinion of you?"--Lord Theign scarceglowed with credulity.
But the younger man held his ground. "She has told me she thoroughlylikes me and that--though a fellow feels an ass repeating suchthings--she thinks me perfectly charming."
"A tremendous creature, eh, all round? Then," said Lord Theign, "whatdoes she want more?"
"She very possibly wants nothing--but I'm to that beastly degree,you see," his visitor patiently explained, "in the cleft stick of myfearfully positive mother's wants. Those are her 'terms,' and I don'tmind saying that they're most disagreeable to me--I quite hate 'em:there! Only I think it makes a jolly difference that I wouldn'ttouch 'em with a long pole if my personal feeling--in respect to LadyGrace--wasn't so immensely enlisted."
"I assure you I'd chuck 'em out of window, my boy, if I didn't believeyou'd be really good to her," Lord Theign returned with the properestspirit.
It only encouraged his companion. "You _will_ just tell her then, nowand here, how good you honestly believe I shall be?"
This appeal required a moment--a longer look at him. "You truly holdthat that friendly guarantee, backed by my parental weight, will do yourjob?"
"That's the conviction I entertain."
Lord Theign thought again. "Well, even if your conviction's just, thatstill doesn't tell me into which of my very empty pockets it will be ofthe least use for me to fumble."
"Oh," Lord John laughed, "when a man has such a tremendous assortmentof breeches--!" He pulled up, however, as, in his motion, his eye caughtthe great vista of the open rooms. "If it's a question of pockets--andwhat's _in_ 'em--here precisely is my man!" This personage had come backfrom his tour of observation and was now, on the threshold of the hall,exhibited to Lord Theign as well. Lord John's welcome was warm. "I'vehad awfully to fail you, Mr. Bender, but I was on the point of joiningyou. Let me, however, still better, introduce you to our host."