The Outcry Part 14

"I'm not so sure! I'm beastly shy--little as I may seem to show it: save in great causes, when I'm horridly bold and hideously offensive. Now at any rate I only know what _has_ been." She turned off for it, moving away from him as with a sense of mingled things that made for unrest; and he had the next moment grown graver under the impression. "But does anything in it all," he asked, "trouble you?"

She faced about across the wider s.p.a.ce, and there was a different note in what she brought out. "I don't know what forces me so to _tell_ you things."

"'Tell' me?" he stared. "Why, you've told me nothing more monstrous than that I've been welcome!"

"Well, however that may be, what did you mean just now by the chance of our not 'going straight'? When you said you'd expose our bad--or is it our false?--Rubens in the event of a certain danger."

"Oh, in the event of your ever being bribed"--he laughed again as with relief. And then as her face seemed to challenge the word: "Why, to let anything--of your best!--ever leave Dedborough. By which I mean really of course leave the country." She turned again on this, and something in her air made him wonder. "I hope you don't feel there _is_ such a danger? I understood from you half an hour ago that it was unthinkable."

"Well, it _was_, to me, half an hour ago," she said as she came nearer.

"But if it has since come up?"

"'If' it has! But _has_ it? In the form of that monster? What Mr. Bender wants is the great d.u.c.h.ess," he recalled.

"And my father won't sell _her_? No, he won't sell the great d.u.c.h.ess--there I feel safe. But he greatly needs a certain sum of money--or he thinks he does--and I've just had a talk with him."

"In which he has told you that?"

"He has told me nothing," Lady Grace said--"or else told me quite other things. But the more I think of them the more it comes to me that he feels urged or tempted--"

"To despoil and denude these walls?" Hugh broke in, looking about in his sharper apprehension.

"Yes, to satisfy, to save my sister. _Now_ do you think our state so ideal?" she asked--but without elation for her hint of triumph.

He had no answer for this save "Ah, but you terribly interest me. May I ask what's the matter with your sister?"

Oh, she wanted to go on straight now! "The matter is--in the first place--that she's too dazzlingly, dreadfully beautiful."

"More beautiful than you?" his sincerity easily risked.

"Millions of times." Sad, almost sombre, she hadn't a shade of coquetry.

"Kitty has debts--great heaped-up gaming debts."

"But to such amounts?"

"Incredible amounts it appears. And mountains of others too. She throws herself all on our father."

"And he _has_ to pay them? There's no one else?" Hugh asked.

She waited as if he might answer himself, and then as he apparently didn't, "He's only afraid there _may_ be some else--that's how she makes him do it," she said. And "Now do you think," she pursued, "that I don't tell you things?"

He turned them over in his young perception and pity, the things she told him. "Oh, oh, oh!" And then, in the great place, while as, just spent by the effort of her disclosure, she moved from him again, he took them all in. "That's the situation that, as you say, may force his hand."

"It absolutely, I feel, does force it." And the renewal of her appeal brought her round. "Isn't it too lovely?"

His frank disgust answered. "It's too d.a.m.nable!"

"And it's you," she quite terribly smiled, "who--by the 'irony of fate'!--have given him help."

He smote his head in the light of it. "By the Mantovano?"

"By the possible Mantovano--as a subst.i.tute for the impossible Sir Joshua. You've made him aware of a value."

"Ah, but the value's to be fixed!"

"Then Mr. Bender will fix it!"

"Oh, but--as he himself would say--I'll fix Mr. Bender!" Hugh declared.

"And he won't buy a pig in a poke."

This cleared the air while they looked at each other; yet she had already asked: "What in the world can you do, and how in the world can you do it?"

Well, he was too excited for decision. "I don't quite see now, but give me time." And he took out his watch as already to measure it. "Oughtn't I before I go to say a word to Lord Theign?"

"Is it your idea to become a lion in his path?"

"Well, say a cub--as that's what I'm afraid he'll call me! But I think I should speak to him."

She drew a conclusion momentarily dark. "He'll have to learn in that case that I've told you of my fear."

"And is there any good reason why he shouldn't?"

She kept her eyes on him and the darkness seemed to clear. "No!" she at last replied, and, having gone to touch an electric bell, was with him again. "But I think I'm rather sorry for you."

"Does that represent a reason why I should be so for you?"

For a little she said nothing; but after that: "None whatever!"

"Then is the sister of whom you speak Lady Imber?"

Lady Grace, at this, raised her hand in caution: the butler had arrived, with due gravity, in answer to her ring; to whom she made known her desire. "Please say to his lords.h.i.+p--in the saloon or wherever--that Mr. Crimble must go." When Banks had departed, however, accepting the responsibility of this mission, she answered her friend's question. "The sister of whom I speak is Lady Imber."

"She loses then so heavily at bridge?"

"She loses more than she wins."

Hugh gazed as with interest at these oddities of the great. "And yet she still plays?"

"What else, in her set, should she do?"

This he was quite unable to say; but he could after a moment's exhibition of the extent to which he was out of it put a question instead. "So _you're_ not in her set?"

"I'm not in her set."

"Then decidedly," he said, "I don't want to save her. I only want--"

He was going on, but she broke in: "I know what you want!"