“I left the great doings, which are almost over, to every one’s relief, I think,” the girl returned, “so that your precious time shouldn’t be taken to hunt for me.”
It was clearly for him, on this bright answer, as if her white hand were holding out the perfect flower of felicity. “You came in from your revels3 on purpose — with the same charity you showed me from that first moment?” They stood smiling at each other as in an exchange of sympathy already confessed — and even as if finding that their relation had grown during the lapse4 of contact; she recognising the effect of what they had originally felt as bravely as he might name it. What the fine, slightly long oval of her essentially5 quiet face — quiet in spite of certain vague depths of reference to forces of the strong high order, forces involved and implanted, yet also rather spent in the process — kept in range from under her redundant6 black hat was the strength of expression, the directness of communication, that her guest appeared to borrow from the unframed and unattached nippers unceasingly perched, by their mere7 ground-glass rims8, as she remembered, on the bony bridge of his indescribably authoritative9 (since it was at the same time decidedly inquisitive) young nose. She must, however, also have embraced in this contemplation, she must more or less again have interpreted, his main physiognomic mark, the degree to which his clean jaw10 was underhung and his lower lip protruded11; a lapse of regularity12 made evident by a suppression of beard and moustache as complete as that practised by Mr. Bender — though without the appearance consequent in the latter’s case, that of the flagrantly vain appeal in the countenance for some other exhibition of a history, of a process of production, than this so superficial one. With the interested and interesting girl sufficiently13 under our attention while we thus try to evoke14 her, we may even make out some wonder in her as to why the so perceptibly protrusive15 lower lip of this acquaintance of an hour or two should positively16 have contributed to his being handsome instead of much more logically interfering17 with it. We might in fact in such a case even have followed her into another and no less refined a speculation18 — the question of whether the surest seat of his good looks mightn’t after all be his high, fair, if somewhat narrow, forehead, crowned with short crisp brown hair and which, after a fashion of its own, predominated without overhanging. He spoke19 after they had stood just face to face almost long enough for awkwardness. “I haven’t forgotten one item of your kindness to me on that rather bleak20 occasion.”
“Bleak do you call it?” she laughed. “Why I found it, rather, tropical —‘lush.’ My neighbour on the other side wanted to talk to me of the White City.”
“Then you made it doubtless bleak for him, let us say. I couldn’t let you alone, I remember, about this — it was like a shipwrecked signal to a sail on the horizon.” “This” obviously meant for the young man exactly what surrounded him; he had begun, like Mr. Bender, to be conscious of a thick solicitation21 of the eye — and much more than he, doubtless, of a tug22 at the imagination; and he broke — characteristically, you would have been sure — into a great free gaiety of recognition.
“Oh, we’ve nothing particular in the hall,” Lady Grace amiably23 objected.
“Nothing, I see, but Claudes and Cuyps! I’m an ogre,” he said —“before a new and rare feast!”
She happily took up his figure. “Then won’t you begin — as a first course — with tea after your ride? If the other, that is — for there has been an ogre before you — has left any.”
“Some tea, with pleasure”— he looked all his longing24; “though when you talk of a fellow-feaster I should have supposed that, on such a day as this especially, you’d find yourselves running a continuous table d’h?te.”
“Ah, we can’t work sports in our gallery and saloon — the banging or whacking25 and shoving amusements that are all most people care for; unless, perhaps,” Lady Grace went on, “your own peculiar26 one, as I understand you, of playing football with the old benighted27 traditions and attributions you everywhere meet: in fact I think you said the old idiotic28 superstitions29.”
Hugh Crimble went more than half-way to meet this description of his fondest activity; he indeed even beckoned30 it on. “The names and stories and styles — the so often vain legend, not to be too invidious — of author or subject or school?” But he had a drop, no less, as from the sense of a cause sometimes lost. “Ah, that’s a game at which we all can play!”
“Though scarcely,” Lady Grace suggested, “at which we all can score.”
The words appeared indeed to take meaning from his growing impression of the place and its charm — of the number of objects, treasures of art, that pressed for appreciation31 of their importance. “Certainly,” he said, “no one can ever have scored much on sacred spots of this order — which express so the grand impunity32 of their pride, their claims, their assurance!”
“We’ve had great luck,” she granted —“as I’ve just been reminded; but ever since those terrible things you told me in town — about the tremendous tricks of the whirligig of time and the aesthetic33 fools’ paradise in which so many of us live — I’ve gone about with my heart in my mouth. Who knows that while I talk Mr. Bender mayn’t be pulling us to pieces?”
Hugh Crimble had a shudder34 of remembrance. “Mr. Bender?”
“The rich American who’s going round.”
It gave him a sharper shock. “The wretch35 who bagged Lady Lappington’s Longhi?”
Lady Grace showed surprise. “Is he a wretch?”
Her visitor but asked to be extravagant36. “Rather — the scoundrel. He offered his infernal eight thousand down.”
“Oh, I thought you meant he had played some trick!”
“I wish he had — he could then have been collared.”
“Well,” Lady Grace peacefully smiled, “it’s no use his offering us eight thousand — or eighteen or even eighty!”
Hugh Crimble stared as at the odd superfluity of this reassurance37, almost crude on exquisite38 lips and contradicting an imputation39 no one would have indecently made. “Gracious goodness, I hope not! The man surely doesn’t suppose you’d traffic.”
She might, while she still smiled at him, have been fairly enjoying the friendly horror she produced. “I don’t quite know what he supposes. But people have trafficked; people do; people are trafficking all round.”
“Ah,” Hugh Crimble cried, “that’s what deprives me of my rest and, as a lover of our vast and beneficent art-wealth, poisons my waking hours. That art-wealth is at the mercy of a leak there appears no means of stopping.” She had tapped a spring in him, clearly, and the consequent flood might almost at any moment become copious40. “Precious things are going out of our distracted country at a quicker rate than the very quickest — a century and more ago — of their ever coming in.”
She was sharply struck, but was also unmistakably a person in whom stirred thought soon found connections and relations. “Well, I suppose our art-wealth came in-save for those awkward Elgin Marbles! — mainly by purchase too, didn’t it? We ourselves largely took it away from somewhere, didn’t we? We didn’t grow it all.”
“We grew some of the loveliest flowers — and on the whole today the most exposed.” He had been pulled up but for an instant. “Great Gainsboroughs and Sir Joshuas and Romneys and Sargents, great Turners and Constables41 and old Cromes and Brabazons, form, you’ll recognise, a vast garden in themselves. What have we ever for instance more successfully grown than your splendid ‘Duchess of Waterbridge’?”
The girl showed herself ready at once to recognise under his eloquence42 anything he would. “Yes — it’s our Sir Joshua, I believe, that Mr. Bender has proclaimed himself particularly ‘after.’”
It brought a cloud to her friend’s face. “Then he’ll be capable of anything.”
“Of anything, no doubt, but of making my father capable —! And you haven’t at any rate,” she said, “so much as seen the picture.”
“I beg your pardon — I saw it at the Guildhall three years ago; and am almost afraid of getting again, with a fresh sense of its beauty, a livelier sense of its danger.”
Lady Grace, however, was so far from fear that she could even afford pity. “Poor baffled Mr. Bender!”
“Oh, rich and confident Mr. Bender!” Crimble cried. “Once given his money, his confidence is a horrid43 engine in itself — there’s the rub! I dare say”— the young man saw it all —“he has brought his poisonous cheque.”
She gave it her less exasperated44 wonder. “One has heard of that, but only in the case of some particularly pushing dealer45.”
“And Mr. Bender, to do him justice, isn’t a particularly pushing dealer?”
“No,” Lady Grace judiciously46 returned; “I think he’s not a dealer at all, but just what you a moment ago spoke of yourself as being.”
He gave a glance at his possibly wild recent past. “A fond true lover?”
“As we all were in our lucky time — when we rum-aged Italy and Spain.”
He appeared to recognise this complication — of Bender’s voracious47 integrity; but only to push it away. “Well, I don’t know whether the best lovers are, or ever were, the best buyers — but I feel today that they’re the best keepers.”
The breath of his emphasis blew, as her eyes showed, on the girl’s dimmer fire. “It’s as if it were suddenly in the air that you’ve brought us some light or some help — that you may do something really good for us.”
“Do you mean ‘mark down,’ as they say at the shops, all your greatest claims?”
His chord of sensibility had trembled all gratefully into derision, and not to seem to swagger he had put his possible virtue48 at its lowest. This she beautifully showed that she beautifully saw. “I dare say that if you did even that we should have to take it from you.”
“Then it may very well be,” he laughed back, “the reason why I feel, under my delightful49, wonderful impression, a bit anxious and nervous and afraid.”
“That shows,” she returned, “that you suspect us of horrors hiding from justice, and that your natural kindness yet shrinks from handing us over!”
Well, clearly, she might put it as she liked — it all came back to his being more charmed. “Heaven knows I’ve wanted a chance at you, but what should you say if, having then at last just taken you in in your so apparent perfection, I should feel it the better part of valour simply to mount my ‘bike’ again and spin away?”
“I should be sure that at the end of the avenue you’d turn right round and come back. You’d think again of Mr. Bender.”
“Whom I don’t, however, you see — if he’s prowling off there — in the least want to meet.” Crimble made the point with gaiety. “I don’t know what I mightn’t do to him — and yet it’s not of my temptation to violence, after all, that I’m most afraid. It’s of the brutal50 mistake of one’s breaking — with one’s priggish, precious modernity and one’s possibly futile51 discriminations — into a general situation or composition, as we say, so serene52 and sound and right. What should one do here, out of respect for that felicity, but hold one’s breath and walk on tip-toe? The very celebrations and consecrations, as you tell me, instinctively53 stay outside. I saw that all,” the young man went on with more weight in his ardour, “I saw it, while we talked in London, as your natural setting and your native air — and now ten minutes on the spot have made it sink into my spirit. You’re a case, all together, of enchanted54 harmony, of perfect equilibrium55 — there’s nothing to be done or said.”
His friend listened to this eloquence with her eyes lowered, then raising them to meet, with a vague insistence56, his own; after which something she had seen there appeared to determine in her another motion. She indicated the small landscape that Mr. Bender had, by Lady Sandgate’s report, rapidly studied and denounced. “For what do you take that little picture?”
Hugh Crimble went over and looked. “Why, don’t you know? It’s a jolly little Vandermeer of Delft.”
“It’s not a base imitation?”
He looked again, but appeared at a loss. “An imitation of Vandermeer?”
“Mr. Bender thinks of Cuyp.”
It made the young man ring out: “Then Mr. Bender’s doubly dangerous!”
“Singly is enough!” Lady Grace laughed. “But you see you have to speak.”
“Oh, to him, rather, after that — if you’ll just take me to him.”
“Yes then,” she said; but even while she spoke Lord John, who had returned, by the terrace, from his quarter of an hour passed with Lady Imber, was there practically between them; a fact that she had to notice for her other visitor, to whom she was hastily reduced to naming him.
His lordship eagerly made the most of this tribute of her attention, which had reached his ear; he treated it — her “Oh Lord John!”— as a direct greeting. “Ah Lady Grace! I came back particularly to find you.”
She could but explain her predicament. “I was taking Mr. Crimble to see the pictures.” And then more pointedly57, as her manner had been virtually an introduction of that gentleman, an introduction which Lord John’s mere noncommittal stare was as little as possible a response to: “Mr. Crimble’s one of the quite new connoisseurs58.”
“Oh, I’m at the very lowest round of the ladder. But I aspire59!” Hugh laughed.
“You’ll mount!” said Lady Grace with friendly confidence.
He took it again with gay deprecation. “Ah, if by that time there’s anything left here to mount on!”
“Let us hope there will be at least what Mr. Bender, poor man, won’t have been able to carry off.” To which Lady Grace added, as to strike a helpful spark from the personage who had just joined them, but who had the air of wishing to preserve his detachment: “It’s to Lord John that we owe Mr. Bender’s acquaintance.”
Hugh looked at the gentleman to whom they were so indebted. “Then do you happen to know, sir, what your friend means to do with his spoil?”
The question got itself but dryly treated, as if it might be a commercially calculating or interested one. “Oh, not sell it again.”
“Then ship it to New York?” the inquirer pursued, defining himself somehow as not snubbed and, from this point, not snubbable.
That appearance failed none the less to deprive Lord John of a betrayed relish60 for being able to displease61 Lady Grace’s odd guest by large assent62. “As fast as ever he can — and you can land things there now, can’t you? in three or four days.”
“I dare say. But can’t he be induced to have a little mercy?” Hugh sturdily pursued.
Lord John pushed out his lips. “A ‘little’? How much do you want?”
“Well, one wants to be able somehow to stay his hand.”
“I doubt if you can any more stay Mr. Bender’s hand than you can empty his purse.”
“Ah, the Despoilers!” said Crimble with strong expression. “But it’s we,” he added, “who are base.”
“‘Base’?”— and Lord John’s surprise was apparently63 genuine.
“To want only to ‘do business,’ I mean, with our treasures, with our glories.”
Hugh’s words exhaled64 such a sense of peril65 as to draw at once Lady Grace. “Ah, but if we’re above that here, as you know ———!”
He stood smilingly corrected and contrite66. “Of course I know — but you must forgive me if I have it on the brain. And show me first of all, won’t you? the Moretto of Brescia.”
“You know then about the Moretto of Brescia?”
“Why, didn’t you tell me yourself?” It went on between them for the moment quite as if there had been no Lord John.
“Probably, yes,” she recalled; “so how I must have swaggered!” After which she turned to the other visitor with a kindness strained clear of urgency. “Will you also come?”
He confessed to a difficulty — which his whole face begged her also to take account of. “I hoped you’d be at leisure — for something I’ve so at heart!”
This had its effect; she took a rapid decision and turned persuasively67 to Crimble — for whom, in like manner, there must have been something in her face. “Let Mr. Bender himself then show you. And there are things in the library too.”
“Oh yes, there are things in the library.” Lord John, happy in his gained advantage and addressing Hugh from the strong ground of an initiation68 already complete, quite sped him on the way.
Hugh clearly made no attempt to veil the penetration69 with which he was moved to look from one of these counsellors to the other, though with a ready “Thank-you!” for Lady Grace he the next instant started in pursuit of Mr. Bender.
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1
countenance
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| n.脸色，面容；面部表情；vt.支持，赞同 | |
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awfully
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| adv.可怕地，非常地，极端地 | |
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revels
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| n.作乐( revel的名词复数 )；狂欢；着迷；陶醉v.作乐( revel的第三人称单数 )；狂欢；着迷；陶醉 | |
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lapse
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| n.过失，流逝，失效，抛弃信仰，间隔；vi.堕落，停止，失效，流逝；vt.使失效 | |
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essentially
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| adv.本质上，实质上，基本上 | |
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redundant
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| adj.多余的，过剩的；(食物)丰富的；被解雇的 | |
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mere
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| adj.纯粹的；仅仅，只不过 | |
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rims
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| n.（圆形物体的）边( rim的名词复数 )；缘；轮辋；轮圈 | |
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authoritative
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| adj.有权威的，可相信的；命令式的；官方的 | |
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jaw
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| n.颚，颌，说教，流言蜚语；v.喋喋不休，教训 | |
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protruded
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| v.（使某物）伸出，（使某物）突出( protrude的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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regularity
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| n.规律性，规则性；匀称，整齐 | |
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sufficiently
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| adv.足够地，充分地 | |
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evoke
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| vt.唤起，引起，使人想起 | |
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protrusive
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| adj.伸出的，突出的 | |
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positively
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| adv.明确地，断然，坚决地；实在，确实 | |
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interfering
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| adj. 妨碍的 动词interfere的现在分词 | |
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speculation
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| n.思索，沉思；猜测；投机 | |
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spoke
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| n.（车轮的）辐条；轮辐；破坏某人的计划；阻挠某人的行动 v.讲，谈（speak的过去式）；说；演说；从某种观点来说 | |
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bleak
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| adj.(天气)阴冷的；凄凉的；暗淡的 | |
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solicitation
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| n.诱惑；揽货；恳切地要求；游说 | |
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tug
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| v.用力拖(或拉)；苦干；n.拖；苦干；拖船 | |
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amiably
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| adv.和蔼可亲地，亲切地 | |
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longing
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| n.（for）渴望 | |
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whacking
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| adj.（用于强调）巨大的v.重击，使劲打( whack的现在分词 ) | |
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peculiar
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| adj.古怪的，异常的；特殊的，特有的 | |
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benighted
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| adj.蒙昧的 | |
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idiotic
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| adj.白痴的 | |
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superstitions
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| 迷信，迷信行为( superstition的名词复数 ) | |
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beckoned
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| v.（用头或手的动作）示意，召唤( beckon的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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appreciation
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| n.评价；欣赏；感谢；领会，理解；价格上涨 | |
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impunity
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| n.(惩罚、损失、伤害等的)免除 | |
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aesthetic
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| adj.美学的，审美的，有美感 | |
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shudder
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| v.战粟，震动，剧烈地摇晃；n.战粟，抖动 | |
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wretch
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| n.可怜的人，不幸的人；卑鄙的人 | |
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extravagant
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| adj.奢侈的；过分的；(言行等)放肆的 | |
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reassurance
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| n.使放心，使消除疑虑 | |
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exquisite
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| adj.精美的；敏锐的；剧烈的，感觉强烈的 | |
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imputation
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| n.归罪，责难 | |
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copious
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| adj.丰富的，大量的 | |
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constables
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| n.警察( constable的名词复数 ) | |
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eloquence
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| n.雄辩；口才，修辞 | |
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horrid
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| adj.可怕的；令人惊恐的；恐怖的；极讨厌的 | |
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exasperated
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| adj.恼怒的 | |
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dealer
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| n.商人，贩子 | |
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judiciously
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| adv.明断地，明智而审慎地 | |
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voracious
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| adj.狼吞虎咽的，贪婪的 | |
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virtue
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| n.德行，美德；贞操；优点；功效，效力 | |
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delightful
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| adj.令人高兴的，使人快乐的 | |
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brutal
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| adj.残忍的，野蛮的，不讲理的 | |
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futile
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| adj.无效的，无用的，无希望的 | |
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serene
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| adj. 安详的，宁静的，平静的 | |
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53
instinctively
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| adv.本能地 | |
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54
enchanted
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| adj. 被施魔法的，陶醉的，入迷的 动词enchant的过去式和过去分词 | |
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55
equilibrium
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| n.平衡，均衡，相称，均势，平静 | |
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insistence
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| n.坚持；强调；坚决主张 | |
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pointedly
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| adv.尖地，明显地 | |
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connoisseurs
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| n.鉴赏家，鉴定家，行家( connoisseur的名词复数 ) | |
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59
aspire
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| vi.(to，after)渴望，追求，有志于 | |
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relish
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| n.滋味，享受，爱好，调味品；vt.加调味料，享受，品味；vi.有滋味 | |
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displease
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| vt.使不高兴，惹怒；n.不悦，不满，生气 | |
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assent
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| v.批准，认可；n.批准，认可 | |
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apparently
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| adv.显然地；表面上，似乎 | |
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64
exhaled
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| v.呼出，发散出( exhale的过去式和过去分词 )；吐出（肺中的空气、烟等），呼气 | |
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65
peril
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| n.(严重的)危险；危险的事物 | |
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66
contrite
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| adj.悔悟了的，后悔的，痛悔的 | |
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67
persuasively
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| adv.口才好地；令人信服地 | |
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68
initiation
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| n.开始 | |
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69
penetration
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| n.穿透，穿人，渗透 | |
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