Hugh caught the allusion1, it would have seemed, but after a moment. “News of the Moretto? No, Mr. Bender, I haven’t news yet.” But he added as with high candour for the visitor’s motion of disappointment: “I think I warned you, you know, that it would take three or four weeks.”
“Well, in my country,” Mr. Bender returned with disgust, “it would take three or four minutes! Can’t you make ’em step more lively?”
“I’m expecting, sir,” said Hugh good-humouredly, “a report from hour to hour.”
“Then will you let me have it right off?”
Hugh indulged in a pause; after which very frankly2: “Ah, it’s scarcely for you, Mr. Bender, that I’m acting3!”
The great collector was but briefly4 checked. “Well, can’t you just act for Art?”
“Oh, you’re doing that yourself so powerfully,” Hugh laughed, “that I think I had best leave it to you!”
His friend looked at him as some inspector5 on circuit might look at a new improvement. “Don’t you want to go round acting with me?”
“Go ‘on tour,’ as it were? Oh, frankly, Mr. Bender,” Hugh said, “if I had any weight ——!”
“You’d add it to your end of the beam? Why, what have I done that you should go back on me — after working me up so down there? The worst I’ve done,” Mr. Bender continued, “is to refuse that Moretto.”
“Has it deplorably been offered you?” our young man cried, unmistakably and sincerely affected6. After which he went on, as his fellow-visitor only eyed him hard, not, on second thoughts, giving the owner of the great work away: “Then why are you — as if you were a banished7 Romeo — so keen for news from Verona?” To this odd mixture of business and literature Mr. Bender made no reply, contenting himself with but a large vague blandness8 that wore in him somehow the mark of tested utility; so that Hugh put him another question: “Aren’t you here, sir, on the chance of the Mantovano?”
“I’m here,” he then imperturbably9 said, “because Lord Theign has wired me to meet him. Ain’t you here for that yourself?”
Hugh betrayed for a moment his enjoyment10 of a “big” choice of answers. “Dear, no! I’ve but been in, by Lady Sandgate’s leave, to see that grand Lawrence.”
“Ah yes, she’s very kind about it — one does go ‘in.’” After which Mr. Bender had, even in the atmosphere of his danger, a throb11 of curiosity. “Is any one after that grand Lawrence?”
“Oh, I hope not,” Hugh laughed, “unless you again dreadfully are: wonderful thing as it is and so just in its right place there.”
“You call it,” Mr. Bender impartially12 inquired, “a very wonderful thing?”
“Well, as a Lawrence, it has quite bowled me over”— Hugh spoke13 as for the strictly14 aesthetic15 awkwardness of that. “But you know I take my pictures hard.” He gave a punch to his hat, pressed for time in this connection as he was glad truly to appear to his friend. “I must make my little rapport16.” Yet before it he did seek briefly to explain. “We’re a band of young men who care — and we watch the great things. Also — for I must give you the real truth about myself — we watch the great people.”
“Well, I guess I’m used to being watched — if that’s the worst you can do.” To which Mr. Bender added in his homely17 way: “But you know, Mr. Crimble, what I’m really after.”
Hugh’s strategy on this would again have peeped out for us. “The man in this morning’s ‘Journal’ appears at least to have discovered.”
“Yes, the man in this morning’s ‘Journal’ has discovered three or four weeks — as it appears to take you here for everything — after my beginning to talk. Why, they knew I was talking that time ago on the other side.”
“Oh, they know things in the States,” Hugh cheerfully agreed, “so independently of their happening! But you must have talked loud.”
“Well, I haven’t so much talked as raved,” Mr. Bender conceded —“for I’m afraid that when I do want a thing I rave18 till I get it. You heard me at Ded-borough, and your enterprising daily press has at last caught the echo.”
“Then they’ll make up for lost time! But have you done it,” Hugh asked, “to prepare an alibi19?”
“An alibi?”
“By ‘raving,’ as you say, the saddle on the wrong horse. I don’t think you at all believe you’ll get the Sir Joshua — but meanwhile we shall have cleared up the question of the Moretto.”
Mr. Bender, imperturbable20, didn’t speak till he had done justice to this picture of his subtlety21. “Then, why on earth do you want to boom the Moretto?”
“You ask that,” said Hugh, “because it’s the boomed thing that’s most in peril22.”
“Well, it’s the big, the bigger, the biggest things, and if you drag their value to the light why shouldn’t we want to grab them and carry them off — the same as all of you originally did?”
“Ah, not quite the same,” Hugh smiled —“that I will say for you!”
“Yes, you stick it on now — you have got an eye for the rise in values. But I grant you your unearned increment23, and you ought to be mighty24 glad that, to such a time, I’ll pay it you.”
Our young man kept, during a moment’s thought, his eyes on his companion, and then resumed with all intensity25 and candour: “You may easily, Mr. Bender, be too much for me — as you appear too much for far greater people. But may I ask you, very earnestly, for your word on this, as to any case in which that happens — that when precious things, things we are to lose here, are knocked down to you, you’ll let us at least take leave of them, let us have a sight of them in London, before they’re borne off?”
Mr. Bender’s big face fell almost with a crash. “Hand them over, you mean, to the sandwich men on Bond Street?”
“To one or other of the placard and poster men — I don’t insist on the inserted human slice! Let the great values, as a compensation to us, be on view for three or four weeks.”
“You ask me,” Mr. Bender returned, “for a general assurance to that effect?”
“Well, a particular one — so it be particular enough,” Hugh said —“will do just for now. Let me put in my plea for the issue — well, of the value that’s actually in the scales.”
“The Mantovano–Moretto?”
“The Moretto–Mantovano!”
Mr. Bender carnivorously smiled. “Hadn’t we better know which it is first?”
Hugh had a motion of practical indifference26 for this. “The public interest — playing so straight on the question — may help to settle it. By which I mean that it will profit enormously — the question of probability, of identity itself will — by the discussion it will create. The discussion will promote certainty ——”
“And certainty,” Mr. Bender massively mused27, “will kick up a row.”
“Of course it will kick up a row!”— Hugh thoroughly28 guaranteed that. “You’ll be, for the month, the best-abused man in England — if you venture to remain here at all; except, naturally, poor Lord Theign.”
“Whom it won’t be my interest, at the same time, to worry into backing down.”
“But whom it will be exceedingly mine to practise on”— and Hugh laughed as at the fun before them —“if I may entertain the sweet hope of success. The only thing is — from my point of view,” he went on —“that backing down before what he will call vulgar clamour isn’t in the least in his traditions, nothing less so; and that if there should be really too much of it for his taste or his nerves he’ll set his handsome face as a stone and never budge29 an inch. But at least again what I appeal to you for will have taken place — the picture will have been seen by a lot of people who’ll care.”
“It will have been seen,” Mr. Bender amended30 —“on the mere31 contingency32 of my acquisition of it — only if its present owner consents.”
“‘Consents’?” Hugh almost derisively33 echoed; “why, he’ll propose it himself, he’ll insist on it, he’ll put it through, once he’s angry enough — as angry, I mean, as almost any public criticism of a personal act of his will be sure to make him; and I’m afraid the striking criticism, or at least animadversion, of this morning, will have blown on his flame of bravado34.”
Inevitably35 a student of character, Mr. Bender rose to the occasion. “Yes, I guess he’s pretty mad.”
“They’ve imputed37 to him”— Hugh but wanted to abound38 in that sense —“an intention of which after all he isn’t guilty.”
“So that”— his listener glowed with interested optimism —“if they don’t look out, if they impute36 it to him again, I guess he’ll just go and be guilty!”
Hugh might at this moment have shown to an initiated39 eye as fairly elated by the sense of producing something of the effect he had hoped. “You entertain the fond vision of lashing40 them up to that mistake, oh fisher in troubled waters?” And then with a finer art, as his companion, expansively bright but crudely acute, eyed him in turn as if to sound him: “The strongest thing in such a type — one does make out — is his resentment41 of a liberty taken; and the most natural furthermore is quite that he should feel almost anything you do take uninvited from the groaning42 board of his banquet of life to be such a liberty.”
Mr. Bender participated thus at his perceptive43 ease in the exposed aristocratic illusion. “Yes, I guess he has always lived as he likes, the way those of you who have got things fixed44 for them do, over here; and to have to quit it on account of unpleasant remark —”
But he gave up thoughtfully trying to express what this must be; reduced to the mere synthetic45 interjection “My!”
“That’s it, Mr. Bender,” Hugh said for the consecration46 of such a moral; “he won’t quit it without a hard struggle.”
Mr. Bender hereupon at last gave himself quite gaily47 away as to his high calculation of impunity48. “Well, I guess he won’t struggle too hard for me to hold on to him if I want to!”
“In the thick of the conflict then, however that may be,” Hugh returned, “don’t forget what I’ve urged on you — the claim of our desolate49 country.”
But his friend had an answer to this. “My natural interest, Mr. Crimble — considering what I do for it — is in the claim of ours. But I wish you were on my side!”
“Not so much,” Hugh hungrily and truthfully laughed, “as I wish you were on mine!” Decidedly, none the less, he had to go. “Good-bye — for another look here!”
He reached the doorway50 of the second room, where, however, his companion, freshly alert at this, stayed him by a gesture. “How much is she really worth?”
“‘She’?” Hugh, staring a moment, was miles at sea. “Lady Sandgate?”
“Her great-grandmother.”
A responsible answer was prevented — the butler was again with them; he had opened wide the other door and he named to Mr. Bender the personage under his convoy51. “Lord John!”
Hugh caught this from the inner threshold, and it gave him his escape. “Oh, ask that friend!” With which he sought the further passage to the staircase and street, while Lord John arrived in charge of Mr. Gotch, who, having remarked to the two occupants of the front drawing-room that her ladyship would come, left them together.
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1
allusion
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| n.暗示，间接提示 | |
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2
frankly
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| adv.坦白地，直率地；坦率地说 | |
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acting
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| n.演戏，行为，假装；adj.代理的，临时的，演出用的 | |
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4
briefly
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| adv.简单地，简短地 | |
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inspector
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| n.检查员，监察员，视察员 | |
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affected
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| adj.不自然的，假装的 | |
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7
banished
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| v.放逐，驱逐( banish的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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8
blandness
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| n.温柔，爽快 | |
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9
imperturbably
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| adv.泰然地，镇静地，平静地 | |
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10
enjoyment
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| n.乐趣；享有；享用 | |
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11
throb
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| v.震颤，颤动；(急速强烈地)跳动，搏动 | |
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impartially
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| adv.公平地，无私地 | |
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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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strictly
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| adv.严厉地，严格地；严密地 | |
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15
aesthetic
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| adj.美学的，审美的，有美感 | |
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rapport
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| n.和睦，意见一致 | |
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homely
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| adj.家常的，简朴的；不漂亮的 | |
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rave
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| vi.胡言乱语；热衷谈论；n.热情赞扬 | |
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19
alibi
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| n.某人当时不在犯罪现场的申辩或证明；借口 | |
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imperturbable
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| adj.镇静的 | |
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subtlety
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| n.微妙，敏锐，精巧；微妙之处，细微的区别 | |
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peril
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| n.(严重的)危险；危险的事物 | |
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23
increment
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| n.增值，增价；提薪，增加工资 | |
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24
mighty
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| adj.强有力的；巨大的 | |
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intensity
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| n.强烈，剧烈；强度；烈度 | |
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indifference
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| n.不感兴趣，不关心，冷淡，不在乎 | |
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mused
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| v.沉思，冥想( muse的过去式和过去分词 )；沉思自语说（某事） | |
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thoroughly
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| adv.完全地，彻底地，十足地 | |
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budge
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| v.移动一点儿；改变立场 | |
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Amended
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| adj. 修正的 动词amend的过去式和过去分词 | |
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mere
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| adj.纯粹的；仅仅，只不过 | |
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contingency
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| n.意外事件，可能性 | |
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33
derisively
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| adv. 嘲笑地，嘲弄地 | |
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34
bravado
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| n.虚张声势，故作勇敢，逞能 | |
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inevitably
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| adv.不可避免地；必然发生地 | |
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impute
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| v.归咎于 | |
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imputed
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| v.把（错误等）归咎于( impute的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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38
abound
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| vi.大量存在；(in，with)充满，富于 | |
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initiated
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| n. 创始人 adj. 新加入的 vt. 开始，创始，启蒙，介绍加入 | |
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40
lashing
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| n.鞭打；痛斥；大量；许多v.鞭打( lash的现在分词 )；煽动；紧系；怒斥 | |
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41
resentment
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| n.怨愤，忿恨 | |
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42
groaning
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| adj. 呜咽的, 呻吟的 动词groan的现在分词形式 | |
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43
perceptive
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| adj.知觉的，有洞察力的，感知的 | |
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44
fixed
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| adj.固定的，不变的，准备好的；(计算机)固定的 | |
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45
synthetic
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| adj.合成的，人工的；综合的；n.人工制品 | |
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46
consecration
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| n.供献，奉献，献祭仪式 | |
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47
gaily
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| adv.欢乐地，高兴地 | |
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48
impunity
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| n.(惩罚、损失、伤害等的)免除 | |
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49
desolate
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| adj.荒凉的，荒芜的；孤独的，凄凉的；v.使荒芜，使孤寂 | |
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50
doorway
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| n.门口，(喻)入门；门路，途径 | |
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51
convoy
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| vt.护送，护卫，护航；n.护送；护送队 | |
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