The Awkward Age Part 13

"You must know."

"Ah it's just my knowing that const.i.tutes the beauty of my loyalty--of my delicacy." He had his quick jumps too. "Am I never, never to see the child?"

This enquiry appeared only to confirm his friend in the view of what was touching in him. "You're the most delicate thing I know, and it crops up with effect the oddest in the intervals of your corruption. Your talk's half the time impossible; you respect neither age nor s.e.x nor condition; one doesn't know what you'll say or do next; and one has to return your books--c'est tout dire--under cover of darkness. Yet there's in the midst of all this and in the general abyss of you a little deepdown delicious niceness, a sweet sensibility, that one has actually one's self, shocked as one perpetually is at you, quite to hold one's breath and stay one's hand for fear of ruffling or bruising. There's no one in talk with whom," she balmily continued, "I find myself half so often suddenly moved to pull up short. You've more little toes to tread on--though you pretend you haven't: I mean morally speaking, don't you know?--than even I have myself, and I've so many that I could wish most of them cut off. You never spare me a shock--no, you don't do that: it isn't the form your delicacy takes. But you'll know what I mean, all the same, I think, when I tell you that there are lots I spare YOU!"

Mr. Mitchett fairly glowed with the candour of his attention. "Know what you mean, dearest lady? How can a man handicapped to death, a man of my origin, my appearance, my general weaknesses, drawbacks, immense indebtedness, all round, for the start, as it were, that I feel my friends have been so good as to allow me: how can such a man not be conscious every moment that every one about him goes on tiptoe and winks at every one else? What CAN you all mention in my presence, poor things, that isn't personal?"

Mrs. Brookenham's face covered him for an instant as no painted Madonna's had ever covered the little charge at the breast beneath it.

"And the finest thing of all in you is your beautiful, beautiful pride!

You're prouder than all of us put together." She checked a motion that he had apparently meant as a protest--she went on with her m.u.f.fled wisdom. "There isn't a man but YOU whom Petherton wouldn't have made vulgar. He isn't vulgar himself--at least not exceptionally; but he's just one of those people, a cla.s.s one knows well, who are so fearfully, in this country, the cause of it in others. For all I know he's the cause of it in me--the cause of it even in poor Edward. For I'm vulgar, Mitchy dear--very often; and the marvel of you is that you never are."

"Thank you for everything. Thank you above all for 'marvel'!" Mitchy grinned.

"Oh I know what I say!"--she didn't in the least blush. "I'll tell you something," she pursued with the same gravity, "if you'll promise to tell no one on earth. If you're proud I'm not. There! It's most extraordinary and I try to conceal it even to myself; but there's no doubt whatever about it--I'm not proud pour deux sous. And some day, on some awful occasion, I shall show it. So--I notify you. Shall you love me still?"

"To the bitter end," Mitchy loyally responded. "For how CAN, how need, a woman be 'proud' who's so preternaturally clever? Pride's only for use when wit breaks down--it's the train the cyclist takes when his tire's deflated. When that happens to YOUR tire, Mrs. Brook, you'll let me know. And you do make me wonder just now," he confessed, "why you're taking such particular precautions and throwing out such a cloud of skirmishers. If you want to shoot me dead a single bullet will do." He faltered but an instant before completing his sense. "Where you really want to come out is at the fact that Nanda loathes me and that I might as well give up asking for her."

"Are you quite serious?" his companion after a moment resumed. "Do you really and truly like her, Mitchy?"

"I like her as much as I dare to--as much as a man can like a girl when from the very first of his seeing her and judging her he has also seen, and seen with all the reasons, that there's no chance for him whatever.

Of course, with all that, he has done his best not to let himself go.

But there are moments," Mr. Mitchett ruefully added, "when it would relieve him awfully to feel free for a good spin."

"I think you exaggerate," his hostess replied, "the difficulties in your way. What do you mean by all the 'reasons'?"

"Why one of them I've already mentioned. I make her flesh creep."

"My own Mitchy!" Mrs. Brookenham protestingly moaned.

"The other is that--very naturally--she's in love."

"With whom under the sun?"

Mrs. Brookenham had, with her startled stare, met his eyes long enough to have taken something from him before he next spoke.

"You really have never suspected? With whom conceivably but old Van?"

"Nanda's in love with old Van?"--the degree to which she had never suspected was scarce to be expressed. "Why he's twice her age--he has seen her in a pinafore with a dirty face and well slapped for it: he has never thought of her in the world."

"How can a person of your acuteness, my dear woman," Mitchy asked, "mention such trifles as having the least to do with the case? How can you possibly have such a fellow about, so beastly good-looking, so infernally well turned out in the way of 'culture,' and so bringing them down in short on every side, and expect in the bosom of your family the absence of history of the reigns of the good kings? If YOU were a girl wouldn't YOU turn purple? If I were a girl shouldn't I--unless, as is more likely, I turned green?"

Mrs. Brookenham was deeply affected. "Nanda does turn purple--?"

"The loveliest shade you ever saw. It's too absurd that you haven't noticed."

It was characteristic of Mrs. Brookenham's amiability that, with her sudden sense of the importance of this new light, she should be quite ready to abase herself. "There are so many things in one's life. One follows false scents. One doesn't make out everything at once. If you're right you must help me. We must see more of her."

"But what good will that do me?" Mitchy appealed.

"Don't you care enough for her to want to help HER?" Then before he could speak, "Poor little darling dear!" his hostess tenderly e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed. "What does she think or dream? Truly she's laying up treasure!"

"Oh he likes her," said Mitchy. "He likes her in fact extremely."

"Do you mean he has told you so?"

"Oh no--we never mention it! But he likes her," Mr. Mitchett stubbornly repeated. "And he's thoroughly straight."

Mrs. Brookenham for a moment turned these things over; after which she came out in a manner that visibly surprised him. "It isn't as if you wished to be nasty about him, is it?--because I know you like him yourself. You're so wonderful to your friends"--oh she could let him see that she knew!--"and in such different and exquisite ways. There are those like HIM"--she signified her other visitor--"who get everything out of you and whom you really appear fond of, or at least to put up with, just FOR that. Then there are those who ask nothing--and whom you're fond of in spite of it."

Mitchy leaned back from this, fist within fist, watching her with a certain disguised emotion. He grinned almost too much for mere amus.e.m.e.nt. "That's the cla.s.s to which YOU belong."

"It's the best one," she returned, "and I'm careful to remain in it. You try to get us, by bribery, into the inferior place, because, proud as you are, it bores you a little that you like us so much. But we won't go--at least I won't. You may make Van," she wonderfully continued.

"There's nothing you wouldn't do for him or give him." Mitchy admired her from his position, slowly shaking his head with it. "He's the man--with no fortune and just as he is, to the smallest particular--whom you would have liked to be, whom you intensely envy, and yet to whom you're magnanimous enough for almost any sacrifice."

Mitchy's appreciation had fairly deepened to a flush. "Magnificent, magnificent Mrs. Brook! What ARE you in thunder up to?"

"Therefore, as I say," she imperturbably went on, "it's not to do him an ill turn that you make a point of what you've just told me."

Mr. Mitchett for a minute gave no sign but his high colour and his queer glare. "How could it do him an ill turn?"

"Oh it WOULD be a way, don't you see? to put before me the need of getting rid of him. For he may 'like' Nanda as much as you please: he'll never, never," Mrs. Brookenham resolutely quavered--"he'll never come to the scratch. And to feel that as _I_ do," she explained, "can only be, don't you also see? to want to save her."

It would have appeared at last that poor Mitchy did see. "By taking it in time? By forbidding him the house?"

She seemed to stand with little nipping scissors in a garden of alternatives. "Or by s.h.i.+pping HER off. Will you help me to save her?"

she broke out again after a moment. "It isn't true," she continued, "that she has any aversion to you."

"Have you charged her with it?" Mitchy demanded with a courage that amounted to high gallantry.

It inspired on the spot his interlocutress, and her own pluck, of as fine a quality now as her diplomacy, which was saying much, fell but little below. "Yes, my dear friend--frankly."

"Good. Then I know what she said."

"She absolutely denied it."

"Oh yes--they always do, because they pity me," Mitchy smiled. "She said what they always say--that the effect I produce is, though at first upsetting, one that little by little they find it possible to get used to. The world's full of people who are getting used to me," Mr. Mitchett concluded.

"It's what _I_ shall never do, for you're quite too great a luxury!"

Mrs. Brookenham declared. "If I haven't threshed you out really MORE with Nanda," she continued, "it has been from a scruple of a sort you people never do a woman the justice to impute. You're the object of views that have so much more to set them off."

Mr. Mitchett on this jumped up; he was clearly conscious of his nerves; he fidgeted away a few steps and then, his hands in his pockets, fixed on his hostess a countenance more controlled. "What does the d.u.c.h.ess mean by your daughter's being--as I understood you to quote her just now--'damaged and depraved'?"

Mrs. Brookenham came up--she literally rose--smiling. "You fit the cap.

You know how she'd like you for little Aggie!"

"What does she mean, what does she mean?" Mitchy repeated.

The door, as he spoke, was thrown open; Mrs. Brookenham glanced round.

"You've the chance to find out from herself!" The d.u.c.h.ess had come back and little Aggie was in her wake.