The Awkward Age Part 36

"To such a tune that I've made up my mind. I want her so to marry--!"

But on the odd little quaver of longing with which he brought it out the elder man fairly hung.

"Well?" said Vanderbank.

"Well, so that on the day she does she'll come into the interest of a considerable sum of money--already very decently invested--that I've determined to settle on her."

Vanderbank's instant admiration flushed across the room. "How awfully jolly of you--how beautiful!"

"Oh there's a way to show practically your appreciation of it."

But Vanderbank, for enthusiasm, scarcely heard him. "I can't tell you how admirable I think you." Then eagerly, "Does Nanda know it?" he demanded.

Mr. Longdon, after a wait, spoke with comparative dryness. "My idea has been that for the present you alone shall."

Vanderbank took it in. "No other man?"

His companion looked still graver. "I need scarcely say that I depend on you to keep the fact to yourself."

"Absolutely then and utterly. But that won't prevent what I think of it.

Nothing for a long time has given me such joy."

s.h.i.+ning and sincere, he had held for a minute Mr. Longdon's eyes. "Then you do care for her?"

"Immensely. Never, I think, so much as now. That sounds of a grossness, doesn't it?" the young man laughed. "But your announcement really lights up the mind."

His friend for a moment almost glowed with his pleasure. "The sum I've fixed upon would be, I may mention, substantial, and I should of course be prepared with a clear statement--a very definite pledge--of my intentions."

"So much the better! Only"--Vanderbank suddenly pulled himself up--"to get it she MUST marry?"

"It's not in my interest to allow you to suppose she needn't, and it's only because of my intensely wanting her marriage that I've spoken to you."

"And on the ground also with it"--Vanderbank so far concurred--"of your quite taking for granted my only having to put myself forward?"

If his friend seemed to cast about it proved but to be for the fullest expression. Nothing in fact could have been more charged than the quiet way in which he presently said: "My dear boy, I back you."

Vanderbank clearly was touched by it. "How extraordinarily kind you are to me!" Mr. Longdon's silence appeared to reply that he was willing to let it go for that, and the young man next went on: "What it comes to then--as you put it--is that it's a way for me to add something handsome to my income."

Mr. Longdon sat for a little with his eyes attached to the green field of the billiard-table, vivid in the spreading suspended lamplight. "I think I ought to tell you the figure I have in mind."

Another person present might have felt rather taxed either to determine the degree of provocation represented by Vanderbank's considerate smile, or to say if there was an appreciable interval before he rang out: "I think, you know, you oughtn't to do anything of the sort. Let that alone, please. The great thing is the interest--the great thing is the wish you express. It represents a view of me, an att.i.tude toward me--!"

He pulled up, dropping his arms and turning away before the complete image.

"There's nothing in those things that need overwhelm you. It would be odd if you hadn't yourself, about your value and your future a feeling quite as lively as any feeling of mine. There IS mine at all events. I can't help it. Accept it. Then of the other feeling--how SHE moves me--I won't speak."

"You sufficiently show it!"

Mr. Longdon continued to watch the bright circle on the table, lost in which a moment he let his friend's answer pa.s.s. "I won't begin to you on Nanda."

"Don't," said Vanderbank. But in the pause that ensued each, in one way or another, might have been thinking of her for himself.

It was broken by Mr. Longdon's presently going on: "Of course what it superficially has the air of is my offering to pay you for taking a certain step. It's open to you to be grand and proud--to wrap yourself in your majesty and ask if I suppose you bribeable. I haven't spoken without having thought of that."

"Yes," said Vanderbank all responsively, "but it isn't as if you proposed to me, is it, anything dreadful? If one cares for a girl one's deucedly glad she has money. The more of anything good she has the better. I may a.s.sure you," he added with the brightness of his friendly intelligence and quite as if to show his companion the way to be least concerned--"I may a.s.sure you that once I were disposed to act on your suggestion I'd make short work of any vulgar interpretation of my motive. I should simply try to be as fine as yourself." He smoked, he moved about, then came up in another place. "I dare say you know that dear old Mitchy, under whose blessed roof we're plotting this midnight treason, would marry her like a shot and without a penny."

"I think I know everything--I think I've thought of everything. Mr.

Mitchett," Mr. Longdon added, "is impossible."

Vanderbank appeared for an instant to wonder. "Wholly then through HER att.i.tude?"

"Altogether."

Again he hesitated. "You've asked her?"

"I've asked her."

Once more Vanderbank faltered. "And that's how you know?"

"About YOUR chance? That's how I know."

The young man, consuming his cigarette with concentration, took again several turns. "And your idea IS to give one time?"

Mr. Longdon had for a minute to turn his idea over. "How much time do you want?"

Vanderbank gave a headshake that was both restrictive and indulgent. "I must live into it a little. Your offer has been before me only these few minutes, and it's too soon for me to commit myself to anything whatever.

Except," he added gallantly, "to my grat.i.tude."

Mr. Longdon, at this, on the divan, got up, as Vanderbank had previously done, under the spring of emotion; only, unlike Vanderbank, he still stood there, his hands in his pockets and his face, a little paler, directed straight. There was disappointment in him even before he spoke.

"You've no strong enough impulse--?"

His friend met him with admirable candour. "Wouldn't it seem that if I had I would by this time have taken the jump?"

"Without waiting, you mean, for anybody's money?" Mr. Longdon cultivated for a little a doubt. "Of course she has struck one as--till now--tremendously young."

Vanderbank looked about once more for matches and occupied a time with relighting. "Till now--yes. But it's not," he pursued, "only because she's so young that--for each of us, and for dear old Mitchy too--she's so interesting." Mr. Longdon had restlessly stepped down, and Vanderbank's eyes followed him till he stopped again. "I make out that in spite of what you said to begin with you're conscious of a certain pressure."

"In the matter of time? Oh yes, I do want it DONE. That," Nanda's patron simply explained, "is why I myself put on the screw." He spoke with the ring of impatience. "I want her got out."

"'Out'?"

"Out of her mother's house."

Vanderbank laughed though--more immediately--he had coloured. "Why, her mother's house is just where I see her!"

"Precisely; and if it only weren't we might get on faster."

Vanderbank, for all his kindness, looked still more amused. "But if it only weren't, as you say, I seem to understand you wouldn't have your particular vision of urgency."

Mr. Longdon, through adjusted gla.s.ses, took him in with a look that was sad as well as sharp, then jerked the gla.s.ses off. "Oh you do understand."