The Awkward Age Part 52

"Well, enlarged and improved."

The words had made on Mitchy's lips an image by which his friend appeared for a moment held. "One doesn't really know quite what to say or to do."

"Oh you must take it all quietly. You're of a special cla.s.s; one of those who, as we said the other day--don't you remember?--are a source of the sacred terror. People made in such a way must take the consequences; just as people must take them," Mitchy went on, "who are made as _I_ am. So cheer up!"

Mitchy, uttering this incitement, had moved to the empty chair by the window, in which he presently was sunk; and it might have been in emulation of his previous strolling and straying that Vanderbank himself now began to revolve. The meditation he next threw out, however, showed a certain resistance to Mitchy's advice. "I'm glad at any rate I don't deprive her of a fortune."

"You don't deprive her of mine of course," Mitchy answered from the chair; "but isn't her enjoyment of Mr. Longdon's at least a good deal staked after all on your action?"

Vanderbank stopped short. "It's his idea to settle it ALL?"

Mitchy gave out his glare. "I thought you didn't 'care a hang.' I haven't been here so long," he went on as his companion at first retorted nothing, "without making up my mind for myself about his means.

He IS distinctly bloated."

It sent Vanderbank off again. "Oh well, she'll no more get all in the one event than she'll get nothing in the other. She'll only get a sort of provision. But she'll get that whatever happens."

"Oh if you're sure--!" Mitchy simply commented.

"I'm not sure, confound it!" Then--for his voice had been irritated--Van spoke more quietly. "Only I see her here--though on his wish of course--handling things quite as if they were her own and paying him a visit without, apparently, any calculable end. What's that on HIS part but a pledge?"

Oh Mitchy could show off-hand that he knew what it was. "It's a pledge, quite as much, to you. He shows you the whole thing. He likes you not a whit less than he likes her."

"Oh thunder!" Van impatiently sighed.

"It's as 'rum' as you please, but there it is," said the inexorable Mitchy.

"Then does he think I'll do it for THIS?"

"For 'this'?"

"For the place, the whole thing, as you call it, that he shows me."

Mitchy had a short silence that might have represented a change of colour. "It isn't good enough?" But he instantly took himself up. "Of course he wants--as I do--to treat you with tact!"

"Oh it's all right," Vanderbank immediately said. "Your 'tact'--yours and his--is marvellous, and Nanda's greatest of all."

Mitchy's momentary renewal of stillness was addressed, he somehow managed not obscurely to convey, to the last clause of his friend's speech. "If you're not sure," he presently resumed, "why can't you frankly ask him?"

Vanderbank again, as the phrase is, "mooned" about a little. "Because I don't know that it would do."

"What do you mean by 'do'?"

"Well, that it would be exactly--what do you call it?--'square.' Or even quite delicate or decent. To take from him, in the way of an a.s.surance so handsomely offered, so much, and then to ask for more: I don't feel I can do it. Besides, I've my little conviction. To the question itself he might easily reply that it's none of my business."

"I see," Mitchy dropped. "Such pressure might suggest to him moreover that you're hesitating more than you perhaps really are."

"Oh as to THAT" said Vanderbank, "I think he practically knows how much."

"And how little?" He met this, however, with no more form than if it had been a poor joke, so that Mitchy also smoked for a moment in silence.

"It's your coming down here, you mean, for these three or four days, that will have fixed it?"

The question this time was one to which the speaker might have expected an answer, but Vanderbank's only immediate answer was to walk and walk.

"I want so awfully to be kind to her," he at last said.

"I should think so!" Then with irrelevance Mitchy harked back. "Shall _I_ find out?"

But Vanderbank, with another thought, had lost the thread. "Find out what?"

"Why if she does get anything--!"

"If I'm not kind ENOUGH?"--Van had caught up again. "Dear no; I'd rather you shouldn't speak unless first spoken to."

"Well, HE may speak--since he knows we know."

"It isn't likely, for he can't make out why I told you."

"You didn't tell ME, you know," said Mitchy. "You told Mrs. Brook."

"Well, SHE told you, and her talking about it is the unpleasant idea. He can't get her down anyhow."

"Poor Mrs. Brook!" Mitchy meditated.

"Poor Mrs. Brook!" his companion echoed.

"But I thought you said," he went on, "that he doesn't mind."

"YOUR knowing? Well, I dare say he doesn't. But he doesn't want a lot of gossip and chatter."

"Oh!" said Mitchy with meekness.

"I may absolutely take it from you then," Vanderbank presently resumed, "that Nanda has her idea?"

"Oh she didn't tell me so. But it's none the less my belief."

"Well," Vanderbank at last threw off, "I feel it for myself. If only because she always knows everything," he pursued without looking at Mitchy. "She always knows everything, everything."

"Everything, everything." Mitchy got up.

"She told me so herself yesterday," said Van.

"And she told ME so to-day."

Vanderbank's hesitation might have shown he was struck with this. "Well, I don't think it's information that either of us required. But of course she--can't help it," he added. "Everything, literally everything, in London, in the world she lives in, is in the air she breathes--so that the longer SHE'S in it the more she'll know."

"The more she'll know, certainly," Mitchy acknowledged. "But she isn't in it, you see, down here."

"No. Only she appears to have come down with such acc.u.mulations. And she won't be here for ever," Vanderbank hastened to mention. "Certainly not if you marry her."