The Awkward Age Part 66

"Never. But I trust her."

"Yes," he mused afresh, "one must trust one's child. Does Van?" he then enquired.

"Does he trust her?"

"Does he know anything of the general figure?"

She hesitated. "Everything. It's high."

"He has told you so?"

Mrs. Brook, supremely impatient now, seemed to demur even to the question. "We ask HIM even less."

"Then how do we know?"

She was weary of explaining. "Because that's just why he hates it."

There was no end however, apparently, to what Edward could take. "But hates what?"

"Why, not liking her."

Edward kept his back to the fire and his dead eyes on the cornice and the ceiling. "I shouldn't think it would be so difficult."

"Well, you see it isn't. Mr. Longdon can manage it."

"I don't see what the devil's the matter with her," he coldly continued.

"Ah that may not prevent--! It's fortunately the source at any rate of half Mr. Longdon's interest."

"But what the h.e.l.l IS it?" he drearily demanded.

She faltered a little, but she brought it out. "It's ME."

"And what's the matter with 'you'?"

She made, at this, a movement that drew his eyes to her own, and for a moment she dimly smiled at him. "That's the nicest thing you ever said to me. But ever, EVER, you know."

"Is it?" She had her hand on his sleeve, and he looked almost awkward.

"Quite the very nicest. Consider that fact well and even if you only said it by accident don't be funny--as you know you sometimes CAN be--and take it back. It's all right. It's charming, isn't it? when our troubles bring us more together. Now go up to her."

Edward kept a queer face, into which this succession of remarks introduced no light, but he finally moved, and it was only when he had almost reached the door that he stopped again. "Of course you know he has sent her no end of books."

"Mr. Longdon--of late? Oh yes, a deluge, so that her room looks like a bookseller's back shop; and all, in the loveliest bindings, the most standard English works. I not only know it, naturally, but I know--what you don't--why."

"'Why'?" Edward echoed. "Why but that--unless he should send her money--it's about the only kindness he can show her at a distance?"

Mrs. Brook hesitated; then with a little suppressed sigh: "That's it!"

But it still held him. "And perhaps he does send her money."

"No. Not now."

Edward lingered. "Then is he taking it out--?"

"In books only?" It was wonderful--with its effect on him now visible--how she possessed her subject. "Yes, that's his delicacy--for the present."

"And you're not afraid for the future--?"

"Of his considering that the books will have worked it off? No. They're thrown in."

Just perceptibly cheered he reached the door, where, however, he had another pause. "You don't think I had better see Van?"

She stared. "What for?"

"Why, to ask what the devil he means."

"If you should do anything so hideously vulgar," she instantly replied, "I'd leave your house the next hour. Do you expect," she asked, "to be able to force your child down his throat?"

He was clearly not prepared with an account of his expectations, but he had a general memory that imposed itself. "Then why in the world did he make up to us?"

"He didn't. We made up to HIM."

"But why in the world--?"

"Well," said Mrs. Brook, really to finish, "we were in love with him."

"Oh!" Edward jerked. He had by this time opened the door, and the sound was partly the effect of the disclosure of a servant preceding a visitor. His greeting of the visitor before edging past and away was, however, of the briefest; it might have implied that they had met but yesterday. "How d'ye do, Mitchy?--At home? Oh rather!"

III

Very different was Mrs. Brook's welcome of the restored wanderer to whom, in a brief s.p.a.ce, she addressed every expression of surprise and delight, though marking indeed at last, as a qualification of these things, her regret that he declined to partake of her tea or to allow her to make him what she called "snug for a talk" in his customary corner of her sofa. He pleaded frankly agitation and embarra.s.sment, reminded her even that he was awfully shy and that after separations, complications, whatever might at any time happen, he was conscious of the dust that had settled on intercourse and that he couldn't blow away in a single breath. She was only, according to her nature, to indulge him if, while he walked about and changed his place, he came to the surface but in patches and pieces. There was so much he wanted to know that--well, as they had arrived only the night before, she could judge.

There was knowledge, it became clear, that Mrs. Brook almost equally craved, so that it even looked at first as if, on either side, confidence might be choked by curiosity. This disaster was finally barred by the fact that the spirit of enquiry found for Mitchy material that was comparatively plastic. That was after all apparent enough when at the end of a few vain pa.s.ses he brought out sociably: "Well, has he done it?"

Still indeed there was something in Mrs. Brook's face that seemed to reply "Oh come--don't rush it, you know!" and something in the movement with which she turned away that described the state of their question as by no means so simple as that. On his refusal of tea she had rung for the removal of the table, and the bell was at this moment answered by the two men. Little ensued then, for some minutes, while the servants were present; she spoke only as the butler was about to close the door.

"If Mr. Longdon presently comes show him into Mr. Brookenham's room if Mr. Brookenham isn't there. If he is show him into the dining-room and in either case let me immediately know."

The man waited expressionless. "And in case of his asking for Miss Brookenham--?"

"He won't!" she replied with a sharpness before which her interlocutor retired. "He will!" she then added in quite another tone to Mitchy.

"That is, you know, he perfectly MAY. But oh the subtlety of servants!"

she sighed.

Mitchy was now all there. "Mr. Longdon's in town then?"

"For the first time since you went away. He's to call this afternoon."