The Awkward Age Part 74

He was on his feet as he spoke, and though he had been half the time on his feet his last words gave the effect of his moving almost immediately to the door. It appeared to come out with them rather clearer than before that he was embarra.s.sed enough really to need help, and it was doubtless the measure she after an instant took of this that enabled Nanda, with a quietness all her own, to draw to herself a little more of the situation. The quietness was plainly determined for her by a quick vision of its being the best a.s.sistance she could show. Had he an inward terror that explained his superficial nervousness, the incoherence of a loquacity designed, it would seem, to check in each direction her advance? He only fed it in that case by allowing his precautionary benevolence to put him in so much deeper. Where indeed could he have supposed she wanted to come out, and what that she could ever do for him would really be so beautiful as this present chance to smooth his confusion and add as much as possible to that refined satisfaction with himself which would proceed from his having dealt with a difficult hour in a gallant and delicate way? To force upon him an awkwardness was like forcing a disfigurement or a hurt, so that at the end of a minute, during which the expression of her face became a kind of uplifted view of her opportunity, she arrived at the appearance of having changed places with him and of their being together precisely in order that he--not she--should be let down easily.

II

"But surely you're not going already?" she asked. "Why in the world then do you suppose I appealed to you?"

"Bless me, no; I've lots of time." He dropped, laughing for very eagerness, straight into another chair. "You're too awfully interesting.

Is it really an 'appeal'?" Putting the question indeed he could scarce even yet allow her a chance to answer it. "It's only that you make me a little nervous with your account of all the people who are going to tumble in. And there's one thing more," he quickly went on; "I just want to make the point in case we should be interrupted. The whole fun is in seeing you this way alone."

"Is THAT the point?" Nanda, as he took breath, gravely asked.

"That's a part of it--I feel it, I a.s.sure you, to be charming. But what I meant--if you'd only give me time, you know, to put in a word--is what for that matter I've already told you: that it almost spoils my pleasure for you to keep reminding me that a bit of luck like this--luck for ME: I see you coming!--is after all for you but a question of business. Hang business! Good--don't stab me with that paper-knife. I listen. What IS the great affair?" Then as it looked for an instant as if the words she had prepared were just, in the supreme pinch of her need, falling apart, he once more tried his advantage. "Oh if there's any difficulty about it let it go--we'll take it for granted. There's one thing at any rate--do let me say this--that I SHOULD like you to keep before me: I want before I go to make you light up for me the question of little Aggie. Oh there are other questions too as to which I regard you as a perfect fountain of curious knowledge! However, we'll take them one by one--the next some other time. You always seem to me to hold the strings of such a lot of queer little dramas. Have something on the shelf for me when we meet again. THE thing just now is the outlook for Mitchy's affair. One cares enough for old Mitch to fancy one may feel safer for a lead or two. In fact I want regularly to turn you on."

"Ah but the thing I happen to have taken it into my head to say to you,"

Nanda now securely enough replied, "hasn't the least bit to do, I a.s.sure you, either with Aggie or with 'old Mitch.' If you don't want to hear it--want some way of getting off--please believe THEY won't help you a bit." It was quite in fact that she felt herself at last to have found the right tone. Nothing less than a conviction of this could have made her after an instant add: "What in the world, Mr. Van, are you afraid of?"

Well, that it WAS the right tone a single little minute was sufficient to prove--a minute, I must yet haste to say, big enough in spite of its smallness to contain the longest look on any occasion exchanged between these friends. It was one of those looks--not so frequent, it must be admitted, as the muse of history, dealing at best in short cuts, is often by the conditions of her trade reduced to representing them--which after they have come and gone are felt not only to have changed relations but absolutely to have cleared the air. It certainly helped Vanderbank to find his answer. "I'm only afraid, I think, of your conscience."

He had been indeed for the s.p.a.ce more helped than she. "My conscience?"

"Think it over--quite at your leisure--and some day you'll understand.

There's no hurry," he continued--"no hurry. And when you do understand, it needn't make your existence a burden to you to fancy you must tell me." Oh he was so kind--kinder than ever now. "The thing is, you see, that _I_ haven't a conscience. I only want my fun."

They had on this a second look, also decidedly comfortable, though discounted, as the phrase is, by the other, which had really in its way exhausted the possibilities of looks. "Oh I want MY fun too," said Nanda, "and little as it may strike you in some ways as looking like it, just this, I beg you to believe, is the real thing. What's at the bottom of it," she went on, "is a talk I had not long ago with mother."

"Oh yes," Van returned with brightly blus.h.i.+ng interest. "The fun," he laughed, "that's to be got out of 'mother'!"

"Oh I'm not thinking so much of that. I'm thinking of any that she herself may be still in a position to pick up. Mine now, don't you see? is in making out how I can manage for this. Of course it's rather difficult," the girl pursued, "for me to tell you exactly what I mean."

"Oh but it isn't a bit difficult for me to understand you!" Vanderbank spoke, in his geniality, as if this were in fact the veriest trifle.

"You've got your mother on your mind. That's very much what I mean by your conscience."

Nanda had a fresh hesitation, but evidently unaccompanied at present by any pain. "Don't you still LIKE mamma?" she at any rate quite successfully brought out. "I must tell you," she quickly subjoined, "that though I've mentioned my talk with her as having finally led to my writing to you, it isn't in the least that she then suggested my putting you the question. I put it," she explained, "quite off my own bat."

The explanation, as an effect immediately produced, did proportionately much for the visitor, who sat back in his chair with a pleased--a distinctly exhilarated--sense both of what he himself and what Nanda had done. "You're an adorable family!"

"Well then if mother's adorable why give her up? This I don't mind admitting she did, the day I speak of, let me see that she feels you've done; but without suggesting either--not a sc.r.a.p, please believe--that I should make you any sort of scene about it. Of course in the first place she knows perfectly that anything like a scene would be no use. You couldn't make out even if you wanted," Nanda went on, "that THIS is one.

She won't hear us--will she?--smas.h.i.+ng the furniture. I didn't think for a while that I could do anything at all, and I worried myself with that idea half to death. Then suddenly it came to me that I could do just what I'm doing now. You said a while ago that we must never be--you and I--anything but frank and natural. That's what I said to myself also--why not? Here I am for you therefore as natural as a cold in your head. I just ask you--I even press you. It's because, as she said, you've practically ceased coming. Of course I know everything changes.

It's the law--what is it?--'the great law' of something or other. All sorts of things happen--things come to an end. She has more or less--by his marriage--lost Mitchy. I don't want her to lose everything. Do stick to her. What I really wanted to say to you--to bring it straight out--is that I don't believe you thoroughly know how awfully she likes you. I hope my saying such a thing doesn't affect you as 'immodest.' One never knows--but I don't much care if it does. I suppose it WOULD be immodest if I were to say that I verily believe she's in love with you. Not, for that matter, that father would mind--he wouldn't mind, as he says, a tuppenny rap. So"--she extraordinarily kept it up--"you're welcome to any good the information may have for you: though that, I dare say, does sound hideous. No matter--if I produce any effect on you. That's the only thing I want. When I think of her downstairs there so often nowadays practically alone I feel as if I could scarcely bear it. She's so fearfully young."

This time at least her speech, while she went from point to point, completely hushed him, though after a full glimpse of the direction it was taking he ceased to meet her eyes and only sat staring hard at the pattern of the rug. Even when at last he spoke it was without looking up. "You're indeed, as she herself used to say, the modern daughter! It takes that type to wish to make a career for her parents."

"Oh," said Nanda very simply, "it isn't a 'career' exactly, is it--keeping hold of an old friend? but it may console a little, mayn't it, for the absence of one? At all events I didn't want not to have spoken before it's too late. Of course I don't know what's the matter between you, or if anything's really the matter at all. I don't care at any rate WHAT is--it can't be anything very bad. Make it up, make it up--forget it. I don't pretend that's a career for YOU any more than for her; but there it is. I know how I sound--most patronising and pus.h.i.+ng; but nothing venture nothing have. You CAN'T know how much you are to her. You're more to her, I verily believe, than any one EVER was. I hate to have the appearance of plotting anything about her behind her back; so I'll just say it once for all. She said once, in speaking of it to a person who repeated it to me, that you had done more for her than any one, because it was you who had really brought her out. It WAS. You did. I saw it at the time myself. I was very small, but I COULD see it.

You'll say I must have been a most uncanny little wretch, and I dare say I was and am keeping now the pleasant promise. That doesn't prevent one's feeling that when a person has brought a person out--"

"A person should take the consequences," Vanderbank broke in, "and see a person through?" He could meet her now perfectly and proceeded admirably to do it. "There's an immense deal in that, I admit--I admit. I'm bound to say I don't know quite what I did--one does those things, no doubt, with a fine unconsciousness: I should have thought indeed it was the other way round. But I a.s.sure you I accept all consequences and all responsibilities. If you don't know what's the matter between us I'm sure _I_ don't either. It can't be much--we'll look into it. I don't mean you and I--YOU mustn't be any more worried; but she and her so unwittingly faithless one. I HAVEN'T been as often, I know"--Van pleasantly kept his course. "But there's a tide in the affairs of men--and of women too, and of girls and of every one. You know what I mean--you know it for yourself. The great thing is that--bless both your hearts!--one doesn't, one simply CAN'T if one would, give your mother up. It's absurd to talk about it. n.o.body ever did such a thing in his life. There she is, like the moon or the Marble Arch. I don't say, mind you," he candidly explained, "that every one LIKES her equally: that's another affair. But no one who ever HAS liked her can afford ever again for any long period to do without her. There are too many stupid people--there's too much dull company. That, in London, is to be had by the ton; your mother's intelligence, on the other hand, will always have its price. One can talk with her for a change. She's fine, fine, fine.

So, my dear child, be quiet. She's a fixed star."

"Oh I know she is," Nanda said. "It's YOU--"

"Who may be only the flas.h.i.+ng meteor?" He sat and smiled at her. "I promise you then that your words have stayed me in my course. You've made me stand as still as Joshua made the sun." With which he got straight up. "'Young,' you say she is?"--for as if to make up for it he all the more sociably continued. "It's not like anything else. She's youth. She's MY youth--she WAS mine. And if you ever have a chance,"

he wound up, "do put in for me that if she wants REALLY to know she's booked for my old age. She's clever enough, you know"--and Vanderbank, laughing, went over for his hat--"to understand what you tell her."

Nanda took this in with due attention; she was also now on her feet.

"And then she's so lovely."

"Awfully pretty!"

"I don't say it, as they say, you know," the girl continued, "BECAUSE she's mother, but I often think when we're out that wherever she is--!"

"There's no one that all round really touches her?" Vanderbank took it up with zeal. "Oh so every one thinks, and in fact one's appreciation of the charming things in that way so intensely her own can scarcely breathe on them all lightly enough. And then, hang it, she has perceptions--which are not things that run about the streets. She has surprises." He almost broke down for vividness. "She has little ways."

"Well, I'm glad you do like her," Nanda gravely replied.

At this again he fairly faced her, his momentary silence making it still more direct. "I like, you know, about as well as I ever liked anything, this wonderful idea of yours of putting in a plea for her solitude and her youth. Don't think I do it injustice if I say--which is saying much--that it's quite as charming as it's amusing. And now good-bye."

He had put out his hand, but Nanda hesitated. "You won't wait for tea?"

"My dear child, I can't." He seemed to feel, however, that something more must be said. "We shall meet again. But it's getting on, isn't it, toward the general scatter?"

"Yes, and I hope that this year," she answered, "you'll have a good holiday."

"Oh we shall meet before that. I shall do what I can, but upon my word I feel, you know," he laughed, "that such a tuning-up as YOU'VE given me will last me a long time. It's like the high Alps." Then with his hand out again he added: "Have you any plans yourself?"

So many, it might have seemed, that she had no time to take for thinking of them. "I dare say I shall be away a good deal."

He candidly wondered. "With Mr. Longdon?"

"Yes--with him most."

He had another pause. "Really for a long time?"

"A long long one, I hope."

"Your mother's willing again?"

"Oh perfectly. And you see that's why."

"Why?" She had said nothing more, and he failed to understand.

"Why you mustn't too much leave her alone. DON'T!" Nanda brought out.

"I won't. But," he presently added, "there are one or two things."

"Well, what are they?"

He produced in some seriousness the first. "Won't she after all see the Mitchys?"