The Awkward Age Part 78

"But isn't my question absolutely a confession of ignorance and a renunciation of thought? I put myself from this moment forth with you,"

Mitchy declared, "on the footing of knowing nothing whatever and of receiving literally from your hands all information and all life. Let my continued att.i.tude of dependence, my dear Nanda, show it. Any hesitation you may yet feel, you imply, proceeds from a sense of duties in London not to be lightly renounced? Oh," he thoughtfully said, "I do at least know you HAVE them."

She watched him with the same mildness while he vaguely circled about.

"You're wild, you're wild," she insisted. "But it doesn't in the least matter. I shan't abandon you."

He stopped short. "Ah that's what I wanted from you in so many clear-cut golden words--though I won't in the least of course pretend that I've felt I literally need it. I don't literally need the big turquoise in my neck-tie; which incidentally means, by the way, that if you should admire it you're quite welcome to it. Such words--that's my point--are like such jewels: the pride, you see, of one's heart. They're mere vanity, but they help along. You've got of course always poor Tishy," he continued.

"Will you leave it all to ME?" Nanda said as if she had not heard him.

"And then you've got poor Carrie," he went on, "though HER of course you rather divide with your mother."

"Will you leave it all to ME?" the girl repeated.

"To say nothing of poor Cashmore," he pursued, "whom you take ALL, I believe, yourself?"

"Will you leave it all to ME?" she once more repeated.

This time he pulled up, suddenly and expressively wondering. "Are you going to do anything about it at present?--I mean with our friend?"

She appeared to have a scruple of saying, but at last she produced it.

"Yes--he doesn't mind now."

Mitchy again laughed out. "You ARE, as a family--!" But he had already checked himself. "Mr. Longdon will at any rate, you imply, be somehow interested--"

"In MY interests? Of course--since he has gone so far. You expressed surprise at my wanting to wait and think; but how can I not wait and not think when so much depends on the question--now so definite--of how much further he WILL go?"

"I see," said Mitchy, profoundly impressed. "And how much does that depend on?"

She had to reflect. "On how much further I, for my part, MUST!"

Mitchy's grasp was already complete. "And he's coming then to learn from you how far this is?"

"Yes--very much."

Mitchy looked about for his hat. "So that of course I see my time's about up, as you'll want to be quite alone together."

Nanda glanced at the clock. "Oh you've a margin yet."

"But you don't want an interval for your thinking--?"

"Now that I've seen you?" Nanda was already very obviously thoughtful.

"I mean if you've an important decision to take."

"Well," she returned, "seeing you HAS helped me."

"Ah but at the same time worried you. Therefore--" And he picked up his umbrella.

Her eyes rested on its curious handle. "If you cling to your idea that I'm frightened you'll be disappointed. It will never be given you to rea.s.sure me."

"You mean by that that I'm primarily so solid--!"

"Yes, that till I see you yourself afraid--!"

"Well?"

"Well, I won't admit that anything isn't exactly what I was prepared for."

Mitchy looked with interest into his hat. "Then what is it I'm to 'leave' to you?" After which, as she turned away from him with a suppressed sound and said, while he watched her, nothing else, "It's no doubt natural for you to talk," he went on, "but I do make you nervous.

Good-bye--good-bye."

She had stayed him, by a fresh movement, however, as he reached the door. "Aggie's only trying to find out--!"

"Yes--what?" he asked, waiting.

"Why what sort of a person she is. How can she ever have known? It was carefully, elaborately hidden from her--kept so obscure that she could make out nothing. She isn't now like ME."

He wonderingly attended. "Like you?"

"Why I get the benefit of the fact that there was never a time when I didn't know SOMETHING or other, and that I became more and more aware, as I grew older, of a hundred little c.h.i.n.ks of daylight."

Mitchy stared. "You're stupendous, my dear!" he murmured.

Ah but she kept it up. "_I_ had my idea about Aggie."

"Oh don't I know you had? And how you were positive about the sort of person--!"

"That she didn't even suspect herself," Nanda broke in, "to be? I'm equally positive now. It's quite what I believed, only there's ever so much more of it. More HAS come--and more will yet. You see, when there has been nothing before, it all has to come with a rush. So that if even I'm surprised of course she is."

"And of course _I_ am!" Mitchy's interest, though even now not wholly unqualified with amus.e.m.e.nt, had visibly deepened. "You admit then," he continued, "that you're surprised?"

Nanda just hesitated. "At the mere scale of it. I think it's splendid.

The only person whose astonishment I don't quite understand," she added, "is Cousin Jane."

"Oh Cousin Jane's astonishment serves her right!"

"If she held so," Nanda pursued, "that marriage should do everything--!"

"She shouldn't be in such a funk at finding what it IS doing? Oh no, she's the last one!" Mitchy declared. "I vow I enjoy her scare."

"But it's very bad, you know," said Nanda.

"Oh too awful!"

"Well, of course," the girl appeared a.s.sentingly to muse, "she couldn't after all have dreamed--!" But she took herself up. "The great thing is to be helpful."

"And in what way--?" Mitchy asked with his wonderful air of inviting compet.i.tive suggestions.

"Toward Aggie's finding herself. Do you think," she immediately continued, "that Lord Petherton really is?"