The Awkward Age Part 28

Nanda seemed for an instant to wish to say that one might deny the queerness, but she said something else instead. "I suppose a man like you doesn't quite feel that he IS beholden. It's awfully good of him--it's doing a great deal for anybody--that he should come down at all; so that it would add immensely to his burden if anybody had to be remembered for it."

"I don't know what you mean by a man 'like me,'" Vanderbank returned.

"I'm not any particular kind of a man." She had been looking at him, but she looked away on this, and he continued good-humoured and explanatory.

"If you mean that I go about such a lot, how do you know it but by the fact that you're everywhere now yourself?--so that, whatever I am, in short, you're just as bad."

"You admit then that you ARE everywhere. I may be just as bad," the girl went on, "but the point is that I'm not nearly so good. Girls are such natural hacks--they can't be anything else."

"And pray what are fellows who are in the beastly grind of fearfully busy offices? There isn't an old cabhorse in London that's kept at it, I a.s.sure you, as I am. Besides," the young man added, "if I'm out every night and off somewhere like this for Sunday, can't you understand, my dear child, the fundamental reason of it?"

Nanda, with her eyes on him again, studied an instant this mystery.

"Am I to infer with delight that it's the sweet hope of meeting ME? It isn't," she continued in a moment, "as if there were any necessity for your saying that. What's the use?" But all impatiently she stopped short.

He was eminently gay even if his companion was not. "Because we're such jolly old friends that we really needn't so much as speak at all? Yes, thank goodness--thank goodness." He had been looking round him, taking in the scene; he had dropped his hat on the ground and, completely at his ease, though still more wishing to show it, had crossed his legs and closely folded his arms. "What a tremendously jolly place! If I can't for the life of me recall who they were--the other people--I've the comfort of being sure their minds are an equal blank. Do they even remember the place they had? 'We had some fellows down at--where was it, the big white house last November?--and there was one of them, out of the What-do-you-call-it?--YOU know--who might have been a decent enough chap if he hadn't presumed so on his gifts.'" Vanderbank paused a minute, but his companion said nothing, and he pursued. "It does show, doesn't it?--the fact that we do meet this way--the tremendous change that has taken place in your life in the last three months. I mean, if I'm everywhere as you said just now, your being just the same."

"Yes--you see what you've done."

"How, what I'VE done?"

"You plunge into the woods for change, for solitude," the girl said, "and the first thing you do is to find me waylaying you in the depths of the forest. But I really couldn't--if you'll reflect upon it--know you were coming this way."

He sat there with his position unchanged but with a constant little shake in the foot that hung down, as if everything--and what she now put before him not least--was much too pleasant to be reflected on. "May I smoke a cigarette?"

Nanda waited a little; her friend had taken out his silver case, which was of ample form, and as he extracted a cigarette she put forth her hand. "May _I_?" She turned the case over with admiration.

Vanderbank demurred. "Do you smoke with Mr. Longdon?"

"Immensely. But what has that to do with it?"

"Everything, everything." He spoke with a faint ring of impatience. "I want you to do with me exactly as you do with him."

"Ah that's soon said!" the girl replied in a peculiar tone. "How do you mean, to 'do'?"

"Well then to BE. What shall I say?" Vanderbank pleasantly wondered while his foot kept up its motion. "To feel."

She continued to handle the cigarette-case, without, however, having profited by its contents. "I don't think that as regards Mr. Longdon and me you know quite so much as you suppose."

Vanderbank laughed and smoked. "I take for granted he tells me everything."

"Ah but you scarcely take for granted _I_ do!" She rubbed her cheek an instant with the polished silver and again the next moment turned over the case. "This is the kind of one I should like."

Her companion glanced down at it. "Why it holds twenty."

"Well, I want one that holds twenty."

Vanderbank only threw out his smoke. "I want so to give you something,"

he said at last, "that, in my relief at lighting on an object that will do, I will, if you don't look out, give you either that or a pipe."

"Do you mean this particular one?"

"I've had it for years--but even that one if you like it."

She kept it--continued to finger it. "And by whom was it given you?"

At this he turned to her smiling. "You think I've forgotten that too?"

"Certainly you must have forgotten, to be willing to give it away again."

"But how do you know it was a present?"

"Such things always are--people don't buy them for themselves."

She had now relinquished the object, laying it upon the bench, and Vanderbank took it up. "Its origin's lost in the night of time--it has no history except that I've used it. But I a.s.sure you that I do want to give you something. I've never given you anything."

She was silent a little. "The exhibition you're making," she seriously sighed at last, "of your inconstancy and superficiality! All the relics of you that I've treasured and that I supposed at the time to have meant something!"

"The 'relics'? Have you a lock of my hair?" Then as her meaning came to him: "Oh little Christmas things? Have you really kept them?"

"Laid away in a drawer of their own--done up in pink paper."

"I know what you're coming to," Vanderbank said. "You've given ME things, and you're trying to convict me of having lost the sweet sense of them. But you can't do it. Where my heart's concerned I'm a walking reliquary. Pink paper? _I_ use gold paper--and the finest of all, the gold paper of the mind." He gave a flip with a fingernail to his cigarette and looked at its quickened fire; after which he pursued very familiarly, but with a kindness that of itself qualified the mere humour of the thing: "Don't talk, my dear child, as if you didn't really know me for the best friend you have in the world." As soon as he had spoken he pulled out his watch, so that if his words had led to something of a pause this movement offered a pretext for breaking it. Nanda asked the hour and, on his replying "Five-fifteen," remarked that there would now be tea on the terrace with every one gathered at it. "Then shall we go and join them?" her companion demanded.

He had made, however, no other motion, and when after hesitating she said "Yes, with pleasure" it was also without a change of position. "I like this," she inconsequently added.

"So do I awfully. Tea on the terrace," Vanderbank went on, "isn't 'in'

it. But who's here?"

"Oh every one. All your set."

"Mine? Have I still a set--with the universal vagabondism you accuse me of?"

"Well then Mitchy's--whoever they are."

"And n.o.body of yours?"

"Oh yes," Nanda said, "all mine. He must at least have arrived by this time. My set's Mr. Longdon," she explained. "He's all of it now."

"Then where in the world am I?"

"Oh you're an extra. There are always extras."

"A complete set and one over?" Vanderbank laughed. "Where then's Tishy?"

Charming and grave, the girl thought a moment. "She's in Paris with her mother--on their way to Aix-les-Bains." Then with impatience she continued: "Do you know that's a great deal to say--what you said just now? I mean about your being the best friend I have."

"Of course I do, and that's exactly why I said it. You see I'm not in the least delicate or graceful or shy about it--I just come out with it and defy you to contradict me. Who, if I'm not the best, is a better one?"

"Well," Nanda replied, "I feel since I've known Mr. Longdon that I've almost the sort of friend who makes every one else not count."