The Awkward Age Part 40

"On the contrary I stopped him off."

"Oh then," Mrs. Brook exclaimed, "that's what I call declining."

The words appeared for an instant to strike her companion. "Is it? Is it?" he almost musingly repeated. But he shook himself the next moment free of his wonder, was more what would have been called in Buckingham Crescent on the spot. "Isn't there rather something in my having thus thought it my duty to warn you that I'm definitely his candidate?"

Mrs. Brook turned impatiently away. "You've certainly--with your talk about 'warning'--the happiest expressions!" She put her face into the flowers as he had done just before; then as she raised it: "What kind of a monster are you trying to make me out?"

"My dear lady"--Vanderbank was prompt--"I really don't think I say anything but what's fair. Isn't it just my loyalty to you in fact that has in this case positively strained my discretion?"

She shook her head in mere mild despair. "'Loyalty' again is exquisite.

The tact of men has a charm quite its own. And you're rather good," she continued, "as men go."

His laugh was now a little awkward, as if she had already succeeded in making him uncomfortable. "I always become aware with you sooner or later that they don't go at all--in your sense: but how am I, after all, so far out if you HAVE put your money on another man?"

"You keep coming back to that?" she wearily sighed.

He thought a little. "No, then. You've only to tell me not to, and I'll never speak of it again."

"You'll be in an odd position for speaking of it if you do really go in.

You deny that you've declined," said Mrs. Brook; "which means then that you've allowed our friend to hope."

Vanderbank met it bravely. "Yes, I think he hopes."

"And communicates his hope to my child?"

This arrested the young man, but only for a moment. "I've the most perfect faith in his wisdom with her. I trust his particular delicacy.

He cares more for her," he presently added, "even than we do."

Mrs. Brook gazed away at the infinite of s.p.a.ce. "'We,' my dear Van,"

she at last returned, "is one of your own real, wonderful touches. But there's something in what you say: I HAVE, as between ourselves--between me and him--been backing Mitchy. That is I've been saying to him 'Wait, wait: don't at any rate do anything else.' Only it's just from the depth of my thought for my daughter's happiness that I've clung to this resource. He would so absolutely, so unreservedly do anything for her."

She had reached now, with her extraordinary self-control, the pitch of quiet bland demonstration. "I want the poor thing, que diable, to have another string to her bow and another loaf, for her desolate old age, on the shelf. When everything else is gone Mitchy will still be there. Then it will be at least her own fault--!" Mrs. Brook continued. "What can relieve me of the primary duty of taking precautions," she wound up, "when I know as well as that I stand here and look at you--"

"Yes, what?" he asked as she just paused.

"Why that so far as they count on you they count, my dear Van, on a blank." Holding him a minute as with the soft low voice of his fate, she sadly but firmly shook her head. "You won't do it."

"Oh!" he almost too loudly protested.

"You won't do it," she went on.

"I SAY!"--he made a joke of it.

"You won't do it," she repeated.

It was as if he couldn't at last but show himself really struck; yet what he exclaimed on was what might in truth most have impressed him.

"You ARE magnificent, really!"

"Mr. Mitchett!" the butler, appearing at the door, almost familiarly dropped; after which Vanderbank turned straight to the person announced.

Mr. Mitchett was there, and, antic.i.p.ating Mrs. Brook in receiving him, her companion pa.s.sed it straighten. "She's magnificent!"

Mitchy was already all interest. "Rather! But what's her last?"

It had been, though so great, so subtle, as they said in Buckingham Crescent, that Vanderbank scarce knew how to put it. "Well, she's so thoroughly superior."

"Oh to whom do you say it?" Mitchy cried as he greeted her.

II

The subject of this eulogy had meanwhile returned to her sofa, where she received the homage of her new visitor. "It's not I who am magnificent a bit--it's dear Mr. Longdon. I've just had from Van the most wonderful piece of news about him--his announcement of his wish to make it worth somebody's while to marry my child."

"'Make it'?"--Mitchy stared. "But ISN'T it?"

"My dear friend, you must ask Van. Of course you've always thought so. But I must tell you all the same," Mrs. Brook went on, "that I'm delighted."

Mitchy had seated himself, but Vanderbank remained erect and became perhaps even slightly stiff. He was not angry--no member of the inner circle at Buckingham Crescent was ever angry--but he looked grave and rather troubled. "Even if it IS decidedly fine"--he addressed his hostess straight--"I can't make out quite why you're doing THIS--I mean immediately making it known."

"Ah but what do we keep from Mitchy?" Mrs. Brook asked.

"What CAN you keep? It comes to the same thing," Mitchy said. "Besides, here we are together, share and share alike--one beautiful intelligence.

Mr. Longdon's 'somebody' is of course Van. Don't try to treat me as an outsider."

Vanderbank looked a little foolishly, though it was but the shade of a shade, from one of them to the other. "I think I've been rather an a.s.s!"

"What then by the terms of our friendship--just as Mitchy says--can he and I have a better right to know and to feel with you about? You'll want, Mitchy, won't you?" Mrs. Brook went on, "to hear all about THAT?"

"Oh I only mean," Vanderbank explained, "in having just now blurted my tale out to you. However, I of course do know," he pursued to Mitchy, "that whatever's really between us will remain between us. Let me then tell you myself exactly what's the matter." The length of his pause after these words showed at last that he had stopped short; on which his companions, as they waited, exchanged a sympathetic look. They waited another minute, and then he dropped into a chair where, leaning forward, his elbows on the arms and his gaze attached to the carpet, he drew out the silence. Finally he looked at Mrs. Brook. "YOU make it clear."

The appeal called up for some reason her most infantine manner. "I don't think I CAN, dear Van--really CLEAR. You know however yourself," she continued to Mitchy, "enough by this time about Mr. Longdon and mamma."

"Oh rather!" Mitchy laughed.

"And about mamma and Nanda."

"Oh perfectly: the way Nanda reminds him, and the 'beautiful loyalty'

that has made him take such a fancy to her. But I've already embraced the facts--you needn't dot any i's." With another glance at his fellow visitor Mitchy jumped up and stood there florid. "He has offered you money to marry her." He said this to Vanderbank as if it were the most natural thing in the world.

"Oh NO" Mrs. Brook interposed with prompt.i.tude: "he has simply let him know before any one else that the money's there FOR Nanda, and that therefore--!"

"First come first served?" Mitchy had already taken her up. "I see, I see. Then to make her sure of the money," he put to Vanderbank, "you MUST marry her?"

"If it depends upon that she'll never get it," Mrs. Brook returned.

"Dear Van will think conscientiously a lot about it, but he won't do it."

"Won't you, Van, really?" Mitchy asked from the hearth-rug.