The Awkward Age Part 51

Mitchy spoke as if his friend's last words were not of consequence, and he continued as Vanderbank got up and, moving rather aimlessly, came and stood with his back to the chimney. "My only hesitation would have been caused by its entailing our going down into things in a way that, face to face--given the private nature of the things--I dare say most men don't particularly enjoy. But if you don't mind--!"

"Oh I don't mind. In fact, as I tell you, I recognise an obligation to you." Vanderbank, with his shoulders against the high mantel, uttered this without a direct look; he smoked and smoked, then considered the tip of his cigar. "You feel convinced she knows?" he threw out.

"Well, it's my impression."

"Ah any impression of yours--of that sort--is sure to be right. If you think I ought to have it from you I'm really grateful. Is that--a--what you wanted to say to me?" Vanderbank after a slight pause demanded.

Mitchy, watching him more than he watched Mitchy, shook a mildly decisive head. "No."

Vanderbank, his eyes on his smoke-puffs, seemed to wonder. "What you wanted is--something else?"

"Something else."

"Oh!" said Vanderbank for the third time.

The e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.i.o.n had been vague, but the movement that followed it was definite; the young man, turning away, found himself again near the chair he had quitted, and resumed possession of it as a sign of being at his friend's service. This friend, however, not only hung fire but finally went back to take a shot from a quarter they might have been supposed to have left. "It strikes me as odd his imagining--awfully acute as he is--that she has NOT guessed. One wouldn't have thought he could live with her here in such an intimacy--seeing her every day and pretty much all day--and make such a mistake."

Vanderbank, his great length all of a lounge again, turned it over. "And yet I do thoroughly feel the mistake's not yours."

Mitchy had a new serenity of affirmation. "Oh it's not mine."

"Perhaps then"--it occurred to his friend--"he doesn't really believe it."

"And only says so to make you feel more easy?"

"So that one may--in fairness to one's self--keep one's head, as it were, and decide quite on one's own grounds."

"Then you HAVE still to decide?"

Vanderbank took time to answer. "I've still to decide." Mitchy became again on this, in the sociable dusk, a slow-circling vaguely-agitated element, and his companion continued: "Is your idea very generously and handsomely to help that by letting me know--?"

"That I do definitely renounce"--Mitchy took him up--"any pretension and any hope? Well, I'm ready with a proof of it. I've pa.s.sed my word that I'll apply elsewhere."

Vanderbank turned more round to him. "Apply to the d.u.c.h.ess for her niece?"

"It's practically settled."

"But since when?"

Mitchy barely faltered. "Since this afternoon."

"Ah then not with the d.u.c.h.ess herself."

"With Nanda--whose plan from the first, you won't have forgotten, the thing has so charmingly been."

Vanderbank could show that his not having in the least forgotten was yet not a bar to his being now mystified. "But, my dear man, what can Nanda 'settle'?"

"My fate," Mitchy said, pausing well before him.

Vanderbank sat now a minute with raised eyes, catching the indistinctness of the other's strange expression. "You're both beyond me!" he exclaimed at last. "I don't see what you in particular gain."

"I didn't either till she made it all out to me. One sees then, in such a matter, for one's self. And as everything's gain that isn't loss, there was nothing I COULD lose. It gets me," Mitchy further explained, "out of the way."

"Out of the way of what?"

This, Mitchy frankly showed, was more difficult to say, but he in time brought it out. "Well, of appearing to suggest to you that my existence, in a prolonged state of singleness, may ever represent for her any real alternative."

"But alternative to what?"

"Why to being YOUR wife, d.a.m.n you!" Mitchy, on these words turned away again, and his companion, in the presence of his renewed dim gyrations, sat for a minute dumb. Before Van had spoken indeed he was back again.

"Excuse my violence, but of course you really see."

"I'm not pretending anything," Vanderbank said--"but a man MUST understand. What I catch hold of is that you offer me--in the fact that you're thus at any rate disposed of--a proof that I, by the same token, shan't, if I hesitate to 'go in,' have a pretext for saying to myself that I MAY deprive her--!"

"Yes, precisely," Mitchy now urbanely a.s.sented: "of something--in the shape of a man with MY amount of money--that she may live to regret and to languish for. My amount of money, don't you see?" he very simply added, "is nothing to her."

"And you want me to be sure that--so far as I may ever have had a scruple--she has had her chance and got rid of it."

"Completely," Mitchy smiled.

"Because"--Vanderbank with the aid of his cigar thoughtfully pieced it out--"that may possibly bring me to the point."

"Possibly!" Mitchy laughed.

He had stood a moment longer, almost as if to see the possibility develop before his eyes, and had even started at the next sound of his friend's voice. What Vanderbank in fact brought out, however, only made him turn his back. "Do you like so very much little Aggie?"

"Well," said Mitchy, "Nanda does. And I like Nanda."

"You're too amazing," Vanderbank mused. His musing had presently the effect of making him rise; meditation indeed beset him after he was on his feet. "I can't help its coming over me then that on such an extraordinary system you must also rather like ME."

"What will you have, my dear Van?" Mitchy frankly asked. "It's the sort of thing you must be most used to. For at the present moment--look!--aren't we all at you at once?"

It was as if his dear Van had managed to appear to wonder. "'All'?"

"Nanda, Mrs. Brook, Mr. Longdon--!"

"And you. I see."

"Names of distinction. And all the others," Mitchy pursued, "that I don't count."

"Oh you're the best."

"I?"

"You're the best," Vanderbank simply repeated. "It's at all events most extraordinary," he declared. "But I make you out on the whole better than I do Mr. Longdon."

"Ah aren't we very much the same--simple lovers of life? That is of that finer essence of it which appeals to the consciousness--"

"The consciousness?"--his companion took up his hesitation.