The Awkward Age Part 53

"But isn't that at the same time," Vanderbank asked, "just the difficulty?"

Mitchy looked vague. "The difficulty?"

"Why as a married woman she'll be steeped in it again."

"Surely"--oh Mitchy could be candid! "But the difference will be that for a married woman it won't matter. It only matters for girls," he plausibly continued--"and then only for those on whom no one takes pity."

"The trouble is," said Vanderbank--but quite as if uttering only a general truth--"that it's just a thing that may sometimes operate as a bar to pity. Isn't it for the non-marrying girls that it doesn't particularly matter? For the others it's such an odd preparation."

"Oh I don't mind it!" Mitchy declared.

Vanderbank visibly demurred. "Ah but your choice--!"

"Is such a different sort of thing?" Mitchy, for the half-hour, in the ambiguous dusk, had never looked more droll. "The young lady I named isn't my CHOICE."

"Well then, that's only a sign the more that you do these things more easily."

"Oh 'easily'!" Mitchy murmured.

"We oughtn't at any rate to keep it up," said Vanderbank, who had looked at his watch. "Twelve twenty-five--good-night. Shall I blow out the candles?"

"Do, please. I'll close the window"--and Mitchy went to it. "I'll follow you--good-night." The candles after a minute were out and his friend had gone, but Mitchy, left in darkness face to face with the vague quiet garden, still stood there.

BOOK EIGHTH. TISHY GRENDON

I

The footman, opening the door, mumbled his name without sincerity, and Vanderbank, pa.s.sing in, found in fact--for he had caught the symptom--the chairs and tables, the lighted lamps and the flowers alone in possession. He looked at his watch, which exactly marked eight, then turned to speak again to the servant, who had, however, without another sound and as if blushing for the house, already closed him in. There was nothing indeed but Mrs. Grendon's want of promptness that failed of a welcome: her drawing-room, on the January night, showed its elegance through a suffusion of pink electricity which melted, at the end of the vista, into the faintly golden glow of a retreat still more sacred.

Vanderbank walked after a moment into the second room, which also proved empty and which had its little globes of white fire--discreetly limited in number--coated with lemon-coloured silk. The walls, covered with delicate French mouldings, were so fair that they seemed vaguely silvered; the low French chimney had a French fire. There was a lemon-coloured stuff on the sofa and chairs, a wonderful polish on the floor that was largely exposed, and a copy of a French novel in blue paper on one of the spindle-legged tables. Vanderbank looked about him an instant as if generally struck, then gave himself to something that had particularly caught his eye. This was simply his own name written rather large on the cover of the French book and endowed, after he had taken the volume up, with the power to hold his attention the more closely the longer he looked at it. He uttered, for a private satisfaction, before letting the matter pa.s.s, a low confused sound; after which, flinging the book down with some emphasis in another place, he moved to the chimney-piece, where his eyes for a little intently fixed the small ashy wood-fire. When he raised them again it was, on the observation that the beautiful clock on the mantel was wrong, to consult once more his watch and then give a glance, in the chimney-gla.s.s, at the state of his moustache, the ends of which he twisted for a moment with due care. While so engaged he became aware of something else and, quickly facing about, recognised in the doorway of the room the other figure the gla.s.s had just reflected.

"Oh YOU?" he said with a quick handshake. "Mrs. Grendon's down?" But he had already pa.s.sed with Nanda, on their greeting, back into the first room, which contained only themselves, and she had mentioned that she believed Tishy to have said 8.15, which meant of course anything people liked.

"Oh then there'll be n.o.body till nine. I didn't, I suppose, sufficiently study my note; which didn't mention to me, by the way," Vanderbank added, "that you were to be here."

"Ah but why SHOULD it?" Nanda spoke again, however, before he could reply. "I dare say that when she wrote to you she didn't know."

"Know you'd come bang up to meet me?" Vanderbank laughed. "Jolly at any rate, thanks to my mistake, to have in this way a quiet moment with you.

You came on ahead of your mother?"

"Oh no--I'm staying here."

"Oh!" said Vanderbank.

"Mr. Longdon came up with me--I came here, Friday last, straight."

"You parted at the door?" he asked with marked gaiety.

She thought a moment--she was more serious. "Yes--but only for a day or two. He's coming tonight."

"Good. How delightful!"

"He'll be glad to see you," Nanda said, looking at the flowers.

"Awfully kind of him when I've been such a brute."

"How--a brute?"

"Well, I mean not writing--nor going back."

"Oh I see," Nanda simply returned.

It was a simplicity that, clearly enough, made her friend a little awkward. "Has he--a--minded? Hut he can't have complained!" he quickly added.

"Oh he never complains."

"No, no--it isn't in him. But it's just that," said Vanderbank, "that makes one feel so base. I've been ferociously busy."

"He knows that--he likes it," Nanda returned. "He delights in your work.

And I've done what I can for him."

"Ah," said her companion, "you've evidently brought him round. I mean to this lady."

"To Tishy? Oh of course I can't leave her--with n.o.body."

"No"--Vanderbank became jocose again--"that's a London necessity. You can't leave anybody with n.o.body--exposed to everybody."

Mild as it was, however, Nanda missed the pleasantry. "Mr. Grendon's not here."

"Where is he then?"

"Yachting--but she doesn't know."

"Then she and you are just doing this together?"

"Well," said Nanda, "she's dreadfully frightened."

"Oh she mustn't allow herself," he returned, "to be too much carried away by it. But we're to have your mother?"

"Yes, and papa. It's really for Mitchy and Aggie," the girl went on--"before they go abroad."

"Ah then I see what you've come up for! Tishy and I aren't in it. It's all for Mitchy."

"If you mean there's nothing I wouldn't do for him you're quite right.

He has always been of a kindness to me--!"