The Awkward Age Part 64

"Isn't Mrs. Donner quite shelved?"

"Find out," she repeated.

Vanderbank had reached the door and had his hand on the latch, but there was still something else. "You scarce suppose, I imagine, that she has come to like him 'for himself?"

"Find out!" And Mrs. Brook, who was now on her feet, turned away. He watched her a moment more, then checked himself and left her.

II

She remained alone ten minutes, at the end of which her reflexions would have been seen to be deep--were interrupted by the entrance of her husband. The interruption was indeed not so great as if the couple had not met, as they almost invariably met, in silence: she took at all events, to begin with, no more account of his presence than to hand him a cup of tea accompanied with nothing but cream and sugar. Her having no word for him, however, committed her no more to implying that he had come in only for his refreshment than it would have committed her to say: "Here it is, Edward dear--just as you like it; so take it and sit down and be quiet." No spectator worth his salt could have seen them more than a little together without feeling how everything that, under his eyes or not, she either did or omitted, rested on a profound acquaintance with his ways. They formed, Edward's ways, a chapter by themselves, of which Mrs. Brook was completely mistress and in respect to which the only drawback was that a part of her credit was by the nature of the case predestined to remain obscure. So many of them were so queer that no one but she COULD know them, and know thereby into what crannies her reckoning had to penetrate. It was one of them for instance that if he was often most silent when most primed with matter, so when he had nothing to say he was always silent too--a peculiarity misleading, until mastered, for a lady who could have allowed in the latter case for almost any variety of remark. "What do you think," he said at last, "of his turning up to-day?"

"Of old Van's?"

"Oh has HE turned up?"

"Half an hour ago, and asking almost in his first breath for Nanda. I sent him up to her and he's with her now." If Edward had his ways she had also some of her own; one of which, in talk with him, if talk it could be called, was never to produce anything till the need was marked.

She had thus a card or two always in reserve, for it was her theory that she never knew what might happen. It nevertheless did occur that he sometimes went, as she would have called it, one better.

"He's not with her now. I've just been with her."

"Then he didn't go up?" Mrs. Brook was immensely interested. "He left me, you know, to do so."

"Know--how should I know? I left her five minutes ago."

"Then he went out without seeing her." Mrs. Brook took it in. "He changed his mind out there on the stairs."

"Well," said Edward, "it won't be the first mind that has been changed there. It's about the only thing a man can change."

"Do you refer particularly to MY stairs?" she asked with her whimsical woe. But meanwhile she had taken it in. "Then whom were you speaking of?"

"Mr. Longdon's coming to tea with her. She has had a note."

"But when did he come to town?"

"Last night, I believe. The note, an hour or two ago, announced him--brought by hand and hoping she'd be at home."

Mrs. Brook thought again. "I'm glad she is. He's too sweet. By hand!--it must have been so he sent them to mamma. He wouldn't for the world wire."

"Oh Nanda has often wired to HIM," her father returned.

"Then she ought to be ashamed of herself. But how," said Mrs. Brook, "do you know?"

"Oh I know when we're in a thing like this."

"Yet you complain of her want of intimacy with you! It turns out that you're as thick as thieves."

Edward looked at this charge as he looked at all old friends, without a sign--to call a sign--of recognition. "I don't know of whose want of intimacy with me I've ever complained. There isn't much more of it, that I can see, that any of them could put on. What do you suppose I'd have them do? If I on my side don't get very far I may have alluded to THAT."

"Oh but you do," Mrs. Brook declared. "You think you don't, but you get very far indeed. You're always, as I said just now, bringing out something that you've got somewhere."

"Yes, and seeing you flare up at it. What I bring out is only what they tell me."

This limitation offered, however, for Mrs. Brook no difficulty. "Ah but it seems to me that with the things people nowadays tell one--! What more do you want?"

"Well"--and Edward from his chair regarded the fire a while--"the difference must be in what they tell YOU."

"Things that are better?"

"Yes--worse. I dare say," he went on, "what I give them--"

"Isn't as bad as what I do? Oh we must each do our best. But when I hear from you," Mrs. Brook pursued, "that Nanda had ever permitted herself anything so dreadful as to wire to him, it comes over me afresh that _I_ would have been the perfect one to deal with him if his detestation of me hadn't prevented." She was by this time also--but on her feet--before the fire, into which, like her husband, she gazed. "_I_ would never have wired. I'd have gone in for little delicacies and odd things she has never thought of."

"Oh she doesn't go in for what you do," Edward a.s.sented.

"She's as bleak as a chimney-top when the fire's out, and if it hadn't been after all for mamma--!" And she lost herself again in the reasons of things.

Her husband's silence seemed to mark for an instant a deference to her allusion, but there was a limit even to this combination. "You make your mother, I think, keep it up pretty well. But if she HADN'T as you say, done so--?"

"Why we shouldn't have been anywhere."

"Well, where are we now? That's what _I_ want to know."

Following her own train she had at first no heed for his question.

"Without his hatred he would have liked me." But she came back with a sigh to the actual. "No matter. We must deal with what we've got."

"What HAVE we got?" Edward continued.

Again with no ear for his question his wife turned away, only however, after taking a few vague steps, to approach him with new decision.

"If Mr. Longdon's due will you do me a favour? Will you go back to Nanda--before he arrives--and let her know, though not of course as from ME, that Van has been here half an hour, has had it put well before him that she's up there and at liberty, and has left the house without seeing her?"

Edward Brookenham made no motion. "You don't like better to do it yourself?"

"If I liked better," said Mrs. Brook, "I'd have already done it. The way to make it not come from me is surely not for me to give it to her.

Besides, I want to be here to receive him first."

"Then can't she know it afterwards?"

"After Mr. Longdon has gone? The whole point is that she should know it in time to let HIM know it."

Edward still communed with the fire. "And what's the point of THAT?" Her impatience, which visibly increased, carried her away again, and by the time she reached the window he had launched another question. "Are you in such a hurry she should know that Van doesn't want her?"

"What do you call a hurry when I've waited nearly a year? Nanda may know or not as she likes--may know whenever: if she doesn't know pretty well by this time she's too stupid for it to matter. My only pressure's for Mr. Longdon. She'll have it there for him when he arrives."

"You mean she'll make haste to tell him?"

Mrs. Brook raised her eyes a moment to some upper immensity. "She'll mention it."