The Awkward Age Part 7

"Good. How d'ye do, d.u.c.h.ess?"--and Harold, before he disappeared, greeted with a rapid concentration of all the shades of familiarity a large high lady, the visitor he had announced, who rose in the doorway with the manner of a person used to arriving on thresholds very much as people arrive at stations--with the expectation of being "met."

II

"Good-bye. He's off," Mrs. Brookenham, who had remained quite on her own side of the room, explained to her friend.

"Where's he off to?" this friend enquired with a casual advance and a look not so much at her hostess as at the cushions just rearranged.

"Oh to some places. To Brander to-day."

"How he does run about!" And the d.u.c.h.ess, still with a glance hither and yon, sank upon the sofa to which she had made her way unaided. Mrs.

Brookenham knew perfectly the meaning of this glance: she had but three or four comparatively good pieces, whereas the d.u.c.h.ess, rich with the spoils of Italy, had but three or four comparatively bad. This was the relation, as between intimate friends, that the d.u.c.h.ess visibly preferred, and it was quite groundless, in Buckingham Crescent, ever to enter the drawing-room with an expression suspicious of disloyalty. The d.u.c.h.ess was a woman who so cultivated her pa.s.sions that she would have regarded it as disloyal to introduce there a new piece of furniture in an underhand way--that is without a full appeal to herself, the highest authority, and the consequent bestowal of opportunity to nip the mistake in the bud. Mrs. Brookenham had repeatedly asked herself where in the world she might have found the money to be disloyal. The d.u.c.h.ess's standard was of a height--! It matched for that matter her other elements, which were wontedly conspicuous as usual as she sat there suggestive of early tea. She always suggested tea before the hour, and her friend always, but with so different a wistfulness, rang for it.

"Who's to be at Brander?" she asked.

"I haven't the least idea--he didn't tell me. But they've always a lot of people."

"Oh I know--extraordinary mixtures. Has he been there before?"

Mrs. Brookenham thought. "Oh yes--if I remember--more than once. In fact her note--which he showed me, but which only mentioned 'some friends'--was a sort of appeal on the ground of something or other that had happened the last time."

The d.u.c.h.ess dealt with it. "She writes the most extraordinary notes."

"Well, this was nice, I thought," Mrs. Brookenham said--"from a woman of her age and her immense position to so young a man."

Again the d.u.c.h.ess reflected. "My dear, she's not an American and she's not on the stage. Aren't those what you call positions in this country?

And she's also not a hundred."

"Yes, but Harold's a mere baby."

"Then he doesn't seem to want for nurses!" the d.u.c.h.ess replied. She smiled at her hostess. "Your children are like their mother--they're eternally young."

"Well, I'M not a hundred!" moaned Mrs. Brookenham as if she wished with dim perversity she were.

"Every one's at any rate awfully kind to Harold." She waited a moment to give her visitor the chance to p.r.o.nounce that eminently natural, but no p.r.o.nouncement came--nothing but the footman who had answered her ring and of whom she ordered tea. "And where did you say YOU'RE going?" she enquired after this.

"For Easter?" The d.u.c.h.ess achieved a direct encounter with her charming eyes--which was not in general an easy feat. "I didn't say I was going anywhere. I haven't of a sudden changed my habits. You know whether I leave my child--except in the sense of having left her an hour ago at Mr. Garlick's cla.s.s in Modern Light Literature. I confess I'm a little nervous about the subjects and am going for her at five."

"And then where do you take her?"

"Home to her tea. Where should you think?"

Mrs. Brookenham declined, in connexion with the matter, any responsibility of thought; she did indeed much better by saying after a moment: "You ARE devoted!"

"Miss Merriman has her afternoon--I can't imagine what they do with their afternoons," the d.u.c.h.ess went on. "But she's to be back in the school-room at seven."

"And you have Aggie till then?"

"Till then," said the d.u.c.h.ess cheerfully. "You're off for Easter to--where is it?" she continued.

Mrs. Brookenham had received with no flush of betrayal the various discriminations thus conveyed by her visitor, and her only revenge for the moment was to look as sweetly resigned as if she really saw what was in them. Where were they going for Easter? She had to think an instant, but she brought it out. "Oh to Pewbury--we've been engaged so long that I had forgotten. We go once a year--one does it for Edward."

"Ah you spoil him!" smiled the d.u.c.h.ess. "Who's to be there?"

"Oh the usual thing, I suppose. A lot of my lord's tiresome supporters."

"To pay his debt? Then why are you poor things asked?"

Mrs. Brookenham looked, on this, quite adorably--that is most wonderingly--grave. "How do I know, my dear Jane, why in the world we're ever asked anywhere? Fancy people wanting Edward!" she exhaled with stupefaction. "Yet we can never get off Pewbury."

"You're better for getting on, cara mia, than for getting off!" the d.u.c.h.ess blandly returned. She was a person of no small presence, filling her place, however, without ponderosity, with a ma.s.siveness indeed rather artfully kept in bounds. Her head, her chin, her shoulders were well aloft, but she had not abandoned the cultivation of a "figure" or any of the distinctively finer reasons for pa.s.sing as a handsome woman.

She was secretly at war moreover, in this endeavour, with a lurking no less than with a public foe, and thoroughly aware that if she didn't look well she might at times only, and quite dreadfully, look good.

There were definite ways of escape, none of which she neglected and from the total of which, as she flattered herself, the air of distinction almost mathematically resulted. This air corresponded superficially with her acquired Calabrian sonorities, from her voluminous t.i.tle down, but the colourless hair, the pa.s.sionless forehead, the mild cheek and long lip of the British matron, the type that had set its trap for her earlier than any other, were elements difficult to deal with and were at moments all a sharp observer saw. The battle-ground then was the haunting danger of the bourgeois. She gave Mrs. Brookenham no time to resent her last note before enquiring if Nanda were to accompany the couple.

"Mercy mercy, no--she's not asked." Mrs. Brookenham, on Nanda's behalf, fairly radiated obscurity. "My children don't go where they're not asked."

"I never said they did, love," the d.u.c.h.ess returned. "But what then do you do with her?"

"If you mean socially"--Mrs. Brookenham looked as if there might be in some distant sphere, for which she almost yearned, a maternal opportunity very different from that--"if you mean socially, I don't do anything at all. I've never pretended to do anything. You know as well as I do, dear Jane, that I haven't begun yet." Jane's hostess now spoke as simply as an earnest anxious child. She gave a vague patient sigh. "I suppose I must begin!"

The d.u.c.h.ess remained for a little rather grimly silent. "How old is she--twenty?"

"Thirty!" said Mrs. Brookenham with distilled sweetness. Then with no transition of tone: "She has gone for a few days to Tishy Grendon."

"In the country?"

"She stays with her to-night in Hill Street. They go down together to-morrow. Why hasn't Aggie been?" Mrs. Brookenham went on.

The d.u.c.h.ess handsomely stared. "Been where?"

"Why here, to see Nanda."

"Here?" the d.u.c.h.ess echoed, fairly looking again about the room. "When is Nanda ever here?"

"Ah you know I've given her a room of her own--the sweetest little room in the world." Mrs. Brookenham never looked so comparatively hopeful as when obliged to explain. "She has everything there a girl can want."

"My dear woman," asked the d.u.c.h.ess, "has she sometimes her own mother?"

The men had now come in to place the tea-table, and it was the movements of the red-haired footman that Mrs. Brookenham followed. "You had better ask my child herself."

The d.u.c.h.ess was frank and jovial. "I would, I promise you, if I could get at her! But isn't that woman always with her?"

Mrs. Brookenham smoothed the little embroidered tea-cloth. "Do you call Tishy Grendon a woman?"

Again the d.u.c.h.ess had one of her pauses, which were indeed so frequent in her talks with this intimate that an auditor could sometimes wonder what particular form of relief they represented. They might have been a habit proceeding from the fear of undue impatience. If the d.u.c.h.ess had been as impatient with Mrs. Brookenham as she would possibly have seemed without them her frequent visits in the face of irritation would have had to be accounted for. "What do YOU call her?" she demanded.

"Why Nanda's best friend--if not her only one. That's the place I SHOULD have liked for Aggie," Mrs. Brookenham ever so graciously smiled.

The d.u.c.h.ess hereupon, going beyond her, gave way to free mirth. "My dear thing, you're delightful. Aggie OR Tishy is a sweet thought. Since you're so good as to ask why Aggie has fallen off you'll excuse my telling you that you've just named the reason. You've known ever since we came to England what I feel about the proper persons--and the most improper--for her to meet. The Tishy Grendons are not a bit the proper."