The Awkward Age Part 75

"Not so much either. That of course is now very different."

Vanderbank demurred. "But not for YOU, I gather--is it? Don't you expect to see them?"

"Oh yes--I hope they'll come down."

He moved away a little--not straight to the door. "To Beccles? Funny place for them, a little though, isn't it?"

He had put the question as if for amus.e.m.e.nt, but Nanda took it literally. "Ah not when they're invited so very very charmingly. Not when he wants them so."

"Mr. Longdon? Then that keeps up?"

"'That'?"--she was at a loss.

"I mean his intimacy--with Mitchy."

"So far as it IS an intimacy."

"But didn't you, by the way"--and he looked again at his watch--"tell me they're just about to turn up together?"

"Oh not so very particularly together."

"Mitchy first alone?" Vanderbank asked.

She had a smile that was dim, that was slightly strange. "Unless you'll stay for company."

"Thanks--impossible. And then Mr. Longdon alone?"

"Unless Mitchy stays."

He had another pause. "You haven't after all told me about the 'evolution'--or the evolutions--of his wife."

"How can I if you don't give me time?"

"I see--of course not." He seemed to feel for an instant the return of his curiosity. "Yet it won't do, will it? to have her out before HIM?

No, I must go." He came back to her and at present she gave him a hand.

"But if you do see Mr. Longdon alone will you do me a service? I mean indeed not simply today, but with all other good chances?"

She waited. "Any service whatever. But which first?"

"Well," he returned in a moment, "let us call it a bargain. I look after your mother--"

"And I--?" She had had to wait again.

"Look after my good name. I mean for common decency to HIM. He has been of a kindness to me that, when I think of my failure to return it, makes me blush from head to foot. I've odiously neglected him--by a complication of accidents. There are things I ought to have done that I haven't. There's one in particular--but it doesn't matter. And I haven't even explained about THAT. I've been a brute and I didn't mean it and I couldn't help it. But there it is. Say a good word for me. Make out somehow or other that I'm NOT a beast. In short," the young man said, quite flushed once more with the intensity of his thought, "let us have it that you may quite trust ME if you'll let me a little--just for my character as a gentleman--trust YOU."

"Ah you may trust me," Nanda replied with her handshake.

"Good-bye then!" he called from the door.

"Good-bye," she said after he had closed it.

III

It was half-past five when Mitchy turned up; and her relapse had in the mean time known no arrest but the arrival of tea, which, however, she had left unnoticed. He expressed on entering the fear that he failed of exact.i.tude, to which she replied by the a.s.surance that he was on the contrary remarkably near it and by the mention of all the aid to patience she had drawn from the pleasure of half an hour with Mr.

Van--an allusion that of course immediately provoked on Mitchy's part the liveliest interest.

"He HAS risked it at last then? How tremendously exciting! And your mother?" he went on; after which, as she said nothing: "Did SHE see him, I mean, and is he perhaps with her now?"

"No; she won't have come in--unless you asked."

"I didn't ask. I asked only for you."

Nanda thought an instant. "But you'll still sometimes come to see her, won't you? I mean you won't ever give her up?"

Mitchy at this laughed out. "My dear child, you're an adorable family!"

She took it placidly enough. "That's what Mr. Van said. He said I'm trying to make a career for her."

"Did he?" Her visitor, though without prejudice to his amus.e.m.e.nt, appeared struck. "You must have got in with him rather deep."

She again considered. "Well, I think I did rather. He was awfully beautiful and kind."

"Oh," Mitchy concurred, "trust him always for that!"

"He wrote me, on my note," Nanda pursued, "a tremendously good answer."

Mitchy was struck afresh. "Your note? What note?"

"To ask him to come. I wrote at the beginning of the week."

"Oh--I see" Mitchy observed as if this were rather different. "He couldn't then of course have done less than come."

Yet his companion again thought. "I don't know."

"Oh come--I say: You do know," Mitchy laughed. "I should like to see him--or you either!" There would have been for a continuous spectator of these episodes an odd resemblance between the manner and all the movements that had followed his entrance and those that had accompanied the installation of his predecessor. He laid his hat, as Vanderbank had done, in three places in succession and appeared to question scarcely less the safety, somewhere, of his umbrella and the grace of retaining in his hand his gloves. He postponed the final selection of a seat and he looked at the objects about him while he spoke of other matters.

Quite in the same fashion indeed at last these objects impressed him.

"How charming you've made your room and what a lot of nice things you've got!"

"That's just what Mr. Van said too. He seemed immensely struck."

But Mitchy hereupon once more had a drop to extravagance. "Can I do nothing then but repeat him? I came, you know, to be original."

"It would be original for you," Nanda promptly returned, "to be at all like him. But you won't," she went back, "not sometimes come for mother only? You'll have plenty of chances."

This he took up with more gravity. "What do you mean by chances? That you're going away? That WILL add to the attraction!" he exclaimed as she kept silence.