The Awkward Age Part 76

"I shall have to wait," she answered at last, "to tell you definitely what I'm to do. It's all in the air--yet I think I shall know to-day.

I'm to see Mr. Longdon."

Mitchy wondered. "To-day?"

"He's coming at half-past six."

"And then you'll know?"

"Well--HE will."

"Mr. Longdon?"

"I meant Mr. Longdon," she said after a moment.

Mitchy had his watch out. "Then shall I interfere?"

"There are quant.i.ties of time. You must have your tea. You see at any rate," the girl continued, "what I mean by your chances."

She had made him his tea, which he had taken. "You do squeeze us in!"

"Well, it's an accident your coming together--except of course that you're NOT together. I simply took the time that you each independently proposed. But it would have been all right even if you HAD met.

"That is, I mean," she explained, "even if you and Mr. Longdon do. Mr.

Van, I confess, I did want alone."

Mitchy had been glaring at her over his tea. "You're more and more remarkable!"

"Well then if I improve so give me your promise."

Mitchy, as he partook of refreshment, kept up his thoughtful gaze. "I shall presently want some more, please. But do you mind my asking if Van knew--"

"That Mr. Longdon's to come? Oh yes, I told him, and he left with me a message for him."

"A message? How awfully interesting!"

Nanda thought. "It WILL be awfully--to Mr. Longdon."

"Some more NOW, please," said Mitchy while she took his cup. "And to Mr. Longdon only, eh? Is that a way of saying that it's none of MY business?"

The fact of her attending--and with a happy show of particular care--to his immediate material want added somehow, as she replied, to her effect of sincerity. "Ah, Mr. Mitchy, the business of mine that has not by this time ever so naturally become a business of yours--well, I can't think of any just now, and I wouldn't, you know, if I could!"

"I can promise you then that there's none of mine," Mitchy declared, "that hasn't made by the same token quite the same shift. Keep it well before you, please, that if ever a young woman had a grave lookout--!"

"What do you mean," she interrupted, "by a grave lookout?"

"Well, the certainty of finding herself saddled for all time to come with the affairs of a gentleman whom she can never get rid of on the specious plea that he's only her husband or her lover or her father or her son or her brother or her uncle or her cousin. There, as none of these characters, he just stands."

"Yes," Nanda kindly mused, "he's simply her Mitchy."

"Precisely. And a Mitchy, you see, is--what do you call it?--simply indissoluble. He's moreover inordinately inquisitive. He goes to the length of wondering whether Van also learned that you were expecting ME."

"Oh yes--I told him everything."

Mitchy smiled. "Everything?"

"I told him--I told him," she replied with impatience.

Mitchy hesitated. "And did he then leave me also a message?"

"No, nothing. What I'm to do for him with Mr. Longdon," she immediately explained, "is to make practically a kind of apology."

"Ah and for me"--Mitchy quickly took it up--"there can be no question of anything of that kind. I see. He has done me no wrong."

Nanda, with her eyes now on the window, turned it over. "I don't much think he would know even if he had."

"I see, I see. And we wouldn't tell him."

She turned with some abruptness from the outer view. "We wouldn't tell him. But he was beautiful all round," she went on. "No one could have been nicer about having for so long, for instance, come so little to the house. As if he hadn't only too many other things to do! He didn't even make them out nearly the good reasons he might. But fancy, with his important duties--all the great affairs on his hands--our making vulgar little rows about being 'neglected'! He actually made so little of what he might easily plead--speaking so, I mean, as if he were all in the wrong--that one had almost positively to SHOW him his excuses. As if"--she really kept it up--"he hasn't plenty!"

"It's only people like me," Mitchy threw out, "who have none?"

"Yes--people like you. People of no use, of no occupation and no importance. Like you, you know," she pursued, "there are so many."

Then it was with no transition of tone that she added: "If you're bad, Mitchy, I won't tell you anything."

"And if I'm good what will you tell me? What I want really most to KNOW is why he should be, as you said just now, 'apologetic' to Mr. Longdon.

What's the wrong he allows he has done HIM?"

"Oh he has 'neglected' him--if that's any comfort to us--quite as much."

"Hasn't looked him up and that sort of thing?"

"Yes--and he mentioned some other matter."

Mitchy wondered. "'Mentioned' it?"

"In which," said Nanda, "he hasn't pleased him."

Mitchy after an instant risked it. "But what other matter?"

"Oh he says that when I speak to him Mr. Longdon will know."

Mitchy gravely took this in. "And shall you speak to him?"

"For Mr. Van?" How, she seemed to ask, could he doubt it? "Why the very first thing."

"And then will Mr. Longdon tell you?"

"What Mr. Van means?" Nanda thought. "Well--I hope not."