The Awkward Age Part 79

Mitchy frankly considered. "Helpful? Oh he does his best, I gather.

Yes," he presently added--"Petherton's all right."

"It's you yourself, naturally," his companion threw off, "who can help most."

"Certainly, and I'm doing my best too. So that with such good a.s.sistance"--he seemed at last to have taken it all from her--"what is it, I again ask, that, as you request, I'm to 'leave' to you?"

Nanda required, while he still waited, some time to reply. "To keep my promise."

"Your promise?"

"Not to abandon you."

"Ah," cried Mitchy, "that's better!"

"Then good-bye," she said.

"Good-bye." But he came a few steps forward. "I MAYN'T kiss your hand?"

"Never."

"Never?"

"Never."

"Oh!" he oddly sounded as he quickly went out.

IV

The interval he had represented as likely to be useful to her was in fact, however, not a little abbreviated by a punctuality of arrival on Mr. Longdon's part so extreme as to lead the first thing to a word almost of apology. "You can't say," her new visitor immediately began, "that I haven't left you alone, these many days, as much as I promised on coming up to you that afternoon when after my return to town I found Mr. Mitchett instead of your mother awaiting me in the drawing-room."

"Yes," said Nanda, "you've really done quite as I asked you."

"Well," he returned, "I felt half an hour ago that, near as I was to relief, I could keep it up no longer; so that though I knew it would bring me much too soon I started at six sharp for our trysting-place."

"And I've no tea, after all, to reward you!" It was but now clearly that she noticed it. "They must have removed the things without my heeding."

Her old friend looked at her with some intensity. "Were you in the room?"

"Yes--but I didn't see the man come in."

"What then were you doing?"

Nanda thought; her smile was as usual the faintest discernible outward sign. "Thinking of YOU."

"So tremendously hard?"

"Well, of other things too and of other persons. Of everything really that in our last talk I told you I felt I must have out with myself before meeting you for what I suppose you've now in mind."

Mr. Longdon had kept his eyes on her, but at this he turned away; not, however, for an alternative, embracing her material situation with the embarra.s.sed optimism of Vanderbank or the mitigated gloom of Mitchy.

"Ah"--he took her up with some dryness--"you've been having things out with yourself?" But he went on before she answered: "I don't want any tea, thank you. I found myself, after five, in such a fidget that I went three times in the course of the hour to my club, where I've the impression I each time had it. I dare say it wasn't there, though, I did have it," he after an instant pursued, "for I've somehow a confused image of a shop in Oxford Street--or was it rather in Regent?--into which I gloomily wandered to beguile the moments with a mixture that if I strike you as upset I beg you to set it all down to. Do you know in fact what I've been doing for the last ten minutes? Roaming hither and thither in your beautiful Crescent till I could venture to come in."

"Then did you see Mitchy go out? But no, you wouldn't"--Nanda corrected herself. "He has been gone longer than that."

Her visitor had dropped on a sofa where, propped by the back, he sat rather upright, his gla.s.ses on his nose, his hands in his pockets and his elbows much turned out. "Mitchy left you more than ten minutes ago, and yet your state on his departure remains such that there could be a bustle of servants in the room without your being aware? Kindly give me a lead then as to what it is he has done to you."

She hovered before him with her obscure smile. "You see it for yourself."

He shook his head with decision. "I don't see anything for myself, and I beg you to understand that it's not what I've come here to-day to do.

Anything I may yet see which I don't already see will be only, I warn you, so far as you shall make it very clear. There--you've work cut out. And is it with Mr. Mitchett, may I ask, that you've been, as you mention, cutting it?"

Nanda looked about her as if weighing many things; after which her eyes came back to him. "Do you mind if I don't sit down?"

"I don't mind if you stand on your head--at the pa.s.s we've come to."

"I shall not try your patience," the girl good-humouredly replied, "so far as that. I only want you not to be worried if I walk about a little."

Mr. Longdon, without a movement, kept his posture. "Oh I can't oblige you there. I SHALL be worried. I've come on purpose to be worried, and the more I surrender myself to the rack the more, I seem to feel, we shall have threshed our business out. So you may dance, you may stamp, if you like, on the absolutely pa.s.sive thing you've made of me."

"Well, what I HAVE had from Mitchy," she cheerfully responded, "is practically a lesson in dancing: by which I perhaps mean rather a lesson in sitting, myself, as I want you to do while _I_ talk, as still as a mouse. They take," she declared, "while THEY talk, an amount of exercise!"

"They?" Mr. Longdon wondered. "Was his wife with him?"

"Dear no--he and Mr. Van."

"Was Mr. Van with him?"

"Oh no--before, alone. All over the place."

Mr. Longdon had a pause so rich in appeal that when he at last spoke his question was itself like an answer. "Mr. Van has been to see you?"

"Yes. I wrote and asked him."

"Oh!" said Mr. Longdon.

"But don't get up." She raised her hand. "Don't."

"Why should I?" He had never budged.

"He was most kind; stayed half an hour and, when I told him you were coming, left a good message for you."

Mr. Longdon appeared to wait for this tribute, which was not immediately produced. "What do you call a 'good' message?"

"I'm to make it all right with you."

"To make what?"