The Awkward Age

“Of course then there’ll be others—lots. The more the better for Harold.”

This young man’s father was silent a little. “Perhaps—if they don’t play high.”

“Ah,” said his mother, “however Harold plays he has a way of winning.”

“He has a way too of being a hopeless ass. What I meant was how he comes there at all,” Edward explained.

“Why as any one comes—by being invited. She wrote to him—weeks ago.”

Brookenham just traceably took this in, but to what profit was not calculable. “To Harold? Very good-natured.” He had another short reflexion, after which he continued: “If they don’t send he’ll be in for five miles in a fly—and the man will see that he gets his money.”

“They WILL send—after her note.”

“Did it say so?”

Her melancholy eyes seemed, from afar, to run over the page. “I don’t remember—but it was so cordial.”

Again he meditated. “That often doesn’t prevent one’s being let in for ten shillings.”

There was more gloom in this forecast than his wife had desired to produce. “Well, my dear Edward, what do you want me to do? Whatever a young man does, it seems to me, he’s let in for ten shillings.”

“Ah but he needn’t be—that’s my point. I wasn’t at his age.”

Harold’s mother took up her book again. “Perhaps you weren’t the same success! I mean at such places.”

“Well, I didn’t borrow money to make me one—as I’ve a sharp idea our young scamp does.”

Mrs. Brookenham hesitated. “From whom do you mean—the Jews?”

He looked at her as if her vagueness might be assumed. “No. They, I take it, are not quite so cordial to him, since you call it so, as the old ladies. He gets it from Mitchy.”

“Oh!” said Mrs. Brookenham. “Are you very sure?” she then demanded.

He had got up and put his empty cup back on the tea-table, wandering afterwards a little about the room and looking out, as his wife had done half an hour before, at the dreary rain and the now duskier ugliness. He reverted in this attitude, with a complete unconsciousness of making for irritation, to an issue they might be supposed to have dropped. “He’ll have a lovely drive for his money!” His companion, however, said nothing and he presently came round again. “No, I’m not absolutely sure—of his having had it from Mitchy. If I were I should do something.”

“What would you do?” She put it as if she couldn’t possibly imagine.

“I’d speak to him.”

“To Harold?”

“No—that might just put it into his head.” Brookenham walked up and down a little with his hands in his pockets, after which, with a complete concealment of the steps of the transition, “Where are we dining to-night?” he brought out.

“Nowhere, thank heaven. We grace our own board.”

“Oh—with those fellows, as you said, and Jane?”

“That’s not for dinner. The Baggers and Mary Pinthorpe and—upon my word I forget.”

“You’ll see when she comes,” suggested Brookenham, who was again at the window.

“It isn’t a she—it’s two or three he’s, I think,” his wife replied with her indifferent anxiety. “But I don’t know what dinner it is,” she bethought herself; “it may be the one that’s after Easter. Then that one’s this one,” she added with her eyes once more on her book.

“Well, it’s a relief to dine at home”—and Brookenham faced about. “Would you mind finding out?” he asked with some abruptness.

“Do you mean who’s to dine?”

“No, that doesn’t matter. But whether Mitchy HAS come down.”

“I can only find out by asking him.”

“Oh I could ask him.” He seemed disappointed at his wife’s want of resource.

“And you don’t want to?”

He looked coldly, from before the fire, over the prettiness of her brown bent head. “It will be such a beastly bore if he admits it.”

“And you think poor I can make him not admit it?” She put the question as if it were really her own thought too, but they were a couple who could, even face to face and unlike the augurs behind the altar, think these things without laughing. “If he SHOULD admit it,” Mrs. Brookenham threw in, “will you give me the money?”

“The money?”

“To pay Mitchy back.”

She had now raised her eyes to her husband, but, turning away, he failed to meet them. “He’ll deny it.”

“Well, if they all deny it,” she presently remarked, “it’s a simple enough matter. I’m sure I don’t want them to come down on us! But that’s the advantage,” she almost prattled on, “of having so many such charming friends. They DON’T come down.”

This again was a remark of a sweep that there appeared to be nothing in Brookenham’s mind to match; so that, scarcely pausing in the walk he had resumed, he only said: “Who do you mean by ‘all’?”

“Why if he has had anything from Mitchy I dare say he has had something from Van.”

“Oh!” Brookenham returned as if with a still deeper drop of interest.

“They oughtn’t to do it,” she declared; “they ought to tell us, and when they don’t it serves them right.” Even this observation, however, failed to rouse in her husband a response, and, as she had quite formed the habit of doing, she philosophically answered herself. “But I don’t suppose they do it on spec.”

It was less apparent than ever what Edward supposed. “Oh Van hasn’t money to chuck about.”

“Ah I only mean a sovereign here and there.”

“Well,” Brookenham threw out after another turn, “I think Van, you know, is your affair.”

“It ALL seems to be my affair!” she lamented too woefully to have other than a comic effect. “And of course then it will be still more so if he should begin to apply to Mr. Longdon.”

“We must stop that in time.”

“Do you mean by warning Mr. Longdon and requesting him immediately to tell us? That won’t be very pleasant,” Mrs. Brookenham noted.

“Well then wait and see.”