The Awkward Age

“Of the same general order?” Vanderbank broke in. “Not in the least.” He seemed to look for a way to express the distinction—which suddenly occurred to him. “He wasn’t in love with Mitchy’s mother.”

“No”—Nanda turned it over. “Mitchy’s mother, it appears, was awful. Mr. Cashmore knew her.”

Vanderbank’s smoke-puffs were profuse and his pauses frequent. “Awful to Mr. Cashmore? I’m glad to hear it—he must have deserved it. But I believe in her all the same. Mitchy’s often awful himself,” the young man rambled on. “Just so I believe in HIM.”

“So do I,” said Nanda—“and that’s why I asked him.”

“YOU asked him, my dear child? Have you the inviting?”

“Oh yes.”

The eyes he turned on her seemed really to try if she jested or were serious. “So you arranged for me too?”

She turned over again a few leaves of his book and, closing it with something of a clap, transferred it to the bench beside him—a movement in which, as if through a drop into thought, he rendered her no assistance. “What I mean is that I proposed it to Mr. Longdon, I suggested he should be asked. I’ve a reason for seeing him—I want to talk to him. And do you know,” the girl went on, “what Mr. Longdon said?”

“Something splendid of course.”

“He asked if you wouldn’t perhaps dislike his being here with you.”

Vanderbank, throwing back his head, laughed, smoked, jogged his foot more than ever. “Awfully nice. Dear old Mitch! How little afraid of him you are!”

Nanda wondered. “Of Mitch?”

“Yes, of the tremendous pull he really has. It’s all very well to talk—he HAS it. But of course I don’t mean I don’t know”—and as with the effect of his nervous sociability he shifted his position. “I perfectly see that you’re NOT afraid. I perfectly know what you have in your head. I should never in the least dream of accusing you—as far as HE is concerned—of the least disposition to flirt; any more indeed,” Vanderbank pleasantly pursued, “than even of any general tendency of that sort. No, my dear Nanda”—he kindly kept it up—“I WILL say for you that, though a girl, thank heaven, and awfully MUCH a girl, you’re really not on the whole more of a flirt than a respectable social ideal prescribes.”

“Thank you most tremendously,” his companion quietly replied.

Something in the tone of it made him laugh out, and the particular sound went well with all the rest, with the August day and the charming spot and the young man’s lounging figure and Nanda’s own little hovering hospitality. “Of course I strike you as patronising you with unconscious sublimity. Well, that’s all right, for what’s the most natural thing to do in these conditions but the most luxurious? Won’t Mitchy be wonderful for feeling and enjoying them? I assure you I’m delighted he’s coming.” Then in a different tone a moment later, “Do you expect to be here long?” he asked.

It took Nanda some time to say. “As long as Mr. Longdon will keep me, I suppose—if that doesn’t sound very horrible.”

“Oh he’ll keep you! Only won’t he himself,” Vanderbank went on, “be coming up to town in the course of the autumn?”

“Well, in that case I’d perfectly stay here without him.”

“And leave him in London without YOU? Ah that’s not what we want: he wouldn’t be at all the same thing without you. Least of all for himself!” Vanderbank declared.

Nanda again thought. “Yes, that’s what makes him funny, I suppose—his curious infatuation. I set him off—what do you call it?—show him off: by his going round and round me as the acrobat on the horse in the circus goes round the clown. He has said a great deal to me of your mother,” she irrelevantly added.

“Ok everything that’s kind of course, or you wouldn’t mention it.”

“That’s what I mean,” said Nanda.

“I see, I see—most charming of him.” Vanderbank kept his high head thrown back as for the view, with a bright equal general interest, of everything that was before them, whether talked of or seen. “Who do you think I yesterday had a letter from? An extraordinary funny one from Harold. He gave me all the family news.”

“And what IS the family news?” the girl after a minute enquired.

“Well, the first great item is that he himself—”

“Wanted,” Nanda broke in, “to borrow five pounds of you? I say that,” she added, “because if he wrote to you—”

“It couldn’t have been in such a case for the simple pleasure of the intercourse?” Vanderbank hesitated, but continued not to look at her. “What do you know, pray, of poor Harold’s borrowings?”

“Oh I know as I know other things. Don’t I know everything?”

“DO you? I should rather ask,” the young man gaily enough replied.

“Why should I not? How should I not? You know what I know.” Then as to explain herself and attenuate a little the sudden emphasis with which she had spoken: “I remember your once telling me that I must take in things at my pores.”

Her companion stared, but with his laugh again changed his posture. “That you’ must—?”

“That I do—and you were quite right.”

“And when did I make this extraordinary charge?”

“Ah then,” said Nanda, “you admit it IS a charge. It was a long time ago—when I was a little girl. Which made it worse!” she dropped.

It made it at all events now for Vanderbank more amusing. “Ah not worse—better!”

She thought a moment. “Because in that case I mightn’t have understood? But that I do understand is just what you’ve always meant.”

“‘Always,’ my dear Nanda? I feel somehow,” he rejoined very kindly, “as if you overwhelmed me!”

“You ‘feel’ as if I did—but the reality is just that I don’t. The day I overwhelm you, Mr. Van—!” She let that pass, however; there was too much to say about it and there was something else much simpler. “Girls understand now. It has got to be faced, as Tishy says.”

“Oh well,” Vanderbank laughed, “we don’t require Tishy to point that out to us. What are we all doing most of the time but trying to face it?”

“Doing? Aren’t you doing rather something very different? You’re just trying to dodge it. You’re trying to make believe—not perhaps to yourselves but to US—that it isn’t so.”

“But surely you don’t want us to be any worse!”

She shook her head with brisk gravity. “We don’t care really what you are.”

His amusement now dropped to her straighter. “Your ‘we’ is awfully beautiful. It’s charming to hear you speak for the whole lovely lot. Only you speak, you know, as if you were just the class apart that you yet complain of our—by our scruples—implying you to be.”

She considered this objection with her eyes on his face. “Well then we do care. Only—!”

“Only it’s a big subject.”

“Oh yes—no doubt; it’s a big subject.” She appeared to wish to meet him on everything reasonable. “Even Mr. Longdon admits that.”

Vanderbank wondered. “You mean you talk over with him—!”

“The subject of girls? Why we scarcely discuss anything else.”

“Oh no wonder then you’re not bored. But you mean,” he asked, “that he recognises the inevitable change—?”

“He can’t shut his eyes to the facts. He sees we’re quite a different thing.”