The Awkward Age

“Let me ask you rather—mayn’t I?—what YOU call its failure.”

Mrs. Brook, who had been standing for some minutes, seated herself at this as if to respond to his idea. But the next moment she had fallen back into thought. “Have you often heard from him?”

“Never once.”

“And have you written?”

“Not a word either. I left it, you see,” Mitchy smiled, “all, to YOU.” After which he continued: “Has he been with you much?”

She just hesitated. “As little as possible. But as it happens he was here just now.”

Her visitor fairly flushed. “And I’ve only missed him?”

Her pause again was of the briefest. “You wouldn’t if he HAD gone up.”

“‘Gone up’?”

“To Nanda, who has now her own sitting-room, as you know; for whom he immediately asked and for whose benefit, whatever you may think, I was at the end of a quarter of an hour, I assure you, perfectly ready to release him. He changed his mind, however, and went away without seeing her.”

Mitchy showed the deepest interest. “And what made him change his mind?”

“Well, I’m thinking it out.”

He appeared to watch this labour. “But with no light yet?”

“When it comes I’ll tell you.”

He hung fire once more but an instant. “You didn’t yourself work the thing again?”

She rose at this in strange sincerity. “I think, you know, you go very far.”

“Why, didn’t we just now settle,” he promptly replied, “that it’s all instinctive and unconscious? If it was so that night at Tishy’s—!”

“Ah, voyons, voyons,” she broke in, “what did I do even then?” He laughed out at something in her tone. “You’d like it again all pictured—?”

“I’m not afraid.”

“Why, you just simply—publicly—took her back.”

“And where was the monstrosity of that?”

“In the one little right place. In your removal of every doubt—”

“Well, of what?” He had appeared not quite to know how to put it. But he saw at last. “Why, of what we may still hope to do for her. Thanks to your care there were specimens.” Then as she had the look of trying vainly to focus a few, “I can’t recover them one by one,” he pursued, “but the whole thing was quite lurid enough to do us all credit.”

She met him after a little, but at such an odd point. “Pardon me if I scarcely see how much of the credit was yours. For the first time since I’ve known you, you went in for decency.”

Mitchy’s surprise showed as real. “It struck you as decency—?”

Since he wished she thought it over. “Oh your behaviour—!”

“My behaviour was—my condition. Do you call THAT decent? No, you’re quite out.” He spoke, in his good nature, with an approach to reproof. “How can I ever—?”

But it had already brought her quite round, and to a firmer earth that she clearly preferred to tread. “Are things really bad with you, Mitch?”

“Well, I’ll tell you how they are. But not now.”

“Some other time?—on your honour?”

“You shall have it all. Don’t be afraid.”

She dimly smiled. “It will be like old times.”

He rather demurred. “For you perhaps. But not for me.”

In spite of what he said it did hold her, and her hand again almost caressed him. “But—till you do tell me—is it very very dreadful?”

“That’s just perhaps what I may have to get you to decide.”

“Then shall I help you?” she eagerly asked.

“I think it will be quite in your line.”

At the thought of her line—it sounded somehow so general—she released him a little with a sigh, yet still looking round, as it were, for possibilities. “Jane, you know, is in a state.”

“Yes, Jane’s in a state. That’s a comfort!”

She continued in a manner to cling to him. “But is it your only one?”

He was very kind and patient. “Not perhaps quite.”

“I’M a little of one?”

“My dear child, as you see.”

Yes, she saw, but was still on the wing. “And shall you have recourse—?”

“To what?” he asked as she appeared to falter.

“I don’t mean to anything violent. But shall you tell Nanda?”

Mitchy wondered. “Tell her—?”

“Well, everything. I think, you know,” Mrs. Brook musingly observed, “that it would really serve her right.”

Mitchy’s silence, which lasted a minute, seemed to take the idea, but not perhaps quite to know what to do with it. “Ah I’m afraid I shall never really serve her right!”

Just as he spoke the butler reappeared; at sight of whom Mrs. Brook immediately guessed. “Mr. Longdon?”