The Awkward Age

“You’re very wonderful,” Mr. Longdon presently returned. “A year and a half ago you wanted to help me to help Mr. Vanderbank.”

“Well,” said Mitchy, “you can’t quite say I haven’t.”

“But your ideas of help are of a splendour—!”

“Oh I’ve told you about my ideas.” Mitchy was almost apologetic. Mr. Longdon had a pause. “I suppose I’m not indiscreet then in recognising your marriage as one of them. And that, with a responsibility so great already assumed, you appear fairly eager for another—!”

“Makes me out a kind of monster of benevolence?” Mitchy looked at it with a flushed face. “The two responsibilities are very much one and the same. My marriage has brought me, as it were, only nearer to Nanda. My wife and she, don’t you see? are particular friends.”

Mr. Longdon, on his side, turned a trifle pale; he looked rather hard at the floor. “I see—I see.” Then he raised his eyes. “But—to an old fellow like me—it’s all so strange.”

“It IS strange.” Mitchy spoke very kindly. “But it’s all right.”

Mr. Longdon gave a headshake that was both sad and sharp. “It’s all wrong. But YOU’RE all right!” he added in a different tone as he walked hastily away.

BOOK TENTH. NANDA

I

Nanda Brookenham, for a fortnight after Mr. Longdon’s return, had found much to think of; but the bustle of business became, visibly for us, particularly great with her on a certain Friday afternoon in June. She was in unusual possession of that chamber of comfort in which so much of her life had lately been passed, the redecorated and rededicated room upstairs in which she had enjoyed a due measure both of solitude and of society. Passing the objects about her in review she gave especial attention to her rather marked wealth of books; changed repeatedly, for five minutes, the position of various volumes, transferred to tables those that were on shelves and rearranged shelves with an eye to the effect of backs. She was flagrantly engaged throughout indeed in the study of effect, which moreover, had the law of an extreme freshness not inveterately prevailed there, might have been observed to be traceable in the very detail of her own appearance. “Company” in short was in the air and expectation in the picture. The flowers on the little tables bloomed with a consciousness sharply taken up by the glitter of nick-nacks and reproduced in turn in the light exuberance of cushions on sofas and the measured drop of blinds in windows. The numerous photographed friends in particular were highly prepared, with small intense faces, each, that happened in every case to be turned to the door. The pair of eyes most dilated perhaps was that of old Van, present under a polished glass and in a frame of gilt-edged morocco that spoke out, across the room, of Piccadilly and Christmas, and visibly widening his gaze at the opening of the door, at the announcement of a name by a footman and at the entrance of a gentleman remarkably like him save as the resemblance was on the gentleman’s part flattered. Vanderbank had not been in the room ten seconds before he showed ever so markedly that he had arrived to be kind. Kindness therefore becomes for us, by a quick turn of the glass that reflects the whole scene, the high pitch of the concert—a kindness that almost immediately filled the place, to the exclusion of everything else, with a familiar friendly voice, a brightness of good looks and good intentions, a constant though perhaps sometimes misapplied laugh, a superabundance almost of interest, inattention and movement.

The first thing the young man said was that he was tremendously glad she had written. “I think it was most particularly nice of you.” And this thought precisely seemed, as he spoke, a flower of the general bloom—as if the niceness he had brought in was so great that it straightway converted everything to its image. “The only thing that upset me a little,” he went on, “was your saying that before writing it you had so hesitated and waited. I hope very much, you know, that you’ll never do anything of that kind again. If you’ve ever the slightest desire to see me—for no matter what reason, if there’s ever the smallest thing of any sort that I can do for you, I promise you I shan’t easily forgive you if you stand on ceremony. It seems to me that when people have known each other as long as you and I there’s one comfort at least they may treat themselves to. I mean of course,” Van developed, “that of being easy and frank and natural. There are such a lot of relations in which one isn’t, in which it doesn’t pay, in which ‘ease’ in fact would be the greatest of troubles and ‘nature’ the greatest of falsities. However,” he continued while he suddenly got up to change the place in which he had put his hat, “I don’t really know why I’m preaching at such a rate, for I’ve a perfect consciousness of not myself requiring it. One does half the time preach more or less for one’s self, eh? I’m not mistaken at all events, I think, about the right thing with YOU. And a hint’s enough for you, I’m sure, on the right thing with me.” He had been looking all round while he talked and had twice shifted his seat; so that it was quite in consonance with his general admiring notice that the next impression he broke out with should have achieved some air of relevance. “What extraordinarily lovely flowers you have and how charming you’ve made everything! You’re always doing something—women are always changing the position of their furniture. If one happens to come in in the dark, no matter how well one knows the place, one sits down on a hat or a puppy-dog. But of course you’ll say one doesn’t come in in the dark, or at least, if one does, deserves what one gets. Only you know the way some women keep their rooms. I’m bound to say YOU don’t, do you?—you don’t go in for flower-pots in the windows and half a dozen blinds. Why SHOULD you? You HAVE got a lot to show!” He rose with this for the third time, as the better to command the scene. “What I mean is that sofa—which by the way is awfully good: you do, my dear Nanda, go it! It certainly was HERE the last time, wasn’t it? and this thing was there. The last time—I mean the last time I was up here—was fearfully long ago: when, by the way, WAS it? But you see I HAVE been and that I remember it. And you’ve a lot more things now. You’re laying up treasure. Really the increase of luxury—! What an awfully jolly lot of books—have you read them all? Where did you learn so much about bindings?”

He continued to talk; he took things up and put them down; Nanda sat in her place, where her stillness, fixed and colourless, contrasted with his rather flushed freedom, and appeared only to wait, half in surprise, half in surrender, for the flow of his suggestiveness to run its course, so that, having herself provoked the occasion, she might do a little more to meet it. It was by no means, however, that his presence in any degree ceased to prevail; for there were minutes during which her face, the only thing in her that moved, turning with his turns and following his glances, actually had a look inconsistent with anything but submission to almost any accident. It might have expressed a desire for his talk to last and last, an acceptance of any treatment of the hour or any version, or want of version, of her act that would best suit his ease, even in fact a resigned prevision of the occurrence of something that would leave her, quenched and blank, with the appearance of having made him come simply that she might look at him. She might indeed well have been aware of an inability to look at him little enough to make it flagrant that she had appealed to him for something quite different. Keeping the situation meanwhile thus in his hands he recognised over the chimney a new alteration. “There used to be a big print—wasn’t there? a thing of the fifties—we had lots of them at home; some place or other ‘in the olden time.’ And now there’s that lovely French glass. So you see.” He spoke as if she had in some way gainsaid him, whereas he had not left her time even to answer a question. But he broke out anew on the beauty of her flowers. “You have awfully good ones—where do you get them? Flowers and pictures and—what are the other things people have when they’re happy and superior?—books and birds. You ought to have a bird or two, though I dare say you think that by the noise I make I’m as good myself as a dozen. Isn’t there some girl in some story—it isn’t Scott; what is it?—who had domestic difficulties and a cage in her window and whom one associates with chickweed and virtue? It isn’t Esmeralda—Esmeralda had a poodle, hadn’t she?—or have I got my heroines mixed? You’re up here yourself like a heroine; you’re perched in your tower or what do you call it?—your bower. You quite hang over the place, you know—the great wicked city, the wonderful London sky and the monuments looming through: or am I again only muddling up my Zola? You must have the sunsets—haven’t you? No—what am I talking about? Of course you look north. Well, they strike me as about the only thing you haven’t. At the same time it’s not only because I envy you that I feel humiliated. I ought to have sent you some flowers.” He smote himself with horror, throwing back his head with a sudden thought. “Why in goodness when I got your note didn’t I for once in my life do something really graceful? I simply liked it and answered it. Here I am. But I’ve brought nothing. I haven’t even brought a box of sweets. I’m not a man of the world.”

“Most of the flowers here,” Nanda at last said, “come from Mr. Longdon. Don’t you remember his garden?”

Vanderbank, in quick response, called it up. “Dear yes—wasn’t it charming? And that morning you and I spent there”—he was so careful to be easy about it—“talking under the trees.”

“You had gone out to be quiet and read—!”

“And you came out to look after me. Well, I remember,” Van went on, “that we had some good talk.”

The talk, Nanda’s face implied, had become dim to her; but there were other things. “You know he’s a great gardener—I mean really one of the greatest. His garden’s like a dinner in a house where the person—the person of the house—thoroughly knows and cares.”

“I see. And he sends you dishes from the table.”

“Often—every week. It comes to the same thing—now that he’s in town his gardener does it.”

“Charming of them both!” Vanderbank exclaimed. “But his gardener—that extraordinarily tall fellow with the long red beard—was almost as nice as himself. I had talks with HIM too and remember every word he said. I remember he told me you asked questions that showed ‘a deal of study.’ But I thought I had never seen all round such a charming lot of people—I mean as those down there that our friend has got about him. It’s an awfully good note for a man, pleasant servants, I always think, don’t you? Mr. Longdon’s—and quite without their saying anything; just from the sort of type and manner they had—struck me as a kind of chorus of praise. The same with Mitchy’s at Mertle, I remember,” Van rambled on. “Mitchy’s the sort of chap who might have awful ones, but I recollect telling him that one quite felt as if it were with THEM one had come to stay. Good note, good note,” he cheerfully repeated. “I’m bound to say, you know,” he continued in this key, “that you’ve a jolly sense for getting in with people who make you comfortable. Then, by the way, he’s still in town?”

Nanda waited. “Do you mean Mr. Mitchy?”

“Oh HE is, I know—I met them two nights ago; and by the way again—don’t let me forget—I want to speak to you about his wife. But I’ve not seen, do you know? Mr. Longdon—which is really too awful. Twice, thrice I think, have I at moments like this one snatched myself from pressure; but there’s no finding the old demon at any earthly hour. When do YOU go—or does he only come here? Of course I see you’ve got the place arranged for him. When I asked at his hotel at what hour he ever IS in, blest if the fellow didn’t say ‘very often, sir, about ten!’ And when I said ‘Ten P. M.?’ he quite laughed at my innocence over a person of such habits. What ARE his habits then now, and what are you putting him up to? Seriously,” Vanderbank pursued, “I AM awfully sorry and I wonder if, the first time you’ve a chance, you’d kindly tell him you’ve heard me say so and that I mean yet to run him to earth. The same really with the dear Mitchys. I didn’t somehow, the other night, in such a lot of people, get at them. But I sat opposite to Aggie all through dinner, and that puts me in mind. I should like volumes from you about Aggie, please. It’s too revolting of me not to go to see her. But every one knows I’m busy. We’re up to our necks!”

“I can’t tell you,” said Nanda, “how kind I think it of you to have found, with all you have to do, a moment for THIS. But please, without delay, let me tell you—!”

Practically, however, he would let her tell him nothing; his almost aggressive friendly optimism clung so to references of short range. “Don’t mention it, please. It’s too charming of you to squeeze me in. To see YOU moreover does me good. Quite distinct good. And your writing me touched me—oh but really. There were all sorts of old things in it.” Then he broke out once more on her books, one of which for some minutes past he had held in his hand. “I see you go in for sets—and, my dear child, upon my word, I see, BIG sets. What’s this?—‘Vol. 23: The British Poets.’ Vol. 23 is delightful—do tell me about Vol. 23. Are you doing much in the British Poets? But when the deuce, you wonderful being, do you find time to read? I don’t find any—it’s too hideous. One relapses in London into such illiteracy and barbarism. I have to keep up a false glitter to hide in conversation my rapidly increasing ignorance: I should be so ashamed after all to see other people NOT shocked by it. But teach me, teach me!” he gaily went on.

“The British Poets,” Nanda immediately answered, “were given me by Mr. Longdon, who has given me all the good books I have except a few—those in that top row—that have been given me at different times by Mr. Mitchy. Mr. Mitchy has sent me flowers too, as well as Mr. Longdon. And they’re both—since we’ve spoken of my seeing them—coming by appointment this afternoon; not together, but Mr. Mitchy at 5.30 and Mr. Longdon at 6.30.”

She had spoken as with conscious promptitude, making up for what she had not yet succeeded in saying by a quick, complete statement of her case. She was evidently also going on with more, but her actual visitor had already taken her up with a laugh. “You ARE making a day of it and you run us like railway-trains!” He looked at his watch. “Have I then time?”

“It seems to me I should say ‘Have I?’ But it’s not half-past four,” Nanda went on, “and though I’ve something very particular of course to say to you it won’t take long. They don’t bring tea till five, and you must surely stay till that. I had already written to you when they each, for the same reason, proposed this afternoon. They go out of town to-morrow for Sunday.”

“Oh I see—and they have to see you first. What an influence you exert, you know, on people’s behaviour!”

She continued as literal as her friend was facetious. “Well, it just happened so, and it didn’t matter, since, on my asking you, don’t you know? to choose your time, you had taken, as suiting you best, this comparatively early hour.”

“Oh perfectly.” But he again had his watch out. “I’ve a job, perversely—that was my reason—on the other side of the world; which, by the way, I’m afraid, won’t permit me to wait for tea. My tea doesn’t matter.” The watch went back to his pocket. “I’m sorry to say I must be off before five. It has been delightful at all events to see you again.”

He was on his feet as he spoke, and though he had been half the time on his feet his last words gave the effect of his moving almost immediately to the door. It appeared to come out with them rather clearer than before that he was embarrassed enough really to need help, and it was doubtless the measure she after an instant took of this that enabled Nanda, with a quietness all her own, to draw to herself a little more of the situation. The quietness was plainly determined for her by a quick vision of its being the best assistance she could show. Had he an inward terror that explained his superficial nervousness, the incoherence of a loquacity designed, it would seem, to check in each direction her advance? He only fed it in that case by allowing his precautionary benevolence to put him in so much deeper. Where indeed could he have supposed she wanted to come out, and what that she could ever do for him would really be so beautiful as this present chance to smooth his confusion and add as much as possible to that refined satisfaction with himself which would proceed from his having dealt with a difficult hour in a gallant and delicate way? To force upon him an awkwardness was like forcing a disfigurement or a hurt, so that at the end of a minute, during which the expression of her face became a kind of uplifted view of her opportunity, she arrived at the appearance of having changed places with him and of their being together precisely in order that he—not she—should be let down easily.

II

“But surely you’re not going already?” she asked. “Why in the world then do you suppose I appealed to you?”

“Bless me, no; I’ve lots of time.” He dropped, laughing for very eagerness, straight into another chair. “You’re too awfully interesting. Is it really an ‘appeal’?” Putting the question indeed he could scarce even yet allow her a chance to answer it. “It’s only that you make me a little nervous with your account of all the people who are going to tumble in. And there’s one thing more,” he quickly went on; “I just want to make the point in case we should be interrupted. The whole fun is in seeing you this way alone.”

“Is THAT the point?” Nanda, as he took breath, gravely asked.

“That’s a part of it—I feel it, I assure you, to be charming. But what I meant—if you’d only give me time, you know, to put in a word—is what for that matter I’ve already told you: that it almost spoils my pleasure for you to keep reminding me that a bit of luck like this—luck for ME: I see you coming!—is after all for you but a question of business. Hang business! Good—don’t stab me with that paper-knife. I listen. What IS the great affair?” Then as it looked for an instant as if the words she had prepared were just, in the supreme pinch of her need, falling apart, he once more tried his advantage. “Oh if there’s any difficulty about it let it go—we’ll take it for granted. There’s one thing at any rate—do let me say this—that I SHOULD like you to keep before me: I want before I go to make you light up for me the question of little Aggie. Oh there are other questions too as to which I regard you as a perfect fountain of curious knowledge! However, we’ll take them one by one—the next some other time. You always seem to me to hold the strings of such a lot of queer little dramas. Have something on the shelf for me when we meet again. THE thing just now is the outlook for Mitchy’s affair. One cares enough for old Mitch to fancy one may feel safer for a lead or two. In fact I want regularly to turn you on.”

“Ah but the thing I happen to have taken it into my head to say to you,” Nanda now securely enough replied, “hasn’t the least bit to do, I assure you, either with Aggie or with ‘old Mitch.’ If you don’t want to hear it—want some way of getting off—please believe THEY won’t help you a bit.” It was quite in fact that she felt herself at last to have found the right tone. Nothing less than a conviction of this could have made her after an instant add: “What in the world, Mr. Van, are you afraid of?”

Well, that it WAS the right tone a single little minute was sufficient to prove—a minute, I must yet haste to say, big enough in spite of its smallness to contain the longest look on any occasion exchanged between these friends. It was one of those looks—not so frequent, it must be admitted, as the muse of history, dealing at best in short cuts, is often by the conditions of her trade reduced to representing them—which after they have come and gone are felt not only to have changed relations but absolutely to have cleared the air. It certainly helped Vanderbank to find his answer. “I’m only afraid, I think, of your conscience.”

He had been indeed for the space more helped than she. “My conscience?”

“Think it over—quite at your leisure—and some day you’ll understand. There’s no hurry,” he continued—“no hurry. And when you do understand, it needn’t make your existence a burden to you to fancy you must tell me.” Oh he was so kind—kinder than ever now. “The thing is, you see, that I haven’t a conscience. I only want my fun.”

They had on this a second look, also decidedly comfortable, though discounted, as the phrase is, by the other, which had really in its way exhausted the possibilities of looks. “Oh I want MY fun too,” said Nanda, “and little as it may strike you in some ways as looking like it, just this, I beg you to believe, is the real thing. What’s at the bottom of it,” she went on, “is a talk I had not long ago with mother.”

“Oh yes,” Van returned with brightly blushing interest. “The fun,” he laughed, “that’s to be got out of ‘mother’!”

“Oh I’m not thinking so much of that. I’m thinking of any that she herself may be still in a position to pick up. Mine now, don’t you see? is in making out how I can manage for this. Of course it’s rather difficult,” the girl pursued, “for me to tell you exactly what I mean.”

“Oh but it isn’t a bit difficult for me to understand you!” Vanderbank spoke, in his geniality, as if this were in fact the veriest trifle. “You’ve got your mother on your mind. That’s very much what I mean by your conscience.”

Nanda had a fresh hesitation, but evidently unaccompanied at present by any pain. “Don’t you still LIKE mamma?” she at any rate quite successfully brought out. “I must tell you,” she quickly subjoined, “that though I’ve mentioned my talk with her as having finally led to my writing to you, it isn’t in the least that she then suggested my putting you the question. I put it,” she explained, “quite off my own bat.”

The explanation, as an effect immediately produced, did proportionately much for the visitor, who sat back in his chair with a pleased—a distinctly exhilarated—sense both of what he himself and what Nanda had done. “You’re an adorable family!”

“Well then if mother’s adorable why give her up? This I don’t mind admitting she did, the day I speak of, let me see that she feels you’ve done; but without suggesting either—not a scrap, please believe—that I should make you any sort of scene about it. Of course in the first place she knows perfectly that anything like a scene would be no use. You couldn’t make out even if you wanted,” Nanda went on, “that THIS is one. She won’t hear us—will she?—smashing the furniture. I didn’t think for a while that I could do anything at all, and I worried myself with that idea half to death. Then suddenly it came to me that I could do just what I’m doing now. You said a while ago that we must never be—you and I—anything but frank and natural. That’s what I said to myself also—why not? Here I am for you therefore as natural as a cold in your head. I just ask you—I even press you. It’s because, as she said, you’ve practically ceased coming. Of course I know everything changes. It’s the law—what is it?—‘the great law’ of something or other. All sorts of things happen—things come to an end. She has more or less—by his marriage—lost Mitchy. I don’t want her to lose everything. Do stick to her. What I really wanted to say to you—to bring it straight out—is that I don’t believe you thoroughly know how awfully she likes you. I hope my saying such a thing doesn’t affect you as ‘immodest.’ One never knows—but I don’t much care if it does. I suppose it WOULD be immodest if I were to say that I verily believe she’s in love with you. Not, for that matter, that father would mind—he wouldn’t mind, as he says, a tuppenny rap. So”—she extraordinarily kept it up—“you’re welcome to any good the information may have for you: though that, I dare say, does sound hideous. No matter—if I produce any effect on you. That’s the only thing I want. When I think of her downstairs there so often nowadays practically alone I feel as if I could scarcely bear it. She’s so fearfully young.”

This time at least her speech, while she went from point to point, completely hushed him, though after a full glimpse of the direction it was taking he ceased to meet her eyes and only sat staring hard at the pattern of the rug. Even when at last he spoke it was without looking up. “You’re indeed, as she herself used to say, the modern daughter! It takes that type to wish to make a career for her parents.”

“Oh,” said Nanda very simply, “it isn’t a ‘career’ exactly, is it—keeping hold of an old friend? but it may console a little, mayn’t it, for the absence of one? At all events I didn’t want not to have spoken before it’s too late. Of course I don’t know what’s the matter between you, or if anything’s really the matter at all. I don’t care at any rate WHAT is—it can’t be anything very bad. Make it up, make it up—forget it. I don’t pretend that’s a career for YOU any more than for her; but there it is. I know how I sound—most patronising and pushing; but nothing venture nothing have. You CAN’T know how much you are to her. You’re more to her, I verily believe, than any one EVER was. I hate to have the appearance of plotting anything about her behind her back; so I’ll just say it once for all. She said once, in speaking of it to a person who repeated it to me, that you had done more for her than any one, because it was you who had really brought her out. It WAS. You did. I saw it at the time myself. I was very small, but I COULD see it. You’ll say I must have been a most uncanny little wretch, and I dare say I was and am keeping now the pleasant promise. That doesn’t prevent one’s feeling that when a person has brought a person out—”