The Awkward Age

“A person should take the consequences,” Vanderbank broke in, “and see a person through?” He could meet her now perfectly and proceeded admirably to do it. “There’s an immense deal in that, I admit—I admit. I’m bound to say I don’t know quite what I did—one does those things, no doubt, with a fine unconsciousness: I should have thought indeed it was the other way round. But I assure you I accept all consequences and all responsibilities. If you don’t know what’s the matter between us I’m sure I don’t either. It can’t be much—we’ll look into it. I don’t mean you and I—YOU mustn’t be any more worried; but she and her so unwittingly faithless one. I HAVEN’T been as often, I know”—Van pleasantly kept his course. “But there’s a tide in the affairs of men—and of women too, and of girls and of every one. You know what I mean—you know it for yourself. The great thing is that—bless both your hearts!—one doesn’t, one simply CAN’T if one would, give your mother up. It’s absurd to talk about it. Nobody ever did such a thing in his life. There she is, like the moon or the Marble Arch. I don’t say, mind you,” he candidly explained, “that every one LIKES her equally: that’s another affair. But no one who ever HAS liked her can afford ever again for any long period to do without her. There are too many stupid people—there’s too much dull company. That, in London, is to be had by the ton; your mother’s intelligence, on the other hand, will always have its price. One can talk with her for a change. She’s fine, fine, fine. So, my dear child, be quiet. She’s a fixed star.”

“Oh I know she is,” Nanda said. “It’s YOU—”

“Who may be only the flashing meteor?” He sat and smiled at her. “I promise you then that your words have stayed me in my course. You’ve made me stand as still as Joshua made the sun.” With which he got straight up. “‘Young,’ you say she is?”—for as if to make up for it he all the more sociably continued. “It’s not like anything else. She’s youth. She’s MY youth—she WAS mine. And if you ever have a chance,” he wound up, “do put in for me that if she wants REALLY to know she’s booked for my old age. She’s clever enough, you know”—and Vanderbank, laughing, went over for his hat—“to understand what you tell her.”

Nanda took this in with due attention; she was also now on her feet. “And then she’s so lovely.”

“Awfully pretty!”

“I don’t say it, as they say, you know,” the girl continued, “BECAUSE she’s mother, but I often think when we’re out that wherever she is—!”

“There’s no one that all round really touches her?” Vanderbank took it up with zeal. “Oh so every one thinks, and in fact one’s appreciation of the charming things in that way so intensely her own can scarcely breathe on them all lightly enough. And then, hang it, she has perceptions—which are not things that run about the streets. She has surprises.” He almost broke down for vividness. “She has little ways.”

“Well, I’m glad you do like her,” Nanda gravely replied.

At this again he fairly faced her, his momentary silence making it still more direct. “I like, you know, about as well as I ever liked anything, this wonderful idea of yours of putting in a plea for her solitude and her youth. Don’t think I do it injustice if I say—which is saying much—that it’s quite as charming as it’s amusing. And now good-bye.”

He had put out his hand, but Nanda hesitated. “You won’t wait for tea?”

“My dear child, I can’t.” He seemed to feel, however, that something more must be said. “We shall meet again. But it’s getting on, isn’t it, toward the general scatter?”

“Yes, and I hope that this year,” she answered, “you’ll have a good holiday.”

“Oh we shall meet before that. I shall do what I can, but upon my word I feel, you know,” he laughed, “that such a tuning-up as YOU’VE given me will last me a long time. It’s like the high Alps.” Then with his hand out again he added: “Have you any plans yourself?”

So many, it might have seemed, that she had no time to take for thinking of them. “I dare say I shall be away a good deal.”

He candidly wondered. “With Mr. Longdon?”

“Yes—with him most.”

He had another pause. “Really for a long time?”

“A long long one, I hope.”

“Your mother’s willing again?”

“Oh perfectly. And you see that’s why.”

“Why?” She had said nothing more, and he failed to understand.

“Why you mustn’t too much leave her alone. DON’T!” Nanda brought out.

“I won’t. But,” he presently added, “there are one or two things.”

“Well, what are they?”

He produced in some seriousness the first. “Won’t she after all see the Mitchys?”

“Not so much either. That of course is now very different.”

Vanderbank demurred. “But not for YOU, I gather—is it? Don’t you expect to see them?”

“Oh yes—I hope they’ll come down.”

He moved away a little—not straight to the door. “To Beccles? Funny place for them, a little though, isn’t it?”

He had put the question as if for amusement, but Nanda took it literally. “Ah not when they’re invited so very very charmingly. Not when he wants them so.”

“Mr. Longdon? Then that keeps up?”

“‘That’?”—she was at a loss.

“I mean his intimacy—with Mitchy.”

“So far as it IS an intimacy.”

“But didn’t you, by the way”—and he looked again at his watch—“tell me they’re just about to turn up together?”

“Oh not so very particularly together.”

“Mitchy first alone?” Vanderbank asked.

She had a smile that was dim, that was slightly strange. “Unless you’ll stay for company.”

“Thanks—impossible. And then Mr. Longdon alone?”

“Unless Mitchy stays.”

He had another pause. “You haven’t after all told me about the ‘evolution’—or the evolutions—of his wife.”

“How can I if you don’t give me time?”

“I see—of course not.” He seemed to feel for an instant the return of his curiosity. “Yet it won’t do, will it? to have her out before HIM? No, I must go.” He came back to her and at present she gave him a hand. “But if you do see Mr. Longdon alone will you do me a service? I mean indeed not simply today, but with all other good chances?”

She waited. “Any service whatever. But which first?”

“Well,” he returned in a moment, “let us call it a bargain. I look after your mother—”

“And I—?” She had had to wait again.

“Look after my good name. I mean for common decency to HIM. He has been of a kindness to me that, when I think of my failure to return it, makes me blush from head to foot. I’ve odiously neglected him—by a complication of accidents. There are things I ought to have done that I haven’t. There’s one in particular—but it doesn’t matter. And I haven’t even explained about THAT. I’ve been a brute and I didn’t mean it and I couldn’t help it. But there it is. Say a good word for me. Make out somehow or other that I’m NOT a beast. In short,” the young man said, quite flushed once more with the intensity of his thought, “let us have it that you may quite trust ME if you’ll let me a little—just for my character as a gentleman—trust YOU.”

“Ah you may trust me,” Nanda replied with her handshake.

“Good-bye then!” he called from the door.

“Good-bye,” she said after he had closed it.