The Awkward Age

He wonderfully glared. “Am I then already frightening you?” He shook his head rather sadly. “I’m not in the least trying yet. There’s something,” he added after an instant, “that I do want too awfully to ask you.”

“Well then—!” If she had not eagerness she had at least charity.

“Oh but you see I reflect that though you show all the courage to go to the roots and depths with ME, I’m not—I never have been—fully conscious of the nerve for doing as much with you. It’s a question,” Mitchy explained, “of how much—of a particular matter—you know.”

She continued ever so kindly to face him. “Hasn’t it come out all round now that I know everything?”

Her reply, in this form, took a minute or two to operate, but when it began to do so it fairly diffused a light. Mitchy’s face turned of a colour that might have been produced by her holding close to it some lantern wonderfully glazed. “You know, you know!” he then rang out.

“Of course I know.”

“You know, you know!” Mitchy repeated.

“Everything,” she imperturbably went on, “but what you’re talking about.”

He was silent a little, his eyes on her. “May I kiss your hand?”

“No,” she answered: “that’s what I call wild.”

He had risen with his question and after her reply he remained a moment on the spot. “See—I’ve frightened you. It proves as easy as that. But I only wanted to show you and to be sure for myself. Now that I’ve the mental certitude I shall never wish otherwise to use it.” He turned away to begin again one of his absorbed revolutions. “Mr. Longdon has asked you this time for a grand public adhesion, and what he turns up for now is to receive your ultimatum? A final irrevocable flight with him is the line he advises, so that he’ll be ready for it on the spot with the post-chaise and the pistols?”

The image appeared really to have for Nanda a certain vividness, and she looked at it a space without a hint of a smile. “We shan’t need any pistols, whatever may be decided about the post-chaise; and any flight we may undertake together will need no cover of secrecy or night. Mother, as I’ve told you—”

“Won’t fling herself across your reckless path? I remember,” said Mitchy—“you alluded to her magnificent resignation. But father?” he oddly demanded.

Nanda thought for this a moment longer. “Well, Mr. Longdon has—off in the country—a good deal of shooting.”

“So that Edward can sometimes come down with his old gun? Good then too—if it isn’t, as he takes you by the way, to shoot YOU. You’ve got it all shipshape and arranged, in other words, and have only, if the fancy does move you, to clear out. You clear out—you make all sorts of room. It IS interesting,” Mitchy exclaimed, “arriving thus with you at the depths! I look all round and see every one squared and every one but one or two suited. Why then reflexion and delay?”

“You don’t, dear Mr. Mitchy,” Nanda took her time to return, “know nearly as much as you think.”

“But isn’t my question absolutely a confession of ignorance and a renunciation of thought? I put myself from this moment forth with you,” Mitchy declared, “on the footing of knowing nothing whatever and of receiving literally from your hands all information and all life. Let my continued attitude of dependence, my dear Nanda, show it. Any hesitation you may yet feel, you imply, proceeds from a sense of duties in London not to be lightly renounced? Oh,” he thoughtfully said, “I do at least know you HAVE them.”

She watched him with the same mildness while he vaguely circled about. “You’re wild, you’re wild,” she insisted. “But it doesn’t in the least matter. I shan’t abandon you.”

He stopped short. “Ah that’s what I wanted from you in so many clear-cut golden words—though I won’t in the least of course pretend that I’ve felt I literally need it. I don’t literally need the big turquoise in my neck-tie; which incidentally means, by the way, that if you should admire it you’re quite welcome to it. Such words—that’s my point—are like such jewels: the pride, you see, of one’s heart. They’re mere vanity, but they help along. You’ve got of course always poor Tishy,” he continued.

“Will you leave it all to ME?” Nanda said as if she had not heard him.

“And then you’ve got poor Carrie,” he went on, “though HER of course you rather divide with your mother.”

“Will you leave it all to ME?” the girl repeated.

“To say nothing of poor Cashmore,” he pursued, “whom you take ALL, I believe, yourself?”

“Will you leave it all to ME?” she once more repeated.

This time he pulled up, suddenly and expressively wondering. “Are you going to do anything about it at present?—I mean with our friend?”

She appeared to have a scruple of saying, but at last she produced it. “Yes—he doesn’t mind now.”

Mitchy again laughed out. “You ARE, as a family—!” But he had already checked himself. “Mr. Longdon will at any rate, you imply, be somehow interested—”

“In MY interests? Of course—since he has gone so far. You expressed surprise at my wanting to wait and think; but how can I not wait and not think when so much depends on the question—now so definite—of how much further he WILL go?”

“I see,” said Mitchy, profoundly impressed. “And how much does that depend on?”

She had to reflect. “On how much further I, for my part, MUST!”

Mitchy’s grasp was already complete. “And he’s coming then to learn from you how far this is?”

“Yes—very much.”

Mitchy looked about for his hat. “So that of course I see my time’s about up, as you’ll want to be quite alone together.”

Nanda glanced at the clock. “Oh you’ve a margin yet.”

“But you don’t want an interval for your thinking—?”

“Now that I’ve seen you?” Nanda was already very obviously thoughtful.

“I mean if you’ve an important decision to take.”

“Well,” she returned, “seeing you HAS helped me.”

“Ah but at the same time worried you. Therefore—” And he picked up his umbrella.

Her eyes rested on its curious handle. “If you cling to your idea that I’m frightened you’ll be disappointed. It will never be given you to reassure me.”

“You mean by that that I’m primarily so solid—!”

“Yes, that till I see you yourself afraid—!”

“Well?”

“Well, I won’t admit that anything isn’t exactly what I was prepared for.”

Mitchy looked with interest into his hat. “Then what is it I’m to ‘leave’ to you?” After which, as she turned away from him with a suppressed sound and said, while he watched her, nothing else, “It’s no doubt natural for you to talk,” he went on, “but I do make you nervous. Good-bye—good-bye.”

She had stayed him, by a fresh movement, however, as he reached the door. “Aggie’s only trying to find out—!”

“Yes—what?” he asked, waiting.

“Why what sort of a person she is. How can she ever have known? It was carefully, elaborately hidden from her—kept so obscure that she could make out nothing. She isn’t now like ME.”

He wonderingly attended. “Like you?”

“Why I get the benefit of the fact that there was never a time when I didn’t know SOMETHING or other, and that I became more and more aware, as I grew older, of a hundred little chinks of daylight.”