Many things at Mertle were strange for her interlocutor, but nothing
perhaps as yet had been so strange as the sight of this arrangement for
little Aggie’s protection; an arrangement made in the interest of her
remaining as a young person of her age and her monde--so her aunt would
have put it--should remain. The strangest part of the impression too
was that the provision might really have its happy side and his lordship
understand definitely better than any one else his noble friend’s whole
theory of perils and precautions. The child herself, the spectator of
the incident was sure enough, understood nothing; but the understandings
that surrounded her, filling all the air, made it a heavier compound to
breathe than any Mr. Longdon had yet tasted. This heaviness had grown
for him through the long sweet summer day, and there was something in
his at last finding himself ensconced with the Duchess that made it
supremely oppressive. The contact was one that, none the less, he would
not have availed himself of a decent pretext to avoid. With so many
fine mysteries playing about him there was relief, at the point he had
reached, rather than alarm, in the thought of knowing the worst; which
it pressed upon him somehow that the Duchess must not only altogether
know but must in any relation quite naturally communicate. It fluttered
him rather that a person who had an understanding with Lord Petherton
should so single him out as to wish for one also with himself; such a
person must either have great variety of mind or have a wonderful idea
of HIS variety. It was true indeed that Mr. Mitchett must have the most
extraordinary understanding, and yet with Mr. Mitchett he now found
himself quite pleasantly at his ease. Their host, however, was a person
sui generis, whom he had accepted, once for all, the inconsequence of
liking in conformity with the need he occasionally felt to put it on
record that he was not narrow-minded. Perhaps at bottom he most liked
Mitchy because Mitchy most liked Nanda; there hung about him still
moreover the faded fragrance of the superstition that hospitality not
declined is one of the things that “oblige.” It obliged the thoughts,
for Mr. Longdon, as well as the manners, and in the especial form in
which he was now committed to it would have made him, had he really
thought any ill, ask himself what the deuce then he was doing in
the man’s house. All of which didn’t prevent some of Mitchy’s queer
condonations--if condonations in fact they were--from not wholly, by
themselves, soothing his vague unrest, an unrest which never had been so
great as at the moment he heard the Duchess abruptly say to him: “Do
you know my idea about Nanda? It’s my particular desire you should--the
reason, really, why I’ve thus laid violent hands on you. Nanda, my dear
man, should marry at the very first moment.”
This was more interesting than he had expected, and the effect produced
by his interlocutress, as well as doubtless not lost on her, was
shown in his suppressed start. “There has been no reason why I should
attribute to you any judgement of the matter; but I’ve had one myself,
and I don’t see why I shouldn’t say frankly that it’s very much the one
you express. It would be a very good thing.”
“A very good thing, but none of my business?”--the Duchess’s vivacity
was not unamiable.
It was on this circumstance that her companion for an instant perhaps
meditated. “It’s probably not in my interest to say that. I should give
you too easy a retort. It would strike any one as quite as much your
business as mine.”
“Well, it ought to be somebody’s, you know. One would suppose it to be
her mother’s--her father’s; but in this country the parents are even
more emancipated than the children. Suppose, really, since it appears to
be nobody’s affair, that you and I do make it ours. We needn’t either
of us,” she continued, “be concerned for the other’s reasons, though I’m
perfectly ready, I assure you, to put my cards on the table. You’ve your
feelings--we know they’re beautiful. I, on my side, have mine--for which
I don’t pretend anything but that they’re strong. They can dispense
with being beautiful when they’re so perfectly settled. Besides, I
may mention, they’re rather nice than otherwise. Edward and I have a
cousinage, though for all he does to keep it up--! If he leaves his
children to play in the street I take it seriously enough to make an
occasional dash for them before they’re run over. And I want for Nanda
simply the man she herself wants--it isn’t as if I wanted for her a
dwarf or a hunchback or a coureur or a drunkard. Vanderbank’s a man whom
any woman, don’t you think? might be--whom more than one woman IS--glad
of for herself: beau comme le jour, awfully conceited and awfully
patronising, but clever and successful and yet liked, and without, so
far as I know, any of the terrific appendages which in this country so
often diminish the value of even the pleasantest people. He hasn’t five
horrible unmarried sisters for his wife to have always on a visit. The
way your women don’t marry is the ruin here of society, and I’ve been
assured in good quarters--though I don’t know so much about that--the
ruin also of conversation and of literature. Isn’t it precisely just a
little to keep Nanda herself from becoming that kind of appendage--say
to poor Harold, say, one of these days, to her younger brother and
sister--that friends like you and me feel the importance of bestirring
ourselves in time? Of course she’s supposedly young, but she’s really
any age you like: your London world so fearfully batters and bruises
them.” She had gone fast and far, but it had given Mr. Longdon time to
feel himself well afloat. There were so many things in it all to take up
that he laid his hand--of which, he was not unconscious, the feebleness
exposed him--on the nearest. “Why I’m sure her mother--after twenty
years of it--is fresh enough.”
“Fresh? You find Mrs. Brook fresh?” The Duchess had a manner that, in
its all-knowingness, rather humiliated than encouraged; but he was all
the more resolute for being conscious of his own reserves. “It seems to
me it’s fresh to look about thirty.”
“That indeed would be perfect. But she doesn’t--she looks about three.
She simply looks a baby.”
“Oh Duchess, you’re really too particular!” he retorted, feeling that,
as the trodden worm will turn, anxiety itself may sometimes tend to wit.
She met him in her own way. “I know what I mean. My niece is a person
_I_ call fresh. It’s warranted, as they say in the shops. Besides,” she
went on, “if a married woman has been knocked about that’s only a part
of her condition. Elle l’a lien voulu, and if you’re married you’re
married; it’s the smoke--or call it the soot!--of the fire. You know,
yourself,” she roundly pursued, “that Nanda’s situation appals you.”
“Oh ‘appals’!” he restrictively murmured.
It even tried a little his companion’s patience. “There you are, you
English--you’ll never face your own music. It’s amazing what you’d
rather do with a thing--anything not to shoot at or to make money
with--than look at its meaning. If I wished to save the girl as YOU wish
it I should know exactly from what. But why differ about reasons,” she
asked, “when we’re at one about the fact? I don’t mention the greatest
of Vanderbank’s merits,” she added--“his having so delicious a friend.
By whom, let me hasten to assure you,” she laughed, “I don’t in the
least mean Mrs. Brook! She IS delicious if you like, but believe me when
I tell you, caro mio--if you need to be told--that for effective action
on him you’re worth twenty of her.”
What was most visible in Mr. Longdon was that, however it came to him,
he had rarely before, all at once, had so much given him to think
about. Again the only way to manage was to take what came uppermost.
“By effective action you mean action on the matter of his proposing for
Nanda?”
The Duchess’s assent was noble. “You can make him propose--you can make,
I mean, a sure thing of it. You can doter the bride.” Then as with
the impulse to meet benevolently and more than halfway her companion’s
imperfect apprehension: “You can settle on her something that will make
her a parti.” His apprehension was perhaps imperfect, but it could
still lead somehow to his flushing all over, and this demonstration the
Duchess as quickly took into account. “Poor Edward, you know, won’t give
her a penny.”
Decidedly she went fast, but Mr. Longdon in a moment had caught up.
“Mr. Vanderbank--your idea is--would require on the part of his wife
something of that sort?”
“Pray who wouldn’t--in the world we all move in--require it quite as
much? Mr. Vanderbank, I’m assured, has no means of his own at all, and
if he doesn’t believe in impecunious marriages it’s not I who shall be
shocked at him. For myself I simply despise them. He has nothing but a
poor official salary. If it’s enough for one it would be little for two,
and would be still less for half a dozen. They’re just the people to
have, that blessed pair, a fine old English family.”
Mr. Longdon was now fairly abreast of it. “What it comes to then, the
idea you’re so good as to put before me, is to bribe him to take her.”
The Duchess remained bland, but she fixed him. “You say that as if you
were scandalised, but if you try Mr. Van with it I don’t think he’ll
be. And you won’t persuade me,” she went on finely, “that you haven’t
yourself thought of it.” She kept her eyes on him, and the effect of
them, soon enough visible in his face, was such as presently to make her
exult at her felicity. “You’re of a limpidity, dear man--you’ve only
to be said ‘bo!’ to and you confess. Consciously or unconsciously--the
former, really, I’m inclined to think--you’ve wanted him for her.” She
paused an instant to enjoy her triumph, after which she continued: “And
you’ve wanted her for him. I make you out, you’ll say--for I see you
coming--one of those horrible benevolent busy-bodies who are the worst
of the class, but you’ve only to think a little--if I may go so far--to
see that no ‘making’ at all is required. You’ve only one link with the
Brooks, but that link is golden. How can we, all of us, by this time,
not have grasped and admired the beauty of your feeling for Lady Julia?
There it is--I make you wince: to speak of it is to profane it. Let us
by all means not speak of it then, but let us act on it.” He had at last
turned his face from her, and it now took in, from the vantage of his
high position, only the loveliness of the place and the hour, which
included a glimpse of Lord Petherton and little Aggie, who, down in
the garden, slowly strolled in familiar union. Each had a hand in the
other’s, swinging easily as they went; their talk was evidently of
flowers and fruits and birds; it was quite like father and daughter.
One could see half a mile off in short that THEY weren’t flirting. Our
friend’s bewilderment came in odd cold gusts: these were unreasoned and
capricious; one of them, at all events, during his companion’s pause,
must have roared in his ears. Was it not therefore through some
continuance of the sound that he heard her go on speaking? “Of course
you know the poor child’s own condition.”
It took him a good while to answer. “Do YOU know it?” he asked with his
eyes still away.
“If your question’s ironical,” she laughed, “your irony’s perfectly
wasted. I should be ashamed of myself if, with my relationship and my
interest, I hadn’t made sure. Nanda’s fairly sick--as sick as a little
cat--with her passion.” It was with an intensity of silence that he
appeared to accept this; he was even so dumb for a minute that the
oddity of the image could draw from him no natural sound. The Duchess
once more, accordingly, recognised an occasion. “It has doubtless
already occurred to you that, since your sentiment for the living is
the charming fruit of your sentiment for the dead, there would be a
sacrifice to Lady Julia’s memory more exquisite than any other.”
At this finally Mr. Longdon turned. “The effort--on the lines you speak
of--for Nanda’s happiness?”
She fairly glowed with hope. “And by the same token such a piece of
poetic justice! Quite the loveliest it would be, I think, one had ever
heard of.”
So, for some time more, they sat confronted. “I don’t quite see your
difficulty,” he said at last. “I do happen to know, I confess, that
Nanda herself extremely desires the execution of your project.”
His friend’s smile betrayed no surprise at this effect of her eloquence.
“You’re bad at dodging. Nanda’s desire is inevitably to stop off for
herself every question of any one but Vanderbank. If she wants me to
succeed in arranging with Mr. Mitchett can you ask for a plainer sign
of her private predicament? But you’ve signs enough, I see”--she caught
herself up: “we may take them all for granted. I’ve known perfectly from
the first that the only difficulty would come from her mother--but also
that that would be stiff.”
The movement with which Mr. Longdon removed his glasses might have
denoted a certain fear to participate in too much of what the Duchess
had known. “I’ve not been ignorant that Mrs. Brookenham favours Mr.
Mitchett.”
But he was not to be let off with that. “Then you’ve not been blind, I
suppose, to her reason for doing so.” He might not have been blind, but
his vision, at this, scarce showed sharpness, and it determined in his
interlocutress the shortest of short cuts. “She favours Mr. Mitchett
because she wants ‘old Van’ herself.”
He was evidently conscious of looking at her hard. “In what
sense--herself?”
“Ah you must supply the sense; I can give you only the fact--and it’s
the fact that concerns us. Voyons” she almost impatiently broke out;
“don’t try to create unnecessary obscurities by being unnecessarily
modest. Besides, I’m not touching your modesty. Supply any sense
whatever that may miraculously satisfy your fond English imagination:
I don’t insist in the least on a bad one. She does want him
herself--that’s all I say. ‘Pourquoi faires’ you ask--or rather, being
too shy, don’t ask, but would like to if you dared or didn’t fear I’d
be shocked. I CAN’T be shocked, but frankly I can’t tell you either. The
situation belongs, I think, to an order I don’t understand. I understand
either one thing or the other--I understand taking a man up or letting
him alone. But I don’t really get at Mrs. Brook. You must judge at any
rate for yourself. Vanderbank could of course tell you if he would--but
it wouldn’t be right that he should. So the one thing we have to do
with is that she’s in fact against us. I can only work Mitchy through
Petherton, but Mrs. Brook can work him straight. On the other hand
that’s the way you, my dear man, can work Vanderbank.”
One thing evidently beyond the rest, as a result of this vivid
demonstration, disengaged itself to our old friend’s undismayed sense,
but his consternation needed a minute or two to produce it. “I can
absolutely assure you that Mr. Vanderbank entertains no sentiment for
Mrs. Brookenham--!”
“That he may not keep under by just setting his teeth and holding on?
I never dreamed he does, and have nothing so alarming in store for
you--rassurez-vous bien!--as to propose that he shall be invited to sink
a feeling for the mother in order to take one up for the child. Don’t,
please, flutter out of the whole question by a premature scare. I never
supposed it’s he who wants to keep HER. He’s not in love with her--be
comforted! But she’s amusing--highly amusing. I do her perfect justice.
As your women go she’s rare. If she were French she’d be a femme
d’esprit. She has invented a nuance of her own and she has done it all
by herself, for Edward figures in her drawing-room only as one of those
queer extinguishers of fire in the corridors of hotels. He’s just a
bucket on a peg. The men, the young and the clever ones, find it a
house--and heaven knows they’re right--with intellectual elbow-room,
with freedom of talk. Most English talk is a quadrille in a sentry-box.
You’ll tell me we go further in Italy, and I won’t deny it, but in Italy
we have the common sense not to have little girls in the room. The
young men hang about Mrs. Brook, and the clever ones ply her with
the uproarious appreciation that keeps her up to the mark. She’s in a
prodigious fix--she must sacrifice either her daughter or what she once
called to me her intellectual habits. Mr. Vanderbank, you’ve seen for
yourself, is of these one of the most cherished, the most confirmed.
Three months ago--it couldn’t be any longer kept off--Nanda began
definitely to ‘sit’; to be there and look, by the tea-table, modestly
and conveniently abstracted.”
“I beg your pardon--I don’t think she looks that, Duchess,” Mr. Longdon
lucidly broke in. How much she had carried him with her in spite of
himself was betrayed by the very terms of his dissent. “I don’t think it
would strike any one that she looks ‘convenient.’”
His companion, laughing, gave a shrug. “Try her and perhaps you’ll find
her so!” But his objection had none the less pulled her up a little. “I
don’t say she’s a hypocrite, for it would certainly be less decent for
her to giggle and wink. It’s Mrs. Brook’s theory moreover, isn’t it?
that she has, from five to seven at least, lowered the pitch. Doesn’t
she pretend that she bears in mind every moment the tiresome difference
made by the presence of sweet virginal eighteen?”
“I haven’t, I’m afraid, a notion of what she pretends!”
Mr. Longdon had spoken with a curtness to which his friend’s particular
manner of overlooking it only added significance. “They’ve become,” she
pursued, “superficial or insincere or frivolous, but at least they’ve
become, with the way the drag’s put on, quite as dull as other people.”
He showed no sign of taking this up; instead of it he said abruptly:
“But if it isn’t Mr. Mitchett’s own idea?”
His fellow visitor barely hesitated. “It would be his own if he were
free--and it would be Lord Petherton’s FOR him. I mean by his being free
Nanda’s becoming definitely lost to him. Then it would be impossible
for Mrs. Brook to continue to persuade him, as she does now, that by a
waiting game he’ll come to his chance. His chance will cease to exist,
and he wants so, poor darling, to marry. You’ve really now seen my
niece,” she went on. “That’s another reason why I hold you can help me.”
“Yes--I’ve seen her.”
“Well, there she is.” It was as if in the pause that followed this they
sat looking at little absent Aggie with a wonder that was almost equal.
“The good God has given her to me,” the Duchess said at last.
“It seems to me then that she herself is, in her remarkable loveliness,
really your help.”
“She’ll be doubly so if you give me proofs that you believe in her.” And
the Duchess, appearing to consider that with this she had made herself
clear and her interlocutor plastic, rose in confident majesty. “I leave
it to you.”
Mr. Longdon did the same, but with more consideration now. “Is it your
expectation that I shall speak to Mr. Mitchett?”
“Don’t flatter yourself he won’t speak to YOU!”
Mr. Longdon made it out. “As supposing me, you mean, an interested
party?”
She clapped her gloved hands for joy. “It’s a delight to hear you
practically admit that you ARE one! Mr. Mitchett will take anything from
you--above all perfect candour. It isn’t every day one meets YOUR kind,
and he’s a connoisseur. I leave it to you--I leave it to you.”
She spoke as if it were something she had thrust bodily into his
hands and wished to hurry away from. He put his hands behind
him--straightening himself a little, half-kindled, still half-confused.
“You’re all extraordinary people!”
She gave a toss of her head that showed her as not so dazzled. “You’re
the best of us, caro mio--you and Aggie: for Aggie’s as good as you.
Mitchy’s good too, however--Mitchy’s beautiful. You see it’s not only
his money. He’s a gentleman. So are you. There aren’t so many. But we
must move fast,” she added more sharply.
“What do you mean by fast?”
“What should I mean but what I say? If Nanda doesn’t get a husband early
in the business--”
“Well?” said Mr. Longdon, as she appeared to pause with the weight of
her idea.
“Why she won’t get one late--she won’t get one at all. One, I mean, of
the kind she’ll take. She’ll have been in it over-long for THEIR taste.”
She had moved, looking off and about her--little Aggie always on her
mind--to the flight of steps, where she again hung fire; and had really
ended by producing in him the manner of keeping up with her to challenge
her. “Been in what?”
She went down a few steps while he stood with his face full of
perceptions strained and scattered. “Why in the air they themselves have
infected for her!”
V
Late that night, in the smoking room, when the smokers--talkers and
listeners alike--were about to disperse, Mr. Longdon asked Vanderbank to
stay, and then it was that the young man, to whom all the evening he had
not addressed a word, could make out why, a little unnaturally, he had
prolonged his vigil. “I’ve something particular to say to you and I’ve
been waiting. I hope you don’t mind. It’s rather important.” Vanderbank
expressed on the spot the liveliest desire to oblige him and, quickly
lighting another cigarette, mounted again to the deep divan with which
a part of the place was furnished. The smoking-room at Mertle was not
unworthy of the general nobleness, and the fastidious spectator had
clearly been reckoned on in the great leather-covered lounge that,
raised by a step or two above the floor, applied its back to two
quarters of the wall and enjoyed most immediately a view of the
billiard-table. Mr. Longdon continued for a minute to roam with the air
of dissimulated absence that, during the previous hour and among the
other men, his companion’s eye had not lost; he pushed a ball or two
about, examined the form of an ash-stand, swung his glasses almost
with violence and declined either to smoke or to sit down. Vanderbank,
perched aloft on the bench and awaiting developments, had a little the
look of some prepossessing criminal who, in court, should have changed
places with the judge. He was unlike many a man of marked good looks
in that the effect of evening dress was not, with a perversity often
observed in such cases, to over-emphasise his fineness. His type was
rather chastened than heightened, and he sat there moreover with a
primary discretion quite in the note of the deference that from the
first, with his friend of the elder fashion, he had taken as imposed.
He had a strong sense for shades of respect and was now careful to
loll scarcely more than with an official superior. “If you ask me,” Mr.
Longdon presently continued, “why at this hour of the night--after a day
at best too heterogeneous--I don’t keep over till to-morrow whatever I
may have to say, I can only tell you that I appeal to you now because
I’ve something on my mind that I shall sleep the better for being rid
of.”
There was space to circulate in front of the haut-pas, where he had
still paced and still swung his glasses; but with these words he had
paused, leaning against the billiard-table, to meet the interested
urbanity of the answer they produced. “Are you very sure that having
got rid of it you WILL sleep? Is it a pure confidence,” Vanderbank said,
“that you do me the honour to make me? Is it something terrific that
requires a reply, so that I shall have to take account on my side of the
rest I may deprive you of?”
“Don’t take account of anything--I’m myself a man who always takes too
much. It isn’t a matter about which I press you for an immediate answer.
You can give me no answer probably without a good deal of thought. I’VE
thought a good deal--otherwise I wouldn’t speak. I only want to put
something before you and leave it there.”
“I never see you,” said Vanderbank, “that you don’t put something before
me.”
“That sounds,” his friend returned, “as if I rather overloaded--what’s
the sort of thing you fellows nowadays say?--your intellectual board.
If there’s a congestion of dishes sweep everything without scruple away.
I’ve never put before you anything like this.”
He spoke with a weight that in the great space, where it resounded a
little, made an impression--an impression marked by the momentary pause
that fell between them. He partly broke the silence first by beginning
to walk again, and then Vanderbank broke it as through the apprehension
of their becoming perhaps too solemn. “Well, you immensely interest
me and you really couldn’t have chosen a better time. A secret--for we
shall make it that of course, shan’t we?--at this witching hour, in this
great old house, is all my visit here will have required to make the
whole thing a rare remembrance. So I assure you the more you put before
me the better.”
Mr. Longdon took up another ash-tray, but with the air of doing so as
a direct consequence of Vanderbank’s tone. After he had laid it down he
put on his glasses; then fixing his companion he brought out: “Have you
no idea at all--?”
“Of what you have in your head? Dear Mr. Longdon, how SHOULD I have?”
“Well, I’m wondering if I shouldn’t perhaps have a little in your place.
There’s nothing that in the circumstances occurs to you as likely I
should want to say?”
Vanderbank gave a laugh that might have struck an auditor as a
trifle uneasy. “When you speak of ‘the circumstances’ you do a thing
that--unless you mean the simple thrilling ones of this particular
moment--always of course opens the door of the lurid for a man of
any imagination. To such a man you’ve only to give a nudge for his
conscience to jump. That’s at any rate the case with mine. It’s never
quite on its feet--so it’s now already on its back.” He stopped a
little--his smile was even strained. “Is what you want to put before me
something awful I’ve done?”
“Excuse me if I press this point.” Mr. Longdon spoke kindly, but if
his friend’s anxiety grew his own thereby diminished. “Can you think of
nothing at all?”
“Do you mean that I’ve done?”
“No, but that--whether you’ve done it or not--I may have become aware
of.”
There could have been no better proof than Vanderbank’s expression, on
this, of his having mastered the secret of humouring without appearing
to patronise. “I think you ought to give me a little more of a clue.”
Mr. Longdon took off his glasses. “Well--the clue’s Nanda Brookenham.”
“Oh I see.” His friend had responded quickly, but for a minute said
nothing more, and the great marble clock that gave the place the air
of a club ticked louder in the stillness. Mr. Longdon waited with a
benevolent want of mercy, yet with a look in his face that spoke of what
depended for him--though indeed very far within--on the upshot of his
patience. The hush between them, for that matter, became a conscious
public measure of the young man’s honesty. He evidently at last felt
it as such, and there would have been for an observer of his handsome
controlled face a study of some sharp things. “I judge that you ask me
for such an utterance,” he finally said, “as very few persons at any
time have the right to expect of a man. Think of the people--and very
decent ones--to whom on so many a question one must only reply that it’s
none of their business.”
“I see you know what I mean,” said Mr. Longdon.
“Then you know also the distinguished exception I make of you. There
isn’t another man with whom I’d talk of it.”
“And even to me you don’t! But I’m none the less obliged to you,” Mr.
Longdon added.
“It isn’t only the gravity,” his companion went on; “it’s the ridicule
that inevitably attaches--!”
The manner in which Mr. Longdon indicated the empty room was in itself
an interruption. “Don’t I sufficiently spare you?”
“Thank you, thank you,” said Vanderbank.
“Besides, it’s not for nothing.”
“Of course not!” the young man returned, though with a look of noting
the next moment a certain awkwardness in his concurrence. “But don’t
spare me now.”
“I don’t mean to.” Mr. Longdon had his back to the table again, on which
he rested with each hand on the rim. “I don’t mean to,” he repeated.
His victim gave a laugh that betrayed at least the drop of a tension.
“Yet I don’t quite see what you can do to me.”
“It’s just what for some time past I’ve been trying to think.”
“And at last you’ve discovered?”
“Well--it has finally glimmered out a little in this extraordinary
place.”
Vanderbank frankly wondered. “In consequence of anything particular that
has happened?”
Mr. Longdon had a pause. “For an old idiot who notices as much as
I something particular’s always happening. If you’re a man of
imagination--”
“Oh,” Vanderbank broke in, “I know how much more in that case you’re
one! It only makes me regret,” he continued, “that I’ve not attended
more since yesterday to what you’ve been about.”
“I’ve been about nothing but what among you people I’m always about.
I’ve been seeing, feeling, thinking. That makes no show, of course I’m
aware, for any one but myself, and it’s wholly my own affair. Except
indeed,” he added, “so far as I’ve taken into my head to make, on it
all, this special appeal. There are things that have come home to me.”
“Oh I see, I see,” Vanderbank showed the friendliest alertness. “I’m to
take it from you then, with all the avidity of my vanity, that I strike
you as the person best able to understand what they are.”
Mr. Longdon appeared to wonder an instant if his intelligence now had
not almost too much of a glitter: he kept the same position, his back
against the table, and while Vanderbank, on the settee, pressed upright
against the wall, they recognised in silence that they were trying each
other. “You’re much the best of them. I’ve my ideas about you. You’ve
great gifts.”
“Well then, we’re worthy of each other. When Greek meets Greek--!” and
the young man laughed while, a little with the air of bracing himself,
he folded his arms. “Here we are.”
His companion looked at him a moment longer, then, turning away, went
slowly round the table. On the further side of it he stopped again and,
after a minute, with a nervous movement, set a ball or two in motion.
“It’s beautiful--but it’s terrible!” he finally murmured. He hadn’t his
eyes on Vanderbank, who for a minute said nothing, and he presently went
on: “To see it and not to want to try to help--well, I can’t do that.”
Vanderbank, still neither speaking nor moving, remained as if he might
interrupt something of high importance, and his friend, passing along
the opposite edge of the table, continued to produce in the stillness,
without the cue, the small click of the ivory. “How long--if you don’t
mind my asking--have you known it?”
Even for this at first Vanderbank had no answer--none but to rise from
his place, come down to the floor and, standing there, look at Mr.
Longdon across the table. He was serious now, but without being solemn.
“How can one tell? One can never be sure. A man may fancy, may wonder;
but about a girl, a person so much younger than himself and so much more
helpless, he feels a--what shall I call it?”
“A delicacy?” Mr. Longdon suggested. “It may be that; the name doesn’t
matter; at all events he’s embarrassed. He wants not to be an ass on the
one side and yet not some other kind of brute on the other.”
Mr. Longdon listened with consideration--with a beautiful little air
indeed of being, in his all but finally benighted state, earnestly open
to information on such points from a magnificent young man. “He doesn’t
want, you mean, to be a coxcomb?--and he doesn’t want to be cruel?”
Vanderbank, visibly preoccupied, produced a faint kind smile. “Oh you
KNOW!”
“I? I should know less than any one.” Mr. Longdon had turned away from
the table on this, and the eyes of his companion, who after an instant
had caught his meaning, watched him move along the room and approach
another part of the divan. The consequence of the passage was that
Vanderbank’s only rejoinder was presently to say: “I can’t tell you
how long I’ve imagined--have asked myself. She’s so charming, so
interesting, and I feel as if I had known her always. I’ve thought of
one thing and another to do--and then, on purpose, haven’t thought at
all. That has mostly seemed to me best.”
“Then I gather,” said Mr. Longdon, “that your interest in her--?”
“Hasn’t the same character as her interest in ME?” Vanderbank had taken
him up responsively, but after speaking looked about for a match and
lighted a new cigarette. “I’m sure you understand,” he broke out, “what
an extreme effort it is to me to talk of such things!”
“Yes, yes. But it’s just effort only? It gives you no pleasure? I mean
the fact of her condition,” Mr. Longdon explained.
Vanderbank had really to think a little. “However much it might give me
I should probably not be a fellow to gush. I’m a self-conscious stick of
a Briton.”
“But even a stick of a Briton--!” Mr. Longdon faltered and hovered.
“I’ve gushed in short to YOU.”
“About Lady Julia?” the young man frankly asked. “Is gushing what you
call what you’ve done?”
“Say then we’re sticks of Britons. You’re not in any degree at all in
love?”
There fell between them, before Vanderbank replied, another pause, of
which he took advantage to move once more round the table. Mr. Longdon
meanwhile had mounted to the high bench and sat there as if the judge
were now in his proper place. At last his companion spoke. “What you’re
coming to is of course that you’ve conceived a desire.”
“That’s it--strange as it may seem. But believe me, it has not been
precipitate. I’ve watched you both.”
“Oh I knew you were watching HER,” said Vanderbank.
“To such a tune that I’ve made up my mind. I want her so to marry--!”
But on the odd little quaver of longing with which he brought it out the
elder man fairly hung.
“Well?” said Vanderbank.
“Well, so that on the day she does she’ll come into the interest of a
considerable sum of money--already very decently invested--that I’ve
determined to settle on her.”
Vanderbank’s instant admiration flushed across the room. “How awfully
jolly of you--how beautiful!”
“Oh there’s a way to show practically your appreciation of it.”
But Vanderbank, for enthusiasm, scarcely heard him. “I can’t tell you
how admirable I think you.” Then eagerly, “Does Nanda know it?” he
demanded.
Mr. Longdon, after a wait, spoke with comparative dryness. “My idea has
been that for the present you alone shall.”
Vanderbank took it in. “No other man?”
His companion looked still graver. “I need scarcely say that I depend on
you to keep the fact to yourself.”
“Absolutely then and utterly. But that won’t prevent what I think of it.
Nothing for a long time has given me such joy.”
Shining and sincere, he had held for a minute Mr. Longdon’s eyes. “Then
you do care for her?”
“Immensely. Never, I think, so much as now. That sounds of a grossness,
doesn’t it?” the young man laughed. “But your announcement really lights
up the mind.”
His friend for a moment almost glowed with his pleasure. “The sum I’ve
fixed upon would be, I may mention, substantial, and I should of course
be prepared with a clear statement--a very definite pledge--of my
intentions.”
“So much the better! Only”--Vanderbank suddenly pulled himself up--“to
get it she MUST marry?”
“It’s not in my interest to allow you to suppose she needn’t, and it’s
only because of my intensely wanting her marriage that I’ve spoken to
you.”
“And on the ground also with it”--Vanderbank so far concurred--“of your
quite taking for granted my only having to put myself forward?”
If his friend seemed to cast about it proved but to be for the fullest
expression. Nothing in fact could have been more charged than the quiet
way in which he presently said: “My dear boy, I back you.”
Vanderbank clearly was touched by it. “How extraordinarily kind you are
to me!” Mr. Longdon’s silence appeared to reply that he was willing to
let it go for that, and the young man next went on: “What it comes to
then--as you put it--is that it’s a way for me to add something handsome
to my income.”
Mr. Longdon sat for a little with his eyes attached to the green field
of the billiard-table, vivid in the spreading suspended lamplight. “I
think I ought to tell you the figure I have in mind.”
Another person present might have felt rather taxed either to determine
the degree of provocation represented by Vanderbank’s considerate smile,
or to say if there was an appreciable interval before he rang out:
“I think, you know, you oughtn’t to do anything of the sort. Let that
alone, please. The great thing is the interest--the great thing is the
wish you express. It represents a view of me, an attitude toward me--!”
He pulled up, dropping his arms and turning away before the complete
image.
“There’s nothing in those things that need overwhelm you. It would be
odd if you hadn’t yourself, about your value and your future a feeling
quite as lively as any feeling of mine. There IS mine at all events. I
can’t help it. Accept it. Then of the other feeling--how SHE moves me--I
won’t speak.”
“You sufficiently show it!”
Mr. Longdon continued to watch the bright circle on the table, lost in
which a moment he let his friend’s answer pass. “I won’t begin to you on
Nanda.”
“Don’t,” said Vanderbank. But in the pause that ensued each, in one way
or another, might have been thinking of her for himself.
It was broken by Mr. Longdon’s presently going on: “Of course what it
superficially has the air of is my offering to pay you for taking a
certain step. It’s open to you to be grand and proud--to wrap yourself
in your majesty and ask if I suppose you bribeable. I haven’t spoken
without having thought of that.”
“Yes,” said Vanderbank all responsively, “but it isn’t as if you
proposed to me, is it, anything dreadful? If one cares for a girl one’s
deucedly glad she has money. The more of anything good she has the
better. I may assure you,” he added with the brightness of his friendly
intelligence and quite as if to show his companion the way to be least
concerned--“I may assure you that once I were disposed to act on your
suggestion I’d make short work of any vulgar interpretation of my
motive. I should simply try to be as fine as yourself.” He smoked, he
moved about, then came up in another place. “I dare say you know that
dear old Mitchy, under whose blessed roof we’re plotting this midnight
treason, would marry her like a shot and without a penny.”
“I think I know everything--I think I’ve thought of everything. Mr.
Mitchett,” Mr. Longdon added, “is impossible.”
Vanderbank appeared for an instant to wonder. “Wholly then through HER
attitude?”
“Altogether.”
Again he hesitated. “You’ve asked her?”
“I’ve asked her.”
Once more Vanderbank faltered. “And that’s how you know?”
“About YOUR chance? That’s how I know.”
The young man, consuming his cigarette with concentration, took again
several turns. “And your idea IS to give one time?”
Mr. Longdon had for a minute to turn his idea over. “How much time do
you want?”
Vanderbank gave a headshake that was both restrictive and indulgent. “I
must live into it a little. Your offer has been before me only these few
minutes, and it’s too soon for me to commit myself to anything whatever.
Except,” he added gallantly, “to my gratitude.”
Mr. Longdon, at this, on the divan, got up, as Vanderbank had previously
done, under the spring of emotion; only, unlike Vanderbank, he still
stood there, his hands in his pockets and his face, a little paler,
directed straight. There was disappointment in him even before he spoke.
“You’ve no strong enough impulse--?”
His friend met him with admirable candour. “Wouldn’t it seem that if I
had I would by this time have taken the jump?”
“Without waiting, you mean, for anybody’s money?” Mr. Longdon
cultivated for a little a doubt. “Of course she has struck one as--till
now--tremendously young.”
Vanderbank looked about once more for matches and occupied a time with
relighting. “Till now--yes. But it’s not,” he pursued, “only because
she’s so young that--for each of us, and for dear old Mitchy too--she’s
so interesting.” Mr. Longdon had restlessly stepped down, and
Vanderbank’s eyes followed him till he stopped again. “I make out that
in spite of what you said to begin with you’re conscious of a certain
pressure.”
“In the matter of time? Oh yes, I do want it DONE. That,” Nanda’s patron
simply explained, “is why I myself put on the screw.” He spoke with the
ring of impatience. “I want her got out.”
“‘Out’?”
“Out of her mother’s house.”
Vanderbank laughed though--more immediately--he had coloured. “Why, her
mother’s house is just where I see her!”
“Precisely; and if it only weren’t we might get on faster.”
Vanderbank, for all his kindness, looked still more amused. “But if it
only weren’t, as you say, I seem to understand you wouldn’t have your
particular vision of urgency.”
Mr. Longdon, through adjusted glasses, took him in with a look that
was sad as well as sharp, then jerked the glasses off. “Oh you do
understand.”
“Ah,” said Vanderbank, “I’m a mass of corruption!”
“You may perfectly be, but you shall not,” Mr. Longdon returned with
decision, “get off on any such plea. If you’re good enough for me you’re
good enough, as you thoroughly know, on whatever head, for any one.”
“Thank you.” But Vanderbank, for all his happy appreciation, thought
again. “We ought at any rate to remember, oughtn’t we? that we should
have Mrs. Brook against us.”
His companion faltered but an instant. “Ah that’s another thing I know.
But it’s also exactly why. Why I want Nanda away.”
“I see, I see.”
The response had been prompt, yet Mr. Longdon seemed suddenly to show
that he suspected the superficial. “Unless it’s with Mrs. Brook you’re
in love.” Then on his friend’s taking the idea with a mere headshake of
negation, a repudiation that might even have astonished by its own lack
of surprise, “Or unless Mrs. Brook’s in love with you,” he amended.
Vanderbank had for this any decent gaiety. “Ah that of course may
perfectly be!”
“But IS it? That’s the question.”
He continued light. “If she had declared her passion shouldn’t I rather
compromise her--?”
“By letting me know?” Mr. Longdon reflected. “I’m sure I can’t say--it’s
a sort of thing for which I haven’t a measure or a precedent. In my time
women didn’t declare their passion. I’m thinking of what the meaning is
of Mrs. Brookenham’s wanting you--as I’ve heard it called--herself.”
Vanderbank, still with his smile, smoked a minute. “That’s what you’ve
heard it called?”
“Yes, but you must excuse me from telling you by whom.”
He was amused at his friend’s discretion. “It’s unimaginable. But it
doesn’t matter. We all call everything--anything. The meaning of it, if
you and I put it so, is--well, a modern shade.”
“You must deal then yourself,” said Mr. Longdon, “with your modern
shades.” He spoke now as if the case simply awaited such dealing.
But at this his young friend was more grave. “YOU could do nothing?--to
bring, I mean, Mrs. Brook round.”
Mr. Longdon fairly started. “Propose on your behalf for her daughter?
With your authority--tomorrow. Authorise me and I instantly act.”
Vanderbank’s colour again rose--his flush was complete. “How awfully you
want it!”
Mr. Longdon, after a look at him, turned away. “How awfully YOU don’t!”
The young man continued to blush. “No--you must do me justice. You’ve
not made a mistake about me--I see in your proposal, I think, all you
can desire I should. Only YOU see it much more simply--and yet I can’t
just now explain. If it WERE so simple I should say to you in a moment
‘do speak to them for me’--I should leave the matter with delight in
your hands. But I require time, let me remind you, and you haven’t yet
told me how much I may take.”
This appeal had brought them again face to face, and Mr. Longdon’s first
reply to it was a look at his watch. “It’s one o’clock.”
“Oh I require”--Vanderbank had recovered his pleasant humour--“more than
to-night!”
Mr. Longdon went off to the smaller table that still offered to view
two bedroom candles. “You must take of course the time you need. I won’t
trouble you--I won’t hurry you. I’m going to bed.”
Vanderbank, overtaking him, lighted his candle for him; after which,
handing it and smiling: “Shall we have conduced to your rest?”
Mr. Longdon looked at the other candle. “You’re not coming to bed?”
“To MY rest we shall not have conduced. I stay up a while longer.”
“Good.” Mr. Longdon was pleased. “You won’t forget then, as we promised,
to put out the lights?”
“If you trust me for the greater you can trust me for the less.
Good-night.”
Vanderbank had offered his hand. “Good-night.” But Mr. Longdon kept him
a moment. “You DON’T care for my figure?”
“Not yet--not yet. PLEASE.” Vanderbank seemed really to fear it, but on
Mr. Longdon’s releasing him with a little drop of disappointment they
went together to the door of the room, where they had another pause.
“She’s to come down to me--alone--in September.”
Vanderbank appeared to debate and conclude. “Then may I come?”
His friend, on this footing, had to consider. “Shall you know by that
time?”
“I’m afraid I can’t promise--if you must regard my coming as a pledge.”
Mr. Longdon thought on; then raising his eyes: “I don’t quite see why
you won’t suffer me to tell you--!”
“The detail of your intention? I do then. You’ve said quite enough. If
my visit must commit me,” Vanderbank pursued, “I’m afraid I can’t come.”
Mr. Longdon, who had passed into the corridor, gave a dry sad little
laugh. “Come then--as the ladies say--‘as you are’!”
On which, rather softly closing the door, the young man remained alone
in the great emptily lighted billiard-room.