The Awkward Age (New York: Harper and Brothers, 1899)/Book 9/Chapter 33
XXXIII
Very different was Mrs. Brook's welcome of the restored wanderer, to whom, in a brief space, she addressed every expression of surprise and delight, though marking indeed at last, as a qualification of these things, her regret that he declined to partake of her tea or to allow her to make him what she called "snug for a talk" in his customary corner of her sofa. He pleaded frankly agitation and embarrassment, reminded her even that he was awfully shy and that after separations, complications, whatever might at any time happen, he was conscious of the dust that had settled on intercourse and that he couldn't blow away in a single breath. She was only, according to her nature, to indulge him if, while he walked about and changed his place, he came to the surface but in patches and pieces. There was so much he wanted to know that—well, as they had arrived only the night before, she could judge. There was knowledge, it became clear, that Mrs. Brook almost equally craved, so that it even looked at first, as if, on either side, confidence might be choked by curiosity. This disaster was finally barred by the fact that the spirit of inquiry found for Mitchy material that was comparatively plastic. That was after all apparent enough when, at the end of a few vain passes, he brought out sociably: "Well, has he done it?"
Still indeed there was something in Mrs. Brook's face that seemed to reply "Oh come—don't rush it, you know!" and something in the movement with which she turned away that described the state of their question as by no means so simple as that. On his refusal of tea she had rung for the removal of the table, and the bell was at this moment answered by the two men. Little ensued then, for some minutes, while the servants were present; she spoke only as the butler was about to close the door. "If Mr. Longdon presently comes show him into Mr. Brookenham's room if Mr. Brookenham isn't there. If he is, show him into the dining-room, and in either case let me immediately know."
The man waited, expressionless. "And in case of his asking for Miss Brookenham—?"
"He won't!" she replied with a sharpness before which her interlocutor retired. "He will!" she then added in quite another tone to Mitchy. "That is, you know, he perfectly may. But oh the subtlety of servants!" she sighed.
Mitchy was now all there. "Mr. Longdon's in town then?"
"For the first time since you went away. He's to call this afternoon."
"And you want to see him alone?"
Mrs. Brook thought. "I don't think I want to see him at all."
"Then your keeping him below—?"
"Is so that he sha'n't burst in till I know. It's you, my dear, I want to see."
Mitchy glared about. "Well, don't take it ill if, in return for that, I say that I myself want to see every one. I could have done even, just now, with a little more of Edward."
Mrs. Brook, in her own manner and with a slow headshake, looked lovely. "I couldn't." Then she puzzled it out with a pause: "It even does come over me that if you don't mind—"
"What, my dear woman," said Mitchy, encouragingly, "did I ever mind? I assure you," he laughed, "I haven't come back to begin!"
At this suddenly, dropping everything else, she laid her hand on him. "Mitchy love, are you happy?"
So for a moment they stood confronted. "Not perhaps as you would have tried to make me."
"Well, you've still got me, you know."
"Oh," said Mitchy, "I've got a great deal. How, if I really look at it, can a man of my peculiar nature—it is, you know, awfully peculiar—not be happy? Think, if one is driven to it, for instance, of the breadth of my sympathies."
Mrs. Brook, as a result of thinking, appeared for a little to demur. "Yes—but one mustn't be too much driven to it. It's by one's sympathies that one suffers. If you should do that, I couldn't bear it."
She clearly evoked for Mitchy a definite image. "It would be funny, wouldn't it? But you wouldn't have to. I'd go off and do it alone somewhere—in a dark room, I think, or on a desert island; at any rate where nobody should see. Where's the harm, moreover," he went on, "of any suffering that doesn't bore one, as I'm sure, however much its outer aspect might amuse some others, mine wouldn't bore me? What I should do in my desert island or my dark room, I feel, would be just to dance about with the thrill of it—which is exactly the exhibition of ludicrous gambols that I would fain have arranged to spare you. I assure you, dear Mrs. Brook," he wound up, "that I'm not in the least bored now. Everything is so interesting."
"You're beautiful!" she vaguely interposed.
But he pursued without heeding: "Was it perhaps what you had in your head that I should see him—?"
She came back but slowly, however, to the moment. "Mr. Longdon? Well, yes. You know he can't bear me—"
"Yes, yes"—Mitchy was almost eager.
It had already sent her off again. "You're too lovely. You have come back the same. It seemed to me," she after an instant explained, "that I wanted him to be seen—"
"Without inconvenience, as it were, either to himself or to you? Then," said Mitchy, who visibly felt that he had taken her up successfully, "it strikes me that I'm absolutely your man. It's delicious to come back to a use."
But she was much more dim about it. "Oh, what you've come back to!"
"It's just what I'm trying to get at. Van is still then where I left him?"
She was just silent. "Did you really believe he would move?"
Mitchy took a few turns, speaking almost with his back presented. "Well, with all the reasons—!" After which, while she watched him, he was before her again with a question. "Is it utterly off?"
"When was it ever really on?"
"Oh, I know your view, and that, I think," said Mitchy, "is the most extraordinary part of it. I can tell you it would have put me on."
"My view?" Mrs. Brook thought. "Have you forgotten that I had for you too a view that didn't?"
"Ah, but we didn't differ, you and I. It wasn't a defiance and a prophecy. You wanted me."
"I did indeed!" Mrs. Brook said simply.
"And you didn't want him. For her, I mean. So you risked showing it."
She looked surprised. "Did I?"
Again they were face to face. "Your candor's divine!"
She wondered. "Do you mean it was even then?"
Mitchy smiled at her till he was red. "It's exquisite now."
"Well," she presently returned, "I knew my Van!"
"I thought I knew 'yours' too." Mitchy said. Their eyes met a minute, and he added: "But I didn't." Then he exclaimed: "How you've worked it!"
She looked barely conscious. "'Worked it'?" After which, with a slightly sharper note: "How do you know—while you've been amusing yourself in places that I'd give my head to see again, but never shall—what I've been doing?"
"Well, I saw, you know, that night at Tishy's, just before we left England, your wonderful start. I got a look at your attitude, as it were, and your system."
Her eyes were now far away, and she spoke, after an instant, without moving them. "And didn't I, by the same token, get a look at yours!"
"Mine?" Mitchy thought, but seemed to doubt. "My dear child, I hadn't any then."
"You mean that it has formed itself—your system—since?"
He shook his head with decision. "I assure you I'm quite at sea. I've never had, and I have as little as ever now, anything but my general philosophy, which I won't attempt at present to go into and of which, moreover, I think you've had, first and last, your glimpses. What I made out in you that night was a perfect policy."
Mrs. Brook had another of her infantine stares. "Every one, that night, seems to have made out something! All I can say is, at any rate," she went on, "that in that case you were all far deeper than I was."
"It was just a blind instinct, without a programme or a scheme? Perhaps then, since it has so perfectly succeeded, the name doesn't matter. I'm lost, as I tell you," Mitchy declared, "in admiration of its success."
She looked, as before, so young, yet so grave. "What do you call its success?"
"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 call. 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 labor. "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. "Excuse 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 behavior—"
"My behavior 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 honor?"
"You shall have them 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 launched. "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 the sight of whom Mrs. Brook immediately guessed. "Mr. Longdon?"
"In Mr. Brookenham's room, ma'am. Mr. Brookenham has gone out."
"And where has he gone?"
"I think, ma'am, only for some evening papers."
She had an intense look for Mitchy; then she said to the man: "Ask him to wait three minutes—I'll ring;" turning again to her visitor as soon as they were alone. "You don't know how I'm trusting you!"
"Trusting me?"
"Why, if he comes up to you."
Mitchy thought. "Hadn't I better go down?"
"No—you may have Edward back. If you see him, you must see him here. If I don't myself, it's for a reason."
Mitchy again just sounded her. "His not, as you awhile ago hinted—"
"Yes, caring for what I say." She had a pause, but she brought it out. "He doesn't believe a word—"
"Of what you tell him?" Mitchy was splendid. "I see. And you want something said to him."
"Yes, that he'll take from you. Only it's for you," Mrs. Brook went on, "really and honestly, and as I trust you, to give it. But the comfort of you is that you'll do so if you promise."
Mitchy was infinitely struck. "But I haven't promised, eh? Of course I can't till I know what it is."
"It's to put before him—"
"Oh, I see: the situation."
"What has happened here to-day. Van's marked retreat, and how, with the time that has passed, it makes us at last know where we are. You of course, for yourself," Mrs. Brook wound up, "see that."
"Where we are?" Mitchy took a turn and came back. "But what then did Van come for? If you speak of a retreat, there must have been an advance."
"Oh," said Mrs. Brook, "he simply wanted not to look too brutal. After so much absence he could come."
"Well, if he established that he wasn't brutal, where was the retreat?"
"In his not going up to Nanda. He came—frankly—to do that, but made up his mind on second thoughts that he couldn't risk even being civil to her."
Mitchy had visibly warmed to his work. "Well, and what made the difference?"
She wondered. "What difference?"
"Why, of the effect, as you say, of his second thoughts. Thoughts of what?"
"Oh," said Mrs. Brook suddenly and as if it were quite simple—"I know that! Suspicions."
"And of whom?"
"Why, of you, you goose. Of your not having done—"
"Well, what?" he persisted as she paused.
"How shall I say it? The best thing for yourself. And of Nanda's feeling that. Don't you see?"
In the effort of seeing, or perhaps indeed in the full act of it, poor Mitchy glared as never before. "Do you mean Van's jealous of me?"
Pressed as she was, there was something in his face that momentarily hushed her. "There it is!" she achieved, however, at last.
"Of me?" Mitchy went on.
What was in his face so suddenly and strangely was the look of rising tears—at sight of which, as from a compunction as prompt, she showed a lovely flush. "There it is, there it is," she repeated. "You ask me for a reason, and it's the only one I see. Of course if you don't care," she added, "he needn't come up. He can straight to Nanda."
Mitchy had turned away again as with the impulse of hiding the tears that had risen and that had not wholly disappeared even by the time he faced about. "Did Nanda know he was to come?"
"Mr. Longdon?"
"No, no. Was she expecting Van—?"
"My dear man," Mrs. Brook mildly wailed, "when can she have not been?"
Mitchy looked hard for an instant at the floor. "I mean does she know he has been and gone?"
Mrs. Brook, from where she stood and through the window, looked rather at the sky. "Her father will have told her."
"Her father?" Mitchy frankly wondered. "Is he in it?"
Mrs. Brook, at this, had a longer pause. "You assume, I suppose, Mitchy dear," she then quavered, "that I put him up—"
"Put Edward up?" he broke in.
"No—that of course. Put Van up to ideas—"
He caught it again. "About me—what you call his suspicions?" He seemed to weigh the charge, but it ended, while he passed his hand hard over his eyes, in weariness and in the nearest approach to coldness he had ever shown Mrs. Brook. "It doesn't matter. It's every one's fate to be, in one way or another, the subject of ideas. Do then," he continued, "let Mr. Longdon come up."
She instantly rang the bell. "Then I'll go to Nanda. But don't look frightened," she added as she came back, "as to what we may—Edward or I—do next. It's only to tell her that he'll be with her."
"Good. I'll tell Tatton," Mitchy replied.
Still, however, she lingered. "Shall you ever care for me more?"
He had almost the air, as he waited for her to go, of the master of the house, for she had made herself before him, as he stood with his back to the fire, as humble as a relegated visitor. "Oh, just as much. Where's the difference? Aren't our ties in fact rather multiplied?"
"That's the way I want to feel it. And from the moment you recognize with me—"
"Yes?"
"Well, that he never, you know, really would—"
He took her mercifully up. "There's no harm done?" Mitchy thought of it.
It made her still hover. "Nanda will be rich. Toward that you can help, and it's really, I may now tell you, what it came into my head you should see our friend here for."
He maintained his waiting attitude. "Thanks, thanks."
"You're our guardian angel!" she exclaimed.
At this he laughed out. "Wait till you see what Mr. Longdon does!"
But she took no notice. "I want you to see before I go that I've done nothing for myself. Van, after all—" she mused.
"Well?"
"Only hates me. It isn't as with you," she said. "I've really lost him."
Mitchy, for an instant, with the eyes that had shown his tears, glared away into space. "He can't, very positively, you know, now like any of us. He misses a fortune."
"There it is!" Mrs. Brook once more observed. Then she had a comparative brightness. "I'm so glad you don't!" He gave another laugh, but she was already facing Mr. Tatton, who had again answered the bell. "Show Mr. Longdon up."
"I'm to tell him, then, it's at your request?" Mitchy asked when the butler had gone.
"That you receive him? Oh yes. He'll be the last to quarrel with that. But there's one more thing."
It was something over which, of a sudden, she had one of her returns of anxiety. "I've been trying for months and months to remember to find out from you—"
"Well, what?" he inquired, as she looked odd.
"Why, if Harold ever gave back to you, as he swore to me on his honor he would, that five-pound note—"
"But which, dear lady?" The sense of other incongruities than those they had been dealing with seemed to arrive now for Mitchy's aid.
"The one that, ages ago, one day when you and Van were here, we had the joke about. You produced it, in sport, as a 'fine' for something, and put it on that table; after which, before I knew what you were about, before I could run after you, you had gone off and ridiculously left it. Of course, the next minute—and again before I could turn round—Harold had pounced on it, and I tried in vain to recover it from him. But all I could get him to do—"
"Was to promise to restore it straight to its owner?"
Mitchy had listened so much less in surprise than in amusement that he had apparently, after a moment, reestablished the scene. "Oh, I recollect—he did settle with me. That's all right."
She fixed him from the door of the next room. "You got every penny?"
"Every penny. But fancy your bringing it up?"
"Ah, I always do, you know, some day."
"Yes, you're of a rigor—! But be at peace. Harold's quite square," he went on, "and I quite meant to have asked you about him."
Mrs. Brook, promptly, was all for this. "Oh, it's all right."
Mitchy came nearer. "Lady Fanny—?"
"Yes—has staid for him."
"Ah" said Mitchy, "I knew you'd do it! But hush—they're coming!" On which, while she whisked away, he went back to the fire.