The Awkward Age by Henry James (simple ebook reader txt) 📖

Mr. Longdon’s garden took in three acres and, full of charming features, had for its greatest wonder the extent and colour of its old brick wall, in which the pink and purple surface was the fruit of the mild ages and the protective function, for a visitor strolling, sitting, talking, reading, that of a nurse of reverie. The air of the place, in the August time, thrilled all the while with the bliss of birds, the hum of little lives unseen and the flicker of white butterflies. It was on the large flat enclosed lawn that Nanda spoke to Vanderbank of the three weeks she would have completed there on the morrow—weeks that had been—she made no secret of it—the happiest she had yet spent anywhere. The greyish day was soft and still and the sky faintly marbled, while the more newly arrived of the visitors from London, who had come late on the Friday afternoon, lounged away the morning in an attitude every relaxed line of which referred to the holiday he had, as it were—at first merely looking about and victualling—sat down in front of as a captain before a city. There were sitting-places, just there, out of the full light, cushioned benches in the thick wide spread of old mulberry-boughs. A large book of facts lay in the young man’s lap, and Nanda had come out to him, half an hour before luncheon, somewhat as Beatrice came out to Benedick: not to call him immediately indeed to the meal, but mentioning promptly that she had come at a bidding. Mr. Longdon had rebuked her, it appeared, for her want of attention to their guest, showing her in this way, to her pleasure, how far he had gone toward taking her, as he called it, into the house.

“You’ve been thinking of yourself,” Vanderbank asked, “as a mere clerk at a salary, and you now find that you’re a partner and have a share in the concern?”

“It seems to be something like that. But doesn’t a partner put in something? What have I put in?”

“Well—ME, for one thing. Isn’t it your being here that has brought me down?”

“Do you mean you wouldn’t have come for him alone? Then don’t you make anything of his attraction? You ought to,” said Nanda, “when he likes you so.”

Vanderbank, longing for a river, was in white flannels, and he took her question with a happy laugh, a handsome face of good humour that completed the effect of his long, cool fairness. “Do you mind my just sitting still, do you mind letting me smoke and staying with me a while? Perhaps after a little we’ll walk about—shan’t we? But face to face with this dear old house, in this jolly old nook, one’s too contented to move, lest raising a finger even should break the spell. What WILL be perfect will be your just sitting down—DO sit down—and scolding me a little. That, my dear Nanda, will deepen the peace.” Some minutes later, while, near him but in another chair, she fingered the impossible book, as she pronounced it, that she had taken from him, he came back to what she had last said. “Has he talked to you much about his ‘liking’ me?”

Nanda waited a minute, turning over the book. “No.”

“Then how are you just now so struck with it?”

“I’m not struck only with what I’m talked to about. I don’t know,” she went on, “only what people tell me.”

“Ah no—you’re too much your mother’s daughter for that!” Vanderbank leaned back and smoked, and though all his air seemed to say that when one was so at ease for gossip almost any subject would do, he kept jogging his foot with the same small nervous motion as during the half-hour at Mertle that this record has commemorated. “You’re too much one of us all,” he continued. “We’ve tremendous perceptions,” he laughed. “Of course I SHOULD have come for him. But after all,” he added, as if all sorts of nonsense would equally serve, “he mightn’t, except for you, you know, have asked me.”

Nanda so far accepted this view as to reply: “That’s awfully weak. He’s so modest that he might have been afraid of your boring yourself.”

“That’s just what I mean.”

“Well, if you do,” Nanda returned, “the explanation’s a little conceited.”

“Oh I only made it,” Vanderbank said, “in reference to his modesty.” Beyond the lawn the house was before him, old, square, red-roofed, well assured of its right to the place it took up in the world. This was a considerable space—in the little world at least of Suffolk—and the look of possession had everywhere mixed with it, in the form of old windows and doors, the tone of old red surfaces, the style of old white facings, the age of old high creepers, the long confirmation of time. Suggestive of panelled rooms, of precious mahogany, of portraits of women dead, of coloured china glimmering through glass doors and delicate silver reflected on bared tables, the thing was one of those impressions of a particular period that it takes two centuries to produce. “Fancy,” the young man incoherently exclaimed, “his caring to leave anything so loveable as all this to come up and live with US!”

The girl also for a little lost herself. “Oh you don’t know what it is— the charm comes out so as one stays. Little by little it grows and grows. There are old things everywhere that are too delightful. He lets me explore so—he lets me rummage and rifle. Every day I make discoveries.”

Vanderbank wondered as he smoked. “You mean he lets you take things—?”

“Oh yes—up to my room, to study or to copy. There are old patterns that are too dear for anything. It’s when you live with them, you see, that you know. Everything in the place is such good company.”

“Your mother ought to be here,” Vanderbank presently suggested. “She’s so fond of good company.” Then as Nanda answered nothing he went on: “Was your grandmother ever?”

“Never,” the girl promptly said. “Never,” she repeated in a tone quite different. After which she added: “I’m the only one.”

“Oh, and I ‘me and you,’ as they say,” her companion amended.

“Yes, and Mr. Mitchy, who’s to come down—please don’t forget—this afternoon.”

Vanderbank had another of his contemplative pauses. “Thank you for reminding me. I shall spread myself as much as possible before he comes —try to produce so much of my effect that I shall be safe. But what did Mr. Longdon ask him for?”

“Ah,” said Nanda gaily, “what did he ask YOU for?”

“Why, for the reason you just now mentioned—that his interest in me is so uncontrollable.”

“Then isn’t his interest in Mitchy—”

“Of the same general order?” Vanderbank broke in. “Not in the least.” He seemed to look for a way to express the distinction—which suddenly occurred to him. “He wasn’t in love with Mitchy’s mother.”

“No”—Nanda turned it over. “Mitchy’s mother, it appears, was awful. Mr. Cashmore knew her.”

Vanderbank’s smoke-puffs were profuse and his pauses frequent. “Awful to Mr. Cashmore? I’m glad to hear it—he must have deserved it. But I believe in her all the same. Mitchy’s often awful himself,” the young man rambled on. “Just so I believe in HIM.”

“So do I,” said Nanda—“and that’s why I asked him.”

“YOU asked him, my dear child? Have you the inviting?”

“Oh yes.”

The eyes he turned on her seemed really to try if she jested or were serious. “So you