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

“I don’t trust YOU,” Nanda said on her friend’s behalf. “She isn’t ‘green’—men are amazing: they don’t know the dearest old blue that ever was seen.”

“IS it your ‘OLD blue’?” Vanderbank, monocular, very earnestly asked. “I can imagine it was’dear,’ but I should have thought—!”

“It was yellow”—Nanda helped him out—“if I hadn’t kindly told you.” Tishy’s figure showed the confidence of objects consecrated by publicity; bodily speaking a beautiful human plant, it might have taken the last November gale to account for the completeness with which, in some quarters, she had shed her leaves. Her companions could only emphasise by the direction of their eyes the nature of the responsibility with which a spectator would have seen them saddled—a choice, as to consciousness, between the effect of her being and the effect of her not being dressed. “Oh I’m hideous—of course I know it,” said Tishy. “I’m only just clean. Here’s Nanda now, who’s beautiful,” she vaguely continued, “and Nanda—”

“Oh but, darling, Nanda’s clean too!” the young lady in question interrupted; on which her fellow guest could only laugh with her as in relief from the antithesis of which her presence of mind had averted the completion, little indeed as in Mrs. Grendon’s talk that element of style was usually involved.

“There’s nothing in such a matter,” Vanderbank observed as if it were the least he could decently say, “like challenging enquiry; and here’s Harold, precisely,” he went on in the next breath, “as clear and crisp and undefiled as a fresh five-pound note.”

“A fresh one?”—Harold had passed in a flash from his hostess. “A man who like me hasn’t seen one for six months could perfectly do, I assure you, with one that has lost its what-do-you-call it.” He kissed Nanda with a friendly peck, then, more completely aware, had a straighter apprehension for Tishy. “My dear child, YOU seem to have lost something, though I’ll say for you that one doesn’t miss it.”

Mrs. Grendon looked from him to Nanda. “Does he mean anything very nasty? I can only understand you when Nanda explains,” she returned to Harold. “In fact there’s scarcely anything I understand except when Nanda explains. It’s too dreadful her being away so much now with strange people, whom I’m sure she can’t begin to do for what she does for me; it makes me miss her all round. And the only thing I’ve come across that she CAN’T explain,” Tishy bunched straight at her friend, “is what on earth she’s doing there.”

“Why she’s working Mr. Longdon, like a good fine girl,” Harold said; “like a good true daughter and even, though she doesn’t love me nearly so much as I love HER, I will say, like a good true sister. I’m bound to tell you, my dear Tishy,” he went on, “that I think it awfully happy, with the trend of manners, for any really nice young thing to be a bit lost to sight. London, upon my honour, is quite too awful for girls, and any big house in the country is as much worse—with the promiscuities and opportunities and all that—as you know for yourselves. I know some places,” Harold declared, “where, if I had any girls, I’d see ‘em shot before I’d take ‘em.”

“Oh you know too much, my dear boy!” Vanderbank remarked with commiseration.

“Ah my brave old Van,” the youth returned, “don’t speak as if YOU had illusions. I know,” he pursued to the ladies, “just where some of Van’s must have perished, and some of the places I’ve in mind are just where he has left his tracks. A man must be wedded to sweet superstitions not nowadays to HAVE to open his eyes. Nanda love,” he benevolently concluded, “stay where you are. So at least I shan’t blush for you. That you’ve the good fortune to have reached your time of life with so little injury to your innocence makes you a case by yourself, of which we must recognise the claims. If Tishy can’t make you gasp, that’s nothing against you nor against HER—Tishy comes of one of the few innocent English families that are left. Yes, you may all cry ‘Oho!’—but I defy you to name me say five, or at most seven, in which some awful thing or other hasn’t happened. Of course ours is one, and Tishy’s is one, and Van’s is one, and Mr. Longdon’s is one, and that makes you, bang off, four. So there you are!” Harold gaily wound up.

“I see now why he’s the rage!” Vanderbank observed to Nanda.

But Mrs. Grendon expressed to their young friend a lingering wonder. “Do you mean you go in for the adoption—?”

“Oh Tishy!” Nanda mildly murmured.

Harold, however, had his own tact. “The dear man’s taking her quite over? Not altogether unreservedly. I’m with the governor: I think we ought to GET something. ‘Oh yes, dear man, but what do you GIVE us for her?’—that’s what I should say to him. I mean, don’t you know, that I don’t think she’s making quite the bargain she might. If he were to want ME I don’t say he mightn’t have me, but I should have it on my conscience to make it in one way or another a good thing for my parents. You ARE nice, old woman”—he turned to his sister—“and one can still feel for the flower of your youth something of the wonderful’reverence’ that we were all brought up on. For God’s sake therefore—all the more— don’t really close with him till you’ve had another word or two with me. I’ll be hanged”—he appealed to the company again—“if he shall have her for nothing!”

“See rather,” Vanderbank said to Mrs. Grendon, “how little it’s like your really losing her that she should be able this evening fairly to bring the dear man to you. At this rate we don’t lose her—we simply get him as well.”

“Ah but is it quite the dear man’s COMPANY we want?”—and Harold looked anxious and acute. “If that’s the best arrangement Nanda can make—!”

“If he hears us talking in this way, which strikes me as very horrible,” Nanda interposed very simply and gravely, “I don’t think we’re likely to get anything.”

“Oh Harold’s talk,” Vanderbank protested, “offers, I think, an extraordinary interest; only I’m bound to say it crushes me to the earth. I’ve to make at least, as I listen to him, a big effort to bear up. It doesn’t seem long ago,” he pursued to his young friend, “that I used to feel I was in it; but the way you bring home to me, dreadful youth, that I’m already NOT—!”

Harold looked earnest to understand. “The hungry generations tread you down—is that it?”

Vanderbank gave a pleasant tragic headshake. “We speak a different language.”

“Ah but I think I perfectly understand yours!”

“That’s just my anguish—and your advantage. It’s awfully curious,” Vanderbank went on to Nanda, “but I feel as if I must figure to him, you know, very much as Mr. Longdon figures to me. Mr. Longdon doesn’t somehow get into me. Yet I do, I think, into him. But we don’t matter!”

“‘We’?”—Nanda, with her eyes on him, echoed it.

“Mr. Longdon and I. It can’t be helped, I suppose,” he went on, for Tishy, with sociable sadness, “but it IS short innings.”

Mrs. Grendon, who was clearly credulous, looked positively frightened. “Ah but, my dear, thank you! I haven’t begun to LIVE.”

“Well, I have—that’s just where it is,” said Harold. “Thank you all the more, old Van, for the tip.”

There was an announcement just now at the door, and Tishy turned to meet the Duchess, with Harold, almost as if he had been master of the house, figuring but a step behind her. “Don’t mind HER,” Vanderbank immediately said to the companion with whom he was left, “but tell me, while I still have hold of you, who wrote my name on the French novel that I noticed a few minutes since in the other room?”

Nanda at first only wondered. “If it’s there—didn’t YOU?”

He just hesitated. “If it were here you’d see if it’s my hand.”

Nanda faltered, and for somewhat longer. “How should I see? What do I know of your hand?”

He looked at her hard. “You HAVE seen it.”

“Oh—so little!” she replied with a faint smile.

“Do you mean I’ve not written to you for so long? Surely I did in—when was it?”

“Yes, when? But why SHOULD you?” she asked in quite a different tone.

He was not prepared on this with the right statement, and what he did after a moment bring out had for the occasion a little the sound of the wrong. “The beauty of YOU is that you’re too good; which for me is but another way of saying you’re too clever. You make no demands. You let things go. You don’t allow in particular for the human weakness that enjoys an occasional glimpse of the weakness of others.”

She had deeply attended to him. “You mean perhaps one doesn’t show enough what one wants?”

“I think that must be it. You’re so fiendishly proud.”

She appeared again to wonder. “Not too much so, at any rate, only to want from YOU—”

“Well, what?”

“Why, what’s pleasant for yourself,” she simply said.

“Oh dear, that’s poor bliss!” he returned. “How does it come then,” he next said, “that with this barrenness of our intercourse I know so well YOUR hand?”

A series of announcements had meanwhile been made, with guests arriving to match them, and Nanda’s eyes at this moment engaged themselves with Mr. Longdon and her mother, who entered the room together. When she looked back to her companion she had had time to drop a consciousness of his question. “If I’m proud, to you, I’m not good,” she said, “and if I’m good—always to you—I’m not proud. I know at all events perfectly how immensely you’re occupied, what a quantity of work you get through and how every minute counts for you. Don’t make it a crime to me that I’m reasonable.”

No, that would show, wouldn’t it? that there isn’t much else. But how it all comes back—!”

“Well, to what?” she asked.

“To the old story. You know how I’m occupied. You know how I work. You know how I manage my time.”

“Oh I see,” said Nanda. “It IS my knowing, after all, everything.”

“Everything. The book I just mentioned is one that, months ago–I remember now—I lent your mother.”

“Oh a thing in a blue cover? I remember then too.” Nanda’s face cleared up. “I had forgotten it was lying about here, but I must have brought it—in fact I remember I did—for Tishy. And I wrote your name on it so that we might know—”

“That I hadn’t lent it to either of you? It didn’t occur to you to write your own?” Vanderbank went on.

“Well, but if it isn’t mine? It ISN’T mine, I’m sure.”

“Therefore also if it can’t be Tishy’s—”

“The thing’s simple enough—it’s mother’s.”

“‘Simple’?” Vanderbank laughed. “I like you! And may I ask if you’ve read the remarkable work?”

“Oh yes.” Then she wonderfully said: “For Tishy.”

“To see if it would do?”

“I’ve often done that,” the girl returned.

“And she takes your word?”

“Generally. I think I remember she did that time.”

“And read the confounded thing?”

“Oh no!” said Nanda.

He looked at her a moment longer. “You’re too particular!” he rather oddly sounded, turning away with it to meet Mr. Longdon.

When after dinner the company was restored to the upper rooms the Duchess was on her feet as soon as the door opened for the entrance of the gentlemen. Then it might have been seen that she had a purpose, for as soon as the elements had again, with a due amount