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

Nanda Brookenham, for a fortnight after Mr. Longdon’s return, had found much to think of; but the bustle of business became, visibly for us, particularly great with her on a certain Friday afternoon in June. She was in unusual possession of that chamber of comfort in which so much of her life had lately been passed, the redecorated and rededicated room upstairs in which she had enjoyed a due measure both of solitude and of society. Passing the objects about her in review she gave especial attention to her rather marked wealth of books; changed repeatedly, for five minutes, the position of various volumes, transferred to tables those that were on shelves and rearranged shelves with an eye to the effect of backs. She was flagrantly engaged throughout indeed in the study of effect, which moreover, had the law of an extreme freshness not inveterately prevailed there, might have been observed to be traceable in the very detail of her own appearance. “Company” in short was in the air and expectation in the picture. The flowers on the little tables bloomed with a consciousness sharply taken up by the glitter of nick-nacks and reproduced in turn in the light exuberance of cushions on sofas and the measured drop of blinds in windows. The numerous photographed friends in particular were highly prepared, with small intense faces, each, that happened in every case to be turned to the door. The pair of eyes most dilated perhaps was that of old Van, present under a polished glass and in a frame of gilt-edged morocco that spoke out, across the room, of Piccadilly and Christmas, and visibly widening his gaze at the opening of the door, at the announcement of a name by a footman and at the entrance of a gentleman remarkably like him save as the resemblance was on the gentleman’s part flattered. Vanderbank had not been in the room ten seconds before he showed ever so markedly that he had arrived to be kind. Kindness therefore becomes for us, by a quick turn of the glass that reflects the whole scene, the high pitch of the concert—a kindness that almost immediately filled the place, to the exclusion of everything else, with a familiar friendly voice, a brightness of good looks and good intentions, a constant though perhaps sometimes misapplied laugh, a superabundance almost of interest, inattention and movement.

The first thing the young man said was that he was tremendously glad she had written. “I think it was most particularly nice of you.” And this thought precisely seemed, as he spoke, a flower of the general bloom—as if the niceness he had brought in was so great that it straightway converted everything to its image. “The only thing that upset me a little,” he went on, “was your saying that before writing it you had so hesitated and waited. I hope very much, you know, that you’ll never do anything of that kind again. If you’ve ever the slightest desire to see me—for no matter what reason, if there’s ever the smallest thing of any sort that I can do for you, I promise you I shan’t easily forgive you if you stand on ceremony. It seems to me that when people have known each other as long as you and I there’s one comfort at least they may treat themselves to. I mean of course,” Van developed, “that of being easy and frank and natural. There are such a lot of relations in which one isn’t, in which it doesn’t pay, in which ‘ease’ in fact would be the greatest of troubles and ‘nature’ the greatest of falsities. However,” he continued while he suddenly got up to change the place in which he had put his hat, “I don’t really know why I’m preaching at such a rate, for I’ve a perfect consciousness of not myself requiring it. One does half the time preach more or less for one’s self, eh? I’m not mistaken at all events, I think, about the right thing with YOU. And a hint’s enough for you, I’m sure, on the right thing with me.” He had been looking all round while he talked and had twice shifted his seat; so that it was quite in consonance with his general admiring notice that the next impression he broke out with should have achieved some air of relevance. “What extraordinarily lovely flowers you have and how charming you’ve made everything! You’re always doing something—women are always changing the position of their furniture. If one happens to come in in the dark, no matter how well one knows the place, one sits down on a hat or a puppy-dog. But of course you’ll say one doesn’t come in in the dark, or at least, if one does, deserves what one gets. Only you know the way some women keep their rooms. I’m bound to say YOU don’t, do you?—you don’t go in for flower-pots in the windows and half a dozen blinds. Why SHOULD you? You HAVE got a lot to show!” He rose with this for the third time, as the better to command the scene. “What I mean is that sofa—which by the way is awfully good: you do, my dear Nanda, go it! It certainly was HERE the last time, wasn’t it? and this thing was there. The last time—I mean the last time I was up here—was fearfully long ago: when, by the way, WAS it? But you see I HAVE been and that I remember it. And you’ve a lot more things now. You’re laying up treasure. Really the increase of luxury—! What an awfully jolly lot of books—have you read them all? Where did you learn so much about bindings?”

He continued to talk; he took things up and put them down; Nanda sat in her place, where her stillness, fixed and colourless, contrasted with his rather flushed freedom, and appeared