The Awkward Age by Henry James (best novel books to read .TXT) 📕

Mr. Longdon, who, his discovery proclaimed, had begun, as might have been said, to live with it, looked hard a moment at his companion. “How you’ve observed her!”

Vanderbank met it without confusion. “Whom haven’t I observed? Do you like her?” he then rather oddly and abruptly asked.

The old man broke away again. “How can I tell—with such disparities?”

“The manner must be different,” Vanderbank suggested. “And the things she says.”

His visitor was before him again. “I don’t know what to make of them. They don’t go with the rest of her. Lady Julia,” said Mr. Longdon, “was rather shy.”

On this too his host could meet him. “She must have been. And Nanda— yes, certainly—doesn’t give that impression.”

“On the contrary. But Lady Julia was gay!” he added with an eagerness that made Vanderbank smile.

“I can also see that. Nanda doesn’t joke. And yet,” Vanderbank continued with his exemplary candour, “we mustn’t speak of her, must we? as if she were bold and grim.”

Mr. Longdon fixed him. “Do you think she’s sad?”

They had preserved their lowered tone and might, with their heads together, have been conferring as the party “out” in some game with the couple in the other room. “Yes. Sad.” But Vanderbank broke off. “I’ll send her to you.” Thus it was he had come back to her.

Nanda, on joining the elder man, went straight to the point. “He says it’s so beautiful—what you feel on seeing me: if that IS what he meant.” Mr. Longdon kept silent again at first, only smiling at her, but less strangely now, and then appeared to look about him for some place where she could sit near him. There was a sofa in this room too, on which, observing it, she quickly sank down, so that they were presently together, placed a little sideways and face to face. She had shown perhaps that she supposed him to have wished to take her hand, but he forbore to touch her, though letting her feel all the kindness of his eyes and their long backward vision. These things she evidently felt soon enough; she went on before he had spoken. “I know how well you knew my grandmother. Mother has told me—and I’m so glad. She told me to say to you that she wants YOU to tell me.” Just a shade, at this, might have appeared to drop over his face, but who was there to know if the girl observed it? It didn’t prevent at any rate her completing her statement. “That’s why she wished me to-day to come alone. She said she wished you to have me all to yourself.”

No, decidedly, she wasn’t shy: that mute reflexion was in the air an instant. “That, no doubt, is the best way. I thank her very much. I called, after having had the honour of dining—I called, I think, three times,” he went on with a sudden displacement of the question; “but I had the misfortune each time to miss her.”

She kept looking at him with her crude young clearness. “I didn’t know about that. Mother thinks she’s more at home than almost any one. She does it on purpose: she knows what it is,” Nanda pursued with her perfect gravity, “for people to be disappointed of finding her.”

“Oh I shall find her yet,” said Mr. Longdon. “And then I hope I shall also find YOU.”

She appeared simply to consider the possibility and after an instant to think well of it. “I dare say you will now, for now I shall be down.”

Her companion just blinked. “In the drawing-room, you mean—always?”

It was quite what she meant. “Always. I shall see all the people who come. It will be a great thing for me. I want to hear all the talk. Mr. Mitchett says I ought to—that it helps to form the young mind. I hoped, for that reason,” she went on with the directness that made her honesty almost violent—“I hoped there would be more people here to-day.”

“I’m very glad there are not!”—the old man rang equally clear. “Mr. Vanderbank kindly arranged the matter for me just this way. I met him at dinner, at your mother’s, three weeks ago, and he brought me home here that night, when, as knowing you so differently, we took the liberty of talking you all over. It naturally had the effect of making me want to begin with you afresh—only that seemed difficult too without further help. This he good-naturedly offered me; he said”—and Mr. Longdon recovered his spirits to repeat it—“‘Hang it, I’ll have ‘em here for you!’”

“I see—he knew we’d come.” Then she caught herself up. “But we haven’t come, have we?”

“Oh it’s all right—it’s all right. To me the occasion’s brilliant and the affluence great. I’ve had such talk with those young men—”

“I see”—she was again prompt, but beyond any young person he had ever met she might have struck him as literal. “You’re not used to such talk. Neither am I. It’s rather wonderful, isn’t it? They’re thought awfully clever, Mr. Van and Mr. Mitchy. Do you like them?” she pushed on.

Mr. Longdon, who, as compared with her, might have struck a spectator as infernally subtle, took an instant to think. “I’ve never met Mr. Mitchett before.”

“Well, he always thinks one doesn’t like him,” Nanda explained. “But one does. One ought to,” she added.

Her companion had another pause. “He likes YOU.”

Oh Mr. Longdon needn’t have hesitated! “I know he does. He has told mother. He has told lots of people.”

“He has told even you,” Mr. Longdon smiled.

“Yes—but that isn’t the same. I don’t think he’s a bit dreadful,” she pursued. Still, there was a greater interest. “Do you like Mr. Van?”

This time her interlocutor indeed hung fire. “How can I tell? He dazzles me.”

“But don’t you like that?” Then before he could really say: “You’re afraid he may be false?”

At this he fairly laughed. “You go to the point!” She just coloured to have amused him so, but he quickly went on: “I think one has a little natural nervousness at being carried off one’s feet. I’m afraid I’ve always liked too much to see where I’m going.”

“And you don’t with him?” She spoke with her curious hard interest. “I understand. But I think I like to be dazzled.”

“Oh you’ve got time—you can come round again; you’ve a margin for accidents, for disappointments and recoveries: you can take one thing with another. But I’ve only my last little scrap.”

“And you want to make no mistakes—I see.”

“Well, I’m too easily upset.”

“Ah so am I,” said Nanda. “I assure you that in spite of what you say I want to make no mistakes either. I’ve seen a great many—though you mightn’t think it,” she persisted; “I really know what they may be. Do you like ME?” she brought forth. But even on this she spared him too; a look appeared to have been enough for her. “How can you say, of course, already?—if you can’t say for Mr. Van. I mean as you’ve seen him so much. When he asked me just now if I liked YOU I told him it was too soon. But it isn’t now; you see it goes fast. I DO like you.” She gave him no time to acknowledge this tribute, but—as if it were a matter of course—tried him quickly with something else. “Can you say if you like mother?”

He could meet it pretty well now. “There are immense reasons why I should.”

“Yes—I know about them, as I mentioned: mother has told me.” But what she had to put to him kept up his surprise. “Have reasons anything to do with it? I don’t believe you like her!” she exclaimed. “SHE doesn’t think so,” she added.

The old man’s face at last, partly bewildered, partly reassured, showed something finer still in the effect she produced. “Into what mysteries you plunge!”

“Oh we do; that’s what every one says of us. We discuss everything and every one—we’re always discussing each other. I think we must be rather celebrated for it, and it’s a kind of trick—isn’t it?—that’s catching. But don’t you think it’s the most interesting sort of talk? Mother says we haven’t any prejudices. YOU have, probably, quantities—and beautiful ones: so perhaps I oughtn’t to tell you. But you’ll find out for yourself.”

“Yes—I’m rather slow; but I generally end by finding out. And I’ve got, thank heaven,” said Mr. Longdon, “quite prejudices enough.”

“Then I hope you’ll tell me some of them,” Nanda replied in a tone evidently marking how much he pleased her.

“Ah you must do as I do—you must find out for yourself. Your resemblance to your grandmother is quite prodigious,” he immediately added.

“That’s what I wish you’d tell me about—your recollection of her and your wonderful feeling about her. Mother has told me things, but that I should have something straight from you is exactly what she also wants. My grandmother must have been awfully nice,” the girl rambled on, “and I somehow don’t see myself at all as the same sort of person.”

“Oh I don’t say you’re in the least the same sort: all I allude to,” Mr. Longdon returned, “is the miracle of the physical heredity. Nothing could be less like her than your manner and your talk.”

Nanda looked at him with all her honesty. “They’re not so good, you must think.”

He hung fire an instant, but was as honest as she. “You’re separated from her by a gulf—and not only of time. Personally, you see, you breathe a different air.”

She thought—she quite took it in. “Of course. And you breathe the same —the same old one, I mean, as my grandmother.”

“The same old one,” Mr. Longdon smiled, “as much as possible. Some day I’ll tell you more of what you’re curious of. I can’t go into it now.”

“Because I’ve upset you so?” Nanda frankly asked.

“That’s one of the reasons.”

“I think I can see another too,” she observed after a moment. “You’re not sure how much I shall understand. But I shall understand,” she went on, “more, perhaps, than you think. In fact,” she said earnestly, “I PROMISE to understand. I’ve some imagination. Had my grandmother?” she asked. Her actual sequences were not rapid, but she had already anticipated him. “I’ve thought of that before, because I put the same question to mother.”

“And what did your mother say?”

“‘Imagination—dear mamma? Not a grain!’”

The old man showed a faint flush. “Your mother then has a supply that makes up for it.”

The girl fixed him on this with a deeper attention. “You don’t like her having said that.”

His colour came stronger, though a slightly strained smile did what it could to diffuse coolness. “I don’t care a single scrap, my dear, in respect to the friend I’m speaking of, for any judgement but my own.”

“Not even for her daughter’s?”

“Not even for her daughter’s.” Mr. Longdon had not spoken loud, but he rang as clear as a bell.

Nanda, for admiration of it, broke almost for the first time into the semblance of a smile. “You feel as if my grandmother were quite YOUR property!”

“Oh quite.”

“I say—that’s splendid!”

“I’m glad you like it,” he answered kindly.

The very kindness pulled her up. “Pardon my speaking so, but I’m sure you know what I mean. You mustn’t think,” she eagerly continued, “that mother won’t also want to hear you.”

“On the subject of Lady Julia?” He gently, but very effectively, shook his head. “Your mother shall