The Awkward Age Part 16

If Mitchy arrived exactly at the hour it was quite by design and on a calculation--over and above the prized little pleasure it might give him--of ten minutes clear with his host, whom it rarely befell him to see alone. He had a theory of something special to go into, of a plummet to sink or a feeler to put forth; his state of mind in short was diplomatic and anxious. But his hopes had a drop as he crossed the threshold. His precaution had only a.s.sured him the company of a stranger, for the person in the room to whom the servant announced him was not old Van. On the other hand this gentleman would clearly be old--what was it? the fellow Vanderbank had made it a matter of such importance he should "really know." But were they then simply to have tea there together? No; the candidate for Mr. Mitchett's acquaintance, as if quickly guessing his apprehension, mentioned on the spot that their entertainer would be with them: he had just come home in a hurry, fearing he was late, and then had rushed off to make a change.

"Fortunately," said the speaker, who offered his explanation as if he had had it on his mind--"fortunately the ladies haven't yet come."

"Oh there ARE to be ladies?"--Mr. Mitchett was all response. His fellow guest, who was shy and apparently nervous, sidled about a little, swinging an eye-gla.s.s, yet glancing in a manner a trifle birdlike from object to object. "Mrs. Edward Brookenham I think."

"Oh!" Mitchy himself felt, as soon as this comment had quitted his lips, that it might sound even to a stranger like a sign, such as the votaries of Mrs. Edward Brookenham had fallen into the way of constantly throwing off, that he recognised her hand in the matter. There was, however, something in his entertainer's face that somehow encouraged frankness; it had the sociability of surprise--it hadn't the chill. Mitchy saw at the same time that this friend of old Van's would never really understand him; though that was a thing he at times liked people as much for as he liked them little for it at others. It was in fact when he most liked that he was on the whole most tempted to mystify. "Only Mrs.

Brook?--no others?"

"'Mrs. Brook'?" his elder echoed; staring an instant as if literally missing the connexion; but quickly after, to show he was not stupid--and indeed it seemed to show he was delightful--smiling with extravagant intelligence. "Is that the right thing to say?"

Mitchy gave the kindest of laughs. "Well, I dare say I oughtn't to."

"Oh I didn't mean to correct you," his interlocutor hastened to profess; "I meant on the contrary, will it be right for me too?"

Mitchy's great goggle attentively fixed him. "Try it."

"To HER?"

"To every one."

"To her husband?"

"Oh to Edward," Mitchy laughed again, "perfectly!"

"And must I call him 'Edward'?"

"Whatever you do will be right," Mitchy returned--"even though it should happen to be sometimes what I do."

His companion, as if to look at him with a due appreciation of this, stopped swinging the nippers and put them on. "You people here have a pleasant way--!"

"Oh we HAVE!"--Mitchy, taking him up, was gaily emphatic. He began, however, already to perceive the mystification which in this case was to be his happy effect.

"Mr. Vanderbank," his victim remarked with perhaps a shade more of reserve, "has told me a good deal about you." Then as if, in a finer manner, to keep the talk off themselves: "He knows a great many ladies."

"Oh yes, poor chap, he can't help it. He finds a lady wherever he turns."

The stranger took this in, but seemed a little to challenge it. "Well, that's rea.s.suring, if one sometimes fancies there are fewer."

"Fewer than there used to be?--I see what you mean," said Mitchy. "But if it has struck you so, that's awfully interesting." He glared and grinned and mused. "I wonder."

"Well, we shall see." His friend seemed to wish not to dogmatise.

"SHALL we?" Mitchy considered it again in its high suggestive light.

"You will--but how shall I?" Then he caught himself up with a blush.

"What a beastly thing to say--as if it were mere years that make you see it!"

His companion this time gave way to the joke. "What else can it be--if I've thought so?"

"Why, it's the facts themselves, and the fine taste, and above all something qui ne court pas les rues, an approach to some experience of what a lady IS." The young man's acute reflexion appeared suddenly to flower into a vision of opportunity that swept everything else away.

"Excuse my insisting on your time of life--but you HAVE seen some?" The question was of such interest that he had already begun to follow it.

"Oh the charm of talk with some one who can fill out one's idea of the really distinguished women of the past! If I could get you," he continued, "to be so awfully valuable as to fill out mine!"

His fellow visitor, on this, made, in a pause, a nearer approach to taking visibly his measure. "Are you sure you've got an idea?" Mr.

Mitchett brightly thought. "No. That must be just why I appeal to you.

And it can't therefore be for confirmation, can it?" he went on. "It must be for the beautiful primary hint altogether."

His interlocutor began, with a shake of the eyegla.s.s, to s.h.i.+ft and sidle again, as if distinctly excited by the subject. But it was as if his very excitement made the poor gentleman a trifle coy. "Are there no nice ones now?"

"Oh yes, there must be lots. In fact I know quant.i.ties."

This had the effect of pulling the stranger up. "Ah 'quant.i.ties'! There it is."

"Yes," said Mitchy, "fancy the 'lady' in her millions. Have you come up to London, wondering, as you must, about what's happening--for Vanderbank mentioned, I think, that you HAVE come up--in pursuit of her?"

"Ah," laughed the subject of Vanderbank's information, "I'm afraid 'pursuit,' with me, is over."

"Why, you're at the age," Mitchy returned, "of--the most exquisite form of it. Observation."

"Yet it's a form, I seem to see, that you've not waited for my age to cultivate." This was followed by a decisive headshake. "I'm not an observer. I'm a hater."

"That only means," Mitchy explained, "that you keep your observation for your likes--which is more admirable than prudent. But between my fear in the one direction and my desire in the other," he lightly added, "I scarcely know how to present myself. I must study the ground. Meanwhile HAS old Van told you much about me?"

Old Van's possible confidant, instead of immediately answering, again a.s.sumed the pince-nez. "Is that what you call him?"

"In general, I think--for shortness."

"And also"--the speaker hesitated--"for esteem?"

Mitchy laughed out. "For veneration! Our disrespects, I think, are all tender, and we wouldn't for the world do to a person we don't like anything so nice as to call him, or even to call her, don't you know--?"

His questioner had quickly looked as if he knew. "Something pleasant and vulgar?"

Mitchy's gaiety deepened. "That discrimination's our only austerity. You must fall in."

"Then what will you call ME?"

"What can we?" After which, sustainingly, "I'm 'Mitchy,'" our friend stated.

His interlocutor looked slightly queer. "I don't think I can quite begin. I'm Mr. Longdon," he almost blushed to articulate.

"Absolutely and essentially--that's exactly what I recognise. I defy any one to see you," Mitchy declared, "as anything else, and on that footing you'll be, among us, unique."

Mr. Longdon appeared to accept his prospect of isolation with a certain gravity. "I gather from you--I've gathered indeed from Mr.

Vanderbank--that you're a little sort of a set that hang very much together."

"Oh yes; not a formal a.s.sociation nor a secret society--still less a 'dangerous gang' or an organisation for any definite end. We're simply a collection of natural affinities," Mitchy explained; "meeting perhaps princ.i.p.ally in Mrs. Brook's drawing-room--though sometimes also in old Van's, as you see, sometimes even in mine--and governed at any rate everywhere by Mrs. Brook, in our mysterious ebbs and flows, very much as the tides are governed by the moon. As I say," Mitchy pursued, "you must join. But if Van has got hold of you," he added, "or you've got hold of him, you HAVE joined. We're not quite so numerous as I could wish, and we want variety; we want just what I'm sure you'll bring us--a fresh eye, an outside mind."

Mr. Longdon wore for a minute the air of a man knowing but too well what it was to be asked to put down his name. "My friend Vanderbank swaggers so little that it's rather from you than from himself that I seem to catch the idea--!"