The Awkward Age Part 67

"And you want to see him alone?"

Mrs. Brook thought. "I don't think I want to see him at all."

"Then your keeping him below--?"

"Is so that he shan't burst in till I know. It's YOU, my dear, I want to see."

Mitchy glared about. "Well, don't take it ill if, in return for that, I say I myself want to see every one. I could have done even just now with a little more of Edward."

Mrs. Brook, in her own manner and with a slow headshake, looked lovely.

"_I_ couldn't." Then she puzzled it out with a pause. "It even does come over me that if you don't mind--!"

"What, my dear woman," said Mitchy encouragingly, "did I EVER mind? I a.s.sure you," he laughed, "I haven't come back to begin!"

At this, suddenly dropping everything else, she laid her hand on him.

"Mitchy love, ARE you happy?"

So for a moment they stood confronted. "Not perhaps as YOU would have tried to make me."

"Well, you've still GOT me, you know."

"Oh," said Mitchy, "I've got a great deal. How, if I really look at it, can a man of my peculiar nature--it IS, you know, awfully peculiar--NOT be happy? Think, if one is driven to it for instance, of the breadth of my sympathies."

Mrs. Brook, as a result of thinking, appeared for a little to demur.

"Yes--but one mustn't be too much driven to it. It's by one's sympathies that one suffers. If you should do that I couldn't bear it."

She clearly evoked for Mitchy a definite image. "It WOULD be funny, wouldn't it? But you wouldn't have to. I'd go off and do it alone somewhere--in a dark room, I think, or on a desert island; at any rate where n.o.body should see. Where's the harm moreover," he went on, "of any suffering that doesn't bore one, as I'm sure, however much its outer aspect might amuse some others, mine wouldn't bore me? What I should do in my desert island or my dark room, I feel, would be just to dance about with the thrill of it--which is exactly the exhibition of ludicrous gambols that I would fain have arranged to spare you. I a.s.sure you, dear Mrs. Brook," he wound up, "that I'm not in the least bored now. Everything's so interesting."

"You're beautiful!" she vaguely interposed.

But he pursued without heeding: "Was perhaps what you had in your head that _I_ should see him--?"

She came back but slowly, however, to the moment. "Mr. Longdon? Well, yes. You know he can't bear ME--"

"Yes, yes"--Mitchy was almost eager.

It had already sent her off again. "You're too lovely. You HAVE come back the same. It seemed to me," she after an instant explained, "that I wanted him to be seen--"

"Without inconvenience, as it were, either to himself or to you? Then,"

said Mitchy, who visibly felt that he had taken her up successfully, "it strikes me that I'm absolutely your man. It's delicious to come back to a use."

But she was much more dim about it. "Oh what you've come back to--!"

"It's just what I'm trying to get at. Van is still then where I left him?"

She was just silent. "Did you really believe he would move?"

Mitchy took a few turns, speaking almost with his back presented. "Well, with all the reasons--!" After which, while she watched him, he was before her again with a question. "It's utterly off?"

"When was it ever really on?"

"Oh I know your view, and that, I think," said Mitchy, "is the most extraordinary part of it. I can tell you it would have put ME on."

"My view?" Mrs. Brook thought. "Have you forgotten that I had for you too a view that didn't?"

"Ah but we didn't differ, you and I. It wasn't a defiance and a prophecy. You wanted ME."

"I did indeed!" Mrs. Brook said simply.

"And you didn't want him. For HER, I mean. So you risked showing it."

She looked surprised. "DID I?"

Again they were face to face. "Your candour's divine!"

She wondered. "Do you mean it was even then?"

Mitchy smiled at her till he was red. "It's exquisite now."

"Well," she presently returned, "I knew my Van!"

"_I_ thought I knew 'yours' too," Mitchy said. Their eyes met a minute and he added: "But I didn't." Then he exclaimed: "How you've worked it!"

She looked barely conscious. "'Worked it'?" After which, with a slightly sharper note: "How do you know--while you've been amusing yourself in places that I'd give my head to see again but never shall--what I've been doing?"

"Well, I saw, you know, that night at Tishy's, just before we left England, your wonderful start. I got a look at your att.i.tude, as it were, and your system."

Her eyes were now far away, and she spoke after an instant without moving them. "And didn't I by the same token get a look at yours?"

"Mine?" Mitchy thought, but seemed to doubt. "My dear child, I hadn't any then."

"You mean that it has formed itself--your system--since?"

He shook his head with decision. "I a.s.sure you I'm quite at sea. I've never had, and I have as little as ever now, anything but my general philosophy, which I won't attempt at present to go into and of which moreover I think you've had first and last your glimpses. What I made out in you that night was a perfect policy."

Mrs. Brook had another of her infantine stares. "Every one that night seems to have made out something! All I can say is at any rate," she went on, "that in that case you were all far deeper than I was."

"It was just a blind instinct, without a programme or a scheme? Perhaps then, since it has so perfectly succeeded, the name doesn't matter. I'm lost, as I tell you," Mitchy declared, "in admiration of its success."

She looked, as before, so young, yet so grave. "What do you call its success?"

"Let me ask you rather--mayn't I?--what YOU call its failure."

Mrs. Brook, who had been standing for some minutes, seated herself at this as if to respond to his idea. But the next moment she had fallen back into thought. "Have you often heard from him?"

"Never once."

"And have you written?"