The Awkward Age Part 69

"I think, ma'am, only for some evening papers."

She had an intense look for Mitchy; then she said to the man: "Ask him to wait three minutes--I'll ring;" turning again to her visitor as soon as they were alone. "You don't know how I'm trusting you!"

"Trusting me?"

"Why, if he comes up to you."

Mitchy thought. "Hadn't I better go down?"

"No--you may have Edward back. If you see him you must see him here. If I don't myself it's for a reason."

Mitchy again just sounded her. "His not, as you a while ago hinted--?"

"Yes, caring for what I say." She had a pause, but she brought it out.

"He doesn't believe a word--!"

"Of what you tell him?" Mitchy was splendid. "I see. And you want something said to him."

"Yes, that he'll take from YOU. Only it's for you," Mrs. Brook went on, "really and honestly, and as I trust you, to give it. But the comfort of you is that you'll do so if you promise."

Mitchy was infinitely struck. "But I haven't promised, eh? Of course I can't till I know what it is."

"It's to put before him--!"

"Oh I see: the situation."

"What has happened here to-day. Van's marked retreat and how, with the time that has pa.s.sed, it makes us at last know where we are. You of course for yourself," Mrs. Brook wound up, "see that."

"Where we are?" Mitchy took a turn and came back. "But what then did Van come for? If you speak of a retreat there must have been an advance."

"Oh," said Mrs. Brook, "he simply wanted not to look too brutal. After so much absence he COULD come."

"Well, if he established that he isn't brutal, where was the retreat?"

"In his not going up to Nanda. He came--frankly--to do that, but made up his mind on second thoughts that he couldn't risk even being civil to her."

Mitchy had visibly warmed to his work. "Well, and what made the difference?"

She wondered. "What difference?"

"Why, of the effect, as you say, of his second thoughts. Thoughts of what?"

"Oh," said Mrs. Brook suddenly and as if it were quite simple--"I know THAT! Suspicions."

"And of whom?"

"Why, of YOU, you goose. Of your not having done--"

"Well, what?" he persisted as she paused.

"How shall I say it? The best thing for yourself. And of Nanda's feeling that. Don't you see?"

In the effort of seeing, or perhaps indeed in the full act of it, poor Mitchy glared as never before. "Do you mean Van's JEALOUS of me?"

Pressed as she was, there was something in his face that momentarily hushed her. "There it is!" she achieved however at last.

"Of ME?" Mitchy went on.

What was in his face so suddenly and strangely--was the look of rising tears--at sight of which, as from a compunction as prompt, she showed a lovely flush. "There it is, there it is," she repeated. "You ask me for a reason, and it's the only one I see. Of course if you don't care," she added, "he needn't come up. He can go straight to Nanda."

Mitchy had turned away again as with the impulse of hiding the tears that had risen and that had not wholly disappeared even by the time he faced about. "Did Nanda know he was to come?"

"Mr. Longdon?"

"No, no. Was she expecting Van--?"

"My dear man," Mrs. Brook mildly wailed, "when can she have NOT been?"

Mitchy looked hard for an instant at the floor. "I mean does she know he has been and gone?"

Mrs. Brook, from where she stood and through the window, looked rather at the sky. "Her father will have told her."

"Her father?" Mitchy frankly wondered. "Is HE in it?"

Mrs. Brook had at this a longer pause. "You a.s.sume, I suppose, Mitchy dear," she then quavered "that I put him up--!"

"Put Edward up?" he broke in.

"No--that of course. Put Van up to ideas--!"

He caught it again. "About ME--what you call his suspicions?" He seemed to weigh the charge, but it ended, while he pa.s.sed his hand hard over his eyes, in weariness and in the nearest approach to coldness he had ever shown Mrs. Brook. "It doesn't matter. It's every one's fate to be in one way or another the subject of ideas. Do then," he continued, "let Mr. Longdon come up."

She instantly rang the bell. "Then I'll go to Nanda. But don't look frightened," she added as she came back, "as to what we may--Edward or I--do next. It's only to tell her that he'll be with her."

"Good. I'll tell Tatton," Mitchy replied.

Still, however, she lingered. "Shall you ever care for me more?"

He had almost the air, as he waited for her to go, of the master of the house, for she had made herself before him, as he stood with his back to the fire, as humble as a tolerated visitor. "Oh just as much. Where's the difference? Aren't our ties in fact rather multiplied?"

"That's the way _I_ want to feel it. And from the moment you recognise with me--"

"Yes?"

"Well, that he never, you know, really WOULD--"

He took her mercifully up. "There's no harm done?" Mitchy thought of it.

It made her still hover. "Nanda will be rich. Toward that you CAN help, and it's really, I may now tell you, what it came into my head you should see our friend here FOR."