by Henry James
“Yes.” Mitchy’s concurrence was grave. “Only you and me.”
“Only you and me.”
The eyes of the two men met over it in a pause terminated at last by Mitchy’s saying: “We must make it all up to her.”
“Is that your idea?”
“Ah,” said Mitchy gently, “don’t laugh at it.”
His friend’s grey gloom again covered him. “But what CAN—?” Then as Mitchy showed a face that seemed to wince with a silent “What COULD?” the old man completed his objection. “Think of the magnitude of the loss.”
“Oh I don’t for a moment suggest,” Mitchy hastened to reply, “that it isn’t immense.”
“She does care for him, you know,” said Mr. Longdon.
Mitchy, at this, gave a wide, prolonged glare. “‘Know’—?” he ever so delicately murmured.
His irony had quite touched. “But of course you know! You know everything—Nanda and you.”
There was a tone in it that moved a spring, and Mitchy laughed out. “I like your putting me with her! But we’re all together. With Nanda,” he next added, “it IS deep.”
His companion took it from him. “Deep.”
“And yet somehow it isn’t abject.”
The old man wondered. “‘Abject’?”
“I mean it isn’t pitiful. In its way,” Mitchy developed, “it’s happy.”
This too, though rather ruefully, Mr. Longdon could take from him. “Yes—in its way.”
“Any passion so great, so complete,” Mitchy went on, “is—satisfied or unsatisfied—a life.” Mr. Longdon looked so interested that his fellow visitor, evidently stirred by what was now an appeal and a dependence, grew still more bland, or at least more assured, for affirmation. “She’s not TOO sorry for herself.”
“Ah she’s so proud!”
“Yes, but that’s a help.”
“Oh—not for US!”
It arrested Mitchy, but his ingenuity could only rebound. “In ONE way: that of reducing us to feel that the desire to ‘make up’ to her is— well, mainly for OUR relief. If she ‘trusts’ us, as I said just now, it isn’t for THAT she does so.” As his friend appeared to wait then to hear, it was presently with positive joy that he showed he could meet the last difficulty. “What she trusts us to do”—oh Mitchy had worked it out!—”is to let HIM off.”
“Let him off?” It still left Mr. Longdon dim.
“Easily. That’s all.”
“But what would letting him off hard be? It seems to me he’s—on any terms—already beyond us. He IS off.”
Mr. Longdon had given it a sound that suddenly made Mitchy appear to collapse under a sharper sense of the matter. “He IS off,” he moodily echoed.
His companion, again a little bewildered, watched him; then with impatience: “Do, please, tell me what has happened.”
He quickly pulled himself round. “Well, he was, after a long absence, here a while since as if expressly to see her. But after spending half an hour he went away without it.”
Mr. Longdon’s watch continued. “He spent the half-hour with her mother instead?”
“Oh ‘instead’—it was hardly that. He at all events dropped his idea.”
“And what had it been, his idea?”
“You speak as if he had as many as I!” Mitchy replied. “In a manner indeed he has,” he continued as if for himself. “But they’re of a different kind,” he said to Mr. Longdon.
“What had it been, his idea?” the old man, however, simply repeated.
Mitchy’s confession at this seemed to explain his previous evasion. “We shall never know.”
Mr. Longdon hesitated. “He won’t tell YOU?”
“Me?” Mitchy had a pause. “Less than any one.”
Many things they had not spoken had already passed between them, and something evidently, to the sense of each, passed during the moment that followed this. “While you were abroad,” Mr. Longdon presently asked, “did you hear from him?”
“Never. And I wrote nothing.”
“Like me,” said Mr. Longdon. “I’ve neither written nor heard.”
“Ah but with you it will be different.” Mr. Longdon, as if with the outbreak of an agitation hitherto controlled, had turned abruptly away and, with the usual swing of his glass, begun almost wildly to wander. “You WILL hear.”
“I shall be curious.”
“Oh but what Nanda wants, you know, is that you shouldn’t be too much so.”
Mr. Longdon thoughtfully rambled. “Too much—?”
“To let him off, as we were saying, easily.”
The elder man for a while said nothing more, but he at last came back. “She’d like me actually to give him something?”
“I dare say!”
“Money?”
Mitchy smiled. “A handsome present.” They were face to face again with more mute interchange. “She doesn’t want HIM to have lost—!” Mr. Longdon, however, on this, once more broke off while Mitchy’s eyes followed him. “Doesn’t it give a sort of measure of what she may feel—?”
He had paused, working it out again with the effect of his friend’s returning afresh to be fed with his light. “Doesn’t what give it?”
“Why the fact that we still like him.”
Mr. Longdon stared. “Do YOU still like him?”
“If I didn’t how should I mind—?” But on the utterance of it Mitchy fairly pulled up.
His companion, after another look, laid a mild hand on his shoulder. “What is it you mind?”
“From HIM? Oh nothing!” He could trust himself again. “There are people like that—great cases of privilege.”
“He IS one!” Mr. Longdon mused.
“There it is. They go through life somehow guaranteed. They can’t help pleasing.”
“Ah,” Mr. Longdon murmured, “if it hadn’t been for that—!”
“They hold, they keep every one,” Mitchy went on. “It’s the sacred terror.”
The companions for a little seemed to stand together in this element; after which the elder turned once more away and appeared to continue to walk in it. “Poor Nanda!” then, in a far-off sigh, came across from him to Mitchy. Mitchy on this turned vaguely round to the fire, into which he remained gazing till he heard again Mr. Longdon’s voice. “I knew it of course after all. It was what I came up to town for. That night, before you went abroad, at Mrs. Grendon’s—”
“Yes?”—Mitchy was with him again.
“Well, made me see the future. It was then already too late.”
Mitchy assented with emphasis. “Too late. She was spoiled for him.”
If Mr. Longdon had to take it he took it at least quietly, only saying after a time: “And her mother ISN’T?”
“Oh yes. Quite.”
“And does Mrs. Brook know it?”
“Yes, but doesn’t mind. She resembles you and me. She ‘still likes’ him.”
“But what good will that do her?”
Mitchy sketched a shrug. “What good does it do US?”
Mr. Longdon thought. “We can at least respect ourselves.”
“CAN we?” Mitchy smiled.
“And HE can respect us,” his friend, as if not hearing him, went on.
Mitchy seemed almost to demur. “He must think we’re ‘rum.’”
“Well, Mrs. Brook’s worse than rum. He can’t respect HER.”
“Oh that will be perhaps,” Mitchy laughed, “what she’ll get just most out of!” It was the first time of Mr. Longdon’s showing that even after a minute he had not understood him; so that as quickly as possible he passed to another point. “If you do anything may I be in it?”
“But what can I do? If it’s over it’s over.”
“For HIM, yes. But not for her or for you or for me.”
“Oh I’m not for long!” the old man wearily said, turning the next moment to the door, at which one of the footmen had appeared.
“Mrs. Brookenham’s compliments, please sir,” this mes
senger articulated, “and Miss Brookenham is now alone.”
“Thanks—I’ll come up.”
The servant withdrew, and the eyes of the two visitors again met for a minute, after which Mitchy looked about for his hat. “Good-bye. I’ll go.”
Mr. Longdon watched him while, having found his hat, he looked about for his stick. “You want to be in EVERYTHING?”
Mitchy, without answering, smoothed his hat down; then he replied: “You say you’re not for long, but you won’t abandon her.”
“Oh I mean I shan’t last for ever.”
“Well, since you so expressed it yourself, that’s what I mean too. I assure you I shan’t desert her. And if I can help you—!”
“Help me?” Mr. Longdon interrupted, looking at him hard.
It made him a little awkward. “Help you to help her, you know—!”
“You’re very wonderful,” Mr. Longdon presently returned. “A year and a half ago you wanted to help me to help Mr. Vanderbank.”
“Well,” said Mitchy, “you can’t quite say I haven’t.”
“But your ideas of help are of a splendour—!”
“Oh I’ve told you about my ideas.” Mitchy was almost apologetic. Mr. Longdon had a pause. “I suppose I’m not indiscreet then in recognising your marriage as one of them. And that, with a responsibility so great already assumed, you appear fairly eager for another—!”
“Makes me out a kind of monster of benevolence?” Mitchy looked at it with a flushed face. “The two responsibilities are very much one and the same. My marriage has brought me, as it were, only nearer to Nanda. My wife and she, don’t you see? are particular friends.”
Mr. Longdon, on his side, turned a trifle pale; he looked rather hard at the floor. “I see—I see.” Then he raised his eyes. “But—to an old fellow like me—it’s all so strange.”
“It IS strange.” Mitchy spoke very kindly. “But it’s all right.”
Mr. Longdon gave a headshake that was both sad and sharp. “It’s all wrong. But YOU’RE all right!” he added in a different tone as he walked hastily away.
BOOK TENTH
NANDA
I
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 only to wait, half in surprise, half in surrender, for the flow of his suggestiveness to run its course, so that, having herself provoked the occasion, she might do a little more to meet it. It was by no means, however, that his presence in any degree ceased to prevail; for there were minutes during which her face, the only thing in her that moved, turning with his turns and following his glances, actually had a look inconsistent with anything but submission to almost any accident. It might have expressed a desire for his talk to last and last, an acceptance of any treatment of the hour or any version, or want of version, of her act that would best suit his ease, even in fact a resigned prevision of the occurrence of something that would leave her, quenched and blank, with the appearance of having made him come simply that she might look at him. She might indeed well have been aware of an inability to look at him
little enough to make it flagrant that she had appealed to him for something quite different. Keeping the situation meanwhile thus in his hands he recognised over the chimney a new alteration. “There used to be a big print—wasn’t there? a thing of the fifties—we had lots of them at home; some place or other ‘in the olden time.’ And now there’s that lovely French glass. So you see.” He spoke as if she had in some way gainsaid him, whereas he had not left her time even to answer a question. But he broke out anew on the beauty of her flowers. “You have awfully good ones—where do you get them? Flowers and pictures and—what are the other things people have when they’re happy and superior?—books and birds. You ought to have a bird or two, though I dare say you think that by the noise I make I’m as good myself as a dozen. Isn’t there some girl in some story—it isn’t Scott; what is it?—who had domestic difficulties and a cage in her window and whom one associates with chickweed and virtue? It isn’t Esmeralda—Esmeralda had a poodle, hadn’t she?—or have I got my heroines mixed? You’re up here yourself like a heroine; you’re perched in your tower or what do you call it?—your bower. You quite hang over the place, you know—the great wicked city, the wonderful London sky and the monuments looming through: or am I again only muddling up my Zola? You must have the sunsets—haven’t you? No—what am I talking about? Of course you look north. Well, they strike me as about the only thing you haven’t. At the same time it’s not only because I envy you that I feel humiliated. I ought to have sent you some flowers.” He smote himself with horror, throwing back his head with a sudden thought. “Why in goodness when I got your note didn’t I for once in my life do something really graceful? I simply liked it and answered it. Here I am. But I’ve brought nothing. I haven’t even brought a box of sweets. I’m not a man of the world.”