Well then, to show how right you are, theres the young lady. He pointed to an object on one of the tables, a small photograph with a very wide border of something that looked like crimson fur.
Mr. Longdon took up the picture; he was serious now. Shes very beautifulbut shes not a little girl.
At Naples they develop early. Shes only seventeen or eighteen, I suppose; but I never know how oldor at least how younggirls are, and Im not sure. An aunt, at any rate, has of course nothing to conceal. She IS extremely prettywith extraordinary red hair and a complexion to match; great rarities I believe, in that race and latitude. She gave me the portraitframe and all. The frame is Neapolitan enough and little Aggies charming. Then Vanderbank subjoined: But not so charming as little Nanda.
Little Nanda?have you got HER? The old man was all eagerness.
Shes over there beside the lampalso a present from the original.
II
Mr. Longdon had gone to the placelittle Nanda was in glazed white wood. He took her up and held her out; for a moment he said nothing, but presently, over his glasses, rested on his host a look intenser even than his scrutiny of the faded image. Do they give their portraits now?
Little girlsinnocent lambs? Surelyto old friends. Didnt they in your time?
Mr. Longdon studied the portrait again; after which, with an exhalation of something between superiority and regret, They never did to me, he returned.
Well, you can have all you want now! Vanderbank laughed.
His friend gave a slow droll headshake. I dont want them now!
You could do with them, my dear sir, still, Vanderbank continued in the same manner, every bit I do!
Im sure you do nothing you oughtnt. Mr. Longdon kept the photograph and continued to look at it. Her mother told me about herpromised me I should see her next time.
You mustshes a great friend of mine.
Mr. Longdon was really deep in it. Is she clever?
Vanderbank turned it over. Well, youll tell me if you think so.
Ah with a child of seventeen! Mr. Longdon murmured it as if in dread of having to pronounce. This one too IS seventeen?
Vanderbank again considered. Eighteen. He just hung fire once more, then brought out: Well, call it nearly nineteen. Ive kept her birthdays, he laughed.
His companion caught at the idea. Upon my honour I should like to! When is the next?
Youve plenty of timethe fifteenth of June.
Im only too sorry to wait. Laying down the object he had been examining Mr. Longdon took another turn about the room, and his manner was such an appeal to his host to accept his restlessness that as he circulated the latter watched him with encouragement. I said to you just now that I knew the mothers, but it would have been more to the point to say the grandmothers. He stopped before his young friend, then nodded at the image of Nanda. I knew HERS. She put it at something less.
Vanderbank rather failed to understand. The old lady? Put what?
Mr. Longdons face showed him as for a moment feeling his way. Im speaking of Mrs. Brookenham. She spoke of her daughter as only sixteen.
Vanderbanks amusement at the tone of this broke out. She usually does! She has done so, I think, for the last year or two.
His visitor dropped upon his sofa as with the weight of something sudden and fresh; then from this place, with a sharp little movement, tossed into the fire the end of a cigarette. Vanderbank offered him another, and as he accepted it and took a light he said: I dont know what youre doing with meI never at home smoke so much! But he puffed away and, seated near, laid his hand on Vanderbanks arm as to help himself to utter something too delicate not to be guarded and yet too important not to be risked. Now thats the sort of thing I did meanas one of my impressions. Vanderbank continued at a loss and he went on: I referif you dont mind my saying soto what you said just now.
Vanderbank was conscious of a deep desire to draw from him whatever might come; so sensible was it somehow that whatever in him was good was also thoroughly personal. But our young friend had to think a minute. I see, I see. Nothings more probable than that Ive said something nasty; but which of my particular horrors?
Well then, your conveying that she makes her daughter out younger!
To make herself out the same? Vanderbank took him straight up. It was nasty my doing that? I see, I see. Yes, yes: I rather gave her away, and youre struck by itas is most delightful you SHOULD bebecause youre in every way of a better tradition and, knowing Mrs. Brookenhams my friend, cant conceive of ones playing on a friend a trick so vulgar and odious. It strikes you also probably as the kind of thing we must be constantly doing; it strikes you that right and left, probably, we keep giving each other away. Well, I dare say we do. Yes, come to think of it, as they say in America, we do. But what shall I tell you? Practically we all know it and allow for it and its as broad as its long. Whats London life after all? Its tit for tat!
Ah but what becomes of friendship? Mr. Longdon earnestly and pleadingly asked, while he still held Vanderbanks arm as if under the spell of the vivid explanation supplied him.
The young man met his eyes only the more sociably. Friendship?
Friendship. Mr. Longdon maintained the full value of the word.
Well, his companion risked, I dare say it isnt in London by any means what it is at Beccles. I quite literally mean that, Vanderbank reassuringly added; I never really have believed in the existence of friendship in big societiesin great towns and great crowds. Its a plant that takes time and space and air; and London society is a huge squash, as we elegantly call itan elbowing pushing perspiring chattering mob.
Ah I dont say THAT of you! the visitor murmured with a withdrawal of his hand and a visible scruple for the sweeping concession he had evoked.
Do say it thenfor Gods sake; let some one say it, so that something or other, whatever it may be, may come of it! Its impossible to say too muchits impossible to say enough. There isnt anything any one can say that I wont agree to.
That shows you really dont care, the old man returned with acuteness.
Oh were past saving, if thats what you mean! Vanderbank laughed.
You dont care, you dont care! his guest repeated, andif I may be frank with youI shouldnt wonder if it were rather a pity.
A pity I dont care?
You ought to, you ought to. And Mr. Longdon paused. May I say all I think?
I assure you I shall! Youre awfully interesting.
So are you, if you come to that. Its just what Ive had in my head. Theres something I seem to make out in you! He abruptly dropped this, however, going on in another way. I remember the rest of you, but why did I never see YOU?
I must have been at schoolat college. Perhaps you did know my brothers, elder and younger.
There was a boy with your mother at Malvern. I was near her there for three months inwhat WAS the year?
Yes, I know, Vanderbank replied while his guest tried to fix the date. It was my brother Miles. He was awfully clever, but had no health, poor chap, and we lost him at seventeen. She used to take houses at such places with himit was supposed to be for his benefit.
Mr. Longdon listened with a visible recovery. He used to talk to meI remember he asked me questions I couldnt answer and made me dreadfully ashamed. But I lent him bookspartly, upon my honour, to make him think that as I had them I did know something. He read everything and had a lot to say about it. I used to tell your mother he had a great future.
Vanderbank shook his head sadly and kindly. So he had. And you remember Nancy, who was handsome and who was usually with them? he went on.
Mr. Longdon looked so uncertain that he explained he meant his other sister; on which his companion said: Oh her? Yes, she was charmingshe evidently had a future too.
Well, shes in the midst of her future now. Shes married.
And whom did she marry?
A fellow called Toovey. A man in the City.
Oh! said Mr. Longdon a little blankly. Then as if to retrieve his blankness: But why do you call her Nancy? Wasnt her name Blanche?
ExactlyBlanche Bertha Vanderbank.
Mr. Longdon looked half-mystified and half-distressed. And now shes Nancy Toovey?
Vanderbank broke into laughter at his dismay. Thats what every one calls her.
But why?
Nobody knows. You see you were right about her future.
Mr. Longdon gave another of his soft smothered sighs; he had turned back again to the first photograph, which he looked at for a longer time. Well, it wasnt HER way.
My mothers? No indeed. Oh my mothers way! Vanderbank waited, then added gravely: She was taken in time.
Mr. Longdon turned half-round as to reply to this, but instead of replying proceeded afresh to an examination of the expressive oval in the red plush frame. He took up little Aggie, who appeared to interest him, and abruptly observed: Nanda isnt so pretty.
No, not nearly. Theres a great question whether Nandas pretty at all.
Mr. Longdon continued to inspect her more favoured friend; which led him after a moment to bring out: She ought to be, you know. Her grandmother was.
Oh and her mother, Vanderbank threw in. Dont you think Mrs. Brookenham lovely?
Mr. Longdon kept him waiting a little. Not so lovely as Lady Julia. Lady Julia had! He faltered; then, as if there were too much to say, disposed of the question. Lady Julia had everything.
Vanderbank gathered hence an impression that determined him more and more to diplomacy. But isnt that just what Mrs. Brookenham has?
This time the old man was prompt. Yes, shes very brilliant, but its a totally different thing. He laid little Aggie down and moved away as without a purpose; but his friend presently perceived his purpose to be another glance at the other young lady. As if all accidentally and absently he bent again over the portrait of Nanda. Lady Julia was exquisite and this childs exactly like her.
Vanderbank, more and more conscious of something working in him, was more and more interested. If Nandas so like her, WAS she so exquisite?
Oh yes; every one was agreed about that. Mr. Longdon kept his eyes on the face, trying a little, Vanderbank even thought, to conceal his own. She was one of the greatest beauties of her day.
Then IS Nanda so like her? Vanderbank persisted, amused at his friends transparency.
Extraordinarily. Her mother told me all about her.
Told you shes as beautiful as her grandmother?
Mr. Longdon turned it over. Well, that she has just Lady Julias expression. She absolutely HAS itI see it here. He was delightfully positive. Shes much more like the dead than like the living.
Vanderbank saw in this too many deep things not to follow them up. One of these was, to begin with, that his guest had not more than half-succumbed to Mrs. Brookenhams attraction, if indeed he had by a fine originality not resisted it altogether. That in itself, for an observer deeply versed in this lady, was attaching and beguiling. Another indication was that he found himself, in spite of such a break in the chain, distinctly predisposed to Nanda. If she reproduces then so vividly Lady Julia, the young man threw out, why does she strike you as so much less pretty than her foreign friend there, who is after all by no means a prodigy?
The subject of this address, with one of the photographs in his hand, glanced, while he reflected, at the other. Then with a subtlety that matched itself for the moment with Vanderbanks: You just told me yourself that the little foreign person
Is ever so much the lovelier of the two? So I did. But youve promptly recognised it. Its the first time, Vanderbank went on, to let him down more gently, that Ive heard Mrs. Brookenham admit the girls good looks.
Her own girls? Admit them?
I mean grant them to be even as good as they are. I myself, I must tell you, extremely like Nandas appearance. I think Lady Julias granddaughter has in her face, in spite of everything!
What do you mean by everything? Mr. Longdon broke in with such an approach to resentment that his hosts gaiety overflowed.
Youll seewhen you do see. She has no features. No, not one, Vanderbank inexorably pursued; unless indeed you put it that she has two or three too many. What I was going to say was that she has in her expression all thats charming in her nature. But beauty, in Londonand feeling that he held his visitors attention he gave himself the pleasure of freely presenting his ideastaring glaring obvious knock-down beauty, as plain as a poster on a wall, an advertisement of soap or whiskey, something that speaks to the crowd and crosses the footlights, fetches such a price in the market that the absence of it, for a woman with a girl to marry, inspires endless terrors and constitutes for the wretched pair (to speak of mother and daughter alone) a sort of social bankruptcy. London doesnt love the latent or the lurking, has neither time nor taste nor sense for anything less discernible than the red flag in front of the steam-roller. It wants cash over the counter and letters ten feet high. Therefore you see its all as yet rather a dark question for poor Nandaa question that in a way quite occupies the foreground of her mothers earnest little life. How WILL she look, what will be thought of her and what will she be able to do for herself? Shes at the age when the whole thingspeaking of her attractions, her possible share of good looksis still to a degree in a fog. But everything depends on it.
Mr. Longdon had by this time come back to him. Excuse my asking it againfor you take such jumps: what, once more, do you mean by everything?
Why naturally her marrying. Above all her marrying early.
Mr. Longdon stood before the sofa. What do you mean by early?
Well, we do doubtless get up later than at Beccles; but that gives us, you see, shorter days. I mean in a couple of seasons. Soon enough, Vanderbank developed, to limit the strain! He was moved to higher gaiety by his friends expression.
What do you mean by the strain?
Well, the complication of her being there.
Being where?
You do put one through! Vanderbank laughed. But he showed himself perfectly prepared. Out of the school-room and where she is now. In her mothers drawing-room. At her mothers fireside.
Mr. Longdon stared. But where else should she be?
At her husbands, dont you see?
He looked as if he quite saw, yet was nevertheless not to be put off from his original challenge. Ah certainly; but not as if she had been pushed down the chimney. All in good time.