“Oh ‘appals’!” he restrictively murmured.
It even tried a little his companion’s patience. “There you are, you English—you’ll never face your own music. It’s amazing what you’d rather do with a thing—anything not to shoot at or to make money with—than look at its meaning. If I wished to save the girl as YOU wish it I should know exactly from what. But why differ about reasons,” she asked, “when we’re at one about the fact? I don’t mention the greatest of Vanderbank’s merits,” she added—“his having so delicious a friend. By whom, let me hasten to assure you,” she laughed, “I don’t in the least mean Mrs. Brook! She IS delicious if you like, but believe me when I tell you, caro mio—if you need to be told—that for effective action on him you’re worth twenty of her.”
What was most visible in Mr. Longdon was that, however it came to him, he had rarely before, all at once, had so much given him to think about. Again the only way to manage was to take what came uppermost. “By effective action you mean action on the matter of his proposing for Nanda?”
The Duchess’s assent was noble. “You can make him propose—you can make, I mean, a sure thing of it. You can doter the bride.” Then as with the impulse to meet benevolently and more than halfway her companion’s imperfect apprehension: “You can settle on her something that will make her a parti.” His apprehension was perhaps imperfect, but it could still lead somehow to his flushing all over, and this demonstration the Duchess as quickly took into account. “Poor Edward, you know, won’t give her a penny.”
Decidedly she went fast, but Mr. Longdon in a moment had caught up. “Mr. Vanderbank—your idea is—would require on the part of his wife something of that sort?”
“Pray who wouldn’t—in the world we all move in—require it quite as much? Mr. Vanderbank, I’m assured, has no means of his own at all, and if he doesn’t believe in impecunious marriages it’s not I who shall be shocked at him. For myself I simply despise them. He has nothing but a poor official salary. If it’s enough for one it would be little for two, and would be still less for half a dozen. They’re just the people to have, that blessed pair, a fine old English family.”
Mr. Longdon was now fairly abreast of it. “What it comes to then, the idea you’re so good as to put before me, is to bribe him to take her.”
The Duchess remained bland, but she fixed him. “You say that as if you were scandalised, but if you try Mr. Van with it I don’t think he’ll be. And you won’t persuade me,” she went on finely, “that you haven’t yourself thought of it.” She kept her eyes on him, and the effect of them, soon enough visible in his face, was such as presently to make her exult at her felicity. “You’re of a limpidity, dear man—you’ve only to be said ‘bo!’ to and you confess. Consciously or unconsciously—the former, really, I’m inclined to think—you’ve wanted him for her.” She paused an instant to enjoy her triumph, after which she continued: “And you’ve wanted her for him. I make you out, you’ll say—for I see you coming—one of those horrible benevolent busy-bodies who are the worst of the class, but you’ve only to think a little—if I may go so far—to see that no ‘making’ at all is required. You’ve only one link with the Brooks, but that link is golden. How can we, all of us, by this time, not have grasped and admired the beauty of your feeling for Lady Julia? There it is—I make you wince: to speak of it is to profane it. Let us by all means not speak of it then, but let us act on it.” He had at last turned his face from her, and it now took in, from the vantage of his high position, only the loveliness of the place and the hour, which included a glimpse of Lord Petherton and little Aggie, who, down in the garden, slowly strolled in familiar union. Each had a hand in the other’s, swinging easily as they went; their talk was evidently of flowers and fruits and birds; it was quite like father and daughter. One could see half a mile off in short that THEY weren’t flirting. Our friend’s bewilderment came in odd cold gusts: these were unreasoned and capricious; one of them, at all events, during his companion’s pause, must have roared in his ears. Was it not therefore through some continuance of the sound that he heard her go on speaking? “Of course you know the poor child’s own condition.”
It took him a good while to answer. “Do YOU know it?” he asked with his eyes still away.
“If your question’s ironical,” she laughed, “your irony’s perfectly wasted. I should be ashamed of myself if, with my relationship and my interest, I hadn’t made sure. Nanda’s fairly sick—as sick as a little cat—with her passion.” It was with an intensity of silence that he appeared to accept this; he was even so dumb for a minute that the oddity of the image could draw from him no natural sound. The Duchess once more, accordingly, recognised an occasion. “It has doubtless already occurred to you that, since your sentiment for the living is the charming fruit of your sentiment for the dead, there would be a sacrifice to Lady Julia’s memory more exquisite than any other.”