“A person should take the consequences,” Vanderbank broke in, “and see a person through?” He could meet her now perfectly and proceeded admirably to do it. “There’s an immense deal in that, I admit—I admit. I’m bound to say I don’t know quite what I did—one does those things, no doubt, with a fine unconsciousness: I should have thought indeed it was the other way round. But I assure you I accept all consequences and all responsibilities. If you don’t know what’s the matter between us I’m sure I don’t either. It can’t be much—we’ll look into it. I don’t mean you and I—YOU mustn’t be any more worried; but she and her so unwittingly faithless one. I HAVEN’T been as often, I know”—Van pleasantly kept his course. “But there’s a tide in the affairs of men—and of women too, and of girls and of every one. You know what I mean—you know it for yourself. The great thing is that—bless both your hearts!—one doesn’t, one simply CAN’T if one would, give your mother up. It’s absurd to talk about it. Nobody ever did such a thing in his life. There she is, like the moon or the Marble Arch. I don’t say, mind you,” he candidly explained, “that every one LIKES her equally: that’s another affair. But no one who ever HAS liked her can afford ever again for any long period to do without her. There are too many stupid people—there’s too much dull company. That, in London, is to be had by the ton; your mother’s intelligence, on the other hand, will always have its price. One can talk with her for a change. She’s fine, fine, fine. So, my dear child, be quiet. She’s a fixed star.”
“Oh I know she is,” Nanda said. “It’s YOU—”
“Who may be only the flashing meteor?” He sat and smiled at her. “I promise you then that your words have stayed me in my course. You’ve made me stand as still as Joshua made the sun.” With which he got straight up. “‘Young,’ you say she is?”—for as if to make up for it he all the more sociably continued. “It’s not like anything else. She’s youth. She’s MY youth—she WAS mine. And if you ever have a chance,” he wound up, “do put in for me that if she wants REALLY to know she’s booked for my old age. She’s clever enough, you know”—and Vanderbank, laughing, went over for his hat—“to understand what you tell her.”
Nanda took this in with due attention; she was also now on her feet. “And then she’s so lovely.”
“Awfully pretty!”
“I don’t say it, as they say, you know,” the girl continued, “BECAUSE she’s mother, but I often think when we’re out that wherever she is—!”
“There’s no one that all round really touches her?” Vanderbank took it up with zeal. “Oh so every one thinks, and in fact one’s appreciation of the charming things in that way so intensely her own can scarcely breathe on them all lightly enough. And then, hang it, she has perceptions—which are not things that run about the streets. She has surprises.” He almost broke down for vividness. “She has little ways.”
“Well, I’m glad you do like her,” Nanda gravely replied.
At this again he fairly faced her, his momentary silence making it still more direct. “I like, you know, about as well as I ever liked anything, this wonderful idea of yours of putting in a plea for her solitude and her youth. Don’t think I do it injustice if I say—which is saying much—that it’s quite as charming as it’s amusing. And now good-bye.”
He had put out his hand, but Nanda hesitated. “You won’t wait for tea?”