THE AWKWARD AGE
"Won't you, Van, really?" Mitchy asked from the hearth-rug.
"Never, never. We shall be very kind to him, we shall help him, hope and pray for him, but we shall be at the end," said Mrs. Brook, "just where we are now. Dear Van will have done his best, and we shall have done ours. Mr. Longdon will have done his—poor Nanda, even, will have done hers. But it will all have been in vain. However," Mrs. Brook continued to expound, "she'll probably have the money. Mr. Longdon will surely consider that she'll want it if she doesn't marry still more than if she does. So we shall be so much at least," she wound up—"I mean Edward and I and the child will be—to the good."
Mitchy, for an equal certainty, required but an instant's thought. "Oh, there can be no doubt about that. The things about which your mind may now be at ease—!" he cheerfully exclaimed.
"It does make a great difference!" Mrs. Brook comfortably sighed. Then in a different tone: "What dear Van will find at the end that he can't face will be, don't you see? just this fact of appearing to have accepted a bribe. He won't want, on the one hand—out of kindness for Nanda—to have the money suppressed; and yet he won't want to have the pecuniary question mixed up with the matter—to look, in short, as if he had had to be paid. He's like you, you know—he's proud; and it will be there we shall break down."
Mitchy had been watching his friend, who, a few minutes before perceptibly embarrassed, had now recovered himself and, at his ease, though still perhaps with a smile a trifle strained, leaned back and let his eyes play everywhere but over the faces of the others. Vanderbank evidently wished now to show a good-humored detachment.
"See here," Mitchy said to him: "I remember your once submitting to me a case of some delicacy."
250
