The Awkward Age (New York: Harper and Brothers, 1899)/Book 2/Chapter 8
VIII
That young lady, in this relation, was certainly a figure to have offered a foundation for the highest hopes. As slight and white, as delicately lovely, as a gathered garden lily, her admirable training appeared to hold her out to them all as with precautionary finger-tips. She presumed, however, so little on any introduction that, shyly and submissively, waiting for the word of direction, she stopped short in the centre of the general friendliness till Mrs. Brookenham fairly became, to meet her, also a shy little girl—put out a timid hand with wonder-struck, innocent eyes that hesitated whether a kiss of greeting might be dared. "Why, you dear, good, strange 'ickle' thing, you haven't been here for ages, but it is a joy to see you, and I do hope you've brought your doll!"—such might have been the sense of our friend's fond murmur while, looking at her up and down with pure pleasure, she drew the rare creature to a sofa. Little Aggie presented, up and down, an arrangement of dress exactly in the key of her age, her complexion, her emphasized virginity. She might have been prepared for her visit by a cluster of doting nuns, cloistered daughters of ancient houses and educators of similar products, whose taste, hereditarily good, had grown, out of the world and most delightfully, so queer as to leave on everything they touched a particular shade of distinction. The Duchess had brought in with the child an air of added confidence for which, in a moment, an observer would have seen the grounds, the association of the pair being so markedly favorable to each. Its younger member carried out the style of her aunt's presence quite as one of the accessory figures effectively thrown into old portraits. The Duchess, on the other hand, seemed, with becoming blandness, to draw from her niece the dignity of a kind of office of state—hereditary governess of the children of the blood. Little Aggie had a smile as softly bright as a southern dawn, and the friends of her relative looked at each other, according to a fashion frequent in Mrs. Brookenham's drawing-room, in free communication of their happy impression. Mr. Mitchett was, none the less, scantly diverted from his recognition of the occasion Mrs. Brookenham had just named to him.
"My dear Duchess," he promptly asked, "do you mind explaining to me an opinion that I have just heard of your—with marked originality—holding?"
The Duchess, with her head in the air, considered an instant her little ivory princess. "I'm always ready, Mr. Mitchett, to defend my opinions; but if it's a question of going much into the things that are the subjects of some of them, perhaps we had better, if you don't mind, choose our time and our place."
"No 'time,' gracious lady, for my impatience," Mr. Mitchett replied, "could be better than the present—but if you've reasons for wanting a better place, why shouldn't we go, on the spot, into another room?"
Lord Petherton, at this inquiry, broke into instant mirth. "Well, of all the coolness, Mitchy!—he does go at it, doesn't he, Mrs. Brook? What do you want to do in another room?" he demanded of his friend. "Upon my word, Duchess, under the nose of those—!"
The Duchess, on the first blush, lent herself to the humor of the case. "Well, Petherton, of 'those'?—I defy him to finish his sentence!" she smiled to the others.
"Of those," said his lordship, "who flatter themselves that when you do happen to find them somewhere your first idea is not quite to jump at a pretext for getting off somewhere else. Especially," he continued to jest, "with a man of Mitchy's vile reputation."
"Oh!" Edward Brookenham exclaimed at this, but only as if with quiet relief.
"Mitchy's offer is perfectly safe, I may let him know," his wife remarked, "for I happen to be sure that nothing would really induce Jane to leave Aggie five minutes among us here without remaining herself to see that we don't become improper."
"Well then, if we're already pretty far on the way to it," Lord Petherton resumed, "what on earth might we arrive at in the absence of your control? I warn you. Duchess," he joyously pursued, "that if you go out of the room with Mitchy I shall rapidly become quite awful."
The Duchess, during this brief passage, never took her eyes from her niece, who rewarded her attention with the sweetness of consenting dependence. The child's foreign origin was so delicately but unmistakably written in all her exquisite lines that her look might have expressed the modest detachment of a person to whom the language of her companions was unknown. The Duchess then glanced round the circle. "You're very odd people, all of you, and I don't think you quite know how ridiculous you are. Aggie and I are simple stranger-folk; there's a great deal we don't understand; yet we're none the less not easily frightened. In what is it, Mr. Mitchett," she asked, "that I've wounded your susceptibilities?"
Mr. Mitchett hesitated; he had apparently found time to reflect on his precipitation. "I see what Petherton's up to, and I won't, by drawing you aside just now, expose your niece to anything that might immediately oblige Mrs. Brook to catch her up and flee with her. But the first time I find you more isolated—well," he laughed, though not with the clearest ring, "all I can say is, mind your eyes, dear Duchess!"
"It's about your thinking, Jane," Mrs. Brookenham placidly explained, "that Nanda suffers—in her morals, don't you know?—by my neglect. I wouldn't say anything about you that I can't bravely say to you; therefore, since he has plumped out with it, I do confess that I've appealed to him on what, as so good an old friend, he thinks of your contention."
"What in the world is Jane's contention?" Edward Brookenham put the question as if they were "stuck" at cards.
"You really, all of you," the Duchess replied with excellent coolness, "choose extraordinary conditions for the discussion of delicate matters. There are decidedly too many things on which we don't feel alike. You're all inconceivable just now. Je ne peux pourtant pas la mettre à la porte, cette chérie"—whom she covered again with the gay solicitude that seemed to have in it a vibration of private entreaty: " Don't understand, my own darling—don't understand!"
Little Aggie looked around with an impartial politeness that, as an expression of the general blind sense of her being, in every particular, in hands at full liberty either to spot or to spare her, was touching enough to bring tears to all eyes. It perhaps had to do with the sudden emotion with which—using now quite a different manner—Mrs. Brookenham again embraced her, and even with this lady's equally abrupt and altogether wonderful address to her: "Between you and me straight, my dear, and as from friend to friend, I know that you'll never doubt that everything must be all right!—What I spoke of to poor Mitchy," she went on to the Duchess, "is the dreadful view you take of my letting Nanda go to Tishy—and indeed of the general question of any acquaintance between young unmarried and young married females. Mr. Mitchett is sufficiently interested in us, Jane, to make it natural of me to take him into our confidence in one of our difficulties. On the other hand we feel your solicitude, and I needn't tell you, at this time of day, what weight, in every respect, we attach to your judgment. Therefore it will be a difficulty for us, cara mia, don't you see? if we decide suddenly, under the spell of your influence, that our daughter must break off a friendship—it will be a difficulty for us to put the thing to Nanda herself in such a way as that she shall have some sort of notion of what suddenly possesses us. Then there'll be the much stiffer job of putting it to poor Tishy. Yet if her house is an impossible place, what else is one to do? Carrie Donner's to be there, and Carrie Donner's a nature apart; but how can we ask even a little lamb like Tishy to give up her own sister?"
The question had been launched with an argumentative sharpness that made it for a moment keep possession of the air, and during this moment, before a single member of the circle could rally, Mrs. Brookenham's effect was superseded by that of the reappearance of the butler. "I say, my dear, don't shriek!"—Edward Brookenham had only time to sound this warning before a lady, presenting herself in the open doorway, followed close on the announcement of her name. "Mrs. Beach Donner!"—the impression was naturally marked. Every one betrayed it a little but Mrs. Brookenham, who, more than the others, appeared to have the help of seeing that, by a merciful stroke, her visitor has just failed to hear. This visitor, a young woman of striking, of startling appearance, who, in the manner of certain shiny house doors and railings, instantly created a presumption of the lurking label "Fresh paint," found herself, with an embarrassment oddly opposed to the positive pitch of her complexion, in the presence of a group in which it was yet immediately evident that every one was a friend. Every one, to show no one had been caught, said something extremely easy; so that it was after a moment only poor Mrs. Donner who, seated close to her hostess, seemed to be in any degree in the wrong. This, moreover, was essentially her fault, so extreme was the anomaly of her having, without the means to back it up, committed herself to a "scheme of color" that was practically an advertisement of courage. Irregularly pretty and painfully shy, she was retouched, from brow to chin, like a suburban photograph—the moral of which was simply that she should either have left more to nature or taken more from art. The Duchess had quickly reached her kinsman with a smothered hiss, an "Edward dear, for God's sake take Aggie!" and at the end of a few minutes had formed for herself in one of Mrs. Brookenham's admirable "corners" a society consisting of Lord Petherton and Mr. Mitchett, the latter of whom regarded Mrs. Donner, across the room, with articulate wonder and compassion.
"It's all right, it's all right—she's frightened only at herself!"
The Duchess watched her as from a box at the play, comfortably shut in, as in the old operatic days at Naples, with a pair of entertainers. "You're the most interesting nation in the world. One never gets to the end of your hatred of the nuance. The sense of the suitable, the harmony of parts—what on earth were you doomed to do that, to be punished sufficiently in advance, you had to be deprived of it in your very cradles? Look at her little black dress—rather good, but not so good as it ought to be, and, mixed up with all the rest, see her type, her beauty, her timidity, her wickedness, her notoriety and her impudeur. It's only in this country that a woman is both so shocking and so shaky." The Duchess's displeasure overflowed. "If she doesn't know how to be good—"
"Let her at least know how to be bad? Ah," Mitchy replied, "your irritation testifies more than anything else could do to our peculiar genius, or our peculiar want of it. Our vice is intolerably clumsy—if it can possibly be a question of vice in regard to that charming child, who looks like one of the new-fashioned bill-posters, only, in the way of 'morbid modernity,' as Mrs. Brook would say, more extravagant and funny than any that have yet been risked. I remember," he continued, "Mrs. Brook's having spoken of her to me lately as 'wild.' Wild?—why, she's simply tameness run to seed. Such an expression shows the state of training to which Mrs. Brook has reduced the rest of us."
"It doesn't prevent, at any rate, Mrs. Brook's training, some of the rest of you being horrible," the Duchess declared. "What did you mean just now, really, by asking me to explain before Aggie this so serious matter of Nanda's exposure?" Then instantly, taking herself up before Mr. Mitchett could answer: "What on earth do you suppose Edward's saying to my darling?"
Brookenham had placed himself, side by side with the child, on a distant little settee, but it was impossible to make out from the countenance of either whether a sound had passed between them. Aggie's little manner was too developed to show, and her host's not developed enough. "Oh, he's awfully careful," Lord Petherton reassuringly observed. "If you or I or Mitchy say anything bad, it's sure to be before we know it and without particularly meaning it. But old Edward means it—!"
"So much that, as a general thing, he doesn't dare to say it?" the Duchess asked. "That's a pretty picture of him, inasmuch as, for the most part, he never speaks. What, therefore, must he mean?"
"He's an abyss—he's magnificent!" Mr. Mitchett langhed. "I don"t know a man of an understanding more profound, and he's equally incapable of uttering and of wincing. If, by the same token, I'm 'horrible,' as you call me," he pursued, "it's only because, in every way, I'm so beastly superficial. All the same, I do sometimes go into things, and I insist upon knowing," he again broke out, "what it exactly was you had in mind in saying to Mrs. Brook, about Nanda, what she repeated to me."
"You 'insist,' you silly man?"—the Duchess had veered a little to indulgence. "Pray, on what ground of right, in such a connection, do you do anything of the sort?"
Poor Mitchy showed but for a moment that he felt pulled up. "Do you mean that when a girl liked by a fellow likes him so little in return—?"
"I don't mean anything," said the Duchess, "that may provoke you to suppose me vulgar and odious enough to try to put you out of conceit of a most interesting and unfortunate creature; and I don't quite, as yet, see—though I dare say I shall soon make it out!—what our friend has in her head in tattling to you on these matters as soon as my back is turned. Petherton will tell you—I wonder he hasn't told you before—why Mrs. Grendon, though not perhaps herself quite the rose, is decidedly, in these days, too near it."
"Oh, Petherton never tells me anything!" Mitchy's answer was brisk and impatient, but evidently quite as sincere as if the person alluded to had not been there.
The person alluded to, meanwhile, fidgeting frankly in his chair, alternately stretching his legs and resting his elbows on his knees, had reckoned as small the profit he might derive from this colloquy. His bored state indeed—if he was bored—prompted in him the honest impulse to clear, as he would have perhaps considered it, the atmosphere. He indicated Mrs. Donner with a remarkable absence of precautions. "Why, what the Duchess alludes to is my poor sister Fanny's stupid grievance—surely you know about that." He made oddly vivid for a moment the nature of his relative's allegation, his somewhat cynical treatment of which became peculiarly derisive in the light of the attitude and expression, at that minute, of the figure incriminated. "My brother-in-law's too thick with her. But Cashmore's such a fine old ass. It's excessively unpleasant," he added, "for affairs are just in that position in which, from one day to another, there may be something that people will get hold of. Fancy a man," he robustly reflected while the three took in more completely the subject of Mrs. Brookenham's attention—"fancy a man with that sort of job on his hands! The beauty of it is that the two women seem never to have broken off. Blest if they don't still keep seeing each other!"
The Duchess, as on everything else, passed succinctly on this. "Ah, how can hatreds comfortably flourish without the nourishment of such regular 'seeing' as what you call here bosom friendship alone supplies? What are parties given for in London but that enemies may meet? I grant you it's inconceivable that the husband of a superb creature like your sister should find his requirements better met by an object comme cette petite, who looks like a pen-wiper—an actress's idea of one—made up for a theatrical bazar. At the same time, if you'll allow me to say so, it scarcely strikes one that your sister's prudence is such as to have placed all the cards in her hands. She's the most beautiful woman in England, but her esprit de conduite isn't quite on a level. One can't have everything!" she philosophically sighed.
Lord Petherton met her comfortably enough on this assumption of his detachments. "If you mean by that her being the biggest fool alive, I'm quite ready to agree with you. It's exactly what makes me afraid. Yet how can I decently say in particular," he asked, "of what?"
The Duchess still perched on her critical height. "Of what but one of your amazing English periodical public washings of dirty linen? There's not the least necessity to 'say'!" she laughed. "If there's anything more remarkable than these purifications, it's the domestic comfort with which, when it has come and gone, you sport the articles purified."
"It comes back, in all that sphere," Mr. Mitchett instructively suggested, "to our national, our fatal want of style. We can never, dear Duchess, take too many lessons, and there's probably at the present time no more useful function performed among us than that dissemination of neater methods to which you are so good as to contribute."
He had had another idea, but before he reached it his companion had gaily broken in. "Awfully good one for you, Duchess—and I'm bound to say that, for a clever woman, you exposed yourself! I've at any rate a sense of comfort," Lord Petherton pursued, "in the good relations now more and more established between poor Fanny and Mrs. Brook. Mrs. Brook's awfully kind to her and awfully sharp, and Fanny will take things from her that she won't take from me. I keep saying to Mrs. Brook—don't you know?—'Do keep hold of her, and let her have it strong.' She hasn't, upon my honor, any one in the world but me."
"And we know the extent of that resource!" the Duchess harshly exclaimed.
"That's exactly what Fanny says—that she knows it," Petherton good-humoredly assented. "She says my beastly hypocrisy makes her sick. There are people," he pleasantly rambled on, "who are awfully free with their advice, but it's mostly fearful rot. Mrs. Brook's isn't, upon my word—I've tried some myself!"
"You talk as if it were something nasty and homemade—gooseberry wine!" the Duchess laughed; "but one can't know Fernanda, of course, without knowing that she has set up, for the convenience of her friends, a little office for consultations. She listens to the case, she strokes her chin and prescribes—"
"And the beauty of it is," cried Lord Petherton, "that she makes no charge whatever!"
"She doesn't take a guinea at the time, but you may still get your account," the Duchess returned. "Of course we know that the great business she does is in husbands and wives."
"This then seems the day of the wives!" Mr. Mitchett interposed as he became aware, the first, of the illustration that the Duchess's image was in the act of receiving. "Lady Fanny Cashmore!"—the butler was already in the field, and the company, with the exception of Mrs. Donner, who remained seated, was apparently conscious of a vibration that brought it afresh, but still more nimbly than on Aggie's advent, to its feet.