The Awkward Age (New York: Harper and Brothers, 1899)/Book 4/Chapter 13
BOOK FOURTH
MR. CASHMORE
XIII
Harold Brookenham, whom Mr. Cashmore, ushered in and announced, had found in the act of helping himself to a cup of tea at the table apparently just prepared—Harold Brookenham arrived at the point with a dash so direct as to leave the visitor an option between but two suppositions: that of a desperate plunge, to have his shame soon over, or that of the acquired habit of such appeals, which had taught him the easiest way. There was no great sharpness in the face of Mr. Cashmore, who was, somehow, massive without majesty; yet he might not have been proof against the suspicion that his young friend's embarrassment was an easy precaution, a conscious corrective to the danger of audacity. It would not have been impossible to divine that if Harold shut his eyes and jumped, it was mainly for the appearance of doing so. Experience was to be taken as showing that one might get a five-pound note as one got a light for a cigarette; but one had to check the friendly impulse to ask for it in the same way. Mr. Cashmore had in fact looked surprised, yet not, on the whole, so surprised as the young man seemed to have expected of him. There was almost a quiet grace in the combination of promptitude and diffidence with which Harold took over the responsibility of all proprietorship of the crisp morsel of paper that he slipped with slow firmness into the pocket of his waistcoat, rubbing it gently, in its passage, against the delicately buff-colored duck of which that garment was composed. "So quite too awfully kind of you that I really don't know what to say"—there was a marked recall, in the manner of this speech, of the sweetness of his mother's droop and the tenderness of her wail. It was as if he had been moved for the moment to moralize, but the eyes he raised to his benefactor had the oddest effect of marking that personage himself as the source of the lesson.
Mr. Cashmore, who would have been very red-headed if he had not been very bald, showed a single eye-glass and a long upper lip; he was large and jaunty, with little petulant movements and intense ejaculations that were not in the line of his type. "You may say anything you like if you don't say you'll repay it. That's always nonsense—I hate it."
Harold remained sad, but showed himself really superior. "Then I won't say it." Pensively, a minute, he appeared to figure the words, in their absurdity, on the lips of some young man not, like himself, tactful. "I know just what you mean."
"But I think, you know, that you ought to tell your father," Mr. Cashmore said.
"Tell him I've borrowed of you?"
Mr. Cashmore good-humoredly demurred. "It would serve me right—it's so shocking my having listened to you. Tell him, certainly," he went on after an instant. "But what I mean is that if you're in such straits you should speak to him like a man."
Harold smiled at the innocence of a friend who could suppose him not to have exhausted that resource. "I'm always speaking to him like a man, and that's just what puts him so awfully out. He denies to my face that I am one. One would suppose, to hear him, not only that I'm a small objectionable child, but that I'm scarcely even human. He doesn't conceive me as with any wants."
"Oh," Mr. Cashmore laughed, "you've all—you youngsters—as many wants, I know, as an advertisement page of the Times."
Harold showed an admiration. "That's awfully good. If you think you ought to speak of it," he continued, "do it rather to mamma." He noted the hour. "I'll go, if you'll excuse me, to give you the chance."
The visitor referred to his own watch. "It's your mother herself who gives the chances—the chances you take."
Harold looked kind and simple. "She has come in, I know. She'll be with you in a moment."
He was half-way to the door, but Mr. Cashmore, though so easy, had not done with him. "I suppose you mean that if it's only your mother who's told, you may depend on her to shield you."
Harold turned this over as if it were a questionable sovereign, but on second thoughts he wonderfully smiled. "Do you think that after you've let me have it you can tell? You could, of course, if you hadn't." He appeared to work it out for Mr. Cashmore's benefit. "But I don't mind," he added, "your telling mamma."
"Don't mind, you mean, really, its annoying her so awfully?"
The invitation to repent thrown off in this could only strike the young man as absurd—it was so previous to any enjoyment. Harold liked things in their proper order; but, at the same time, his evolutions were quick. "I dare say I am selfish, but what I was thinking was that the terrific wigging, don't you know?—well, I'd take it from her. She knows about one's life—about our having to go on, by no fault of our own, as our parents start us. She knows all about wants—no one has more than mamma."
Mr. Cashmore stared, but there was amusement in it too. "So she'll say it's all right?"
"Oh no; she'll let me have it hot. But she'll recognize that, at such a pass, more must be done for a fellow, and that may lead to something—indirectly, don't you see? for she won't tell my father, she'll only, in her own way, work on him—that will put me on a better footing, and for which, therefore, at bottom, I shall have to thank you."
The eye assisted by Mr. Cashmore's glass had fixed, during this address, with a discernible growth of something like alarm, the subject of his beneficence. The thread of their relations somehow lost itself in this subtler twist, and he fell back on mere stature, position and property, things always convenient in the presence of crookedness. "I shall say nothing to your mother, but I think I shall be rather glad that you're not a son of mine."
Harold wondered at this new element in their talk. "Do your sons never—?"
"Borrow money of their mother's visitors?" Mr. Cashmore had taken him up, eager, evidently, quite to satisfy him; but the question was caught on the wing by Mrs. Brookenham herself, who had opened the door as her friend spoke and who quickly advanced with an echo of it.
"Lady Fanny's visitors?"—and, though her eyes rather avoided than met his own, she seemed to cover her ladyship's husband with a vague but practised sympathy. "What on earth are you saying to Harold about them?" Thus it was that at the end of a few minutes Mr. Cashmore, on the sofa face to face with her, found his consciousness quite purged of its actual sense of his weakness and a new turn given to the idea of what, in one's very drawing-room, might go on behind one's back. Harold had quickly vanished—had been tacitly disposed of, and Mrs. Brook's caller had moved, even in the short space of time, so far in quite another direction as to have drawn from her the little cold question: "'Presents'? You don't mean money?"
He clearly felt the importance of expressing at least by his silence and his eye-glass what he meant. "Her extravagance is beyond everything, and though there are bills enough, God knows, that do come in to me, I don't see how she pulls through unless there are others that go elsewhere."
Mrs. Brookenham had given him his tea—her own she had placed on a small table near her, and she could now respond freely to the impulse felt, on this, of settling herself to something of real interest. Except to Harold she was incapable of reproach, though there were shades, of course, in her resignation, and her daughter's report of her to Mr. Longdon as conscious of an absence of prejudice would have been justified, for a spectator, by the particular feeling that Mr. Cashmere's speech caused her to disclose. What did this feeling wonderfully appear unless strangely irrelevant? "I've no patience when I hear you talk as if you weren't horribly rich."
He looked at her an instant as if with the fancy that she might have derived that impression from Harold. "What has that to do with it? Does a rich man enjoy any more than a poor his wife's making a fool of him?"
Her eyes opened wider: it was one of her very few ways of betraying amusement. There was little indeed to be amused at here except his choice of the particular invidious name. "You know I don't believe a word you say."
Mr. Cashmore drank his tea, then rose to carry the cup somewhere and put it down, declining, with a motion, any assistance. When he was on the sofa again he resumed their intimate talk. "I like tremendously to be with you, but you mustn't think I've come here to let you say to me such dreadful things as that." He was an odd compound, Mr. Cashmore, and the air of personal good health, the untarnished bloom which sometimes lent a monstrous serenity to his mention of the barely mentionable, was on occasion balanced or matched by his playful application of extravagant terms to matters of much less moment. "You know what I come to you for, Mrs. Brook: I won't come any more if you're going to be horrid and impossible."
"You come to me, I suppose, because—for my deep misfortune, I assure you—I've a kind of vision of things, of the wretched miseries in which you all knot yourselves up, which you yourselves are as little blessed with as if, tumbling about together in your heap, you were a litter of blind kittens."
"Awfully good, that—you do lift the burden of my trouble!" He had laughed out, in the manner of the man who made notes, for platform use, of things that might serve; but the next moment he was grave again, as if his observation had reminded him of Harold's praise of his wit. It was in this spirit that he abruptly brought out: "Where, by-the-way, is your daughter?"
"I haven't the least idea. I do all I can to enter into her life, but you can't get into a railway train while it's on the rush."
Mr. Cashmore swung back to hilarity. "You give me lots of things. Do you mean she's so 'fast'?" He could keep the ball going.
Mrs. Brookenham hesitated. "No; she's a tremendous dear, and we're great friends. But she has her free young life, which, by that law of our time that I'm sure I only want, like all other laws, once I know what they are, to accept—she has her precious freshness of feeling which I say to myself that, so far as control is concerned, I ought to respect. I try to get her to sit with me, and she does so often, because she's kind. But before I know it she leaves me again: she feels that her presence makes a difference in one's liberty of talk."
Mr. Cashmore was struck by this picture. "That's awfully charming of her."
"Isn't it too dear?" The thought of it, for Mrs. Brook, seemed fairly to open out vistas. "The modern daughter!"
"But not the ancient mother!" Mr. Cashmore smiled.
She shook her head with a world of accepted woe. "'Give me back, give me back one hour of my youth'? Oh, I haven't a single thrill left to answer a compliment. I sit here now face to face with things as they are. They come in their turn, I assure you—and they find me," Mrs. Brook sighed, "ready. Nanda has stepped on the stage, and I give her up the house. Besides," she went on musingly, "it's awfully interesting. It is the modern daughter—we're really 'doing' her, the child and I; and as the modern has always been my own note—I've gone in, I mean, frankly for my very own Time— who is one, after all, that one should pretend to decline to go where it may lead?" Mr. Cashmore was unprepared with an answer to this question, and his hostess continued in a different tone: "It's sweet her sparing one!"
This, for the visitor, was firmer ground. "Do you mean about talking before her?"
Mrs. Brook's assent was positively tender. "She won't have a difference in my freedom. It's as if the dear thing knew, don't you see? what we must keep back. She wants us not to have to think. It's quite maternal!" she mused again. Then, as if with the pleasure of presenting it to him afresh: "That's the modern daughter!"
"Well," said Mr. Cashmore, "I can't help wishing she were a trifle less considerate. In that case I might find her with you, and I may tell you frankly that I get more from her than I do from you. She has the great merit for me, in the first place, of not being such an admirer of my wife."
Mrs. Brookenham took this up with interest. "No—you're right; she doesn't, as I do, see Lady Fanny, and that's a kind of mercy."
"There you are, then, you inconsistent creature," he cried with a laugh; "after all you do believe me. You recognize how benighted it would be for your daughter not to feel that Fanny's bad."
"You're too tiresome, my dear man," Mrs. Brook returned, "with your ridiculous simplifications. Fanny's not 'bad'; she's magnificently good—in the sense of being generous and simple and true, too adorably unaffected and without the least mesquinerie. She's a great calm silver statue."
Mr.Cashmore showed, on this, something of the strength that comes from the practice of public debate. "Then why are you glad that your daughter doesn't like her?"
Mrs. Brook smiled as with the sadness of having too much to triumph. "Because I'm not, like Fanny, without mesquinerie, I'm not generous and simple. I'm exaggeratedly anxious about Nanda. I care, in spite of myself, for what people may say. Your wife doesn't—she towers above them. I can be a shade less brave through the chance of my girl's not happening to feel her as the rest of us do."
Mr. Cashmore too heavily followed. "To 'feel' her?"
Mrs. Brook floated over. "There would be, in that case perhaps, something to hint to her not to shriek on the house-tops. When you say," she continued, "that one admits, as regards Fanny, anything wrong, you pervert dreadfully what one does freely grant—that she's a great glorious pagan. It's a real relief to know such a type—it's like a flash of insight into history. None the less, if you ask me why then it isn't all right for young things to 'shriek' as I say, I have my answer perfectly ready." After which, as her visitor seemed not only too reduced to doubt it, but too baffled to distinguish audibly, for his credit, between resignation and admiration, she produced: "Because she's purely instinctive. Her instincts are splendid—but it's terrific."
"That's all I ever maintained it to be!" Mr. Cashmore cried. "It is terrific."
"Well," his friend answered, "I'm watching her. We're all watching her. It's like some great natural poetic thing—an Alpine sunrise or a big high tide."
"You're amazing!" Mr. Cashmore laughed. "I'm watching her too."
"And I'm also watching you," Mrs. Brook lucidly continued. "What I don't for a moment believe is that her bills are paid by any one. It's much more probable," she sagaciously observed, "that they're not paid at all."
"Oh, well, if she can get on that way—!"
"There can't be a place in London," Mrs. Brook pursued, "where they're not delighted to dress such a woman. She shows things, don't you see? as some great massive wall shows placards and posters. And what proof can you adduce?" she asked.
Mr. Cashmore had grown restless; he picked a stray thread off the knee of his trousers. "Ah, when you talk about 'adducing'—!" He appeared to intimate, as if with the hint that if she didn't take care she might bore him, that it was the kind of word he used only in the House of Commons.
"When I talk about it you can't meet me," she placidly returned. But she fixed him with her weary penetration. "You try to believe what you can't believe, in order to give yourself excuses. And she does the same—only less, for she recognizes less, in general, the need of them. She's so grand and simple."
Poor Mr. Cashmore stared. "Grander and simpler than I, you mean?"
Mrs. Brookenham thought. "Not simpler—no; but very much grander. She wouldn't, in the case you conceive, recognize really the need of what you conceive."
Mr. Cashmore wondered—it was almost mystic. "I don't understand you."
Mrs. Brook seeing it all from dim depths, tracked it further and further. "We've talked her over so!"
Mr. Cashmore groaned as if too conscious of it. "Indeed we have!"
"I mean we"—and it was wonderful how her accent discriminated. "We've talked you too—but of course we talk every one." She had a pause through which there glimmered a ray from luminous hours, the inner intimacy which, privileged as he was, he couldn't pretend to share; then she broke out almost impatiently: "We're looking after her—leave her to us!"
He looked suddenly so curious as to seem really envious, but he tried to throw it off. "I doubt if, after all, you're good for her."
But Mrs. Brookenham knew. "She's just the sort of person we are good for, and the thing for her is to be with us as much as possible—just live with us naturally and easily, listen to our talk, feel our confidence in her, be kept up, don't you know? by the sense of what we expect of her splendid type, and so, little by little, let our influence act. What I meant to say just now is that I do perfectly see her taking what you call presents."
"Well, then," Mr. Cashmore inquired, "what do you want more?"
Mrs. Brook hung fire an instant—she seemed on the point of telling him. "I don't see her, as I said, recognizing the obligation."
"The obligation—?"
"To give anything back. Anything at all." Mrs. Brook was positive. "The comprehension of petty calculations? Never!"
"I don't say the calculations are petty," Mr. Cashmore objected.
"Well, she's a great creature. If she does fall—"His hostess lost herself in the view, which was at last all before her. "Be sure we shall all know it."
"That's exactly what I'm afraid of!"
"Then don't be afraid till we do. She would fall, as it were, on us, don't you see? and," said Mrs. Brook with decision this time in her head-shake, "that couldn't be. We must keep her up—that's your guarantee. It's rather too much," she added with the same increase of briskness, "to have to keep you up too. Be very sure that if Carrie really wavers—"
"Carrie?"
His interruption was clearly too vague to be sincere, and it was as such that, going straight on, she treated it. "I shall never again give her three minutes' attention. To answer to you for Fanny without being able—"
"To answer to Fanny for me, do you mean?" He had flushed quickly as if he awaited her there. "It wouldn't suit you, you contend? Well then, I hope it will ease you off," he went on with spirit, "to know that I wholly loathe Mrs. Donner."
Mrs. Brook, staring, met the announcement with an absolute change of color. "And since when, pray?" It was as if a fabric had crumbled. "She was here but the other day, and as full of you, poor thing, as an egg of meat."
Mr. Cashmore could only blush for her. "I don't say she wasn't. My life's a burden from her."
Nothing, for a spectator, could have been so odd as Mrs. Brook's disappointment unless it had been her determination. "Have you done with her already?"
"One has never done with a buzzing insect—"
"Until one has literally killed it?" Mrs. Brookenham wailed. "I can't take that from you, my dear man: it was yourself who originally distilled the poison that courses through her veins." He jumped up, at this, as if he couldn't bear it, presenting as he walked across the room, however, a large, foolish, fugitive back, on which her eyes rested as on a proof of her penetration. "If you spoil everything by trying to deceive me, how can I help you?"
He had looked, in his restlessness, at a picture or two, but he finally turned round. "With whom is it you talk us over? With Petherton and his friend Mitchy? With your adored Vanderbank? With your awful Duchess?"
"You know my little circle, and you've not always despised it." She met him on his return with a figure that had visibly flashed out for her. "Don't foul your own nest! Remember that, after all, we've more or less produced you." She had a smile that attenuated a little her image, for there were things that, on a second thought, he appeared ready to take from her. She patted the sofa as if to invite him again to be seated, and, though he still stood before her, it was with a face that seemed to show how her touch went home. "You know I've never quite thought you do us full honor, but it was because she took you for one of us that Carrie first—"
At this, to stop her, he dropped straight into the seat. "I assure you there has really been nothing." With a continuation of his fidget he pulled out his watch. "Won't she come in at all?"
"Do you mean Nanda?"
"Talk me over with her," he smiled, "if you like. If you don't believe Mrs. Donner is dust and ashes to me," he continued, "you do little justice to your daughter."
"Do you wish to break it to me that you're in love with her?"
He hesitated, but only as if to give weight to his reply. "Awfully. I can't tell you how I like her."
She wondered. "And pray how will that help me? Help me, I mean, to help you. Is it what I'm to tell your wife?"
He sat looking away, but he evidently had his idea, which he at last produced. "Why wouldn't it be just the thing? It would exactly prove my purity."
There might have been in her momentary silence a hint of acceptance of it as a practical contribution to their problem, and there were indeed several lights in which it could be considered. Mrs. Brook, on a quick survey, selected the ironic. "I see, I see. I might, by the same law, arrange somehow that Lady Fanny should find herself in love with Edward. That would 'prove' her purity. And you could be quite at ease," she laughed—"he wouldn't make any presents!"
Mr. Cashmore regarded her with a candor that was almost a reproach to her mirth. "I like your daughter better than I like you."
But it only amused her more. "Is that perhaps because I don't prove your purity?"
What he might have replied remained in the air, for the door opened so exactly at the moment she spoke that he rose again with a start and the butler, coming in, received her inquiry full in the face. This functionary's answer to it, however, had no more than the usual austerity. "Mr. Vanderbank and Mr. Longdon."
These visitors took a minute to appear, and Mrs. Brook, not stirring—still only looking, from the sofa, calmly up at Mr. Cashmore—used the time, it might have seemed, for correcting any impression of undue levity made by her recent question. "Where did you last meet Nanda?"
He glanced at the door to see if he were heard. "At the Grendons'."
"So you do go there?"
"I went over from Hicks the other day for an hour."
"And Carrie was there?"
"Yes. It was a dreadful horrid bore. But I talked only to your daughter."
She got up—the others were at hand, and she offered Mr. Cashmore a face that might have struck him as strange. "It's serious."
"Serious?"—he had no eyes for the others.
"She didn't tell me."
He gave a sound, controlled by discretion, which sufficed, none the less, to make Mr. Longdon—beholding him for the first time—receive it with a little of the stiffness of a person greeted with a guffaw. Mr. Cashmore visibly liked this silence of Nanda's about their meeting.