Mitchy

“ She had an intense look for Mitchy; then she said to the man: "Ask him to wait three minutes—I'll ring;" turning again to her visitor as soon as they were alone. "You don't know how I'm trusting you!"
"Trusting me?"
"Why, if he comes up to you."
Mitchy thought. "Hadn't I better go down?"
"No—you may have Edward back. If you see him, you must see him here. If I don't myself, it's for a reason."
Mitchy again just sounded her. "His not, as you awhile ago hinted—"
"Yes, caring for what I say." She had a pause, but she brought it out. "He doesn't believe a word—"
"Of what you tell him?" ”

“ Brook put in.
"She has a theory"—Vanderbank, from his chair, lighted it up for Mitchy, who hovered before them—"that your chance will come, later on, after I've given my measure."
"Oh, but that's exactly," Mitchy was quick to respond, "what you'll never do! You'll walk in magnificent mystery 'later on' not a bit less than you do to-day; you'll continue to have the benefit of everything that our imagination, perpetually engaged, often baffled and never fatigued, will continue to bedeck you with. ”

“ Mitchy threw out, “who have none?”
“Yes—people like you. People of no use, of no occupation and no importance. Like you, you know,” she pursued, “there are so many.” Then it was with no transition of tone that she added: “If you’re bad, Mitchy, I won’t tell you anything.”
“And if I’m good what will you tell me? What I want really most to KNOW is why he should be, as you said just now, ‘apologetic’ to Mr. Longdon. What’s the wrong he allows he has done HIM?” ”

“ Mr. Longdon wondered. "And Nanda too?"
"Oh, that must be between yourselves. Only, while I keep you here—"
"She understands my delay?"
Mitchy thought. "Mrs. Brook must have explained." Then as his companion took this in silence, "But you don't like it?" he inquired.
"It only comes to me that Mrs. Brook's explanations—!"
"Are often odd? Oh yes. But Nanda, you know, allows for that oddity. And Mrs. Brook, by the same token," Mitchy developed, "knows herself—no one better—what may frequently be thought of it. ”

“ Mitchy rang out.
“Without,” Nanda pursued, “being as good.” She had on this, in a different key, her own sudden explosion. “Don’t you see, Mitchy dear—for the very heart of it all—how good I BELIEVE you?”
She had spoken as with a flare of impatience at some justice he failed to do her, and this brought him after a startled instant close enough to her to take up her hand. She let him have it, and in mute solemn reassurance he raised it to his lips, saying to her thus more things than he could say in any other way ”

“ Mitchy laughed.
Mrs. Brook had got up and Vanderbank had gone again to the window. “That’s exactly why,” she returned. “You’re a pair of monsters and your monstrosity fits. She does know too much,” she added.
“Well,” said Mitchy with resolution, “it’s all my fault.”
“Not ALL—unless,” Mrs. Brook returned, “that’s only a sweet way of saying that it’s mostly mine.”
“Oh yours too—immensely; in fact every one’s. Even Edward’s, I dare say; and certainly, unmistakably, Harold’s. Ah and Van’s own—rather!” Mitchy continued; “for all he turns his back and will have nothing to say to it.” ”

“ What on earth," the girl pursued, "do you take us for?"
"Oh, it's all right!" breathed Mitchy, divinely pacific. "I'm sure I don't know whether it is; I shouldn't wonder if it were in fact all wrong. But what at least is certainly right is for one not to pretend anything else. There I am for you, at any rate. Now the beauty of Aggie is that she knows nothing—but absolutely, utterly: not the least little tittle of anything."
It was barely visible that Mitchy hesitated, and he spoke quite gravely. "Have you tried her?"
"Oh yes. And Tishy has." His gravity had been less than Nanda's. ”

“ Do you know Mitchy?" Mrs. Brook suddenly asked.
"Oh yes, he knows Mitchy"—Vanderbank had approached again.
"Then make him tell him"—she put it before the young man as a charming turn for them all. "Mitchy can be refined when he tries."
"Oh dear—when Mitchy 'tries'!" Vanderbank laughed. "I think I should rather, for the job, offer him to Mr. Longdon as abandoned to his native wild impulse."
"I like Mr. Mitchett," the old man said, endeavoring to look his hostess straight in the eye, and speaking as if somewhat to defy her to convict him, even from the point of view of Beccles, of a mistake. ”

“ Mitchy suggested, “he’s saving up to start a business. Harold’s irreproachable—hasn’t a vice. Who knows in these days what may happen? He sees further than any young man I know. Do let him save.”
She looked far away with her sweet world-weariness. “If you weren’t an angel it would be a horror to be talking to you. But I insist on knowing.” ”

“ You’re of a special class; one of those who, as we said the other day—don’t you remember?—are a source of the sacred terror. People made in such a way must take the consequences; just as people must take them,” Mitchy went on, “who are made as I am. So cheer up!”
Mitchy, uttering this incitement, had moved to the empty chair by the window, in which he presently was sunk; and it might have been in emulation of his previous strolling and straying that Vanderbank himself now began to revolve. The meditation he next threw out, however, showed a certain resistance to Mitchy’s advice. ”

“ Mitchy laughed. It possibly chilled his interlocutor, who again hung fire so long that he himself at last adopted his image. “Why doesn’t he marry, you mean?”
Mr. Longdon fairly flushed with recognition. “You’re very deep, but with what we perceive—why doesn’t he?”
Mitchy continued visibly to have his amusement, which might have been, this time and in spite of the amalgamation he had pictured, for what “they” perceived. But he threw off after an instant an answer clearly intended to meet the case. “He thinks he hasn’t the means. He has great ideas of what a fellow must offer a woman.” ”

“ Mitchett went on, "is that she takes no trouble to meet me."
"My dear Mitchy," said Mrs. Brookenham, "what do you know about 'trouble'—either poor Nanda's, or mine, or anybody's else? You've never had to take any in your life, you're the spoiled child of fortune, and you skim over the surface of things in a way that seems often to represent you as supposing that everybody else has wings. Most other people are sticking fast in their native mud." ”

“ Our disrespects, I think, are all tender, and we wouldn't for the world do to a person we don't like anything so nice as to call him, or even to call her, don't you know—?"
His questioner had quickly looked as if he knew. "Something pleasant and vulgar?"
Mitchy's gaiety deepened. "That discrimination is our only austerity. You must fall in."
"Then what will you call me?"
"What can we?" After which, sustainingly, "I'm 'Mitchy,'" our friend revealed.
His interlocutor looked sliglitly queer. "I don't think I can quite begin. I'm Mr. Longdon," he almost blushed to articulate. ”

“ Longdon's school of manners, a foreign tour might be treated, and Mitchy, no doubt, plentifully showed that none of his frequent returns had encountered a curiosity at once so explicit and so discreet. To belong to a circle in which most of the members might be at any moment on the other side of the globe was inevitably to fall into the habit of few questions, as well as into that of making up for their fewness by their freedom. ”

“ Ah that has nothing to do with it; that’s a thing without which surely it’s but too possible to be exquisite. There are beautiful, quite beautiful people who don’t care for me. The thing that’s important to one is the thing one sees one’s self, and it’s quite enough if I see what can be made of that child. Marry her, Mitchy, and you’ll see who she’ll care for!”
Mitchy kept his position; he was for the moment—his image of shortly before reversed—the one who appeared to sit happily and watch. “It’s too awfully pleasant your asking of me anything whatever!” ”

“ It’s your marriage, Mitchy, that has darkened our old bright air, changed us more than we even yet know, and most grossly and horribly, my dear man, changed YOU. You steal up in a way that gives one the creeps, whereas in the good time that’s gone you always burst in with music and song. ”

“ Mitchy loyally responded. "For how can, how need, a woman be 'proud' who's so preternaturally clever? Pride's only for use when wit breaks down—it's the train the cyclist takes when his tire's deflated. When that happens to your tire, Mrs. Brook, you'll let me know. And you do make me wonder just now," he confessed, "why you're taking such particular precautions and throwing out such a cloud of skirmishers. If you want to shoot me dead a single bullet will do." He faltered but an instant before completing his sense. ”

“ You try to get us, by bribery, into the inferior place, because, proud as you are, it bores you a little that you like us so much. But we won't go—at least I won't. You may make Van," she wonderfully continued. "There's nothing you wouldn't do for him or give him." Mitchy admired her from his position, slowly shaking his head with it. "He's the man—with no fortune, and just as he is, to the smallest particular—whom you would have liked to be, whom you intensely envy, and yet to whom you're magnanimous enough to be ready for almost any sacrifice." ”

“ So for a moment they stood confronted. "Not perhaps as you would have tried to make me."
"Well, you've still got me, you know."
"Oh," said Mitchy, "I've got a great deal. How, if I really look at it, can a man of my peculiar nature—it is, you know, awfully peculiar—not be happy? Think, if one is driven to it, for instance, of the breadth of my sympathies."
Mrs. Brook, as a result of thinking, appeared for a little to demur. "Yes—but one mustn't be too much driven to it. It's by one's sympathies that one suffers. ”

“ If it consists only of me and Mitchy he's not so very low down. We don't allow her very many friends; we look out too well for ourselves." He addressed the child as on an easy jocose understanding. "Is the question, Aggie, whether we shall allow you Mr. Longdon? Won't that rather 'do' for us—for Mitchy and me? I say, Duchess," he went on as this lady reappeared, "are we going to allow her Mr. Longdon, and do we quite realize what we're about? ”

“ All of which didn't prevent some of Mitchy's queer condonations—if condonations in fact they were—from not wholly, by themselves, soothing his vague unrest, an unrest which never had been so great as at the moment he heard the Duchess abruptly say to him: "Do you know my idea about Nanda? It's my particular desire that you should—the reason, really, why I've thus laid violent hands on you. Nanda, my dear man, should marry the very first moment." ”

“ Brook?” Mitchy responded with interest. “The worse things are, let me just mention to you about that, the better they seem positively to be for one’s feeling up in the language. They’re more difficult, the bad ones—and there’s a lot in that. All the young men know it—those who are going up for exams.”
She had her eyes for a little on Lord Petherton and her husband; then as if she had not heard what her interlocutor had just said she overcame her last scruple. “Dear Mitchy, has he had money from you?” ”

“ Mitchy still accepted the prophecy only to control it. "Do you call eighty middle life? Why, my moral beauty, my dear woman—if that's what you mean by my genius—is precisely my curse. What on earth is left for a man just rotten with goodness! It renders necessary the kind of liking that renders unnecessary anything else."
"Now that is cheap paradox!" Vanderbank patiently sighed. "You're down for a fine."
It was with less of the patience perhaps that Mrs. Brook took this up. "Yes, on that we are stiff. Five pounds, please."
Mitchy drew out his pocket-book even though he explained. ”

“ The amiable Mitchy had straightway obliged his companion and he as promptly took in the effect of the diminished light on the character of the room, which he commended as if the depth of shadow produced were all this companion had sought. He might freshly have brought home to Vanderbank that a man sensitive to so many different things, and thereby always sure of something or other, could never really be incommoded ”

“ Mitchy spoke as if his friend's last words were not of consequence, and he continued as Vanderbank got up and, moving rather aimlessly, came and stood with his back to the chimney. "My only hesitation would have been caused by its entailing our going down into things in a way that, face to face—given the private nature of the things—I dare say most men don't particularly enjoy. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Mitchy on this turned off with an ambiguous but unmistakeably natural sigh; he looked at photographs, he took up a book or two as Vanderbank had done, and for a couple of minutes there was silence between them. “What does stretch before me,” he resumed after an interval during which clearly, in spite of his movements, he had looked at nothing—“what does stretch before me is the happy prospect of my feeling that I’ve found in you a friend with whom, so utterly and unreservedly, I can always go to the bottom of things. ”