Mr. Longdon

“ Mr. Longdon for an instant lost himself. “Yes, I remember—one heard of those things at the time. And SHE must have had something.”
“Yes indeed, she had something—and she always has her intense cleverness. She knows thoroughly how. They do it tremendously well.”
“Tremendously well,” Mr. Longdon intelligently echoed. “But a house in Buckingham Crescent, with the way they seem to have built through to all sorts of other places—?”
“Oh they’re all right,” Vanderbank soothingly dropped.
“One likes to feel that of people with whom one has dined. There are four children?” ”

“ Longdon's eyes travelled awhile over the amenities about him. "He hasn't such a view of himself alone—"
"As to make him think he's enough as he stands? No," said Mitchy, "I don't fancy he has a very awful view of himself alone. And since we are burning this incense under his nose," he added, "it's also my impression that he has no private means. Women in London want so much."
Mr. Longdon was silent a little. "A very great deal, I dare say."
"Oh, a tremendous lot. They want everything. I mean the sort of women he lives with. A modest man—who's also poor—isn't in it. ”

“ Vanderbank had asked of Mr. Longdon on rejoining him in his retreat. The old man, with his back turned, was gazing out of the window, and when, in answer, he showed his face, there were tears in his eyes. His answer, in fact, was just these tears, the significance of which Vanderbank immediately recognized. "It's still greater then than you gathered from her photograph."
"It's the most extraordinary thing in the world. I'm too absurd to be so upset"—Mr. Longdon smiled through his tears—"but if you had known Lady Julia you would understand. ”

“ Nanda's visitor looked so far about as to take the neighborhood in general into the confidence of his surprise. "To neglect me?"
"Well, others too, I believe—with whom we're not concerned. He has been so taken up. But you above all."
Mr. Longdon showed, on this, a coldness that somehow spoke for itself as the greatest with which he had ever in his life met an act of reparation, and that was infinitely confirmed by his sustained immobility. ”

“ He said he hadn't seen you."
"He has quite sufficiently tried—he has left cards," Mr. Longdon returned. "What more does he want?"
Nanda looked at him with her long, grave straightness, which had often a play of light beyond any smile. "Oh, you know, he does want more."
"Then it was open to him—"
"So he so strongly feels"—she quickly took him up—"that you must have felt. And therefore it is that I speak for him."
"Don't!" said Mr. Longdon. ”

“ Longdon had left it? Our friend doubtless averted himself from the possibility of a mental dilemma; if the man didn't lower the position, was it the position then that let down the man? Somehow he wasn't positively up. More evidence would be needed to decide; yet it was just of more evidence that one remained rather in dread. Lord Petherton was kind to little Aggie, kind to her companion, kind to every one, after Mr. Longdon had explained that she was so good as to be giving him the list of her dear friends. ”

“ Longdon objected.
"Oh, I admit I'm the one he least dislikes. But if I had any money," Nanda went on, "or if I were really good-looking—for that to-day, the real thing, will do as well as being a Duke's daughter—he wouldn't come near me. And I think that ought to settle it. Besides, he must marry Aggie. She's a beggar-maid too—as well as an angel; so there's nothing against it."
Mr. Longdon stared, but even in his surprise seemed to take from the swiftness with which she made him move over the ground a certain agreeable glow. "Does 'Aggie' like him?"
"She likes every one. ”

“ Mr. Longdon was now fairly abreast of it. “What it comes to then, the idea you’re so good as to put before me, is to bribe him to take her.”
The Duchess remained bland, but she fixed him. “You say that as if you were scandalised, but if you try Mr. Van with it I don’t think he’ll be. And you won’t persuade me,” she went on finely, “that you haven’t yourself thought of it.” She kept her eyes on him, and the effect of them, soon enough visible in his face, was such as presently to make her exult at her felicity. “You’re of a limpidity, dear man—you’ve only to be said ‘bo!’ to and you confess. ”

“ We’re lost—and you find us.” Mr. Longdon, as he spoke, had prepared at last really to go, reaching the door with a manner that denoted, however, by no means so much satiety as an attention that felt itself positively too agitated. Vanderbank had helped him on with the Inverness cape and for an instant detained him by it. “Just tell me as a kindness. DO we talk—”
“Too freely?” Mr. Longdon, with his clear eyes so untouched by time, speculatively murmured. ”

“ Nanda looked about her as if weighing many things; after which her eyes came back to him. "Do you mind if I don't sit down?"
"I don't mind if you stand on your head—at the pass we've come to."
"I shall not try your patience," the girl good-humoredly replied, "so far as that. I only want you not to be worried if I walk about a little."
Mr. Longdon, without a movement, kept his posture. "Oh, I can't oblige you there. I shall be worried. I've come on purpose to be worried, and the more I surrender myself to the rack the more, I seem to feel, we shall have threshed our business out. ”

“ Fancy 'getting' Mr. Longdon anything or anywhere whatever! Don't you feel," Vanderbank threw out, "how the impossibility of exerting that sort of patronage for him immediately places him?"
Mrs. Brook gave her companion one of those fitful glances of almost grateful appreciation with which their intercourse was even at its darkest hours frequently illumined. ”

“ An observer at all initiated would, at the juncture, fairly have hung on his lips, and there was in fact on Vanderbank’s part quite the look of the man—though it lasted but just while we seize it—in suspense about himself. The most initiated observer of all would have been poor Mr. Longdon, in that case destined, however, to be also the most defeated, with the sign of his tension a smothered “Ah if he doesn’t do it NOW!” ”

“ Mr. Longdon put by with a mere drop of his eyes the question of his suffering: there was so clearly for him an issue more relevant. “What do you know of my ‘plan’?”
“Why, my dear man, haven’t I told you that ever since Mertle I’ve made out your hand? What on earth for other people can your action look like but an adoption?”
“Of—a—HIM?”
“You’re delightful. Of—a—HER! If it does come to the same thing for you, so much the better. That at any rate is what we’re all taking it for, and Mrs. Brook herself en tete. ”

“ Mrs. Brook said while Mr. Longdon took his place and Vanderbank looked out for another seat. “But I didn’t know,” she observed with her sweet free curiosity, “that he called you ‘sir.’” She often made discoveries that were fairly childlike. “He has done it twice.”
“Isn’t that only your inevitable English surprise,” the Duchess demanded, “at the civility quite the commonest in other societies?—so that one has to come here to find it regarded, in the way of ceremony, as the very end of the world!”
“Oh,” Mr. Longdon remarked, “it’s a word I rather like myself even to employ to others.” ”

“ Mr. Longdon just hesitated. “Yes.”
“It must be the sacred terror,” Mrs. Brook suggested to Van, “that Mitchy so often speaks of. I’M not trying with you,” she went on to Mr. Longdon, “for anything of that kind, but only for the short half-hour in private that I think you won’t for the world grant me. Nothing will induce you to find yourself alone with me.”
“Why what on earth,” Vanderbank asked, “do you suspect him of supposing you want to do?”
“Oh it isn’t THAT,” Mrs. Brook sadly said.
“It isn’t what?” laughed the Duchess. ”

“ The things that are unlike—well, are so very unlike." Mr. Longdon, for a moment, on this, fixed his companion with eyes that betrayed one of the restless little jumps of his mind. "I told you just now that there's something I seem to make out in you."
"Yes, that was meant for better things?"—Vanderbank gaily took him up. "There is something, I really believe—meant for ever so much better ones. Those are just the sort I like to be supposed to have a real affinity with. Help me to them, Mr. Longdon ”

“ Longdon, “you must know Petherton.”
The elder man remained vague and not imperceptibly cold. “Petherton?”
“My brother-in-law—whom, God knows why, Mitchy runs.”
“Runs?” Mr. Longdon again echoed.
Mrs. Brook appealed afresh to Vanderbank. “I think we ought to spare him. I may not remind you of mamma,” she continued to their companion, “but I hope you don’t mind my saying how much you remind me. Explanations, after all, spoil things, and if you CAN make anything of us and will sometimes come back you’ll find everything in its native freshness. You’ll see, you’ll feel for yourself.” ”

“ I want to show you," he continued, "what life can give. Not, of course," he subjoined, "of this sort of thing."
"No—you've told me. Of peace."
"Of peace," said Mr. Longdon. "Oh, you don't know—you haven't the least idea. That's just why I want to show you."
Nanda looked as if already she saw it in the distance. "But will it be peace if I'm there? I mean for you," she added.
"It isn't a question of 'me.' Everybody's omelette is made of somebody's eggs. Besides, I think that when we're alone together—"
He had dropped for so long that she wondered. "Well, when we are—?" ”

“ Mr. Cashmore exclaimed, "against anything of the sort! I defy you to 'arrange' that young lady in any such manner without also arranging me. I'm one of her greatest admirers," he gaily announced to Mr. Longdon.
Vanderbank said nothing, and Mr. Longdon seemed to show that he would have preferred to do the same: the old man's eyes might have represented an appeal to him somehow to intervene, to show the due acquaintance, springing from practice and wanting in himself, with the art of conversation developed to the point at which it could thus sustain a lady in the upper air. ”

“ But it doesn’t matter. We all call everything—anything. The meaning of it, if you and I put it so, is—well, a modern shade.”
“You must deal then yourself,” said Mr. Longdon, “with your modern shades.” He spoke now as if the case simply awaited such dealing.
But at this his young friend was more grave. “YOU could do nothing?—to bring, I mean, Mrs. Brook round.”
Mr. Longdon fairly started. “Propose on your behalf for her daughter? With your authority—tomorrow. Authorise me and I instantly act.”
Vanderbank’s colour again rose—his flush was complete. “How awfully you want it!” ”

“ Mr. Longdon, focussing the effect of the sketch, pointed its moral with an indulgent: “Oh well, a FOREIGN duchess!” He could make his distinctions.
“Yes, she’s invidiously, cruelly foreign,” Vanderbank agreed: “I’ve never indeed seen a woman avail herself so cleverly, to make up for the obloquy of that state, of the benefits and immunities it brings with it. She has bloomed in the hot-house of her widowhood—she’s a Neapolitan hatched by an incubator.”
“A Neapolitan?”—Mr. Longdon seemed all civilly to wish he had only known it. ”

“ He gave a vague but expressive sigh. "She's rather lovely, little Aggie."
Mr. Longdon looked conspicuously subtle. "Then perhaps you're the man—"
"Do I look like a great one?" Vanderbank broke in.
His visitor, turning away from him, again embraced the room. "Oh dear, yes!"
"Well then, to show how right you are, there's the young lady." He pointed to an object on one of the tables, a small photograph with a very wide border of something that looked like crimson fur.
Mr. Longdon took up the picture; he was serious now. "She's very beautiful—but she's not a little girl." ”

“ Longdon: "The point about Aggie's conservative education is the wonderful sincerity with which the Duchess feels that one's girl may so perfectly and consistently be hedged in without one's really ever (for it comes to that,) depriving one's own self—"
"Well, of what?" Mr. Longdon boldly demanded while his hostess appeared thoughtfully to falter.
She addressed herself mutely to Vanderbank, in whom the movement produced a laugh. "I defy you," he exclaimed, "to say!"
"Well, you don't defy me!" Mr. Cashmore cried as Mrs. Brook failed to take up the challenge. ”

“ Brook?"
"Well, the thing that would be the complication. He hasn't gone beyond a certain point. You may ask how one knows such matters, but I'm afraid I've not quite a receipt for it. A woman knows, but she can't tell. They haven't done, as it's called, anything wrong."
Mr. Longdon frowned. "It would be extremely horrid if they had."
"Ah, but, for you and me who know life, it isn't that that—if other things had made for it—would have prevented! As it happens, however, we've got off easily. ”

“ Vanderbank was my own idea.”
“I wasn’t thinking,” Nanda said, “of your snatching me. I was thinking of your snatching yourself.”
“I might have sent YOU to the house? Well,” Mr. Longdon replied, “I find I take more and more the economical view of my pleasures. I run them less and less together. I get all I can out of each.”
“So now you’re getting all you can out of ME?”
“All I can, my dear—all I can.” He watched a little the flushed distance, then mildly broke out: “It IS, as you said just now, exciting! ”

“ Longdon as conscious of an absence of prejudice would have been justified for a spectator by the particular feeling that Mr. Cashmore’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 guessing 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?” ”