Vanda

“ Much she cared about that, indeed!—She was sure now to free herself and to succeed.
"You are jolly right," said the ancient danseuse. "The nest is entirely at the birds' disposal. Your minister—I don't ask his name, but I shall learn it by the bills of exchange—would treat you as a grisette if he found you at your uncle's. Whereas at Vanda's—ah! at Vanda's! you will have news to tell me. So, see this is all that is necessary. I will write to Vanda that her house is rented, and well rented. Kiss me and skip! I hear Adolphe coming. He does not care to see new faces. ”

“ He felt he must; it might atone for his fault of feeling that great load off his heart now he knew Vanda would be his. Then he remembered the Cossack colonel's card. He had promised to fight, had insisted on being drafted into a hard-fighting regiment. But that was an hour ago. That was when thoughts of Vanda were pain, and he did not so much mind if he got killed. Now, he hated the idea of it. If he got killed soon he would be no more married to her than Joseph had been. He rebelled. Why should he go and get killed? Russia had plenty of men. ”

“ There are those who pronounce Vanda Sanderiana the stateliest of all orchids. To compare such numberless and varied forms of beauty is rather childish. But it will be allowed that a first view of those enormous flowers, ten or more upon a stalk—lilac above, pale cinnamon below, covered with a network of crimson lines—is a memorable sensation for the elect.
We may fancy the emotions of Mr. Roebelin on seeing it—the earliest of articulate mortals so favoured. ”

“ Dinner is only waiting for you."
When he was once more seated in his old place on the right hand of Katrina, Erik was able to look around him, and mark the changes that two years had made in the family. Otto was now a large, robust boy of sixteen years of age, and who looked twenty. As for Vanda, two years had added wonderfully to her size and beauty. Her countenance had become more refined. Her magnificent blonde hair, which lay in heavy braids upon her shoulders, formed around her forehead a light silvery cloud. ”

“ Large blocks of syenite were scattered amongst these wonderful erections.
Splendid trees of Bombax, fig and banyan, overshadowed them: the largest banyan had a trunk five feet in diameter, clear of the buttresses, and numerous small trees of Celtic grew out of it, and an immense flowering tuft of Vanda caerulea (the rarest and most beautiful of Indian orchids) flourished on one of its limbs. A small plantain with austere woolly scarlet fruit, bearing ripe seeds, was planted in this sacred grove, where trees of the most tropical genera grew mixed with the pine, birch, Myrica, and Viburnum. ”

“ When one thinks of that murderous school at Cowan Bridge it is hard to restrain one’s feelings.’
‘Some people love moors and fells,’ argued Vanda; ‘there’s a wild and rugged grandeur about them; and Yorkshiremen, next to the Scots, are among the boldest of the races of Britain. Look at the men and women we watched going to that mill!’
‘All very well,’ said her unconvinced sister. ‘The climate kills off the weak ones ”

“ Father Constantine spoke first.
"There is the high-road," he said in a detached way he had.
"Well?" said Ian.
"The troops won't make trenches in that, because it forms one of the lines of communication between Warsaw and Prussia. If we make a hole, lined with cement and moss, put some sausages over the jewels, with hard earth between, they ought to be safe. For anybody who found the sausages wouldn't go further down. We mustn't choose a spot near trees, for they will get felled and the ground torn up around them."
"There are two versts without trees, after you pass the windmills," said Vanda. ”

“ Here Vandalia gave me a sketch of her own life. She was the eldest of the family, and was born twenty-four years ago, on a farm in the mountains near Tehana. Her father at that time reared herds of olgommeras and flanillas; also cultivated the ground, and grew grain and fruits. Their house was in a picturesque neighbourhood, on the slope of a hill, just above a rapid stream that made an everlasting murmur as it tumbled over rock and precipice on its way to the sea. ”

“ Silas T. Vandam, the millionaire and oil magnate, was a lean man with a long, yellow face and blue-black hair, colours which were the less conspicuous yet somehow the more sinister because his face and figure showed dark against the window and the white warehouse wall outside it; he was buttoned up tight in an elegant overcoat with strips of astrakhan. The eager face and brilliant eyes of Wynd, on the other hand, were in the full light from the other window overlooking the little garden, for his chair and desk stood facing it ”

“ Why, here is Philip Vandal, for example. He loves his kind so much that he has not a word softer than a brickbat for a single mother's son of them. He goes about to save them by proving that not one of them is worth damning. ”

“ We do the breathing into our own nostrils out in Oklahoma. What's the meaning of the very word Spirit? It's just the Greek for breathing exercises. Life, progress, prophecy; it's all breath."
"Some would allow it's all wind," said Vandam; "but I'm glad you've got rid of the divinity stunt, anyhow."
The keen face of the secretary, rather pale against his red hair, showed a flicker of some odd feeling suggestive of a secret bitterness.
"I'm not glad," he said, "I'm just sure. You seem to like being atheists; so you may be just believing what you like to believe. ”

“ And beside it a strange ornament,--a bronze half-circle with characters inscribed on it, not Latin, Greek, nor Hebrew. No matter. The girl's bones shall not remain scattered in the desert. The Christian shall sleep in consecrated ground. The peasants must help me to bury her here or in the neighborhood."
He went to Decimum. The traces of the Vandal battle had long since vanished. The village children who had then fled were now grown men, the owners of the houses and fields. ”

“ Vandam was a bit jealous—I don't know. But she, too, had an interest in spiritualism, though he was much more deeply influenced by Mrs. Popper than she.
“Here's the strange part of it. The old man believes so thoroughly in rappings and materialisations that he constantly keeps a notebook in his pocket in which he records all the materialisations he thinks he sees and the rappings he hears, along with the time and place. Now it so happened that on the night Mrs. Vandam was taken ill, he had retired—I believe in another part of the house, where he has a regular seance-room. ”

“ But it’s just that,” said Vanderbank, “that makes one feel so base. I’ve been ferociously busy.”
“He knows that—he likes it,” Nanda returned. “He delights in your work. And I’ve done what I can for him.”
“Ah,” said her companion, “you’ve evidently brought him round. I mean to this lady.”
“To Tishy? Oh of course I can’t leave her—with nobody.”
“No”—Vanderbank became jocose again—“that’s a London necessity. You can’t leave anybody with nobody—exposed to everybody.”
Mild as it was, however, Nanda missed the pleasantry. “Mr. Grendon’s not here.” ”

“ Tea on the terrace,” Vanderbank went on, “isn’t ‘in’ it. But who’s here?”
“Oh every one. All your set.”
“Mine? Have I still a set—with the universal vagabondism you accuse me of?”
“Well then Mitchy’s—whoever they are.”
“And nobody of yours?”
“Oh yes,” Nanda said, “all mine. He must at least have arrived by this time. My set’s Mr. Longdon,” she explained. “He’s all of it now.”
“Then where in the world am I?”
“Oh you’re an extra. There are always extras.”
“A complete set and one over?” Vanderbank laughed. “Where then’s Tishy?” ”

“ Vanderbank said on this, “if you understood to the full how I keep on admiring you. Only what stupefies me a little,” he continued, “is the extraordinary critical freedom—or we may call it if we like the high intellectual detachment—with which we discuss a question touching you, dear Mrs. Brook, so nearly and engaging so your private and most sacred sentiments. What are we playing with, after all, but the idea of Nanda’s happiness?” ”

“ So speak, Nanda; bare your heart to me."
"Brother," replied Nanda, "I doubt if you would understand, for you once spurned sovereign power I and you deserted loving Gopa!"
"You expect to be king some day, and that is why you are happy, Nanda!"
"Yes. And I am also happy because I love Sundarika, and because Sundarika will soon be my bride."
"Poor man!" cried the Master. "How can you be happy, you who live in darkness? Would you see the light? Then first rid yourself of happiness: fear is born of happiness, fear and suffering. He neither fears nor suffers who no longer knows happiness. ”

“ Nanda seemed for an instant to wish to say that one might deny the queerness, but she said something else instead. “I suppose a man like you doesn’t quite feel that he IS beholden. It’s awfully good of him—it’s doing a great deal for anybody—that he should come down at all; so that it would add immensely to his burden if anybody had to be remembered for it.”
“I don’t know what you mean by a man ‘like me,’” Vanderbank returned. “I’m not any particular kind of a man.” ”

“ Vanderbank hesitated. "You mean I managed him so well?"
"I don't know how you managed him, but liking me has been for him a painful, gradual process. I think he does now," Nanda declared. "He accepts me at last as different—he's trying with me on that basis. He has ended by understanding that when he talks to me of Granny I can't even imagine her."
Vanderbank puffed away, "I can."
"That's what Mitchy says too. But you've both probably got her wrong."
"I don't know," said Vanderbank—"I've gone into it a good deal. But it's too late. We can't be Greeks if we would." ”

“ Van’s amusement took it up. “That we were most detrimental?”
“Yes, because of course what’s so awfully unutterable is just what we most notice. Tishy knows that,” Nanda wonderfully observed.
As the reflexion of her tone might have been caught by an observer in Vanderbank’s face it was in all probability caught by his interlocutress, who superficially, however, need have recognised there—what was all she showed—but the right manner of waiting for dinner. “The better way then is to dash right in? That’s what our friend here does?” ”

“ It's when you live with them, you see, that you know. Everything in the place is such good company."
"Your mother ought to be here," Vanderbank presently suggested. "She's so fond of good company." Then as Nanda answered nothing he went on: "Was your grandmother ever?"
"Never," the girl promptly said. "Never," she repeated in a tone quite different. After which she added: "I'm the only one."
"Oh, and I. 'Me and you,' as they say," her companion amended.
"Yes, and Mr. Mitchy, who's to come down—please don't forget—this afternoon."
Vanderbank had another of his contemplative pauses. ”

“ Nanda asked. “Has he been taken ill?”
“He IS ‘rum,’ my dear Van,” Mitchy said; “but you’re right—of a charm, a distinction! In short just the sort of thing we want.”
“The sort of thing we ‘want’—I dare say!” Vanderbank laughed. “But it’s not the sort of thing that’s to be had for the asking—it’s a sort we shall be mighty lucky if we can get!”
Mitchy turned with amusement to Nanda. “Van has invented him and, with the natural greed of the inventor, won’t let us have him cheap. Well,” he went on, “I’ll ‘stand’ my share.” ”

“ Vanderbank said musingly and kindly.
"Yes; one knows on the whole what she won't do." After which, for a period, Mitchy roamed and reflected. "But in spite of the assurance given you by Mr. Longdon—or perhaps indeed just because of your having taken it—I think I ought to mention to you my belief that Nanda does know of his offer to you. I mean having guessed it."
"Oh!" said Vanderbank.
"There's in fact more still," his companion pursued, "that I feel I should like to mention to you."
"Oh!" Vanderbank at first only repeated. But after a moment he said: "My dear fellow, I'm much obliged." ”

“ Vanderbank took it up with zeal. “Oh so every one thinks, and in fact one’s appreciation of the charming things in that way so intensely her own can scarcely breathe on them all lightly enough. And then, hang it, she has perceptions—which are not things that run about the streets. She has surprises.” He almost broke down for vividness. “She has little ways.”
“Well, I’m glad you do like her,” Nanda gravely replied. ”

“ Van replied to Mrs. Grendon, “that—like the traveller in the desert, isn’t it?—I only make out, as an oasis or a mirage, a sweet green rustling blur. I don’t trust you.”
“I don’t trust YOU,” Nanda said on her friend’s behalf. “She isn’t ‘green’—men are amazing: they don’t know the dearest old blue that ever was seen.”
“IS it your ‘OLD blue’?” Vanderbank, monocular, very earnestly asked. “I can imagine it was ‘dear,’ but I should have thought—!”
“It was yellow”—Nanda helped him out—“if I hadn’t kindly told you.” Tishy’s figure showed the confidence of objects consecrated by publicity ”

“ Why, in other words—if it was to know so little about her and to get no nearer to her—did you secure Nanda's return?"
There was a clear reason, her face said, if she could only remember it. "Why did I—?" Then as catching a light: "Fancy your asking me—at this time of day!"
"Ah, you have noticed that I haven't asked before? However," Van promptly added, "I know well enough what you notice. Nanda hasn't mentioned to you whether or no she has heard?"
"Absolutely not. But you don't suppose, I take it, that it was to pry into her affairs that I called her in." ”