“In the matter of time? Oh yes, I do want it DONE. That,” Nanda’s patron simply explained, “is why I myself put on the screw.” He spoke with the ring of impatience. “I want her got out.”
Vanderbank laughed though--more immediately--he had coloured. “Why, her mother’s house is just where I see her!”
“Precisely; and if it only weren’t we might get on faster.”
Vanderbank, for all his kindness, looked still more amused. “But if it only weren’t, as you say, I seem to understand you wouldn’t have your particular vision of urgency.”
Mr. Longdon, through adjusted glasses, took him in with a look that was sad as well as sharp, then jerked the glasses off. “Oh you do understand.”
“Ah,” said Vanderbank, “I’m a mass of corruption!”
“You may perfectly be, but you shall not,” Mr. Longdon returned with decision, “get off on any such plea. If you’re good enough for me you’re good enough, as you thoroughly know, on whatever head, for any one.”
“Thank you.” But Vanderbank, for all his happy appreciation, thought again. “We ought at any rate to remember, oughtn’t we? that we should have Mrs. Brook against us.”
His companion faltered but an instant. “Ah that’s another thing I know. But it’s also exactly why. Why I want Nanda away.”
The response had been prompt, yet Mr. Longdon seemed suddenly to show that he suspected the superficial. “Unless it’s with Mrs. Brook you’re in love.” Then on his friend’s taking the idea with a mere headshake of negation, a repudiation that might even have astonished by its own lack of surprise, “Or unless Mrs. Brook’s in love with you,” he amended.
Vanderbank had for this any decent gaiety. “Ah that of course may perfectly be!”
He continued light. “If she had declared her passion shouldn’t I rather compromise her--?”
“By letting me know?” Mr. Longdon reflected. “I’m sure I can’t say--it’s a sort of thing for which I haven’t a measure or a precedent. In my time women didn’t declare their passion. I’m thinking of what the meaning is of Mrs. Brookenham’s wanting you--as I’ve heard it called--herself.”
Vanderbank, still with his smile, smoked a minute. “That’s what you’ve heard it called?”
“Yes, but you must excuse me from telling you by whom.”
He was amused at his friend’s discretion. “It’s unimaginable. 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.”