Henry James

The Awkward Age Henry James

Save when it happened to rain Vanderbank always walked home, but he usually took ahansom when the rain was moderate and adopted the preference of the philosopher whenit was heavy. On this occasion he therefore recognised as the servant opened the door acongruity between the weather and the "four-wheeler" that, in the empty street, under theglazed radiance, waited and trickled and blackly glittered. The butler mentioned it as onsuch a wild night the only thing they could get, and Vanderbank, having replied that it wasexactly what would do best, prepared in the doorway to put up his umbrella and dashdown to it. At this moment he heard his name pronounced from behind and on turningfound himself joined by the elderly fellow guest with whom he had talked after dinner andabout whom later on upstairs he had sounded his hostess. It was at present a clear questionof how this amiable, this apparently unassertive person should get home-of the possibilityof the other cab for which even now one of the footmen, with a whistle to his lips, cranedout his head and listened through the storm. Mr. Longdon wondered to Vanderbank if theircourse might by any chance be the same; which led our young friend immediately toexpress a readiness to see him safely in any direction that should accommodate him. As thefootman's whistle spent itself in vain they got together into the four-wheeler, where at theend of a few moments more Vanderbank became conscious of having proposed his ownrooms as a wind-up to their drive. Wouldn't that be a better finish of the evening than justseparating in the wet? He liked his new acquaintance, who struck him as in a mannerclinging to him, who was staying at an hotel presumably at that hour dismal, and who, confessing with easy humility to a connexion positively timid with a club at which onecouldn't have a visitor, accepted his invitation under pressure. Vanderbank, when theyarrived, was amused at the air of added extravagance with which he said he would keep thecab: he so clearly enjoyed to that extent the sense of making a night of it. "You young men, Ibelieve, keep them for hours, eh? At least they did in my time," he laughed-"the wild ones!But I think of them as all wild then. I dare say that when one settles in town one learns howto manage; only I'm afraid, you know, that I've got completely out of it. I do feel really quitemouldy. It's a matter of thirty years-!""Since you've been in London?""For more than a few days at a time, upon my honour