Page:The Awkward Age (New York, Harper and Brothers, 1899).djvu/211

BOOK FIFTH: THE DUCHESS His companion had to consider, but suddenly she caught assistance. "This one, I think, comes before." Lord Petherton, arriving apparently from the garden, had drawn near unobserved by Mr. Longdon, and the next moment was within hail. "I see him very often," she continued—"oftener than Nanda. Oh, but then Nanda. And then," little Aggie wound up, "Mr. Mitchy."

"Oh, I'm glad he comes in," Mr. Longdon returned, "though rather far down in the list." Lord Petherton was now before them, there being no one else on the terrace to speak to, and, with the odd look of an excess of physical power that almost blocked the way, he seemed to give them, in the flare of his big teeth, the benefit of a kind of brutal geniality. It was always to be remembered for him that he could scarce show without surprising you an adjustment to the smaller conveniences; so that when he took up a trifle it was not perforce, in every case, the sign of an uncanny calculation. When the elephant in the show plays the fiddle, it must be mainly with the presumption of consequent apples; which was why, doubtless, this personage had half the time the air of assuring you that, really civilized as his type had now become, no apples were required. Mr. Longdon viewed him with a vague apprehension and as if quite unable to meet the question of what he would have called, for such a personage, the social responsibility. Did this specimen of his class pull the tradition down, or did he just take it where he found it—in the very different place from that in which, on ceasing so long ago to "go out," Mr. 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. 201