Page:The Awkward Age (New York, Harper and Brothers, 1899).djvu/221

BOOK FIFTH: THE DUCHESS through Petherton, but Mrs. Brook can work him straight. On the other hand that's the way you, my dear man, can work Vanderbank."

One thing, evidently, beyond the rest, as a result of this vivid demonstration, disengaged itself to Mr. Longdon's undismayed sense, but his consternation needed a minute or two to produce it. "I can absolutely assure you that Mr. Vanderbank entertains no sentiment for Mrs. Brookenham—"

"That he may not keep under by just setting his teeth and holding on? I never dreamed that he does, and have nothing so alarming in store for you—rassurez-vous bien!—as to propose that he shall be invited to sink a feeling for the mother in order to take one up for the child. Don't, please, flutter out of the whole question by a premature scare. I never supposed it's he who wants to keep her. He's not in love with her—be comforted! But she's amusing—highly amusing. I do her perfect justice. As your women go, she's rare. If she were French she'd be a femme d'esprit. She has invented a nuance of her own, and she has done it all by herself, for Edward figures in her drawing-room only as one of those queer extinguishers of fire in the corridors of hotels. He's just a bucket on a peg. The men, the young and the clever ones, find it a house—and Heaven knows they're right—with intellectual elbow-room, with freedom of talk. Most English talk is like a quadrille in a sentry-box. You'll tell me we go further in Italy, and I won't deny it, but in Italy we have the common-sense not to have little girls in the room. The young men hang about Mrs. Brook and the clever ones ply her with the uproarious appreciation that keeps her up to the mark. She's in a prodigious fix—she must sacrifice either her daughter or what she once called to me her intellectual habits. Mr. Vanderbank, you've seen for yourself, is one of the most cherished, the most 211