Page:The Awkward Age (New York, Harper and Brothers, 1899).djvu/27

BOOK FIRST: LADY JULIA him straight up. "It was nasty my doing that? I see, I see. Yes, yes: I rather gave her away, and you're struck by it—as is most delightful you should be—because you're, in every way, of a better tradition and, knowing Mrs. Brookenham's my friend, can't conceive of one's playing on a friend a trick so vulgar and odious. It strikes you also probably as the kind of thing we must be constantly doing; it strikes you that, right and left, probably, we keep giving each other away. Well, I dare say we do. Yes, 'come to think of it' as they say in America, we do. But what shall I tell you? Practically we all know it and allow for it, and it's as broad as it's long. What's London life after all? It's tit for tat!"

"Ah, but what becomes of friendship?" Mr. Longdon earnestly and pleadingly asked, while he still held Vanderbank's arm as if under the spell of the vivid explanation with which he had been furnished.

The young man met his eyes only the more sociably. "Friendship?"

"Friendship." Mr. Longdon maintained the full value of the word.

"Well," his companion risked, "I dare say it isn't in London by any means what it is at Beccles. I quite literally mean that," Vanderbank reassuringly added; "I never really have believed in the existence of friendship in big societies—in great towns and great crowds. It's a plant that takes time and space and air; and London society is a huge 'squash,' as we elegantly call it—an elbowing, pushing, perspiring, chattering mob."

"Ah, I don't say that of you!" Mr. Longdon murmured, with a withdrawal of his hand and a visible scruple for the sweeping concession he had evoked.

"Do say it, then—for God's sake; let some one say it, so that something or other, whatever it may be, may come of it! It's impossible to say too much—it's 17