Teresa was staying with Evangeline at Drage. Evangeline had received a
letter from her a week before saying, “I want you to ask me to stay with
you for a few days. David has asked me to marry him and I can hardly
make you understand how much I want to and at the same time explain why
I have refused. You will think it silly, because you don’t take sayings
literally and there are some that I can’t take generally. If I had a lot
of money I should see written up on the walls all round me, ‘Sell all
that thou hast and give to the poor.’ I couldn’t live in the middle of
it and just dole out what was left from the expenses of a big house.
David won’t see it. If only his father had not died! Then we should have
been married and I couldn’t have gone back; whatever we settled David
and I could not have parted. Though that is just cowardice. It is that I
hate having the choice when I am so perfectly certain which I ought to
do. David says the money he would get for the estate would make as much
difference to the poor as a parcel of dressings in a battle, but I think
that is the weakest possible argument, that because one person can’t do
much no one is to do anything; everyone has to go as far as they can see
and nothing less is enough. He says the money is more useful where it
is, in teaching people to make the best out of the land. I asked if we
couldn’t at least sell the big house and live in a cottage or perhaps
use the house as a convalescent home for mothers and children; but he
says, No. It is full of lovely things, hundreds of years old, that
belonged to his family and that he has the right to enjoy as much as if
he had bought them himself. He says that if Mr. Price bought them, as he
would like to do, he wouldn’t either give them away or sell them
directly. He doesn’t care about them, but he would keep them out of
vanity and hand them on to Joseph, who would probably sell them to the
Jews and they would be lost all over the world. I said, wasn’t that a
good thing, as then so many people could each have a little bit and
enjoy it, but he said there was no sense in that; they looked much
better all together where they were. Of course you and I have never had
a family tree, so I don’t suppose we understand any more than Mrs.
Potter does—though, if you come to think of it, whenever she puts that
absurd old tea caddy of hers up the spout she always gets it out again
because it was her grandmother’s. But Mother found out about David and
she goes on talking very gently and persistently, and tells me I am only
a little girl and can’t possibly think out things that even the greatest
men don’t agree about, and she doesn’t see that that is not the point. I
have to follow what my bones say is the only decent thing to do. She
does get on my nerves so, and I know you won’t argue if I ask you not. I
believe I shall get some support out of Evan, as he does so believe in
anything uncomfortable, doesn’t he? And this is so uncomfortable I am
nearly mad.”
Evangeline had written at once, offering all the welcome and freedom
Teresa could want, and Evan received her with affection. He liked her
thoroughly. She found an atmosphere of tension and sadness in the house
that she had not expected, neither could she see how it came there, for
Evangeline seemed on good terms with her husband, and Ivor was well and
in the highest spirits; except when his father came into the nursery,
which was not very often. Then the nurse grew troubled and fidgeted the
child and he became exacting and contentious, speaking rudely to her,
which was quite unusual with him. One day Teresa and Evangeline were
there playing with him in perfect peace, when Evan came in. It was about
half-past three on a foggy November afternoon. “Why isn’t that boy out?”
he asked his wife.
“He has been out,” she answered, “but Nurse brought him in as it is so
foggy and he has had a cold.”
“We were always turned out in all weathers up in Yorkshire, and it never
did us any harm,” said Evan.
“Let’s turn that gun further round this way, Ivor,” said Evangeline,
going on with the game. “You see it would be firing right into its own
trenches; try a shot and you will see.” Evan looked on.
“Here, old man, I’ll show you,” he said, and he took hold of the gun.
“No, don’t!” shouted Ivor in great excitement. “Put it down! I’ve put it
there mythelf.”
“Yes, but you haven’t done it properly,” his father said, beginning to
move it.
“Leave it, I thay,” Ivor screamed, almost beside himself. “Get out from
my gunth——” He pushed his father away impatiently. “And you get out
too,” he commanded Evangeline, pushing her also, suddenly tired of
visitors. “All go away downthtairth.” Tears of aggravation were in his
eyes, but he kept them back.
“You are not to speak to your mother like that, sir,” said Evan.
“Apologise to her at once.” Ivor had no idea what apologising meant, but
it sounded horrid. “Than’t,” he said.
“Oh, do go away, please, Evan,” said Evangeline. “We’re coming down to
tea presently. Do go and ring for it.”
“Not till that boy has apologised for his rudeness,” said Evan. Ivor had
resumed his game alone and was getting interested and remote. Evidently
this tiresome family of his were going to fight among themselves and
leave him in peace.
“You are sorry, aren’t you?” his mother said, then in a pleading tone:
“You didn’t mean to push, did you?”
“Eth,” said Ivor, as he placed the contested gun carefully back in the
position from which his father had moved it.
“Nonsense,” said Evangeline temptingly. “Come here and kiss me and make
it up.”
“Take—away—your—’uthband,” Ivor said slowly, as if he were repeating a
lesson to himself. His mother and his aunt shouted with delight and
could hardly believe that the child had meant it. Ivor’s face was quite
unmoved. “Come on,” said Evangeline, seizing Evan by the arm and
dragging him out of the room. “You can’t stay after that.” But he
neither smiled nor answered. He followed them downstairs and did not
speak for some time.
When he had gone out again after tea Evangeline sat for a time looking
idly into the fire. “Dicky,” she began after a little while, “whatever
you do don’t marry a man with whom you daren’t be truthful. Before I
talk to Evan I have to treat what I want to say as if it were to a
foreigner and had to be translated into his language. First I have to
cut out the bits that won’t do because of the prejudices he was brought
up in. Then I have to change whole chunks that he would associate with
other women whom he dislikes and who have said the same things; we do,
as a sex, rather talk about the same things as each other, don’t we? But
when he has heard some gas-bag of a creature say, ‘Oh, Captain Hatton, I
do love children!’ (which she probably does) he thinks the whole subject
exhausted, and shamefully exhausted too! So if any woman uses the word
‘love’ at any time afterwards he looks the subject up in his mind and
finds a note, ‘memo. gas. Mrs. T.’ and there’s an end of it; so in
future, when I want to say anything about love I have to use another
word. It is very hampering.”
“But you can’t go on using new words about everything,” said Teresa.
“No, but you see in the kind of things he talks to men about the words
can’t very well be misused. If you are describing what has gone wrong
with an engine you can only use words like ‘plug’ and ‘spring’ and
‘valve,’ that have only one meaning. Even a lawyer couldn’t say, ‘I
suggest that when you tell the Court that the valve was defective you
inferred that John Brown’s baby had a wart on its nose.’ But that is
what Evan does if I try to tell him what Ivor is thinking—things that I
know quite well because I remember being a child, and he doesn’t.”
“Yes, I see,” said Teresa.
“Well, let us get on to David,” said her sister. “Does what I have said
apply to him or not?”
“No, not at all,” (very emphatically).
“Then why doesn’t he do what you want?”
“Not because he doesn’t understand, but because he doesn’t agree. It is
rather like statistics; two people can add up the same figures and prove
different results with them, one showing that trade is prospering and
the other that it is going all wrong.”
“You know, I agree with him,” said Evangeline. “I don’t think you could
do any good by selling everything. There is nothing you can give to
people to make them happy if they don’t want to be. I have found that
out.”
“But the people I am talking about do want to be happy,” Teresa argued
passionately. “They are starving for what other people are throwing away
because they can’t use all of it.”
“I saw in the paper the other day that if you divided up everyone’s
money there would be only thirteen-and-something a day—or a week—or it
might have been a year—I forget; but only a very little like that for
each person.”
“It wasn’t finance that I was thinking of,” said Teresa, “I know it is
no good trying to settle that. There is a horrid boy at the University
called Fisk. He is always telling me that I haven’t studied the subject,
and he is going quite mad himself over it. He devours Mr. Cranston’s
literature and coughs it up again much the worse for wear. Joseph Price
ran over him once, ages ago, and brought him back to their house in the
middle of a tea-party. Mother was there, and David told me all about it
afterwards. Of course Mother told us nothing except that Mrs. Price got
frightened at Fisk talking so much about blood, as he always does when
he is excited, and that she had said that he couldn’t possibly be a
Communist, because some of her own relations were; wasn’t that like her?
You know they were all very rich, so I have wondered since how they did
mean to divide up their money. But whichever way it was they don’t seem
to have done it. Fisk stayed in the Prices’ house for two days, and at
last Mrs. Price sent for Emma, as he seemed to have settled down there
very comfortably and said he was too ill to move. I think Joseph
encouraged him because he thought it was the kind of thing his dear
Mortons, whom he imitates, would do; keep a revolutionary in bed in
their own house and egg him on and feed him up and get lots of notoriety
out of him and then manage to get out of any trouble that they raised
later on. David says if there were a revolution the Mortons would
probably pretend to head it and then slip off to another country where
it is all comfortable under a despot.”
“What does Father say?” Evangeline asked curiously.
“I haven’t told him about David,” Teresa replied.
“Why not? He always understands, and if, as you say, Mother knows, she
is sure to have told him.”
“No, there are some things he doesn’t see at all, and one of them is
slums. They don’t worry him an atom unless he has to walk through them,
and if he does that he complains that everyone wears fish next the skin,
and wants to go home another way. He never will take the trouble to
think about anything horrid that he can’t help. I asked him once what he
would do if he had to live in a place like that—we were in some horrible
street near the docks—and he said that it was impossible that he should
have to, because then he would be somebody else; he explained that he
would have been given gin in his bottle as a baby, and therefore would
have grown up quite contented with it all. Of course he would side with
David if I told him. The idea of Mr. Price having anything to do with
hounds would prevent him from listening to arguments even from an
archangel.”
If Teresa had but known, her parents were at that very moment discussing
the same subject. It was after dinner, and Susie had mentioned that she
met Lady Varens that afternoon opening a bazaar. “They are going to let
Aldwych to the Prices for three years,” she said. “David refuses to sell
it, but he has suddenly come round to the idea of letting it. I suppose
the Prices hope to be able to buy it in the end.”
“Well, I’m damned sorry,” he said with a sigh.
“I am afraid it is partly Dicky’s fault, Cyril,” she suggested gently.
“How’s that?” he asked. “You haven’t sold her to that young Price, have
you, Sue? I couldn’t stand that.”
“I wonder if you will ever understand that marriage is not a question of
bargaining and arrangement,” said his wife impatiently. “It is really a
pity, I think, that I wasn’t able to provide you with cattle instead of
children. You would have understood me far better if I had been a slave
or an animal.”
“We might try,” he suggested. “It is not too late to add to your list of
female impersonations. But you haven’t answered my question.”
“I forget what it was,” she answered gravely.
“Whether you had bestowed (we will say if you prefer it) Teresa on
Joseph Price.”
“I have no reason to suppose that he has asked her to marry him,” said
Susie.
“Then we may take it that is all right,” he said with relief. “She would
never invite herself. I am always glad to see Mammon spread his net in
vain for your sex, Sue. It makes the world so much brighter and better.
But what did you mean that Dicky had done?”
“She has refused David; why I don’t know.”
“I am really sorry about that,” he said after a pause.
“I suppose you wouldn’t tell her so, would you?” she asked hopefully.
“Of course not. If marriage means as much to a girl as you say it does,
she isn’t likely to invest in a husband to amuse dear old Dad.”
“No, but you might tell her. Girls are so silly.”
“Well, you astonish me!” said Cyril.
“Why? Surely you must know they are.”
“I thought the feminine instinct was infallible on every subject.”
“She can’t be expected to have experience,” said Susie.
“Then the divine gift is just a happy little flame that you can blow out
when you don’t want to see it, is that it? You can just ask Mother what
she saw when she was a girl? And that was a devil of a lot,” he added
reflectively.
“Then it is no good asking you to take the matter seriously?” she
inquired.
“She is not going to stay away long, is she?” Cyril asked.
“I shouldn’t think so. I believe Evan’s sisters are going to stay there
next week.”
“Well, absence makes the heart grow fonder,” he observed. “I am very
sorry about Dicky. I don’t think you made a great success there, Sue.”
“I had nothing to do with it,” she protested. “I implored her to wait.
If anything it was your fault for having Evan always about here.”
“Now how could I help that?” Cyril inquired. “I couldn’t have a maiden
lady as my A.D.C., and if I had, you would have said that I taught her
to be wicked. As it was, I just tried not to worry.”
“Is there anything else I can say for you to twist round, Cyril dear?”
asked his wife. “I am delighted to give you opportunities for your wit,
but sometimes it is hardly possible to open one’s mouth.”
“I am sorry,” he said penitently. “I don’t want to tease you, really. I
love everything you say. But when you blamed me for not keeping Hatton
in a cupboard like a bottle of whisky labelled ‘not to be taken,’ I
thought you were coming it a little strong.”
“They don’t seem to me to be very happy,” said Susie, prepared to start
again amicably. “I wish he wouldn’t carry religion quite so far.”
“How far does he carry it?” asked Cyril, “You see, he never had occasion
to bring it to me at all, so I don’t know.”
“Oh quite ridiculous lengths,” Susie replied. “He thinks quite a number
of things wrong.”
“Ha! ha! ha!” laughed Cyril uproariously. “Well done, Sue. That’s a
topper! Ha! ha!”
“My dear Cyril, what on earth is the matter?” she asked, quite
bewildered.
“Nothing,” he replied gravely, as he poured himself out his usual
evening drink. “My mind wanders sometimes. Go on, my dear. Evan is
suffering from moral unrest, you say?”
“Yes, he used even to think it wrong sometimes when I had dear Baby in
my room and played with him. I think it is dreadful not to want to see a
little child happy.”
“I don’t know that I would trust you to bring up a boy, Sue,” he said
candidly. “You see, your idea of a male is to let it have all it wants
so long as it is only a matter of a little song and dance. But when it
begins to want things a bit nearer the bone, you pull it up short and it
gets confused. Very few women know how to go on as they meant to begin.”
“I suppose you mean ‘begin as they mean to go on,’” said Susie, “but you
are quite wrong. Men understand what women mean quite well from the
beginning.”
“I meant what I said,” Cyril persisted. “Go on as they meant to begin.
They meant to begin with a carnival and to end in Lent.”
Susie flushed. “I was saying that I think Evan is far too strict with
little Ivor,” she said.
“Someone has got to be sometime,” said Cyril carelessly. “It will save
the schoolmaster’s arm later.”
“But a baby! It is so cruel,” she protested. “I must say, Cyril, to do
you justice, you never interfered with the children.”
“No, because they were girls,” he replied. “And anyhow, I don’t know
anything about kids. I don’t mind them but I keep out of the way.”
“They were much fonder of you than Ivor is of his father.”
“Don’t let’s be boastful. And you had much better leave those two to
manage their own affairs.”
Teresa came back at the end of the week and saw David once before he
went away. The Prices were to move into Aldwych next month and Lady
Varens was going abroad when David went to the Argentine to learn
farming.
He met Teresa when he was leaving the University one evening and walked
back with her. When they reached the house she invited him in. “I know
Mother is out,” she said, “and Father probably is, too, but I want you
to come in. I have one more thing to say.”
“What is it?” he asked when they were in the drawing-room.
“Do you think you will certainly come back when the Prices’ three years
are up?”
“I shall see what sort of a show they run there. If it is all right I
might let them have it and I would buy some land somewhere else.”
“Where for instance?”
“Anywhere where they talk English.”
“Even in the Colonies? And what about all the things in your house?”
“I should move them.”
“And what about the old people on the place?”
“Easily move them too, if they liked. If not, leave them.”
“Would many of them want to go, do you think?”
“Not unless your friend Fisk gets too much of the blood he is after.
Then they might.”
“David, I do loathe that Fisk.”
“Yes, so do I.——Teresa?”
“It is the Lady Bountiful I can’t do,” she said very sadly. “There is
something in me that sticks and boggles at it as if I were trying to
swallow a fish bone. If you loved someone as much as you could and were
told you must only flirt with them—wouldn’t you feel you couldn’t? It
would be like selling one’s soul to the devil.”
“No, I do think that is awfully silly,” said David. “You can’t flirt
with a girl you love. You get run away with and then—well, you go where
it is going. You don’t think about whether you ought to stop and pick
mushrooms.”
So it seemed. For when Susie came back David had gone, and Teresa’s pale
little face bore evidence of having paid dearly for her inability to (as
she thought) flirt with her love for Mrs. Potter. It is impossible to
say whether David carried his idea of the runaway horse any further, or
comforted himself with the possibility of deflecting the course of
Teresa’s passion for regeneration.