“I’m maintaining that’s not the Darwinian idea at all. It was not a single couple, but several different ones.”
“We’re not descended from monkeys at all. It’s not natural,” said Mrs. Craven loudly, across the irritated voices of the men. Their faces were red. They filled the room with inaccurate phrases pausing politely between each and keeping up a show of being guest and host. How nice of them. But this was how cultured people with incomes talked about Darwin.
“The great thing Darwin did,” said Miriam abruptly, “was to point out the power of environment in evolving the different species—selecting.”
“That’s it, that’s it!” sang Mrs. Corrie. “Let’s all select ourselves into the droin’-room.” “Now I’ve offended the men and the women too,” thought Miriam.
8
Mr. Staple-Craven joined the ladies almost at once. He came in leaving the door open behind him and took a chair in the centre of the fireside circle and sat giving little gasps and sighs of satisfaction, spreading his hands and making little remarks about the colours of the fire, and the shape of the coffee cups. There he was and he would have to be entertained, although he had nothing at all to say and was puzzling about himself and life all the time behind his involuntary movements and polite smiles and gestures. Perhaps he was uneasy because he knew there was someone saying all the time, “You’re a silly pompous old man and you think yourself much cleverer than you are.” But it was not altogether that; he was always uneasy, even when he was alone, unless he was rapidly preparing to go and be with people who did not know what he was. If he had been alone with the other three women he would have forgotten for a while and half-liked, half-despised them for their affability.
“The great man’s always at work, always at work,” he said suddenly, in a desperate sort of way. They were like some sort of needlework guild sitting round, just people, in the end; it made the surroundings seem quite ordinary. The room fell to pieces; one could imagine it being turned out, or all the things being sold up and dispersed.
“All work and no play,” scolded Mrs. Craven, “makes Jack....”
Miriam heard the swish of the bead curtain at the end of the short passage.
“Heah he is,” smiled Joey.