Presently, seized by a gust of unreasonable irritation, he went out of the room.
“Mr. Stubland talks,” said Mrs. Darcy; “really——” She paused. She hesitated. She spoke with a little disarming titter lest what she said should seem too dreadful. “He says such things. I really believe he’s more than half a Liberal. There! You mustn’t mind what I say, Mrs. Stubland....”
Dolly, by virtue of her vicarage training, understood these people better than Peter’s father. She had read herself out of the great Anglican culture, but she remembered things from the inside. She was still in close touch with numerous relations who were quite completely inside. Before the little green gate had clicked behind their departing backs, Arthur would protest to her and heaven that these visitors were impossible, that such visitors could not be, they were phantoms or bad practical jokes, undergraduates dressed up to pull his leg.
“They know nothing,” he said.
“They know all sorts of things you don’t know,” she corrected.
“What do they know? There isn’t a topic one can start on which they are not just blank.”
“You start the wrong topics. They can tell you all sorts of things about the dear Queen’s grandchildren. They know things about horses. And about regiments and barracks. Tell me, Arthur, how is the charming young Prince of Bulgaria, who is just getting married, related to the late Prince Consort.”
“Damn their Royal Marriages!”
“If you say that, then they have an equal right to say, ‘damn your Wildes and Beardsleys and William Morrises and Swinburnes.’”
“They read nothing.”