“But that is nothing new,” he said, “I saw when I first met you that that was what you were after and you thought none of us here had ever had the same idea at all except good old Emma. That is why I wanted to make friends with you. I didn’t want the barrier of a rich dinner table to separate you from your natural friend here.”
Teresa laughed. “Well, it didn’t, you see. But still, I don’t seem able to leap across the pineapples to Mr. and Mrs. Price. What does she mean by saying that her people are communists? It does seem the silliest rot.”
“They are intellectual socialists. People who see that the world is untidy, which it certainly is, but they haven’t the taste for the characters that can only come out of an untidy world. I am a bit of a reader of the classics, as I haven’t a wife to talk to, and I can’t see any of the people I love best in books coming out of a world where everything is as neat as a bedded-out garden. I have a great dislike of culture, as it is called. Education is one thing and so is enterprise, and Price is enterprising; but I must say I don’t like Botticelli pictures and cocoa in a public-house, and that is what Mrs. Price means by saying her people are communists. They are wealthy themselves with all sorts of art tastes and live comfortably, and they like to preach. They don’t understand commerce and are ashamed of having any connection with it. You may always suspect a man who is prepared to run a business he hasn’t served in. I’ve the same suspicion of parsons. They see so many notices up everywhere, ‘Beware of the Devil!’ that they get tripping about here, there and everywhere in such a state of nerves that they forget they are not there to run God’s business, but to find out what He wants done. It is all this assuming of moral responsibility instead of working that I think is the mistake. Now you see what I meant when you were running down charitable institutions. You do your bit, my dear, and help to keep the machinery going. You can’t run it alone and improvements are being made all the time.” Teresa got up to go.
“Do you know Mother is making a speech to-day?” she said doubtfully. “The first she has ever made outside a drawing-room, and I have to go—shall you be there? It is in the small room at the Town Hall.”
“What is the meeting for?” he asked.
“The Mary Popley Home for women.”
“No,” he said, “I have given a subscription, but I am not coming to-day. I am sure she will do it well; she is so gentle and tactful. We want more women like that on our committees. Some of them are so very fierce. That is why I like Mrs. Vachell, though I am never sure what she has got up her sleeve; she’s rather an enigma.”
“She hates men, that is all I know,” said Teresa.
“Does she really? How very remarkable. I never knew that. And living among such excellent men and great scholars as she does! Good-bye, my dear, good-bye.”