“That’s illogical,” said Lady Varens. “I have to shut my eyes tight when I see advertisements of anything to do with my lady, because I know that that sort of indignation is off the line. Communism is dreary and crushing and impossible, I think; and if you are going to let people keep the money they or their fathers make, then you must let them alone to spend it as they like. There are idiots in every class who chuck money about. But, as I say, if you are going to admit freedom to inherit and make, you must have freedom to spend as well, or else Rule Britannia becomes Rule Bolshevina, and my dear friend, the British working man, who hates to be hustled, will have to set up his apple cart again in some other place.”
“No, it is quite true, it won’t suit him a bit,” said Teresa, thinking of Mr. Jason.
“I have tried to imagine the very beeriest British loafer being made compulsorily drunk at stated intervals by a public authority, and I can’t see him getting a bit of pleasure out of it. And as for being compulsorily busy, and obliged to see nothing but good plays, and sent to hear good music—has any real Englishman ever devised such a plan, or are they all those very unhumorous Huns in disguise? Only a nation that wears spectacles could picture England as a community with rules, except the ordinary policeman rules. But the people have got so used to freedom that they may let the thing go on and stand watching it like a dog fight until it is done and has to be cleaned up.”
“That is what Mrs. Vachell said about Evangeline, that father wouldn’t interfere about Evan until he had actually done something. She said that men won’t bother to prevent a thing happening.”
“What are you talking about?” said Lady Varens.
“Oh, I forgot, I was thinking about what you said. Evan did rather try to work out theories about Ivor and there was a bother that there needn’t have been if he and Chips had understood each other instead of working separately. However that is nothing. I expect they will worry through all right.”
“Well, come and see David,” said Lady Varens, “and help us to decide what we will do. He is all for stopping a muddle before it is too late.”
Teresa went home in a tram, among the faces in the fog, but she did not notice them. She was tired to death by problems and counter problems; by desires that seemed to lead straight to a just and happy end, and were blocked always, sooner or later, by some defect of the quality that engendered them. Equality had a way of elbowing the grace of respect off the path, social recognition bred snobbery and civic responsibility led to jobbery, philanthropy grew so easily into impertinence, reform into self-righteousness and contentment into smugness; there seemed no end to the fine and stupid ideas that had started along the same road. Innocence and discipline fought for perfection in every imaginative task. She saw a world full of Evans and Evangelines quarrelling irreconcilably for ever, like Tweedledum and Tweedledee.
The car trundled and swayed, grinding along its rails. The distorted, grotesquely-dressed forms that had been made beautiful all these years in her imagination by the belief that they were princes and princesses in disguise, waiting for the magic touch of recognition to restore them to their kingdom, failed for the first time to excite her interest. The desire which used to entice her with the promise of a new world had vanished, and left in its place a message rather like the traditional note on the pincushion left by the escaping heroine of romance. The message said that the only truth on which heaven and earth were agreed was that a marriage would shortly take place.
She cheered up a little as she looked at the fog-bound faces on either side of her, and thought how greatly any of them might be improved by loving any one as much as she loved David. Another still more cheerful idea occurred to her, that perhaps they did! Perhaps it was only the mud filtering down upon the city that made them look so depressed. Inside their minds there might be an inextinguishable flame that only needed to be kindled to destroy all anger and discontent. “I suppose there will always be Evans and Evangelines,” she thought, “all the Tweedledums and Tweedledees, and they will fight about nothing whenever they meet; but if they were really in love Evan wouldn’t look for trouble and Evangeline wouldn’t try to walk round it; they would go through it together as it came. I am glad David doesn’t either worry or shirk—but then, of course, he wouldn’t.”