“Yes, I know you have,” said Teresa. “I think, Chips, if you hadn’t sat so comfortably in the sun, and been content with sensations you might have found out more for yourself. Isn’t that why we called you ‘Chips,’ just because you were always picking up bits of information? I always think of toast and newspapers when I remember you as my elder sister in the nursery. Either with toast and newspapers by the fire or else out in the garden when you ought to have been somewhere else. Do you remember when you brought in a worm when we were away in the country, and you put it on a doll’s chair on the tea-table, and tried to make it sit up, and Miss Jacks came in? But to go back to your newspaper; you can’t do that. Do wait until you are well again, and then go away from Mrs. Vachell, and write to Evan. I am not sure you hadn’t better leave your family with nurse and me somewhere, and go to Egypt yourself; but, anyhow, it will be all right. I have told you things are always happening.”
“Evan’s sisters are another problem,” Evangeline said presently. “They don’t know anything yet, but they keep on wanting Ivor to go there, and when they do find out they will do everything they can to get him taken away from me. They will think I am an active danger if I differ from Evan in any way. And they are so silly with Ivor. They do spoil him so.”
“I think that is awfully funny,” said Teresa. “Doesn’t it amuse you if you think of it?”
“You mean because Evan complains of me spoiling him? But then, you see, I don’t and they do. You never saw such drivel as they carry on. Ivor gets quite imbecile when he is there; he hardly seems the same. It isn’t gaiety, it is a sort of orgie of pranks; like those wearisome film comedies where a lot of people slip up on a piece of soap, and get covered with whitewash and food. Really when I am staying there I often feel like asking the cook to shoot me into the dining-room by the hatch and fling a basin of custard after me just so as not to damp the party.”
“Doesn’t Evan mind that?”
“No, he doesn’t, because it is something that can be explained. It doesn’t amuse him, but he can pigeon-hole it as ‘all good girls’’ way of amusing themselves. It has nothing to do with him, but it is a necessary cog in the machinery of a nice family so he can get on with something else while they do it. It is almost like a domestic rite. But when I enjoy myself he thinks it is moral indulgence because it isn’t planned out and it isn’t tiring.”
“I don’t know how father gets on so well with all sorts of different people,” said Teresa. “It never seems to bother him if they don’t understand what he is talking about. He never tries to explain himself or cares whether they agree with him or not.”
“No, I daresay, but then he has only got himself to bother about,” said Evangeline. “If he had to protect us from a wife with high principles it might make him think a bit.”
Teresa dreaded telling her mother about the Varens’ return. Experience has taught me that there are many painstaking minds who will come to a knot at this point, and want to be told why any young girl with a clear conscience should dread to tell so amiable and good a mother that an eligible young man, dear to them both, has returned to the neighbourhood. But it cannot be made quite clear to all readers. The nearest thing that can be said is that perhaps if Susie had been known to approve less of the possibility with which Teresa was secretly aglow, the girl would have been less anxious to keep it to herself. “Alice in Wonderland” is full of the everyday experience of simple people, and in one of those irrational gambollings of the female mind which have been referred to on another page I seem to see Susie represented by the kindly Dodo who said to Alice after she had won the race, “I beg your acceptance of this elegant thimble,” and presented her with her own property. Teresa was as straight-forward as Alice, and liked things to work out logically, so she resented being led up to her lover, as much as she disliked hearing Mrs. Carpenter instruct Mrs. Potter in the art of patience.
She decided now that the dangerous moment could be most successfully faced under Cyril’s protection, so she announced at dinner, “I met Lady Varens to-day, and they are both coming back, probably for good.” She made the news sound as gossipy and impersonal as she could, and shot a rapid glance at her father.