“Yes,” said Teresa, her cheeks glowing. “But you know you will never make anything different out of Mrs. Potter, any more than I have.”
“Who is Mrs. Potter? I don’t remember her,” asked Mrs. Carpenter.
“There are some people called Potter in that long street—Boaling Street—just by Emma’s office; but I don’t mean them alone. I was thinking of them as a class, and I forgot you didn’t know them. I don’t think either you or I are any good to them. They laugh at you for thinking you are wiser than they are, and they think I am mad because I keep on supposing they are feeling the same things as I do. Emma understands everything they say and is never surprised, nor ever tells them anything about herself, so they think she is perfectly normal and never suspect her of being a lady. She is just ‘The lady at the depôt,’ like the girl behind the counter is ‘the young lady in the shop.’ They go to her when they want sensible things, and I don’t suppose they have any more theory as to why she is there than they have about any official. They probably think she is paid by the Government.”
“And you are really sure you are not going to keep it up, even twice a week?” said Mrs. Carpenter. Then, without waiting for further answer, she changed the subject. “By-the-bye, Mr. Vachell, can you tell me what the Sphinx really is? Someone was asking the other day, and I said you could tell us if anyone could.”
Teresa excused herself and went away, depressed by what had happened. She felt crushed by the weight of the heaviest burden that society brings, the failure to impress a living thought on a dead comprehension. She had offered sincerity, and been met with the corpse-like hand of offence.
“Both those Fulton girls have been very much spoiled,” said Mrs. Carpenter, when she had shut the door.
When Teresa got home she found David sitting stiffly in a chair beside Susie, who was knitting a small coat for her grandchild. There had been a conversation between them which it may be worth recording, and Teresa arrived at a critical moment. Susie’s knitting was a curious performance, and David, sadly at a loss for an occupation while he waited for Teresa, had watched it and wondered in what way it differed from his mother’s. Lady Varens at work with needles suggested Penelope filling in time to avert the intrusion of emotions. Susie evidently undertook the thing as part of the equipment of a rôle. It was like all household affairs performed by stage characters, the dusting of a room by a saucy maid who flicks the mantelpiece twice and then gets on with her lines, the dinner-party where everything is swept away after the first morsel of fish has been tasted. Susie’s knitting was the “business” connected with the rôle of “Mrs. Fulton; beautiful, refined, well-dressed, awaiting the eventide of life with the calm philosophy of one who has known much suffering.” She was now “discovered seated, centre R.f., expecting the return of her husband, a typical twentieth century rake.”
“You do a great deal of knitting, don’t you?” David remarked at last.
“Not as much as I should like,” said Susie. “I hope that when you and Dicky are married you will encourage her to do something of that kind in the evening. If she is giving up all her other work she will need something to take its place. You don’t sing or play at all, do you?”
“No,” he said, feeling some apology was needed, “I don’t.”