“I almost think I should take up some interest if I were you,” she said gently. “Of course there is no doubt that there is no happiness like being married if people understand each other, but at the same time it is impossible not to feel the need for change of thought sometimes. You are not fond of wine, are you, David?”
“No, not at odd times, thanks very much,” David replied. He was mildly startled by the question and wondered what she was driving at.
“And no more is Dicky. She never cared for it at all, and yet Evangeline would always take a glass when it was offered her. It gives people quite a different outlook. I don’t know how far you have studied Dicky’s character but I understand her, in a way, better than Evangeline. Dicky takes a much wider view of spiritual things.”
“Yes, I expect so,” said David, polite and noncommittal.
“And just for that reason I am a little sad at her giving up all her work among the poor. I am afraid she will feel the want of it.” David was struck dumb, so she went on, supposing his silence to be due to a wish to hear more. “She has no artistic interests, you see. When I was her age I had a great many. I was devoted to music, for instance, and if I had not fallen in love with my husband the course of my life might have been quite different. I hope you will forgive these little bits of personal history, dear David, but I should be so glad if they helped you in any way to clear up difficulties that may come when the ‘first fine careless rapture,’ as I heard it described the other day at a wonderful lecture of Professor Gaskie’s—I thought of you two at once—when that is over. I felt it so much when I had to give up all that side of things when I married. You see my husband has his wine, for instance, and his men; he had a great number of old friends when we first married, whom I must say, I thought extremely uninteresting. They talked by the hour about foxes; not in connection with all the beautiful country life that you have, for he never hunted except when he was asked to stay with people, but they were always talking about that kind of thing. Some of them were purely politicians and some very much worse. Not the old intellectual type like Disraeli, who really cared for beautiful things, but the sort who run away from a drawing-room and hide themselves somewhere with decanters and laugh and roar and sing half the night. I can’t tell you how much I used to feel the want of something else. Then the children came, and of course it was all right, and I had friends who were very kind, so that I could go now and then and hear music and talk about the things I cared for. That is why I have taken up the work I do here. It is not an intellectual place, as you see; and those concerts! Have you ever been to them?”
“Yes, sometimes,” said David. “I thought they were supposed to be rather good.”
“The performers are often very good,” she agreed, “but there is an atmosphere about the place that I don’t like; a want of appreciation. Have you noticed that there is often quite a fog in the hall? I have wondered sometimes whether it was anything like what Professor Bole was describing the other day. I forget how he put it, but I thought of those concerts and wondered whether people’s tastes—their love of rich dinners and wine and all that, had been chased out of them by the music and was wanting to get back and preventing them from hearing it fully. Dear little Dicky used to find the fog in the town so depressing when we first came, and I expect she felt the same as I do. Now Evangeline is different altogether, more like her father. She will throw off anything of that sort in a minute and be all ready for a gallop or a dance or party. Haven’t you noticed that? And yet I always think any art is such a happy thing. One has no real need of other people——” Her knitting had gone down on to her lap long ago.
“No, perhaps not,” said David.
“I am so glad you think so,” she continued in her purry voice. “For of course, you will be a great deal cut off in the country. What is that Mrs. Lake like whom I used to meet now and then? She seemed to have quite taken up the Prices. She is very typical of the society round there, isn’t she?”
“I don’t know much about her,” said David. “But I believe she is all right.”