“I don’t think you have quite understood my point, dear David,” she replied, and at that moment Teresa came in and found them.
CHAPTER XXIII
Teresa and Joseph Price were going back to Millport together in the rickety little train that joggled up and down the coast every few hours. Teresa had spent the day with the Varens’ and Joseph had called about tea time with some information from his father for Evangeline about her husband’s new work. Evan was expected in about ten days, and was to take up his work at first under Mr. Price’s own eye before being entrusted with the final appointment at a distance. Joseph and Teresa were each occupied in trying to hold an evening paper still enough in the dim light to read the last news of a riot that had broken out in the Midlands over a labour dispute. They had hardly deciphered more than a few lines when the train wriggled itself to a standstill, and Mr. Fisk junior jumped into the carriage. He threw himself down in a corner and took some papers from his pocket and then recognised his companions. “How do you do?” said Teresa. “I don’t think you can see anything by this lamp. We were trying to read a paper, but it is no good.”
“How d’ you do, Fisk?” said Joseph. “Been playing golf down here?”
“No,” said Mr. Fisk, frowning. “What I have been doing is a game to some but deadly earnest to others. If it ends in bloodshed the responsibility will lie with those who treated it as a game.” He settled himself into his corner and glared at Teresa.
“Kait sairysly, though, Fisk, what d’ you think of this?” Joseph asked, tapping his paper. “D’ you think it’ll come t’ anything, what?”
“It has come to something already,” said Fisk, “as you will find if you study your newspaper. And it will come to something that you have not yet experienced, the search for a crust of bread by those who have treated the misery of their fellow-creatures as a game.”
“Yes, but you know, that won’t do any good,” said Joseph. “Somebody’s got t’ hold the purse, or the money’s bound to get lost. That’s been gone into pretty thoroughly. You and I can’t decide the thing ’n a railway carriage, like this. Now I’ll tell you a thing ’s an instance. My father, the other day, was thinking of buying a big place—since you’ve turned us out—” he added politely to Teresa, “and I said t’ him, ‘Don’t. I don’t want the thing. In a year or two’s time we shan’t have a soul left t’ talk to. All the f’llers we know will be in trade or driving their own engines and so on, and the people at the top will be the sort that nobody c’n ask out and all that. ’T’s abs’lutely not done,’ I said, ‘’t’s played out.’ Th’ only thing t’ do now, ’f you want to be in it, is t’ cover yourself with grease and get up at th’ most ungodly hours. Th’ old aristocracy won’t look at you if you offer them a really decent dinner. At my club th’ other day, I met a f’ller ordering tripe and onions; ’t’s a fact.”
“Oh, don’t be so stupid,” said Teresa angrily. “You can’t always go on shifting from one branch to another as soon as anyone else sits down on yours. All people want is to be let alone to do anything they are able to do, and it is snobbery like yours that makes it impossible.”
“No, no, really, I assure you,” Joseph protested. “That’s not Fisk’s idea, I’m sure, is it?” He appealed to the indignant spectacled form opposite. “What? I heard about you th’ other day, you know. I was down canv’ssing your way for my father and turned up ’t your house. Your father gave us his vote—’t’s a fact, abs’lutely—because he said he was f’d up with socialism. ‘My son’s one of them,’ he said, ‘and he won’t work, and he objects t’ me and my wife working.’ Now there’s snobb’ry for you ’f you like, I think, what? I’m willing t’ associate with people who won’t associate with themselves. What are you t’ do?”