“Mr. Vachell do you mean? Don’t you really know him? No, that’s delightful. He’s simply won’f’l man—been digging, you know—Egypt—didn’t you read about it? You ought to read the paper, you know. He’s our show card. When I was up at Cambridge they were fairf’lly jealous that I knew him. I told my tutor that I’d seen him once act’lly in pyjamas and he became quite respectf’l and let me off a lot of lectures on the strength of it. And then you live here and ask who he is——! That’s really great, what? isn’t it? You’ve got to say something really brilliant now to make up or I shall think you’ve taken to good works like all the dear people here.”
“Do you know you make me feel awfully queer,” said Teresa, looking at him with puzzled interest. “What are you talking about really? I know you answered my question, but what has all the rest to do with it? Why should your tutor let you off lectures because you saw somebody who lives here in pyjamas? I don’t understand a bit?”
“Miss Fulton, it is quite time you left that silly boy and gave me a little attention,” said Mr. Manley, whom Mrs. Vachell had neglected so much that he had been keeping a friendly eye on Teresa. He liked the young and had understood that she was not enjoying herself. He included Mr. Price in what he said with a friendly smile and Teresa turned to him gratefully.
“I believe you are much more old-fashioned than you look,” he said to her. “You were not getting on at all well. You didn’t mind my rudeness?”
“No, I liked it,” she answered. “I have met Mrs. Manley heaps of times, but I’ve never seen you nor your brother to talk to. I have noticed since we came here that you may know people for quite a long time before you are even sure that they have a husband. One has nothing to go by sometimes except the hats in the hall.”
“We come back sometimes to claim them, believe me,” said the old gentleman. Teresa’s heart warmed towards him as the dinner went on. His kindliness was real, untainted by any wish to shine or obtain credit. He had the quick understanding of ideas half expressed, succeeding one another like colour in changing light, which alone makes conversation anything but a distorted image of what the mind sees. Questions come so often from a curiosity that wishes to compare others with itself to its own glorification. Each one that Mr. Price or Mrs. Carpenter asked had that end in view. Mr. Manley enjoyed his game of give-and-take without that ghostly referee to balance the score. Teresa began to understand dimly how it was that what Strickland called “our leading families” seemed to have been the pious founders of Millport in a way that no Londoner’s ancestors can claim to have built their city. Millport was the child of dead and gone Manleys; it was handed on by them to new generations of themselves and of trusted friends who had watched over the early days of its growth. Tutors, governors and servants were appointed for the precious thing with that personal care that Teresa found so puzzling in the words “duty to the city,” which recurred constantly in public and in private. Afterwards in the drawing-room Mr. Manley came to her again.
“If you don’t go away and forget all our conversation,” he said, “come to me and tell me what you want to do and I’ll show you how to set about it. You’ll find my office hat in the hall on Saturday and Sunday afternoons—and that’s the one I keep my ideas in. I’d like to show you some pictures I’ve got of the old town as it was in my great-great-grandfather’s time.”
I had meant to say a great deal about David Varens during this dinner party. But Millport has proved too strong for him. It always must have been and is now overpowering for the gentle, detached characters whose strength is in enjoyment of the immediate thing that circumstances have put in their way to be done as well as possible; people who accept inherited comfort and adventitious pain equally, as it comes; who love and hate by instinct without recognition of any outside interests to modify their decision and who never go back on a verdict given by this tribunal of taste. He is to be Teresa’s lover and therefore his first words to her should have been recorded, also his appearance, his manner and what they thought of each other. They should have begun at once with definite sensations of like or dislike. But the truth is they hardly exchanged a word. He sat on the other side of Emma Gainsborough and shared with Mr. Price the miasma of her longing for the whole evening to be over. He talked to her as well as he could, patiently and easily, in spite of her stumbles into pitfalls of silence that the least presence of mind should have taught her to avoid. He retrieved her each time without effort and set her on her legs again, wondering what was the matter with the poor girl, supposing she might feel the fire at her back. He did once suggest drawing a screen further along behind her and they talked for some minutes about the cold of Oxford Colleges, but she didn’t seem any better for it so he gave it up. It is no use giving Mr. Varens any more scope just now. He will turn up in his glory when the time comes.