Teresa told her about the Debating Society and Mr. Fisk. “A horrible young man,” said Mrs. Vachell. “He isn’t one of my husband’s students, luckily, or I should have to ask him to tea. They all get brought here at intervals. They sit about in corners and balance cups on their knees and spill tea into the saucer. I wish you would come and help me next time I have to ask some of them. I believe you would be good to them and teach me not to dislike them so much.”
“Very well,” said Teresa, “though I am not benevolent. If people won’t talk I can’t make conversation. Why don’t you ask Emma? She knows them all.”
“That is just why she is no good,” Mrs. Vachell explained while she made tea. “It is like a mother and her children in society. They can’t talk their own nonsense before an audience, and they can’t do the polite to each other. I want you to extract something from the students. They must have interests of the sort that one does not air in the family circle, and strangers are the ideal safety valve for that sort of thing.”
“Are many of them like Fisk; wanting blood and new governments and things?” Teresa asked.
“That is one of the things I want to know,” Mrs. Vachell answered. “Emma could tell us so far as statistics go, but I want to hear for myself. You know I sit on Committees with Mrs. Carpenter and her lot because I love organisation, and so many of those women who are always talking and ordering and doing the Nosey Parker everywhere are just tools for anybody in the show who has an axe to grind. Do you understand about Boards of Guardians and Select Vestries and all that part?” Teresa answered quickly, “Oh, no—nothing whatever. Of course I get inspectors and visitors on my track and I have to help Emma with her reports. But a Board of Guardians means nothing to me except a firm eye and questions that I can’t answer. Mother has them to lunch sometimes.”
“Can she answer their questions?” asked Mrs. Vachell.
“Surely you know that Mother never answers any questions?” said Teresa very much surprised. “She always tells you something that she thinks instead, and makes it seem as if she had answered. But I never know whether it is because she can’t or won’t.”
“I do loathe poverty,” Mrs. Vachell said, as if to herself.
Teresa went home very little the wiser for her visit, but she felt greatly discouraged by the extreme age of civilisation as it had been shown to her at the Vachells’. It seemed to have accomplished so little in the time at its disposal.