“Or for a girl to run after a young man,” Mrs. Gainsborough interrupted nervously. “They so often do, you know.”
“Not unless they are taught to do it,” Susie objected, her eyes wide with reproach.
Joseph Price sat on the back of a sofa looking from one lady to the other and jingling the money in his pockets. His mother was waiting to ring the bell and have them all shown out. The girls had come from the other room and were standing at the back wondering what it was all about.
“I am afraid we must be going,” said Mrs. Gainsborough, feeling that she had not said the right thing and wishing Emma were there.
“You m’st have a talk to Fisk,” said Joseph to Susie. “You’d like him; he’s really a very int’resting f’ller. I wonder if he’s still talking about blood; p’raps I’d better go and see.”
“Well, you will come and meet Mr. Cranston, won’t you, Mrs. Fulton?” Mrs. Vachell said. She held out her hand to say good-bye to Mrs. Price and they all went downstairs.
CHAPTER XIII
Teresa was staying with Evangeline at Drage. Evangeline had received a letter from her a week before saying, “I want you to ask me to stay with you for a few days. David has asked me to marry him and I can hardly make you understand how much I want to and at the same time explain why I have refused. You will think it silly, because you don’t take sayings literally and there are some that I can’t take generally. If I had a lot of money I should see written up on the walls all round me, ‘Sell all that thou hast and give to the poor.’ I couldn’t live in the middle of it and just dole out what was left from the expenses of a big house. David won’t see it. If only his father had not died! Then we should have been married and I couldn’t have gone back; whatever we settled David and I could not have parted. Though that is just cowardice. It is that I hate having the choice when I am so perfectly certain which I ought to do. David says the money he would get for the estate would make as much difference to the poor as a parcel of dressings in a battle, but I think that is the weakest possible argument, that because one person can’t do much no one is to do anything; everyone has to go as far as they can see and nothing less is enough. He says the money is more useful where it is, in teaching people to make the best out of the land. I asked if we couldn’t at least sell the big house and live in a cottage or perhaps use the house as a convalescent home for mothers and children; but he says, No. It is full of lovely things, hundreds of years old, that belonged to his family and that he has the right to enjoy as much as if he had bought them himself. He says that if Mr. Price bought them, as he would like to do, he wouldn’t either give them away or sell them directly. He doesn’t care about them, but he would keep them out of vanity and hand them on to Joseph, who would probably sell them to the Jews and they would be lost all over the world. I said, wasn’t that a good thing, as then so many people could each have a little bit and enjoy it, but he said there was no sense in that; they looked much better all together where they were. Of course you and I have never had a family tree, so I don’t suppose we understand any more than Mrs. Potter does—though, if you come to think of it, whenever she puts that absurd old tea caddy of hers up the spout she always gets it out again because it was her grandmother’s. But Mother found out about David and she goes on talking very gently and persistently, and tells me I am only a little girl and can’t possibly think out things that even the greatest men don’t agree about, and she doesn’t see that that is not the point. I have to follow what my bones say is the only decent thing to do. She does get on my nerves so, and I know you won’t argue if I ask you not. I believe I shall get some support out of Evan, as he does so believe in anything uncomfortable, doesn’t he? And this is so uncomfortable I am nearly mad.”
Evangeline had written at once, offering all the welcome and freedom Teresa could want, and Evan received her with affection. He liked her thoroughly. She found an atmosphere of tension and sadness in the house that she had not expected, neither could she see how it came there, for Evangeline seemed on good terms with her husband, and Ivor was well and in the highest spirits; except when his father came into the nursery, which was not very often. Then the nurse grew troubled and fidgeted the child and he became exacting and contentious, speaking rudely to her, which was quite unusual with him. One day Teresa and Evangeline were there playing with him in perfect peace, when Evan came in. It was about half-past three on a foggy November afternoon. “Why isn’t that boy out?” he asked his wife.
“He has been out,” she answered, “but Nurse brought him in as it is so foggy and he has had a cold.”