“Not because he doesn’t understand, but because he doesn’t agree. It is rather like statistics; two people can add up the same figures and prove different results with them, one showing that trade is prospering and the other that it is going all wrong.”
“You know, I agree with him,” said Evangeline. “I don’t think you could do any good by selling everything. There is nothing you can give to people to make them happy if they don’t want to be. I have found that out.”
“But the people I am talking about do want to be happy,” Teresa argued passionately. “They are starving for what other people are throwing away because they can’t use all of it.”
“I saw in the paper the other day that if you divided up everyone’s money there would be only thirteen-and-something a day—or a week—or it might have been a year—I forget; but only a very little like that for each person.”
“It wasn’t finance that I was thinking of,” said Teresa, “I know it is no good trying to settle that. There is a horrid boy at the University called Fisk. He is always telling me that I haven’t studied the subject, and he is going quite mad himself over it. He devours Mr. Cranston’s literature and coughs it up again much the worse for wear. Joseph Price ran over him once, ages ago, and brought him back to their house in the middle of a tea-party. Mother was there, and David told me all about it afterwards. Of course Mother told us nothing except that Mrs. Price got frightened at Fisk talking so much about blood, as he always does when he is excited, and that she had said that he couldn’t possibly be a Communist, because some of her own relations were; wasn’t that like her? You know they were all very rich, so I have wondered since how they did mean to divide up their money. But whichever way it was they don’t seem to have done it. Fisk stayed in the Prices’ house for two days, and at last Mrs. Price sent for Emma, as he seemed to have settled down there very comfortably and said he was too ill to move. I think Joseph encouraged him because he thought it was the kind of thing his dear Mortons, whom he imitates, would do; keep a revolutionary in bed in their own house and egg him on and feed him up and get lots of notoriety out of him and then manage to get out of any trouble that they raised later on. David says if there were a revolution the Mortons would probably pretend to head it and then slip off to another country where it is all comfortable under a despot.”
“What does Father say?” Evangeline asked curiously.
“I haven’t told him about David,” Teresa replied.
“Why not? He always understands, and if, as you say, Mother knows, she is sure to have told him.”
“No, there are some things he doesn’t see at all, and one of them is slums. They don’t worry him an atom unless he has to walk through them, and if he does that he complains that everyone wears fish next the skin, and wants to go home another way. He never will take the trouble to think about anything horrid that he can’t help. I asked him once what he would do if he had to live in a place like that—we were in some horrible street near the docks—and he said that it was impossible that he should have to, because then he would be somebody else; he explained that he would have been given gin in his bottle as a baby, and therefore would have grown up quite contented with it all. Of course he would side with David if I told him. The idea of Mr. Price having anything to do with hounds would prevent him from listening to arguments even from an archangel.”
If Teresa had but known, her parents were at that very moment discussing the same subject. It was after dinner, and Susie had mentioned that she met Lady Varens that afternoon opening a bazaar. “They are going to let Aldwych to the Prices for three years,” she said. “David refuses to sell it, but he has suddenly come round to the idea of letting it. I suppose the Prices hope to be able to buy it in the end.”