“No, no, please,” said Joseph. “Come on, Miss Fulton, we must finish this. I’m enjoying it ’mmensely. I love people that speak out. I——”
“Oh, do leave it alone,” said Teresa. “You don’t understand a bit.”
“Yes, I do,” he persisted. “I’m ’normously int’rested in th’ whole subject. I shall b’ sure to have to canvass for my father at the next election and what you were saying is just th’ sort of thing th’ Labour people will put up, and I shall have t’ find an answer. And there isn’t any answer, you know, except that somebody’s got t’ have money—there isn’t ’nough in th’ country for everybody—and mining and all that takes generations of training. Somebody’s got to do it, and somebody’s got t’ stay outside and watch them when they come up. Th’ question is, Who? Fisk thinks he ought t’ have a turn because he never has. I think I’m going to because I’ve got int’ the habit of it. There’s nothing in it as an argument, you see. The only way is t’ sit tight. The thing’s bound t’ settle itself in time.”
“And what is your father’s view as a Member of Parliament?” asked Mrs. Lake, who was a good deal bewildered, a little shocked and a very little amused.
“Oh, I don’t know,” said Joseph, “he doesn’t say, but I don’t think he stands much nonsense from the f’llers down at the works. But he keeps friends with the Labour Party, I b’lieve on principle. The government offered him a baronetcy last year, but that sort of thing isn’t done now, thank goodness. He said he’d be a fool t’ take it, I remember, but I forget why.”
“How can you pretend to be so silly, Joseph,” his mother interrupted. “You know your father doesn’t believe in rewards for public service of that sort. No one can ever say he has pushed himself forward.”
“No, my dear mother, that’s just what I said,” he remarked. “It’s such frightf’lly bad form t’ have titles and all that sort of thing, now. The Tories stick to it on principle, of course, but they’re frightf’lly crude in their ideas——” He was wandering on gaily as a matter of habit, relating as much as he could remember of what he heard at the houses he loved, when Mrs. Archie Lake rose.
“Don’t talk too much about crude Conservatives while you are at Aldwych, Mr. Price,” she said. “We don’t study politics down here; we just have them, and we are not likely to change. You had better come and play tennis with us next week, and leave abstruse problems alone.”
Evangeline had taken a small house by the sea for July and August. She intended to be there alone with Ivor and his nurse, except for such time as she could persuade Teresa to spend with her. Evan would come down for week ends, and perhaps a whole ten days at the end of the time. She was beginning to lose those sociable tastes that had made her so popular when she came to Drage. Her joy in living that had made her easily throw off the weight of other people’s theories of conduct was giving way under continuous fatigue. Her war against Evan’s prejudices had broken out again.
This reassembling of his forces and hers might have been prophesied without much risk from the beginning, but the prophet would have been called cynical and pessimistic by all those genial souls who believe that the best way to prevent war is to invite the hostile parties to a picnic. They fondly suppose that because the guns are left at home there will be no fighting. Even when they look round and discover that half the party are drawn up on one side of the tablecloth with all the teapots and the other half are massed with all the buns on the other,—even then they would consider it morbid to suspect them of harbouring old grudges. It may be remembered that before Evan asked Evangeline to marry him he had reviewed and finally dismissed the remnant of his doubts about the soundness of her character. His inner voices warned him, “She is not your ideal woman; she is lax and flippant and light-headed,” but Nature laughed at and tormented him. No one knows how Nature does this work of uniting opposite temperaments, but she did it, and Evan’s misgivings retired muttering.