“You were very rude and disagreeable at supper,” said Eddy, striking a match. “It was awkward for me. I must apologise to-morrow for having asked you. I shall say it’s your country manners, though I suppose you would like me to say that you don’t approve of clergymen.... Really, Arnold, I was surprised you should be so very rustic, even if you don’t like them.”
Arnold groaned faintly.
“Chuck it,” he murmured. “Come out of it before it is too late, before you get sucked in irrevocably. I’ll help you; I’ll tell the vicar for you; yes, I’ll interview them all in turn, even Hillier, if it will make it easier for you. Will it?”
“No,” said Eddy. “I’m not going to leave at present. I like being here.”
“That,” said Arnold, “is largely why it’s so demoralising for you. Now for me it would be distressing, but innocuous. For you it’s poison.”
“Well, now,” Eddy reasoned with him, “what’s the matter with Traherne, for instance? Of course, I see that the vicar’s too much the practical man of the world for you, and Peters too much the downright sportsman, and Hillier too much the pious ass (though I like him, you know). But Traherne’s clever and all alive, and not in the least reputable. What’s the matter with him, then?”
Arnold grunted. “Don’t know. Must be something, or he wouldn’t be filling his present position in life. Probably he labours under the delusion that life is real, life is earnest. Socialists often do.... Look here, come and see Jane one day, will you? She’d be a change for you.”
“What’s Jane like?”
“I don’t know.... Not like anyone here, anyhow. She draws in pen and ink, and lives in a room in a little court out of Blackfriars Road, with a little fat fair girl called Sally. Sally Peters; she’s a cousin of young James here, I believe. Rather like him, too, only rounder and jollier, with bluer eyes and yellower hair. Much more of a person, I imagine; more awake to things in general, and not a bit rangée, though quite crude. But the same sort of cheery exuberance; personally, I couldn’t live with either; but Jane manages it quite serenely. Sally isn’t free of the good-works taint herself, though we hope she is outgrowing it.”
“Oh, I’ve met her. She comes and helps Jimmy with the children’s clubs sometimes.”