"If you will have it, you will have it--though this isn't the time or place; but Vivian must blame you, not me. Life's largely a game of make-believe and pretence, and, right or wrong, we've got to suffer it. We should all be no better than lonely monkeys or Red Indians, if we didn't pretend a bit more than we meant and say a bit more than we'd swear to. Monkeys don't pretend, and what's the result? They've all gone under."
They wrangled until the food was on the plates, then Vivian, who had been puffing out his cheeks, rolling his eyes and showing uneasiness in other ways, displayed a sudden irritability.
"God damn it!" he cried. "Let's have no more of this! Be the meal to be sarved with no sauce but all this blasted nonsense? Get the drink, Rupert."
Nathan expressed instant regret and strove to lift the tone of the company. But the cloud did not pass so easily. Vivian himself soon forgot the incident; his children and his wife found it difficult. The young people, indeed, maintained a very dogged taciturnity and only talked among themselves in subdued tones. May and Polly waited upon the rest between the intervals of their own meal. They changed the dishes and went to and from the kitchen. Rupert and his youngest brother helped them, but Ned did not.
Some cheerfulness returned with the beer, and even Humphrey Baskerville strove to assist the general jollity; but he lacked the power. His mind was of the discomfortable sort that cannot suffer opinions, believed erroneous, to pass unchallenged. Sometimes he expressed no more than doubt; sometimes he dissented forcibly to Nathan's generalities. But after Vivian's heat at the beginning of the entertainment, his brother from 'The White Thorn' was cautious, and took care to raise no more dust of controversy.
The talk ran on the new vicar, and the master of Cadworthy spoke well of him.
"An understanding man, and for my part, though I can't pretend to like new things, yet I ban't going to quarrel for nothing. And if he likes to put the boys in surplices and make the maidens sit with the congregation, I don't see no great harm. They can sing praises to God wi' their noses to the east just so easy as they can facing north."
"Well said," declared Humphrey. "I've no patience with such fools as Gollop."