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Title: Three Loving Ladies

Author: Mrs. Dowdall

Release Date: March 12, 2022 [eBook #67610]

Language: English

Produced by: Richard Tonsing and the Online Distributed Proofreading
             Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from
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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THREE LOVING LADIES ***





                          THREE LOVING LADIES


                                   By
                         THE HON. MRS. DOWDALL


                          BOSTON AND NEW YORK
                        HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY

                                  1921

                       _Printed in Great Britain_




                                   TO

                             KATIE BURRILL




                          THREE LOVING LADIES




                               CHAPTER I


Messrs. Burridge and Co’s pantechnicons bumped majestically along the
streets of Millport early in the morning. Mud seemed to be unaccountably
falling from the sky through a close filter of smoke draped high above
the town; for although there was no fog, the great stucco offices on
either side of the street were slimy with coffee-coloured moisture, and
the people who hurried along looked cold and slippery, like
panic-stricken snails compelled to leave their shelters. The same
mysterious mud oozed also from below the paving stones, and would
continue to ooze long after the sun had penetrated the smoke filter and
made the houses and the pedestrians comparatively dry.

Millport is one of the largest cities of the empire, and one of the
richest. I have never heard of anyone living there for choice, or for
any reason but an alleged opportunity for making money. Those who settle
there are in the habit of transplanting themselves at regular intervals;
removing to a house further away from the premises to which the
breadwinner carries a neat bag or attaché case every weekday morning,
between eight and ten. The removals mark a rise in the social scale, and
are celebrated by new responsibilities, in the addition of servants,
greenhouses, garages and acres of ground requiring “upkeep.” The heights
of Elysium are, in the end, reached by train. Between the main railway
station and the outskirts of wealth, lie nearly two miles of shops, and
a professional quarter where the inner darkness of blocks and terraces
shades into the dim glory of semi-detached houses. The next stage of
grandeur is seen in the increase of laurel bushes and gravel paths round
each semi-detached pair. When the flower beds in front, and the tennis
lawns at the back, reach a certain standard of importance they flow into
each other by connecting paths between the buildings, and each house
then stands alone, detached, in the full radiance of encircling
“grounds.”

It was nearly ten o’clock before Messrs. Burridge’s stately
pantechnicons reached their destination, a large, square,
cinnamon-coloured house, standing in about two acres of ground on the
borders of Millport’s largest and most satisfactory park. General
Fulton, who had taken a five years’ lease of it, wondered many times
what had induced him to leave his comfortable little house in
Westminster. He had meant to retire from the army at the end of the war,
and had been turning over in his mind many agreeable plans for the
future, when he was offered the command of a military district of which
Millport was the centre. In a rash moment he confided the offer to his
wife, hoping for some entertainment from her habit of commenting
seriously on matters which he regarded as trifling. To his surprise and
disgust, she surpassed his expectation, and pointed out unanswerable
reasons why the command must be accepted. She confronted him with facts
about his income, which had hitherto been sufficient. But he neither
read the papers nor practised arithmetic, and, as she observed at the
end of the argument, “seemed to suppose that girls’ clothes grew on
their backs.” His reply to this last shot produced a silence which he
knew to be ominous of a settled programme; he knew that he had thrown
away his last chance by “saying something coarse,” and that any further
excuses would be flung unregarded into the flame of her spiritual nature
(a possession which is supposed by women who boast of it, to guarantee
also a sound business judgment). He appealed in vain to his daughters
Evangeline and Teresa. Evangeline said carelessly, “Oh, do let’s,
father,” and left the room to post a letter. She informed the maid whom
she passed on the stairs that, “we are all going to Millport, and isn’t
it fun?” Teresa ran her fingers through her untidy hair, done up for the
first time, and said, “If it is by the sea couldn’t we have a cottage?”

General Fulton, avoiding his wife’s eye, mixed himself a whisky and
soda. It was the only way to drown his bitter regret at having ever
mentioned the appointment. “You’ll never get another house as nice as
this,” he suggested feebly. “I’ve been to Millport once, and it’s a
filthy place. There was a great black church opposite the hotel, and
drunken old women poking stale fish about.” Teresa shivered, but said
nothing.

“I don’t suppose those poor old women ever thought of drinking until
they were taught by their husbands,” said Mrs. Fulton, glancing at the
tumbler he held, but she added hurriedly, before he had time to protest,
“and I believe it is perfectly necessary to poke fish before you can
tell whether it is fresh or not. You would see that kind of thing in any
town you went to, Cyril. And, anyhow, one doesn’t live down there.
Father and mother lived in Millport for years, and I know father said
everyone lived right out.”

“Well, I don’t think I want the thing,” he said bravely. “I am not going
to take it.” He gathered up his morning’s correspondence. “I’m out to
lunch, Sue.”

“Do you mind paying some money into the bank for me as you go past?” she
said gently. “The last quarter hasn’t been nearly enough. I suppose it
is the income tax and the price of everything.”

General Fulton looked at her in exasperated admiration as she sat there,
quietly warming her toes in front of the fire, meditative and candid;
the typical gentle wife who patiently adds up the problems of life for
her husband, and leaves his wisdom to unravel the answer.

“Why didn’t you say at the beginning that we were in debt?” he asked.

“I don’t know that we are, dear,” she said, looking at him in perfect
innocence. “I only said that I couldn’t manage on what you gave me. I
don’t know what your shares come to; it is all Greek to me.”

“Well, have it your own way, damn it,” returned her husband. “Perhaps
you’ve inherited business instincts, and they always go with turpitude.”

“I wish you would think a little of the children sometimes,” she said,
glancing at Teresa who sat lost in thought by the window, hearing what
they said, and trying in vain to understand what the argument really
meant.

“Do you want to go to Millport, Dicky?” her father asked kindly.

“I don’t know,” she said. “It is on the sea, isn’t it?”

“It’s on shrimps,” he replied, “and docks—things that open and shut at
you—and it is as black as night, and people walk about with bread under
their arms. Well, good-bye, dear; your mother says we’re going, and she
knows—she cares—God bless her.” He kissed Teresa affectionately, and
left the room.

And so, the course of time showed Messrs. Burridge’s pantechnicons
casting the contents of Cyril’s happy little home into the ornate
cinnamon jaws of a house that he said made him think somehow of the late
Prince Albert. “The sort of thing he’d have built for the head
gamekeeper, Sue,” he remarked after lunch on their first day there. “And
the park is the very thing for ‘interments’; you could see them winding
all the way from end to end. I hope it will come up to your expectations
in the matter of wealthy consorts for the girls; or is that not part of
the scheme?”

“I don’t like joking about marriage, Cyril, you know that,” she replied,
“it may mean so much to a girl.” She sighed. She had been very beautiful
twenty years before, and would have been so still, but for the fact that
years of quiet enjoyment of her own skill in getting what she wanted,
and a conscious superiority over people who “worried about what couldn’t
be helped” had obliterated the delicate lines of her face, and given to
the fleeting dimple, which used to be the despair and delight of her
lovers, the coarser appearance of a crease in a satin cushion.

“It may mean something to her partner, too, if you come to that,”
returned Cyril. “It will to Evangeline’s, I should think. I wouldn’t be
in his shoes for something. She’s like you, Sue, in some ways; with all
the naughty little point of the story left out. I never knew such a
rough rider in the field of conversation. She’d never have been able to
stuff me with the stories you did about the injury to your pure young
mind when I kissed you. Lord! think of it!”

Mrs. Fulton kept a dignified silence for a minute or two, and then
sighed again, as if to waft away the possibility of looking at Nature’s
beauties with a man who had been blind from birth. “How did you like the
people you met to-day?” she asked.

“Oh, some of them weren’t bad. Hatton will be here to breakfast. He’ll
always be about the place, so I hope you’ll like him; he’s my A.D.C. And
all their wives will be round soon, I suppose, to pay their respects.
Hatton hasn’t got one I’m glad to say; though I daresay he’ll be as
preoccupied with the subject as if he had. I wish I had gone into the
Navy instead of the Army.”

“Why?” she asked, though she knew that the drift of what he was going to
say would be somehow unflattering to herself.

“Because one’s subordinates have always got a neat woman in lodgings
somewhere, and they just clear off in their spare time and keep
themselves employed until one meets them again. Their wives don’t litter
about the place and fight with each other.”

“I don’t know how any woman can care to be a mere tool like that,” she
replied. “It must make them so one-sided.”

“Yes,” he said, “but think of the feelings of the happy man who can say,
‘This little side is all for me,’ and knows that she has no other to
give to one who might like to have it. Why, it would make life a
different thing. Where are the girls, by the way?”

“I think they are arranging their rooms and showing the servants where
to put things. They seem to be the most curious creatures that we have
got; but it was so difficult to find well trained ones. They call me
‘Mrs. Fulton,’ and tell me what they have been accustomed to. I think I
shall engage a housekeeper, Cyril. I do hate explaining, and these
creatures want to argue about everything.”

“Can’t the girls do it?” he asked.

“Oh no; they have other things to do. Besides, Evangeline turns
everything upside down. I had the greatest difficulty in getting the
dining-room table put where I wanted it. Of course I want the dears to
have everything as they like, but I do wish sometimes they would be a
little more help.”

“Oh, well, we managed all right in the old place.”

“Yes, but then these servants won’t do nearly so much,” she complained,
“and they have more to do as it is. I must say I think it is only right
that we should consider them more than we used to do. It must be so
dreadful to work all day. I am sure that new girl Strickland would be
more satisfied and likely to stop if you kept your room tidier, Cyril.”

Evangeline poked her head round the door. “Father,” she asked, “can I
leave your books and have a lesson on the car from that magnificent
Fitz-Augustus person of yours? He says he is going some messages for
you, and he wouldn’t mind——”

“Anything you like,” said her father, “so long as I don’t know anything
about it; you can’t drive without a licence. Also, if you’ll make Dicky
go for a walk with me. I must go into the town, and I must have some
exercise, and I won’t walk alone.”

                  *       *       *       *       *

“I don’t think we’ll do that business after all,” he said as he left the
house with Teresa half an hour later. “It only means a small additional
coolness to the heels of an unknown gentleman in an office. They’ll warm
up again to-morrow, like a lodging house chop. You’ve never lived in
lodgings have you?”

“No, never.”

“Well, never do. When I lived in lodgings and used to be a bit off
colour in the morning I used to see ornaments about everywhere. I
remember I once saw a china dog, with a basket of forget-me-nots in its
mouth, on the Colonel’s table in the middle of his papers, and I’m
hanged if I know to this day whether it was a real one or not. I could
never make up my mind about it, though it gave me such a turn that I
went round to the chemist and got something.”

“What else,” asked Teresa. “That’s lovely.”

“Oh, I don’t remember anything special; but they never clean the mustard
pot in those places—that was another thing. They’ve no sense. And I
never could find the matches. They’d be at the bottom of a vase with
dried grass in it, or that kind of thing. I think this ought to take us
down to the docks. Would you like to see them?”

“Yes, awfully,” she agreed, and they walked some way in silence. “They
are nicer houses down here if they weren’t so dirty, aren’t they?” she
said presently, looking up at the windows as they passed along a street
to which some bygone architect had bequeathed an indestructible dignity.
Their restful proportions and large windows gave her a sudden sense of
relief after the turrets and variegated excrescences, coloured bricks
disposed in geometrical patterns, and twisted ironwork that adhered to
the semi-detached quarter they had passed through.

“Yes,” said her father. “I expect all the old turpitudes—pious founders
and all that—lived down here. Our place was probably a marsh or a coal
mine or something, till the influence of the Late Lamented overtook it.
A man I met yesterday was talking about slaves. They were up to all
sorts of games down at their warehouses. The negro still flourishes
apparently,” he added, as a group of black men passed them and turned
down a narrow street, where tousled women stood at their doors, and
children screamed in the gutter. They crossed over a thoroughfare at
which main streets intersected one another, and accommodation for
sailors was advertised by mission rooms, clubs, public-houses, slop
shops, and reiterated offers of beds. Blocks of shops, shipping bureaus
and warehouses split up further on into single gigantic buildings, the
offices of the state and of great trading companies, full as beehives,
and glittering with prosperity; all the organism of a seaport in touch
with continents. The sea air was fresh in their faces.

“That’s good,” said Cyril. “We’ll go and hang about.”

They went precariously down a sloping bridge, slippery with mud from the
feet of a stream of hurrying workers intent on their home affairs which
lay on the other side of the river, and stood by a line of iron chains
that stretched indefinitely along the gently heaving planks of the stage
to which the ferry boats were moored. A red sun hung above the chimneys
on the opposite side in a slight fog that was creeping up the river,
and, from mysterious shapes behind this veil, hooters, syrens and
clanging bells answered one another in warnings to the capering atoms of
whom the drowning of even one would affect, in some degree, the life of
the city.

“Do you know,” said Teresa presently, “that I haven’t seen a single
person—what we used to call ‘person’—since we came out; nothing but the
kind of people who make crowds.”

“That’s because you don’t know them,” said Cyril. “I saw a millionaire
get off the boat a minute ago, ‘walking quite unaffectedly,’ as the
newspapers say.”

“No, but the dressed people,” said Teresa, “you know what I mean. Where
are they?”

“My dear, how should I know?” he replied carelessly. “That’s what I
tried to explain to your mother before we came; I thought it would put
her off. But I shouldn’t be in the least surprised if she took up
philanthropy.”

“Do you mean that she’d go on committees?” Teresa asked awestruck.

“She might quite well, and if I were the committee I should just tell
her what I wanted done, and leave her to do it her own way. You’d find
it would work out in the end.”

“But those kind of people are generally so interfering,” said Teresa.
“Mother is not.”

“No, but she is a master of strategy,” said Cyril. “I used to read about
Napoleon when we were taught strategy. Did you ever hear of his
battles?”

“You mean Waterloo?” she asked.

“Yes, but that didn’t come off. His great success was before then. She
may meet her Wellington on the playing fields of Millport for all you
know. We shall see. Let’s go back to tea. Have a taxi?”

“No, let’s go on the top of a tram,” said Teresa. “I want to have that
rod thing arranged over my head. Did you see the conductor running round
with a string and hooking the little wheel on at the back?”

“Well, I don’t mind,” he conceded, “but the smell will knock you down.”

“What smell?” asked Teresa.

“Demos, a crowd,” he replied, as they made their slow progress between
the jostling workers who still poured uninterruptedly across the bridge,
“see also ‘Demosthenes’ and ‘demon’— and ‘demi-monde’,” he added
reflectively, as a whiff of strong scent struck him from a girl with a
sharp elbow.

“What a fuss you make about smells and things,” she said. “They’re all
life. They mean all sorts of things.”

“Well, they don’t mean anything I want,” he grumbled. “I believe
everybody in this damned place wears fish next the skin.” This was said
with profound disgust as they took their places on a little seat at the
top of the tram staircase, and other swarms of people with pale, serious
faces and drab clothing pushed past his knees to the glass shelter
beyond. The windows became fogged with human breath and clouds of cheap
tobacco, and as the sun disappeared in the drifting fog from the river,
the mud began to filter down once more on to the roofs, and to ooze up
from under the stones of the pavement. The car swayed under its heavy
load, with occasional grinding squeals, stopping every few hundred yards
to take up new burdens in place of those who had reached their
destination. Teresa watched the squalid forms and weary faces with a
new-born ecstasy. Some veiled desire, a love for something unknown,
which had led her in pursuit for as long as she could remember, had
stopped and shown itself to her for a moment. Then it fled again from
her reach.




                               CHAPTER II


One great source of mental nourishment that Evangeline relied on at this
time was the Press. Two thirds of the things she thought about each day
came from the newspapers, plain or illustrated, but not political; that
is to say, not political beyond striking headlines and a short—very
short—leading article. Her mind made curious pictures of these scraps of
state information. Perhaps the best way of describing what she thought
Parliament is, and does, is to imagine oneself very agile, very kind,
very interested, perched inside the roof of an immense building, looking
down on hundreds of elderly gentlemen all of one type, but some with
familiar faces. We, from our perch, know that each of them has gone
through a period of anxiety and expense, connected with loss of voice
and terrible boredom of his supporters, who have to sit behind him on
uncomfortable chairs and wish he would pull his coat down at the back
before speaking. This period of trial has ended in an election—ribbon
and scratch meals—and then he got a “seat” here on something or other
benches (Evangeline had been at school, but she wasn’t in the serious
lot, at least, not the brainy serious. Her set used only to discuss
things like immortality when they felt really friendly.) Once on these
“benches” men become political, and lose considerably in spiritual
value, except when they call out the army and navy. Otherwise they spend
their time henceforth in committing blunders (the meat blunder, the wool
blunder, the tax blunder, the housing blunder, etc.), to the perpetual
inconvenience of the public, until something happens to the Cabinet and
a lot of well-known people who were IN become OUT, and it makes no
difference at all, except as a frail raft for the drowning in
conversation. But the rest of the paper is worth reading; there are
things to interest everybody. The eccentric behaviour of criminals,
landladies and leaders of society; adventures, and reports of shipwrecks
and calves with two tails. On the last page there is often expert advice
on physical fitness and the complexion.

On the morning following Teresa’s walk to the docks with her father
Evangeline began to try the effects of the juice of an orange
accompanied by half an hour’s deep breathing before breakfast. She had
walked and deep breathed in the park, and returned full of exhilaration
from the sight of the dewy grass, young tulips pushing through the heavy
dun soil and the song of birds in smoke-laden trees and bushes that were
budding as irrepressibly as herself. She stood on the edge of a pond and
watched the ducks performing an ecstatic toilet. Their guttural sounds
of pleasure and the grinding of distant tram wheels were the only sounds
besides the chorus of chirping. The only people she met were a policeman
on one side of the pond, and a dressmaker’s assistant on the other, and
she felt that God was the friend of both as of the ducks and the Spring;
they were not at all in the way. When she arrived at home a man in
military uniform was standing on the doorstep. He was young and had the
face of a reformer.

“Good morning,” she said. “Are you coming in?”

“Please,” he answered gravely, and said no more, while she fitted her
latchkey. She led the way into the dining-room, where breakfast was
laid, and looked vaguely round.

“Shall I tell my father you’re here?” she asked hesitatingly, and then,
with sudden uncontrollable interest, “Are you the man that hasn’t got a
wife?”

He started and frowned. He was embarrassed, and felt that the question
was not one that should have been asked by a stranger. “No, I am not
married,” he snapped.

“Is your name Hatton?” she asked next.

“Yes.”

“Oh, then Father told us about you. Do you want to see him?”

“Very much,” said Captain Hatton with emphasis.

“I’ll fetch him,” she said, “but do sit down and be comfortable.” She
went out and called, “Father! Father!” at the bottom of the stairs.
“Father! Oh, drat him! I believe he is still in the bath.” Captain
Hatton, erect on the hearthrug in front of the door she had left open,
heard, and winced.

“Dick—y! Dick—y!” she called next.

“Oh, do come up, Chips, if you want anything,” he heard a small weary
voice say upstairs. “Father is in the bath; he’ll be out directly.”

“Well tell him to hurry up; it’s Captain Hatton,” said Evangeline, and
she plunged back into the dining-room.

“I am afraid my watch must be all wrong,” he said, as he glanced round
the room in hope of moral support from an accusing clock. “I thought
General Fulton said breakfast at half-past eight.”

“So it is,” said Evangeline. “It is only twenty minutes to nine now.
Father won’t get up if he has an interesting post. What time do you get
up?”

“Oh—er—a quarter to seven usually,” he replied.

“A quarter to——? Gracious! Do you mean in the very middle of a minute
like that? It seems just as if you said ‘up goes the hand of my watch,
down goes my leg on the floor.’ I couldn’t do that. I have to yawn a
long time first and then get out by degrees till it gets too cold not to
do something about it.”

There was silence. Evangeline felt depressed. All her gladness in the
awakening spring had gone. “Would you like to look at the paper?” she
asked with a sigh. He said, “Thank you,” but as he stretched out his
hand to take it from her he saw that it was not _Country Life_, but a
lady’s paper. Doll-like faces with no noses, shameless trousseaux,
ridiculous young men in black, scent bottles and wigs met his eye on the
open page.

“Er—thanks very much,” he said, “I think I’ll wait for the morning
paper. What time do you get it?”

“I expect it has come,” said Evangeline. “The boy generally flings it in
at the kitchen window.” She rang the bell. “Breakfast, please,
Strickland, and the paper if it has come,” she ordered.

“I was waiting till Mrs. Fulton came down,” said the maid severely.
Evangeline sighed again. “How obstructive everyone is this morning,” she
thought, but said aloud, “No, we’ll begin please, and anyhow I want the
paper.”

But neither came and the silence grew heavier. She wanted to rush out
of the room; she knew that her hair was untidy and two of her finger
nails were grubby owing to having restored a strayed worm to what she
thought a safe place on the bank of the pond, where a duck had eaten
him at once to her disgust. But she could not move from the sofa where
she had taken refuge with her rejected paper. The barrier of Captain
Hatton’s eye stretched between her and the door and she felt that it
might touch her as she ran past; if it did she would have to scream.
Suddenly—“A—tish—u!”—a fearful explosion. Captain Hatton had sneezed.
There was a dead silence while Evangeline held her breath and dared
not look. Then again the awful sound; and again; eight times.

“I beg your pardon,” he said when all was quiet again. “Extraordinary
how these attacks come on.”

The great friendly creature cheered up at once on this crumb of
encouragement. “I like sneezing,” she said. “It almost takes the place
of swearing. You feel better and no harm done to anybody.”

“Ah—h’m,” he agreed without enthusiasm.

“There’s Mother coming,” she said thankfully as a gentle rustle was
heard in the passage. Susie came in in a soft breakfast gown that
avoided conclusions with her figure. Her hair was beautifully done and
her face delicately cared for. Captain Hatton, though he approved of her
evidently careful toilet, took a vague dislike to her because it had not
been carried through at the specified time.

“I am so sorry my husband is late,” she murmured, “I am afraid we got
into bad habits in London. Everything is so late there and the morning
is really the loveliest time, isn’t it? I remember once being out at six
to catch a train and the birds were simply delightful. Do you sing at
all?” she inquired, her eyes brimming with sympathetic interest.

“I do occasionally,” he admitted, heartily wishing that his chief would
come and relieve him.

“I hope we shall often hear you,” said Mrs. Fulton. “I always think
music is such a happy thing. Evangeline dear, ring the bell.”

“I have rung twice,” she said.

“Servants are very unpunctual as a race,” Mrs. Fulton observed. “I wish
they would get up earlier, but I daresay they are often tired like we
are.” Strickland came in with the hot dishes. “We shall want some more
toast, I think, Strickland.”

“The fire’s not hot enough,” answered the maid. “The cook was late this
morning.”

“Then just run up and make a little at the gas fire in the General’s
dressing-room,” Susie ordered. “Will you help yourself, Captain Hatton.”

A few minutes later Cyril entered hurriedly in his dressing-gown. “I
say, Sue, what the devil—hullo, Hatton, that you?—what the devil did you
send that woman to make toast in my room for? I’d nothing but——”

“Cyril dear, never mind,” his wife interrupted. “The kitchen fire wasn’t
quite ready; she won’t be a minute.”

“Well, I can’t go back to dress now,” he complained.

“It will teach us to be more punctual to-morrow,” said Mrs. Fulton. “We
must set them a good example. Dicky ought to be down too.”

Teresa came in quietly and shut the door without looking at anyone. She
was flushed and seemed preoccupied and had evidently forgotten
Evangeline’s announcement of a guest. “My hair refuses to go up,” she
began, turning straight to the sideboard. “I shall do it like some women
I saw yesterday. The front was all in tiny plaits and the back—well, it
wasn’t hairdressing, it was plumbing. You’ve been pretty hearty with the
kedgeree, haven’t you?”

“Dicky, darling, I don’t think you have seen Captain Hatton,” her mother
suggested. Teresa turned unconcernedly.

“I am sorry,” she apologised. “How do you do? I remember my sister did
tell me you were here, but I happened to be thinking at the time and I
forgot.”

“Please don’t bother,” he said. He was recovering his temper under the
influence of breakfast and the sense of safety that his host brought.
“You’ll see so much of me, I’m afraid, that I’d rather you did not
notice it.”

“Don’t hope for that, Hatton,” put in the General. “They’ll see
everything you do. It’s a damned noticing family; except Evangeline and
she’ll fall over you in the dark every time.”

Captain Hatton looked embarrassed and changed the subject. “Are you
going to like being here, do you think?” he asked Susie.

“Oh, I think so,” she replied. “Of course it is quite different from
London, but there must be some nice people. Do you know many people here
yet?”

“I have got some friends who live a few miles out,” he said. “I have
stayed with them for hunting, but I’ve been out of England for the last
three years. We were sent to Germany after the armistice and I came back
to go into hospital.”

“Oh, dear me, those hospitals!” she sighed. “Shall I ever forget them! I
couldn’t do any actual nursing, of course, though I should have loved
it; but I don’t think it was right the way women left their children.
But I used to visit the poor boys and wash up. I get such touching
letters from them even now. Do you remember young Digby, Cyril?”

“No, I don’t, but I could make a fair guess at him. You forget that I
was in my little wooden hut at the time and couldn’t leave it even for
you. I wonder if that beastly woman is out of my room. Dicky—oblige your
father. Go and see if she is there, will you? I want to get dressed.”

“She is making toast, dear,” Mrs. Fulton explained. “You might ask her
for it; she won’t hear the bell.”

Teresa went out and met Strickland in the passage. She was dusting the
hall. “Can we have the toast, please?” Teresa asked.

“It isn’t made,” Strickland replied coldly. “I couldn’t be spoken to
like that. I shall leave at the end of the month. I’m not accustomed to
be blasted.” Teresa touched her on the shoulder. “Never mind Father,”
she said. “We none of us do. He’s most affectionate really. Forget the
toast; I’ll tell them.” She went back into the dining-room and shut the
door. Mrs. Fulton was offering dainty morsels of sentiment about
hospitals to Captain Hatton, who disposed of them one by one with the
indifference a sea lion shows about the quality of the fish thrown into
its mouth. Teresa sat down by her father and said in a low voice, “You
mustn’t swear at the maids, you know. Strickland is very angry and was
going to go, but I told her you are all right. I don’t know if she will
recover, but you must remember that you don’t have the trouble of going
to registry offices.”

“What an eternal curse women’s feelings are,” he grumbled as he pulled
out a cigarette case. “I believe they grow fat on them.”

“But then, you see, your men have none at all,” she explained, “which is
as bad the other way, because you can’t make them hear except by
blasting and all those kinds of words that mean nothing.”

“But they do mean something,” argued her aggrieved father. “They mean,
‘You’ve damn well got to do it and look sharp.’”

“Yes, but if you say to a woman, ‘Be quick, Pansy dear,’ she does it
just as well.”

Cyril roared with laughter. “Here, Hatton,” he said, “do you know what
you’ve got to say to the mess sergeant the next time he keeps you
waiting? ‘Be quick, Pansy dear!’ Will you try it first or shall I?”
Captain Hatton laughed.

“What is Dicky saying?” asked Mrs. Fulton indulgently.

“Explaining the art of commanding those of unripe station,” said the
General. “Come on to my room, Hatton, and I’ll leave you there while I
get some clothes on—if they’re not all over toast and tears,” he added
resentfully.

“Good heavens! What a man!” Evangeline exclaimed when the door shut
behind them. “He’s like an umbrella.”

“Oh, I think he’s charming,” said her mother. “So much tact, and most
interesting, I should think, when one gets to know him. Ring the bell,
Dicky dear, and when she comes to clear away tell her I shall be in my
sitting-room if she wants me.”

“What are we going to do with ourselves every day in this place, Chips?”
Teresa asked her sister when they were alone.

“Oh, what we have done before, I suppose,” Evangeline answered
carelessly. She was reading the paper that had come too late to save
Captain Hatton’s temper. The Labour Party, she read, were determined to
do something which she did not understand, but which foreboded
discomfort to everybody including their own supporters. They seemed to
do it on purpose, like schoolmistresses, for some end which no
reasonable young person desires, even if it could be achieved. Who
exactly were the Labour party she wondered? The paper showed their
photographs; clumsy figures in impossible hats, with impossible wives
whose barren heads contrasted grotesquely with the hairiness of their
men’s faces. She looked over the page. An officer, recently demobilised,
had committed suicide owing to the difficulty of maintaining a blue-eyed
child, whose portrait was inset below his own. The “night life” of a
great city was said to be “glittering with unprecedented extravagance!”
A millionaire had made a unique will at a place she had never heard of,
providing for the purchase of fifty elephants, which were to be
presented to the Corporation, and supported by public funds for the
employment of superannuated keepers.

“But you forget that I haven’t done anything except go to classes,”
pursued Teresa. “I am supposed to be ‘out’ now.”

“Jolly lucky for you,” remarked her sister. “There was no coming out in
my time.”

“I don’t see much difference,” said Teresa, “except that you brought
your own food to parties and didn’t wear such low necks. But anyhow,
what I meant was that the war is over, and we’re in a new place and
we’ve got some maids, and what is the next?”

“I don’t know,” Evangeline answered slowly. “There are days when I want
to burst—you know—with a pop, in the sun on a still day—like that, (she
waved her hands) and then I should become something quite different. I
should be full of ideas. I don’t know what they would be but that is the
exciting part.”

“This is a very dirty town,” Teresa said, as she stood at the window. “I
haven’t seen any people yet who looked as if they liked what they were
doing.”

Evangeline’s eager interest had faded. “Haven’t you?” she said.

“No, and I don’t know what Mother will do with herself, either. I
suppose there must be some ordinary ones. She’s a social success, isn’t
she?”

“In a way——” Evangeline hesitated. “She’s not like an American mother in
those ways, but if you notice you’ll find that you never can stop
anything happening as she wants it to. I believe she conjures. She seems
to sit down by a hat and take no notice of it, and then there’s an
omelet in it. If Father doesn’t want the omelet, or we don’t, she says
she hasn’t made it, and I spend my life trying to find out whether she
has or not.”

“Well that hasn’t much to do with what I was saying,” her sister
continued. “We shall drift here if we don’t look out.”

“Drift?”

“Yes, you know—I shall arrange the flowers, and you will play endless
games and go to things and perhaps ‘take up’ something, and I shall shop
and be polite to visitors, and I really don’t want to do anything else.
I am not energetic, and I should love to live in a cottage. But
everything is so hideous here, and those smells and awful faces make me
sort of drunk.”

“My dear!” Evangeline sympathised with little understanding.

“Everyone has always made me feel a little drunk,” Teresa went on. “They
say such stupid things; sit there gibbering and drinking tea, and yet
all the people in history—anyone—Nebuchadnezzar or Cleopatra or Anne
Boleyn—were in society, and all sorts of real things happened to them;
they didn’t ask for it. And I believe just as much could happen to the
silly people who pay calls. I often understand eating grass and letting
one’s nails grow.” She paused. “And those people who are poor—they must
know a lot. I want to know what it is.”

“It is like my wanting to burst, perhaps,” said Evangeline. “Except that
I don’t want to know all about those horrors. I hated all that in the
war, though, of course, it was so exciting being useful that one forgot
the mess. I should like to be in a dangerous country with a lovely
climate, and live with a man who had read everything there is. We should
ride all day, and perhaps have some children who wouldn’t want clothes
or governesses nor have diseases.”

“Like a cinema,” commented Teresa.

“Yes, rather. I always get so angry with the film girl who is left in a
log cabin with a perfectly beautiful savage who leaves her the room to
herself out of chivalry and sleeps in the stable and does all he can for
her, and then the silly ass crawls screaming round the walls, and wants
to go back to some odious young man in the city.”

“But the city man would be much more likely to have read everything,”
her sister pointed out. “Your savage wouldn’t know any more than you do,
which isn’t saying much.”

“No, I know,” she admitted with a sigh. “I don’t know what I want;
perhaps both of them for different days; wet Sundays to spend with the
young man who reads, and the other days, when it is sunny, to gallop
about with the dangerous one.”

“I believe there is more in it than that,” said Teresa, “and meantime I
am going to study Strickland. I have an idea she can tell me the things
I want to know. I had better find her, by the way, and give her Mother’s
message. I don’t think she takes much interest in bells.” She left
Evangeline to speculate on life as digested for her by the newspaper,
and went herself in search of the woman who, she felt, held some clue to
the pursuit of her desire.

At the end of a week she recalled her sister’s inspired description of
their mother’s behaviour. Susie had, it seemed, by some unobservable
process, evolved a spiritual omelet out of the most unpromising material
among the people who called on her. Most of them belonged to what
Strickland, who had begun to unbend towards Teresa, assured her were
“some of our leading families.”

“The Manleys are very well known,” she said. “Old Mr. Manley did a great
deal of good, and was very well thought of all over the town. My
grandfather used to work for him, and he always said he never wished to
have a better master. I don’t know so much about the young ones. My
sister lived with Mrs. James Manley, and I can’t say she enjoyed it.
Everything was very near, and she left because she got run down with the
work. But Mrs. Eric Manley, that called to-day, is well enough spoken
of, though I don’t think much of her myself.”

“Yes,—Mrs. Carpenter,” she said, another day, when she was turning down
Teresa’s bed. “I’m glad you mentioned her. She’s another of the sort I
was telling you about. They’re well enough in public I suppose, but
those who have to do with them when they get back know who are the real
ladies and gentlemen. Now you’ll hear a great deal, I daresay, about
Mrs. Carpenter, and how she goes about here and there and all she does,
but I wouldn’t be the matron of some of those homes she goes to—no, I
wouldn’t for all the money you could give me; and I wouldn’t be one of
the inmates, either, with all the advice she gives, and she who doesn’t
know what it is to have one child left on her hands for a day, let alone
six or eight. I don’t say she doesn’t go about here and there, and so
she should, for she’s the time and the money, but I don’t think it’s
right for servants to be kept up till all hours washing dishes for those
who study the poor, and up again next morning to light the fires in time
for ladies to warm themselves while they telephone for the best of
everything.”

“Yes,” said Teresa, looking into the fire.

“You’ll say I’m a socialist, perhaps, Miss,” Strickland added, as she
was going to leave the room, “but it isn’t that. I know we can’t all do
alike, and I don’t mind the General, if you’ll excuse me, now I’ve got
used to his language. He’s very thoughtful in some ways, and it seems a
man’s place to mess things about. But when I took in the tea, and heard
Mrs. Carpenter going on at such a rate, and Mrs. Manley, too, I felt
like speaking out when you mentioned her.”

“How you do gossip with the servants, dear Dicky,” said Susie, who had
heard the last word on her way to her bedroom, and called to Teresa to
help her to fasten her dress. “I never think it is a wise plan.”

Teresa said nothing. Although she always received her mother’s remarks
with respectful affection, due to the fact that Susie never appeared
cross and everything she said was incontrovertible, yet very little that
was not a definitely expressed wish penetrated her thoughts. “If Mother
wants anything done, of course we do it,” was the understanding between
her and Evangeline, but they respected her power as a conjuror, rather
than her wisdom as a prophet. Susie’s power over men had been great in
her youth, and she had had much influence in the lives of women, but no
one had ever counted her as friend or enemy. She had been an article of
faith to some, of admiration, of liking, of amusement or indefinite
irritation to others, but only her children in their nursery days had
ever looked to her as a help in time of trouble. Her conjuring ability
had been invaluable in the nursery and schoolroom. Her presence would
always turn a crime into a bubble, and the indignant nurse or governess
was compelled to see her rod break out into the delicate blossom of
divine forgiveness under her outraged eyes. The impression of this
gentleness remained with the girls when they grew up; but that was all.
They might search the corners of the wonder-box where their
recollections of her were stored, and find nothing that they could put
together and call a mother.

Teresa had been surprised that day by Susie’s immediate success with the
women who had called. It is true that they had come prepared to like the
Fultons, but they were in no way committed; and such all-embracing
eagerness to love as Evangeline showed to strangers was against their
traditions. It is one of the customs of Millport before paying a call to
consider first the reasons for the newcomers’ arrival. A well paid
appointment gives them a good start, whereas an indefinite purpose would
be thought suspicious. Second to be considered is their pedigree. If
they can be traced to some source called “good connections” another
point is scored in their favour. A good income comes third, and,
provided the rest is satisfactory, adds greatly to their favourable
chances, but this item is not so essential as it used to be. People who
are not at all nice are often rich at the present time, and even furs
have to be more carefully chosen than in the past, for fear they may be
the outcome of too recent enterprise. But the thing that tells in the
long run is “views.” The Provinces have collective “views” in a way that
would be impossible in London. You must either think with the city or
carry the city with you. To live in opposition to it you must be either
a hermit or a fanatic; cease to love your neighbour or lose your reason.
The apostle of a different creed from that of the city can carry the
people with him some distance towards any end—the best or the
worst—provided he uses the old ritual cunningly; but wolves and doves
alike must be dressed in sheep’s clothing, or out they go.

“None of that, now, with those feathers,” the city says to the intruding
dove. “I know you’re not a wolf. You don’t need to tell me what I can
see. But you’ve got a beak, and I wouldn’t put it past you to get
pecking at my legs.”

But they received Susie at once with open arms. She came from London,
which is always nice; her parents had been born in Millport of
absolutely pure wool stock, her husband had inherited money from a good
old lady before the war, and Susie had only to appear in her own
spotless fleece of nice feeling upon every subject—especially wine—for
them to cluster round her with acclamations and summon their kind from
the most distant parts of the county.




                              CHAPTER III


Miss Archer, reporter for the _Millport News_, stood just inside the
first reception-room at the Town Hall. There was a suite of rooms,
leading one into the other, showing a vista of hats and baldish heads
and faces of all sorts wedged together in packs or moving in a slow
stream with eddies and cross currents. The stream rose in the great
entrance hall of the building. It was brought by contributory motors and
broughams, from all parts of the town, suburbs and county, and it flowed
upstairs and through the rooms and down again through a temporary
congestion at the first door where Miss Archer stood with her little
note book. A middle-aged woman, mastering fatigue with vivacity, stood
beside her and made rapid remarks in an undertone, pointing out this or
that noteworthy face or garment. Her hand was conspicuous by being so
obviously ill at ease in its white glove. It was a worker’s hand, full
of strength and sensibility, and the sillily cut glove sat on it like a
bonnet on a horse. The Mayor and Mayoress remained just within the big
folding doors which were set wide apart, a footman planted on either
side. The footman on the left had nothing about him to allay the
suspicion that he was stuffed, except his small twinkling eyes that
spoke of much experience of humanity, a family life of his own and
knowledge of the moral difficulties of rich men. His counterpart on the
right was unable to give way to the same luxurious calm, being compelled
to undergo the trouble of repeating strange syllables whispered into his
ear, such as “—siz-an-Miss-S-Arkbury,” “—stron-misses J’n’per,” etc.; if
it had not been that he knew the names of the greater number of the
guests he would probably have broken down and been led weeping to the
nearest public-house. As it was he battled bravely on, and beyond the
momentary annoyance of the Harburys who became “Barleys,” and the
Muskovilles who became “Musk-and-veal,” and so on, it didn’t really
matter. People who knew them knew them, and those who didn’t didn’t
mind.

“Who were those last, did you hear?” Miss Archer bent to ask her friend.
“They’re new, surely; I must note their dresses; they’re very good.
There—the woman in grey with sables, and the two girls.”

“‘Fulton!’ I thought he said,” answered the tired woman. She followed
them with her eyes to where they stopped, looking at the crowd and
talking now and then to each other. Susie was benevolently dimpling, as
if the party were hers, and commenting to her daughters on the beauty of
the rooms. “Architecture makes so much difference to a building, doesn’t
it?” she said. “It would be so easy to spoil a big place like this by
making it clumsy and in bad taste. But I do admire this immensely, don’t
you?”

“There’s Mrs. Manley gone up to them now,” said Miss Archer’s friend. “I
tell you—won’t they be the new general’s family that someone said had
come? There’s some new arrangement or other about the soldiers. I know
my nephew who’s a territorial said something about a General Fulton
coming to be over the whole lot of them; not separated as they used to
be.”

Miss Archer wrote down, “—in a distinguished combination of old gold and
palest petunia, relieved by valuable antique buckles. Mrs. Slacks looked
well in mauve, with one of the new violet pyramid hats.” “What did you
say? Yes, I should think that’s very likely. Let me see. Grey poult de
soie, isn’t it, with sables? and her two young daughters (she was
scribbling again) in girlish foam of niaise crepe in the new swallow
blue that has lately come into its own. Yes, that will do.”

“There’s Mrs. Carpenter speaking to them,” said the friend. “I don’t
know how you are going to dish up that checked coat of hers again. I
must catch Mr. Beaver if I can—he has just gone through—and see if he
will take the chair on the 15th.” She disappeared among the crowd, and
presently Miss Archer tripped away to take a turn through the rooms to
make sure she had omitted no one of importance.

“Shall we find a table for you?” Mrs. Manley said to Susie. “It will
take us through the rooms on the way and there are several people you
must meet.”

A young woman, dressed with the touching pride of the connoisseur on a
small income, turned as Mrs. Manley spoke, and smiled at her.

“How are you?” Mrs. Manley said. “I am showing Mrs. Fulton the lions. If
you want tea we could fill a table. Mrs. Fulton, may I introduce you to
Mrs. Vachell. You are sure to meet everywhere. General and Mrs. Fulton
have just moved into the Babley’s house,” she explained to the other.

“Yes, I know,” said Mrs. Vachell. “I was going to call on you this week
(she turned to Susie). Mrs. Babley left me several messages for you
about the house, small things that she thought might be useful, but she
didn’t want to bother you by writing about them. I only came back from
Egypt yesterday.”

“Mrs. Vachell’s husband,” Mrs. Manley explained, “is the most
distinguished something-or-other-ist of the century, only I never can
pronounce it.”

“Never mind,” said Mrs. Vachell. “We’ll leave it at that. What a squash
there is to-day. Do you suppose we shall ever get any tea?” They moved
slowly on, and Mrs. Vachell found herself separated with the two girls.

“You must find it rather dreary being turned loose in a strange town,”
she said almost pityingly. “Has anyone been any use?”

“We’re quite happy,” said Evangeline. “Do tell me why so many people
come here. Is a Town Hall a sort of public party place? Oh dear, what a
row that band makes!”

“If we can get to the tea room we shall be out of it,” said Mrs.
Vachell. “No, this isn’t exactly a public party, but the Lord Mayor has
to entertain everybody. You will find later that you meet your friends
here, and it isn’t so bad. But you will probably be roped in to make
yourselves useful before long.”

Teresa thrilled once more with the breath of the thing she sought.
“How?” she asked.

“All sorts of ways. Child welfare or domestic training or inebriates—or
perhaps imbeciles,” Mrs. Vachell added, mischievously putting on an
extra screw as she noted the alarm in Evangeline’s face and the throb of
excitement in Teresa’s.

Mrs. Carpenter was to be seen through the doorway, pushing slowly
towards them, elbowing one, patronising another with a smile, making
expressive gestures to friends here and there indicating that her task
was nearly impossible—but—hold on, little sheep! The shepherdess is
coming. You shall have tea if she has to commandeer some one else’s
table.

“I wonder if you would mind——” she will probably say reproachfully.
“This lady ought to sit down and it is impossible to find a table. I
think we can get six chairs in here if it won’t be pressing you too near
the wall.” It was by some manœuvre of this sort that she did in the end
plant the girls, whom she had volunteered to find, and Mrs. Vachell,
whom she could not very well get rid of, at a table where Mrs. Fulton
and Mrs. Manley were already seated. The two elderly ladies who were
there first drained their cups and withdrew, commenting on the bad
management of the tea rooms and the “manners of some people.”

Mrs. Eric Manley, Mrs. Carpenter and Mrs. Vachell occupied
positions in Millport not unlike those of the kings of England
before Alfred. Their territories were less defined, their wars
were not so bitter, but, as the history books say, “the country
languished under their rule and longed for a just and wise leader
to unite their petty factions under his sway.” Mrs. Manley ruled
over the Fashionable-who-are-charitable, Mrs. Carpenter over the
Charitable-who-are-fashionable-and-educated, and Mrs. Vachell over
the Educated-and-incidentally-fashionable-and-charitable. They
were ripe for the arrival of a visionary like Susie who should
unite their people in the peaceful practices of Love—love of
architecture-and-so-on, love of children, of all weathers, of the
poor, “even those poor terrible drunken creatures who have been
taught to be wicked,” of “your own beautiful homes.” We have
anticipated this last object of her love. It became one of the
stock phrases of those speeches which made her the idol of public
meetings in days to come.

But although Destiny was hovering over the tea-table, they knew it not.
Perhaps Teresa felt something of the fate in store for her. Their chairs
were near a window, below which the trams stopped to load and discharge
their passengers. The faces were there by the hundred, the drab
clothing, the mud were as usual. Did the scene never alter she wondered?
Did the stream of people pour on like that under lowering skies
perpetually—all day—Sundays—holidays, even through the night? She had
come from the crowded streets of London, but that was utterly different.
There was variety, sunshine, even leisureliness in the squares and quiet
places off the main traffic; and besides that, the significance of any
individual was so small that no one could feel responsible for his
neighbour unless he were invited to interest himself. In Millport every
weary pedestrian seemed to carry a personal grudge against those who had
the means to escape from the mud.

Mrs. Manley was comparing notes with Susie on the eternal subject of
prices. Even cakes made at home were almost too expensive to eat every
day, she complained. Her husband had had to give up keeping a tin of
biscuits at his office, and he often came home to tea to save expense,
unless he had to stay and carry on work that the clerks used to do. It
was impossible to have the sort of entrées one used to, made with just a
little sweetbread or cream or something; even the eggs mounted up now——

“Yes, yes, I know, my dear women,” Mrs. Carpenter interrupted, “but do
you realise what it means to _Charity_? You are only on the visiting
committee of my beloved Institute, you know,” she smiled at Mrs. Manley,
“and you can have no idea. The very soap the women wash with costs us
£20 a year more than it did; there now! What do you think of that? That
is just soap alone.”

Mrs. Manley looked a little contemptuous. “Everyone uses soap,” she
said. “I have to deal it out at our orphanage when it is my week for the
store cupboard. But anyhow I believe there is only one thing that hasn’t
gone up and that is bi-carbonate of soda. That is why everybody’s cakes
taste of it. (She glanced at Mrs. Carpenter). How do you find things,
Mrs. Fulton?”

“I try not to worry about it,” Susie replied. Love seemed to envelope
the table as she spoke, and even Mrs. Carpenter felt that she had not
got the nail plumb on the head with her last blow. Mrs. Vachell pricked
up her ears. “I do so want those two,” Susie continued with a fond look
at her daughters, “not to have all their young time clouded by perpetual
half-pennies. Of course we are not extravagant, but we have none of us
very large appetites and, as I say, I just try not to worry. I have no
doubt that what we are going through now is somehow for the good of the
world.”

Mrs. Carpenter drew a long breath and turned back a piece of fur at her
wrist. “Of course we all believe that,” she said, “or we shouldn’t be
here; at least I hope not. But what do you propose, Mrs. Fulton, to do
about the terrible suffering as it is?” Even the best accredited lamb in
its first year at Millport must not have things all its own way in the
fold.

Susie’s eyes brimmed. “I think and think,” she said earnestly, “but I
can’t see how it is to be avoided. It seems somehow as if it was meant,
and we can only learn the meaning by helping everywhere we can when we
get the chance. I think some of the saddest cases are often the least
known, don’t you?” Mrs. Vachell was taking an Olympic pleasure in the
new forces which Susie was evidently going to bring in on the side of
good against evil. She looked on from the high ground of quicker wits
than her two sister rulers. She now wanted to see what Susie did with
her two daughters. “It is the younger generation that will have to find
out these things,” she said, looking at the girls.

“Oh, shall we,” said Evangeline, rather bored. Teresa shrugged her
shoulders and passed the cake. Mrs. Carpenter alone took up the
challenge. “I think girls have lost all taste for the mere
pleasure-loving life they used to lead,” she said, “I know mine won’t
look at it. ‘Oh, Mother,’ they say, ‘We’re _so_ bored with parties.’
They are all going to have professions and Lena is going to do social
work.” Mrs. Manley, being childless, said nothing.

“Are they!” Susie exclaimed, full of interest. “How wonderful! I often
thought as a girl how much I should have liked to _be_ something, but I
never had a chance and I am afraid I had no talents.” She dimpled at the
three leaders. “I could only admire and enjoy. We must really be going,
I think, dears. You belong to the University, don’t you, Mrs. Vachell?”
she asked as they dispersed. “It must be so delightful.”

“Yes,” Mrs. Vachell replied, “my husband does. Have you met Mrs.
Gainsborough yet?”

“The Principal’s wife?” said Susie. “No, she called last week, but I was
out. I was so sorry.” They were walking down the great staircase by this
time.

“You must be sure to call on her At Home day,” Mrs. Vachell warned her,
“or you will frighten her. It is every Tuesday.”

“Frighten her?” Susie repeated.

“Yes, because if she hasn’t met you first she will have to ask you to
dinner without knowing you and she can’t bear that. There she is, by the
way, still in the hall. Will you come and speak to her?”

Susie allowed herself to be the means of violently startling a massive
woman—there is no other way to think of her—dressed in old-fashioned
clothes, who was peering timidly through the glass doors that opened on
to the street. She turned in a fright when Mrs. Vachell spoke to her.
“Oh! is that you!” she exclaimed thankfully. “I can’t think why my cab
hasn’t come. I ordered it at a quarter past five and it is nearly six
now and it has come on so wet.”

Mrs. Vachell introduced Susie and her daughters and slipped away.

“Oh!” said Mrs. Gainsborough again—(it was her usual beginning)—“so
delighted to meet you—so sorry you were out when I called. And these are
your girls?—quite so—yes——” She relapsed into silence and went on
looking helplessly at the rain.

“Mayn’t we drive you home?” Susie suggested. “Our car is there.” Mrs.
Gainsborough threw up her hands and followed, murmuring. As they drove
home through the crowded, dripping streets, Evangeline and Teresa
crushed suffocatingly under the shadow of Mrs. Gainsborough’s knees,
Susie’s kind little face peeping from behind a bunch of aged ostrich
tips in Mrs. Gainsborough’s bonnet, all three of them disconcerted by
the unusual smell of warm eau-de-Cologne that filled their car, very
little was said. Mrs. Gainsborough was at her request left on the
doorstep of a house, cinnamon-coloured like the Fultons’, at the corner
of a cinnamon-coloured square. Once safely on her own territory her
nervousness left her, and her smiles and genuine pleasure in the small
service rendered brought Teresa another fleeting vision of the joy she
perpetually sought.




                               CHAPTER IV


Mrs. Gainsborough soon returned the hospitality of Susie’s motor by
inviting her and Cyril to dinner. Her note was rambling and agitated
like her manner, and ended with a postscript, “Please bring one of your
daughters if she would care for it. Emma will be so pleased.”

Evangeline and Teresa refused to have anything to do with it when the
letter came, but Cyril said with genuine terror to Teresa when his wife
had gone out of the room, “Dicky, you must come—promise me quick—but
don’t say anything about it——”

“All right, of course,” she assured him, “but why?”

“They’re all schoolmasters,” he explained in an undertone as Susie came
back. Nothing more was said until breakfast was over and then Teresa
plunged for her father’s sake.

“Can I go to the Gainsboroughs’, after all, Mother?”

“If you like, dear, but I thought you said just now——”

“I know,” she interrupted, “but—I should like to see the University. I
think the Gainsborough girl would like it.”

Mrs. Fulton looked suspiciously at her husband. He was filling his
cigarette case from a box on the mantelpiece, using unnecessary care to
fit them in properly.

“Strickland should have done that for you, dear. Are you off now?”

“Yes, presently,” he answered. “I’m not sure I can come to the
Gainsboroughs, Sue; we’ve some rather special business next week.”

“I think we ought to get to know everybody as much as possible, Cyril,
if only for the sake of the girls. And the University are the most
interesting of all. If you knew what a pleasure it is to me to talk
about something besides wine and money now and then!”

Cyril instantly threw diplomacy to the winds and began to enjoy himself,
standing with his back to the fire. “I don’t want to be a kill-joy,” he
replied, “but I learned more about those two subjects from old Wacks at
Cambridge than I ever have since from anybody. But he wasn’t married. I
daresay the female dons understand the use of the globes and all that.
By George! I remember their queer get-ups. Must have been some very deep
thinking that led to most of those marriages; which, after all, proves
your theory of the Higher mind. Let’s go, and take Dicky if she wants to
come,” he added with the boldness that often came to him suddenly after
hunting down one of his wife’s insincerities.

By this time she felt nothing but an irritable longing to get him out of
the room. Through the whole of their married life he had amused himself
by making a cockshy of the sentiments which she presented to the world
as the expression of her thoughts. He often exaggerated her insincerity,
for the sentiments were as much her own as any other jewellery she might
have bought to adorn herself. She admired them quite as much as any she
could have originated.

“One of the children will come, of course,” she said impatiently, “if
Mrs. Gainsborough really wants some young people. It is very kind of
her, for I don’t suppose you have the least idea how dull it is for
them, seeing nothing but soldiers and business people who have nothing
to talk about. The Gainsboroughs are probably teetotallers—in spite of
the set you mixed with at Cambridge and who had probably nothing to do
with the life there. Most clever people think very little about their
food. But you had better have your wine at the club before you start or
they will think there is something the matter with you. Isn’t the time
getting on? That clock is a little slow.”

When the time for the party came it turned out to be less of a feast of
intellect than had been hoped and feared by the Fultons. In the first
place the Carpenters were there, because Mrs. Carpenter was as difficult
to keep out of any social gathering as was King Charles’s head from Mr.
Dick’s “Memorial.” If the festivity were a heavy duty for the cementing
of business connections, Mrs. Carpenter was invited to lighten the dough
of wealth with the ferment of culture. If it were a frivolous affair for
the benefit of the young and thoughtless, she was there with her
daughters. Hostesses included her as a precaution against any subsequent
rumour that the scene had been one of unbridled licence. “Really, my
dear—of course I wasn’t there so I can’t say, but I believe, etc.” If it
were an ordinary mixed dinner, town and gown, she must be there to make
things smooth between everybody; to interpose when Mrs. Alderman Snack
was talking to Professor Cameo about rabbits, and see that the
conversation was switched off at once on to his last book. She had read
it of course and was so anxious to contradict him on one point, the
condition of India before the mutiny. “My grandfather, you know, was
there as a subaltern and he always said he was _convinced_, etc.” “A
wonderful woman, Mrs. Carpenter,” everybody said. “She talks so well
upon anything.”

Mrs. Gainsborough, being so very nervous as she was, of course had not
settled on a day to ask the new general and his wife until she had made
sure that the Carpenters would come. Mrs. Carpenter had therefore
consulted her little note-book and had chosen a day when she had only
one or two small committees and dear Amy’s dancing lesson to attend, so
that she would be “nice and fresh for the evening.” Poor Mr. Carpenter,
who was the overworked underwriter to an insurance company, was not
likely to be at all nice and fresh, even if he had a good twenty minutes
to dress after hurrying up from the office. He could be trusted to be
punctual, though, and would be quite up to a little educated chaff with
anyone of his own set—Mrs. Vachell or one of the Manleys—so long as he
hadn’t to tackle a stranger. He was, as it turned out, very happily
situated, as there were only the Vachells, and Mrs. Eric Manley and her
unmarried brother-in-law and two young men for Emma Gainsborough and
Teresa. One was David Varens, whose father, Sir Richard Varens, belonged
to a family that had owned land round Millport for three or four hundred
years. Sir Richard had given money and land to Millport University and
his son David had just left Oxford. It would never have done if Mrs.
Carpenter had not been there.

The third unmarried man was Mr. Joseph Price, the son of Mr. Manley’s
partner. Eton and Cambridge had recently handed him back to the home
nest, which he was prepared, with the backing of the Liberal Party and
his father’s money, to re-line and generally bring up to date. The old
birds were to be furbished up and taught new songs; the young lady birds
from neighbouring nests were to be simply knocked off their perches, and
Londoners coming to Millport were to understand that Millshire was young
Mr. Price’s country seat and Millport was his little village where he
went to post his letters and chat to the Mayor at election time. You
could even buy things in the town now, he was told—quite fairly decent;
of course not clothes and all that, but groceries and gloves and that
sort of thing his mother found she could get there now. But the hotels
were pretty scandalous sort of places. What? I should say so. Lots of
churches though; some quite decent ones in the old part of the town if
you’re interested in glass and all that kind of thing. And good music
too; you ought to go to the concerts if music doesn’t bore you. There
was a fellow there the other day—what’s his name—came all the way from
Russia with a little handbag—he beat everyone else hollow—never heard
anything like it—thought his arm would come off. Abs’lutely wond’f’l.
You’ve heard him b’fur ’n town, ’f course? (I have burst into Mr.
Price’s way of speaking for a moment, but I cannot reproduce it
perfectly.)

This was to Teresa, whom, owing to her father’s military position and
their having lived in London, he was treating with unusual effusiveness.
He knew Emma Gainsborough slightly and had made an honest effort to talk
to her. He always tried to keep close to the ideal manner at which he
aimed, the manner of the particular social pen through whose doors he
had been allowed to squeeze because of his politics and his father’s
money. He was already getting on very well with the manner, a sort of
mincingly polite way of speaking, with the vowels squeezed slowly out as
if through a confectioner’s icing tube, and laid along the sentence, or
else omitted altogether; the exact opposite to the broad flat tones of
his native habit. The natural rudeness of vanity was sugared over in
this way to just the “right” effect he sought; enthusiasm for this or
that “discovery,” indifference to anything tainted with popularity
unless some popular thing became discredited enough in time to make it
discoverable as a new taste.

“Been doing very much lately?” he had asked Emma Gainsborough dutifully
before turning his attention to Teresa who was really his object of the
evening. “Seen anything new?”

“No, I don’t think I have,” the poor girl replied, instantly ill at
ease. Mr. Price observed the effect he had made, and scored several
marks of superiority to himself; it made him feel good-natured.

“Peewit’s brought out another book, I see,” he said, giving her another
chance. “’ve you read it?”

“No,” said Emma, adding hurriedly, “I’m doing welfare just now and it
takes such an awful lot of time. I’m too sleepy to read after I’ve been
wading through statistics all day.”

“Welfare? Let’s see—what’s that now?” asked Mr. Price. It might possibly
be something he ought to know about, though from the way Emma did her
hair he thought it unlikely.

“Welfare? Oh, it is seeing about children—at least, my part is—finding
out things about them and seeing what happens to them and all that; I
can’t explain it, but I have been making records of imbeciles all
afternoon.” Emma was reckoned a humorist in the family circle and many
were the evenings when her father and mother went to bed exhausted by
their laughter over things noted by her with a delicacy of perception
few people would have suspected, Mr. Price less than any. His “Oh, I
see. Splendid work, I’m sure, but don’t you get tired of it?” was
followed by a minute’s horrid silence and then he devoted himself with a
clear conscience to Teresa in the way that has been described.

Teresa’s attention was wandering to her father, who seemed to be doing
very well with Mrs. Gainsborough. She wondered what they were laughing
at. She caught up Mr. Price at his short pause after the Russian with
the handbag.

“No, I didn’t see him,” she answered vaguely. “What was he doing? Was
there anything in the bag?”

Mr. Price was not very pleased. “I don’t know. Pro’b’ly the last sponge
in Russia, what? Don’t you take almonds? I shall eat them all if you
don’t stop me. Oh, prihsless caat, what are you doing? come here and
talk to me——” He broke off as Mrs. Gainsborough’s blue persian stood up
beside him and, having pretended to extract three or four long thorns
from his leg, withdrew.

“I don’t mind them one way or the other,” said Teresa, “but I want to
know something. Who is the man—the last at the end opposite—by my
mother?”

“Mr. Vachell do you mean? Don’t you really know him? No, that’s
delightful. He’s simply won’f’l man—been digging, you know—Egypt—didn’t
you read about it? You ought to read the paper, you know. He’s our show
card. When I was up at Cambridge they were fairf’lly jealous that I knew
him. I told my tutor that I’d seen him once act’lly in pyjamas and he
became quite respectf’l and let me off a lot of lectures on the strength
of it. And then you live here and ask who he is——! That’s really great,
what? isn’t it? You’ve got to say something really brilliant now to make
up or I shall think you’ve taken to good works like all the dear people
here.”

“Do you know you make me feel awfully queer,” said Teresa, looking at
him with puzzled interest. “What are you talking about really? I know
you answered my question, but what has all the rest to do with it? Why
should your tutor let you off lectures because you saw somebody who
lives here in pyjamas? I don’t understand a bit?”

“Miss Fulton, it is quite time you left that silly boy and gave me a
little attention,” said Mr. Manley, whom Mrs. Vachell had neglected so
much that he had been keeping a friendly eye on Teresa. He liked the
young and had understood that she was not enjoying herself. He included
Mr. Price in what he said with a friendly smile and Teresa turned to him
gratefully.

“I believe you are much more old-fashioned than you look,” he said to
her. “You were not getting on at all well. You didn’t mind my rudeness?”

“No, I liked it,” she answered. “I have met Mrs. Manley heaps of times,
but I’ve never seen you nor your brother to talk to. I have noticed
since we came here that you may know people for quite a long time before
you are even sure that they have a husband. One has nothing to go by
sometimes except the hats in the hall.”

“We come back sometimes to claim them, believe me,” said the old
gentleman. Teresa’s heart warmed towards him as the dinner went on. His
kindliness was real, untainted by any wish to shine or obtain credit. He
had the quick understanding of ideas half expressed, succeeding one
another like colour in changing light, which alone makes conversation
anything but a distorted image of what the mind sees. Questions come so
often from a curiosity that wishes to compare others with itself to its
own glorification. Each one that Mr. Price or Mrs. Carpenter asked had
that end in view. Mr. Manley enjoyed his game of give-and-take without
that ghostly referee to balance the score. Teresa began to understand
dimly how it was that what Strickland called “our leading families”
seemed to have been the pious founders of Millport in a way that no
Londoner’s ancestors can claim to have built their city. Millport was
the child of dead and gone Manleys; it was handed on by them to new
generations of themselves and of trusted friends who had watched over
the early days of its growth. Tutors, governors and servants were
appointed for the precious thing with that personal care that Teresa
found so puzzling in the words “duty to the city,” which recurred
constantly in public and in private. Afterwards in the drawing-room Mr.
Manley came to her again.

“If you don’t go away and forget all our conversation,” he said,
“come to me and tell me what you want to do and I’ll show you how to
set about it. You’ll find my office hat in the hall on Saturday and
Sunday afternoons—and that’s the one I keep my ideas in. I’d like to
show you some pictures I’ve got of the old town as it was in my
great-great-grandfather’s time.”

                  *       *       *       *       *

I had meant to say a great deal about David Varens during this dinner
party. But Millport has proved too strong for him. It always must have
been and is now overpowering for the gentle, detached characters whose
strength is in enjoyment of the immediate thing that circumstances have
put in their way to be done as well as possible; people who accept
inherited comfort and adventitious pain equally, as it comes; who love
and hate by instinct without recognition of any outside interests to
modify their decision and who never go back on a verdict given by this
tribunal of taste. He is to be Teresa’s lover and therefore his first
words to her should have been recorded, also his appearance, his manner
and what they thought of each other. They should have begun at once with
definite sensations of like or dislike. But the truth is they hardly
exchanged a word. He sat on the other side of Emma Gainsborough and
shared with Mr. Price the miasma of her longing for the whole evening to
be over. He talked to her as well as he could, patiently and easily, in
spite of her stumbles into pitfalls of silence that the least presence
of mind should have taught her to avoid. He retrieved her each time
without effort and set her on her legs again, wondering what was the
matter with the poor girl, supposing she might feel the fire at her
back. He did once suggest drawing a screen further along behind her and
they talked for some minutes about the cold of Oxford Colleges, but she
didn’t seem any better for it so he gave it up. It is no use giving Mr.
Varens any more scope just now. He will turn up in his glory when the
time comes.




                               CHAPTER V


It did not need many months in Millport to convince Teresa that idleness
was not one of the snares of the city. She soon found that if any young
person of the leisured classes were to attempt to “drift” she would have
her aimless career brought to a standstill by some snag of “duty to the
city.” No one in London had ever reminded Teresa of her civic
responsibilities. On thinking it over one day after a particularly
strong dose of “duty to the city,” administered by Mrs. Carpenter, she
could not remember that the city of London and its chief magistrate had
ever laid any personal claim to her services. She tried to imagine any
such phrase as, “Have you seen the Mayor about it?” or, “What does
Alderman Teazle think?” occurring in her father’s conversation at his
club. It was impossible. In those days no one knew anything of her plans
or her wishes but what she told them; in Millport it seemed that the
very paving stones knew who was walking along and why, and that carrier
sparrows flitted from chimney to chimney with little messages of
information about everybody and an index of probable explanations for
their conduct—all dead certain to be wrong.

Mrs. Carpenter had not trusted to the fowls of the air to inform the
Fultons that Millport intended them to do their duty. She gave them a
few weeks’ law, with full access to her own example. She never failed to
explain in the street, in the shop, in the ladies’ club, across the
family pew or on the platform that the fact of her being found where she
was would mean the loss of so many heart beats to the city’s life. She
would say, perhaps, “I ought not to be here, my dear, but I promised
dear Mabel Somebody this little treat just to buck her up after the new
arrival. Fancy! I was there just two hours before it happened, and my
waifs and strays waiting for a tin of biscuits I had promised them, and
Alderman McWhittock’s funeral at half-past two. I don’t know how I ever
got there—but now what are _you_ doing here? Up to the ears, I suppose,
getting ready for the dance next week. What it is to be young! though I
saw you resting like a wise girl at dear Emily’s party. The men are so
naughty now, aren’t they? They won’t dance—absolutely won’t—except with
their own old favourites. I always say to them now, ‘No, it’s no use. I
am here to rest my old bones and you have just got to look in all the
corners and pick out the plainest and dullest thing you can find and
send her home happy.’ I condoled with Emily because I know the
difficulties, and after all a dance must be a success if it is to be
worth all the trouble, mustn’t it? Now what church do you go to——?” etc.

But Susie almost forestalled her remarks. She was there ready equipped
by instinct before the call to battle came. Mrs. Carpenter didn’t know
what to think of it. It is said that birds of prey have their own
allotted beats and do not poach on their neighbours’ quarry; but they
arrive, warned by some secret telegraphy wherever there is a vacancy and
a corpse. Susie had evidently sensed the prevailing occupation of
Millport and had descended out of the blue to fill a gap among the
leaders of good works. She could not be said to “take an active part” in
anything, because that was against her nature, but her name was soon in
everybody’s mouth as a member of all the chief committees of private
enterprises. Strangely shaped gentlemen in black used to call on her
between meals with papers and she listened to them with her gentle smile
of the mother was has suffered all things; she recognised them instantly
when she saw them again and remembered with which particular good work
they were connected; and that is really quite enough, as she herself
would have said. Ladies with grown-up daughters, who are obliged to
entertain a great deal and who have no head for organisation and so on,
ought to leave the running about to those who will do it so much better;
what the workers need is sympathy.

Evangeline and Teresa, being newcomers from a careless place of comfort,
were particularly susceptible to the unfamiliar poison of depression for
which there seemed no cure. The mud, the damp, the ugly streets, and
indignant, tired faces, the grudging service of the working classes, the
self consciousness of the well-to-do who walked everywhere in the
limelight of recognition, the sharp division between those who thought
everything was all right because they were comfortable and those who
thought everything was all wrong because they weren’t—all this made the
girls restless.

A vision of Hyde Park Corner on a sunny day used to haunt Evangeline’s
mind. She contrasted the space of it, the blue sky, the
buildings—“polite buildings” was the description that came to her as she
recalled their appearance, perfectly groomed, keeping their private life
absolutely to themselves. She felt a sudden hatred for the rows of pert
little dwellings that she saw all round; “brick trimmings!” she thought
with disgust as her eye fell on the oblongs and stars and cubes inlaid
in musty red on a background of livid ginger. There was nothing polite
about them; they seemed positively loquacious about themselves and their
trimmings and the nice people that lived in them. Horrid houses, she
thought.

Teresa, though she did not know it, was distilling for herself a sort of
love potion from the drabness and hostility. As she once said to her
sister, the smells and the mysterious purpose behind the faces in the
fog intoxicated her. All that she knew about what she felt was that an
insistent passion was dragging her towards some end that she could not
see. The interest that she found in her conversations with Strickland
gave her a clue towards the direction from which knowledge of her desire
was coming to her, and gave her relief from the excitement at the same
time because Strickland had no grievance against society; she only
disliked people—ladies especially—talking “through their hats” about
work. For instance, she did not mind Cyril or Teresa being untidy,
because “it was their place to leave things about” and she was paid to
look after them. They never referred to her duties nor seemed to think
about them. Mrs. Carpenter and Susie implied by their manner that they
were selected by Providence to lead comfortable lives for the reason
that every one of their common attributes of humanity, such as their
legs and their brains, were of such superior quality that their births,
their lives and their deaths must not be confused with similar
occurrences in other houses. Work! Of course they knew all about work!
Did they not exhaust themselves in explaining how early rising and
attention to detail actually saves labour? If you clean a room
thoroughly every day there is no need to turn it out once a fortnight;
if you clear up as you go, wipe the plates with paper and burn it
directly to avoid clogging the sink, and if you wear gloves for the
roughest work and put glycerine on the hands after washing, there should
be at least two clear hours in the afternoon for mending stockings or
even making clothes. That was the point where Strickland became “horn
mad,” as she said. “I’d sooner earn me money by being starved and
scolded as me mother was,” she declared, “than have it explained that
there’s nothing to complain of. I’d rather have it all wrong and keep my
liberty to object.”

“But Strickland,” Teresa interrupted, “don’t you remember when you first
came you said you wouldn’t be blasted by father and you were going to
leave?”

“Yes,” she replied, “and so I should have if he had made out, as some
do, that it was all a misunderstanding. But when I saw that it was just
his way, as you said, and he wasn’t aware of it, you will understand
that it was no business of mine and I didn’t object. There’s never
anything personal about the General’s language, I will say that for him.
It seems it’s his nature, like my brother.”

She took no notice of Evangeline, neither liked nor disliked her. “She’s
a young lady that will marry,” she observed, “and change her servants
and not notice who comes and goes nor how the work is done. She won’t
make much of a house, but no doubt she’ll keep a housekeeper and not
notice how the money goes. She’ll always be a favourite with the
gentlemen. My brother’s wife is like that. You never saw such a
house—and the mess! I often tidy it all up for her and it’s all the same
next day. And yet he thinks the world of her and keeps out of the public
house so as he can take her about. And my cousin Gladys is just the
opposite; everything tidy and as it should be, but she’ll talk, talk,
talk the whole day, pointing out what she’s done; and her husband has
taken to drink; he can’t stand it, he says.”

Strickland was right. Evangeline was already proving her capacity for
being a favourite with the gentlemen by penetrating, one by one, Captain
Hatton’s well-ordered defences. Being her father’s A.D.C. he was, as he
had warned them on the first morning, so much about the house that he
preferred they should not notice him; but then as Cyril counter-warned
him, “they were a damned noticing family.”

Captain Evan Hatton had always been shy of women because as a
passionately serious little boy he had been for ever baited by a pair of
lively young sisters. They meant not an atom of harm, but neither were
they at all interested in abstract goodness, which together with
mechanisms of any kind were Evan’s consolation for the trials of family
life. He wanted with all his soul to know what made wheels (including
those of the Universe) go round. Nature, which he admired, completely
outwitted him there and he developed towards the Maker of the Universe
the passionate respect of pertinacious inquiry incessantly baffled. He
succeeded in finding out from time to time the elementary rules
governing earthly wheels, but the vastness of the world (as he had
glimpses of it through the life of his tame rabbits, the beauties of a
well-kept garden, geography lessons and the upheaval of his own mind),
kept him in a ceaseless ferment of questioning. The most industrious
organ must rest sometimes; so at about fifteen years old he admitted
himself beaten by the Higher Inquiry. He rested his poor mind in worship
of that which he had questioned in vain, and concentrated his efforts on
wheels which could be explained by those who made them. His sisters
thought all this very funny indeed. They themselves approved of the
Universe as a first-rate place to live in; it looked so charming, with
hills and fields and woods all of nice colours. Winter, spring, summer
and autumn were all nice in their way and could not be improved. The
idea of tropical storms and polar silence and danger made it seem all
the more cosy in England. Machinery was a delightful invention and they
were glad it had been discovered, because it brought all sorts of
comfort within reach and gave one’s brothers something suitable to do.
They did laugh sometimes when Evan took a really good thing to pieces
and couldn’t put it together again or when he got in such a bait about
Emily giggling at the missionary. When the war broke out they stopped
laughing at him at first. He was suddenly lifted in their estimation
from the position of a dear, ridiculous creature to that of “our brother
in France,” a god among Olympians—“while we have got to stick at home.”
They worked creditably and humbly at home and when he came back they
forgot his ribbons in the agitating question whether Emily’s cooking
would still do or whether they ought not to scrape up £50 somehow and
get that kitchenmaid who was leaving the club.

When they began to get used to having him at home again they noticed
that what had been only serious attention to rectitude in the old days
now burned hot in him as passionate morality. They were good girls,
secured from evil, if he had known it, by their happy natures. They
would have thought it very silly to let a man kiss them unless he were
an accepted lover, properly engaged; because where would be the point in
being scrubbed by a hairy face; unless it were one of the poor darling
boys leaving Victoria, and then of course one would hug any stranger.
That is enough. We know the girls quite well now. There is nothing at
all the matter with them, quite the contrary. But their brother’s heavy
sense of responsibility for their souls was as much wasted as if he had
been Joan of Arc hiding an unexpurgated edition of Shakespeare from the
cat. All the mistakes he had made about his sisters he repeated with
every woman he met afterwards. He was wrong every time because the
attention he gave to their conversation was of the same kind as he would
have given to a machine that didn’t interest him—if any such machine
could be imagined—a musical box perhaps. Now everyone knows what happens
to even the cheapest fiddle, still more to a bird, if its music is
courted in that way. His sisters saved him from disaster by affectionate
amusement that asked nothing of him. He offended a great many other
women, but, to return to the simile of the fiddle, their discords meant
as little to him as their harmonies, so he learned nothing from his
failures.

Then suddenly fate confronted him with Evangeline, who also wanted to
know how wheels went round and—oh, the poor fellow! my heart bleeds for
him—the wheels she was interested in were those of love and creation and
human nature; and poor industrious Hatton, who only wished for
righteousness and good machines, was put into her hands to take to
pieces. It is, as has often been observed, a cruel world in many ways.

Evangeline’s mother had also been on the track of true love in her
youth; her story has been written. But a world of difference lay between
them, for Susie had wanted to possess love and had studied to be all
things to all men to gain it, giving nothing in return; her daughter
wanted it in order to give it away, as another lavish nature might ask
for wealth to spend.

“Captain Hatton is less like an umbrella than he used to be, don’t you
think?” she said one day to Teresa as they walked home through the Park.
“When I go riding with him he often stops being polite and tells me
about the tanks. Yesterday he told me about men out at the war who had
visions. You’d never think he was that sort of man, would you?”

“I never think much about him,” said Teresa, “I just think of him as a
table that Father has brought in to work at.”

“I know he doesn’t talk to everyone,” said Evangeline proudly. “He never
talked to his sisters.”

“Well, what do you do to him?” Teresa asked.

“I don’t know. I just went on bravely and wouldn’t be put down. I was
sure there must be something somewhere and I wanted to know what it was.
He has a wonderful face, if you look at it. His eyes look so suffering
sometimes, like something in a cage. I was sure he couldn’t be all ribs
and the best waterproof twill really. I said to him once at the Manleys’
dance, when we were sitting out,” she went on after a pause, “‘You know
we can’t always go on pretending that you are a pair of trousers and a
coat and I am a bag with flounces propped up on two chairs. I’m a person
and so are you. We must have heaps and heaps of things to talk about.
Do, for goodness’ sake, let one of us go ahead’—I really worked myself
up. I felt I just would smash into that propriety.”

“And what happened?” her sister asked.

“He got red at first and didn’t answer and I got awfully frightened.
Then he said in quite a natural voice, ‘If you will behave just as you
like I will try not to put you off. It is very kind of you to trouble
about me.’ Rather as if I were a dog that he had been asked to exercise.
However it was a beginning, and now he starts off by himself. I think
the great thing is that he doesn’t regard me as a girl.”

“What does he think you are, then?”

“I don’t know. A sort of inferior Tommy I should think; uneducated but
harmless, and quite useless. I might be his batman, marooned with him in
a desert full of baboons.”

“It sounds very unlikely,” said Teresa. “You have a very muddled head,
Chips, and you read such a lot of scraps that I believe it makes you
worse; but you explain yourself quite clearly. I shall be interested
to-morrow when I see that stuffed back at the breakfast table. Father
would be amused.”

“You are not to tell him,” said Evangeline quickly.

“I’m not going to. At least I might have if you hadn’t told me not to.
Why don’t you want him to know that his man is nicer than we thought?”

“I don’t know, except that I discovered him and I don’t want to show him
to people; he’s not nearly ready. And besides, he is like having a
sitting-room of my own. I like a retreat that no one else knows the way
to.”

                  *       *       *       *       *

“Is Hatton in the house by any chance?” Cyril asked one day when he came
in to tea.

“I don’t know at all, dear,” said Susie. “I should think very likely; he
generally is.”

“He’s helping Chips to wash Tricot in the bathroom,” said Teresa.

Cyril stopped in the act of filling his pipe. “H’m,” he remarked.
“Hereditary instinct, I suppose. Poor fellow.”

“I know by your face that you mean something unkind, Cyril,” said his
wife, “but I don’t see how even you can make out that there can be
anything hereditary about washing a dog.”

“Not if there’s only one person to do it,” he replied. He was holding a
match to the tobacco and went on explaining between puffs. “But when
Hatton, who is a nervous fellow—begins washing poodles with your
daughter—your own little girl—who isn’t generally fond of work—I seem to
see the young Eve adorning herself with the leaf of experiment just as
Mother did. Have you ever seen a young chicken begin to scratch the
moment it leaves the egg? It isn’t imitation, because it does it just
the same if it is raised in an incubator.”

Teresa looked anxiously amused as a mother does whose favourite child is
not behaving well in a drawing-room, but Mrs. Fulton was smarting under
old sores. She said coldly, “Perhaps you would finish washing Tricot,
dear Dicky. You had better tell Captain Hatton that your father wants
him.”

“Don’t be silly,” said Cyril. “I don’t want him. I told him there was
nothing for him to do this afternoon and as I didn’t see him at the Polo
ground and found his hat in the hall when I came in I remembered the
story of Adam and thought I’d ask, that’s all.”

Teresa had gone out while he was speaking.

“May I ask if you never want the girls to marry?” Susie asked.

“Lord, no, I don’t care,” he replied, “but what’s that got to do with
Hatton? I was only joking. I suppose he knows all about washing dogs. I
expect he likes it. And Chips doesn’t know the business as well as you,
Sue; she won’t construe a wag of the tail into an offer of marriage.
Hatton is a very upright man. He’d probably consult you first and lay
out his plans on paper in the approved style.”

“Well, if he did I’m sure I don’t know what I should say,” she answered
thoughtfully. Cyril had once explained to a bewildered friend, “The
great charm of an argument with Sue is that you never know which part of
a conversation she will choose to take the trick with. You may find that
the only lie you have told for years is used as an ace.”

“I mean,” she went on, “that I don’t think Evangeline ought to be
encouraged to act hastily. I like Mr. Varens so much better than Evan
Hatton. He will probably come into his father’s place very soon.”

“Great Scott!” exclaimed Cyril, really startled at last. “Has Varens
asked her after dining here once? What in heaven’s name possesses the
poor devils! But I oughtn’t to talk I suppose.”

“Don’t be so absurd, Cyril. I never said he had proposed to her. I only
meant that she hadn’t had time to consider him.”

“What do you mean, ‘consider him?’”

“I merely took Mr. Varens as an instance. I don’t want her to be pushed
into liking Evan Hatton just because she hasn’t had time to think of any
other. Ill-considered marriages are often so regrettable.”

“If I were a woman,” said Cyril, “I should say that I didn’t know
whether to laugh or cry at the things you say. Unlace me, Emmeline, and
give me some more tea—have you got any?” He passed his cup.

“But do you see what I mean, Cyril?” she persisted.

“Oh, I see all right,” he replied. “My eye wants shading if anything;
it’s positively dazzling, the light that you throw on matters of the
heart. It’s a pity you never met Darwin. He wrote on natural selection,
but I’m not sure that he mastered the subject. You might——” He stopped
as the door opened and Evangeline came in with Captain Hatton.

Evan glanced at his general, who was peacefully sunk in an armchair,
playing with the cat. Tricot, the poodle, followed into the room and
walked about shaking himself restlessly as if he missed something.

“That’s all right, old Tricot,” said Cyril. “Come here and talk to
Pussy; she’s your friend.”

Tricot came in innocent confidence, and the usual recriminations between
him and the cat began.

“It is funny, if you notice, that dogs are all for love and cats all for
marriage,” said Cyril thoughtfully, “and the two together are always
chosen to represent domestic life—at least the ill-considered domestic
life that you were talking about, Sue. I suppose it’s handed on for
generations.”

Evan Hatton did not hear. He was at the window with Evangeline, trying
to make her understand the principle of a magneto. “Here’s Emma coming,”
she announced presently from the window. “She’s getting off the tram. Do
you want her, Dicky?”

“I’m going out with her,” Teresa answered. “She said she would come.”

“Where on earth to at this time?”

“She has got a place where children go after school; she said she would
take me.”

“I do wish she wouldn’t wear that hat,” Evangeline said critically,
watching Emma as she came up the garden path. “I wonder where good
milliners go to when they die. They never seem to mix with good people
in this world.”

Captain Hatton’s face reddened and he turned away from the window.

“What’s the matter?” asked Evangeline. “Are you going?”

“Yes,” he answered shortly and then he said good-bye and left the room.
He nearly ran into Emma in the hall, so great was his haste and his
preoccupation. “I beg your pardon,” he apologised. “How could I have
been so stupid. Did I knock your hat?” for she had put up her hand to
straighten it.

“Captain Hatton!” Evangeline called over the banisters, “are you coming
riding before breakfast to-morrow?”

“If you wish me to,” he answered unsteadily and waited for a moment
while Emma ran upstairs. But Evangeline only replied, “All right, eight
o’clock then,” and disappeared, and he heard the girls’ laughter in the
drawing-room. He let himself out and spent the evening and most of the
night walking along the sea shore.

“That’s an unlucky hat of yours, Emma,” said Evangeline when she went
back to the drawing-room. “I believe there’s a devil in it. We had one
row about it before you came up.” She went off singing.

Teresa’s elusive desire had begun to show itself openly to her since she
met Emma Gainsborough. She had been allowed at last behind the curtain
where the faces that haunted her in the streets were no longer imaginary
characters in a scene at which she looked on as a spectator. She began
to know individual Tommys and Gordons and Gladyses and Victorias, Mrs.
Potter and Mrs. Jason; to understand why Mr. Potter was out of work and
what it meant to half-a-dozen lives when Mr. Jason brought home only a
fraction of his earnings. She saw disease for the first time. She met
pleasure and wit and obscenity and tragedy jostling familiarly together
without prejudice or distinction, engendered by all possible unions of
hunger, love, jealousy, optimism, sensuality, pride, gentleness,
patience, brutality, callousness, kindness, ambition, hopelessness,
fidelity, in all possible conditions of filth or heartrending strife
with squalor; intelligence burning indomitably in fogs of prejudice and
lies and stupidity. She had torn the veil which the faces in the street
seemed to draw down between Mrs. Carpenter’s “duty to the city” and some
vital secret that the city kept to itself. The passionate love of
fellowship that had tormented her with its insistence and eluded her by
its formlessness had taken shape in the places that Emma and her leaders
were patiently trying to remake, and now she thought of little else.




                               CHAPTER VI


If Evangeline’s campaign against Evan Hatton’s prejudices had been a
public war, the supporters of either side would have seen that the end
was now drawing near. Optimists among the Evangelineites would have
rubbed their hands and said that she had got the forces of his harsh
morality fairly on the run; the pessimists would have prophesied (though
admitting Evangeline’s strength) that the struggle would break out again
as soon as peace was signed. The Evanites would either have declared
that Morality was going to the dogs and was being sold by Self-interest
and Pleasure, or they would have prepared to retreat, still fighting, to
the height of “A Strong Man’s Influence,” and determined to reorganise
for a new offensive when the enemy should be weakened by marriage.

An important battle took place during the ride that Evangeline had
arranged, when Evan retreated after her flippancy on the subject of dead
milliners. He called for her and brought her horse from the livery
stable at eight the next morning, and they rode away in that state of
silent tension which precedes an explanation when two people who care
for each other have parted in offence. Evangeline tried hard to make him
“start talking by himself,” as she had boasted to Teresa that he was now
in the habit of doing. She tempted him with proof that she had absorbed
his lecture on the magneto and was mistress of its difficulties. She
threw him touching confidences about her plans in little everyday
matters. But all in vain. At last her temper rose slightly.

“What is the matter with you?” she asked. “Are you angry with me?”

“I have no right to be angry with you,” he answered with emotion, “but I
don’t understand you, and yet I know that you are good and could be
great. Why do you pretend to be like the others and say things that are
unworthy of you?”

Evangeline was overawed. “What things?” she asked timidly.

“It was a silly trifle, and I know I am a fool—but it made me hot—what
you said about good milliners not associating with good people in this
world. Emma Gainsborough is giving her life to God’s work as readily as
the saints gave theirs—she’s a Crusader if you like—and you make paltry
fun of her hat. There now! I suppose you won’t speak to me again.”

“Yes, I shall,” said Evangeline. “If you will not shut yourself up into
that dreadful silence you may say anything—absolutely anything. You make
me see such a long way when you talk. I read the papers by myself and
get into such knots because I can’t see any connection between different
things. But when you hurl me about from Emma’s hat to the Crusaders, who
I thought were people who fought in nightgowns and red crosses with a
feather in their helmets and defeated the heathen—why—let me see, where
am I?—well you see how exhilarating it is! I feel as if my mind had been
galloping miles in the fresh air in new places.”

“Great heavens, what a child you are!” he said, looking at her in
wonderment. Then he smiled and held out his hand. “I’m sorry,” he said.

Evangeline shook it heartily. “So am I,” she assured him. “And will you
show me how to take the car to pieces next time Father lets you off?”

“Nonsense, he won’t want it taken to pieces,” said Evan. “What’s the
good of that?”

“Just to see the wheels,” she begged. “And then I should be so useful if
anything went wrong.”

“No, you haven’t got any mechanical sense,” he argued. “I can see that.
You understand a theory when I tell it you, but when it comes to putting
it into practice you don’t think a bit. I’ve watched you learning to
drive; you do it all by the book.”

“Well, what should I do it by?” she asked.

“Common sense and a thorough knowledge of the reason for everything. The
fact that any part of a machine does so-and-so isn’t enough; you must
know why, and what will be the result if it doesn’t act, and then you
must treat it so that it will act.”

“Oh, dear,” she said. “There’s the sun coming out! Let’s gallop while
there is grass.”

It is superfluous to follow this love episode any further. I have met
ladies who are always passionately anxious to know “what he said” when a
girl announces her engagement, and who need no encouragement to tell in
return “how John did it.” But I am all against emotional indecency, and
unless any private conversations in this book have to be recorded in the
interests of research, or are betrayed by the genial indiscretions of
sympathy, they will be omitted. Evan is the last person who would wish
anything to be said of him in that moment when Nature, who had always
laughed at his attempts to make her acknowledge the sovereignty of such
Divine Rule as he was able to imagine, pushed Evangeline into his arms
and commanded him to take her or suffer the pains of hell.

He saw no reason to refuse. But the end was not yet, though it had
become inevitable. Evan had reserves. Evangeline’s gallant forces had a
tough time of it before they won. Suspicion was the hardest to beat
down; Evan’s sisters had helped to make that so strong. He reviewed his
bonny black doubts every day, and led them out against Evangeline’s
joys. But there was all the difference in the world between his sisters’
cheerfulness and hers. Their pleasure in life was that of mice in a
granary, hers was that of a rush of invaders over a rich country; she
wanted all there was. Her assurance that God loves His world was
invincible. Evan’s doubts suffered casualties that put them out of
action; but for a happy marriage they should all have been dead. The
smallest remnant of a strong army is dangerous.

These battles went on unobserved by Cyril. Susie noticed and said
nothing, because she knew that unasked advice to a girl precipitates a
crisis, and she hoped in secret that Evangeline loved her freedom too
much to do what her mother would call “anything rash,” such as binding
herself in marriage before she had reviewed all likely candidates. As
weeks went on she became more anxious. There was a look of settled
happiness about Evangeline that was not what you would expect of a young
girl, Susie said to herself. It is a mistake to wear the heart on the
sleeve. One of the great joys of her own girlhood had been the security
of living behind a veil of misty sweetness that allowed the public free
scope for their imagination of what might be behind it and yet committed
her to nothing. Misunderstandings had arisen in that way but she had not
suffered and those who had done so had only their own imaginations to
blame. She still made use of the veil, and the only person who made her
feel nervous about it was Cyril. He had the knack of twitching it away,
and never tired of the joke, which seemed to compensate him for the
nothingness he exposed. In one way only, her disappointment about
Evangeline’s choice was a good thing to her. She felt it as a revenge on
her husband for his cynicism about women and the jibes he aimed at her
about their duplicity towards men. “Perhaps he will see now,” she said
to herself—her very soul bridling at the Spirit of Man—“that they do
need protection after all. If he really cared for her I could have
discussed it with him and he could have got another A.D.C. until this
had blown over. As it is, it must just go on, and I can’t prevent
it—with the man here all day while the sons of rich people are sitting
on office stools, shuffling oats and sugar through their fingers. Why
can’t some of them come and ride with her and show her their motors? And
I suppose Dicky will marry a rent collector with a wooden leg, or a
socialist who stands on a chair and wants to take away our money.” Her
thoughts wandered into all sorts of bitter possibilities, not at all in
keeping with the maxim that “if everyone were happy and contented
everything would come right,” which she brought in so delightfully at
Mrs. Carpenter’s little informal conferences on social reform. “Mrs.
Fulton is so original in what she says,” was a remark constantly made.
But true it was that she thought differently at the moment.
Circumstances alter cases, as she so often said.

Because of this grievance of hers against him, Cyril was not told of her
fears, and in due time Evangeline’s battle was won. Evan frowned on the
tattered remnant of his doubts and bade them go home. He went in, his
heart stumbling and stopping, to the study where Cyril was asleep after
a day’s hunting, and shut the door.

Cyril came down early before dinner, and found Evangeline reading the
evening paper in the drawing-room.

“Hullo,” he said.

“Hullo, dear,” she replied, and went on reading.

“So you and Hatton have fixed it up,” he began. Evangeline put down the
paper, and looked up at him.

“Is that all right?” she asked. “You’re not cross, are you?”

“No, I’m not cross, my dear,” he said, as if he were thinking of
something else. “I suppose you wouldn’t tell me any more, would you? Why
you really want him, for instance.”

“Yes, I would, of course,” she answered readily. “I’d tell you
anything—though that’s not true, because I told Dicky weeks ago that he
was getting—oh well, you know—quite tame—and she thought you would be
pleased, but I wouldn’t let her tell you because—I didn’t want to spoil
it.”

“H’m,” said Cyril.

“I mean I liked feeling that none of you knew him properly.”

“H’m,” said Cyril again.

“Well, what’s the matter?”

“A powerful apple,” he observed. “Power, my dear child, power.”

“Oh, Father,” she sighed, “you’re not going on again about that dreadful
old Eden, are you? I do wish no one had ever told you the story. You
think women are always tempting men to this day.”

“So they are when it comes to marriage,” he asserted. “Don’t you make
any mistake about that.”

Evangeline felt desperate, as if she were caught and entangled. “Do you
mean that men never fall in love with them?” Tears gathered in her eyes.
She had had some weary work at the last stand of Hatton’s doubts, and
now her father, whom she loved and believed in as a friend, was going to
take the top off the morning of her happiness.

Cyril understood and repented. “No,” he said, “Hatton loves you—but——”
he looked at her inquiring face and decided to revise what he was going
to say. “Have you ever heard of spontaneous combustion? It’s a
troublesome thing, but I should have more faith in your sex if they
suffered from it in their emotions. They think too hard for my taste.
But that’s all. Hatton is the devil of a hard thinker himself, so you
had better leave him to scratch his head, and say, ‘yes, dear,’ like
your mother does when I give her the benefit of my wisdom. Then all you
need is to go out and do just the opposite, and say afterwards that that
was what you thought he meant. Don’t incense him at the time, is the
great thing. ‘The Housewife’s Vade Mecum,’ as I read somewhere, or
‘Little Polly’s first steps in efficiency’.” He kissed her on his way
across the room to turn on some more light. “Just to wish you luck,
dear, and to show there’s no ill-feeling.”

He returned to the fire and drew up a chair. “I’m in favour of marriage
for all, myself,” he went on, “young and old, rich and poor, never mind
the reason, but get on with the event itself. The advent of little ones
is, after all, the only thing that matters, as your mother explained to
me. And that was you, Chips. There was a devil of a row before you
turned up.”

“Oh, did you and Mother quarrel?” she asked, very much surprised.

“You can’t call a one-sided thing exactly a quarrel,” he said. “No one
but a man could quarrel with me.”

“Couldn’t they?” she asked.

“No. But your mother is very powerful in the way I was describing;——”

Susie came in just then. Cyril had told her while they were dressing
that Evan had “put in a claim as consort for Chips; which just bears out
what I said this style of architecture would lead to when we came;
except that he isn’t wealthy. In fact, he has very little except his
pay.”

Susie took the line that this was “all that could be expected in a place
where people think so much of money that they never leave their offices
till it is time to go to bed.”

“That ought to make them all the more anxious to marry,” he remarked,
“or else how can they enjoy any intellectual conversation?”

“Of course you will twist everything I say to a coarse standpoint,
Cyril,” she said, “because those sort of cheap jokes are so easy to
make.”

“Where’s the joke?” he asked, putting on his coat. “‘Honi soit qui mal y
pense,’ as the leaders of taste remind us.”

Susie made no answer, but closed the door between their rooms, and she
did not go down until dinner was announced.




                              CHAPTER VII


Among the people who called on Susie from Mr. Price’s Paradise, the
county, was Lady Varens, David Varens’s stepmother. Sir Richard and
Cyril were admirably suited to one another because the old man was a
sportsman by nature and practice. He had had an adventurous youth and
“mercifully,” as Cyril said, “forgotten the details.” Then, on his
father’s death, he came back to Millshire and managed the estate with
the same thoroughness that had brought him success in less peaceful
enterprises. He married first a guest of one of his hunting neighbours.
She was lying unconscious on a bank, with her horse grazing beside her,
when he saw her for the first time; and when he had brought her round
and taken her home and called every other day to ask how she was it
seemed natural to regard her as his own property. She died when David
was nine, and Sir Richard married, two years afterwards, a lady whom he
thought to have been unjustly divorced from a drunken old peer who had
married her from the schoolroom.

She was good to David and kept her own counsel, so Millshire allowed her
to carry on the tradition of Varens hospitality; in fact there was an
extra piquancy about her parties owing to the opportunity they gave for
a little private skeleton hunting among intimate friends. Towards the
following Christmas, while Evangeline was staying with Evan’s sisters,
Sir Richard invited Cyril to take a day or two’s hunting with him and
stay over the week-end. Lady Varens hoped that Mrs. Fulton would come
too, and bring her daughter, to hunt or not, as she liked. Evangeline
being away, Teresa was torn from her heart’s delight, the alleys, the
rotting garrets and the dingy clubs where she groped all day for the
scattered remnant of what seemed to her the lost birthright of the
bottom class, their right to the fellowship of common desires and tastes
with the people who filled her mother’s drawing-room.

“What is the good of this eternal talk about all men being able to reach
any position they are fitted for, if, when you come across the most
lovable people in that class, you can hardly bear to sit with them for
five minutes because of smells and anxieties and habits that shut them
off like a cage that they didn’t make themselves and can’t get out of?”
she asked Emma Gainsborough.

“We are trying to get them out,” said Emma.

“I know,” Teresa answered, “but I don’t see how you can unless you kill
Mrs. Carpenter.” She and Mrs. Carpenter had perhaps the same end in view
when they worked among the dismal crowds that swarmed in the mud and
hideousness of the poorer quarters, but to the casual observer it looked
as though the “charity ladies,” as Strickland called them, were under
the impression that in their promotion of health and virtue they were
pressing something new on somebody who had never heard of it, while
Teresa hoped to restore a treasure that had been lost by past
generations.

Her own experience was showing her that the cage door gives way before
devotees who will suffer the violation of everything that makes life
sweet to them for the sake of what they hold dearer, and she also
learned the freemasonry of hard work; the point where she stuck was the
apparent impossibility of ever bridging the gulf between Mrs. Carpenter
and Mrs. Potter. How to wean Mrs. Carpenter from the idea that the
social order was all right because she was on the bright side of it, and
at the same time convince Mrs. Potter that it was not all wrong because
she was on the dark one? As one of Emma’s friends pointed out, twenty
centuries had passed since the only serious attempt had been made to
bring about an understanding between the ancestors of those two
irreconcilable ladies. The best spiritual engineering had been carried
on ever since along the lines then laid down; communications had been
devised and traffic of a sort carried on. But as soon as Mrs. Potter
advanced a little and caught sight of Mrs. Carpenter and went for her,
bald-headed, and when Mrs. Carpenter sailed along from her end of the
bridge and then sat down and sang to Mrs. Potter——. I must stop this
allegory or the reader will break down in tears of perplexity and
perhaps send the book straight back to the library; unless he has
himself lived for a time miserably wedged between the philanthropists
and the slums of a city.

To get on with the story. Teresa was, as I have said, torn from her
absorbing occupation and compelled to go with her father and mother to
be the Varens’ guest at Aldwych Court.

I believe there is no place so comfortable to stay in as an English
country house belonging to a good hostess. The luxury of dressing in any
part of her room without the penalty of gooseflesh; the deep, scented
bath and warm towel three feet square; the rich, dry fluffiness under
foot, and the cup of tea afterwards, brought by a maid who seemed to
have nothing else to do, banished all visions of Mrs. Potter to such a
remote corner of Teresa’s consciousness that when she did remember her
again the recollection had no more sting than a bad dream. She ate her
dinner, served by willing men and women who performed their duties like
priests of Isis, instead of, as dear Strickland did, giving her the
uneasy feeling that one course would have been quite enough if ladies
were not so greedy. She had observed sometimes to Evangeline that
Millport maids treated their mistresses as if they were parrots whose
dirty cages had to be cleaned out, and whom it “took up people’s time”
to feed.

David Varens is to play his part on the stage now, but there is to be no
sudden change in the music to waltz time, nor cries of the villagers,
“But here comes the Prince! Gay and dancing, bright and prancing, sing
we now our welcome,” nor will the light fade and moon children glide out
from under trees and sit upon their mushrooms while he sings, “Queen of
the dusk and lodestar of my dreams.” He comes on like Cyril’s
millionaire, “walking quite unaffectedly” among a number of ordinary
people. It was not until Teresa and her mother went away on Monday that
she began seriously to prefer him to Mrs. Potter. It may be difficult
for anyone who is unacquainted with the love of Beauty for the Beast to
understand what a disappointment it was to her to find that her heart
had betrayed her and was transferring its allegiance to a normal object.
It was something between childish terror of the sea and the remorse of a
pilgrim whose prayers have grown cold that followed on the joy his
presence gave her. “How happy I am,” she thought, and then, as a ghostly
voice demanded the truth, she added, “and I don’t care a hang what Mrs.
Potter is doing.”

There were other people staying in the house, but she did not notice
them and no more need we. Lady Varens and Susie talked and knitted and
drove, and Lady Varens liked Susie, because it was impossible not to on
a slight acquaintance, and Susie liked Lady Varens because there was
mystery about her and she had great charm, with her soft eyes that saw
much and told nothing, and her sensitive mouth whose utterances led to
conversation, but also told nothing. Susie admired in her the ideal
woman, and “we are so much alike” was what she chiefly thought of her.
Cyril enjoyed his hunting and sat up late in the smoking-room.

“I hope you will come and see us, Mr. Varens,” said Susie before they
left. “Your mother, I know, hardly ever leaves this lovely place, and no
more should I if it were mine. But I know you do come into town
sometimes. We can always give you lunch and it will be such a change to
hear about the beautiful country things in the middle of all our
ugliness; I never get used to it. I shall be so anxious to hear whether
that dear black cow gets all right again. Cows are such mothers, you
know; one feels so sorry for them having to be parted from those sweet
calves. You are going to manage the estate now, Sir Richard told me. How
delightful that will be, and what a saving of anxiety to him.”

“Yes,” said David, “I come in two or three times a week to the
University. Perhaps you would let me come one of those days, may I?
Thanks very much.”

He took Teresa through the woods that morning. She said less than usual,
and presently he noticed this. “You look worried,” he remarked. “Is
anything wrong?”

“I don’t know that you can call it wrong,” she answered, “but I feel
almost sick at the thought of going back to Emma Gainsborough and her
office. It doesn’t seem any use from here. I was bent on teaching music
to Albert Potter the day I came, and now I want to turn him into a calf
or a frog. What is the good of Emma going on sending different kinds of
splints for him and telling Mrs. Potter how to put them on? The money I
have eaten since I came here would have saved him from getting like that
a year ago.”

“Look here,” said David seriously, “I have been along that road while I
was at Oxford, and it leads nowhere, except into a sort of maze where
you lose yourself and die for want of a fresh argument. If I had ideas I
would come down to your place and do what you are doing for as long as
you wanted me, but I haven’t got any ideas and I have got fields—or
rather my father has, and can’t look after them as he used to—and I am
going to see what is to be got out of them.”

“I have neither ideas nor fields,” she said, “but I had an enormous
family when I left home last week, and now I have been happy and
forgotten them.”

“Did you forget them?” he asked.

“Yes, quite,” she answered sadly.

“Then you can’t really care for them enough to succeed,” he said. This
struck Teresa a blow. “Don’t you ever forget your farms and things?” she
asked, “not for a minute?”

“No, except when I’m asleep or hunting.”

“Hunting! my hunting is done down there,” she said illogically.

“Then where are your farms?”

“Oh, blow!” said Teresa.

“All right. Well, when will you come back here?”

“When I can’t bear any more committees of the charitable. I wish you
could see Mrs. Carpenter. Do you remember, she was at the Gainsboroughs
the night you were there?”

“Was she? I forget. What like?”

“Like an hour glass, in pink—with the sand quite solid.”

“I didn’t notice. I couldn’t make your Miss Gainsborough talk, that’s
all I know. Is there anything the matter with her?”

“Dear me, no,” she answered in surprise. “She’s very amusing when you
know her. Mr. Price got her into such a state of nerves. He did me, too.
Do you understand him?”

“No, but I think he is only trying to mix society; just what you want to
do with Mrs. Potter. If you encourage her you ought to encourage him.”

Teresa looked at him to see whether he was laughing, but they had come
to a stile and he was waiting politely for her to get over. Instead of
climbing she sat down on it and faced him. “It is absolutely different,”
she began to explain. “What I can’t bear is to find people, who would be
just like you if they had been sent to school and fed, unable to express
themselves and living in such horrible places that one can hardly attend
to what they are trying to say because of the awfulness. And it is
nonsense to say that they can always get out. All self-made men say
afterwards that they were newsboys, but there are thousands of darling
newsboys who haven’t got just the bit of extra that made Dick
Whittington; and, as my mother says, purring among her furs on a
platform, ‘they are often taught to be bad.’ She does talk such rot, and
yet often her platitudes wouldn’t be so telling if they were not made up
over a small piece of truth. There is nothing like that about that
dreadful man Price; is there now? Come, speak up.”

“He wants to get into a better set and explain himself,” said David.

“Nonsense,” answered Teresa, “not a better set at all; only a more
fashionable one.”

“Well, but you say that your set isn’t any better than Mrs. Potter’s,
only more fashionable. If that is so then Mrs. Potter is a snob like
Price. But if you claim some other advantage that you want Mrs. Potter
to share, why shouldn’t Price be sensitive about having been born
outside a set that claims to be better than his own?”

“I wish I could get someone who has as much ‘lip’ as you have to talk to
you,” said Teresa. “I can’t do it, but I know you are wrong.”

“Your Potter vocabulary is beyond me,” said David politely.




                              CHAPTER VIII


The curtain now goes up on Evangeline’s marriage. It took place six
months ago. Cyril has a new A.D.C. with a fluffy wife and blue-eyed
child; all three as happy as grigs. His name is Jimmy Trotter—(the
Trotters of Burnside) and she was Miss Fripps of Ely, a daughter of the
famous Dean Fripps. Cyril doesn’t mind Trotter, who does his work all
right, and Mrs. Trotter is always good fun at a party, though Susie
thinks she is rather empty-headed, and can’t understand how she can
afford a nurse like that for the baby; it would be much more sensible if
she looked after it herself, and got a really nice girl to take charge
in the afternoon. Mrs. Trotter thinks not, as she does not believe in
nice girls and prefers to save money by doing the cooking in which she
is expert and let the baby have the whole attention of a woman whom she
can trust. She doesn’t believe in making oneself a premature fright by
being a Jack-of-all-trades. They have recurrent arguments on this
question and Susie gets the worst of it, for Mrs. Trotter disposes of
platitudes as she would of kitchen refuse, without a moment’s thought
whether there may not be diamonds among them. Therefore, Susie says she
is empty-headed, and does not care to see more of her than politeness
demands.

And you should see Mrs. Trotter mimicking “Mrs. General” to the wives of
Cyril’s staff, all of whom she knows intimately! Of course it got round
in time to Susie through Mrs. Carpenter, who heard of it from the wife
of the Staff-Captain, who was rather keen on getting into the University
set.

Evangeline was happy at this time, living at a place we will call Drage,
where Cyril had got Evan an appointment. He found there several men who
had been with him in the trenches. Their recollections pictured him as a
man who had been of the greatest value as an unfailing joke; a good
joke, too, for you never knew when it mightn’t blow you sky high. It was
always worth while raising him when you had a lot to think of, because
his explosions of temper were entertaining enough to take your mind off
any unpleasantness. And he was such a thoroughly good fellow; would do
anything or go anywhere, and his mechanical genius had earned their
admiration and gratitude for many improvised good things. Hicks
remembered him taking a Hun’s watch to pieces in his dug-out and—the
story that followed was always a success. It preceded his arrival at
Drage, and Evan found everyone pleased to welcome him and his wife.

Evangeline’s enthusiasms and her naïveté were soon the talk of the
place. Some of the women regarded her as a fool and some as “a very
dashing young person.” She certainly was, as Strickland had prophesied,
“a favourite with the gentlemen.” There is a pose of free speech and
free living that is as closely bound by its self-imposed limits as any
other doctrine, and it is particularly false because the naturally free
have never heard of freedom; as Cyril would have pointed out, “it was
knowledge of the damned thing’s existence that made Eve a slave to
propriety.” Evangeline’s knowledge of good and evil was, as we have
seen, gathered almost entirely from the newspapers, and was therefore
negligible. So she thought freely (which is different from being a free
thinker) and Evan, who had eaten his apple with attention, was
scandalised, and the ladies of Drage, who wore their aprons merely as a
class distinction, cutting them long or short or leaving them off
altogether, as fashion dictated, were astonished at her behaviour.
Indeed when her instincts did, as she once hoped they would, “burst with
a pop in the sun” of experience, she loved creation with a generosity
that might have led her into all sorts of trouble had she been as
faithless a woman as her mother. She was fascinated by the idea of
having a child of her own, “a brand new person, whom no one has ever
seen before, conjured from the vasty deep,” she said (with some school
recollection of a quotation connected with impressive magic). She adored
Evan as the god behind the machine and lost a great deal of the interest
in his character that had made her take pride in his reluctant
confidences. Splitting hairs in argument about sin seemed to her an
absurd waste of time when it was clear that no one would bother to sin
if he were happy; and who could be other than happy when the war was
over and a new generation coming into life? Evan’s friends enjoyed her
hospitality in peace, for she never teased them by the militant
chastity, provoking but unyielding, which turns many a good bride into a
firebrand. The average Englishman does not often engage in illicit love
affairs unless they are offered him; so Evangeline’s lack of decorum was
regarded as a new and perfectly innocent game. Evan, with his explosive
seriousness, had been a first-class jest in the old days, and here he
was back again, married to some one just as funny in an opposite way,
and the two together were simply splendid. The jokers were never tired
of setting the one against the other in public, without an idea that
differences of opinion could hold any danger for two people so obviously
in love. They relished the stories that went round about Evangeline’s
latest indiscretions and told how shirty old Evan had been and how the
two had gone off together afterwards talking all the way and you could
bet she got it properly in the neck when they reached home. One evening,
these mischief makers who had egged on Evangeline to persuade poor old
Hicks to do his Fiji dance, with young Blake lashed to a chair in the
character of a maiden, went home to bed in the highest spirits, and left
Evangeline and her husband alone.

“I shall chuck my job at once and leave here if you ever encourage that
sort of thing again,” he said, standing in front of the embers of the
fire that had made the little room so cheerful earlier in the evening.
He had put young Blake’s chair back into its place with a savage push,
and was now winding up the string that had been broken in the final
ecstasy that brought the house down. Evangeline stared at him with
round, startled eyes. “Darling Evan,” she said, “it was a game. What on
earth is the matter?”

“It was outrageous. If you had ever been among savages——” he stopped,
speechless.

“But I haven’t,” she argued. “That’s just it. I want to know. It was
fascinating. I felt as if I were the girl and he were getting nearer and
nearer—it was gloriously exciting. And anyhow—dear Evan—don’t be an ass;
it was pure farce, and I don’t believe he knows anything about Fijians
at all.”

“My mother would have died before she would have allowed such a thing in
her drawing-room,” said Evan. “You have no womanly dignity. Everyone
talks about you and the way you behave as if you were married to the
whole staff.”

“Oh, what is the matter with you?” cried Evangeline. “I was so happy and
I have done nothing whatever. I don’t know what you are trying to get
at. How can I be married to the whole staff?”

“I assure you no stranger could point out which was your husband in a
mixed gathering,” he replied coldly.

“Oh my dear, you’re like an eclipse of the sun,” she said, getting up
and putting her arms round his neck. “I have been so happy that I had
forgotten all your Mumbo Jumbo of this or that being right or wrong,
that you used to make my flesh creep with till I thought you really knew
about it. I believe you would blow out pleasure like a lamp if you could
and make us all sit and eat repentance by corpse light. I am going to
make another fire in my room and have tea and cake there, and if you
don’t come and cheer up I’ll telephone for one of my other husbands to
come instead.” So Evan relented until the next time.

They came back to Millport for a visit at Easter.

“And when does Mrs. Hatton expect the great event?” asked Mrs. Carpenter
of Susie when she and Mrs. Eric Manley and Mrs. Vachell had remained
behind to tea after a committee meeting. The committee had been dealing,
among other matters, with the case of Mrs. Potter’s daughter, for whom
Teresa asked admittance to the maternity home they represented.

“A particularly sad case,” Susie had remarked, “because it seems that
she hardly knew the man and only encouraged him because her husband
drank and she had nothing to live on. If she had only come to me, as
Teresa might have suggested to her, I would have advised her what to
do.”

“What would you have advised?” asked Mrs. Vachell curiously.

“I should have tried to explain our point of view,” said Susie, “and
shown her that, apart from the disgrace and all that, the man would
probably leave her sooner or later, as he has.”

“But surely, Mrs. Fulton, that is not the main point?” said Mrs.
Carpenter. “Surely we want to awaken something more than self-interest?
We want to make these girls understand that the marriage vow often
implies suffering.”

“Oh, of course,” replied Susie with a far-away look. “But I think a
woman always hopes to the end. They are so confiding and they forget
that it will probably lead them into trouble.”

In replying to Mrs. Carpenter’s other question, however, she took a
brighter view of marriage. “Not quite yet,” she said, “but to tell you
the truth, I never ask many questions of that sort. I always think that
the glamour of a young marriage ought not to be rubbed off by too many
practical details.”

Mrs. Vachell used to wonder now and then how it was that Susie
constantly took the bread out of Mrs. Carpenter’s mouth without her
victim seeming to experience any sense of loss. Mrs. Carpenter did
sometimes hesitate as if she thought she had lost something, but Susie
seemed so innocent of her theft that it generally passed as an accident.
On the whole, Mrs. Carpenter accepted her as an ally.

“How do they like being at Drage?” Mrs. Manley asked.

“Very much indeed,” Susie replied. “She enjoys military society,
fortunately, which I never did. Mrs. Trotter envies her, she says, as
she doesn’t like Millport herself. Of course a place that is building
itself up a great position with its University and its social schemes
can’t have much interest for people who are always packing up and
following a drum from one dusty parade ground to another.” She paused
and, as her audience was busy with cake, went on, “Those dreadful
folding beds and bamboo furniture that they all seem to go in for—I
suppose because it is so light—depress me too much. I do love a
beautiful home of my own, however small.”

“I don’t think you are altogether fair to the army, my dear lady,” said
Mrs. Carpenter, a trifle piqued. “I lived, until I married, among my
dear people who were always on the move, and I don’t think you would
have said that their ideas were limited. Wherever they went they were
fêted like princes by all the most interesting people, and I think it
gave all of us girls much wider interests and sharpened our wits more
than being shut up in the same set who all think each other perfect.
Your parents felt it a great change, I expect, when they moved to
London. One’s individuality has to fight so much harder there not to go
under with the stream.”

“I daresay,” said Susie gently, “but that was some time before I was
born. I have always been a Londoner, you know. Of course I missed at
first being in the centre of everything, but I have got to enjoy the
earnestness and concentration of it all here. Like those wonderful
things your friend showed us under the microscope the other day,” she
added to Mrs. Vachell. “One could hardly believe they were of so much
importance until one saw them moving about.”

Mrs. Manley laughed and exchanged a look with Mrs. Vachell and then
Cyril came in and they rose to go. They never felt quite at ease with
him. Mrs. Carpenter, feeling bound to assert her familiarity with
military interests, stayed a few minutes to question him about his work,
hoping incidentally that she might see Evangeline and determine for
herself the probable date of her initiation.

                  *       *       *       *       *

A few days later Evangeline was sitting in her father’s study after
dinner. Her eyes were red with crying and she sat in a deep armchair
opposite him, blowing her nose at intervals.

“Have a cigarette,” said Cyril sympathetically, pushing the box towards
her. There had been something like a row at dinner. The Trotters had
been invited and David Varens had turned up unexpectedly as he often did
now after a late lecture at the University. All had gone well until the
dessert, when Mrs. Trotter, with that want of perception that often goes
with household efficiency and a bright nature, began telling of a rift
in the matrimonial lute of the staff-captain and his wife. “It all comes
of her being so keen on the University,” she concluded. “She was bound
to get scorched by Mrs. Vachell, sooner or later, when she took up Egypt
with that giddy old professor. He knows too much about the Sphinx
altogether.” She helped herself to some grapes and winked at Evan
Hatton. Evangeline grew nervous as she saw that he was excessively
angry. Cyril saw, too, but not realising that the matter was serious he
laid himself out for a little fun.

“Now then, Evan,” he said, “we’ll drink to the spotless reputation of
the Army versus Thought, coupled with the name of Captain Hatton.” He
poured himself out a glass of port and passed the decanter. “Now then,
up you get.”

“I have no joke ready, Sir, about the sort of dirt that women choose to
throw at each other,” said Evan, and he relapsed into a black silence,
fingering his glass.

“Here, I say, Hatton——” began Captain Trotter angrily. Evangeline
blushed scarlet and looked at her husband in despair. Mrs. Trotter
inspected him with amused disgust and waited for her husband to go on.

“Evan dear, Evan,” Susie remonstrated. “What are you talking about? Mrs.
Trotter will think you a great bear if you use such strong language
about poor old Professor Vachell’s little flirtation. You’d really think
he meant it, wouldn’t you?” she smiled round the table and was going to
change the conversation when Evan rose.

“I am sorry,” he said, “but I should have to finish what I was going to
say if I remained, and perhaps I have no right—which of us has when it
comes to throwing stones?” He went to the door.

“Evan——!” pleaded Evangeline almost angrily, but he was gone.

“Poor fellow!” said Susie, “I expect he feels the heat” (or the cold—I
forget what the weather was at the time). “You know,” she turned to
Captain Trotter, “I don’t believe any of you have quite got over that
dreadful war yet. I met a poor boy only yesterday who was quite sure
that Moses had appeared to him in a vision and announced the Day of
Judgment.”

“That’s what Moses is rather in the habit of doing,” said Cyril,
grateful to her for once, though the occasion had been unintentional.
“You know, Trotter, seriously, you ought to stop those boys gambling at
the mess like that. There’s some of them don’t know the difference
between a Hebrew and a bank account.”

The Trotters went home early after dinner. Evan had gone for a walk and
not returned, and David Varens and Teresa were arguing in a corner about
something, so Evangeline slipped off to her father’s room and there wept
profusely while he smoked. When she was re-established and had accepted
a cigarette, Cyril began to talk.

“I’ve seen more of that sort of thing than you’d suppose,” he said, “but
I’m sorry it should come your way, Chips; you, of all people.”

“Oh, I don’t much mind, thanks,” she answered, blowing her nose once
more with a final blast, the last roll of thunder before sunshine
reappears. “Only when it is in public.”

“Do you get much of it in private?” asked her father.

“Oh, yes,” she sighed. “Father, what do you think it is? He must be so
miserable if he thinks everybody wicked when they are having fun. I
would give up everything or do anything to see him happy, but it seems
impossible.”

“I always understood he had a reputation for being very good fun,” said
Cyril.

“Yes, to the others,” she agreed. “They all adore him and he never minds
anything they do or if he does they only think it funnier still. It is
women he thinks ought not to be amused at anything broader than—— Oh, I
don’t know, the way a canary eats or something like that.”

“Very dry humour certainly,” he commented, “but easily gratified. It’s a
pity more of you don’t care for it.”

“Father, don’t talk to the gallery,” she reproached him. “You know you
detest a perfect lady.”

“H’m. First catch your hare,” he replied. “We’re not getting on with
this, Chips, but I wish I could help you. How does he take the prospect
of fatherhood? If it’s a girl and you keep her in good condition I
should think his number will be up shortly.”

“But I hate fighting,” she objected. “Why can’t we be happy? And suppose
it is a boy and he learns to hate Evan? I should give up then and run
away with him to the desert and live on dates in the sun. I won’t have a
little boy brought up in that abominable nonsense about Hell. Anger is
hell. I don’t believe in a God with a black temper.”

“Have another cigarette,” said Cyril.

“Thanks.”

“What are Hatton’s sisters like?” he asked after a pause.

“Giggly little people,” she said, “awfully kind.”

“Do they like you?”

“Oh, yes, so long as they suppose I think Evan perfect.”

“Does he object to them?”

“No, he talks to them about carburettors and their G.F.S. and the dogs.”

“Oh, well, that shows he can be all right if he’s interested,” Cyril
remarked with some relief. “You evidently haven’t mastered the art of
distraction that I warned you about, you remember.

            ‘J. is for James, Maria’s younger brother,
            Who, walking one way, chose to look the other.’

That is the secret of married happiness, I find; to act like James.”

The front door banged and they heard Evan come upstairs. He stopped for
a moment outside the door and then came in. “May I come in, Sir?” he
asked, “I heard Evangeline was here. I’m very sorry I lost my temper at
dinner. I’ve been round to Trotter and apologised; but I can’t stand
that woman.”

“Oh, Evan, you are a good bird,” said Evangeline. “Come and sit down
here and have a cigarette.”

“I had better go down and throw out Varens,” said Cyril, looking at the
clock, “unless—(an idea struck him)—unless you care to go, Chips, and
tell your mother I think I am a little feverish and would she like to
come and rub me with camphorated oil?” Evangeline stared at him.

“What on earth for?” she asked.

“And tell Varens I’ll be down in a minute when the attack has worn off,
if he wouldn’t mind waiting,” Cyril continued. “I’m rather inclined to
back up young David against Miss Emma Goliath when it comes to taking up
Dicky’s time.”

“Where do you get all your Scripture knowledge from?” she asked
wonderingly.

“I have often read the lessons,” he assured her; then he remembered his
son-in-law and looked at him guiltily, but all was calm. Evan was
listening and smoking benevolently. Evangeline resumed, “Mother will
never swallow that rot.”

“Then I must do it myself,” Cyril decided reluctantly. “Down with Emma
Goliath and her musty cohorts!” He left the room and a few minutes
afterwards they heard him rummaging in a book-case in the passage for
the Army List of 1913, while Susie held the candle.




                               CHAPTER IX


Young Mr. Price worked quite hard (“rehrly, you know, kait sairys
effort!”) to bring his parent’s house up to the requirements of his
college friends. He was not likely to ask anyone to his home except for
political or enterprising reasons, because Millport at its richest did
not provide much entertainment for unsympathetic guests. Its merchant
princes fell short of imagination when it came to spending. They were as
unlike the Medici as could well be imagined. They not only failed to
encourage art, but they disliked it and fought against it. It took as
much pressure of public opinion from rival cities and continents to get
anything of value into the town as would have been required to turn
Lobengula into a St. Anthony. Sometimes when this or that architect,
painter, poet or musician was known to have built, decorated or filled
the super-halls of America and returned burdened with contracts and
delicious food, Millport used to stir uneasily in its contempt and
occasionally went so far as to despatch a clerk to find out if there
were any of the stuff left; because America’s habit of apt valuation is
only too well known in business circles. The fact that her people also
care passionately for their purchases might otherwise pass unnoticed.
Neither did Millport indulge itself much in luxuries such as sailing,
travelling or sport. The Prices kept a big motor which they used
carefully, often suffering the horrors of the local train or the crowded
tram rather than be unbusiness-like with petrol. Their clothes were a
source of pride rather than pleasure. Mrs. Price was timid in her choice
of garments and inclined to the perfect taste prescribed by the
lady-in-waiting at Messrs. Venison and Phipps. “Mantles this way,
Modom,” said the junior assistant in black charmeuse, and then Miss
Figginbottam, whom Mrs. Price “always reckoned on,” aged forty-five,
disillusioned and imperative, stepped forward and gave the casting vote
between the grey moire velours and the rather richer effect of the
petunia and chinchilla.

But young Mr. Price and his sisters now told the poor old lady that this
would not do. Her daughters took her to London and brought her back with
monkeys’ tails and Balkan embroideries hanging slantwise over her
innocent curves; they trotted her about in high-heeled shoes instead of
the soft kid boots that Bollingworth’s used to make so well to her
pattern. They did her hair in the fashion of Goya’s mistress and made
her drink cocktails and become a vegetarian, but forbade her to smoke,
which she did not understand. Her son taught her the names of the new
poets, but could never get six quotable lines of their poetry into her
head because there was “nothing to catch hold of” about it. Then they
began on Dad; and he took to it like a bird. There was no trouble with
him. He put himself entirely in the hands of his son’s tailor and then
was told he looked too smart. So he stood patiently and allowed his
trousers to be let down till they corkscrewed ever so rightly down his
short legs. He shaved off his beard and grew a very intellectual-looking
moustache; but his daughters told him he looked like a Labour Member and
made him shave it off. He smoked a pipe, which he did not care for, and
also learned when to smoke it; as, for instance, when his old friends of
the city had all got out their cigars. He was made to eat less and give
up carving; forbidden to press his guests to a second or third helping
and privately instructed to let the butler manage. He was persuaded to
buy some pedigree dogs for Mrs. Price, and a man was hired to lecture to
her once a week on their management and breeding as she wouldn’t learn
from books. The more they tore up the drawing-room the better the young
Prices were pleased, though it caused their mother secret agony. Besides
the names of poets and their works, the parents were made to learn the
phraseology of farming, lawn tennis, cricket, golf, sex-boredom and the
religions of the world.

It was during the time when these social gymnastics were being most
arduously practised by the Price family that they gave an evening party;
one might almost suppose for the purpose of taking their minds off
themselves. “Everybody” was there and a few representative nobodies,
just to show that Mr. Price, senior, was in touch with the political
movement of the day. “The University,” of course, were there, because
though it used not to be considered the thing in Millport to encourage
people who lived in poky houses and “talked superior” and “made fun,” it
is different now that the aristocracy have taken to asking even
theatrical people about and marrying professors and so on. You never
know in these days when your local goose won’t go away somewhere and
become a swan and get written up in the papers and go to Court or even
make money. Once bitten, twice shy. Mrs. Carpenter and Mrs. James Manley
and Mrs. Price had one or two secret grievances against certain
home-clad young wives whom they had avoided as “not quite——” and who had
gone back on them later by being positively run after by all sorts of
people; people you wouldn’t expect. How on earth is one to know? Jupiter
ought to label his protégés in some way from the start so that honest
people who can afford the best of everything may know where to look for
it.

“Would you believe it, Mrs. —er?” Mrs. Manley had been known to say, on
coming to something of the sort in the pages of her _Times_.

“No, and if you ask me, I think it’s absu-u-rd,” replied Mrs. Price in
her new accent.

“I used to think her decidedly peculiar,” put in Mrs. Carpenter, “but
there never was any question that he was immensely clever. I used to
talk to him by the hour.” Emma Gainsborough was reported to have said
that she hoped that when Millport put up a memorial to Mrs. Carpenter it
would be in the appropriate form of a weathercock.

The Prices’ house was about three times the size of the Fultons’. It was
of the same pattern as all the other houses in the neighbourhood; only
its square mass seemed to have plumped itself down with more aggressive
self-satisfaction than the others. On a close spring day it could almost
be heard breathing there on its bit of gravel, puffing and grunting,
“Now then; what dju looking at? Go away. This is Mr. Price’s house.
We’ve got four reception rooms, twelve bedrooms, double tennis court,
treble croquet lawn, copious vinery, garage and the usual offices.”

It must be admitted that the party was a good one to the extent that the
prodigality of limitless self-satisfaction can go. The Prices meant well
so far as they could see beyond their own affairs; and their unfortunate
haziness over the rest of humanity was probably not their fault. Some
day the school of “Hope-for-all” thought may enlarge its activities and
devise a sort of Borstal system for the spiritually deficient, and the
habits of the Prices will be investigated and probably traced to some
quite simple defect in the marrow; the juice of a dog’s kidney may
perhaps be injected and suitable exercises prescribed, and so on.

Dancing was going on in the larger of the two drawing-rooms, cards were
to be played in the other, an “imperial supper,” as someone reported,
was laid out in the dining-room and Father’s den was banked up all round
by about a hundred hats, in the middle of which an old retainer with a
face like the largest and richest muffin ever seen sat as if in a nest.
No one could have approved more thoroughly of the proceedings than he.
He had spent nearly all his life in waiting on the ladies and gentlemen
of Millport in the evenings and in the small hours. By day it is
supposed that he slept and murmured in his dreams, “Cold chicken or
galantine, Sir? Lobster salad or trifle, Miss? Champagne, Madam?” He was
now too rheumatic for this labour of love, so he sat among the hats and
greeted the familiar faces as they came in. A few of them, such as Mr.
Manley, spoke to him. “Ah, Higgins, so you’re here, are you?” they said.
“Wet night, isn’t it?” and then they passed into the bright light and
deafening chatter. Cyril came in to leave his coat and hat at the same
moment as Sir Richard was receiving his ticket. “Hullo, what brings you
here?” he said. “Didn’t know you came to these things.”

“I’ve laid a foundation stone this afternoon and looked in on my
doctor,” Sir Richard began, and he paused a moment to dust his sleeve
with a clothes brush.

“Pure coincidence, I hope?” Cyril asked anxiously.

“No, it’s a fact,” the old man assured him. “But I’ll tell Milly you
asked and what’s more I won’t tell her that Queen Anne sent that joke to
_Punch_. She has got the car here and I thought I might as well go back
in it. Young David is here somewhere with her. By-the-bye, Price wants
me to let Aldwych to him for the hunting next year. I may have to go
abroad, but I can’t make up my mind.” He spoke in a low voice, but
Higgins heard.

“I shouldn’t,” Cyril answered. “You never know what those sort of people
will do with a place.”

“How d’you mean?” asked Sir Richard.

“Oh, I don’t know,” Cyril replied, “but it is never the same
afterwards.” It was characteristic of him not to connect any mental
process with a globe of flesh encircled by hats, so he spoke in his
usual tone. “You never get the smell of money out afterwards, and it
demoralises tenants worse than the plague. And what would you do with
the stables?”

“He wants to buy the lot,” said Sir Richard.

“My dear fellow!” Cyril exclaimed, and then words failed him. “Here,
come along and let’s see where the bottle imp has his lair. That
foundation stone had your wits in it, I think.”

Mr. Joseph Price had been dancing with Evangeline and they were now
sitting in the winter garden. “You’re living at Drage now, aren’t you?”
he asked. “Rather a wretch’d sort of place, isn’t it? Not much to do
there, what?” Evangeline looked at him in surprise. “What sort of things
can’t you do?” she asked. “I should think you could do anything there is
to do as well there as anywhere; unless you want to shoot bears or ride
elephants.”

“I led the strainuous life there for a bit,” he replied. “I never was so
f’d up in my life.”

“How long were you there?” Evangeline asked.

“Oh, on and off f’ three years in charge ’f a batt’ry.”

“And where did your battery go to?” She was full of interest.

“Well, ’n point ’f fact it stayed where ’t was,” he replied carelessly.
“They’d had ’nough, you see, ’f sending out f’llers not prop’ly trained,
and the f’llers they sent to us then weren’t fit t’ handle a catapult.
H’wever, we pushed them off in th’ end.”

“And then where did you go?” she pursued.

“I’m ’fraid you’ll be raather shocked,” said Mr. Price, smiling, “but I
never got further than Switch’nham. Kait sairysly though, the Gov’nment
took over the Dad’s plant there and not a soul knew an’thing about it. I
had t’ run the whole blooming show by m’self with a handful of r’tired
M’thuselahs. Awf’l shaame, I thought, digging the pwur old things out at
their time ’f life. But now you have the whole sordid story ’f m’ life.
Not much of a f’ller, Price, is he? I know that’s what you’re thinking.”

“Well, I want to be quite fair,” said Evangeline. “Have you got anything
the matter with you?”

“No, sound ’s a bell,” said young Joseph.

“Well, but had you anything then?” she persisted. “Groggy arms or legs
or insides?”

“Lac’ration of right forearm ’n’ elbow, received when leaving th’
theatre in state ’f intoxication during ’n air raid,” he replied,
grinning at her, “also sustained loss ’f an eye and inj’ry to left
ankle.”

“Honest?” she asked earnestly. “Let me look at your eye.”

“’T’s glass, but there’s nothing green in it,” said Mr. Price, holding
down one eyelid, and she saw that what he said was true.

The music of the next dance began and he rose. “You dancing this?” he
asked, “or c’n I get you a partner? I’m ’fraid I’ve got to trot out Miss
Gainsborough. I shall keep her meuving for she caan’t talk.”

“I’ve lost my programme,” said Evangeline, “but I’m almost certain I’m
dancing with some kind of a Manley, with pink eyes—— Oh, I’m sorry, I
expect he is your cousin; everybody is here.”

“Yes, that’s Claud, I expect, but don’t mind me, please,” Mr. Price
replied. “His mother’s my aunt. But I don’t see him or my partner——” He
looked round and they waited a moment. “He’s great on the pwur, too,” he
said. “P’haps they’re hatching something t’gether. I don’t alt’gether
b’lieve in it m’self, d’you? Of course it’s awf’lly fine and all that
and I ’dmire it immensely, but I think it ’ncourages them t’ have
grievances—makes them dwell on their p’sition and so on, which after all
can’t be helped. Don’t you rather agree?”

“I don’t know,” said Evangeline. She was not attending much for she had
caught sight of her husband talking seriously to Mrs. Vachell and
wondered what it was about. She recalled her mind to what Mr. Price was
saying. “My sister thinks of nothing else,” she said, “but I am no good
at it; I am too lazy and selfish.” Emma Gainsborough appeared just then
and Mr. Price left Evangeline with an apology.

“Awf’lly hot, what?” he observed to Emma when they had been labouring
round the room a few minutes. Emma was not a good dancer.

“Hot what, what hot?” she mimicked him rather crossly. “You had better
stop and have an ice.”

“Forthcoming!” he observed as they stopped and he inspected her
curiously. “Forthcoming indeed! You’re magnif’cent actress, you know,
Miss Gainsborough. Why couldn’t you do thaat when I came to dinner with
you, ’nstead of making me think I was boring you all th’ time?”

Emma ignored his last sentence. “I am very sorry,” she said, “but I do
so hate parties. I get to know such a lot about the food before I see
it, and I know all the time that my father will criticise every dish
afterwards and mother will feel she has been a failure and say that she
must get another cook; and we never do. We have had the same one for
years and she gets steadily older and worse.”

“Have some coffee or ’n ice?” he suggested. “What c’n I get you? I say,
th’ band seems to be packing up—that means supper. Will you excuse me as
I merst look after one of the dowagers. Claud will take you in. Here,
Claud,” he beckoned to his cousin, “’ll you taek Miss Gainsborough?” and
he departed in haste. He found that his mother had allotted Susie to him
from among “the dowagers.” The parent Gainsboroughs, Sir Richard and his
wife, Cyril and the sister of the ex-Lord Mayor, filled a table with
their host, and Joseph Price and Susie sat together close by.

“A most charming young man, that Joseph Price,” Susie remarked in her
room that night. “I wish Evangeline had met him before dear Evan came to
the house so constantly. He is so fond of sport. I hear there is some
idea of his father taking Aldwych.”

“Mother Price’s diamonds would flash the glad news from tower to tower,”
said Cyril with more animosity than he generally showed to anyone. “Her
searchlights played over me at supper till anyone could have spotted the
lobster swimming in the champagne.” Susie took refuge in silence and
they went to bed. Evangeline and Evan were talking in their room at the
same time. “I hope you had supper,” she said, “I feel I don’t want any
more to eat for days. Whom did you get hold of?”

“Mrs. Vachell,” he answered. “She is a very charming woman; most
interesting and cultivated.”

“Evan, I shall never understand you,” she said with amusement. “You
disapprove of the most harmless people and Mrs. Vachell does more harm
than almost anyone at Drage.”

“Now that is so like a woman,” said Evan. “Always running down your own
sex if a man praises one of them.”

Evangeline winced under the injustice and her amusement died. “You will
give me a sharp tongue some day that I wasn’t born with,” she said
hotly. “What I meant was that Mrs. Vachell doesn’t believe in any of the
things you are always fighting about, she isn’t kind to people for she
doesn’t like them, and Mrs. Carpenter——”

“Don’t mention her,” said Evan. “She’s an awful woman.”

“Yes, I know you can’t stand her any more than you can stand Mrs.
Trotter who is a perfectly harmless, common little thing, as good as
gold. But Mrs. Carpenter is the solid prop of the whole edifice of what
I understand you want people to be and yet you hate her.”

“She’s a humbug,” said Evan, “that’s why.”

“I don’t think Mrs. Vachell believes in anything except brains,” said
Evangeline. “That’s her own affair,” he replied. “That is a matter
between her and her Maker. All I say is that she behaves like a lady and
talks intelligently, without that silly affectation of chaff that spoils
most women.”

“She doesn’t work nearly as hard as Mrs. Carpenter,” Evangeline laboured
on. She would always take up any cause at a moment’s notice and
sacrifice the approval she loved best in her whole-hearted defence.

“Well, keep your opinion and I’ll keep mine,” he said, “I never could
help being fond of you, Evangeline, but you do exasperate me sometimes
more than I can tell you. I never know whether you deliberately won’t
see what I am talking about or whether you can’t.”

“If that is all,” she said contentedly, “I don’t mind. I thought you
were angry with me.”

The Gainsboroughs were habitually early risers. At half-past nine they
generally parted for the day; the Principal to his principalling, his
wife to the kitchen, fortified by renewed hope of Annie being able to
cook something really nice to-day; Emma to the grimy back street where
she had her office. It had been late when they reached home after the
Prices’ party, and Mrs. Gainsborough’s inevitable question, “Would you
like anything, dear, before you go to bed?” was known to the other two
to offer no inducement to sitting up; no one can talk over a feast on
digestive biscuits and water. The three bedroom doors were shut within
ten minutes after the cab had rattled away down the street and not a
sound was heard in the big house except faint snoring from the top floor
and the ticking of the grandfather clock on the landing below. Emma got
into bed and heard the clock gather itself together with a hoarse rattle
and strike one; four church clocks answered it a minute later. The trams
had stopped and the road was so silent that a policeman’s footstep was
heard all up the street that lay behind the house, round the corner and
down past Emma’s window almost to the end of the Square. “Certainly not!
Certainly not!” Emma imagined the footsteps saying, and her heart warmed
to the image of faithful Robert, patient and decorous, with order as his
means of subsistence and disorder his only hope of pleasure in the
monotonous hours. “Certainly not. Certainly not.” The clocks chimed two
strokes and then one; half-past one. Robert was coming back. Cats began
to quarrel in the sooty flower beds of the Square; scuffled, spat,
shrieked and vanished. Emma thought harshly of them and gradually dozed.
The silence was broken by a sudden uproar in the street at the back,
near the corner of Robert’s beat, where rows of mean little houses led
down to one of the railway stations. There were loud sounds of
quarrelling, a woman’s voice and two or three men; a splintering of
glass, a scream, grumbling, threats and oaths and then—“Certainly not.
Certainly not.” Robert was coming back.

“’Ere, what’s this?” she imagined he would say when he reached the
corner, but all was silent before he had passed the Square, and any hope
of incident for that night faded away as the clock struck two and the
rain began to fall gently. Emma was wide awake now and lay for some time
thinking of her work with the hopelessness of a tired body and mind.
Robert probably never suffered in this way. If he got in the dumps he
took something for it, “an’ as for that lot up there,” he would have
said, pointing a thumb up the poverty-stricken scene of the quarrel,
“the sooner they was all turned out the better.” Mrs. Robert probably
understood more than he did about the discouraging habits of matter,
which collects again as soon as it is displaced. Teresa’s dreams were
busy with other plans for settling the difficulty. She wanted to build
up the whole mess into a work of art.

The Gainsboroughs had their deferred talk about the Prices’ party at
breakfast next morning.

“Joseph Price is a perfect ass,” said Emma. “And yet you can’t be as
angry with him as he makes you. I want first to slap him and then to
turn him right side up again and put him back in his chair.”

“No, I think he is really dreadful,” said her mother. “He always was a
tiresome little boy, but Cambridge seems to have done him more harm than
good. I can’t think where he gets that silly way of speaking. It is more
like Oxford if anything, but it isn’t that either. I wouldn’t libel the
poor things.”

“It is a sort of culture and climbing mixed,” said Emma. “Don’t you
remember when the Mortons came down here to open the Industries? Some of
them talked exactly like that, only it wasn’t so obvious because it must
have been longer since they did it on purpose. It is almost natural to
lots of people I am sure. But Joseph Price was very busy with it then.
‘Voilà que j’arrive!’ his whole face said.”

“It was a splendid supper,” said Mrs. Gainsborough, “I only wish I could
teach Annie to make quenelles like that. I think she must make ours too
soft. They always have that curious squashy tastelessness about them, or
else too much pepper.”

“My dear Beatrice, you’ll never do anything with that woman, so long as
you live,” said the Principal. He tossed a piece of kidney on his plate.
“Look at that! Leathery, dry—a kidney ought to be a dream of tenderness
and blood, just poised—poised, mind, so that the juices soak through—on
a piece of toast, neither hard nor soft, browned to a turn——”

“Oh, Father,” interrupted his daughter, “do please talk of something
else. You make me dribble with envy; I can’t bear it.”

“Poor darlings!” murmured the mother, compassionate almost to tears. “It
is hard on you. I really will speak to her and see if she wouldn’t care
to go to Mrs. Plumtre; I know they don’t care what they eat. I’m not
sure even that they’re not vegetarians.”

“Did you know Mrs. Price has become a vegetarian?” said Emma. “But not
the duck-made-of-peas kind; just lettuce and peaches and cheese; except
when she goes to London by herself, she told me. Oh dear, I must go but
I am so sleepy,” she yawned and got up.

“Did you sleep well, darling?” asked her mother anxiously.

“There was a row going on in Millard Street and it woke me up.”

“I’d have all those people turned out,” said the Principal. “When
there’s a revolution the houses round here won’t be fit to live in. And
there’s that Cranston next door, throwing out literature that is so much
rank poison by its stupidity. It is bad enough to harm even educated
idiots, for they take it all in, but at least they are not likely to
burn down——”

“If you please, Sir, Mr. Fisk wants to know if he can see you for a
moment. He is in the library,” said Annie at the door.

Emma escaped, and as she passed the open door of the library she saw a
young man with hair à la Kropotkin and immense spectacles whom she knew
to be the secretary of the students’ debating society and the son of
good Mr. Fisk, plumber and decorator in the neighbourhood.




                               CHAPTER X


Mr. Fisk was a good son at home and a pleasant fellow among his friends.
Emma, who was liked by the students and went to their gatherings, had
often met him. He kept dormice in his bedroom and tended them with care,
but if the Communist society he belonged to had called him to do murder
in the cause of incomes for all he would have summoned his courage to
smite some bald-headed director of a company with a bloody axe. His
errand to the Principal that morning was, I am glad to say, of a most
peaceful nature, connected with the degree he hoped to take. He met Emma
and Teresa the same afternoon at a tea given by some of the students
after the meeting of the debating society. Teresa took the cup he
offered her, and became fascinated by his withered little face, his
immense spectacles and his Kropotkin hair. Her instinct scented
suffering and the cage, and she led him on to talk. It must be
understood that this was her first experience of his kind and she never
forgot it. He began explaining to her, earnestly at first, then
excitedly; he struck his knobbly little hands one against the other.
“Blood!” he concluded, “blood! there’s nothing else for it. We shall
give our blood when the time comes and we shall take it
ruthlessly—without remorse.” Teresa looked at him fixedly, questioning.
“I think that is very wicked,” she said, when she had made up her mind.
“You have no business at all to decide that one person shall live and
another shan’t; it is much too serious. Suppose that another lot of
people decided that you must be killed because you got a degree and they
didn’t?”

“I shan’t have been born into my degree when I get it,” he said proudly.
“I shall have earned it by my own endeavours. The rich have been born
into their property for generations. They come into the world nourished
on the blood of my fathers. Show me the signs of toil on your hands, if
you please,” he looked down with a bitter expression at her little hands
that held the cup.

“I know,” she said humbly, “I often think of it. You needn’t point it
out. But still you oughtn’t to murder anybody. It is not their fault;
and anyhow, suppose you burgled my father’s house, he would have no
right to kill you except in self-defence. I know that is so; a lawyer
told me.”

“What’s the law!” said Mr. Fisk contemptuously. “We’re going to alter
all that; we’re going to make new laws by which man will have the right
to live.”

“Yes, but not to stop others living,” said Teresa. “It’s silly; you know
you can’t make laws; and who is going to carry them out if you do? You
can’t make people do what you want just by telling them that you have
made a law. There’s the army and navy too—but what is the good of
arguing. You must know it is silly.”

“The army and navy are also learning to think, you’ll find,” said Mr.
Fisk. “But I don’t wish to offend you, Miss—er. You are yourself of
military stock, I believe?”

“Yes I am, but I don’t bother about that. It has got nothing to do with
what I think,” she replied. “Don’t you know——” she went on, with passion
beginning to rise in her as his words soaked in, “don’t you know, you
stupid (she shook him delicately by the sleeve), that all the decent
people in England—and English people are decent, not like the beastly
people you try to make your hair like—are working their very hardest,
day and night, to put things straight? And the fact that some of them
have got white hands is all the better, for it means they have money and
time to spend on it, and you have only the time to learn by heart what
someone else has written. It does make me so angry when I know what the
idle rich, as you call them, are doing.”

“Bah! charity!” said Mr. Fisk, and he spat some shreds of tobacco from
his cigarette neatly into the grate.

“Oh, you can’t have thought I was talking about charity,” said Teresa
with real distress. “Of course I wasn’t. It is the very thing I dislike
most, except your muddle and murder. And besides that, some of the
richest people boast of having been newsboys, and they are often the
rudest to their servants and their wives are horrid lazy snobs.” Mr.
Fisk’s little withered face twitched with his anxiety to collect some
clear dignified retort.

“Have you ever read much on your subject, may I ask?” he inquired at
last. “Have you studied economics? Perhaps you have attended Professor
Cranston’s lectures?”

“No, I haven’t,” she replied.

“Then, pardon me, but I think you are hardly qualified for the argument.
Capitalism is a highly intricate subject and should involve deep study.
To judge how far it is advisable to submit the control of wages to the
State, and also to consider to what extent the right of the individual
to determine the extent of his earning capacity should be carried,
requires a long training and arduous study. I should be pleased to
continue our talk at some other time if convenient to you, and I should
be happy to lend books if you are interested.”

“Yes,” said Teresa with a sigh of fatigue. “I want to know. And you are
part of the faces in the fog, I suppose,” she added absently, looking at
him.

“I beg pardon?”

“I said you were part of the faces in the fog. I used to wonder when we
came here what was behind the sort of brick-wall expression that people
in the streets and the trams had. When you go to speak in Hyde Park you
will see how different your audience is—quite merry in comparison.”

“I don’t propose to do so at present,” said Kropotkin-Fisk, highly
offended. “We leave that to the executive. Our body here is concerned at
the moment exclusively with study and propaganda.” Emma came to look for
Teresa and heard the end of the discussion.

“Aren’t you paving the way for a new set of class distinctions, Mr.
Fisk?” she asked. “What you said just now sounded like it. I hope you
will take a lesson from the present evil system and pay yourself
properly if you are going to keep to the higher activities.”

“I don’t quite follow,” said Mr. Fisk, “but if you’ll favour us at the
next debate and hear my paper, perhaps you will put your question then,
and I shall do my best to parry your thrust.”

“I don’t know what Mrs. Potter would do if Fisk were made Chancellor of
the Exchequer under the new régime,” said Emma, as she and Teresa walked
back together.

“Yes, she would loathe it,” Teresa agreed. “But I don’t exactly know
why. Why do they so often hate their own class in office?”

“Well,” said Emma, “I suppose if Eddie Fisk is Chancellor of the
Exchequer there’s no reason why Albert Potter shouldn’t go one better
and be King. Mrs. Potter ‘never would ’ave ’eld with them Fisks,’ you’d
find, ‘—settin’ themselves up!’”

“But Communists don’t have a King; isn’t that the whole point?” Teresa
objected.

“They don’t until one of them wants to be it,” said Emma. “They would
call him something else, but some of them would develope an aptitude for
ruling. Even apes do.”

“But then, I suppose the others could depose him if he wasn’t
hereditary,” said Teresa.

“No, ‘Gawd save the Prince o’ Wales, bless ’is dear ’eart!’ is Mrs.
Potter’s motto. ‘That there Fisk is never going to come it over our
Albert, you’ll find, Miss,’ is what she would say. Ask her the next time
you see her.”

“Mr. Jorkins doesn’t agree with that,” Teresa pursued. “When he is out
of work the first thing he blames is Parliament. He’s dead against it.”

“Well, there will always be two opinions about everything in a country,”
said Emma. “You had much better leave them all alone to mess about and
let us get on with what we are doing. At present Mr. Fisk is rather like
the mouse that dipped its tail in the beer and sucked it. He is looking
for the cat, that’s all.”

“Are you sure?” her friend asked anxiously.

“I am only sure after a party like the Prices’ last night,” Emma
answered. “It will wear off to-morrow, and I shall get cross with Father
for talking Conservative intellectualism. I can’t see any use in the
Prices to-day. They give money when there is a list of donations, and
Papa Price just hugs himself when someone comes round for a
subscription. He keeps them waiting in his office, and then when he has
succeeded in beating them down to less than they asked for and yet finds
he is still in the top batch of subscriptions he does think he has been
clever. And Mrs. Price and the family! I would really enjoy seeing the
girls working in the fur trade instead of wearing coats of it, and I
wouldn’t wish that to many people. I would like to see them stop
cackling and find out how witty they would be on two pennyworth of
refuse. Then the next day, perhaps, I meet Lady Varens, whom I don’t
grudge anything to, because she keeps a lot of people happily employed
and really cares for them and buys beautiful things with her money. And
after that the Starks turn up—you know—the schoolmistress at St.
Angelus’ school—you met her at the Dispensary. Mrs. Potter’s life is a
screaming farce compared to hers, and the Jorkinses are wallowing in
wealth, for at least they enjoy themselves at the pictures and the pub
when so disposed.”

“Well, let us add it up,” said Teresa. “Under Mr. Fisk’s scheme, Mrs.
Potter and Mrs. Stark will benefit; Mrs. Price will be altogether
wrecked and mangled—she and her family; Lady Varens will live as she
would probably be quite content to live now—she never seems to want
much—and she would upset the apple carts of a lot of happy dependants.
But then there are lots of Potters, lots of Starks, comparatively few
Prices, a good many Varenses and not a great many happy dependants, so
how does the proportion of benefits work out? I shall have to ask David
to unravel it.”

“I beg your pardon—David?” asked Emma.

“David Varens,” said Teresa. “What’s the matter?”

“Nothing. I only wondered for a moment. Do you go much by what he says?”

“Yes, more than anybody.”

“Why, may I ask?”

“Oh, because he is so simple,” she answered readily. “I can never tangle
him up in a problem. He lays it all out and sorts it into heaps, and
then generally sums up by saying there is nothing in it. It is so
restful. And then he tells me about phosphates and the habits of the
teal. But it is only for the rest to my muddled head that I like it so
much. It would never put me off my work.”

“Sure?” asked Emma, and she was obliged to accept the assurance when it
was given a second time.

As they passed the Vachells’ house, which was not far from the
Gainsboroughs’, Mrs. Vachell was just going in. “Come and have tea with
me?” she suggested. Emma explained that they had had tea and that she
had work to do at home, but Teresa accepted. She was inclined, like
Alice in Wonderland, to taste and nibble whatever new thing came her
way; she had never been inside the Vachells’ house, nor felt that she
understood what lay behind the self-possession of the small, graceful
lady whom it was said the Professor had found fanning herself by
moonlight under an obelisk and brought home. Mrs. Vachell’s face was
beautiful and full of character but the character was of the reversible
kind, of which it is impossible to decide whether it is intended to be
good or bad. Such faces seem not, like most faces, to alter gradually
with their owner’s mind, but to hold always in themselves two distinct
characters between which the soul has never chosen a habitation. At
death, opinion is generally divided as to which character has been the
true one, as in life it was never decided which it would prove to be.
“Very like a curious death-mask my father was once given for his study,”
Susie had described her on first acquaintance. “Dante, or somebody, I
think it was, who wrote the ‘Inferno.’”

Teresa followed the small gliding figure into the hall and up the
stairs, where photographs of Byzantine art and reproductions of drawings
from Egyptian tombs were hung right up to the high window that lighted
the stairs with a cold north light. The back yards and chimneys of young
Millport mixed disagreeably in her mind with the impression of endless
centuries of life that she gathered from the procession of antiquity on
the walls. There is something alarming to youth in the idea of the early
days of a very old person.

The drawing-room was more cheerful, but Mr. Vachell’s study, which his
wife showed her as they passed, made her shiver again. There were
objects of stone, of clay, of mildewed bronze; tiny domestic
possessions, gifts of love, weapons, tokens of mourning for the dead,
provision even for an eternity of wandering beyond the grave. Everywhere
were glass cases to preserve the imperishable; the penetrating dust of a
new city defiling them notwithstanding. If Teresa had seen Life and
Death supping together in the silent room, pledging one another from the
old vessels that stood upon the Professor’s table, she could not have
felt more discomfort than she did.

“Do you like these things?” Mrs. Vachell asked her.

“Perhaps I might if I got to know them,” she admitted, “but they scare
me rather.”

“Come into the drawing-room and have tea then.” Mrs. Vachell led the way
into the next room and rang the bell. “It is only half-past five; you
have lots of time to recover. What have you been doing?”

Teresa told her about the Debating Society and Mr. Fisk. “A horrible
young man,” said Mrs. Vachell. “He isn’t one of my husband’s students,
luckily, or I should have to ask him to tea. They all get brought here
at intervals. They sit about in corners and balance cups on their knees
and spill tea into the saucer. I wish you would come and help me next
time I have to ask some of them. I believe you would be good to them and
teach me not to dislike them so much.”

“Very well,” said Teresa, “though I am not benevolent. If people won’t
talk I can’t make conversation. Why don’t you ask Emma? She knows them
all.”

“That is just why she is no good,” Mrs. Vachell explained while she made
tea. “It is like a mother and her children in society. They can’t talk
their own nonsense before an audience, and they can’t do the polite to
each other. I want you to extract something from the students. They must
have interests of the sort that one does not air in the family circle,
and strangers are the ideal safety valve for that sort of thing.”

“Are many of them like Fisk; wanting blood and new governments and
things?” Teresa asked.

“That is one of the things I want to know,” Mrs. Vachell answered. “Emma
could tell us so far as statistics go, but I want to hear for myself.
You know I sit on Committees with Mrs. Carpenter and her lot because I
love organisation, and so many of those women who are always talking and
ordering and doing the Nosey Parker everywhere are just tools for
anybody in the show who has an axe to grind. Do you understand about
Boards of Guardians and Select Vestries and all that part?” Teresa
answered quickly, “Oh, no—nothing whatever. Of course I get inspectors
and visitors on my track and I have to help Emma with her reports. But a
Board of Guardians means nothing to me except a firm eye and questions
that I can’t answer. Mother has them to lunch sometimes.”

“Can she answer their questions?” asked Mrs. Vachell.

“Surely you know that Mother never answers any questions?” said Teresa
very much surprised. “She always tells you something that she thinks
instead, and makes it seem as if she had answered. But I never know
whether it is because she can’t or won’t.”

“I do loathe poverty,” Mrs. Vachell said, as if to herself.

Teresa went home very little the wiser for her visit, but she felt
greatly discouraged by the extreme age of civilisation as it had been
shown to her at the Vachells’. It seemed to have accomplished so little
in the time at its disposal.




                               CHAPTER XI


Evangeline’s baby was a boy, very much to Susie’s satisfaction. It would
be going too far to say that it had been a grief to her that she had no
son, for grief and she had met only on the most courtly terms since she
outgrew the realities of childhood which no one escapes. Her philosophy
had developed early, and since then she had met grief on the terms of
cavalier and lady. He had bowed to her and fingered his sword; she had
curtseyed, smiled and turned her back on him, with perhaps a coy glance
of mockery above her fan. But he paid his first visit to Evangeline,
equipped for battle, when her son was a few months old. Evan began
making plans one day for his future, as affectionate fathers will, and
the discussion, begun amicably, ended in such a storm of passion from
Evangeline as surprised and horrified him. A doctor would have said that
she was still weak and unbalanced after young Ivor’s birth; the fact was
that resentment suppressed or tided over on many occasions had
accumulated, and was now being paid in one sum. Her natural gaiety had
made her fairly independent when it was only she who was to suffer from
Evan’s severity; but when it went beyond her to the child she became
savage in the defence of her offspring. This situation is as old as the
hills—older than man—and the true simile of the tigress has become so
hackneyed by being tacked on to every thwarted feminine instinct that it
hardly arrests the eye on a printed page; but its accuracy is age-proof.
The occasion for her outburst was as trifling as it could be; it
generally is when a storm is long brewing. Evan had chosen for his
peroration the unfortunate words, “—and we shall teach him discipline
early.”

He spoke from a full heart and meant, as Queen Elizabeth is said to have
performed upon the virginals, “excellently well.” Evangeline pictured
the young creature that was to have been a marvel of joy, crushed by
fear of its natural friends, pursued by something dark and threatening
that was called “Right,” so that all sweetness of the day that was
called “Wrong” must be loved and followed in secret. She pictured the
child lonely in a garden, with a dog for his friend and his father for
an enemy, and she herself, perhaps, under suspicion as being in the
confidence of the enemy. He would be like Romulus and Remus, she
thought, as her horror gathered volume. She was always a very simple
thinker. In any crisis her mind’s eye looked over a wide space of
whatever emotion was in possession of her, and some episode, historical,
literary or personal, often arose before her as a point of focus for the
end she was aiming at. Just now she was overwhelmed with pity for the
awful loneliness of a child’s nature with no human love to comfort it.
She knew herself what a place animals can take at such times. Romulus
and Remus had been mothered by a wolf, but must her Ivor be abandoned to
such a makeshift, while she, adoring him with all her heart and soul,
was chained by Evan to the Juggernaut’s car that was to pursue the child
through life? At the moment she pictured her husband’s religion as an
all-devouring monster.

He sat meanwhile silent, frowning at her grief and wondering how his
domestic security had come to collapse like this at the breath of a high
ideal. Was his wife wholly worldly and given over to the worship of
self-indulgence? Did she mean to bring the boy up to be a pampered young
ass with no sense of duty to God or man? He said nothing, but thought
very dark thoughts.

Presently Evangeline’s indomitable optimism came back to the rescue. She
had exhausted her emotion; Romulus and Remus had played their part in
her imagination and retired. Pity remained, but there was also hope and
the fighting strength of the jungle mother. She would remain Ivor’s
mother and play the part of the wolf as well. Evan should never get at
her darling while she lived; she would throw herself between them. It
was not until very much later in the tragedy that she began to think of
using cunning in her defence. At present she had no idea of decoying an
enemy away; that instinct had not yet been roused in her so she still
fought in the open. After the outburst of protest with which she first
met his innocent remark, and the passionate tears that followed, she
cheered up again and was prepared to shake hands.

“It will be all right,” she said confidently. “I know you love him as
much as I do.”

“I love him more, for I care what becomes of him,” was Evan’s grave
reply.

“You are not going to beat him the first time he disobeys you?” she
asked in renewed panic.

“Control yourself, for goodness sake,” he replied impatiently. “He is
only a baby. I have nothing to do with your nursery arrangements. Let
him tyrannise over you and make his life and yours a misery. There is
time enough for you to think over whether I am right, and to see the
result of depriving him of all means of defending himself against
ill-fortune in this world and damnation in the next.”

“And when he is older, if I still think you are wrong——?” she pursued
breathlessly.

“Then—I am sorry, Evangeline—I shall not hesitate to remove him from
your charge.”

“You couldn’t!” she exclaimed. “They would never let you!”

“I don’t know the exact law, but I fancy I could safeguard him and still
allow you to see him in an ordinary way without your being in authority.
But all this is absurd. We are making ourselves miserable about nothing.
Go up to him now and spoil him to your heart’s content. But think over
what I have said. You have so much good in you, Evangeline, if you would
only not let yourself be carried away by this terror of all pain and
discomfort.”

“I didn’t make a sound when Ivor was born,” she said in amazement.

“I know. Don’t think you hadn’t my admiration because I didn’t say so. I
was thinking of the pains of self-sacrifice and obedience to rules not
understood.”

“If I can keep Ivor by bearing those, too, I will,” she assured him.

“Of course you can, darling,” he said, misunderstanding. “We shall all
be happy at last, you will see.”

At Christmas they went again to stay with Evangeline’s parents. Ivor
found his grandmother all that he could possibly desire. He fell madly
in love with her and she made very little attempt to conceal her triumph
from his nurse. Ivor loved the nurse dearly and she loved him, so that
altogether he never suffered a moment’s anxiety during his visit. War
was declared over him; a long and bitter war as it turned out; yet his
life became for the time being all the sweeter in consequence. Susie
entered the battlefield on the side of Evangeline and motherhood in
general, of “not worrying about things that can’t be helped,” and of
opposition to men who “will be disagreeable.” Love, wounded by Ivor’s
mischievous treachery at times when his grandmother’s blandishments must
be left for sleep and exercise, brought nurse in on the side of the
father and discipline. It was she who had to endure the nerve-racking
screams and struggles that took place on the other side of the
drawing-room door, and the wakeful nights caused by excitement and “the
very purest chocolate” from Grannie’s drawer which Ivor had learned to
open so cleverly. She had to put up with the gentlest and most
persistent advice, with seeing windows covertly opened or shut when
otherwise arranged by her with the tenderest care for Ivor’s comfort,
with clothes added to or removed from what he was wearing. Mothers of
any civilised country will bear witness that such trifles are more
dangerous to domestic peace than the franker brawls of the gutter. If
Susie and the nurse had let themselves go with the same _abandon_ as the
ladies of honest Robert’s beat, Ivor would have suffered less in the end
and his father and mother might have called quits after the exchange of
a black eye and a broken nose. As it was, Evangeline took no part in the
daily duels so long as her son remained unscathed between the contending
parties; but she noted Evan’s silent criticism. She saw that every scene
of wilfulness strengthened his position against her, and her heart
hardened towards him. Once when Mrs. Vachell asked her to lunch she
arrived there so discouraged that she could hardly keep up a pretence of
other conversation.

“I am very sorry to be so stupid,” she said at last, “but I am tired to
death. Mother and Ivor’s nurse do get on so badly, though I believe it
is really one-sided because Mother seems not to notice at all; but she
puts nurse’s back up and Ivor takes advantage of it to get everything he
wants, and I don’t think she would stay through another visit. Evan
thinks it is my fault and that I spoil Ivor. I do so hate anger and
fuss. What would you do?”

“I should tell the nurse that she must be polite to your mother or go,”
said Mrs. Vachell.

“I wouldn’t do that for a thousand pounds,” said Evangeline. “She
worships Ivor and would give her life for him I really think.”

“You would easily find another who would do just the same,” Mrs. Vachell
remarked, “and it might be good for him not to depend so much on one
person.”

“No, no,” Evangeline repeated. “I won’t do that. But people can make
one’s life a burden, can’t they! Just by disapproving.”

“I never allow anyone’s vagaries to bother me,” said Mrs. Vachell
coolly. “I do the best I can and am proof against black looks. Angry
faces are as soon dead as merry ones and their memory is not kept
green.”

“Do you think a man’s feeling about children is always different from a
woman’s?” Evangeline asked presently.

“Yes, very different,” Mrs. Vachell replied. “I think, if you ask me,
they are the most ram-headed, firebrand, poker-fingered lumps of folly
that could have been planted on an unhappy world to wreck its comfort.”
She spoke in a low, deliberate voice. “Damned fools,” she added lightly.
“Don’t you think so in your heart?”

Evangeline was just going to answer when she remembered her husband’s
description of Mrs. Vachell after the Prices’ party, “intelligent” and
“cultivated” and “talks like a lady.” She saw a very old mistake for the
first time, fresh in all its eternal comedy, and was lifted right out of
her present difficulties by the amusement of it. “How gloriously funny!”
she exclaimed.

“What is funny?” Mrs. Vachell asked, a little displeased.

“That you should think that, and—Evan was so delighted with you!”
Evangeline blurted out.

“Pooh!” said Mrs. Vachell. “I suppose you think I was trying to please
him?”

“Oh, gracious, no,” said the poor girl. “I told him he knew nothing
about you.”

“Did you? Why did you say that?”

“Oh, because I knew you don’t believe in any of the things that he
likes.”

“My dear girl, how can you know that? What don’t I believe in?”

“I mean his kind of religion, and rectitude, and making oneself
uncomfortable about nothing, and all that misunderstanding of everybody
and looking out for badness.”

“You don’t need to look far,” said Mrs. Vachell.

“Do you think so?” said Evangeline, surprised. “Now that is just what I
don’t. I think there would be hardly any badness if people didn’t make
it by believing in it. But why do you think men are so stupid? You can’t
have thought so in the war——” She became suddenly indignant.

“If men had not been what they are there would have been no war,” said
Mrs. Vachell.

“Oh, but—good gracious! Look how women fight!” Evangeline exclaimed in
amazement, “and all about nothing! Men fight _for_ something, and—I
can’t bear to hear you say beastly things about them when they did——”
Her voice broke and she stopped. Her eyes were bright and troubled as
she looked at Mrs. Vachell in the hope of having mistaken her words.

“Don’t take what I say so much to heart,” Mrs. Vachell said gently. “You
are a very feminine woman. You ought to turn your sympathies on to your
own sex, who have to endure seeing their lovers and sons killed because
countries are governed by brutes and knaves and idiots. When your baby
goes to war and your husband urges him on with applause and he leaves a
wife and probably two or three ruined women behind him——”

Evangeline’s tears had vanished in utter astonishment at the novelty of
this view and her own fundamental disbelief in its reality. There was
nothing in it to stir her passion as it was remote from anything she
could ever feel and she did not believe anyone else felt it either.

“Of course Ivor will go without any egging on,” she said. “I should die
of shame if I had even to open the door for him. And as for ruined
women—Evan is not like that nor are my people, any of them. I don’t see
why Ivor should grow up a pig any more than they did. But”—she
remembered again what had amused her—“I do wish you would come and say
all that to Evan. I do want to prove to him that I was right, and of
course I can’t tell him what you said. He wouldn’t believe it and would
think I was being like a woman.”

This last slip of the tongue was unfortunate and might have led to such
divergence of opinion as would have deprived Evangeline of those further
talks with Mrs. Vachell that had so much influence on her future. But
they heard the front door bell ring and Mrs. Vachell said, “That is
probably Mr. Fisk. He said he might come this afternoon. I wish you
would stay a little; he might really interest you.”

“Who is he?” Evangeline asked.

“One of the stupidest of the students, but a reformer——” Mr. Fisk was
announced. He began of course about the weather and asked Evangeline
whether she had “been long in these parts,” and so on; he omitted none
of the steps to acquaintance by which his kindred are accustomed to
reach the more companionable stage of invitations to “tea and s’rimps.”
Mrs. Vachell soon became impatient and cut him short. “Don’t let us be
social any more, Mr. Fisk,” she suggested, “but tell us how your
campaign is getting on.”

He plunged at once into oratorical phrases and Evangeline listened,
bewildered. Mrs. Vachell led him on by subtle questions to the law of
marriage.

“Are you in favour of the coming of women?” he asked Evangeline.

“Where to?” she asked. She was deeply interested.

“What people call feminism,” Mrs. Vachell explained. “Don’t you want to
take your share in the world?”

“What sort of share?” said Evangeline. “I thought I had got one; but I
am too stupid to do things, if you mean having a profession.”

“Have you ever tried, may I ask?” Mr. Fisk inquired. “Perhaps you hardly
know your powers.”

“You like people to be happy, I know,” said Mrs. Vachell. “Why not take
steps to make them so? Don’t you find, for instance, that men have too
much power over their families?”

Evangeline’s private anxieties awoke. “Do you mean when they can say how
children are to be brought up?”

“Yes, that among other things.” Mrs. Vachell observed her closely.

“They oughtn’t to,” said Evangeline. “They don’t understand——”

“Have you read Iris Smith’s pamphlet on the matriarchate?” asked Mr.
Fisk.

“No, I haven’t read anything deep,” she replied. “What is the thing? You
don’t mean that sort of solid turquoise?” She supposed him to have
changed the subject out of modesty. He looked scared and Mrs. Vachell
laughed.

“Mrs. Hatton is only a potential ally,” she explained to him. “She has
the real instinct, which is worth all the learning in the world. Books
are only useful for downing the catchwords of stupid people who won’t
think. How would you like it,” she continued to Evangeline, “if your
husband insisted on your boy being brought up at some particular school
and you knew that he would be bullied and misunderstood there, and that
all the tenderness you love would be crushed out of him; and suppose you
found after he went that he came back despising you in his heart for
being of the inferior sex, though he still caressed you as a dear old
silly whom he could get material comforts from and put down with one
hand in any discussion?”

“Boys aren’t like that,” said Evangeline frowning. “I know they are
not—not English boys, anyhow,” she added with a look at Mr. Fisk’s hair,
to which she had taken a sudden dislike.

“They have been just like that since a date so far back that I don’t
believe you have ever heard of it,” Mrs. Vachell assured her. “That is
why you will find it interesting to read books some day.”

Evangeline stayed to tea and came back more incensed than ever against
Evan’s theories and more than ever in love with his masculinity.




                              CHAPTER XII


Anyone entering the Prices’ house on any Wednesday afternoon between
3.30 and 6 would hear from the staircase and even from the front door a
chatter and clatter of cups and conversation and shrill laughter. In a
short time the drawing-room bell would ring, a door would open upstairs
and louder sounds of talking would burst out; then one of the Price
girls would be heard to say, “Well, good-bye, then. Tuesday week,” or
something like that, and a female form, expensively dressed, the remains
of a farewell smile still on the face, would pass down the stairs and
probably meet the maidservant on her way up with another batch from the
front door. On some Wednesdays as many as thirty women called on Mrs.
Price. Susie, who “believed in keeping up with people,” as she said, was
there one day soon after Evangeline had left her. The Prices made much
of her because of her triple connection with Millport, London and the
county, and the girls described Cyril as “perfectly killing!” They had a
great respect for him as soon as they saw that he had none whatever for
them.

Perhaps it was some survival of the days when slavery was upheld from
the pulpit by a man of God in their city that gave one or two of the
older Millport families their exaggerated esteem for an impressive
manner. They knew by ancestral experience that the top dog is the thing
to be. They sat as near the top as they could and gazed with admiration
at those who pressed on them from above. No one who understood Cyril
could suspect him of being impressive, but he took no interest in the
Prices, so their natural inference from his behaviour was that he must
be used to something better than themselves, and that would be something
very good indeed. The train of thought runs easily to the conclusion
that Cyril was worth cultivating. Half the things he said would have
convicted him of “giving himself airs” had he been a poor man and polite
to the Prices, but, “Have you heard what the General said?” they
repeated to one another after every occasion when they met him. Even
such trifles as “what he said when Father offered him a cigar at the
Club,” were reported, and the answer, “No, thanks; have you seen the
paper?” produced an avalanche of delight.

“But what did he mean, dear?” asked poor Mrs. Price. “I don’t see
anything particular in that.”

“Oh, mother! Of course he wanted to get rid of Dad; can’t you see? ‘Have
you seen the paper!’ I think it is delicious. You can just imagine him
handing it over and sloping off.”

On this afternoon Mrs. Price sat down beside Susie and began to make
herself agreeable. “Your daughter has left you now, hasn’t she, Mrs.
—er?” she began. “I hope Drage suits her. My son was there for a time
and didn’t care for it.”

“It is not a beautiful place, of course,” Susie replied, “but to see
those boys back from the war enjoying themselves so much is as good as
any scenery. Your son told Evangeline of the unfortunate accident that
prevented him from going out. She was so sorry for him.”

“Well, I wasn’t sorry,” said Mrs. Price. “I think the whole arrangement
of conscription was scandalous. They took people who were absolutely
necessary for carrying on what business there was, and sent them out.
Joseph has a very weak throat and would have been absolutely useless, as
I told him; though he had made up his mind to go. However, it is all
over now and I hope to goodness they will get all the labour troubles
settled soon. The price of everything is dreadful. I don’t know how we
are to go on living.”

“By-the-bye,” asked Susie, “has anything been settled about your taking
Aldwych?”

An unpleasant recollection rose in Mrs. Price’s mind. Higgins had
reported to one of the maids after the party “how disrespectful that
military gentleman that came had spoke” about wealth in general and the
Prices in particular. He had retailed Cyril’s remarks about getting the
smell of money out of the house and the likelihood of the Prices
demoralising the Aldwych tenants like the plague. Higgins had told the
infamous tale three times at supper, and Hopkins, Mrs. Price’s maid, had
repeated it to her mistress. The young Prices had heard of it, but paid
little attention. It only stung them to further admiration of Cyril, for
since the Profiteering Act had been passed and half the jokes in _Punch_
were about people who looked rather like Dad and Mother they had begun
to feel that the gilt on their gingerbread had better be covered a
little to prevent rubbing. The parents, however, did not like it.

“I don’t know whether we can afford to take it at all,” Mrs. Price
continued. “It is only people who have made money in the war that can do
that sort of thing now. Of course Mr. Price actually lost more than he
made, and with the income tax and everything his idea was really to give
up and go into the country. Aldwych would need a great deal of keeping
up.”

“Would it?” said Susie. “I daresay. But you would find the life so
delightful, wouldn’t you? I think the unrest in a big town is so trying,
and the unemployment makes it so much worse.” Mrs. Gainsborough was
sitting on a sofa at her left hand, talking to a clergyman’s wife, and
there was a sudden silence as Susie spoke. The young Prices had gone
into the little room beyond to discuss some theatricals they were
getting up for a charity.

“Why does the Principal allow Mr. Cranston to go on as he does?” Mrs.
Price asked, turning to Mrs. Gainsborough.

“He doesn’t,” she replied distractedly. “It drives him nearly wild, but
he can’t do anything.”

“He is making it much harder for everybody,” said Mrs. Abel, the
clergyman’s wife. “My husband says he is doing incalculable harm in our
neighbourhood. They are not the very poorest people there and they all
have time to read and they are great orators—”

“Mrs. Carpenter and Mrs. Vachell,” the maid announced.

“Ah, this is delightful!” Mrs. Carpenter exclaimed, advancing first and
shaking hands with everybody. “You are so wise to go on keeping to one
day,” she said to Mrs. Price. “It is almost the only way of seeing one’s
friends. I should love it if I had nothing to do, but if I tried to keep
an afternoon to myself someone would be sure to call a special meeting
somewhere and I should have to go off. And how is your dear girl? (To
Susie.) Wrapped up in hubby and the baby, I suppose. I hope he is not
getting his teeth too soon; it is such a pity when they do; they only
decay earlier. And how is Emma? (To Mrs. Gainsborough.) I meet her here,
there and everywhere. I think she does too much. She has not been
accustomed to so much drudgery as an old soldier’s daughter like me.
Papa used to hear us our Greek Testament every morning at half-past six.
You know those were the good old days at Universities! He never gave it
up even when he went to India. Then we had our classes and our
riding-master and the old drill-sergeant, and my mother used to take us
round among the wives and tell them what to do with their babies. Girls
haven’t the same strength now. I make Baba lie down for an hour every
day after lunch while I write letters, and I am sure Emma ought to do
the same. And how is your parish, Mrs. Abel?” She settled down at last
to one victim and let the others go.

Presently they heard men’s voices in the hall, some heavy stumbling
upstairs and a door shut. Mrs. Price listened, hesitated and rang the
bell. “Has anything happened, Gregory?” she asked the maid.

“Mr. Joseph, ma’am, brought home a young man who got knocked down by the
car. He wished you not to be troubled as there is nothing serious and he
is expected to be all right in a few minutes. Mr. Varens is with him in
Mr. Price’s study.”

“I had better go and see what is the matter,” said Mrs. Price. “Don’t
disturb yourselves; I shall be back in a minute.” She was gone nearly a
quarter-of-an-hour, but her guests waited on. Mrs. Carpenter and Mrs.
Vachell had begun an animated conversation on strikes and Susie was
listening. When Mrs. Price came back she looked quite scared.

“It is a young man called Fisk,” she said. “David Varens says he is one
of the students and you would know him,” she turned to Mrs.
Gainsborough. “He is quite himself again, but he was stunned for the
moment and I don’t think he knew where he was. He was talking a great
deal in a very noisy way about blood, and there wasn’t a scratch on him!
I have telephoned for the doctor to make quite sure he is all right,
though he says he can go home. Do you know anything of him?”

“Yes, I do,” said Mrs. Gainsborough, “and if he is talking about blood
you may be sure he is quite well. He thinks of very little else; it is
almost a pity in some ways if he hasn’t lost any. We all know about him
and he is the greatest nuisance and trouble to my husband. How did it
happen?”

“Joseph was driving Mr. Varens back to tea here and the young man came
out from behind some cart when they were crossing the road. He was not
thinking where he was going and walked right into the car; but
fortunately it was hardly moving.”

“Dear me, what a shock it must have given him!” said Susie.

“Have you got brandy in the house?” asked Mrs. Abel.

“Of course we have, thank you,” Mrs. Price was greatly offended at the
suggestion of such incompleteness in a perfect establishment. As bad as
asking King George whether he kept a hair brush. “That is not the point.
Do you mean to say that he is dangerous, Mrs. Gainsborough?”

“Not more than a flying soda-water bottle,” she answered nervously. The
little contretemps about the brandy had flurried her and probably
suggested the comparison.

“I think Teresa mentioned him once,” said Susie, who always came to the
rescue at any hint of dispute. “A Communist, isn’t he?”

“A very determined one,” said Mrs. Vachell.

“What nonsense!” Mrs. Price exclaimed. “A great many of my relations are
Communists and I am quite sure this young man doesn’t look like one. He
must be pretending.” Joseph came in just then.

“The doctor has come,” he remarked, “and says he’d better go t’ bed.
There’s nothing the matter, but David says he’ll leave a note on the
chap’s people on th’ way back. They live close by th’ station. Kerious
sort of f’ller, he is. Called me ‘Moloch’ when he w’s coming round. Who
was Moloch, d’you remember?” he asked Mrs. Vachell. “I can’t just get it
for th’ moment.”

“Something to do with blood, wasn’t he?” Mrs. Vachell suggested.

“Ah, thaat’s it,” Joseph replied contentedly. “Script’ral allusion ’f
some sort I w’s sure. He’s talking about blood all th’ time and not a
scratch on him anywhere. ’t’s most kerious.”

“Some people have such a prejudice against cars, particularly if they
are not in them,” said Susie. “And if he is a Communist he is quite sure
to think he ought to have one. And so ought everybody, I do think, if
they can. When cheap ones are made in large quantities I am sure people
will be happier and more contented.”

“Except those who make them,” said Mrs. Vachell. She was standing up by
the mantelpiece, fingering a matchbox on the corner. “Or shall we
contrive that Mr. Fisk gets inside one as soon as possible and you and I
take a turn at the workshops, Mrs. Fulton?”

“No, I think we are all much better where we are,” Susie replied
smiling. “Every man to his last. But I do certainly think that
conditions ought to be made better. I believe if all that sort of thing
were arranged everyone would settle down much more comfortably. Beauty
is such a happy thing. I find, myself, that I don’t mind how simply I
live so long as I have music and books and so on and if I can get out
into the country sometimes. These ugly streets are so depressing.”

“You must meet Mr. Cranston and see what you can do with him,” said Mrs.
Vachell.

“I don’t think Mrs. Fulton would get on with him at all,” put in Mrs.
Gainsborough in a great flurry. Her imagination flew to a possible scene
of inextricable confusion and she turned quite red with embarrassment.

“No, do, Mrs. Fulton,” said Mrs. Abel anxiously. “I wish you would speak
to him and see if you can’t influence him. What you say is perfectly
true. My husband would be so grateful to you.”

“Well, I hope you will ask me to come too,” said Mrs. Carpenter. “I can
support you with all the facts if you want them. Mr. Cranston talks the
greatest nonsense. He should come down to our place and talk to the
women I have to deal with and get at the practical side of what they
want. He would find that if he stopped the men drinking and made them
bring home their wages there would be plenty—abundance even—to live on;
and if it were made a criminal offence for a man to run after a young
girl——”

“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.”

“We were always turned out in all weathers up in Yorkshire, and it never
did us any harm,” said Evan.

“Let’s turn that gun further round this way, Ivor,” said Evangeline,
going on with the game. “You see it would be firing right into its own
trenches; try a shot and you will see.” Evan looked on.

“Here, old man, I’ll show you,” he said, and he took hold of the gun.

“No, don’t!” shouted Ivor in great excitement. “Put it down! I’ve put it
there mythelf.”

“Yes, but you haven’t done it properly,” his father said, beginning to
move it.

“Leave it, I thay,” Ivor screamed, almost beside himself. “Get out from
my gunth——” He pushed his father away impatiently. “And you get out
too,” he commanded Evangeline, pushing her also, suddenly tired of
visitors. “All go away downthtairth.” Tears of aggravation were in his
eyes, but he kept them back.

“You are not to speak to your mother like that, sir,” said Evan.
“Apologise to her at once.” Ivor had no idea what apologising meant, but
it sounded horrid. “Than’t,” he said.

“Oh, do go away, please, Evan,” said Evangeline. “We’re coming down to
tea presently. Do go and ring for it.”

“Not till that boy has apologised for his rudeness,” said Evan. Ivor had
resumed his game alone and was getting interested and remote. Evidently
this tiresome family of his were going to fight among themselves and
leave him in peace.

“You are sorry, aren’t you?” his mother said, then in a pleading tone:
“You didn’t mean to push, did you?”

“Eth,” said Ivor, as he placed the contested gun carefully back in the
position from which his father had moved it.

“Nonsense,” said Evangeline temptingly. “Come here and kiss me and make
it up.”

“Take—away—your—’uthband,” Ivor said slowly, as if he were repeating a
lesson to himself. His mother and his aunt shouted with delight and
could hardly believe that the child had meant it. Ivor’s face was quite
unmoved. “Come on,” said Evangeline, seizing Evan by the arm and
dragging him out of the room. “You can’t stay after that.” But he
neither smiled nor answered. He followed them downstairs and did not
speak for some time.

When he had gone out again after tea Evangeline sat for a time looking
idly into the fire. “Dicky,” she began after a little while, “whatever
you do don’t marry a man with whom you daren’t be truthful. Before I
talk to Evan I have to treat what I want to say as if it were to a
foreigner and had to be translated into his language. First I have to
cut out the bits that won’t do because of the prejudices he was brought
up in. Then I have to change whole chunks that he would associate with
other women whom he dislikes and who have said the same things; we do,
as a sex, rather talk about the same things as each other, don’t we? But
when he has heard some gas-bag of a creature say, ‘Oh, Captain Hatton, I
do love children!’ (which she probably does) he thinks the whole subject
exhausted, and shamefully exhausted too! So if any woman uses the word
‘love’ at any time afterwards he looks the subject up in his mind and
finds a note, ‘memo. gas. Mrs. T.’ and there’s an end of it; so in
future, when I want to say anything about love I have to use another
word. It is very hampering.”

“But you can’t go on using new words about everything,” said Teresa.

“No, but you see in the kind of things he talks to men about the words
can’t very well be misused. If you are describing what has gone wrong
with an engine you can only use words like ‘plug’ and ‘spring’ and
‘valve,’ that have only one meaning. Even a lawyer couldn’t say, ‘I
suggest that when you tell the Court that the valve was defective you
inferred that John Brown’s baby had a wart on its nose.’ But that is
what Evan does if I try to tell him what Ivor is thinking—things that I
know quite well because I remember being a child, and he doesn’t.”

“Yes, I see,” said Teresa.

“Well, let us get on to David,” said her sister. “Does what I have said
apply to him or not?”

“No, not at all,” (very emphatically).

“Then why doesn’t he do what you want?”

“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.”

“Well, I’m damned sorry,” he said with a sigh.

“I am afraid it is partly Dicky’s fault, Cyril,” she suggested gently.

“How’s that?” he asked. “You haven’t sold her to that young Price, have
you, Sue? I couldn’t stand that.”

“I wonder if you will ever understand that marriage is not a question of
bargaining and arrangement,” said his wife impatiently. “It is really a
pity, I think, that I wasn’t able to provide you with cattle instead of
children. You would have understood me far better if I had been a slave
or an animal.”

“We might try,” he suggested. “It is not too late to add to your list of
female impersonations. But you haven’t answered my question.”

“I forget what it was,” she answered gravely.

“Whether you had bestowed (we will say if you prefer it) Teresa on
Joseph Price.”

“I have no reason to suppose that he has asked her to marry him,” said
Susie.

“Then we may take it that is all right,” he said with relief. “She would
never invite herself. I am always glad to see Mammon spread his net in
vain for your sex, Sue. It makes the world so much brighter and better.
But what did you mean that Dicky had done?”

“She has refused David; why I don’t know.”

“I am really sorry about that,” he said after a pause.

“I suppose you wouldn’t tell her so, would you?” she asked hopefully.

“Of course not. If marriage means as much to a girl as you say it does,
she isn’t likely to invest in a husband to amuse dear old Dad.”

“No, but you might tell her. Girls are so silly.”

“Well, you astonish me!” said Cyril.

“Why? Surely you must know they are.”

“I thought the feminine instinct was infallible on every subject.”

“She can’t be expected to have experience,” said Susie.

“Then the divine gift is just a happy little flame that you can blow out
when you don’t want to see it, is that it? You can just ask Mother what
she saw when she was a girl? And that was a devil of a lot,” he added
reflectively.

“Then it is no good asking you to take the matter seriously?” she
inquired.

“She is not going to stay away long, is she?” Cyril asked.

“I shouldn’t think so. I believe Evan’s sisters are going to stay there
next week.”

“Well, absence makes the heart grow fonder,” he observed. “I am very
sorry about Dicky. I don’t think you made a great success there, Sue.”

“I had nothing to do with it,” she protested. “I implored her to wait.
If anything it was your fault for having Evan always about here.”

“Now how could I help that?” Cyril inquired. “I couldn’t have a maiden
lady as my A.D.C., and if I had, you would have said that I taught her
to be wicked. As it was, I just tried not to worry.”

“Is there anything else I can say for you to twist round, Cyril dear?”
asked his wife. “I am delighted to give you opportunities for your wit,
but sometimes it is hardly possible to open one’s mouth.”

“I am sorry,” he said penitently. “I don’t want to tease you, really. I
love everything you say. But when you blamed me for not keeping Hatton
in a cupboard like a bottle of whisky labelled ‘not to be taken,’ I
thought you were coming it a little strong.”

“They don’t seem to me to be very happy,” said Susie, prepared to start
again amicably. “I wish he wouldn’t carry religion quite so far.”

“How far does he carry it?” asked Cyril, “You see, he never had occasion
to bring it to me at all, so I don’t know.”

“Oh quite ridiculous lengths,” Susie replied. “He thinks quite a number
of things wrong.”

“Ha! ha! ha!” laughed Cyril uproariously. “Well done, Sue. That’s a
topper! Ha! ha!”

“My dear Cyril, what on earth is the matter?” she asked, quite
bewildered.

“Nothing,” he replied gravely, as he poured himself out his usual
evening drink. “My mind wanders sometimes. Go on, my dear. Evan is
suffering from moral unrest, you say?”

“Yes, he used even to think it wrong sometimes when I had dear Baby in
my room and played with him. I think it is dreadful not to want to see a
little child happy.”

“I don’t know that I would trust you to bring up a boy, Sue,” he said
candidly. “You see, your idea of a male is to let it have all it wants
so long as it is only a matter of a little song and dance. But when it
begins to want things a bit nearer the bone, you pull it up short and it
gets confused. Very few women know how to go on as they meant to begin.”

“I suppose you mean ‘begin as they mean to go on,’” said Susie, “but you
are quite wrong. Men understand what women mean quite well from the
beginning.”

“I meant what I said,” Cyril persisted. “Go on as they meant to begin.
They meant to begin with a carnival and to end in Lent.”

Susie flushed. “I was saying that I think Evan is far too strict with
little Ivor,” she said.

“Someone has got to be sometime,” said Cyril carelessly. “It will save
the schoolmaster’s arm later.”

“But a baby! It is so cruel,” she protested. “I must say, Cyril, to do
you justice, you never interfered with the children.”

“No, because they were girls,” he replied. “And anyhow, I don’t know
anything about kids. I don’t mind them but I keep out of the way.”

“They were much fonder of you than Ivor is of his father.”

“Don’t let’s be boastful. And you had much better leave those two to
manage their own affairs.”

Teresa came back at the end of the week and saw David once before he
went away. The Prices were to move into Aldwych next month and Lady
Varens was going abroad when David went to the Argentine to learn
farming.

He met Teresa when he was leaving the University one evening and walked
back with her. When they reached the house she invited him in. “I know
Mother is out,” she said, “and Father probably is, too, but I want you
to come in. I have one more thing to say.”

“What is it?” he asked when they were in the drawing-room.

“Do you think you will certainly come back when the Prices’ three years
are up?”

“I shall see what sort of a show they run there. If it is all right I
might let them have it and I would buy some land somewhere else.”

“Where for instance?”

“Anywhere where they talk English.”

“Even in the Colonies? And what about all the things in your house?”

“I should move them.”

“And what about the old people on the place?”

“Easily move them too, if they liked. If not, leave them.”

“Would many of them want to go, do you think?”

“Not unless your friend Fisk gets too much of the blood he is after.
Then they might.”

“David, I do loathe that Fisk.”

“Yes, so do I.——Teresa?”

“It is the Lady Bountiful I can’t do,” she said very sadly. “There is
something in me that sticks and boggles at it as if I were trying to
swallow a fish bone. If you loved someone as much as you could and were
told you must only flirt with them—wouldn’t you feel you couldn’t? It
would be like selling one’s soul to the devil.”

“No, I do think that is awfully silly,” said David. “You can’t flirt
with a girl you love. You get run away with and then—well, you go where
it is going. You don’t think about whether you ought to stop and pick
mushrooms.”

So it seemed. For when Susie came back David had gone, and Teresa’s pale
little face bore evidence of having paid dearly for her inability to (as
she thought) flirt with her love for Mrs. Potter. It is impossible to
say whether David carried his idea of the runaway horse any further, or
comforted himself with the possibility of deflecting the course of
Teresa’s passion for regeneration.




                              CHAPTER XIV


“I am going to Aldwych to call on the Prices. Will you come with me,
dear Dicky? I wish you would,” said Susie.

Teresa said she would. Sometime the idea of Aldwych without David must
be recognised and dealt with. She also wished her mother to forget that
“a girl may regret some day” having refused a beautiful old place in the
country and a really good husband “just for an idea.” Poor little Teresa
supposed that any show of reluctance to go back to the house might be
taken as evidence of a weak spot in her armour. Neither she nor
Evangeline had ever known how much of the world their mother detected
from behind her veil of misty sweetness. Anything more candid than her
words and actions could hardly be imagined, and yet somehow, as
Evangeline had said, omelets were mysteriously made in hats, and whether
Susie or the Powers of Darkness made them none of her audience could
discern. Cyril had his ideas on the subject and we have seen how deeply
they wounded her.

Mrs. Price was found in the garden, talking in her best manner to one of
“the county” who had called; a crushing sort of woman who made it quite
clear to Mrs. Price that she had called in obedience to the tradition
that “noblesse oblige.” She was known as Mrs. Archie Lake, and newcomers
were supposed to be “all right” if she called on them. She had conferred
the stamp of recognition on Mrs. Price for several reasons. First, “out
of decency to Milly Varens”; secondly, because the Hunt was not in a
very flourishing condition, and Mr. Price was reported to be rich and
ambitious; thirdly, “just to see what they were like.” Someone had met
Joseph Price and reported that he was quite possible and that the girls
would probably have money too in the end——. Here Mrs. Lake let her train
of thought lose itself because one does not think these things out in so
many words. Her son was rather a worry to her, but it is impossible to
make plans of that sort. The French do, but we don’t. Anyhow she called,
and Susie and Teresa found her there. Mrs. Price was getting on well
with her new manner. “How charming of you to come, Mrs. Fulton. Of
course you know this part of the world well. And how is the General?”
She did not wish Mrs. Lake to suppose that Millport was going to be
allowed to track her down here, but Susie, of course, was different. She
welcomed her.

“Yes, I think we have met somewhere, haven’t we?” said Mrs. Lake,
raising her eyes sleepily to Susie. Mrs. Price made a mental note and
tried to look a little sleepy too.

“I am sure you are enjoying the country,” Susie said to her. “Everything
is looking so exquisite just now. We want to go away ourselves as soon
as we can, but my husband finds it very difficult to get away. He
doesn’t care for the sea and so many of his Staff have children that he
likes to let them off when the schools break up and take his own holiday
when the hunting begins.”

“But isn’t Millport on the sea somewhere?” asked Mrs. Lake. Mrs. Price
flushed. “We hardly think of a great port like that as the seaside,” she
said. “Of course when my husband’s ancestor went there first and
practically built what there was it was on the sea, but that is so long
ago and everything is so altered he would hardly recognise it if he were
alive. There are very few people nowadays who have the courage of those
pioneers who went down to the sea in ships and opened up communications
with the East. My husband cares so much more for sport and racing and
all that, that I tell him he is not half proud enough of the old family
he comes from. Something so rugged and adventurous about the sea, isn’t
there?”

“They used to import slaves, didn’t they?” Mrs. Lake inquired, looking
quite vacant. “I wish they would begin again now. I am fed up with the
search for servants, aren’t you?”

“Oh, but don’t you think that was terribly wrong?” said Susie. “I can’t
bear to think of it. I am sure that most of the labour troubles now are
largely owing to people having been so inconsiderate for others in the
past. Teresa and I both work a great deal in that way, and we see so
much of it.”

“Oh, really? What sort of work do you do?” asked Mrs. Lake of Teresa.

“I just sort papers in an office,” said Teresa, who would have beaten
her mother at that moment.

“Really? Don’t you find you need exercise?” said Mrs. Lake. “You had
better come and do some hunting in the winter. I have come to the
conclusion that the working classes don’t need helping any more; they
help themselves to everything they want. Do your girls hunt?” she turned
to Mrs. Price.

“Oh, they are quite mad about it,” their mother replied. “Sir David sold
his horses before we came. He said he didn’t understand that Mr. Price
would have bought any that were good enough for the girls, but some
others have been ordered, I believe, and in the meantime we have the
three motors to get about in, so we are not really cut off.”

Mrs. Lake was startled almost out of her good behaviour. She regretted
for a moment having called so soon, in case it should really be
impossible to go on with these people, however rich they were.

“I suppose Sir David is coming back in a year or two?” she said,
anxiously.

“Well, that of course, one can’t say,” Mrs. Price replied, “but my
husband would have bought the place if he could and he still hopes to—if
we find we can afford it, that is,” she added, recollecting certain
warnings from her daughters. “We had to draw in our horns very much
since the war, like everybody else.”

“Not quite everybody, do you think?” said Mrs. Lake, as she made room
for the butler and footman who had come in with tea. “There are some
people who have taken a place called Fable near here—perhaps you know
them? I think they come from Millport or Poolchester, I forget which. He
contracted for something during the war, boots or cholera belts or
cigarettes or something, and not only that, but the price of whatever it
was is still up. It is rather sad to see the old places go, one by one.”

“I expect they come from Poolchester,” said Mrs. Price. “There is a
great deal of that sort of thing there. It is a manufacturing town of
course.”

“But such an interesting place,” Susie intervened. “So much life. I went
there once to hear some wonderful music, and the faces all looked to me
so strong. No, no sugar, thanks,—Teresa, dear, will you take that cup
from Mrs. Price?”

Joseph came in just then and Mrs. Lake dropped all unpleasant subjects
immediately. She encouraged him and he responded gladly. He infused a
quality of ease into the conversation.

“And how’s the—what d’you call it?—the welfare of the city, Miss
Fulton?” he asked presently. “Still going strong, what? Fisk been
shedding much blood lately?”

“What’s that?” asked Mrs. Lake curiously.

“Oh, great sport, isn’t he, Miss Fulton? Communist, what? Miss Fulton
b’nevolently hands round soup and Fisk gets into it, isn’t that it? No,
kait sairysly though. I hope you’re getting on. I do immensely admire
what you’re doing. I couldn’t do it for m’life. The smell of the f’llers
on parade used to quite upset me.”

Mrs. Lake didn’t like that. “He must learn not to say those kind of
things,” she thought. “It is dreadfully bad form; but he is a nice boy
in many ways; we had better make use of him.”

To Teresa the whole thing was little less than torture. Love of humanity
was so alive in her that to have it wounded in sport gave her something
of the hopeless misery of a child roughly handled by bigger boys. The
fact that they were of her own species made her sense of isolation
worse. Affectionate women fear alien sympathies more than force. They
also feel it their duty to betray the whereabouts of the thing they love
by fighting over it, instead of merely putting it out of range of attack
and guarding all approaches as men do.

“You would have smelt just as bad yourself if you had been a private,”
she said, blushing and stammering, “it is only just chance that gives
you hot baths.”

“Ha! ha!” he laughed heartily. “Of course I should. You’re abs’lutely
right; but then I shouldn’t have minded, don’t you see? That’s th’ whole
point.”

“How do you know you wouldn’t?” she flamed out. “How do you know they
don’t care? They do care. You know nothing about it. You have never
talked to them.”

“Teresa, dear,” Susie remonstrated.

“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.

By the time we are now speaking of they had gathered again in a strong
force. Evangeline’s gaiety and confidence and innocence with which she
had routed them were now weakened by constant unexpected attacks. The
anxiety of never knowing from what quarter disapproval would burst out
and turn pleasure into pain made her nervous and depressed. As Ivor grew
older the strain was more than doubled, for in every attack of Evan’s
that she could have dodged or parried for herself she was hampered by
Ivor’s little body, that would suffer equally from her blows at her
husband and her husband’s at her. She dared not hide away with him,
because that would at once bring about the crisis she dreaded, and Evan
would claim his right to take the boy away. There was nowhere she could
hide him where he would not be found by the police and given back to his
father. She sat sometimes on a gate among fields that overlooked the
railway line, and watched with frightened eyes the trains rush by and
wondered whether any of them went far enough without a stop to take her
and the child out of Evan’s reach. She thought longingly of other
countries, stretches of hill and forest, new faces, new people;
English-speaking they must be for Evangeline, but there are plenty of
these everywhere, on the other side of the globe. She thought once what
fun it would be to walk about in bright sunshine, knowing that Evan was
asleep in darkness and fog just below the curve of the round world. Only
there, on the other side, would she feel safe; he would never come
slowly up like a fly over an orange (as she was taught at school when
the hemispheres were explained) and look for her. No, she knew he would
not. He would search over England, and possibly Europe, but if the
police still failed in their clues he would go home at last and explain
to Cyril, and retire into a blacker severity than ever with his giggly
little sisters. Then she used to shake herself free from these dreams
and return home tired and sad. She had looked forward eagerly to being
by the sea with Teresa and Ivor, and when they were all there at last,
some of her old confidence came back.

She said nothing to Teresa about the trouble in her mind, because it had
increased beyond the stage of being an interesting puzzle and become
grief that lies quieter untouched, except by the one who brought it and
only could remove it. One great difference between Evangeline and her
mother was that Susie counted differences of opinion with herself as a
compliment to her higher understanding; they were treasures to be turned
over and enjoyed in secret. To her daughter they were so many
obstructions to love, and must be destroyed if possible; if persistently
obstructive, she climbed over and fled from them.

Ivor had certainly managed to collect in himself all the elements of
discord in his father’s and mother’s families. If he had inherited his
mother’s joyousness and been content with that, the two of them together
might have weakened Evan’s fears through lack of exercise, for his
disapproval was not the natural bitterness that uses a creed as the
organ of its appetite; it was his means of following the same desire as
Evangeline followed, the desire to know how God works the universe. She
felt that she knew how it was done and he thought he knew. But feeling
is generally stronger than thought in personal affairs, so if the
wretched young Ivor had left well alone and not excited his father’s
reasoning powers, they might have grown soft like the Roman Legions. But
unfortunately he had inherited a great deal of Susie’s mischievous
tendency to stir up strife without taking part in it. He had her elusive
charm and was, like her, uncommunicative; he loved natural pleasure and
was indifferent to public opinion, like his mother, and was as
unswerving along his own chosen path as his father. This combination of
qualities made him perfectly adapted as a bone of contention, a
desirable young person, belonging to both, and yet to neither of the
contending parties. There, down by the sea with his devoted mother and
aunt and nurse, he played and bathed and went his own way in peace,
asking nothing that was unreasonable, kind-hearted, courageous and
merry; the kind of child that terrifies its weaker relatives by the
thought of what it has to meet in the future; of candid eyes coming upon
hatred for the first time, small hands roughened by work and stained
with blood from the noses of hostile neighbours with predatory instincts
and a perverted sense of humour; visions perhaps, of little trousers
that were designed for warmth and comfort removed with trembling fingers
at the command of an ogre with a cane in a place far from home—a callous
creature with lips dripping the literature of a civilisation that
worshipped suffering. There is a radical difference between mothers who
revere the name of Cæsar and mothers who don’t. It is not all children
who work upon maternal terrors in this way, but Ivor had the gift to
perfection and his unconsciousness of his own power made it the
stronger.

The little party were playing on the sands one day, when two figures,
one in a linen dress with a red parasol, the other in baggy tweeds, came
to the edge of the cliff above them and sat down. Evangeline heard a
small laugh with a familiar tone in it, and looked up. “Hullo, Dicky,”
she said, “there are the Vachells; look!” Mrs. Vachell waved her hand
and then said something, and presently both figures rose and came slowly
down the sandhills, Mrs. Vachell with leisurely ease, her husband with
the reluctance of a shy man obeying the stronger will of a wife used to
society.

“I had no idea you were here,” she said. “Did I tell you of the place by
any chance? There are so few people here generally. You know my husband,
don’t you?” Mr. Vachell bowed. “But you two don’t count as people,” she
added. “I don’t grudge you your simple pleasures. If you spend your days
like this making sand pies you must have very peaceful minds. What I
hate are people who put up tents and are always making tea and screaming
in two inches of water.”

“Your boy seems to be having a good time,” said Mr. Vachell. Ivor was
busy with a net among the small rocks that appeared at low tide.

“Yes, he loves it,” Evangeline replied. “We are so happy here.” She
spread her rug hospitably, and they all sat down. Mr. Vachell and Teresa
were side by side in a silence that each felt the other ought to break
first, but neither was equal to the attempt.

“Is Captain Hatton with you?” asked Mrs. Vachell.

“No, not often,” Evangeline replied. “He comes for week ends sometimes.

“Your boy looks very well,” Mr. Vachell remarked.

“Yes, he is, and he is really no trouble,” said his mother. “There are
some other children about, but he doesn’t seem to want them. He is the
most independent creature I ever met.”

“That is a useful thing in a boy, isn’t it?”

“It is useful in anybody,” said Evangeline, sighing. “I think if
everyone minded their own business like animals, and were just happy
eating together and enjoying each other’s society and hopping off in
between, it would be much nicer.”

Mr. Vachell’s face wrinkled into a smile, but he said nothing.

Teresa happened to look up. “What are you laughing at?” she asked.

“Your sister’s idea of living agrees with mine,” he said. They missed
Mrs. Vachell’s reply, but Evangeline went on thinking aloud, incited by
the sunshine and the splash of the waves. She had once said to Susie, as
a child, that the sea was always telling her to speak out, but that it
never said anything but “h’m” when she did, and Susie had answered,
“Yes, dear, that is quite true.” She had found the sea restful herself,
when pursued by the eager questioning of lovers. Evangeline went on now,
“There is too much busy-bodying about morals. I think that people who
like committing murder should be put on an island together and settle it
among themselves; people who steal should have all their things taken
away and sold for hospitals; people who say nasty things should be given
vinegar tea made with bilge water, and be photographed every day and
obliged to look at the proofs——”

“What about people who are stupid?” asked Mrs. Vachell.

“Oh, poor darlings, nothing about them,” said Evangeline quickly, “don’t
be horrid.”

“Don’t you think most vice is stupidity?”

“No, certainly not. For instance, I am so stupid that I don’t know what
two and two make, but I don’t mean an atom of harm.”

“But you may do a lot of harm by adding them up to make six. Why not try
to learn?”

“I don’t believe God adds up,” said Evangeline, tracing patterns in the
sand with her finger. “But then I expect He knows the answer without
thinking, so that doesn’t come to anything.”

“I don’t know your husband, Mrs. Hatton,” said Mr. Vachell, “but I hope
he is not passionately fond of arithmetic.”

“He has a passion for everything uncomfortable,” said Evangeline.

“Poor fellow!” observed Mr. Vachell.

“Mr. Vachell, really I don’t think you need look like that,” said
Teresa. “Your study, which I saw once, is the most hauntingly
uncomfortable place I was ever led into. I couldn’t go to sleep the
night after I had seen it.”

“Why, what is the matter with it?” he asked, surprised.

“Everything is so dug up,” she explained. “Have you ever seen it,
Chips?” she turned to her sister. “I do think when people have finished
with their lives they might be allowed to get rid of them decently. To
have their bones and their tears and the things they have been happy
with all brought back and looked at——. Suppose someone dug up Millport
thousands of years after us, and put a whole street full of people
together again! Personal possessions are bad enough when the people who
own them are alive; they are so full of—I don’t know what—associations.
But when the owners are dead their things become perfectly horrid. I
don’t think anyone ought to own anything at all. I would like them to
live out of doors in tents that don’t cost anything, and to eat with
their fingers——”

“I am very sorry my things worried you so much,” said Mr. Vachell. “I
have always looked at them quite prosaically as history; interesting in
their way. In fact, I think I could show you that they are interesting
if you came and looked at them again. Some of them are very beautiful,
and if people make beautiful things to please themselves they are worth
keeping. The world would be very squalid by now if it had gone on as you
suggest. Think of the grass all trampled down with being sat upon and
nobody’s hair ever having been combed, and how dreadfully they would all
quarrel and gossip with nothing to do.”

“I expect I was thinking of a world with fewer people in it,” said
Teresa. “It makes me giddy when I think of arranging a government that
will be fair to millions and millions of people, each one of them just a
little different from any one of the others.”

“That is where historians do their humble best for you,” said he. “It
does sort the masses into a few main heaps that tend to move about in
definite directions, and even clear the ground by destroying one
another.”

“Yes, that is a man’s only idea of deciding an argument,” said his wife.
“He has never been able to understand anything more intelligent than
blood. And as long as women are silly enough to go on providing children
and handing them over to him the supply will be kept up and arguments
will be decided in that way.”

“I am afraid I must go in and do a little work,” said he, rising with a
sigh.

“Good-bye,” said his wife, “I’ll come along later.”

They sat talking until it was time to go in to tea. Evangeline began to
feel her contentment in the outdoor life she loved give way gradually
before the force of purpose that Mrs. Vachell brought with her. The
Sphinx who looked so calm among hungry crowds had the opposite effect on
Evangeline’s simple enjoyment of things as they are. The smothered
rebellion that is hidden by pride so long as the enemy is overpowering
may suddenly break out and inflame a peaceful party of shepherds and set
them running and shouting for an end that they never contemplated or
desired. Evangeline had been suffering under a sense of heavy depression
when she came away to the sea. She felt herself up against an obstacle
that was not to be moved because it moved with her and encircled her
from all sides, closing her in and shutting out all the new joys of the
future that she had seen ahead of her when Ivor was born. Every step she
took was hampered by fear that she might be sending him farther away
from her, some incident might arise that would strengthen Evan’s
conviction that she was not fit to have the charge of him. Then when she
hid her sympathy from Ivor and forced herself to suffer for the sake of
keeping him with her, she could see a look of childish judgment in his
eyes that placed her unjustly in the category she dreaded, that of
people who have grown up and are beyond the pale of confidence from the
young. If she went on pretending for his sake, she said to herself, he
would become like Romulus and Remus, living in his own thoughts without
a mother. The idea made her almost mad at times.

Alone with Teresa and Ivor by the sea, she had got back her confidence,
her nature being of the kind that expects a trouble left behind to
remain where it is without attempting pursuit. She kept no record of the
occasions when this hope had been disappointed. The things Mrs. Vachell
talked of that afternoon showed her something entirely new to her. She
understood, to her great surprise, that all over the world were
thousands of other Evangelines, suffering as she did, from the
inexplicable harshness of men towards those precious, irrational
gambollings of the mind, that move women to actions that are condemned
as “unreasonable,” “inconsistent,” “illogical,” “false,” “silly,” and
generally lacking in orderly sequence. She learned that she was not
alone, fighting something sinister that had no shape and perhaps was
only a disorder of her own imagination. Mrs. Vachell explained that the
enemy was terribly real and powerful; the enemy of all true women whose
duty it was to unite in fighting to the last drop of their blood.

“Women are not stupid,” she said in her slow, deep voice, “they are not
irrational. What you see in Ivor and dread to lose—what your husband
does not see—is what comes into the world by women, and your husband
thinks it foolish because it is not in him. He wants to preserve his own
qualities; you want to preserve yours; they are wholly contradictory,
and one side or the other must impose its will.”

“But I thought men were supposed to adore women for having just what
they haven’t got, just as we adore them for their physical strength and
their brains.”

“So they say, and so we say, because otherwise there would be no
marriages,” said Mrs. Vachell. “But it is a lie. We only love their
strength for the sake of getting the better of it. They cultivate our
foolishness because it gives them rest from competition, and they can
sit down and plume themselves. Each wants the power, and the centuries
of suffering that we have gone through have taught us to see love as the
only thing worth having, while they still look on it as a pleasant fad
to be indulged in when they have finished arranging who is to get the
most of what belongs, by right, equally to all. It is all very pretty,
you will find, if you look into it.”

                  *       *       *       *       *

“Dicky,” said Evangeline, a few days later, when she and Teresa had
settled themselves under the cliff after breakfast, “I have done the
most evil bit of mischief. I feel like Guy Fawkes. I have advised Mrs.
Trotter to come here, and she is coming.”

“But why not?” Teresa asked in surprise.

“Don’t you know how Evan hates her? No, I suppose you wouldn’t. But he
does. She is his _bête noir_.”

“But, then, why have you asked her?”

“I didn’t ask her. Mother wrote and said the rooms the Trotters
generally go to at Broadstairs have got something the matter with them;
a lodger developed some disease or other, I think. They couldn’t get in
anywhere, and she wanted to know if I could get rooms here. There are
rooms in those cottages down on the left by the church, nurse told me.
So I think she is sure to come.”

“But that isn’t your fault,” said Teresa. “You couldn’t do anything
else. Evan hasn’t bought up the whole place.”

“No, not if I had done it innocently like that,” said Evangeline, “but I
didn’t. I urged her to come and made everything easy, and I have been
enjoying the idea ever since. It is deliberate vice. There is Evan
coming along now with Mrs. Vachell, of course. He still thinks her a
very ladylike woman. Oh, Dicky! when Mrs. Trotter comes won’t she mow
them both down with repartee? It will be lovely.”

“Chips,” said Teresa hesitatingly, “you—you’re not so—so kind to Evan as
you are to the rest of us. You used to be so interested in making him
talk, and now you so often won’t listen when he does.”

“He talks such rot,” said her sister. “I can’t be bothered with it.”
There was silence for some minutes.

“I’m a pig, Dicky,” said Evangeline presently. “But if you knew how
deadly it is being with someone who doesn’t understand the way women
look at things——”

“Don’t talk about women as if they were all alike,” said Teresa
impatiently. “It is as bad as Mrs. Carpenter. She is always saying, ‘we
women are so something or other,’ and Mother says, ‘but then, don’t you
think women are so something else.’ But they both give you an idea of
somebody very noble and forlorn in the position of Daniel in the den of
lions. I am sure that there are certain qualities in people, courage and
truthfulness and meanness and greed and all the rest, and everybody has
some of them in different mixtures; it doesn’t make any difference
whether they are male or female or rich or poor. It is so silly trying
to label people into classes and species according to their incomes or
their sex. Nationality divides them up a little, I admit, but otherwise
you are just asking for trouble by presupposing any vice or virtues.”

“Well, then, men should stop presupposing that women have no brains and
no morals,” said Evangeline.

“I don’t believe that any woman with either has ever bothered what was
presupposed about her, or had any difficulty in convincing anyone to
whom it mattered,” Teresa replied.

“But that is nonsense, Dicky. You know it was only when women had to be
employed in the war that they had a chance to show what they could do.
Look at women doctors before they began to run their own hospitals.”

“Well, that is exactly what I have been trying to explain. It all came
of that abominable system of classifying. Women were this and women were
that, and it was very largely their own fault. Which sex was it that
used to say, ‘My dear, that is unladylike. Don’t imitate that nasty bold
girl who handles mice as if she were a navvy’? Now they are allowed to
be competent or incompetent, as nature made them, and you are doing your
best to rebuild the whole obstacle by saying, ‘All women are not what
you think them. They are all something else. They have all got lovely,
pure, high-browed minds and all men have horrid brutish ones.’ You are
only changing a guerilla war into a series of pitched battles. I detest
Mrs. Vachell. She looks like a martyr, and she is only a hunger
striker.”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean she is a rebel with no sense of adventure. She will plot against
any sort of power that galls her personally, and I don’t think she uses
fair means; there’s no gallantry about her. It is all spitting and
kicking and causing harmless people inconvenience.”

“I think you are most unfair,” said Evangeline hotly. “She is out
against all sorts of tyranny, the sort of tyranny that Evan would
exercise over Ivor if he could; the tyranny of horrid vulgar people who
never do a stroke of work and have no brains and simply live on enormous
incomes, while women are sweated and slave-driven or forced on to the
street. It has nothing to do with her personally; Mr. Vachell is the
least interfering man in the world, and they are not particularly hard
up.”

“Whom does she think she is going to do good to by making you fed up
with Evan?”

“She doesn’t; but she has made me see why it is that he doesn’t
understand children and why I have to stand up to him if I want to save
Ivor. And you know, Dicky, it is such a joke, because Evan thinks her
perfect and is always holding her up as a model of dignity and common
sense. That is why I want Mrs. Trotter to come. It does make me so
irritated to see him stalking along thinking Mrs. Vachell is listening
with the deepest interest to what he says, and all the time she is
boiling like a volcano, and when she looks quietest I know she is quite
white hot with contempt for something he has said.”

“Then she is an abominable hypocrite,” said Teresa indignantly.

“I know,” her sister answered rather sadly, “and if I tell Evan the
least little bit of truth about her he flies at me and won’t listen;
just thunders me down, and yet I am really fond of him. But she hates
him, and the only way she can get in the truths she wants to say is to
keep so quiet that he doesn’t understand, and then little by little she
undermines his ideas. It is quite wonderful to watch.”

When Mrs. Trotter came she surpassed even Evangeline’s expectations. It
may be necessary to recall to the reader’s mind that on the occasion
when Evan had burst out at Cyril’s dinner-table on the subject of women
throwing dirt at each other the exciting cause of his anger had been
Mrs. Trotter’s sarcasm on the wife of the Staff Captain, who wanted to
“get into the University set,” and was alleged to have incensed her
husband by too frequent references to Mr. Vachell’s brain power. Mrs.
Trotter was devoted with real sisterly affection to the Staff Captain,
who was an honest blue-eyed Briton, and she therefore harboured secret
dislike, both of the University set and of Evan with his misplaced
belief in Mrs. Vachell. The Hattons could not do other than ask her to
dinner on the evening when she arrived at her lodgings, alone with the
child and its nurse, as Captain Trotter was yachting with a friend.
Evangeline had mischievously urged the Vachells to come in after the
meal as they often did. When they arrived Evan was in one of his most
taciturn moods, having been worried by his wife’s daring laughter over
some misdemeanour of Ivor’s. She was comparing notes with Mrs. Trotter,
whose young daughter treated her parents with fearless impertinence, the
common result of insensitiveness in favourable surroundings.

“The little scamp!” Mrs. Trotter exclaimed. “He and Maisie will be great
pals I expect. She doesn’t care a rap for anybody. Her father can’t say
boo to a goose when she is knocking round. I tell him he had better give
it up and save time.”

Evan glanced at Mrs. Vachell and saw her raise her eyebrows slightly. It
soothed him to be assured that she shared his disgust and he sat down by
her. “I am very sorry,” he said in a low voice. “We ought to have warned
you.”

“Oh no, please,” she answered. “It is very interesting; and I am sure
Evangeline enjoys it. And it is something you have got to learn some
time. You may have daughters of your own in days to come, and then you
will know how to save yourself needless worry by giving in at once.”

“Yes, it is appalling, isn’t it?” he agreed, supposing her to be
commenting on Mrs. Trotter’s remark. “But perhaps it is good in some
ways to let the thing go on as grossly and blatantly as possible. It
will achieve its own destruction all the quicker.”

“How?” she asked.

“A revulsion is bound to come, and it will be all the stronger when
women see what a monstrous race they have raised. They have rebelled
against chastisement with whips and their children will chastise them
with scorpions.”

“They will, indeed,” said Mrs. Vachell. “I am glad I have no children,
though the want of them put out the sun for me so far as marriage is
concerned. But it is not a world to have children in just now.”

“If you had brought them up to be like yourself they would have helped
to keep the balance,” said Evan.

“Well, you shall send your daughters to me to bring up,” she said,
turning her small sphinx face directly to him. “Evangeline will be
engrossed in her boys. She thinks women of no importance.”

“It is not that,” said Evan, “but she thinks nothing of importance
except liveliness and getting the pleasure out of everything that
happens, and throwing away the rest. As soon as anything has to be
bought at the price of discomfort it is worthless to her.”

“Do you think so?” said she, raising her eyebrows again. “Is your
beautiful Ivor worth so little to her? You surprise me. I thought she
was devoted to him.”

“So she is, but she won’t give herself the momentary pain of correcting
him. It is the most fatal cowardice. I don’t know what to do to avert
the end that I foresee.”

“You must have been a great deal with children,” she remarked, while she
looked at him with grave inquiry. “Did you always care for them, or is
it just that you understand them so well?”

“Every man knows the kind of way a boy ought to be brought up,” he
replied innocently.

“And a woman, of course, understands a girl better?”

“Yes, I suppose so.”

“It is so much simpler that they should start on wholly different lines
from the beginning.”

“Well, I suppose they do naturally. I know that my sisters never had the
least idea what I was driving at. They were always giggling among
themselves.”

“And your mother?” asked Mrs. Vachell.

“My mother was a wonderful woman,” Evan replied. His tone made it clear
that discussion was barricaded along that road.

“I don’t want to persuade you to discuss her, but please answer one
question truthfully. Suppose you had done something that you knew she
would dislike, not because it was wrong in itself, but because she had
no experience of a wish to do it herself; let us take for an instance
that delightful story I heard about your taking a German’s watch to
pieces and what you did with it.”

“Who told you that story?” he asked, frowning.

“The Staff Captain’s wife told my husband. It amused him and it amused
her, because she has had parents who educated her between them; they
didn’t believe in female sheep and male goats.”

“I find all that sort of telling of stories very offensive,” said Evan.
“But if they choose to hear it it is nothing to me. There is no harm in
it.”

“But your mother would have held a different opinion if she had known?”

“Why are you asking these questions, Mrs. Vachell?” She saw
disappointment in his face, and knew she must pick her way delicately.

“Because you were good enough to give me some of your confidence in a
difficulty and I was trying to make you understand what I think is a
point of great importance to you and Evangeline and Ivor. What I say is
that you were not perfectly brought up as you think, because you grew up
with the idea that what was all right for you as a man would offend your
mother as a woman, even to hear about. That means that all through your
life you could only enjoy her society within limits, and you were either
obliged to worry out every difficulty alone in your head, or else to
chance it among outsiders who had not a quarter of the interest in you
that she had. You must have felt very lonely, or you wouldn’t have shown
me so much confidence as you have. Have you ever tried Evangeline as a
confidante? She has not been brought up with many prejudices—not enough
you think. And one thing more. Don’t you think that Ivor is better off
than you were at his age? I am sure he is less harassed with problems
and he will have a better brain than his father, because it won’t have
been prematurely worn out.”

“It is no use telling me he won’t go to bits if he has no principles to
fall back on,” said Evan doggedly.

“But what about Evangeline’s principles?” Mrs. Vachell persisted.

“She has none. That is the whole point. It is where we started from——”

“You two are carrying on a very long flirtation,” interrupted Mrs.
Trotter from the other side of the room. “Can’t we hear what it is all
about? I heard something about principles just now. Do you believe in
principles, Captain Hatton?”

“Yes,” said Evan. “I hope you are pleased with the lodgings my wife
found for you.”

“Yes, thank you, they are delightful. But talking of principles, do you
know, Mrs. Vachell, that your friend Fisk has been making the most
dreadful havoc with his principles? You see we never get rid of these
students like the ordinary undergraduates are disposed of, because they
don’t go down for the vacs. They are at home all the time. And he has
been spending his spare time in stirring up the Welsh and the Irish and
every sort of rabble in the place, and holding meetings and passing
resolutions. He gets hold of the wives and tells them they ought to be
dressed in velvet and silk, and have time to read and play the piano.
But Mrs. Price says all that is quite inconsistent with Communism. The
real Communists want everyone to live as simply as possible and earn a
small amount each day and then improve their minds. But since Mr. Fisk
spent those few days with the Prices he has lost all his noble ideas
about garden cities and honest toil and sandals or whatever he believed
in, and in place of the blood that was to be spilled in the cause of
education and leisure and concerts and so on he now wants rapine, and
oh! the most frightful outrages! so that everyone may change places. He
and his friends are to have education and champagne and talk big, while
their female relations play the gramophone and order Mrs. Price about.
It is all screamingly funny. Dear me, Captain Hatton, pray don’t look at
me like that. Do you think one ought not to laugh at poor silly
creatures? I do find human nature so very amusing sometimes. What do you
think, Professor Vachell? Do you think the universities are doing good
or harm?”

“They have hardly reached an age of full-grown responsibility yet,” he
replied. “When ladies and Labour have joined our deliberations for a few
years we shall be able to give a better opinion.”

“Now, don’t be sarcastic,” Mrs. Trotter warned him with a finger. “That
is very naughty of you. I hope it will be a long time before your
beautiful cloistered calm is invaded in any such way. I can’t imagine
women and tradesmen holding forth in Oxford, can you, Mrs. Vachell?”

“So long as the present generation of poor weak fools, who will risk
nothing, survive it is rather difficult,” she answered quietly. Evan
started slightly as she spoke. “But even though every year the
percentage is less of boys who are brought up to be bullies and of girls
whose intelligence is crushed, it will take a long time to destroy the
tradition. Don’t worry, Mrs. Trotter. Your system will probably last
your time, and if your little girl does scandalise you by learning some
other trade than husband hunting, she may make up by marrying a
tradesman Prime Minister.”

“I don’t think that is at all likely,” Teresa broke in. “The tradesman
Prime Minister would want a perfect lady for his wife; they always do.
They boast of the work that their women do when they want to compare
them with what they call the idle rich; but the very first thing they
want to buy for their wives and daughters is exemption from any kind of
work.”

“Nonsense, my dear Teresa,” said Mrs. Vachell. “They are the keenest of
all that their daughters should have ‘the schooling.’”

“Yes, but that is only so that they may not have to do housework or be
ordered about in shops. They think that education for a girl means her
marrying into another class and keeping a servant. They are just like
us. They hate squalor and want to live like we do. They don’t care for
learning in itself any more than we do——”

“I beg your pardon, Miss Fulton,” Mr. Vachell interrupted. “Do I
understand that you put down my laborious work of research to a sordid
hope of fitting myself to dine at Buckingham Palace, or even living
there some day? You are wounding me very much.”

“No, of course not,” said Teresa. “You are quite different; you are a
man. I am sure lots of men wanted to learn because they are interested.
I was thinking of what they wanted for their daughters.”

“Well, what do you think the Principal wants for our excellent Emma?” he
went on. “That she should marry the Prince of Wales? I don’t believe she
has got the ghost of a chance, so you had better stop her while you
can.”

“Don’t muddle up what I say like that,” said Teresa. “Emma only wants to
stop mothers giving their babies rhubarb pie, and to persuade fathers to
buy bread instead of beer; and she wants them to be clean and have time
and money enough to find out what they can do.”

“But where does Maisie Trotter’s husband come in?” asked Evan, who was
also grateful for the diversion that Teresa had made.

“I haven’t the least idea. I have lost sight of him. Oh, no, I remember;
he was to be Prime Minister. It will be no good for Maisie to live up to
him in the way of education, because his sisters will do that. He will
want a pink and white princess who can detect a crumpled rose leaf under
the mattress. I assure you that is what working people ask for. It is
the really valuable thing that they have lost, and they are often so
silly, poor darlings, and think it comes with money. You know how fussy
people like the Prices are about breeding, and they spend and spend,
trying to buy it somehow and knowing that they fail. It is so sad.”

“Oh, everything is sad if you notice it,” said Mrs. Trotter impatiently.
“I don’t believe in pitying people for not being different from what
they are. I once met a woman who said she disliked travelling in public
conveyances because women’s hats were pathetic; something about the
trimming; if you ever heard such nonsense! Now I’m off and thank you all
very much for a pleasant evening. Anyone coming my way?”




                               CHAPTER XV


“Well, I am sure, Roderick,” said Mrs. Carpenter as she turned the last
page of a letter she was reading, “Evangeline Hatton seems to be laying
up a nice future for herself. Emmie Trotter is staying down there with
Maisie and she says that Mrs. Vachell is in and out of the Hattons’
house the whole time, influencing Evangeline to run down her husband.
And that poor Evan Hatton is as blind as a bat and running after Mrs.
Vachell all the time. Of course, Amy Vachell is one of those hard women
who never see when men are attracted by them. All she thinks of is her
social work and I have often told her it is dangerous and that in her
anxiety to put women on a higher footing she forgets that men persist in
remaining on the lower one and they misunderstand her motives. I knew
she would get into trouble some day.” There was a note of triumph in her
voice.

“Yers,” her husband answered deprecatingly over the top of his
pince-nez. “Yers—yers—very foolish of her.”

“They will come to grief in the end, you will see,” said Mrs. Carpenter,
as one who observes the first swallow of the season.

She met Mrs. Eric Manley that afternoon at a sale of work on behalf of
an inebriates’ home in Mrs. Abel’s parish. They wandered together from
stall to stall, inspecting photograph frames ornamented with landscapes
in poker work, table centres and tea-cosies of hand-painted satin,
pinafores edged with cheap lace, preposterous woollen garments for all
ages, dreary confections in flannelette that would make a Hottentot
pessimistic, dusters, packets of Lux and grate polish; everything that
could most vividly recall the horrors of the Will to Live and the Desire
to Decorate at Random. The two friends sat down presently to tea in a
small room festooned with coloured muslin, served by ladies who were
beginning to feel the running about rather a strain though great fun.

“Well, my dear, how is it that you are still here?” asked Mrs.
Carpenter. “I told Mrs. Abel that it was a bad time to have the sale as
everybody would be away, but she said that some of the best helpers
would have more time now. Of course, we shall get off to Scotland later.
I heard to-day that Evangeline Hatton and her husband are not enjoying
their holiday very much, poor things. They are at Roscombe with the boy
and Teresa Fulton, and the Vachells are there too. I am afraid Amy
Vachell is stirring up mischief. It is a great pity for such young
married things.”

“Oh, who told you?” asked Mrs. Manley.

“Emmie Trotter for one. She is quite worried about it. Captain Hatton is
so dogged, you know, with that kind of foolish religious fervour. It
does blind people so when it takes hold of them; they don’t seem to see
anything else. Of course he is a splendid man; so upright and devoted to
her. But I do think it is a great mistake to get carried away by that
kind of thing.”

“And what is Mrs. Vachell after, do you suppose?” inquired her friend.

“Oh, dear Amy! I am sure I don’t know. Of course one knows that she is
absolutely straight; no one could doubt that. But it is a pity, I think,
the things she does sometimes—with that far-away look of hers, don’t you
know? She may have encouraged Evangeline without meaning anything, and
made her rebel against his very dogmatic manner. And the Professor is so
silly; he really is. All that about Mrs. Harting was so absurd. She is a
very intellectual woman; I get on with her splendidly, we have so much
in common; and she threw herself into all his excavations and so on, and
of course dear Amy was just a little—well, she didn’t like it; naturally
she wouldn’t; but there was absolutely no more in it than that. However,
it may have made Amy bitter and perhaps she has lashed out against men
and put Evangeline up to some nonsense. I wonder if I could do any good
by having a chat with her mother.”

“I should leave it alone, I think,” Mrs. Manley advised. “You won’t get
anything out of Mrs. Fulton. She is so extraordinarily broad-minded and
indulgent and thinks everybody means well.”

“Do you think so?” said Mrs. Carpenter, with her head on one side. “I
don’t know altogether that I should have said that. Dear Susie Fulton is
very shrewd and likes to keep the peace in the family, but she would
very much dislike the General getting to hear anything from outside
sources, and it might be best to warn her privately. What do you think?”

“Well, you might drop in,” said Mrs. Manley. “I could drive you round
there if you have bought all you want now. Perhaps I had better not come
in. You would prefer to talk about it alone.”

“Perhaps that would be wise,” Mrs. Carpenter agreed. “I really think it
is the kind thing to do. It would be such a pity if anything got round.”

She found Susie at home and tea being cleared away. “I have had some, my
dear, thank you,” said Mrs. Carpenter. “Quite an excellent tea at dear
Jenny Abel’s little sale, where I was buying for all I was worth. Such a
poor lot of things. I am afraid they won’t have done very well; but then
they don’t manage that place at all as it should be done. They ought to
call a meeting and have the whole thing laid out and make a proper
appeal. It is no good patching up with little affairs like that. No one
wants to buy at all nowadays; we are all overdone with sales of work.
Still, the things won’t be wasted. I just pass them on to the next. Your
little Teresa is not back again with you yet, I suppose?”

“No, she is still with Evangeline,” said Susie. “They are staying on as
long as the weather lasts. The Vachells and the Trotters are there, too,
so they are quite a pleasant little party.”

They talked nicely in this way for some time and then Mrs. Carpenter
said, lowering her voice mysteriously, “You didn’t gather, did you, that
there was any little difficulty with Evangeline seeing so much of dear
Amy Vachell? I am not quite sure that she is just the person whom I
should choose to be very much with a young mother, who, of course, wants
to see everything _couleur de rose_.”

“Dear me, no,” Susie replied in gentle astonishment. “Is there any
difficulty about anything? I didn’t know. What makes you think so?”

“My dear, it was just an impression that was whispered to me by a little
bird who knows them very well. I won’t tell you whom because it wouldn’t
be fair, and of course there was nothing wrong anywhere, but just the
idea that Evangeline and her hubby were inclined to drift a little in
opposite directions and that Amy Vachell—who is so open-hearted and
sincere and has such a high opinion of women and the place they should
take in the home—may perhaps have unconsciously made a little mischief.
Captain Hatton believes so very strongly in the dogmatic side of
religion, doesn’t he? and he may suppose that Amy goes further with him
in her opinions than she does. But that is all; just to put you on your
guard. It was the merest trifle that I heard, but it would be such a
pity if it went any further when you as a mother could put it all right,
probably, in a moment with just a word.”

“Oh, I am sure there is nothing in it,” said Susie contentedly. “People
make too much of Evan’s manner, and he means nothing; it is all on the
surface. He is a most delightful fellow and Evangeline is wrapped up in
him. But it was so kind of you to come and tell me. I often think people
are not outspoken enough.”

She said nothing about Mrs. Carpenter’s visit until Teresa came home,
and then she chose the next evening when Cyril was peacefully reading in
an armchair. Teresa had put away a bundle of papers from Emma’s office,
over which she had been toiling with evident fatigue and depression.

“I hope dear little Ivor is not vexing his father as much as he did
while he was a baby,” Susie began quietly over her knitting.

“He doesn’t get into many rows,” said Teresa. “It would be almost better
if he did.”

“How do you mean, dear?”

“I mean that Evan says so little, it is rather frightening sometimes. He
just looks and you don’t know what he is thinking.”

“Evangeline doesn’t worry, I suppose?”

“Yes, I think she does. She is much thinner than she used to be.”

“I daresay that is the damp of Drage,” Susie remarked. “It is a very
relaxing place, I have heard.” Teresa laughed, not very merrily.

“Mother, darling,” she asked, looking at Susie with kindly curiosity,
“if Father bit you do you think you would say it was owing to the frost?
I believe you would.”

“What an absurd thing to say, dear. I don’t talk so much about the
weather, do I? It is a subject I have always detested; it is so
commonplace. But if you are laughing because I said that Drage is damp
that is ridiculous. Everyone knows it is and there is nothing so
depressing as a place that is all on clay.” She left the room presently
and Cyril put down his book.

“How old are you, Dicky?” he asked.

“Twenty-five next month. Why?”

“You seem to have grown a little and I couldn’t remember how long we had
been here. It is a devil of a long time. Sit down there for a minute and
tell me something I want to know. Aren’t you wasting your time a bit,
young woman? frousting down there with Emma Gainsborough. Or is it what
you want?”

“I am rather in a fog,” said Teresa. He said nothing and she went on, “I
used to look at people paddling along in the mud, streaming past all the
time; you remember the first time we went down to the docks together and
came back on a tram? It fascinated me. I had always felt that there was
something that my mind was chasing after, as if I were half asleep and
shouldn’t wake up until I had found out what I wanted to know. Have you
ever felt like that?”

“No, I am not much troubled with what is called the Higher Mind,” said
Cyril. “But I don’t disbelieve in it on that account. In fact I think it
is a good thing if properly used. But go on. How does it work out?”

“Well, they all look so angry and miserable and discontented,” she
explained. “There was some mystery or other that cut me off from them
like a misunderstanding; some enormous grievance or injustice that
divided us and our lot from them and their lot, and I felt as if I
wanted to break through it somehow—anyhow—and say, ‘Here! Let me in! I
won’t be left outside. Tell me what you want and I will get it for you
somehow.’ I wanted to give them everything I had; not only money, but
the kind of pleasure that makes it of no importance whether one has
money or not. And then they let me in. Strickland let me in first. She
told me such a lot when she found that I wasn’t inquisitive or
preaching. She explains things so clearly and I began to see what the
grievance is and then it got more hopeless than ever, because I saw that
before you can get into the frame of mind that is independent of poverty
you must be decently fed and warm or else you can’t think at all for
sheer animal discomfort. I suppose mystics come back down the same road
by smashing the body after they have used it to get a mind with. They
couldn’t begin as slum babies and say, ‘I must fast and subdue the
flesh.’ You see, if you start hungry, unless you have a perfectly sweet
nature you probably think of nothing but clawing for food and knocking
down someone else who has got some. Then you find people down there with
all sorts of wonderful qualities so strong that they manage to keep
their end of the stick up in spite of everything. So that topples down
all your hopes when you see that all the virtues that you were going to
bring in by making more comfortable surroundings are there already in
the most wonderful perfection. It just thickens the mystery and makes
the barrier and the fog more unaccountable than it was from outside. If
you could see the horrors that some people contend against and still
remain as good as gold and gay as larks, I think you would stop being so
perfectly disgusting as you are sometimes about my Potters and people.”

“No, I shouldn’t, my dear,” he said, “but not because I don’t believe
you. But why should I make myself sick with smells that I can’t prevent?
I should be of no earthly use sitting by the bedside of an aged
fish-wife with my nose in my handkerchief, and I don’t understand
accounts or babies. I am much more use at my own job, which neither Emma
nor your friend Jason nor even the lion-hearted Fisk could do.”

“No, no, you are much better where you are,” she agreed. “And now you
see I have got beyond the first fog into a worse one. I feel cut off
from the side I left and I can do nothing for the others because they
have got all the means of happiness that I wanted to give them. You see,
if anything good survives there it gets awfully good because it takes so
much exercise.”

“Yes?” said Cyril.

“I don’t know how much you were ever in love with anyone, but you
wouldn’t, would you, have married Mother if she had not been rather
extra pretty and very, very well washed?”

“No, Dicky, you are not going to win on that. I should never have got
within speaking distance of her, so the Higher Mind would not have
contended with the lower. No war, no victory. You see, your Misters and
Misseses of the unwashed brigade start on an equal footing. Mr. Potter
has nothing to forgive before he inquires into the perfections of Mrs.
Potter’s character.”

“Very well, we’ll try again,” she said patiently. “I must make you
understand somehow. We’ll take Mother. She was devoted to us and she
loves babies as she only sees clean ones. Suppose she lived in a slum
and had half-a-dozen of them squalling and screaming and covered with
every sort of hideous filth and was kept awake all night and saw them
being hungry and ill and cold. Just think what a tremendous sort of love
she would need to have to make her go on with it; and how honest she
would have to be not to steal for them; and how unselfish to go hungry
so that they might have what food there was, and how patient not to
grumble and scold. You need a super quality of every good point in a
character in order to keep up at all. You can’t say that being used to
horrors takes away all the merit of enduring them with real style like
you see sometimes down there.

“No, not all,” said Cyril, “but then, Dicky, you must be fair. Lots of
things that I find very hard to bear, such as—no, I won’t go into them;
you are too tender-hearted and I don’t want to add to your worries. But
I assure you I am a very noble fellow in my way though nothing I have to
put up with would rouse any sympathy in your fog-bound heroes.”

Teresa looked at him anxiously, critical and questioning.

“I am only trying to cheer you up, dear,” he assured her. “I have a very
tidy mind—untidiness at the office is one of the things that I was going
to mention just now—and I dislike arguing in a circle. That is where
Emma is more suited to her job than you are. She never stands about and
says, ‘Yes, but on the other hand——’ or, ‘what can we do, because every
way you look at it it doesn’t make sense?’ She plugs along as busy as a
bee, fitting splints on to one and a flannel petticoat and a book of
poetry on to another and doesn’t wear herself out in guessing whether
the creatures are angels or devils. Dicky, my dear, you are twenty-five
and you are missing everything that you have been looking for and that
you haven’t found. You have said that you only got past one fog into
another and that you want to give what you have to starving people who
need it. What about David?”

“I do want so dreadfully to marry him,” said Teresa after some
hesitation. “But I am sure it is selfish. He won’t do what I want and
what would make it all right.”

“What won’t he do?”

“Sell the place and give the money to the work Emma is doing. It
wouldn’t make much difference, I know, but it would take a few hundred
children out of the mud and I should feel I had done my best.”

“You would do much more good by keeping those damned Prices out of
Aldwych. You never saw such a mess as they are making of it. It is
perfectly beastly. Enough to make the old man turn in his grave.”

“But it is the wrong way to live,” she persisted. “I have no right to
glide into beautiful things and comfort that I haven’t earned.”

“Well, look here. You’re pretty comfortable to start with, aren’t you?
Your mother and I saw to that. She especially. She married me because
she wanted a child and like a good careful bird she chose the downiest
nesting-place she could find for the benefit of her young.”

“Oh, Father,” said Teresa, awestruck. “Wasn’t she in love with you?”

“Not a bit of it,” he replied.

“I wish she had married a poor man, then,” said the girl. “It would have
saved me a lot of trouble. But to go back to what you said. I couldn’t
help being born where I am, but I can give back everything I have got.
It makes it worse to marry into a lot more luxury.”

“How much do you think your friends in the fog would give back to you if
they dropped into a soft job?” he asked.

“That has nothing to do with it.”

“Yes, it has. It means that they go with the stream and don’t drown
themselves trying to dam it up with a bunch of flowers. Keep those
damned hucksters out of Aldwych and keep it the decent civilised place
it was; and breed young Davids to counteract the pernicious spawning of
Millport. You’ll be far better employed. You can invite all the young
Potters to tea and show them what they may attain by thrift instead of
greed. They’ll only think you a damned fool and not listen to a word of
good advice.”

Teresa was silent.

“They would take the place off you to-morrow if they could and say you
weren’t fit to appreciate it. And they would undo the work of centuries
that have been spent on it and turn it into a hell of their own.”

“They wouldn’t. They would want to become gentle people and build it up
again in their own way.”

“Rot,” said Cyril. “Much better keep it as a model instead of wasting it
all first. You must keep something in the show room. It is no good for
everybody who wants an airship to destroy all there are and begin again
by himself with a glider.”

“Why are you two silly things sitting together in the dark?” said
Susie’s voice at the door.




                              CHAPTER XVI


“There is a good deal to be said for subscription lists all the same,”
said Mr. Manley. “How could you have the hospitals and other places kept
going?” Teresa often went to the old man for help in her schemes, as he
had invited her to do on their first acquaintance. They were good
friends, though his tolerance of institutions, governors, spiritual
pastors and masters puzzled her when she tried to piece it together with
the other side of his character; the side which made him impatient with
all sorts of pomposity and humbug. He delighted in the removal of
lifeless traditions and he welcomed to his house the whole of the small
army of people who fought for the life of the city against vanity,
self-interest and stupidity.

“But the way people go home to a fat dinner, with servants running round
the table with more dishes, after they have sat listening to speeches
about all sorts of deadly necessities makes me sick,” she said. “They
sign a cheque for a sum that is just large enough to look impressive on
a list, but that won’t make the least difference to the way they live;
and then they think they have done everything that can possibly be
required of them.”

“If would be a dull world if there were no kindness, only obligation and
compulsion,” he remarked. “I like people who are charitable to the
poverty of my intelligence, so why not to the poverty of my comforts.”

“But if some starving genius were to head a list of people who were kind
to Mr. Price’s intelligence he wouldn’t be grateful.”

“Well, if we are going to pounce upon ingratitude and snobbery in one
place let us be down on it all round,” he said. “I tell you that
kindness is a good thing anywhere, and though giving and taking is
always a ticklish business because people think too much of themselves,
that doesn’t make it any less good. By the way, did you know that Fisk
has got himself locked up?”

“I am delighted to hear it,” said Teresa, “but what for especially?”

“Inciting to breach of the peace. Of course that has finished him so far
as his career goes. He never got his degree and now he is too old and
too mad. He was quite a decent boy. I used to employ his father and knew
him quite well. He was as keen as possible on educating the lad.
Cranston has a great deal to answer for, wasting these boys’ time so
that they don’t work at anything. Fisk will have to be a paid agitator
when he comes out in order to make a living. He’ll never go back to
learn a trade now.”

“How do you manage to stand the Prices?” Teresa resumed presently, going
back to her train of thought. “I have often wondered. And Mrs.
Carpenter—— Oh, dear me, I have got to hate rich people since we came
here. At first I was worried about the poor. I wanted money not to
matter either way, so that one could make friends anywhere and there
shouldn’t be a barrier of habits and manners that some of them were born
into and that cut them off from their natural friends in other classes.”

“But that is nothing new,” he said, “I saw when I first met you that
that was what you were after and you thought none of us here had ever
had the same idea at all except good old Emma. That is why I wanted to
make friends with you. I didn’t want the barrier of a rich dinner table
to separate you from your natural friend here.”

Teresa laughed. “Well, it didn’t, you see. But still, I don’t seem able
to leap across the pineapples to Mr. and Mrs. Price. What does she mean
by saying that her people are communists? It does seem the silliest
rot.”

“They are intellectual socialists. People who see that the world is
untidy, which it certainly is, but they haven’t the taste for the
characters that can only come out of an untidy world. I am a bit of a
reader of the classics, as I haven’t a wife to talk to, and I can’t see
any of the people I love best in books coming out of a world where
everything is as neat as a bedded-out garden. I have a great dislike of
culture, as it is called. Education is one thing and so is enterprise,
and Price is enterprising; but I must say I don’t like Botticelli
pictures and cocoa in a public-house, and that is what Mrs. Price means
by saying her people are communists. They are wealthy themselves with
all sorts of art tastes and live comfortably, and they like to preach.
They don’t understand commerce and are ashamed of having any connection
with it. You may always suspect a man who is prepared to run a business
he hasn’t served in. I’ve the same suspicion of parsons. They see so
many notices up everywhere, ‘Beware of the Devil!’ that they get
tripping about here, there and everywhere in such a state of nerves that
they forget they are not there to run God’s business, but to find out
what He wants done. It is all this assuming of moral responsibility
instead of working that I think is the mistake. Now you see what I meant
when you were running down charitable institutions. You do your bit, my
dear, and help to keep the machinery going. You can’t run it alone and
improvements are being made all the time.” Teresa got up to go.

“Do you know Mother is making a speech to-day?” she said doubtfully.
“The first she has ever made outside a drawing-room, and I have to
go—shall you be there? It is in the small room at the Town Hall.”

“What is the meeting for?” he asked.

“The Mary Popley Home for women.”

“No,” he said, “I have given a subscription, but I am not coming to-day.
I am sure she will do it well; she is so gentle and tactful. We want
more women like that on our committees. Some of them are so very fierce.
That is why I like Mrs. Vachell, though I am never sure what she has got
up her sleeve; she’s rather an enigma.”

“She hates men, that is all I know,” said Teresa.

“Does she really? How very remarkable. I never knew that. And living
among such excellent men and great scholars as she does! Good-bye, my
dear, good-bye.”

                  *       *       *       *       *

“I suppose you are not coming, Cyril?” said Susie, later, putting on her
gloves. “We are dining with the Gainsboroughs after the meeting; without
dressing.”

“No, your subjects are too deep for me, Sue,” he replied. “I’ll have
something ready to wet your whistle when you come back, and keep up the
fire and let the cat out and that sort of thing.”

“Strickland will see to all that, dear,” she said. “I think you had
better go to bed if you feel tired. I expect one of the maids will be up
to make tea if we want it.”

When they arrived at the Town Hall they were shown into a small room
where the general committees of charitable institutions were often held.
Reports were read, giving an outline of the year’s work and a statement
of the financial position and requirements; an attempt was made to rouse
public interest, accounts were then passed and votes of thanks to the
principal helpers and the chairman were proposed, seconded and carried.
Susie had been asked to second the vote of thanks to the committee.

The audience consisted of a large number of her personal friends, a few
dowdily dressed women with serious, lined faces, whom she knew by sight,
and dreaded a little for their habit of turning up at tea-parties and
saying tactless things about the behaviour of young girls in the Park
after sunset, the cruelty of parents and the tendency of wives to drink
to excess, in spite of industrious husbands. Very often they introduced
these subjects just when she herself had been expounding the perfection
of the mother instinct or the disastrous result of confidence in a young
and innocent mind. They had a way of referring to crime as if it were a
flaw in a work of art, rather than a snare set by wicked poachers for
the Almighty’s pet rabbits. A few of the outside public were also
present, with the usual vacant faces, perfunctory clothes, thin hair,
and those curious eyes of the English stranger, which, if they are
indeed windows of the soul, certainly do not belong to a country where
romances are carried on at the lattice. Those eyes suggest Nottingham
lace curtains and an aspidistra behind the dim panes which the owner
never approaches, unless there is a street accident or a ring at the
bell. They enclose many human preoccupations, but nothing that is likely
to be shared with the passersby.

Susie faced the eyes, the friendly eyes, the business-like eyes and the
aspidistra eyes. The chairman had called on her to second the vote of
thanks, after a short-sighted glance round to make sure she was there.
Her dimple, the little crease in the satin cushion of her cheek,
appeared, and she smiled, catching the attention of the first few rows.

“Mr. Chairman, ladies and gentlemen,” she began, “I think it extremely
kind of you to ask me to second this vote of thanks, because you are all
so busy and I am not used to speaking, nor experienced enough in your
work to be of very much help. But in thanking our splendid committee for
all they have done, I want to try and tell everybody if I can, how
deeply I feel that we all ought to do a great deal more to help these
poor women. Vice is so pitifully easy to women in a great city like this
(murmured approval was heard at the back). I am not going to say
anything against men. We are the wives and mothers and sisters of men,
and the responsibility lies with us (slight signs of cynicism from an
aspidistra eye in the fifth row). But what I say is this. All our
influence is necessarily—must necessarily be—of no use so long as our
girls are wilfully misled by the idea that their love and innocent
confidence will be understood and valued at its true worth by the
naturally coarser and rougher nature. (“How thankful I am father didn’t
come!” thought Teresa.) Men go into the world and become accustomed to
hardness and cruelty, especially in foreign countries, with which a
great port like this is constantly in touch. They drink and quarrel, and
their poor homes have so little beauty to encourage them. Is it to be
wondered at that a young girl who dreams of romance and her own little
home and the sound of baby feet should refuse to believe that these
things are of less value to the rough sailor or soldier or merchant,
drunk with wine and full of strong passions that have no place in her
finer nature? (The chairman, the treasurer and a doctor, who happened to
be there, were gazing meditatively at the electric light fixtures, the
desk, the floor, anywhere that would afford a sufficiently obscure
resting-place for any involuntary expression of opinion on their faces.
They felt a friendly approval of Susie as a nice, tender-hearted little
woman, but all the same they hoped she would wind up soon.) What I feel
so much is this, that although great sympathy and great patience with
these poor girls must be shown, and although they must, of course, be
taught to see the dreadful evil that they do, yet until wives and
mothers and sisters impress their men with a better understanding of a
woman’s feeling about these things, and make them see that the finer and
higher view is not necessarily foolish and sentimental—that they hurt us
by coarse jokes and rough actions, by mistaking love of motherhood for
vulgar flirtation—that until they see all this in its true light it is
useless to expect that trust will not be betrayed and happy girls flung
back into these Homes, ruined and disgraced. Marriage may mean so much
to a girl. It is surely worth an effort from us, who have had our trials
and difficulties and misunderstandings, to bring home to the boys who
are growing up a sense of those qualities which they lack by nature. I
have much pleasure in seconding this vote of thanks to our committee.”

She sat down amidst whole-hearted applause from her friends and several
of the aspidistra-eyed. The ladies whom she feared gave a few
business-like taps with one hand upon the other and fidgeted
impatiently. Everything that interested them in the meeting was over and
most of them had other engagements or voluminous documents at home to
attend to.

The vote of thanks to the chairman and his reply only occupied another
ten minutes, and then there was tea in the Lady Mayoress’s parlour.

“What a splendid speech you made,” said Mrs. Eric Manley, coming up to
Susie. “I don’t know that I go quite as far as you do about the
innocence of girls, but still——”

“Oh, don’t you?” said Susie. “Of course a great many are not innocent,
because they have been taught so young by seeing all kinds of dreadful
things. But I think a woman’s natural character is much less suspicious
than a man’s.” Mrs. Vachell came up and under the pretext of finding a
chair drew Susie away from the crowd.

“I have been waiting to see you,” she said. “I have just seen Evangeline
off to Drage again and I am very much worried about her. Has she written
to you much about herself?”

“No, her letters are generally full of darling Ivor,” said Susie.

Mrs. Vachell looked her up and down for an instant as if considering
whether she could make a cut in Susie’s plump little figure without
letting out too much sawdust and spoiling it.

“She didn’t tell you that her husband thinks of sending Ivor away from
her?”

Susie’s eyes grew startled, but she said quietly, “Don’t you think you
have mistaken a joke of his? Why should he do such a thing?”

“I think he is a little mad,” said Mrs. Vachell. “The war shook a good
many of them. He was always very strict with Ivor, wasn’t he?”

“Oh yes, but then men are so silly about children,” said Susie, a little
reassured. “They never do understand them.”

“You were saying this afternoon that the responsibility for making them
understand lies with women,” said Mrs. Vachell. “If you really believe
that, it is time for you to help Evangeline. Her situation seems to me
to be desperate.”

“What did he say he was going to do?” Susie asked.

“He told me in confidence that he means to send him away quite soon, in
a year perhaps—not to a boy’s school, of course, but a sort of place
kept by religious ladies. But Evangeline was not to know that. He is
afraid she might do something violent, come to you and her father or
make some public scandal. He hates having his affairs discussed and
preferred to wait until the time comes.”

“Men are really very tiresome and difficult sometimes, aren’t they,”
said Susie with a sigh. “I do wish they would keep to their own affairs.
Suppose I interfered with my husband’s soldiers and you put all Mr.
Vachell’s diggings upside down on the shelves when he had arranged them.
I can’t think how they can be so stupid. I am dreadfully worried about
what you tell me, because, of course, it is all nonsense. If dear Evan
suffers from his head that is no reason why he should vent it on a
little boy. Perhaps a doctor might advise some tonic that would do him
good.”

“There is no tonic for a bullying disposition,” said Mrs. Vachell.

“Oh, don’t you think so?” said Susie. “I am sure the blood has so much
effect on those kind of ideas. If people are well, you know, they see
things quite differently, though, of course, there are some things that
they will never understand, unless they are poets or artists. That makes
a great deal of difference, I think, being in touch with beautiful
things. Those religious ideas of his are a great mistake, I think; all
about Jehovah, and being so full of judgment and wrath and so on. It
gives them quite a wrong idea of the Bible. But I think his mother must
have been a masculine sort of woman from what he says. Quite a little
joke sometimes upsets him. Teresa and I are going on to the
Gainsboroughs. Can we drop you?”

All through the evening Susie was a little preoccupied. She was thinking
out a plan of campaign by which she might save Evangeline from the harsh
authority of her husband, as she had saved her from the prosy ethics of
the schoolroom when she was a child. But, as in those days so now, she
had no wish to reveal herself as a fighter. Once recognised as a
partisan she would lay herself open to attack and perhaps be driven from
her high ground of superiority to earthly passions. She represented in
her own mind idealism, tender remoteness from all ugly thoughts,
innocence of all desires save love for everybody. Could power be more
strongly hedged about from attack?

She had a short time alone with Mrs. Gainsborough, as the Principal
retired to work in his study and Emma took Teresa away to her room.

“I heard from a sister of mine at Drage to-day,” Mrs. Gainsborough
began, “that they think they will probably be sent to Egypt quite soon.
Will that affect Captain Hatton or will the special work he is doing
keep him behind?”

“I don’t know at all,” said Susie. “I hadn’t heard there was any idea of
their going, but I think my husband did say that Evan would probably
have to move soon in any case. Those special jobs they get are only
temporary.”

“Would Evangeline go with him?” asked Mrs. Gainsborough; “would it be
all right for Ivor?” A possible solution to all difficulties at once
presented itself to Susie. “I hardly think he could afford to take them
both,” she said. “Without the extra pay he has been getting they will
have to be very careful for a time, and I hear everything in Egypt is an
awful price. He may be glad to leave Evangeline and the boy with us; I
hope so.”

“Oh, poor girl!” exclaimed Mrs. Gainsborough, “she wouldn’t like that.”

“No, of course it would be a dreadful separation,” Susie agreed, “but it
might be necessary until he got something else. He probably would very
soon. He is so popular with everyone and so high principled. Anything to
do with engineering delights him, and I should think there must be a
great deal of that sort of thing going on everywhere just now. The whole
world is making an effort to better everybody’s lives—except ours, of
course, who have to pay for it. But one doesn’t grudge that. Personally
I don’t mind how simply I live so long as I can have the things I want.”

“I am very sorry I couldn’t come and hear you speak this afternoon,”
said Mrs. Gainsborough. “But the fact is, my old cook, Annie, is being
married and we gave her a little send-off from here. She has married
such a nice respectable man—a widower—a plumber and decorator; we have
known him for years—a man of the name of Fisk. But you know all about
young Fisk, the son? How stupid of me! A horrid nuisance he is and a
great worry to his father. He won’t have anything to do with poor old
Annie. Turns up his nose at her altogether.”

“How horrid of him!” said Susie.

“Yes, I believe he thinks we arranged it all as a studied insult to him;
vulgar little wretch!”

“You will miss Annie, won’t you?” said Susie. “She has been with you
such a long time.”

“Oh, she is not exactly leaving us,” said Mrs. Gainsborough. “She will
still come for the day about eleven o’clock to do all the cooking, and
she will go home in the afternoon to give her husband his tea and then
come back and dish up the dinner. You see, her home is only just round
the corner and he is out all day so she is glad of the company and to
earn the extra money. I fancy young Fisk takes a good bit of what his
father makes.”

They had hardly finished dinner when the maid handed a note to Susie.
The girl, she said, was waiting for an answer. It was from Mrs. Vachell.

  “DEAR MRS. FULTON,” it said.

  “You told me you are dining with the Gainsboroughs. I wonder if you
  would have time to come in here for a few minutes on your way home. If
  Teresa is tired she could drop you and send the car back? I have heard
  from Evangeline by the last post with some reference to what I
  suggested to you this afternoon. She is sure to have written to you at
  the same time, but I cannot answer her letter without consulting you,
  and as you are always so busy it might save time if I can catch you
  between your good deeds.”

“Would you ask the girl to tell Mrs. Vachell I shall be very glad to
come round later,” she said to the maid; then she turned with an apology
to Mrs. Gainsborough. “If one once takes up these public things there
are so many little details to think out. Mrs. Vachell wants to talk over
one or two points that she suggested this afternoon. I will send Teresa
home when the car comes in case my husband wonders what has become of
us, and it can come back for me to Mrs. Vachell’s.”

Mrs. Vachell was alone when Susie was shown up. “My husband is out at
one of those dreary men’s dinners where they play Bridge till all
hours,” she explained. “I wanted to tell you, though you are sure to
find a letter from Evangeline when you get back, that there seems to be
an idea that his regiment is going to Egypt and he will probably have to
go with them. In that case he is sure to make it the excuse for the
separation I told you of.”

“But surely all such things must be decided between themselves,” said
Susie. “Evangeline and he are sure to talk it over and decide what is
best to be done.”

“Mrs. Fulton, have you seen your son-in-law lately?” Mrs. Vachell asked,
looking at her searchingly. “Do you know how strongly he has got to feel
on this point? I have been down there for a month with them and I
realised that Evangeline has no idea what an obsession it has become
with him. He seemed to want to pour it out to somebody and you know
yourself how a man always chooses a woman to listen to him because of
the very qualities he despises in her—shall we call it flexibility of
judgment? He knows she is not likely to say, ‘My dear chap, that’s all
rot. Have a whiskey and soda?’”

“That is so true,” said Susie with a sigh. “How well I know it!”

“You understand then how I come to know more of his intentions than you
do. He wouldn’t feel that you were an impartial judge and also——” her
mouth twitched slightly—“I am afraid he thinks you a little—frivolous.
He mistakes your delicacy of thought for want of earnestness.”

“Yes, I daresay,” said Susie, slightly stung, “I am quite used to being
thought absurd just because there is so much in spiritual things that
one cannot explain in black and white. Those very dogmatic people always
seem to me to miss the whole point of everything.”

“Well, now, the question is this. I know—I tell you this in all
seriousness—I know what he means to do with the child at the last
moment, and the last moment will come sooner than we expected if he is
ordered to Egypt. So please do dispossess yourself of any fancy ideas of
its all blowing over or all coming right. What can you do? You will
probably offer to take Ivor and Evangeline too. He will refuse because
he thinks you are even worse for the boy than she is.” Susie betrayed no
sign of anger, but her eyes narrowed a little and there was no dimple in
her cheek as she listened attentively. “What will you do then?” Mrs.
Vachell went on. “There are some terrible women he knows of who keep a
school away down in Cornwall. I don’t mean that they are intentionally
cruel, but Ivor has your sensitive nature. He is a little boy whom you
might as well whip with a cat-o’-nine-tails as send to women like that.”

Tears sprang to Susie’s eyes and her lips trembled. “I will do anything
you suggest,” she promised. “I don’t care what it is. I think I could
almost kill him. Thank heaven he trusts you!”

Mrs. Vachell laughed. “It is against all my principles and theories,”
she said, “but they force us to do these things. Some day when we are in
power we can be our true selves and enjoy the luxury of the straight
path. At present we lie for the children and the women like Evangeline
who suffer in their foolish reverence for the male. I don’t know what
you advise, but I don’t see any better way out of it than that
Evangeline should be supposed to be going overland to join him and just
not turn up. The boy will be left with me on the understanding that I
take him to Cornwall as soon as Evangeline has left or perhaps a month
or two after.”

“It doesn’t sound at all the sort of thing Evan would do,” said Susie
doubtfully. “He is always so very downright.”

“No, you are quite right,” said Mrs. Vachell. “He hasn’t thought of it
yet. He has only got as far as the old ladies. But I can make him see
the difficulty of a scene with Evangeline. She is very much liked at
Drage. Evan’s Colonel and his wife are devoted to her. There would be
awful talk and gossip and indignation if she let herself go and got the
rest of them down on to it. He is secretive and hates outside
interference.”

“But then why not let public opinion have the chance to make him give
in?” asked Susie.

“He wouldn’t do that. He would make some plan for a temporary
arrangement with me or someone else and it is safer that it should be
with me.”

“But when you have got him off, what next? The school will be expecting
him, they will be furious and write to Evan and he will order you to
give up Ivor. He may send a solicitor’s letter. He may get special leave
and come back.”

“That he couldn’t possibly afford,” said Mrs. Vachell. “It is a very
expensive journey just now. And as for the solicitor’s letter—do you
know I am not at all sure that I shouldn’t leave that to your husband. I
can’t tell you why, but I think he could manage Captain Hatton even now;
the only thing is that he wouldn’t. You have to get things into a mess
first before a man like that will move. They never will do anything to
prevent a row if it means making a plan, but they will shovel away the
mess afterwards quite willingly.”

“I think I might sound him,” said Susie reflectively.

“Very well, but remember if you give him the least hint of a plan he
will forbid you to do it and then it becomes rather a nuisance; it would
be fifty per cent more complicated. If you do the thing first you can
pretend to be sorry and say how stupid you were not to have thought of
the consequences. A man will always swallow that.”

Susie changed the subject. “And what about Evangeline?” she asked.
“Shall I write to her?”

“No, indeed, you won’t. Don’t write a line except the usual
grandmotherly stuff. I will ring her up and get her to take a day’s
shopping in London; I am going there next week. Then after that I will
go on to Drage to see a young cousin of mine. Evan will know by that
time whether he is going or not. If he does I can persuade him to lend
me Ivor for a month or two or even more. Even he understands that he is
rather a baby to go to strangers alone and he is sorry for me for having
no children——” She gave a little laugh. “You might, perhaps, make it
easier by saying that you want to have Ivor yourself, but that there is
difficulty about the nurse. He trusts her, and she doesn’t, in fact,
like being with you.”

“Doesn’t she?” asked Susie, very much surprised.

“No, not at all. She went so far as to threaten to give notice if she
stayed with you again. She complains that you spoil Ivor.”

“What a horrid woman!” said Susie.

“Yes, you will probably have to get another in the end. But all that
will be much simpler when we once get him out there. It is difficult for
anyone to make arrangements with such a long post in between.”

“Dear me,” Susie said with a sigh, “it is all very sad. I think I will
go home now. There may be a letter from Evangeline and I can see what my
husband says.”

“Well,” said Cyril when she came back, “Dicky says you are a great
orator, Sue. Got the nail plumb on the head and brought tears to every
eye. I sent her to bed as she looked tired. Strickland said she was
going to bring you some tea as soon as you came in.”

“Are there any letters for me?” she asked.

“Yes, I believe there are. I put them down somewhere. Evan has written
to me to say that the regiment is going to Egypt and he will have to go
unless he gets anything else.”

“Is he likely to do that?”

“I don’t know. He will have to run his own show now. I should think he
is most likely to go.” Susie found her letters and looked through them.
There was nothing from Evangeline. “I wonder why she writes to Mrs.
Vachell and not to me,” she thought, but she felt no jealousy; nothing
more than a little surprise, such as she might have felt if one of her
children had chosen to have tea with the housemaid instead of coming
down to the drawing-room.

“What sort of a country is Egypt for children?” she asked presently when
Strickland had brought the tea.

“I’ve never been there, but I shouldn’t think it was very good for
them,” said Cyril.

“Wouldn’t it be the best plan for Ivor to stay with us and have a
governess?” she suggested.

“Well, I suppose that is for Chips to settle.”

“When you talk of her settling do you realise that Evan has very odd
views about children and that he is a little obstinate sometimes?”

“What are you getting at, Sue?” he asked. “I haven’t studied the insect
world enough to be always sure what particular idea you are after. If
you will tell me the shape of twig you want to resemble——”

“I haven’t an idea what you are talking about, Cyril, but I was asking
for Evangeline’s sake. You always seem to understand men so much better
than I do.”

“That is because they say what they mean,” he replied. “There is no
difficulty about that.”

                  *       *       *       *       *

Mrs. Vachell scarcely recognised Evangeline when she rose out of a
corner of the shop lounge where they had arranged to meet. She was not
only thin and heavy-eyed, but she looked hunted. Behind the sphinx face
that looked into hers bitter pity was hard at work. “My dear child,”
Mrs. Vachell said, holding out both her hands, “don’t worry. It is
perfectly all right.”

“But you don’t know,” said Evangeline in a low, frightened voice. “I
haven’t told you. He is going to Egypt and insists on my going too. Ivor
is to be sent away——” Her voice broke.

“No, no, nonsense,” said Mrs. Vachell. “Here, come and sit down. Ivor
isn’t going away. He will be sent to me first and you won’t go on the
boat at all. You can either be supposed to join him at Marseilles, or if
that makes too much fuss you can go on board and slip off among the
crowd when people are being sent ashore at the last minute. There are
lots of ways and we will think out the best. Once he is safely off, you
will go back to your parents and he will find the devil of a difficulty
in dislodging you. It is a temporary remedy, I know, but we shall have
time to think of something else when the next obstacle turns up. He is
one man against three women, remember. You know your mother by this
time. I am not sure but what she is stronger than either of us. And you
will have all the regiment with you if they get to know of it.”

“But Mother doesn’t know,” said Evangeline. “I didn’t think it was any
use telling her.”

“Then you are a fool, dear. Never mind; I have told her; and if Evan
thinks he is any match for her he is mistaken. He might as well try to
fight a climate.”

“But how did you know anything about it?” she asked, more and more
puzzled. “He only told me yesterday, and I don’t know now where he wants
to send Ivor. It may be to his sisters, which is bad enough.”

“I knew a month ago what he intended to do some day, and I made plans
for you as soon as I heard that he might be going to Egypt. Don’t waste
time being jealous of me, Evangeline. I would wring the man’s neck like
a turkey’s if I could.”

“Oh, you are wicked!” gasped Evangeline.

“No, I am not. Don’t be stupid. You will lose your faith in men too some
day, and then you won’t stick at anything to help a woman. What other
weapons have we to defend our lives as yet? Do you want Ivor or do you
not?”

“Do I?” said Evangeline, nervously hunting for her handkerchief. “I
didn’t sleep last night and I’ve had no breakfast.”

“Very well, have lunch now, then,” said Mrs. Vachell, rising. During
lunch they matured their plan. Evan had not yet explained definitely
where he intended to send Ivor, though he had once mentioned two friends
of his mother’s, “the best women in the world,” he called them. Mrs.
Vachell related all she knew of the place where they lived and their
methods of training the young mind. Perhaps she exaggerated and perhaps
Evan had laid unfair stress on the items he was most anxious about.
“They believe in making a child independent of physical comforts,” she
said, “and not allowing a light in the room at night and that sort of
thing.”

“Oh, God! Ivor will go mad,” said Evangeline. “He is so good about the
dark and getting used to it, but he hates it—and without me!”

Mrs. Vachell shrugged her shoulders. “I came across men in hospital,”
she said, “to whom their childish terrors used to come back. Of course
it made them able to stand anything as they grew up, for nothing they
were likely to meet afterwards in an ordinary life could be such
torture. But it seems a little like burning down the house to get roast
pig. And, after all, the war has shown that it wasn’t worth while,
because boys from happy homes were just as undefeatable as the children
of brutes. In fact some of them who took it most simply had had the
happiest childhood. Good schools do just as well now when the boys come
by train as when they were frozen on the tops of coaches on the way and
tortured when they got there.”

“Yes,” said Evangeline.

“I shall have to fool your husband a good deal before I get Ivor handed
over to me,” Mrs. Vachell said, looking at her attentively.

“Oh, I don’t mind,” Evangeline answered carelessly. “He doesn’t love the
real you. That is the only thing that would annoy me.” Mrs. Vachell gave
a little laugh.

“Who says women can’t stick together or tell the truth?” she said.

“Do they?” said Evangeline with indifference. “I wonder why.”

“Well, let’s get on,” said Mrs. Vachell. “I must do my shopping in a few
minutes. I shall come to Drage next week, and, in the meantime, just
behave as you would if you believed it was all going to happen as he
says. Try to forget that it isn’t; and when I come you will find that
the old ladies will be postponed for a few months at least. And another
thing. You had better beg for Ivor to be sent to your mother. I want
your husband to have knocked off that idea before I come or I should
have to suggest it and fail. He shall tell you himself that it won’t do,
and he will be getting uneasy about the old duchesses by that time if
you are tragic enough.”

“Oh, it is beastly!” said Evangeline. “Hateful! disgusting! How can a
man be so mean as to force his wife to filthy, low tricks to keep their
only son with her while he is a baby and she has done nothing wrong. How
dare he do it! I shall be a wicked woman before he has done with me.”

Mrs. Vachell again shrugged her shoulders. “Wait,” she said, “it is
coming. There can be no stopping it in the end. We are in Parliament; we
are almost in the Law; we have one foot in the Church. Wait, Evangeline,
my dear. And in the meantime we won’t throw away the old weapons till
the new are ready. They haven’t done bad service in the past.”




                              CHAPTER XVII


“God bless you,” said Evan, as he let Mrs. Vachell out of his house
about a week later. “I’ll tell Evangeline as soon as she comes in. It is
an enormous weight off my mind, really. I can’t tell you what torture it
has been to see the poor girl in that state, and yet it was my duty. I
couldn’t do otherwise, so it had to be gone through. Now she will be
comparatively happy as she will trust Ivor with you and Mrs. Fulton can
see him when she wants to—within limits. Evangeline will like that. I
have the utmost confidence in the nurse too. I should never have sent
her away from him if it had been possible to keep him at home. I have
written to Miss Moseley and told her that his coming is only postponed
and that I will arrange with her later when you see how he gets on.”

“Yes,” said Mrs. Vachell. “I will write to you every week or so at
first. Good-bye. You sail on the 30th, don’t you? I suppose I can make
all the final arrangements about trains with Evangeline. She will like
to see him settled in before she goes, perhaps, and it will give her
time to pack and settle the house in peace.”

Evan had refused to listen to the suggestion that Evangeline should pick
up the ship anywhere on the way out, so that had been given up. Mrs.
Vachell had undertaken to bring off the final coup. Ivor was to be
established in her house a week before the ship sailed. Evangeline was
to pack her trunks as much as possible with old clothes and oddments
that she did not need. Evan was out all day, so there was no difficulty
about that. Mrs. Vachell would get permission to see them off on board,
and would undertake that Evangeline should disappear when the shore bell
rang. An errand of mercy in some lady’s cabin would prevent Evan from
looking for her until some time after the ship had left. Mrs. Vachell
would keep him in discussion till the last moment and tear herself away
only at the last imperative shouts from the gangway. After that the
deluge, and Cyril in the character of Noah.

“I don’t like the plan at all,” Susie said anxiously, when Mrs. Vachell
returned. “I simply don’t know how I shall ever make my husband
understand. He is quite extraordinarily dense in those ways. And I want
to tell the servants to get Evangeline’s room ready, and of course I
can’t. There are all sorts of things to be seen to, and Strickland will
be so cross. And I am afraid they will gossip, too. Can’t you possibly
think of anything else? Couldn’t Evangeline be taken ill on the way out
and landed, and then she could just come home?”

“I am afraid that soldiers are more easily deceived than doctors,” said
Mrs. Vachell, “and Evangeline is such a bad actress! How I have pulled
her through this week I don’t know. But I can keep Ivor as long as you
like while you make your preparations. When Evangeline comes off the
boat and gets to you, she must just have had a fit of temporary insanity
to account for it to your husband; a sort of mad motherhood. I
understand that she has an excuse for a certain amount of eccentricity.
For that reason alone any doctor can be got to say that she is better at
home.”

“Well, we must try not to worry,” said Susie. “I daresay, when you come
to think of it, that by the time Evan has several children he will give
up a great deal of that absurd nonsense about training. The children
themselves will make him forget about it. Marriage does away with so
many silly fancies, doesn’t it?”

All the same, as the time drew near, she became a trifle restless. One
day, unknown to her, Cyril went to have a tooth out. It was a bad tooth,
and he felt decidedly uncomfortable afterwards, so he telephoned from
the dentist’s house to put off an engagement he had made, and went
straight home. It happened to be the afternoon Susie had chosen for a
box containing Evangeline’s belongings to be brought to the house, as
she knew Cyril had a train journey of a couple of hours, which would
keep him out of the way. He was just fitting his latchkey in the door
when a van stopped and a man got out and touched his hat. “A box for
you, sir,” he said, “would you sign, please.” Another man was dragging
out the box and Cyril took the paper and read it. “It is addressed to
Mrs. Hatton,” he said. “Just wait a minute and I’ll send a servant.”
Susie, hearing his voice, was peeping rather agitatedly out of the
drawing-room door. He rang the front door bell for Strickland, and went
upstairs.

“There’s a man with a box addressed to Chips,” he remarked. “Is it all
right?”

“Y-yes, I think so, dear,” said Susie. “It is just a few things we are
to take care of, that she thought might spoil in Egypt. Perhaps I had
better see about it. Why are you back so early?”

“I had a tooth out,” he explained.

“Well, really, Cyril dear,” she said impatiently, “how you men do fuss
about every little ache and pain. What would you say if we gave up our
work for as little reason as that?”

“I should say you had the wisdom of the serpent and the harmlessness of
the dove,” he replied. “It wouldn’t matter a row of beans.” He went off
to his room.

“When are we going to see those two to say good-bye?” he asked that
evening after dinner.

“They will be coming for a night next week when they take Ivor to the
Vachells’,” said Susie.

“I still don’t understand why he is being sent there instead of coming
to us,” he observed.

Susie made a little face. “It is just Evan,” she said. “He thinks we are
not to be trusted with children. Of course I couldn’t insist.”

“It is very unlike you, Sue, to hand over one of your brood without a
murmur. Does Evangeline want him to go there?”

“Certainly not,” said Susie unguardedly.

“Well then, I bet he won’t be there long,” said Cyril. Susie began to
wonder whether this might not be a golden opportunity put into her
hands.

“If you think it best too, dear, I am not sure it mightn’t be the wisest
thing to move him here after a little while,” she said. Cyril looked at
her speculatively, but said nothing at the time. When Evangeline arrived
he noticed a great alteration in her. She had lost her easy-going
acceptance of everything that was said and done. She seemed anxious and
analytical, on the look out for traps, chary of expressing an opinion.
She had said good-bye to Ivor, she told them, and Evan had stayed behind
to settle a few last details with Mrs. Vachell. She said all this with
so much nervousness and lack of interest, as if repeating a lesson, that
Cyril wondered more and more. He thought again of the box that had
arrived, of Susie’s embarrassment, and her anger at his unexpected
return. When she went in the afternoon to pay her fortnightly visit to a
women’s hospital Cyril asked:

“You’re not acting altogether on the straight about this voyage, are
you, Chips? What’s the plot?”

Evangeline pushed back her chair and a look of terror came into her
face. She hesitated, but said nothing. He looked at her with concern.
“My dear child, I am not going to eat you,” he said. “What’s the
matter?”

“I thought perhaps you knew,” she stammered, without realising what she
had said.

“What, that your mother had given you away?”

“Yes.”

“Well, she did, though she didn’t mean to. She was a marvel of
discretion, but unfortunately I had a tooth out and came here when I
ought to have been stowed in the train, and I met your luggage on the
doorstep. She told me it was antiques or something, and I didn’t, in
fact, think much about it until you turned up. So now you had better
tell me what you have both been up to. It is quite evident that you
haven’t parted from Ivor. How do you manage that? Are you going to take
him as a cargo of apples or what?”

“No, I am not going,” said Evangeline. “I won’t go, and if you give me
away, I’ll—no, I am sorry. I would have told you at first, but Mother
and Mrs. Vachell said that men will only help to clear up a mess. They
won’t ever make a plan to prevent it.”

“Oh,” said Cyril, “so the plot is pretty deep, is it? How big is the
membership?”

“Just us three,” said Evangeline.

“Not Dicky?”

“No, no, Dicky is impossible. She wouldn’t give it away, but she would
want me to fight it out with Evan. But I can’t, Father,—I can’t, I
can’t. He has broken my nerve. I would fight for myself, but I can’t
risk it when it is for Ivor. I can’t afford to lose. It is Evan’s own
fault. I never thought of being deceitful until I met him.”

“And Mrs. Vachell?” added Cyril.

“I daresay,” she admitted, “but she doesn’t want to any more than I do.
She says she does so look forward to the day when women won’t have to
lie. It will be such a luxury.”

“H’m, yes, perhaps,” he replied, “but we won’t go into these gilded
prospects now. She’s evidently still in a very poor way. But if you
don’t mind me telling you, I think what you are doing is very risky,
though I don’t exactly know what it is. How are you going to get off?”

“Just slip off the boat while Mrs. Vachell is saying good-bye to him. He
is to suppose that I am in the ladies’ cabin looking after someone who
is ill.”

“And do you suppose any man is going to find out that his wife has
played him a trick like that and yet go on with his voyage and stay over
there?”

“Mrs. Vachell said he wouldn’t be able to afford to come back,” said
Evangeline.

“Good God! What a fool the woman is,” he exclaimed. “And she and her
pack of jelly-brained idiots think that—well, well, Chips my dear, she
is not too big a fool anyhow to have properly done poor old Evan. She
must have endured the devil of a lot of self-denial in the way of truth
lately. A regular Lent of corkers. Chips, I really don’t advise you to
go on with this. It is all nonsense; Evan is a very decent sort of
fellow and I don’t suppose he understands in the least that he is
worrying you seriously. I’ll tell him that I am going to keep you here
for a bit, and Ivor too, to keep you company, and that we’ll think out a
scheme later for you to go out there when he has got ready for you. He
can’t object, for I don’t think you are well.”

“No, I am not,” said Evangeline, and she burst into tears. “I am going
to have another, and I know he will take it away, too, and I shall go
mad——”

“Oh, rot!” said Cyril kindly. “Here, buck up. You’re not going if you
don’t want to. Why on earth didn’t you talk over this mess before?
There——” (the front door bell rang) “that’s probably the heavy father
coming on the stage now.”

“Father,” said Evangeline, turning white, “don’t tell him——” She fell
forward in her chair and fainted, and at the same moment Evan came in.

“Here,” said Cyril holding her, “go down, there’s a good fellow, and get
some brandy; there’s some in the dining-room.” Evan raced down and
brought back the decanter and a glass, and between them they did their
best, lifting her on to the sofa, and Evan tried to make her swallow
some of the brandy. She opened her eyes and looked at him with terror,
and then sat up. “What is it?” she asked. “Oh please, please, Evan,
don’t take him away. I will do anything you like.”

“Don’t take who away, my darling, I don’t know what you mean?” he said.

“Here, never mind,” said Cyril. “It’s all right, Chips. We’ll get you
put to bed I think, and, there’s nothing to worry about; do you
understand?” He rang the bell for Strickland, and she came in and stood
gazing at them in surprise and disapproval.

“Mrs. Hatton isn’t well,” said Cyril. “A little influenza or something.
Will you get her room ready and put her to bed? Can you walk so far,
Chips, if we give you a hand?” They left her in the bedroom with
Strickland, and then Cyril faced his son-in-law in the drawing-room.

“I think I’ll telephone for a doctor,” he said, “just to make sure she’s
all right. Mix yourself a drink while I look the fellow up.” He found
the number and took up the receiver. “That Doctor Clark?” he said. “Oh,
isn’t he? Well would you ask him to come round to Mrs. Fulton’s house as
soon as he comes in. Now then, Evan,” he went on, while he lit a pipe,
“let’s have this out. You mustn’t take the girl away to Egypt just yet.
She’s all to bits and she’s got a holy terror of you for some reason.
What have you been doing?”

“I am afraid it has been parting from the boy that has upset her,” said
Evan. “But I considered very carefully before I did it, and I am quite
sure it is the only way.”

“Only way to what?” asked Cyril.

“The only way to safeguard him from being ruined by weakness and
self-indulgence.”

“It won’t do him any harm to speak of for a year or two,” said Cyril,
“and then he’ll go to school and get it put straight. You’ll do him far
more harm where you’ve left him at present with that unscrupulous
she-devil of the Nile. Take her back with you on the spare ticket and
drop her whence she came.”

“Excuse me, sir,” Evan said, getting up. “I can’t listen to any abuse of
Mrs. Vachell. I am sorry Evangeline has sunk to that last resort of
slandering her best friend to achieve her end.”

“Evangeline didn’t slander her, my dear boy,” said Cyril. “She was full
of her praises because of the magnificent plan she had devised for
deceiving you. I arrived home unexpectedly a few days ago and met
Evangeline’s box on the doorstep. The plan was that Cleopatra was to
beguile you at one end of the deck while Evangeline nipped off down the
gangway and home. They had a plan all thought out about her ministering
to a sick friend in a distant cabin so that you wouldn’t look for her
until you were well out at sea. Ivor was to join her here then, and
after that I don’t think they had any clear idea, but they were
reckoning on your finding it cheaper to stay where you were and storm at
them on paper.”

Evan’s face looked hard and worn, but he showed no other sign of
disappointment. “I think I had better go now and ask Mrs. Vachell if it
is true,” he said. “You know I have only just come from her, and we made
an arrangement that Ivor should stay with her for two or three months
and then go to some ladies whom my mother knew in Cornwall; they keep a
small school for very young children whose parents are abroad.”

“Did Chips know of that further arrangement?” asked Cyril.

“Not unless Mrs. Vachell told her.”

“Why not? What sort of a fellow do you think you are, making plans with
another woman behind your wife’s back as to what you will do with your
son while she is away?”

“It was the only way,” said Evan again.

“The only way to land yourself in the devil of a mess. Upon my word,
Evan, it’s a pretty beastly sort of thing to do. If it got round to the
mess you’d find yourself up against a devilish hard proposition.”

“Yes, I know,” said Evan. “It was cowardice. I hate hurting a woman if
it can be avoided.”

“Funny how people deny themselves in little ways,” Cyril said
reflectively. “There you say you hate hurting a woman, and you go a long
way round to find a plan that must hurt her more than anything you could
have chosen. Evangeline told me that Mrs. Vachell hates lying more than
anything, and she——”

“Excuse my interrupting you, sir,” said Evan rising. “That is not quite
proved yet. I’ll be back in half an hour.”

Cyril, from the window, saw him rush after a passing tram and board it
with the expression of the Chief of Police in a cinema drama. “Poor
devil!” he said to himself with amusement. “She’s going to catch it.”

Mrs. Vachell’s little maid was greatly surprised when the gentleman whom
she had let out of the house not long before brushed past her with some
muttered remark when she opened the door, and ran straight up to the
drawing-room, where her mistress was having tea. Mr. Vachell had
returned from the University and was enjoying himself with a muffin.
Evan greeted him hurriedly, and said to Mrs. Vachell, “Can I speak to
you a moment alone?”

“No, my dear Evan, I don’t think you can with that face,” she said,
looking at him coldly, “you almost frighten me. Sit down there and have
some tea, and tell us what is the matter. Ivor is quite happy having his
upstairs.”

“He must pack up now and come with me, unless you can contradict what I
have just been told,” said Evan. “But I know you will——” his voice was
almost beseeching. “Evangeline is ill. She fainted and went to bed, and
I think she is a little light-headed. She assured her father that you
had made a plan to let her slip off the boat as it was starting and to
join Ivor here and take him to her father’s house——” he paused
anxiously.

“Yes, it is quite true,” she said without concern. “It evidently isn’t
coming off now as Evangeline has gone back on it. Still I think she
might have warned me. It is all the same to me what she does, but it is
generally considered not to be playing the game to do that sort of
thing.”

“Why did you do it?” asked Evan.

“Because it was the only way to stop your monstrous behaviour to a woman
and her child. I would have done it for anybody.” Mr. Vachell had taken
no part in what was going on, but was quietly proceeding with his tea.

“Did you know of this?” Evan asked, turning to him.

“Of course not,” he replied. “Is it likely?”

“Of course he didn’t,” said Mrs. Vachell. “It had nothing to do with
him. But he wouldn’t have interfered in any case. We are a normal
husband and wife; not a potentate and his slave.”

“Then would you ring for Ivor and his nurse to get ready, please,” said
Evan.

“Where are you going to take him?” she inquired.

“I beg your pardon, but that is no business of yours.”

“Very well, then, wait a moment please.” She took up the telephone from
a table beside her and asked for the Fultons’ number. Cyril answered it.
“Is that you, General Fulton?” she said. “Captain Hatton wishes to take
Ivor away at once and will not tell me where he is taking him to. The
little boy has hardly had his tea and is tired after the journey. Would
you mind telling me what to do.” Emphatic sounds were audible from the
mouth-piece, and she turned to Evan. “He says I am to tell you not to be
a damned fool but to go round there at once. Your wife is very ill. You
are to leave the child here for the present. What did you say, General
Fulton? Do you want to speak to him?” She got up and gave her place to
Evan. “Yes—hullo,” he said. “Is that you, sir? What’s the matter,
please,—very well—I will come.” He said good-bye to neither of the
Vachells, but stopped at the door. “I should like Ivor and the nurse
sent to General Fulton’s as early as you conveniently can to-morrow,” he
said, and went downstairs.

“Good heavens! what idiots!” said Mrs. Vachell, pouring herself out
another cup of tea, when he was gone. “It is very difficult to do good
in this world.”

“I know you don’t want my advice,” said Mr. Vachell, “so I won’t give
it. But I am sorry there has been such a mess and she is ill. I like the
poor girl and she seems to have had a bad time one way and another.
Little Teresa will be hitting out right and left I expect.”

“Oh, Teresa!” his wife said contemptuously, “is full of old-fashioned
prejudices, and her idea of equality between human beings doesn’t go
beyond incomes.”

“If people would study the way things have worked out in the past they
would get a better idea of what is likely to happen in the future,” he
observed. “I think I must go down and do a little work.”




                             CHAPTER XVIII


“There is certainly no question of her going to Egypt just yet,” said
the doctor when he came downstairs. “She seems to have got a sort of
nervous breakdown. Can you account for it in any way?”

Susie had come home just before he arrived, and was apparently greatly
fluttered by the scene of confusion that she found, but, in fact, she
was secretly rejoiced. “It clears the whole thing up in the most
wonderful way,” she thought. “Really it almost seems as if Providence
did interfere sometimes.” She came into the drawing-room with the doctor
and found Cyril and Evan talking with perfect friendliness. She put them
both down in her thoughts as “extraordinarily lacking in all feeling,”
but she expressed nothing but cheerful propriety.

“Really I don’t know,” she said, in answer to the doctor’s question.
“Evan, Dr. Clark wants to know whether you can account for Evangeline
having broken down like this. You were here with her, Cyril, when it
happened. Do either of you know of anything?” Both were silent, waiting
for the other to speak. “Well?” said Susie impatiently. “You see, I have
been out, and she seemed to be all right when she arrived.”

“I think it had to do with her leaving Ivor behind,” said Cyril at last.
“Really, my dear, you are a mother; you ought to understand these
feelings. She was about to sail on a long voyage, remember.”

Susie blushed. “There has been the move too, of course,” she said to the
doctor. “Everything was arranged in a great hurry and there was a great
deal of packing up; and as she told you, she is not strong just now.”

“No,” he said, “there’s that. But I should have thought there was more
in it. However, it is not my affair, and if it is a family matter you
must do as you like. But whatever it is must be put right somehow, or
you may have very serious consequences to deal with. I will come back
to-morrow morning, unless you want me before then. But please try to set
her mind at rest on whatever it is that is worrying her. It would be
much better if you had a trained nurse.”

“Little Ivor’s nurse is a splendid woman,” said Susie. “She has had a
hospital training, and Evangeline is used to her. Do you think she could
manage?”

“No, I think not,” he said. “She seems to be worrying about the child as
it is. Have him in the house with her and let her know he is within
reach with his own nurse, and I’ll send you round another woman, if you
don’t mind.”

Evangeline slept that evening under the influence of some medicine the
doctor ordered, and Cyril and Evan were left alone after dinner, while
the household were carrying out the numerous requirements of the nurse
and preparing another couple of rooms for Ivor.

It had been decided that Evan must sail with his regiment, but so far
nothing had been said about Ivor’s future. Presently Cyril remarked, “We
had better settle now about the boy, Evan. It looks pretty clear to me
that you have got to wait for him to find his level in the ordinary way
at a preparatory school. There aren’t many years to wait, and I can
promise you that there will be nothing morbid about him so long as he is
under my roof. You see, if I had had a son I should have had to check
his tendencies and all that, and he will quite likely mind what I say
more than he would the old women of Cornwall.”

“I shall make no inquiries,” said Evan. “Since his mother and I cannot
act together, and it seems that I shall be responsible for her illness
if we act separately, I shall withdraw altogether. I will send her all
the money I have beyond what I need for bare necessities, and she has
your very generous allowance. I don’t imagine she will miss me at all
out of her life. Everything has been as wretched as it could be for the
last year or two.”

“I think you will probably find you want them both back again by and
bye,” said Cyril. “My wife would tell you, I am sure, that absence makes
the heart grow fonder—which reminds me that I very much hope that is
true. However, don’t let’s take it for granted that all is over and Moab
is our wash-pot, and so on. It is wonderful how things peter out if you
leave them alone.”

“Perhaps,” said Evan gloomily, “but I am afraid not. What is wrong in
the beginning is wrong in the end. I shall go away to-morrow before the
boy arrives. He is not likely to ask after me much, as he was set
against me from the beginning.”

“Have a drink before you go up,” said Cyril, as Evan rose from his
chair. “I am sure you had better.” Ten minutes later they were absorbed
in a discussion about Egyptian administration, but Evan remained gloomy.

When Strickland brought his breakfast next morning she asked whether he
had seen Mrs. Hatton, and how was she?

“I didn’t disturb her,” he answered, “but the nurse came to the door and
told me she was better.”

“I think Mrs. Fulton will be down in a few minutes, sir,” said
Strickland, hesitating at the door. She liked Evan, who was always
gravely considerate to the maids and, as she once said to the cook,
“never passes us with his hat on.” “I may be gone before then,” said
Evan, “but if so, please tell her I was sorry to go without saying
good-bye. I have several things to do on the way to the station.” Teresa
ran down just as he was putting on his coat.

“Oh Evan, were you going without saying good-bye? Wouldn’t you like to
see Chips?”

“No, Dicky, I must be off,” he said. “Will you write and tell me how she
is?”

“Yes, I will, and Ivor too,” she promised. “I wish you were not going so
early and so far off. You look so bleak. But it won’t be long before
Chips can go out to you.”

“Dicky,” he said, stopping with his hand on the door, “don’t say
anything about Ivor when you write. I would rather not hear. But do what
you can for him—and if you marry, have him with you sometimes, will
you?” He gave her a kiss and went out, and she watched him call a cab
from the rank across the road and drive off. She was standing there
still when Strickland came to shut the door.

“I don’t like the Captain going off like that,” Strickland said, when
they were back in the dining-room and she was clearing away the plates
and cup. “It doesn’t seem right somehow.”

“I wonder what there is about marriage that is so difficult,” said
Teresa sadly. “People nearly always behave queerly after a bit. Even if
they don’t actually quarrel they call each other ‘dear’—rather short—and
say ‘it doesn’t matter, thank you,’ and dreary things like that.”

“I think, myself, better have a quarrel and have done with it,” said
Strickland. “It is a mistake to think over things too much. If a woman
is busy all day working she’s no time to bother about the man till it
comes to getting his wages off him, and then it’s best to be civil.”

“But, my dear, it is worse in working men’s houses,” said Teresa. “If
you counted up the quarrels between husbands and wives in some of those
small streets!”

“Quarrels, yes, Miss, that’s what I said,” Strickland replied. “But I
thought you were speaking of Captain Hatton going off so cold this
morning, and no one able to say exactly what has happened.”

Susie came in at that moment and dismissed Strickland with a rather
reproving request for breakfast at once. When the door was shut she said
to Teresa, “I do hope the maids haven’t begun gossiping about Evangeline
already. What was Strickland saying?”

“We were talking about marriage and wondering why it is so difficult,”
said Teresa. “She was sorry Evan had gone off so drearily.”

“Oh, has he gone!” Susie exclaimed. “Really he ought not to have done
that. They will think all sorts of absurd things, and now there is that
nurse to gossip with. You really encourage them sometimes, dear Dicky,
by talking about a thing instead of pretending there is nothing to
notice.”

“But I didn’t know there was anything the matter, except that Chips was
ill,” said Teresa in astonishment. “I was talking to Strickland about
married people’s manner to each other. What has happened?”

“Evan made a very foolish and cruel plan to send poor little Ivor to a
strict school in the furthest part of Cornwall. There was no persuading
him, so Evangeline very wisely took the whole thing out of his hands.”

“How?” asked Teresa. “What could she do if he wouldn’t do what she
wanted?”

“Well you will find, dear, some day,” said Susie, “that when a man is
bent on doing what is wrong the only way is to seem as if it was all to
go on as he says and then trust to Providence to find some way of
stopping it when the time comes. Opposition only makes him more
determined, and he is more likely to take precautions.”

“I thought it was arranged by Evan and everybody that Ivor was to go to
Mrs. Vachell’s.”

“That was Evan’s own silly arrangement, certainly, and Mrs. Vachell
agreed just for the sake of putting off the dreadful school time. And
now you see, mercifully the doctor says that Evangeline must, on no
account, be worried, so darling Ivor is to come here after all, as he
ought to have in the first place, and everything is all right. It is
wonderful how things work out if only one has trust.”

“But then, I don’t see what you are afraid of the maids knowing, and why
Evan is so cold,” said Teresa, very puzzled.

“Well, of course Evan wasn’t pleased with the alteration of plan. You
couldn’t expect him to be. And Evangeline has got so ill with the
anxiety. If she had only trusted to its coming out right——. But she got
run down and worried, and what with one thing and another, she didn’t
want to see Evan or to hear any more discussion, and I thought the maids
would think it so odd. You know how in that class everything is
sacrificed to the man because he has the money, and they don’t
understand anything between a difference of opinion and actual
quarrelling.”

“I see,” said Teresa thoughtfully.

“I wouldn’t talk to Evangeline about it, I think, dear,” said Susie
after a pause. “The doctor says she must be kept very quiet.”

Later in the morning Evangeline asked for Teresa to come up to her room.
She was in bed, looking white and tired and the nurse was quietly
dusting.

“Wouldn’t you like some tea, Nurse?” Evangeline suggested. “Strickland
is sure to be making some if it is eleven o’clock.”

“I don’t mind leaving you for half an hour if that is what you want,”
said the nurse with a smile. “But don’t talk about any worries, there’s
a dear, or you will get your temperature up again. You’ll not let her
tire herself, will you?” she said to Teresa. “And I’ll leave this little
bell here in case you want anything.”

“Everything is quite all right, you know,” she said soothingly, as she
arranged the bedclothes before departing. “Your husband sent you his
best love when he went off this morning, only you were asleep and he
wouldn’t disturb you. And everything is ready for the little boy when he
comes. He will be pleased to see his Mummy again, won’t he?”

“Oh yes, yes,” said Evangeline, “it is all right. Do go and get your
tea, Nurse; we won’t do anything.”

“Well, did you see him?” she asked eagerly, when the nurse had gone.

“Yes, I did. He was very nice about you. He asked me to write and tell
him how you are, and I said I would.”

“Forgive me, Dicky, for not telling you what I meant to do,” said
Evangeline. “But I knew it would make you miserable, and I couldn’t
stand discussion.”

“I don’t mind that a bit,” she answered, “but if you get into a mess
again, Chips, do tell Father. I think Mother’s way of deceiving men on
principle is a mistake, apart from whether it is right or wrong. I think
you could have got Evan to do anything you liked if you had told Father,
because, after all, it was quite reasonable, only I expect he didn’t in
the least understand. You told me once that if you want to make him see
your side of the argument you have to translate it into different terms,
because he uses other ways of expressing the same things. You see,
Father would probably have used very bad language and said that the
school Evan wanted was kept by a lot of damned tea-drinking,
blanketty-blank-I-don’t-know-what’s, and then Evan would have understood
that it wasn’t really a good plan.”

“Well, it is done now and he is gone,” said Evangeline. “I shall never
see him again. I’ve deceived him and that is the end. But if he hadn’t
told Mrs. Vachell what he meant to do I should never have found out. I
knew nothing about the school until she told me.”

“Didn’t you! Oh, Chips, how horrid! But then, he must have deceived you,
too, so it is rather like what Mother says about being ‘taught to be
wicked.’ It is so odd if you come to think of it that what she says
should really come true, perhaps for the first time; though it is too
near the bone to be so funny as it might be.”

“Do you know, I never thought of that,” Evangeline remarked, “but, of
course he did. That makes it a lot better.”

“No it doesn’t. It doesn’t make any difference either way. But, at
least, you can both say you are sorry and start again.”

“But Dicky, I didn’t tell you—there is going to be a new one, and then
everything will begin all over again. I could perhaps have held out
until Ivor goes to school in the ordinary way, which of course I want
him to, and after that he will be able to look after himself; but I
can’t go through it all with another.” Her eyes looked large and
startled.

“But he hasn’t done Ivor any harm,” Teresa protested, “and he will see
by and by that he is not a tiresome little boy, and then he won’t want
to interfere.”

“But the strain of perpetually smoothing things over and avoiding
rows——. You don’t know what hell it is. We never laugh now except when
he’s out of the house, and when I hear his latchkey it is like hearing
the prison door shut again after one had escaped.”

“For the Lord’s sake don’t cry,” said Teresa, “or the nurse will never
let me up here again. It is all over now, Chips. There’s months and
months for things to settle, and they always do settle. Nothing ever
goes on as it is. I wish it did sometimes, but life is a very restless
thing, like the kind of person who is always saying, ‘Well, what shall
we do next?’ You will see something will turn up.”

But months went by, and nothing did turn up. The carrier sparrows of
Millport somehow disseminated the news that the Hattons had had a split.
One report said that Evangeline was looking ill and went nowhere. This
was contradicted by someone who had met her at the theatre, “In quite
her old spirits.” Mrs. Carpenter determined to sift the matter to the
bottom, and invited Evangeline to tea. She refused, so Mrs. Carpenter
called on Susie and found Mrs. Gainsborough there. Evangeline had gone
to stay for the week-end with her sisters-in-law, Susie announced with
secret pleasure. No one but herself knew what a relief it was to have
such a respectable piece of news to impart. For since Mrs. Carpenter’s
visit of inquiry during the summer holiday she had been in daily dread
of what the mysterious “little bird” then alluded to might not choose
for its subject next time it sang songs of Araby to its kind patroness.
“The Hattons are charming girls and devoted to Evangeline,” Susie added.

“I suppose she will be going out to her husband soon,” said Mrs.
Carpenter. “She will get the climate at its very best about now I should
think.”

“Oh dear no, she is not going to Egypt,” said Susie, with great surprise
at such an idea. “She gave that up from the very first. It was really
foolish of her to think of it at all, but she was so anxious to be with
him. But Doctor Clark says it would never do to take the risk. It would
be difficult to get a proper nurse out there, and either to keep a baby
out in the heat or to bring it home such a long way would be risky. No,
there is no idea of that.”

Susie had always had a lurking taste for critical situations requiring
skill in manipulating censorious persons, and whenever she managed to
get out of a difficult place with credit, she always felt an increased
sense of safety from the snares of the stupid and downright who persist
in making life difficult by wanting everything set down in black and
white.

“Oh certainly, you are very wise,” Mrs. Carpenter agreed, “though it
always seems hard on a husband when he is away a long time. Dear Mamma
always insisted on going out to India whatever happened. One of us was
even born at sea when the doctor had said that he wouldn’t be
responsible for her unless she spent one hot weather at home. However,
she was back again that autumn and we were all left with dear Grannie
until Papa came home for good.”

“I never think that mothers were so wise in those days as they are now,”
said Susie. “One reads of so many little lives sacrificed to theories of
that sort. Mothers away, careless nurses and governesses, cold bathing
and all sorts of tyrannical rules. They did nobody any good that one can
see.”

“Don’t you think that generation were very much stronger, though, than
the present one?” asked Mrs. Carpenter. “I do, and I think they were
more high principled.”

“Oh no, I don’t think so,” Susie answered in gentle rebuke. “Look at the
drinking that went on, for instance. Even gentlemen used to spend their
evenings under the table, unable to sit up, and they did just as they
liked, and no one dared to say anything. The divorce laws are improving
all the time now, though, of course, it is still dreadfully wrong
whichever way you look at it. Still, I think people have higher ideals
than they did.”

Mrs. Carpenter was completely crushed for the moment. Susie had left no
opening for her to score, for modern ideals were her own favourite
topic, which she was sometimes unwisely tempted to confuse with the
superiority of her own infancy. Susie, though she was by nature always
anxious to smooth over all friction between other people, and to
establish her own spiritual triumph over sordid dispute, had lately
passed through a dangerous crisis, owing to the fact that her own
intrigues against her son-in-law might be exposed at any moment by
Evangeline’s impatient candour or Mrs. Vachell’s boastful contempt for
male authority. It was necessary that she should build for herself a
strong pedestal of Courage-to-do-what-is-right-at-all-costs, and she
chose to cement it with a plastering of the Best Modern Thought. Once
her position was on a solid foundation, she would withdraw again behind
her inviolable mist of vagueness. It is easy to imagine how foolish a
veiled figure of Mystery would look, toppled over and broken, with
nothing left but some meaningless drapery and wire, compared to that of,
let us say, Nelson, whose every separate feature and limb would retain
its individuality, whether erect above the ground or scattered upon it.

“These strikes are very terrible,” Mrs. Gainsborough remarked, seizing
upon the nearest current topic in order to save herself from the perils
of controversy into which she might be drawn at any moment. Poor woman!
She chose badly.

“It is all very largely the fault of so-called education,” said Mrs.
Carpenter, pulling herself together for a new line of self-assertion.
“They insist on everybody being taught to read, and send working-men to
the Universities, and then are surprised that they read the wrong
things. Of course they read whatever is sensational, just as our maids
prefer trashy novels about peers marrying housemaids, and they won’t
look at the classics. All that the strikers want is gramophones and
pianos that they can’t play and motors to go to work in instead of
trams. They are far better paid than our wretched clergy, for instance.
I looked in on little Jenny Abel the other day, and found her and the
children having tea with nothing but bread and a scraping of margarine,
and all of them with colds, and Jenny simply worn out with doing all the
housework and the cooking. The small girl they had had gone off to a
place where she was getting £35 a year; more than Jenny has to dress
herself and all the children. The girl’s mother took her away because
she said she wasn’t properly fed and had too much to do. Said she
shouldn’t touch margarine. ‘Nasty poor stuff, I call it!’ she said; and
the girl must have butter and jam and something hot for supper and every
afternoon off from three to six and two evenings a week out until ten.”

“But I really don’t think you would find those sort of girls very much
educated,” said Mrs. Gainsborough nervously. “They are not the kind who
take scholarships. They are, in a way, more like some of the girls one
meets about in society just now; selfish, you know, thinking of nothing
but amusing themselves.”

“I don’t know at all where you meet such girls, dear lady,” Mrs.
Carpenter answered rather acidly. “All my friends’ daughters whom I can
think of are taking up professions.”

“Yes, but rather for the fun of it, don’t you think?” poor Mrs.
Gainsborough suggested, plunging more and more wildly. “They don’t like
to be worried by home life and they prefer working with men and so on.
It is very natural, poor young things. Just what I should have done
myself if I had been born later.”

“My dear Mrs. Gainsborough, how shockingly indiscreet!” said Mrs.
Carpenter with a silly little laugh. “I hope you won’t go round the
University saying that women take degrees in order to be with men. You
will raise a nice hornets’ nest if you do.”

“Oh dear me, no, that is not in the least what I meant,” stammered Mrs.
Gainsborough. “Most of the girls are splendid and don’t run after the
boys at all. But I meant that I don’t think that they care about
domestic things so much and that it is partly to escape from them that
they take up professions. I can’t believe that some of them who are
really pretty and charming can care very much for mathematics and the
other subjects of that sort that they take.”

“Evangeline was telling me that she read in some paper that socialism is
taking a great hold in the Universities,” said Susie. “I think it is a
pity, because though it is a nice idea in many ways it doesn’t seem
practicable. What you were saying just now about Mrs. Abel just shows
that everybody is not fitted for the same kind of work; and either very
strong people would get into mischief from not having enough to do or
else the weaker ones would die through having too much to do.”

“I think the chief difficulty would be with the ordinary British working
man,” said Mrs. Gainsborough, innocently. “They do so dislike
regulations of any sort, and if they chose to stop work for any reason I
believe they would always do it. They would take no notice of orders or
shots or anything. They are so unused to not doing what they want and
you can’t argue with them. They would just say it was all nonsense. They
are very strong and not at all hysterical like foreigners. They never
paid the least attention to rationing, you remember, during the war; no
tradesman dared to enforce it in the industrial districts. They don’t
mind losing their lives but they seem to think it so silly to be ordered
about at home and so it is, I quite agree.”

“Of course,” said Susie, placidly, “if anyone could be found who had
really enjoyed a revolution it would be different and one would have
more sympathy. It is worth any sacrifice to make people happy. But
beyond a few brutal kind of men, who I am sure are either naturally
disagreeable or not English, it seems to make everyone discontented.
Even the people who make themselves comfortable in ruined palaces must
be afraid of someone wanting to turn them out. It all seems so gloomy
from what one reads. Must you really go? I hope you will come back, Mrs.
Carpenter, and see Evangeline when she comes home. Now she is here for
good she will want something to interest her. She might help you perhaps
at Christmas with your parcels distribution. Dear Evan was so anxious
she should be too busy and happy to miss him just now.”




                              CHAPTER XIX


Just before Christmas, Teresa met Lady Varens in a shop. “My dear, I am
so glad to see you,” said the soft voice that reminded her of Aldwych
and her first happiness there. “Come and have tea with me somewhere. I
have a great deal to tell you.” Teresa’s heart bounded and bumped. It
seemed a year before the girl behind the counter located her particular
little wooden ball from among the dozens that were bowling along the
wire above her head, carrying little scraps of paper and small change to
a stupid public who did not know David. She followed Lady Varens through
the crowd to a shop on the other side of the street, where they sat down
at a table shut away in a recess off the main room. “What would you
like?” Lady Varens asked; “tea and crumpets?”

“Oh yes, anything, awfully,” said Teresa, hardly able to hide her
impatience.

“David is coming back next week, did you know?” said Lady Varens. “Has
he written to you?”

“No,” said Teresa; “I haven’t heard from him for a year.” Tears came
into her eyes, but she flattered herself that they were unobserved.

“We are both going to stay with Mr. Manley,” Lady Varens went on. “I had
just let my villa and was going to friends in Rome when David’s letter
came; but I didn’t want to lose any time by bringing him round all that
way so I came here and Mr. Manley wants us both to go to him. We must
settle finally with the Prices whether we take Aldwych back next year or
whether I go out with David to the Argentine. He has a charming house
there.”

“Oh,” said Teresa, “and which do you think you will do?” Her heart
seemed to have stood still for a year, waiting for the answer, before it
came.

“I don’t know at all, but old Bessie, David’s nurse, who writes to me
sometimes from the village, says they are all longing for him to come
back. The Prices seem to have put everybody’s back up. None of the
outside people will stay if he buys the place and he makes all sorts of
mischief with the bailiff and the farmers, imagining he is being robbed
of sixpence somewhere or other. He says that if he buys it he is going
to get an American expert over to run it all on some new system by which
everything is organised and checked automatically, and the output, as
they call it, of every grain and cow and rabbit and man and boy on the
place is ascertained, and if it doesn’t work out at the maximum the
animal is destroyed and the man is sacked.”

“Oh, David must come back,” said Teresa. “It sounds too horrible.”

“Very well then, dear, tell him so,” said Lady Varens, drinking her tea
peacefully without a hint of intention in her voice.

“I can’t think why the man in the Bible was told to give all his money
to the poor if it wasn’t the right thing to do,” said Teresa. She put
her chin on her hands and puckered her brow over some inner problem.

“I think it was probably suggested more for his benefit than for that of
the poor,” said Lady Varens. “It is the giving that matters much more
than who gets the stuff.”

“Do you really think so?” said Teresa.

“Yes, personally I do. People can only be governed by the qualities that
are in them, and a state can’t make them equal, because it is made up
itself of inequalities. It can never be made into an automatic machine;
it is alive—made of live things. I can’t understand how even decent
socialists can expect it to act as if it were a machine. Of course one
knows what bad communists are after. They are just criminal tyrants who
want to be beasts in control instead of controlled beasts. But the good
ones make me desperate. It is so impossible to imagine anything but
disaster coming from their innocent idiocy. They seem to go on blindly
hoping that human intelligence can devise a scheme that is proof against
human intelligence. They are dear things but I do wish they would take
their hobby horses to some place where the bad boys couldn’t harness
them to the cart that will land us all in the ditch. They think they can
out-theorise history and all forms of religion.”

Two little tears rolled at last down Teresa’s cheeks and were lost in
the cup with which she tried in vain to hide them. Their salt taste
symbolised to her the bitterness of her failure.

“Oh, bother it!” she said; “I give up here and now trying to do any
good. It is no earthly use.”

“David said that when he left Oxford,” said Lady Varens, lighting a
cigarette to avoid Teresa’s eye. “But in a way he works harder than ever
at it now.”

“Does he?” Teresa answered with elaborate indifference.

“Yes; won’t you come to dinner with us while we are with Mr. Manley? He
said I was to ask anyone I liked and he loves you.”

“Yes, I would like to.”

“Very well; come next Thursday if you are not too busy,” said Lady
Varens. “By the way, how is your sister? Are they still at Drage?”

“Oh, no—dear me, it is a long story to tell you all the things that have
happened since you left. But Evan is in Egypt and Evangeline and Ivor
are with us.”

“I am sorry; that sounds dreary,” she said. “I never knew your sister
well, but I liked him though he seemed so different from her. I often
wished he had thought of going out to the colonies or something of that
sort. I believe it would have suited her. I can’t see her in a garrison
town.”

“She used to say she would like to lead two lives at once,” said Teresa.
“One a sort of Wild West business and the other with someone very
literary, but Evan isn’t either, so I suppose people compromise or do
something different from what they intended.”

“Tell me, Teresa,” said Lady Varens, “I am not asking from curiosity; is
it a success?”

“Chips could make a success of almost anybody who didn’t interfere with
her,” Teresa replied. “She is not at all exacting and she is so
affectionate. But Evan is a little like John Knox or that sort of
person; then she does things without telling him and he gets all sorts
of ideas into his head. I do hate Mrs. Vachell. I think she does more
harm than a thousand mothers-in-law.” Lady Varens laughed.

“Do be careful what you say about mothers-in-law. When David marries I
shall remind you of that remark and ask you not to suggest to my
daughter-in-law that I interfere, because I don’t.”

Teresa blushed and looked vexed. “I had forgotten about you, really,”
she said. “But Mrs. Vachell came to stay by the sea when Chips and I
were there with Ivor, and it all went wrong after that. I don’t think
they were ever happy again. And I believe she only did it out of sheer
spite because she hates men.”

“Does she? I should never have guessed that,” said Lady Varens.

“No, nobody would. She never says a word, but she used to get at that
wretched boy Fisk, at the University, and put him up to all sorts of
revolutions; not because she cares twopence about the poor, I think,
unless they are women, but she wants women to govern everything, and I
think she got him to believe that they would all help a revolution for
the sake of making laws to get what they want for themselves. Don’t you
think that Miss Smackfield would probably drop her Bolshevism if there
were any women capitalists?”

“I don’t know that I or anyone else knows exactly what a capitalist is.
But do you seriously suppose Miss Smackfield cares a hang what any row
is about so long as she can be in the front with an axe, shouting, ‘Off
with his head!’ like the Queen of the pack of cards. She would be
forgotten to-morrow if someone put a flower pot over her.”

They talked for some little time and at last Lady Varens said, “It is so
difficult to remedy anything, from a disease to a grievance. There is
always a ‘vicious circle,’ not one thing alone that is the matter.
People are ill because they fuss and fuss because they are ill. There
are some, I think, who want a revolution because they are miserable, and
others who are miserable because they want a revolution, another lot who
make other people’s misfortunes an excuse for making a row and some more
who put all their misfortunes down to other people’s love of making a
row. If you take a human body in that sort of contradictory mess into a
doctor’s consulting room, he pays no attention to the details, but tells
the patient to wash in the Ganges or eat a lightly-boiled onion an hour
before sunset with his back to the north; or else he tries
psycho-analysis or hypnotism.”

“Oh, does he?” said Teresa, who was quite bewildered by this time.

“Yes, he does, and once upon a time it was done with incantations and
charms, or the fat of a dormouse was rubbed under the ear. There was
Christianity too, with all sorts of by-products in the way of
Reformations and Crusades—but you see my point. A really engrossing
superstition or a creed with a ritual would be more useful than
discussing symptoms of national neurasthenia. Any idea that is unselfish
and clean would do, and Bolshevism isn’t either; it is both selfish and
dirty.”

“But you can’t preach unselfishness to the unemployed,” Teresa objected,
“not, anyhow, so long as there are ‘boudoir gowns for my lady when she
snatches a moment’s rest in her strenuous afternoon,’ advertised in the
papers. If I were an unemployed, I should want to tear my lady in
pieces, and roll her beastly maid with the sofa and the pot of chocolate
over and over in the mud on the Embankment.”

“That’s illogical,” said Lady Varens. “I have to shut my eyes tight when
I see advertisements of anything to do with my lady, because I know that
that sort of indignation is off the line. Communism is dreary and
crushing and impossible, I think; and if you are going to let people
keep the money they or their fathers make, then you must let them alone
to spend it as they like. There are idiots in every class who chuck
money about. But, as I say, if you are going to admit freedom to inherit
and make, you must have freedom to spend as well, or else Rule Britannia
becomes Rule Bolshevina, and my dear friend, the British working man,
who hates to be hustled, will have to set up his apple cart again in
some other place.”

“No, it is quite true, it won’t suit him a bit,” said Teresa, thinking
of Mr. Jason.

“I have tried to imagine the very beeriest British loafer being made
compulsorily drunk at stated intervals by a public authority, and I
can’t see him getting a bit of pleasure out of it. And as for being
compulsorily busy, and obliged to see nothing but good plays, and sent
to hear good music—has any real Englishman ever devised such a plan, or
are they all those very unhumorous Huns in disguise? Only a nation that
wears spectacles could picture England as a community with rules, except
the ordinary policeman rules. But the people have got so used to freedom
that they may let the thing go on and stand watching it like a dog fight
until it is done and has to be cleaned up.”

“That is what Mrs. Vachell said about Evangeline, that father wouldn’t
interfere about Evan until he had actually done something. She said that
men won’t bother to prevent a thing happening.”

“What are you talking about?” said Lady Varens.

“Oh, I forgot, I was thinking about what you said. Evan did rather try
to work out theories about Ivor and there was a bother that there
needn’t have been if he and Chips had understood each other instead of
working separately. However that is nothing. I expect they will worry
through all right.”

“Well, come and see David,” said Lady Varens, “and help us to decide
what we will do. He is all for stopping a muddle before it is too late.”

Teresa went home in a tram, among the faces in the fog, but she did not
notice them. She was tired to death by problems and counter problems; by
desires that seemed to lead straight to a just and happy end, and were
blocked always, sooner or later, by some defect of the quality that
engendered them. Equality had a way of elbowing the grace of respect off
the path, social recognition bred snobbery and civic responsibility led
to jobbery, philanthropy grew so easily into impertinence, reform into
self-righteousness and contentment into smugness; there seemed no end to
the fine and stupid ideas that had started along the same road.
Innocence and discipline fought for perfection in every imaginative
task. She saw a world full of Evans and Evangelines quarrelling
irreconcilably for ever, like Tweedledum and Tweedledee.

The car trundled and swayed, grinding along its rails. The distorted,
grotesquely-dressed forms that had been made beautiful all these years
in her imagination by the belief that they were princes and princesses
in disguise, waiting for the magic touch of recognition to restore them
to their kingdom, failed for the first time to excite her interest. The
desire which used to entice her with the promise of a new world had
vanished, and left in its place a message rather like the traditional
note on the pincushion left by the escaping heroine of romance. The
message said that the only truth on which heaven and earth were agreed
was that a marriage would shortly take place.

She cheered up a little as she looked at the fog-bound faces on either
side of her, and thought how greatly any of them might be improved by
loving any one as much as she loved David. Another still more cheerful
idea occurred to her, that perhaps they did! Perhaps it was only the mud
filtering down upon the city that made them look so depressed. Inside
their minds there might be an inextinguishable flame that only needed to
be kindled to destroy all anger and discontent. “I suppose there will
always be Evans and Evangelines,” she thought, “all the Tweedledums and
Tweedledees, and they will fight about nothing whenever they meet; but
if they were really in love Evan wouldn’t look for trouble and
Evangeline wouldn’t try to walk round it; they would go through it
together as it came. I am glad David doesn’t either worry or shirk—but
then, of course, he wouldn’t.”

When she reached home she went up to the nursery where Evangeline was
putting Ivor to bed, it being nurse’s afternoon out. When he was tucked
up and Evangeline was tidying the nursery, Teresa sat down by the fire
and said, “I met Lady Varens and had tea with her. David is coming home
in a few days, and they are going to stay with Mr. Manley. They are
going to make up their minds what they will do with Aldwych.”

“Oh, are they?” said Evangeline. “Do you suppose they will go back?”

“I should think quite likely.”

“You look very pleased, Dicky,” said Evangeline, looking at her sister’s
face in the firelight. “I am so glad if it is all right. But Dicky——”
she hesitated in a frightened way—“you know I have no nerves in these
days, and I get unnecessary panics—, don’t build on his being the same
as when he went away, will you? You know what men are.”

“Oh, Chips, do drop that men and women business,” said Teresa wearily.
“There are men and men and David is David.”

“I know,” she admitted, “but you see Evan is also Evan, so I warn you
from my experience—quite kindly meant, and you are angry, quite fairly.”

“I think you would like him best to be Evan if you loved him,” said
Teresa. “He wouldn’t be ‘men’ any more, and you wouldn’t compare him
with yourself.”

“I do love him,” Evangeline answered; “but he thinks I don’t because I
deceived him.”

“Do you suppose he doesn’t love you because he deceived you?”

“I am sure he doesn’t, because men—I am sorry, I won’t say it. But he is
always talking about ‘women’ too. In fact, he began.”

“Do you know, as I was coming up in the tram it occurred to me how like
Tweedledum and Tweedledee you two are, and now what you say makes you
more absurdly like. They never knew which began the quarrels. You need a
‘monstrous crow’ to send you both flying into one another’s arms. Of
course if you were in a book Ivor would have a dangerous illness or
something silly like that.”

“That would only make us hate each other more because he would say that
God did it for our good, and I should say that God was sorry the devil
did it.”

“And suppose Ivor died, whose doing would you say it was?”

“No one’s doing at all. But I should say the devil made the germs and
that God did nothing, except that He was glad to have Ivor back.”

“I am sure that is very bad theology,” said Teresa, “You can’t have
Badness with a definite intention and Goodness without any.”

“Why not? Intentions mean brains and theories and I do loathe them more
than I can tell you. I’m content with things that are alive and perfect;
I mean without diseases and sins. One doesn’t need any intention for
loving the sun and everything that I call ‘God.’ But Evan sets his brain
humming and buzzing like a factory to make up the awful Moloch of a
creature that he worships.”

“It is very odd,” said Teresa, “how people have always been more annoyed
by each other’s religions than by anything else. I am myself. I could
put up with Mrs. Carpenter’s face, if it were not for the things she
says about the Church. But there we go again! I suppose if a monstrous
crow could frighten quarrellers apart a monstrous dove might prevent
them from fighting; but I don’t know, and there would probably be some
drawback to that too; there always is. I am going to meet David next
week.”

“You know, I can’t go on living at home for ever,” said Evangeline. “I
shall have to arrange something when all this business is over, and what
am I going to tell people? I can’t keep an unexplained husband in the
background all my life. Just think of it! Very little money, no man, no
father for the children and no explanation to give. I shall have to
become a paid agitator in self-defence.”

“To agitate about what?”

“Oh, anything. Mrs. Vachell belongs to all sorts of societies. I might
help to run a paper. I’ve always liked papers.”

“Yes, I know you have,” said Teresa. “I think, Chips, if you hadn’t sat
so comfortably in the sun, and been content with sensations you might
have found out more for yourself. Isn’t that why we called you ‘Chips,’
just because you were always picking up bits of information? I always
think of toast and newspapers when I remember you as my elder sister in
the nursery. Either with toast and newspapers by the fire or else out in
the garden when you ought to have been somewhere else. Do you remember
when you brought in a worm when we were away in the country, and you put
it on a doll’s chair on the tea-table, and tried to make it sit up, and
Miss Jacks came in? But to go back to your newspaper; you can’t do that.
Do wait until you are well again, and then go away from Mrs. Vachell,
and write to Evan. I am not sure you hadn’t better leave your family
with nurse and me somewhere, and go to Egypt yourself; but, anyhow, it
will be all right. I have told you things are always happening.”

“Evan’s sisters are another problem,” Evangeline said presently. “They
don’t know anything yet, but they keep on wanting Ivor to go there, and
when they do find out they will do everything they can to get him taken
away from me. They will think I am an active danger if I differ from
Evan in any way. And they are so silly with Ivor. They do spoil him so.”

“I think that is awfully funny,” said Teresa. “Doesn’t it amuse you if
you think of it?”

“You mean because Evan complains of me spoiling him? But then, you see,
I don’t and they do. You never saw such drivel as they carry on. Ivor
gets quite imbecile when he is there; he hardly seems the same. It isn’t
gaiety, it is a sort of orgie of pranks; like those wearisome film
comedies where a lot of people slip up on a piece of soap, and get
covered with whitewash and food. Really when I am staying there I often
feel like asking the cook to shoot me into the dining-room by the hatch
and fling a basin of custard after me just so as not to damp the party.”

“Doesn’t Evan mind that?”

“No, he doesn’t, because it is something that can be explained. It
doesn’t amuse him, but he can pigeon-hole it as ‘all good girls’’ way of
amusing themselves. It has nothing to do with him, but it is a necessary
cog in the machinery of a nice family so he can get on with something
else while they do it. It is almost like a domestic rite. But when I
enjoy myself he thinks it is moral indulgence because it isn’t planned
out and it isn’t tiring.”

“I don’t know how father gets on so well with all sorts of different
people,” said Teresa. “It never seems to bother him if they don’t
understand what he is talking about. He never tries to explain himself
or cares whether they agree with him or not.”

“No, I daresay, but then he has only got himself to bother about,” said
Evangeline. “If he had to protect us from a wife with high principles it
might make him think a bit.”

Teresa dreaded telling her mother about the Varens’ return. Experience
has taught me that there are many painstaking minds who will come to a
knot at this point, and want to be told why any young girl with a clear
conscience should dread to tell so amiable and good a mother that an
eligible young man, dear to them both, has returned to the
neighbourhood. But it cannot be made quite clear to all readers. The
nearest thing that can be said is that perhaps if Susie had been known
to approve less of the possibility with which Teresa was secretly aglow,
the girl would have been less anxious to keep it to herself. “Alice in
Wonderland” is full of the everyday experience of simple people, and in
one of those irrational gambollings of the female mind which have been
referred to on another page I seem to see Susie represented by the
kindly Dodo who said to Alice after she had won the race, “I beg your
acceptance of this elegant thimble,” and presented her with her own
property. Teresa was as straight-forward as Alice, and liked things to
work out logically, so she resented being led up to her lover, as much
as she disliked hearing Mrs. Carpenter instruct Mrs. Potter in the art
of patience.

She decided now that the dangerous moment could be most successfully
faced under Cyril’s protection, so she announced at dinner, “I met Lady
Varens to-day, and they are both coming back, probably for good.” She
made the news sound as gossipy and impersonal as she could, and shot a
rapid glance at her father.

“I am glad to hear that,” he replied. “The Perkin Warbecks can now
resume their normal occupations.”

“Who are they?” she said.

“I don’t know who they were, but I remember being sent to bed because I
didn’t know that they aspired to the throne. I’ve remembered their
beastly names ever since.”

“They are staying with Mr. Manley,” Teresa went on, “at least she is,
and David is going there next week. I promised to go to dinner one
evening, so I can tell them about the Perkin Warbecks. It is nice to
think how pleased the farmers will be, isn’t it?” She felt some pride in
the way she was conducting this affair.

“Very nice, dear,” said Susie quietly. “Do you know at all how he got on
in the Argentine?”

“No, she didn’t say,” Teresa answered.

“I thought perhaps you might have heard sometimes,” said Susie. “So
often out in those lonely places people are so glad of posts, and they
write and tell one all sorts of things about themselves, just with the
idea of getting an answer. I remember I had a cousin who used to write
dreadfully dull letters all about the country and then strings and
strings of questions.”

Teresa need not have been afraid. Her mother did, as Evangeline had
pointed out, achieve what seemed like conjuring tricks in the lives of
other people, but she only prepared spiritual omelets in places where no
omelet was likely to be made in the ordinary way. Having satisfied
herself now that Teresa had been completely cut off from David while he
was away and was full of suppressed excitement at his return, she was
too great an artist in mystery to use apparatus when the laws of nature
were already operating in the direction she wished.

Three days after this was Christmas Day, and both Susie and Teresa had a
busy day before them. Susie was to attend a tea and distribution of
useful Christmas presents to the inmates of the Mary Popley Home, and
Teresa was to help serve dinner to some hundreds of street urchins,
members of one of the many organisations with which Emma’s devoted band
worked ceaselessly and hopefully, undeterred by rumours of class war or
theories about the reconstruction of the State. Emma’s workers got on
with the business of cleaning the city as best they could, while Fisk,
the people’s friend, raved of blood and destruction, and then went home
to tend his dormice. Teresa’s post was at the end of a trestle table
with nearly fifty boys on each side. She was buttoned up to the neck in
an overall; her face was hot from the stove beside her and from the
crowded atmosphere; her head felt bursting from the smell of poor homes
and the clapper of voices; her feet were icy from the draught along the
wooden floor which was only separated from the street by an open door
and a long stone passage. In front of her was a gigantic hot-pot,
replaced by another as soon as empty. She held in her hand a long iron
spoon, greasy from top to bottom and heavy to wield. At her elbow were a
pile of plates, which were snatched up and borne away by other helpers
as fast as she filled them. There were three tables altogether, and the
same thing was happening at both ends of each. Other people, visitors
and members of the committee, stood about the room and looked on, giving
a hand with any extra job that was needed. When the last plate was
filled Teresa had a moment in which to look at the faces down the table.
They were all faces from behind the fog, but they were young, and the
Great Depression (as she called the public expression of countenance
when she first came to Millport) had not yet reached them. Many of them
were pale and pinched, many were apple-faced, some fat and white, but
they were all young and as free as squirrels. They bore marks of cold
and hunger, some of them of cruelty and disease, every single one of
them had a cold in the head and took no notice of it. “The plum pudding,
Miss——. May I pass?” said a voice beside her, and, as she moved, a
monstrous pudding was put before her and the helpers pawed the ground in
their impatience to be off with the plates. Teresa doled out great
helpings of the stuff as fast as she could, grasping her heavy spoon
with both hands. Once more she had time to look at the boys. They were
not talking now; they were stuffing, and they had said all they had to
say to their neighbours. She saw one of them deposit a large
tablespoonful of the pudding in a pocket of his little age-worn
waistcoat, and in the horror of the moment she exclaimed, “Child! what
on earth are you doing?”

“It’s for me granny,” he said, “she’s sick.” Teresa experienced the
upheaval of mind and body that used to shake her with a general sense of
topsy-turvydom when she first took up Emma’s work, and which she had
nearly lost during the last years. She remembered Ivor as she had left
him that morning, happily engaged in discussion on seasonable topics of
revelry, she thought of dirty little faces assembled outside toyshops
lighted up early on account of the penetrating fog; she had a vision of
the Price family in paper caps seated among a débris of hothouse dessert
and wine and coffee and expensive trifles in leather and gold, recently
unwrapped from parcels, each “novelty” designed to save small
discomforts, such as the lighting of a match or the turn of a head to
see the time; she thought of Evan’s sisters, giggling happily beneath
banners that advertised Peace and Goodwill, and of Fisk at the other end
of the Christmas dinner-table, gloomily contemplating his father’s
mésalliance, the Gainsboroughs’ old cook who never could cook anything
decently, and who had now become the last straw on all that an unjust
government had heaped upon him at his birth. Teresa’s mind, which had by
now established David in its background as a referee in all debated
questions, recalled at this moment her first visit to Aldwych and her
self-reproach for having eaten the price of Albert Potter’s splints. “I
have been along that road,” David had said, “and it leads nowhere except
to a maze where you lose yourself and die for want of a new argument.”
“David!” she cried now, in her heart, “David! get me out of this and
take me with you, if you know where you are going.”




                               CHAPTER XX


Susie, meanwhile, was performing prodigies of peace and goodwill at the
Mary Popley Home. She radiated the most suitable atmosphere that a lady
visitor to a rescue home could possibly have evolved after years of
thought, and she did it without any thought at all! The “inmates,” as
they were called, and as we will call them for want of a less lively
word, literally basked in her smile. Grave kindness they were accustomed
to; breeziness they knew to satiety; Mrs. Abel’s generous pity almost
inconvenienced them; but Susie’s veil of aloofness from everything real
wrapped them in gossamer of the angels who have no bodies. “Isn’t she a
nice lady?” they said among themselves, feeling that, where she was,
neither shame nor hope of doing well eventually, nor gratitude for
tolerance would be expected of them. “It must be nice to be a lady and
able to do what yer like without any ’arm coming of it,” was what they
mostly thought, in place of the bitter reflections that stung them in
the presence of Mrs. Carpenter. “What does she know about it?” they were
used to mutter, when that excellent visitor explained to them the duties
of self-respect, the necessity for self-control, the joys of home that
they had forfeited, and the useful-even-though-damaged lives they might
yet lead. “That there Jack, I used to tell you about, would ’ave taught
’er what for,” was a favourite comment of one of them after these
occasions. “Telling us as men is what we makes them, and ’adn’t ought to
be encouraged! ’E don’t want much encouragin’, she’d find, if she got
’im ’ome, in spite of ’er face.” It seems almost a pity that this inmate
could not have heard Susie second the vote of thanks to the committee at
the Town Hall; for one feels that justice was hardly done to Mrs.
Carpenter, while Susie, who had said the same thing in other words, was
so much admired. But that, of course, was never known, and probably if
it had been, her manner and her expression would have caused a different
interpretation to be put upon her words. The inmates would have pictured
themselves as partakers in a scene of innocent pleasure, ended in sorrow
by the devil, while Mrs. Carpenter only succeeded in offending them by
the suggestion of mischief done to an honest fellow.

“’Ain’t she a nice lady!” they repeated in admiration. “I do like ’er
’at, and the way it is done at the back. Just pass my cup up along
there, Veronica, would you?”

“Give old pasty-face something to do for ’er living,” said Veronica, as
she passed the cup up the line, to where the under-matron was presiding
over the urns.

“You know, some of them are such nice girls,” Mrs. Abel was saying
enthusiastically to Susie at the same moment. “I can’t tell you what
splendid natures they have. That one down there—Veronica Baker—it’s the
saddest history, but I won’t tell you now. She is simply devoted to the
baby—such a darling it is—and I am hoping to get her a really good job
where she can keep it with her. It is with her mother at present.”

“I do hope the old woman is good to it,” said Susie. “It would be
terrible if anything happened to it while the mother is here. That is
the worst of Homes I always think, although they are so necessary and
splendid in every way. But so few of them are able to arrange to keep
the mothers and children together, and it does separate them so in cases
where it isn’t possible. Don’t you think there is that about them?”

“Yes, but then what can one do?” said Mrs. Abel a little sadly. “One
can’t leave them to go on with the life, and in many cases it is better
that the child should be sent to some place that is known to be all
right, so that the mother may not be hampered in finding work. It goes
against them very much with some people if the child is seen.”

“I do think,” said Susie, “that if the girls could be got to see before
they go so far what will happen if they do, it might prevent them. It
seems to me sadder than any amount of difficulty in making ends meet.”

“Yes, indeed, it does,” said Mrs. Abel, greatly touched, poor little
thing. “When I think of my own home and how difficult things are just
now, and yet how we have been kept from all unhappiness, I think I
hardly know how to be thankful enough.”

“It must be so delightful to have your husband with you in everything,”
Susie said with a little sigh. “It must make up for any anxiety. If one
is thoroughly understood nothing else matters. I was so glad you did so
well with the sale of work in the summer. Drink is really another of the
worst problems, I think. Do you find many in your Home are any better?”

“Well, it is impossible to say whether any of them are really cured,”
said Mrs. Abel. “But a great many have gone out and kept steady for
several years, and now and then we hear from them that they are doing
well. But of course some of them relapse and then they sometimes come
back for a time. But if we get them quite early on I believe there is
every chance of their keeping straight. Only it is so difficult to
persuade them to come in then.”

“What a pity it is that wine was ever invented,” said Susie. “I can’t
think what people want with it. It only makes them noisy and stupid; not
really cheerful.”

“I don’t think it is wine that matters,” said Mrs. Abel. “In fact a
little of it would do them good if they could get it. It is the beer and
spirits that are so bad, because they take such quantities of beer and
so little spirits affects them, especially the stuff they can afford. My
husband doesn’t at all believe in actual teetotalism, except as a help
to those who can’t keep away from it. The doctor says a glass of port
would do him all the good in the world in the evening, but I can’t get
him to take it, just for the sake of the example.”

“How splendid of him!” Susie exclaimed. “I wish I could persuade my
husband to set the example to his men.”

“You see, it is the evenings that are such a temptation,” Mrs. Abel went
on. “Their homes are so dreadfully uncomfortable, with the children all
about and everything in a mess and nothing to do. Of course they prefer
the public-houses and the clubs.”

“But if the children went to bed in proper time and the wives kept their
sewing until the evening it would be quite simple,” Susie declared.
“They seem to have no idea of time.”

“Still, I know myself that it is not easy to have everything straight by
the evening,” Mrs. Abel sighed. “Now my little maid has gone and I have
everything to do for the children, besides the house and the parish, I
find it very difficult to be all neat and good tempered, and ready to
listen to my husband, though I am longing to hear all about his day. And
then, you see, very often with those people the children have nowhere to
sleep except the living-room, and there is hardly room for them all to
sit round—and perhaps no fire—and if there is illness—and they have no
occupations to keep them quiet. And besides, some of the houses you
really can’t make clean or cheerful, and if the man does get good wages
for a time it all goes as soon as there is unemployment or if he meets
with an accident; the insurance doesn’t cover it all. At least I know my
husband will get his stipend whatever happens, and people are very kind
and good. We were so touched by the amount of the Easter Offering this
year, although it is such a poor parish.”

“Mrs. Fulton, would you like to come and see the distribution of
presents?” said the matron, advancing to Susie with a smile that she did
her best to make genial. Long years of bringing the passions of other
people into line had made it difficult for her to relax at different
milestones of the Almanack into the requirements of a moral armistice.

Susie followed her into the next room, where a small Christmas tree was
glimmering and dropping wax on to a table; round it, piled high, were
parcels with the forbiddingly soft contours that betray to the
experienced eye the presence of wool in unattractive shapes. Two smiling
men with eyeglasses and gay waistcoats, and Mr. Abel, well-bred, shabby,
harassed, devoted and obviously in need of port wine, stood by with
sponges, ready to quench any untoward splutterings between the dim
flames and the branches on which they drooped. Festoons of tinselled
cotton hung between the pine needles which still smelled of the forest,
and on the top spike, precariously inclined, was a cardboard Father
Christmas with frosted boots and a face like Mr. Price after dinner. The
inmates crowded round, murmuring among themselves in drawling
exclamations peculiar to the class who spend so much of their lives as
onlookers at all kinds of pageantry.

“Eh, luk!” they said. “H’m—yes, it is, i’nt it! eh, to be sure! See,
Lily, the li’l moonkey wi’ th’ baal in its mouth! See Father Christmas?
Where? Eh, yes, a see ’im. Seems a pity there a’nt no children here to
see it. What’s the good of it?” A terrific sniff raised the speaker’s
nose in wrinkles almost into her low-growing hair. “Eh, luk! the parcel!
’tis for the paarson!” Roars of laughter broke out while Mr. Abel
unwrapped a neat silver cigar-cutter and sought in vain for words that
should combine truth with the idea that it was the thing he was most in
need of. Mrs. Abel received a pocket manicure case, the matron was
delighted with Miss Gilworth’s _Outlook of the Saints_, the under-matron
had a sponge, “specially designed for continental use,” and the rest of
the staff were given various articles ranging from penwipers to plaster
dogs with one eye bandaged. The proceedings ended with a carol, in which
Susie joined with her very kindest expression and a most delicate voice,
reinforced by the powerful bass of one of the gentlemen with eyeglasses
who was a member of Mr. Abel’s choir. Mr. Abel moved a vote of thanks in
his high-pitched Oxford plaint, and soon after a piercing wind from the
front door and a hum of voices and flutter of aprons in the passage
betokened that the Mary Popley inmates would be left to their own
reflections on a year that was about to slink away like a defaulter with
the happiness they had invested.

                  *       *       *       *       *

Evangeline’s daughter was born between Christmas and the New Year.
Teresa arrived home late from her dinner at Mr. Manley’s and was met by
Strickland looking as if she were about to perform some religious rite.
Her cap lay across her head at an angle that gave her a slightly mystic
appearance, her eyes were full of indefinite purpose and her mouth was
set tight.

“Have you got toothache again, you poor thing?” Teresa exclaimed the
moment she saw her.

“No, Miss Teresa; it’s _that_,” Strickland replied in a hushed voice.
“We’ve got the nurse, and the doctor is coming along now. Mrs. Fulton is
upstairs, but I was to tell you there’s nothing to worry about and you
was to go into the General’s study. I’ll bring you a cup of tea and then
you’ll go to bed. It’ll be all over in the morning, you’ll see. You’ll
not hinder me by worrying, now, will you? For I’ve the kettles to see to
and all.”

“N—no,” said Teresa rather doubtfully. “I won’t hinder you anyhow, old
lady. Go on with your fussing and don’t mind me. But I wish you would
come and tell me when it is there. I don’t suppose I shall be asleep.”

“Yes, you will, then, Miss Teresa, or I shall be angry. No, I mean it.
You’ll be doing very wrong if you’re not asleep. The General is in the
study, if you’ll go up now, so I needn’t keep up the drawing-room fire.”

“Strickland—here a moment,” said Teresa, pulling her into the darkened
drawing-room. “Just tell me before you go. Is it very, very awful?”

“No, Miss Teresa, of course it isn’t,” she replied quite angrily,
shaking herself away. “My brother’s wife thinks nothing of it. It’s what
we’ve all got to go through—unless it’s a poor thing like me that has no
one. And there’s the nurse and doctor and everything she can want.
There’s a great many that hasn’t——”

“Oh, yes, yes, I know,” Teresa interrupted. “I shall stop my ears if you
say any more of that. I’ve finished with it. I’m not going to hear any
more until I can begin again. Strickland, I’m engaged; but please don’t
tell them downstairs. I want to do it myself when it is all over. Only I
am so happy I had to tell you; and now I have come home to be so
frightened. Never mind; you see, I am not in the least worried. I’m
going up. And about twelve o’clock I shall go to my room—and take off
all my clothes—and go to bed—and put my head on the pillow—Oh,
Strickland, you are an ass, aren’t you? How do you suppose I am going to
sleep? Well, good-night.” She ran upstairs very quietly and went into
the study.

Cyril was sitting by the fire, smoking and reading. He looked round as
she came in and said, “Well, did you have a good time? I suppose they’ve
told you about Chips?”

“Yes,” she said. “I shan’t go to bed yet if you are not going. We’ll
wait together if you like. And, Father—I saw David.” She brought a chair
up to the fire.

“And did he see you?” Cyril inquired. “You please my eye very much when
you are happy and you’ve been a withered little object lately.”

“Well, that is really about all about it,” she said. “I’ve stopped
withering. You do like David, don’t you, Father?”

“I’m devoted to him,” Cyril answered. “Do I understand that you have
fixed it up?”

“Yes,” she answered. “Oh, Father, listen, what was that?”

“I didn’t hear anything,” he said, rather hastily, “but there’s a devil
of a draught up those back stairs. I think I’ll shut the passage door.”

“I’ll do it,” she said.

“No, stay where you are.” He went out, shutting the door after him, shut
the passage door that led to the top storey and met Strickland coming
up. “Keep that door shut, would you?” he said. “Miss Teresa’s in there;
and don’t worry her to go to bed. I’ll send her when I think it is a
good plan.” He went back to the study.

“Was that Strickland you were talking to?” she asked. “There’s nothing
wrong, is there?”

“No, but I can’t do with her damned singing. I told her to wait until
the Philharmonic was open. Now then, tell us all about it, Dicky; that
is, as much of it as you like.”

“Well, you see, I refused him before,” she began slowly. “He wouldn’t
combine with what I was doing and I wouldn’t give it up——” She stopped,
and Cyril poured himself out a glass of whiskey. “Have some?” he asked.

“Now you know, dear, that is silly,” said Teresa. “I don’t want to take
to drink because I am going to be married—— Oh, father, what is that?
Something is bothering me—is there a wind or something? It was quite
still when I came back.”

Cyril hesitated a moment and then said, “You’re not the woman your
mother is. She thought me very foolish—I am not sure she didn’t say very
wrong—for spending the night in the Turkish bath when you were born. I
should be there now if you weren’t at home, but if you are going to sit
there behaving like some damned fox-terrier whenever a door opens I
shall have to get out the car and drive you round till we both freeze.”

“All right,” she said. “I am sorry, but I didn’t know what it was. I
just felt creepy.”

They heard the front door slam.

“That’s the doctor,” said Cyril. “Now you can go ahead. The pilot is on
board and a tot of rum will be served to all those in favour. I wish you
would have some.”

“No, I am going to have tea presently,” she said. “I do wish you
wouldn’t interrupt. I was going to tell you why I changed my mind.”

“Yes?” he said, encouragingly.

“Let’s see. You see, the thing is like this. I think David started with
the same idea that I did and I don’t know exactly what happened but he
found that he hadn’t enough brains for argument, so he studied
fox-hunting which he had always had a passion for, only he got slightly
mixed like I did about people who live in towns. He is really very
sensitive about cruelty, and his father gave him such a lot of money at
college that when he found anyone who wanted it he gave like anything;
and when you have once begun doing that in person, not just by
subscription, it is very difficult not to feel that you ought to be
earning some instead. But anyhow that is what he did. And then he had to
go to Aldwych to help his father who wasn’t well, and then he got
interested in the land and he met some people who wanted experiments
done—I forget what in—and who couldn’t afford to do them; and, it is
very odd, but he seems to find out more by common sense than I ever
should by working and working at an idea, trying to make it fit whatever
happens, because it never does. As soon as one stops worrying and works
at whatever one can do best, the idea one had tried to fit on to all
sorts of contradictions seems suddenly to grow up out of the middle of
one’s work, with a root fastened to all the different things it wouldn’t
fit before. It is impossible to explain but I assure you you would have
found that happen if you had ever had an idea of any sort or done any
work.”

“I should like to direct your next piece of purposeless labour to
respecting the forces of the Crown a little if you can,” said Cyril.
“I’m damned! No ideas and no work! Do you know who I am? I suppose your
mother is right. Marriage does mean something to a girl.”

“Why? What?” she asked in bewilderment. “What have I said?”

“Go on, my love; don’t let me interrupt you,” he said. Strickland came
in with some tea and a plate of sandwiches. “I suppose it is no good
offering you tea, sir?” she inquired.

“No, thank you, I have got everything I want,” he answered.

“I am coming to bed in a few minutes,” Teresa said, nodding to her.

Strickland looked appealingly at Cyril and hesitated. “You’d better stay
here a bit I think,” he said. “You won’t sleep after that stuff.”

“Oh yes, I shall. I’m awfully sleepy,” she said.

Strickland pulled herself together and cleared her throat. “I’m sorry,
Miss Teresa,” she said boldly, “but there’s been a slight accident in
your room. Your hot water bottle leaked, and the bed was wet through so
I’ve taken the things down to the fire. I’ll tell you as soon as they
are dry.”

“Very well; but goodness, how late it is!” Teresa said as she glanced at
the clock. “Nearly one. Has mother gone to bed?”

“Not yet,” said Strickland. “She’ll be down by-and-by. You’ll see her if
you wait a little.” She shut the door and Teresa settled herself again
in the armchair with her tea. “The Prices have got Aldwych for another
six months,” she said, “but David thought perhaps if we were married in
the spring I might go out with him to see his place over there and help
him to settle up, and then come back when they leave. I shouldn’t so
much mind leaving all of it if I didn’t go straight from Emma’s office
to a house with hot towel rails and pheasant for breakfast and a peach
house.”

“Well, we all have our troubles, but I feel if I were given my choice
that that is the one I could face with most courage,” said Cyril. “I
could tear myself away from Emma’s office more resolutely than from
almost any luxury I know. But then I can’t live up to your friend Mrs.
Vachell, who hunts with George Washington and runs with Ananias from a
sense of duty. I admit I wasn’t happy in the office when you took me
there.”

“What are we going to do with Chips when she gets well?” said Teresa. “I
can’t bear to go away and leave her here. Mrs. Vachell would get her
altogether in time and mother wouldn’t be any good. Mother thinks that
when she says what fine creatures women are and all that, and when Mrs.
Vachell begins on the same subject, they both mean the same thing. But
they don’t. Did you know that? Mrs. Vachell is quite serious.”

“Yes, I knew that,” he answered. “She told me herself that nothing was
too bad to do in the cause of the noblest of God’s creatures, and a
woman in that frame of mind is always beyond a joke. You can’t get it
into their heads that there are certain things that are not done, such
as vitriol and so on. Not that I have heard of any of them doing that,
but she seemed to be speaking inclusively.”

“No, that sort of thing isn’t a bit like her. Really father, it isn’t. I
only meant that the more depressed Chips gets about being away from Evan
the more Mrs. Vachell uses it to make it impossible for her ever to go
back. Chips is quite right in saying that she can’t live here. It would
be so dreary for her and she hates having no explanation for it. People
will think that either she or Evan have done something bad. And it is
cruel to think of her without a man for the rest of her life; it is far
worse than being a widow. I don’t think either you or mother have
realised that.”

“It hadn’t, as you say, occurred to me that they wouldn’t finish it up
sometime. I hope marriage doesn’t mean too much to her after all. I have
always supposed that so long as people mind their own business there is
very little to complain of.”

As he stopped speaking, a long, high-pitched sound, seeming to come from
nowhere in particular and too faint to be more than just audible, rose,
grew and died away again. Teresa turned white and looked at her father
with frightened, questioning eyes.

“Was it a lie that Strickland told me about my hot bottle?” she asked.
“Didn’t she want me to go up?”

“I expect not,” said Cyril. “You can’t do anything. Would you like me to
get the car out? We can wrap up quite warm.”

“No, what is the good of running away,” she answered. “I have got to
know. But Strickland said it was nothing. She was quite indignant and
was going to tell me that there are people who aren’t as well looked
after as Chips, but I wouldn’t listen. Let’s go on talking. I do so want
to get out of this mess of pity on to a road that leads somewhere. It is
like being for ever shot at and hurt by something you can’t see.
Strickland is wrong. Evidently in the main things one person suffers as
much as another.”

“I’ve often told you you were worrying unnecessarily,” said Cyril. “I am
sorry we didn’t send you away just now, but I never thought of it and
your mother doesn’t descend to details much, as you know. She takes the
most alarming things as a matter of course. I believe she was born a
favourite of the gods. I found out the other day that she has never had
a tooth out. I was away when Chips was born and, as I told you, I spent
the night of your arrival in the Turkish bath, so I don’t know what
happened; but it wouldn’t surprise me in the least to hear she slept
through it.”

The door opened and Susie came in. As she stood there for a moment a
smell unknown to Teresa came in with the air from the passage.

“What! are you two still here?” she said in the gently reproving tone
she used when any of them did anything not wholly normal. “Why didn’t
you go to bed, Teresa dear? I told Strickland to tell you not to worry.
I hope you weren’t.”

“Oh no,” she replied, “it wasn’t that. I got your message, but I’m not
sleepy. What is that odd smell?”

“Just a little something the doctor used to give her some sleep,” said
Susie. “I think I shall wait here until he comes down.” She had left the
door open and Teresa sat tense and agonised, dreading the sound that
might come again at any moment. But everything was quiet. Strickland
shuffled down the back stairs and shut the kitchen door. Cyril got up
and shut the door of the study and drew up another chair.

“Well, and how did your dinner go off?” Susie asked. “Did you see
David?”

“Yes,” said Teresa. “He—he enjoyed himself very much in the Argentine.”

“How nice. And is he going back or is he going to take up Aldwych again?
I do hope he will.”

“Yes,” she said still more nervously. “Yes—we are going to take it up
together—we arranged—I hope you don’t mind. I got a little worried with
Chips and everything, or I should have told you. I really came home to
tell you—I——”

“My darling, I quite understand,” said Susie. “Don’t trouble to explain.
I am so glad that you have come to see what a dear fellow he is. I
always told you he was a great deal nicer than you thought; but you
wouldn’t believe me.”

Teresa’s just feeling of indignation gave way to a second thought that
she had much rather her mother supposed her not to have cared for David
before, than that she should suspect her of having listened to wisdom on
the subject of a prudent marriage.

“And so that is all settled!” Susie continued, warming her toes
peacefully. “And when dear Evangeline is strong again we must make
another effort to put that right. And then we shall have nothing left to
wish for, shall we? Evan is a silly fellow, really. I wish he were here
now; it might bring it home to him.”

“How, Mother?”

“I mean that he might see that women have quite enough to go through
without being teased about their children when they have got them. All
those stupid rules and that kind of thing! Really, you know, I think
that anyone who has had a child—I mean any woman, of course,—deserves to
be let alone. Now those poor women I saw last week——. I don’t know that
it is a very nice subject for you, Teresa, but as you have taken to work
among the poor you are bound to hear of it, and you are going to be
married yourself—what I was going to say is that those poor women I saw
at Christmas have been most foolish, there is no doubt, and the law
ought to oblige the men to marry them. But if it won’t do that, at least
it might be made more easy for the mother to keep the child with her
instead of her living alone with that matron, who I am sure, is
extremely kind, but with such a cross face. The poor little child has to
be brought up elsewhere because the mother has lost her character! Men
lose their characters quickly enough in the public-house, and no one
says anything. They are allowed to take the bottle home with them, too,
and it is not thought a disgrace, although they do it deliberately.
Whereas a child——” She paused, becoming suddenly aware that Cyril’s eye
was fixed on her with delighted interest. “Cyril, dear,” she said, “are
you sure you want to wait up? There is really no need.”

“I wouldn’t miss a word, Sue, I assure you,” he said politely. “Dicky,
pass me the syphon, would you?” Teresa passed it, and said nothing. No
one spoke for a short time, and then a bell rang upstairs and another
sound, a sort of rapid, angry mewing, was heard as Susie opened the door
of the study and Strickland vanished up the stairs. Susie disappeared
into the passage and presently Strickland ran down again. “It’s a dear
little girl, sir, the doctor says,” she remarked, thrusting her head
round the study door, “and now you get to bed, Miss Teresa, please,
while I get a cup of something for the nurse. The doctor will be pleased
to join you, sir, presently, but he won’t stop to have nothing but a
glass of wine and a biscuit. He’s got another case waiting for him he
says.” She disappeared before Teresa had grasped the wonderful details
of her déshabille. This was indeed a new Strickland, or at least one
unknown to the family. “My brother’s wife” and Evangeline were one and
indivisible in Strickland’s heart that night.




                              CHAPTER XXI


Lady Varens and David stayed for some weeks with Mr. Manley, and then
took a furnished cottage by the sea, at a place not far from Millport.
It was a place of everlasting winds, sandy as the desert, flat as a
tablecloth, ugly as every other nest of the speculative builder. It is
true that the owners of the land had imposed restrictions on the
invaders, but the only result of this was to make a certain style of
architecture a duty, instead of an unfortunate occurrence, so the town
had as little chance of achieving beauty as a society for the
suppression of marriage would have of evolving true love. The little
caskets of the home, that were dumped down in groups along the shore,
roofed to excess in the prevailing fashion, neatly gardened with rock
plants that could not blow away and might be disinterred from an
avalanche of sand without obvious damage, were designed to catch the
greatest possible quantity of ozone. Painstaking mothers, whose husbands
were occupied in Millport, immured themselves heroically there all the
year round for the good of their offspring, who rewarded them by
thriving exceedingly on the hurricanes of health that swept along the
mud flats. The tide rose from time to time—generally in the night—, took
a rapid survey of the villas, and fled back into the distant sea.
Squadrons of perambulators were marched daily along the most exposed
part of the shore, which the speculative builder had kindly laid with
asphalt for the purpose. There, prevented by stout iron railings from
being blown into the sea, the mothers and sisters and aunts and nurses
of young Millport wrestled up and down twice a day, their skirts lashed
impedingly against their knees or their calves, according to whether
they were going to or coming from, the butcher. Their faces were set
with a permanent expression of having been blown crooked, nose slightly
aslant and a little richer in tone on one side than the other, eyes half
closed to keep out the volleying sand, ears all but inside out, and the
mouth set at the gasp, owing to the nostrils having been banged to as
soon as the owner struggled out of her front door; heads were mostly a
little on one side, cocked to meet the shouts of a succession of
acquaintances all endeavouring to hear whether Reggie would come to tea
with Edna on Thursday or Friday, or whether the bridge party began at
three or four. But then, as the inhabitants say when strangers are
critical about the place, “we do have such beautiful sunsets. They say
it is something phosphorescent about the mud.” So there’s always
something either way to keep the balance between good and evil.

Lady Varens took one of the villas for a few months. The place more
nearly resembled country than any other in the neighbourhood where she
could get a house; it was at least in the open air, or rather, as she
said, in an open draught, and the mud stayed where it was, instead of
going up into the sky and down again all the time. The sun shone a
little when it was anywhere handy, and one could smell the sea, and even
see it for a few minutes if one looked sharp about it. There was a golf
course, and a train to bring Teresa and anyone else who had sufficient
patience and a solid enough frame to hold together during the requisite
period. Maids were found who, being attached by love to the butcher’s
assistants, were willing to oblige a titled lady to whom money was no
object. The villa was designed for a large family and attendants, so
when Evangeline was well again, Lady Varens asked her to stay for a time
with the children; she persuaded her that it would be good for them to
be blown into the state of solidity that comes to the young of that
scourging place from constant tossing between the consuming ozone and
the replenishing butcher. Evangeline accepted, and at the end of a week
or two the shadow of Millport and all the human vexatiousness which had
darkened the last months for her began to stir and rise, taking with it
her newspaper problems, Mrs. Vachell’s sphinxery and the episodes of her
life at Drage that were stored in her recollection like toys broken in a
long-forgotten quarrel. The dear inanities of that time were like poor
Tweedledum and Tweedledee’s nice new rattle which had brought them both
out armed with deceptions against each other, till the monstrous crow
they had brought down frightened them apart. She laughed aloud one day
as she thought of Teresa’s comparison, and presently she went to the
nursery and brought Ivor’s copy of “Through the Looking Glass” into the
drawing-room and sat down with it in the window seat, where she used to
watch the sunsets. She turned up the part where the quarrel begins about
nothing, when Tweedledum and Tweedledee have been sitting together under
an umbrella. “That is exactly like us,” she thought and she laughed as
she read. “But Evan will never see that. I shall have to explain the
situation in some other way.” Her thoughts wandered back down a train of
other things that she had tried to explain to him. Before their
engagement she had expounded a good deal and listened very little. To
tell the truth, Evan had been attending more to the distraction of her
presence than to the matter of her speech, but she did not know that. He
had been unaccustomed to the society of women who lulled, and she did
lull his natural embarrassment in conversation by the largeness of her
interest in everything that went on in the world. Such luxuriant living
and lack of analysis was new to him. He had formed an idea of women from
his sisters’ giggling little comments on every subject; they inspected
life at too close quarters to make their view interesting to anyone with
Evan’s passion for Universal study. The world was contained for them in
their village interests; England was a garden where God lived and their
village was one of His boundary lodges; foreign countries were something
akin to a nobleman’s other residences, managed by agents and let to
strangers; the mission field a wild region that must be brought into
cultivation. Evan had loved his sisters while the war was on, for they
thought neither to the right hand nor to the left. They had trotted out
of their village in the wake of England, Harry and St. George, never
doubting that God was with them as they bandaged and stitched and prayed
that Ypres might hold out, and that Evan and the men from the village
might come home safe. They never spoke of the enemy as sheep or devils.
War was a medicine which England had to take now and then for the good
of her health, and whether it was against Zulus, Boers, or Germans had
nothing whatever to do with the village. _The Graphic_ of the past or
_The Graphic_ of the present, depicted “the dead,” with troops advancing
over them through smoke, and dropping as they came; or a hillock and a
gun and a few figures lying bandaged—perhaps with the very bandages that
Emily had made—and that was Victory, and would end someday in “The
Soldier’s Return,” and a dinner in the village. Such a dinner! The
sisters were at their best at such times; no one could be cross with
them; but in private life, during peace, Evan found them trying beyond
words. He was suffering from reaction against their village interests
when he met Evangeline, and listened to her impersonal prattle of
sunshine and wide spaces of the earth where parties are unknown and no
man is obliged to ask the nymph of his choice how many theatres she has
been to. Then, as we know, Evangeline encouraged him. She wouldn’t let
him keep himself to himself as he had always done. She forced him, in
the name of politeness to his General’s daughter, to say something, and
it had to be something true. She refused all substitutes for his
treasures; so he brought them out one at a time, and she handled them so
respectfully, owing to a “gentleman’s” instinct, which was part of her
inheritance from Cyril, that in the end he married her; married her,
poor dear, supposing her to be what he called a lady. Then after a time
they began to quarrel. He said his nice new rattle was spoiled, his lady
was not ladylike. She always behaved “like a gentleman” towards him, but
that wasn’t right; she must behave like a lady. Then Evangeline said
that she had done nothing to the rattle. It was just as it was when he
first got it. So he pointed to Mrs. Vachell and said that was what he
wanted his rattle to look like, a ladylike woman who could understand a
man’s idea of the way he wanted his sons brought up. They fought battles
and separated in fear of the darkness that came down over everything
after that and now——. “Really, really,” she thought, “it is too silly
for anything. He knows by now that Mrs. Vachell was having him on and
never cared twopence for what he said. If he could know that I love him
he might see that his rattle isn’t broken at all. After all, we were
happy—. Ivor doesn’t seem to mind very much whether he is approved of or
not. Evan wouldn’t find his ‘moulding’ made much difference in a year or
two’s time, and Father says Ivor is all right; he is not afraid of
things and tells the truth; and perhaps Evan might let him alone if he
came back now. What a good thing Susan is a girl. I don’t think he would
be so keen about bringing her up to be ladylike after coming such a
cropper. Oh, dear! I do wish we could begin all over again.” She
remembered the daily event of Evan’s homecoming when they were at Drage;
the pleasure of his being in to lunch unexpectedly; his atrocious
singing while he had a hot bath; the general disturbance in every room;
the comfortable, foolish conversations; the friendly disputes and dear
kisses; one or two tiresome occurrences, as when there was a drunken
cook to be dealt with and people coming to dinner and Evan was so decent
and helpful. Then a happy, out-of-door summer, and later on their
eagerness about Ivor. After that, Evan began to shun the nursery
foolishness and she had got bored by his details of tinkering with the
little car he bought. They had gone to Millport one Christmas and Ivor
had screamed a good deal, and the nurse complained. There were no
complaints now. Everything went like clockwork, and life was dull as
ditchwater with no man to promote irrationality by treating all episodes
with common sense. No household can be really merry without someone to
supply the spectacle of common sense, meeting with little accidents from
the mischievous contradictions of the human heart. Presently David came
in.

“You can’t see to read there, can you?” he said.

“I wasn’t reading,” she answered. “I was wondering. I must do something
about Evan, do you know? It isn’t really a quarrel if you come to think
of it.”

David looked at her inquiringly, and sat down on the window seat. “I
wonder what I had better do. Go out to him, or what?”

“The children would be all right with us here, but I suppose you would
want them,” he said. “Your husband has never thought of leaving the
army, has he? He could get something to do in England that would
probably pay him better.”

“What sort of thing?” she asked.

“I don’t know, but I could find out. I know some engineering people.”

Evangeline was silent. “I haven’t the least idea when it began,” she
said, after a few minutes’ thought.

“Have you tried writing to him?” he suggested.

“No, not yet.”

“Does he know about Susan?”

“Dicky wrote,” said Evangeline.

“There is no difficulty in getting out of the army,” he remarked.

“But how am I to put that? What shall I say?”

“Just tell him,” said David; “there’s no difficulty in that.”

“Oh, David!” said Evangeline in despair, “don’t go on saying there’s no
difficulty in anything. I daresay there isn’t if you can do the things,
but just think of it! He went away in the blackest huff you ever saw,
and all about nothing, so there is, in a way, nothing to begin on. I
can’t say, ‘Are you still angry?’ because he must be, or he would have
written. I can’t say, ‘I am not angry any more,’ because I wasn’t. I was
depressed and frightened to death.”

David sat with his hands in his pockets, slowly swinging his legs and
gazing at the floor, wrapped in thought. “I don’t think I should think
at all,” he advised. “I should just take a pen and write.”

“Would you take a J pen or a quill pen?” Evangeline inquired, while she
tossed the volume of “Alice” backwards and forwards.

“Either,” he replied. “There’s no difficulty in that.” She all but threw
the book at his head, but refrained. “No difficulty at all,” he
repeated, with his eye on the book.

“Can I say you thought he could get a job in England?” she said.

“Yes, if you like.”

“But do you think I had better?”

“I shouldn’t begin with it,” said David.

“But you think I might put it in at the end?”

“I should see how the letter looks when it is done. If it seems to fit,
put that in.”

“I suppose you are doing your best to be helpful.”

“I’d do anything I could for you.”

“But you don’t know how frightening he is when he just turns his back.
Suppose he says, ‘No’.”

“Then you might have to go out there.”

“What! and just walk up to him?”

“Yes, or else wait till he came in.”

“And what should I say?”

“You’d have to tell him you had come.”

“I see.”

“I am going to see where Dicky is,” he said, getting off the window
seat. “I really came in to look for her. You had better have a light.”
He brought a small lamp over from the writing-table and fastened it to a
switch beside her. Then he got a blotting book and some paper and
envelopes and took a fountain pen from his pocket. “That will write,
you’ll find,” he said, as he laid the things by her and then he went
out.

She took up the paper and turned it over; paused, and took up the pen.
It was rather like the preliminaries to a letter written by planchette,
when the fingers are loose upon the board and the eye fixed on vacancy.
Presently she began and wrote a few words rapidly, stopped, wrote again,
and this time she was off. She filled the four sides of the paper with
what she wrote, and then folded it, screwing up her eyes resolutely. “I
daren’t read it,” she said to herself, and pushed it, with shaking
fingers, into the envelope, stuck it down and addressed it. Then she
went into the hall and opened a cupboard, groped in the dark for a coat,
and took the first she touched, which happened to be David’s. She
slipped her arms into it, and without stopping for fastenings, wrapped
it round her and opened the outer door. The pillar box was about twenty
yards away and the letter was posted before anything but the speed of
her actions had time to guide her thoughts. When it was done she felt as
if she had given the world a kick and sent a villa or two toppling about
her ears. “Oh!——” she thought, and “Oh——! suppose it doesn’t work!” She
ran back into the house and flung David’s coat upon a seat without
thinking. Then she went to the drawing-room and drew the curtains and
sat down by the fire. “Suppose I should have to go out,” she thought.
“Suppose he wouldn’t look at me. Suppose he doesn’t care for old times
after all.” She was still sitting there when Lady Varens came in. “I
thought there was no wind this afternoon,” she remarked, “but there is
something; I think it must be suction, because there is not a twig
stirring, but my hat was drawn off my head and my eyes are full of sand.
Have you been out?”

“Only to the letter box,” said Evangeline. “I wrote to Evan and raced
out to post it before I had time to think.”

“What made you do that?” Lady Varens asked.

“David,” she answered. “He kept repeating that there was no difficulty.
If anyone goes on saying a thing often enough I begin to believe it, and
he went on and on.”

“But I don’t understand yet,” Lady Varens said. “What sort of a letter
was it?”

“Just a nice letter. There are a great many things that he may have
forgotten. I haven’t. It was all right, you know, once.”

“David thinks Evan might leave the army,” she went on presently. “I
shouldn’t have to go out then—unless he won’t answer.”

“What would he do if he left?” asked Lady Varens.

“I don’t know, but David seemed to have some idea in his mind.”

“Then I expect if he seemed to, he had. If he goes after a fox there
generally is one.”

                  *       *       *       *       *

The post to Egypt is not a very long one, but measured by the emotions
Evangeline went through between the earliest day when Evan’s answer
could be expected, and the day when it came, the interval was about a
year and a half. The extra length of time was put in three strips. One
between the moment when the postman knocked at the front door and the
time it took the maid to examine and bring up the letters. The second
was when Evangeline was out in the afternoon and remembered that another
post would be there when she got back; it took the length of several
days to look at the letters on the hall table as she crossed the
threshold and judge from their appearance whether they were all
circulars. The third age was when she and Teresa were talking in their
bedrooms before going to bed and went through their nightly review of
all the things he would be likely to say, and compared them with the
likelihood of his saying nothing at all. The nights were all right, for
Evangeline, when in health, would sleep though the earth cracked
asunder. One day people came to lunch and stayed talking, so she did not
go out, and the maid brought the letters to Lady Varens before anyone
had remembered the postman.

“Here’s yours, Evangeline,” Lady Varens said, passing it to her. “Do you
know whether the children have gone out yet? I wanted them to call at
the butcher’s for me. He didn’t send the mutton I ordered this morning.”

“I’ll go and see,” said Evangeline, and she carried off her letter. Ten
minutes or a quarter-of-an-hour went by, and then Ivor came in dressed
for going out.

“Mother’s being a dog on the stairth,” he said. “It’s dangerous; you’d
better not go past, but we’re going to do your message now if Nurth can
get past.”

“Can’t you say your s’s yet, darling?” said the visitor. “Well, I’m
quite shocked! Come and tell me where you are going.”

“Can’t thtop,” said Ivor. “You oughtn’t to path remarkth. Good-bye.”

He went out, leaving the door open, and Teresa got up and shut it. She
heard cacklings from the baby and Ivor and respectful protests from the
nurse near the top landing. “Now go off,” she heard Evangeline say in a
tone she had nearly forgotten. “I don’t know where the dog has gone;
probably to the butcher’s. You may find him there.” Teresa shut the door
behind her. “Chips!” she called gently, “shall I come up or are you
coming down?”

“I don’t know what I am going to do,” said a dishevelled head through
the banisters. “What about those people? ‘Massacre them all!’ as the
Peace Delegate said.” Nurse, carrying the baby, brushed past with an
apology, and went down, herding Ivor before her.

“It is quite all right,” said Evangeline. “Very much all right.
Excessively all right.” Teresa sat down on a lower step.

“David is clever, isn’t he?” she remarked with pleasure.

“I thought of it first,” said Evangeline. “He only suggested writing.”

“Well what is going to happen? Are you going out or what?”

“No, he says Joseph Price offered him a job in their works when the
regiment was sent out, but he refused. If he can still get it he will
clear out.”

“Why did he refuse it before?” asked Teresa.

“Because of Ivor I think—but we won’t go into that.”

“Where is the Price place? Would you have to be in Millport?”

“No, it is a new one they have started somewhere near London. I forget
what the name is; it is somewhere I never heard of except that I know
some famous person was born there.”

“Hush!” said Teresa. “They’re coming out. Let me up, quick!” They both
disappeared into Evangeline’s room as the drawing-room door opened.

“Yes, he’s a thoroughly decent f’ller,” said Joseph Price to his father,
that evening. “Marv’llous engineer, I’m told. But ’f course, it’s just
’s you like.”

“What does he want to leave the army for?” inquired Mr. Price
suspiciously. “Nothing fishy about it, I suppose? The army’s a very good
profession for a man that has got up in it.”

“’T’s not lucrative, very,” observed Joseph, “nor int’resting exactly, I
should think. And Egypt’s a tedious sort of place; nothing t’ do except
learn about it and so on; th’ sort of thing Vachell’s good at. You know,
so far as Hatton’s concerned I c’n understand a man pr’ferring to use
his intell’gence in the panoply of war, rather than th’ executive;
specially if there’s nothing t’ execute, if you see what I mean. And,
aft’r all, the sort of thing he’d be doing f’r us might be useful in all
sorts of ways in ’nother war. There’s no earthly reason, if you come t’
think of it, why he shouldn’t join up again ’n that case and take th’
thing up where he left it.”

“Yes, yes,” said Mr. Price, “but that’s not the point. What I want to
find out is, has he any business capacity apart from this talent?”

“’Mense capacity, I b’lieve,” said Joseph. “It’s his strong point.”

“How do you know? What experience have you of him?”

“When I was at Drage the f’llers talked of nothing else. He was the very
man that ought to have taken over your plant then.”

“But surely he was in France at that time,” said the perplexed parent.

“Yes, I know, but everyone was going backwards and forwards all th’
time, and they all knew what th’ others were doing. There was a story
about him, I r’member——”

“Well?” said Mr. Price, as his son stopped.

“No, you must get him t’ tell it you himself; I might spoil it. But kait
sairysly, Dad, he’s the very f’ller you’re looking for.”

“Why are you so keen about this?” asked Mr. Price, frowning to himself.
“You’re not after the wife, are you, eh?”

“No, my dear dirty old man, I’m not, and you mustn’t say that kind ’f
thing now; ’t’s not done.”

“I don’t see why not,” his father remarked. “There’s nothing to be
ashamed of. I remember a time when a lot of jobs were handled that way,
but people are mealy-mouthed now. Well, write and say we’ll try him, if
you like.”

“I’ve his letter ’f acceptance here, as a matt’r of fact,” said Joseph.
“Subject, of course, t’ your approval. I sounded him more ’r less befur
he went away, but it didn’t appeal t’ him then. However, Egypt’s kait
’mpossible they tell me, f’r a young family; flies get int’ the milk,
’n’ so on. I’ll fix it up with him for you, ’f you like. By th’ bye,
when exactly d’ we clear out ’f here?”

“In June,” replied his father. “It’s a great disappointment to me, the
whole thing. I had thought of settling down here and leaving you with a
decent place to call your own. However, there are plenty more in the
market. I shouldn’t be surprised if Brackenbury didn’t come up for sale
some time, and of course this doesn’t hold a candle to it.”

“If you’re thinking of me, I’d leave it,” said Joseph. “You know, the
thing’s hardly done ’t all now. You won’t find any decent f’llers left
in houses like this in a year or two, I b’lieve. Nobody’s got ’ny money,
except a few people like you, and you might b’ left stranded here with
practic’lly no one to talk to. Personally, I should say th’ thing to do
is to live ’s quietly and comf’rtably as possible, and say we’ve lost
th’ money. You’d find yourself in a far better set t’-morrow.”

“Tut! nonsense!” said his father.

“’T’s true, I ’ssure you. I’ve been sairysly c’nsidering putting in a
couple ’f hours a day at the ’lectric light plant at Brackenbury. Th’
Duke’s fairf’lly keen on getting his daughters off, and they won’t look
’t anybody ’nless he’s a mechanic ’r dustman or that kind ’f thing. Two
’f them are starting ’n old-fashioned inn and calling it ‘Th’ Star ’nd
Garter.’ They want t’ have th’ old f’ller’s trophies framed t’ stick up
outside. ’T’s an awf’lly jolly little idea ’f you come t’ think of it.”

We will here leave Mr. Price to his reflections.




                              CHAPTER XXII


“Well now, tell me,” said Mrs. Carpenter, drawing her chair near to Mrs.
Vachell’s tea-table. “What is all this about the Hattons, do you know?”

“I haven’t heard anything,” said Mrs. Vachell. “What have they, or
rather, what has she, been doing?”

“Haven’t you heard that he is coming home?”

“Let me see, where was it he went to? Egypt, wasn’t it? I haven’t seen
Evangeline for some time.”

“Amy,” Mrs. Carpenter said earnestly, wedging her large face close up to
Mrs. Vachell, “tell me now—you know I never repeat things—what did
happen then? You know people say all sorts of things, and some of them
have really said so much about you that I want to be able to contradict
them.”

“You can contradict them all, certainly,” said Mrs. Vachell.

“I may do that from you, may I?”

“No, not from me, from yourself. I don’t know what they have said, but
whatever it is, I am sure you can safely say it is untrue.”

“You really had nothing to do with his going to Egypt? I was told
to-day, on the very best authority, that you had sent him off because
Evangeline—you know those young wives—they can’t bear anyone even to
look at their husbands, can they? Do you know, I thought she was quite
strange in her manner one evening at our house when he would talk to me
all the time about India. We said something about the heat, and I
remember I thought to myself, ‘Yes, my dear boy, you would find it very
hot indeed out there with a wife who looks after you with those eyes!’
Why, half the women at any station would run after him on purpose, if
they saw she was jealous.”

“Yes,—women!” said Mrs. Vachell. “How these Christians love one another,
don’t they? We are a very united sex when we are running with the hounds
to show what the hare can do to please them.”

“Then it really wasn’t you who made him go to Egypt?” Mrs. Carpenter
persisted.

“No. I am very much flattered at being mistaken for the War Office, but
it wasn’t me. I should like to take the credit for ridding the country
of the dullest regiment in England, but I am afraid I can’t truthfully.”

“That is very sarcastic of you, dear Amy, but I know you don’t like
soldiers,” said Mrs. Carpenter affectionately. “You have never mixed
with them enough to know how honest and simple they are. What do you
think of General Fulton, though, really and truly? He is an odd sort of
man, isn’t he? I get on with him very well because I love his humour and
we have great arguments together, but I know he is not popular as a
rule. He is very naughty in the things he says to her sometimes, and she
never seems to see. Emmie Trotter doesn’t like her at all; she thinks
she is not genuine, but I don’t think that. I think she is perfectly
sincere in the work she does but I don’t think she is business-like.
Someone told me that Evan Hatton is coming back and going into business.
Had you heard of it?”

“Yes, I had heard that,” said Mrs. Vachell. “And Teresa has given up her
work with Emma and is going to study unemployment from the most
favourable standpoint, by having nothing to do. She is very lucky, I
think, though I couldn’t do it myself.”

“You mean you don’t care for the Varens’?”

“I know nothing about them one way or the other. He used to be in and
out of the University, I don’t know what for; learning to make chemical
manures perhaps; but I never saw much of him. He belongs to what Mrs.
Harding calls the ‘polo set’ and they don’t interest me.”

“Oh, now, some of them are very charming and delightful. All the
Brackenbury set are dears. Bobo, as they call him, is a splendid player
and a real dear boy. However, the Duke says he can’t afford to let him
play next year and he must do something. You have heard about the girls
setting up an inn, haven’t you? It is a pity, I think, but as Bobo says,
what are you to do? He pretends he is going to run a circus, but
seriously, I’m sure I don’t know. They can’t keep themselves in the army
now, not even in the Guards. But David Varens—how did we get off the
track——? He is all right, apparently. His father seems to have left him
plenty of money, and of course he is not extravagant like Bobo and that
terrible elder brother. Wasn’t it dreadful about him! Did you say Teresa
is going to give up all her work as soon as she marries? Now I do think
that is a great mistake, don’t you? All the more reason she should go on
with it now that she will have money. Of course I can see that she
couldn’t come in every day in the same way, but there is no reason why
she shouldn’t visit and take an interest in it all. A few meetings would
be good for her and prevent her from getting self-centred.”

The door opened and Mr. Vachell was heard to say, “Come in. I think my
wife is in here,” and Teresa walked into the room, followed by the
little man with a pile of books. “I was bringing these back,” she said
to Mrs. Vachell. “They are some that you lent to Evangeline and she had
forgotten about them. I am so sorry. I met Mr. Vachell on the step and
he brought me up, but I am afraid I mustn’t stay.”

“Yes, you must,” said Mrs. Vachell. “I haven’t seen any of you for so
long and Mrs. Carpenter was saying just now that I am given credit for
all sorts of things in your family—for Captain Hatton’s regiment being
sent to Egypt and—what else was it, Mrs. Carpenter? I have just told her
that I never see you, but she is still suspicious.”

Teresa frowned and blushed and had nothing to say for a minute. Then she
turned on Mrs. Carpenter in sudden wrath. “I do wish women wouldn’t be
sweet when they want to make mischief,” she said. “I never knew anything
like this place. It is like a lot of flies walking in muck and then
settling on the jam.” The expression on Mrs. Carpenter’s face moved her
to compunction, and she stopped. After all, the woman had had children
and battled with pain and death and denied herself for her
fellow-creatures in more ways than Teresa, for she had no love of them
to carry her over the discomforts of bearing other people’s burdens. If
she did gossip and preach and plume herself by the way, she was entitled
to that relaxation, knowing no other. So long as Britons never shall be
slaves let us allow the Potters their public-house, the Carpenters their
tea-table, the Fisks their blood and the passionate philanthropists
their feast of reason and flow of soul. The Emma Gainsboroughs will go
on patiently and methodically clearing up, taking no notice of
themselves, and by-and-bye, as Susie so often justly remarked, “Anything
that is really good is sure to make the rest seem so small in
comparison.”

“What was it you wanted to know?” she asked Mrs. Carpenter gently. “I
would so much rather tell you, if you are interested, than have you
going about asking all sorts of people whether they have heard
anything.”

“Dear little Teresa!” Mrs. Carpenter said, recovering her usual smile.
“What a set-down for poor me! You fierce little thing! Well then, since
you ask, tell me what Evangeline has been doing to set all the tongues
wagging? I shouldn’t have liked to ask you, dear, until you offered me
your confidence so sweetly. I appreciate it, I assure you. But you know
it is distressing to hear a thing hinted at everywhere and not to be
able to put it right authoritatively. Now we will have it all fair and
square, shall we? Sit down there and tell me——have they separated?”

“No, they haven’t,” said Teresa. “Mrs. Vachell lent Evangeline those
books that I have brought back, and they are all written to dish up rows
that needn’t happen if people’s minds weren’t as stuffy as mouldy
cupboards. Evangeline’s is like a wide open door, you know; she is not
at all stuffy; but she wants so much to have everyone enjoy everything
they can that she took on the idea of women being oppressed, and of
course, wanted to help to let them out, as she thought. That is true,
isn’t it?” she turned to Mrs. Vachell.

Mrs. Vachell shrugged her shoulders. “It is true as far as it goes,” she
said. “Yes.”

“Well then, you know Evan Hatton, don’t you,” Teresa continued. She had
forgotten her anger against Mrs. Carpenter, and was trying to tell the
story as if she were in a Court of Justice, presenting Evangeline’s case
and Evan’s as one against the world. “He is not so naturally anxious for
everyone to be happy. In fact he doesn’t mind whether they are enjoying
themselves or not, so long as he thinks they are doing what has got to
be done. He got really worried about her trying to undo all the doors
and locks everywhere. I think he got a sort of panic about it; as if she
would or could possibly have done any harm! Anyhow, he thought it was
the thing to do, so they had it out; that is all. And now he is coming
back. They hated being away from each other, and he is going into Mr.
Price’s engineering place, a new one he has started near London. Now
aren’t you sorry you helped to make people think there was some nasty,
frowsy mystery?”

“That is nonsense, dear Teresa,” Mrs. Carpenter protested. “You ought
not to let yourself run away with such ideas. But I am more than
delighted it is so simple as you say. You know Mrs. Trotter had quite a
different impression, and I must say Evangeline talked to her a good
deal when you were all together that summer.”

“Yes, that is what she does,” Teresa admitted regretfully. “She talks to
everybody as if they were all straight and decent, and she doesn’t
realise what worms some of them are. Of course they just mix whatever
she says with slime.”

Mrs. Carpenter gave the little laugh which she used to express offence.
“Hardly flattering to her audience, is it?” she said.

“No, I didn’t mean to flatter them,” said Teresa. “They can do that for
themselves when they have finished. I was telling you how it looks to me
when I know how Evangeline loves all sunny and kind things.”

“I hear you are going to be married and give up all your work,” said
Mrs. Carpenter. “I must congratulate you and I hope you will be very
happy. Aldwych is a lovely place and David Varens is quite delightful I
think. You find you can’t keep on with your poor people, don’t you? With
so many new interests, I daresay it is not easy for young people to
think of others.”

“Yes,” said Teresa, her cheeks glowing. “But you know you will never
make anything different out of Mrs. Potter, any more than I have.”

“Who is Mrs. Potter? I don’t remember her,” asked Mrs. Carpenter.

“There are some people called Potter in that long street—Boaling
Street—just by Emma’s office; but I don’t mean them alone. I was
thinking of them as a class, and I forgot you didn’t know them. I don’t
think either you or I are any good to them. They laugh at you for
thinking you are wiser than they are, and they think I am mad because I
keep on supposing they are feeling the same things as I do. Emma
understands everything they say and is never surprised, nor ever tells
them anything about herself, so they think she is perfectly normal and
never suspect her of being a lady. She is just ‘The lady at the depôt,’
like the girl behind the counter is ‘the young lady in the shop.’ They
go to her when they want sensible things, and I don’t suppose they have
any more theory as to why she is there than they have about any
official. They probably think she is paid by the Government.”

“And you are really sure you are not going to keep it up, even twice a
week?” said Mrs. Carpenter. Then, without waiting for further answer,
she changed the subject. “By-the-bye, Mr. Vachell, can you tell me what
the Sphinx really is? Someone was asking the other day, and I said you
could tell us if anyone could.”

Teresa excused herself and went away, depressed by what had happened.
She felt crushed by the weight of the heaviest burden that society
brings, the failure to impress a living thought on a dead comprehension.
She had offered sincerity, and been met with the corpse-like hand of
offence.

“Both those Fulton girls have been very much spoiled,” said Mrs.
Carpenter, when she had shut the door.

When Teresa got home she found David sitting stiffly in a chair beside
Susie, who was knitting a small coat for her grandchild. There had been
a conversation between them which it may be worth recording, and Teresa
arrived at a critical moment. Susie’s knitting was a curious
performance, and David, sadly at a loss for an occupation while he
waited for Teresa, had watched it and wondered in what way it differed
from his mother’s. Lady Varens at work with needles suggested Penelope
filling in time to avert the intrusion of emotions. Susie evidently
undertook the thing as part of the equipment of a rôle. It was like all
household affairs performed by stage characters, the dusting of a room
by a saucy maid who flicks the mantelpiece twice and then gets on with
her lines, the dinner-party where everything is swept away after the
first morsel of fish has been tasted. Susie’s knitting was the
“business” connected with the rôle of “Mrs. Fulton; beautiful, refined,
well-dressed, awaiting the eventide of life with the calm philosophy of
one who has known much suffering.” She was now “discovered seated,
centre R.f., expecting the return of her husband, a typical twentieth
century rake.”

“You do a great deal of knitting, don’t you?” David remarked at last.

“Not as much as I should like,” said Susie. “I hope that when you and
Dicky are married you will encourage her to do something of that kind in
the evening. If she is giving up all her other work she will need
something to take its place. You don’t sing or play at all, do you?”

“No,” he said, feeling some apology was needed, “I don’t.”

“I almost think I should take up some interest if I were you,” she said
gently. “Of course there is no doubt that there is no happiness like
being married if people understand each other, but at the same time it
is impossible not to feel the need for change of thought sometimes. You
are not fond of wine, are you, David?”

“No, not at odd times, thanks very much,” David replied. He was mildly
startled by the question and wondered what she was driving at.

“And no more is Dicky. She never cared for it at all, and yet Evangeline
would always take a glass when it was offered her. It gives people quite
a different outlook. I don’t know how far you have studied Dicky’s
character but I understand her, in a way, better than Evangeline. Dicky
takes a much wider view of spiritual things.”

“Yes, I expect so,” said David, polite and noncommittal.

“And just for that reason I am a little sad at her giving up all her
work among the poor. I am afraid she will feel the want of it.” David
was struck dumb, so she went on, supposing his silence to be due to a
wish to hear more. “She has no artistic interests, you see. When I was
her age I had a great many. I was devoted to music, for instance, and if
I had not fallen in love with my husband the course of my life might
have been quite different. I hope you will forgive these little bits of
personal history, dear David, but I should be so glad if they helped you
in any way to clear up difficulties that may come when the ‘first fine
careless rapture,’ as I heard it described the other day at a wonderful
lecture of Professor Gaskie’s—I thought of you two at once—when that is
over. I felt it so much when I had to give up all that side of things
when I married. You see my husband has his wine, for instance, and his
men; he had a great number of old friends when we first married, whom I
must say, I thought extremely uninteresting. They talked by the hour
about foxes; not in connection with all the beautiful country life that
you have, for he never hunted except when he was asked to stay with
people, but they were always talking about that kind of thing. Some of
them were purely politicians and some very much worse. Not the old
intellectual type like Disraeli, who really cared for beautiful things,
but the sort who run away from a drawing-room and hide themselves
somewhere with decanters and laugh and roar and sing half the night. I
can’t tell you how much I used to feel the want of something else. Then
the children came, and of course it was all right, and I had friends who
were very kind, so that I could go now and then and hear music and talk
about the things I cared for. That is why I have taken up the work I do
here. It is not an intellectual place, as you see; and those concerts!
Have you ever been to them?”

“Yes, sometimes,” said David. “I thought they were supposed to be rather
good.”

“The performers are often very good,” she agreed, “but there is an
atmosphere about the place that I don’t like; a want of appreciation.
Have you noticed that there is often quite a fog in the hall? I have
wondered sometimes whether it was anything like what Professor Bole was
describing the other day. I forget how he put it, but I thought of those
concerts and wondered whether people’s tastes—their love of rich dinners
and wine and all that, had been chased out of them by the music and was
wanting to get back and preventing them from hearing it fully. Dear
little Dicky used to find the fog in the town so depressing when we
first came, and I expect she felt the same as I do. Now Evangeline is
different altogether, more like her father. She will throw off anything
of that sort in a minute and be all ready for a gallop or a dance or
party. Haven’t you noticed that? And yet I always think any art is such
a happy thing. One has no real need of other people——” Her knitting had
gone down on to her lap long ago.

“No, perhaps not,” said David.

“I am so glad you think so,” she continued in her purry voice. “For of
course, you will be a great deal cut off in the country. What is that
Mrs. Lake like whom I used to meet now and then? She seemed to have
quite taken up the Prices. She is very typical of the society round
there, isn’t she?”

“I don’t know much about her,” said David. “But I believe she is all
right.”

“Dicky will find friends, of course,” said Susie. “One can always find
some good in everybody if one is prepared to look for it.”

“Yes, I don’t think there will be any difficulty,” said David.

“What do you think about Evan going into this business of Mr. Price’s?”
she asked.

“It ought to be quite easy I think,” he answered. “It is what he likes.”

“Yes, but Evan does like such curious things,” said Susie. “His is a
most interesting nature; so upright; but I often wonder how Evangeline,
with her very sunny disposition, chose anyone with such very strong
religious views. Religion always seems to me to be a thing that should
be so helpful in making it easier to stand up against things that go
wrong. One sees so much suffering in a place like this that unless one
can be sure that it is all intended and for the best, one would be
inclined to dwell too much on it. Now Evan, it seems to me, instead of
seeing it like that, often makes it sadder by supposing things to be
worse than they are. He used to take the gloomiest view of poor little
Ivor in his childish naughtiness, though he is really a good little boy
and very obedient if one just smooths over difficulties with a little
tact. Nurse is not always very wise with him. She goes on persisting at
the time, instead of waiting until he has forgotten and letting him do
whatever it is of his own accord, when he is interested in something
else. That is Evan’s mistake I am sure. He is always on the look out for
sad things and it makes him so difficult to interest. Now my husband is
all the other way. He won’t believe that anything matters, and I think
that Evangeline is rather like him. They have no sympathy for any aims
beyond the present. Do you know Mrs. Vachell well?”

“Not very,” David replied.

“Do you like her?”

“I don’t think she wants people to either like or dislike her, so I
haven’t got so far,” he said. He would have been candid with Teresa or
Evangeline or many other people, but he had a deep-rooted distrust of
Susie as a receptacle for words. They meant so little to her that she
was liable to pass them on as coinage in conversation and give no goods
of her own in exchange, so there was no bargain that she was likely to
respect between her and whoever she talked to. He felt this
instinctively and had no dealings with her, not being willing, like
Cyril, to declare himself bankrupt for the joy of riotous living.

“She believes very much in women,” Susie went on. “Her idea is that some
day all those things that I was talking about, the love of finer tastes
and of children, and all the confidence and dislike of harshness and
ugliness that woman feels so much will come more to the front and have
more influence. There may be something in it, for although I dislike the
idea of women going into the world, still, if they can do any good I am
sure it is right for them not to hold back; for the sake of the
unmarried ones who have to earn a living. It does seem terrible, don’t
you think, that there should be no way for those who are not
intellectual to live except by pleasing men in the wrong way; because
that is what it comes to, whether they are married or not. And if they
are not good looking it is even worse. They ought to be as well paid for
cultivating the higher side of life as for pandering to the lower. A
loving nature is of as much value to the world as a brain that invents
war material; and, as it is, men only use it as a toy for every sort of
coarser instinct.”

“But does Mrs. Vachell suggest a sort of spiritual—market?” David asked,
hesitatingly, roused at last out of his burrow by the logical
enticements that Susie had been aiming at him. “Aren’t there enough
people who sell themselves in that way already?”

“I don’t think you have quite understood my point, dear David,” she
replied, and at that moment Teresa came in and found them.




                             CHAPTER XXIII


Teresa and Joseph Price were going back to Millport together in the
rickety little train that joggled up and down the coast every few hours.
Teresa had spent the day with the Varens’ and Joseph had called about
tea time with some information from his father for Evangeline about her
husband’s new work. Evan was expected in about ten days, and was to take
up his work at first under Mr. Price’s own eye before being entrusted
with the final appointment at a distance. Joseph and Teresa were each
occupied in trying to hold an evening paper still enough in the dim
light to read the last news of a riot that had broken out in the
Midlands over a labour dispute. They had hardly deciphered more than a
few lines when the train wriggled itself to a standstill, and Mr. Fisk
junior jumped into the carriage. He threw himself down in a corner and
took some papers from his pocket and then recognised his companions.
“How do you do?” said Teresa. “I don’t think you can see anything by
this lamp. We were trying to read a paper, but it is no good.”

“How d’ you do, Fisk?” said Joseph. “Been playing golf down here?”

“No,” said Mr. Fisk, frowning. “What I have been doing is a game to some
but deadly earnest to others. If it ends in bloodshed the responsibility
will lie with those who treated it as a game.” He settled himself into
his corner and glared at Teresa.

“Kait sairysly, though, Fisk, what d’ you think of this?” Joseph asked,
tapping his paper. “D’ you think it’ll come t’ anything, what?”

“It has come to something already,” said Fisk, “as you will find if you
study your newspaper. And it will come to something that you have not
yet experienced, the search for a crust of bread by those who have
treated the misery of their fellow-creatures as a game.”

“Yes, but you know, that won’t do any good,” said Joseph. “Somebody’s
got t’ hold the purse, or the money’s bound to get lost. That’s been
gone into pretty thoroughly. You and I can’t decide the thing ’n a
railway carriage, like this. Now I’ll tell you a thing ’s an instance.
My father, the other day, was thinking of buying a big place—since
you’ve turned us out—” he added politely to Teresa, “and I said t’ him,
‘Don’t. I don’t want the thing. In a year or two’s time we shan’t have a
soul left t’ talk to. All the f’llers we know will be in trade or
driving their own engines and so on, and the people at the top will be
the sort that nobody c’n ask out and all that. ’T’s abs’lutely not
done,’ I said, ‘’t’s played out.’ Th’ only thing t’ do now, ’f you want
to be in it, is t’ cover yourself with grease and get up at th’ most
ungodly hours. Th’ old aristocracy won’t look at you if you offer them a
really decent dinner. At my club th’ other day, I met a f’ller ordering
tripe and onions; ’t’s a fact.”

“Oh, don’t be so stupid,” said Teresa angrily. “You can’t always go on
shifting from one branch to another as soon as anyone else sits down on
yours. All people want is to be let alone to do anything they are able
to do, and it is snobbery like yours that makes it impossible.”

“No, no, really, I assure you,” Joseph protested. “That’s not Fisk’s
idea, I’m sure, is it?” He appealed to the indignant spectacled form
opposite. “What? I heard about you th’ other day, you know. I was down
canv’ssing your way for my father and turned up ’t your house. Your
father gave us his vote—’t’s a fact, abs’lutely—because he said he was
f’d up with socialism. ‘My son’s one of them,’ he said, ‘and he won’t
work, and he objects t’ me and my wife working.’ Now there’s snobb’ry
for you ’f you like, I think, what? I’m willing t’ associate with people
who won’t associate with themselves. What are you t’ do?”

“My father knows nothing about economic questions,” said Fisk, with
dignity. “He has been ground down to the level he is at now, but he has
never been below into the pit from which a class must either become
submerged or rise above the one that is holding it down. They may rise
through blood——”

“Oh, do stop, Mr. Fisk,” Teresa implored him, “I believe England got on
a lot better when people only argued at elections and went on with
things in between. But look here. Will you tell me what you get paid for
stopping people working and I will find you something to do where you
shall get the same for being of some use. I have promised to find
someone who will give their whole time to doing properly what I did so
badly in scraps for Miss Gainsborough. You have had an education which I
haven’t, and you have much longer legs——”

“No, pardon me, I don’t approve of palliative methods,” said Mr. Fisk.

“Well, you won’t argue any more till we get out, will you?” asked
Teresa. “How are the dormice?”

He launched into the subject with enthusiasm. He forsaw a great future
for dormice in the field of knowledge when their habits had been studied
more. After he got out at the next station Joseph remarked:

“Kerious sort of f’ller, isn’t he? Typical of a kind that’s dying out, I
b’lieve. In a year or two you’ll find that sort of thing’ll hardly be
done at all. Abs’lutely the latest thing already is t’ work at something
and it’ll come in, you’ll find, and then everybody’ll want to do it for
a bit. Fisk’ll be as jealous as poss’ble when he finds someone else has
collared his little shovel and his paint pot and all that, and that
there isn’t any loose money about to pay him for talking. It’s a very
kerious thing how ’n idea gets out ’f date. I don’t know if you’re
interested in morals and all that?”

“Go on,” said Teresa, “I shall be grateful if you will make me really
cross with you.”

“How’s that?” inquired Joseph.

“It is like a sneeze that won’t come off—but never mind; you have worked
me up into an explosion sometimes. What were you going to say?”

“I said I didn’t know if you are int’rested in morals; because I b’lieve
very strongly that illicit love affairs and all that sort ’f thing’s
going t’ be frightfully stale, what? Don’t you think so? Of course it’ll
go on happ’ning; you can’t prevent it; but people will have t’ run the
risk of being thought middle class. I’m fairf’lly bored with th’ idea of
sex, myself, aren’t you?”

“No, I must say I am glad there are two,” said Teresa. “But then I am
‘fairf’lly bored,’ as you call it, with the idea of anything being
‘middle class.’ Perhaps that is newer still. I hope not for your sake.
However, in the meantime I am ever so grateful for what you have done
for Evan. My sister is so happy about having him back and that he is
going to do something he will like so awfully. I hope it won’t bore your
father, having him there.”

“Oh no, my father’s never bored,” said Joseph. “That’s really th’ thing
about him that bores me sometimes, ’f you know what I mean.”

The train stopped for the last time and Teresa got out into the
brightly-lit station. Outside it there was semi-darkness, and the
mud dripping imperceptibly. Along the slimy pavements three or four
of the little boys to whom she had ladled out hot-pot and plum
pudding ran to and fro, shouting the latest news. “—’clock
‘Echo’—special edi—shun! six-o’clock—‘Echo’—’clock—edi—shun!
‘Echo’—riots—in—Blankshire—forty-seven—persons—injured!
‘Echo’—edi—shun—serious-rioting—in Midland—town—forty-seven—’ere you
are, sir.—’clock—‘Echo’——” and away he sped. “I wonder if he has got
any awfulness buttoned into his waistcoat for Grannie to-night,”
thought Teresa, “or whether she died——. Shall I ever be able to
stand knowing that ‘Grannie’ and the waistcoat are there and I am
with David, and not doing anything?”

“I met Joseph Price to-day,” she said to her father when she got home.
“He has really been very good about Evan. I believe he invented the
whole idea himself. Mr. Price seems suspicious about it and wants to
have Evan at the works here first, to make sure that he is all right.
David says he is quite sure that he is in fact what is wanted, and there
won’t be any difficulty, as he keeps on saying, but how Joseph knew, or
why he took the trouble, I can’t imagine. He is such an absolute ass and
yet he seems to pick up ideas and he makes the old man do just what he
likes. He is also the greatest snob and time-server, and yet he will do
anything or go anywhere for anybody for no reason. Fisk was in the
train, raving about blood as usual, and Joseph said he was going to ask
him to stay for a week-end and meet some of the people who are coming
down about the election. Joseph will sit there quite undisturbed by his
family and get any amount of amusement out of the fluttering in the
dovecot there will be, and Lady Varens says that Mrs. Lake—the select
Mrs. Lake—thinks he would make a nice son-in-law. She thought that he
liked Lady Angela Brackenbury who started the inn, the Star and Garter.
They wanted to have the Duke’s Star and Garter framed as a sign outside.
I am getting so muddled with them all. I couldn’t go and live there if
it weren’t for David. Joseph told me he was bored with sex, so I
suppose, as he can’t find anything newer than a woman to marry, it won’t
be either of them and the Price money will have to go to anyone who
marries the girls after Joseph has lolled about on it enough. It is
distracting to ravel out.”

“You’ve got an abnormal love of the social order,” said Cyril. “You’d
much better leave it alone and concentrate on your man. He’ll repay it
with far more gratitude.”

“I don’t want gratitude,” she said. “It is just the Lady Bountiful idea
that has annoyed me from the beginning. I want to feel one of a colossal
family, that’s all; not to be the housekeeper in the store cupboard or a
cow being milked.”

“Then you must put up with poor relations, and they’re always a damned
nuisance,” said Cyril. “Your mother had a great love of humanity, she
said, but her idea was more to be the head of a family of her own than
to be mixed up in a general one. Gad! she used to rope them in, too! I
never saw anything like it. And nothing about it of a grosser nature,
like your friend Joseph. All pure, unadulterated love. It’s a wonderful
gift.” He was lost in retrospect.

“Where have you wandered off to?” she asked in perplexity. “Mother had
only two of us and you said once that she wasn’t in love with you. I
have thought over that sometimes, and I think you must be wrong. I don’t
mean to say you oughtn’t to have said it, because I don’t want nasty
things covered up; I want them not to happen. But you were probably
talking to the gallery that time, weren’t you? People forget. Evan
forgot a lot of things that Chips remembered afterwards.”

“I wasn’t thinking about anything at all nasty,” Cyril replied. “There’s
nothing wrong with the instinct of the nesting season, and the number of
eggs laid has nothing to do with it. The selection of a mate has also
been sung by poets, so I have every right to use the comparison without
being blamed by you. Chips is another of you loving ladies,” he went on.
“That makes three of you. What a trio for one man to keep under the same
roof! No wonder that I give way sometimes.”

“Chips loves the sun, with people thrown in as something that hatches
out under it, I think,” said Teresa. “There’s not much actual family
about it—though Ivor—goodness! You talk of birds! That is nothing to
her. Do you know, I think she imagined she had hatched out the whole of
creation at once when Ivor was born. And now she lives in him in a way,
and doesn’t mind how independent he is. She never wants to hold on to
him or push him this way or that, like some mothers do. She forgets so
easily what other people think, so long as they don’t make obstacles and
set them up in front of her.”

“I daresay,” said Cyril. “Your sex amuse me very much, and I am very
fond of a great many of you. But I wish you didn’t all think so much. It
keeps one for ever tripping about for fear of disturbing a valued plan.
That’s a thing I detested during the war, having to make arrangements.
You see a thing to do and you do it or don’t. That’s the only reasonable
way.”

About a fortnight later Evangeline went to London to meet Evan. They
were to stay there for a few days while he went to see Mr. Price’s
engineering works. They were then to take rooms in Millport until after
Teresa’s wedding, and make arrangements for the future. There was not
much money to spare for the moment, and Susie had urged Evangeline to
economise by staying with them until Evan began to receive his new
income. But the sisters decided between themselves that the suggestion
held too many risks. “He does so hate being looked at,” Evangeline had
said, at the conclusion of her remarks on the subject in Teresa’s
bedroom one night.

“There is too much of what Father calls ‘damned noticing’ in this
family, isn’t there?” said Teresa. “And yet Mother never tells you she
has seen anything; she only points out what someone else has seen. And
Father never seems to see anything unless you ask him, and I don’t spy
round, but still I understand. I should hate not to be away with David.
I am so glad we are going away into another continent before we end up
among neighbours.”

“But this isn’t a honeymoon, so it ought not to matter,” said
Evangeline. “But I know you will all look so nervous if we disagree, and
since the Vachell episode I feel that Evan will suspect the devil in
every female eye he sees for a long time.”

“Mrs. Vachell is the only person I know from whom I feel absolutely cut
off,” said Teresa. “I don’t mean since the episode, but always. You and
I have thought she wasn’t human, but that is not true. She is fond—I
mean fond really—of that little Vachell. He fainted one day at his
lecture and was brought home in a cab; I don’t know if I ever told you;
and I happened to be there. She didn’t say anything hardly, but you
can’t mistake. That is all I know about her. I think from something she
said once that her father ill-treated her mother, but I am not sure. If
you had left Evan I have an idea she would have carried the
luggage—taken the blame and all that—and you would have kept Ivor even
if she had to seduce Evan and all the jury, so if you come to
principles——! She would have been burnt in the Middle Ages and Evan
would have burnt her and been burnt himself. Isn’t it a mercy there is
nothing worse than Fisk to make opinions unpleasant in this country.”
The hour was very late and honest Robert’s footsteps could be heard
coming down the street. “Certainly not; certainly not,” they said. But
neither Teresa nor Evangeline was aware of him. “But I don’t know her in
the very least,” Teresa added.

“I was a fool,” said Evangeline, reflecting. “As if it mattered!”

“As if what mattered?”

“Whether Evan understood either her or me. Things come out in the wash.
But it would be nice to live with someone whom one could say just
anything to, instead of only being in love with them, wouldn’t it? But I
suppose that hardly ever happens.”

Teresa didn’t answer.

A day arrived when Evangeline stood waiting for the train that was to
bring Evan. She was shivering and impatient, like a swimmer about to
dive on a rough day; anticipating the joy of achievement and the thrill
after stale security, but aware also of what would happen if she failed.
The noise of the station was deafening; other trains came in,
discharging crowds that pushed past her in their search for relatives
and luggage. An engine let off steam close behind her and then thudded
and puffed interminably, it seemed, until the noise added to her
nervousness and the smell of smoke and the pushing of unlovely strangers
gave her an utter revulsion against the thought of contending with
Evan’s sunlessness. She forgot everything except the weariness of
contention. All of a sudden the platform was magically clear except for
a line of porters drawn up at intervals along it. The engine was still
screeching somewhere near and now a second one appeared before her in a
rush of smoke and noise. The powerful movement of the axle, bringing the
inexorable moment, was the only thing she noticed, and then she was
fairly in the crowd, trying to remember what Evan looked like. She
caught sight of him at last, standing a little apart, with a drawn,
chilly expression of disappointment. She ran up to him, pushing porters
and passengers out of her way and caught his arm. “Here——” she said
breathlessly, “I’m here—I couldn’t find you for ages.” He smiled, and
she began to feel less at the mercy of events. He said something not
very distinctly, that was drowned in a blast from the engine. She made a
sign to him to look for his luggage, and after a time they drove away to
the hotel. Poor Evan felt as though he had been washed ashore right into
his own home after a shipwreck. He wanted to hear everything, to pick up
lost threads of small events; to hear about this new job, and Teresa’s
marriage. Evangeline found plenty to talk about over their meal, but she
was conscious all the time of the strength of the sea and that she would
have to swim again presently. She longed for a sunny beach and warm blue
ripples with no danger lurking in them. She was tired with excitement,
and all her natural distaste for effort oppressed her with a wish that
the man she loved were in charge of the situation, and not she. She
wanted to bask in the certainty that nothing she could say would matter,
and yet she knew that his face might cloud at any moment and become
chilled by a chance slip of her speech.

                  *       *       *       *       *

The story ends at the Fultons’ house a few weeks after this. Luncheon
was over and Cyril had poured himself out a glass of port and pushed the
decanter towards Evan. The Hattons were to leave Millport in ten days
after Teresa’s wedding and move into their new home. Even Mr. Price was
satisfied that there was no hanky-panky about the appointment his son
had made, and Evan’s prospects were bright. He and Evangeline had been
to lunch and the children were to go afterwards for a drive with Susie.
David was also there.

“Well, here’s luck,” said Cyril. “Luck to marriage and all it may mean
to a girl. Isn’t that it, Sue?”

“I will drink the health in my cup of coffee, I think, dear,” said
Susie. “Hadn’t you better send the wine down to this end of the table?
David may like to reply with some idea that is a little brighter.”

“I am not sure that I won’t drink Mrs. Potter’s health,” said David.
“May I, Dicky?”

“Yes, do,” she said eagerly. “And you do really mean it, don’t you?”

“Yes, of course I do,” he answered. “Where’s the difficulty?”

“No, there isn’t any, I know,” said Teresa. The door was pushed gently
open and Ivor came in. Nurse stood in the doorway holding young Susan.

“I shall be ready in about twenty minutes,” said Susie. “I must be at
the bank before it shuts. Would you like to walk up and down a little,
in the garden, Nurse, and get what sun there is till the car comes?”

The little party went out and Evan got up to watch them from the window.
“How they do wrap that child up,” he observed to Evangeline. “Just look
at the forest of shawls in that thing. I am sure it is not good for
her.”

“Oh, Evan,” she said, wincing, “please, please don’t begin over again.
You may find the wheel of the perambulator is loose or something,” she
added hastily, to make her request sound like a kindly joke. She opened
the window to say something to the nurse, and Strickland, who had come
out into the garden, intoxicated with the atmosphere of nuptial gaiety,
was heard carolling to the baby, as she pushed the perambulator up and
down:

                   “It’s a—long, long trail a—winding
                       Unto the—land of—my dreams——”

“I always think that is so true,” said Susie with a little sigh.

------------------------------------------------------------------------




                          TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES


 1. Silently corrected obvious typographical errors and variations in
      spelling.
 2. Retained archaic, non-standard, and uncertain spellings as printed.
 3. Enclosed italics font in _underscores_.

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