“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?”