“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.”