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.