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.