“Well, I am sure, Roderick,” said Mrs. Carpenter as she turned the last page of a letter she was reading, “Evangeline Hatton seems to be laying up a nice future for herself. Emmie Trotter is staying down there with Maisie and she says that Mrs. Vachell is in and out of the Hattons’ house the whole time, influencing Evangeline to run down her husband. And that poor Evan Hatton is as blind as a bat and running after Mrs. Vachell all the time. Of course, Amy Vachell is one of those hard women who never see when men are attracted by them. All she thinks of is her social work and I have often told her it is dangerous and that in her anxiety to put women on a higher footing she forgets that men persist in remaining on the lower one and they misunderstand her motives. I knew she would get into trouble some day.” There was a note of triumph in her voice.
“Yers,” her husband answered deprecatingly over the top of his pince-nez. “Yers—yers—very foolish of her.”
“They will come to grief in the end, you will see,” said Mrs. Carpenter, as one who observes the first swallow of the season.
She met Mrs. Eric Manley that afternoon at a sale of work on behalf of an inebriates’ home in Mrs. Abel’s parish. They wandered together from stall to stall, inspecting photograph frames ornamented with landscapes in poker work, table centres and tea-cosies of hand-painted satin, pinafores edged with cheap lace, preposterous woollen garments for all ages, dreary confections in flannelette that would make a Hottentot pessimistic, dusters, packets of Lux and grate polish; everything that could most vividly recall the horrors of the Will to Live and the Desire to Decorate at Random. The two friends sat down presently to tea in a small room festooned with coloured muslin, served by ladies who were beginning to feel the running about rather a strain though great fun.
“Well, my dear, how is it that you are still here?” asked Mrs. Carpenter. “I told Mrs. Abel that it was a bad time to have the sale as everybody would be away, but she said that some of the best helpers would have more time now. Of course, we shall get off to Scotland later. I heard to-day that Evangeline Hatton and her husband are not enjoying their holiday very much, poor things. They are at Roscombe with the boy and Teresa Fulton, and the Vachells are there too. I am afraid Amy Vachell is stirring up mischief. It is a great pity for such young married things.”
“Oh, who told you?” asked Mrs. Manley.
“Emmie Trotter for one. She is quite worried about it. Captain Hatton is so dogged, you know, with that kind of foolish religious fervour. It does blind people so when it takes hold of them; they don’t seem to see anything else. Of course he is a splendid man; so upright and devoted to her. But I do think it is a great mistake to get carried away by that kind of thing.”
“And what is Mrs. Vachell after, do you suppose?” inquired her friend.
“Oh, dear Amy! I am sure I don’t know. Of course one knows that she is absolutely straight; no one could doubt that. But it is a pity, I think, the things she does sometimes—with that far-away look of hers, don’t you know? She may have encouraged Evangeline without meaning anything, and made her rebel against his very dogmatic manner. And the Professor is so silly; he really is. All that about Mrs. Harting was so absurd. She is a very intellectual woman; I get on with her splendidly, we have so much in common; and she threw herself into all his excavations and so on, and of course dear Amy was just a little—well, she didn’t like it; naturally she wouldn’t; but there was absolutely no more in it than that. However, it may have made Amy bitter and perhaps she has lashed out against men and put Evangeline up to some nonsense. I wonder if I could do any good by having a chat with her mother.”
“I should leave it alone, I think,” Mrs. Manley advised. “You won’t get anything out of Mrs. Fulton. She is so extraordinarily broad-minded and indulgent and thinks everybody means well.”
“Do you think so?” said Mrs. Carpenter, with her head on one side. “I don’t know altogether that I should have said that. Dear Susie Fulton is very shrewd and likes to keep the peace in the family, but she would very much dislike the General getting to hear anything from outside sources, and it might be best to warn her privately. What do you think?”
“Well, you might drop in,” said Mrs. Manley. “I could drive you round there if you have bought all you want now. Perhaps I had better not come in. You would prefer to talk about it alone.”
“Perhaps that would be wise,” Mrs. Carpenter agreed. “I really think it is the kind thing to do. It would be such a pity if anything got round.”
She found Susie at home and tea being cleared away. “I have had some, my dear, thank you,” said Mrs. Carpenter. “Quite an excellent tea at dear Jenny Abel’s little sale, where I was buying for all I was worth. Such a poor lot of things. I am afraid they won’t have done very well; but then they don’t manage that place at all as it should be done. They ought to call a meeting and have the whole thing laid out and make a proper appeal. It is no good patching up with little affairs like that. No one wants to buy at all nowadays; we are all overdone with sales of work. Still, the things won’t be wasted. I just pass them on to the next. Your little Teresa is not back again with you yet, I suppose?”
“No, she is still with Evangeline,” said Susie. “They are staying on as long as the weather lasts. The Vachells and the Trotters are there, too, so they are quite a pleasant little party.”
They talked nicely in this way for some time and then Mrs. Carpenter said, lowering her voice mysteriously, “You didn’t gather, did you, that there was any little difficulty with Evangeline seeing so much of dear Amy Vachell? I am not quite sure that she is just the person whom I should choose to be very much with a young mother, who, of course, wants to see everything couleur de rose.”
“Dear me, no,” Susie replied in gentle astonishment. “Is there any difficulty about anything? I didn’t know. What makes you think so?”
“My dear, it was just an impression that was whispered to me by a little bird who knows them very well. I won’t tell you whom because it wouldn’t be fair, and of course there was nothing wrong anywhere, but just the idea that Evangeline and her hubby were inclined to drift a little in opposite directions and that Amy Vachell—who is so open-hearted and sincere and has such a high opinion of women and the place they should take in the home—may perhaps have unconsciously made a little mischief. Captain Hatton believes so very strongly in the dogmatic side of religion, doesn’t he? and he may suppose that Amy goes further with him in her opinions than she does. But that is all; just to put you on your guard. It was the merest trifle that I heard, but it would be such a pity if it went any further when you as a mother could put it all right, probably, in a moment with just a word.”
“Oh, I am sure there is nothing in it,” said Susie contentedly. “People make too much of Evan’s manner, and he means nothing; it is all on the surface. He is a most delightful fellow and Evangeline is wrapped up in him. But it was so kind of you to come and tell me. I often think people are not outspoken enough.”
She said nothing about Mrs. Carpenter’s visit until Teresa came home, and then she chose the next evening when Cyril was peacefully reading in an armchair. Teresa had put away a bundle of papers from Emma’s office, over which she had been toiling with evident fatigue and depression.
“I hope dear little Ivor is not vexing his father as much as he did while he was a baby,” Susie began quietly over her knitting.
“He doesn’t get into many rows,” said Teresa. “It would be almost better if he did.”
“How do you mean, dear?”
“I mean that Evan says so little, it is rather frightening sometimes. He just looks and you don’t know what he is thinking.”
“Evangeline doesn’t worry, I suppose?”
“Yes, I think she does. She is much thinner than she used to be.”
“I daresay that is the damp of Drage,” Susie remarked. “It is a very relaxing place, I have heard.” Teresa laughed, not very merrily.
“Mother, darling,” she asked, looking at Susie with kindly curiosity, “if Father bit you do you think you would say it was owing to the frost? I believe you would.”
“What an absurd thing to say, dear. I don’t talk so much about the weather, do I? It is a subject I have always detested; it is so commonplace. But if you are laughing because I said that Drage is damp that is ridiculous. Everyone knows it is and there is nothing so depressing as a place that is all on clay.” She left the room presently and Cyril put down his book.
“How old are you, Dicky?” he asked.
“Twenty-five next month. Why?”
“You seem to have grown a little and I couldn’t remember how long we had been here. It is a devil of a long time. Sit down there for a minute and tell me something I want to know. Aren’t you wasting your time a bit, young woman? frousting down there with Emma Gainsborough. Or is it what you want?”
“I am rather in a fog,” said Teresa. He said nothing and she went on, “I used to look at people paddling along in the mud, streaming past all the time; you remember the first time we went down to the docks together and came back on a tram? It fascinated me. I had always felt that there was something that my mind was chasing after, as if I were half asleep and shouldn’t wake up until I had found out what I wanted to know. Have you ever felt like that?”
“No, I am not much troubled with what is called the Higher Mind,” said Cyril. “But I don’t disbelieve in it on that account. In fact I think it is a good thing if properly used. But go on. How does it work out?”
“Well, they all look so angry and miserable and discontented,” she explained. “There was some mystery or other that cut me off from them like a misunderstanding; some enormous grievance or injustice that divided us and our lot from them and their lot, and I felt as if I wanted to break through it somehow—anyhow—and say, ‘Here! Let me in! I won’t be left outside. Tell me what you want and I will get it for you somehow.’ I wanted to give them everything I had; not only money, but the kind of pleasure that makes it of no importance whether one has money or not. And then they let me in. Strickland let me in first. She told me such a lot when she found that I wasn’t inquisitive or preaching. She explains things so clearly and I began to see what the grievance is and then it got more hopeless than ever, because I saw that before you can get into the frame of mind that is independent of poverty you must be decently fed and warm or else you can’t think at all for sheer animal discomfort. I suppose mystics come back down the same road by smashing the body after they have used it to get a mind with. They couldn’t begin as slum babies and say, ‘I must fast and subdue the flesh.’ You see, if you start hungry, unless you have a perfectly sweet nature you probably think of nothing but clawing for food and knocking down someone else who has got some. Then you find people down there with all sorts of wonderful qualities so strong that they manage to keep their end of the stick up in spite of everything. So that topples down all your hopes when you see that all the virtues that you were going to bring in by making more comfortable surroundings are there already in the most wonderful perfection. It just thickens the mystery and makes the barrier and the fog more unaccountable than it was from outside. If you could see the horrors that some people contend against and still remain as good as gold and gay as larks, I think you would stop being so perfectly disgusting as you are sometimes about my Potters and people.”
“No, I shouldn’t, my dear,” he said, “but not because I don’t believe you. But why should I make myself sick with smells that I can’t prevent? I should be of no earthly use sitting by the bedside of an aged fish-wife with my nose in my handkerchief, and I don’t understand accounts or babies. I am much more use at my own job, which neither Emma nor your friend Jason nor even the lion-hearted Fisk could do.”
“No, no, you are much better where you are,” she agreed. “And now you see I have got beyond the first fog into a worse one. I feel cut off from the side I left and I can do nothing for the others because they have got all the means of happiness that I wanted to give them. You see, if anything good survives there it gets awfully good because it takes so much exercise.”
“Yes?” said Cyril.
“I don’t know how much you were ever in love with anyone, but you wouldn’t, would you, have married Mother if she had not been rather extra pretty and very, very well washed?”
“No, Dicky, you are not going to win on that. I should never have got within speaking distance of her, so the Higher Mind would not have contended with the lower. No war, no victory. You see, your Misters and Misseses of the unwashed brigade start on an equal footing. Mr. Potter has nothing to forgive before he inquires into the perfections of Mrs. Potter’s character.”
“Very well, we’ll try again,” she said patiently. “I must make you understand somehow. We’ll take Mother. She was devoted to us and she loves babies as she only sees clean ones. Suppose she lived in a slum and had half-a-dozen of them squalling and screaming and covered with every sort of hideous filth and was kept awake all night and saw them being hungry and ill and cold. Just think what a tremendous sort of love she would need to have to make her go on with it; and how honest she would have to be not to steal for them; and how unselfish to go hungry so that they might have what food there was, and how patient not to grumble and scold. You need a super quality of every good point in a character in order to keep up at all. You can’t say that being used to horrors takes away all the merit of enduring them with real style like you see sometimes down there.
“No, not all,” said Cyril, “but then, Dicky, you must be fair. Lots of things that I find very hard to bear, such as—no, I won’t go into them; you are too tender-hearted and I don’t want to add to your worries. But I assure you I am a very noble fellow in my way though nothing I have to put up with would rouse any sympathy in your fog-bound heroes.”
Teresa looked at him anxiously, critical and questioning.
“I am only trying to cheer you up, dear,” he assured her. “I have a very tidy mind—untidiness at the office is one of the things that I was going to mention just now—and I dislike arguing in a circle. That is where Emma is more suited to her job than you are. She never stands about and says, ‘Yes, but on the other hand——’ or, ‘what can we do, because every way you look at it it doesn’t make sense?’ She plugs along as busy as a bee, fitting splints on to one and a flannel petticoat and a book of poetry on to another and doesn’t wear herself out in guessing whether the creatures are angels or devils. Dicky, my dear, you are twenty-five and you are missing everything that you have been looking for and that you haven’t found. You have said that you only got past one fog into another and that you want to give what you have to starving people who need it. What about David?”
“I do want so dreadfully to marry him,” said Teresa after some hesitation. “But I am sure it is selfish. He won’t do what I want and what would make it all right.”
“What won’t he do?”
“Sell the place and give the money to the work Emma is doing. It wouldn’t make much difference, I know, but it would take a few hundred children out of the mud and I should feel I had done my best.”
“You would do much more good by keeping those damned Prices out of Aldwych. You never saw such a mess as they are making of it. It is perfectly beastly. Enough to make the old man turn in his grave.”
“But it is the wrong way to live,” she persisted. “I have no right to glide into beautiful things and comfort that I haven’t earned.”
“Well, look here. You’re pretty comfortable to start with, aren’t you? Your mother and I saw to that. She especially. She married me because she wanted a child and like a good careful bird she chose the downiest nesting-place she could find for the benefit of her young.”
“Oh, Father,” said Teresa, awestruck. “Wasn’t she in love with you?”
“Not a bit of it,” he replied.
“I wish she had married a poor man, then,” said the girl. “It would have saved me a lot of trouble. But to go back to what you said. I couldn’t help being born where I am, but I can give back everything I have got. It makes it worse to marry into a lot more luxury.”
“How much do you think your friends in the fog would give back to you if they dropped into a soft job?” he asked.
“That has nothing to do with it.”
“Yes, it has. It means that they go with the stream and don’t drown themselves trying to dam it up with a bunch of flowers. Keep those damned hucksters out of Aldwych and keep it the decent civilised place it was; and breed young Davids to counteract the pernicious spawning of Millport. You’ll be far better employed. You can invite all the young Potters to tea and show them what they may attain by thrift instead of greed. They’ll only think you a damned fool and not listen to a word of good advice.”
Teresa was silent.
“They would take the place off you to-morrow if they could and say you weren’t fit to appreciate it. And they would undo the work of centuries that have been spent on it and turn it into a hell of their own.”
“They wouldn’t. They would want to become gentle people and build it up again in their own way.”
“Rot,” said Cyril. “Much better keep it as a model instead of wasting it all first. You must keep something in the show room. It is no good for everybody who wants an airship to destroy all there are and begin again by himself with a glider.”
“Why are you two silly things sitting together in the dark?” said Susie’s voice at the door.