“God bless you,” said Evan, as he let Mrs. Vachell out of his house about a week later. “I’ll tell Evangeline as soon as she comes in. It is an enormous weight off my mind, really. I can’t tell you what torture it has been to see the poor girl in that state, and yet it was my duty. I couldn’t do otherwise, so it had to be gone through. Now she will be comparatively happy as she will trust Ivor with you and Mrs. Fulton can see him when she wants to—within limits. Evangeline will like that. I have the utmost confidence in the nurse too. I should never have sent her away from him if it had been possible to keep him at home. I have written to Miss Moseley and told her that his coming is only postponed and that I will arrange with her later when you see how he gets on.”
“Yes,” said Mrs. Vachell. “I will write to you every week or so at first. Good-bye. You sail on the 30th, don’t you? I suppose I can make all the final arrangements about trains with Evangeline. She will like to see him settled in before she goes, perhaps, and it will give her time to pack and settle the house in peace.”
Evan had refused to listen to the suggestion that Evangeline should pick up the ship anywhere on the way out, so that had been given up. Mrs. Vachell had undertaken to bring off the final coup. Ivor was to be established in her house a week before the ship sailed. Evangeline was to pack her trunks as much as possible with old clothes and oddments that she did not need. Evan was out all day, so there was no difficulty about that. Mrs. Vachell would get permission to see them off on board, and would undertake that Evangeline should disappear when the shore bell rang. An errand of mercy in some lady’s cabin would prevent Evan from looking for her until some time after the ship had left. Mrs. Vachell would keep him in discussion till the last moment and tear herself away only at the last imperative shouts from the gangway. After that the deluge, and Cyril in the character of Noah.
“I don’t like the plan at all,” Susie said anxiously, when Mrs. Vachell returned. “I simply don’t know how I shall ever make my husband understand. He is quite extraordinarily dense in those ways. And I want to tell the servants to get Evangeline’s room ready, and of course I can’t. There are all sorts of things to be seen to, and Strickland will be so cross. And I am afraid they will gossip, too. Can’t you possibly think of anything else? Couldn’t Evangeline be taken ill on the way out and landed, and then she could just come home?”
“I am afraid that soldiers are more easily deceived than doctors,” said Mrs. Vachell, “and Evangeline is such a bad actress! How I have pulled her through this week I don’t know. But I can keep Ivor as long as you like while you make your preparations. When Evangeline comes off the boat and gets to you, she must just have had a fit of temporary insanity to account for it to your husband; a sort of mad motherhood. I understand that she has an excuse for a certain amount of eccentricity. For that reason alone any doctor can be got to say that she is better at home.”
“Well, we must try not to worry,” said Susie. “I daresay, when you come to think of it, that by the time Evan has several children he will give up a great deal of that absurd nonsense about training. The children themselves will make him forget about it. Marriage does away with so many silly fancies, doesn’t it?”
All the same, as the time drew near, she became a trifle restless. One day, unknown to her, Cyril went to have a tooth out. It was a bad tooth, and he felt decidedly uncomfortable afterwards, so he telephoned from the dentist’s house to put off an engagement he had made, and went straight home. It happened to be the afternoon Susie had chosen for a box containing Evangeline’s belongings to be brought to the house, as she knew Cyril had a train journey of a couple of hours, which would keep him out of the way. He was just fitting his latchkey in the door when a van stopped and a man got out and touched his hat. “A box for you, sir,” he said, “would you sign, please.” Another man was dragging out the box and Cyril took the paper and read it. “It is addressed to Mrs. Hatton,” he said. “Just wait a minute and I’ll send a servant.” Susie, hearing his voice, was peeping rather agitatedly out of the drawing-room door. He rang the front door bell for Strickland, and went upstairs.
“There’s a man with a box addressed to Chips,” he remarked. “Is it all right?”
“Y-yes, I think so, dear,” said Susie. “It is just a few things we are to take care of, that she thought might spoil in Egypt. Perhaps I had better see about it. Why are you back so early?”
“I had a tooth out,” he explained.
“Well, really, Cyril dear,” she said impatiently, “how you men do fuss about every little ache and pain. What would you say if we gave up our work for as little reason as that?”
“I should say you had the wisdom of the serpent and the harmlessness of the dove,” he replied. “It wouldn’t matter a row of beans.” He went off to his room.
“When are we going to see those two to say good-bye?” he asked that evening after dinner.
“They will be coming for a night next week when they take Ivor to the Vachells’,” said Susie.
“I still don’t understand why he is being sent there instead of coming to us,” he observed.
Susie made a little face. “It is just Evan,” she said. “He thinks we are not to be trusted with children. Of course I couldn’t insist.”
“It is very unlike you, Sue, to hand over one of your brood without a murmur. Does Evangeline want him to go there?”
“Certainly not,” said Susie unguardedly.
“Well then, I bet he won’t be there long,” said Cyril. Susie began to wonder whether this might not be a golden opportunity put into her hands.
“If you think it best too, dear, I am not sure it mightn’t be the wisest thing to move him here after a little while,” she said. Cyril looked at her speculatively, but said nothing at the time. When Evangeline arrived he noticed a great alteration in her. She had lost her easy-going acceptance of everything that was said and done. She seemed anxious and analytical, on the look out for traps, chary of expressing an opinion. She had said good-bye to Ivor, she told them, and Evan had stayed behind to settle a few last details with Mrs. Vachell. She said all this with so much nervousness and lack of interest, as if repeating a lesson, that Cyril wondered more and more. He thought again of the box that had arrived, of Susie’s embarrassment, and her anger at his unexpected return. When she went in the afternoon to pay her fortnightly visit to a women’s hospital Cyril asked:
“You’re not acting altogether on the straight about this voyage, are you, Chips? What’s the plot?”
Evangeline pushed back her chair and a look of terror came into her face. She hesitated, but said nothing. He looked at her with concern. “My dear child, I am not going to eat you,” he said. “What’s the matter?”
“I thought perhaps you knew,” she stammered, without realising what she had said.
“What, that your mother had given you away?”
“Yes.”
“Well, she did, though she didn’t mean to. She was a marvel of discretion, but unfortunately I had a tooth out and came here when I ought to have been stowed in the train, and I met your luggage on the doorstep. She told me it was antiques or something, and I didn’t, in fact, think much about it until you turned up. So now you had better tell me what you have both been up to. It is quite evident that you haven’t parted from Ivor. How do you manage that? Are you going to take him as a cargo of apples or what?”
“No, I am not going,” said Evangeline. “I won’t go, and if you give me away, I’ll—no, I am sorry. I would have told you at first, but Mother and Mrs. Vachell said that men will only help to clear up a mess. They won’t ever make a plan to prevent it.”
“Oh,” said Cyril, “so the plot is pretty deep, is it? How big is the membership?”
“Just us three,” said Evangeline.
“Not Dicky?”
“No, no, Dicky is impossible. She wouldn’t give it away, but she would want me to fight it out with Evan. But I can’t, Father,—I can’t, I can’t. He has broken my nerve. I would fight for myself, but I can’t risk it when it is for Ivor. I can’t afford to lose. It is Evan’s own fault. I never thought of being deceitful until I met him.”
“And Mrs. Vachell?” added Cyril.
“I daresay,” she admitted, “but she doesn’t want to any more than I do. She says she does so look forward to the day when women won’t have to lie. It will be such a luxury.”
“H’m, yes, perhaps,” he replied, “but we won’t go into these gilded prospects now. She’s evidently still in a very poor way. But if you don’t mind me telling you, I think what you are doing is very risky, though I don’t exactly know what it is. How are you going to get off?”
“Just slip off the boat while Mrs. Vachell is saying good-bye to him. He is to suppose that I am in the ladies’ cabin looking after someone who is ill.”
“And do you suppose any man is going to find out that his wife has played him a trick like that and yet go on with his voyage and stay over there?”
“Mrs. Vachell said he wouldn’t be able to afford to come back,” said Evangeline.
“Good God! What a fool the woman is,” he exclaimed. “And she and her pack of jelly-brained idiots think that—well, well, Chips my dear, she is not too big a fool anyhow to have properly done poor old Evan. She must have endured the devil of a lot of self-denial in the way of truth lately. A regular Lent of corkers. Chips, I really don’t advise you to go on with this. It is all nonsense; Evan is a very decent sort of fellow and I don’t suppose he understands in the least that he is worrying you seriously. I’ll tell him that I am going to keep you here for a bit, and Ivor too, to keep you company, and that we’ll think out a scheme later for you to go out there when he has got ready for you. He can’t object, for I don’t think you are well.”
“No, I am not,” said Evangeline, and she burst into tears. “I am going to have another, and I know he will take it away, too, and I shall go mad——”
“Oh, rot!” said Cyril kindly. “Here, buck up. You’re not going if you don’t want to. Why on earth didn’t you talk over this mess before? There——” (the front door bell rang) “that’s probably the heavy father coming on the stage now.”
“Father,” said Evangeline, turning white, “don’t tell him——” She fell forward in her chair and fainted, and at the same moment Evan came in.
“Here,” said Cyril holding her, “go down, there’s a good fellow, and get some brandy; there’s some in the dining-room.” Evan raced down and brought back the decanter and a glass, and between them they did their best, lifting her on to the sofa, and Evan tried to make her swallow some of the brandy. She opened her eyes and looked at him with terror, and then sat up. “What is it?” she asked. “Oh please, please, Evan, don’t take him away. I will do anything you like.”
“Don’t take who away, my darling, I don’t know what you mean?” he said.
“Here, never mind,” said Cyril. “It’s all right, Chips. We’ll get you put to bed I think, and, there’s nothing to worry about; do you understand?” He rang the bell for Strickland, and she came in and stood gazing at them in surprise and disapproval.
“Mrs. Hatton isn’t well,” said Cyril. “A little influenza or something. Will you get her room ready and put her to bed? Can you walk so far, Chips, if we give you a hand?” They left her in the bedroom with Strickland, and then Cyril faced his son-in-law in the drawing-room.
“I think I’ll telephone for a doctor,” he said, “just to make sure she’s all right. Mix yourself a drink while I look the fellow up.” He found the number and took up the receiver. “That Doctor Clark?” he said. “Oh, isn’t he? Well would you ask him to come round to Mrs. Fulton’s house as soon as he comes in. Now then, Evan,” he went on, while he lit a pipe, “let’s have this out. You mustn’t take the girl away to Egypt just yet. She’s all to bits and she’s got a holy terror of you for some reason. What have you been doing?”
“I am afraid it has been parting from the boy that has upset her,” said Evan. “But I considered very carefully before I did it, and I am quite sure it is the only way.”
“Only way to what?” asked Cyril.
“The only way to safeguard him from being ruined by weakness and self-indulgence.”
“It won’t do him any harm to speak of for a year or two,” said Cyril, “and then he’ll go to school and get it put straight. You’ll do him far more harm where you’ve left him at present with that unscrupulous she-devil of the Nile. Take her back with you on the spare ticket and drop her whence she came.”
“Excuse me, sir,” Evan said, getting up. “I can’t listen to any abuse of Mrs. Vachell. I am sorry Evangeline has sunk to that last resort of slandering her best friend to achieve her end.”
“Evangeline didn’t slander her, my dear boy,” said Cyril. “She was full of her praises because of the magnificent plan she had devised for deceiving you. I arrived home unexpectedly a few days ago and met Evangeline’s box on the doorstep. The plan was that Cleopatra was to beguile you at one end of the deck while Evangeline nipped off down the gangway and home. They had a plan all thought out about her ministering to a sick friend in a distant cabin so that you wouldn’t look for her until you were well out at sea. Ivor was to join her here then, and after that I don’t think they had any clear idea, but they were reckoning on your finding it cheaper to stay where you were and storm at them on paper.”
Evan’s face looked hard and worn, but he showed no other sign of disappointment. “I think I had better go now and ask Mrs. Vachell if it is true,” he said. “You know I have only just come from her, and we made an arrangement that Ivor should stay with her for two or three months and then go to some ladies whom my mother knew in Cornwall; they keep a small school for very young children whose parents are abroad.”
“Did Chips know of that further arrangement?” asked Cyril.
“Not unless Mrs. Vachell told her.”
“Why not? What sort of a fellow do you think you are, making plans with another woman behind your wife’s back as to what you will do with your son while she is away?”
“It was the only way,” said Evan again.
“The only way to land yourself in the devil of a mess. Upon my word, Evan, it’s a pretty beastly sort of thing to do. If it got round to the mess you’d find yourself up against a devilish hard proposition.”
“Yes, I know,” said Evan. “It was cowardice. I hate hurting a woman if it can be avoided.”
“Funny how people deny themselves in little ways,” Cyril said reflectively. “There you say you hate hurting a woman, and you go a long way round to find a plan that must hurt her more than anything you could have chosen. Evangeline told me that Mrs. Vachell hates lying more than anything, and she——”
“Excuse my interrupting you, sir,” said Evan rising. “That is not quite proved yet. I’ll be back in half an hour.”
Cyril, from the window, saw him rush after a passing tram and board it with the expression of the Chief of Police in a cinema drama. “Poor devil!” he said to himself with amusement. “She’s going to catch it.”
Mrs. Vachell’s little maid was greatly surprised when the gentleman whom she had let out of the house not long before brushed past her with some muttered remark when she opened the door, and ran straight up to the drawing-room, where her mistress was having tea. Mr. Vachell had returned from the University and was enjoying himself with a muffin. Evan greeted him hurriedly, and said to Mrs. Vachell, “Can I speak to you a moment alone?”
“No, my dear Evan, I don’t think you can with that face,” she said, looking at him coldly, “you almost frighten me. Sit down there and have some tea, and tell us what is the matter. Ivor is quite happy having his upstairs.”
“He must pack up now and come with me, unless you can contradict what I have just been told,” said Evan. “But I know you will——” his voice was almost beseeching. “Evangeline is ill. She fainted and went to bed, and I think she is a little light-headed. She assured her father that you had made a plan to let her slip off the boat as it was starting and to join Ivor here and take him to her father’s house——” he paused anxiously.
“Yes, it is quite true,” she said without concern. “It evidently isn’t coming off now as Evangeline has gone back on it. Still I think she might have warned me. It is all the same to me what she does, but it is generally considered not to be playing the game to do that sort of thing.”
“Why did you do it?” asked Evan.
“Because it was the only way to stop your monstrous behaviour to a woman and her child. I would have done it for anybody.” Mr. Vachell had taken no part in what was going on, but was quietly proceeding with his tea.
“Did you know of this?” Evan asked, turning to him.
“Of course not,” he replied. “Is it likely?”
“Of course he didn’t,” said Mrs. Vachell. “It had nothing to do with him. But he wouldn’t have interfered in any case. We are a normal husband and wife; not a potentate and his slave.”
“Then would you ring for Ivor and his nurse to get ready, please,” said Evan.
“Where are you going to take him?” she inquired.
“I beg your pardon, but that is no business of yours.”
“Very well, then, wait a moment please.” She took up the telephone from a table beside her and asked for the Fultons’ number. Cyril answered it. “Is that you, General Fulton?” she said. “Captain Hatton wishes to take Ivor away at once and will not tell me where he is taking him to. The little boy has hardly had his tea and is tired after the journey. Would you mind telling me what to do.” Emphatic sounds were audible from the mouth-piece, and she turned to Evan. “He says I am to tell you not to be a damned fool but to go round there at once. Your wife is very ill. You are to leave the child here for the present. What did you say, General Fulton? Do you want to speak to him?” She got up and gave her place to Evan. “Yes—hullo,” he said. “Is that you, sir? What’s the matter, please,—very well—I will come.” He said good-bye to neither of the Vachells, but stopped at the door. “I should like Ivor and the nurse sent to General Fulton’s as early as you conveniently can to-morrow,” he said, and went downstairs.
“Good heavens! what idiots!” said Mrs. Vachell, pouring herself out another cup of tea, when he was gone. “It is very difficult to do good in this world.”
“I know you don’t want my advice,” said Mr. Vachell, “so I won’t give it. But I am sorry there has been such a mess and she is ill. I like the poor girl and she seems to have had a bad time one way and another. Little Teresa will be hitting out right and left I expect.”
“Oh, Teresa!” his wife said contemptuously, “is full of old-fashioned prejudices, and her idea of equality between human beings doesn’t go beyond incomes.”
“If people would study the way things have worked out in the past they would get a better idea of what is likely to happen in the future,” he observed. “I think I must go down and do a little work.”