“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.”