Susie, meanwhile, was performing prodigies of peace and goodwill at the Mary Popley Home. She radiated the most suitable atmosphere that a lady visitor to a rescue home could possibly have evolved after years of thought, and she did it without any thought at all! The “inmates,” as they were called, and as we will call them for want of a less lively word, literally basked in her smile. Grave kindness they were accustomed to; breeziness they knew to satiety; Mrs. Abel’s generous pity almost inconvenienced them; but Susie’s veil of aloofness from everything real wrapped them in gossamer of the angels who have no bodies. “Isn’t she a nice lady?” they said among themselves, feeling that, where she was, neither shame nor hope of doing well eventually, nor gratitude for tolerance would be expected of them. “It must be nice to be a lady and able to do what yer like without any ’arm coming of it,” was what they mostly thought, in place of the bitter reflections that stung them in the presence of Mrs. Carpenter. “What does she know about it?” they were used to mutter, when that excellent visitor explained to them the duties of self-respect, the necessity for self-control, the joys of home that they had forfeited, and the useful-even-though-damaged lives they might yet lead. “That there Jack, I used to tell you about, would ’ave taught ’er what for,” was a favourite comment of one of them after these occasions. “Telling us as men is what we makes them, and ’adn’t ought to be encouraged! ’E don’t want much encouragin’, she’d find, if she got ’im ’ome, in spite of ’er face.” It seems almost a pity that this inmate could not have heard Susie second the vote of thanks to the committee at the Town Hall; for one feels that justice was hardly done to Mrs. Carpenter, while Susie, who had said the same thing in other words, was so much admired. But that, of course, was never known, and probably if it had been, her manner and her expression would have caused a different interpretation to be put upon her words. The inmates would have pictured themselves as partakers in a scene of innocent pleasure, ended in sorrow by the devil, while Mrs. Carpenter only succeeded in offending them by the suggestion of mischief done to an honest fellow.
“’Ain’t she a nice lady!” they repeated in admiration. “I do like ’er ’at, and the way it is done at the back. Just pass my cup up along there, Veronica, would you?”
“Give old pasty-face something to do for ’er living,” said Veronica, as she passed the cup up the line, to where the under-matron was presiding over the urns.
“You know, some of them are such nice girls,” Mrs. Abel was saying enthusiastically to Susie at the same moment. “I can’t tell you what splendid natures they have. That one down there—Veronica Baker—it’s the saddest history, but I won’t tell you now. She is simply devoted to the baby—such a darling it is—and I am hoping to get her a really good job where she can keep it with her. It is with her mother at present.”
“I do hope the old woman is good to it,” said Susie. “It would be terrible if anything happened to it while the mother is here. That is the worst of Homes I always think, although they are so necessary and splendid in every way. But so few of them are able to arrange to keep the mothers and children together, and it does separate them so in cases where it isn’t possible. Don’t you think there is that about them?”
“Yes, but then what can one do?” said Mrs. Abel a little sadly. “One can’t leave them to go on with the life, and in many cases it is better that the child should be sent to some place that is known to be all right, so that the mother may not be hampered in finding work. It goes against them very much with some people if the child is seen.”
“I do think,” said Susie, “that if the girls could be got to see before they go so far what will happen if they do, it might prevent them. It seems to me sadder than any amount of difficulty in making ends meet.”
“Yes, indeed, it does,” said Mrs. Abel, greatly touched, poor little thing. “When I think of my own home and how difficult things are just now, and yet how we have been kept from all unhappiness, I think I hardly know how to be thankful enough.”
“It must be so delightful to have your husband with you in everything,” Susie said with a little sigh. “It must make up for any anxiety. If one is thoroughly understood nothing else matters. I was so glad you did so well with the sale of work in the summer. Drink is really another of the worst problems, I think. Do you find many in your Home are any better?”
“Well, it is impossible to say whether any of them are really cured,” said Mrs. Abel. “But a great many have gone out and kept steady for several years, and now and then we hear from them that they are doing well. But of course some of them relapse and then they sometimes come back for a time. But if we get them quite early on I believe there is every chance of their keeping straight. Only it is so difficult to persuade them to come in then.”
“What a pity it is that wine was ever invented,” said Susie. “I can’t think what people want with it. It only makes them noisy and stupid; not really cheerful.”
“I don’t think it is wine that matters,” said Mrs. Abel. “In fact a little of it would do them good if they could get it. It is the beer and spirits that are so bad, because they take such quantities of beer and so little spirits affects them, especially the stuff they can afford. My husband doesn’t at all believe in actual teetotalism, except as a help to those who can’t keep away from it. The doctor says a glass of port would do him all the good in the world in the evening, but I can’t get him to take it, just for the sake of the example.”
“How splendid of him!” Susie exclaimed. “I wish I could persuade my husband to set the example to his men.”
“You see, it is the evenings that are such a temptation,” Mrs. Abel went on. “Their homes are so dreadfully uncomfortable, with the children all about and everything in a mess and nothing to do. Of course they prefer the public-houses and the clubs.”
“But if the children went to bed in proper time and the wives kept their sewing until the evening it would be quite simple,” Susie declared. “They seem to have no idea of time.”
“Still, I know myself that it is not easy to have everything straight by the evening,” Mrs. Abel sighed. “Now my little maid has gone and I have everything to do for the children, besides the house and the parish, I find it very difficult to be all neat and good tempered, and ready to listen to my husband, though I am longing to hear all about his day. And then, you see, very often with those people the children have nowhere to sleep except the living-room, and there is hardly room for them all to sit round—and perhaps no fire—and if there is illness—and they have no occupations to keep them quiet. And besides, some of the houses you really can’t make clean or cheerful, and if the man does get good wages for a time it all goes as soon as there is unemployment or if he meets with an accident; the insurance doesn’t cover it all. At least I know my husband will get his stipend whatever happens, and people are very kind and good. We were so touched by the amount of the Easter Offering this year, although it is such a poor parish.”
“Mrs. Fulton, would you like to come and see the distribution of presents?” said the matron, advancing to Susie with a smile that she did her best to make genial. Long years of bringing the passions of other people into line had made it difficult for her to relax at different milestones of the Almanack into the requirements of a moral armistice.
Susie followed her into the next room, where a small Christmas tree was glimmering and dropping wax on to a table; round it, piled high, were parcels with the forbiddingly soft contours that betray to the experienced eye the presence of wool in unattractive shapes. Two smiling men with eyeglasses and gay waistcoats, and Mr. Abel, well-bred, shabby, harassed, devoted and obviously in need of port wine, stood by with sponges, ready to quench any untoward splutterings between the dim flames and the branches on which they drooped. Festoons of tinselled cotton hung between the pine needles which still smelled of the forest, and on the top spike, precariously inclined, was a cardboard Father Christmas with frosted boots and a face like Mr. Price after dinner. The inmates crowded round, murmuring among themselves in drawling exclamations peculiar to the class who spend so much of their lives as onlookers at all kinds of pageantry.
“Eh, luk!” they said. “H’m—yes, it is, i’nt it! eh, to be sure! See, Lily, the li’l moonkey wi’ th’ baal in its mouth! See Father Christmas? Where? Eh, yes, a see ’im. Seems a pity there a’nt no children here to see it. What’s the good of it?” A terrific sniff raised the speaker’s nose in wrinkles almost into her low-growing hair. “Eh, luk! the parcel! ’tis for the paarson!” Roars of laughter broke out while Mr. Abel unwrapped a neat silver cigar-cutter and sought in vain for words that should combine truth with the idea that it was the thing he was most in need of. Mrs. Abel received a pocket manicure case, the matron was delighted with Miss Gilworth’s Outlook of the Saints, the under-matron had a sponge, “specially designed for continental use,” and the rest of the staff were given various articles ranging from penwipers to plaster dogs with one eye bandaged. The proceedings ended with a carol, in which Susie joined with her very kindest expression and a most delicate voice, reinforced by the powerful bass of one of the gentlemen with eyeglasses who was a member of Mr. Abel’s choir. Mr. Abel moved a vote of thanks in his high-pitched Oxford plaint, and soon after a piercing wind from the front door and a hum of voices and flutter of aprons in the passage betokened that the Mary Popley inmates would be left to their own reflections on a year that was about to slink away like a defaulter with the happiness they had invested.
Evangeline’s daughter was born between Christmas and the New Year. Teresa arrived home late from her dinner at Mr. Manley’s and was met by Strickland looking as if she were about to perform some religious rite. Her cap lay across her head at an angle that gave her a slightly mystic appearance, her eyes were full of indefinite purpose and her mouth was set tight.
“Have you got toothache again, you poor thing?” Teresa exclaimed the moment she saw her.
“No, Miss Teresa; it’s that,” Strickland replied in a hushed voice. “We’ve got the nurse, and the doctor is coming along now. Mrs. Fulton is upstairs, but I was to tell you there’s nothing to worry about and you was to go into the General’s study. I’ll bring you a cup of tea and then you’ll go to bed. It’ll be all over in the morning, you’ll see. You’ll not hinder me by worrying, now, will you? For I’ve the kettles to see to and all.”
“N—no,” said Teresa rather doubtfully. “I won’t hinder you anyhow, old lady. Go on with your fussing and don’t mind me. But I wish you would come and tell me when it is there. I don’t suppose I shall be asleep.”
“Yes, you will, then, Miss Teresa, or I shall be angry. No, I mean it. You’ll be doing very wrong if you’re not asleep. The General is in the study, if you’ll go up now, so I needn’t keep up the drawing-room fire.”
“Strickland—here a moment,” said Teresa, pulling her into the darkened drawing-room. “Just tell me before you go. Is it very, very awful?”
“No, Miss Teresa, of course it isn’t,” she replied quite angrily, shaking herself away. “My brother’s wife thinks nothing of it. It’s what we’ve all got to go through—unless it’s a poor thing like me that has no one. And there’s the nurse and doctor and everything she can want. There’s a great many that hasn’t——”
“Oh, yes, yes, I know,” Teresa interrupted. “I shall stop my ears if you say any more of that. I’ve finished with it. I’m not going to hear any more until I can begin again. Strickland, I’m engaged; but please don’t tell them downstairs. I want to do it myself when it is all over. Only I am so happy I had to tell you; and now I have come home to be so frightened. Never mind; you see, I am not in the least worried. I’m going up. And about twelve o’clock I shall go to my room—and take off all my clothes—and go to bed—and put my head on the pillow—Oh, Strickland, you are an ass, aren’t you? How do you suppose I am going to sleep? Well, good-night.” She ran upstairs very quietly and went into the study.
Cyril was sitting by the fire, smoking and reading. He looked round as she came in and said, “Well, did you have a good time? I suppose they’ve told you about Chips?”
“Yes,” she said. “I shan’t go to bed yet if you are not going. We’ll wait together if you like. And, Father—I saw David.” She brought a chair up to the fire.
“And did he see you?” Cyril inquired. “You please my eye very much when you are happy and you’ve been a withered little object lately.”
“Well, that is really about all about it,” she said. “I’ve stopped withering. You do like David, don’t you, Father?”
“I’m devoted to him,” Cyril answered. “Do I understand that you have fixed it up?”
“Yes,” she answered. “Oh, Father, listen, what was that?”
“I didn’t hear anything,” he said, rather hastily, “but there’s a devil of a draught up those back stairs. I think I’ll shut the passage door.”
“I’ll do it,” she said.
“No, stay where you are.” He went out, shutting the door after him, shut the passage door that led to the top storey and met Strickland coming up. “Keep that door shut, would you?” he said. “Miss Teresa’s in there; and don’t worry her to go to bed. I’ll send her when I think it is a good plan.” He went back to the study.
“Was that Strickland you were talking to?” she asked. “There’s nothing wrong, is there?”
“No, but I can’t do with her damned singing. I told her to wait until the Philharmonic was open. Now then, tell us all about it, Dicky; that is, as much of it as you like.”
“Well, you see, I refused him before,” she began slowly. “He wouldn’t combine with what I was doing and I wouldn’t give it up——” She stopped, and Cyril poured himself out a glass of whiskey. “Have some?” he asked.
“Now you know, dear, that is silly,” said Teresa. “I don’t want to take to drink because I am going to be married—— Oh, father, what is that? Something is bothering me—is there a wind or something? It was quite still when I came back.”
Cyril hesitated a moment and then said, “You’re not the woman your mother is. She thought me very foolish—I am not sure she didn’t say very wrong—for spending the night in the Turkish bath when you were born. I should be there now if you weren’t at home, but if you are going to sit there behaving like some damned fox-terrier whenever a door opens I shall have to get out the car and drive you round till we both freeze.”
“All right,” she said. “I am sorry, but I didn’t know what it was. I just felt creepy.”
They heard the front door slam.
“That’s the doctor,” said Cyril. “Now you can go ahead. The pilot is on board and a tot of rum will be served to all those in favour. I wish you would have some.”
“No, I am going to have tea presently,” she said. “I do wish you wouldn’t interrupt. I was going to tell you why I changed my mind.”
“Yes?” he said, encouragingly.
“Let’s see. You see, the thing is like this. I think David started with the same idea that I did and I don’t know exactly what happened but he found that he hadn’t enough brains for argument, so he studied fox-hunting which he had always had a passion for, only he got slightly mixed like I did about people who live in towns. He is really very sensitive about cruelty, and his father gave him such a lot of money at college that when he found anyone who wanted it he gave like anything; and when you have once begun doing that in person, not just by subscription, it is very difficult not to feel that you ought to be earning some instead. But anyhow that is what he did. And then he had to go to Aldwych to help his father who wasn’t well, and then he got interested in the land and he met some people who wanted experiments done—I forget what in—and who couldn’t afford to do them; and, it is very odd, but he seems to find out more by common sense than I ever should by working and working at an idea, trying to make it fit whatever happens, because it never does. As soon as one stops worrying and works at whatever one can do best, the idea one had tried to fit on to all sorts of contradictions seems suddenly to grow up out of the middle of one’s work, with a root fastened to all the different things it wouldn’t fit before. It is impossible to explain but I assure you you would have found that happen if you had ever had an idea of any sort or done any work.”
“I should like to direct your next piece of purposeless labour to respecting the forces of the Crown a little if you can,” said Cyril. “I’m damned! No ideas and no work! Do you know who I am? I suppose your mother is right. Marriage does mean something to a girl.”
“Why? What?” she asked in bewilderment. “What have I said?”
“Go on, my love; don’t let me interrupt you,” he said. Strickland came in with some tea and a plate of sandwiches. “I suppose it is no good offering you tea, sir?” she inquired.
“No, thank you, I have got everything I want,” he answered.
“I am coming to bed in a few minutes,” Teresa said, nodding to her.
Strickland looked appealingly at Cyril and hesitated. “You’d better stay here a bit I think,” he said. “You won’t sleep after that stuff.”
“Oh yes, I shall. I’m awfully sleepy,” she said.
Strickland pulled herself together and cleared her throat. “I’m sorry, Miss Teresa,” she said boldly, “but there’s been a slight accident in your room. Your hot water bottle leaked, and the bed was wet through so I’ve taken the things down to the fire. I’ll tell you as soon as they are dry.”
“Very well; but goodness, how late it is!” Teresa said as she glanced at the clock. “Nearly one. Has mother gone to bed?”
“Not yet,” said Strickland. “She’ll be down by-and-by. You’ll see her if you wait a little.” She shut the door and Teresa settled herself again in the armchair with her tea. “The Prices have got Aldwych for another six months,” she said, “but David thought perhaps if we were married in the spring I might go out with him to see his place over there and help him to settle up, and then come back when they leave. I shouldn’t so much mind leaving all of it if I didn’t go straight from Emma’s office to a house with hot towel rails and pheasant for breakfast and a peach house.”
“Well, we all have our troubles, but I feel if I were given my choice that that is the one I could face with most courage,” said Cyril. “I could tear myself away from Emma’s office more resolutely than from almost any luxury I know. But then I can’t live up to your friend Mrs. Vachell, who hunts with George Washington and runs with Ananias from a sense of duty. I admit I wasn’t happy in the office when you took me there.”
“What are we going to do with Chips when she gets well?” said Teresa. “I can’t bear to go away and leave her here. Mrs. Vachell would get her altogether in time and mother wouldn’t be any good. Mother thinks that when she says what fine creatures women are and all that, and when Mrs. Vachell begins on the same subject, they both mean the same thing. But they don’t. Did you know that? Mrs. Vachell is quite serious.”
“Yes, I knew that,” he answered. “She told me herself that nothing was too bad to do in the cause of the noblest of God’s creatures, and a woman in that frame of mind is always beyond a joke. You can’t get it into their heads that there are certain things that are not done, such as vitriol and so on. Not that I have heard of any of them doing that, but she seemed to be speaking inclusively.”
“No, that sort of thing isn’t a bit like her. Really father, it isn’t. I only meant that the more depressed Chips gets about being away from Evan the more Mrs. Vachell uses it to make it impossible for her ever to go back. Chips is quite right in saying that she can’t live here. It would be so dreary for her and she hates having no explanation for it. People will think that either she or Evan have done something bad. And it is cruel to think of her without a man for the rest of her life; it is far worse than being a widow. I don’t think either you or mother have realised that.”
“It hadn’t, as you say, occurred to me that they wouldn’t finish it up sometime. I hope marriage doesn’t mean too much to her after all. I have always supposed that so long as people mind their own business there is very little to complain of.”
As he stopped speaking, a long, high-pitched sound, seeming to come from nowhere in particular and too faint to be more than just audible, rose, grew and died away again. Teresa turned white and looked at her father with frightened, questioning eyes.
“Was it a lie that Strickland told me about my hot bottle?” she asked. “Didn’t she want me to go up?”
“I expect not,” said Cyril. “You can’t do anything. Would you like me to get the car out? We can wrap up quite warm.”
“No, what is the good of running away,” she answered. “I have got to know. But Strickland said it was nothing. She was quite indignant and was going to tell me that there are people who aren’t as well looked after as Chips, but I wouldn’t listen. Let’s go on talking. I do so want to get out of this mess of pity on to a road that leads somewhere. It is like being for ever shot at and hurt by something you can’t see. Strickland is wrong. Evidently in the main things one person suffers as much as another.”
“I’ve often told you you were worrying unnecessarily,” said Cyril. “I am sorry we didn’t send you away just now, but I never thought of it and your mother doesn’t descend to details much, as you know. She takes the most alarming things as a matter of course. I believe she was born a favourite of the gods. I found out the other day that she has never had a tooth out. I was away when Chips was born and, as I told you, I spent the night of your arrival in the Turkish bath, so I don’t know what happened; but it wouldn’t surprise me in the least to hear she slept through it.”
The door opened and Susie came in. As she stood there for a moment a smell unknown to Teresa came in with the air from the passage.
“What! are you two still here?” she said in the gently reproving tone she used when any of them did anything not wholly normal. “Why didn’t you go to bed, Teresa dear? I told Strickland to tell you not to worry. I hope you weren’t.”
“Oh no,” she replied, “it wasn’t that. I got your message, but I’m not sleepy. What is that odd smell?”
“Just a little something the doctor used to give her some sleep,” said Susie. “I think I shall wait here until he comes down.” She had left the door open and Teresa sat tense and agonised, dreading the sound that might come again at any moment. But everything was quiet. Strickland shuffled down the back stairs and shut the kitchen door. Cyril got up and shut the door of the study and drew up another chair.
“Well, and how did your dinner go off?” Susie asked. “Did you see David?”
“Yes,” said Teresa. “He—he enjoyed himself very much in the Argentine.”
“How nice. And is he going back or is he going to take up Aldwych again? I do hope he will.”
“Yes,” she said still more nervously. “Yes—we are going to take it up together—we arranged—I hope you don’t mind. I got a little worried with Chips and everything, or I should have told you. I really came home to tell you—I——”
“My darling, I quite understand,” said Susie. “Don’t trouble to explain. I am so glad that you have come to see what a dear fellow he is. I always told you he was a great deal nicer than you thought; but you wouldn’t believe me.”
Teresa’s just feeling of indignation gave way to a second thought that she had much rather her mother supposed her not to have cared for David before, than that she should suspect her of having listened to wisdom on the subject of a prudent marriage.
“And so that is all settled!” Susie continued, warming her toes peacefully. “And when dear Evangeline is strong again we must make another effort to put that right. And then we shall have nothing left to wish for, shall we? Evan is a silly fellow, really. I wish he were here now; it might bring it home to him.”
“How, Mother?”
“I mean that he might see that women have quite enough to go through without being teased about their children when they have got them. All those stupid rules and that kind of thing! Really, you know, I think that anyone who has had a child—I mean any woman, of course,—deserves to be let alone. Now those poor women I saw last week——. I don’t know that it is a very nice subject for you, Teresa, but as you have taken to work among the poor you are bound to hear of it, and you are going to be married yourself—what I was going to say is that those poor women I saw at Christmas have been most foolish, there is no doubt, and the law ought to oblige the men to marry them. But if it won’t do that, at least it might be made more easy for the mother to keep the child with her instead of her living alone with that matron, who I am sure, is extremely kind, but with such a cross face. The poor little child has to be brought up elsewhere because the mother has lost her character! Men lose their characters quickly enough in the public-house, and no one says anything. They are allowed to take the bottle home with them, too, and it is not thought a disgrace, although they do it deliberately. Whereas a child——” She paused, becoming suddenly aware that Cyril’s eye was fixed on her with delighted interest. “Cyril, dear,” she said, “are you sure you want to wait up? There is really no need.”
“I wouldn’t miss a word, Sue, I assure you,” he said politely. “Dicky, pass me the syphon, would you?” Teresa passed it, and said nothing. No one spoke for a short time, and then a bell rang upstairs and another sound, a sort of rapid, angry mewing, was heard as Susie opened the door of the study and Strickland vanished up the stairs. Susie disappeared into the passage and presently Strickland ran down again. “It’s a dear little girl, sir, the doctor says,” she remarked, thrusting her head round the study door, “and now you get to bed, Miss Teresa, please, while I get a cup of something for the nurse. The doctor will be pleased to join you, sir, presently, but he won’t stop to have nothing but a glass of wine and a biscuit. He’s got another case waiting for him he says.” She disappeared before Teresa had grasped the wonderful details of her déshabille. This was indeed a new Strickland, or at least one unknown to the family. “My brother’s wife” and Evangeline were one and indivisible in Strickland’s heart that night.