Lady Varens and David stayed for some weeks with Mr. Manley, and then took a furnished cottage by the sea, at a place not far from Millport. It was a place of everlasting winds, sandy as the desert, flat as a tablecloth, ugly as every other nest of the speculative builder. It is true that the owners of the land had imposed restrictions on the invaders, but the only result of this was to make a certain style of architecture a duty, instead of an unfortunate occurrence, so the town had as little chance of achieving beauty as a society for the suppression of marriage would have of evolving true love. The little caskets of the home, that were dumped down in groups along the shore, roofed to excess in the prevailing fashion, neatly gardened with rock plants that could not blow away and might be disinterred from an avalanche of sand without obvious damage, were designed to catch the greatest possible quantity of ozone. Painstaking mothers, whose husbands were occupied in Millport, immured themselves heroically there all the year round for the good of their offspring, who rewarded them by thriving exceedingly on the hurricanes of health that swept along the mud flats. The tide rose from time to time—generally in the night—, took a rapid survey of the villas, and fled back into the distant sea. Squadrons of perambulators were marched daily along the most exposed part of the shore, which the speculative builder had kindly laid with asphalt for the purpose. There, prevented by stout iron railings from being blown into the sea, the mothers and sisters and aunts and nurses of young Millport wrestled up and down twice a day, their skirts lashed impedingly against their knees or their calves, according to whether they were going to or coming from, the butcher. Their faces were set with a permanent expression of having been blown crooked, nose slightly aslant and a little richer in tone on one side than the other, eyes half closed to keep out the volleying sand, ears all but inside out, and the mouth set at the gasp, owing to the nostrils having been banged to as soon as the owner struggled out of her front door; heads were mostly a little on one side, cocked to meet the shouts of a succession of acquaintances all endeavouring to hear whether Reggie would come to tea with Edna on Thursday or Friday, or whether the bridge party began at three or four. But then, as the inhabitants say when strangers are critical about the place, “we do have such beautiful sunsets. They say it is something phosphorescent about the mud.” So there’s always something either way to keep the balance between good and evil.
Lady Varens took one of the villas for a few months. The place more nearly resembled country than any other in the neighbourhood where she could get a house; it was at least in the open air, or rather, as she said, in an open draught, and the mud stayed where it was, instead of going up into the sky and down again all the time. The sun shone a little when it was anywhere handy, and one could smell the sea, and even see it for a few minutes if one looked sharp about it. There was a golf course, and a train to bring Teresa and anyone else who had sufficient patience and a solid enough frame to hold together during the requisite period. Maids were found who, being attached by love to the butcher’s assistants, were willing to oblige a titled lady to whom money was no object. The villa was designed for a large family and attendants, so when Evangeline was well again, Lady Varens asked her to stay for a time with the children; she persuaded her that it would be good for them to be blown into the state of solidity that comes to the young of that scourging place from constant tossing between the consuming ozone and the replenishing butcher. Evangeline accepted, and at the end of a week or two the shadow of Millport and all the human vexatiousness which had darkened the last months for her began to stir and rise, taking with it her newspaper problems, Mrs. Vachell’s sphinxery and the episodes of her life at Drage that were stored in her recollection like toys broken in a long-forgotten quarrel. The dear inanities of that time were like poor Tweedledum and Tweedledee’s nice new rattle which had brought them both out armed with deceptions against each other, till the monstrous crow they had brought down frightened them apart. She laughed aloud one day as she thought of Teresa’s comparison, and presently she went to the nursery and brought Ivor’s copy of “Through the Looking Glass” into the drawing-room and sat down with it in the window seat, where she used to watch the sunsets. She turned up the part where the quarrel begins about nothing, when Tweedledum and Tweedledee have been sitting together under an umbrella. “That is exactly like us,” she thought and she laughed as she read. “But Evan will never see that. I shall have to explain the situation in some other way.” Her thoughts wandered back down a train of other things that she had tried to explain to him. Before their engagement she had expounded a good deal and listened very little. To tell the truth, Evan had been attending more to the distraction of her presence than to the matter of her speech, but she did not know that. He had been unaccustomed to the society of women who lulled, and she did lull his natural embarrassment in conversation by the largeness of her interest in everything that went on in the world. Such luxuriant living and lack of analysis was new to him. He had formed an idea of women from his sisters’ giggling little comments on every subject; they inspected life at too close quarters to make their view interesting to anyone with Evan’s passion for Universal study. The world was contained for them in their village interests; England was a garden where God lived and their village was one of His boundary lodges; foreign countries were something akin to a nobleman’s other residences, managed by agents and let to strangers; the mission field a wild region that must be brought into cultivation. Evan had loved his sisters while the war was on, for they thought neither to the right hand nor to the left. They had trotted out of their village in the wake of England, Harry and St. George, never doubting that God was with them as they bandaged and stitched and prayed that Ypres might hold out, and that Evan and the men from the village might come home safe. They never spoke of the enemy as sheep or devils. War was a medicine which England had to take now and then for the good of her health, and whether it was against Zulus, Boers, or Germans had nothing whatever to do with the village. The Graphic of the past or The Graphic of the present, depicted “the dead,” with troops advancing over them through smoke, and dropping as they came; or a hillock and a gun and a few figures lying bandaged—perhaps with the very bandages that Emily had made—and that was Victory, and would end someday in “The Soldier’s Return,” and a dinner in the village. Such a dinner! The sisters were at their best at such times; no one could be cross with them; but in private life, during peace, Evan found them trying beyond words. He was suffering from reaction against their village interests when he met Evangeline, and listened to her impersonal prattle of sunshine and wide spaces of the earth where parties are unknown and no man is obliged to ask the nymph of his choice how many theatres she has been to. Then, as we know, Evangeline encouraged him. She wouldn’t let him keep himself to himself as he had always done. She forced him, in the name of politeness to his General’s daughter, to say something, and it had to be something true. She refused all substitutes for his treasures; so he brought them out one at a time, and she handled them so respectfully, owing to a “gentleman’s” instinct, which was part of her inheritance from Cyril, that in the end he married her; married her, poor dear, supposing her to be what he called a lady. Then after a time they began to quarrel. He said his nice new rattle was spoiled, his lady was not ladylike. She always behaved “like a gentleman” towards him, but that wasn’t right; she must behave like a lady. Then Evangeline said that she had done nothing to the rattle. It was just as it was when he first got it. So he pointed to Mrs. Vachell and said that was what he wanted his rattle to look like, a ladylike woman who could understand a man’s idea of the way he wanted his sons brought up. They fought battles and separated in fear of the darkness that came down over everything after that and now——. “Really, really,” she thought, “it is too silly for anything. He knows by now that Mrs. Vachell was having him on and never cared twopence for what he said. If he could know that I love him he might see that his rattle isn’t broken at all. After all, we were happy—. Ivor doesn’t seem to mind very much whether he is approved of or not. Evan wouldn’t find his ‘moulding’ made much difference in a year or two’s time, and Father says Ivor is all right; he is not afraid of things and tells the truth; and perhaps Evan might let him alone if he came back now. What a good thing Susan is a girl. I don’t think he would be so keen about bringing her up to be ladylike after coming such a cropper. Oh, dear! I do wish we could begin all over again.” She remembered the daily event of Evan’s homecoming when they were at Drage; the pleasure of his being in to lunch unexpectedly; his atrocious singing while he had a hot bath; the general disturbance in every room; the comfortable, foolish conversations; the friendly disputes and dear kisses; one or two tiresome occurrences, as when there was a drunken cook to be dealt with and people coming to dinner and Evan was so decent and helpful. Then a happy, out-of-door summer, and later on their eagerness about Ivor. After that, Evan began to shun the nursery foolishness and she had got bored by his details of tinkering with the little car he bought. They had gone to Millport one Christmas and Ivor had screamed a good deal, and the nurse complained. There were no complaints now. Everything went like clockwork, and life was dull as ditchwater with no man to promote irrationality by treating all episodes with common sense. No household can be really merry without someone to supply the spectacle of common sense, meeting with little accidents from the mischievous contradictions of the human heart. Presently David came in.
“You can’t see to read there, can you?” he said.
“I wasn’t reading,” she answered. “I was wondering. I must do something about Evan, do you know? It isn’t really a quarrel if you come to think of it.”
David looked at her inquiringly, and sat down on the window seat. “I wonder what I had better do. Go out to him, or what?”
“The children would be all right with us here, but I suppose you would want them,” he said. “Your husband has never thought of leaving the army, has he? He could get something to do in England that would probably pay him better.”
“What sort of thing?” she asked.
“I don’t know, but I could find out. I know some engineering people.”
Evangeline was silent. “I haven’t the least idea when it began,” she said, after a few minutes’ thought.
“Have you tried writing to him?” he suggested.
“No, not yet.”
“Does he know about Susan?”
“Dicky wrote,” said Evangeline.
“There is no difficulty in getting out of the army,” he remarked.
“But how am I to put that? What shall I say?”
“Just tell him,” said David; “there’s no difficulty in that.”
“Oh, David!” said Evangeline in despair, “don’t go on saying there’s no difficulty in anything. I daresay there isn’t if you can do the things, but just think of it! He went away in the blackest huff you ever saw, and all about nothing, so there is, in a way, nothing to begin on. I can’t say, ‘Are you still angry?’ because he must be, or he would have written. I can’t say, ‘I am not angry any more,’ because I wasn’t. I was depressed and frightened to death.”
David sat with his hands in his pockets, slowly swinging his legs and gazing at the floor, wrapped in thought. “I don’t think I should think at all,” he advised. “I should just take a pen and write.”
“Would you take a J pen or a quill pen?” Evangeline inquired, while she tossed the volume of “Alice” backwards and forwards.
“Either,” he replied. “There’s no difficulty in that.” She all but threw the book at his head, but refrained. “No difficulty at all,” he repeated, with his eye on the book.
“Can I say you thought he could get a job in England?” she said.
“Yes, if you like.”
“But do you think I had better?”
“I shouldn’t begin with it,” said David.
“But you think I might put it in at the end?”
“I should see how the letter looks when it is done. If it seems to fit, put that in.”
“I suppose you are doing your best to be helpful.”
“I’d do anything I could for you.”
“But you don’t know how frightening he is when he just turns his back. Suppose he says, ‘No’.”
“Then you might have to go out there.”
“What! and just walk up to him?”
“Yes, or else wait till he came in.”
“And what should I say?”
“You’d have to tell him you had come.”
“I see.”
“I am going to see where Dicky is,” he said, getting off the window seat. “I really came in to look for her. You had better have a light.” He brought a small lamp over from the writing-table and fastened it to a switch beside her. Then he got a blotting book and some paper and envelopes and took a fountain pen from his pocket. “That will write, you’ll find,” he said, as he laid the things by her and then he went out.
She took up the paper and turned it over; paused, and took up the pen. It was rather like the preliminaries to a letter written by planchette, when the fingers are loose upon the board and the eye fixed on vacancy. Presently she began and wrote a few words rapidly, stopped, wrote again, and this time she was off. She filled the four sides of the paper with what she wrote, and then folded it, screwing up her eyes resolutely. “I daren’t read it,” she said to herself, and pushed it, with shaking fingers, into the envelope, stuck it down and addressed it. Then she went into the hall and opened a cupboard, groped in the dark for a coat, and took the first she touched, which happened to be David’s. She slipped her arms into it, and without stopping for fastenings, wrapped it round her and opened the outer door. The pillar box was about twenty yards away and the letter was posted before anything but the speed of her actions had time to guide her thoughts. When it was done she felt as if she had given the world a kick and sent a villa or two toppling about her ears. “Oh!——” she thought, and “Oh——! suppose it doesn’t work!” She ran back into the house and flung David’s coat upon a seat without thinking. Then she went to the drawing-room and drew the curtains and sat down by the fire. “Suppose I should have to go out,” she thought. “Suppose he wouldn’t look at me. Suppose he doesn’t care for old times after all.” She was still sitting there when Lady Varens came in. “I thought there was no wind this afternoon,” she remarked, “but there is something; I think it must be suction, because there is not a twig stirring, but my hat was drawn off my head and my eyes are full of sand. Have you been out?”
“Only to the letter box,” said Evangeline. “I wrote to Evan and raced out to post it before I had time to think.”
“What made you do that?” Lady Varens asked.
“David,” she answered. “He kept repeating that there was no difficulty. If anyone goes on saying a thing often enough I begin to believe it, and he went on and on.”
“But I don’t understand yet,” Lady Varens said. “What sort of a letter was it?”
“Just a nice letter. There are a great many things that he may have forgotten. I haven’t. It was all right, you know, once.”
“David thinks Evan might leave the army,” she went on presently. “I shouldn’t have to go out then—unless he won’t answer.”
“What would he do if he left?” asked Lady Varens.
“I don’t know, but David seemed to have some idea in his mind.”
“Then I expect if he seemed to, he had. If he goes after a fox there generally is one.”
The post to Egypt is not a very long one, but measured by the emotions Evangeline went through between the earliest day when Evan’s answer could be expected, and the day when it came, the interval was about a year and a half. The extra length of time was put in three strips. One between the moment when the postman knocked at the front door and the time it took the maid to examine and bring up the letters. The second was when Evangeline was out in the afternoon and remembered that another post would be there when she got back; it took the length of several days to look at the letters on the hall table as she crossed the threshold and judge from their appearance whether they were all circulars. The third age was when she and Teresa were talking in their bedrooms before going to bed and went through their nightly review of all the things he would be likely to say, and compared them with the likelihood of his saying nothing at all. The nights were all right, for Evangeline, when in health, would sleep though the earth cracked asunder. One day people came to lunch and stayed talking, so she did not go out, and the maid brought the letters to Lady Varens before anyone had remembered the postman.
“Here’s yours, Evangeline,” Lady Varens said, passing it to her. “Do you know whether the children have gone out yet? I wanted them to call at the butcher’s for me. He didn’t send the mutton I ordered this morning.”
“I’ll go and see,” said Evangeline, and she carried off her letter. Ten minutes or a quarter-of-an-hour went by, and then Ivor came in dressed for going out.
“Mother’s being a dog on the stairth,” he said. “It’s dangerous; you’d better not go past, but we’re going to do your message now if Nurth can get past.”
“Can’t you say your s’s yet, darling?” said the visitor. “Well, I’m quite shocked! Come and tell me where you are going.”
“Can’t thtop,” said Ivor. “You oughtn’t to path remarkth. Good-bye.”
He went out, leaving the door open, and Teresa got up and shut it. She heard cacklings from the baby and Ivor and respectful protests from the nurse near the top landing. “Now go off,” she heard Evangeline say in a tone she had nearly forgotten. “I don’t know where the dog has gone; probably to the butcher’s. You may find him there.” Teresa shut the door behind her. “Chips!” she called gently, “shall I come up or are you coming down?”
“I don’t know what I am going to do,” said a dishevelled head through the banisters. “What about those people? ‘Massacre them all!’ as the Peace Delegate said.” Nurse, carrying the baby, brushed past with an apology, and went down, herding Ivor before her.
“It is quite all right,” said Evangeline. “Very much all right. Excessively all right.” Teresa sat down on a lower step.
“David is clever, isn’t he?” she remarked with pleasure.
“I thought of it first,” said Evangeline. “He only suggested writing.”
“Well what is going to happen? Are you going out or what?”
“No, he says Joseph Price offered him a job in their works when the regiment was sent out, but he refused. If he can still get it he will clear out.”
“Why did he refuse it before?” asked Teresa.
“Because of Ivor I think—but we won’t go into that.”
“Where is the Price place? Would you have to be in Millport?”
“No, it is a new one they have started somewhere near London. I forget what the name is; it is somewhere I never heard of except that I know some famous person was born there.”
“Hush!” said Teresa. “They’re coming out. Let me up, quick!” They both disappeared into Evangeline’s room as the drawing-room door opened.
“Yes, he’s a thoroughly decent f’ller,” said Joseph Price to his father, that evening. “Marv’llous engineer, I’m told. But ’f course, it’s just ’s you like.”
“What does he want to leave the army for?” inquired Mr. Price suspiciously. “Nothing fishy about it, I suppose? The army’s a very good profession for a man that has got up in it.”
“’T’s not lucrative, very,” observed Joseph, “nor int’resting exactly, I should think. And Egypt’s a tedious sort of place; nothing t’ do except learn about it and so on; th’ sort of thing Vachell’s good at. You know, so far as Hatton’s concerned I c’n understand a man pr’ferring to use his intell’gence in the panoply of war, rather than th’ executive; specially if there’s nothing t’ execute, if you see what I mean. And, aft’r all, the sort of thing he’d be doing f’r us might be useful in all sorts of ways in ’nother war. There’s no earthly reason, if you come t’ think of it, why he shouldn’t join up again ’n that case and take th’ thing up where he left it.”
“Yes, yes,” said Mr. Price, “but that’s not the point. What I want to find out is, has he any business capacity apart from this talent?”
“’Mense capacity, I b’lieve,” said Joseph. “It’s his strong point.”
“How do you know? What experience have you of him?”
“When I was at Drage the f’llers talked of nothing else. He was the very man that ought to have taken over your plant then.”
“But surely he was in France at that time,” said the perplexed parent.
“Yes, I know, but everyone was going backwards and forwards all th’ time, and they all knew what th’ others were doing. There was a story about him, I r’member——”
“Well?” said Mr. Price, as his son stopped.
“No, you must get him t’ tell it you himself; I might spoil it. But kait sairysly, Dad, he’s the very f’ller you’re looking for.”
“Why are you so keen about this?” asked Mr. Price, frowning to himself. “You’re not after the wife, are you, eh?”
“No, my dear dirty old man, I’m not, and you mustn’t say that kind ’f thing now; ’t’s not done.”
“I don’t see why not,” his father remarked. “There’s nothing to be ashamed of. I remember a time when a lot of jobs were handled that way, but people are mealy-mouthed now. Well, write and say we’ll try him, if you like.”
“I’ve his letter ’f acceptance here, as a matt’r of fact,” said Joseph. “Subject, of course, t’ your approval. I sounded him more ’r less befur he went away, but it didn’t appeal t’ him then. However, Egypt’s kait ’mpossible they tell me, f’r a young family; flies get int’ the milk, ’n’ so on. I’ll fix it up with him for you, ’f you like. By th’ bye, when exactly d’ we clear out ’f here?”
“In June,” replied his father. “It’s a great disappointment to me, the whole thing. I had thought of settling down here and leaving you with a decent place to call your own. However, there are plenty more in the market. I shouldn’t be surprised if Brackenbury didn’t come up for sale some time, and of course this doesn’t hold a candle to it.”
“If you’re thinking of me, I’d leave it,” said Joseph. “You know, the thing’s hardly done ’t all now. You won’t find any decent f’llers left in houses like this in a year or two, I b’lieve. Nobody’s got ’ny money, except a few people like you, and you might b’ left stranded here with practic’lly no one to talk to. Personally, I should say th’ thing to do is to live ’s quietly and comf’rtably as possible, and say we’ve lost th’ money. You’d find yourself in a far better set t’-morrow.”
“Tut! nonsense!” said his father.
“’T’s true, I ’ssure you. I’ve been sairysly c’nsidering putting in a couple ’f hours a day at the ’lectric light plant at Brackenbury. Th’ Duke’s fairf’lly keen on getting his daughters off, and they won’t look ’t anybody ’nless he’s a mechanic ’r dustman or that kind ’f thing. Two ’f them are starting ’n old-fashioned inn and calling it ‘Th’ Star ’nd Garter.’ They want t’ have th’ old f’ller’s trophies framed t’ stick up outside. ’T’s an awf’lly jolly little idea ’f you come t’ think of it.”
We will here leave Mr. Price to his reflections.