Three Loving Ladies by Mrs. Dowdall - HTML preview

CHAPTER XXIII

Teresa and Joseph Price were going back to Millport together in the rickety little train that joggled up and down the coast every few hours. Teresa had spent the day with the Varens’ and Joseph had called about tea time with some information from his father for Evangeline about her husband’s new work. Evan was expected in about ten days, and was to take up his work at first under Mr. Price’s own eye before being entrusted with the final appointment at a distance. Joseph and Teresa were each occupied in trying to hold an evening paper still enough in the dim light to read the last news of a riot that had broken out in the Midlands over a labour dispute. They had hardly deciphered more than a few lines when the train wriggled itself to a standstill, and Mr. Fisk junior jumped into the carriage. He threw himself down in a corner and took some papers from his pocket and then recognised his companions. “How do you do?” said Teresa. “I don’t think you can see anything by this lamp. We were trying to read a paper, but it is no good.”

“How d’ you do, Fisk?” said Joseph. “Been playing golf down here?”

“No,” said Mr. Fisk, frowning. “What I have been doing is a game to some but deadly earnest to others. If it ends in bloodshed the responsibility will lie with those who treated it as a game.” He settled himself into his corner and glared at Teresa.

“Kait sairysly, though, Fisk, what d’ you think of this?” Joseph asked, tapping his paper. “D’ you think it’ll come t’ anything, what?”

“It has come to something already,” said Fisk, “as you will find if you study your newspaper. And it will come to something that you have not yet experienced, the search for a crust of bread by those who have treated the misery of their fellow-creatures as a game.”

“Yes, but you know, that won’t do any good,” said Joseph. “Somebody’s got t’ hold the purse, or the money’s bound to get lost. That’s been gone into pretty thoroughly. You and I can’t decide the thing ’n a railway carriage, like this. Now I’ll tell you a thing ’s an instance. My father, the other day, was thinking of buying a big place—since you’ve turned us out—” he added politely to Teresa, “and I said t’ him, ‘Don’t. I don’t want the thing. In a year or two’s time we shan’t have a soul left t’ talk to. All the f’llers we know will be in trade or driving their own engines and so on, and the people at the top will be the sort that nobody c’n ask out and all that. ’T’s abs’lutely not done,’ I said, ‘’t’s played out.’ Th’ only thing t’ do now, ’f you want to be in it, is t’ cover yourself with grease and get up at th’ most ungodly hours. Th’ old aristocracy won’t look at you if you offer them a really decent dinner. At my club th’ other day, I met a f’ller ordering tripe and onions; ’t’s a fact.”

“Oh, don’t be so stupid,” said Teresa angrily. “You can’t always go on shifting from one branch to another as soon as anyone else sits down on yours. All people want is to be let alone to do anything they are able to do, and it is snobbery like yours that makes it impossible.”

“No, no, really, I assure you,” Joseph protested. “That’s not Fisk’s idea, I’m sure, is it?” He appealed to the indignant spectacled form opposite. “What? I heard about you th’ other day, you know. I was down canv’ssing your way for my father and turned up ’t your house. Your father gave us his vote—’t’s a fact, abs’lutely—because he said he was f’d up with socialism. ‘My son’s one of them,’ he said, ‘and he won’t work, and he objects t’ me and my wife working.’ Now there’s snobb’ry for you ’f you like, I think, what? I’m willing t’ associate with people who won’t associate with themselves. What are you t’ do?”

“My father knows nothing about economic questions,” said Fisk, with dignity. “He has been ground down to the level he is at now, but he has never been below into the pit from which a class must either become submerged or rise above the one that is holding it down. They may rise through blood——”

“Oh, do stop, Mr. Fisk,” Teresa implored him, “I believe England got on a lot better when people only argued at elections and went on with things in between. But look here. Will you tell me what you get paid for stopping people working and I will find you something to do where you shall get the same for being of some use. I have promised to find someone who will give their whole time to doing properly what I did so badly in scraps for Miss Gainsborough. You have had an education which I haven’t, and you have much longer legs——”

“No, pardon me, I don’t approve of palliative methods,” said Mr. Fisk.

“Well, you won’t argue any more till we get out, will you?” asked Teresa. “How are the dormice?”

He launched into the subject with enthusiasm. He forsaw a great future for dormice in the field of knowledge when their habits had been studied more. After he got out at the next station Joseph remarked:

“Kerious sort of f’ller, isn’t he? Typical of a kind that’s dying out, I b’lieve. In a year or two you’ll find that sort of thing’ll hardly be done at all. Abs’lutely the latest thing already is t’ work at something and it’ll come in, you’ll find, and then everybody’ll want to do it for a bit. Fisk’ll be as jealous as poss’ble when he finds someone else has collared his little shovel and his paint pot and all that, and that there isn’t any loose money about to pay him for talking. It’s a very kerious thing how ’n idea gets out ’f date. I don’t know if you’re interested in morals and all that?”

“Go on,” said Teresa, “I shall be grateful if you will make me really cross with you.”

“How’s that?” inquired Joseph.

“It is like a sneeze that won’t come off—but never mind; you have worked me up into an explosion sometimes. What were you going to say?”

“I said I didn’t know if you are int’rested in morals; because I b’lieve very strongly that illicit love affairs and all that sort ’f thing’s going t’ be frightfully stale, what? Don’t you think so? Of course it’ll go on happ’ning; you can’t prevent it; but people will have t’ run the risk of being thought middle class. I’m fairf’lly bored with th’ idea of sex, myself, aren’t you?”

“No, I must say I am glad there are two,” said Teresa. “But then I am ‘fairf’lly bored,’ as you call it, with the idea of anything being ‘middle class.’ Perhaps that is newer still. I hope not for your sake. However, in the meantime I am ever so grateful for what you have done for Evan. My sister is so happy about having him back and that he is going to do something he will like so awfully. I hope it won’t bore your father, having him there.”

“Oh no, my father’s never bored,” said Joseph. “That’s really th’ thing about him that bores me sometimes, ’f you know what I mean.”

The train stopped for the last time and Teresa got out into the brightly-lit station. Outside it there was semi-darkness, and the mud dripping imperceptibly. Along the slimy pavements three or four of the little boys to whom she had ladled out hot-pot and plum pudding ran to and fro, shouting the latest news. “—’clock ‘Echo’—special edi—shun! six-o’clock—‘Echo’—’clock—edi—shun! ‘Echo’—riots—in—Blankshire—forty-seven—persons—injured! ‘Echo’—edi—shun—serious-rioting—in Midland—town—forty-seven—’ere you are, sir.—’clock—‘Echo’——” and away he sped. “I wonder if he has got any awfulness buttoned into his waistcoat for Grannie to-night,” thought Teresa, “or whether she died——. Shall I ever be able to stand knowing that ‘Grannie’ and the waistcoat are there and I am with David, and not doing anything?”

“I met Joseph Price to-day,” she said to her father when she got home. “He has really been very good about Evan. I believe he invented the whole idea himself. Mr. Price seems suspicious about it and wants to have Evan at the works here first, to make sure that he is all right. David says he is quite sure that he is in fact what is wanted, and there won’t be any difficulty, as he keeps on saying, but how Joseph knew, or why he took the trouble, I can’t imagine. He is such an absolute ass and yet he seems to pick up ideas and he makes the old man do just what he likes. He is also the greatest snob and time-server, and yet he will do anything or go anywhere for anybody for no reason. Fisk was in the train, raving about blood as usual, and Joseph said he was going to ask him to stay for a week-end and meet some of the people who are coming down about the election. Joseph will sit there quite undisturbed by his family and get any amount of amusement out of the fluttering in the dovecot there will be, and Lady Varens says that Mrs. Lake—the select Mrs. Lake—thinks he would make a nice son-in-law. She thought that he liked Lady Angela Brackenbury who started the inn, the Star and Garter. They wanted to have the Duke’s Star and Garter framed as a sign outside. I am getting so muddled with them all. I couldn’t go and live there if it weren’t for David. Joseph told me he was bored with sex, so I suppose, as he can’t find anything newer than a woman to marry, it won’t be either of them and the Price money will have to go to anyone who marries the girls after Joseph has lolled about on it enough. It is distracting to ravel out.”

“You’ve got an abnormal love of the social order,” said Cyril. “You’d much better leave it alone and concentrate on your man. He’ll repay it with far more gratitude.”

“I don’t want gratitude,” she said. “It is just the Lady Bountiful idea that has annoyed me from the beginning. I want to feel one of a colossal family, that’s all; not to be the housekeeper in the store cupboard or a cow being milked.”

“Then you must put up with poor relations, and they’re always a damned nuisance,” said Cyril. “Your mother had a great love of humanity, she said, but her idea was more to be the head of a family of her own than to be mixed up in a general one. Gad! she used to rope them in, too! I never saw anything like it. And nothing about it of a grosser nature, like your friend Joseph. All pure, unadulterated love. It’s a wonderful gift.” He was lost in retrospect.

“Where have you wandered off to?” she asked in perplexity. “Mother had only two of us and you said once that she wasn’t in love with you. I have thought over that sometimes, and I think you must be wrong. I don’t mean to say you oughtn’t to have said it, because I don’t want nasty things covered up; I want them not to happen. But you were probably talking to the gallery that time, weren’t you? People forget. Evan forgot a lot of things that Chips remembered afterwards.”

“I wasn’t thinking about anything at all nasty,” Cyril replied. “There’s nothing wrong with the instinct of the nesting season, and the number of eggs laid has nothing to do with it. The selection of a mate has also been sung by poets, so I have every right to use the comparison without being blamed by you. Chips is another of you loving ladies,” he went on. “That makes three of you. What a trio for one man to keep under the same roof! No wonder that I give way sometimes.”

“Chips loves the sun, with people thrown in as something that hatches out under it, I think,” said Teresa. “There’s not much actual family about it—though Ivor—goodness! You talk of birds! That is nothing to her. Do you know, I think she imagined she had hatched out the whole of creation at once when Ivor was born. And now she lives in him in a way, and doesn’t mind how independent he is. She never wants to hold on to him or push him this way or that, like some mothers do. She forgets so easily what other people think, so long as they don’t make obstacles and set them up in front of her.”

“I daresay,” said Cyril. “Your sex amuse me very much, and I am very fond of a great many of you. But I wish you didn’t all think so much. It keeps one for ever tripping about for fear of disturbing a valued plan. That’s a thing I detested during the war, having to make arrangements. You see a thing to do and you do it or don’t. That’s the only reasonable way.”

About a fortnight later Evangeline went to London to meet Evan. They were to stay there for a few days while he went to see Mr. Price’s engineering works. They were then to take rooms in Millport until after Teresa’s wedding, and make arrangements for the future. There was not much money to spare for the moment, and Susie had urged Evangeline to economise by staying with them until Evan began to receive his new income. But the sisters decided between themselves that the suggestion held too many risks. “He does so hate being looked at,” Evangeline had said, at the conclusion of her remarks on the subject in Teresa’s bedroom one night.

“There is too much of what Father calls ‘damned noticing’ in this family, isn’t there?” said Teresa. “And yet Mother never tells you she has seen anything; she only points out what someone else has seen. And Father never seems to see anything unless you ask him, and I don’t spy round, but still I understand. I should hate not to be away with David. I am so glad we are going away into another continent before we end up among neighbours.”

“But this isn’t a honeymoon, so it ought not to matter,” said Evangeline. “But I know you will all look so nervous if we disagree, and since the Vachell episode I feel that Evan will suspect the devil in every female eye he sees for a long time.”

“Mrs. Vachell is the only person I know from whom I feel absolutely cut off,” said Teresa. “I don’t mean since the episode, but always. You and I have thought she wasn’t human, but that is not true. She is fond—I mean fond really—of that little Vachell. He fainted one day at his lecture and was brought home in a cab; I don’t know if I ever told you; and I happened to be there. She didn’t say anything hardly, but you can’t mistake. That is all I know about her. I think from something she said once that her father ill-treated her mother, but I am not sure. If you had left Evan I have an idea she would have carried the luggage—taken the blame and all that—and you would have kept Ivor even if she had to seduce Evan and all the jury, so if you come to principles——! She would have been burnt in the Middle Ages and Evan would have burnt her and been burnt himself. Isn’t it a mercy there is nothing worse than Fisk to make opinions unpleasant in this country.” The hour was very late and honest Robert’s footsteps could be heard coming down the street. “Certainly not; certainly not,” they said. But neither Teresa nor Evangeline was aware of him. “But I don’t know her in the very least,” Teresa added.

“I was a fool,” said Evangeline, reflecting. “As if it mattered!”

“As if what mattered?”

“Whether Evan understood either her or me. Things come out in the wash. But it would be nice to live with someone whom one could say just anything to, instead of only being in love with them, wouldn’t it? But I suppose that hardly ever happens.”

Teresa didn’t answer.

A day arrived when Evangeline stood waiting for the train that was to bring Evan. She was shivering and impatient, like a swimmer about to dive on a rough day; anticipating the joy of achievement and the thrill after stale security, but aware also of what would happen if she failed. The noise of the station was deafening; other trains came in, discharging crowds that pushed past her in their search for relatives and luggage. An engine let off steam close behind her and then thudded and puffed interminably, it seemed, until the noise added to her nervousness and the smell of smoke and the pushing of unlovely strangers gave her an utter revulsion against the thought of contending with Evan’s sunlessness. She forgot everything except the weariness of contention. All of a sudden the platform was magically clear except for a line of porters drawn up at intervals along it. The engine was still screeching somewhere near and now a second one appeared before her in a rush of smoke and noise. The powerful movement of the axle, bringing the inexorable moment, was the only thing she noticed, and then she was fairly in the crowd, trying to remember what Evan looked like. She caught sight of him at last, standing a little apart, with a drawn, chilly expression of disappointment. She ran up to him, pushing porters and passengers out of her way and caught his arm. “Here——” she said breathlessly, “I’m here—I couldn’t find you for ages.” He smiled, and she began to feel less at the mercy of events. He said something not very distinctly, that was drowned in a blast from the engine. She made a sign to him to look for his luggage, and after a time they drove away to the hotel. Poor Evan felt as though he had been washed ashore right into his own home after a shipwreck. He wanted to hear everything, to pick up lost threads of small events; to hear about this new job, and Teresa’s marriage. Evangeline found plenty to talk about over their meal, but she was conscious all the time of the strength of the sea and that she would have to swim again presently. She longed for a sunny beach and warm blue ripples with no danger lurking in them. She was tired with excitement, and all her natural distaste for effort oppressed her with a wish that the man she loved were in charge of the situation, and not she. She wanted to bask in the certainty that nothing she could say would matter, and yet she knew that his face might cloud at any moment and become chilled by a chance slip of her speech.

The story ends at the Fultons’ house a few weeks after this. Luncheon was over and Cyril had poured himself out a glass of port and pushed the decanter towards Evan. The Hattons were to leave Millport in ten days after Teresa’s wedding and move into their new home. Even Mr. Price was satisfied that there was no hanky-panky about the appointment his son had made, and Evan’s prospects were bright. He and Evangeline had been to lunch and the children were to go afterwards for a drive with Susie. David was also there.

“Well, here’s luck,” said Cyril. “Luck to marriage and all it may mean to a girl. Isn’t that it, Sue?”

“I will drink the health in my cup of coffee, I think, dear,” said Susie. “Hadn’t you better send the wine down to this end of the table? David may like to reply with some idea that is a little brighter.”

“I am not sure that I won’t drink Mrs. Potter’s health,” said David. “May I, Dicky?”

“Yes, do,” she said eagerly. “And you do really mean it, don’t you?”

“Yes, of course I do,” he answered. “Where’s the difficulty?”

“No, there isn’t any, I know,” said Teresa. The door was pushed gently open and Ivor came in. Nurse stood in the doorway holding young Susan.

“I shall be ready in about twenty minutes,” said Susie. “I must be at the bank before it shuts. Would you like to walk up and down a little, in the garden, Nurse, and get what sun there is till the car comes?”

The little party went out and Evan got up to watch them from the window. “How they do wrap that child up,” he observed to Evangeline. “Just look at the forest of shawls in that thing. I am sure it is not good for her.”

“Oh, Evan,” she said, wincing, “please, please don’t begin over again. You may find the wheel of the perambulator is loose or something,” she added hastily, to make her request sound like a kindly joke. She opened the window to say something to the nurse, and Strickland, who had come out into the garden, intoxicated with the atmosphere of nuptial gaiety, was heard carolling to the baby, as she pushed the perambulator up and down:

“It’s a—long, long trail a—winding
Unto the—land of—my dreams——”

“I always think that is so true,” said Susie with a little sigh.