Transcriber’s Note:

The cover image was created by the transcriber and is placed in the public domain.

THREE LOVING LADIES

By

THE HON. MRS. DOWDALL

BOSTON AND NEW YORK

HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY

1921

Printed in Great Britain

TO

KATIE BURRILL

THREE LOVING LADIES

CHAPTER I

Messrs. Burridge and Co’s pantechnicons bumped majestically along the streets of Millport early in the morning. Mud seemed to be unaccountably falling from the sky through a close filter of smoke draped high above the town; for although there was no fog, the great stucco offices on either side of the street were slimy with coffee-coloured moisture, and the people who hurried along looked cold and slippery, like panic-stricken snails compelled to leave their shelters. The same mysterious mud oozed also from below the paving stones, and would continue to ooze long after the sun had penetrated the smoke filter and made the houses and the pedestrians comparatively dry.

Millport is one of the largest cities of the empire, and one of the richest. I have never heard of anyone living there for choice, or for any reason but an alleged opportunity for making money. Those who settle there are in the habit of transplanting themselves at regular intervals; removing to a house further away from the premises to which the breadwinner carries a neat bag or attaché case every weekday morning, between eight and ten. The removals mark a rise in the social scale, and are celebrated by new responsibilities, in the addition of servants, greenhouses, garages and acres of ground requiring “upkeep.” The heights of Elysium are, in the end, reached by train. Between the main railway station and the outskirts of wealth, lie nearly two miles of shops, and a professional quarter where the inner darkness of blocks and terraces shades into the dim glory of semi-detached houses. The next stage of grandeur is seen in the increase of laurel bushes and gravel paths round each semi-detached pair. When the flower beds in front, and the tennis lawns at the back, reach a certain standard of importance they flow into each other by connecting paths between the buildings, and each house then stands alone, detached, in the full radiance of encircling “grounds.”

It was nearly ten o’clock before Messrs. Burridge’s stately pantechnicons reached their destination, a large, square, cinnamon-coloured house, standing in about two acres of ground on the borders of Millport’s largest and most satisfactory park. General Fulton, who had taken a five years’ lease of it, wondered many times what had induced him to leave his comfortable little house in Westminster. He had meant to retire from the army at the end of the war, and had been turning over in his mind many agreeable plans for the future, when he was offered the command of a military district of which Millport was the centre. In a rash moment he confided the offer to his wife, hoping for some entertainment from her habit of commenting seriously on matters which he regarded as trifling. To his surprise and disgust, she surpassed his expectation, and pointed out unanswerable reasons why the command must be accepted. She confronted him with facts about his income, which had hitherto been sufficient. But he neither read the papers nor practised arithmetic, and, as she observed at the end of the argument, “seemed to suppose that girls’ clothes grew on their backs.” His reply to this last shot produced a silence which he knew to be ominous of a settled programme; he knew that he had thrown away his last chance by “saying something coarse,” and that any further excuses would be flung unregarded into the flame of her spiritual nature (a possession which is supposed by women who boast of it, to guarantee also a sound business judgment). He appealed in vain to his daughters Evangeline and Teresa. Evangeline said carelessly, “Oh, do let’s, father,” and left the room to post a letter. She informed the maid whom she passed on the stairs that, “we are all going to Millport, and isn’t it fun?” Teresa ran her fingers through her untidy hair, done up for the first time, and said, “If it is by the sea couldn’t we have a cottage?”

General Fulton, avoiding his wife’s eye, mixed himself a whisky and soda. It was the only way to drown his bitter regret at having ever mentioned the appointment. “You’ll never get another house as nice as this,” he suggested feebly. “I’ve been to Millport once, and it’s a filthy place. There was a great black church opposite the hotel, and drunken old women poking stale fish about.” Teresa shivered, but said nothing.

“I don’t suppose those poor old women ever thought of drinking until they were taught by their husbands,” said Mrs. Fulton, glancing at the tumbler he held, but she added hurriedly, before he had time to protest, “and I believe it is perfectly necessary to poke fish before you can tell whether it is fresh or not. You would see that kind of thing in any town you went to, Cyril. And, anyhow, one doesn’t live down there. Father and mother lived in Millport for years, and I know father said everyone lived right out.”

“Well, I don’t think I want the thing,” he said bravely. “I am not going to take it.” He gathered up his morning’s correspondence. “I’m out to lunch, Sue.”

“Do you mind paying some money into the bank for me as you go past?” she said gently. “The last quarter hasn’t been nearly enough. I suppose it is the income tax and the price of everything.”

General Fulton looked at her in exasperated admiration as she sat there, quietly warming her toes in front of the fire, meditative and candid; the typical gentle wife who patiently adds up the problems of life for her husband, and leaves his wisdom to unravel the answer.

“Why didn’t you say at the beginning that we were in debt?” he asked.

“I don’t know that we are, dear,” she said, looking at him in perfect innocence. “I only said that I couldn’t manage on what you gave me. I don’t know what your shares come to; it is all Greek to me.”

“Well, have it your own way, damn it,” returned her husband. “Perhaps you’ve inherited business instincts, and they always go with turpitude.”

“I wish you would think a little of the children sometimes,” she said, glancing at Teresa who sat lost in thought by the window, hearing what they said, and trying in vain to understand what the argument really meant.

“Do you want to go to Millport, Dicky?” her father asked kindly.

“I don’t know,” she said. “It is on the sea, isn’t it?”

“It’s on shrimps,” he replied, “and docks—things that open and shut at you—and it is as black as night, and people walk about with bread under their arms. Well, good-bye, dear; your mother says we’re going, and she knows—she cares—God bless her.” He kissed Teresa affectionately, and left the room.

And so, the course of time showed Messrs. Burridge’s pantechnicons casting the contents of Cyril’s happy little home into the ornate cinnamon jaws of a house that he said made him think somehow of the late Prince Albert. “The sort of thing he’d have built for the head gamekeeper, Sue,” he remarked after lunch on their first day there. “And the park is the very thing for ‘interments’; you could see them winding all the way from end to end. I hope it will come up to your expectations in the matter of wealthy consorts for the girls; or is that not part of the scheme?”

“I don’t like joking about marriage, Cyril, you know that,” she replied, “it may mean so much to a girl.” She sighed. She had been very beautiful twenty years before, and would have been so still, but for the fact that years of quiet enjoyment of her own skill in getting what she wanted, and a conscious superiority over people who “worried about what couldn’t be helped” had obliterated the delicate lines of her face, and given to the fleeting dimple, which used to be the despair and delight of her lovers, the coarser appearance of a crease in a satin cushion.

“It may mean something to her partner, too, if you come to that,” returned Cyril. “It will to Evangeline’s, I should think. I wouldn’t be in his shoes for something. She’s like you, Sue, in some ways; with all the naughty little point of the story left out. I never knew such a rough rider in the field of conversation. She’d never have been able to stuff me with the stories you did about the injury to your pure young mind when I kissed you. Lord! think of it!”

Mrs. Fulton kept a dignified silence for a minute or two, and then sighed again, as if to waft away the possibility of looking at Nature’s beauties with a man who had been blind from birth. “How did you like the people you met to-day?” she asked.

“Oh, some of them weren’t bad. Hatton will be here to breakfast. He’ll always be about the place, so I hope you’ll like him; he’s my A.D.C. And all their wives will be round soon, I suppose, to pay their respects. Hatton hasn’t got one I’m glad to say; though I daresay he’ll be as preoccupied with the subject as if he had. I wish I had gone into the Navy instead of the Army.”

“Why?” she asked, though she knew that the drift of what he was going to say would be somehow unflattering to herself.

“Because one’s subordinates have always got a neat woman in lodgings somewhere, and they just clear off in their spare time and keep themselves employed until one meets them again. Their wives don’t litter about the place and fight with each other.”

“I don’t know how any woman can care to be a mere tool like that,” she replied. “It must make them so one-sided.”

“Yes,” he said, “but think of the feelings of the happy man who can say, ‘This little side is all for me,’ and knows that she has no other to give to one who might like to have it. Why, it would make life a different thing. Where are the girls, by the way?”

“I think they are arranging their rooms and showing the servants where to put things. They seem to be the most curious creatures that we have got; but it was so difficult to find well trained ones. They call me ‘Mrs. Fulton,’ and tell me what they have been accustomed to. I think I shall engage a housekeeper, Cyril. I do hate explaining, and these creatures want to argue about everything.”

“Can’t the girls do it?” he asked.

“Oh no; they have other things to do. Besides, Evangeline turns everything upside down. I had the greatest difficulty in getting the dining-room table put where I wanted it. Of course I want the dears to have everything as they like, but I do wish sometimes they would be a little more help.”

“Oh, well, we managed all right in the old place.”

“Yes, but then these servants won’t do nearly so much,” she complained, “and they have more to do as it is. I must say I think it is only right that we should consider them more than we used to do. It must be so dreadful to work all day. I am sure that new girl Strickland would be more satisfied and likely to stop if you kept your room tidier, Cyril.”

Evangeline poked her head round the door. “Father,” she asked, “can I leave your books and have a lesson on the car from that magnificent Fitz-Augustus person of yours? He says he is going some messages for you, and he wouldn’t mind——”

“Anything you like,” said her father, “so long as I don’t know anything about it; you can’t drive without a licence. Also, if you’ll make Dicky go for a walk with me. I must go into the town, and I must have some exercise, and I won’t walk alone.”

“I don’t think we’ll do that business after all,” he said as he left the house with Teresa half an hour later. “It only means a small additional coolness to the heels of an unknown gentleman in an office. They’ll warm up again to-morrow, like a lodging house chop. You’ve never lived in lodgings have you?”

“No, never.”

“Well, never do. When I lived in lodgings and used to be a bit off colour in the morning I used to see ornaments about everywhere. I remember I once saw a china dog, with a basket of forget-me-nots in its mouth, on the Colonel’s table in the middle of his papers, and I’m hanged if I know to this day whether it was a real one or not. I could never make up my mind about it, though it gave me such a turn that I went round to the chemist and got something.”

“What else,” asked Teresa. “That’s lovely.”

“Oh, I don’t remember anything special; but they never clean the mustard pot in those places—that was another thing. They’ve no sense. And I never could find the matches. They’d be at the bottom of a vase with dried grass in it, or that kind of thing. I think this ought to take us down to the docks. Would you like to see them?”

“Yes, awfully,” she agreed, and they walked some way in silence. “They are nicer houses down here if they weren’t so dirty, aren’t they?” she said presently, looking up at the windows as they passed along a street to which some bygone architect had bequeathed an indestructible dignity. Their restful proportions and large windows gave her a sudden sense of relief after the turrets and variegated excrescences, coloured bricks disposed in geometrical patterns, and twisted ironwork that adhered to the semi-detached quarter they had passed through.

“Yes,” said her father. “I expect all the old turpitudes—pious founders and all that—lived down here. Our place was probably a marsh or a coal mine or something, till the influence of the Late Lamented overtook it. A man I met yesterday was talking about slaves. They were up to all sorts of games down at their warehouses. The negro still flourishes apparently,” he added, as a group of black men passed them and turned down a narrow street, where tousled women stood at their doors, and children screamed in the gutter. They crossed over a thoroughfare at which main streets intersected one another, and accommodation for sailors was advertised by mission rooms, clubs, public-houses, slop shops, and reiterated offers of beds. Blocks of shops, shipping bureaus and warehouses split up further on into single gigantic buildings, the offices of the state and of great trading companies, full as beehives, and glittering with prosperity; all the organism of a seaport in touch with continents. The sea air was fresh in their faces.

“That’s good,” said Cyril. “We’ll go and hang about.”

They went precariously down a sloping bridge, slippery with mud from the feet of a stream of hurrying workers intent on their home affairs which lay on the other side of the river, and stood by a line of iron chains that stretched indefinitely along the gently heaving planks of the stage to which the ferry boats were moored. A red sun hung above the chimneys on the opposite side in a slight fog that was creeping up the river, and, from mysterious shapes behind this veil, hooters, syrens and clanging bells answered one another in warnings to the capering atoms of whom the drowning of even one would affect, in some degree, the life of the city.

“Do you know,” said Teresa presently, “that I haven’t seen a single person—what we used to call ‘person’—since we came out; nothing but the kind of people who make crowds.”

“That’s because you don’t know them,” said Cyril. “I saw a millionaire get off the boat a minute ago, ‘walking quite unaffectedly,’ as the newspapers say.”

“No, but the dressed people,” said Teresa, “you know what I mean. Where are they?”

“My dear, how should I know?” he replied carelessly. “That’s what I tried to explain to your mother before we came; I thought it would put her off. But I shouldn’t be in the least surprised if she took up philanthropy.”

“Do you mean that she’d go on committees?” Teresa asked awestruck.

“She might quite well, and if I were the committee I should just tell her what I wanted done, and leave her to do it her own way. You’d find it would work out in the end.”

“But those kind of people are generally so interfering,” said Teresa. “Mother is not.”

“No, but she is a master of strategy,” said Cyril. “I used to read about Napoleon when we were taught strategy. Did you ever hear of his battles?”

“You mean Waterloo?” she asked.

“Yes, but that didn’t come off. His great success was before then. She may meet her Wellington on the playing fields of Millport for all you know. We shall see. Let’s go back to tea. Have a taxi?”

“No, let’s go on the top of a tram,” said Teresa. “I want to have that rod thing arranged over my head. Did you see the conductor running round with a string and hooking the little wheel on at the back?”

“Well, I don’t mind,” he conceded, “but the smell will knock you down.”

“What smell?” asked Teresa.

“Demos, a crowd,” he replied, as they made their slow progress between the jostling workers who still poured uninterruptedly across the bridge, “see also ‘Demosthenes’ and ‘demon’— and ‘demi-monde’,” he added reflectively, as a whiff of strong scent struck him from a girl with a sharp elbow.

“What a fuss you make about smells and things,” she said. “They’re all life. They mean all sorts of things.”

“Well, they don’t mean anything I want,” he grumbled. “I believe everybody in this damned place wears fish next the skin.” This was said with profound disgust as they took their places on a little seat at the top of the tram staircase, and other swarms of people with pale, serious faces and drab clothing pushed past his knees to the glass shelter beyond. The windows became fogged with human breath and clouds of cheap tobacco, and as the sun disappeared in the drifting fog from the river, the mud began to filter down once more on to the roofs, and to ooze up from under the stones of the pavement. The car swayed under its heavy load, with occasional grinding squeals, stopping every few hundred yards to take up new burdens in place of those who had reached their destination. Teresa watched the squalid forms and weary faces with a new-born ecstasy. Some veiled desire, a love for something unknown, which had led her in pursuit for as long as she could remember, had stopped and shown itself to her for a moment. Then it fled again from her reach.

CHAPTER II

One great source of mental nourishment that Evangeline relied on at this time was the Press. Two thirds of the things she thought about each day came from the newspapers, plain or illustrated, but not political; that is to say, not political beyond striking headlines and a short—very short—leading article. Her mind made curious pictures of these scraps of state information. Perhaps the best way of describing what she thought Parliament is, and does, is to imagine oneself very agile, very kind, very interested, perched inside the roof of an immense building, looking down on hundreds of elderly gentlemen all of one type, but some with familiar faces. We, from our perch, know that each of them has gone through a period of anxiety and expense, connected with loss of voice and terrible boredom of his supporters, who have to sit behind him on uncomfortable chairs and wish he would pull his coat down at the back before speaking. This period of trial has ended in an election—ribbon and scratch meals—and then he got a “seat” here on something or other benches (Evangeline had been at school, but she wasn’t in the serious lot, at least, not the brainy serious. Her set used only to discuss things like immortality when they felt really friendly.) Once on these “benches” men become political, and lose considerably in spiritual value, except when they call out the army and navy. Otherwise they spend their time henceforth in committing blunders (the meat blunder, the wool blunder, the tax blunder, the housing blunder, etc.), to the perpetual inconvenience of the public, until something happens to the Cabinet and a lot of well-known people who were IN become OUT, and it makes no difference at all, except as a frail raft for the drowning in conversation. But the rest of the paper is worth reading; there are things to interest everybody. The eccentric behaviour of criminals, landladies and leaders of society; adventures, and reports of shipwrecks and calves with two tails. On the last page there is often expert advice on physical fitness and the complexion.

On the morning following Teresa’s walk to the docks with her father Evangeline began to try the effects of the juice of an orange accompanied by half an hour’s deep breathing before breakfast. She had walked and deep breathed in the park, and returned full of exhilaration from the sight of the dewy grass, young tulips pushing through the heavy dun soil and the song of birds in smoke-laden trees and bushes that were budding as irrepressibly as herself. She stood on the edge of a pond and watched the ducks performing an ecstatic toilet. Their guttural sounds of pleasure and the grinding of distant tram wheels were the only sounds besides the chorus of chirping. The only people she met were a policeman on one side of the pond, and a dressmaker’s assistant on the other, and she felt that God was the friend of both as of the ducks and the Spring; they were not at all in the way. When she arrived at home a man in military uniform was standing on the doorstep. He was young and had the face of a reformer.

“Good morning,” she said. “Are you coming in?”

“Please,” he answered gravely, and said no more, while she fitted her latchkey. She led the way into the dining-room, where breakfast was laid, and looked vaguely round.

“Shall I tell my father you’re here?” she asked hesitatingly, and then, with sudden uncontrollable interest, “Are you the man that hasn’t got a wife?”

He started and frowned. He was embarrassed, and felt that the question was not one that should have been asked by a stranger. “No, I am not married,” he snapped.

“Is your name Hatton?” she asked next.

“Yes.”

“Oh, then Father told us about you. Do you want to see him?”

“Very much,” said Captain Hatton with emphasis.

“I’ll fetch him,” she said, “but do sit down and be comfortable.” She went out and called, “Father! Father!” at the bottom of the stairs. “Father! Oh, drat him! I believe he is still in the bath.” Captain Hatton, erect on the hearthrug in front of the door she had left open, heard, and winced.

“Dick—y! Dick—y!” she called next.

“Oh, do come up, Chips, if you want anything,” he heard a small weary voice say upstairs. “Father is in the bath; he’ll be out directly.”

“Well tell him to hurry up; it’s Captain Hatton,” said Evangeline, and she plunged back into the dining-room.

“I am afraid my watch must be all wrong,” he said, as he glanced round the room in hope of moral support from an accusing clock. “I thought General Fulton said breakfast at half-past eight.”

“So it is,” said Evangeline. “It is only twenty minutes to nine now. Father won’t get up if he has an interesting post. What time do you get up?”

“Oh—er—a quarter to seven usually,” he replied.

“A quarter to——? Gracious! Do you mean in the very middle of a minute like that? It seems just as if you said ‘up goes the hand of my watch, down goes my leg on the floor.’ I couldn’t do that. I have to yawn a long time first and then get out by degrees till it gets too cold not to do something about it.”

There was silence. Evangeline felt depressed. All her gladness in the awakening spring had gone. “Would you like to look at the paper?” she asked with a sigh. He said, “Thank you,” but as he stretched out his hand to take it from her he saw that it was not Country Life, but a lady’s paper. Doll-like faces with no noses, shameless trousseaux, ridiculous young men in black, scent bottles and wigs met his eye on the open page.

“Er—thanks very much,” he said, “I think I’ll wait for the morning paper. What time do you get it?”

“I expect it has come,” said Evangeline. “The boy generally flings it in at the kitchen window.” She rang the bell. “Breakfast, please, Strickland, and the paper if it has come,” she ordered.

“I was waiting till Mrs. Fulton came down,” said the maid severely. Evangeline sighed again. “How obstructive everyone is this morning,” she thought, but said aloud, “No, we’ll begin please, and anyhow I want the paper.”

But neither came and the silence grew heavier. She wanted to rush out of the room; she knew that her hair was untidy and two of her finger nails were grubby owing to having restored a strayed worm to what she thought a safe place on the bank of the pond, where a duck had eaten him at once to her disgust. But she could not move from the sofa where she had taken refuge with her rejected paper. The barrier of Captain Hatton’s eye stretched between her and the door and she felt that it might touch her as she ran past; if it did she would have to scream. Suddenly—“A—tish—u!”—a fearful explosion. Captain Hatton had sneezed. There was a dead silence while Evangeline held her breath and dared not look. Then again the awful sound; and again; eight times.

“I beg your pardon,” he said when all was quiet again. “Extraordinary how these attacks come on.”

The great friendly creature cheered up at once on this crumb of encouragement. “I like sneezing,” she said. “It almost takes the place of swearing. You feel better and no harm done to anybody.”

“Ah—h’m,” he agreed without enthusiasm.

“There’s Mother coming,” she said thankfully as a gentle rustle was heard in the passage. Susie came in in a soft breakfast gown that avoided conclusions with her figure. Her hair was beautifully done and her face delicately cared for. Captain Hatton, though he approved of her evidently careful toilet, took a vague dislike to her because it had not been carried through at the specified time.

“I am so sorry my husband is late,” she murmured, “I am afraid we got into bad habits in London. Everything is so late there and the morning is really the loveliest time, isn’t it? I remember once being out at six to catch a train and the birds were simply delightful. Do you sing at all?” she inquired, her eyes brimming with sympathetic interest.

“I do occasionally,” he admitted, heartily wishing that his chief would come and relieve him.

“I hope we shall often hear you,” said Mrs. Fulton. “I always think music is such a happy thing. Evangeline dear, ring the bell.”

“I have rung twice,” she said.

“Servants are very unpunctual as a race,” Mrs. Fulton observed. “I wish they would get up earlier, but I daresay they are often tired like we are.” Strickland came in with the hot dishes. “We shall want some more toast, I think, Strickland.”

“The fire’s not hot enough,” answered the maid. “The cook was late this morning.”

“Then just run up and make a little at the gas fire in the General’s dressing-room,” Susie ordered. “Will you help yourself, Captain Hatton.”

A few minutes later Cyril entered hurriedly in his dressing-gown. “I say, Sue, what the devil—hullo, Hatton, that you?—what the devil did you send that woman to make toast in my room for? I’d nothing but——”

“Cyril dear, never mind,” his wife interrupted. “The kitchen fire wasn’t quite ready; she won’t be a minute.”

“Well, I can’t go back to dress now,” he complained.

“It will teach us to be more punctual to-morrow,” said Mrs. Fulton. “We must set them a good example. Dicky ought to be down too.”

Teresa came in quietly and shut the door without looking at anyone. She was flushed and seemed preoccupied and had evidently forgotten Evangeline’s announcement of a guest. “My hair refuses to go up,” she began, turning straight to the sideboard. “I shall do it like some women I saw yesterday. The front was all in tiny plaits and the back—well, it wasn’t hairdressing, it was plumbing. You’ve been pretty hearty with the kedgeree, haven’t you?”

“Dicky, darling, I don’t think you have seen Captain Hatton,” her mother suggested. Teresa turned unconcernedly.

“I am sorry,” she apologised. “How do you do? I remember my sister did tell me you were here, but I happened to be thinking at the time and I forgot.”

“Please don’t bother,” he said. He was recovering his temper under the influence of breakfast and the sense of safety that his host brought. “You’ll see so much of me, I’m afraid, that I’d rather you did not notice it.”

“Don’t hope for that, Hatton,” put in the General. “They’ll see everything you do. It’s a damned noticing family; except Evangeline and she’ll fall over you in the dark every time.”

Captain Hatton looked embarrassed and changed the subject. “Are you going to like being here, do you think?” he asked Susie.

“Oh, I think so,” she replied. “Of course it is quite different from London, but there must be some nice people. Do you know many people here yet?”

“I have got some friends who live a few miles out,” he said. “I have stayed with them for hunting, but I’ve been out of England for the last three years. We were sent to Germany after the armistice and I came back to go into hospital.”

“Oh, dear me, those hospitals!” she sighed. “Shall I ever forget them! I couldn’t do any actual nursing, of course, though I should have loved it; but I don’t think it was right the way women left their children. But I used to visit the poor boys and wash up. I get such touching letters from them even now. Do you remember young Digby, Cyril?”

“No, I don’t, but I could make a fair guess at him. You forget that I was in my little wooden hut at the time and couldn’t leave it even for you. I wonder if that beastly woman is out of my room. Dicky—oblige your father. Go and see if she is there, will you? I want to get dressed.”

“She is making toast, dear,” Mrs. Fulton explained. “You might ask her for it; she won’t hear the bell.”

Teresa went out and met Strickland in the passage. She was dusting the hall. “Can we have the toast, please?” Teresa asked.

“It isn’t made,” Strickland replied coldly. “I couldn’t be spoken to like that. I shall leave at the end of the month. I’m not accustomed to be blasted.” Teresa touched her on the shoulder. “Never mind Father,” she said. “We none of us do. He’s most affectionate really. Forget the toast; I’ll tell them.” She went back into the dining-room and shut the door. Mrs. Fulton was offering dainty morsels of sentiment about hospitals to Captain Hatton, who disposed of them one by one with the indifference a sea lion shows about the quality of the fish thrown into its mouth. Teresa sat down by her father and said in a low voice, “You mustn’t swear at the maids, you know. Strickland is very angry and was going to go, but I told her you are all right. I don’t know if she will recover, but you must remember that you don’t have the trouble of going to registry offices.”

“What an eternal curse women’s feelings are,” he grumbled as he pulled out a cigarette case. “I believe they grow fat on them.”

“But then, you see, your men have none at all,” she explained, “which is as bad the other way, because you can’t make them hear except by blasting and all those kinds of words that mean nothing.”

“But they do mean something,” argued her aggrieved father. “They mean, ‘You’ve damn well got to do it and look sharp.’”

“Yes, but if you say to a woman, ‘Be quick, Pansy dear,’ she does it just as well.”

Cyril roared with laughter. “Here, Hatton,” he said, “do you know what you’ve got to say to the mess sergeant the next time he keeps you waiting? ‘Be quick, Pansy dear!’ Will you try it first or shall I?” Captain Hatton laughed.

“What is Dicky saying?” asked Mrs. Fulton indulgently.

“Explaining the art of commanding those of unripe station,” said the General. “Come on to my room, Hatton, and I’ll leave you there while I get some clothes on—if they’re not all over toast and tears,” he added resentfully.

“Good heavens! What a man!” Evangeline exclaimed when the door shut behind them. “He’s like an umbrella.”

“Oh, I think he’s charming,” said her mother. “So much tact, and most interesting, I should think, when one gets to know him. Ring the bell, Dicky dear, and when she comes to clear away tell her I shall be in my sitting-room if she wants me.”

“What are we going to do with ourselves every day in this place, Chips?” Teresa asked her sister when they were alone.

“Oh, what we have done before, I suppose,” Evangeline answered carelessly. She was reading the paper that had come too late to save Captain Hatton’s temper. The Labour Party, she read, were determined to do something which she did not understand, but which foreboded discomfort to everybody including their own supporters. They seemed to do it on purpose, like schoolmistresses, for some end which no reasonable young person desires, even if it could be achieved. Who exactly were the Labour party she wondered? The paper showed their photographs; clumsy figures in impossible hats, with impossible wives whose barren heads contrasted grotesquely with the hairiness of their men’s faces. She looked over the page. An officer, recently demobilised, had committed suicide owing to the difficulty of maintaining a blue-eyed child, whose portrait was inset below his own. The “night life” of a great city was said to be “glittering with unprecedented extravagance!” A millionaire had made a unique will at a place she had never heard of, providing for the purchase of fifty elephants, which were to be presented to the Corporation, and supported by public funds for the employment of superannuated keepers.

“But you forget that I haven’t done anything except go to classes,” pursued Teresa. “I am supposed to be ‘out’ now.”

“Jolly lucky for you,” remarked her sister. “There was no coming out in my time.”

“I don’t see much difference,” said Teresa, “except that you brought your own food to parties and didn’t wear such low necks. But anyhow, what I meant was that the war is over, and we’re in a new place and we’ve got some maids, and what is the next?”

“I don’t know,” Evangeline answered slowly. “There are days when I want to burst—you know—with a pop, in the sun on a still day—like that, (she waved her hands) and then I should become something quite different. I should be full of ideas. I don’t know what they would be but that is the exciting part.”

“This is a very dirty town,” Teresa said, as she stood at the window. “I haven’t seen any people yet who looked as if they liked what they were doing.”

Evangeline’s eager interest had faded. “Haven’t you?” she said.

“No, and I don’t know what Mother will do with herself, either. I suppose there must be some ordinary ones. She’s a social success, isn’t she?”

“In a way——” Evangeline hesitated. “She’s not like an American mother in those ways, but if you notice you’ll find that you never can stop anything happening as she wants it to. I believe she conjures. She seems to sit down by a hat and take no notice of it, and then there’s an omelet in it. If Father doesn’t want the omelet, or we don’t, she says she hasn’t made it, and I spend my life trying to find out whether she has or not.”

“Well that hasn’t much to do with what I was saying,” her sister continued. “We shall drift here if we don’t look out.”

“Drift?”

“Yes, you know—I shall arrange the flowers, and you will play endless games and go to things and perhaps ‘take up’ something, and I shall shop and be polite to visitors, and I really don’t want to do anything else. I am not energetic, and I should love to live in a cottage. But everything is so hideous here, and those smells and awful faces make me sort of drunk.”

“My dear!” Evangeline sympathised with little understanding.

“Everyone has always made me feel a little drunk,” Teresa went on. “They say such stupid things; sit there gibbering and drinking tea, and yet all the people in history—anyone—Nebuchadnezzar or Cleopatra or Anne Boleyn—were in society, and all sorts of real things happened to them; they didn’t ask for it. And I believe just as much could happen to the silly people who pay calls. I often understand eating grass and letting one’s nails grow.” She paused. “And those people who are poor—they must know a lot. I want to know what it is.”

“It is like my wanting to burst, perhaps,” said Evangeline. “Except that I don’t want to know all about those horrors. I hated all that in the war, though, of course, it was so exciting being useful that one forgot the mess. I should like to be in a dangerous country with a lovely climate, and live with a man who had read everything there is. We should ride all day, and perhaps have some children who wouldn’t want clothes or governesses nor have diseases.”

“Like a cinema,” commented Teresa.

“Yes, rather. I always get so angry with the film girl who is left in a log cabin with a perfectly beautiful savage who leaves her the room to herself out of chivalry and sleeps in the stable and does all he can for her, and then the silly ass crawls screaming round the walls, and wants to go back to some odious young man in the city.”

“But the city man would be much more likely to have read everything,” her sister pointed out. “Your savage wouldn’t know any more than you do, which isn’t saying much.”

“No, I know,” she admitted with a sigh. “I don’t know what I want; perhaps both of them for different days; wet Sundays to spend with the young man who reads, and the other days, when it is sunny, to gallop about with the dangerous one.”

“I believe there is more in it than that,” said Teresa, “and meantime I am going to study Strickland. I have an idea she can tell me the things I want to know. I had better find her, by the way, and give her Mother’s message. I don’t think she takes much interest in bells.” She left Evangeline to speculate on life as digested for her by the newspaper, and went herself in search of the woman who, she felt, held some clue to the pursuit of her desire.

At the end of a week she recalled her sister’s inspired description of their mother’s behaviour. Susie had, it seemed, by some unobservable process, evolved a spiritual omelet out of the most unpromising material among the people who called on her. Most of them belonged to what Strickland, who had begun to unbend towards Teresa, assured her were “some of our leading families.”

“The Manleys are very well known,” she said. “Old Mr. Manley did a great deal of good, and was very well thought of all over the town. My grandfather used to work for him, and he always said he never wished to have a better master. I don’t know so much about the young ones. My sister lived with Mrs. James Manley, and I can’t say she enjoyed it. Everything was very near, and she left because she got run down with the work. But Mrs. Eric Manley, that called to-day, is well enough spoken of, though I don’t think much of her myself.”

“Yes,—Mrs. Carpenter,” she said, another day, when she was turning down Teresa’s bed. “I’m glad you mentioned her. She’s another of the sort I was telling you about. They’re well enough in public I suppose, but those who have to do with them when they get back know who are the real ladies and gentlemen. Now you’ll hear a great deal, I daresay, about Mrs. Carpenter, and how she goes about here and there and all she does, but I wouldn’t be the matron of some of those homes she goes to—no, I wouldn’t for all the money you could give me; and I wouldn’t be one of the inmates, either, with all the advice she gives, and she who doesn’t know what it is to have one child left on her hands for a day, let alone six or eight. I don’t say she doesn’t go about here and there, and so she should, for she’s the time and the money, but I don’t think it’s right for servants to be kept up till all hours washing dishes for those who study the poor, and up again next morning to light the fires in time for ladies to warm themselves while they telephone for the best of everything.”

“Yes,” said Teresa, looking into the fire.

“You’ll say I’m a socialist, perhaps, Miss,” Strickland added, as she was going to leave the room, “but it isn’t that. I know we can’t all do alike, and I don’t mind the General, if you’ll excuse me, now I’ve got used to his language. He’s very thoughtful in some ways, and it seems a man’s place to mess things about. But when I took in the tea, and heard Mrs. Carpenter going on at such a rate, and Mrs. Manley, too, I felt like speaking out when you mentioned her.”

“How you do gossip with the servants, dear Dicky,” said Susie, who had heard the last word on her way to her bedroom, and called to Teresa to help her to fasten her dress. “I never think it is a wise plan.”

Teresa said nothing. Although she always received her mother’s remarks with respectful affection, due to the fact that Susie never appeared cross and everything she said was incontrovertible, yet very little that was not a definitely expressed wish penetrated her thoughts. “If Mother wants anything done, of course we do it,” was the understanding between her and Evangeline, but they respected her power as a conjuror, rather than her wisdom as a prophet. Susie’s power over men had been great in her youth, and she had had much influence in the lives of women, but no one had ever counted her as friend or enemy. She had been an article of faith to some, of admiration, of liking, of amusement or indefinite irritation to others, but only her children in their nursery days had ever looked to her as a help in time of trouble. Her conjuring ability had been invaluable in the nursery and schoolroom. Her presence would always turn a crime into a bubble, and the indignant nurse or governess was compelled to see her rod break out into the delicate blossom of divine forgiveness under her outraged eyes. The impression of this gentleness remained with the girls when they grew up; but that was all. They might search the corners of the wonder-box where their recollections of her were stored, and find nothing that they could put together and call a mother.

Teresa had been surprised that day by Susie’s immediate success with the women who had called. It is true that they had come prepared to like the Fultons, but they were in no way committed; and such all-embracing eagerness to love as Evangeline showed to strangers was against their traditions. It is one of the customs of Millport before paying a call to consider first the reasons for the newcomers’ arrival. A well paid appointment gives them a good start, whereas an indefinite purpose would be thought suspicious. Second to be considered is their pedigree. If they can be traced to some source called “good connections” another point is scored in their favour. A good income comes third, and, provided the rest is satisfactory, adds greatly to their favourable chances, but this item is not so essential as it used to be. People who are not at all nice are often rich at the present time, and even furs have to be more carefully chosen than in the past, for fear they may be the outcome of too recent enterprise. But the thing that tells in the long run is “views.” The Provinces have collective “views” in a way that would be impossible in London. You must either think with the city or carry the city with you. To live in opposition to it you must be either a hermit or a fanatic; cease to love your neighbour or lose your reason. The apostle of a different creed from that of the city can carry the people with him some distance towards any end—the best or the worst—provided he uses the old ritual cunningly; but wolves and doves alike must be dressed in sheep’s clothing, or out they go.

“None of that, now, with those feathers,” the city says to the intruding dove. “I know you’re not a wolf. You don’t need to tell me what I can see. But you’ve got a beak, and I wouldn’t put it past you to get pecking at my legs.”

But they received Susie at once with open arms. She came from London, which is always nice; her parents had been born in Millport of absolutely pure wool stock, her husband had inherited money from a good old lady before the war, and Susie had only to appear in her own spotless fleece of nice feeling upon every subject—especially wine—for them to cluster round her with acclamations and summon their kind from the most distant parts of the county.

CHAPTER III

Miss Archer, reporter for the Millport News, stood just inside the first reception-room at the Town Hall. There was a suite of rooms, leading one into the other, showing a vista of hats and baldish heads and faces of all sorts wedged together in packs or moving in a slow stream with eddies and cross currents. The stream rose in the great entrance hall of the building. It was brought by contributory motors and broughams, from all parts of the town, suburbs and county, and it flowed upstairs and through the rooms and down again through a temporary congestion at the first door where Miss Archer stood with her little note book. A middle-aged woman, mastering fatigue with vivacity, stood beside her and made rapid remarks in an undertone, pointing out this or that noteworthy face or garment. Her hand was conspicuous by being so obviously ill at ease in its white glove. It was a worker’s hand, full of strength and sensibility, and the sillily cut glove sat on it like a bonnet on a horse. The Mayor and Mayoress remained just within the big folding doors which were set wide apart, a footman planted on either side. The footman on the left had nothing about him to allay the suspicion that he was stuffed, except his small twinkling eyes that spoke of much experience of humanity, a family life of his own and knowledge of the moral difficulties of rich men. His counterpart on the right was unable to give way to the same luxurious calm, being compelled to undergo the trouble of repeating strange syllables whispered into his ear, such as “—siz-an-Miss-S-Arkbury,” “—stron-misses J’n’per,” etc.; if it had not been that he knew the names of the greater number of the guests he would probably have broken down and been led weeping to the nearest public-house. As it was he battled bravely on, and beyond the momentary annoyance of the Harburys who became “Barleys,” and the Muskovilles who became “Musk-and-veal,” and so on, it didn’t really matter. People who knew them knew them, and those who didn’t didn’t mind.

“Who were those last, did you hear?” Miss Archer bent to ask her friend. “They’re new, surely; I must note their dresses; they’re very good. There—the woman in grey with sables, and the two girls.”

“‘Fulton!’ I thought he said,” answered the tired woman. She followed them with her eyes to where they stopped, looking at the crowd and talking now and then to each other. Susie was benevolently dimpling, as if the party were hers, and commenting to her daughters on the beauty of the rooms. “Architecture makes so much difference to a building, doesn’t it?” she said. “It would be so easy to spoil a big place like this by making it clumsy and in bad taste. But I do admire this immensely, don’t you?”

“There’s Mrs. Manley gone up to them now,” said Miss Archer’s friend. “I tell you—won’t they be the new general’s family that someone said had come? There’s some new arrangement or other about the soldiers. I know my nephew who’s a territorial said something about a General Fulton coming to be over the whole lot of them; not separated as they used to be.”

Miss Archer wrote down, “—in a distinguished combination of old gold and palest petunia, relieved by valuable antique buckles. Mrs. Slacks looked well in mauve, with one of the new violet pyramid hats.” “What did you say? Yes, I should think that’s very likely. Let me see. Grey poult de soie, isn’t it, with sables? and her two young daughters (she was scribbling again) in girlish foam of niaise crepe in the new swallow blue that has lately come into its own. Yes, that will do.”

“There’s Mrs. Carpenter speaking to them,” said the friend. “I don’t know how you are going to dish up that checked coat of hers again. I must catch Mr. Beaver if I can—he has just gone through—and see if he will take the chair on the 15th.” She disappeared among the crowd, and presently Miss Archer tripped away to take a turn through the rooms to make sure she had omitted no one of importance.

“Shall we find a table for you?” Mrs. Manley said to Susie. “It will take us through the rooms on the way and there are several people you must meet.”

A young woman, dressed with the touching pride of the connoisseur on a small income, turned as Mrs. Manley spoke, and smiled at her.

“How are you?” Mrs. Manley said. “I am showing Mrs. Fulton the lions. If you want tea we could fill a table. Mrs. Fulton, may I introduce you to Mrs. Vachell. You are sure to meet everywhere. General and Mrs. Fulton have just moved into the Babley’s house,” she explained to the other.

“Yes, I know,” said Mrs. Vachell. “I was going to call on you this week (she turned to Susie). Mrs. Babley left me several messages for you about the house, small things that she thought might be useful, but she didn’t want to bother you by writing about them. I only came back from Egypt yesterday.”

“Mrs. Vachell’s husband,” Mrs. Manley explained, “is the most distinguished something-or-other-ist of the century, only I never can pronounce it.”

“Never mind,” said Mrs. Vachell. “We’ll leave it at that. What a squash there is to-day. Do you suppose we shall ever get any tea?” They moved slowly on, and Mrs. Vachell found herself separated with the two girls.

“You must find it rather dreary being turned loose in a strange town,” she said almost pityingly. “Has anyone been any use?”

“We’re quite happy,” said Evangeline. “Do tell me why so many people come here. Is a Town Hall a sort of public party place? Oh dear, what a row that band makes!”

“If we can get to the tea room we shall be out of it,” said Mrs. Vachell. “No, this isn’t exactly a public party, but the Lord Mayor has to entertain everybody. You will find later that you meet your friends here, and it isn’t so bad. But you will probably be roped in to make yourselves useful before long.”

Teresa thrilled once more with the breath of the thing she sought. “How?” she asked.

“All sorts of ways. Child welfare or domestic training or inebriates—or perhaps imbeciles,” Mrs. Vachell added, mischievously putting on an extra screw as she noted the alarm in Evangeline’s face and the throb of excitement in Teresa’s.

Mrs. Carpenter was to be seen through the doorway, pushing slowly towards them, elbowing one, patronising another with a smile, making expressive gestures to friends here and there indicating that her task was nearly impossible—but—hold on, little sheep! The shepherdess is coming. You shall have tea if she has to commandeer some one else’s table.

“I wonder if you would mind——” she will probably say reproachfully. “This lady ought to sit down and it is impossible to find a table. I think we can get six chairs in here if it won’t be pressing you too near the wall.” It was by some manœuvre of this sort that she did in the end plant the girls, whom she had volunteered to find, and Mrs. Vachell, whom she could not very well get rid of, at a table where Mrs. Fulton and Mrs. Manley were already seated. The two elderly ladies who were there first drained their cups and withdrew, commenting on the bad management of the tea rooms and the “manners of some people.”

Mrs. Eric Manley, Mrs. Carpenter and Mrs. Vachell occupied positions in Millport not unlike those of the kings of England before Alfred. Their territories were less defined, their wars were not so bitter, but, as the history books say, “the country languished under their rule and longed for a just and wise leader to unite their petty factions under his sway.” Mrs. Manley ruled over the Fashionable-who-are-charitable, Mrs. Carpenter over the Charitable-who-are-fashionable-and-educated, and Mrs. Vachell over the Educated-and-incidentally-fashionable-and-charitable. They were ripe for the arrival of a visionary like Susie who should unite their people in the peaceful practices of Love—love of architecture-and-so-on, love of children, of all weathers, of the poor, “even those poor terrible drunken creatures who have been taught to be wicked,” of “your own beautiful homes.” We have anticipated this last object of her love. It became one of the stock phrases of those speeches which made her the idol of public meetings in days to come.

But although Destiny was hovering over the tea-table, they knew it not. Perhaps Teresa felt something of the fate in store for her. Their chairs were near a window, below which the trams stopped to load and discharge their passengers. The faces were there by the hundred, the drab clothing, the mud were as usual. Did the scene never alter she wondered? Did the stream of people pour on like that under lowering skies perpetually—all day—Sundays—holidays, even through the night? She had come from the crowded streets of London, but that was utterly different. There was variety, sunshine, even leisureliness in the squares and quiet places off the main traffic; and besides that, the significance of any individual was so small that no one could feel responsible for his neighbour unless he were invited to interest himself. In Millport every weary pedestrian seemed to carry a personal grudge against those who had the means to escape from the mud.

Mrs. Manley was comparing notes with Susie on the eternal subject of prices. Even cakes made at home were almost too expensive to eat every day, she complained. Her husband had had to give up keeping a tin of biscuits at his office, and he often came home to tea to save expense, unless he had to stay and carry on work that the clerks used to do. It was impossible to have the sort of entrées one used to, made with just a little sweetbread or cream or something; even the eggs mounted up now——

“Yes, yes, I know, my dear women,” Mrs. Carpenter interrupted, “but do you realise what it means to Charity? You are only on the visiting committee of my beloved Institute, you know,” she smiled at Mrs. Manley, “and you can have no idea. The very soap the women wash with costs us £20 a year more than it did; there now! What do you think of that? That is just soap alone.”

Mrs. Manley looked a little contemptuous. “Everyone uses soap,” she said. “I have to deal it out at our orphanage when it is my week for the store cupboard. But anyhow I believe there is only one thing that hasn’t gone up and that is bi-carbonate of soda. That is why everybody’s cakes taste of it. (She glanced at Mrs. Carpenter). How do you find things, Mrs. Fulton?”

“I try not to worry about it,” Susie replied. Love seemed to envelope the table as she spoke, and even Mrs. Carpenter felt that she had not got the nail plumb on the head with her last blow. Mrs. Vachell pricked up her ears. “I do so want those two,” Susie continued with a fond look at her daughters, “not to have all their young time clouded by perpetual half-pennies. Of course we are not extravagant, but we have none of us very large appetites and, as I say, I just try not to worry. I have no doubt that what we are going through now is somehow for the good of the world.”

Mrs. Carpenter drew a long breath and turned back a piece of fur at her wrist. “Of course we all believe that,” she said, “or we shouldn’t be here; at least I hope not. But what do you propose, Mrs. Fulton, to do about the terrible suffering as it is?” Even the best accredited lamb in its first year at Millport must not have things all its own way in the fold.

Susie’s eyes brimmed. “I think and think,” she said earnestly, “but I can’t see how it is to be avoided. It seems somehow as if it was meant, and we can only learn the meaning by helping everywhere we can when we get the chance. I think some of the saddest cases are often the least known, don’t you?” Mrs. Vachell was taking an Olympic pleasure in the new forces which Susie was evidently going to bring in on the side of good against evil. She looked on from the high ground of quicker wits than her two sister rulers. She now wanted to see what Susie did with her two daughters. “It is the younger generation that will have to find out these things,” she said, looking at the girls.

“Oh, shall we,” said Evangeline, rather bored. Teresa shrugged her shoulders and passed the cake. Mrs. Carpenter alone took up the challenge. “I think girls have lost all taste for the mere pleasure-loving life they used to lead,” she said, “I know mine won’t look at it. ‘Oh, Mother,’ they say, ‘We’re so bored with parties.’ They are all going to have professions and Lena is going to do social work.” Mrs. Manley, being childless, said nothing.

“Are they!” Susie exclaimed, full of interest. “How wonderful! I often thought as a girl how much I should have liked to be something, but I never had a chance and I am afraid I had no talents.” She dimpled at the three leaders. “I could only admire and enjoy. We must really be going, I think, dears. You belong to the University, don’t you, Mrs. Vachell?” she asked as they dispersed. “It must be so delightful.”

“Yes,” Mrs. Vachell replied, “my husband does. Have you met Mrs. Gainsborough yet?”

“The Principal’s wife?” said Susie. “No, she called last week, but I was out. I was so sorry.” They were walking down the great staircase by this time.

“You must be sure to call on her At Home day,” Mrs. Vachell warned her, “or you will frighten her. It is every Tuesday.”

“Frighten her?” Susie repeated.

“Yes, because if she hasn’t met you first she will have to ask you to dinner without knowing you and she can’t bear that. There she is, by the way, still in the hall. Will you come and speak to her?”

Susie allowed herself to be the means of violently startling a massive woman—there is no other way to think of her—dressed in old-fashioned clothes, who was peering timidly through the glass doors that opened on to the street. She turned in a fright when Mrs. Vachell spoke to her. “Oh! is that you!” she exclaimed thankfully. “I can’t think why my cab hasn’t come. I ordered it at a quarter past five and it is nearly six now and it has come on so wet.”

Mrs. Vachell introduced Susie and her daughters and slipped away.

“Oh!” said Mrs. Gainsborough again—(it was her usual beginning)—“so delighted to meet you—so sorry you were out when I called. And these are your girls?—quite so—yes——” She relapsed into silence and went on looking helplessly at the rain.

“Mayn’t we drive you home?” Susie suggested. “Our car is there.” Mrs. Gainsborough threw up her hands and followed, murmuring. As they drove home through the crowded, dripping streets, Evangeline and Teresa crushed suffocatingly under the shadow of Mrs. Gainsborough’s knees, Susie’s kind little face peeping from behind a bunch of aged ostrich tips in Mrs. Gainsborough’s bonnet, all three of them disconcerted by the unusual smell of warm eau-de-Cologne that filled their car, very little was said. Mrs. Gainsborough was at her request left on the doorstep of a house, cinnamon-coloured like the Fultons’, at the corner of a cinnamon-coloured square. Once safely on her own territory her nervousness left her, and her smiles and genuine pleasure in the small service rendered brought Teresa another fleeting vision of the joy she perpetually sought.

CHAPTER IV

Mrs. Gainsborough soon returned the hospitality of Susie’s motor by inviting her and Cyril to dinner. Her note was rambling and agitated like her manner, and ended with a postscript, “Please bring one of your daughters if she would care for it. Emma will be so pleased.”

Evangeline and Teresa refused to have anything to do with it when the letter came, but Cyril said with genuine terror to Teresa when his wife had gone out of the room, “Dicky, you must come—promise me quick—but don’t say anything about it——”

“All right, of course,” she assured him, “but why?”

“They’re all schoolmasters,” he explained in an undertone as Susie came back. Nothing more was said until breakfast was over and then Teresa plunged for her father’s sake.

“Can I go to the Gainsboroughs’, after all, Mother?”

“If you like, dear, but I thought you said just now——”

“I know,” she interrupted, “but—I should like to see the University. I think the Gainsborough girl would like it.”

Mrs. Fulton looked suspiciously at her husband. He was filling his cigarette case from a box on the mantelpiece, using unnecessary care to fit them in properly.

“Strickland should have done that for you, dear. Are you off now?”

“Yes, presently,” he answered. “I’m not sure I can come to the Gainsboroughs, Sue; we’ve some rather special business next week.”

“I think we ought to get to know everybody as much as possible, Cyril, if only for the sake of the girls. And the University are the most interesting of all. If you knew what a pleasure it is to me to talk about something besides wine and money now and then!”

Cyril instantly threw diplomacy to the winds and began to enjoy himself, standing with his back to the fire. “I don’t want to be a kill-joy,” he replied, “but I learned more about those two subjects from old Wacks at Cambridge than I ever have since from anybody. But he wasn’t married. I daresay the female dons understand the use of the globes and all that. By George! I remember their queer get-ups. Must have been some very deep thinking that led to most of those marriages; which, after all, proves your theory of the Higher mind. Let’s go, and take Dicky if she wants to come,” he added with the boldness that often came to him suddenly after hunting down one of his wife’s insincerities.

By this time she felt nothing but an irritable longing to get him out of the room. Through the whole of their married life he had amused himself by making a cockshy of the sentiments which she presented to the world as the expression of her thoughts. He often exaggerated her insincerity, for the sentiments were as much her own as any other jewellery she might have bought to adorn herself. She admired them quite as much as any she could have originated.

“One of the children will come, of course,” she said impatiently, “if Mrs. Gainsborough really wants some young people. It is very kind of her, for I don’t suppose you have the least idea how dull it is for them, seeing nothing but soldiers and business people who have nothing to talk about. The Gainsboroughs are probably teetotallers—in spite of the set you mixed with at Cambridge and who had probably nothing to do with the life there. Most clever people think very little about their food. But you had better have your wine at the club before you start or they will think there is something the matter with you. Isn’t the time getting on? That clock is a little slow.”

When the time for the party came it turned out to be less of a feast of intellect than had been hoped and feared by the Fultons. In the first place the Carpenters were there, because Mrs. Carpenter was as difficult to keep out of any social gathering as was King Charles’s head from Mr. Dick’s “Memorial.” If the festivity were a heavy duty for the cementing of business connections, Mrs. Carpenter was invited to lighten the dough of wealth with the ferment of culture. If it were a frivolous affair for the benefit of the young and thoughtless, she was there with her daughters. Hostesses included her as a precaution against any subsequent rumour that the scene had been one of unbridled licence. “Really, my dear—of course I wasn’t there so I can’t say, but I believe, etc.” If it were an ordinary mixed dinner, town and gown, she must be there to make things smooth between everybody; to interpose when Mrs. Alderman Snack was talking to Professor Cameo about rabbits, and see that the conversation was switched off at once on to his last book. She had read it of course and was so anxious to contradict him on one point, the condition of India before the mutiny. “My grandfather, you know, was there as a subaltern and he always said he was convinced, etc.” “A wonderful woman, Mrs. Carpenter,” everybody said. “She talks so well upon anything.”

Mrs. Gainsborough, being so very nervous as she was, of course had not settled on a day to ask the new general and his wife until she had made sure that the Carpenters would come. Mrs. Carpenter had therefore consulted her little note-book and had chosen a day when she had only one or two small committees and dear Amy’s dancing lesson to attend, so that she would be “nice and fresh for the evening.” Poor Mr. Carpenter, who was the overworked underwriter to an insurance company, was not likely to be at all nice and fresh, even if he had a good twenty minutes to dress after hurrying up from the office. He could be trusted to be punctual, though, and would be quite up to a little educated chaff with anyone of his own set—Mrs. Vachell or one of the Manleys—so long as he hadn’t to tackle a stranger. He was, as it turned out, very happily situated, as there were only the Vachells, and Mrs. Eric Manley and her unmarried brother-in-law and two young men for Emma Gainsborough and Teresa. One was David Varens, whose father, Sir Richard Varens, belonged to a family that had owned land round Millport for three or four hundred years. Sir Richard had given money and land to Millport University and his son David had just left Oxford. It would never have done if Mrs. Carpenter had not been there.

The third unmarried man was Mr. Joseph Price, the son of Mr. Manley’s partner. Eton and Cambridge had recently handed him back to the home nest, which he was prepared, with the backing of the Liberal Party and his father’s money, to re-line and generally bring up to date. The old birds were to be furbished up and taught new songs; the young lady birds from neighbouring nests were to be simply knocked off their perches, and Londoners coming to Millport were to understand that Millshire was young Mr. Price’s country seat and Millport was his little village where he went to post his letters and chat to the Mayor at election time. You could even buy things in the town now, he was told—quite fairly decent; of course not clothes and all that, but groceries and gloves and that sort of thing his mother found she could get there now. But the hotels were pretty scandalous sort of places. What? I should say so. Lots of churches though; some quite decent ones in the old part of the town if you’re interested in glass and all that kind of thing. And good music too; you ought to go to the concerts if music doesn’t bore you. There was a fellow there the other day—what’s his name—came all the way from Russia with a little handbag—he beat everyone else hollow—never heard anything like it—thought his arm would come off. Abs’lutely wond’f’l. You’ve heard him b’fur ’n town, ’f course? (I have burst into Mr. Price’s way of speaking for a moment, but I cannot reproduce it perfectly.)

This was to Teresa, whom, owing to her father’s military position and their having lived in London, he was treating with unusual effusiveness. He knew Emma Gainsborough slightly and had made an honest effort to talk to her. He always tried to keep close to the ideal manner at which he aimed, the manner of the particular social pen through whose doors he had been allowed to squeeze because of his politics and his father’s money. He was already getting on very well with the manner, a sort of mincingly polite way of speaking, with the vowels squeezed slowly out as if through a confectioner’s icing tube, and laid along the sentence, or else omitted altogether; the exact opposite to the broad flat tones of his native habit. The natural rudeness of vanity was sugared over in this way to just the “right” effect he sought; enthusiasm for this or that “discovery,” indifference to anything tainted with popularity unless some popular thing became discredited enough in time to make it discoverable as a new taste.

“Been doing very much lately?” he had asked Emma Gainsborough dutifully before turning his attention to Teresa who was really his object of the evening. “Seen anything new?”

“No, I don’t think I have,” the poor girl replied, instantly ill at ease. Mr. Price observed the effect he had made, and scored several marks of superiority to himself; it made him feel good-natured.

“Peewit’s brought out another book, I see,” he said, giving her another chance. “’ve you read it?”

“No,” said Emma, adding hurriedly, “I’m doing welfare just now and it takes such an awful lot of time. I’m too sleepy to read after I’ve been wading through statistics all day.”

“Welfare? Let’s see—what’s that now?” asked Mr. Price. It might possibly be something he ought to know about, though from the way Emma did her hair he thought it unlikely.

“Welfare? Oh, it is seeing about children—at least, my part is—finding out things about them and seeing what happens to them and all that; I can’t explain it, but I have been making records of imbeciles all afternoon.” Emma was reckoned a humorist in the family circle and many were the evenings when her father and mother went to bed exhausted by their laughter over things noted by her with a delicacy of perception few people would have suspected, Mr. Price less than any. His “Oh, I see. Splendid work, I’m sure, but don’t you get tired of it?” was followed by a minute’s horrid silence and then he devoted himself with a clear conscience to Teresa in the way that has been described.

Teresa’s attention was wandering to her father, who seemed to be doing very well with Mrs. Gainsborough. She wondered what they were laughing at. She caught up Mr. Price at his short pause after the Russian with the handbag.

“No, I didn’t see him,” she answered vaguely. “What was he doing? Was there anything in the bag?”

Mr. Price was not very pleased. “I don’t know. Pro’b’ly the last sponge in Russia, what? Don’t you take almonds? I shall eat them all if you don’t stop me. Oh, prihsless caat, what are you doing? come here and talk to me——” He broke off as Mrs. Gainsborough’s blue persian stood up beside him and, having pretended to extract three or four long thorns from his leg, withdrew.

“I don’t mind them one way or the other,” said Teresa, “but I want to know something. Who is the man—the last at the end opposite—by my mother?”

“Mr. Vachell do you mean? Don’t you really know him? No, that’s delightful. He’s simply won’f’l man—been digging, you know—Egypt—didn’t you read about it? You ought to read the paper, you know. He’s our show card. When I was up at Cambridge they were fairf’lly jealous that I knew him. I told my tutor that I’d seen him once act’lly in pyjamas and he became quite respectf’l and let me off a lot of lectures on the strength of it. And then you live here and ask who he is——! That’s really great, what? isn’t it? You’ve got to say something really brilliant now to make up or I shall think you’ve taken to good works like all the dear people here.”

“Do you know you make me feel awfully queer,” said Teresa, looking at him with puzzled interest. “What are you talking about really? I know you answered my question, but what has all the rest to do with it? Why should your tutor let you off lectures because you saw somebody who lives here in pyjamas? I don’t understand a bit?”

“Miss Fulton, it is quite time you left that silly boy and gave me a little attention,” said Mr. Manley, whom Mrs. Vachell had neglected so much that he had been keeping a friendly eye on Teresa. He liked the young and had understood that she was not enjoying herself. He included Mr. Price in what he said with a friendly smile and Teresa turned to him gratefully.

“I believe you are much more old-fashioned than you look,” he said to her. “You were not getting on at all well. You didn’t mind my rudeness?”

“No, I liked it,” she answered. “I have met Mrs. Manley heaps of times, but I’ve never seen you nor your brother to talk to. I have noticed since we came here that you may know people for quite a long time before you are even sure that they have a husband. One has nothing to go by sometimes except the hats in the hall.”

“We come back sometimes to claim them, believe me,” said the old gentleman. Teresa’s heart warmed towards him as the dinner went on. His kindliness was real, untainted by any wish to shine or obtain credit. He had the quick understanding of ideas half expressed, succeeding one another like colour in changing light, which alone makes conversation anything but a distorted image of what the mind sees. Questions come so often from a curiosity that wishes to compare others with itself to its own glorification. Each one that Mr. Price or Mrs. Carpenter asked had that end in view. Mr. Manley enjoyed his game of give-and-take without that ghostly referee to balance the score. Teresa began to understand dimly how it was that what Strickland called “our leading families” seemed to have been the pious founders of Millport in a way that no Londoner’s ancestors can claim to have built their city. Millport was the child of dead and gone Manleys; it was handed on by them to new generations of themselves and of trusted friends who had watched over the early days of its growth. Tutors, governors and servants were appointed for the precious thing with that personal care that Teresa found so puzzling in the words “duty to the city,” which recurred constantly in public and in private. Afterwards in the drawing-room Mr. Manley came to her again.

“If you don’t go away and forget all our conversation,” he said, “come to me and tell me what you want to do and I’ll show you how to set about it. You’ll find my office hat in the hall on Saturday and Sunday afternoons—and that’s the one I keep my ideas in. I’d like to show you some pictures I’ve got of the old town as it was in my great-great-grandfather’s time.”

I had meant to say a great deal about David Varens during this dinner party. But Millport has proved too strong for him. It always must have been and is now overpowering for the gentle, detached characters whose strength is in enjoyment of the immediate thing that circumstances have put in their way to be done as well as possible; people who accept inherited comfort and adventitious pain equally, as it comes; who love and hate by instinct without recognition of any outside interests to modify their decision and who never go back on a verdict given by this tribunal of taste. He is to be Teresa’s lover and therefore his first words to her should have been recorded, also his appearance, his manner and what they thought of each other. They should have begun at once with definite sensations of like or dislike. But the truth is they hardly exchanged a word. He sat on the other side of Emma Gainsborough and shared with Mr. Price the miasma of her longing for the whole evening to be over. He talked to her as well as he could, patiently and easily, in spite of her stumbles into pitfalls of silence that the least presence of mind should have taught her to avoid. He retrieved her each time without effort and set her on her legs again, wondering what was the matter with the poor girl, supposing she might feel the fire at her back. He did once suggest drawing a screen further along behind her and they talked for some minutes about the cold of Oxford Colleges, but she didn’t seem any better for it so he gave it up. It is no use giving Mr. Varens any more scope just now. He will turn up in his glory when the time comes.

CHAPTER V

It did not need many months in Millport to convince Teresa that idleness was not one of the snares of the city. She soon found that if any young person of the leisured classes were to attempt to “drift” she would have her aimless career brought to a standstill by some snag of “duty to the city.” No one in London had ever reminded Teresa of her civic responsibilities. On thinking it over one day after a particularly strong dose of “duty to the city,” administered by Mrs. Carpenter, she could not remember that the city of London and its chief magistrate had ever laid any personal claim to her services. She tried to imagine any such phrase as, “Have you seen the Mayor about it?” or, “What does Alderman Teazle think?” occurring in her father’s conversation at his club. It was impossible. In those days no one knew anything of her plans or her wishes but what she told them; in Millport it seemed that the very paving stones knew who was walking along and why, and that carrier sparrows flitted from chimney to chimney with little messages of information about everybody and an index of probable explanations for their conduct—all dead certain to be wrong.

Mrs. Carpenter had not trusted to the fowls of the air to inform the Fultons that Millport intended them to do their duty. She gave them a few weeks’ law, with full access to her own example. She never failed to explain in the street, in the shop, in the ladies’ club, across the family pew or on the platform that the fact of her being found where she was would mean the loss of so many heart beats to the city’s life. She would say, perhaps, “I ought not to be here, my dear, but I promised dear Mabel Somebody this little treat just to buck her up after the new arrival. Fancy! I was there just two hours before it happened, and my waifs and strays waiting for a tin of biscuits I had promised them, and Alderman McWhittock’s funeral at half-past two. I don’t know how I ever got there—but now what are you doing here? Up to the ears, I suppose, getting ready for the dance next week. What it is to be young! though I saw you resting like a wise girl at dear Emily’s party. The men are so naughty now, aren’t they? They won’t dance—absolutely won’t—except with their own old favourites. I always say to them now, ‘No, it’s no use. I am here to rest my old bones and you have just got to look in all the corners and pick out the plainest and dullest thing you can find and send her home happy.’ I condoled with Emily because I know the difficulties, and after all a dance must be a success if it is to be worth all the trouble, mustn’t it? Now what church do you go to——?” etc.

But Susie almost forestalled her remarks. She was there ready equipped by instinct before the call to battle came. Mrs. Carpenter didn’t know what to think of it. It is said that birds of prey have their own allotted beats and do not poach on their neighbours’ quarry; but they arrive, warned by some secret telegraphy wherever there is a vacancy and a corpse. Susie had evidently sensed the prevailing occupation of Millport and had descended out of the blue to fill a gap among the leaders of good works. She could not be said to “take an active part” in anything, because that was against her nature, but her name was soon in everybody’s mouth as a member of all the chief committees of private enterprises. Strangely shaped gentlemen in black used to call on her between meals with papers and she listened to them with her gentle smile of the mother was has suffered all things; she recognised them instantly when she saw them again and remembered with which particular good work they were connected; and that is really quite enough, as she herself would have said. Ladies with grown-up daughters, who are obliged to entertain a great deal and who have no head for organisation and so on, ought to leave the running about to those who will do it so much better; what the workers need is sympathy.

Evangeline and Teresa, being newcomers from a careless place of comfort, were particularly susceptible to the unfamiliar poison of depression for which there seemed no cure. The mud, the damp, the ugly streets, and indignant, tired faces, the grudging service of the working classes, the self consciousness of the well-to-do who walked everywhere in the limelight of recognition, the sharp division between those who thought everything was all right because they were comfortable and those who thought everything was all wrong because they weren’t—all this made the girls restless.

A vision of Hyde Park Corner on a sunny day used to haunt Evangeline’s mind. She contrasted the space of it, the blue sky, the buildings—“polite buildings” was the description that came to her as she recalled their appearance, perfectly groomed, keeping their private life absolutely to themselves. She felt a sudden hatred for the rows of pert little dwellings that she saw all round; “brick trimmings!” she thought with disgust as her eye fell on the oblongs and stars and cubes inlaid in musty red on a background of livid ginger. There was nothing polite about them; they seemed positively loquacious about themselves and their trimmings and the nice people that lived in them. Horrid houses, she thought.

Teresa, though she did not know it, was distilling for herself a sort of love potion from the drabness and hostility. As she once said to her sister, the smells and the mysterious purpose behind the faces in the fog intoxicated her. All that she knew about what she felt was that an insistent passion was dragging her towards some end that she could not see. The interest that she found in her conversations with Strickland gave her a clue towards the direction from which knowledge of her desire was coming to her, and gave her relief from the excitement at the same time because Strickland had no grievance against society; she only disliked people—ladies especially—talking “through their hats” about work. For instance, she did not mind Cyril or Teresa being untidy, because “it was their place to leave things about” and she was paid to look after them. They never referred to her duties nor seemed to think about them. Mrs. Carpenter and Susie implied by their manner that they were selected by Providence to lead comfortable lives for the reason that every one of their common attributes of humanity, such as their legs and their brains, were of such superior quality that their births, their lives and their deaths must not be confused with similar occurrences in other houses. Work! Of course they knew all about work! Did they not exhaust themselves in explaining how early rising and attention to detail actually saves labour? If you clean a room thoroughly every day there is no need to turn it out once a fortnight; if you clear up as you go, wipe the plates with paper and burn it directly to avoid clogging the sink, and if you wear gloves for the roughest work and put glycerine on the hands after washing, there should be at least two clear hours in the afternoon for mending stockings or even making clothes. That was the point where Strickland became “horn mad,” as she said. “I’d sooner earn me money by being starved and scolded as me mother was,” she declared, “than have it explained that there’s nothing to complain of. I’d rather have it all wrong and keep my liberty to object.”

“But Strickland,” Teresa interrupted, “don’t you remember when you first came you said you wouldn’t be blasted by father and you were going to leave?”

“Yes,” she replied, “and so I should have if he had made out, as some do, that it was all a misunderstanding. But when I saw that it was just his way, as you said, and he wasn’t aware of it, you will understand that it was no business of mine and I didn’t object. There’s never anything personal about the General’s language, I will say that for him. It seems it’s his nature, like my brother.”

She took no notice of Evangeline, neither liked nor disliked her. “She’s a young lady that will marry,” she observed, “and change her servants and not notice who comes and goes nor how the work is done. She won’t make much of a house, but no doubt she’ll keep a housekeeper and not notice how the money goes. She’ll always be a favourite with the gentlemen. My brother’s wife is like that. You never saw such a house—and the mess! I often tidy it all up for her and it’s all the same next day. And yet he thinks the world of her and keeps out of the public house so as he can take her about. And my cousin Gladys is just the opposite; everything tidy and as it should be, but she’ll talk, talk, talk the whole day, pointing out what she’s done; and her husband has taken to drink; he can’t stand it, he says.”

Strickland was right. Evangeline was already proving her capacity for being a favourite with the gentlemen by penetrating, one by one, Captain Hatton’s well-ordered defences. Being her father’s A.D.C. he was, as he had warned them on the first morning, so much about the house that he preferred they should not notice him; but then as Cyril counter-warned him, “they were a damned noticing family.”

Captain Evan Hatton had always been shy of women because as a passionately serious little boy he had been for ever baited by a pair of lively young sisters. They meant not an atom of harm, but neither were they at all interested in abstract goodness, which together with mechanisms of any kind were Evan’s consolation for the trials of family life. He wanted with all his soul to know what made wheels (including those of the Universe) go round. Nature, which he admired, completely outwitted him there and he developed towards the Maker of the Universe the passionate respect of pertinacious inquiry incessantly baffled. He succeeded in finding out from time to time the elementary rules governing earthly wheels, but the vastness of the world (as he had glimpses of it through the life of his tame rabbits, the beauties of a well-kept garden, geography lessons and the upheaval of his own mind), kept him in a ceaseless ferment of questioning. The most industrious organ must rest sometimes; so at about fifteen years old he admitted himself beaten by the Higher Inquiry. He rested his poor mind in worship of that which he had questioned in vain, and concentrated his efforts on wheels which could be explained by those who made them. His sisters thought all this very funny indeed. They themselves approved of the Universe as a first-rate place to live in; it looked so charming, with hills and fields and woods all of nice colours. Winter, spring, summer and autumn were all nice in their way and could not be improved. The idea of tropical storms and polar silence and danger made it seem all the more cosy in England. Machinery was a delightful invention and they were glad it had been discovered, because it brought all sorts of comfort within reach and gave one’s brothers something suitable to do. They did laugh sometimes when Evan took a really good thing to pieces and couldn’t put it together again or when he got in such a bait about Emily giggling at the missionary. When the war broke out they stopped laughing at him at first. He was suddenly lifted in their estimation from the position of a dear, ridiculous creature to that of “our brother in France,” a god among Olympians—“while we have got to stick at home.” They worked creditably and humbly at home and when he came back they forgot his ribbons in the agitating question whether Emily’s cooking would still do or whether they ought not to scrape up £50 somehow and get that kitchenmaid who was leaving the club.

When they began to get used to having him at home again they noticed that what had been only serious attention to rectitude in the old days now burned hot in him as passionate morality. They were good girls, secured from evil, if he had known it, by their happy natures. They would have thought it very silly to let a man kiss them unless he were an accepted lover, properly engaged; because where would be the point in being scrubbed by a hairy face; unless it were one of the poor darling boys leaving Victoria, and then of course one would hug any stranger. That is enough. We know the girls quite well now. There is nothing at all the matter with them, quite the contrary. But their brother’s heavy sense of responsibility for their souls was as much wasted as if he had been Joan of Arc hiding an unexpurgated edition of Shakespeare from the cat. All the mistakes he had made about his sisters he repeated with every woman he met afterwards. He was wrong every time because the attention he gave to their conversation was of the same kind as he would have given to a machine that didn’t interest him—if any such machine could be imagined—a musical box perhaps. Now everyone knows what happens to even the cheapest fiddle, still more to a bird, if its music is courted in that way. His sisters saved him from disaster by affectionate amusement that asked nothing of him. He offended a great many other women, but, to return to the simile of the fiddle, their discords meant as little to him as their harmonies, so he learned nothing from his failures.

Then suddenly fate confronted him with Evangeline, who also wanted to know how wheels went round and—oh, the poor fellow! my heart bleeds for him—the wheels she was interested in were those of love and creation and human nature; and poor industrious Hatton, who only wished for righteousness and good machines, was put into her hands to take to pieces. It is, as has often been observed, a cruel world in many ways.

Evangeline’s mother had also been on the track of true love in her youth; her story has been written. But a world of difference lay between them, for Susie had wanted to possess love and had studied to be all things to all men to gain it, giving nothing in return; her daughter wanted it in order to give it away, as another lavish nature might ask for wealth to spend.

“Captain Hatton is less like an umbrella than he used to be, don’t you think?” she said one day to Teresa as they walked home through the Park. “When I go riding with him he often stops being polite and tells me about the tanks. Yesterday he told me about men out at the war who had visions. You’d never think he was that sort of man, would you?”

“I never think much about him,” said Teresa, “I just think of him as a table that Father has brought in to work at.”

“I know he doesn’t talk to everyone,” said Evangeline proudly. “He never talked to his sisters.”

“Well, what do you do to him?” Teresa asked.

“I don’t know. I just went on bravely and wouldn’t be put down. I was sure there must be something somewhere and I wanted to know what it was. He has a wonderful face, if you look at it. His eyes look so suffering sometimes, like something in a cage. I was sure he couldn’t be all ribs and the best waterproof twill really. I said to him once at the Manleys’ dance, when we were sitting out,” she went on after a pause, “‘You know we can’t always go on pretending that you are a pair of trousers and a coat and I am a bag with flounces propped up on two chairs. I’m a person and so are you. We must have heaps and heaps of things to talk about. Do, for goodness’ sake, let one of us go ahead’—I really worked myself up. I felt I just would smash into that propriety.”

“And what happened?” her sister asked.

“He got red at first and didn’t answer and I got awfully frightened. Then he said in quite a natural voice, ‘If you will behave just as you like I will try not to put you off. It is very kind of you to trouble about me.’ Rather as if I were a dog that he had been asked to exercise. However it was a beginning, and now he starts off by himself. I think the great thing is that he doesn’t regard me as a girl.”

“What does he think you are, then?”

“I don’t know. A sort of inferior Tommy I should think; uneducated but harmless, and quite useless. I might be his batman, marooned with him in a desert full of baboons.”

“It sounds very unlikely,” said Teresa. “You have a very muddled head, Chips, and you read such a lot of scraps that I believe it makes you worse; but you explain yourself quite clearly. I shall be interested to-morrow when I see that stuffed back at the breakfast table. Father would be amused.”

“You are not to tell him,” said Evangeline quickly.

“I’m not going to. At least I might have if you hadn’t told me not to. Why don’t you want him to know that his man is nicer than we thought?”

“I don’t know, except that I discovered him and I don’t want to show him to people; he’s not nearly ready. And besides, he is like having a sitting-room of my own. I like a retreat that no one else knows the way to.”

“Is Hatton in the house by any chance?” Cyril asked one day when he came in to tea.

“I don’t know at all, dear,” said Susie. “I should think very likely; he generally is.”

“He’s helping Chips to wash Tricot in the bathroom,” said Teresa.

Cyril stopped in the act of filling his pipe. “H’m,” he remarked. “Hereditary instinct, I suppose. Poor fellow.”

“I know by your face that you mean something unkind, Cyril,” said his wife, “but I don’t see how even you can make out that there can be anything hereditary about washing a dog.”

“Not if there’s only one person to do it,” he replied. He was holding a match to the tobacco and went on explaining between puffs. “But when Hatton, who is a nervous fellow—begins washing poodles with your daughter—your own little girl—who isn’t generally fond of work—I seem to see the young Eve adorning herself with the leaf of experiment just as Mother did. Have you ever seen a young chicken begin to scratch the moment it leaves the egg? It isn’t imitation, because it does it just the same if it is raised in an incubator.”

Teresa looked anxiously amused as a mother does whose favourite child is not behaving well in a drawing-room, but Mrs. Fulton was smarting under old sores. She said coldly, “Perhaps you would finish washing Tricot, dear Dicky. You had better tell Captain Hatton that your father wants him.”

“Don’t be silly,” said Cyril. “I don’t want him. I told him there was nothing for him to do this afternoon and as I didn’t see him at the Polo ground and found his hat in the hall when I came in I remembered the story of Adam and thought I’d ask, that’s all.”

Teresa had gone out while he was speaking.

“May I ask if you never want the girls to marry?” Susie asked.

“Lord, no, I don’t care,” he replied, “but what’s that got to do with Hatton? I was only joking. I suppose he knows all about washing dogs. I expect he likes it. And Chips doesn’t know the business as well as you, Sue; she won’t construe a wag of the tail into an offer of marriage. Hatton is a very upright man. He’d probably consult you first and lay out his plans on paper in the approved style.”

“Well, if he did I’m sure I don’t know what I should say,” she answered thoughtfully. Cyril had once explained to a bewildered friend, “The great charm of an argument with Sue is that you never know which part of a conversation she will choose to take the trick with. You may find that the only lie you have told for years is used as an ace.”

“I mean,” she went on, “that I don’t think Evangeline ought to be encouraged to act hastily. I like Mr. Varens so much better than Evan Hatton. He will probably come into his father’s place very soon.”

“Great Scott!” exclaimed Cyril, really startled at last. “Has Varens asked her after dining here once? What in heaven’s name possesses the poor devils! But I oughtn’t to talk I suppose.”

“Don’t be so absurd, Cyril. I never said he had proposed to her. I only meant that she hadn’t had time to consider him.”

“What do you mean, ‘consider him?’”

“I merely took Mr. Varens as an instance. I don’t want her to be pushed into liking Evan Hatton just because she hasn’t had time to think of any other. Ill-considered marriages are often so regrettable.”

“If I were a woman,” said Cyril, “I should say that I didn’t know whether to laugh or cry at the things you say. Unlace me, Emmeline, and give me some more tea—have you got any?” He passed his cup.

“But do you see what I mean, Cyril?” she persisted.

“Oh, I see all right,” he replied. “My eye wants shading if anything; it’s positively dazzling, the light that you throw on matters of the heart. It’s a pity you never met Darwin. He wrote on natural selection, but I’m not sure that he mastered the subject. You might——” He stopped as the door opened and Evangeline came in with Captain Hatton.

Evan glanced at his general, who was peacefully sunk in an armchair, playing with the cat. Tricot, the poodle, followed into the room and walked about shaking himself restlessly as if he missed something.

“That’s all right, old Tricot,” said Cyril. “Come here and talk to Pussy; she’s your friend.”

Tricot came in innocent confidence, and the usual recriminations between him and the cat began.

“It is funny, if you notice, that dogs are all for love and cats all for marriage,” said Cyril thoughtfully, “and the two together are always chosen to represent domestic life—at least the ill-considered domestic life that you were talking about, Sue. I suppose it’s handed on for generations.”

Evan Hatton did not hear. He was at the window with Evangeline, trying to make her understand the principle of a magneto. “Here’s Emma coming,” she announced presently from the window. “She’s getting off the tram. Do you want her, Dicky?”

“I’m going out with her,” Teresa answered. “She said she would come.”

“Where on earth to at this time?”

“She has got a place where children go after school; she said she would take me.”

“I do wish she wouldn’t wear that hat,” Evangeline said critically, watching Emma as she came up the garden path. “I wonder where good milliners go to when they die. They never seem to mix with good people in this world.”

Captain Hatton’s face reddened and he turned away from the window.

“What’s the matter?” asked Evangeline. “Are you going?”

“Yes,” he answered shortly and then he said good-bye and left the room. He nearly ran into Emma in the hall, so great was his haste and his preoccupation. “I beg your pardon,” he apologised. “How could I have been so stupid. Did I knock your hat?” for she had put up her hand to straighten it.