“God bless you,” said Evan, as he let Mrs. Vachell out of his house about a week later. “I’ll tell Evangeline as soon as she comes in. It is an enormous weight off my mind, really. I can’t tell you what torture it has been to see the poor girl in that state, and yet it was my duty. I couldn’t do otherwise, so it had to be gone through. Now she will be comparatively happy as she will trust Ivor with you and Mrs. Fulton can see him when she wants to—within limits. Evangeline will like that. I have the utmost confidence in the nurse too. I should never have sent her away from him if it had been possible to keep him at home. I have written to Miss Moseley and told her that his coming is only postponed and that I will arrange with her later when you see how he gets on.”
“Yes,” said Mrs. Vachell. “I will write to you every week or so at first. Good-bye. You sail on the 30th, don’t you? I suppose I can make all the final arrangements about trains with Evangeline. She will like to see him settled in before she goes, perhaps, and it will give her time to pack and settle the house in peace.”
Evan had refused to listen to the suggestion that Evangeline should pick up the ship anywhere on the way out, so that had been given up. Mrs. Vachell had undertaken to bring off the final coup. Ivor was to be established in her house a week before the ship sailed. Evangeline was to pack her trunks as much as possible with old clothes and oddments that she did not need. Evan was out all day, so there was no difficulty about that. Mrs. Vachell would get permission to see them off on board, and would undertake that Evangeline should disappear when the shore bell rang. An errand of mercy in some lady’s cabin would prevent Evan from looking for her until some time after the ship had left. Mrs. Vachell would keep him in discussion till the last moment and tear herself away only at the last imperative shouts from the gangway. After that the deluge, and Cyril in the character of Noah.
“I don’t like the plan at all,” Susie said anxiously, when Mrs. Vachell returned. “I simply don’t know how I shall ever make my husband understand. He is quite extraordinarily dense in those ways. And I want to tell the servants to get Evangeline’s room ready, and of course I can’t. There are all sorts of things to be seen to, and Strickland will be so cross. And I am afraid they will gossip, too. Can’t you possibly think of anything else? Couldn’t Evangeline be taken ill on the way out and landed, and then she could just come home?”
“I am afraid that soldiers are more easily deceived than doctors,” said Mrs. Vachell, “and Evangeline is such a bad actress! How I have pulled her through this week I don’t know. But I can keep Ivor as long as you like while you make your preparations. When Evangeline comes off the boat and gets to you, she must just have had a fit of temporary insanity to account for it to your husband; a sort of mad motherhood. I understand that she has an excuse for a certain amount of eccentricity. For that reason alone any doctor can be got to say that she is better at home.”
“Well, we must try not to worry,” said Susie. “I daresay, when you come to think of it, that by the time Evan has several children he will give up a great deal of that absurd nonsense about training. The children themselves will make him forget about it. Marriage does away with so many silly fancies, doesn’t it?”
All the same, as the time drew near, she became a trifle restless. One day, unknown to her, Cyril went to have a tooth out. It was a bad tooth, and he felt decidedly uncomfortable afterwards, so he telephoned from the dentist’s house to put off an engagement he had made, and went straight home. It happened to be the afternoon Susie had chosen for a box containing Evangeline’s belongings to be brought to the house, as she knew Cyril had a train journey of a couple of hours, which would keep him out of the way. He was just fitting his latchkey in the door when a van stopped and a man got out and touched his hat. “A box for you, sir,” he said, “would you sign, please.” Another man was dragging out the box and Cyril took the paper and read it. “It is addressed to Mrs. Hatton,” he said. “Just wait a minute and I’ll send a servant.” Susie, hearing his voice, was peeping rather agitatedly out of the drawing-room door. He rang the front door bell for Strickland, and went upstairs.
“There’s a man with a box addressed to Chips,” he remarked. “Is it all right?”
“Y-yes, I think so, dear,” said Susie. “It is just a few things we are to take care of, that she thought might spoil in Egypt. Perhaps I had better see about it. Why are you back so early?”
“I had a tooth out,” he explained.