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.