“Then she is an abominable hypocrite,” said Teresa indignantly.
“I know,” her sister answered rather sadly, “and if I tell Evan the least little bit of truth about her he flies at me and won’t listen; just thunders me down, and yet I am really fond of him. But she hates him, and the only way she can get in the truths she wants to say is to keep so quiet that he doesn’t understand, and then little by little she undermines his ideas. It is quite wonderful to watch.”
When Mrs. Trotter came she surpassed even Evangeline’s expectations. It may be necessary to recall to the reader’s mind that on the occasion when Evan had burst out at Cyril’s dinner-table on the subject of women throwing dirt at each other the exciting cause of his anger had been Mrs. Trotter’s sarcasm on the wife of the Staff Captain, who wanted to “get into the University set,” and was alleged to have incensed her husband by too frequent references to Mr. Vachell’s brain power. Mrs. Trotter was devoted with real sisterly affection to the Staff Captain, who was an honest blue-eyed Briton, and she therefore harboured secret dislike, both of the University set and of Evan with his misplaced belief in Mrs. Vachell. The Hattons could not do other than ask her to dinner on the evening when she arrived at her lodgings, alone with the child and its nurse, as Captain Trotter was yachting with a friend. Evangeline had mischievously urged the Vachells to come in after the meal as they often did. When they arrived Evan was in one of his most taciturn moods, having been worried by his wife’s daring laughter over some misdemeanour of Ivor’s. She was comparing notes with Mrs. Trotter, whose young daughter treated her parents with fearless impertinence, the common result of insensitiveness in favourable surroundings.
“The little scamp!” Mrs. Trotter exclaimed. “He and Maisie will be great pals I expect. She doesn’t care a rap for anybody. Her father can’t say boo to a goose when she is knocking round. I tell him he had better give it up and save time.”
Evan glanced at Mrs. Vachell and saw her raise her eyebrows slightly. It soothed him to be assured that she shared his disgust and he sat down by her. “I am very sorry,” he said in a low voice. “We ought to have warned you.”
“Oh no, please,” she answered. “It is very interesting; and I am sure Evangeline enjoys it. And it is something you have got to learn some time. You may have daughters of your own in days to come, and then you will know how to save yourself needless worry by giving in at once.”
“Yes, it is appalling, isn’t it?” he agreed, supposing her to be commenting on Mrs. Trotter’s remark. “But perhaps it is good in some ways to let the thing go on as grossly and blatantly as possible. It will achieve its own destruction all the quicker.”
“How?” she asked.
“A revulsion is bound to come, and it will be all the stronger when women see what a monstrous race they have raised. They have rebelled against chastisement with whips and their children will chastise them with scorpions.”
“They will, indeed,” said Mrs. Vachell. “I am glad I have no children, though the want of them put out the sun for me so far as marriage is concerned. But it is not a world to have children in just now.”