CHAPTER V
Parker Steel’s wife, in a depressed and melancholy mood, wandered restlessly about the house in St. Antonia’s Square, with the chimes of St. Antonia’s thundering out every “quarter” over the sleepy town. Mrs. Betty had attended a drawing-room meeting that afternoon in support of the zenana missions, and such social mortifications, undertaken for the good of the “practice,” usually reduced her to utter gloom. Mrs. Betty was one of those cultured beings who suffer seriously from the effects of boredom. Her mercurial temper was easily lowered by the damp, gray skies of Roxton morality.
The tea was an infusion of tannin in the pot, and still the unregenerate male refused to return in time to save a second brew. Betty Steel had tried one of the latest novels, and guessed the end before she had read ten pages; she was an admirer of the ultra-psychological school, and preferred their bloodless and intricate verbiage to the simpler and more human “cry.” Even her favorite fog philosopher could not keep her quiet in her chair. The desire for activity stirred in her; it was useless to sit still and court the mopes.
Betty Steel went up-stairs to her bedroom, looked through her jewel-box, folded up a couple of silk blouses in tissue paper, rearranged her hair, and found herself more bored than ever. After drifting about aimlessly for a while, she climbed to the second floor landing, and entered a room that looked out on St. Antonia’s and the square. A tall, brass-topped fender closed the fireless grate. There were pictures from the Christmas numbers of magazines upon the walls, and rows of old books and toys on the shelves beside the chimney. In one corner stood a bassinet hung with faded pink satin. The room seemed very gray and silent, as though it lacked something, and waited for the spark of life.
Mrs. Betty looked at the toys and books; they had belonged to her these twenty years, and she had thought to watch them torn and broken by a baby’s hands. Parker Steel’s wife had borne him no children. Strange, cultured egotist that she was, it had been a great grief to her, this barrenness, this sealing of the heart. Betty was woman enough despite her psychology to feel the instincts of the sex piteous within her. A mother in desire, she still kept the room as she had planned it after her marriage, and so spoken of it as “the nursery,” hoping yet to see it tenanted.
Feeling depressed and restless, she went to the window and looked out. Clouds that had been flushed with transient crimson in the east, were paling before the grayness of the approaching night. On the topmost branch of an elm-tree a thrush was singing gloriously, and the traceried windows of the church were flashing back the gold of the western sky.
Parker Steel’s wife saw something that made her lips tighten as she stood looking across the square. Two children were loitering on the footway, the boy rattling the railings with his stick, the girl tucking up a doll in a miniature mail-cart. They were waiting for a tall woman in a green coat, faced with white, who had stopped to speak to a laborer whose arm was in a sling.
The boy ran back and began dragging at the woman’s hand.
“Mummy, mummy, come along, do.”
“Good-day, Wilson, I am so glad you are getting on well.”
The workman touched his cap, and watched Mrs. Murchison hustled away impulsively by her two children. The thrush had ceased singing, silenced by the clatter of Mr. Jack’s stick. Betty Steel was leaning against the shutter and watching the mother and her children with a feeling of bitter resentment in her heart. Even in her home-life this woman seemed to vanquish her. Catherine Murchison was taking her children’s hands, while Betty Steel stood alone in the darkening emptiness of the “nursery.”
Perhaps the rushing up of simpler, deeper impulses made her hurry from the room when she saw her husband’s carriage stop before the house. He was the one living thing that she could call her own, and this pale-faced and cynical woman felt very lonely for the moment and conscious of the dusk. Parker Steel had signalized his return by a savage slamming of the heavy door. Betty met him in the hall. She went and kissed him, and hung near him almost tenderly as she helped him off with his fur-lined coat.
“You poor thing, how late you are!”
Her husband growled, as though he were in no mood for a woman’s fussing.
“I should like some tea.”
“Of course, dear; you look tired.”
“Hurry it up, I’m busy.”
And he marched into the dining-room, leaving Betty standing in the hall.
The warmer impulses of the moment flickered and died in the wife’s heart. Her eyes had been tender, her mouth soft, and even lovable. The slight shock of the man’s preoccupied coldness drove her back to the unemotional monotony of life. Husbands were unsympathetic creatures. She had read the fact in books as a girl, and had proved it long ago in the person of Parker Steel.
“What is the matter, dear, you look worried?”
Her husband was battering at the sulky fire as though the action relieved his feelings.
“Oh, nothing,” and he kept his back to her.
Mrs. Betty rang the bell for fresh tea.
“What a surly dog you are, Parker.”
“Surly!”
“Yes.”
“Confound it, can’t you see that I’m dead tired? You women always want to talk.”
Betty Steel looked at him curiously, and spoke to the maid who was waiting at the door.
“I always know, Parker, when you have lost a patient,” she drawled, calmly, when the girl had gone.
“Who said anything about losing patients?”
“Have you quarrelled with old Pennington?”
“Well, if you must know,” and he snapped it out at her with a vicious grin; “I’ve made an infernal ass of myself over at Marley.”
His wife’s most saving virtue was that she rarely lost control either of her tongue or of her temper. She could on occasion display the discretion of an angel, and smile down a snub with a beatific simplicity that made her seem like a child out of a convent. She busied herself with making her husband’s tea, and chatted on general topics for fully three minutes before referring to the affair at Marley.
“You generally exaggerate your sins, Parker,” she said, cheerfully.
“Do I? Damn that Pennington woman and her humbugging hysterics.”
Mrs. Betty studied him keenly.
“Is Miss Julia really and truly ill for once?”
“I have just wired for Campbell of ‘Nathaniel’s’.”
“Indeed!”
“The idiot’s eyesight is in danger. Old Pennington got worried about her, and insisted on a consultation.”
Betty cut her husband some cake.
“So you have sent for Campbell?”
“I had Murchison first.”
“Parker!”
“The fellow spotted the thing. I hadn’t even looked at the woman’s eyes. Nice for me, wasn’t it?”
Betty Steel’s face had changed in an instant, as though her husband had confessed bankruptcy or fraud. The sleek and complacent optimism vanished from her manner; her voice lost its drawl, and became sharp and almost fierce.
“What did Murchison do?”
“Do!” And Parker Steel laughed with an unpleasant twitching of the nostrils. “Bluffed like a hero, and helped me through.”
Mrs. Betty’s bosom heaved.
“So you are at Murchison’s mercy?”
“I suppose so, yes.”
“Parker, I almost hate you.”
“My dear girl!”
“And that woman, of course he will tell her.”
“Who?”
“Kate Murchison.”
“No one ever accused Kate Murchison of being a gossip.”
“She will have the laugh of us, that is what makes me mad.”
Betty Steel pushed her chair back from the table, and went and leaned against the mantel-piece. She was white and furious, she who rarely showed her passions. All the vixen was awake in her, the spite of a proud woman who pictures the sneer on a rival’s face.
“Parker!” And her voice sounded hard and metallic.
“Well, dear.”
“You love Murchison for this, I suppose?”
Steel gulped down his tea and laughed.
“Not much,” he confessed.
“Parker, we must remember this. Lie quiet a while, and take the fool’s kindnesses. Our turn will come some day.”
“My dear girl, what are you driving at?”
“The Murchisons are our enemies, Parker. I will show this Kate woman some day that her husband is not without a flaw.”
The great Sir Thomas Campbell arrived that night at Roxton, and was driven over to Marley in Steel’s brougham. The specialist confirmed the private practitioner’s diagnosis, complimented him gracefully in Mr. Pennington’s presence, and elected to operate on the lady forthwith. Parker Steel’s mustache boasted a more jaunty twist when he returned home that night after driving Sir Thomas Campbell to the station. He had despatched a reliable nurse to attend to Miss Julia at Marley, and felt that his reputation was weathering the storm without the loss of a single twig.
As for James Murchison, he kept his own council and said never a word. Even doctors are human, and Murchison remembered many a mild blunder of his own. He received a note in due course from Parker Steel, thanking him formally for services rendered, and informing him that the operation had been eminently successful. Murchison tore up the letter, and thought no more of the matter for many months. Work was pressing heavily on his shoulders with influenza and measles epidemic in the town, and he had his own “dragon of evil” to battle with in the secret arena of his heart.
Gossip is like the wind, every man or woman hears the sound thereof without troubling to discover whence it comes or whither it blows. The details of Miss Julia Pennington’s illness had been wafted half across the county in less than a week. Nothing seems to inspire the tongues of garrulous elderly ladies more than the particulars of some particular gory and luscious slashing of a fellow-creature’s flesh. Miss Pennington’s ordeal had been delicate and almost bloodless, but there were vague and dramatic mutterings in many Roxton side streets, and gusts of gossip whistling through many a keyhole.
It was at a “Church Restoration”conversazioneat Canon Stensly’s that Mrs. Steel’s ears were first opened to the tittle-tattle of the town. The month was May, and the respectable and genteel Roxtonians had been turned loose in the Canon’s garden. Mrs. Betty chanced to be sitting under the shelter of a row of cypresses, chatting to Miss Gerraty, a partisan of the Steel faction, when she heard voices on the other side of the trees. The promenaders, whosoever they were, were discussing Miss Pennington’s illness, and the tenor of their remarks was not flattering to Parker Steel. Mrs. Betty reddened under her picture-hat. The thought was instant in her that Catherine Murchison had betrayed the truth, and set the tongues of Roxton wagging.
Half an hour later the two women met on the stretch of grass outside the drawing-room windows. A casual observer would have imagined them to be the most Christian and courteous of acquaintances. Mrs. Betty was smiling in her rival’s face, though her heart seethed like a mill-pool.
“What a lovely day! I always admire the Canon’s spring flowers. Did you absorb all that the architectural gentleman gave us with regard to the value of flying buttresses in resisting the outward thrust of the church roof?”
“I am afraid I did not listen.”
“Nor did I. Technical jargon always bores me. So we are to have a bazaar; that is more to the point, so far as the frivolous element is concerned. I have not seen Dr. Murchison yet; is he with you?”
Catherine was looking at Mrs. Betty’s pale and refined face. She did not like the woman, but was much too warm-hearted to betray her feelings.
“No, my husband is too busy.”
“Of course. Measles in the slums, I hear. Is it true that you are taking an assistant.”
Catherine opened her eyes a little at the faint flavor of insolence in the speech.
“Yes, my husband finds the work too heavy.”
“I sympathize with you. Dr. Steel never would take club and dispensary work; not worth his while, you know; he is worked to death as it is. The curse of popularity, I tell him. How are the children? I hear the younger looks very frail and delicate.”
Mrs. Steel’s condescension was cunningly conveyed by her refined drawl. Catherine colored slightly, her pride repelled by the suave assumption of patronage Parker Steel’s wife adopted.
“Gwen is very well,” she said, curtly.
“Ah, one hears so much gossip. Roxton is full of tattlers. I am often astonished by the strange tales I hear.”
She flashed a smiling yet eloquent look into her rival’s eyes, and was rewarded by the sudden rush of color that spread over Catherine Murchison’s face. Mrs. Betty exulted inwardly. The shaft had flown true, she thought, and had transfixed the conscience of the originator of the Pennington scandal.
“Please remember me to your husband, Mrs. Murchison,” and she passed on with a glitter of the eyes and a graceful lifting of the chin, feeling that she had challenged her rival and seen her quail.
But Catherine was thinking of that frosty night in March when she had found her husband drink drugged in his study.
CHAPTER VI
A doctor’s life is not lightly to be envied. Like a traveller in a half-barbarous country, he must be prepared for all emergencies, trusting to his own mother-wit and the resourcefulness of his manhood. He may be challenged from cock-crow until midnight to do battle with every physical ill that affects humanity on earth, and to act as arbiter between life and death. The common functions of existence are hardly granted him; he is a species of supramundane creature to whom sleep and food are scarcely considered vital. However critical the strain, he must never slacken, never show temper when pestered by the old women of the sick-room, never lose the suggestion of sympathy. People will run to catch him “at his dinner-hour,” poor wretch, and drag him from bed to discover that some fat old gentleman has eaten too much crab. Of all men he must appear the most infallible, the most assured and resolute of philosophers. He walks on the edge of a precipice, for the glory of a thousand triumphs may be swallowed up in the blunder of a day.
The responsibilities of such a life are heavy, and may be said to increase with the sensitiveness of the practitioner’s conscience. The man of heart and of ideals will give out more of the vital essence than the mere intellectual who works like a marvellous machine. Yet, flow of soul is necessary to true success in the higher spheres of the healing art. There is a vast difference between the mere chemist who mixes tinctures in a bottle, and the psychologist whose personality suggests the cure that he wishes to complete.
James Murchison was a practitioner of the higher type, a man who wrestled Jacob-like with problems, and took his responsibilities to heart. He was no clever automaton, no perfunctory juggler with the woes and sufferings of his fellows. Life touched him at every turn, and there was none of the cynical adroitness of the mere materialist about Murchison. He worked both with his heart and with his head, a man whose mingled strength and humility made him beloved by those who knew him best.
The winter’s work had been unusually heavy, and the burden of it had not lightened with the spring. Murchison enjoyed the grappling of difficulties, that keen tautness of the intellect that vibrates to necessity. Strong as he was, the strain of the winter’s work had told on him, and his wife, ever watchful, had seen that he was spending himself too fast. Interminable night work, the rush of the crowded hours, and hurried meals, grind down the toughest constitution. Murchison was not a man to confess easily to exhaustion, possessing the true tenacity of the Saxon, the spirit that will not realize the nearness of defeat. It was only by constant pleading that Catherine persuaded him to consider the wisdom of hiring help. Sleeplessness, the worker’s warning, had troubled her husband as the spring drew on.
One Wednesday evening in May, Murchison came home dead tired and faint for want of food. The day had been rough and stormy, a keen wind whirling the rain in gray sheets across the country, beating the bloom from the apple-trees, and laying Miss Gwen’s proud tulips in red ruin along the borders. Murchison’s visiting-list would have appalled a man of frailer energy and resolution. The climbing of interminable stairs, the feeling of pulses, and all the accurate minutes of the craft, the interviewing of anxious relatives, slave work in the slums! A premature maternity case had complicated the routine. Murchison looked white and almost hunted when he sat down at last to dinner.
Catherine dismissed the maid and waited on him in person.
“Thanks, dear, this is very sweet of you.”
She bent over him and kissed him on the forehead.
“You look tired to death.”
“Not quite that, dear; I have been rushed off my legs and the flesh is human.”
“Crocker will send a suitable man down in a day or two. He can take the club work off your hands. You have finished for to-night?”
He lay back in his chair, the lines of strain smoothed from his face a little, the driven look less evident in his eyes.
“Only a consultation or two, I hope. I shall get to bed early. Ah, coffee, that is good!”
Catherine played and sang to him in the drawing-room after dinner, with the lamp turned low and a brave fire burning on the hearth. Murchison had run up-stairs to kiss his children, and was lying full length on the sofa when the “detestable bell” broke in upon a slumber song. The inevitable message marred the relaxation of the man’s mind and body, and the tired slave of sick humanity found himself doomed to a night’s watching.
“What is it, dear?”
He had read the note that the maid had brought him.
“No peace for the wicked!” and he almost groaned; “a maternity case. Confound the woman, she might have left me a night’s rest!”
His wife looked anxious, worried for him in her heart.
“How absolutely hateful! Can’t Hicks act for you to-night?”
“No, dear, I promised my services.”
“Will it take long?”
“A first case—all night, probably.”
He got up wearily, threw the letter into the fire, and going to his study took up his obstetric bag and examined it to see that he had all he needed. Catherine was waiting for him with his coat and scarf, wishing for the moment that the Deity had arranged otherwise for the bringing of children into the world.
“Shall you walk?” she asked.
“Yes, it is only Carter Street. Go to bed, dear, don’t wait up.”
She kissed him, and let her head rest for a moment on his shoulder.
“I wish I could do the work for you, dear.”
He laughed, a tired laugh, looking dearly at her, and went out into the dark.
A vague restlessness took possession of Catherine that night, when she was left alone in the silent house. She had sent the servants to bed, and drawing a chair before the fire, tried to forget herself in the pages of romance. Color and passion had no glamour for her in print, however. It was as though some silent watcher stood behind her chair, and willed her to brood on thoughts that troubled her heart.
She put the book aside at last, and sat staring at the fire, listening to the wind that moaned and sobbed about the house. The curtains swayed before the windows, and she could hear the elm-trees in the garden groaning as though weary of the day’s unrest. There was something in the nature of the night that gave a sombre setting to her thoughts. She remembered her husband’s tired and jaded face, and her very loneliness enhanced her melancholy.
The Dutch clock in the hall struck eleven, the antique whir of wheels sounding strange in the sleeping house. Catherine stirred the fire together, rose and put out the lamp. She lit her candle in the hall, leaving a light burning there, and climbed the stairs slowly to her room. Instinct led her to cross the landing and enter the nursery where her children slept.
The two little beds stood one in either corner beside the fireplace, each headed by some favorite picture, and covered with red quilts edged with white. Gwen was sleeping with a doll beside her, her hair tied up with a blue ribbon. The boy had a box of soldiers on the bed, and one fist cuddled a brass cannon.
Catherine stood and looked at them with a mother’s tenderness in her eyes. They spelled life to her—these little ones, flesh of her flesh, bone of her bone. They were her husband’s children, and they seemed to bring into her heart that night a deep rush of tenderness towards the man who had given her motherhood. All the joy and sorrow that they had shared together stole up like the odor of a sacrifice.
“When the strength’s out of a man, the devil’s in.”
She remembered those words he had spoken, and shuddered. Was it prophetic, this voice that came to her out of the deeps of her own heart? Tenderly, wistfully, she bent over each sleeping child, and stole a kiss from the land of dreams. Betty Steel’s speech recurred to her as she passed to her own room, feeling lonely because the arms she yearned for would not hold her close that night.
Catherine went to bed, but she did not sleep. Her brain seemed clear as a starlit sky, the thoughts floating through it like frail clouds over the moon. She heard the wind wailing, the rain splashing against the windows, the slow voice of the hall clock measuring out the hours. Some unseen power seemed to keep her wakeful and afraid, restless in her loneliness, listening for the sound of her husband’s return.
The clock struck five before she heard the jar of a closing door. Footsteps crossed the hall, and she heard some one moving in the room below. For some minutes she sat listening in bed, waiting to hear her husband’s step upon the stairs. Her heart beat strangely when he did not come; the room felt cold to her as she shivered and listened.
A sudden, vague dread seized her. She slipped out of bed, lit the candle with trembling hands, and throwing her dressing-gown round her, went out on to the landing. The lamp was still burning in the hall, and the door of the dining-room stood ajar. Shading the candle behind her hand, she went silently down the stairs into the hall. The only sound she heard was the clink of a glass.
“James, husband!”
Catherine stood on the threshold, her hair loose about her, the candle quivering in her hand. For the moment there was an agony of reproach upon her face. Then she had swayed forward, snatched something from the table, and broke it upon the floor.
“My God, Kate, forgive me!”
He sank down into a chair and buried his head in his arms upon the table. Catherine bent over him, her hands resting on his shoulders.
“Oh, my beloved, I had dreaded this.”
He groaned.
“Miserable beast that I am!”
“No, no, you are tired, you are not yourself. Come with me, come with me, lie in my arms—and rest.”
He turned and buried his face in the warmth of her bosom.
“Thank God you were awake,” he said.
CHAPTER VII
Roxton, that little red town under a June sky, looked like a ruby strung upon the silver thread of a river and set in a green hollow of the hills. As yet the enterprising builder had not stamped the mark of the beast glaringly upon the place, and the quaint outreachings of the town were suffered to dwindle through its orchards into the June meadows, where the deep grass was slashed and webbed with gold. The hills above were black with pine thickets that took fire with many a dawn and sunset, and to the north great beech-woods hung like purple clouds across the blue.
The most miserly of mortals might have warmed with the ridge view from Marley Down. Southward a violet haze of hills, larch-woods golden spired in glimmering green valleys, bluff knolls massive with many oaks, waving fields, blue smoke from a few scattered cottages. From Marley Down with its purple heather billowing between the pine woods like some Tyrian sea, the road curled to the red town sleeping amid its meadows.
Mrs. Betty Steel was at least an æsthetician, and her eyes roved pleasurably over the woods and valleys as she drove in her smart dog-cart over Marley Down. She had been ridding her conscience of a number of belated country “calls” with a friend, Miss Gerratty, beside her, a plump little person in a pink frock. There was a certain cottage on Marley Down that Betty Steel had coveted for months, an antique gem, oak panelled, brick floored, with great brown beams across the ceilings. Betty Steel had the woman’s greed for the possession of pretty things. The house in St. Antonia’s Square seemed too large and cumbersome for her at times. Perhaps it was something of a mausoleum, holding the ashes of a dead desire. Often she wearied of it and the endless domestic details, and longed for some nook where her restless individualism could live in its own atmosphere.
A glazier was tinkering at one of the cottage casements when Mrs. Betty drove up the grass track between sheets of glowing gorse. A pine wood backed the cottage on the west; in front, before the little lawn, a white fence linked up two banks of towering cypresses. Mrs. Betty drew rein before the gate, and called to the man who was releading the casement frames.
“I hear the cottage is to let. Can you tell me where Mr. Pilgrim, the owner, lives. Somewhere on the Down, is it not?”
The man, an unpretentious, wet-nosed creature, crossed the grass plot, wiping his hands on a dirty apron.
“Mr. Pilgrim’s just ’ad an offer, miss.”
“Has he?”
“Well, we’re doin’ the repairs. I ’ave ’eard that Mrs. Murchison of Roxton ’ave taken it.”
“Dr. Murchison’s wife?”
The man nodded.
“How utterly vexatious. I suppose Mr. Pilgrim would not sell?”
“Don’t know, miss, I ’ain’t the authority to say.”
Parker Steel’s wife flicked her horse up with the whip and turned back to the main road, a woman with a grievance. Her companion in pink offered sympathy with a twitter. Being of the Steel faction, she was wise as to the friction between the households, and a friend’s grievance has always an element of wickedness for a woman.
“How very annoying, dear!”
Mrs. Betty waved her whip.
“I have had that cottage in mind for over a year. Some one must have told the selfish wretch that I was after it.”
“Strangely like spite, dear,” cooed the dove in pink.
“I wonder what the Murchisons want with the place? To make a summer beer-garden for their brats, perhaps.”
“Marley Down’s so bracing. I hear Jim Murchison has been overworking himself. Probably he intends spending his week-ends here.”
“Rather curious.”
Miss Gerratty’s blue eyes were too shallow for the holding of a mystery.
“I can’t see anything strange in it, Betty. Jim Murchison has that assistant of his, a finnicking little fellow in glasses, with a neck like a giraffe’s. Strange that they should have snapped up your particular cottage.”
“Oh, that’s just like Kate Murchison,” and Mrs. Betty’s brown eyes sparkled.
Hatred, like love, is a transfiguration of trifles, and nothing is too paltry to be registered against a foe. Parker Steel’s wife drove home in the most unenviable of tempers, untouched by the scent of the bean-fields in bloom, or by the flash of the river through the green of June. She rattled down the steep hill into Roxton town at a pace that made Miss Gerratty wince. Metaphorically, Betty Steel would have given much to have had her bit in Catherine Murchison’s mouth, and to have treated her to a taste of her nimble whip.
Leaving Miss Gerratty at the end of Queen’s Walk by the old Jacobean Market-House, Mrs. Steel drove home alone, to find some half-dozen letters waiting for her, the mid-day post that she had missed by lunching with Mrs. Feveril, of The Cedars. She shuffled the letters irritably through her hands like a pack of cards, her eyes sparkling into sudden vivacity as a foreign envelope showed among the rest. The letter bore the Egyptian Sphinx and pyramids, and the familiar writing of a friend.
The letter lay unopened in her lap awhile, as she sat by the open window of the drawing-room and looked out over the beds that were gorgeous with the flare of Oriental poppies. The lawn, studded with standard roses, swept to the trailing branches of an Indian cedar. Rhododendrons were still in bloom in the little shrubbery under the rich green shade shed by two great oaks.
She tore open the envelope at last, having lingered like one who shirks the reading of news long waited for. The familiar squirl of the man’s handwriting made her smile, bringing back memories of a first seriousaffaire de cœurwith the quaint grotesqueness of the foolish past. She remembered the thin, raw-boned youth with the red mouth and the strenuous eyes who had kissed her one night after a river-party. He was still vivid to her, even to the recollection how his boating-shirt had slipped a button and given her a glimpse of a hairy chest. What a little fool she had been in those days! Mrs. Betty was not the slave of sentiment, and Surgeon-Major Shackleton had slipped with his somewhat strenuous love-making into the past. She still had occasional letters from him, and from other sundry friends, letters that she always showed her husband. Parker Steel was not a jealous being. He was mildly pleased by the conviction that he was still envied in secret by a bevy of old rivals.
“Dear Betty,—”
“Dear Betty,—”
Mrs. Steel made a little grimace as she pictured the number of “dear Betties” who had probably drifted within the sphere of Charlie Shackleton’s passion for romance. She skipped through the letter with watchful eyes, ignoring the surgeon-major’s bantering persiflage, the familiar gibes of an old friend. It was on the fourth page that she unearthed the news she delved for, tangled beneath the splutterings of an execrable pen.
“I think you asked me in your last letter whether I knew a fellow named Murchison at St. Peter’s. Haven’t you mentioned ‘the creature’ to me before? I remember Jim Murchison just as you describe him, a solid, brown-faced six-footer, one of those happy-go-lucky beggars who seem ready to punch creation. I left the place two years before he qualified; he had brains, but if my pate serves me, he was the sworn slave of a drug we catalogue as C2H5OH. Not a bad sort of fool, but bibulous as blotting-paper. Funny he should have turned up your way, and married Kate of the golden hair. Mark this private, and let my friend Parker deal with the above formula. Glad to hear that he is raking in the guineas—”
“I think you asked me in your last letter whether I knew a fellow named Murchison at St. Peter’s. Haven’t you mentioned ‘the creature’ to me before? I remember Jim Murchison just as you describe him, a solid, brown-faced six-footer, one of those happy-go-lucky beggars who seem ready to punch creation. I left the place two years before he qualified; he had brains, but if my pate serves me, he was the sworn slave of a drug we catalogue as C2H5OH. Not a bad sort of fool, but bibulous as blotting-paper. Funny he should have turned up your way, and married Kate of the golden hair. Mark this private, and let my friend Parker deal with the above formula. Glad to hear that he is raking in the guineas—”
The letter ended with a few personal paragraphs that Mrs. Betty hardly troubled to read. She crossed the hall to her husband’s study, hunted out a text-book on chemistry from the shelves, and proceeded with much patience and deliberation to unearth the scientific hieroglyph the surgeon-major’s letter contained. She found it at last, and smiled maliciously at its vulgar triteness.
“C2H5OH, ethyl alcohol; commonly known as alcohol; a generic term for certain compounds which are the hydroxides of hydrocarbon radicals. The active principle of intoxicating liquors.”
Mrs. Betty put the book back on the shelf, and buttoned Mr. Shackleton’s letter into her blouse. There was a queer glitter in her eyes, a spiteful sparkle of satisfaction. She went back to the drawing-room, and seating herself at the piano, played Mendelssohn’s “Spring Song” with fine verve and feeling.
Her husband found her in a brilliant mood that night at dinner. She looked sleek and handsome, blood in her cheeks and mischief in her eyes. Mrs. Betty at her best could be a very inflammatory and sensuous creature, like a Greek nymph taken from some Bacchic vase.
“The latest news, Parker—the Murchisons have snapped up my cottage on Marley Down.”
“The dickens they have! You don’t appear jealous.”
“No, I have a forgiving heart. The place is like a hermitage. What can the Murchisons want with such a cottage?”
Her husband, cold intellectualist, warmed to her beauty as to true Falernian.
“Am I a crystal gazer?”
“Read me the riddle.”
Parker Steel laughed, and looked at her with a slight loosening of the mouth.
“Riddle-de-dee! You women are always analyzing imaginary motives. Murchison has been looking run to death, lean as an overdriven horse. I don’t blame him for wishing to munch his oats in rustic seclusion.”
Mrs. Betty bubbled over with sparkles of intuition.
“What does C2H5OH stand for, Parker?”
“C2H5OH! What on earth have you to do with chemical formulæ?”
“Answer my question.”
“Gin, if you like; the stuff the blue-ribbonites battle with.”
CHAPTER VIII
Porteus Carmagee, the lawyer, and his sister lived in Lombard Street, in a grim, blind-eyed, stuccoed house with laurels in tubs before it, and chains and posts defending an arid stretch of shingle. There was something about the house that suggested law, a dry and close-mouthed look that was wholly on the surface. Porteus Carmagee was a little man, who forever seemed spluttering and fuming under some grievance. He was hardly to be met without an irritable explosion against his own physical afflictions, the delinquencies of tradesmen and Radicals, or the sins of the boy who brought the morning paper. The lawyer’s almost truculent attitude towards the world was largely the result of “liver”; his sourness was on the surface; one glimpse of him cutting capers with Kate Murchison’s children would dissipate the notion that he was a cadaverous and crusty hater of mankind.
Miss Phyllis Carmagee was remarkable for the utter unfitness of her Christian name, and for the divine placidity that contrasted with her brother’s waspishness. A big, moon-faced, ponderous woman, she was a rock of composure, a species of human banyan-tree under whose blessed branches a hundred fretful mortals might rest in the shade. Her detractors, and they were few, asserted that she was a mere mass of amiable and phlegmatic fat. Miss Carmagee was blessed with a very happy sense of humor; she had a will of her own, a will that was formidable by reason of its stubborn inertia when once it had come to rest.
Some six years had passed since Miss Carmagee had deposited herself as a supporter of James Murchison on his professional platform. Her pleasant stolidity had done him service, for Miss Carmagee impressed her convictions on people by sitting down with the serene look of one who never argues. She was a woman who stated her opinions with a buxom frankness, and who sat on opposition as though it were a cushion. She was perhaps the only woman who gave no sparks to the flint of Mrs. Steel’s aggressive vivacity. Miss Carmagee’s placidity was unassailable. To attack her was like throwing pease against a pyramid.
“Well, my dear, so you have furnished the cottage.”
She lay back contentedly in her basket-chair—chairs were the few things that nourished grievances against her—and beamed on Catherine Murchison, who sat shaded by the leaves of a young lime. The tea-table stood between them. Miss Carmagee liked basking in the sun like some sleek, fat spaniel.
“It is such a dear little place.” And the young wife’s eyes were full of tenderness. “I want James to keep the gray hairs from coming too fast. I shall lure him away to Marley Down, one day in seven, if I can.”
“Of course, my dear, you can persuade him.”
“Jim has such an obstinate conscience. He gives his best to people, and naturally they overwork him. We have rivals, too, to consider. I know that Betty Steel is jealous of us, but then—”
A touch of wistfulness on Catherine’s face brought Miss Carmagee’s optimism to the rescue.
“You need not fear the Steels, my dear.”
“No, perhaps not.”
“Many people—I, for one—don’t trust them. The woman is too thin to be sincere,” and Miss Carmagee’s bust protested the fact.
“Betty’s kind enough in her way.”
“When she gets her way, my dear. But tell me about the cottage. Are the drains quite safe, and are there plenty of cupboards?”
Catherine was launched into multitudinous details—the staining of floors, the choosing of tapestries, the latest bargains in old furniture. It eased her to talk to this placid woman, for, despite her courage, her heart was sad in her and full of forebodings for her husband. The truth had become as a girdle of thorns about her, worn both day and night. She bore the smart of it without a flicker of the lids, and carried her head bravely before the world.
The strip of garden, with its prim and old-fashioned atmosphere, was invaded abruptly by the rising generation. There was a flutter of feet round the laurel hedge bordering the path to the front gate, and Mr. Porteus pranced into view, a veritable light-opera lawyer with youth at either elbow.
“Hello, godma! may I have some strawberries?”
Master Jack Murchison plumped himself emphatically into Miss Carmagee’s lap, oblivious of the fact that he was sitting on her spectacles.
“Jack, dear, you must not be so rough.”
Mr. Porteus crossed the grass with the more dignified and less voracious Dutch bonnet beside him. Miss Gwen and the bachelor always treated each other with a species of stately yet twinkling civility. The lawyer’s wrinkles turned into smile wreaths in the child’s presence, and there was less perking up of his critical eyebrows.
“Here’s a handful for you, Kate; I was ambuscaded and captured round the corner. Who said strawberries? Will Miss Gwendolen Murchison deign to deprive the blackbirds of a few?”
“Do you grow stawberries for the blackbirds, godpa?”
“Do I, Miss Innocent! No, not exactly.”
Catherine had removed her son and heir from Miss Carmagee’s lap. The fat lady looked cheerful and unperturbed. Master Jack was suffered to ruffle her best skirts with impunity.
“Don’t let them eat too much, Porteus.”
Her brother cocked a birdlike eye at Miss Gwen.
“Sixpence for the biggest strawberry brought back unnibbled. Off with you. And don’t trample on the plants, John Murchison, Esq.”
The pair raced for the fruit-garden, Master Jack’s enthusiasm rendering him oblivious to the crime of taking precedence of a lady. Gwen relinquished the van to him, and dropped to a demure toddle. Her brother’s flashing legs suggested the thought to her that it was undignified to be greedy.
“Pardon me, Kate, I think you are wanted over the way.”
Mr. Carmagee’s sudden soberness of manner brought the color to Catherine’s cheeks. The lawyer was rattling the keys in his pocket, and blinking irritably at space. Intuition warned her that he was more concerned than he desired her to imagine. She rose instantly, as though her thoughts were already in her home.
“Good-bye; you will excuse me—”
She bent over Miss Carmagee and kissed her, her heart beating fast under the silks of her blouse.
“I’ll bring the youngsters over presently, Kate.”
“Thank you so much.”
“And send some fruit with them.”
“You are always spoiling us.”
And Porteus Carmagee accompanied her to the gate.
The lawyer rejoined his sister under the lime-tree, biting at his gray mustache, and still rattling the keys in his trousers pocket. He walked with a certain jerkiness that was peculiar to him, the spasmodic and irritable habit of a man whose nerve-force seemed out of proportion to his body.
“Murchison’s an ass—a damned ass,” and he flashed a look over his shoulder in the direction of the fruit-garden.
Familiarity had accustomed Miss Carmagee to her brother’s forcible methods of expression. He detonated over the most trivial topics, and the stout lady took the splutterings of his indignation as a matter of course.
“Well?” and she examined her bent spectacles forgivingly.
“Murchison’s been overworking himself.”
“So Kate told me.”
“The man’s a fool.”
“A conscientious fool, Porteus.”
Mr. Carmagee sniffed, and expelled a sigh through his mustache.
“I’ve warned him over and over again. Idiot! He’ll break down. They had to bring him home in a cab from Mill Lane half an hour ago.”
His sister’s face betrayed unusual animation.
“What is the matter?”
“Heat stroke, or fainting fit. I saw the cab at the door, and collared the youngsters as they were coming round the corner with the nurse. Poor little beggars. I shall tell Murchison he’s an infernal fool unless he takes two months’ rest.”
Miss Carmagee knew where her brother’s heart lay. He generally abused his friends when he was most in earnest for their salvation.
“Kate will persuade him, Porteus.”
“The woman’s a treasure. The man ought to consider her and the children before he addles himself for a lot of thankless and exacting sluts. Conscience! Conscience be damned. Why, only last week the man must sit up half the night with a sweep’s child that had diphtheria. Conscience! I call it nonsense.”
Miss Carmagee smiled like the moon coming from behind a cloud.
“You approve of Parker Steel’s methods?”
“That little snob!” and the lawyer’s coat-tails gave an expressive flick.
“James Murchison only wants rest. Leave him to Kate; wives are the best physicians often.”
Mr. Carmagee’s keys applauded the remark.
“Taken a cottage on Marley Down, have they?”
“Yes.”
“I’ll recommend a renewal of the honeymoon. Hallo, here comes the sunlight.”
Mr. Porteus romped across the grass to poke his wrinkled face into the oval of the Dutch bonnet.
“Hallo, who says senna to-night? What! Miss Gwendolen Murchison approves of senna!”
“I’ve won that sixpence, godpa.”
“Indeed, sir, I think not.”
“Jack can have the sixpence; it’s his buffday to-morrow.”
“A lady who likes senna and renounces sixpences! Go to, Master John, you must run to Mr. Parsons, the clockmaker, and buy godma a pair of new spectacles.”
“Spectacles!” and Master Jack mouthed his scorn.
“A sad day for us, Miss Carmagee, when babies sit upon our infirmities!”
Parker Steel dropped into his Roxton tailor’s that same afternoon to have a summer suit fitted. The proprietor, an urbane and bald-headed person with the deportment of a diplomat, rubbed his hands and remarked that professional duties must be very exacting in the heat of June.
“Your colleague, I understand, sir—Dr. Murchison, sir—has had an attack from overwork; sunstroke, they say.”
“What! Sunstroke?”
“So I have been informed, sir.”
“Indeed!”
“Or an attack of faintness. Dr. Murchison is a most laborious worker. Four buttons, thank you; a breast-pocket, as before, certainly. Any fancy vestings to-day, doctor? No! Greatly obliged, sir, I’m sure,” and the diplomat dodged to the door and swung it open with a bow.
Parker Steel found his wife reading under the Indian cedar in the garden. She was dressed in white, with a red rose in her bosom, the green shadows of the trees and shrubs about her casting a sleek sheen over her olive face and dusky hair. Poets might have written odes to her, hailing the slim sweetness of her womanliness, using the lily as a symbol of her beauty and the Madonna-like radiance of her spiritual face.
She glanced up at her husband as he came spruce and complacent, like any Agag, over the grass.
“Murchison has had a sunstroke.”
“What! Who told you?”
“Rudyard, the tailor.”
The book was lying deprecatingly at Mrs. Betty’s feet. Her eyes swept from her husband to dwell reflectively on the scarlet pomp of the Oriental poppies.
“Do you think it was a sunstroke, Parker?”
Her husband glanced at his neat boots and whistled.
“What a melodramatic mind you have,” he said.