CHAPTER XV
There is little that is beautiful in death, save, perhaps, in the faces of children, and those taken in the heyday of their youth. As in life the majority of mortals are ugly and grotesque, so in death the body grows in repulsiveness as it nears the grave. The lily corpse with the angelic smile is rarely seen, save perhaps by irresponsible poets. Blotched and stiff, shrunken or inflated, the nameless thing welcomes putrefaction and decay. Beauty of outline is lost to the limbs, the bones show at the joints, the muscles stand out in stiff and unnatural relief. Nothing but the glamour of sentiment preserves this ruined tabernacle of the flesh from being designated as a “carcass.”
At Boland’s Farm the house had that sickly and indescribable smell of death. Farmer Baxter’s bullocks grazed peacefully in the great fourteen-acre lot to the east of the garden; the hens clucked and scratched in the rickyard; the pigs sucked and paddled in the swill. The laborers were at work as though their master was still alive to curse them across fields and hedgerows. The soil pays no heed to death; it is a natural occurrence; only we human beings elevate it into an incident of singularity and note. The farm-hands who passed through the yard cast curious and awed looks at the darkened windows of the house. Mrs. Baxter had given them their orders, and they knew there would be no shirking where that lady was concerned.
A couple of traps were standing before the garden gate, and in the death-chamber two intent figures bent over the bed that had been drawn close to the open window. The sun shone upon the body, a mere mountain of flesh, loathsome, gaping, flatulent, lying naked from loins to chin. In death this carcass seemed to dishonor all the higher aspirations of the race. A myriad organisms were usurping the tissues that had worked the will of what men call “the soul.”
Dr. Brimley, of Cossington, a little, spectacled cherub of a man, held back the yellow flaps of fat-laden skin while his confrère groped and delved within the cavity. There was a wrinkle of disgust about Parker Steel’s sharp mouth. He had never vanquished that loathing of contact with the nauseous slime of death. The cold and succulent smoothness of the inert tissues repelled his cultured instincts. Yet even the superfine sneer vanished from about his nostrils as he drew out a black and oozing object from the dead man’s body.
“Good God, Brimley, look at this!”
The spectacled cherub peered at it, puckered up his lips and gave a whistle.
“A sponge!”
“Nice mess, eh?”
“Relieved that I haven’t the responsibility.”
Steel’s delicate hands were at work again. A sharp exclamation of surprise escaped him as he drew out a pair of artery forceps, and held them up to Brimley’s gaze.
“This is a pretty business!”
Dr. Brimley’s eyes seemed to enlarge behind his spectacles.
“Confoundedly unpleasant for the operator. The man must have lost his head.”
“Put your hand in here,” and Parker Steel guided his confrère’s fingers into the cavity, “tell me what you feel.”
Brimley groped a moment, and then elevated his eyebrows.
“Good Lord!—what was Murchison at? A rent in the bowel three inches long!”
“We had better have a look at it.”
And the evidence of the sense of vision confirmed the evidence of the sense of touch.
Both men perched themselves on the bed, and looked questioningly into each other’s eyes. Success demands the survival of the fittest, and in the scramble for gold and reputation men may ignore generosity for egotistical and self-serving cant. Parker Steel did not determine to act against his rival, without a struggle. He remembered his wife’s words, and they decided him.
“What are you going to do?”
Parker Steel looked Dr. Brimley straight in the face.
“There is only one thing to be done,” he retorted.
“Well, sir, well?”
“I have no personal grudge against Murchison, but before God, Brimley, I can’t forgive him this abominable bungling. Professional feeling or no, I can’t stretch my conscience to such a lie.”
Dr. Brimley stared and nodded. He was somewhat impressed by Steel’s cultured indignation, a professional Brutus waxing public-spirited over Cæsar’s body. Moreover, he was no friend of Murchison’s, and was secretly pleased to hear another man assume the moral responsibility of injuring his reputation.
“So you will tell the old lady?”
“I take it to be a matter of duty.”
“Quite so; I agree with you, Steel. But it will about smash Murchison.”
Parker Steel moved to the wash-stand and began to rinse his hands.
“I cannot see how I can give a death certificate,” he said; “the man must have been drunk. It is a case for the coroner.”
Dr. Brimley puckered his chubby mouth and whistled.
“There is no other conclusion to accept,” he answered.
Mrs. Baxter was awaiting the two gentlemen in the darkened parlor, dressed in her black silk Sabbath gown. She had a photograph-album on her knee, and was chastening her grief by referring to the faded pictures of the past. Each photograph stood for a season in the late farmer’s life. Tom Baxter as a fat and plethoric-looking youth of twenty, in a braided coat and baggy trousers, one hand on a card-board sundial, the other stuffed into a side-pocket. Tom Baxter, ten years later, in his Yeomanry uniform, mustachioed, tight-thighed, nursing a carbine, with an air of assertive self-satisfaction. Tom Baxter and his bride awkwardly linked together arm in arm, toes out, top hat and bridal bouquet much in evidence. Tom Baxter, fat, prosperous, and middle-aged, smoking his pipe in a corner of the orchard, his Irish terrier at his feet; a snapshot by a friend. The widow studied them all with solemn deliberation, glancing a little scornfully at her sister Harriet, who was snivelling over a copy of Eliza Cook’s poems.
They heard the voices of the two doctors above, the sound of a door opening, and footsteps descending the stairs. Parker Steel, suave, quiet, and serious as a black cat, appeared at the parlor door. Mrs. Baxter rose from her chair, and signalled to her sister to leave her with Parker Steel.
“Harriet, go out. Sit down, doctor,” and she replaced the album on its pink wool mat in the middle of the circular table.
Harriet absented herself without a murmur, Miss Cook’s volume still clasped in her bony fingers. From the direction of the stables came the plaintive howling of a dog, Tom Baxter’s Irish terrier, Peter, who had been chained up because he would haunt the landing outside his dead master’s room. Mrs. Baxter had fallen over the poor beast as he crouched at the top of the stairs, and poor Peter’s loyalty had not saved him from chastisement with the lady’s slipper.
Parker Steel seated himself on the extreme edge of an arm-chair, a great yellow sunflower in a Turkish-red antimacassar haloing him like a saint. He had assumed an air of studied yet anxious reserve, as though the matter in hand required delicate handling.
“Well, doctor, it’s all over, I suppose.”
Steel nodded, hearing Miss Harriet’s voice in the distance rasping out endearments to the dead man’s dog.
“Dr. Brimley and I have completed the examination.”
“Poor Tom! poor Tom!”
“I can sympathize with you, Mrs. Baxter.”
“Thank you, doctor. How that dog do howl, to be sure! And now, sir, let’s come to business.”
The widow sat erect and rigid in her chair, her hands clasped in her lap, an expression of determined alertness on her face. Steel, student of human nature that he was, felt relieved that it was Murchison and not he who had incurred the resentment of this hard-fibred woman.
“Will you be so good as to tell me, doctor, just what my husband died of?”
Parker Steel fidgeted, and studied his finger-nails.
“It is rather painful to me,” he began.
“Painful, sir!”
“To have to confess to a brother-doctor’s misman—misdirection of the case.”
His tactful disinclination reacted electrically upon Mrs. Baxter. She leaned forward in her chair, and brandished a long forefinger with exultant solemnity.
“Just what I thought, doctor.”
Parker Steel cleared his throat and proceeded.
“You understand my professional predicament, Mrs. Baxter. At the same time, I feel it to be my duty—”
“Just you tell me the plain facts, doctor; what did my husband die of?”
Steel rose from his chair, walked to the window, and stood there a moment looking out into the garden, as though struggling with the ethics and the etiquette of the case.
“Frankly, Mrs. Baxter,” and he turned to her with a grieved air, “I am compelled to admit that this operation hastened your husband’s death.”
Mrs. Baxter bumped in her chair.
“Doctor, I could have sworn it. Go on, I can bear the scandal.”
“Dr. Murchison made a very grave mistake.”
“He did!”
“A sponge and a pair of artery forceps were left in your husband’s body. As for the operation, well, the less said of it the better.”
Mrs. Baxter rose and went to the mantel-shelf, and taking down a bottle of smelling-salts, applied them deliberately to either nostril.
“Then this man Murchison killed my husband!”
Parker Steel gave an apologetic shrug.
“I have to state facts,” he explained. “I cannot swear to what might have happened.”
“Let the ‘might have’ alone, doctor. I’ve pulled the pease out of the pod, and by the Holy Spirit I’ll boil my water in Murchison’s pot!”
Parker Steel attempted to pacify her, confident in his heart that any such effort would be useless.
“My dear Mrs. Baxter, let me explain to you—”
“Explain! What is there to explain? This man’s killed my husband. I’ll sue him, I’ll make him pay for it.”
“Pardon me, one word—”
The widow raised her hands and patted Steel solemnly on the shoulders.
“You’ve done your duty by me, doctor, for I reckon it isn’t proper to tell tales of the profession. Now, listen, I’ll relate what Jane Baxter’s going to do.”
Steel’s silence welcomed the confession.
“Well, I’m going to order the market-trap out, the trap my poor Tom used to drive in to Roxton every Monday, the Lord have pity on him!—”
“Yes.”
“I’m going straight to call at Lawyer Cranston’s.”
“Indeed!”
“And just set him to pull Dr. Murchison’s coat from off his back.”
CHAPTER XVI
There was a dance that night at one of the Roxton houses, and Mrs. Betty, brilliant in cream and carnation, swept through the room with all the verve of a girl of twenty. Her partners discovered her in wondrous fettle—swift, splendid, and audacious, color in her cheeks, a sparkle of conscious triumph in her eyes. Her tongue was in sympathy with the quickness of her feet. She prattled, laughed, and was as deliciously impertinent as any minx who has a theory of fascination.
Mrs. Hamilton-Hamilton, the hostess of the night, was a patient of James Murchison’s, and Catherine’s more gracious comeliness came as a contrast to Mrs. Betty’s faylike glamour. The Hamiltons were brewers, wealthy plebeians who had assimilated that lowest of all arts, the art of making money, without absorbing a culture that was of the same temper as their gold. Catherine had left her husband to his pipe and his books at Lombard Street. She had come to serve him, because as a doctor’s wife she knew the value of smart publicity. In small towns trifles are of serious moment. Orthodoxy is in the ascendant, and individual singularity of opinion is considered to be “peculiar.” A professional gentleman suspected of free thought may discover his social standing being damaged by the vicaress behind his back. Bigotry dies hard despite the broadening of our culture, and “eccentric” individuals may be ostracized by the sectarians of a town. Forms and formularies produce hypocrites. It is perilous for professional gentlemen to appear eccentric. Even if they abstain from lip service in person, their wives must be regular in helping to populate the parish pews.
Kate Murchison and Mrs. Betty passed and repassed each other in the vortex of many a waltz. To Parker Steel’s wife there was a prophetic triumph on the wind. She found herself calculating, as she chatted to her partners, how long these people would remain loyal to the surgeon of Lombard Street when his repute was damaged by the scandal at Boland’s Farm. Catherine had a peculiar interest for her that night, for Mrs. Betty’s hate was tempered by exultation. She watched for the passing and repassing of Catherine’s aureole of shimmering hair, smiling to herself at the woman’s happy ignorance of the notoriety that threatened her husband’s name.
To Catherine also, with each sweep of the dance, came that olive-skinned and complacent face, whose eyes seemed ever on the watch for her. She caught the rattle of the dark woman’s persiflage as she drifted past to the moan of the violins. She remarked an exaggerated vivacity in Mrs. Betty’s manner, a something that suggested triumph with each nearness of their faces. Always the slightly cynical smile, the teeth glimmering between the lips; always that curious flash of the eyes, sudden and momentary, like the flash of a light over the night sea. With women the vaguest of emotions lead to intuitive gleams of thought, and Mrs. Betty’s exultation inspired Catherine with reasonless unrest.
The two women met in the doorway of the supper-room, Parker Steel’s wife on Mr. Cranston’s arm, Catherine escorted by Captain Hensley, of the Buffs. Their eyes met with a glitter of defiance and distrust. Catherine would have drawn aside, but Betty, with a laugh, gave her a pretty sweep of the hand.
“Seniores priores, dear. How is your husband? What a delicious evening!”
The presentiment of treachery asserted itself with superstitious strangeness. Catherine colored, stung, despite herself, by Parker Steel’s wife’s patronizing drawl.
“Thanks. My husband is very well. Has he been ill?” and the ironical question conveyed a challenge.
Mrs. Betty’s lips parted over their perfect teeth.
“Mr. Cranston is such an enthusiast that I must not lose him the next waltz. Try the pâté de foie gras, it is excellent,” and she swept out, with a glitter of amusement, on the lawyer’s arm.
They were soon moving in the midst of the music, a score of rustling dresses swinging their colors over the polished floor.
“Poor Mrs. Murchison,” and the lawyer looked curiously into his partner’s face.
“Strange that we should have met her, just then!”
“After our discussion at supper!”
“Yes; she knows nothing.”
“My dear Mrs. Steel, the penny-post carries more poison than the rings of the old Italians.”
“But then we are more civilized in our methods.”
“Possibly. The cruelties of civilization are more refined, of the soul rather than of the body. Shall we reverse?”
“Yes. There are some fatalities that cannot be reversed, Mr. Cranston, eh?”
Catherine returned to the great house in Lombard Street that night with a vague feeling of melancholy and unrest. She was beginning to know the terror of a secret in a house, a hidden shame to be held sacred from the eyes of the world. Nor was it that she did not trust her husband, nor respect his strength, for few men would have fought as he had fought, and even in defeat she beheld a pathos that was wholly tragic, never sordid.
She was haunted by the thought that night that Betty Steel had guessed her secret, and only women know the feline cruelty of their sex. The greater part of the social snobberies and tyrannies of life are inspired by the spiteful egotism of women. Catherine knew enough of Betty’s nature to forecast the mercy she might expect from her rival’s tongue. Moreover, the very home-coming from the dance recalled to her that March night when she had first uncovered her husband’s shame. There are some memories that are like aggressive weeds, no tearing up by the roots can banish them from the human heart. Their tendrils creep and thrust into every crevice of the mind. Their fruit is full of a poisoned juice, their flowers red as hyssop—for all the world to see.
As for the sake of irony, the letters that Betty Steel and Mr. Cranston had discussed, were opened by Murchison at the breakfast-table before the faces of his children and his wife. Master Jack had been clamoring to be taken to the cottage on Marley Down, and Gwen had crept round to her father’s elbow to overpersuade him with the winsomeness of childhood. The first letter that Murchison opened was from Cranston; the second from Parker Steel. Miss Gwen, doll in hand, stood unheeded at her father’s elbow. It was Catherine who rose, called the two children, and took them out into the garden to play.
They clung, one to either hand, the boy prancing and chattering, the girl solemn-eyed because of her father’s silence.
“Mother, when may we go to Marley?”
“Soon, dear, soon.”
“Oh, I say, do they keep rabbits there?”
“And will daddy come too?”
Catherine disentangled herself, and left them on the lawn under the great plane-tree, her heart heavy with some half-expected dread.
“Daddy will come too, dear. I will call you when you are to come in.”
Murchison was still sitting at the breakfast-table when she returned, looking like a man who had lost his all at cards. His figure appeared shrunken, and hollow at the shoulders, his face expressionless as though from some sudden palsy of the brain.
“James!”
He started as though he had not heard her enter.
“The children, where—?”
“In the garden. Tell me, what has happened?”
“Happened? My God, Kate, see, read!—what have I done?”
She stretched out her hand, her face piteously brave.
“This letter?”
He nodded.
“From whom?”
“Steel. There is to be an inquest at Boland’s Farm.”
Catherine read it, and the lawyer’s also, an angry glow welling up into her eyes. She crumpled the letters in her hand, and stood silent a moment, with quivering lips.
“Now, now—I know—”
Murchison stared at her like one half-dazed.
“You have read it?”
“Yes. A blunder! No, I’ll not believe it, James; there is malice here. I read it in Betty Steel’s eyes last night.”
“But the facts,” and he groaned.
“Facts! Are they facts? Is Parker Steel infallible? Wait, I know what I will do.”
Murchison’s eyes watched her like the eyes of a dog.
“I will see Dr. Parker Steel. I will ask him by what right he has dared to act as he has acted.”
Her words seemed to shake her husband from his stupor.
“Kate, you cannot do it.”
“Why not?”
“Beg a favor of that fop! Besides, the case has gone too far. The facts are there. I blundered. I knew that I had lost my nerve.”
She looked at him with a woman’s pity, her pride and her love still strong and heroic in their trust.
“It was not you, dear—not you.”
“Not I, Kate, but my baser self. Fate takes us when we are in the toils.”
They heard the children in the garden, their laughter close beneath the window. Murchison’s hands caught the arms of his chair. His children’s happiness seemed part of the mockery of fate.
“Don’t let them come in. I can’t bear it. I—” and he broke down suddenly into that most pitiful and tragic pass when a strong man’s anguish brings him even to tears.
Catherine, her face transfigured, bent over him, and seized his hands.
“Oh, not that! Why, we are here together, and you look on the darker side—”
His tears were on her hands; he was ashamed, and hung his head.
“Kate, it is true, I feel it. Steel—”
“Steel?”
“Is too cold a man to risk what he cannot prove.”
She drew her breath, and kissed him, the kiss of a mother and a wife.
“I will go to him,” she said.
“Kate!”
“No, not to plead. I could not plead with such a man as Steel.”
CHAPTER XVII
Parker Steel was compiling his list of visits for the day, when, following the sharp “burr” of the electric bell, came the announcement that Mrs. Murchison, of Lombard Street, waited to see him in the drawing-room. A momentary cloud of annoyance passed over the physician’s sleek and shallow face. Few men care to appear ungenerous in the eyes of a woman, and Parker Steel was not devoid of the passion for indiscriminate popularity. The craving to appear excellent in the eyes of others is a more potent power for the polishing of man’s character than the dogmatics of a state religion, and Mrs. Betty’s husband purred like a cat about the silk skirts of society. Man for man, he could have dealt with Murchison on hard and scientific lines, but with a woman the logic of unsympathetic facts could be consumed by the lava flow of the more passionate privileges of the heart.
He continued scribbling at his desk, mentally considering the attitude he should assume, and hesitating between an air of infinite regret and a calm assumption of stoical responsibility. The door opened on him as he still studied his part. Mrs. Betty stood on the threshold, eyes a-glitter, an eager frown on her pale face.
She closed the door and approached her husband, leaning the palms of her hands on the edge of the table.
“Well, Parker, are you prepared with sal-volatile and a dozen handkerchiefs?”
Steel looked uneasy, a betrayal of weakness that his wife’s sharp eyes did not disregard.
“I suppose I must see the woman,” and he fastened the elastic band about his visiting-book with an irritable snap.
“See her? By all means, unless you are afraid of needing a tear bottle.”
“Perhaps you would prefer to interview—”
A flash of malicious amusement beaconed out from his wife’s eyes.
“No, no, sir, you must assume the responsibility. I shall enjoy myself by listening to your diplomatic irrelevances.”
Parker Steel pushed back his chair.
“Betty, you are a woman, what do you advise?”
“Advise!” and she laughed with delicious satisfaction. “Am I to advise infallible man?”
“Well, you know the tricks of the sex.”
“Do I, indeed! Firstly, then, my dear Parker, beware of tears.”
The physician gave an impatient twist to his mustache.
“Kate Murchison is not that sort of creature,” he retorted.
“No, perhaps not. But you may find her dangerous if she makes use of her emotions.”
“Hang it, Betty, I hate scenes!”
“Scenes are easily avoided.”
“How?”
“By a process of refrigeration. Be as ice. Do not give the lady an opportunity to melt. Compel her to restrain herself for the sake of her self-respect.”
Steel smiled ironically at his wife’s earnestness.
“An antagonistic attitude—”
“Exactly. Polite north-windedness. Be an iceberg of professional propriety. Kate Murchison has pride; she will not catch you by the knees. Heavens, Parker”—and she brimmed with mischief—“I should like to see you trying to disentangle your legs from some hysterical lady’s embraces!”
Her husband glanced at himself in the glass, and adjusted his tie as a protest against his wife’s raillery.
“The sooner the interview is ended—the better,” he remarked.
“Wait, let me see you attempt the necessary stony stare!”
And she glided up and kissed him, much to the spruce physician’s sincere surprise.
Catherine had been moving restlessly to and fro in the drawing-room, glancing at the photographs and pictures, and listening to the murmur of voices that reached her from Parker Steel’s consulting-room. The air of the house seemed oppressive to her, and there was even an unwelcome strangeness about the furniture, as though the inanimate things could conspire against her and repel her sympathies. The environment was the environment of an unfamiliar spirit. The personality of the possessor impresses itself upon the home, and to Catherine there seemed superciliousness and a sense of antagonism in every corner. Her woman’s pride put on the armor of a warlike tenderness. She thought of her children, and was caught thinking of them by Parker Steel.
“Good-morning, Mrs. Murchison.”
“Good-morning.”
“Won’t you sit down?”
There was a questioning pause. Catherine remained standing, her eyes studying the man’s smooth, clever, but soulless face.
“I have come, Dr. Steel, half as a friend—”
The physician’s smile completed the inimical portion of the sentence.
“I cannot but regret,” and he rested his white and manicured hands on the back of a Chippendale chair, “that you have thought fit to interview me, Mrs. Murchison, on such a matter.”
Catherine watched his face as he spoke.
“Of course you realize—”
“The nature of the case? I realize it, Mrs. Murchison, too gravely to admit this meeting to be a pleasure.”
His chilly suavity reacted on Catherine as Betty Steel had promised. Individual antipathy comes quickly to the surface. Any display of feeling before Parker Steel would have been like throwing a burning torch down into the snow.
“I presume you realize the nature of the responsibility you are assuming?”
Her tone had nothing of pacification or appeal. The curve of her neck became the more haughty as she realized the purpose of the man to whom she spoke.
“It is my responsibility, Mrs. Murchison,” and he bent his slim and black-sheathed figure slightly over the rail of the chair, “that makes this interview the more painful to me.”
“You have accused my husband of gross incompetence and carelessness.”
“I have stated facts.”
“Dr. Murchison’s surgical experience is not that of a mere theorist. It has an established reputation. You understand me?”
Parker Steel understood her perfectly, his nostrils lifting at the rebuff.
“My duty, Mrs. Murchison, is towards my own conscience.”
“I do not deny your sense of duty.”
“And the facts of the case—”
“Say—rather—your interpretation of those facts.”
“Madam!”
“For in the interpretation lies the meaning of your action. I can only warn you, for your own sake, to be careful.”
Parker Steel’s mask of unsympathetic suavity lost its unflurried coldness for the moment.
“My dear Mrs. Murchison, I have my day’s work before me, and I am a busy man. It is my misfortune to have earned your resentment by the discovery of a blunder. Please consider the question to be beyond our individual interests.”
“Then I am to understand—?”
“That I have already adopted the only course that seemed honest to me. I have declined to give a death certificate and I have communicated with the coroner.”
Catherine took the blow without flinching, though a deep resentment stirred in her as she remembered how her husband had bulwarked Parker Steel.
“Then I think there is nothing more to be said between us.”
The physician made a step towards the door.
“Accept my regrets”—the vanity of the man, the desire to stand well in the eyes of a handsome woman, was not wholly to be suppressed.
“I accept no regrets, Dr. Steel—”
“Indeed.”
“For no regrets are given. My eyes are open to the truth.”
Steel turned the handle of the door.
“A sense of duty makes us enemies, Mrs. Murchison.”
“Perhaps, sir, your very lively sense of duty may lead you some day into a lane that has no turning.”
Whether by chance, or by premeditated malice, Mrs. Betty crossed the hall as Catherine left the drawing-room. She halted, smiled, and extended a languid hand. Her eyes recalled to Catherine the eyes of the previous night.
“Ah, good-morning, Kate.”
There was not a quiver of emotion on Catherine Murchison’s face. She looked at Mrs. Betty as she would have looked at some pert shop-girl who assured her that some warranted material had been ruined by chemicals in the wash. Parker Steel’s wife was deprived of any suggestion of a triumph.
“I hope you are not tired after Mr. Cranston’s enthusiasm.”
“Intelligent partners never tire me. May I echo the inquiry?”
Her feline spite marred the perfection of Mrs. Betty’s patronizing pity.
“Many thanks. You will excuse me, since I am a woman with responsibilities. You have no children to act as mother to, Betty.”
The barren woman’s lips tightened. The words, with all their innocent irony, went home.
“Oh, I detest children. All the philosophers will tell you that they are a doubtful blessing.”
“A matter of temperament, perhaps.”
“Some of us resemble rabbits, I suppose.”
Their mutual courtesy had reached the limit of extreme tension. Parker Steel, who had been watching the lightning flashes, the play between positive clouds and negative earth, opened the door to let the imminent storm disperse.
Catherine passed out with a slight bending of the head.
“How beautiful these July days are!” she remarked.
“Superb,” and Steel took leave of her with a cynical smile.
CHAPTER XVIII
Catherine’s lips were tightly set as she turned from the shadows of St. Antonia’s elms, where the sunlight made a moving fret of gold upon the grass. The sky was a broad canopy of blue above the town, the wooded hills about it far and faint with haze. To Catherine the summer stillness of the place, the dim blazoned windows of the church, the wreathing smoke, the circling pigeons, were parts of a quaint and homely tenderness that made her realize the more the repellent coldness of the house she had just left.
She had come by one conviction through her visit, the conviction that those two intellectualists hungered to humiliate her and her husband. Mrs. Betty’s eyes had betrayed too much. She would be content with nothing but sensational head-lines, and the discussion of “the scandal” in every Roxton home. The brain behind that ethereal yet supercilious face knew no flush of feeling for a rival in distress. The pair were exulting over the chance James Murchison had given them, and the wife had realized it with a bitter flooding up of loyalty and love.
Catherine had made her plans before she reached the glare of Lombard Street. She had left her husband sitting in the darkened room, the blinds drawn down over his humiliation and self-shame. Her heart grieved in her for the strong man whose sensitive consciousness had been paralyzed by the realization of his own irrevocable blunder. Her pity left him undisturbed, like a sick man needing rest. Inglis had taken the work for the whole day, for Catherine had interviewed him in the surgery, and shocked the theorist by imparting a portion of the truth to him.
“Incredible!” had been Mr. Inglis’s solitary remark, and Catherine’s heart had blessed him for that single adjective.
As she passed the house in Lombard Street, her face seemed overshadowed for the moment by the unpropitious heaviness of her thoughts. The vision of her husband’s pale and troubled face saddened her more utterly than any regretfulness her pride might feel. Nor did she pass her home unchallenged, for at the barred but open window of the nursery, a ripple of gold in the sunlight bathed her daughter Gwen’s round face,
“Muvver, muvver!” and a doll’s red pelisse was waved over the window-sill. Catherine felt all her womanhood yearn longingly towards the child.
“Muvver. I’ve spelled a whole page. Daddy’s gone out. May I come wid you?”
Catherine shook her head, her eyes very bright with tenderness under her blue sunshade. How little the child realized the grim beneathness of life!
“No, dear, no. I shall be back soon. Ask Mary to take you for a walk in the meadows,” and she passed on with a lingering look at the red pelisse and the golden curls.
Porteus Carmagee, white as to waistcoat, brown as to face, jumped up briskly from his well-worn leather chair when his head clerk announced Mrs. Catherine Murchison. The lawyer, despite his eccentricities, was a keen and tenacious man of business, the emphasis of whose advice might have impressed an audience more cynical than the English House of Commons. He had a habit of snapping at his syllables with a vindictive sincerity that stimulated nervous clients suffering from the neurasthenia of indecision.
“What!—a professional visit? My dear Kate, this is a most portentous event; all my musty deeds must blush into new pink tape. Sit down. Do you want damages against your washerwoman for spoiling the underlinen? Believe me—I have been asked to advise on such questions. Ah, and how did your husband like my port?”
An inward shudder swept through Catherine. The memories of that night at Marley Down were brutally vivid to her, like the bizarre dreams of a feverish sleep remembered in the morning. Porteus had been the innocent cause of all this misery. Tell him she could not, that his very kindness had brought her husband to the brink of ruin.
“We ought to have thanked you”—and the words clung to her throat. “James has had one of his attacks of nervous depression and an endless amount of worry.”
Porteus Carmagee’s keen brown eyes sparkled with intentness as he watched her face. She looked white, uneasy, haggard about the mouth, like one who has suffered from the strain of perpetual self-repression. Catherine had always moved before him as a serene being, a woman whose face had symbolized the quiet splendor of an evening sky. He had often quoted her as one of the few people in the world whose happiness displayed itself in the beauty of radiant repose. The stain of suffering on her face was new to him, and the more remarkable for that same reason.
“You speak of worries, Kate. Am I to be concerned in them as a fatherly friend?”
She tried to give him one of her happy smiles.
“You see—I have to run to you—because I am in trouble.”
The pathetic simplicity of her manner touched him.
“My dear Kate,” and his voice lost its usual snappishness, “how can I serve you—as a friend? It is not usual to see you worried.”
“You know James has been overworked.”
“Have I not lectured the rogue on a dozen different occasions?”
“Yes, yes, I know; and he was ill at Marley Down on Sunday, in the little place where I had hoped to give him rest. Oh, Porteus, how brutal the responsibilities of life can be at times! Inglis, our assistant, sent for him to attend a serious case. James’s sense of duty dragged him away from Marley. He went, braved a critical operation, and—”
She faltered, her face aglow, as though the very loyalty of her love made the confession partake of treachery. The wrinkles about Porteus Carmagee’s eyes seemed to grow more marked.
“And made a mess of it, Kate, eh?”
His brusquerie passed with her as a characteristic method of concealing emotion.
“Yes.”
“Ugh!” and he jerked one leg over the chair; “confound his sense of duty, risking his reputation to ease some old woman’s temper.”
Catherine looked at him with a quivering of the lips.
“Porteus, you can’t blame him. It seems hard that one slip may undermine so much.”
“Why ‘undermine’?—why ‘undermine’? The law does not expect infallibility.”
“I know—but then—the man died.”
“Who? What man?”
“Farmer Baxter, of Boland’s Farm.”
“A fool who has been eating himself to death for years.”
Catherine spread her open hands with the look of a pathetic partisan.
“James was not in a fit state to meet the strain. The wife quarrelled with him after the operation, and refused to let him continue the case.”
“My dear, inferior females always quarrel!”
“And we have enemies.”
“So had the saints, and plenty.”
“It was Parker Steel—”
Porteus Carmagee sat up briskly in his chair, his wrinkled face twitching with intelligence.
“Now we are growing vital. Well, I can forecast that gentleman’s procedure.”
“Steel was called in, and the man died.”
“Most natural of mortals!”
“He performed a post-mortem with Dr. Brimley, of Cossington, at the widow’s request. As a result he has refused to give a death certificate and has written to the coroner. And Mrs. Baxter has instructed Cranston to institute an action against us for malpraxis and incompetence.”
Porteus Carmagee sat motionless for a moment, his legs tucked under his chair, his brown face suggestive of the ugliness of some carved mediæval corbel.
“I flatter myself that I recognize the inspiring spirit, Kate,” he said, at last.
“Betty Steel.”
“That’s the lady; we have learned to respect our capabilities, Mrs. Betty—and I.”
He pushed his chair back, established himself on the hearth-rug, and began the habitual rattling of his bunch of keys.
“Well, Kate, you want me to act for you.”
“If you will.”
“If I will? My dear girl, don’t insult my affection for you all. I must confess that I like to feel vindictive when I undertake a case. No city dinner could have made me more irritable, vulpine, and liverish in your service.”
Catherine’s eyes thanked him sufficiently, but they were still brimming with questioning unrest.
“Porteus, tell me what you think.”
“My dear Kate, don’t worry.”
“How can I help worrying?”
The brown and intelligent face, like the face of a sharp and keen-eyed dog, lit up with a peculiar flash of tenderness for her.
“Come, Kate, I am not a full-blooded optimist, as you know, but your woman’s nature makes the affair seem more serious than it is. Your husband was overworked, and ill at the time, yet these people insisted—I take it—on his assuming the full responsibility of the case. Steel is notoriously an unprincipled rival; as for Brimley, of Cossington, the fellow is known as the most saintly humbug as ever made ginger and water appear as potent as the elixir vitæ. My dear Kate, I know more of the secret squabbles of this town than you do. People have threatened to sue Parker Steel before now—yes, in this very room. If spite and spleen are dragged into the case, I think I can promise our opponents a somewhat stormy season.”
A look of relief melted into Catherine’s eyes. Porteus Carmagee was emphatic, and women look for emphasis in the advice of a man.
“You are doing me good, Porteus.”
“That’s right. The law is a crabbed old spinster, but she can be exhilarating on occasions. Tell me, when did you receive the challenge?”
“This morning, by letter.”
“From whom?”
“Parker Steel and Mr. Cranston.”
“Exactly. And your husband?”
She faltered, and looked aside.
“James was deeply shocked by the thought.”
“Of course—of course. He is a man with a conscience. What is he doing?”
“I left him at home—to rest. I ought to tell you, Porteus, that I have seen Parker Steel.”
The lawyer frowned.
“Unwise, Kate, unwise. I hope—”
“No,” and she flushed, hotly; “I made no pretence of weakness. They had defiance from me.”
“Good girl—good girl.”
“They are bitter against us. It was easy to discover that.”
Porteus Carmagee drew out his watch.
“In an hour, Kate, I will run over and see your husband. Oblige me by telling him not to look worried. Now, my dear girl, nonsense, you needn’t.”
Catherine had risen, and had put her hands upon his shoulders. And on that single and momentous occasion, Porteus Carmagee blushed as his bachelor face was touched by the lips of June.
The words of a friend in the dry season of trouble are like dew to the parched grass. Catherine left Porteus Carmagee’s office with a feeling of gratitude and relief, as though the sharing of her burden with him had eased her heart. From a feeling of forlorn impatience she sprang to a more sanguine and happy temper, with her gloomier forebodings left among the deeds and documents of the dusty office. She thought of her husband and her children without that wistful stirring of regret, that fear lest some store of evil were being laid up for them in the home she loved. Her reprieve was but momentary, had she but known it, for the cup of her humiliation was not full to the brim.
As she turned into Lombard Street, she came upon her two children returning with Mary from a ramble in the meadows. The youngsters raced for her, eyes aglow, health and the beauty thereof in every limb. The omen seemed propitious, the incident as sacred as Catherine could have wished. Perhaps to the two children her kisses seemed no less warm and heart-given than of yore, but to the mother the moment had a meaning that no earthly poetry could portray.
“Ah—my darlings—”
“Where have you been, muvver—where?”
“At Uncle Porteus’s. Mary, run around to Arnsbury’s and ask him to send me in some fruit. I will take the children home.”
Mary departed, leaving youth clinging to the maternal hands. Master Jack Murchison pranced like a war-horse, his curiosity still cantering towards Marley Down.
“Oh, I say, mother, when are we going to the cottage?”
“Saturday, dear, perhaps.”
“Daddy said we might have tea in the woods.”
“Boys who put pepper on the cat’s nose don’t deserve picnics.”
Master Jack giggled over the originality of the crime. “Old Tom did sneeze!”
“You was velly cruel, Jack,” and Gwen’s face reproved him round her mother’s skirts.
“Little girls don’t know nuffin.”
“I can spell ‘fuchsia,’ I can.”
“What’s the use of spelling! Any one can spell—can’t they, mother?”
“No, dear,” and the mother laughed; “many people are not as far advanced as Gwen.”
They were within twenty yards of the great house in Lombard Street, with its warm red walls and its white window frames, when a crowd of small boys came scattering round the northeast corner of St. Antonia’s Square. In the middle of the road a butcher had stopped his cart, and several people were loitering by the railings under the elms, watching something that was as yet invisible to Catherine and the children.
“I specs it’s Punch and Judy,” and Master Jack tugged at his mother’s hand.
“Wait, dear, wait.”
“Muvver, may I give the Toby dog a biscuit?”
“Two, Gwen, if you like.”
“I just love to see old Punch smack silly old Judy with a stick!”
“Jack, you are velly cruel,” and the little lady disassociated herself once more from all sympathy with her brother’s barbaric inclinations.
A man turned the corner of the street suddenly, cannoned two small boys aside, and hurried on with the half-scared look of one who has seen a child crushed to death under a cart. He stopped abruptly when he saw Catherine and the children, his white and resolute face glistening with sweat.
“Mrs. Murchison, take the children in—”
Catherine stared at him; it was John Reynolds, her husband’s dispenser.
“What is it—what has happened?”
The man glanced backward over his right shoulder as though he had been followed by a ghost.
“Dr. Murchison was taken ill at the County Club. They sent round for me. Good God, ma’am, get the children out of the way!”
For a moment Catherine stood motionless with the sun blazing upon her face, her eyes fixed upon a knot of figures dimly seen under the shadows of the mighty elms. A great shudder passed through her body. She stooped, caught up Gwen, and carried the wondering child into the house. Reynolds, the dispenser, followed with the boy, who rebelled strenuously, his querulous innocence making the tragedy more poignant and pathetic.
“Shut up, silly old Reynolds—”
“There, there, Master Jack,” and the man panted; “be quiet, sir. Mrs. Murchison, I must—you understand.”
Catherine, her face wonderful in its white restraint, her eyes full of the horror of keen consciousness, hurried the two children up the stairs. Outside in the sunlit street the club porter and a laboring man were swaying along with an unsteady figure grappled by either arm. The troop of small boys sneaked along the sidewalk, and on the opposite pavement some dozen spectators watched the affair incredulously across the road.
“Dang me if it ain’t the doctor.”
“What, Jim Murchison?”
“Drunk as blazes.”
A little widow woman in black slipped away with a shudder from the coarse voices of the men. “How horrible!” And she looked ready to weep, for she was one of Murchison’s patients and had known much kindness at his hands.
John Reynolds had gone to help the two men get Murchison up the steps into the house.
“Good God, sir,” he said, “pull yourself together!”
“Lemme go, R’nolds, I can walk.”
“Steady, sir, steady! For the love of your good lady, get inside.”
And between them they half carried him into the house, three men awed by a strong man’s shame.
Catherine had locked the two children into the nursery. She stood on the stairs, and saw the limp figure of her husband lifted across the hall into his consulting-room. It was as though fate had given her the last most bitter draught to drink. Their cause was lost. She felt it to be the end.
Reynolds, the dispenser, came to her across the hall. The man was almost weeping, so bitterly did he feel the misery of it all.
“I—I have sent for Dr. Inglis.”
“Thank you, Reynolds.”
“Shall I stay?”
“Yes, for God’s sake, do!”
The other two men came out from the consulting-room, and crossed the hall sheepishly, without looking at Catherine. She turned, and reascended the stairs, leaving to Reynolds the task of watching by her husband. The sound of a small fist beating on the nursery door seemed to echo the loud throbbing of her heart. She steadied herself, choked back her anguish, unlocked the door, and went in to her children.
“Muvver, muvver!” Gwen’s eyes were full of tears.
“Yes, darling, yes.”
“Is daddy ill?”
“Daddy—daddy is ill,” and she took the two frightened children in her arms, and wept.