A Woman's War by Warwick Deeping (top romance novels txt) 📕
"I wonder whether Murchison is as privileged as I am?" he said, passing his cup over the red tea cosy.
"I suppose the woman gushes for him, just as I work my wits for you."
"The Amazons of Roxton."
"We live in a civilized age, Parker, but the battle is no less bitter for us. I use my head. Half the words I speak are winged for a final end."
"You are clever enough, Betty," he confessed.
"We both have brains" and she gave an ironical laugh "I shall not be content till the world, our world, fully recognizes that fact. Old Hicks is past his work. Murchison is the only rival you need consider. Therefore, Parker, our battle is with the gentleman of Lombard Street."
"And with the wife?"
"That is my affair."
Such life feuds as are chronicled in the hatred of a Fredegonde for a Brunehaut may be studied in miniature in many a modern setting.
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by his absolute refusal to qualify the disgrace. An inquest, an unflattering finding by the coroner’s jury, a
case for damages threatening to be successfully instituted
by an outraged widow. Amid such social humiliations
the brass plate had disappeared abruptly from the door
of the house in Lombard Street. It was as though Murchison’s pride had accepted the tragic climax with all
the finality of grim despair. He had even made no attempt to sell the practice, but, like Cain, he had gone forth
with his wife and with his children, too sensitive in his
humiliation to brave the ordeal of reconquering a lost
respect.
Many months had passed since the furniture dealers’
vans had stood in the roadway outside the house in Lombard Street, with bass and straw littering the pavement,
and men in green baize aprons going up and down the
dirty steps. Frost was in the air, and the winter sun
burned vividly upon the western hills. A fog of smoke
hung over the straggling town, lying a dark blurr amid
the white-misted meadows. Lights were beginning to
wink out like sparks on tinder. The dull roar of a passing train came with hoarse strangeness out of the vague
windings of the valley.
As the dusk fell, a smart pair of “bays” switched round
the northwest corner of St. Antonia’s Square and clattered over the cobbles under the spectral hands of the
towering elms. The church clock chimed for the hour
as Parker Steel, furred like any Russian, stepped out of
the brougham, and, slamming the door sharply after him,
ordered the coachman to keep the horses on the move.
Dr. Steel’s brougham was not the only carriage under
St. Antonia’s sleeping elms. A steady beat of hoofs and
a jingling of harness gave a ring of distinction to the quiet
square.
Parker Steel glanced at the warm windows of his house
as he crossed the pavement, and fumbled for his latchkey in his waistcoat pocket. The sound of music came
from within, ceasing as the physician entered the hall,
and giving place to the brisk murmur of many voices.
A smart parlor-maid emerged from the drawingroom,
carrying a number of teacups, blue and gold, on a
silver tray. The babble of small talk unmuffled by the
open door suggested that Mrs. Betty excelled as a
hostess.
Ten minutes elapsed before Parker Steel, spruce and
complacent, was bowing himself into his own drawingroom with the easy unction of a man sure of the distinction of his own manners. Quite twenty ladies were ready
to receive the physician’s effeminate white fingers. Mrs.
Betty had gathered the carriage folk of Roxton round her.
The heat of the room seemed to have stimulated the
scent of the exotic flowers. The shaded standard lamp,
burning in the bay-window beside the piano, shed a brilliant light upon a pink mass of azaleas in bloom. Mrs.
Betty herself was still seated upon the music-stool, one
hand resting on the key-board as she chatted to Lady
Sophia Gillingham, sunk deep in the luxurious cushions
of a lounge-chair.
Mrs. Betty, a study in saffron, her pale face warmed
by the light of the lamp, caught her husband’s eye as
he moved through the crowded room. Sleek, brilliant,
pleased as a cat that has been lapping cream, she made a
slight gesture that he understood, a gesture that brought
him before Lady Gillingham’s chair.
“Parker.”
“Yes, dear.”
“Will you touch the bell for me? I want to show Mignon to Lady Sophia.”
Parker Steel’s smile congratulated his wife on her deft
handling of the weapons of social diplomacy. He rang
the bell, and meeting the servant at the door, desired her
to bring Mrs. Betty’s blue Persian and the basket of
kittens from before the library fire.
The physician took personal charge of Mignon and her
children, and returning between the chairs and skirts,
presented the family to Lady Sophia.
Parker Steel had an ecstatic lady at either elbow as
he held the basket lined with red silk, the three mouse-colored kittens crawling about within. Mignon, the ambereyed, had made a leap for Mrs. Betty’s lap.
“The dears!”
“How absolutely sweet!”
“Such tweety pets.”
The two elderly canaries cheeped in chorus while Lady
Sophia’s fat and pudgy hand fondled the three kittens.
Her red and apathetic face became more human and expressive for the moment, though there was a suggestion
of cupidity in her dull blue eyes.
“The dear things!” and she lifted one from the basket
into her lap, where it mewed rather peevishly, and caught
its claws in Lady Sophia’s lace.
“Mignon is a prize beauty,” and Mrs. Betty caressed
the cat, and looked up significantly into her husband’s face.
“Perfectly lovely. There, there, pet, what a fuss to
make!” and the dowager’s red-knuckled hand contrasted
with the kitten’s slate-gray coat. “I suppose they are all
promised, Mrs. Steel?”
“Well, to tell the truth, they have created quite a rage
among my friends.”
“No doubt, the dears. You could ask quite a fancy
price for such prize kittens.”
Parker Steel had been prompted by an instant flash of
his wife’s eyes.
“I am sure if Lady Gillingham would like one of the
kittens—”
He appeared to glance questioningly. and for approval,
at Mrs. Betty.
“Of course I shall be delighted.”
“Really?”
“Why, yes.”
“Then may I buy one?”
Parker Steel elevated his eyebrows, and, with the air of
a Leicester, refused to listen to any such proposal.
“Do not mention such a matter. We shall only be too
glad.”
“But, my dear Mrs. Steel—”
“I agree wholly with my husband.” And Mrs. Betty
stretched out a white hand, and stroked the ball of fluff
in Lady Sophia’s lap. “Choose which you like. They
can leave the mother in a week or two.”
Lady Gillingham’s plebeian face beamed upon Mrs.
Betty.
“This is really too generous.”
“Why, not at all,” and her vivacity was compelling.
“Then I may choose this one?”
“With pleasure.”
“Isn’t it a pet?”
Mignon, purring on Mrs. Betty’s lap, failed to realize
in the least how valuable a social asset she had proved.
There was a rustling of skirts, a shaking of hands, as the
room began to empty of its silks and laces. Lady Sophia
struggled up with a fat sigh from the depths of her chair,
stroked Mignon’s ears, and held out a very gracious hand
to Mrs. Steel.
“Can you dine with us on Monday?”
“Delighted.”
“Sir Gerald Gerson and the Italian ambassador will
be with us. I want to show you some choice Dresden
that my husband has just bought at Christie’s.”
Mrs. Betty received the favor with the smiling and enthusiastic simplicity of an ingenuous girl.
“How kind of you! I am so fond of china.”
Parker Steel gave his arm to the great lady, and escorted
her to her carriage, his deportment a professional triumph
in the consummation of such a courtesy.
He found Mrs. Betty alone in the drawingroom when
he returned. She was lying back in the chair that Lady
Gillingham’s stout majesty had impressed, and had
Mignon and a kitten on her lap.
Parker Steel, standing on the hearth-rug, looked round
him with the air of a man to whom the flowers in the
vases, the lilies and azaleas in bloom, seemed to exhale an
incense of success. Social prosperity and an abundance
of cash; the expensive arm-chairs appeared to assert the
facts loudly.
“A satisfactory party, dear, eh?”
Mrs. Betty, fondling Mignon’s ears, looked up and
smiled.
“I think we have conquered Boadicea at last,” she said.
“It appears so.”
“She should be a most excellent advertisement.”
Parker Steel fingered his chin, and looked meditatively
at the carpet. A self-satisfied and half-cynical smile hovered about the angles of his clean-cut mouth.
“A year ago, Betty,” he remarked, “Lady Sophia pertained to Catherine Murchison, and showed us the cold
shoulder. Well, we have changed all that.”
“We?”
“Well, say the workings of the ‘spirit/ or the infirmities
of the flesh.”
Mrs. Betty held Mignon against her cheek and laughed.
“What a dear, soft, fluffy thing it is!”
“Set a cat to catch a cat, eh? I wonder what our
friend Murchison is doing?”
“Murchison! I never trouble to think.”
Parker Steel studied his boots.
“Poor devil, he made a pretty mess of a first-class
practice. They were hard up, too, I imagine. Damages
and costs must have cleared out most of Murchison’s investments, and their furniture sold dirt cheap. I can’t
tell why the ass did not try to sell the practice.”
“Pride, I suppose.”
“It meant making me a present of most of his best
patients.”
“My dear Parker, never complain.”
“Hardly, when we should be booking between two and
three thousand a year at least. Well, I must turn out
again before dinner.”
The physician returned to his fur coat and his brougham,
leaving Mrs. Betty fondling Mignon and her kittens.
A HUNDRED rows of mud-colored brick “boxes,”
set face to face and back to back. Scores of cobbled streets, a gray band of stone, and two gray bands of
slate. Interminable brown doors and dingy windows;
interminable black and sour back yards, festoons of
sodden underclothing, moping chickens caged up in
corners, rubbish, broken boxes, cinder heaps, and
smoke.
Hardness in every outline, in the dirty, yellow-walled
houses, in the faces of the women, and in the crude straightness of every street. An atmosphere-of granite, brick,
cast-iron, and slate. No softness of contour, no flow of
curves, no joy in the sweep of land or sky. The color
scheme a smirch of gray, yellow, and dingy red. Scarcely
a streak of green in the monotonous streets. The sky
itself, at best a dusty blue, sliced up into lengths by slate
roofs and cast-iron gutters.
To the south of this wilderness of brick and stone rose
the chimneys and cage wheels of the Wilton collieries.
Here the sketch had been worked in charcoal, black
wharves beside a black canal, hillocks of coal, black smoke,
black faces. The whirr of wheels, the grinding of shovels,
the banging of trucks being shunted to and fro along the
sidings. The eternal spinning of the cage wheels, the
panting and screaming of engines, the toil and travail of
a civilization that disembowels the very earth.
In Wilton High Street, where electric trams sounded
their gongs all day, and cheap shops ogled the cheap
crowd, there was a broad window that had been colored
red and topped by a line of gold some eight feet above the
pavement. On this sanguinary window ran an inscription in big, black letters:
DR. TUGLER, M.R.C.S., L.R.C.P.
Consulting hours, 8 to 10 and 6 to 9
Consultations one shilling. Medicines included.
Those beshawled ladies who carried their rickety infants into Dr. Tugler’s shop, might find the doctor and one
of his two professional assistants seated in the two cheap,
cane-bottomed arm-chairs before two baize-topped tables.
There were wooden benches round the room, a glassfronted cabinet in one corner, medical almanacs on the
walls, a placard over the mantel-piece instructing patients
“To bring their own bottles.” An inner door with ground
glass panels led to a dingy surgery, a white sink in one
corner, and a dresser littered with instrument cases, packages of lint, reels of plaster, and boxes of bandages. A
third door opened from the
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