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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Porteous Carmagee, solicitor and commissioner for
oaths, had his bald head tilted towards Mr. Thomas
Flemming’s ear. Mr. Flemming was one of the cultured
idlers of the town, a gentleman who was an authority on
ornithology, who presided often at the county bench, and
could dash off a cartoon that was not quite clever enough
for Punch.
“What did you say, Carmagee? The beggars are
making such a din—”
“From the heart, sir, from the heart.”
“Indigestion, eh?”
Mr. Carmagee was seized with an irritable twitching of
his creased, brown face.
“Oh, an encore, that’s good. I said, Tom, that Kate
Murchison’s voice came from her heart.”
“Very likely, very likely.”
“I could sit all night and hear her sing.”
“I doubt it,” quoth the man of culture, with a twinkle.
The opening notes rippled on the piano, and Mr. Carmagee lay back in his chair to listen. He was a little
monkey of a man, fiery-eyed, wrinkled, with a grieved
and husky voice that seemed eternally in a hurry. He
knew everybody and everybody’s business, and the secrets
his bald pate covered would have trebled the circulation
of the Roxton Herald in a week. Porteous Carmagee was
godfather to Catherine Murchison’s two children. She
was one of the few women, and he had stated it almost
as a grievance, who could make him admit the possible
advantages of matrimony.
“Bravo, bravo” and Mr. Carmagee slapped Tom
Flemming’s knee. ‘When the swans fly towards the
south, and the hills are all aglow.’ I believe in woman
bringing luck, my friend.”
“Oh, possibly.”
“Murchison took the right turning. Supposing he had
married—”
Mr. Flemming trod on the attorney’s toe.
“Look out, she’s there; people have ears, you know;
they’re not chairs.”
Mr. Carmagee nursed a grievance on the instant.
“Mention a name,” he snapped.
And Thomas Flemming pointed towards Mrs. Betty
with his programme.
Parker Steel’s wife drove home alone in her husband’s
brougham, ignoring the many moonlight effects that the
old town offered her with its multitudinous gables and
timbered fronts. She was not in the happiest of tempers, feeling much like a sensuous cat that has been tumbled unceremoniously from some crusty stranger’s lap.
Betty had attempted blandishments with the distinguished
Mrs. Fraser, and had been favored with a shoulder and
half an aristocratic cheek. Moreover, she had watched
the great lady melt under Catherine Murchison’s smiles,
and such incidents are not rose leaves to a woman.
Mrs. Betty lay back in a corner of the brougham, and
indulged herself in mental tearings of Catherine Murchison’s hair. What insolent naturalness this rival of
hers possessed! Mrs. Betty was fastidious and critical
enough, and her very acuteness compelled her to confess
that her enmity seemed but a blunted weapon. Catherine Murchison was so cantankerously popular. She
looked well, dressed well, did things well, loved well.
The woman was an irritating prodigy. It was her very
sincerity, the wholesomeness of her charm, that made
her seem invulnerable, a woman who never worried her
head about social competition.
Parker Steel sat reading before the fire when his wife
returned. He uncurled himself languidly and with deliberation, pulled down his dress waistcoat, and put his
book aside carefully on the table beside his chair.
“Enjoyed yourself?”
“Not vastly. I wonder why vulgar people always eat
oranges in public?”
”Better than sucking lemons.”
Mrs. Betty tossed her opera-cloak aside and slipped into
a chair. Her husband’s complacency irritated her a little.
He was not a sympathetic soul, save in the presence of
prominent patients.
“You look bored, dear. Who performed?”
“The usual amateurs. I am tired to death; are you
coming to bed?”
Parker Steel looked at the clock, and sighed.
“I shall not be wanted till about five,” he said. “Confound these guinea babies. I hope to build a tariff wall
round myself when we are more independent.”
“Yes, of course.”
“And Mrs. Fraser?”
“Safe in the other camp, dear.”
Parker Steel was dropping off to sleep that night when
he felt his wife’s hand upon his shoulder. He turned
with a grunt, and saw her white face dim amid her cloud
of hair.
“Anything wrong?”
“No. Do you believe in Murchison, Parker?”
“‘Believe in him’?”
“Yes, is he reliable; does he know his work?”
Her husband laughed.
“Why, do you want to consult the fellow?”
“You have never caught him tripping?”
“Not yet. What are you driving at?”
“Oh nothing,” and she turned away, and put the hair
back from her face, feeling feverish with the ferment of
her thoughts.
NO one in Roxton would have imagined that any
shadow of dread darkened the windows of the house
in Lombard Street. Even to his most intimate friends,
James Murchison would have appeared as the one man
least likely to be dominated by any inherited taint of
body or mind. His face was the face of a man who had
mastered his own passions, the mouth firm yet generous,
the jaw powerful, the eyes and forehead suggesting the
philosopher behind the virility of the man of action. He
had built up a substantial reputation for himself in Roxton and the neighborhood. His professional honesty was
unimpeachable, his skill as a surgeon a matter of common gossip. But it was his warm-heartedness, the sincerity of his sympathy, his wholesome Saxon manliness
that had won him popularity, especially among the poor.
For Catherine the uncovering of the past had come as
a second awakening, a resanctification of her love. Women are the born champions of hero worship, and to generous natures imperfections are but as flints scattered in
the warm earth of life. Women will gather them and
hide them in their bosoms, breathing a more passionate
tenderness perhaps, and betraying nothing to the outer
world.
James Murchison and his wife had held each other’s
hands more firmly, like those who approach a narrow
mountain path. They were happy in their home life,
happy with each other, and with their children. To the
woman’s share there was added a new sacredness that
woke and grew with every dawn. There were wounds
to be healed, bitternesses to be warded off. The man
who lay in her arms at night needed her more dearly,
and there was exultation in the thought for her. She
loved him the more for this stern thorn in the flesh. The
pity of it seemed to make him more her own, to knit her
tenderness more bravely round him, to fill life with a
more sacred fire. She was not afraid of the future for his
sake, believing him too strong to be vanquished by an
ancestral sin.
It was one day in April when James Murchison came
rattling over the Roxton cobbles in his motorcar, to slacken speed suddenly in Chapel Gate at the sight of a red
Dutch bonnet, a green frock, and a pair of white-socked
legs on the edge of the pavement. The Dutch bonnet
belonged to his daughter Gwen, a flame-haired dame of
four, demure and serious as any dowager. The child had
a chip-basket full of daffodils in her hand, and she seemed
quite alone, a most responsible young person.
A minute gloved hand had gone up with the gravity
of a constable’s paw signalling a lawbreaker to stop.
James Murchison steered to the footway, and regarded
Miss Gwen with a surprised twinkle.
“Hallo, what are you doing here?”
Miss Gwen ignored the ungraceful familiarity of the
inquisitive parent.
“I’ll drive home, daddy,” she said, calmly.
“Oh you will! Where’s nurse?”
“Mending Jack’s stockings.” And the lady with the
daffodils dismissed the question with contempt.
Murchison laughed, and helped the vagrant into the
car.
“Shopping, I see,” he observed, refraining from adult
priggery, and catching the spirit of Miss Gwen’s adventuresomeness.
“Yes. I came out by myself. I’d five pennies in my
money-box. Nurse was so busy. The daffies are for
mother.”
Her father had one eye on the child as he steered the
car through the market - place and past St. Antonia’s
into Lombard Street. The youth in him revolted from
administering moral physic to Miss Gwen. Even the
florist seemed to have treated her pennies with generous
respect, and like the majority of sympathetic males, Murchison left the dogmatic formalities of education to his
wife. The very flowers, the child’s offering, would have
withered at any tactless chiding.
Mary, the darner of Mr. Jack’s stockings, was discovered waddling up Lombard Street with flat - footed
haste. Miss Gwen greeted her with the composure of
an empress, proud of her flowers, her father, the motorcar, and life in general. To Mary’s “Oh Miss Gwen!”
she answered with a sedate giggle and hugged her basket
of flowers.
Murchison saw his wife’s figure framed between the
white posts of the doorway. He chuckled as he reached
for his instrument bag under the seat, and caught a glimpse
of Mary’s outraged authority.
“Look, mother, look, you love daffies ever so much.
I bought them all myself.”
Catherine’s arms were hugging the green frock.
“Gwen, you wicked one,” and she caught her husband’s
eyes and blushed.
“We are growing old fast, Kate. I picked her up in
Chapel Gate.”
“The dear flowers; come, darling. Jack, you rascal,
what are you doing?”
“Master Jack! Master Jack!”
Male mischief was astir also in Lombard Street, having emerged from the school-room with the much-tried
Mary’s darning-basket. There was an ironical humor
in pelting the fat woman with the stockings she had mended and rolled so conscientiously. His father’s appearance
in the hall sent Master Jack laughing and squirming up
the stairs. He-was caught, tickled, and carried in bodily
to lunch.
James Murchison was smoking in his study early the
same afternoon, ticking off visits in his pocket-book, when
his wife came to him with a letter in her hand.
“From Marley, dear. A man has just ridden in with
it. They need you at once.”
“Marley? Why, the Penningtons belong to Steel.”
He tore open the envelope and glanced through the
letter, while his wife looked whimsically at the chaos of
books and papers on his desk. The ground was holy,
and her tact debarred her from meddling with the muddle.
The room still had a sense of shadow for her. She could
not enter it without an indefinable sense of dread.
Murchison did not show the letter to his wife. He
put it in his pocket, knocked out his pipe, and picked up
his stethoscope that was lying on the table.
“I am afraid you will have to go to the Stantons’
without me, dear,” he said; “Steel wants me at Marley.”
Catherine gave him a surprised flash of the eyes.
“Something serious?”
“Possibly.”
“Parker Steel is not fond of asking your advice.”
“Who is, dear?”
“I’m sorry,” she said.
“So am I, dear,” and he kissed her, and rang the bell
to order out his car.
Marley was an old moated house some five miles from
Roxton, a place that seemed stolen from a romance, save
that there was nothing romantic about its inmates. A
well-wooded park protected it from the high-road, the
red walls rising warm and mellow behind the yews, junipers, and cedars that grew in the rambling garden. Spring
flowers were binding the sleek, sun-streaked lawns with
strands of color, dashes of crimson, of azure, and white,
of golden daffodils blowing like banners amid a sheaf of
spears. Here and there the lawns were purple with crocuses,
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