Warwick Deeping

“ 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. ”

“ Always would his manhood yearn towards it because of the dear dead, even though its memories were hateful to him, full of the bitterness of ignominy and pain.
Gwen’s death had come to Murchison as a sudden silence, a strange void in the hurrying entities of life. It was as though the passing of this child had changed the phenomena of existence for him, and given a new rhythm to the pulse of Time. He had become aware of a new setting to life, even as a man who has walked the same road day by day discovers on some winter dawn a fresh and unearthly beauty in the scene. ”

“ The strain had lessened for her husband with the summer, and he seemed his more breezy, strenuous self, a great child with his children, a man who appeared to have no dark corners in the house of life. Wilful optimist that she was, she could not conceive it possible that a mere “inherited lust” could bear down the man whose strength and honor were bound up for her in her religion. Where great love exists, great faith lives also. Catherine was too ready, perhaps, to forget her fears, to regard them as mere thunder-clouds, black for the hour, but destitute of heavier dread. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The madness would flicker down like fire and die. Yes, she would wait and watch till he had fallen asleep. To see him in the throes of it, no, she could not suffer that!
With a dry sob in the throat, Catherine set the candle down on the table, beside the bowl of roses that she had arranged but yesterday with her own hands. How cold the house was, even for summer! She returned to her bedroom, took down her dressing-gown from behind the door, and wrapped it round her, thanking Heaven in her heart that she was alone with her husband in the house. ”

“ Betty listened to her with the outward complacency of an angel. The big woman in her black dress, with a white rose in her ruddy hair, bowed and smiled to the enthusiasts of the Roxton slums who knew her nearly as well as they knew her husband. Catherine Murchison’s rare contralto flowed unconcernedly over her rival’s head. She sang finely, and without effort, and the voice seemed part of her, a touch of the sunset, a breath from the fields of June. Catherine’s nature came out before men in her singing. A glorious unaffectedness, a charm with no trick of the self-conscious egoist. ”

“ A WOMAN’S WAR
CHAPTER I There was a ripple of chimes through the frosty air as Catherine Murchison turned from King’s Walk into Lombard Street, and saw the moon shining white and clear between the black parapets and chimney-stacks of the old houses. St. Antonia’s steeple was giving the hour of three, and a babel of lesser tongues answered from the silence of the sleeping town. Hoar-frost glittered on the cypresses that stood in a garden bounding the road, and the roofs were like silver under the hard, moonlit sky. ”

“ The old lady in the opposing corner was looking at Jack over her spectacles, and the boy took to returning the stare with the inimitable composure of youth. Catherine had turned again towards the other window, but the white head-stones no longer checkered the hill-side. Instead, she saw her husband’s profile, stern and determined, yet infinitely sad.
Life has been described as a series of sensations; and though some days are dull and passionless, others vibrate with a thousand waves of feeling. To Murchison the day had been crowded with sensation since the break of dawn. ”

“ Catherine had been spared the lot of many of the married, that casual kindness, that familiar monotony that smothers all romance. Love is often blessed when gleaning the fields of sorrow, and the pathos of life is an inspiration towards poetry. Those who suffer most are the children of the spirit. Life never loses its mystery for the idealist, while your épicier has no stronger joy than the purchasing of a red-wheeled gig or the building of some abominable and inflamed-face villa.
Murchison rose, kissed his wife, and dressed to the sound of his children laughing and romping in the nursery. ”

“ Porteus Carmagee stared hard at the silver epergne full of daffodils before him on the table. They were at dessert, and alone, with the curtains drawn, and a wood fire burning in the old-fashioned grate. The whole setting of the room spoke of a generation that was past. It suggested solidity and repose, placid kindliness, prosaic comfort.
“Murchison ought never to have left us,” said the lawyer, curtly.
“No.”
“The affair might have blown over in a year.”
“You think so, Porteus.”
“If he had only stuck to his guns. People always wait to see what a man will do. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Antonia’s elms. The warmth of worldly well-being plumps out a woman’s comeliness. She expands and ripens in the sun of prosperity and praise, in contrast to the thousands of the ever-contriving poor, whose sordid faces are but the reflection of sordid facts.
Betty Steel’s face had an April alluringness that day; its outlines were soft and beautiful, suggestive of the delicacy of apple bloom seen through morning mist. She was exceeding well content with life, was Mrs. Betty, for her husband was in a position to write generous checks, and the people of Roxton seemed ready to pay her homage. ”

“ Through one of the open windows of the dining-room, Betty Steel’s sharp eyes caught sight of Miss Carmagee, rigged up in a white apron and unpacking china with the help of one of her maids.
The furniture van had made port, and Parker Steel’s carriage rolled on into St. Antonia’s Square. Mrs. Betty’s eyes had clouded a little under her Paris hat, for unpleasant thoughts are invariably suggested by the faces of people who do not love us. The ego in self-conscious mortals is sensitive as a piece of smoked-glass. ”

“ Beyond came the slow, sad heave of the Wilton hills, and, seen dimly—white specks upon the hill-side—the crowded head-stones where the dead slept.
The eyes of husband and wife met for a moment. They smiled at each other with the wistful cheerfulness of two people who have determined to be brave, a pathetic pretence hardly created to deceive. Moroseness need not testify deep feeling. The gleam from between the clouds turns even the wet clouds to gold.
Jack Murchison was watching a couple of colts cantering across a field beside the line. ”

“ Betty’s eyes. A few of his most intimate friends had noticed that Parker Steel had the tense, strained look of a man suffering from overwork. That he had given up his nightly cigar and his wine, pointed also to the fact that the physician had knowledge of his own needs.
To such a man as Steel the zest of life lay in the energetic stir and ostentatious bustle of success. His conceit was in his cleverness, in the smartness of his equipage and reputation, and in the flattering gossip that haunts a healer’s name. ”

“ The very brilliancy of the summer coloring almost hurt her tired eyes. A familiar sound drowned the Roxton chiming as she listened, and brought a sharp twinge of anxiety to her face. Rounding the pine woods the rakish outline of her husband’s car showed up over the banks of gorse between the cottage and the high-road. The machine came panting over the down, leaving a drifting trail of dust to sully the sunlight. Catherine caught her breath with impatient dread. This day of all days, when defeat was heavy on her husband! Could they not let him rest? If these selfish sick folk only knew! ”

“ Catherine’s hands flashed out to Gwen, hovering, as though fearing to touch the fragile thing she loved. She tried to soothe the child, a woman whose wounded tenderness overflowed in a flood of broken and disjointed words. Her husband watched her, his firm mouth loosened into a mute and poignant tremor of distress.
Tugler touched him on the shoulder.
“Let’s go down.”
Murchison straightened, and followed the doctor to the door. He looked back for a moment, and saw Catherine’s head, a dull gleam of gold above the child’s flushed face. ”

“ The rivalry of girlhood had deepened into the rivalry of womanhood. They were the “beauties” of Roxton; the one generous, ruddy, and open-hearted; the other sleek, white-faced, a studied artist in elegance and charm. Both were admired and championed by their retainers; Catherine popular with the many, Betty served by the few. Miss Elizabeth had beheld herself the less favored goddess, and as of old the apple of Paris had had the power to inflame.
Catherine’s final crime against her rival had been her marrying of James Murchison. ”

“ Catherine had kept Jack by her side, and the boy was kneeling on the seat and looking out of the window. She felt that her husband was in no mood for the child’s chattering. In leaving Wilton he was leaving a poignant part of reality behind, to enter upon a life that should try the strength of his manhood as a bowman tries a bow.
An old lady and a consumptive clerk were their only fellow-travellers. Murchison had chosen a corner whose window looked towards the west, and an intense and determined face it was that stared out over the ugliness of Wilton town. ”

“ The very words he chose were the words least calculated to move a woman. Betty, lying back in her chair, pictured to herself a cringing, deprecating figure that could boast none of the passionate forcefulness of manhood. A woman may be won by courage and strength, even in the person of the man who has done her wrong; but let her have the repulsion of contempt, and her instinct towards forgiveness will be frozen into an unbending pride. ”

“ Everywhere a broad, breezy sky, brilliant with color above a brilliant world.
The palings of the cottage-garden glimmered white between the sombre cypresses, and the dark swell of the fir-wood topped the red of the tiled roof. This nook in Arcady had the charm of a surprise for Murchison, for Catherine had made him promise that he would leave the stewardship to her. She had spent many an hour over at Marley Down, and her year’s allowance from her mother had gone in art fabrics, carpets, and old furniture. ”

“ 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. ”

“ CHAPTER XXXII It is said that a pretty woman is never out of patience when she has a glass to gaze at, and Betty Steel, casting critical yet complacent glances into the depths of a Venetian mirror, awaited the descent of her very particular friend, Madge Ellison, with the sweet content of a lily waiting for the moon. Mrs. Betty’s face was a Diana’s face, but her body was of the color of a blush-rose in her summer-rose dress. The figure had charm enough as it idled to and fro in the spacious, mellow-tinted room. Mirror and window showed her patronage; the one, symbolical of self alone ”