A Woman's War, Warwick Deeping [have you read this book .TXT] 📗
- Author: Warwick Deeping
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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 supperroom, 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 pate 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 breakfasttable 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 breakfasttable 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.”
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 drawingroom. 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 selfrespect.”
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
drawingroom, 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.
“Goodmorning, Mrs. Murchison.”
“Goodmorning.”
“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
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