A Woman's War, Warwick Deeping [have you read this book .TXT] 📗
- Author: Warwick Deeping
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and fresh as snow.
A head disappeared from the hall window as the cab
drove up; the front door opened; they were welcomed by
a homely and familiar face.
“Mary!”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“This is like home.”
“I’m glad, ma’am, I’m glad—”
Catherine kissed her. They were both good women,
and heart met heart in that home-coming, so full of
memories of mingled joy and pain.
“It is good to see you here, Mary,” and Murchison
held out a hand.
“Oh, sir, it was good to come.”
“You will only have one to worry you now.”
“It wasn’t a worry, sir.”
And she retreated because her weakness was a woman’s
weakness and showed itself in tears.
A man was helping the cabman with the luggage. He
came in carrying one end of a heavy trunk, cap in hand,
gaiters on legs, a smart figure that seemed a little faded
and out of fortune, to judge by the threadbare cleanliness of its clothes.
“What, you here, Gage?”
The man colored up like a boy.
“Glad to see you, sir, and you, ma’am. The old house
begins to look itself again.”
“You are right, Gage. Old faces make a welcome
surer. We shall want you if you are free.”
“Only too happy, sir. Family man now, sir.”
“What, married!”
“A year last Easter, sir,” and he disappeared up the
stairs, carrying the lower end of the trunk.
An hour had passed. Husband and wife had wandered
over the whole house together, and found many an old
familiar friend that had been saved from the wreck of
that disastrous year. The sympathetic touch showed
everywhere, a reverent and sensitive spirit had schemed
and plotted to retain the past. The coloring of each room
was the same as of old; much of the furniture had been
rebought; the very pictures were as so many memories.
It was home, and yet not the home they had known of
yore.
“Does it feel strange to you?”
“Strange?”
“Yes, it is all so real, and yet there is something we
shall always miss.”
They were standing together at the study window, looking out into the garden that was lit with flowers. Polyanthuses were as so many gems scattered on the brown
earth of the beds. An almond-tree was still in bloom, a
blush of pink against the sky. Tulips, red, white, and
yellow, lifted their cups to the falling dew.
“It can never be the same, dear.”
“No.”
“Gwen?”
“Yes, our little one. And yet in death—”
“In death?”
“My child has given me victory over myself. As I
trust God, dear, I believe that curse is dead.”
“Yes, it is dead.”
“The house is cleansed; we have come home together.
I am ready now to face my fellow-men.”
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; the other of that same self’s outlook
upon life at large. Betty was in one of her most radiant
moods. A letter had come for her from her husband by
the morning post; his eyes were much better, and there
was no cloud upon the horizon.
Parker Steel’s wife heard the frou-frou of a silk petticoat sweeping down the stairs, the sudden opening of the
study door, a man’s footstep crossing the hall.
“What, out to tea again in your best frock?”
The rustling of silk ceased for a moment at the foot of
the stairs. Betty Steel smiled like a wise and intelligent
elder sister. Madge Ellison, and their most stylish locumtenens, Dr. Little, had reached that degree of familiarity
that permits two people to spar amiably with each other.
“A grievance, as usual! I suppose you grudge us the
carriage?”
“Nothing half so selfish, I assure you.”
“Why not come and pay calls with us?”
“The old proverb, Miss Ellison.”
“A little goes a long way, is that it?”
“Am I so little?”
“What’s in a name!” and she passed on with a significant side glance and an arch lifting of the chin.
Dr. Little, a black-chinned, tailor-waisted, superfine
person, with a distinct “air,” proceeded on a hypothetical
expedition up the stairs. He had remembered leaving
his latchkey in his bedroom, a useful excuse for meeting
a pretty woman on the way, as though the coincidence
were supremely natural.
“Au revoir.”
Miss Ellison favored him with an undeniable wink as
she picked up a pink parasol from the hall table. She
was one of those women who remind one forcibly of the
stage-beauty as seen on very young men’s mantel-pieces.
Madge Ellison would show as much of an open-work
stocking as was compatible with social refinement. A
retroussS nose and a round and rather cheeky chin associated themselves naturally with her methods of fascination.
“Madge!”
“Yes, dear.”
“Here, quick, I want you!”
“Bless my soul, why this tragic note?”
“Look, the window; do you recognize any one by the
church-railings?”
There was a hard abruptness in Betty Steel’s voice.
She was leaning forward with her hand on the windowsill, her face curiously changed in its expression from the
purring contentment of two minutes ago.
“I see a solitary female, dear.”
“Don’t you recognize her?”
Miss Ellison gave a quaint and expressive little whistle.
“No, surely, it can’t be!”
“Kate Murchison.”
“By George, dear, it is!”
The two friends watched the figure in black disappear
under the old gate-house that stood at the northwest corner of the square. For Madge Ellison there was nothing
more inspiriting than curiosity in the event. To Betty
Steel that passing glimpse had opened up all the hatred
of the past.
“What’s in your mind, Madge?”
Miss Ellison was buttoning her gloves.
“I’ll bet a tea-cake to a penny bun, dear, that it is the
Murchisons who have taken their house in Lombard
Street again.”
“Nonsense!”
Betty Steel’s eyes grew hard and dangerous at the suggestion.
“Why nonsense?”
“The Murchisons would hardly have the impudence
to sneak back to Roxton. People don’t care to be bungled
into the next world by a drunkard.”
“My word, Betty, draw it mild. I never heard that
the man drank.”
“You were in Italy, then, I believe.”
“Nasty, nasty! You are peevish over the poor people’s
failings!”
“I hate that woman, Madge.”
Miss Ellison laughed at the sincerity of her friend’s
spite.
“Why, what earthly harm can that woman do you by
choosing to live in Roxton?”
“I tell you, Madge, there are some people in this world
who set one’s teeth on edge. After all, what need for all
this waste of antipathy. Kate Murchison must be staying with the Carmagees. I’ll risk that as my explanation.”
Spirited away on a round of social duties, Betty Steel
and her friend paid their third call that afternoon at the
Canonry in Canon’s Court, off Cloister Street. A row of
carriages under the avenue of limes, and a liveried servant standing on duty under the Georgian portico, reminded Betty Steel that the third Friday in the month
was the date printed on Mrs. Stensly’s cards. Betty
and her gossip were announced in the crowded drawingroom, where a number of bored figures were balancing
teacups and talking with forced animation. A few men,
severely saddened by their responsibilities, were treading
on each other’s heels, and looking anxiously for ladies
who would take pity on sandwiches or cake. The French
windows of the room were open to the May sunshine
of the garden, and the fringes of a cedar could be seen
sweeping the sleek grass.
Individual faces disassociate themselves slowly from
such an assemblage, and Betty Steel, blockaded under the
lee of a grand-piano, had but half the room under the ken
of her keen eyes. Madge Ellison had been left to chat
with Mr. Keightly, a very popular and enthusiastic curate
who had rendered his character doubly fascinating by
professing to hold prejudices in favor of celibacy. Betty
had a brewer’s wife at her elbow. They had exchanged
ecstatic confidences on the exquisite shape and color of
Mrs. Stensly’s tea - service, and were both groping for
some further topic to keep the conversation moving.
“And how is the play going, Mrs. Steel?”
“The play?”
Mrs. Betty seemed unusually pensive and distraught.
“Lady Sophia’s play.”
“As well as a piece can go with amateurs. We all
find fault with our neighbors.”
“I hear it is a splendid little play.”
“Not at all bad.”
“I must say I like the pathetic style of play.”
“Oh yes, quite charming.”
“I saw Julia Neilson play in that play, oh what was
the play called?—”
“‘A Woman of no Ideal,’ most likely,” thought Mrs.
Betty. “I wonder how many more times she is going to
tread on that one unfortunate word.”
She waited demurely for the title to recur, but it appeared lost in the limbo of the fat lady’s mind. The
brewer’s wife continued to grope for it like a conscientious
housewife who has lost the Sabbath threepenny bit in her
glove-box while dressing for church.
Betty Steel, however, had become utterly oblivious of
her presence for the moment. She was gazing towards
one of the open windows where a woman’s figure, tall and
comely in simple black, showed against the rich green of
the grass. The woman’s back was turned towards the
room, but Betty knew her by her figure and the lustre of
her hair.
“Very odd, Mrs. Steel, I can’t remember the name of
that play.”
“Really, I beg your pardon, I was thinking of other
things.”
A slight rearranging of this aggregate of Roxton culture
released Betty Steel from this amiable mass of irresponsible bathos. She contrived to wedge herself beside
Madge Ellison, whose retrousse nose had failed to tempt
the celibate to expand.
“You see?”
A smart hat was tilted significantly towards the window.
“I do.”
“Any news?”
“You have lost, dear. The tea-cake is on top. The
sensation of Roxton. They are here to stay.”
Mrs. Betty’s face expressed infinite pity.
“How eccentric!”
“Kate Murchison has had money left her.”
“And the husband?”
“I hear his plate is up in Lombard Street.”
Whether it was a mere matter of coincidence or the
working of a definite purpose, the fact was curiously selfevident to Betty Steel that the drawing - room of the
Canonry had divided itself into two camps. Windowward sat Miss Carmagee, dressed in black, her large
face shining like a buckler against the embattled foe.
Porteus the irascible Porteus who blasphemed all teaparties was chattering like a little brown baboon. Several of Kate Murchison ‘s old friends appeared to have
congregated together on the opposition benches. Mrs.
Betty remarked all this, and her mouth grew a mere line
in her pale and alert face.
The breweress had risen to depart. A number of
nervous people who had
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