A Woman's War, Warwick Deeping [have you read this book .TXT] 📗
- Author: Warwick Deeping
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humbled rival. Jealousy and a sneaking suspicion of
inferiority had embittered the feud for her of old; and
Kate Murchison, saddened and aged, half a suppliant
for the loyalty of a few good friends, could still inspire in
Betty a spirit of aggressive and impatient hate. She remembered that she had seen Catherine triumphant where
she herself had received indifference and disregard. The
instinct to crush this antipathetic rival was as fierce and
keen in her as ever.
“Call on her,” had been Madge Ellison’s suggestion.
“Call on her!”
“It would be more diplomatic.”
“Do you imagine, Madge, that I am going to make
advances to that woman? She used to snub me once;
my turn has come. I give the Murchisons just six months
in Roxton.”
How little mercy Betty Steel had in that intolerant and
subtle heart of hers was betrayed by the strategic move
that opened the renewal of hostilities. She had driven
Kate Murchison out of Roxton once, and the arrogance
of conquest was as fierce in this slim, refined-faced woman
as in any Alexander. She moved in a small and limited
sphere, but the aggressive spirit was none the less inevitable in its lust to overthrow. The motives were the
meaner for their comparative minuteness.
Lady Sophia’s Bazaar Committee met in Roxton public hall one day towards the end of May, to consider the
arrangement of stalls, and to settle a number of decorative details. Betty had spent half the morning at her
escritoire sorting letters, meditating chin on hand, scribbling on the backs of old envelopes, which she afterwards
took care to burn.
She seemed in her happiest vein that afternoon, as she
left Madge Ellison to provide tea for Dr. Little, and
drove to the public hall with her despatch-box full of the
Bazaar Fund’s correspondence. No one would have
imagined it possible for such refinement and charm to
cover instincts that were not unallied to the instincts found
in” an Indian jungle. Mrs. Betty went through her business with briskness and precision; the committee left their
chairs to discuss the grouping of the stalls about the
room. There were to be twelve of these booths, each to
represent a familiar flower; Lady Sophia had elected herself a rose. Mrs. Betty’s choice had been Oriental
poppies.
Lady Sophia was parading the hall with a pair of pincenez perched on the bridge of her nose, and a memorandumbook open in her hand. A group of deferential ladies followed her like hens about the farmer’s wife at feedingtime. The most trivial suggestion that fell from those
aristocratic lips was seized upon and swallowed with
relish.
“Betty, dear, have you heard from Jennings about the
draperies?”
The glory of it, to be “my deared” in public by Lady
Sophia Gillingham!
“Yes, I have a letter somewhere, and a list of prices.”
“You might pin up the letter and the price-list on the
black-board by the door, so that the stall-holders can take
advantage of any item that may be of use to them.”
Betty moved to the table and rummaged amid her
multifarious correspondence. She was chatting all the
while to a Miss Cozens, a thin, wiry little woman, alert
as a Scotch-terrier in following up the scent of favor.
“What a lot of work the bazaar has given you, Mrs.
Steel!”
“Yes, quite enough,” and she divided her attention
between Miss Cozens and the pile of papers.
“When is the next rehearsal?”
“Tuesday, I believe.”
“I hear you are the genius of the play.”
“Am I?” and Betty smiled like an ingenuous girl. “I
am most horribly nervous. I always feel that I am spoiling the part. Oh, here’s Jennings’s letter, and the list, I
think.”
She left the two papers lying unheeded for the moment,
while she answered Miss Cozens’s interested questions on
costume.
“Primrose and leaf green, that will be lovely.”
“Yes, so everybody says.”
Lady Sophia’s voice interrupted the gossip. She was
beckoning to Betty with her memorandumbook.
“Betty, can you spare me a moment?”
Miss Cozens’s sharp eyes gave an envious twinkle.
“Shall I pin up the papers for you, Mrs. Steel?”
“Would you?”
“With pleasure.”
And Betty swept two sheets of paper towards Miss
Cozens without troubling to glance at them, and turned
to wait on Lady Sophia.
Several ladies congregated about the black-board as
Miss Cozens pinned up the letter and the price-list with
such conscientious promptitude that she had not troubled
to read their contents. Had she had eyes for the faces
of her neighbors she might have been struck by the
puzzled eagerness of their expression. One elderly committee woman readjusted her glasses, and then touched
Miss Cozens with a pencil that she carried.
“Excuse me.”
“Yes.”
“There is some mistake I think.”
“Mistake?”
“Yes, that letter ” and the spectacled lady pointed to
the black-board with her pencil.
Miss Cozens took the trouble to investigate the charge.
The letter was written on one broad sheet in a neat, bold
hand. Miss Cozens’s prim little mouth pursed itself up
expressively as she read; her brows contracted, her
eyes stared.
“Good Heavens! what’s this? I must have taken the
wrong letter.”
She tore the sheet down, pushed past her neighbors,
and crossed the room towards Betty Steel. The group
about the black-board appeared to be discussing the incident. Mr. Jennings ‘s list of silks and drapings seemed
forgotten.
“Mrs. Steel, excuse me—”
“Yes?”
“This letter; there’s some mistake. It’s the wrong one.
I pinned it up, and Mrs. Saker called my attention to the
error.”
“Let me see.”
Miss Cozens gave her the sheet, intense curiosity quivering in every line of her doglike face.
“Good Heavens! how did this get mixed up with my
business correspondence?”
She looked perturbation to perfection.
“Miss Cozens, what am I to do? Has any one read
it?”
The little woman nodded.
“How horrible! I must explain It must not go any
further.”
Betty hurried across the hall towards the door, hesitated, and looked round her as though baffled by indecision. She knew well enough that inquisitive eyes
were watching her. Her skill as an actress and she was
consummately clever as a hypocrite served to heighten
the meaning that she wished to convey.
“Lady Sophia.”
Betty had doubled adroitly in the direction of the
amiable aristocrat.
“Yes, dear”
“Can I speak to you alone?”
“What is it?”
“Oh, I have done such an awful thing. Do help me.
You have so much nerve and tact/’
“My dear child, steady yourself.”
“I looked out Jennings ‘s papers; Miss Cozens was chattering to me, and when you called me, she offered to pin
the things on the board. How on earth it happened, I
cannot imagine, but a private letter of mine had got
mixed up with the bazaar correspondence. It must have
been lying by Jennings ‘s list, for Miss Cozens, without
troubling to read it, pinned it on the board.”
The perturbed, sensitive creature was breathless and
all a-flutter. Lady Sophia patted her arm.
“Well, dear, I see no great harm yet
“Wait! It was a letter from an old friend abroad, a
letter that contained certain confessions about a Roxton
family. What on earth am I to do? Look, here it is,
read it.”
Lady Sophia read the letter, holding it at arm’s-length
like the music of a song.
“Good Heavens, Betty, I never knew the man drank,
that it had been a habit
“Don’t, Lady Sophia, don’t!”
“You should have been more careful.”
“I know I know. I shall never forgive myself. For
goodness’ sake, help me. You have so much more tact
than I.”
Her ladyship accepted the responsibility with stately
unction.
“Leave it to me, dear. I can go round and have a quiet
talk with all those who happened to read the letter. How
unfortunate that the opening sentences should have contained this information. Still, it need never get abroad.”
“How good of you!”
“There, dear, you are rather upset, most naturally
so —”
“I think I had better retreat.”
“Yes, leave it to me.”
“Thank you, oh, so much. Tell them not to whisper
a word of it.”
“There will be no difficulty, dear, about that.”
Betty, white and troubled, added a sharper flavor to
the stew by withdrawing dramatically from the stage.
And any one wise as to the contradictoriness of human
nature could have prophesied how the news would spread
had he seen the Lady Sophia voyaging on her diplomatic
mission round the hall.
“Poor Mrs. Steel! Such an unfortunate coincidence!
Not a woman easily upset, but, believe me, my dear Mrs.
So-and-So, it was as much a shock to her as though she
had heard bad news of her husband. Now, I am quite
sure this unpleasant affair will go no further. Of course
not. I rely absolutely on your discretion.”
And since the discretion of a provincial town is complex to a degree of an ever-repeated confession, coupled
with a solemn warning against repetition, it was not improbable that this froth would haunt the pot for many a
long day.
JUNE is the month for the old world garden that holds
mystery and fragrance within its red -brick walls.
In Lombard Street you would suspect no wealth of flowers,
and yet in the passing through of one of those solid, mellow, Georgian houses you might meet dreams from the
bourn of a charmed sleep.
Aloofness is the note of such a garden. It is no piece
of pompous mosaic-work spread before the front windows of a stock-broker’s villa, a conventional color scheme
to impress the public. The true garden has no studied
ostentation. It is a charm apart, a quiet corner of life
smelling of lavender, built for old books, and memories
that have the mystery of hills touched by the dawn. You
will find the monk’s-hood growing in tall campaniles ringing a note of blue; columbines, fountains of gold and red;
great tumbling rose-trees like the foam of the sea; stocks
all a-bloom; pansies like antique enamel-work; clove-pinks
breathing up incense to meet the wind-blown fragrance
of elder-trees in flower. You may hear birds singing as
though in the wild deeps of a haunted wood whose trees
part the sunset into panels of living fire.
Mary of the plain face and the loyal heart had opened
the green front door to a big man, whose broad shoulders
seemed fit to bear the troubles of the whole town. He
had asked for Catherine and her husband.
“They are in the garden, sir.”
“Alone?”
“Yes, only Master Jack.”
Canon Stensly bowed his iron-gray head under the
Oriental curtain that screened the passage leading from
the hall to the garden.
“Thanks; I know the way.”
The Rector of St. Antonia’s came out into the sunlight,
and stood looking about him for an instant with the air
of a man whose eyes were always open to what was admirable in life. A thrush had perched itself on the pinnacle of a yew, and was singing his vesper-song with the
broad west for an altar of splendid gold. The chiming
of the hour rang from St. Antonia’s steeple half hid by
the green mist of its elms. A few trails of smoke rising
from red-brick chimney-stacks alone betrayed the presence of a town.
To an old college-man such an evening brought back
memories of sunny
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