A Woman's War, Warwick Deeping [have you read this book .TXT] 📗

A satisfactory breakfast followed

by the contemplation of a satisfactory banking account

begets peace in the heart of man.

 

It was about ten o’clock, and a few enthusiasts were

already quarrelling over croquet, when the hotel “buttons” came out with a telegram on a tray.

 

“No. 25, Dr. Steel?”

 

“Here.”

 

“Any reply, sir?”

 

The boy waited with the tray held over that portion of

his figure where his morning meal reposed, while Parker

Steel tore open the envelope and read the message.

 

“No answer.”

 

“Right, sir.”

 

“Wait; tell them at the office to get my bill made up.

I have to leave after lunch.”

 

“Yes, sir.”

 

“And bring me a time-table, and a whiskey and soda.”

 

Parker Steel glanced at his watch, thrust the investment list into the breastpocket of his coat, and lay back

again in his chair with the telegram across his knee.

Faces vary much in their expression when the mind behind the face labors with some thought that fills the whole

consciousness for the moment. The smooth indolence

had melted from the physician’s features. His face had

sharpened as faces sharpen in bitter weather, for a man

who is a coward betrays his cowardice even when he

thinks.

 

A much-grieved croquet-player in a blue-and-white

check dress was confiding her criticisms to a very sympathetic gentleman in one corner of the lawn.

 

“It is such a pity that Mrs. Sallow cheats so abominably. I hate playing with mean people. Every other

stroke is a spoon, and she is always walking over her ball,

and shifting it with her skirt when it is wired.”

 

“People give their characters away in games.”

 

“It is so contemptible. I can’t understand any selfrespecting person cheating.”

 

The continuous click of the balls appeared to irritate

Parker Steel, as he sat huddled up in his chair with the

telegram on his knee. He found himself listening without curiosity to the young lady in the blue-and-white

whose complaints suggested that the immoral Mrs. Sallow was the cleverer player of the two. Dishonesty is

only dishonest, to many people, when it comes within

the cognizance of the law, and how thoroughly symbolical those four balls were of the opportunities mortals

manipulate in life, Parker Steel might have realized had

not his mind been clogged with other things.

 

The boy returned with a time-table and the whiskey

and soda on a tray.

 

“A fast train leaves at 2.30, sir.”

 

“Thanks; get me a table. You can keep the change.”

 

“Much obliged, sir,” and he touched a carefully watered

forelock; “will you drive, sir, or walk?”

 

“Order me a cab.”

 

“Right, sir.”

 

And the boy noticed, as he turned away, that the hand

shook that reached for the glass, and that some of the

stuff was spilled before it came to the man’s lips.

 

No one met Parker Steel at Roxton station that June

evening. A porter piled his luggage on a cab, for the

physician’s own carriage was not forthcoming. A sense

of isolation and neglect took hold upon him as he drove

through the sleepy streets of the old town. Loneliness is

never comforting to a man who is cursed with an irrepressible conscience, and his own restless imaginings rose

like a cold fog into the June air. Parker Steel shivered

as he had often shivered when driving through moonlit

mists to answer a midnight message. The very elms about

St. Antonia’s spire had a shadowy strangeness for him, a

gloom that gave nothing of the glow of a return home.

 

Parker Steel stood in his own diningroom, waiting and

listening, as though he were in a stranger’s house. Symons,

the starched servant, had opened the door to him without a smile; his luggage had been carried up-stairs. He

had heard voices, faint, distant voices, that had tantalized

him with words that he could not understand. He had

been ready to ask the woman Symons a dozen questions,

but had faltered from a self-conscious fear of betraying

his own thoughts. The house seemed full of some indefinable dread as the dusk deepened towards night.

 

A door opened above. He heard footsteps descending

the stairs, so slowly in the silence of the darkening house,

that the sound reminded the man of the slow drip of

water into a well. Parker Steel found himself counting

them as they descended towards the hall. If it was

Betty, how was he to construe the message of the morning? The suffering of suspense drove him to action. He

turned sharply, crossed the room, and, opening the door,

looked out into the hall.

 

“Hallo, dear, is it you?”

 

She was in white, and her foot was on the last step of

the stairs.

 

“I am glad that you have come, Parker.”

 

“I had your wire early. I imagined—”

 

“That I was ill?”

 

“Yes, that you were ill.”

 

She halted with one hand on the carved foot-post of

the balustrading. The dusk of the hall showed nothing

but a white figure and a gray oval to mark her face.

Some mysterious psychic force seemed to hold husband

and wife apart. Their two personalities had become incompatible through some subtle ferment of distrust.

 

“Parker!”

 

He made a step forward.

 

“No, I want you to go into that room and light the

gas.”

 

The insistent note in her voice repulsed him. His

walk approached a self-conscious shuffle as he turned

and re-entered the darkening room. Betty heard him

groping for the matches. A sudden glare of light followed

the sharp purr of a flaring match. She drew a deep and

sighing breath, pressed her hands to her breast, and entered the room.

 

Parker Steel was drawing the blinds. His wife closed

the door, and waited for him to turn.

 

“When I had your wire, dear—”

 

“Yes.”

 

“I wondered what I should find here. The wording Good Heavens, Betty—”

 

She stood back from him and leaned against the sideboard, the glare from the gas falling full upon her face.

It was red, repulsive, tinged with an ooze that had hardened

here and there into yellow scabs.

 

“You see, Parker, why I sent for you.”

 

He looked for the moment like a man shocked into

immobility by a sudden storm of wind and sleet beating

on his face.

 

“When did this appear?”

 

He moved towards her, the shallow gleam of sympathy

in his eyes darkened by something more terrible than

mere fear. Betty stood her ground. It was the man

who betrayed the incoherency of panic.

 

“Come, tell me.”

 

His eyes were fixed upon her face, upon her mouth.

 

“It is I, Parker, who want to know

 

“Yes, yes, of course, dear, I can understand. You

should have sent for me sooner.”

 

Intuition is a gift of the gods to women, a power almost unholy in its brilliant reading of the hearts of others.

Betty’s eyes were searching her husband’s face as though

it were some delicately finished miniature in which every

piece of shading had significance. Her breath came and

went more deeply than when life had a normal flow. For

all else she was cold, very quiet, the mistress even of her

own repulsive face.

 

“I want you to tell me, Parker—”

 

She saw the muscles about his mouth quiver.

 

“Have you seen any one?”

 

“Yes.”

 

“Who?”

 

“Dr. Little, and Dr. Brimley.”

 

“Well? What?”

 

“They would tell me nothing.”

 

“Nothing?”

 

She saw him breathe out deeply like a man who has seen

a child escape the wheels of a heavy cart.

 

“They gave me mere phrases, Parker. A woman can

tell when men are hiding the truth.”

 

“What had they to hide, dear? Come closer here

to the light.”

 

She did not stir.

 

“I must know, Parker.”

 

“Yes, of course.”

 

“The whole truth. Listen I happened to go yesterday morning into your consulting-room. Dr. Little

had been reading; he had left the book open at a certain

page. You know, Parker, that many men only read the

big text-books when they are puzzled by a particular

case.”

 

Steel’s face seemed nothing but a gray and frightened

mask to her.

 

“Betty, you are imagining things—”

 

“Well, tell me the truth.”

 

“A form of eczema.”

 

“Parker!”

 

Her voice had the ring of iron in it.

 

“That was not the word I read.”

 

“Good God, Betty!”

 

“It was this.”

 

She spoke the word without flinching, with a distinctness that had that cold and terrible conciseness that

science loves. Her eyes did not leave her husband’s face.

Even as he answered her, hotly, haltingly, she knew him

to be a liar.

 

“Impossible! You are seizing on a mad coincidence,

a mere ridiculous conclusion. I can swear

 

“Yes, swear—”

 

“That it is nothing, nothing of what you have said.”

 

His eyes had the furtive fierceness of eyes searching

her soul for unbelief.

 

“Come, Betty, wife”

 

She remained unmoved.

 

“What? You think that I”

 

“No, don’t touch me. I don’t believe that you have

told me the truth.”

 

“Not believe that I!”

 

“No, God help me, I cannot!”

 

Her body had hardly changed the pose that it had

taken from the first moment. It was as though it had

stiffened with the slow, pitiless hardening of her heart.

Parker Steel looked at her like the moral coward that he

was, too crushed by his own keen consciousness of shame

to pretend to the courage that he could not boast.

 

“Betty, am I?”

 

She flung aside from him with an indescribable gesture

of passionate repulsion.

 

“Don’t. I can’t look at you, or be looked at. Madge

is waiting for me. They will bring you your dinner.

Goodnight.”

 

She moved towards the door.

 

“Betty”

 

He would have hindered her, but the manhood in him

had neither the power nor the pride. She swept out and

left him. He heard the sound of sobbing as she climbed

the stairs.

 

“Good God!”

 

Parker Steel stood listening, staring at the door, a man

who could neither think nor act.