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

and the singing of the birds seemed to turn the yewtrees into towers of song.

 

The panting of Murchison’s car seemed to outrage the

atmosphere of the place, as though the fierce and aggressive present were intruding upon the dreamy past. A manservant met the doctor, and led him across the Jacobean

hall to the library, whose windows looked towards the west.

 

Parker Steel was standing before the fire, biting his

black mustache. He had the appearance of a man

whose vanity had been ruffled, and who was having an

unwelcome consultation forced upon him by the preposterous fussing of some elderly relative.

 

The two men shook hands, Steel’s white fingers limp

in his rival’s palm. His air of cultured hauteur had fallen

to freezing point. He condescended, and made it a matter of dignity.

 

“Sorry to drag you over here, Murchison. Mr. Pennington has been on the fidget with regard to his daughter,

and to appease him I elected to send for you at once.”

 

Murchison warmed his hands before the fire. Steel’s

grandiloquent manner always amused him.

 

“I am glad to be of any use to you. Who is the patient, Miss Julia Pennington?”

 

“Yes.”

 

“Anything serious?”

 

“Nothing; only hysteria; the woman’s a tangle of

nerves, a mass of emotions. I have grown to learn her

idiosyncrasies in a year. One month it is palpitation

and imaginary heart disease, next month she is swearing

that she has cancer of the oesophagus and cannot swallow.

The lady has headaches regularly every other week, and

merges on melancholia in the intervals.”

 

Murchison nodded.

 

“What is the present phase?” he asked.

 

“Acute migraine and facial neuralgia. She is worrying about her eyes, seems to see nothing and everything,

mere hysterical phantasmagoria. The woman is not to

be taken seriously. She is being drenched with bromide

and fed upon phenacetin. Come and see her.”

 

Parker Steel led the way from the library as though he

regarded the consultation as a mere troublesome formality, a pandering to domestic officiousness that had to be

appeased. Miss Julia Pennington was lying on a sofa

in the drawingroom with a younger sister holding her

hand. The room smelled horribly of vinegar, and the

blinds were down, for the patient persisted that she could

not bear the light.

 

The younger lady rose and bowed to Murchison, and

drew aside, with her eyes fixed upon her sister’s face.

Miss Julia was moaning and whimpering on the sofa, a

thin and neurotic spinster of forty with tightly drawn

hair, sharp features, and the peevish expression of a

creature who had long been the slave of a hundred imaginary ills.

 

Murchison sat down beside her, and asked whether she

could bear the light. His manner was in acute contrast

to Parker Steel’s; the one incisive, almost brusque in his

effort to impress; the other calm, quiet, deliberate, sympathetic in every word and gesture.

 

The younger Miss Pennington drew up the blinds.

Murchison was questioning her sister, watching her face

keenly, while Parker Steel fidgeted to and fro before the

fire.

 

“Much pain in the eyes, Miss Pennington?”

 

“Oh, Dr. Murchison, the pain is terrible, it runs all

over the face; you cannot conceive—”

 

She broke away into a chaos of complaints till Murchison quieted her and asked a few simple questions. He

rose, turned the sofa bodily towards the light, and proceeded to examine the lady’s eyes.

 

“Things look dim to you?” he asked her, quietly.

 

“All in a blur, flashes of light, and spots like blood.

I’m sure—”

 

“Yes, yes. You have never had anything quite like

this before?”

 

“Never, never. I am quite unnerved, Dr. Murchison, and Dr. Steel won’t believe half the things I tell

him.”

 

Her voice was peevish and irritable. Parker Steel

grinned at the remark, and muttered “mad cat” under

his breath.

 

“You are hardly kind to me, Miss Pennington,” he

said, aloud, with a touch of banter.

 

“I’m sure I’m ill, Dr. Steel, very ill—”

 

“Please lie quiet a moment,” and Murchison bent over

her, closed her lids, and felt the eyeballs with his fingers.

Miss Pennington indulged in little gasps of pain, yet feeling mesmerized by the quiet earnestness of the man.

 

Murchison stood up suddenly, looking grave about the

mouth.

 

“Do you mind ringing the bell, Steel? I want my bag

out of the car.”

 

Steel, who appeared vexed and restless despite his selfconceit, went out in person to fetch the bag. When he

returned, Murchison had drawn the blinds and curtains

so that the room was in complete darkness.

 

“Thanks; I want my lamp; here it is. I have matches.

Now, Miss Pennington, do you think you can sit up in a

chair for five minutes?”

 

The thin lady complained, protested, but obeyed him.

Murchison seated himself before her, while Parker Steel

held the lamp behind Miss Pennington. A beam of light

from the mirror of Murchison’s ophthalmoscope flashed

upon the woman’s face. She started hysterically, but

seemed to feel the calming influence of Murchison’s personality.

 

Complete silence held for some minutes, save for an

occasional word from Murchison. Parker Steel’s face

was in the shadow. The hand that held the lamp quivered a little as he watched his rival’s face. There was

something in the concentrated earnestness of Murchison’s

examination that made Mrs. Betty’s husband feel vaguely

uncomfortable.

 

Murchison rose at last with a deep sigh, stood looking

at Miss Pennington a moment, and then handed the

ophthalmoscope to Steel. The lamp changed hands and

the men places. Miss Pennington’s supply of nerve power,

however, was giving out. She blinked her eyes, put her

hands to her face, and protested that she could bear the

light from the mirror no longer.

 

Parker Steel lost patience.

 

“Come, Miss Pennington, come; I must insist—”

 

“I can’t, I can’t, the glare burns my eyes out.”

 

“Nonsense, my dear lady, control yourself—”

 

His irritability reduced Miss Pennington to peevish

tears. She called for her sister, and began to babble

hysterically, an impossible subject.

 

Parker Steel pushed back his chair in a dudgeon.

 

“I can’t see anything,” he said; “utterly hopeless.”

 

Murchison drew back the curtains and let dim daylight into the room. He helped Miss Pennington back

to the sofa, very gentle with her, like a man bearing with

the petulance of a sick child, and then turned to Steel with

a slight frown.

 

“Shall we talk in the library?”

 

“Yes.”

 

“I will just put my lamp away.”

 

They crossed the hall together in silence, and entered

the room with its irreproachable array of books, and the

logs burning on the irons. Murchison went and stood

by one of the windows. A red sunset was coloring the

west, and the dark trees in the garden seemed fringed

with flame.

 

Parker Steel had closed the door. He looked irritable

and restless, a man jealous of his self-esteem.

 

“Well? Anything wrong?”

 

The big man turned with his hands in his trousers pockets. Steel did not like the serious expression of his face.

 

“Have you examined Miss Pennington’s eyes?”

 

Parker Steel shifted from foot to foot.

 

“Well, no,” he confessed, with an attempt at hauteur,

“I know the woman’s eccentricities. She may be slightly

myopic—”

 

Murchison drew a deep breath.

 

“She may be stark blind in a week,” he said, curtly.

 

“What!”

 

“Acute glaucoma.”

 

“Acute glaucoma! Impossible!”

 

“I say it is.”

 

Parker Steel took two sharp turns up and down the

room. His mouth was twitching and he looked pale,

like a man who has received a shock. He was conscious,

too, that Murchison’s eyes were upon him, and that his

rival had caught him blundering like any careless boy.

There was something final and convincing in Murchison’s

manner. Parker Steel hated him from that moment with

the hate of a vain and ambitious egotist.

 

“Confound it, Murchison, are you sure of this?”

 

“Quite sure, as far as my skill serves me.”

 

“Have you had much experience?”

 

There was a slight sneer in the question, but Murchison

was proof against the challenge.

 

“I specialized in London on the eyes.”

 

Parker Steel emitted a monosyllable that sounded remarkably like “damn.”

 

“Well, what’s to be done?”

 

“We must consider the advisability of an immediate

iridectomy.”

 

They heard footsteps in the hall. The library door

opened. A spectacled face appeared, to be followed by

a long, loose-limbed body clothed in black.

 

“Good-day, Dr. Murchison. I have come to inquire—”

 

Parker Steel planted himself before the fire, a miniature Ajax ready to defy the domestic lightning. He cast

a desperate and half-appealing look at Murchison.

 

“We have just seen your daughter, Mr. Pennington.”

 

A pair of keen gray eyes were scrutinizing the faces of

the two doctors. Mr. Pennington was considered something of a terror in the neighborhood, a brusque, snappish old gentleman with a ragged beard, and ill-tempered

wisps of hair straggling over his forehead.

 

“Well, gentlemen, your opinion?”

 

Murchison squared his shoulders, and seemed to be

weighing every word he uttered. He was too generous

a man to seize the chance of distinguishing himself at the

expense of a rival.

 

“I think, Mr. Pennington, that Dr. Steel and I agree

in the matter. We take, sir, rather a serious view of the

case. Is not that so, Steel?”

 

The supercilious person bent stiffly at the hips.

 

“Certainly.”

 

“Perhaps, Steel, you will explain the urgency of the case.”

 

Mr. Pennington jerked into a chair, took off his spectacles and dabbed them with his handkerchief.

 

“I am sorry to have to tell you, sir, that your daughter’s

eyesight is in danger.”

 

The gentleman in the chair started.

 

“What! Eyesight in danger! Bless my bones, why—”

 

“Dr. Murchison agrees with me, I believe.”

 

“Absolutely.”

 

“Good God, gentlemen!”

 

“A peculiarly dangerous condition, sir, developing

rapidly and treacherously, as this rare disease sometimes

does.”

 

Perspiration was standing out on Parker Steel’s forehead. He flashed a grateful yet savage glance at Murchison, and braced back his shoulders with a sigh of

bitter relief.

 

“I think a London opinion would be advisable, Murchison, eh?”

 

“I think so, most certainly, in view of the operation

that may have to be performed immediately.”

 

“Thank you, gentlemen, thank you. I presume this

means my writing out a check for a hundred guineas.”

 

“Your daughter’s condition, sir—”

 

“Of course, of course. Don’t mention the expense.

And you will manage—”

 

Parker Steel resumed his dictatorship.

 

“I will wire at once,” he said; “we must lose no time.”

 

He accompanied Murchison from the house, jerky and

distraught in manner, a man laboring under a most unwelcome obligation. The rivals shook hands. There

was much of the anger of the sunset in Parker Steel’s

heart as he watched Murchison’s car go throbbing down

the drive amid the slanting shadows of the silent trees.