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Read books online » Fiction » A Woman's War by Warwick Deeping (ap literature book list .txt) 📖

Book online «A Woman's War by Warwick Deeping (ap literature book list .txt) 📖». Author Warwick Deeping



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of a light over the night sea.

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.”

CHAPTER XVII

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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