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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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>“It comes from the heart, sir.”

 

Porteous Carmagee, solicitor and commissioner for

oaths, had his bald head tilted towards Mr. Thomas

Flemming’s ear. Mr. Flemming was one of the cultured

idlers of the town, a gentleman who was an authority on

ornithology, who presided often at the county bench, and

could dash off a cartoon that was not quite clever enough

for Punch.

 

“What did you say, Carmagee? The beggars are

making such a din—”

 

“From the heart, sir, from the heart.”

 

“Indigestion, eh?”

 

Mr. Carmagee was seized with an irritable twitching of

his creased, brown face.

 

“Oh, an encore, that’s good. I said, Tom, that Kate

Murchison’s voice came from her heart.”

 

“Very likely, very likely.”

 

“I could sit all night and hear her sing.”

 

“I doubt it,” quoth the man of culture, with a twinkle.

 

The opening notes rippled on the piano, and Mr. Carmagee lay back in his chair to listen. He was a little

monkey of a man, fiery-eyed, wrinkled, with a grieved

and husky voice that seemed eternally in a hurry. He

knew everybody and everybody’s business, and the secrets

his bald pate covered would have trebled the circulation

of the Roxton Herald in a week. Porteous Carmagee was

godfather to Catherine Murchison’s two children. She

was one of the few women, and he had stated it almost

as a grievance, who could make him admit the possible

advantages of matrimony.

 

“Bravo, bravo” and Mr. Carmagee slapped Tom

Flemming’s knee. ‘When the swans fly towards the

south, and the hills are all aglow.’ I believe in woman

bringing luck, my friend.”

 

“Oh, possibly.”

 

“Murchison took the right turning. Supposing he had

married—”

 

Mr. Flemming trod on the attorney’s toe.

 

“Look out, she’s there; people have ears, you know;

they’re not chairs.”

 

Mr. Carmagee nursed a grievance on the instant.

 

“Mention a name,” he snapped.

 

And Thomas Flemming pointed towards Mrs. Betty

with his programme.

 

Parker Steel’s wife drove home alone in her husband’s

brougham, ignoring the many moonlight effects that the

old town offered her with its multitudinous gables and

timbered fronts. She was not in the happiest of tempers, feeling much like a sensuous cat that has been tumbled unceremoniously from some crusty stranger’s lap.

Betty had attempted blandishments with the distinguished

Mrs. Fraser, and had been favored with a shoulder and

half an aristocratic cheek. Moreover, she had watched

the great lady melt under Catherine Murchison’s smiles,

and such incidents are not rose leaves to a woman.

 

Mrs. Betty lay back in a corner of the brougham, and

indulged herself in mental tearings of Catherine Murchison’s hair. What insolent naturalness this rival of

hers possessed! Mrs. Betty was fastidious and critical

enough, and her very acuteness compelled her to confess

that her enmity seemed but a blunted weapon. Catherine Murchison was so cantankerously popular. She

looked well, dressed well, did things well, loved well.

The woman was an irritating prodigy. It was her very

sincerity, the wholesomeness of her charm, that made

her seem invulnerable, a woman who never worried her

head about social competition.

 

Parker Steel sat reading before the fire when his wife

returned. He uncurled himself languidly and with deliberation, pulled down his dress waistcoat, and put his

book aside carefully on the table beside his chair.

 

“Enjoyed yourself?”

 

“Not vastly. I wonder why vulgar people always eat

oranges in public?”

 

”Better than sucking lemons.”

 

Mrs. Betty tossed her opera-cloak aside and slipped into

a chair. Her husband’s complacency irritated her a little.

He was not a sympathetic soul, save in the presence of

prominent patients.

 

“You look bored, dear. Who performed?”

 

“The usual amateurs. I am tired to death; are you

coming to bed?”

 

Parker Steel looked at the clock, and sighed.

 

“I shall not be wanted till about five,” he said. “Confound these guinea babies. I hope to build a tariff wall

round myself when we are more independent.”

 

“Yes, of course.”

 

“And Mrs. Fraser?”

 

“Safe in the other camp, dear.”

 

Parker Steel was dropping off to sleep that night when

he felt his wife’s hand upon his shoulder. He turned

with a grunt, and saw her white face dim amid her cloud

of hair.

 

“Anything wrong?”

 

“No. Do you believe in Murchison, Parker?”

 

“‘Believe in him’?”

 

“Yes, is he reliable; does he know his work?”

 

Her husband laughed.

 

“Why, do you want to consult the fellow?”

 

“You have never caught him tripping?”

 

“Not yet. What are you driving at?”

 

“Oh nothing,” and she turned away, and put the hair

back from her face, feeling feverish with the ferment of

her thoughts.

CHAPTER IV

NO one in Roxton would have imagined that any

shadow of dread darkened the windows of the house

in Lombard Street. Even to his most intimate friends,

James Murchison would have appeared as the one man

least likely to be dominated by any inherited taint of

body or mind. His face was the face of a man who had

mastered his own passions, the mouth firm yet generous,

the jaw powerful, the eyes and forehead suggesting the

philosopher behind the virility of the man of action. He

had built up a substantial reputation for himself in Roxton and the neighborhood. His professional honesty was

unimpeachable, his skill as a surgeon a matter of common gossip. But it was his warm-heartedness, the sincerity of his sympathy, his wholesome Saxon manliness

that had won him popularity, especially among the poor.

 

For Catherine the uncovering of the past had come as

a second awakening, a resanctification of her love. Women are the born champions of hero worship, and to generous natures imperfections are but as flints scattered in

the warm earth of life. Women will gather them and

hide them in their bosoms, breathing a more passionate

tenderness perhaps, and betraying nothing to the outer

world.

 

James Murchison and his wife had held each other’s

hands more firmly, like those who approach a narrow

mountain path. They were happy in their home life,

happy with each other, and with their children. To the

woman’s share there was added a new sacredness that

woke and grew with every dawn. There were wounds

to be healed, bitternesses to be warded off. The man

who lay in her arms at night needed her more dearly,

and there was exultation in the thought for her. She

loved him the more for this stern thorn in the flesh. The

pity of it seemed to make him more her own, to knit her

tenderness more bravely round him, to fill life with a

more sacred fire. She was not afraid of the future for his

sake, believing him too strong to be vanquished by an

ancestral sin.

 

It was one day in April when James Murchison came

rattling over the Roxton cobbles in his motorcar, to slacken speed suddenly in Chapel Gate at the sight of a red

Dutch bonnet, a green frock, and a pair of white-socked

legs on the edge of the pavement. The Dutch bonnet

belonged to his daughter Gwen, a flame-haired dame of

four, demure and serious as any dowager. The child had

a chip-basket full of daffodils in her hand, and she seemed

quite alone, a most responsible young person.

 

A minute gloved hand had gone up with the gravity

of a constable’s paw signalling a lawbreaker to stop.

James Murchison steered to the footway, and regarded

Miss Gwen with a surprised twinkle.

 

“Hallo, what are you doing here?”

 

Miss Gwen ignored the ungraceful familiarity of the

inquisitive parent.

 

“I’ll drive home, daddy,” she said, calmly.

 

“Oh you will! Where’s nurse?”

 

“Mending Jack’s stockings.” And the lady with the

daffodils dismissed the question with contempt.

 

Murchison laughed, and helped the vagrant into the

car.

 

“Shopping, I see,” he observed, refraining from adult

priggery, and catching the spirit of Miss Gwen’s adventuresomeness.

 

“Yes. I came out by myself. I’d five pennies in my

money-box. Nurse was so busy. The daffies are for

mother.”

 

Her father had one eye on the child as he steered the

car through the market - place and past St. Antonia’s

into Lombard Street. The youth in him revolted from

administering moral physic to Miss Gwen. Even the

florist seemed to have treated her pennies with generous

respect, and like the majority of sympathetic males, Murchison left the dogmatic formalities of education to his

wife. The very flowers, the child’s offering, would have

withered at any tactless chiding.

 

Mary, the darner of Mr. Jack’s stockings, was discovered waddling up Lombard Street with flat - footed

haste. Miss Gwen greeted her with the composure of

an empress, proud of her flowers, her father, the motorcar, and life in general. To Mary’s “Oh Miss Gwen!”

she answered with a sedate giggle and hugged her basket

of flowers.

 

Murchison saw his wife’s figure framed between the

white posts of the doorway. He chuckled as he reached

for his instrument bag under the seat, and caught a glimpse

of Mary’s outraged authority.

 

“Look, mother, look, you love daffies ever so much.

I bought them all myself.”

 

Catherine’s arms were hugging the green frock.

 

“Gwen, you wicked one,” and she caught her husband’s

eyes and blushed.

 

“We are growing old fast, Kate. I picked her up in

Chapel Gate.”

 

“The dear flowers; come, darling. Jack, you rascal,

what are you doing?”

 

“Master Jack! Master Jack!”

 

Male mischief was astir also in Lombard Street, having emerged from the school-room with the much-tried

Mary’s darning-basket. There was an ironical humor

in pelting the fat woman with the stockings she had mended and rolled so conscientiously. His father’s appearance

in the hall sent Master Jack laughing and squirming up

the stairs. He-was caught, tickled, and carried in bodily

to lunch.

 

James Murchison was smoking in his study early the

same afternoon, ticking off visits in his pocket-book, when

his wife came to him with a letter in her hand.

 

“From Marley, dear. A man has just ridden in with

it. They need you at once.”

 

“Marley? Why, the Penningtons belong to Steel.”

 

He tore open the envelope and glanced through the

letter, while his wife looked whimsically at the chaos of

books and papers on his desk. The ground was holy,

and her tact debarred her from meddling with the muddle.

The room still had a sense of shadow for her. She could

not enter it without an indefinable sense of dread.

 

Murchison did not show the letter to his wife. He

put it in his pocket, knocked out his pipe, and picked up

his stethoscope that was lying on the table.

 

“I am afraid you will have to go to the Stantons’

without me, dear,” he said; “Steel wants me at Marley.”

 

Catherine gave him a surprised flash of the eyes.

 

“Something serious?”

 

“Possibly.”

 

“Parker Steel is not fond of asking your advice.”

 

“Who is, dear?”

 

“I’m sorry,” she said.

 

“So am I, dear,” and he kissed her, and rang the bell

to order out his car.

 

Marley was an old moated house some five miles from

Roxton, a place that seemed stolen from a romance, save

that there was nothing romantic about its inmates. A

well-wooded park protected it from the high-road, the

red walls rising warm and mellow behind the yews, junipers, and cedars that grew in the rambling garden. Spring

flowers were binding the sleek, sun-streaked lawns with

strands of color, dashes of crimson, of azure, and white,

of golden daffodils blowing like banners amid a sheaf of

spears. Here and there the lawns were purple with crocuses,

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