A Woman's War by Warwick Deeping (ap literature book list .txt) 📖
- Author: Warwick Deeping
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hopeless chapel bell. A gray sky merging into a wet,
gray landscape. In the valley Wilton, prostrate under
mist and smoke.
James Murchison, standing bareheaded before Gwen’s
grave, gazed at the wet turf with the eyes of a man who
saw more beneath it than mere lifeless clay. There was
nothing of rebellion in the pose of the tall figure rather,
the slight stoop of one poring over some rare book with
the reverence of him who reads to learn.
For Catherine there was no consciousness of penance
as she stood beside him, silent and distant-eyed. Her
hands were clasped together under her cloak. She stood
as one waiting, heart heavy, yet ready to awake to the
new life that opens even for those who grieve.
There were not a few such groups scattered about this
upland burial-ground, colorless, subdued figures seen
dimly through the drizzling mist of rain. Quite near to
Murchison a working-man was arranging a few flowers
in a large white jam-pot; the grave, by the name on the
headstone, was the grave of his wife. A few children,
who had wandered up to see some funeral, were playing
“touch wood” between the aspens of the main walk.
There was an irresponsible callousness in their shrill,
slum-hardened voices. To them this place of Death was
but a field to play in.
Murchison had turned from Gwen’s grave, and was
looking at his wife. There seemed some bond more
sacred between them now that they had shared both life
and death in the body of their child.
“You are cold, dear.”
He touched her cheek with his hand as he turned up
the collar of her cloak. Her hair was wet and a-glisten
with the rain, her face cold like the face of one fresh from
the breath of an autumn sea.
“Only my skin.”
“The wind is keen, though. It is time we turned back
home.”
“Yes.”
“Good-bye, my child.”
He spoke the words in a whisper as they moved away
from the corner.
Before them, seen dimly through a haze of rain, lay
the colliery town, a vague splash of darkness in the valley. Here and there a tall chimney stood trailing smoke,
or the faint glow of a fire gave a thin opalescence to the
shell of mist. Sounds, faint and far, yet full of the significance of labor, drifted up the bleak slopes of the hillside, like the sounds from ships sailing a foggy sea. The
rattle of a train, the shriek of a steam-whistle, the slow
strokes of some great clock striking the hour.
James Murchison’s eyes were fixed upon this town beside the pit mouths, this pool of poverty and toil, where
the eddies of effort never ceased upon the surface. It
was strange to him, this colliery town, and yet familiar.
Always would his manhood yearn towards it because of
the dear dead, even though its memories were hateful to
him, full of the bitterness of ignominy and pain.
Gwen’s death had come to Murchison as a sudden
silence, a strange void in the hurrying entities of life. It
was as though the passing of this child had changed the
phenomena of existence for him, and given a new rhythm
to the pulse of Time. He had become aware of a new
setting to life, even as a man who has walked the same
road day by day discovers on some winter dawn a fresh
and unearthly beauty in the scene. He felt an unsolved
newness in his being, a solemnity such as those who have
looked upon the dead must feel. And no strong nature
can pass through such a phase without creating inward
energy and power. Sorrow, like winter, may be but a
season of repose, troubled and drear perhaps, but moving
towards the miracle of spring.
Wilton cemetery, with its zincroofed chapel, its yellow
walls and iron gates, lay behind them, while the dim
horizon ran in a gray blur along the hills. Husband and
wife walked for a time in silence, for each had a burden
of deep thought to bear.
It was the man who spoke first, quietly, and with restraint, and yet with something of the fierce spirit of an
outcast Cain visible upon his face.
“I have been thinking of what I said to you last
night.”
She was looking at him with a brave clearness of the
eyes.
“I suppose sensible people would call such a venture
mad.”
“We are often strongest, dear, when we are most mad.”
He swung on beside her, his eyes at gaze.
“The madness of a forlorn hope. No, it is not that.
I have not any of the impudence of the adventurer. It
is something more solemn, more grim, more for a final
end.”
“Beloved, I understand.”
“Are you not afraid for me?”
“No, no.”
She put her hand under his arm.
“God give us both courage, dear,” she said.
They had reached the outskirts of Wilton, and the
ugliness of the place was less visible in these outworks
of the town. The streets had something of the quaintness of antiquity about them, for this was a part of the
real Wilton, an old English townlet that had been gripped
and strangled by the decapod of the pits.
“About your mother’s money, Kate.”
The rumble of a passing van compelled silence for a
moment.
“You must retain the whole control.”
“I?”
“Yes.”
He heard a woman’s unwillingness in her voice.
“It is my wish, dear. I shall need a certain sum to
start with, but my life-insurance can be made a security
for that.”
“James!”
Her face reproached him.
“Are we so little married that what is mine is not yours
also?”
“It is because you are my wife, Kate, that I consider
these things. Your mother was wise, though her instructions do not flatter me. Legally, I cannot touch a
single penny.”
She looked troubled, and a little impatient.
“I shall hate the money if no, I don’t mean that.
But, dear,” and she drew very close to him in the twilight
of the streets, “it will make no difference. You will not
feel?”
“Feel, Kate?”
“That it is mine, and not yours. You know, dear,
what I mean. I don’t want to think to think that you
will feel as though you had to ask.”
They looked, man and wife, into each other’s eyes.
“I shall ask, Kate, because—”
“Because?”
“You are what you are. It will not hurt me to remember that the stuff is yours.”
Now, quite an hour ago a battered and moth-eaten cab
had deposited a stout lady on the doorstep of Clovelly.
The stout lady had a round white face that beamed sympathetically from under the arch of a rather grotesque
bonnet. A girl, hired for the month, and dressed in a
makeshift black frock, had opened the door three inches
to Miss Carmagee. There had been a confidential discussion between these two, the girl letting the gap between
door and door-post increase before the lady in the grotesque bonnet. The doctor and the “missus” were out,
and Master Jack having tea at a friend’s house in the
next street. So much Miss Carmagee had learned before
she had been admitted to the little front room.
It was quite dusk when Catherine and her husband
turned in at the garden gate. The blinds were down, the
gas lit. Murchison opened the front door with his key,
remembering, as he ever remembered, the golden head
that would shine no more for him in that diminutive,
dreary house.
He was hanging his coat on a peg in the passage, when
he heard a sharp cry from Catherine, who had entered
the front room. There was the rustling of skirts, the sound
of an inarticulate greeting between two eager friends.
No one could have doubted Miss Carmagee’s solid
identity. She was resting her hands on Catherine’s
shoulders. They had kissed each other like mother and
child.
“Why, when did you come? We had no letter. James,
James—”
Murchison found them holding hands. There were
tears in Miss Carmagee’s mild blue eyes. Warned of
her coming, he might have shirked the meeting with the
pride of a man too sensitive towards the past. But Miss
Carmagee in the flesh, motherly and very gentle, with
Catherine’s kisses warm upon her face, stood for nothing
that was critical, or chilling to the heart.
He met her with open hands.
“You have taken us by surprise.”
Miss Phyllis ‘s eyes were on the sad, memory-shadowed
face.
“I had to come,” and her voice failed her a little. “I
sha’n’t worry you; we are old friends.”
She put up her benign and ugly face, as though the
privilege of a mother belonged to her by nature.
“I have felt it all so much.”
A flash of infinite yearning leaped up and passed in the
man’s eyes.
“You must be tired,” he said, clinging to commonplaces. “Have they sent your luggage up?”
Miss Carmagee sank into a chair.
“I left it at the hotel. I’m not going to be a
worry.”
“Worry!”
“Of course not, child.”
“Oh but we must have you here. James—”
“My dear,” and the substantial nature of the old lady’s
person seemed to become evident, “I insist on sleeping
there tonight. Now, humor me, or I shall feel myself
a nuisance.”
Miss Carmagee’s solidity of will made her contention
impregnable. Moreover, the common - sense view she
took of the matter boasted a large element of discretion.
People who live in a small house on one hundred and
sixty pounds a year cannot be expected to be prepared
for social emergencies. Even a philosopher is limited
by the contents of his larder, and Miss Carmagee was one
of those excellent women whose philosophy takes note
of the trivial things of life pots, pans, and linen, the cold
end of mutton, a rice-pudding to supply three. It is truly
regrettable that a man’s Promethean spirit should be
bound down by such contemptible trifles. Yet a tactful
refusal to share a suet-pudding may be worth more than
the wittiest epigram ever made.
Miss Carmagee and Catherine spent an hour alone
together that evening, for Murchison had patients waiting for him at Dr. Tugler’s surgery in Wilton High Street.
Master Jack had returned from his tea-party, to be
hugged, presented with a box of soldiers, a clasp-knife,
and a prayerbook, and then hurried off to bed. The soldiers and the knife shared the sheets with him; the prayerbook (amiable aunts forgive!) was left derelict under an
arm-chair.
But the great event that night for these two women,
such contrasts and yet so alike in the deeper things of
the soul, came with that communing together before the
fire, the lights turned low, the room in shadow. It was
somewhile before Miss Carmagee approached the purpose that had brought her across England with bag
and baggage. She was a woman of tact, and it is not
easy to be a partisan at times without wounding those
whom we wish to help.
The elder woman had hardly broached the subject,
before Catherine, sitting on a cushion beside Miss Carmagee’s chair, turned from the fire-light with an eager
lifting of the head.
“Why, it was only yesterday that James spoke to me
of such a plan.”
“To return to us?”
“Yes, and win back what he lost.”
Miss Carmagee saw her way more clearly.
“You know, child, you have many friends.”
“I?”
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