A Woman's War by Warwick Deeping (ap literature book list .txt) 📖

CHAPTER XXXIII

ROXTON, like a certain lady of literary fame, was

ever ready with its free opinions on any subject

that it did not understand. The return of the Murchisons had exercised the town’s capacity for criticism, and

inaugurated a debate that was to be heard at publichouse bars, as well as in the parlors of the pious. The

facts of the case were generally agreed upon; but facts

are things that the ingenious mind of man can juggle

with. The complexion of the affair varied with the convictions of the debater, and the sacred incidents of home

life profaned or honored according to the temper of the

tongue that dealt with them.

 

In Mill Lane the case had a most energetic exponent

in the person of Mr. William Bains, the sweep, A certain brewer’s drayman, who had won some crude celebrity as an atheist, had taken upon himself to argue on

the adverse side. The two gentlemen squared to each

other one evening at the bottom of the lane, and thrashed

it out strenuously before a meagre but attentive crowd.

 

“What about the inquest? Didn’t we read the ‘ole of

it in the Mail and Times? Yer can’t get away from

facts, can yer?”

 

“And supposin’ he did make a mistake for once, does

that mean callin’ a man a fool and a danger to the public?

Who drove his cart last week into a pillar-box by Wilson’s

grocery shop?”

 

Mr. Bains scored a palpable hit. The audience laughed.

 

“Got ‘im there, William,” said a neighbor.

 

The drayman sniffed, and threw out his stomach.

 

“Facts is facts. Doctorin’ ain’t drivin’ ‘osses.”

 

“Thank the Lord, Mr. Sweetyer, it ain’t, for our

sakes.”

 

“I say the man blundered.”

 

“And who ‘asn’t run ‘is nose into a lamp-post on occasions? Why, look ‘ere,” and Mr. Bains stretched out a

didactic forefinger, “when my little girl ‘ad the diphtheria,

who pulled ‘er through? And who saved old Jenny

Lowther’s leg? And there was young Ben Thompson,

who some London joker swore was a dyin’ man!”

 

“That’s true,” said a bony woman in an old red blouse.

 

The drayman, finding the neighbors inclined to take the

sweep’s view of the matter, began to look hot, and a little

nettled.

 

“Well, what ‘ave yer got to say about the booze?” he

asked.

 

“I reckon that’s more your business than mine.”

 

Again the audience caught the gibe and laughed.

 

“Three gallons a day, that’s ‘is measure,” interjected

a morose gentleman, who was hanging over his garden

gate and smoking the stump of a clay pipe.

 

“Wasn’t ‘e carried ‘ome from the club?”

 

“P’raps ‘e was, p’r’aps ‘e wasn’t. Any fool could ‘ave

seen that the man ‘ad been workin’ hisself to death. Why,

he fainted bang off one mornin’, round at our ‘ouse. Ask

my missus. A thimbleful o’ brandy would ‘ave made a

man in ‘is state ‘ug the railin’s.”

 

“Anyhow, he hugged ‘em,” said the obdurate opponent.

 

“We ain’t always responsible for what we do when we’ve

‘ad a bad smack over the side of the jaw.”

 

“Doct’rs oughtn’t ter touch it.”

 

“You’re a nice one to preach, now, ain’t yer?”

 

“He is that,” quoth the laconic worthy at the gate.

 

“Look ‘ere, don’t you go shovin’ it into me sideways.”

 

“Let me argue ‘im, Mr. Catt.”

 

“Argue, you ‘ain’t got a leg to stand on!”

 

“Haven’t I, my boy!” and the two disputants began to

glare.

 

The drayman wiped his hands on the back of his

breeches.

 

“Some fool ‘11 be callin’ me a liar soon,” he remarked.

 

“It’s on the cards.”

 

“Look ‘ere, Bill Bains, I’ve ‘ad enough of your sarce.

Stow it.”

 

“You go and bully your kids. Can’t I speak my mind

when I bloomin’ well like?”

 

“Course ‘e can,” said the lady in the red blouse; “and

‘e speaks it well, ‘e does. Murchison was always a right

down gentleman; better than that there little nipper,

Steel.”

 

“Right for you, Mrs. Penny. We don’t go blackguardin’ other people’s characters, do we?”

 

“I ain’t blackguardin’ the man, I’m statin’ facts.”

 

“Facts, facts why, the man’s clean daft on facts. Facts

must be another name for a pint of bitter.”

 

“I’ll smash your jaw, Bill Bains, if you don’t stow it.”

 

“Smash away, my buck. Who’s afraid of a bloomin’

cask?”

 

Whereon the dwellers in Mill Lane were treated to an

exhibition of two minutes straight hitting, an exhibition

that ended in the intervention of friends. But since the

drayman departed with a red nose and a swollen eye, it

may be inferred that the sweep had the best of the argument.

 

To have one’s past, present, and future dragged through

the back streets of a country town is not an experience

that a man of selfrespect would welcome. A sensitive

spirit cannot fail to feel the atmosphere about it. It may

see the sun shining, the clouds white against the blue,

the natural phenomena of health and of well-being; or

the faces of a man’s fellows may be as sour puddles to

him, their sympathy a wet December.

 

Trite as the saying is, that in trouble we make trial of

our friends, only those who have faced defeat know the

depth and meaning of that time-worn saying. A week

in Roxton betrayed to Catherine and her husband the

number and the sincerity of their friends. The instinct

of pride is wondrous quick in detecting truth from shams,

even as an expert’s fingers can tell old china by the feel.

The population of the place was soon mapped out into

the priggishly polite, the piously distant, the vulgarly inquisitive, the unaffected honest, and the honestly indifferent. Catherine met many a face that brightened to

hers in the Roxton streets. The past seemed to have

banked more good-will for them then they had imagined.

It was among the poor that they found the least forgetfulness, less of the cultured and polite hauteur, less affectation, less hypocrisy. As for the practice, they found

it non-existent that first humiliating yet half-happy week.

 

But perhaps the sincerest person in Roxton at that

moment was the wife of Dr. Parker Steel. Betty was not

a passionate woman in the matter of her affections, but in

her capabilities for hatred she concentrated the energy

of ten. She had come quite naturally to regard herself

as the most gifted and interesting feminine personality

that Roxton could boast. Every woman has an instinctive conviction that her own home, and her own children,

are immeasurably superior to all others. With Betty

Steel, this spirit of womanly egotism had been largely

centred on herself. She had no children to make her

jealous and critical towards other women’s children. It

was the symmetry of her own success in life that had

developed into an enthralling art, an art that absorbed

her whole soul.

 

It might have been imagined that she had climbed too

high to trouble about an old hate; that she was too