A Woman's War - Warwick Deeping (best black authors .TXT) 📗

CHAPTER X

A WHITE-CAPPED servant came running across

Lombard Street from Mr. Carmagee’s, and hailed

Murchison’s chauffeur, who had just swung the car to the

edge of the footway outside the doctor’s house. The

white streamers of the maid’s apron were fluttering jauntily in the wind. Some weeks ago the chauffeur had discovered the fact that the lawyer’s parlor-maid had an attractive simper.

 

“Good-day, miss; can I oblige a lady?”

 

“Mr. Carmagee wants to know whether the doctor and

the missus are going to Marley Down this afternoon?”

 

“Yes, straight away. I’m waiting for ‘em to finish tea.”

 

“You’re to step over to Mr. Carmagee’s garden door

at once.”

 

“Thank you. And who’s to mind the car?”

 

“It won’t catch cold,” and the maid showed her dimples for a bachelor’s benefit.

 

The chauffeur crossed the road with her, and was met

at the green gate in the garden by Mr. Porteus himself. A hamper lay on the gravel-path at the lawyer’s

feet, with straw protruding from under the lid. Mr.

Carmagee twinkled, and gave the man a shilling.

“Stow this in the car, Gage; you’ve room, I suppose.”

 

“Plenty, sir.”

 

“Don’t say anything about it to your master. Just a

little surprise, a good liver-tonic, Gage see?”

 

The man grinned, touched his cap, and, picking up the

hamper, recrossed the street. He packed Mr. Carmagee’s

offering away with the light luggage at the back of the

car, and after grimacing at the maid, who was still watching him from the garden door, busied himself with polishing the lamps.

 

“Good-bye, darling, good-bye. Be a good boy, Jack,

and do what Mary tells you.”

 

Catherine was bending over her two children in the

hall, a light dust cloak round her, a white veil over her

summer hat. Miss Gwen, looking a little pensive and

inclined to weep, hugged her mother with a pair of very

chubby arms. Master Jack was more militant, and inclined to insist upon his rights.

 

“Oh, I say, mother, I don’t call it fair!”

 

“You shall come next week, dear.”

 

“Gage says he’ll teach me to drive. I’ll come next

week. You’ve promised now you know.”

 

Catherine kissed him, and laughed like a young bride

when her husband came up and lifted the youngster off

his feet.

 

“Who wants to boss creation, eh?”

 

Master John clapped his heels together.

 

“It’s no fun with old Mary, father.”

 

“You must learn to be a philosopher, my man.”

 

“I’m going to buy a busting big pea-shooter at Smith’s,”

quoth the heckler, meaningly, as he regained the floor.

 

Murchison caught his daughter up in his strong arms.

 

“Good-bye, my Gwen—”

 

“Dood-bye, father.”

 

“No tears, little sunlight. What is it, a secret? well.”

 

The child was whispering in his ear. Murchison

listened, fatherly amusement shining in his eyes.

 

“I put ‘em in muvver’s bag.”

 

“All right. I’ll see to it.”

 

“They’re boofy; I tried one, jus’ one.”

 

Murchison laughed, and hugged the child.

 

“What a wicked fay it is! You shall come with us

next time. We’ll have tea in the woods, stir up ant-heaps,

and play at Swiss Family Robinson. Good-bye,” and

he carried her with him to the door to take her child’s kiss

as the sunlight touched her hair.

 

Summer on Marley Down was a pageant such as painter’s love. Heather everywhere, lagoons of purple amid

the rich green reefs of the rising bracken. Scotch firs

towering into mystery against the blue, roofing magic

aisles where shadows played on grass like velvet, bluff

banks and forest valleys, heather and whortleberry tangling the ground. In the marshy hollows of the down the

moss was as some rich carpet from the Orient, gold, green,

and bronze. Asphodel grew in these rank green hollows,

with the red whorls of the sundew, and the swinging

sedge. Everywhere a broad, breezy sky, brilliant with

color above a brilliant world.

 

The palings of the cottage-garden glimmered white

between the sombre cypresses, and the dark swell of the

fir-wood topped the red of the tiled roof. This nook in

Arcady had the charm of a surprise for Murchison, for

Catherine had made him promise that he would leave

the stewardship to her. She had spent many an hour

over at Marley Down, and her year’s allowance from her

mother had gone in art fabrics, carpets, and old furniture. Catherine had taken Gwen with her more than

once, having sworn the child to secrecy on these solemn

motherly trifles, and Gwen had hidden her bubbling enthusiasm even from her father.

 

“Here we are! Is it not a corner of romance?”

 

“The place looks lovely, dear.”

 

“Wait!” and she seemed happily mysterious.

 

“I can guess your magic. Carry the luggage in, Gage;

Dr. Inglis may want you for an hour or two at home.”

 

He gave his hand to Catherine, and together they passed

into the little garden. Murchison looked about him like

a man who had put the grim world out of his heart. The

peacefulness of the place seemed part of the woodland

and the sky. Purple clematis was in bloom, with a white

rose over the porch. The beds below the windows were

fragrant with sweet herbs, lavender and thyme, rosemary

and sage. A crimson rambler blazed up nearly to the

overhanging eaves, and there were rows of lilies, milk

white, beneath the cypress-trees.

 

Within, a woman’s careful and happy tenderness welcomed him everywhere. A dozen nooks and corners betrayed where Catherine’s hands had been at work. Flowered curtains at the casements; simple pottery, richly

colored, on the window shelves; his favorite books; a

great lounge-chair for him before an open window. The

place was a dream cottage, brown beamed, brown floored,

its walls tinted with delicate greens and reds, old panelling

beside the red brick hearths, beauty and quaintness everywhere, flowers in the garden, flowers in the quiet room.

 

“What a haven of rest!”

 

He stood in the little drawingroom, looking about him

with an expression of deep contentment on his face.

 

Catherine knew that his heart thanked her, and that her

simple idyl was complete.

 

He turned and put his arm across her shoulders.

 

“You have worked hard, dear.”

 

“Have I?” and she laughed and colored.

 

“It is all good. I am wondering whether I deserve so

much.”

 

Her happy silence denied the thought.

 

“Your spirit is in the place, Kate.”

 

“My heart, perhaps,” she answered.

 

He bent and kissed her, and drew from her with smiling

mouth as they heard the man Gage come plodding down

the stairs.

 

He stopped at the door and touched his cap.

 

“All in, sir. I’ve put your bag in what the old lady

told me was your dressing-room.”

 

“Thanks, Gage.”

 

“Any message to Dr. Inglis, sir?”

 

“Oh, ask him to call at Mrs. Purvis’s in Carter Street;

I forgot to put her on the list.”

 

“Right, sir,” and they heard the clash of the garden

gate; then the panting of the car, and the plaintive wail

of the “oil horse” as it got in gear.

 

“Out old world,” and Murchison swept his wife

towards the piano; “give me a song, Kate.”

 

“Now?” and her eyes were radiant.

 

“Yes, I shall remember the first song you sing to me

in this dear place.”

 

Catherine had gone to her room, when Murchison

stumbled on the hamper that Porteus Carmagee had

given the man Gage to carry in the car. The fellow had

set it down in the little hall, between an oak settle and a

table that held a bowl of roses by the door. Murchison

imagined that his wife had been investing in china or

antiques. A letter was tucked under the cord, and, looking closer, he recognized his own name and the lawyer’s

scrawl, the “qualifications” added with a humorous

flourish of Mr. Carmagee’s pen.

 

Murchison sat on the oak settle, opened the envelope,

and drew out the paper with its familiar crest.

 

“Mv DEAR FELLOW, Being a hearty admirer of your

wife’s management of your health, I, a ridiculous bachelor,

presume to afflict you with medicine of my own, gratis.

I send you half a dozen bottles of Martinez’s 1887, as good

a port as you will find in any cellar. I know that you are

an abstemious beggar, but take the stuff for the tonic it

is, and drink to an ‘incomparable’ wife’s health. The

wine has purpled me out of the gray dumps on many an

occasion. Not that you will need it, sir, for such a disease.

Chivalry forbid! Yours ever,

 

“PORTEUS CARMAGEE.”

 

“P. S. Gage is smuggling this over for me in the

car.”

 

Murchison read the letter through as though this eccentric but lovable gentleman had written to bully him

on behalf of some injured client. Six bottles of Martinez’s

1887, plumped by this dear old blunderer into Kate’s

haven of refuge! Had Murchison believed in the personal existence of the devil, he would have imagined that

the Spirit of Evil had bewitched the innocent heart of

Mr. Porteus Carmagee. Good God! what a frail fool

he was that such a thing should have the least significance

for him! James Murchison scared by a drug in a bottle!

 

And yet the first impulse that he had was to dash the

hamper on the floor, and watch the red juice dye the

stones.

 

He heard his wife singing in her room above, singing

with that tender yet subdued abandonment that goes

with a happy heart. He heard the door open, her footstep on the landing.

 

“James, dear.”

 

He started as though guilty, and crumpled the letter

in his hand.

 

“Yes.”

 

“Would you like supper now, and a walk later? There

will be a moon.”

 

“Let us have supper,” he answered back.

 

“I will come in a minute. Have you seen the sunset?

It is grand over the heath.”

 

She went back into her bedroom, humming some old

song, her very happiness hurting the man’s heart. What

was this lust, this appetite, this thirst in the blood, that it

should make him the creature of such a chance? Had

he not free will, the selfrespecting strength of his own

manhood? Strange irony of life that six bottles of