A Woman's War - Warwick Deeping (best black authors .TXT) 📗
- Author: Warwick Deeping
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and the two shrews had watched by him through the night,
their pitiable peevishness unmoved by the sick man’s peril.
At seven o’clock Nurse Sprange had favored Mrs. Baxter with her opinion.
“Worse, of course!” the housewife had exclaimed;
“what can any Christian creature expect after the way
they hacked the poor soul about?”
The nurse had ruffled up in defence of the profession.
“You had better send at once for Dr. Murchison.”
“I should think we had. The lad can drive over in
the milk-cart. Murchison did the thing; he’d better
mend it, if he can.”
Murchison drove through the July fields where the
corn was rustling for the harvest. The cottage gardens
were full of flowers, sweet-pease a-flutter in the sun, the
borders packed with scent and color. On the river’s
bank the willows drooped lazily, and the meadows had
been shorn of their fragrant hay. To the south the pine
woods of Marley Down touched the azure of the sky.
His welcome at Boland’s Farm was neither cordial nor
inspiring. Murchison had expected sour faces, and sour
and sinister they were. Mrs. Baxter was a cynic by
choice, one of those women who count their change carefully to the last farthing as though forever expecting to
be cheated. Her manner towards Murchison was abrupt
and aggressive. She bore herself towards him with a
threatening dourness, as though she held him responsible
for her husband’s critical condition.
“I am sorry to hear Mr. Baxter is no better.”
The lady looked supremely sapient, as though the brilliance of her genius had foreshadowed the event.
“I think I told you, doctor, that I don’t hold with all
this operating.”
“I am sorry that we disagree.”
“Perhaps you will step up-stairs, doctor, and just see
Mr. Baxter for yourself.”
Madam’s presence was not enthralling, and Murchison
escaped from her with relief. The ugly parlor, with its
texts and its piety, seemed part and parcel of the world
to which farmer Baxter’s wife belonged. But sick men
cannot be responsible for their wives, and Murchison knew
that Tom Baxter was more sinned against than sinning.
Nurse Sprange was sitting by the patient’s bed, looking
limp and tired, as though her patience had been torn to
tatters by Mrs. Baxter’s restless temper. She rose as
Murchison entered, and drew back the curtains to let
more light into the room. Murchison nodded to her,
and took the chair that she had left. The farmer was
lying very still and straight, his eyes half closed, his breathing shallow, as though any expansion of the chest gave
him acute pain.
“Well, Baxter, how do you feel?”
The man turned his head feebly.
“Ay, doctor, not mighty grand.”
“Any pain now?”
“Pain, sir, plenty; not like the gripe, but just as if I
had a lot of weed-killer sluicing about inside of me.”
“Ah! Any tenderness?”
The farmer winced under Murchison’s hand.
“Bless you, doctor, it be damned sore!”
“Where?”
“All over. What d’you think of me, sir? I guess I’m
pretty bad.”
The man’s eyes were searching Murchison’s face. He
had been a fat and hearty liver, a full-blooded man who
had loved life, where his wife was not, and was loath to
leave it. There was something pathetic in his almost
bovine dread, as though like one of his own oxen he had
an instinct of the end. Murchison pitied him. He had
seen many such men die, some like frightened animals,
others sullen and sturdy against their doom.
“You must keep up your pluck, Baxter,” he said.
“I know, sir, but—”
“My dear fellow, you are very bad, it is no use shirking it. I hope yet to see you recover.”
“All right, doctor, you’ve done your best,” and he
turned his face away with a groan of despair.
Murchison took the nurse out with him to the head of
the stairs, and questioned her as to any symptoms she
had observed during the night. Her evidence only
tended to strengthen the gloomy prognosis he had already
made. Nothing remained for him but to consider Mrs.
Baxter’s unsensitive soul.
The lady did not weep. On the contrary, she displayed
gathering resentment, the prejudice of an inferior nature,
and gave Murchison the benefit of her free opinion.
“I may as well tell you, doctor, that I’m not satisfied.
If my Tom had had proper attention from the first—”
“Well?”
“You wouldn’t have had to use that there knife. And
it’s my opinion, sir, that you’ve done more harm than
good.”
Murchison’s patience was being severely tested.
“I don’t think you are quite yourself, Mrs. Baxter,”
he remarked.
“Not myself, indeed!”
“I cannot hold you responsible for what you are saying.”
The suggestion of any hysterical weakness on her part
offended the lady more than her husband’s probable decease.
“Look here, doctor, I’m no fool, and I tell you you’ve
done your business badly.”
“My dear woman, this is absolutely unwarranted.”
“I beg to differ, sir, and—”
Murchison prevented the imminent insult.
“If you care to place the case in other hands, by all
means do so.”
“I shall send for Dr. Steel.”
“As you please.”
“And don’t you be afraid of getting your money.”
“That is a secondary consideration.”
“Oh, I guess not, operations don’t cost twopencehalfpenny. I’ll send for Steel at once.”
Murchison took his hat and gloves.
“Then, Mrs. Baxter, I had better wish you goodmorning?’
And being too much of a philosopher to accuse the
lady of ingratitude, he left her in possession of her prejudices.
It had been the season of garden-fetes at Roxton, when
the gracious gowns of the mesdames and demoiselles
glorified the sleek lawns and herb-scented gardens of the
old town. Gay colors and piquant hats were in July
flower, save for the few sober weeds who put forth no
gaudy corolla to attract the winged messengers of love.
Mrs. Betty had paraded the terraces and yew walks in
dove-colored silk, in crimson, and in lilac. Her successive sunshades were as so many royal flowers that
came as by magic from the house of glass. She was an
aesthetic spirit, and loved beauty, particularly when the
picture was painted upon the surface of her own pier-glass.
Yet, delectable as she was with her pale and sinuous
glamour, Mrs. Betty had many rebuffs to remember within
the sound of St. Antonia’s bells. Dull, domesticated
ladies in a country town do not embrace with enthusiasm
a young and fascinating woman who has a habit of drawing the men about her. Mrs. Betty was regarded as a
dangerous person, a species of Circe who looked sidelong
into the faces of respectable married men, and possessed
a motherwit and a vivacity that made her seem like
sparkling wine beside the “domestic ditch-water” she
abhorred.
Catherine Murchison succeeded with her sister-women
where Betty Steel failed utterly. There was a frankness,
an absolute lack of the guile of the Cleopatra, about her
that set jealous matrons at their ease. She was so notoriously devoted to her own husband and her home that
the respectable flock welcomed her with pleasant bleatings. It was this very popularity of hers that impressed
itself on the social pageantries of Roxton. The quickeyed Betty saw her rival receive the smiles of the feminine
community, while she herself was favored with polite distrust. Catherine Murchison was considered orthodox,
and to be orthodox is the first proof of gentility among
genteel people. Mrs. Steel might be stigmatized as something of a social heretic. And women, being the most
outrageous Tories in their heart of hearts, dreaded the
fascinating and glib-tongued Socialist who would perhaps
reform the marriage laws into free love.
Hence, through all the galaxy of the Roxton garden-parties, Parker Steel’s wife had accumulated many
incidental grievances against her rival. Women are
sensitive beings, so sensitive that their feelings may be
diffused into a smart gown or a Paris hat. The old battle-fire burned in Mrs. Betty’s Circassian eyes. She was
amassing her grievances, slowly, surely, and with that
curious secretiveness that has often characterized the
feminine heart.
“Thomas Baxter, of Boland’s Farm, is dead.”
Parker Steel whisked his serviette over his knees, and
looked with a peculiar glint of the eye at his wife in her
orange-silk tea-gown.
“Dead. no!”
“Dead as Marley.”
“But they only turned Murchison out yesterday.”
“Exactly. And the dear wife is in the most militant
of tempers, the Puritanical old fraud.”
Betty Steel’s olive skin had flushed. She was breathing deeply, and her glance had a significant and inspired
glitter.
“Parker.”
“Well?”
“What else?”
The spruce physician showed his teeth.
“You expect more?”
“Yes, you are teasing me, keeping back some delicate
morsel. Has Murchison blundered?”
“The wish seems mother to the thought.”
“Perhaps.”
“Mrs. Baxter has demanded a post-mortem examination. I am to perform it.”
His wife’s lips parted, and closed again into a hard line.
She looked wickedly handsome in her yellow gown.
“I shall take Brimley, of Cossington, with me.”
“Good. You must have a second opinion, and Brimley does not love the six-footer. What do you think,
Parker? tell me frankly.”
The doctor wiped his mustache, took up his sherry
glass and sipped the wine.
“Can’t say yet,” he answered.
“But supposing—”
“Well, what am I to suppose?”
“That Murchison blundered badly.”
Dr. Steel meditated an instant.
“Professional etiquette ” he began.
Mrs. Betty’s eyes flashed.
“Professional nonsense! If Parker, you must not
lose a possible chance.”
Her husband regarded her with amused interest.
“You would strike your little Italian stiletto into
Murchison’s reputation,” he said.
THERE is little that is beautiful in death, save, perhaps, in the faces of children, and those taken in the
heyday of their youth. As in life the majority of mortals
are ugly and grotesque, so in death the body grows in
repulsiveness as it nears the grave. The lily corpse with
the angelic smile is rarely seen, save perhaps by irresponsible poets. Blotched and stiff, shrunken or inflated, the
nameless thing welcomes putrefaction and decay. Beauty
of outline is lost to the limbs, the bones show at the joints,
the muscles stand out in stiff and unnatural relief. Nothing but the glamour of sentiment preserves this ruined
tabernacle of the flesh from being designated as a “carcass.”
At Boland’s Farm the house had that sickly and indescribable smell of death. Farmer Baxter’s bullocks
grazed peacefully in the great fourteen-acre lot to the east
of the garden; the hens clucked and scratched in the rickyard; the pigs sucked and paddled in the swill. The laborers were at work as though their master was still alive
to curse them across fields and hedgerows. The soil pays
no heed to death; it is a natural occurrence; only we human beings elevate it into an incident of singularity and
note. The farm-hands who passed through the yard cast
curious and awed looks at the darkened windows of the
house. Mrs. Baxter had given them their orders, and
they knew there would be no shirking where that lady
was concerned.
A couple of traps were standing before the garden gate,
and in the death-chamber two intent figures bent over
the bed that had been drawn close to the open window.
The sun shone upon the body, a mere mountain of flesh,
loathsome, gaping, flatulent, lying naked from loins to
chin. In
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