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

CHAPTER III

MRS. BETTY STEEL sat alone at the breakfasttable with a silver teapot covered with a crimson

cosy before her, and a pile of letters and newspapers at

her elbow. The west front of St. Antonia’s showed

through the window, buttress and pinnacle glimmering

up into the morning sunlight. Frost-rimed trees spun a

scintillant net against the blue. The quiet life of the old

town went up with its lazy plumes of smoke into the crisp

air.

 

Mrs. Betty Steel drew a slice of toast from the rack,

toyed with it, and looked reflectively at her husband’s

empty chair. She was a dark, sinuous, feline creature

was Mrs. Betty, with a tight red mouth, and an olive

whiteness of skin under her black wreath of hair. Her

hands were thin, mercurial, and yet suggestive of pretty

and graceful claws. A clever woman, cleverer with her

head than with her heart, acute, elegant, aggressive, yet

often circuitous in her methods. She had abundant impulse in her, blood, and clan, even evidenced by the way

in which she ripped the wrapper from a copy of the

Wilmenden Mail.

 

Mrs. Betty buried her face in the pages, crumbling her

toast irritably as her eyes ran to and fro over the head-lines.

She glanced up as her husband entered, a smooth-faced,

compressed, and professional person, with an assured

manner and an incisive cut of the mouth and chin.

 

“Any news in this hub of monotony?”

 

His wife put down the paper, and called back the dog

who was poking his nose near the bacon-dish on the fireguard.

 

“Quack medicines much in evidence. The fellows are

arrant Papists, Parker; they promise to cure everything

with nothing. Tea or coffee?”

 

Mrs. Betty spoke with the slight drawl that was habitual

to her. Her admirers felt it to be distinguished, but its

effect upon shop assistants was to spread the instincts of

socialism.

 

Dr. Parker Steel declared for coffee, and took salt to

his porridge. He was not a man who wasted words, save

perhaps on the most paying patients. Professional ambition, and an aggressive conviction that he was to be the

leading citizen in Roxton filled the greater part of the

gentleman’s sphere of consciousness.

 

“And local sensations?”

 

“Mrs. Pindar’s ball, a very dull affair, sausage-rolls

and jelly, and a floor like glue probably.”

 

“Any one there?”

 

“The Lombard Street clique, the Carnabys, Tom

Flemming, Kate Murchison, etc., etc., etc.”

 

Parker Steel grunted, and appeared to be estimating

the number of cubes in the sugar bowl by way of exercising himself in the compilation of statistics.

 

“Murchison not there, I suppose?” he asked.

 

“The wife quite sufficient.”

 

Her husband smiled, showing the regular white teeth

under his trim, black mustache with scarcely any flow of

feeling in his features. Dr. Parker Steel was very proud

of his teeth and finger-nails.

 

“You don’t love that lady much, eh?”

 

Mrs. Betty’s refined superciliousness trifled with the

suggestion.

 

“Kate Murchison? I cannot say that I ever trouble

much about her. Rather fat and vulgar perhaps. Fat

women do not appeal to me; they seem to carry sentimentality and gush about with them like patchouli. Do

you think that you are gaining ground on Murchison,

Parker, eh?”

 

The husband appeared confident.

 

“Perhaps.”

 

“Old Hicks will resign the Hospital soon; you must

take it.”

 

“Not worth the trouble.”

 

Mrs. Betty’s dark eyes condemned the assertion.

 

“Dirt’s money in the wrong place, as they say in trade,

Parker.”

 

“Well?” And the amused consort glanced at her with

a cold flicker of affection.

 

“Study it on utilitarian principles. Lady Twaddletwaddle sends her cook, or her gardener, or her boot-boy

to be treated in Roxton Hospital. You exercise yourself on the boot-boy or the cook, and Lady Twaddletwaddle approves the cure. Praise is never thrown away.

Let the old ladies who attend missionary meetings say of

you, ‘that Dr. Steel is so kind and attentive to the poor.’

We have to lay the foundation of a palace in the soil.”

 

Parker Steel chuckled, knowing that behind Mrs.

Betty’s elegant verbiage there was a tenacity of purpose

that would have surprised her best friends.

 

“I wonder whether Murchison is as privileged as I

am?” he said, passing his cup over the red tea cosy.

 

“I suppose the woman gushes for him, just as I work

my wits for you.”

 

“The Amazons of Roxton.”

 

“We live in a civilized age, Parker, but the battle is no

less bitter for us. I use my head. Half the words I

speak are winged for a final end.”

 

“You are clever enough, Betty,” he confessed.

 

“We both have brains” and she gave an ironical

laugh “I shall not be content till the world, our world,

fully recognizes that fact. Old Hicks is past his work.

Murchison is the only rival you need consider. Therefore,

Parker, our battle is with the gentleman of Lombard

Street.”

 

“And with the wife?”

 

“That is my affair.”

 

Such life feuds as are chronicled in the hatred of a

Fredegonde for a Brunehaut may be studied in miniature

in many a modern setting. Ever since childhood Betty

Steel and Catherine Murchison had been born foes. Their

innate instincts had seemed antagonistic and repellent, and

the life of Roxton had not chastened the tacit feud. Girls

together at the same school, they had fought for leadership and moral sway. Catherine had been one of those

creatures in whom the deeper feelings of womanhood

come early to the surface. Children had loved her; her

arms had been always open to them, and she had stood

out as a species of little mother to whom the owners of

bleeding knees had run for comfort.

 

The rivalry of girlhood had deepened into the rivalry

of womanhood. They were the “beauties” of Roxton;

the one generous, ruddy, and open-hearted; the other sleek,

white-faced, a studied artist in elegance and charm. Both

were admired and championed by their retainers; Catherine popular with the many, Betty served by the few.

Miss Elizabeth had beheld herself the less favored goddess,

and as of old the apple of Paris had had the power to

inflame.

 

Catherine’s final crime against her rival had been her

marrying of James Murchison. Miss Betty had chosen the

gentleman for herself, though she would rather have bitten

her tongue off than have confessed the fact. The hatred

of the wife had been extended to the husband, and Dr.

Parker Steel had assuaged the smart. And thus the

rivalry of these two women lived on intensified by the professional rivalry of two men.

 

As for my lady Betty, she hated the wife in Lombard

Street with all the quiet virulence of her nature. It was

the hate of the head for the heart, of the intellect for the

soul. Envy and jealousy were sponsors to the bantling

that Betty Steel had reared. Catherine Murchison had

children; Mrs. Steel had none. Her detestation of her

rival was the more intense even because she recognized

the good in her that made her loved by others. Catherine Murchison had a larger following than Mrs. Steel

in Roxton, and the truth strengthened the poison in the

stew.

 

With Catherine the feeling was more one of distaste

than active enmity. Betty Steel repelled her, even as

certain electrical currents repel the magnet. She mistrusted the woman, avoided her, even ignored her, an

attitude which did not fail to influence Mrs. Betty. Catherine Murchison ‘s heart was too full of the deeper happiness of life for her to trouble her head greatly about the

pale and fastidious Greek whose dark eyes flashed whenever she passed the great red brick house in Lombard

Street. Life had a June warmth for Catherine. Nor

had she that innate restlessness of soul that fosters jealousy and the passion for climbing above the common

crowd.

 

Parker Steel reminded his wife, as he rose from the

breakfasttable, of a certain charity concert that was to

be given at the Roxton public hall the same evening.

 

“Are you going?”

 

“Yes, I believe so; Mrs. Fraser extorted a guinea from

us; I may as well get something for my money. And

you?”

 

Her husband smoothed his hair and looked in the

mirror.

 

“Expecting a confinement. If you get a chance, be

polite to old Fraser, she would be worth bagging in the

future, and Murchison thieved her from old Hicks.”

 

Catherine Murchison sang at the charity concert that

night, and Mrs. Betty listened to her with the outward

complacency of an angel. The big woman in her black

dress, with a white rose in her ruddy hair, bowed and

smiled to the enthusiasts of the Roxton slums who knew

her nearly as well as they knew her husband. Catherine

Murchison’s rare contralto flowed unconcernedly over her

rival’s head. She sang finely, and without effort, and the

voice seemed part of her, a touch of the sunset, a breath

from the fields of June. Catherine’s nature came out before men in her singing. A glorious unaffectedness, a

charm with no trick of the self-conscious egoist. It was

this very naturalness, this splendid unconcern that had

forever baffled Mrs. Betty Steel. The woman was proof

against the mundane sneer. Ridicule could not touch

her, and the burrs of spite fell away from her smooth

completeness.

 

“By George, what a voice that woman has!”

 

The bourgeoisie of Roxton was piling up its applause.

Mrs. Murchison had half the small boys in the town as

her devoted henchmen. Politically her personality would

have carried an election.