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

surgery into the dispensary,

a veritable bower of bottles, lit by a skylight, a ledger

desk under the gas-jet in one corner, medicine glasses

standing on the sloppy drugstained dresser, a spirituous

reek filling the little room. Oil-cloth, worn patternless,

covered all the floors. The gas-jet in the surgery flared

perpetually through all the winter months, for the skylight was too small and dirty to gather much light from

the December skies.

 

It was Saturday night at Wilton, and hucksters were

shouting up their wares in High Street, despite the fine

and almost impalpable rain that wrapped everything in

a dismal mist. The gongs of the tram-cars clanged impatiently past Dr. Tugler’s surgery, where a row of stalls

ranged beside the pavement gathered a crowd of marketers under their naphtha lamps. Trade had been busy

behind the red window that Saturday evening. Piles of

shillings and sixpences lay in the drawer of Dr. Tugler’s

consulting-table, small change left by anaemic, work-worn

women, who needed food and rest more than Dr. Tugler’s

cheap and not very effectual mixtures. The room had

been full of the bronchitic coughing of old men, the whining of children, the scent of wet, warm, dirty clothes.

 

The front room had emptied itself at last, an old woman with a cancerous lip being the last to go. Dr. Tugler

was sitting at the table nearest to the red window, counting up the miscellaneous and greasy pile of small coins,

and packing them pound by pound into a black handbag that lay across his knees. He was a vulgar little man

with a cheerful, blustering manner, and a kind of plump

and smiling self-assurance that was never at a loss for

the most dogmatic of opinions.

 

Among the Wilton colliery folk he was known distinctively as ”the doctor.” A man of finer fibre might

have been wasted amid such surroundings. Dr. Tugler,

florid, bumptious, ever ready with a semi-decent joke,

and boasting an aggressive yet generous aplomb, contrived to impress his uncultured clients with a sense of

sufficiency and of rough-and-ready power. But for his

frock-coat, and for the binoral stethoscope that dangled

from the top button of his fancy waistcoat, he might have

been taken for a prosperous publican, a bookmaker, or a

butcher.

 

Dr. Tugler swept the remaining small change into his

bag, locked it, and jumped up with the air of a man eminently satisfied with the day’s trade. The assistant at the

other table was pencilling a few notes into a pocket-book,

and humming the tune of a popular, music-hall song.

The surgery door opened as Dr. Tugler deposited the

black bag on the mantelshelf, and a swarthy collier, with

one hand bandaged, came slouching out, swinging an

old cap.

 

“Goodnight, doctor.”

 

Dr. Tugler faced round with his hands stuffed into his

trousers pockets.

 

“Hallo, Smith, find the knife sharp, eh?”

 

The man grinned, and glanced at his bandaged hand.

 

“There was a tidy lot of muck in it,” he said.

 

“Good thing we’ve saved the finger. Paid your bob,

eh? Right. Keep off the booze, and go straight home

to the missus.”

 

Tugler turned down the gas-jets, and entered the surgery. A big man in a white cotton coat was bending

over the sink and washing a porcelain tray under the hotwater tap. Blood-stained swabs of wool lay in an old

paper basket under the sink. A couple of scalpels, a

pair of dressing forceps and scissors, a roll of lint, dental

forceps still clutching a decayed tooth, an excised cyst

floating in a bowl of blood-stained water, such were the

details that completed the picture of a general surgeon at

work.

 

Dr. Tugler cast a quick and observant glance round the

room, turned down the gas a little, and counted the bandages in a card-board box on the dresser.

 

“Feel fagged, Murchison, eh?”

 

The big man turned, his lined and powerful face wearing a look of patient self-restraint.

 

“No thanks.”

 

“Be easy on the bandages,” and Dr. Tugler gave a

frowning wink; “we can’t do the beggars a la West End

on a bob a time.”

 

The big man nodded, and began to clean his knives.

 

“A message has just come round from Cinder Lane,

No. 10. Primip. Glad if you’d see to it. I feel dead

fagged myself.”

 

An almost imperceptible sigh and a slight deepening

of the lines about Murchison’s mouth escaped Dr. Tugler’s notice,

 

“I will start as soon as I have cleaned these instruments. No. 10, is it?”

 

“Yes. Here’s the week’s cash.”

 

Dr. Tugler rapped down three sovereigns and three

shillings on the dresser, and turning into the dispensary,

busied himself by inspecting the contents of the bottles

with the critical eye of a man who realizes that details

decide the difference between profit and loss.

 

In ten minutes Murchison had taken off his white cotton

coat, pocketed his money, put on a blue serge jacket and

overcoat, and taken a rather shabby bowler from the peg

on the surgery door. He picked up an obstetric bag from

under the dresser, and crossing the outer room with a

curt “goodnight” to his fellow-assistant, plunged into

the glare and drizzle of Wilton High Street.

 

Despite the rain, the sidewalks were crowded with

Saturday-night bargainers who loitered round the stalls

under the flaring naphtha lamps. The strident voices of

the salesmen mingled with the clangor of the passing teams

and the plaintive whining of the overhead wires. Here

and there the glare from a publichouse streamed across

the pavement, and through the swing-doors, Murchison,

as he passed, had a glimpse of the gaudy fittings, the

glittering glasses, the rows of bottles set out like lures to

catch the eye. The bars were crowded with men and

women, the discordant hubbub of their voices striking

out like the waters of a mill-race into the more even murmur of the streets.

 

The man with the bag shuddered as he passed these

glittering dens, and felt the hot breath of the “drink

beast” on his face. His eyes seemed to fling back the

glare of the lights with a fierceness that was not far from

fanatical disgust. Possibly there was an element of

mockery for him in the coarse chattering and the braying

laughter. His fingers contracted about the handle of his

bag. He seemed to hurry with the air of some grim wayfarer in the Pilgrim’s Progress, escaping from sights and

sounds poignant with the prophecies of despair.

 

In Cinder Lane, Murchison found the door of No. 10

half open, and a man sitting reading in his shirt-sleeves

in the little front parlor. A significant whimpering came

from the room above, the first faint crying of a new-born

child. A flash of relief passed across Murchison ‘s face.

The sound reprieved him from a possible night-watch

in the stuffy heat of a room that smelled of paraffin,

stale beer, and unwashed clothes.

 

“All over, I think.”

 

The man with the paper rose, removed his clay pipe,

jerked back his chair, and grinned.

 

“Jus’ so, doctor.”

 

“So much the better for every one.”

 

“Lord love you, doctor, I feel as though I’d bin sittin’

on ‘ot coals for ten mortal hours.”

 

Murchison swung his overcoat over a chair, and climbed

the stairs, a half open door showing a band of light blotted

by the shadow of a woman’s head. The proud father returned to his pipe and to his paper and the mug of beer

on the table at his elbow. He looked a mere lad, sickly,

beardless, hatchet - faced, with high shoulders and no

chest. Coal-dust seemed to have been grimed into the

pores of his greasy and wax-white skin.

 

The lad’s smirk was a quaint mixture of pride and

sheepishness when Murchison came down the stairs half

an hour later and congratulated him on the possession of

a son.

 

“Glad it’s over, doctor. ‘Ave a drop?” and he reached

for a clean glass.

 

Murchison’s face hardened.

 

“No, thanks very much. Your wife has come through

it very well.”

 

The man put his paper down and held Murchison’s

overcoat for him.

 

“Well, it’s a mercy, doctor, that it ain’t twins.”

 

“Not a double responsibility, eh?”

 

The lad winked.

 

“Why, there’s a cove bin writin’ in this paper as ‘ow

every man ought t’ have a woppin’ fam’ly. I sh’ld like to

ask ‘im, “ow about the bread and cheese’?”

 

“And the beer, perhaps?”

 

“Ther, doctor, only two bob a week reg’lar. That

ain’t ruination. It’s a bit sweaty down in the coal-‘ole.

I give the missus most of the money.”

 

“So do I,” and Murchison smiled at the lad with something fatherly in his eyes.

 

“You do that, doctor?”

 

“I do.”

 

“Well, there ain’t much mistake in makin* the missus

yer banker when she’s clean and tidy, and looks to a man’s

buttons.”

 

Murchison turned out again into the drizzling rain,

and swung along a dozen dreary streets that resembled

each other much as one curbstone resembles another.

A church clock was striking eleven as he reached a row

of little, red brick villas on the outskirts of the town, with

a dirty piece of waste-land in front and the black canal

behind. He stopped before a gate that bore, as though

in irony, the name “Clovelly.” There was no blue,

boundless Atlantic within glimpse of Wilton town, no

flashing up of golden coast-lines in the sunlight, no towering cliffs piling green foam towards a sapphire sky.

 

The front door opened at the click of the garden gate,

if ten square feet of garden and a gravel-path could be

flattered with the name of a garden. A woman’s figure

stood outlined by the lamp burning in the hall. She was

dressed in a cheap cotton blouse, and skirt of dark-blue

serge, but the clothes looked well on her, better than silks

on the body of another.

 

Her husband’s face drew out of the darkness into the

light. Catherine’s eyes had rested half-questioningly on

it for a moment, the eyes of a woman whose love is ever

on the watch.

 

“I am late, dear,” and he went in with a feeling of

tired relief.

 

They kissed,

 

“Come, your supper is ready. Dear me, what a long

day you have had!” and she glanced at the bag, understanding at once what had kept him to such an hour.

 

“How are the youngsters?”

 

“Asleep since nine.”

 

Catherine took his coat and hat, and put her arm

through his as they went into the little front room together. A coke fire glowed in the diminutive grate, a

saucepan full of soup stood steaming on the trivet. Murchison sat down at the table that was half covered by a

white cloth. At the other end lay his wife’s work-basket,

with a dozen pairs of socks and stockings. Her eyes had

been tired before the opening of the garden gate. Now

they were bright and vital, for love had wiped all weariness away that heroic, quiet love that conquers a thousand sordid trifles.

 

“Saturday is always busy.”

 

“I know,” and she smiled as she poured him out his

soup.

 

“I think we had nearly a hundred people tonight.

Thanks, dear, thanks,” and he touched her hand.

 

Catherine sat down on the sofa, and took up her stockings, seeing that he was tired, too tired to care to talk.

Her woman’s instinct was rarely at a loss, and a tired man

appreciates restfulness in a wife.

 

When he had finished, she rose and drew the solitary

arm-chair before the fire, and brought him his pipe and

his tobacco. Murchison’s face softened. He never lost

the consciousness