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

CHAPTER XXI

FAILURE is bitter enough in itself to a man of energy

and strength of purpose, but more bitter still are

the humiliations and the sufferings that failure may impose on those he loves.

 

Reputation, resources, his very home, had been swallowed up, but in Murchison there was that dogged northern spirit, that stubborn uplift against odds, that is at its

strongest when confronted with defeat. Like a man

brought to the edge of a black cliff at night, he had looked

down grimly into the depths, depths that waited not for

him alone, but for the innocent children who held his

hands.

 

As a cheap assistant in a colliery town, James Murchison had joined issue with his own unfitness for the ordeal

of life. A tight-mouthed and rather silent man, he had

entered upon the rebuilding of his selfrespect with the

dogged patience of a Titan. The little, red brick villa,

with the dirty piece of waste land in front and the black

canal behind, might have suggested no stage for heroic

drama to the casual eyes of Murchison’s neighbors. The

big, brownfaced man stalked to and fro to work, quiet

and unobtrusive, a figure that was soon familiar to most

of the middle-class people who lived on either side. He

seemed one of those many mortals who move through

life without a history, an ant in an ant world, busy, monotonously busy, earning his paltry pounds a week, without

glamour, and without fame.

 

Man suffers most in seeing those dear to him in suffering, and the tragic tones of life are caught from the lips

of those he loves. The wounds of a wife or of a child are

open in the heart of the husband or father. Remorse or

self-accusation, if there be cause for such a feeling, is as

the vinegar on the sponge to the man crucified by his own

sin. One has but to come in contact with the material

side of civilization to discover how desperately sordid this

twentieth-century life can be. How great the contrast

was between Roxton lying amid its woods and meadows,

and the dismal colliery town, Murchison, as a father,

realized too soon. The one smelled of the fresh earth,

primal and invigorating; the other of soap-works, soot,

cabbage-water, and rancid oil. In Roxton the mortality

was low; in the colliery town hundreds of infants died

yearly before they were four weeks old.

 

Such realism, the vivid heritage of thousands, might

well make a man go grimly through life, the burden of

care very heavy on his shoulders.

 

To watch a wife’s face fade, despite her courage, poverty and sorrow bringing weariness to the serenest eyes.

 

To know that drudgery burdens the dear life of the

home.

 

To watch the lapsing of a child from sheer health

into sickness, the beautiful aliveness vanishing, the bloom

marred like the bloom on handled fruit.

 

The consciousness of dependence and obligation, the

receiving of brusque instructions from a man of cheap

and vulgar fibre.

 

Sordid surroundings, sordid neighbors, an utter dearth

of friends.

 

Work, eternal work, day in, day out; no Sabbath rest,

no time for home life, no money to give joy to those most

dear.

 

A vivid ghost past following, like a shadow.

 

A dim and unflattering future before the eyes, a future

darkened by the prophetic dread of leaving wife and

children alone in a selfish world.

 

Such were the realities that filled James Murchison’s

sphere of consciousness, realities that were responsible

for many a sleepless night.

 

It was the afternoon of a February day when Murchison stopped before the theatre in Wilton High Street, for

the colliery town delighted in melodrama, and pulling

out a pigskin purse, examined the contents with critical

consideration. He had saved a few shillings by stinting

himself in tobacco, and in his daily lunch at a cheap

eating - house near Dr. Tugler’s surgery. The pantomime “Puss in Boots,” was still running at the theatre,

and at the box-office Murchison bought four tickets for

the upper circle.

 

In the old days the children had gone up yearly to

Drury Lane, and Master Jack had been making many

allusions to the gaudy “posters” covering a hoarding

near the row of red brick villas. More than once the

boy’s thoughtless words had hurt the father’s heart. It

was chiefly of Gwen that Murchison thought as he thrust

the envelope with its yellow slips into his breastpocket.

 

At Clovelly, Catherine, her sleeves turned up, stood in

the little back kitchen making a suet - pudding. The

Murchisons had dispensed with a servant because of the

expense, for their income had practically no margin, and

money had to be scraped together to pay the yearly dividend on the husband’s life-insurance. Catherine’s mother,

a somewhat stern, pious, and bedridden old lady, living

in a respectable south-coast town, allowed her daughter a

small sum each year. Mrs. Pentherby was the possessor

of a comfortable income, but suffered from a meanness

of mind and a severity of prejudice that had made her

rather merciless to Murchison in the hour of his misfortune. Such money as she sent was to be spent “solely on the children.” Catherine’s face had often reddened

over the contents of her mother’s drastic and didactic

letters. Her love and her loyalty were hurt by the old

lady’s blunt and Puritanical advice. As for James Murchison, he had too much pride to ever dream of touching

Mrs. Pentherby’s “ear-marked” donations to his children.

 

On several occasions a five-pound note had reached

Clovelly anonymously from another quarter. Murchison had suspected Porteus Carmagee of this noiseless

generosity, but he had been unable to discover whence

the money came. The little lawyer of Lombard Street

alone knew how the phenomenal damages accorded to

Mrs. Baxter by a sentimental jury had swept away all

Murchison’s savings, and even the money realized by

the sale of his furniture and his car. Yet these five-pound

notes were always placed in Catherine’s hands, to be deposited in the post-office savings-bank in Gwendolen

Murchison’s name. At Christmas a huge hamper had

reached them from Roxton, a hamper whose bulk had

symbolized the abundant kindness of Miss Carmagee ‘s

virgin heart. Friends in adversity are friends worthy of

honor, and Miss Carmagee, good woman, had packed the

hamper with her own fat and generous hands.

 

Catherine, her fore-arms white with flour, stood in the

little back kitchen, tying a piece of cloth over the puddingbowl before sinking it in the steaming saucepan on the

fire. The winter day was drawing towards twilight.

Mists hung over the black canal. Through the windows

could be seen the zinc roofs of a number of storage sheds

attached to the buildings of a steam-mill.

 

In the front parlor the horse-hair sofa had been drawn

beneath the window, and Gwen, her golden head on a

faded blue cushion, lay, trying a new frock on a great

wax doll. The child’s eyes looked big and strange in her

pale face, and the blue veins showed through the pearly

skin. Apathy in a child is pathetic in its unnaturalness,

the more so when the sparkle of health has but lately left

the eager eyes. Gwen had whitened like a plant deprived

of life. Her black-socked legs were no longer brown and

chubby. She had the unanimated and drooping look of

a child languid under the spell of some insidious disease.

 

The garden gate closed with a clash as Master Jack

came crunching up the gravel-path, swinging his ragged

school-books at the end of a strap. He grimaced at

Gwen, and rang the bell with the cheerful verve of youth,

for John Murchison was a sturdy ragamuffin, capable of

adapting himself to changed surroundings. The young

male is a creature of mental resilience and resource.

Toys were fewer, puddings plainer, parties unknown.

But a boy can find treasures in a rubbish heap and mystery in the dirty waters of a canal.

 

Master Jack’s return from school was usually a noisy

incident. He appeared loud and emphatic, an infallible

autocrat of eight.

 

“I say I’m hungry.”

 

Bang went the books into a corner of the hall. For

the hundredth time Catherine reproved her son, and insisted on Master Jack’s “primers” being put in order on

the proper shelf. The boy, much under compulsion,

stooped for those battered symbols of civilization, disclosing in the act a disastrous rent in his blue serge

knickers.

 

“Jack, dear, what have you been doing to your clothes?”

 

“What clothes, mother?”

 

The boy’s innocent yet subtle obtuseness did not save

him from further catechisation.

 

“I only mended your knickers yesterday, Jack, and

they were new last month.”

 

“My knickers, mother!”

 

“What have you been doing?”

 

Master Jack passed a hypocritical hand over a certain

region.

 

“Lor!”

 

“Don’t say ‘lor,’ dear.”

 

“Well, I never! I was only climbin’with Bert Smith.”

 

“You don’t think, Jack, that clothes cost money.”

 

It was perfectly plain that no such thought ever entered Jack Murchison’s head. Children are serenely insensible to the worries of their elders, and, moreover,

Master Jack had at the moment a grievance of his

own.

 

“Bert Smith’s going to the pantomime,” and he pushed

past his mother into the front room, swinging his books.

 

“Jack, be careful!”

 

“Why don’t we go to the pantomime? It’s a beastly

shame!”

 

Catherine’s lips quivered almost imperceptibly. The

blatant self-assertiveness of boyhood hurt her, as the

thoughtless grumblings of a child must often hurt a

mother.

 

“Put those books down, dear, and go and change your

knickers.”

 

Jack obeyed, if swinging the books into a corner could

be called obedience. Catherine restrained a gesture of

impatience. Gwen, lying on the sofa, winced at the clatter as though morbidly sensitive