A Woman's War - Warwick Deeping (best black authors .TXT) 📗
- Author: Warwick Deeping
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“You are silly, Jack!”
“Shut up.”
“Muvver’s tired.”
Reproof from a supposed inferior is never particularly
welcome. Jack made a clutch at his sister’s doll, landed
it by one leg, and proceeded to dangle it head downward
before the fire.
“Jack Jack don’t!”
The boy chuckled like a tyrant as Gwen, peevish and
hypersensitive, burst into a flood of tears. Catherine,
who had turned back into the kitchen, reappeared in time
to rescue the doll from being melted.
“Jack, I am ashamed of you.”
She took the doll from him, and went to the window to
comfort Gwen. John Murchison, conscious of humiliation, adopted an attitude of aggressive scorn.
“Silly old doll.”
“Jack, go up to the nursery.”
“I shan’t.”
His courage melted rather abruptly, however, before the
look upon his mother’s face. He retreated at his leisure,
climbed the stairs slowly, whistling as he went, and kicking the banisters with the toes of his boots.
A grieved voice reached Catherine from the halt-dark
landing.
“Mother?”
“Yes.”
“Why can’t we go to the pantomime?”
“Go into the nursery, dear, and don’t grumble.”
“Bert Smith’s going. I call it a beastly shame.”
“Jack, if you say another word I shall send you to
bed.”
Five minutes had hardly elapsed before Catherine heard
her husband’s footsteps on the path, and the rattle of his
latchkey in the lock. In the front room he found poor
Gwen still sobbing spasmodically in her mother’s arms.
The sight damped the glow on Murchison’s face.
“Hallo, what’s the matter?” and the anxious lines came
back in his forehead.
“Nothing, dear, nothing.”
“Why, little one, what is it?”
Catherine surrendered her place to him. Murchison’s
arms went round the child. Gwen, though struggling to
be brave, broke out again into uncontrollable and helpless
weeping.
“I—I’s tired, father.”
“Tired! there, there! You must not cry like this,” and
the big man’s face was a study in troubled tenderness.
“What has upset her, Kate?”
He looked at his wife.
“Jack has been teasing her.”
“The young scoundrel.”
“The boy’s in one of his trying moods.” And she
could find no more to say against her son.
Gwen grew comforted in her father’s arms. Yet to
this man who had learned to watch the faces of the sick,
there was something ominous in the child’s half-fretful
eyes, in the way she flushed, and in the hurrying of her
heart. He felt her hands; they were hot and feverish.
Husband and wife looked at each other.
“Tired, little one, eh?”
“Yes, very tired.”
She lay with her head on her father’s shoulder, looking
with large, languid eyes up into his face.
“By-bye time for little girls who are going to see ‘Puss
in Boots’ tomorrow.”
Gwen’s eyes brightened a little; her hands held the
lappets of her father’s coat-collar.
“Oh daddy!”
Murchison felt in his pocket and drew out the envelope with the yellow tickets.
“So you would like to see ‘Puss in Boots’?”
“Yes, oh yes.”
“Little girls who go to pantomimes must go to bed
early. Shall daddy carry you up-stairs?”
A tired but ecstatic sigh accepted the condition. Murchison lifted the child, kissed her, and smiled sadly at his
wife.
“What about your unregenerate son?”
Catherine turned, and called to Jack, who was listening
at the nursery door.
“Jack, dear, you may come down.”
A clatter of feet pounded down the stairs.
“Quiet, dear, quiet.”
“Daddy, Bert Smith’s going to the pantomime.”
“He is, is he? Well, so are we.”
“To ‘Puss in Boots’?”
“Yes, if a certain young gentleman is good.”
Jack gave a shout of triumph, kissed Gwen, and skipped
round the room as Murchison went out with his daughter
in his arms.
The boy ran to Catherine, and jumped up to her embrace.
“I’m sorry, mother,” and his bright face vanquished
her.
“Sorry, Jack?”
“I tore my knickers.”
And Catherine took the confession in the spirit that it
was given.
THOUGH the most agile of mock cats cut capers behind the foot-lights, and though forty fairies in green
and crimson fluttered their gauzy wings under the pasteboard trees, Gwen Murchison sat silent and solemn-eyed
beside her father, while her brother shouted over the
vagaries of Selina the Cook. The glitter, the kaleidoscopic color, the gaudy incidentalism of the mummery
could charm only a transient light into Gwen’s eyes. She
sat beside Murchison, with one hot hand in his, her face
shining like a white flower out of the depths of the crowded
balcony.
“Daddy, I’m so tired.”
They were in the theatre arcade with a great electric
light blazing above their heads. People were pouring
from the vestibule. A line of trams and cabs waited in
the roadway to drain the human flood streaming out into
the night.
“Tired, little one?”
“So tired, daddy! My head, it does ache.”
Under the glare of the electric arc Murchison’s face
had a haggard look as he took Gwen up like a baby in
his arms. Jack was hanging to his mother’s hand, garrulous and ecstatic, a slab of warm chocolate browning
his ringers.
“Let’s go in the tram, mother.”
Catherine was following her husband’s powerful figure,
as he pushed through the crowd with Gwen lying in his
arms. Murchison had hailed a cab, a luxury that he had
not allowed himself for many a long week. The wife
caught a glimpse of her husband’s face as he turned to
her. There was something in his eyes that made her
look at Gwen.
“I say, daddy, how that old—”
“Quiet, dear, quiet.”
The boy’s shrill voice died down abruptly. He looked
puzzled, and a little offended, and began cramming chocolate into his mouth. Murchison had opened the cab
door.
“Gwen?”
Catherine’s eyes interrogated her husband.
“Get in, dear; can you take her from me? The child
is dead tired.”
Gwen appeared half asleep. Her eyes opened vaguely
as her father lifted her into the cab.
“My head aches, muvver.”
“Does it, dear?” and Catherine’s arms drew close
about her; “we shall soon be home.”
“In with you, Jack.”
The boy scrambled into a corner, fidgeted to and fro,
and stared at his mother. Murchison followed him, closing the door gently, and putting up both windows, for the
night was raw and cold. The cab rumbled away over
the Wilton cobbles, the windows clattering like castanets,
the light from the street-lamps flashing in rhythmically
upon the faces of Catherine and her children. Murchison had sunk into his corner with a heavy sigh. The
cab had a sense of smothering confinement for him. With
the crunching wheels and the chattering windows, he was
too conscious, through the oppressive restlessness of it all,
of Gwen’s tired and apathetic face.
“Don’t, Jack, don’t”
The child stirred in her mother’s arms with a peevish
cry. Her brother, who had devoured his chocolate, had
squirmed forward to tickle his sister’s legs.
“Sit still.”
Murchison’s voice was fierce in its suppressed impatience. Jack crumbled into his corner, while his
mother soothed Gwen and stroked her hair. A distant
church clock chimed the quarter as the cab turned a
corner slowly, and stopped before the blank-faced villa.
Murchison climbed out and took Gwen from his wife’s
arms. He unlocked the door, and laid the child on the
sofa by the window, before returning to pay the man his
fare.
“How much?”
“Two bob, sir.”
Murchison felt in his pockets, and brought out a shilling, a sixpence, and two halfpennies. The little cashbox in Catherine’s desk had to be unlocked before the cab
rattled away, leaving a solitary candle burning in the front
room of Clovelly.
In half an hour the two children were in bed; Gwen
feverish, restless, Jack reduced to silence by his father’s
quiet but unquestionable authority. Murchison examined Gwen anxiously as she lay with her curls gathered
up by a blue ribbon. He made her up a light draught of
bromide, sweetened it with sugar, and persuaded the
child to drink it down. Master Jack Murchison was
ordered to lie as quiet as a mouse. Then Catherine and
her husband went down to a plain and rather dismal supper, cold boiled mutton, rice-pudding, bread and cheese.
When the meal was over, Catherine glided up-stairs to
look at Gwen. She found both children asleep. Jack
curled up like a puppy, the girl flushed, but breathing
peacefully. In the diningroom Murchison had drawn
an arm-chair before the fire, and was stirring the dull coal
into a blaze. He glanced uneasily over his shoulder as he
heard his wife’s step upon the threshold. Catherine was
struck by his lined and thoughtful face.
“Well?”
“Both asleep.”
Her husband continued to stir the fire, his eyes catching a restless gleam from the wayward flicker of the
flames.
“I am bothered about the child, Kate.”
“Yes.”
She turned a chair from the table.
“This last month—”
“You have noticed the change?”
“Yes, dear.”
“So have I.”
He rested his elbows on his knees, and sat close over
the fire, moving the poker to and fro as though beating
time.
“She has lost flesh and color. There is a swollen gland
in the neck, too. This beast of a town, I suppose, with
its dirt and smoke. Thank God, the boy seems fit enough.
He spoke slowly, yet with an emphatic curtness that
might have suggested lack of feeling to a sentimentalist.
Catherine sat in silence, watching him with troubled eyes.
“Do you suspect anything?”
“Suspect?”
He turned sharply, and she could see the nervous
twitching of his brows.
“Anything serious? Oh James, don’t keep me in
ignorance.”
She slipped from her chair, and sat down beside him on
the hearth-rug, leaning against his knees.
“The child is out of health, dear. It may mean anything or nothing. I am wondering” and he stopped
with a tired sigh “whether we can give her a change of
air.
“Dear, why not?”
She met his eyes, and colored.
“That is”
“If we can find the money.”
Catherine pretended not to notice the humiliating bitterness in his voice.
“It can be managed. I think mother would take Gwen.
I’m sure she would take her.”
Murchison smiled the unpleasant, cynical smile of a
man unwilling to ask a favor.
“Grandparents are always more merciful to their
grandchildren,” he said; “I suppose because there is less
responsibility.”
Catherine reached for his hand, and drew it down into
her bosom.
“I will write at once, James, if you are willing.”
“I have no right to object.”
“Object!”
“Beggars are not choosers.”
“James, don’t.”
“I realize my position, dear, and I accept it as a law
of nature.”
Her face, wistful with a wealth of unshed tears, appealed to him for mercy towards himself.
“Don’t let us talk of it. Oh, James, why should we?
Then, I may write to mother?”
“Yes.”
She knelt up and kissed him.
“Beloved, if Gwen should die!”
Life was a somewhat monotonous affair at Dr. Tugler’s
dispensary. Method was essential to the management
of such a business, for there was more of the commercial
enterprise in Dr. Tugler’s profession than a wilful idealist
could have wished. Surgery hours began at eight, and
Dr. Tugler’s was a punctual
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