A Woman's War - Warwick Deeping (best black authors .TXT) 📗
- Author: Warwick Deeping
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so unbusiness-like a theory. There was more shrewd,
honest, and unflinching truth-telling in Hobbes than in
the vaporings of a flimsy sentimentalism.
Now Mrs. Betty had no more love for a washerwoman
sick with a carbuncle on her neck than she had for an old
and mildewed boot. Poverty and the inevitable sordidness thereof were more than distasteful to her, and yet
she was so far sound in her worldly philosophy as to dissemble her distaste for expediency’s sake. It is never
foolish to be suspected of generosity. And in Roxton,
where the ladies counted one another’s yearly record as
to hats, it was necessary to assume some sort of benignant
attitude towards the heathen or the poor. Betty Steel, as
the leading physician’s wife, recognized the power of
judicious and moral self-advertisement. She had lived
down her mischievous desire to shock the good people
who paid her husband’s pleasant bills. No doubt she
derived some delicate satisfaction from playing the fair
lady in her furs, and from conferring favors on her humbler neighbors. The sense of superiority is always pleasant. That man is a liar who describes himself as utterly
indifferent to obloquy or favor.
Mrs. Betty stopped at a florist’s shop on her way and
bought three bundles of Scilla flowers. The golden
blooms made a kind of splendor beside her sable coat.
Colonel Feveril, Roxton’s most antique dandy, passed as
she returned towards her brougham, and the brisk sweep
of the soldier’s hat saved her the trouble of remembering
her mirror.
At the top of one of the alleys leading to the river, Dr.
Steel’s wife disembarked upon her errand of mercy. A
small boy whipping a top on the narrow sidewalk served
as a porter for the carrying of her jellies. One or two
greasy heads were poked out of the pigeon-holes of windows. Mrs. Betty, demure and sweet as any Dorcas,
knocked at the door of No. 5.
“Good-day, Mrs. Ripstone.”
An elderly woman in a faded blue flannel blouse had
thrust a beak of a nose round the edge of the door.
“Good-day, ma’am.”
The thin, hard face offered no very fulsome welcome.
“How is your husband? Dr. Steel told me yesterday
that he was a little better.”
Mrs. Ripstone’s lethargic eyes rested for a moment on
the small boy carrying the parcels. Mrs. Betty herself
bore the golden flowers.
“Much obliged, ma’am; my ‘usband is doin’ as well as
can be expected. Will you step in? We ain’t particular
tidy.”
Mrs. Betty stepped in, and sat down calmly on a very
rickety chair.
“I have brought you a little soup, and two glasses of
jelly.”
“Much obliged to you, ma’am.”
The two women looked curiously at each other. They
were utterly unlike in any characteristic. Mrs. Betty in
her furs looked like a Russian countess in the hovel of a
peasant.
The room was unconditionally dirty, and smelled of
burned fat. There was nothing to admire in it, nothing
to provide the lady with a subject for enthusiasm.
“I am glad your husband is better, Mrs. Ripstone.”
“Thank you, ma’am.”
The woman in the blue blouse stood stolidly by the
table. Mrs. Betty’s words made no evident impression
on her. It was as though she regarded the visit as a
necessary evil, and was only persuaded to be polite by
such tangible blessings as might accrue.
“Have you any children?”
Mrs. Ripstone stared.
“Ten, ma’am.”
Her brevity was expressive.
“You must be very busy.”
“I am that, ma’am.”
“Are they all grown up?”
“Grow’d up?”
“Yes.”
“Well, ma’am,” and the woman in the blue blouse gave
a peculiar smile, “if you’ll listen you’ll ‘ear the baby
‘ammerin’ a tin pot in the yard.”
The reek of the burned fat began to prove too powerful for Mrs. Betty’s sensitive soul. She and Mrs. Ripstone
seemed out of sympathy. Conversation languished. The
lady, with all her cleverness, was wholly at a loss what to
say next.
Two minutes had passed when Dr. Steel’s wife rose.
She smiled one of her perfunctory smiles at the woman
in the blue blouse, and turned with a rustling petticoat
towards the door.
“I hope your husband will like the soup, Mrs. Ripstone.”
“Thank you, ma’am.”
“Good-afternoon.”
“Good-afternoon, ma’am.”
The woman watched Mrs. Betty to her carriage, and
then closed the door with an expression of rather sour
relief. She turned to the flowers and parcels on the
table, untied the string, and examined the contents.
“Wonder what she’s left ‘em for;” such was Mrs.
Ripstone’s solitary and cynical remark.
In her carriage Mrs. Betty was holding an enamelled
scent-bottle to her nose.
“I wonder why they are so dirty and so reserved,” she
thought; “I don’t think that woman was the least bit
grateful. I don’t like the poor. Anyway, I have done
my duty.”
The west was wreathed with the torn crimson of a
wind-blown sky at sunset when Mrs. Betty drove home
from her essay in almsgiving. St. Antonia’s spire, a
black and slender wedge, seemed to cleave the vastness of the flaming west. The tall elms about the
church were very restless with the wailing of the
wind.
In Parker Steel’s diningroom there was an air of
warmth and luxury, a sense of deep shelter from the blustering melancholy of the dying day. The table was laid
for tea, a silver kettle singing above the spiritlamp, a
plate of hot cakes on the trivet before the piled-up fire.
It was the hour of soft, slanting shadows, and of the wayward yet sleepy flickering of the flames. Betty swept
into the room with the sensuous satisfaction of a cat. The
thick Turkey carpet muffled her footsteps like the moss
of a forest “ride.”
At the window, his figure outlined by the gold and
purple of a fading sky, she saw her husband standing
motionless, his head bent forward over an out-stretched
hand. He appeared to be examining something closely
in the twilight. She could see his keen, clear profile,
intent and a little stern.
“Parker, Parker, the cakes are burning!”
Her husband turned with a start, taken unawares, like
the hero of Wessex in the swineherd’s hut. Betty Steel
had glided towards the fire.
“Preoccupation thy name is man! Parker, quick,
your handkerchief. The dish is as hot as Say something, do.”
Before the glow of the fire she noticed the irritable frown
upon her husband’s face.
“Most worried of men, what is the matter?”
“Matter!”
“Fate cannot touch us, the cakes are saved. Misery,
Parker! Quick, the kettle!”
The silver spout was spouting hot water over Mrs.
Betty’s treasured Japanese tray. Her husband with a
“damn the thing,” turned down the cap of the spiritlamp with a spoon.
“What an infernal fool that girl Symons is!”
Mrs. Betty drew a chair forward with her foot, reached
for the tea-caddy, and glanced whimsically across the
table at her much grieved mate.
“The king did not try to shift the responsibility, Parker.”
Dr. Steel sat down abruptly, with the air of a man in
no mood for persiflage.
“What were you studying so intently?”
“I?”
“Learning palmistry?”
Parker Steel helped himself to one of the hot cakes.
“Oh, nothing,” he said, curtly.
His wife laughed.
“What a retort to give a woman!”
The physician shifted his chair.
“Really, Betty, am I to go into a lengthy dissertation on every trifle because you happen to be inquisitive?”
“Tell me the trifle, and you shall have your tea.”
“I was looking at a chilblain on my finger.”
“What admirable bathos, Parker! I might have taken
you for Hamlet soliloquizing for the last time over Ophelia’s
tokens.”
“Oh, quite possibly,” and he began to sip his tea;
“you have forgotten the sugar. What execrable memories
you women have!”
“DADDY, my head, my head!”
“Lie quiet, little one. Hold her hands, Kate.
Drink it all down, Gwen.”
“I can’t! Daddy, my head, oh, my head!”
Dr. John Tugler, standing before the nursery window,
bit one corner of his mustache, and stared hard at the
chimney of the steam-mill trailing a plume of smoke across
the dull gray of the sky. The monotonous cooing of a
dove came from a wooden cage hung in the back yard of
the next-door house. A hundred yards away an iron
railway bridge crossed the canal, and the thunder of each
passing train made peace impossible in the little villa.
Dr. Tugler pulled down the blind.
“Beast of a back room,” he thought; “they must wring
the neck of that confounded bird.”
He turned, and stood looking in silence at the two
figures bending over the little bed. Catherine had one
arm under the child’s head, and was smoothing back the
hair from Gwen’s forehead. The child’s eyes were closed,
her face flushed. Tugler saw her turn restlessly from her
mother’s arm, as though the least touch was feverishly
resented.
“Don’t, don’t—”
“There, dear, there!”
The look in the mother’s eyes betrayed how sharply
such an innocent repulse could wound.
“Come, Gwen, darling.”
“I should let her rest, dear.”
Murchison’s voice was peculiarly quiet. He was standing at the foot of the bed, bending forward a little over
the bar, his eyes fixed on the face of the child.
Dr. Tugler moved softly from the window. His habitual bluster had disappeared completely. His full blue
eyes looked dull and puzzled.
“Not much of a room this,” he said, apologetically,
touching Murchison’s elbow.
The father turned and looked at him with the slow and
almost stupid stare of a man suffering from shock.
“I suppose it isn’t.”
“We can move her to the front room.”
Catherine had caught John Tugler’s meaning. She
was kneeling beside the bed, her eyes fixed on the little
man’s plebeian but good-natured face.
“Move her, Mrs. Murchison.”
“At once?”
“Yes. She must be kept absolutely quiet; no light, no
noise.”
Catherine looked at him almost helplessly. A train
was clanging over the iron bridge, and the caged dove
cooed irrepressibly, a living symbol of vexatious sentimentalism.
“There will be less noise in the front room.”
Her husband nodded.
“We can have straw put down.”
“And tell the next-door people to strangle that confounded pigeon.”
“I will ask them.”
“And remember, no light.”
A shrill cry came from the sick child’s lips, as though
driven from her by some sudden flaring up of pain.
“My head, my head! Muvver—”
Catherine’s hands flashed out to Gwen, hovering, as
though fearing to touch the fragile thing she loved. She
tried to soothe the child, a woman whose wounded tenderness overflowed in a flood of broken and disjointed words.
Her husband watched her, his firm mouth loosened into
a mute and poignant tremor of distress.
Tugler touched him on the shoulder.
“Let’s go down.”
Murchison straightened, and followed the doctor to
the door. He looked back for a moment, and saw Catherine’s head, a dull gleam of gold above the child’s flushed
face. A strange shock of awe ran through him, like the
deep in-drawing of a breath before some picture that tells
of tears. His vision blurred as he closed the door, and
followed John Tugler slowly down the stairs.
Both men were silent for a moment in the little front
room of
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