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

the

hopeless chapel bell. A gray sky merging into a wet,

gray landscape. In the valley Wilton, prostrate under

mist and smoke.

 

James Murchison, standing bareheaded before Gwen’s

grave, gazed at the wet turf with the eyes of a man who

saw more beneath it than mere lifeless clay. There was

nothing of rebellion in the pose of the tall figure rather,

the slight stoop of one poring over some rare book with

the reverence of him who reads to learn.

 

For Catherine there was no consciousness of penance

as she stood beside him, silent and distant-eyed. Her

hands were clasped together under her cloak. She stood

as one waiting, heart heavy, yet ready to awake to the

new life that opens even for those who grieve.

 

There were not a few such groups scattered about this

upland burial-ground, colorless, subdued figures seen

dimly through the drizzling mist of rain. Quite near to

Murchison a working-man was arranging a few flowers

in a large white jam-pot; the grave, by the name on the

headstone, was the grave of his wife. A few children,

who had wandered up to see some funeral, were playing

“touch wood” between the aspens of the main walk.

There was an irresponsible callousness in their shrill,

slum-hardened voices. To them this place of Death was

but a field to play in.

 

Murchison had turned from Gwen’s grave, and was

looking at his wife. There seemed some bond more

sacred between them now that they had shared both life

and death in the body of their child.

 

“You are cold, dear.”

 

He touched her cheek with his hand as he turned up

the collar of her cloak. Her hair was wet and a-glisten

with the rain, her face cold like the face of one fresh from

the breath of an autumn sea.

 

“Only my skin.”

 

“The wind is keen, though. It is time we turned back

home.”

 

“Yes.”

 

“Good-bye, my child.”

 

He spoke the words in a whisper as they moved away

from the corner.

 

Before them, seen dimly through a haze of rain, lay

the colliery town, a vague splash of darkness in the valley. Here and there a tall chimney stood trailing smoke,

or the faint glow of a fire gave a thin opalescence to the

shell of mist. Sounds, faint and far, yet full of the significance of labor, drifted up the bleak slopes of the hillside, like the sounds from ships sailing a foggy sea. The

rattle of a train, the shriek of a steam-whistle, the slow

strokes of some great clock striking the hour.

 

James Murchison’s eyes were fixed upon this town beside the pit mouths, this pool of poverty and toil, where

the eddies of effort never ceased upon the surface. It

was strange to him, this colliery town, and yet familiar.

Always would his manhood yearn towards it because of

the dear dead, even though its memories were hateful to

him, full of the bitterness of ignominy and pain.

 

Gwen’s death had come to Murchison as a sudden

silence, a strange void in the hurrying entities of life. It

was as though the passing of this child had changed the

phenomena of existence for him, and given a new rhythm

to the pulse of Time. He had become aware of a new

setting to life, even as a man who has walked the same

road day by day discovers on some winter dawn a fresh

and unearthly beauty in the scene. He felt an unsolved

newness in his being, a solemnity such as those who have

looked upon the dead must feel. And no strong nature

can pass through such a phase without creating inward

energy and power. Sorrow, like winter, may be but a

season of repose, troubled and drear perhaps, but moving

towards the miracle of spring.

 

Wilton cemetery, with its zincroofed chapel, its yellow

walls and iron gates, lay behind them, while the dim

horizon ran in a gray blur along the hills. Husband and

wife walked for a time in silence, for each had a burden

of deep thought to bear.

 

It was the man who spoke first, quietly, and with restraint, and yet with something of the fierce spirit of an

outcast Cain visible upon his face.

 

“I have been thinking of what I said to you last

night.”

 

She was looking at him with a brave clearness of the

eyes.

 

“I suppose sensible people would call such a venture

mad.”

 

“We are often strongest, dear, when we are most mad.”

 

He swung on beside her, his eyes at gaze.

 

“The madness of a forlorn hope. No, it is not that.

I have not any of the impudence of the adventurer. It

is something more solemn, more grim, more for a final

end.”

 

“Beloved, I understand.”

 

“Are you not afraid for me?”

 

“No, no.”

 

She put her hand under his arm.

 

“God give us both courage, dear,” she said.

 

They had reached the outskirts of Wilton, and the

ugliness of the place was less visible in these outworks

of the town. The streets had something of the quaintness of antiquity about them, for this was a part of the

real Wilton, an old English townlet that had been gripped

and strangled by the decapod of the pits.

 

“About your mother’s money, Kate.”

 

The rumble of a passing van compelled silence for a

moment.

 

“You must retain the whole control.”

 

“I?”

 

“Yes.”

 

He heard a woman’s unwillingness in her voice.

 

“It is my wish, dear. I shall need a certain sum to

start with, but my life-insurance can be made a security

for that.”

 

“James!”

 

Her face reproached him.

 

“Are we so little married that what is mine is not yours

also?”

 

“It is because you are my wife, Kate, that I consider

these things. Your mother was wise, though her instructions do not flatter me. Legally, I cannot touch a

single penny.”

 

She looked troubled, and a little impatient.

 

“I shall hate the money if no, I don’t mean that.

But, dear,” and she drew very close to him in the twilight

of the streets, “it will make no difference. You will not

feel?”

 

“Feel, Kate?”

 

“That it is mine, and not yours. You know, dear,

what I mean. I don’t want to think to think that you

will feel as though you had to ask.”

 

They looked, man and wife, into each other’s eyes.

 

“I shall ask, Kate, because—”

 

“Because?”

 

“You are what you are. It will not hurt me to remember that the stuff is yours.”

 

Now, quite an hour ago a battered and moth-eaten cab

had deposited a stout lady on the doorstep of Clovelly.

The stout lady had a round white face that beamed sympathetically from under the arch of a rather grotesque

bonnet. A girl, hired for the month, and dressed in a

makeshift black frock, had opened the door three inches

to Miss Carmagee. There had been a confidential discussion between these two, the girl letting the gap between

door and door-post increase before the lady in the grotesque bonnet. The doctor and the “missus” were out,

and Master Jack having tea at a friend’s house in the

next street. So much Miss Carmagee had learned before

she had been admitted to the little front room.

 

It was quite dusk when Catherine and her husband

turned in at the garden gate. The blinds were down, the

gas lit. Murchison opened the front door with his key,

remembering, as he ever remembered, the golden head

that would shine no more for him in that diminutive,

dreary house.

 

He was hanging his coat on a peg in the passage, when

he heard a sharp cry from Catherine, who had entered

the front room. There was the rustling of skirts, the sound

of an inarticulate greeting between two eager friends.

 

No one could have doubted Miss Carmagee’s solid

identity. She was resting her hands on Catherine’s

shoulders. They had kissed each other like mother and

child.

 

“Why, when did you come? We had no letter. James,

James—”

 

Murchison found them holding hands. There were

tears in Miss Carmagee’s mild blue eyes. Warned of

her coming, he might have shirked the meeting with the

pride of a man too sensitive towards the past. But Miss

Carmagee in the flesh, motherly and very gentle, with

Catherine’s kisses warm upon her face, stood for nothing

that was critical, or chilling to the heart.

 

He met her with open hands.

 

“You have taken us by surprise.”

 

Miss Phyllis ‘s eyes were on the sad, memory-shadowed

face.

 

“I had to come,” and her voice failed her a little. “I

sha’n’t worry you; we are old friends.”

 

She put up her benign and ugly face, as though the

privilege of a mother belonged to her by nature.

 

“I have felt it all so much.”

 

A flash of infinite yearning leaped up and passed in the

man’s eyes.

 

“You must be tired,” he said, clinging to commonplaces. “Have they sent your luggage up?”

 

Miss Carmagee sank into a chair.

 

“I left it at the hotel. I’m not going to be a

worry.”

 

“Worry!”

 

“Of course not, child.”

 

“Oh but we must have you here. James—”

 

“My dear,” and the substantial nature of the old lady’s

person seemed to become evident, “I insist on sleeping

there tonight. Now, humor me, or I shall feel myself

a nuisance.”

 

Miss Carmagee’s solidity of will made her contention

impregnable. Moreover, the common - sense view she

took of the matter boasted a large element of discretion.

People who live in a small house on one hundred and

sixty pounds a year cannot be expected to be prepared

for social emergencies. Even a philosopher is limited

by the contents of his larder, and Miss Carmagee was one

of those excellent women whose philosophy takes note

of the trivial things of life pots, pans, and linen, the cold

end of mutton, a rice-pudding to supply three. It is truly

regrettable that a man’s Promethean spirit should be

bound down by such contemptible trifles. Yet a tactful

refusal to share a suet-pudding may be worth more than

the wittiest epigram ever made.

 

Miss Carmagee and Catherine spent an hour alone

together that evening, for Murchison had patients waiting for him at Dr. Tugler’s surgery in Wilton High Street.

Master Jack had returned from his tea-party, to be

hugged, presented with a box of soldiers, a clasp-knife,

and a prayerbook, and then hurried off to bed. The soldiers and the knife shared the sheets with him; the prayerbook (amiable aunts forgive!) was left derelict under an

arm-chair.

 

But the great event that night for these two women,

such contrasts and yet so alike in the deeper things of

the soul, came with that communing together before the

fire, the lights turned low, the room in shadow. It was

somewhile before Miss Carmagee approached the purpose that had brought her across England with bag

and baggage. She was a woman of tact, and it is not

easy to be a partisan at times without wounding those

whom we wish to help.

 

The elder woman had hardly broached the subject,

before Catherine, sitting on a cushion beside Miss Carmagee’s chair, turned from the fire-light with an eager

lifting of the head.

 

“Why, it was only yesterday that James spoke to me

of such a plan.”

 

“To return to us?”

 

“Yes, and win back what he lost.”

 

Miss Carmagee saw her way more clearly.

 

“You know, child, you have many friends.”

 

“I?”