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

and turmoil of it all, John Tugler’s red face

shone out with a redeeming exuberance of good-will.

 

“Good-bye.”

 

Murchison was leaning from the window, and the two

men shook hands.

 

“Good luck to you.”

 

“Thanks. You have been very good to us. We shall

not forget it.”

 

“Bosh, man, bosh!” and John Tugler gave Catherine

a final flourish of his hat.

 

The train was on the move, but Murchison still leaned

from the window, to the exclusion of his excited and irrepressible son. We grow fond of people who have

stood by us in trouble, and John Tugler, bumptious and

money-making mortal that he was, carried many generous impulses under his gorgeous waistcoat. The gift of

sympathy covers a multitude of imperfections, for the

heart craves bread and wine from others, and not the

philosopher’s stone.

 

Interminable barriers of brick, back yards, sour, rubbish-ridden gardens were gliding by. Factories with

their tall chimneys, the minarets of labor, stood out above

the crowded grayness of the monotonous streets. Hardly a tree, and not an acre of green grass, in Wilton. It

was as though nature had cursed the place, and left it

no symbol of the season, no passing pageantry of summer,

autumn, or of spring.

 

Catherine had kept Jack by her side, and the boy was

kneeling on the seat and looking out of the window.

She felt that her husband was in no mood for the child’s

chattering. In leaving Wilton he was leaving a poignant

part of reality behind, to enter upon a life that should

try the strength of his manhood as a bowman tries a

bow.

 

An old lady and a consumptive clerk were their only

fellow-travellers. Murchison had chosen a corner whose

window looked towards the west, and an intense and determined face it was that stared out over the ugliness of

Wilton town. Houses had given place to market-gardens,

acres of cabbages, flat, dismal, and dotted with zincroofed sheds. Beyond came the slow, sad heave of the

Wilton hills, and, seen dimly white specks upon the

hillside the crowded headstones where the dead slept.

 

The eyes of husband and wife met for a moment. They

smiled at each other with the wistful cheerfulness of two

people who have determined to be brave, a pathetic pretence hardly created to deceive. Moroseness need not

testify deep feeling. The gleam from between the clouds

turns even the wet clouds to gold.

 

Jack Murchison was watching a couple of colts cantering across a field beside the line.

 

“Mother, look at the old horses.”

 

“Yes, dear.”

 

“Silly old things. They’re making that old cow run.

The brown one’s like Wellington, the horse we had before dad bought the car.”

 

“So it is, dear.”

 

“P’r’aps it is Wellington?”

 

“No, dear, Wellington must be dead by now.”

 

The old lady in the opposing corner was looking at

Jack over her spectacles, and the boy took to returning

the stare with the inimitable composure of youth. Catherine had turned again towards the other window, but the

white headstones no longer checkered the hillside. Instead, she saw her husband’s profile, stern and determined,

yet infinitely sad.

 

Life has been described as a series of sensations; and

though some days are dull and passionless, others vibrate

with a thousand waves of feeling. To Murchison the day

had been crowded with sensation since the break of dawn.

It was a day of disruption, a plucking up of routine from

the soil, a change of attitude that concerned the soul even

more than the body. He yearned towards Wilton, and

yet fled from it with gratitude; his old home called to him,

and yet he dreaded it as a disgraced man might fear the

shocked faces of familiar friends. It was a day of unrest,

self-judgment, and great forethought for him. The

physical atoms seemed to tremble and vibrate, till the

manhood in him might have been likened to a tremulous

vapor. He could eat nothing, fix his mind on nothing.

Even the sagging wires, coming and going as the train

swept from pole to pole, were not unsymbolical of his

thoughts.

 

Two hundred miles, with an hour’s wait in London,

and the monotonous Midlands gave place to the more

mysterious and dreamy south. Pine-crowned hills, great

oaks and beeches purpling the villages, the blue distance

of a more magical horizon. In orchards and meadows

the infinite glamour of a golden spring. Quiet rivers curling through the mists of green. In many a park the

stately spruce built sombre, windless thickets; larches

glimmered with Scotch firs red-throated towards the west.

Trees in whispering and triumphant multitudes. Quiet,

dreamy meadows where the willows waved. Mysterious

Isles of Avalon imaginable towards the setting sun.

 

Murchison, leaning back in his corner, watched for the

pine woods about Roxton town with a deep commingling

of yearning and of dread. It was to be a home-coming,

and yet what a home-coming! The return of a prodigal,

but no cringing prodigal; the return of a man, stiff-necked

and square-jawed, ready to fight but not to conciliate.

There was something of the tense expectancy of the hour

before the bugles blow the assault. Every nerve in Murchison’s body tingled.

 

The boy Jack was jumping from foot to foot at the

other window.

 

“Look, mother, look, there’s old Mr. Tomkin’s farm!

And there’s the river. Look and the kingcups are out!

Gwen used to call ‘em—”

 

He stopped suddenly, for his mother had drawn him

to her and smothered the words with her mouth.

 

“You take care of the rugs and umbrellas, dear.”

 

“Yes. Shall I get ‘em down?”

 

“In a minute. Sit still, dear, and don’t worry.”

 

She looked across quickly at her husband. Their eyes

met. He was pale, but he smiled at her.

 

“Here we are, at last.”

 

“At last.”

 

Both felt that the ordeal had begun.

 

They let the boy lean out of the open window as the

train ran in and slowed up beside the platform. Porteus

Carmagee and his sister were waiting by the door of the

booking-office. Jack sighted them and waved a salute,

their coach running far beyond the office, for they were

in the forepart of the train.

 

Murchison was the first out of the carriage. He lifted

the boy down, and stood waiting to help his wife with

some of her parcels.

 

“Luggage, sir?”

 

Murchison turned, and stared straight into the face of

one of his old patients. The man looked at him blankly

for a moment before recognition dawned upon his face.

 

“Good-day, doctor. Didn’t know you, sir, at first,”

and he touched his cap.

 

Murchison’s upper lip was stiff. He looked like one

who had come to judge rather than to be judged.

 

“Get my luggage out, Johnson. Three trunks, a

Gladstone, hat-box, and two wooden cases.”

 

“Yes, sir.”

 

The man was polite, though ready to be inquisitive.

 

“Glad to see you again in Roxton, sir.”

 

“Thanks.”

 

“Cab, sir? There’s Timmins’s fly.”

 

“Yes, that will do.”

 

Murchison turned abruptly from the porter to find Miss

 

Carmagee and Catherine kissing, and Jack tugging at his

godfather’s hands. It was Porteus in a new Panama

hat, whose whiteness made his face look brown as an

Asiatic’s.

 

“Ah, my dear Murchison, ten minutes late; beast of a

line this.”

 

“It was good of you to come.”

 

“Eh, what? not a bit of it. Where’s your luggage? I

abhor stations; can’t talk in comfort. This imp of darkness can come along with us.”

 

An unprejudiced observer would have imagined the

little man in the most peppery of tempers. He tweaked

Jack by the ear, frowned hard at Catherine, and bit his

mustache as though possessed by some uncontrollable

spirit of impatience.

 

His sister was straightening her bonnet-strings.

 

“You can drive straight home, dear; everything is

ready.”

 

“You don’t know how much I feel all this.”

 

“There, you must be tired. We are going to take the

boy tonight.”

 

Miss Carmagee’s stout figure seemed to stand like a

breakwater between Catherine and the world, and there

was an all-sufficing courage on her face.

 

People were staring; Murchison became aware of it as

they moved towards the booking-office. Several familiar

faces seemed to start up vividly out of the past. He

noticed two porters grinning and talking together beside

a pile of luggage near the bridge, and his sensitive pride

concluded that they were making him their mark. The

ticket collector was a thin, gray-headed man whom Murchison had known for years. He found himself conjecturing, as one conjectures over trifles at such a pass,

whether the man would remember him or not. The

official received the tickets without vouchsafing a glimmer

of recognition. But he stared after Murchison when he

had passed, with that curious, peering insolence typical of

the breed.

 

Outside the station a very throaty individual in a very

big cap, Harris tweed suit, white stock, and mulberry

red waistcoat, was giving instructions to a porter with

regard to a barrow-load of luggage. A trim dog-cart

stood by the curb, with a sleek little woman in a tailormade costume perched on the seat, and looking down

on everybody with something of the keenness of a

hawk.

 

It so happened that this exquisite piece of “breeding,”

this Colonel Larter of county fame, stepped back against

Murchison in turning towards his dog-cart.

 

“Beg pardon.”

 

The words were reinforced by a surprised and rather

impertinent stare.

 

“What!”

 

“Don’t trouble to mention it, sir.”

 

“How d’you do? Had heard you were knocking about

down our way. Wife well?”

 

Colonel Larter’s glance had passed the figure in black,

and had fixed itself on the Carmagees and Catherine.

There is always some charm about a handsome woman

that can command courtesy, and Colonel Larter walked

round Murchison with the sang-froid of a superior person,

and ignored the husband in appearing impressive to the

wife.

 

“How d’you do, Mrs. Murchison? Back in Roxton?

 

Miss Carmagee has been keeping secrets from us. Quite

a crime, I’m sure.”

 

Catherine had seen the slighting of her husband.

 

“We are back again, Colonel Larter.”

 

“That’s good. To stay?” and he nodded affably to the

lawyer.

 

“Yes, to stay.”

 

“And the piccaninnies? Hallo, here’s one of them!

And where’s my little flirt? What! Left her behind?”

 

Colonel Larter had one of those high-pitched, patronizing voices that carry a goodly distance and allow casual

listeners to benefit by their remarks. Yet even his obtuse conceit was struck by Catherine Murchison’s manner. A sudden sense of distance and discomfort obtruded

itself upon the gentleman’s consciousness. He caught

Porteus Carmagee’s brown, birdlike eye, and the glint

thereof was curiously disconcerting.

 

“Expect you’re busy. My wife’s waiting for me;

mustn’t delay,” and he withdrew with a jerk of his peaked

cap, repassing Murchison with an oblivious serenity, and

rejoining his wife, who had acknowledged the presence of

acquaintances by a single inclination of the head.

 

“Insufferable ass! Where’s that luggage? Ah, here

we are,” and Porteus opened the cab-door with emphasis.

 

“Get in, Kate, you’ll find everything shipshape at

home.”

 

“You will come across later?”

 

“If I’m wanted.”

 

“Then we shall expect you both. We have not thanked

you yet.”

 

“Oh, if I’m to be thanked, I sha’n’t come.”

 

“Don’t say that,” and Murchison’s hand rested for a

moment on Porteus Carmagee’s shoulder.

 

Lombard Street again, broad, tranquil Lombard Street,

warm with its red-walled houses, shaded by its cypresses,

its budding elms and limes, St. Antonia’s steeple clear

against the blue. The old house itself, white-sashed

and sun-steeped, curtains at