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

courts, cloisters, and sleek lawns, the

ringing of bells towards sunset, the dark swirl of a river

under the yawn of bridges that linked gardens to gardens

beneath the benisons of mighty trees. Yet the light bn

Canon Stensly ‘s face was not wholly a placid light. It

was as though he came as a messenger from the restless,

bickering outer world, a friend whom friendship freighted

with words not easy to be said.

 

A glimmer of white under an old cherry-tree showed

where Catherine sat reading, with the boy Jack prone on

the grass, the Swiss Family Robinson under his chin.

Murchison was lying back in a deck-chair, watching the

smoke from his pipe amid the foliage overhead.

 

Master Jack, rolling from elbow to elbow, as he thrilled

over the passage of the “tub-boat” from the wreck,

caught sight of the Canon crossing the lawn. Catherine

was warned by a tug at her skirts, and a very audible

stage-aside.

 

“Look out, here’s old Canon Stensly—”

 

“S-sh, Jack.”

 

“Should like to see him afloat in a tub-boat. Take

a big-”

 

A tweak of the ear nipped the boy’s reflection in the

bud. His father gave him a significant push in the direction of the fruit garden.

 

“See if there are any strawberries ripe.”

 

“I’ve looked twice, dad.”

 

“Oh, no doubt. Go and look again.”

 

Canon Stensly ‘s big fist had closed on Catherine’s

fingers. He was not the conventional figure, the portly,

smiling cleric, the man of the world with a benignant yet

selfsufficient air. Like many big men, silent and peculiarly sensitive, his quiet manner suggested a diffidence

anomalous in a man of six feet two. To correct the impression one had but to look at the steady blue of the eye,

the firm yet sympathetic mouth, the stanchness of the

chin. It is a fallacy that lives perennially, the belief that

a confident face, an aggressive manner, and much facility

of speech necessarily mark the man of power.

 

A courtly person would have remarked on the beauty

of the evening, and discovered something in the garden

to praise. Canon Stensly was not a man given to pleasant commonplaces. He said nothing, and sat down.

 

Murchison handed him his cigar-case.

 

“Thanks, not before dinner.”

 

His habit of silence, the silence of a man who spoke

only when he had something definite to say, gave him, to

strangers, an expression of reserve. Canon Stensly invariably made talkative men feel uncomfortable. It was

otherwise with people who had learned to know the nature

of his sincerity.

 

“Hallo, what literature have we here?”

 

He picked up Jack’s discarded book, and turned over

the pages as though the illustrations brought back recollections of his own youth. As a boy he had been the most

irrepressible young mischief-monger, a youngster whom

Elisha would have bequeathed to the bear’s claws.

 

“Ever a member of the Robinson family, Mrs. Murchison?”

 

Catherine caught a suspicious side glint in his eye.

 

“I suppose all children read the book.”

 

“I wonder how much of the moralizing you remember?”

 

“Very little, I’m afraid.”

 

“Nor do I. Children demand life not moralizing

upon life,” and the Canon scrutinized a picture portraying the harpooning of a turtle, as though he had gloated

over that picture many times as a boy.

 

Catherine had caught a glimpse of Mary’s white apron

signalling for help in some domestic problem. She was

glad of the excuse to leave the two men together. The

sense of a woman is never more in evidence than when

she surrenders her husband to a friend.

 

“Can you spare me half an hour for a talk?”

 

“I am not overburdened with work yet.”

 

“Oh, it will come.”

 

He turned over the pages deliberately, glancing at each

picture.

 

“Your wife looks well.”

 

“Yes, in spite of everything.”

 

“A matter of heart and pluck.”

 

“She has the courage of a Cordelia.”

 

Canon Stensly put the book down upon the grass.

The two men were silent awhile; Murchison lying back

in his chair, smoking; the churchman leaning forward a

little with arms folded, his massive face set rather sternly

in the repose of thought.

 

“There is something I want to talk to you about.”

 

Murchison turned his head, but did not move his body.

 

“Yes?”

 

“Don’t set me down as a busybody. I think I have a

duty to you as a friend. It is a matter of justice.”

 

The Canon’s virtues were of the practical, workmanlike order. He was not an eloquent man in the oratorical

sense, having far too straightforward and sincere a personality to wax hysterical for the benefit of a church full

of women. But he was a man who was listened to by

men.

 

Murchison turned half-restlessly in his chair.

 

“With reference to the old scandal?” he asked.

 

“Yes.”

 

“Something unpleasant, of course.”

 

“Things that are put about behind one’s back are

generally unpleasant. It was my wife who discovered

the report. Women hear more lies than we do, you

know.”

 

“As a rule.”

 

“I decided that it was only fair that you should know,

since slandered people are generally the last to hear of

their own invented sins.”

 

“Thanks. I appreciate honesty.”

 

Canon Stensly sat motionless a moment, staring at the

house. Then he rose up leisurely from his chair, reached

for one of the branches of the cherry-tree, drew it down

and examined the forming fruit.

 

“They say that you used to drink.”

 

Murchison remained like an Egyptian Memnon looking towards Thebes. The churchman talked on.

 

“I have heard the same thing said about one or two

of my dearest friends. Vile exaggerations of some explainable incident. The report originated from a certain lady

who resides over against my church. Her husband is a

professional man.”

 

He pulled down a second bough, and brushed the young

fruit with his fingers to see whether it was set or not.

The silence had something of the tension of expense.

Murchison knew that this old friend was waiting for a

denial.

 

“That’s quite true; I drank at one time.”

 

A man of less ballast and less unselfishness would have

rounded on the speaker, perhaps with an affected incredulity that would have embittered the consciousness

of the confession. Canon Stensly did nothing so insignificant. He let the branch of the cherry-tree slip slowly through his fingers, put his hands in his pockets, and

walked aside three paces as though to examine the tree

at another angle.

 

“Tell me about it.”

 

There was a pause of a few seconds.

 

“My father drank; poor old dad! I’m not trying to

shelve the affair by putting it on his shoulders. My

father and my grandfather both died of drink. My wife

knows. She did not know when we were married. That

was wrong. If ever a man owed anything to the love of

a good woman, I am that man.”

 

Canon Stensly returned to his chair. His face bore

the impress of deep thought. He had the air of a man

ready to help in the bearing of a brother’s burden, not

with any bombast and display, but as though it were as

natural an action as holding out a hand.

 

“It can’t have been very serious,” he said.

 

Murchison set his teeth.

 

“A sort of hell while it lasted, a tempting of the devil;

not often; perhaps the worse for that.”

 

“Ah, I can understand.”

 

“It was when I was overworked.”

 

“Jaded.”

 

“The wife was something better than a ministering

angel, she was a brave woman. She fought for me. We

should have won without that scandal, but for a mad

piece of folly I took to be heroism.”

 

The churchman extended a large hand.

 

“I’ll smoke after all,” he said.

 

“Do.”

 

Murchison opened his cigar-case. Canon Stensly

was as deliberate as a man wholly at his ease. There

was not a tremor as he held the lighted match.

 

“Do you know, Murchison, I appreciate this deeply?”

 

He returned the match-box.

 

“It puts you in a new light to me, a finer light, with

that rare wife of yours.”

 

Murchison was refilling his pipe, lines of thought crossing his forehead.

 

“When my child died…”

 

“Yes…”

 

“I seemed to lose part of myself. I had crushed the

curse then. I don’t know how to explain the psychology

of the affair, but when she died, the other thing died

also.”

 

Canon Stensly nodded.

 

“It was what we call dipsomania. I never touched

alcohol for years. I had been a fool as a student. At my

worst, I only had the crave now and again.”

 

“And you are sure—”

 

“Sure that that curse killed my child, indirectly. Is it

strange that her death should have killed the curse?”

 

“As I trust in God, no.”

 

The thrush was singing again on the yewtree, another

thrush answering it from a distant garden. Canon Stensly lay back in his chair and smiled.

 

“Stay here,” he said, quietly.

 

“In Roxton?”

 

“Yes. You have friends. Trust them. There is a

greater sense of justice in this world than most cynics

allow. I never knew man fight a good fight, a clean uphill fight, and lose in the end.”

 

They were smoking peacefully under the cherry-tree

when Catherine returned. She had no suspicion of what

had passed, for no storm spirit had left its torn clouds in

the summer air. Her husband’s face was peculiarly

calm and placid.

 

“Where’s that boy of yours, Mrs. Murchison?”

 

“Jack?”

 

“Yes.”

 

“He was hunting the strawberry-beds half an hour ago.”

 

“Tell him,” and the Canon chuckled, “tell him I am

not too big yet for a tub.”

 

“Oh, Canon Stensly—”

 

“My dear Mrs. Murchison, I said many a truer thing

when I was a boy. Children strike home. To have his

vanity chastened, let a man listen to children.”

 

The big man with the massive head and the broad

British chest had gone. Husband and wife were sitting

alone under the cherry-tree.

 

“You told him all?”

 

“All, Kate.”

 

“And it was Betty? That woman! May she never

have to bear what we have borne!”

 

Murchison was sitting with his elbows on his knees, his

chin upon his fists.

 

“Well they know the worst at last,” he said, grimly.

“We can clear for action. That’s a grand man, Kate.

I shall stay and fight fight as he would were he in my

place.”

 

She stretched out a hand and let it rest upon his

shoulder.

 

“You are what I would have you be, brave. Our chance

will come.”

 

“God grant it.”

 

“You shall show these people what manner of man

you are.”