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

a steady downrush

of rain purred on the tiled roofs of the old town and

set the broad eaves and high-peaked gables dripping.

A summer sweetness breathed in the gardens where the

fallen petals of rhododendrons lay like flame upon the

green grass. The roses were weighed down with dew,

and each leaf diamonded with a glimmering tear. In

Lombard Street the tall cypresses stood like solemn monks

cowled and coped against the rain.

 

The downpour had lessened a little, and Jack Murchison, flattening his nose against the nursery window,

saw a country cart driven by a man in a white mackintosh

swing into Lombard Street from the silver, rain-drenched

sheen of St. Antonia’s trees. The man’s big white body

streamed with wet, his face shining out like a drenched

peony under the brim of his hat, that dripped like the

flooded gutter of a house. Tremulous raindrops fell

rhythmically from the big man’s nose, and the apron that

covered his legs was full of puddles.

 

The country cart drew up outside the doctor’s house,

and Master Jack saw the big man in the white mackintosh

climb out laboriously, the cart tilting under his weight.

He threw the leather apron over the horse’s loins, and

swung the water out of his hat, disclosing to the

boy above a round bald patch about the size of a

saucer.

 

The bell rang, a good, rattling, honest peal that told

of a straightforward and unaffected fist. Jack heard

Mary’s rather nasal treble answering the big man’s vigorous bass. The white mackintosh was doffed and hung

considerately on the handle of the bell. There was much

wiping of boots, while the man Gage appeared at the

side gate in the garden wall, and came forward to hold

the farmer’s horse.

 

“Sorry to bother you, doctor, on such a beast of an

evening.”

 

“Come in, Mr. Carrington.”

 

“You remember me, sir?”

 

“I don’t forget many faces. Come into my study.”

 

The doffing of the white mackintosh had uncovered a

robust and rather corpulent, thick-set figure in rough

tweed jacket and breeches and box-cloth leggings. The

farmer had one of those typically solid English faces,

fresh-colored though deeply wrinkled, and chastening its

good humor with an alert, world-wise watchfulness in the

rather deep-set eyes. Mr. Carrington was considered

rather a masterful man by his friends, a man who could

laugh while his wits were at work bettering a bargain.

He was one of the most prominent farmers in the neighborhood, and one of the few who confessed to making

money despite the times.

 

“My trap’s waiting outside, doctor. I want you to come

back with me right away to Goldspur Farm.”

 

Mr. Carrington was sitting on the extreme edge of a

chair, and wiping the rain from his face with a silk handkerchief.

 

“Anything much the matter?”

 

“Well, doctor, you know I have taken to growing a

lot of ground-fruit, and I’ve had about fifty pickers down

from town this year.”

 

Murchison nodded.

 

“They’re camped out in two tin shanties and a couple

of tents down at Goldspur Farm. Eastenders, all of

them; and you never quite know, doctor, what an Eastender carries. Well, to be frank, I’m worried about

some of ‘em.”

 

Mr. Carrington sat squarely in his chair, and tapped

the floor with the soles of his boots. He looked thoughtful, and the corners of-his big, good-tempered mouth had

a melancholy droop.

 

“There’s one woman in particular, doctor, and her

youngster, who seem bad. Sick and sweating; won’t

take food; they just lie there in the straw like logs. My

foreman didn’t tell me anything about it till this afternoon, but when I’d seen the woman I had the horse put

in, and came straight here.”

 

Murchison glanced at his watch, and then crossed the

room and rang the bell.

 

“Can you have me driven back?” he asked.

 

“Certainly, doctor.”

 

“Good. Ah, Mary, will you ask your mistress to

have dinner postponed till eight. And tell Gage to take

these letters to the post. Now, Mr. Carrington, my

mackintosh and I are at your service.”

 

“You’ll need it, doctor, and an old hat.”

 

A slender vein of gold gashed the dull west as they

left the outskirts of the town behind. As the rent in the

sky broadened, long rays of light came down the valley,

making the woods and meadows a glory of shimmering

green, and firing the rain pools so that they shone like

brass. The farmer took the private road that ran through

Ulverstone Park, a rolling wilderness of beeches and

Scotch firs, whose green “rides” plunged into the glimmering rain-splashed umbrage of tall trees. Here were

tangled banks of purpling heather, and great stretches

of sweet woodland turf. Old yews brooded in the deeps of,

the domain, solemn and still, most ancient and wise of trees.

 

“Get up, Molly,” and Mr. Carrington shook a raindrop from his nose, and flicked the brown mare with the

whip. “Clearing a little. Sorry for the people who cut

their hay yesterday.”

 

“Somewhat damp. How is the fruit doing?”

 

“Oh, pretty fair, pretty fair, as far as our strawberries

are concerned. The finest year, doctor, is when you

have a first-class crop and your neighbors can only put

up rubbish. It’s no good every one being in tip-top form.

I’ve got rid of tons, and at no dirt price, either.”

 

Mr. Carrington’s British face beamed slyly above his

angelic white mackintosh. It was a face in which stolid

satisfaction and stolid woe were easily interchanged, for

the heavy lines thereof could be twisted into either expression.

 

Murchison was listening to the hoarse rattle of the

clearing shower beating upon a myriad leaves. The gold

band in the west was broadening into a canopy of splendor. Had Mr. Carrington been educated up to more

pushing and aggressive methods of making money, he

would have seen in that sky nothing but a magnificent

background for some silhouetted sky-sign shouting “Try

Our Jam.”

 

“And these pickers of yours, how long have they been

with you?”

 

The lines in the farmer’s face rearranged themselves

abruptly.

 

“Poor devils, they look on this as a sort of yearly picnic, doctor. There are about fifty of them, and they’ve

been at Goldspur about ten days.”

 

“Many children?”

 

“Children? Plenty. If they were Irish, they’d bring

the family pig out, doctor, just to give him some new sort

of dirt to wallow in. But then, what can you expect

what can you expect?”

 

They had left the park by the western lodge, and came

out upon a stretch of undulating fields closed in the near

distance by woods of oak and beech. A tall, gabled farmhouse of red brick rose outlined against the sky with a

great fir topping its chimney-stacks like the flat cloud

seen above a volcano in full eruption. Near it, fronting

the road, were a few nondescript cottages; farther still a

jumble of barns, outhouses, and stables. In the middle

of a fourteen-acre field Murchison could see two zincroofed sheds and a couple of old military tents standing

isolated in a waste of sodden, dreary soil.

 

Mr. Carrington pointed to them with his whip.

 

“There’s the colony. Will you come in first, doctor,

and have ” he reconsidered the words and cleared his

throat “and have a cup of tea?”

 

Murchison had noticed the break in the invitation, and

had reddened.

 

“No, thanks. We had better walk, I suppose?”

 

“Sit light, doctor; we have a sort of road, though it

ain’t exactly Roman.”

 

The farmer passed Murchison the reins, and climbed

down, the trap swaying like a small boat anchored in a

swell. He opened a gate leading into the field, his white

mackintosh flapping about his legs.

 

“Not worth while getting up again,” he said, laconically. “Drive her on, doctor, I’ll follow.”

 

Murchison heard the click of the gate, and the squelch

of Mr. Carrington’s boots in the mud, as the trap

bumped at a walking pace towards the zinc sheds in the

field. The larger of the two resembled a coach-house,

and could be closed at one end by two swinging doors.

The rain was still rattling on the roof as Murchison

drove up, and a thin swirl of smoke drifted out sluggishly

from the darkness of the interior. The two tents had a

soaked and slatternly appearance. Empty bottles, old

tins, scraps of dirty paper, and miscellaneous rubbish

littered the ground. On a line slung between two chestnut poles three dirty towels were hanging, either to wash

or to dry?

 

As the trap stopped at the end of the rough road, Murchison could see that the larger shed was like a big hutch

full of live things crowded together. A Utter of straw,

ankle deep, lay round the walls. A fire burned in the

middle of the earth floor. The faces that were lit up by

the light from the fire were coarse, quickeyed, and

hungry, the faces seen in London slums.

 

Half a dozen children scuttled out like a litter of young

pigs, and stood in the slush and rain, staring at the trap.

Murchison’s appearance on the scene seemed to arouse

no stir of interest among the adult dwellers in the shed.

They stared, that was all, one or two breaking the silence

with crude and characteristic brevity.

 

‘“Ello, ‘ere’s the b y doctor.”

 

“There’s ‘air!”

 

“Look at the hold boss, with a phiz like a round o’ raw

beef stuck hon top of a sack of flour.”

 

Mr. Carrington arrived with his boots muddy and the

lines of his face emphatic and authoritative.

 

“Some one hold the mare. Why don’t you keep the

kids in out of the wet? This way, doctor, the second

tent.”

 

Mr. Carrington opened the flap, and, letting Murchison

enter, contented himself with staring hard at two figures

lying on an old flock mattress with a coat rolled up for a

pillow. One was a woman, thin, still pretty, in a hollowcheeked, hectic way, with a ragged blouse open at the

throat, and a couple of sacks covering her. The other

was a child, a girl with flaxen hair tossed about a flushed

and feverish face. The child seemed asleep, with half

an orange, sucked to the pulp, clutched by her grimy

fingers.

 

Murchison remained for perhaps half an hour in that

rain-soaked tent, while Mr. Carrington stumped up and

down impatiently, kicking the mud from his boots and

eying the rubbish that marked the presence of these

London poor. The eastern sky was filling fast with the

oblivion of night when Murchison emerged. The woman

had been able to answer his questions in a dazed and

apathetic way.

 

Mr. Carrington met him with a squaring of his sturdy

shoulders and a bluff uplift of the chin.

 

“Well, doctor?”

 

“I’m glad you sent for me.”

 

“As bad as that, is it?”

 

“Typhoid, or I am much mistaken.”

 

The farmer thrust his hands into the side pockets of

his mackintosh, and flapped them to and fro.

 

“Well, I’m damned!” was all he said.

 

The cold sky rose dusted with a few stars in the west

when the farmer’s cart set Murchison down in Lombard

Street before his own door. Dinner had been waiting

more than an hour. Catherine’s face, bright, yet a little

troubled, met him in the shaded glow of the hall.

 

“You must be soaked to the skin, dear,” and she felt

his clothes.

 

“No, nothing much. I’m more hungry than wet.”

 

“A long case. Dinner is ready.”

 

They went into the diningroom together, Murchison ‘s

arm about her body.

 

“Some responsibility for me