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

CHAPTER XXXIX

IT was on the second morning following his interview

with Dr. Peterson that Parker Steel received two letters,

heralding the shadow of an approaching storm.

 

“I have laid the facts of the case,” wrote the demigod from Mayfair, “before the General Medical Council. I consider this action of mine to partake of the

nature of a public duty; for your abuse of your position

has been too gross even for medical etiquette to cover. I

cannot understand how a practitioner of your reputation

could be so mad as to run so scandalous a risk. That

you contracted the disease innocently in the pursuit of

duty would have won you the sympathy of your fellowpractitioners. Your concealment of the disease puts an

immoral complexion on the case… . Needless to say,

I have given Major Murray the full benefit of an honest

opinion.”

 

Such a letter from a physician of Dr. Peterson’s standing would have been sufficient in itself to demoralize a

man of more courage and tenacity than Parker Steel.

The curt declaration of war that reached him from Major

Murray, by the very same post, exaggerated the effect

that the specialist’s letter had produced.

 

“Sm, I have received from Dr. Peterson a statement

that convicts you of the most scandalous mal praxis.

Needless to say, I am placing the matter in the hands of

my solicitor. I consider it to be a case deserving of

publicity, however repugnant the atmosphere surrounding the affair may be to me and mine.

 

“MURRAY.”

 

Those who have touched the realities of war will tell

you that they have seen men with faces pinched as by a

frost, their teeth chattering like castanets, even under the

blaze of an African sun. It was at the breakfasttable

that Parker Steel read those two ominous letters. The

man looked ill and yellow, and his nerves were none too

steady, to judge by the way he had gashed himself in

shaving. The very clothes he wore seemed to have

grown creased and shabby in a week, as though they felt

the wearer’s figure limp and shrunken, and had lost tone

in consequence.

 

It may be remembered that the Immortal Three displayed varying symptoms when at grips with death. The

tongue of Ortheris waxed feverishly profane; the Yorkshireman broke out into song; Mulvaney, the Paddy, was

incontinently sick. Parker Steel emulated the Irishman

in this eccentricity that morning, save that his nausea

was inspired by panic, and not by heroic rage.

 

Shaken and very miserable, he sat down at the bureau

in his consulting-room, leaned his head upon his hands,

and shivered. For two nights he had had but short

snatches of sleep, brief lapses into oblivion that had been

rendered vain by dreams. The imminent dread of a

hundred ignominies had held him sick and cold through

the short darkness of the summer nights. Dawn had

come and found him feverish and very weary. To a

coward it is torture to be alone with his own thoughts.

 

The third night he had taken sulphonal, a full dose,

and had slept till Symons knocked at his bedroom door.

The fog of the drug still clung about his brain as he sat

at the bureau and tried to think. He seemed incapable

of putting any purpose into motion, like an exhausted

battery whose cells have been drained of their electric

charge.

 

Parker Steel picked up a pen after he had crouched

there silently for some twenty minutes. He opened a

drawer, drew out several sheets of note-paper, and began to

scribble confused, jerky sentences, to alter, to reconsider,

and to erase. The power to determine and to act, even

on paper, were lost to him that morning. He wrote two

letters, only to tear them up and scatter the pieces in the

grate, where a lighted match set them burning. He was

still on his knees, turning over the charred fragments,

when the door-bell rang.

 

The sedate Symons came to announce a patient.

 

“Mrs. Prosser, sir.”

 

“Tell her I can’t see her.”

 

Symons stared. Her master had something of the air

of an angry dog.

 

“Tell her I’m busy. She can call again.”

 

“Yes, sir.”

 

She still stood in the doorway, irresolute, surprised.

 

“What the devil are you waiting there for, Symons?”

 

“Nothing, sir.”

 

And she withdrew, with her dignity balanced on the

tip of a very much tilted nose.

 

Parker Steel opened the window wide, and leaning his

hands on the sill, looked out into the garden. It was air

that he needed air amid the stifling complexities of life

that were crowding tumultuous upon his future. The

garden with the sumptuous serenity of its trees and flowers had no sympathetic touch for him in his agony of

isolation. It was his loneliness that weighed upon him

heavily at that moment. He had outlawed himself, as

it were, from the heart of his own wife. The very house

was a pest-house in which two stricken souls were sundered and held apart.

 

If Betty would only see him. If she could only bring

herself to understand that he had acted this disastrous

part in order to retain the social satisfactions that she

loved. Any companionship, even the companionship of

a half-estranged wife, seemed preferable to the isolation

that he felt deepening about him. He argued that it was

his realization of Betty’s ambition that had made him

dissemble for her sake. Any argument, however suspicious, is pressed into the service of a man whose whole

desire is to justify himself.

 

Unfortunately, when a woman’s trust has been once

shocked from its foundations, no buttressing and underpinning can save that superstructure of sentiment that

has taken years to build. Betty had kept to her room

with no one but Madge Ellison to give her sympathy and

advice. The husband had always found the friend embarrassing with her presence any rapprochement between

him and his wife.

 

As he stood at the open window, with the words of the

two letters he had read weaving a hopeless tangle of bewilderment in his brain, he heard some one descend the

stairs and go out by the front door into the square. Parker

 

Steel realized that this ubiquitous and embarrassing

friend had left Betty alone in the room above. There

was some chance at last of his seeing her alone, and of

attempting to break down the barrier of her reserve.

 

He climbed the stairs slowly, and stood listening for

several seconds on the landing before turning the handle

of his wife’s door. The door was locked.

 

Parker Steel frowned over the ineptitude of the manoeuvre. A dramatic entry might at least have given some

dignity to the trick. As it was, he felt like a sneaking

boy who had been balked and taken in some none too

honorable artifice.

 

“Betty.”

 

“Yes, what is it?”

 

She was in a chair near the window, reading, with her

dark hair spread upon her shoulders. Her mouth hardened as she recognized her husband’s voice. It was the

very day, and she remembered it, the day of Lady Sophia’s

fashionable bazaar when Betty Steel had foreseen the

people of Roxton at her feet. She had asked Madge

Ellison to bring out the dress that she should have worn.

Primrose and leaf-green, it hung across the foot-rail of

her bed.

 

“I want to speak to you, Betty.”

 

“Is there anything that we can discuss?”

 

The level tenor of her voice, its unflurried callousness,

gave him an impression of obstinate estrangement.

 

“Betty.”

 

She did not answer.

 

“Let me in. If you will only give me a chance to

justify myself—”

 

The very words he chose were the words least calculated to move a woman. Betty, lying back in her chair,

pictured to herself a cringing, deprecating figure that could

boast none of the passionate forcefulness of manhood.

A woman may be won by courage and strength, even in

the person of the man who has done her wrong; but let

her have the repulsion of contempt, and her instinct towards forgiveness will be frozen into an unbending pride.

 

“I do not wish you to make excuses, Parker.”

 

“But, Betty”

 

“Well?”

 

“It was for the sake of the home, the practice, everything. Can’t you understand? Can’t you imagine what

I have gone through?”

 

Her momentary silence seemed to suggest a sneer.

 

“So you would justify a lie?”

 

“Betty, don’t talk like this. I am worried to death

by other matters as it is.”

 

“I can understand that perfectly.”

 

He began to pace the landing, halting irresolutely from

time to time before the locked door.

 

“I have heard from Peterson this morning.”

 

No reply.

 

“He is reporting the matter to the General Council,

and he has given the truth away to Murray. You know

what that must mean.”

 

Still no reply.

 

“Betty.”

 

Had he been able to see the cynical smile upon her

face, Parker Steel might have understood that by acting

the suppliant for her pity he only intensified her contempt.

 

“Betty, is this fair to me?”

 

He shook the door with a sudden gust of petulant impatience.

 

“Show me some little consideration. I have some right

to demand—”

 

“Demand what you please, Parker, but oblige me by

not making so much noise.”

 

“You will regret this.”

 

His voice was harsh now and beyond control.

 

“I have regretted much already.”

 

“Your marriage, I suppose?”

 

“There is no need, Parker, to indulge in details.”

 

“This is beyond my patience!”

 

“And mine, I assure you.”

 

He turned, and retreated from the attack at the same

moment that Madge Ellison reappeared upon the stairs.

They passed each other without a word; the woman,

clear-eyed and uncompromising; the man gliding close

to the wall. Madge Ellison found Betty sitting with

closed eyes before the open window, the June sunshine

dappling the bosoms of the tall trees in the square with

gold.