A Woman's War. Warwick Deeping

final crime against her rival had been her marrying of James Murchison. Miss Betty had chosen the gentleman for herself, though she would rather have bitten her tongue off than have confessed the fact. The hatred of the wife had been extended to the husband, and Dr. Parker Steel had assuaged the smart. And thus the rivalry of these two women lived on intensified by the professional rivalry of two men.

      As for my lady Betty, she hated the wife in Lombard Street with all the quiet virulence of her nature. It was the hate of the head for the heart, of the intellect for the soul. Envy and jealousy were sponsors to the bantling that Betty Steel had reared. Catherine Murchison had children; Mrs. Steel had none. Her detestation of her rival was the more intense even because she recognized the good in her that made her loved by others. Catherine Murchison had a larger following than Mrs. Steel in Roxton, and the truth strengthened the poison in the stew.

      With Catherine the feeling was more one of distaste than active enmity. Betty Steel repelled her, even as certain electrical currents repel the magnet. She mistrusted the woman, avoided her, even ignored her, an attitude which did not fail to influence Mrs. Betty. Catherine Murchison’s heart was too full of the deeper happiness of life for her to trouble her head greatly about the pale and fastidious Greek whose dark eyes flashed whenever she passed the great red brick house in Lombard Street. Life had a June warmth for Catherine. Nor had she that innate restlessness of soul that fosters jealousy and the passion for climbing above the common crowd.

      Parker Steel reminded his wife, as he rose from the breakfast-table, of a certain charity concert that was to be given at the Roxton public hall the same evening.

      “Are you going?”

      “Yes, I believe so; Mrs. Fraser extorted a guinea from us; I may as well get something for my money. And you?”

      Her husband smoothed his hair and looked in the mirror.

      “Expecting a confinement. If you get a chance, be polite to old Fraser, she would be worth bagging in the future, and Murchison thieved her from old Hicks.”

      Catherine Murchison sang at the charity concert that night, and Mrs. Betty listened to her with the outward complacency of an angel. The big woman in her black dress, with a white rose in her ruddy hair, bowed and smiled to the enthusiasts of the Roxton slums who knew her nearly as well as they knew her husband. Catherine Murchison’s rare contralto flowed unconcernedly over her rival’s head. She sang finely, and without effort, and the voice seemed part of her, a touch of the sunset, a breath from the fields of June. Catherine’s nature came out before men in her singing. A glorious unaffectedness, a charm with no trick of the self-conscious egoist. It was this very naturalness, this splendid unconcern that had forever baffled Mrs. Betty Steel. The woman was proof against the mundane sneer. Ridicule could not touch her, and the burrs of spite fell away from her smooth completeness.

      “By George, what a voice that woman has!”

      The bourgeoisie of Roxton was piling up its applause. Mrs. Murchison had half the small boys in the town as her devoted henchmen. Politically her personality would have carried an election.

      “It comes from the heart, sir.”

      Porteous Carmagee, solicitor and commissioner for oaths, had his bald head tilted towards Mr. Thomas Flemming’s ear. Mr. Flemming was one of the cultured idlers of the town, a gentleman who was an authority on ornithology, who presided often at the county bench, and could dash off a cartoon that was not quite clever enough for Punch.

      “What did you say, Carmagee? The beggars are making such a din—”

      “From the heart, sir, from the heart.”

      “Indigestion, eh?”

      Mr. Carmagee was seized with an irritable twitching of his creased, brown face.

      “Oh, an encore, that’s good. I said, Tom, that Kate Murchison’s voice came from her heart.”

      “Very likely, very likely.”

      “I could sit all night and hear her sing.”

      “I doubt it,” quoth the man of culture, with a twinkle.

      The opening notes rippled on the piano, and Mr. Carmagee lay back in his chair to listen. He was a little monkey of a man, fiery-eyed, wrinkled, with a grieved and husky voice that seemed eternally in a hurry. He knew everybody and everybody’s business, and the secrets his bald pate covered would have trebled the circulation of the Roxton Herald in a week. Porteous Carmagee was godfather to Catherine Murchison’s two children. She was one of the few women, and he had stated it almost as a grievance, who could make him admit the possible advantages of matrimony.

      “Bravo, bravo”—and Mr. Carmagee slapped Tom Flemming’s knee. ‘When the swans fly towards the south, and the hills are all aglow.’ I believe in woman bringing luck, my friend.”

      “Oh, possibly.”

      “Murchison took the right turning. Supposing he had married—”

      Mr. Flemming trod on the attorney’s toe.

      “Look out, she’s there; people have ears, you know; they’re not chairs.”

      Mr. Carmagee nursed a grievance on the instant.

      “Mention a name,” he snapped.

      And Thomas Flemming pointed towards Mrs. Betty with his programme.

      Parker Steel’s wife drove home alone in her husband’s brougham, ignoring the many moonlight effects that the old town offered her with its multitudinous gables and timbered fronts. She was not in the happiest of tempers, feeling much like a sensuous cat that has been tumbled unceremoniously from some crusty stranger’s lap. Betty had attempted blandishments with the distinguished Mrs. Fraser, and had been favored with a shoulder and half an aristocratic cheek. Moreover, she had watched the great lady melt under Catherine Murchison’s smiles, and such incidents are not rose leaves to a woman.

      Mrs. Betty lay back in a corner of the brougham, and indulged herself in mental tearings of Catherine Murchison’s hair. What insolent naturalness this rival of hers possessed! Mrs. Betty was fastidious and critical enough, and her very acuteness compelled her to confess that her enmity seemed but a blunted weapon. Catherine Murchison was so cantankerously popular. She looked well, dressed well, did things well, loved well. The woman was an irritating prodigy. It was her very sincerity, the wholesomeness of her charm, that made her seem invulnerable, a woman who never worried her head about social competition.

      Parker Steel sat reading before the fire when his wife returned. He uncurled himself languidly and with deliberation, pulled down his dress waistcoat, and put his book aside carefully on the table beside his chair.

      “Enjoyed yourself?”

      “Not vastly. I wonder why vulgar people always eat oranges in public?”

      “Better than sucking lemons.”

      Mrs. Betty tossed her opera-cloak aside and slipped into a chair. Her husband’s complacency irritated her a little. He was not a sympathetic soul, save in the presence of prominent patients.

      “You look bored, dear. Who performed?”

      “The usual amateurs. I am tired to death; are you coming to bed?”

      Parker Steel looked at the clock, and sighed.

      “I shall not be wanted till about five,” he said. “Confound these guinea babies. I hope to build a tariff wall round myself when we are more independent.”

      “Yes, of course.”

      “And Mrs. Fraser?”

      “Safe in the other camp, dear.”

      Parker Steel was dropping off to sleep that night when he felt his wife’s hand upon his shoulder. He turned with a grunt, and saw her white face dim amid her cloud of hair.

      “Anything wrong?”

      “No. Do you believe in Murchison, Parker?”

      “Believe