A Woman's War. Warwick Deeping

two men shook hands, Steel’s white fingers limp in his rival’s palm. His air of cultured hauteur had fallen to freezing point. He condescended, and made it a matter of dignity.

      “Sorry to drag you over here, Murchison. Mr. Pennington has been on the fidget with regard to his daughter, and to appease him I elected to send for you at once.”

      Murchison warmed his hands before the fire. Steel’s grandiloquent manner always amused him.

      “I am glad to be of any use to you. Who is the patient, Miss Julia Pennington?”

      “Yes.”

      “Anything serious?”

      “Nothing; only hysteria; the woman’s a tangle of nerves, a mass of emotions. I have grown to learn her idiosyncrasies in a year. One month it is palpitation—and imaginary heart disease, next month she is swearing that she has cancer of the œsophagus and cannot swallow. The lady has headaches regularly every other week, and merges on melancholia in the intervals.”

      Murchison nodded.

      “What is the present phase?” he asked.

      “Acute migraine and facial neuralgia. She is worrying about her eyes, seems to see nothing—and everything, mere hysterical phantasmagoria. The woman is not to be taken seriously. She is being drenched with bromide and fed upon phenacetin. Come and see her.”

      Parker Steel led the way from the library as though he regarded the consultation as a mere troublesome formality, a pandering to domestic officiousness that had to be appeased. Miss Julia Pennington was lying on a sofa in the drawing-room with a younger sister holding her hand. The room smelled horribly of vinegar, and the blinds were down, for the patient persisted that she could not bear the light.

      The younger lady rose and bowed to Murchison, and drew aside, with her eyes fixed upon her sister’s face. Miss Julia was moaning and whimpering on the sofa, a thin and neurotic spinster of forty with tightly drawn hair, sharp features, and the peevish expression of a creature who had long been the slave of a hundred imaginary ills.

      Murchison sat down beside her, and asked whether she could bear the light. His manner was in acute contrast to Parker Steel’s; the one incisive, almost brusque in his effort to impress; the other calm, quiet, deliberate, sympathetic in every word and gesture.

      The younger Miss Pennington drew up the blinds. Murchison was questioning her sister, watching her face keenly, while Parker Steel fidgeted to and fro before the fire.

      “Much pain in the eyes, Miss Pennington?”

      “Oh, Dr. Murchison, the pain is terrible, it runs all over the face; you cannot conceive—”

      She broke away into a chaos of complaints till Murchison quieted her and asked a few simple questions. He rose, turned the sofa bodily towards the light, and proceeded to examine the lady’s eyes.

      “Things look dim to you?” he asked her, quietly.

      “All in a blur, flashes of light, and spots like blood. I’m sure—”

      “Yes, yes. You have never had anything quite like this before?”

      “Never, never. I am quite unnerved, Dr. Murchison, and Dr. Steel won’t believe half the things I tell him.”

      Her voice was peevish and irritable. Parker Steel grinned at the remark, and muttered “mad cat” under his breath.

      “You are hardly kind to me, Miss Pennington,” he said, aloud, with a touch of banter.

      “I’m sure I’m ill, Dr. Steel, very ill—”

      “Please lie quiet a moment,” and Murchison bent over her, closed her lids, and felt the eyeballs with his fingers. Miss Pennington indulged in little gasps of pain, yet feeling mesmerized by the quiet earnestness of the man.

      Murchison stood up suddenly, looking grave about the mouth.

      “Do you mind ringing the bell, Steel? I want my bag out of the car.”

      Steel, who appeared vexed and restless despite his self-conceit, went out in person to fetch the bag. When he returned, Murchison had drawn the blinds and curtains so that the room was in complete darkness.

      “Thanks; I want my lamp; here it is. I have matches. Now, Miss Pennington, do you think you can sit up in a chair for five minutes?”

      The thin lady complained, protested, but obeyed him. Murchison seated himself before her, while Parker Steel held the lamp behind Miss Pennington. A beam of light from the mirror of Murchison’s ophthalmoscope flashed upon the woman’s face. She started hysterically, but seemed to feel the calming influence of Murchison’s personality.

      Complete silence held for some minutes, save for an occasional word from Murchison. Parker Steel’s face was in the shadow. The hand that held the lamp quivered a little as he watched his rival’s face. There was something in the concentrated earnestness of Murchison’s examination that made Mrs. Betty’s husband feel vaguely uncomfortable.

      Murchison rose at last with a deep sigh, stood looking at Miss Pennington a moment, and then handed the ophthalmoscope to Steel. The lamp changed hands and the men places. Miss Pennington’s supply of nerve power, however, was giving out. She blinked her eyes, put her hands to her face, and protested that she could bear the light from the mirror no longer.

      Parker Steel lost patience.

      “Come, Miss Pennington, come; I must insist—”

      “I can’t, I can’t, the glare burns my eyes out.”

      “Nonsense, my dear lady, control yourself—”

      His irritability reduced Miss Pennington to peevish tears. She called for her sister, and began to babble hysterically, an impossible subject.

      Parker Steel pushed back his chair in a dudgeon.

      “I can’t see anything,” he said; “utterly hopeless.”

      Murchison drew back the curtains and let dim daylight into the room. He helped Miss Pennington back to the sofa, very gentle with her, like a man bearing with the petulance of a sick child, and then turned to Steel with a slight frown.

      “Shall we talk in the library?”

      “Yes.”

      “I will just put my lamp away.”

      They crossed the hall together in silence, and entered the room with its irreproachable array of books, and the logs burning on the irons. Murchison went and stood by one of the windows. A red sunset was coloring the west, and the dark trees in the garden seemed fringed with flame.

      Parker Steel had closed the door. He looked irritable and restless, a man jealous of his self-esteem.

      “Well? Anything wrong?”

      The big man turned with his hands in his trousers pockets. Steel did not like the serious expression of his face.

      “Have you examined Miss Pennington’s eyes?”

      Parker Steel shifted from foot to foot.

      “Well, no,” he confessed, with an attempt at hauteur, “I know the woman’s eccentricities. She may be slightly myopic—”

      Murchison drew a deep breath.

      “She may be stark blind in a week,” he said, curtly.

      “What!”

      “Acute glaucoma.”

      “Acute glaucoma! Impossible!”

      “I say it is.”

      Parker Steel took two sharp turns up and down the room. His mouth was twitching and he looked pale, like a man who has received a shock. He was conscious, too, that Murchison’s eyes were upon him, and that his rival had caught him blundering like any careless boy. There was something final and convincing in Murchison’s manner. Parker Steel hated him