A Woman's War. Warwick Deeping

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 from that moment with the hate of a vain and ambitious egotist.

      “Confound it, Murchison, are you sure of this?”

      “Quite sure, as far as my skill serves me.”

      “Have you had much experience?”

      There was a slight sneer in the question, but Murchison was proof against the challenge.

      “I specialized in London on the eyes.”

      Parker Steel emitted a monosyllable that sounded remarkably like “damn.”

      “Well, what’s to be done?”

      “We must consider the advisability of an immediate iridectomy.”

      They heard footsteps in the hall. The library door opened. A spectacled face appeared, to be followed by a long, loose-limbed body clothed in black.

      “Good-day, Dr. Murchison. I have come to inquire—”

      Parker Steel planted himself before the fire, a miniature Ajax ready to defy the domestic lightning. He cast a desperate and half-appealing look at Murchison.

      “We have just seen your daughter, Mr. Pennington.”

      A pair of keen gray eyes were scrutinizing the faces of the two doctors. Mr. Pennington was considered something of a terror in the neighborhood, a brusque, snappish old gentleman with a ragged beard, and ill-tempered wisps of hair straggling over his forehead.

      “Well, gentlemen, your opinion?”

      Murchison squared his shoulders, and seemed to be weighing every word he uttered. He was too generous a man to seize the chance of distinguishing himself at the expense of a rival.

      “I think, Mr. Pennington, that Dr. Steel and I agree in the matter. We take, sir, rather a serious view of the case. Is not that so, Steel?”

      The supercilious person bent stiffly at the hips.

      “Certainly.”

      “Perhaps, Steel, you will explain the urgency of the case.”

      Mr. Pennington jerked into a chair, took off his spectacles and dabbed them with his handkerchief.

      “I am sorry to have to tell you, sir, that your daughter’s eyesight is in danger.”

      The gentleman in the chair started.

      “What! Eyesight in danger! Bless my bones, why—”

      “Dr. Murchison agrees with me, I believe.”

      “Absolutely.”

      “Good God, gentlemen!”

      “A peculiarly dangerous condition, sir, developing rapidly and treacherously, as this rare disease sometimes does.”

      Perspiration was standing out on Parker Steel’s forehead. He flashed a grateful yet savage glance at Murchison, and braced back his shoulders with a sigh of bitter relief.

      “I think a London opinion would be advisable, Murchison, eh?”

      “I think so, most certainly, in view of the operation that may have to be performed immediately.”

      “Thank you, gentlemen, thank you. I presume this means my writing out a check for a hundred guineas.”

      “Your daughter’s condition, sir—”

      “Of course, of course. Don’t mention the expense. And you will manage—”

      Parker Steel resumed his dictatorship.

      “I will wire at once,” he said; “we must lose no time.”

      He accompanied Murchison from the house, jerky and distraught in manner, a man laboring under a most unwelcome obligation. The rivals shook hands. There was much of the anger of the sunset in Parker Steel’s heart as he watched Murchison’s car go throbbing down the drive amid the slanting shadows of the silent trees.

      CHAPTER V

       Table of Contents

      Parker Steel’s wife, in a depressed and melancholy mood, wandered restlessly about the house in St. Antonia’s Square, with the chimes of St. Antonia’s thundering out every “quarter” over the sleepy town. Mrs. Betty had attended a drawing-room meeting that afternoon in support of the zenana missions, and such social mortifications, undertaken for the good of the “practice,” usually reduced her to utter gloom. Mrs. Betty was one of those cultured beings who suffer seriously from the effects of boredom. Her mercurial temper was easily lowered by the damp, gray skies of Roxton morality.

      The tea was an infusion of tannin in the pot, and still the unregenerate male refused to return in time to save a second brew. Betty Steel had tried one of the latest novels, and guessed the end before she had read ten pages; she was an admirer of the ultra-psychological school, and preferred their bloodless and intricate verbiage to the simpler and more human “cry.” Even her favorite fog philosopher could not keep her quiet in her chair. The desire for activity stirred in her; it was useless to sit still and court the mopes.

      Betty Steel went up-stairs to her bedroom, looked through her jewel-box, folded up a couple of silk blouses in tissue paper, rearranged her hair, and found herself more bored than ever. After drifting about aimlessly for a while, she climbed to the second floor landing, and entered a room that looked out on St. Antonia’s and the square. A tall, brass-topped fender closed the fireless grate. There were pictures from the Christmas numbers of magazines upon the walls, and rows of old books and toys on the shelves beside the chimney. In one corner stood a bassinet hung with faded pink satin. The room seemed very gray and silent, as though it lacked something, and waited for the spark of life.

      Mrs. Betty looked at the toys and books; they had belonged to her these twenty years, and she had thought to watch them torn and broken by a baby’s hands. Parker Steel’s wife had borne him no children. Strange, cultured egotist that she was, it had been a great grief to her, this barrenness, this sealing of the heart. Betty was woman enough despite her psychology to feel the instincts of the sex piteous within her. A mother in desire, she still kept the room as she had planned it after her marriage, and so spoken of it as “the nursery,” hoping yet to see it tenanted.

      Feeling depressed and restless, she went to the window and looked out. Clouds that had been flushed with transient crimson in the east, were paling before the grayness of the approaching night. On the topmost branch of an elm-tree a thrush was singing gloriously, and the traceried windows of the church were flashing back the gold of the western sky.

      Parker Steel’s wife saw something that made her lips tighten as she stood looking across the square. Two children were loitering on the footway, the boy rattling the railings with his stick, the girl tucking up a doll in a miniature mail-cart. They were waiting for a tall woman in a green coat, faced with white, who had stopped to speak to a laborer whose arm was in a sling.

      The boy ran back and began dragging at the woman’s hand.

      “Mummy, mummy, come along, do.”

      “Good-day, Wilson, I am so glad you are getting on well.”

      The workman touched his cap, and watched Mrs. Murchison hustled away impulsively by her two children. The thrush had ceased singing, silenced by the clatter of Mr. Jack’s stick. Betty Steel was leaning against the shutter and watching the mother and her children with a feeling of bitter resentment in her heart. Even in her home-life this