A Woman's War. Warwick Deeping

impulses made her hurry from the room when she saw her husband’s carriage stop before the house. He was the one living thing that she could call her own, and this pale-faced and cynical woman felt very lonely for the moment and conscious of the dusk. Parker Steel had signalized his return by a savage slamming of the heavy door. Betty met him in the hall. She went and kissed him, and hung near him almost tenderly as she helped him off with his fur-lined coat.

      “You poor thing, how late you are!”

      Her husband growled, as though he were in no mood for a woman’s fussing.

      “I should like some tea.”

      “Of course, dear; you look tired.”

      “Hurry it up, I’m busy.”

      And he marched into the dining-room, leaving Betty standing in the hall.

      The warmer impulses of the moment flickered and died in the wife’s heart. Her eyes had been tender, her mouth soft, and even lovable. The slight shock of the man’s preoccupied coldness drove her back to the unemotional monotony of life. Husbands were unsympathetic creatures. She had read the fact in books as a girl, and had proved it long ago in the person of Parker Steel.

      “What is the matter, dear, you look worried?”

      Her husband was battering at the sulky fire as though the action relieved his feelings.

      “Oh, nothing,” and he kept his back to her.

      Mrs. Betty rang the bell for fresh tea.

      “What a surly dog you are, Parker.”

      “Surly!”

      “Yes.”

      “Confound it, can’t you see that I’m dead tired? You women always want to talk.”

      Betty Steel looked at him curiously, and spoke to the maid who was waiting at the door.

      “I always know, Parker, when you have lost a patient,” she drawled, calmly, when the girl had gone.

      “Who said anything about losing patients?”

      “Have you quarrelled with old Pennington?”

      “Well, if you must know,” and he snapped it out at her with a vicious grin; “I’ve made an infernal ass of myself over at Marley.”

      His wife’s most saving virtue was that she rarely lost control either of her tongue or of her temper. She could on occasion display the discretion of an angel, and smile down a snub with a beatific simplicity that made her seem like a child out of a convent. She busied herself with making her husband’s tea, and chatted on general topics for fully three minutes before referring to the affair at Marley.

      “You generally exaggerate your sins, Parker,” she said, cheerfully.

      “Do I? Damn that Pennington woman and her humbugging hysterics.”

      Mrs. Betty studied him keenly.

      “Is Miss Julia really and truly ill for once?”

      “I have just wired for Campbell of ‘Nathaniel’s’.”

      “Indeed!”

      “The idiot’s eyesight is in danger. Old Pennington got worried about her, and insisted on a consultation.”

      Betty cut her husband some cake.

      “So you have sent for Campbell?”

      “I had Murchison first.”

      “Parker!”

      “The fellow spotted the thing. I hadn’t even looked at the woman’s eyes. Nice for me, wasn’t it?”

      Betty Steel’s face had changed in an instant, as though her husband had confessed bankruptcy or fraud. The sleek and complacent optimism vanished from her manner; her voice lost its drawl, and became sharp and almost fierce.

      “What did Murchison do?”

      “Do!” And Parker Steel laughed with an unpleasant twitching of the nostrils. “Bluffed like a hero, and helped me through.”

      Mrs. Betty’s bosom heaved.

      “So you are at Murchison’s mercy?”

      “I suppose so, yes.”

      “Parker, I almost hate you.”

      “My dear girl!”

      “And that woman, of course he will tell her.”

      “Who?”

      “Kate Murchison.”

      “No one ever accused Kate Murchison of being a gossip.”

      “She will have the laugh of us, that is what makes me mad.”

      Betty Steel pushed her chair back from the table, and went and leaned against the mantel-piece. She was white and furious, she who rarely showed her passions. All the vixen was awake in her, the spite of a proud woman who pictures the sneer on a rival’s face.

      “Parker!” And her voice sounded hard and metallic.

      “Well, dear.”

      “You love Murchison for this, I suppose?”

      Steel gulped down his tea and laughed.

      “Not much,” he confessed.

      “Parker, we must remember this. Lie quiet a while, and take the fool’s kindnesses. Our turn will come some day.”

      “My dear girl, what are you driving at?”

      “The Murchisons are our enemies, Parker. I will show this Kate woman some day that her husband is not without a flaw.”

      The great Sir Thomas Campbell arrived that night at Roxton, and was driven over to Marley in Steel’s brougham. The specialist confirmed the private practitioner’s diagnosis, complimented him gracefully in Mr. Pennington’s presence, and elected to operate on the lady forthwith. Parker Steel’s mustache boasted a more jaunty twist when he returned home that night after driving Sir Thomas Campbell to the station. He had despatched a reliable nurse to attend to Miss Julia at Marley, and felt that his reputation was weathering the storm without the loss of a single twig.

      As for James Murchison, he kept his own council and said never a word. Even doctors are human, and Murchison remembered many a mild blunder of his own. He received a note in due course from Parker Steel, thanking him formally for services rendered, and informing him that the operation had been eminently successful. Murchison tore up the letter, and thought no more of the matter for many months. Work was pressing heavily on his shoulders with influenza and measles epidemic in the town, and he had his own “dragon of evil” to battle with in the secret arena of his heart.

      Gossip is like the wind, every man or woman hears the sound thereof without troubling to discover whence it comes or whither it blows. The details of Miss Julia Pennington’s illness had been wafted half across the county in less than a week. Nothing seems to inspire the tongues of garrulous elderly ladies more than the particulars of some particular gory and luscious slashing of a fellow-creature’s flesh. Miss Pennington’s ordeal had been delicate and almost bloodless, but there were vague and dramatic mutterings in many Roxton side streets, and gusts of gossip whistling through many a keyhole.

      It was at a “Church Restoration” conversazione at Canon Stensly’s that Mrs. Steel’s ears were first opened to the tittle-tattle of the town. The month was May, and the respectable and genteel Roxtonians had been turned loose in the Canon’s garden. Mrs. Betty chanced to be sitting under the shelter of a row of cypresses, chatting to Miss Gerraty, a partisan of the Steel faction, when she heard voices on the other side of the trees. The promenaders, whosoever they were, were discussing Miss Pennington’s illness, and the tenor of their remarks was not flattering to Parker Steel. Mrs. Betty reddened under her picture-hat.