CHAPTER III

Mrs. Betty Steel sat alone at the breakfast-table with a silver teapot covered with a crimson cosy before her, and a pile of letters and newspapers at her elbow. The west front of St. Antonia’s showed through the window, buttress and pinnacle glimmering up into the morning sunlight. Frost-rimed trees spun a scintillant net against the blue. The quiet life of the old town went up with its lazy plumes of smoke into the crisp air.

Mrs. Betty Steel drew a slice of toast from the rack, toyed with it, and looked reflectively at her husband’s empty chair. She was a dark, sinuous, feline creature was Mrs. Betty, with a tight red mouth, and an olive whiteness of skin under her black wreath of hair. Her hands were thin, mercurial, and yet suggestive of pretty and graceful claws. A clever woman, cleverer with her head than with her heart, acute, elegant, aggressive, yet often circuitous in her methods. She had abundant impulse in her, blood, and clan, even evidenced by the way in which she ripped the wrapper from a copy of the Wilmenden Mail.

Mrs. Betty buried her face in the pages, crumbling her toast irritably as her eyes ran to and fro over the head-lines. She glanced up as her husband entered, a smooth-faced, compressed, and professional person, with an assured manner and an incisive cut of the mouth and chin.

“Any news in this hub of monotony?”

His wife put down the paper, and called back the dog who was poking his nose near the bacon-dish on the fire-guard.

“Quack medicines much in evidence. The fellows are arrant Papists, Parker; they promise to cure everything with nothing. Tea or coffee?”

Mrs. Betty spoke with the slight drawl that was habitual to her. Her admirers felt it to be distinguished, but its effect upon shop assistants was to spread the instincts of socialism.

Dr. Parker Steel declared for coffee, and took salt to his porridge. He was not a man who wasted words, save perhaps on the most paying patients. Professional ambition, and an aggressive conviction that he was to be the leading citizen in Roxton filled the greater part of the gentleman’s sphere of consciousness.

“And local sensations?”

“Mrs. Pindar’s ball, a very dull affair, sausage-rolls and jelly, and a floor like glue—probably.”

“Any one there?”

“The Lombard Street clique, the Carnabys, Tom Flemming, Kate Murchison, etc., etc., etc.”

Parker Steel grunted, and appeared to be estimating the number of cubes in the sugar bowl by way of exercising himself in the compilation of statistics.

“Murchison not there, I suppose?” he asked.

“The wife—quite sufficient.”

Her husband smiled, showing the regular white teeth under his trim, black mustache with scarcely any flow of feeling in his features. Dr. Parker Steel was very proud of his teeth and finger-nails.

“You don’t love that lady much, eh?”

Mrs. Betty’s refined superciliousness trifled with the suggestion.

“Kate Murchison? I cannot say that I ever trouble much about her. Rather fat and vulgar—perhaps. Fat women do not appeal to me; they seem to carry sentimentality and gush about with them like patchouli. Do you think that you are gaining ground on Murchison, Parker, eh?”

The husband appeared confident.

“Perhaps.”

“Old Hicks will resign the Hospital soon; you must take it.”

“Not worth the trouble.”

Mrs. Betty’s dark eyes condemned the assertion.

“Dirt’s money in the wrong place, as they say in trade, Parker.”

“Well?” And the amused consort glanced at her with a cold flicker of affection.

“Study it on utilitarian principles. Lady Twaddle-twaddle sends her cook, or her gardener, or her boot-boy to be treated in Roxton Hospital. You exercise yourself on the boot-boy or the cook, and Lady Twaddle-twaddle approves the cure. Praise is never thrown away. Let the old ladies who attend missionary meetings say of you, ‘that Dr. Steel is so kind and attentive to the poor.’ We have to lay the foundation of a palace in the soil.”

Parker Steel chuckled, knowing that behind Mrs. Betty’s elegant verbiage there was a tenacity of purpose that would have surprised her best friends.

“I wonder whether Murchison is as privileged as I am?” he said, passing his cup over the red tea cosy.

“I suppose the woman gushes for him, just as I work my wits for you.”

“The Amazons of Roxton.”

“We live in a civilized age, Parker, but the battle is no less bitter for us. I use my head. Half the words I speak are winged for a final end.”

“You are clever enough, Betty,” he confessed.

“We both have brains”—and she gave an ironical laugh—“I shall not be content till the world, our world, fully recognizes that fact. Old Hicks is past his work. Murchison is the only rival you need consider. Therefore, Parker, our battle is with the gentleman of Lombard Street.”

“And with the wife?”

“That is my affair.”

Such life feuds as are chronicled in the hatred of a Fredegonde for a Brunehaut may be studied in miniature in many a modern setting. Ever since childhood Betty Steel and Catherine Murchison had been born foes. Their innate instincts had seemed antagonistic and repellent, and the life of Roxton had not chastened the tacit feud. Girls together at the same school, they had fought for leadership and moral sway. Catherine had been one of those creatures in whom the deeper feelings of womanhood come early to the surface. Children had loved her; her arms had been always open to them, and she had stood out as a species of little mother to whom the owners of bleeding knees had run for comfort.

The rivalry of girlhood had deepened into the rivalry of womanhood. They were the “beauties” of Roxton; the one generous, ruddy, and open-hearted; the other sleek, white-faced, a studied artist in elegance and charm. Both were admired and championed by their retainers; Catherine popular with the many, Betty served by the few. Miss Elizabeth had beheld herself the less favored goddess, and as of old the apple of Paris had had the power to inflame.

Catherine’s 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 in him?”

“Yes, is he reliable; does he know his work?”

Her husband laughed.

“Why, do you want to consult the fellow?”

“You have never caught him tripping?”

“Not yet. What are you driving at?”

“Oh—nothing,” and she turned away, and put the hair back from her face, feeling feverish with the ferment of her thoughts.