CHAPTER V

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 woman seemed to vanquish her. Catherine Murchison was taking her children’s hands, while Betty Steel stood alone in the darkening emptiness of the “nursery.”

Perhaps the rushing up of simpler, deeper 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. The thought was instant in her that Catherine Murchison had betrayed the truth, and set the tongues of Roxton wagging.

Half an hour later the two women met on the stretch of grass outside the drawing-room windows. A casual observer would have imagined them to be the most Christian and courteous of acquaintances. Mrs. Betty was smiling in her rival’s face, though her heart seethed like a mill-pool.

“What a lovely day! I always admire the Canon’s spring flowers. Did you absorb all that the architectural gentleman gave us with regard to the value of flying buttresses in resisting the outward thrust of the church roof?”

“I am afraid I did not listen.”

“Nor did I. Technical jargon always bores me. So we are to have a bazaar; that is more to the point, so far as the frivolous element is concerned. I have not seen Dr. Murchison yet; is he with you?”

Catherine was looking at Mrs. Betty’s pale and refined face. She did not like the woman, but was much too warm-hearted to betray her feelings.

“No, my husband is too busy.”

“Of course. Measles in the slums, I hear. Is it true that you are taking an assistant.”

Catherine opened her eyes a little at the faint flavor of insolence in the speech.

“Yes, my husband finds the work too heavy.”

“I sympathize with you. Dr. Steel never would take club and dispensary work; not worth his while, you know; he is worked to death as it is. The curse of popularity, I tell him. How are the children? I hear the younger looks very frail and delicate.”

Mrs. Steel’s condescension was cunningly conveyed by her refined drawl. Catherine colored slightly, her pride repelled by the suave assumption of patronage Parker Steel’s wife adopted.

“Gwen is very well,” she said, curtly.

“Ah, one hears so much gossip. Roxton is full of tattlers. I am often astonished by the strange tales I hear.”

She flashed a smiling yet eloquent look into her rival’s eyes, and was rewarded by the sudden rush of color that spread over Catherine Murchison’s face. Mrs. Betty exulted inwardly. The shaft had flown true, she thought, and had transfixed the conscience of the originator of the Pennington scandal.

“Please remember me to your husband, Mrs. Murchison,” and she passed on with a glitter of the eyes and a graceful lifting of the chin, feeling that she had challenged her rival and seen her quail.

But Catherine was thinking of that frosty night in March when she had found her husband drink drugged in his study.