CHAPTER VIII

Porteus Carmagee, the lawyer, and his sister lived in Lombard Street, in a grim, blind-eyed, stuccoed house with laurels in tubs before it, and chains and posts defending an arid stretch of shingle. There was something about the house that suggested law, a dry and close-mouthed look that was wholly on the surface. Porteus Carmagee was a little man, who forever seemed spluttering and fuming under some grievance. He was hardly to be met without an irritable explosion against his own physical afflictions, the delinquencies of tradesmen and Radicals, or the sins of the boy who brought the morning paper. The lawyer’s almost truculent attitude towards the world was largely the result of “liver”; his sourness was on the surface; one glimpse of him cutting capers with Kate Murchison’s children would dissipate the notion that he was a cadaverous and crusty hater of mankind.

Miss Phyllis Carmagee was remarkable for the utter unfitness of her Christian name, and for the divine placidity that contrasted with her brother’s waspishness. A big, moon-faced, ponderous woman, she was a rock of composure, a species of human banyan-tree under whose blessed branches a hundred fretful mortals might rest in the shade. Her detractors, and they were few, asserted that she was a mere mass of amiable and phlegmatic fat. Miss Carmagee was blessed with a very happy sense of humor; she had a will of her own, a will that was formidable by reason of its stubborn inertia when once it had come to rest.

Some six years had passed since Miss Carmagee had deposited herself as a supporter of James Murchison on his professional platform. Her pleasant stolidity had done him service, for Miss Carmagee impressed her convictions on people by sitting down with the serene look of one who never argues. She was a woman who stated her opinions with a buxom frankness, and who sat on opposition as though it were a cushion. She was perhaps the only woman who gave no sparks to the flint of Mrs. Steel’s aggressive vivacity. Miss Carmagee’s placidity was unassailable. To attack her was like throwing pease against a pyramid.

“Well, my dear, so you have furnished the cottage.”

She lay back contentedly in her basket-chair—chairs were the few things that nourished grievances against her—and beamed on Catherine Murchison, who sat shaded by the leaves of a young lime. The tea-table stood between them. Miss Carmagee liked basking in the sun like some sleek, fat spaniel.

“It is such a dear little place.” And the young wife’s eyes were full of tenderness. “I want James to keep the gray hairs from coming too fast. I shall lure him away to Marley Down, one day in seven, if I can.”

“Of course, my dear, you can persuade him.”

“Jim has such an obstinate conscience. He gives his best to people, and naturally they overwork him. We have rivals, too, to consider. I know that Betty Steel is jealous of us, but then—”

A touch of wistfulness on Catherine’s face brought Miss Carmagee’s optimism to the rescue.

“You need not fear the Steels, my dear.”

“No, perhaps not.”

“Many people—I, for one—don’t trust them. The woman is too thin to be sincere,” and Miss Carmagee’s bust protested the fact.

“Betty’s kind enough in her way.”

“When she gets her way, my dear. But tell me about the cottage. Are the drains quite safe, and are there plenty of cupboards?”

Catherine was launched into multitudinous details—the staining of floors, the choosing of tapestries, the latest bargains in old furniture. It eased her to talk to this placid woman, for, despite her courage, her heart was sad in her and full of forebodings for her husband. The truth had become as a girdle of thorns about her, worn both day and night. She bore the smart of it without a flicker of the lids, and carried her head bravely before the world.

The strip of garden, with its prim and old-fashioned atmosphere, was invaded abruptly by the rising generation. There was a flutter of feet round the laurel hedge bordering the path to the front gate, and Mr. Porteus pranced into view, a veritable light-opera lawyer with youth at either elbow.

“Hello, godma! may I have some strawberries?”

Master Jack Murchison plumped himself emphatically into Miss Carmagee’s lap, oblivious of the fact that he was sitting on her spectacles.

“Jack, dear, you must not be so rough.”

Mr. Porteus crossed the grass with the more dignified and less voracious Dutch bonnet beside him. Miss Gwen and the bachelor always treated each other with a species of stately yet twinkling civility. The lawyer’s wrinkles turned into smile wreaths in the child’s presence, and there was less perking up of his critical eyebrows.

“Here’s a handful for you, Kate; I was ambuscaded and captured round the corner. Who said strawberries? Will Miss Gwendolen Murchison deign to deprive the blackbirds of a few?”

“Do you grow stawberries for the blackbirds, godpa?”

“Do I, Miss Innocent! No, not exactly.”

Catherine had removed her son and heir from Miss Carmagee’s lap. The fat lady looked cheerful and unperturbed. Master Jack was suffered to ruffle her best skirts with impunity.

“Don’t let them eat too much, Porteus.”

Her brother cocked a birdlike eye at Miss Gwen.

“Sixpence for the biggest strawberry brought back unnibbled. Off with you. And don’t trample on the plants, John Murchison, Esq.”

The pair raced for the fruit-garden, Master Jack’s enthusiasm rendering him oblivious to the crime of taking precedence of a lady. Gwen relinquished the van to him, and dropped to a demure toddle. Her brother’s flashing legs suggested the thought to her that it was undignified to be greedy.

“Pardon me, Kate, I think you are wanted over the way.”

Mr. Carmagee’s sudden soberness of manner brought the color to Catherine’s cheeks. The lawyer was rattling the keys in his pocket, and blinking irritably at space. Intuition warned her that he was more concerned than he desired her to imagine. She rose instantly, as though her thoughts were already in her home.

“Good-bye; you will excuse me—”

She bent over Miss Carmagee and kissed her, her heart beating fast under the silks of her blouse.

“I’ll bring the youngsters over presently, Kate.”

“Thank you so much.”

“And send some fruit with them.”

“You are always spoiling us.”

And Porteus Carmagee accompanied her to the gate.

The lawyer rejoined his sister under the lime-tree, biting at his gray mustache, and still rattling the keys in his trousers pocket. He walked with a certain jerkiness that was peculiar to him, the spasmodic and irritable habit of a man whose nerve-force seemed out of proportion to his body.

“Murchison’s an ass—a damned ass,” and he flashed a look over his shoulder in the direction of the fruit-garden.

Familiarity had accustomed Miss Carmagee to her brother’s forcible methods of expression. He detonated over the most trivial topics, and the stout lady took the splutterings of his indignation as a matter of course.

“Well?” and she examined her bent spectacles forgivingly.

“Murchison’s been overworking himself.”

“So Kate told me.”

“The man’s a fool.”

“A conscientious fool, Porteus.”

Mr. Carmagee sniffed, and expelled a sigh through his mustache.

“I’ve warned him over and over again. Idiot! He’ll break down. They had to bring him home in a cab from Mill Lane half an hour ago.”

His sister’s face betrayed unusual animation.

“What is the matter?”

“Heat stroke, or fainting fit. I saw the cab at the door, and collared the youngsters as they were coming round the corner with the nurse. Poor little beggars. I shall tell Murchison he’s an infernal fool unless he takes two months’ rest.”

Miss Carmagee knew where her brother’s heart lay. He generally abused his friends when he was most in earnest for their salvation.

“Kate will persuade him, Porteus.”

“The woman’s a treasure. The man ought to consider her and the children before he addles himself for a lot of thankless and exacting sluts. Conscience! Conscience be damned. Why, only last week the man must sit up half the night with a sweep’s child that had diphtheria. Conscience! I call it nonsense.”

Miss Carmagee smiled like the moon coming from behind a cloud.

“You approve of Parker Steel’s methods?”

“That little snob!” and the lawyer’s coat-tails gave an expressive flick.

“James Murchison only wants rest. Leave him to Kate; wives are the best physicians often.”

Mr. Carmagee’s keys applauded the remark.

“Taken a cottage on Marley Down, have they?”

“Yes.”

“I’ll recommend a renewal of the honeymoon. Hallo, here comes the sunlight.”

Mr. Porteus romped across the grass to poke his wrinkled face into the oval of the Dutch bonnet.

“Hallo, who says senna to-night? What! Miss Gwendolen Murchison approves of senna!”

“I’ve won that sixpence, godpa.”

“Indeed, sir, I think not.”

“Jack can have the sixpence; it’s his buffday to-morrow.”

“A lady who likes senna and renounces sixpences! Go to, Master John, you must run to Mr. Parsons, the clockmaker, and buy godma a pair of new spectacles.”

“Spectacles!” and Master Jack mouthed his scorn.

“A sad day for us, Miss Carmagee, when babies sit upon our infirmities!”

Parker Steel dropped into his Roxton tailor’s that same afternoon to have a summer suit fitted. The proprietor, an urbane and bald-headed person with the deportment of a diplomat, rubbed his hands and remarked that professional duties must be very exacting in the heat of June.

“Your colleague, I understand, sir—Dr. Murchison, sir—has had an attack from overwork; sunstroke, they say.”

“What! Sunstroke?”

“So I have been informed, sir.”

“Indeed!”

“Or an attack of faintness. Dr. Murchison is a most laborious worker. Four buttons, thank you; a breast-pocket, as before, certainly. Any fancy vestings to-day, doctor? No! Greatly obliged, sir, I’m sure,” and the diplomat dodged to the door and swung it open with a bow.

Parker Steel found his wife reading under the Indian cedar in the garden. She was dressed in white, with a red rose in her bosom, the green shadows of the trees and shrubs about her casting a sleek sheen over her olive face and dusky hair. Poets might have written odes to her, hailing the slim sweetness of her womanliness, using the lily as a symbol of her beauty and the Madonna-like radiance of her spiritual face.

She glanced up at her husband as he came spruce and complacent, like any Agag, over the grass.

“Murchison has had a sunstroke.”

“What! Who told you?”

“Rudyard, the tailor.”

The book was lying deprecatingly at Mrs. Betty’s feet. Her eyes swept from her husband to dwell reflectively on the scarlet pomp of the Oriental poppies.

“Do you think it was a sunstroke, Parker?”

Her husband glanced at his neat boots and whistled.

“What a melodramatic mind you have,” he said.