CHAPTER X

A white-capped servant came running across Lombard Street from Mr. Carmagee’s, and hailed Murchison’s chauffeur, who had just swung the car to the edge of the footway outside the doctor’s house. The white streamers of the maid’s apron were fluttering jauntily in the wind. Some weeks ago the chauffeur had discovered the fact that the lawyer’s parlor-maid had an attractive simper.

“Good-day, miss; can I oblige a lady?”

“Mr. Carmagee wants to know whether the doctor and the missus are going to Marley Down this afternoon?”

“Yes, straight away. I’m waiting for ’em to finish tea.”

“You’re to step over to Mr. Carmagee’s garden door at once.”

“Thank you. And who’s to mind the car?”

“It won’t catch cold,” and the maid showed her dimples for a bachelor’s benefit.

The chauffeur crossed the road with her, and was met at the green gate in the garden by Mr. Porteus himself. A hamper lay on the gravel-path at the lawyer’s feet, with straw protruding from under the lid. Mr. Carmagee twinkled, and gave the man a shilling.

“Stow this in the car, Gage; you’ve room, I suppose.”

“Plenty, sir.”

“Don’t say anything about it to your master. Just a little surprise, a good liver-tonic, Gage—see?”

The man grinned, touched his cap, and, picking up the hamper, recrossed the street. He packed Mr. Carmagee’s offering away with the light luggage at the back of the car, and after grimacing at the maid, who was still watching him from the garden door, busied himself with polishing the lamps.

“Good-bye, darling, good-bye. Be a good boy, Jack, and do what Mary tells you.”

Catherine was bending over her two children in the hall, a light dust cloak round her, a white veil over her summer hat. Miss Gwen, looking a little pensive and inclined to weep, hugged her mother with a pair of very chubby arms. Master Jack was more militant, and inclined to insist upon his rights.

“Oh, I say, mother, I don’t call it fair!”

“You shall come next week, dear.”

“Gage says he’ll teach me to drive. I’ll come next week. You’ve promised now—you know.”

Catherine kissed him, and laughed like a young bride when her husband came up and lifted the youngster off his feet.

“Who wants to boss creation, eh?”

Master John clapped his heels together.

“It’s no fun with old Mary, father.”

“You must learn to be a philosopher, my man.”

“I’m going to buy a busting big pea-shooter at Smith’s,” quoth the heckler, meaningly, as he regained the floor.

Murchison caught his daughter up in his strong arms.

“Good-bye, my Gwen—”

“Dood-bye, father.”

“No tears, little sunlight. What is it, a secret?—well.”

The child was whispering in his ear. Murchison listened, fatherly amusement shining in his eyes.

“I put ’em in muvver’s bag.”

“All right. I’ll see to it.”

“They’re boofy; I tried one, jus’ one.”

Murchison laughed, and hugged the child.

“What a wicked fay it is! You shall come with us next time. We’ll have tea in the woods, stir up ant-heaps, and play at Swiss Family Robinson. Good-bye,” and he carried her with him to the door to take her child’s kiss as the sunlight touched her hair.

Summer on Marley Down was a pageant such as painter’s love. Heather everywhere, lagoons of purple amid the rich green reefs of the rising bracken. Scotch firs towering into mystery against the blue, roofing magic aisles where shadows played on grass like velvet, bluff banks and forest valleys, heather and whortleberry tangling the ground. In the marshy hollows of the down the moss was as some rich carpet from the Orient, gold, green, and bronze. Asphodel grew in these rank green hollows, with the red whorls of the sundew, and the swinging sedge. Everywhere a broad, breezy sky, brilliant with color above a brilliant world.

The palings of the cottage-garden glimmered white between the sombre cypresses, and the dark swell of the fir-wood topped the red of the tiled roof. This nook in Arcady had the charm of a surprise for Murchison, for Catherine had made him promise that he would leave the stewardship to her. She had spent many an hour over at Marley Down, and her year’s allowance from her mother had gone in art fabrics, carpets, and old furniture. Catherine had taken Gwen with her more than once, having sworn the child to secrecy on these solemn motherly trifles, and Gwen had hidden her bubbling enthusiasm even from her father.

“Here we are! Is it not a corner of romance?”

“The place looks lovely, dear.”

“Wait!” and she seemed happily mysterious.

“I can guess your magic. Carry the luggage in, Gage; Dr. Inglis may want you for an hour or two at home.”

He gave his hand to Catherine, and together they passed into the little garden. Murchison looked about him like a man who had put the grim world out of his heart. The peacefulness of the place seemed part of the woodland and the sky. Purple clematis was in bloom, with a white rose over the porch. The beds below the windows were fragrant with sweet herbs, lavender and thyme, rosemary and sage. A crimson rambler blazed up nearly to the overhanging eaves, and there were rows of lilies, milk white, beneath the cypress-trees.

Within, a woman’s careful and happy tenderness welcomed him everywhere. A dozen nooks and corners betrayed where Catherine’s hands had been at work. Flowered curtains at the casements; simple pottery, richly colored, on the window shelves; his favorite books; a great lounge-chair for him before an open window. The place was a dream cottage, brown beamed, brown floored, its walls tinted with delicate greens and reds, old panelling beside the red brick hearths, beauty and quaintness everywhere, flowers in the garden, flowers in the quiet room.

“What a haven of rest!”

He stood in the little drawing-room, looking about him with an expression of deep contentment on his face. Catherine knew that his heart thanked her, and that her simple idyl was complete.

He turned and put his arm across her shoulders.

“You have worked hard, dear.”

“Have I?” and she laughed and colored.

“It is all good. I am wondering whether I deserve so much.”

Her happy silence denied the thought.

“Your spirit is in the place, Kate.”

“My heart, perhaps,” she answered.

He bent and kissed her, and drew from her with smiling mouth as they heard the man Gage come plodding down the stairs.

He stopped at the door and touched his cap.

“All in, sir. I’ve put your bag in what the old lady told me was your dressing-room.”

“Thanks, Gage.”

“Any message to Dr. Inglis, sir?”

“Oh, ask him to call at Mrs. Purvis’s in Carter Street; I forgot to put her on the list.”

“Right, sir,” and they heard the clash of the garden gate; then the panting of the car, and the plaintive wail of the “oil horse” as it got in gear.

“Out—old world,” and Murchison swept his wife towards the piano; “give me a song, Kate.”

“Now?” and her eyes were radiant.

“Yes, I shall remember the first song you sing to me in this dear place.”

Catherine had gone to her room, when Murchison stumbled on the hamper that Porteus Carmagee had given the man Gage to carry in the car. The fellow had set it down in the little hall, between an oak settle and a table that held a bowl of roses by the door. Murchison imagined that his wife had been investing in china or antiques. A letter was tucked under the cord, and, looking closer, he recognized his own name and the lawyer’s scrawl, the “qualifications” added with a humorous flourish of Mr. Carmagee’s pen.

Murchison sat on the oak settle, opened the envelope, and drew out the paper with its familiar crest.

“My dear Fellow,—Being a hearty admirer of your wife’s management of your health, I, a ridiculous bachelor, presume to afflict you with medicine of my own, gratis. I send you half a dozen bottles of Martinez’s 1887, as good a port as you will find in any cellar. I know that you are an abstemious beggar, but take the stuff for the tonic it is, and drink to an ‘incomparable’ wife’s health. The wine has purpled me out of the gray dumps on many an occasion. Not that you will need it, sir, for such a disease. Chivalry forbid!    Yours ever,

“Porteus Carmagee.”

“P. S.—Gage is smuggling this over for me in the car.”

Murchison read the letter through as though this eccentric but lovable gentleman had written to bully him on behalf of some injured client. Six bottles of Martinez’s 1887, plumped by this dear old blunderer into Kate’s haven of refuge! Had Murchison believed in the personal existence of the devil, he would have imagined that the Spirit of Evil had bewitched the innocent heart of Mr. Porteus Carmagee. Good God! what a frail fool he was that such a thing should have the least significance for him! James Murchison scared by a drug in a bottle! And yet the first impulse that he had was to dash the hamper on the floor, and watch the red juice dye the stones.

He heard his wife singing in her room above, singing with that tender yet subdued abandonment that goes with a happy heart. He heard the door open, her footstep on the landing.

“James, dear.”

He started as though guilty, and crumpled the letter in his hand.

“Yes.”

“Would you like supper now, and a walk later? There will be a moon.”

“Let us have supper,” he answered back.

“I will come in a minute. Have you seen the sunset? It is grand over the heath.”

She went back into her bedroom, humming some old song, her very happiness hurting the man’s heart. What was this lust, this appetite, this thirst in the blood, that it should make him the creature of such a chance? Had he not free will, the self-respecting strength of his own manhood? Strange irony of life that six bottles of choice wine should typify the father’s sins visited upon the children! A scientific platitude! And yet the thought was pitiful to him, pitiful that the spiritual beauty of a woman’s love could be challenged by such a pathetic thing as this. He had grappled and thrown the passion time on time, and yet it had slunk away to come grinning back to him with open mouth and burning eyes.

He was still sitting on the settle with the letter crumpled in his hand, when Catherine called to him again from her bedroom.

“Do look at the sky, dear, it is wonderful.”

His wife’s innocent happiness stung him with its unconscious pathos. She had conceived this Eden for him, and lo—the serpent was amid the flowers her hands had gathered. He roused himself, picked up the hamper by the cord, and carried it into the little dining-room beyond the hall. Ignorance was bliss for her; knowledge would dash her joyous confidence in a moment. There was no need for her to know; he felt sure of himself, safe with her in such a place. Looking round him a moment, he pushed the hamper under the deep window-seat, where it was hidden by the drapings. Poor Porteus, how little he thought that an asp lurked under the leaves of the vine!

A full moon was rising in the east when husband and wife went out into the garden. The glimmering witchery of the night bathed the world in silent splendor. From the cottage the broad swell of the heathland rolled back under the sky to where a forest of firs rose like distant peaks against the moon. Mists, white and ghostly, were rising in the meadows of the plain, vistas of woodland, vague and mysterious, shining up through the gathering vapor. In the garden the scent of the lilies mingled with the old world sweetness of the herbs. The flowers stood white before the cypresses, and the dew was falling.

Not a sound save the distant baying of a dog. Murchison opened the little gate to the path that wound amid the gorse and heather. The turmoil and clamor of the world seemed far from them under the moonlit sky; the breath of the night was cool and fragrant.

Catherine’s head was on her husband’s shoulder, his arm about her body. She leaned her weight on him with the happy instinct of a woman, her face white towards the moon, her eyes full of the light thereof.

“Eight years,” she said, as though speaking her inmost thoughts.

“Eight years!” and he echoed her.

“Do you remember that night at Weybourne? It was just such a night as this.”

His arm tightened about her.

“Memories are like books,” he said, “a few live in our hearts through life, the rest, like the bills we pay, are read, and then forgotten.”

“You were very nervous.” And she laughed, alluringly.

“I can remember stammering.”

“And how you held my wrist?”

“Like that,” and he proved that he had not forgotten.

They wandered on for a while in silence, looking towards the fir-woods whose spires were touched by the light of the moon.

“I hope the children are asleep.”

“And that poor Mary has not been blinded by your son’s propensity for blowing pease.”

“Jack will be like you, dear.”

“Poor child, he might do better.”

He spoke lightly, caught up self-consciousness, and sighed. His wife’s eyes looked swiftly at his face.

“You feel that you can rest here, dear?”

“With you, yes.”

She felt the pressure of his hand, and saw his mouth harden, his brows contract a little. The subject saddened him, brought back the introspective mood, and recalled the darker past. Catherine broke from it instinctively, knowing that it was poor comfort to let him brood.

“To-morrow—”

“What are your plans?”

“Shall we walk to Farley church?”

“Yes, I love the old place, the cedars and yews shading the graves. It has repose—poetry.”

His mind recoiled on happier things. Catherine felt it, and was comforted.

“I often went to Farley as a child.”

“The memory suits you, dear. I can see a little, golden-headed woman sitting in the sunlight in one of those black old pews.”

“I was like our Gwen, but more noisy.”

“Gwen cannot do better than repeat her mother.”

The moon sailed high over Marley Down when husband and wife returned to the cottage. The old village woman whom Catherine had hired had lit the lamp in the small drawing-room, and the warm glow flooded through the casement upon the flowers and the dew-drenched grass. Catherine wandered to the piano, her husband lying in the chair before the open window. She played and sang to him, the old songs she had sung when they had been betrothed.

She rose at last, and, bending over him, put her arms about his neck, while his hands held hers.

“I am going to bed.”

“Dustman, eh?”

“And you?”

He looked through the window at the black sweep of the heath and the stars above it.

“I shall sit up awhile, dear, and do some work.”

“Work, traitor!”

He glanced up at her with a smile.

“I brought a ledger over with me. No time like the sweet and idle present. There are such things as bills, dear.”

Catherine brushed the commonplace aside with a woman’s adroitness.

“Well, an hour’s exile, and no more.”

“I promise that.”

“Good-night, till you come—”

She kissed him, glided away, and went up to her room, humming one of Schubert’s songs.