CHAPTER XVI

There was a dance that night at one of the Roxton houses, and Mrs. Betty, brilliant in cream and carnation, swept through the room with all the verve of a girl of twenty. Her partners discovered her in wondrous fettle—swift, splendid, and audacious, color in her cheeks, a sparkle of conscious triumph in her eyes. Her tongue was in sympathy with the quickness of her feet. She prattled, laughed, and was as deliciously impertinent as any minx who has a theory of fascination.

Mrs. Hamilton-Hamilton, the hostess of the night, was a patient of James Murchison’s, and Catherine’s more gracious comeliness came as a contrast to Mrs. Betty’s faylike glamour. The Hamiltons were brewers, wealthy plebeians who had assimilated that lowest of all arts, the art of making money, without absorbing a culture that was of the same temper as their gold. Catherine had left her husband to his pipe and his books at Lombard Street. She had come to serve him, because as a doctor’s wife she knew the value of smart publicity. In small towns trifles are of serious moment. Orthodoxy is in the ascendant, and individual singularity of opinion is considered to be “peculiar.” A professional gentleman suspected of free thought may discover his social standing being damaged by the vicaress behind his back. Bigotry dies hard despite the broadening of our culture, and “eccentric” individuals may be ostracized by the sectarians of a town. Forms and formularies produce hypocrites. It is perilous for professional gentlemen to appear eccentric. Even if they abstain from lip service in person, their wives must be regular in helping to populate the parish pews.

Kate Murchison and Mrs. Betty passed and repassed each other in the vortex of many a waltz. To Parker Steel’s wife there was a prophetic triumph on the wind. She found herself calculating, as she chatted to her partners, how long these people would remain loyal to the surgeon of Lombard Street when his repute was damaged by the scandal at Boland’s Farm. Catherine had a peculiar interest for her that night, for Mrs. Betty’s hate was tempered by exultation. She watched for the passing and repassing of Catherine’s aureole of shimmering hair, smiling to herself at the woman’s happy ignorance of the notoriety that threatened her husband’s name.

To Catherine also, with each sweep of the dance, came that olive-skinned and complacent face, whose eyes seemed ever on the watch for her. She caught the rattle of the dark woman’s persiflage as she drifted past to the moan of the violins. She remarked an exaggerated vivacity in Mrs. Betty’s manner, a something that suggested triumph with each nearness of their faces. Always the slightly cynical smile, the teeth glimmering between the lips; always that curious flash of the eyes, sudden and momentary, like the flash of a light over the night sea. With women the vaguest of emotions lead to intuitive gleams of thought, and Mrs. Betty’s exultation inspired Catherine with reasonless unrest.

The two women met in the doorway of the supper-room, Parker Steel’s wife on Mr. Cranston’s arm, Catherine escorted by Captain Hensley, of the Buffs. Their eyes met with a glitter of defiance and distrust. Catherine would have drawn aside, but Betty, with a laugh, gave her a pretty sweep of the hand.

“Seniores priores, dear. How is your husband? What a delicious evening!”

The presentiment of treachery asserted itself with superstitious strangeness. Catherine colored, stung, despite herself, by Parker Steel’s wife’s patronizing drawl.

“Thanks. My husband is very well. Has he been ill?” and the ironical question conveyed a challenge.

Mrs. Betty’s lips parted over their perfect teeth.

“Mr. Cranston is such an enthusiast that I must not lose him the next waltz. Try the paté de foie gras, it is excellent,” and she swept out, with a glitter of amusement, on the lawyer’s arm.

They were soon moving in the midst of the music, a score of rustling dresses swinging their colors over the polished floor.

“Poor Mrs. Murchison,” and the lawyer looked curiously into his partner’s face.

“Strange that we should have met her, just then!”

“After our discussion at supper!”

“Yes; she knows nothing.”

“My dear Mrs. Steel, the penny-post carries more poison than the rings of the old Italians.”

“But then we are more civilized in our methods.”

“Possibly. The cruelties of civilization are more refined, of the soul rather than of the body. Shall we reverse?”

“Yes. There are some fatalities that cannot be reversed, Mr. Cranston, eh?”

Catherine returned to the great house in Lombard Street that night with a vague feeling of melancholy and unrest. She was beginning to know the terror of a secret in a house, a hidden shame to be held sacred from the eyes of the world. Nor was it that she did not trust her husband, nor respect his strength, for few men would have fought as he had fought, and even in defeat she beheld a pathos that was wholly tragic, never sordid.

She was haunted by the thought that night that Betty Steel had guessed her secret, and only women know the feline cruelty of their sex. The greater part of the social snobberies and tyrannies of life are inspired by the spiteful egotism of women. Catherine knew enough of Betty’s nature to forecast the mercy she might expect from her rival’s tongue. Moreover, the very home-coming from the dance recalled to her that March night when she had first uncovered her husband’s shame. There are some memories that are like aggressive weeds, no tearing up by the roots can banish them from the human heart. Their tendrils creep and thrust into every crevice of the mind. Their fruit is full of a poisoned juice, their flowers red as hyssop—for all the world to see.

As for the sake of irony, the letters that Betty Steel and Mr. Cranston had discussed, were opened by Murchison at the breakfast-table before the faces of his children and his wife. Master Jack had been clamoring to be taken to the cottage on Marley Down, and Gwen had crept round to her father’s elbow to overpersuade him with the winsomeness of childhood. The first letter that Murchison opened was from Cranston; the second from Parker Steel. Miss Gwen, doll in hand, stood unheeded at her father’s elbow. It was Catherine who rose, called the two children, and took them out into the garden to play.

They clung, one to either hand, the boy prancing and chattering, the girl solemn-eyed because of her father’s silence.

“Mother, when may we go to Marley?”

“Soon, dear, soon.”

“Oh, I say, do they keep rabbits there?”

“And will daddy come too?”

Catherine disentangled herself, and left them on the lawn under the great plane-tree, her heart heavy with some half-expected dread.

“Daddy will come too, dear. I will call you when you are to come in.”

Murchison was still sitting at the breakfast-table when she returned, looking like a man who had lost his all at cards. His figure appeared shrunken, and hollow at the shoulders, his face expressionless as though from some sudden palsy of the brain.

“James!”

He started as though he had not heard her enter.

“The children, where—?”

“In the garden. Tell me, what has happened?”

“Happened? My God, Kate, see, read!—what have I done?”

She stretched out her hand, her face piteously brave.

“This letter?”

He nodded.

“From whom?”

“Steel. There is to be an inquest at Boland’s Farm.”

Catherine read it, and the lawyer’s also, an angry glow welling up into her eyes. She crumpled the letters in her hand, and stood silent a moment, with quivering lips.

“Now, now—I know—”

Murchison stared at her like one half-dazed.

“You have read it?”

“Yes. A blunder! No, I’ll not believe it, James; there is malice here. I read it in Betty Steel’s eyes last night.”

“But the facts,” and he groaned.

“Facts! Are they facts? Is Parker Steel infallible? Wait, I know what I will do.”

Murchison’s eyes watched her like the eyes of a dog.

“I will see Dr. Parker Steel. I will ask him by what right he has dared to act as he has acted.”

Her words seemed to shake her husband from his stupor.

“Kate, you cannot do it.”

“Why not?”

“Beg a favor of that fop! Besides, the case has gone too far. The facts are there. I blundered. I knew that I had lost my nerve.”

She looked at him with a woman’s pity, her pride and her love still strong and heroic in their trust.

“It was not you, dear—not you.”

“Not I, Kate, but my baser self. Fate takes us when we are in the toils.”

They heard the children in the garden, their laughter close beneath the window. Murchison’s hands caught the arms of his chair. His children’s happiness seemed part of the mockery of fate.

“Don’t let them come in. I can’t bear it. I—” and he broke down suddenly into that most pitiful and tragic pass when a strong man’s anguish brings him even to tears.

Catherine, her face transfigured, bent over him, and seized his hands.

“Oh, not that! Why, we are here together, and you look on the darker side—”

His tears were on her hands; he was ashamed, and hung his head.

“Kate, it is true, I feel it. Steel—”

“Steel?”

“Is too cold a man to risk what he cannot prove.”

She drew her breath, and kissed him, the kiss of a mother and a wife.

“I will go to him,” she said.

“Kate!”

“No, not to plead. I could not plead with such a man as Steel.”