CHAPTER XIX

By certain scientific thinkers life is held to be but a relative term, and the “definitions” of the ancients have been cast aside into the very dust that they despised as gross and utterly inanimate. Whether radium be “alive” or no, the thing we ordinary mortals know as “life” shows even in its social aspects a significant sympathy with the Spencerian definition. The successful men are those who react and respond most readily, and most selfishly to the externals of existence. Vulgarly, we call it the seizing of opportunities, though the clever merchant may react almost unconsciously and yet instinctively to the market of the public mind. All life is an adjustment of relationships, of husband to wife, of mother to child, of cheat to dupe, of capital to labor.

Thus, in social death, so to speak, a man may be so placed that he is unable to adapt himself to his surroundings. His reputation dies and disintegrates like a body that is incapable of adjusting itself to some blighting change of climate. Or, in the terminology of physics, responsible repute may be likened to an obelisk whose instability increases with its height. A flat stone may remain in respectable and undisturbed equilibrium for centuries. The poised pinnacle is pressed upon by every wind that blows.

The fall of some such pinnacle is a dramatic incident in the experience of the community. The noise thereof is in a hundred ears, and the splintered fragments may be gaped at by the crowd. Thus it had been with James Murchison in Roxton town. Neither doctors nor engine-drivers are permitted to indulge in drink, and in Murchison’s case the downfall had been the more dramatic by his absolute refusal to qualify the disgrace. An inquest, an unflattering finding by the coroner’s jury, a case for damages threatening to be successfully instituted by an outraged widow. Amid such social humiliations the brass plate had disappeared abruptly from the door of the house in Lombard Street. It was as though Murchison’s pride had accepted the tragic climax with all the finality of grim despair. He had even made no attempt to sell the practice, but, like Cain, he had gone forth with his wife and with his children, too sensitive in his humiliation to brave the ordeal of reconquering a lost respect.

Many months had passed since the furniture dealers’ vans had stood in the roadway outside the house in Lombard Street, with bass and straw littering the pavement, and men in green baize aprons going up and down the dirty steps. Frost was in the air, and the winter sun burned vividly upon the western hills. A fog of smoke hung over the straggling town, lying a dark blurr amid the white-misted meadows. Lights were beginning to wink out like sparks on tinder. The dull roar of a passing train came with hoarse strangeness out of the vague windings of the valley.

As the dusk fell, a smart pair of “bays” switched round the northwest corner of St. Antonia’s Square and clattered over the cobbles under the spectral hands of the towering elms. The church clock chimed for the hour as Parker Steel, furred like any Russian, stepped out of the brougham, and, slamming the door sharply after him, ordered the coachman to keep the horses on the move. Dr. Steel’s brougham was not the only carriage under St. Antonia’s sleeping elms. A steady beat of hoofs and a jingling of harness gave a ring of distinction to the quiet square.

Parker Steel glanced at the warm windows of his house as he crossed the pavement, and fumbled for his latch-key in his waistcoat pocket. The sound of music came from within, ceasing as the physician entered the hall, and giving place to the brisk murmur of many voices. A smart parlor-maid emerged from the drawing-room, carrying a number of teacups, blue and gold, on a silver tray. The babble of small talk unmuffled by the open door suggested that Mrs. Betty excelled as a hostess.

Ten minutes elapsed before Parker Steel, spruce and complacent, was bowing himself into his own drawing-room with the easy unction of a man sure of the distinction of his own manners. Quite twenty ladies were ready to receive the physician’s effeminate white fingers. Mrs. Betty had gathered the carriage folk of Roxton round her. The heat of the room seemed to have stimulated the scent of the exotic flowers. The shaded standard lamp, burning in the bay-window beside the piano, shed a brilliant light upon a pink mass of azaleas in bloom. Mrs. Betty herself was still seated upon the music-stool, one hand resting on the key-board as she chatted to Lady Sophia Gillingham, sunk deep in the luxurious cushions of a lounge-chair.

Mrs. Betty, a study in saffron, her pale face warmed by the light of the lamp, caught her husband’s eye as he moved through the crowded room. Sleek, brilliant, pleased as a cat that has been lapping cream, she made a slight gesture that he understood, a gesture that brought him before Lady Gillingham’s chair.

“Parker.”

“Yes, dear.”

“Will you touch the bell for me?—I want to show Mignon to Lady Sophia.”

Parker Steel’s smile congratulated his wife on her deft handling of the weapons of social diplomacy. He rang the bell, and meeting the servant at the door, desired her to bring Mrs. Betty’s blue Persian and the basket of kittens from before the library fire.

The physician took personal charge of Mignon and her children, and returning between the chairs and skirts, presented the family to Lady Sophia.

Parker Steel had an ecstatic lady at either elbow as he held the basket lined with red silk, the three mouse-colored kittens crawling about within. Mignon, the amber-eyed, had made a leap for Mrs. Betty’s lap.

“The dears!”

“How absolutely sweet!”

“Such tweety pets.”

The two elderly canaries cheeped in chorus while Lady Sophia’s fat and pudgy hand fondled the three kittens. Her red and apathetic face became more human and expressive for the moment, though there was a suggestion of cupidity in her dull blue eyes.

“The dear things!” and she lifted one from the basket into her lap, where it mewed rather peevishly, and caught its claws in Lady Sophia’s lace.

“Mignon is a prize beauty,” and Mrs. Betty caressed the cat, and looked up significantly into her husband’s face.

“Perfectly lovely. There, there, pet, what a fuss to make!” and the dowager’s red-knuckled hand contrasted with the kitten’s slate-gray coat. “I suppose they are all promised, Mrs. Steel?”

“Well, to tell the truth, they have created quite a rage among my friends.”

“No doubt, the dears. You could ask quite a fancy price for such prize kittens.”

Parker Steel had been prompted by an instant flash of his wife’s eyes.

“I am sure if Lady Gillingham would like one of the kittens—”

He appeared to glance questioningly, and for approval, at Mrs. Betty.

“Of course—I shall be delighted.”

“Really?”

“Why, yes.”

“Then—may I buy one?”

Parker Steel elevated his eyebrows, and, with the air of a Leicester, refused to listen to any such proposal.

“Do not mention such a matter. We shall only be too glad.”

“But, my dear Mrs. Steel—”

“I agree wholly with my husband.” And Mrs. Betty stretched out a white hand, and stroked the ball of fluff in Lady Sophia’s lap. “Choose which you like. They can leave the mother in a week or two.”

Lady Gillingham’s plebeian face beamed upon Mrs. Betty.

“This is really too generous.”

“Why, not at all,” and her vivacity was compelling.

“Then I may choose this one?”

“With pleasure.”

“Isn’t it a pet?”

Mignon, purring on Mrs. Betty’s lap, failed to realize in the least how valuable a social asset she had proved. There was a rustling of skirts, a shaking of hands, as the room began to empty of its silks and laces. Lady Sophia struggled up with a fat sigh from the depths of her chair, stroked Mignon’s ears, and held out a very gracious hand to Mrs. Steel.

“Can you dine with us on Monday?”

“Delighted.”

“Sir Gerald Gerson and the Italian ambassador will be with us. I want to show you some choice Dresden that my husband has just bought at Christie’s.”

Mrs. Betty received the favor with the smiling and enthusiastic simplicity of an ingenuous girl.

“How kind of you! I am so fond of china.”

Parker Steel gave his arm to the great lady, and escorted her to her carriage, his deportment a professional triumph in the consummation of such a courtesy.

He found Mrs. Betty alone in the drawing-room when he returned. She was lying back in the chair that Lady Gillingham’s stout majesty had impressed, and had Mignon and a kitten on her lap.

Parker Steel, standing on the hearth-rug, looked round him with the air of a man to whom the flowers in the vases, the lilies and azaleas in bloom, seemed to exhale an incense of success. Social prosperity and an abundance of cash; the expensive arm-chairs appeared to assert the facts loudly.

“A satisfactory party, dear, eh?”

Mrs. Betty, fondling Mignon’s ears, looked up and smiled.

“I think we have conquered Boadicea at last,” she said.

“It appears so.”

“She should be a most excellent advertisement.”

Parker Steel fingered his chin, and looked meditatively at the carpet. A self-satisfied and half-cynical smile hovered about the angles of his clean-cut mouth.

“A year ago, Betty,” he remarked, “Lady Sophia pertained to Catherine Murchison, and showed us the cold shoulder. Well, we have changed all that.”

“We?”

“Well, say the workings of the ‘spirit,’ or the infirmities of the flesh.”

Mrs. Betty held Mignon against her cheek and laughed.

“What a dear, soft, fluffy thing it is!”

“Set a cat to catch a cat, eh? I wonder what our friend Murchison is doing?”

“Murchison! I never trouble to think.”

Parker Steel studied his boots.

“Poor devil, he made a pretty mess of a first-class practice. They were hard up, too, I imagine. Damages and costs must have cleared out most of Murchison’s investments, and their furniture sold dirt cheap. I can’t tell why the ass did not try to sell the practice.”

“Pride, I suppose.”

“It meant making me a present of most of his best patients.”

“My dear Parker, never complain.”

“Hardly, when we should be booking between two and three thousand a year—at least. Well, I must turn out again before dinner.”

The physician returned to his fur coat and his brougham, leaving Mrs. Betty fondling Mignon and her kittens.