CHAPTER XXXIII

Roxton, like a certain lady of literary fame, was ever ready with its free opinions on any subject that it did not understand. The return of the Murchisons had exercised the town’s capacity for criticism, and inaugurated a debate that was to be heard at public-house bars, as well as in the parlors of the pious. The facts of the case were generally agreed upon; but facts are things that the ingenious mind of man can juggle with. The complexion of the affair varied with the convictions of the debater, and the sacred incidents of home life profaned or honored according to the temper of the tongue that dealt with them.

In Mill Lane the case had a most energetic exponent in the person of Mr. William Bains, the sweep. A certain brewer’s drayman, who had won some crude celebrity as an atheist, had taken upon himself to argue on the adverse side. The two gentlemen squared to each other one evening at the bottom of the lane, and thrashed it out strenuously before a meagre but attentive crowd.

“What about the inquest? Didn’t we read the ’ole of it in the Mail and Times? Yer can’t get away from facts, can yer?”

“And supposin’ he did make a mistake for once, does that mean callin’ a man a fool and a danger to the public? Who drove his cart last week into a pillar-box by Wilson’s grocery shop?”

Mr. Bains scored a palpable hit. The audience laughed.

“Got ’im there, William,” said a neighbor.

The drayman sniffed, and threw out his stomach.

“Facts is facts. Doctorin’ ain’t drivin’ ’osses.”

“Thank the Lord, Mr. Sweetyer, it ain’t, for our sakes.”

“I say the man blundered.”

“And who ’asn’t run ’is nose into a lamp-post on occasions? Why, look ’ere,” and Mr. Bains stretched out a didactic forefinger, “when my little girl ’ad the diphtheria, who pulled ’er through? And who saved old Jenny Lowther’s leg? And there was young Ben Thompson, who some London joker swore was a dyin’ man!”

“That’s true,” said a bony woman in an old red blouse.

The drayman, finding the neighbors inclined to take the sweep’s view of the matter, began to look hot, and a little nettled.

“Well, what ’ave yer got to say about the booze?” he asked.

“I reckon that’s more your business than mine.”

Again the audience caught the gibe and laughed.

“Three gallons a day, that’s ’is measure,” interjected a morose gentleman, who was hanging over his garden gate and smoking the stump of a clay pipe.

“Wasn’t ’e carried ’ome from the club?”

“P’r’aps ’e was, p’r’aps ’e wasn’t. Any fool could ’ave seen that the man ’ad been workin’ hisself to death. Why, he fainted bang off one mornin’, round at our ’ouse. Ask my missus. A thimbleful o’ brandy would ’ave made a man in ’is state ’ug the railin’s.”

“Anyhow, he hugged ’em,” said the obdurate opponent.

“We ain’t always responsible for what we do when we’ve ’ad a bad smack over the side of the jaw.”

“Doct’rs oughtn’t ter touch it.”

“You’re a nice one to preach, now, ain’t yer?”

“He is that,” quoth the laconic worthy at the gate.

“Look ’ere, don’t you go shovin’ it into me—sideways.”

“Let me argue ’im, Mr. Catt.”

“Argue, you ’ain’t got a leg to stand on!”

“Haven’t I, my boy!” and the two disputants began to glare.

The drayman wiped his hands on the back of his breeches.

“Some fool’ll be callin’ me a liar soon,” he remarked.

“It’s on the cards.”

“Look ’ere, Bill Bains, I’ve ’ad enough of your sarce. Stow it.”

“You go and bully your kids. Can’t I speak my mind when I bloomin’ well like?”

“Course ’e can,” said the lady in the red blouse; “and ’e speaks it well, ’e does. Murchison was always a right down gentleman; better than that there little nipper, Steel.”

“Right for you, Mrs. Penny. We don’t go blackguardin’ other people’s characters, do we?”

“I ain’t blackguardin’ the man, I’m statin’ facts.”

“Facts, facts—why, the man’s clean daft on facts. Facts must be another name for a pint of bitter.”

“I’ll smash your jaw, Bill Bains, if you don’t stow it.”

“Smash away, my buck. Who’s afraid of a bloomin’ cask?”

Whereon the dwellers in Mill Lane were treated to an exhibition of two minutes straight hitting, an exhibition that ended in the intervention of friends. But since the drayman departed with a red nose and a swollen eye, it may be inferred that the sweep had the best of the argument.

To have one’s past, present, and future dragged through the back streets of a country town is not an experience that a man of self-respect would welcome. A sensitive spirit cannot fail to feel the atmosphere about it. It may see the sun shining, the clouds white against the blue, the natural phenomena of health and of well-being; or the faces of a man’s fellows may be as sour puddles to him, their sympathy a wet December.

Trite as the saying is, that in trouble we make trial of our friends, only those who have faced defeat know the depth and meaning of that time-worn saying. A week in Roxton betrayed to Catherine and her husband the number and the sincerity of their friends. The instinct of pride is wondrous quick in detecting truth from shams, even as an expert’s fingers can tell old china by the feel. The population of the place was soon mapped out into the priggishly polite, the piously distant, the vulgarly inquisitive, the unaffected honest, and the honestly indifferent. Catherine met many a face that brightened to hers in the Roxton streets. The past seemed to have banked more good-will for them then they had imagined. It was among the poor that they found the least forgetfulness, less of the cultured and polite hauteur, less affectation, less hypocrisy. As for the practice, they found it non-existent that first humiliating yet half-happy week.

But perhaps the sincerest person in Roxton at that moment was the wife of Dr. Parker Steel. Betty was not a passionate woman in the matter of her affections, but in her capabilities for hatred she concentrated the energy of ten. She had come quite naturally to regard herself as the most gifted and interesting feminine personality that Roxton could boast. Every woman has an instinctive conviction that her own home, and her own children, are immeasurably superior to all others. With Betty Steel, this spirit of womanly egotism had been largely centred on herself. She had no children to make her jealous and critical towards other women’s children. It was the symmetry of her own success in life that had developed into an enthralling art, an art that absorbed her whole soul.

It might have been imagined that she had climbed too high to trouble about an old hate; that she was too sufficiently assured of her own glory to stoop to attack a humbled rival. Jealousy and a sneaking suspicion of inferiority had embittered the feud for her of old; and Kate Murchison, saddened and aged, half a suppliant for the loyalty of a few good friends, could still inspire in Betty a spirit of aggressive and impatient hate. She remembered that she had seen Catherine triumphant where she herself had received indifference and disregard. The instinct to crush this antipathetic rival was as fierce and keen in her as ever.

“Call on her,” had been Madge Ellison’s suggestion.

“Call on her!”

“It would be more diplomatic.”

“Do you imagine, Madge, that I am going to make advances to that woman? She used to snub me once; my turn has come. I give the Murchisons just six months in Roxton.”

How little mercy Betty Steel had in that intolerant and subtle heart of hers was betrayed by the strategic move that opened the renewal of hostilities. She had driven Kate Murchison out of Roxton once, and the arrogance of conquest was as fierce in this slim, refined-faced woman as in any Alexander. She moved in a small and limited sphere, but the aggressive spirit was none the less inevitable in its lust to overthrow. The motives were the meaner for their comparative minuteness.

Lady Sophia’s Bazaar Committee met in Roxton public hall one day towards the end of May, to consider the arrangement of stalls, and to settle a number of decorative details. Betty had spent half the morning at her escritoire sorting letters, meditating chin on hand, scribbling on the backs of old envelopes, which she afterwards took care to burn.

She seemed in her happiest vein that afternoon, as she left Madge Ellison to provide tea for Dr. Little, and drove to the public hall with her despatch-box full of the Bazaar Fund’s correspondence. No one would have imagined it possible for such refinement and charm to cover instincts that were not unallied to the instincts found in an Indian jungle. Mrs. Betty went through her business with briskness and precision; the committee left their chairs to discuss the grouping of the stalls about the room. There were to be twelve of these booths, each to represent a familiar flower; Lady Sophia had elected herself a rose. Mrs. Betty’s choice had been Oriental poppies.

Lady Sophia was parading the hall with a pair of pince-nez perched on the bridge of her nose, and a memorandum-book open in her hand. A group of deferential ladies followed her like hens about the farmer’s wife at feeding-time. The most trivial suggestion that fell from those aristocratic lips was seized upon and swallowed with relish.

“Betty, dear, have you heard from Jennings about the draperies?”

The glory of it, to be “my deared” in public by Lady Sophia Gillingham!

“Yes, I have a letter somewhere, and a list of prices.”

“You might pin up the letter and the price-list on the black-board by the door, so that the stall-holders can take advantage of any item that may be of use to them.”

Betty moved to the table and rummaged amid her multifarious correspondence. She was chatting all the while to a Miss Cozens, a thin, wiry little woman, alert as a Scotch-terrier in following up the scent of favor.

“What a lot of work the bazaar has given you, Mrs. Steel!”

“Yes, quite enough,” and she divided her attention between Miss Cozens and the pile of papers.

“When is the next rehearsal?”

“Tuesday, I believe.”

“I hear you are the genius of the play.”

“Am I?” and Betty smiled like an ingenuous girl. “I am most horribly nervous. I always feel that I am spoiling the part. Oh, here’s Jennings’s letter, and the list, I think.”

She left the two papers lying unheeded for the moment, while she answered Miss Cozens’s interested questions on costume.

“Primrose and leaf green, that will be lovely.”

“Yes, so everybody says.”

Lady Sophia’s voice interrupted the gossip. She was beckoning to Betty with her memorandum-book.

“Betty, can you spare me a moment?”

Miss Cozens’s sharp eyes gave an envious twinkle.

“Shall I pin up the papers for you, Mrs. Steel?”

“Would you?”

“With pleasure.”

And Betty swept two sheets of paper towards Miss Cozens without troubling to glance at them, and turned to wait on Lady Sophia.

Several ladies congregated about the black-board as Miss Cozens pinned up the letter and the price-list with such conscientious promptitude that she had not troubled to read their contents. Had she had eyes for the faces of her neighbors she might have been struck by the puzzled eagerness of their expression. One elderly committee woman readjusted her glasses, and then touched Miss Cozens with a pencil that she carried.

“Excuse me.”

“Yes.”

“There is some mistake—I think.”

“Mistake?”

“Yes, that letter”—and the spectacled lady pointed to the black-board with her pencil.

Miss Cozens took the trouble to investigate the charge. The letter was written on one broad sheet in a neat, bold hand. Miss Cozens’s prim little mouth pursed itself up expressively as she read; her brows contracted, her eyes stared.

“Good Heavens!—what’s this? I must have taken the wrong letter.”

She tore the sheet down, pushed past her neighbors, and crossed the room towards Betty Steel. The group about the black-board appeared to be discussing the incident. Mr. Jennings’s list of silks and drapings seemed forgotten.

“Mrs. Steel, excuse me—”

“Yes?”

“This letter; there’s some mistake. It’s the wrong one. I pinned it up, and Mrs. Saker called my attention to the error.”

“Let me see.”

Miss Cozens gave her the sheet, intense curiosity quivering in every line of her doglike face.

“Good Heavens!—how did this get mixed up with my business correspondence?”

She looked perturbation to perfection.

“Miss Cozens, what am I to do? Has any one read it?”

The little woman nodded.

“How horrible! I must explain—It must not go any further.”

Betty hurried across the hall towards the door, hesitated, and looked round her as though baffled by indecision. She knew well enough that inquisitive eyes were watching her. Her skill as an actress—and she was consummately clever as a hypocrite—served to heighten the meaning that she wished to convey.

“Lady Sophia.”

Betty had doubled adroitly in the direction of the amiable aristocrat.

“Yes, dear—”

“Can I speak to you alone?”

“What is it?”

“Oh, I have done such an awful thing. Do help me. You have so much nerve and tact.”

“My dear child, steady yourself.”

“I looked out Jennings’s papers; Miss Cozens was chattering to me, and when you called me, she offered to pin the things on the board. How on earth it happened, I cannot imagine, but a private letter of mine had got mixed up with the bazaar correspondence. It must have been lying by Jennings’s list, for Miss Cozens, without troubling to read it, pinned it on the board.”

The perturbed, sensitive creature was breathless and all a-flutter. Lady Sophia patted her arm.

“Well, dear, I see no great harm yet—”

“Wait! It was a letter from an old friend abroad, a letter that contained certain confessions about a Roxton family. What on earth am I to do? Look, here it is, read it.”

Lady Sophia read the letter, holding it at arm’s-length like the music of a song.

“Good Heavens, Betty, I never knew the man drank, that it had been a habit—”

“Don’t, Lady Sophia, don’t!”

“You should have been more careful.”

“I know—I know. I shall never forgive myself. For goodness’ sake, help me. You have so much more tact than I.”

Her ladyship accepted the responsibility with stately unction.

“Leave it to me, dear. I can go round and have a quiet talk with all those who happened to read the letter. How unfortunate that the opening sentences should have contained this information. Still, it need never get abroad.”

“How good of you!”

“There, dear, you are rather upset, most naturally so—”

“I think I had better retreat.”

“Yes, leave it to me.”

“Thank you, oh, so much. Tell them not to whisper a word of it.”

“There will be no difficulty, dear, about that.”

Betty, white and troubled, added a sharper flavor to the stew by withdrawing dramatically from the stage. And any one wise as to the contradictoriness of human nature could have prophesied how the news would spread had he seen the Lady Sophia voyaging on her diplomatic mission round the hall.

“Poor Mrs. Steel! Such an unfortunate coincidence! Not a woman easily upset, but, believe me, my dear Mrs. So-and-So, it was as much a shock to her as though she had heard bad news of her husband. Now, I am quite sure this unpleasant affair will go no further. Of course not. I rely absolutely on your discretion.”

And since the discretion of a provincial town is complex to a degree of an ever-repeated confession, coupled with a solemn warning against repetition, it was not improbable that this froth would haunt the pot for many a long day.