CHAPTER XXXVI

The glitter of the sea visible between the foliage of flowering-shrubs seemed to add a touch of vivacity to the June somnolence that hung like a summer mist over the south-coast town. Parker Steel, half lying in a basket-chair under a red May-tree in the hotel garden, betrayed his sympathy with the poetical paraphernalia of life by reading through a list of investments recommended by his brokers. A satisfactory breakfast followed by the contemplation of a satisfactory banking account begets peace in the heart of man.

It was about ten o’clock, and a few enthusiasts were already quarrelling over croquet, when the hotel “buttons” came out with a telegram on a tray.

“No. 25, Dr. Steel?”

“Here.”

“Any reply, sir?”

The boy waited with the tray held over that portion of his figure where his morning meal reposed, while Parker Steel tore open the envelope and read the message.

“No answer.”

“Right, sir.”

“Wait; tell them at the office to get my bill made up. I have to leave after lunch.”

“Yes, sir.”

“And bring me a time-table, and a whiskey and soda.”

Parker Steel glanced at his watch, thrust the investment list into the breast-pocket of his coat, and lay back again in his chair with the telegram across his knee. Faces vary much in their expression when the mind behind the face labors with some thought that fills the whole consciousness for the moment. The smooth indolence had melted from the physician’s features. His face had sharpened as faces sharpen in bitter weather, for a man who is a coward betrays his cowardice even when he thinks.

A much-grieved croquet-player in a blue-and-white check dress was confiding her criticisms to a very sympathetic gentleman in one corner of the lawn.

“It is such a pity that Mrs. Sallow cheats so abominably. I hate playing with mean people. Every other stroke is a spoon, and she is always walking over her ball, and shifting it with her skirt when it is wired.”

“People give their characters away in games.”

“It is so contemptible. I can’t understand any self-respecting person cheating.”

The continuous click of the balls appeared to irritate Parker Steel, as he sat huddled up in his chair with the telegram on his knee. He found himself listening—without curiosity—to the young lady in the blue-and-white whose complaints suggested that the immoral Mrs. Sallow was the cleverer player of the two. Dishonesty is only dishonest, to many people, when it comes within the cognizance of the law, and how thoroughly symbolical those four balls were of the opportunities mortals manipulate in life, Parker Steel might have realized had not his mind been clogged with other things.

The boy returned with a time-table and the whiskey and soda on a tray.

“A fast train leaves at 2.30, sir.”

“Thanks; get me a table. You can keep the change.”

“Much obliged, sir,” and he touched a carefully watered forelock; “will you drive, sir, or walk?”

“Order me a cab.”

“Right, sir.”

And the boy noticed, as he turned away, that the hand shook that reached for the glass, and that some of the stuff was spilled before it came to the man’s lips.

No one met Parker Steel at Roxton station that June evening. A porter piled his luggage on a cab, for the physician’s own carriage was not forthcoming. A sense of isolation and neglect took hold upon him as he drove through the sleepy streets of the old town. Loneliness is never comforting to a man who is cursed with an irrepressible conscience, and his own restless imaginings rose like a cold fog into the June air. Parker Steel shivered as he had often shivered when driving through moonlit mists to answer a midnight message. The very elms about St. Antonia’s spire had a shadowy strangeness for him, a gloom that gave nothing of the glow of a return home.

Parker Steel stood in his own dining-room, waiting and listening, as though he were in a stranger’s house. Symons, the starched servant, had opened the door to him without a smile; his luggage had been carried up-stairs. He had heard voices, faint, distant voices, that had tantalized him with words that he could not understand. He had been ready to ask the woman Symons a dozen questions, but had faltered from a self-conscious fear of betraying his own thoughts. The house seemed full of some indefinable dread as the dusk deepened towards night.

A door opened above. He heard footsteps descending the stairs, so slowly in the silence of the darkening house, that the sound reminded the man of the slow drip of water into a well. Parker Steel found himself counting them as they descended towards the hall. If it was Betty, how was he to construe the message of the morning? The suffering of suspense drove him to action. He turned sharply, crossed the room, and, opening the door, looked out into the hall.

“Hallo, dear, is it you?”

She was in white, and her foot was on the last step of the stairs.

“I am glad that you have come, Parker.”

“I had your wire early. I imagined—”

“That I was ill?”

“Yes, that you were ill.”

She halted with one hand on the carved foot-post of the balustrading. The dusk of the hall showed nothing but a white figure and a gray oval to mark her face. Some mysterious psychic force seemed to hold husband and wife apart. Their two personalities had become incompatible through some subtle ferment of distrust.

“Parker!”

He made a step forward.

“No, I want you to go into that room and light the gas.”

The insistent note in her voice repulsed him. His walk approached a self-conscious shuffle as he turned and re-entered the darkening room. Betty heard him groping for the matches. A sudden glare of light followed the sharp purr of a flaring match. She drew a deep and sighing breath, pressed her hands to her breast, and entered the room.

Parker Steel was drawing the blinds. His wife closed the door, and waited for him to turn.

“When I had your wire, dear—”

“Yes.”

“I wondered what I should find—here. The wording—Good Heavens, Betty—”

She stood back from him and leaned against the sideboard, the glare from the gas falling full upon her face. It was red, repulsive, tinged with an ooze that had hardened here and there into yellow scabs.

“You see, Parker, why I sent for you.”

He looked for the moment like a man shocked into immobility by a sudden storm of wind and sleet beating on his face.

“When did this appear?”

He moved towards her, the shallow gleam of sympathy in his eyes darkened by something more terrible than mere fear. Betty stood her ground. It was the man who betrayed the incoherency of panic.

“Come, tell me.”

His eyes were fixed upon her face, upon her mouth.

“It is I, Parker, who want to know—”

“Yes, yes, of course, dear, I can understand. You should have sent for me sooner.”

Intuition is a gift of the gods to women, a power—almost unholy in its brilliant reading of the hearts of others. Betty’s eyes were searching her husband’s face as though it were some delicately finished miniature in which every piece of shading had significance. Her breath came and went more deeply than when life had a normal flow. For all else she was cold, very quiet, the mistress even of her own repulsive face.

“I want you to tell me, Parker—”

She saw the muscles about his mouth quiver.

“Have you seen any one?”

“Yes.”

“Who?”

“Dr. Little, and Dr. Brimley.”

“Well? What—?”

“They would tell me nothing.”

“Nothing?”

She saw him breathe out deeply like a man who has seen a child escape the wheels of a heavy cart.

“They gave me mere phrases, Parker. A woman can tell when men are hiding the truth.”

“What had they to hide, dear? Come closer—here—to the light.”

She did not stir.

“I must know, Parker.”

“Yes, of course.”

“The whole truth. Listen—I happened to go yesterday morning into your consulting-room. Dr. Little had been reading; he had left the book open—at a certain page. You know, Parker, that many men only read the big text-books when they are puzzled by a particular case.”

Steel’s face seemed nothing but a gray and frightened mask to her.

“Betty, you are imagining things—”

“Well, tell me the truth.”

“A form of eczema.”

“Parker!”

Her voice had the ring of iron in it.

“That was not the word I read.”

“Good God, Betty!”

“It was this.”

She spoke the word without flinching, with a distinctness that had that cold and terrible conciseness that science loves. Her eyes did not leave her husband’s face. Even as he answered her, hotly, haltingly, she knew him to be a liar.

“Impossible! You are seizing on a mad coincidence, a mere ridiculous conclusion. I can swear—”

“Yes, swear—”

“That it is nothing, nothing of what you have said.”

His eyes had the furtive fierceness of eyes searching her soul for unbelief.

“Come, Betty, wife—”

She remained unmoved.

“What? You think that I—”

“No, don’t touch me. I don’t believe that you have told me the truth.”

“Not believe—that I—!”

“No, God help me, I cannot!”

Her body had hardly changed the pose that it had taken from the first moment. It was as though it had stiffened with the slow, pitiless hardening of her heart. Parker Steel looked at her like the moral coward that he was, too crushed by his own keen consciousness of shame to pretend to the courage that he could not boast.

“Betty, am I—?”

She flung aside from him with an indescribable gesture of passionate repulsion.

“Don’t. I can’t look at you, or be looked at. Madge is waiting for me. They will bring you your dinner. Good-night.”

She moved towards the door.

“Betty—”

He would have hindered her, but the manhood in him had neither the power nor the pride. She swept out and left him. He heard the sound of sobbing as she climbed the stairs.

“Good God—!”

Parker Steel stood listening, staring at the door, a man who could neither think nor act.