south, and the hills are all aglow.’ I believe in woman bringing luck, my friend.”
“Oh, possibly.”
“Murchison took the right turning. Supposing he had married—”
Mr. Flemming trod on the attorney’s toe.
“Look out, she’s there; people have ears, you know; they’re not chairs.”
Mr. Carmagee nursed a grievance on the instant.
“Mention a name,” he snapped.
And Thomas Flemming pointed towards Mrs. Betty with his programme.
Parker Steel’s wife drove home alone in her husband’s brougham, ignoring the many moonlight effects that the old town offered her with its multitudinous gables and timbered fronts. She was not in the happiest of tempers, feeling much like a sensuous cat that has been tumbled unceremoniously from some crusty stranger’s lap. Betty had attempted blandishments with the distinguished Mrs. Fraser, and had been favored with a shoulder and half an aristocratic cheek. Moreover, she had watched the great lady melt under Catherine Murchison’s smiles, and such incidents are not rose leaves to a woman.
Mrs. Betty lay back in a corner of the brougham, and indulged herself in mental tearings of Catherine Murchison’s hair. What insolent naturalness this rival of hers possessed! Mrs. Betty was fastidious and critical enough, and her very acuteness compelled her to confess that her enmity seemed but a blunted weapon. Catherine Murchison was so cantankerously popular. She looked well, dressed well, did things well, loved well. The woman was an irritating prodigy. It was her very sincerity, the wholesomeness of her charm, that made her seem invulnerable, a woman who never worried her head about social competition.
Parker Steel sat reading before the fire when his wife returned. He uncurled himself languidly and with deliberation, pulled down his dress waistcoat, and put his book aside carefully on the table beside his chair.
“Enjoyed yourself?”
“Not vastly. I wonder why vulgar people always eat oranges in public?”
“Better than sucking lemons.”
Mrs. Betty tossed her opera-cloak aside and slipped into a chair. Her husband’s complacency irritated her a little. He was not a sympathetic soul, save in the presence of prominent patients.
“You look bored, dear. Who performed?”
“The usual amateurs. I am tired to death; are you coming to bed?”
Parker Steel looked at the clock, and sighed.
“I shall not be wanted till about five,” he said. “Confound these guinea babies. I hope to build a tariff wall round myself when we are more independent.”
“Yes, of course.”
“And Mrs. Fraser?”
“Safe in the other camp, dear.”
Parker Steel was dropping off to sleep that night when he felt his wife’s hand upon his shoulder. He turned with a grunt, and saw her white face dim amid her cloud of hair.
“Anything wrong?”
“No. Do you believe in Murchison, Parker?”
“Believe in him?”
“Yes, is he reliable; does he know his work?”
Her husband laughed.
“Why, do you want to consult the fellow?”
“You have never caught him tripping?”
“Not yet. What are you driving at?”
“Oh—nothing,” and she turned away, and put the hair back from her face, feeling feverish with the ferment of her thoughts.
CHAPTER IV
No one in Roxton would have imagined that any shadow of dread darkened the windows of the house in Lombard Street. Even to his most intimate friends, James Murchison would have appeared as the one man least likely to be dominated by any inherited taint of body or mind. His face was the face of a man who had mastered his own passions, the mouth firm yet generous, the jaw powerful, the eyes and forehead suggesting the philosopher behind the virility of the man of action. He had built up a substantial reputation for himself in Roxton and the neighborhood. His professional honesty was unimpeachable, his skill as a surgeon a matter of common gossip. But it was his warm-heartedness, the sincerity of his sympathy, his wholesome Saxon manliness that had won him popularity, especially among the poor.
For Catherine the uncovering of the past had come as a second awakening, a resanctification of her love. Women are the born champions of hero worship, and to generous natures imperfections are but as flints scattered in the warm earth of life. Women will gather them and hide them in their bosoms, breathing a more passionate tenderness perhaps, and betraying nothing to the outer world.
James Murchison and his wife had held each other’s hands more firmly, like those who approach a narrow mountain path. They were happy in their home life, happy with each other, and with their children. To the woman’s share there was added a new sacredness that woke and grew with every dawn. There were wounds to be healed, bitternesses to be warded off. The man who lay in her arms at night needed her more dearly, and there was exultation in the thought for her. She loved him the more for this stern thorn in the flesh. The pity of it seemed to make him more her own, to knit her tenderness more bravely round him, to fill life with a more sacred fire. She was not afraid of the future for his sake, believing him too strong to be vanquished by an ancestral sin.
It was one day in April when James Murchison came rattling over the Roxton cobbles in his motor-car, to slacken speed suddenly in Chapel Gate at the sight of a red Dutch bonnet, a green frock, and a pair of white-socked legs on the edge of the pavement. The Dutch bonnet belonged to his daughter Gwen, a flame-haired dame of four, demure and serious as any dowager. The child had a chip-basket full of daffodils in her hand, and she seemed quite alone, a most responsible young person.
A minute gloved hand had gone up with the gravity of a constable’s paw signalling a lawbreaker to stop. James Murchison steered to the footway, and regarded Miss Gwen with a surprised twinkle.
“Hallo, what are you doing here?”
Miss Gwen ignored the ungraceful familiarity of the inquisitive parent.
“I’ll drive home, daddy,” she said, calmly.
“Oh—you will! Where’s nurse?”
“Mending Jack’s stockings.” And the lady with the daffodils dismissed the question with contempt.
Murchison laughed, and helped the vagrant into the car.
“Shopping, I see,” he observed, refraining from adult priggery, and catching the spirit of Miss Gwen’s adventuresomeness.
“Yes.
