Porteus Carmagee, the lawyer, and his sister lived in Lombard Street, in
a grim, blind-eyed, stuccoed house with laurels in tubs before it, and
chains and posts defending an arid stretch of shingle. There was
something about the house that suggested law, a dry and close-mouthed
look that was wholly on the surface. Porteus Carmagee was a little man,
who forever seemed spluttering and fuming under some grievance. He was
hardly to be met without an irritable explosion against his own physical
afflictions, the delinquencies of tradesmen and Radicals, or the sins of
the boy who brought the morning paper. The lawyer’s almost truculent
attitude towards the world was largely the result of “liver”; his
sourness was on the surface; one glimpse of him cutting capers with Kate
Murchison’s children would dissipate the notion that he was a cadaverous
and crusty hater of mankind.
Miss Phyllis Carmagee was remarkable for the utter unfitness of her
Christian name, and for the divine placidity that contrasted with her
brother’s waspishness. A big, moon-faced, ponderous woman, she was a
rock of composure, a species of human banyan-tree under whose blessed
branches a hundred fretful mortals might rest in the shade. Her
detractors, and they were few, asserted that she was a mere mass of
amiable and phlegmatic fat. Miss Carmagee was blessed with a very happy
sense of humor; she had a will of her own, a will that was formidable by
reason of its stubborn inertia when once it had come to rest.
Some six years had passed since Miss Carmagee had deposited herself as a
supporter of James Murchison on his professional platform. Her pleasant
stolidity had done him service, for Miss Carmagee impressed her
convictions on people by sitting down with the serene look of one who
never argues. She was a woman who stated her opinions with a buxom
frankness, and who sat on opposition as though it were a cushion. She
was perhaps the only woman who gave no sparks to the flint of Mrs.
Steel’s aggressive vivacity. Miss Carmagee’s placidity was unassailable.
To attack her was like throwing pease against a pyramid.
“Well, my dear, so you have furnished the cottage.”
She lay back contentedly in her basket-chair—chairs were the few things
that nourished grievances against her—and beamed on Catherine
Murchison, who sat shaded by the leaves of a young lime. The tea-table
stood between them. Miss Carmagee liked basking in the sun like some
sleek, fat spaniel.
“It is such a dear little place.” And the young wife’s eyes were full of
tenderness. “I want James to keep the gray hairs from coming too fast. I
shall lure him away to Marley Down, one day in seven, if I can.”
“Of course, my dear, you can persuade him.”
“Jim has such an obstinate conscience. He gives his best to people, and
naturally they overwork him. We have rivals, too, to consider. I know
that Betty Steel is jealous of us, but then—”
A touch of wistfulness on Catherine’s face brought Miss Carmagee’s
optimism to the rescue.
“You need not fear the Steels, my dear.”
“No, perhaps not.”
“Many people—I, for one—don’t trust them. The woman is too thin to be
sincere,” and Miss Carmagee’s bust protested the fact.
“Betty’s kind enough in her way.”
“When she gets her way, my dear. But tell me about the cottage. Are the
drains quite safe, and are there plenty of cupboards?”
Catherine was launched into multitudinous details—the staining of
floors, the choosing of tapestries, the latest bargains in old
furniture. It eased her to talk to this placid woman, for, despite her
courage, her heart was sad in her and full of forebodings for her
husband. The truth had become as a girdle of thorns about her, worn both
day and night. She bore the smart of it without a flicker of the lids,
and carried her head bravely before the world.
The strip of garden, with its prim and old-fashioned atmosphere, was
invaded abruptly by the rising generation. There was a flutter of feet
round the laurel hedge bordering the path to the front gate, and Mr.
Porteus pranced into view, a veritable light-opera lawyer with youth at
either elbow.
“Hello, godma! may I have some strawberries?”
Master Jack Murchison plumped himself emphatically into Miss Carmagee’s
lap, oblivious of the fact that he was sitting on her spectacles.
“Jack, dear, you must not be so rough.”
Mr. Porteus crossed the grass with the more dignified and less voracious
Dutch bonnet beside him. Miss Gwen and the bachelor always treated each
other with a species of stately yet twinkling civility. The lawyer’s
wrinkles turned into smile wreaths in the child’s presence, and there
was less perking up of his critical eyebrows.
“Here’s a handful for you, Kate; I was ambuscaded and captured round the
corner. Who said strawberries? Will Miss Gwendolen Murchison deign to
deprive the blackbirds of a few?”
“Do you grow stawberries for the blackbirds, godpa?”
“Do I, Miss Innocent! No, not exactly.”
Catherine had removed her son and heir from Miss Carmagee’s lap. The fat
lady looked cheerful and unperturbed. Master Jack was suffered to ruffle
her best skirts with impunity.
“Don’t let them eat too much, Porteus.”
Her brother cocked a birdlike eye at Miss Gwen.
“Sixpence for the biggest strawberry brought back unnibbled. Off with
you. And don’t trample on the plants, John Murchison, Esq.”
The pair raced for the fruit-garden, Master Jack’s enthusiasm rendering
him oblivious to the crime of taking precedence of a lady. Gwen
relinquished the van to him, and dropped to a demure toddle. Her
brother’s flashing legs suggested the thought to her that it was
undignified to be greedy.
“Pardon me, Kate, I think you are wanted over the way.”
Mr. Carmagee’s sudden soberness of manner brought the color to
Catherine’s cheeks. The lawyer was rattling the keys in his pocket, and
blinking irritably at space. Intuition warned her that he was more
concerned than he desired her to imagine. She rose instantly, as though
her thoughts were already in her home.
“Good-bye; you will excuse me—”
She bent over Miss Carmagee and kissed her, her heart beating fast under
the silks of her blouse.
“I’ll bring the youngsters over presently, Kate.”
“Thank you so much.”
“And send some fruit with them.”
“You are always spoiling us.”
And Porteus Carmagee accompanied her to the gate.
The lawyer rejoined his sister under the lime-tree, biting at his gray
mustache, and still rattling the keys in his trousers pocket. He walked
with a certain jerkiness that was peculiar to him, the spasmodic and
irritable habit of a man whose nerve-force seemed out of proportion to
his body.
“Murchison’s an ass—a damned ass,” and he flashed a look over his
shoulder in the direction of the fruit-garden.
Familiarity had accustomed Miss Carmagee to her brother’s forcible
methods of expression. He detonated over the most trivial topics, and
the stout lady took the splutterings of his indignation as a matter of
course.
“Well?” and she examined her bent spectacles forgivingly.
“Murchison’s been overworking himself.”
“So Kate told me.”
“The man’s a fool.”
“A conscientious fool, Porteus.”
Mr. Carmagee sniffed, and expelled a sigh through his mustache.
“I’ve warned him over and over again. Idiot! He’ll break down. They had
to bring him home in a cab from Mill Lane half an hour ago.”
His sister’s face betrayed unusual animation.
“What is the matter?”
“Heat stroke, or fainting fit. I saw the cab at the door, and collared
the youngsters as they were coming round the corner with the nurse. Poor
little beggars. I shall tell Murchison he’s an infernal fool unless he
takes two months’ rest.”
Miss Carmagee knew where her brother’s heart lay. He generally abused
his friends when he was most in earnest for their salvation.
“Kate will persuade him, Porteus.”
“The woman’s a treasure. The man ought to consider her and the children
before he addles himself for a lot of thankless and exacting sluts.
Conscience! Conscience be damned. Why, only last week the man must sit
up half the night with a sweep’s child that had diphtheria. Conscience!
I call it nonsense.”
Miss Carmagee smiled like the moon coming from behind a cloud.
“You approve of Parker Steel’s methods?”
“That little snob!” and the lawyer’s coat-tails gave an expressive
flick.
“James Murchison only wants rest. Leave him to Kate; wives are the best
physicians often.”
Mr. Carmagee’s keys applauded the remark.
“Taken a cottage on Marley Down, have they?”
“Yes.”
“I’ll recommend a renewal of the honeymoon. Hallo, here comes the
sunlight.”
Mr. Porteus romped across the grass to poke his wrinkled face into the
oval of the Dutch bonnet.
“Hallo, who says senna to-night? What! Miss Gwendolen Murchison approves
of senna!”
“I’ve won that sixpence, godpa.”
“Indeed, sir, I think not.”
“Jack can have the sixpence; it’s his buffday to-morrow.”
“A lady who likes senna and renounces sixpences! Go to, Master John, you
must run to Mr. Parsons, the clockmaker, and buy godma a pair of new
spectacles.”
“Spectacles!” and Master Jack mouthed his scorn.
“A sad day for us, Miss Carmagee, when babies sit upon our infirmities!”
Parker Steel dropped into his Roxton tailor’s that same afternoon to
have a summer suit fitted. The proprietor, an urbane and bald-headed
person with the deportment of a diplomat, rubbed his hands and remarked
that professional duties must be very exacting in the heat of June.
“Your colleague, I understand, sir—Dr. Murchison, sir—has had an
attack from overwork; sunstroke, they say.”
“What! Sunstroke?”
“So I have been informed, sir.”
“Indeed!”
“Or an attack of faintness. Dr. Murchison is a most laborious worker.
Four buttons, thank you; a breast-pocket, as before, certainly. Any
fancy vestings to-day, doctor? No! Greatly obliged, sir, I’m sure,” and
the diplomat dodged to the door and swung it open with a bow.
Parker Steel found his wife reading under the Indian cedar in the
garden. She was dressed in white, with a red rose in her bosom, the
green shadows of the trees and shrubs about her casting a sleek sheen
over her olive face and dusky hair. Poets might have written odes to
her, hailing the slim sweetness of her womanliness, using the lily as a
symbol of her beauty and the Madonna-like radiance of her spiritual
face.
She glanced up at her husband as he came spruce and complacent, like any
Agag, over the grass.
“Murchison has had a sunstroke.”
“What! Who told you?”
“Rudyard, the tailor.”
The book was lying deprecatingly at Mrs. Betty’s feet. Her eyes swept
from her husband to dwell reflectively on the scarlet pomp of the
Oriental poppies.
“Do you think it was a sunstroke, Parker?”
Her husband glanced at his neat boots and whistled.
“What a melodramatic mind you have,” he said.