There was a dance that night at one of the Roxton houses, and Mrs.
Betty, brilliant in cream and carnation, swept through the room with all
the verve of a girl of twenty. Her partners discovered her in wondrous
fettle—swift, splendid, and audacious, color in her cheeks, a sparkle
of conscious triumph in her eyes. Her tongue was in sympathy with the
quickness of her feet. She prattled, laughed, and was as deliciously
impertinent as any minx who has a theory of fascination.
Mrs. Hamilton-Hamilton, the hostess of the night, was a patient of James
Murchison’s, and Catherine’s more gracious comeliness came as a contrast
to Mrs. Betty’s faylike glamour. The Hamiltons were brewers, wealthy
plebeians who had assimilated that lowest of all arts, the art of making
money, without absorbing a culture that was of the same temper as their
gold. Catherine had left her husband to his pipe and his books at
Lombard Street. She had come to serve him, because as a doctor’s wife
she knew the value of smart publicity. In small towns trifles are of
serious moment. Orthodoxy is in the ascendant, and individual
singularity of opinion is considered to be “peculiar.” A professional
gentleman suspected of free thought may discover his social standing
being damaged by the vicaress behind his back. Bigotry dies hard despite
the broadening of our culture, and “eccentric” individuals may be
ostracized by the sectarians of a town. Forms and formularies produce
hypocrites. It is perilous for professional gentlemen to appear
eccentric. Even if they abstain from lip service in person, their wives
must be regular in helping to populate the parish pews.
Kate Murchison and Mrs. Betty passed and repassed each other in the
vortex of many a waltz. To Parker Steel’s wife there was a prophetic
triumph on the wind. She found herself calculating, as she chatted to
her partners, how long these people would remain loyal to the surgeon of
Lombard Street when his repute was damaged by the scandal at Boland’s
Farm. Catherine had a peculiar interest for her that night, for Mrs.
Betty’s hate was tempered by exultation. She watched for the passing and
repassing of Catherine’s aureole of shimmering hair, smiling to herself
at the woman’s happy ignorance of the notoriety that threatened her
husband’s name.
To Catherine also, with each sweep of the dance, came that olive-skinned
and complacent face, whose eyes seemed ever on the watch for her. She
caught the rattle of the dark woman’s persiflage as she drifted past to
the moan of the violins. She remarked an exaggerated vivacity in Mrs.
Betty’s manner, a something that suggested triumph with each nearness of
their faces. Always the slightly cynical smile, the teeth glimmering
between the lips; always that curious flash of the eyes, sudden and
momentary, like the flash of a light over the night sea. With women the
vaguest of emotions lead to intuitive gleams of thought, and Mrs.
Betty’s exultation inspired Catherine with reasonless unrest.
The two women met in the doorway of the supper-room, Parker Steel’s wife
on Mr. Cranston’s arm, Catherine escorted by Captain Hensley, of the
Buffs. Their eyes met with a glitter of defiance and distrust. Catherine
would have drawn aside, but Betty, with a laugh, gave her a pretty sweep
of the hand.
“Seniores priores, dear. How is your husband? What a delicious evening!”
The presentiment of treachery asserted itself with superstitious
strangeness. Catherine colored, stung, despite herself, by Parker
Steel’s wife’s patronizing drawl.
“Thanks. My husband is very well. Has he been ill?” and the ironical
question conveyed a challenge.
Mrs. Betty’s lips parted over their perfect teeth.
“Mr. Cranston is such an enthusiast that I must not lose him the next
waltz. Try the pâté de foie gras, it is excellent,” and she swept out,
with a glitter of amusement, on the lawyer’s arm.
They were soon moving in the midst of the music, a score of rustling
dresses swinging their colors over the polished floor.
“Poor Mrs. Murchison,” and the lawyer looked curiously into his
partner’s face.
“Strange that we should have met her, just then!”
“After our discussion at supper!”
“Yes; she knows nothing.”
“My dear Mrs. Steel, the penny-post carries more poison than the rings
of the old Italians.”
“But then we are more civilized in our methods.”
“Possibly. The cruelties of civilization are more refined, of the soul
rather than of the body. Shall we reverse?”
“Yes. There are some fatalities that cannot be reversed, Mr. Cranston,
eh?”
Catherine returned to the great house in Lombard Street that night with
a vague feeling of melancholy and unrest. She was beginning to know the
terror of a secret in a house, a hidden shame to be held sacred from the
eyes of the world. Nor was it that she did not trust her husband, nor
respect his strength, for few men would have fought as he had fought,
and even in defeat she beheld a pathos that was wholly tragic, never
sordid.
She was haunted by the thought that night that Betty Steel had guessed
her secret, and only women know the feline cruelty of their sex. The
greater part of the social snobberies and tyrannies of life are inspired
by the spiteful egotism of women. Catherine knew enough of Betty’s
nature to forecast the mercy she might expect from her rival’s tongue.
Moreover, the very home-coming from the dance recalled to her that March
night when she had first uncovered her husband’s shame. There are some
memories that are like aggressive weeds, no tearing up by the roots can
banish them from the human heart. Their tendrils creep and thrust into
every crevice of the mind. Their fruit is full of a poisoned juice,
their flowers red as hyssop—for all the world to see.
As for the sake of irony, the letters that Betty Steel and Mr. Cranston
had discussed, were opened by Murchison at the breakfast-table before
the faces of his children and his wife. Master Jack had been clamoring
to be taken to the cottage on Marley Down, and Gwen had crept round to
her father’s elbow to overpersuade him with the winsomeness of
childhood. The first letter that Murchison opened was from Cranston; the
second from Parker Steel. Miss Gwen, doll in hand, stood unheeded at her
father’s elbow. It was Catherine who rose, called the two children, and
took them out into the garden to play.
They clung, one to either hand, the boy prancing and chattering, the
girl solemn-eyed because of her father’s silence.
“Mother, when may we go to Marley?”
“Soon, dear, soon.”
“Oh, I say, do they keep rabbits there?”
“And will daddy come too?”
Catherine disentangled herself, and left them on the lawn under the
great plane-tree, her heart heavy with some half-expected dread.
“Daddy will come too, dear. I will call you when you are to come in.”
Murchison was still sitting at the breakfast-table when she returned,
looking like a man who had lost his all at cards. His figure appeared
shrunken, and hollow at the shoulders, his face expressionless as though
from some sudden palsy of the brain.
“James!”
He started as though he had not heard her enter.
“The children, where—?”
“In the garden. Tell me, what has happened?”
“Happened? My God, Kate, see, read!—what have I done?”
She stretched out her hand, her face piteously brave.
“This letter?”
He nodded.
“From whom?”
“Steel. There is to be an inquest at Boland’s Farm.”
Catherine read it, and the lawyer’s also, an angry glow welling up into
her eyes. She crumpled the letters in her hand, and stood silent a
moment, with quivering lips.
“Now, now—I know—”
Murchison stared at her like one half-dazed.
“You have read it?”
“Yes. A blunder! No, I’ll not believe it, James; there is malice here. I
read it in Betty Steel’s eyes last night.”
“But the facts,” and he groaned.
“Facts! Are they facts? Is Parker Steel infallible? Wait, I know what I
will do.”
Murchison’s eyes watched her like the eyes of a dog.
“I will see Dr. Parker Steel. I will ask him by what right he has dared
to act as he has acted.”
Her words seemed to shake her husband from his stupor.
“Kate, you cannot do it.”
“Why not?”
“Beg a favor of that fop! Besides, the case has gone too far. The facts
are there. I blundered. I knew that I had lost my nerve.”
She looked at him with a woman’s pity, her pride and her love still
strong and heroic in their trust.
“It was not you, dear—not you.”
“Not I, Kate, but my baser self. Fate takes us when we are in the
toils.”
They heard the children in the garden, their laughter close beneath the
window. Murchison’s hands caught the arms of his chair. His children’s
happiness seemed part of the mockery of fate.
“Don’t let them come in. I can’t bear it. I—” and he broke down
suddenly into that most pitiful and tragic pass when a strong man’s
anguish brings him even to tears.
Catherine, her face transfigured, bent over him, and seized his hands.
“Oh, not that! Why, we are here together, and you look on the darker
side—”
His tears were on her hands; he was ashamed, and hung his head.
“Kate, it is true, I feel it. Steel—”
“Steel?”
“Is too cold a man to risk what he cannot prove.”
She drew her breath, and kissed him, the kiss of a mother and a wife.
“I will go to him,” she said.
“Kate!”
“No, not to plead. I could not plead with such a man as Steel.”