By certain scientific thinkers life is held to be but a relative term,
and the “definitions” of the ancients have been cast aside into the very
dust that they despised as gross and utterly inanimate. Whether radium
be “alive” or no, the thing we ordinary mortals know as “life” shows
even in its social aspects a significant sympathy with the Spencerian
definition. The successful men are those who react and respond most
readily, and most selfishly to the externals of existence. Vulgarly, we
call it the seizing of opportunities, though the clever merchant may
react almost unconsciously and yet instinctively to the market of the
public mind. All life is an adjustment of relationships, of husband to
wife, of mother to child, of cheat to dupe, of capital to labor.
Thus, in social death, so to speak, a man may be so placed that he is
unable to adapt himself to his surroundings. His reputation dies and
disintegrates like a body that is incapable of adjusting itself to some
blighting change of climate. Or, in the terminology of physics,
responsible repute may be likened to an obelisk whose instability
increases with its height. A flat stone may remain in respectable and
undisturbed equilibrium for centuries. The poised pinnacle is pressed
upon by every wind that blows.
The fall of some such pinnacle is a dramatic incident in the experience
of the community. The noise thereof is in a hundred ears, and the
splintered fragments may be gaped at by the crowd. Thus it had been with
James Murchison in Roxton town. Neither doctors nor engine-drivers are
permitted to indulge in drink, and in Murchison’s case the downfall had
been the more dramatic by his absolute refusal to qualify the disgrace.
An inquest, an unflattering finding by the coroner’s jury, a case for
damages threatening to be successfully instituted by an outraged widow.
Amid such social humiliations the brass plate had disappeared abruptly
from the door of the house in Lombard Street. It was as though
Murchison’s pride had accepted the tragic climax with all the finality
of grim despair. He had even made no attempt to sell the practice, but,
like Cain, he had gone forth with his wife and with his children, too
sensitive in his humiliation to brave the ordeal of reconquering a lost
respect.
* * * * *
Many months had passed since the furniture dealers’ vans had stood in
the roadway outside the house in Lombard Street, with bass and straw
littering the pavement, and men in green baize aprons going up and down
the dirty steps. Frost was in the air, and the winter sun burned vividly
upon the western hills. A fog of smoke hung over the straggling town,
lying a dark blurr amid the white-misted meadows. Lights were beginning
to wink out like sparks on tinder. The dull roar of a passing train came
with hoarse strangeness out of the vague windings of the valley.
As the dusk fell, a smart pair of “bays” switched round the northwest
corner of St. Antonia’s Square and clattered over the cobbles under the
spectral hands of the towering elms. The church clock chimed for the
hour as Parker Steel, furred like any Russian, stepped out of the
brougham, and, slamming the door sharply after him, ordered the coachman
to keep the horses on the move. Dr. Steel’s brougham was not the only
carriage under St. Antonia’s sleeping elms. A steady beat of hoofs and a
jingling of harness gave a ring of distinction to the quiet square.
Parker Steel glanced at the warm windows of his house as he crossed the
pavement, and fumbled for his latch-key in his waistcoat pocket. The
sound of music came from within, ceasing as the physician entered the
hall, and giving place to the brisk murmur of many voices. A smart
parlor-maid emerged from the drawing-room, carrying a number of teacups,
blue and gold, on a silver tray. The babble of small talk unmuffled by
the open door suggested that Mrs. Betty excelled as a hostess.
Ten minutes elapsed before Parker Steel, spruce and complacent, was
bowing himself into his own drawing-room with the easy unction of a man
sure of the distinction of his own manners. Quite twenty ladies were
ready to receive the physician’s effeminate white fingers. Mrs. Betty
had gathered the carriage folk of Roxton round her. The heat of the room
seemed to have stimulated the scent of the exotic flowers. The shaded
standard lamp, burning in the bay-window beside the piano, shed a
brilliant light upon a pink mass of azaleas in bloom. Mrs. Betty herself
was still seated upon the music-stool, one hand resting on the key-board
as she chatted to Lady Sophia Gillingham, sunk deep in the luxurious
cushions of a lounge-chair.
Mrs. Betty, a study in saffron, her pale face warmed by the light of the
lamp, caught her husband’s eye as he moved through the crowded room.
Sleek, brilliant, pleased as a cat that has been lapping cream, she made
a slight gesture that he understood, a gesture that brought him before
Lady Gillingham’s chair.
“Parker.”
“Yes, dear.”
“Will you touch the bell for me?—I want to show Mignon to Lady Sophia.”
Parker Steel’s smile congratulated his wife on her deft handling of the
weapons of social diplomacy. He rang the bell, and meeting the servant
at the door, desired her to bring Mrs. Betty’s blue Persian and the
basket of kittens from before the library fire.
The physician took personal charge of Mignon and her children, and
returning between the chairs and skirts, presented the family to Lady
Sophia.
Parker Steel had an ecstatic lady at either elbow as he held the basket
lined with red silk, the three mouse-colored kittens crawling about
within. Mignon, the amber-eyed, had made a leap for Mrs. Betty’s lap.
“The dears!”
“How absolutely sweet!”
“Such tweety pets.”
The two elderly canaries cheeped in chorus while Lady Sophia’s fat and
pudgy hand fondled the three kittens. Her red and apathetic face became
more human and expressive for the moment, though there was a suggestion
of cupidity in her dull blue eyes.
“The dear things!” and she lifted one from the basket into her lap,
where it mewed rather peevishly, and caught its claws in Lady Sophia’s
lace.
“Mignon is a prize beauty,” and Mrs. Betty caressed the cat, and looked
up significantly into her husband’s face.
“Perfectly lovely. There, there, pet, what a fuss to make!” and the
dowager’s red-knuckled hand contrasted with the kitten’s slate-gray
coat. “I suppose they are all promised, Mrs. Steel?”
“Well, to tell the truth, they have created quite a rage among my
friends.”
“No doubt, the dears. You could ask quite a fancy price for such prize
kittens.”
Parker Steel had been prompted by an instant flash of his wife’s eyes.
“I am sure if Lady Gillingham would like one of the kittens—”
He appeared to glance questioningly, and for approval, at Mrs. Betty.
“Of course—I shall be delighted.”
“Really?”
“Why, yes.”
“Then—may I buy one?”
Parker Steel elevated his eyebrows, and, with the air of a Leicester,
refused to listen to any such proposal.
“Do not mention such a matter. We shall only be too glad.”
“But, my dear Mrs. Steel—”
“I agree wholly with my husband.” And Mrs. Betty stretched out a white
hand, and stroked the ball of fluff in Lady Sophia’s lap. “Choose which
you like. They can leave the mother in a week or two.”
Lady Gillingham’s plebeian face beamed upon Mrs. Betty.
“This is really too generous.”
“Why, not at all,” and her vivacity was compelling.
“Then I may choose this one?”
“With pleasure.”
“Isn’t it a pet?”
Mignon, purring on Mrs. Betty’s lap, failed to realize in the least how
valuable a social asset she had proved. There was a rustling of skirts,
a shaking of hands, as the room began to empty of its silks and laces.
Lady Sophia struggled up with a fat sigh from the depths of her chair,
stroked Mignon’s ears, and held out a very gracious hand to Mrs. Steel.
“Can you dine with us on Monday?”
“Delighted.”
“Sir Gerald Gerson and the Italian ambassador will be with us. I want to
show you some choice Dresden that my husband has just bought at
Christie’s.”
Mrs. Betty received the favor with the smiling and enthusiastic
simplicity of an ingenuous girl.
“How kind of you! I am so fond of china.”
Parker Steel gave his arm to the great lady, and escorted her to her
carriage, his deportment a professional triumph in the consummation of
such a courtesy.
He found Mrs. Betty alone in the drawing-room when he returned. She was
lying back in the chair that Lady Gillingham’s stout majesty had
impressed, and had Mignon and a kitten on her lap.
Parker Steel, standing on the hearth-rug, looked round him with the air
of a man to whom the flowers in the vases, the lilies and azaleas in
bloom, seemed to exhale an incense of success. Social prosperity and an
abundance of cash; the expensive arm-chairs appeared to assert the facts
loudly.
“A satisfactory party, dear, eh?”
Mrs. Betty, fondling Mignon’s ears, looked up and smiled.
“I think we have conquered Boadicea at last,” she said.
“It appears so.”
“She should be a most excellent advertisement.”
Parker Steel fingered his chin, and looked meditatively at the carpet. A
self-satisfied and half-cynical smile hovered about the angles of his
clean-cut mouth.
“A year ago, Betty,” he remarked, “Lady Sophia pertained to Catherine
Murchison, and showed us the cold shoulder. Well, we have changed all
that.”
“We?”
“Well, say the workings of the ‘spirit,’ or the infirmities of the
flesh.”
Mrs. Betty held Mignon against her cheek and laughed.
“What a dear, soft, fluffy thing it is!”
“Set a cat to catch a cat, eh? I wonder what our friend Murchison is
doing?”
“Murchison! I never trouble to think.”
Parker Steel studied his boots.
“Poor devil, he made a pretty mess of a first-class practice. They were
hard up, too, I imagine. Damages and costs must have cleared out most of
Murchison’s investments, and their furniture sold dirt cheap. I can’t
tell why the ass did not try to sell the practice.”
“Pride, I suppose.”
“It meant making me a present of most of his best patients.”
“My dear Parker, never complain.”
“Hardly, when we should be booking between two and three thousand a
year—at least. Well, I must turn out again before dinner.”
The physician returned to his fur coat and his brougham, leaving Mrs.
Betty fondling Mignon and her kittens.