James Murchison bent forward, and drew a deep breath as though in pain. The flash of sympathy was instant in its passage. Husband and wife were thinking the same thoughts.
“Kate, you must help me to fight this down—”
“Yes.”
“For their sakes, the children—for yours. I think that I have worked too hard of late. When the strength’s out of one, the devil comes in and takes command. And the servants, you are sure—?”
She felt the spasmodic girding of all his manhood, and yearned to him with all her heart.
“They knew nothing; I saved that. Don’t let us talk of it; the thing is over”—and she tried not to shudder. “Ah—I am glad I know, dear, I can do so much.”
James Murchison bent down and drew her into his arms, and she lay there awhile, feeling that the warmth of her love passed into her husband’s body. The hearth was red before them with the fire-light, and they heard the sound of their children playing.
“Shall we go up to them?” she said, at last.
“Yes”—and she knew by his face that he was praying, not with mere words, but with every life-throb of his being—“it will do me good. God bless you—”
And they kissed each other.
CHAPTER III
Mrs. Betty Steel sat alone at the breakfast-table with a silver teapot covered with a crimson cosy before her, and a pile of letters and newspapers at her elbow. The west front of St. Antonia’s showed through the window, buttress and pinnacle glimmering up into the morning sunlight. Frost-rimed trees spun a scintillant net against the blue. The quiet life of the old town went up with its lazy plumes of smoke into the crisp air.
Mrs. Betty Steel drew a slice of toast from the rack, toyed with it, and looked reflectively at her husband’s empty chair. She was a dark, sinuous, feline creature was Mrs. Betty, with a tight red mouth, and an olive whiteness of skin under her black wreath of hair. Her hands were thin, mercurial, and yet suggestive of pretty and graceful claws. A clever woman, cleverer with her head than with her heart, acute, elegant, aggressive, yet often circuitous in her methods. She had abundant impulse in her, blood, and clan, even evidenced by the way in which she ripped the wrapper from a copy of the Wilmenden Mail.
Mrs. Betty buried her face in the pages, crumbling her toast irritably as her eyes ran to and fro over the head-lines. She glanced up as her husband entered, a smooth-faced, compressed, and professional person, with an assured manner and an incisive cut of the mouth and chin.
“Any news in this hub of monotony?”
His wife put down the paper, and called back the dog who was poking his nose near the bacon-dish on the fire-guard.
“Quack medicines much in evidence. The fellows are arrant Papists, Parker; they promise to cure everything with nothing. Tea or coffee?”
Mrs. Betty spoke with the slight drawl that was habitual to her. Her admirers felt it to be distinguished, but its effect upon shop assistants was to spread the instincts of socialism.
Dr. Parker Steel declared for coffee, and took salt to his porridge. He was not a man who wasted words, save perhaps on the most paying patients. Professional ambition, and an aggressive conviction that he was to be the leading citizen in Roxton filled the greater part of the gentleman’s sphere of consciousness.
“And local sensations?”
“Mrs. Pindar’s ball, a very dull affair, sausage-rolls and jelly, and a floor like glue—probably.”
“Any one there?”
“The Lombard Street clique, the Carnabys, Tom Flemming, Kate Murchison, etc., etc., etc.”
Parker Steel grunted, and appeared to be estimating the number of cubes in the sugar bowl by way of exercising himself in the compilation of statistics.
“Murchison not there, I suppose?” he asked.
“The wife—quite sufficient.”
Her husband smiled, showing the regular white teeth under his trim, black mustache with scarcely any flow of feeling in his features. Dr. Parker Steel was very proud of his teeth and finger-nails.
“You don’t love that lady much, eh?”
Mrs. Betty’s refined superciliousness trifled with the suggestion.
“Kate Murchison? I cannot say that I ever trouble much about her. Rather fat and vulgar—perhaps. Fat women do not appeal to me; they seem to carry sentimentality and gush about with them like patchouli. Do you think that you are gaining ground on Murchison, Parker, eh?”
The husband appeared confident.
“Perhaps.”
“Old Hicks will resign the Hospital soon; you must take it.”
“Not worth the trouble.”
Mrs. Betty’s dark eyes condemned the assertion.
“Dirt’s money in the wrong place, as they say in trade, Parker.”
“Well?” And the amused consort glanced at her with a cold flicker of affection.
“Study it on utilitarian principles. Lady Twaddle-twaddle sends her cook, or her gardener, or her boot-boy to be treated in Roxton Hospital. You exercise yourself on the boot-boy or the cook, and Lady Twaddle-twaddle approves the cure. Praise is never thrown away. Let the old ladies who attend missionary meetings say of you, ‘that Dr. Steel is so kind and attentive to the poor.’ We have to lay the foundation of a palace in the soil.”
Parker Steel chuckled, knowing that behind Mrs. Betty’s elegant verbiage there was a tenacity of purpose that would have surprised her best friends.
“I wonder whether Murchison is as privileged as I am?” he said, passing his cup over the red tea cosy.
“I suppose the woman gushes for him, just as I work my wits for you.”
“The Amazons of Roxton.”
“We live in a civilized age, Parker, but the battle is no less bitter for us. I use my head. Half the words I speak are winged for a final end.”
“You are clever enough, Betty,” he confessed.
“We both have brains”—and she gave an ironical laugh—“I shall not be content till the world, our world, fully recognizes that fact. Old Hicks is past his work. Murchison is the only rival you need consider. Therefore, Parker, our battle is with the gentleman of Lombard Street.”
“And with the wife?”
“That is my affair.”
Such life feuds as are chronicled in the hatred of a Fredegonde for a Brunehaut may be studied in miniature in many a modern setting. Ever since childhood Betty Steel and Catherine Murchison had been born foes. Their innate instincts had seemed antagonistic and repellent, and the life of Roxton had not chastened the tacit feud. Girls together at the same school, they had fought for leadership and moral sway. Catherine had been one of those creatures in whom the deeper feelings of womanhood come early to the surface. Children had loved her; her arms had been always open to them, and she had stood out as a species of little mother to whom the owners of bleeding knees had run for comfort.
The rivalry of girlhood had deepened into the rivalry of womanhood. They were the “beauties” of Roxton; the one generous, ruddy, and open-hearted; the other sleek, white-faced, a studied artist in elegance and charm. Both were admired and championed by their retainers; Catherine popular with the many, Betty served by the