“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. I came out by myself. I’d five pennies in my money-box. Nurse was so busy. The daffies are for mother.”
Her father had one eye on the child as he steered the car through the market-place and past St. Antonia’s into Lombard Street. The youth in him revolted from administering moral physic to Miss Gwen. Even the florist seemed to have treated her pennies with generous respect, and like the majority of sympathetic males, Murchison left the dogmatic formalities of education to his wife. The very flowers, the child’s offering, would have withered at any tactless chiding.
Mary, the darner of Mr. Jack’s stockings, was discovered waddling up Lombard Street with flat-footed haste. Miss Gwen greeted her with the composure of an empress, proud of her flowers, her father, the motor-car, and life in general. To Mary’s “Oh—Miss Gwen!” she answered with a sedate giggle and hugged her basket of flowers.
Murchison saw his wife’s figure framed between the white posts of the doorway. He chuckled as he reached for his instrument bag under the seat, and caught a glimpse of Mary’s outraged authority.
“Look, mother, look, you love daffies ever so much. I bought them all myself.”
Catherine’s arms were hugging the green frock.
“Gwen, you wicked one,” and she caught her husband’s eyes and blushed.
“We are growing old fast, Kate. I picked her up in Chapel Gate.”
“The dear flowers; come, darling. Jack, you rascal, what are you doing?”
“Master Jack! Master Jack!”
Male mischief was astir also in Lombard Street, having emerged from the school-room with the much-tried Mary’s darning-basket. There was an ironical humor in pelting the fat woman with the stockings she had mended and rolled so conscientiously. His father’s appearance in the hall sent Master Jack laughing and squirming up the stairs. He was caught, tickled, and carried in bodily to lunch.
James Murchison was smoking in his study early the same afternoon, ticking off visits in his pocket-book, when his wife came to him with a letter in her hand.
“From Marley, dear. A man has just ridden in with it. They need you at once.”
“Marley? Why, the Penningtons belong to Steel.”
He tore open the envelope and glanced through the letter, while his wife looked whimsically at the chaos of books and papers on his desk. The ground was holy, and her tact debarred her from meddling with the muddle. The room still had a sense of shadow for her. She could not enter it without an indefinable sense of dread.
Murchison did not show the letter to his wife. He put it in his pocket, knocked out his pipe, and picked up his stethoscope that was lying on the table.
“I am afraid you will have to go to the Stantons’ without me, dear,” he said; “Steel wants me at Marley.”
Catherine gave him a surprised flash of the eyes.
“Something serious?”
“Possibly.”
“Parker Steel is not fond of asking your advice.”
“Who is, dear?”
“I’m sorry,” she said.
“So am I, dear,” and he kissed her, and rang the bell to order out his car.
Marley was an old moated house some five miles from Roxton, a place that seemed stolen from a romance, save that there was nothing romantic about its inmates. A well-wooded park protected it from the high-road, the red walls rising warm and mellow behind the yews, junipers, and cedars that grew in the rambling garden. Spring flowers were binding the sleek, sun-streaked lawns with strands of color, dashes of crimson, of azure, and white, of golden daffodils blowing like banners amid a sheaf of spears. Here and there the lawns were purple with crocuses, and the singing of the birds seemed to turn the yew-trees into towers of song.
The panting of Murchison’s car seemed to outrage the atmosphere of the place, as though the fierce and aggressive present were intruding upon the dreamy past. A manservant met the doctor, and led him across the Jacobean hall to the library, whose windows looked towards the west.
Parker Steel was standing before the fire, biting his black mustache.