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Discovering Diverse Content Through
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 “Facts, facts—why, the man’s clean daft on facts. Facts must be
another name for a pint of bitter.”
“I’ll smash your jaw, Bill Bains, if you don’t stow it.”
“Smash away, my buck. Who’s afraid of a bloomin’ cask?”
Whereon the dwellers in Mill Lane were treated to an exhibition
of two minutes straight hitting, an exhibition that ended in the
intervention of friends. But since the drayman departed with a red
nose and a swollen eye, it may be inferred that the sweep had the
best of the argument.
To have one’s past, present, and future dragged through the
back streets of a country town is not an experience that a man of
self-respect would welcome. A sensitive spirit cannot fail to feel the
atmosphere about it. It may see the sun shining, the clouds white
against the blue, the natural phenomena of health and of well-being;
or the faces of a man’s fellows may be as sour puddles to him, their
sympathy a wet December.
Trite as the saying is, that in trouble we make trial of our friends,
only those who have faced defeat know the depth and meaning of
that time-worn saying. A week in Roxton betrayed to Catherine and
her husband the number and the sincerity of their friends. The
instinct of pride is wondrous quick in detecting truth from shams,
even as an expert’s fingers can tell old china by the feel. The
population of the place was soon mapped out into the priggishly
polite, the piously distant, the vulgarly inquisitive, the unaffected
honest, and the honestly indifferent. Catherine met many a face that
brightened to hers in the Roxton streets. The past seemed to have
banked more good-will for them then they had imagined. It was
among the poor that they found the least forgetfulness, less of the
cultured and polite hauteur, less affectation, less hypocrisy. As for
the practice, they found it non-existent that first humiliating yet half-
happy week.
But perhaps the sincerest person in Roxton at that moment was
the wife of Dr. Parker Steel. Betty was not a passionate woman in
the matter of her affections, but in her capabilities for hatred she
concentrated the energy of ten. She had come quite naturally to
regard herself as the most gifted and interesting feminine
personality that Roxton could boast. Every woman has an instinctive
conviction that her own home, and her own children, are
immeasurably superior to all others. With Betty Steel, this spirit of
womanly egotism had been largely centred on herself. She had no
children to make her jealous and critical towards other women’s
children. It was the symmetry of her own success in life that had
developed into an enthralling art, an art that absorbed her whole
soul.
It might have been imagined that she had climbed too high to
trouble about an old hate; that she was too sufficiently assured of
her own glory to stoop to attack a humbled rival. Jealousy and a
sneaking suspicion of inferiority had embittered the feud for her of
old; and Kate Murchison, saddened and aged, half a suppliant for
the loyalty of a few good friends, could still inspire in Betty a spirit of
aggressive and impatient hate. She remembered that she had seen
Catherine triumphant where she herself had received indifference
and disregard. The instinct to crush this antipathetic rival was as
fierce and keen in her as ever.
“Call on her,” had been Madge Ellison’s suggestion.
“Call on her!”
“It would be more diplomatic.”
“Do you imagine, Madge, that I am going to make advances to
that woman? She used to snub me once; my turn has come. I give
the Murchisons just six months in Roxton.”
How little mercy Betty Steel had in that intolerant and subtle
heart of hers was betrayed by the strategic move that opened the
renewal of hostilities. She had driven Kate Murchison out of Roxton
once, and the arrogance of conquest was as fierce in this slim,
refined-faced woman as in any Alexander. She moved in a small and
limited sphere, but the aggressive spirit was none the less inevitable
in its lust to overthrow. The motives were the meaner for their
comparative minuteness.
Lady Sophia’s Bazaar Committee met in Roxton public hall one
day towards the end of May, to consider the arrangement of stalls,
and to settle a number of decorative details. Betty had spent half the
morning at her escritoire sorting letters, meditating chin on hand,
scribbling on the backs of old envelopes, which she afterwards took
care to burn.
She seemed in her happiest vein that afternoon, as she left
Madge Ellison to provide tea for Dr. Little, and drove to the public
hall with her despatch-box full of the Bazaar Fund’s correspondence.
No one would have imagined it possible for such refinement and
charm to cover instincts that were not unallied to the instincts found
in an Indian jungle. Mrs. Betty went through her business with
briskness and precision; the committee left their chairs to discuss
the grouping of the stalls about the room. There were to be twelve
of these booths, each to represent a familiar flower; Lady Sophia
had elected herself a rose. Mrs. Betty’s choice had been Oriental
poppies.
Lady Sophia was parading the hall with a pair of pince-nez
perched on the bridge of her nose, and a memorandum-book open
in her hand. A group of deferential ladies followed her like hens
about the farmer’s wife at feeding-time. The most trivial suggestion
that fell from those aristocratic lips was seized upon and swallowed
with relish.
“Betty, dear, have you heard from Jennings about the draperies?”
The glory of it, to be “my deared” in public by Lady Sophia
Gillingham!
“Yes, I have a letter somewhere, and a list of prices.”
“You might pin up the letter and the price-list on the black-board
by the door, so that the stall-holders can take advantage of any item
that may be of use to them.”
Betty moved to the table and rummaged amid her multifarious
correspondence. She was chatting all the while to a Miss Cozens, a
thin, wiry little woman, alert as a Scotch-terrier in following up the
scent of favor.
“What a lot of work the bazaar has given you, Mrs. Steel!”
“Yes, quite enough,” and she divided her attention between Miss
Cozens and the pile of papers.
“When is the next rehearsal?”
“Tuesday, I believe.”
“I hear you are the genius of the play.”
 “Am I?” and Betty smiled like an ingenuous girl. “I am most
horribly nervous. I always feel that I am spoiling the part. Oh, here’s
Jennings’s letter, and the list, I think.”
She left the two papers lying unheeded for the moment, while
she answered Miss Cozens’s interested questions on costume.
“Primrose and leaf green, that will be lovely.”
“Yes, so everybody says.”
Lady Sophia’s voice interrupted the gossip. She was beckoning to
Betty with her memorandum-book.
“Betty, can you spare me a moment?”
Miss Cozens’s sharp eyes gave an envious twinkle.
“Shall I pin up the papers for you, Mrs. Steel?”
“Would you?”
“With pleasure.”
And Betty swept two sheets of paper towards Miss Cozens
without troubling to glance at them, and turned to wait on Lady
Sophia.
Several ladies congregated about the black-board as Miss Cozens
pinned up the letter and the price-list with such conscientious
promptitude that she had not troubled to read their contents. Had
she had eyes for the faces of her neighbors she might have been
struck by the puzzled eagerness of their expression. One elderly
committee woman readjusted her glasses, and then touched Miss
Cozens with a pencil that she carried.
“Excuse me.”
“Yes.”
“There is some mistake—I think.”
“Mistake?”
“Yes, that letter”—and the spectacled lady pointed to the black-
board with her pencil.
Miss Cozens took the trouble to investigate the charge. The letter
was written on one broad sheet in a neat, bold hand. Miss Cozens’s
prim little mouth pursed itself up expressively as she read; her
brows contracted, her eyes stared.
“Good Heavens!—what’s this? I must have taken the wrong
letter.”
 She tore the sheet down, pushed past her neighbors, and
crossed the room towards Betty Steel. The group about the black-
board appeared to be discussing the incident. Mr. Jennings’s list of
silks and drapings seemed forgotten.
“Mrs. Steel, excuse me—”
“Yes?”
“This letter; there’s some mistake. It’s the wrong one. I pinned it
up, and Mrs. Saker called my attention to the error.”
“Let me see.”
Miss Cozens gave her the sheet, intense curiosity quivering in
every line of her doglike face.
“Good Heavens!—how did this get mixed up with my business
correspondence?”
She looked perturbation to perfection.
“Miss Cozens, what am I to do? Has any one read it?”
The little woman nodded.
“How horrible! I must explain—It must not go any further.”
Betty hurried across the hall towards the door, hesitated, and
looked round her as though baffled by indecision. She knew well
enough that inquisitive eyes were watching her. Her skill as an
actress—and she was consummately clever as a hypocrite—served
to heighten the meaning that she wished to convey.
“Lady Sophia.”
Betty had doubled adroitly in the direction of the amiable
aristocrat.
“Yes, dear—”
“Can I speak to you alone?”
“What is it?”
“Oh, I have done such an awful thing. Do help me. You have so
much nerve and tact.”
“My dear child, steady yourself.”
“I looked out Jennings’s papers; Miss Cozens was chattering to
me, and when you called me, she offered to pin the things on the
board. How on earth it happened, I cannot imagine, but a private
letter of mine had got mixed up with the bazaar correspondence. It
must have been lying by Jennings’s list, for Miss Cozens, without
troubling to read it, pinned it on the board.”
The perturbed, sensitive creature was breathless and all a-flutter.
Lady Sophia patted her arm.
“Well, dear, I see no great harm yet—”
“Wait! It was a letter from an old friend abroad, a letter that
contained certain confessions about a Roxton family. What on earth
am I to do? Look, here it is, read it.”
Lady Sophia read the letter, holding it at arm’s-length like the
music of a song.
“Good Heavens, Betty, I never knew the man drank, that it had
been a habit—”
“Don’t, Lady Sophia, don’t!”
“You should have been more careful.”
“I know—I know. I shall never forgive myself. For goodness’
sake, help me. You have so much more tact than I.”
Her ladyship accepted the responsibility with stately unction.
“Leave it to me, dear. I can go round and have a quiet talk with
all those who happened to read the letter. How unfortunate that the
opening sentences should have contained this information. Still, it
need never get abroad.”
“How good of you!”
“There, dear, you are rather upset, most naturally so—”
“I think I had better retreat.”
“Yes, leave it to me.”
“Thank you, oh, so much. Tell them not to whisper a word of it.”
“There will be no difficulty, dear, about that.”
Betty, white and troubled, added a sharper flavor to the stew by
withdrawing dramatically from the stage. And any one wise as to the
contradictoriness of human nature could have prophesied how the
news would spread had he seen the Lady Sophia voyaging on her
diplomatic mission round the hall.
“Poor Mrs. Steel! Such an unfortunate coincidence! Not a woman
easily upset, but, believe me, my dear Mrs. So-and-So, it was as
much a shock to her as though she had heard bad news of her
husband. Now, I am quite sure this unpleasant affair will go no
further. Of course not. I rely absolutely on your discretion.”
And since the discretion of a provincial town is complex to a
degree of an ever-repeated confession, coupled with a solemn
warning against repetition, it was not improbable that this froth
would haunt the pot for many a long day.
 CHAPTER XXXIV
June is the month for the old world garden that holds mystery
and fragrance within its red-brick walls. In Lombard Street you
would suspect no wealth of flowers, and yet in the passing through
of one of those solid, mellow, Georgian houses you might meet
dreams from the bourn of a charmed sleep.
Aloofness is the note of such a garden. It is no piece of pompous
mosaic-work spread before the front windows of a stock-broker’s
villa, a conventional color scheme to impress the public. The true
garden has no studied ostentation. It is a charm apart, a quiet
corner of life smelling of lavender, built for old books, and memories
that have the mystery of hills touched by the dawn. You will find the
monk’s-hood growing in tall campaniles ringing a note of blue;
columbines, fountains of gold and red; great tumbling rose-trees like
the foam of the sea; stocks all a-bloom; pansies like antique enamel-
work; clove-pinks breathing up incense to meet the wind-blown
fragrance of elder-trees in flower. You may hear birds singing as
though in the wild deeps of a haunted wood whose trees part the
sunset into panels of living fire.
Mary of the plain face and the loyal heart had opened the green
front door to a big man, whose broad shoulders seemed fit to bear
the troubles of the whole town. He had asked for Catherine and her
husband.
“They are in the garden, sir.”
“Alone?”
“Yes, only Master Jack.”
Canon Stensly bowed his iron-gray head under the Oriental
curtain that screened the passage leading from the hall to the
garden.
“Thanks; I know the way.”
The Rector of St. Antonia’s came out into the sunlight, and stood
looking about him for an instant with the air of a man whose eyes
were always open to what was admirable in life. A thrush had
perched itself on the pinnacle of a yew, and was singing his vesper-
song with the broad west for an altar of splendid gold. The chiming
of the hour rang from St. Antonia’s steeple half hid by the green mist
of its elms. A few trails of smoke rising from red-brick chimney-
stacks alone betrayed the presence of a town.
To an old college-man such an evening brought back memories
of sunny courts, cloisters, and sleek lawns, the ringing of bells
towards sunset, the dark swirl of a river under the yawn of bridges
that linked gardens to gardens beneath the benisons of mighty
trees. Yet the light on Canon Stensly’s face was not wholly a placid
light. It was as though he came as a messenger from the restless,
bickering outer world, a friend whom friendship freighted with words
not easy to be said.
A glimmer of white under an old cherry-tree showed where
Catherine sat reading, with the boy Jack prone on the grass, the
Swiss Family Robinson under his chin. Murchison was lying back in a
deck-chair, watching the smoke from his pipe amid the foliage
overhead.
Master Jack, rolling from elbow to elbow, as he thrilled over the
passage of the “tub-boat” from the wreck, caught sight of the Canon
crossing the lawn. Catherine was warned by a tug at her skirts, and
a very audible stage-aside.
“Look out, here’s old Canon Stensly—”
“S-sh, Jack.”
“Should like to see him afloat in a tub-boat. Take a big—”
A tweak of the ear nipped the boy’s reflection in the bud. His
father gave him a significant push in the direction of the fruit
garden.
“See if there are any strawberries ripe.”
“I’ve looked twice, dad.”
“Oh, no doubt. Go and look again.”
Canon Stensly’s big fist had closed on Catherine’s fingers. He was
not the conventional figure, the portly, smiling cleric, the man of the
world with a benignant yet self-sufficient air. Like many big men,
silent and peculiarly sensitive, his quiet manner suggested a
diffidence anomalous in a man of six feet two. To correct the
impression one had but to look at the steady blue of the eye, the
firm yet sympathetic mouth, the stanchness of the chin. It is a
fallacy that lives perennially, the belief that a confident face, an
aggressive manner, and much facility of speech necessarily mark the
man of power.
A courtly person would have remarked on the beauty of the
evening, and discovered something in the garden to praise. Canon
Stensly was not a man given to pleasant commonplaces. He said
nothing, and sat down.
Murchison handed him his cigar-case.
“Thanks, not before dinner.”
His habit of silence, the silence of a man who spoke only when
he had something definite to say, gave him, to strangers, an
expression of reserve. Canon Stensly invariably made talkative men
feel uncomfortable. It was otherwise with people who had learned to
know the nature of his sincerity.
“Hallo, what literature have we here?”
He picked up Jack’s discarded book, and turned over the pages
as though the illustrations brought back recollections of his own
youth. As a boy he had been the most irrepressible young mischief-
monger, a youngster whom Elisha would have bequeathed to the
bear’s claws.
“Ever a member of the Robinson family, Mrs. Murchison?”
Catherine caught a suspicious side glint in his eye.
“I suppose all children read the book.”
“I wonder how much of the moralizing you remember?”
“Very little, I’m afraid.”
“Nor do I. Children demand life—not moralizing upon life,” and
the Canon scrutinized a picture portraying the harpooning of a turtle,
as though he had gloated over that picture many times as a boy.
Catherine had caught a glimpse of Mary’s white apron signalling
for help in some domestic problem. She was glad of the excuse to
leave the two men together. The sense of a woman is never more in
evidence than when she surrenders her husband to a friend.
“Can you spare me half an hour for a talk?”
“I am not overburdened with work—yet.”
 “Oh, it will come.”
He turned over the pages deliberately, glancing at each picture.
“Your wife looks well.”
“Yes, in spite of everything.”
“A matter of heart and pluck.”
“She has the courage of a Cordelia.”
Canon Stensly put the book down upon the grass. The two men
were silent awhile; Murchison lying back in his chair, smoking; the
churchman leaning forward a little with arms folded, his massive
face set rather sternly in the repose of thought.
“There is something I want to talk to you about.”
Murchison turned his head, but did not move his body.
“Yes?”
“Don’t set me down as a busybody. I think I have a duty to you
as a friend. It is a matter of justice.”
The Canon’s virtues were of the practical, workman-like order. He
was not an eloquent man in the oratorical sense, having far too
straightforward and sincere a personality to wax hysterical for the
benefit of a church full of women. But he was a man who was
listened to by men.
Murchison turned half-restlessly in his chair.
“With reference to the old scandal?” he asked.
“Yes.”
“Something unpleasant, of course.”
“Things that are put about behind one’s back are generally
unpleasant. It was my wife who discovered the report. Women hear
more lies than we do, you know.”
“As a rule.”
“I decided that it was only fair that you should know, since
slandered people are generally the last to hear of their own invented
sins.”
“Thanks. I appreciate honesty.”
Canon Stensly sat motionless a moment, staring at the house.
Then he rose up leisurely from his chair, reached for one of the
branches of the cherry-tree, drew it down and examined the forming
fruit.
 “They say that you used to drink.”
Murchison remained like an Egyptian Memnon looking towards
Thebes. The churchman talked on.
“I have heard the same thing said about one or two of my
dearest friends. Vile exaggerations of some explainable incident. The
report originated from a certain lady who resides over against my
church. Her husband is a professional man.”
He pulled down a second bough, and brushed the young fruit
with his fingers to see whether it was set or not. The silence had
something of the tension of expense. Murchison knew that this old
friend was waiting for a denial.
“That’s quite true; I drank—at one time.”
A man of less ballast and less unselfishness would have rounded
on the speaker, perhaps with an affected incredulity that would have
embittered the consciousness of the confession. Canon Stensly did
nothing so insignificant. He let the branch of the cherry-tree slip
slowly through his fingers, put his hands in his pockets, and walked
aside three paces as though to examine the tree at another angle.
“Tell me about it.”
There was a pause of a few seconds.
“My father drank; poor old dad! I’m not trying to shelve the affair
by putting it on his shoulders. My father and my grandfather both
died of drink. My wife knows. She did not know when we were
married. That was wrong. If ever a man owed anything to the love
of a good woman, I am that man.”
Canon Stensly returned to his chair. His face bore the impress of
deep thought. He had the air of a man ready to help in the bearing
of a brother’s burden, not with any bombast and display, but as
though it were as natural an action as holding out a hand.
“It can’t have been very serious,” he said.
Murchison set his teeth.
“A sort of hell while it lasted, a tempting of the devil; not often;
perhaps the worse for that.”
“Ah, I can understand.”
“It was when I was overworked.”
“Jaded.”
 “The wife was something better than a ministering angel, she
was a brave woman. She fought for me. We should have won—
without that scandal, but for a mad piece of folly I took to be
heroism.”
The churchman extended a large hand.
“I’ll smoke after all,” he said.
“Do.”
Murchison opened his cigar-case. Canon Stensly was as
deliberate as a man wholly at his ease. There was not a tremor as
he held the lighted match.
“Do you know, Murchison, I appreciate this—deeply?”
He returned the match-box.
“It puts you in a new light to me, a finer light, with that rare wife
of yours.”
Murchison was refilling his pipe, lines of thought crossing his
forehead.
“When my child died—”
“Yes—”
“I seemed to lose part of myself. I had crushed the curse then. I
don’t know how to explain the psychology of the affair, but when she
died, the other thing died also.”
Canon Stensly nodded.
“It was what we call dipsomania. I never touched alcohol for
years. I had been a fool as a student. At my worst, I only had the
crave now and again.”
“And you are sure—”
“Sure that that curse killed my child, indirectly. Is it strange that
her death should have killed the curse?”
“As I trust in God, no.”
The thrush was singing again on the yew-tree, another thrush
answering it from a distant garden. Canon Stensly lay back in his
chair and smiled.
“Stay here,” he said, quietly.
“In Roxton?”
“Yes. You have friends. Trust them. There is a greater sense of
justice in this world than most cynics allow. I never knew man fight
a good fight, a clean up-hill fight, and lose in the end.”
They were smoking peacefully under the cherry-tree when
Catherine returned. She had no suspicion of what had passed, for no
storm spirit had left its torn clouds in the summer air. Her husband’s
face was peculiarly calm and placid.
“Where’s that boy of yours, Mrs. Murchison?”
“Jack?”
“Yes.”
“He was hunting the strawberry-beds half an hour ago.”
“Tell him,” and the Canon chuckled, “tell him I am not too big yet
—for a tub.”
“Oh, Canon Stensly—”
“My dear Mrs. Murchison, I said many a truer thing when I was a
boy. Children strike home. To have his vanity chastened, let a man
listen to children.”
The big man with the massive head and the broad British chest
had gone. Husband and wife were sitting alone under the cherry-
tree.
“You told him—all?”
“All, Kate.”
“And it was Betty? That woman! May she never have to bear
what we have borne!”
Murchison was sitting with his elbows on his knees, his chin upon
his fists.
“Well—they know the worst—at last,” he said, grimly. “We can
clear for action. That’s a grand man, Kate. I shall stay and fight—
fight as he would were he in my place.”
She stretched out a hand and let it rest upon his shoulder.
“You are what I would have you be, brave. Our chance will
come.”
“God grant it.”
“You shall show these people what manner of man you are.”
 CHAPTER XXXV
Dr. Little descended the stairs of Major Murray’s house with the
alert and rather furtive look of a man who has been for days
subjected to the semi-sceptical questions of interested relatives.
Parker Steel had attended at the introduction of a third Miss Murray
into the world; the whole affair had seemed but the ordinary yearly
incident in the great, rambling, florid-faced house, whose windows
appeared to have copied its owner’s military stare. It was during Dr.
Little’s regency that Major Murray’s wife had developed certain
sinister symptoms that had worried the locum-tenens very seriously.
Concern for his own self-conceit rather than concern for the patient,
characterized Dr. Little’s attitude towards the case. The professional
spirit when cultivated to the uttermost end of complexity, becomes
an impersonation of the intellectual ego.
A thin, acute-faced woman with sandy hair appeared at the
dining-room door as Dr. Little reached the hall. This lady with the
sandy hair and freckles happened to be the most inquisitive,
suspicious, and unrebuffable of sisters that Dr. Little had ever
encountered on guard over her brother’s domestic happiness.
“Good-morning.”
“Damn the woman—Ah, good-morning.”
Miss Murray’s attitude betrayed the inevitable catechisation. Dr.
Little followed her into the dining-room.
“And how do you find my sister-in-law this morning. Dr. Little?”
Miss Murray had an aggressive, expeditious manner that
disorganized any ordinary mortal’s sense of self-sufficiency and vain
repose. In action her hair seemed to become sandier in color, her
freckles more yellow and independent. In speech she reminded the
locum-tenens of a quick-firing gun whose exasperating detonations
numbered so many snaps a minute.
“Mrs. Murray is no worse this morning. In fact—I can—”
“The temperature?”
“The temperature is a little above normal.”
 Dr. Little’s “distinguished air” became ten times more
distinguished. He articulated in his throat, and began to pull on his
gloves with gestures of great finality.
“Did you notice that reddish rash?”
“It is our duty, Miss Murray, to notice such things.”
“And the throat? It seems very red and angry—”
“A certain degree of pharyngitis is present.”
“Well, and what’s the meaning of it all, Dr. Little?”
“Meaning, Miss Murray? Really—”
“There’s a cause for everything, I imagine.”
“Certainly. The problem—”
“You admit then that there is something problematic in the case,
Dr. Little.”
“There is a problem in every—”
“Of course. But in my sister-in-law’s case, that is the matter
under discussion.”
“Pardon me, madam, it is impossible to discuss certain—”
“My brother desires something definite. He was obliged to go to
town to-day.”
“I should prefer to give my opinion—”
“Major Murray left instructions that I should wire to his club—”
“His club?”
“Whether any definite conclusion had been arrived at.”
The two disputants had been volleying and counter-volleying at
point-blank range. Neither displayed any sign of giving ground or of
surrender. The Scotch lady’s voice had harshened into a slight rasp
of natural Gaelic. Dr. Little still fumbled at the buttons of his gloves,
his words very much in his throat, his whole pose characteristic of
the profession upon its dignity.
“It is quite impossible, Miss Murray, for me to discuss this case.”
The thin lady’s pupils were no bigger than pin-heads, so that her
eyes looked like two circles of hard, blue glass.
“Very well, Dr. Little. I must telegraph to my brother that no
conclusion has been reached—”
“Pardon me, that would be indiscreet—”
“To provide—me—with a solution!”
 The distinguished gentleman had completed the buttoning of his
gloves.
“I shall hope to see Major Murray in person to-morrow.”
“You shall see him, Dr. Little, without fail.”
The locum-tenens conducted a dignified retreat, fully aware of
the fact that the sandy-haired lady believed him to be an ignoramus.
“Confound the woman! How can I tell her what I think?” he
reflected. “It seems to me that there is half a ton of domestic
dynamite waiting to be exploded in that house. I hardly relish the
responsibility. If matters don’t clear in a day or two, I shall wire for
Steel. It is his case, not mine.”
To a much-hustled man, whose temper had been chastened by a
series of irritating incidents, the picture of a pretty woman smiling
up at him from a neat luncheon-table revivified the more sensuous
satisfactions of existence. Men who live to eat, smoke, and enjoy the
curves of a woman’s figure are in the main very docile mortals. The
savor of a well-cooked entrée will dispel despair and bring down
heaven.
Dr. Little sat down with a grieved sigh, unfolded his napkin, and
accepted Miss Ellison’s sympathy as though it were his just and
sovereign due. He still had a vision of freckles and sandy hair, and
echoes of an aggressive voice that revived memories of the dame
school he had attended when in frocks.
“What a morning you must have had! It is nearly two.”
“A delightful morning, I can assure you. Excuse me, Miss Ellison,
the cover of that magazine you have been reading reminds me of a
certain female’s hair. Would you mind removing it from sight?”
“Is the memory so poignant?”
“Poignant! And she has freckles the size of pease. Ugh! I wonder
why it is that one’s patients always seem to conspire against one by
being mulish and irritating all on the same day?”
“Something in the air, perhaps. Poor man!”
“Poor man, it is, I assure you, when you have had a series of
cantankerous old ladies to blarney. I wonder if I might have a glass
of sherry? Oh, don’t bother, let me get it.”
 As though the mere offer absolved him from all further effort, Dr.
Little sat still and fed while Madge Ellison rummaged in the
sideboard for the decanter.
“How much, a tumblerful?”
She bent over him as she poured out the wine, the gold chain
she wore dangling against his cheek.
“Thanks. Three fingers. How angelic a thing is woman!”
“Even when she has freckles and straw-colored hair?”
“Forbear, forbear. Ah, now I began to revive a little.”
He drank the wine, wiped his mustache, and leaned back in his
chair as though to reflect on the natural philosophy of life. Madge
Ellison entered into the system as a pleasing and satisfactory
protoplasmic development. To this bachelor, who already showed a
tendency to plumpness below the heart, she was bracketed with
good wine, nine-penny cigars, and well-cooked dishes, a thing
pleasant to look at and pleasant perhaps to taste.
“How is Mrs. Steel?”
Cutlets and new pease were pushed aside. Dr. Little helped
himself generously to sponge custard, his eyes fixed affectionately
upon the dish.
“I am rather worried about Betty.”
“Worried?”
The bachelor began to look sleek and happy. His outlook upon
life changed greatly after a few magical passes with a spoon and
fork.
“I wish you would go up and see her after lunch.”
“Anything to oblige a lady who can show no freckles. What is the
woe? A cold in the head?”
Madge Ellison had returned to her chair, and was rocking it
gracefully to and fro on two legs. She might have posed as a living
metronome marking the rhythm for the epicure’s busy spoon.
“How frivolous you doctors are!”
Dr. Little wiped a streak of custard from his mustache with his
dinner napkin.
“It is my hour of relaxation. Haven’t you heard the tale of the
two bishops who played leap-frog at the end of a church conference.
But, to be serious, what are the symptoms?”
“She seems rather feverish and has a sore throat. I noticed
something that looked like herpes on her lip.”
“Herpes, eh? Will she let me see her?”
“I’ll run up and ask.”
“Thanks. Is the paper reposing anywhere? Oh, don’t bother. On
the window-sill? Thanks, much obliged.”
And he propped the paper against the decanter, and so consoled
himself with the happy facility of a bachelor.
Betty Steel, in a richly laced dressing-jacket, was sitting up in bed
with Persian Mignon in her lap.
“Bring the man up, dear, if it will give you any satisfaction. Any
news in the town?”
Madge Ellison sat down and chatted for five minutes, while the
cat purred under Betty’s hand.
“I saw Kate Murchison in Castle Gate this morning.”
“Alone?”
“No; being convoyed by the Canoness.”
Betty Steel’s mouth curved into a sneer.
“A most respectable connection. Did you see any blue ribbon
about?”
“You are rather hard on the poor wretches, Betty.”
“Am I?” and she gave a short, sharp laugh; “every woman sides
with her husband—I suppose. You might rub some scent on my
forehead, dear.”
Dr. Little finished a cigar, and yawned in turn over every page of
the paper before ascending to Mrs. Betty’s room. Madge Ellison
opened the door to him. His shoulder brushed her arm as he
entered, quite the professional Agag where the patient was a
woman and under fifty.
Dr. Little remained some fifteen minutes beside Mrs. Betty’s bed.
His air of lazy refinement left him by degrees, giving place to the
interested and puzzled alertness of the physician. It was the curious
nodular swelling on Parker Steel’s wife’s lip that led him to discover
glandular enlargement under her round, white chin.
“Hair falling out at all?” he asked, casually.
 “Why refer to a woman’s one eternal woe?”
“Oh, nothing,” and he smiled a little stiffly; “the throat is sore, is
it not?”
“Yes.”
“Let me look. Turn to the light, please. Open the mouth wide,
and say ‘ah.’ Hum, yes, rather inflamed,” and Dr. Little, after moving
his head from side to side, like a man peering down the bowl of a
pipe, drew back from the bed, his eyes fixed momentarily on Betty
Steel’s face with a peculiarly intent stare.
“I’ll send you up a gargle for the throat.”
“Thanks. I shall be all right for Saturday, I suppose?”
“I hope so.”
“It is the last rehearsal. I must not miss it.”
“Have you heard from Dr. Steel to-day?”
Betty was holding Mignon’s head between her two hands, and
looking into the cat’s yellow eyes. Something in the intonation of Dr.
Little’s voice seemed to startle her. She glanced up at him with a
questioning smile.
“I expect him back in a week or so. Madge, get me that letter,
dear. I think he said next Wednesday. Is there anything—?”
Little had moved towards the door.
“I only wanted to know the date. I promised some months ago to
do locum work for an old friend next week.”
Betty had glanced through her husband’s letter. She laid it aside
when Dr. Little had gone, and took Mignon back into her lap.
“That man’s worried about something, Madge,” she said.
“Worried, not a bit of it, dear.”
“Why not?”
“It’s not in the bachelor nature to worry, provided food is plentiful
and work slack. Pins wouldn’t prick him. They’re selfish beasts.”
“I thought you liked the man, Madge.”
“The men we flirt with, dear, are not often the men we marry.”
Meanwhile, Dr. Little had descended the stairs, looking as serious
as any middle aged demi-god who had been snubbed by a school-
girl. He crossed the hall to Parker Steel’s consulting-room, took out a
bottle containing tabloids of perchloride of mercury from the cabinet,
dissolved two in the basin fixed in one corner of the room, and
sedulously and carefully disinfected his hands.
“How the devil—!”
This meditative exclamation appeared to limit the gentleman’s
reflections for the moment. He stood with bent shoulders, staring at
his hands soaking in the rose-tinted water, like some mediæval
wiseacre striving to foresee the future in a pot of ink.
 CHAPTER XXXVI
The glitter of the sea visible between the foliage of flowering-
shrubs seemed to add a touch of vivacity to the June somnolence
that hung like a summer mist over the south-coast town. Parker
Steel, half lying in a basket-chair under a red May-tree in the hotel
garden, betrayed his sympathy with the poetical paraphernalia of life
by reading through a list of investments recommended by his
brokers. A satisfactory breakfast followed by the contemplation of a
satisfactory banking account begets peace in the heart of man.
It was about ten o’clock, and a few enthusiasts were already
quarrelling over croquet, when the hotel “buttons” came out with a
telegram on a tray.
“No. 25, Dr. Steel?”
“Here.”
“Any reply, sir?”
The boy waited with the tray held over that portion of his figure
where his morning meal reposed, while Parker Steel tore open the
envelope and read the message.
“No answer.”
“Right, sir.”
“Wait; tell them at the office to get my bill made up. I have to
leave after lunch.”
“Yes, sir.”
“And bring me a time-table, and a whiskey and soda.”
Parker Steel glanced at his watch, thrust the investment list into
the breast-pocket of his coat, and lay back again in his chair with the
telegram across his knee. Faces vary much in their expression when
the mind behind the face labors with some thought that fills the
whole consciousness for the moment. The smooth indolence had
melted from the physician’s features. His face had sharpened as
faces sharpen in bitter weather, for a man who is a coward betrays
his cowardice even when he thinks.
 A much-grieved croquet-player in a blue-and-white check dress
was confiding her criticisms to a very sympathetic gentleman in one
corner of the lawn.
“It is such a pity that Mrs. Sallow cheats so abominably. I hate
playing with mean people. Every other stroke is a spoon, and she is
always walking over her ball, and shifting it with her skirt when it is
wired.”
“People give their characters away in games.”
“It is so contemptible. I can’t understand any self-respecting
person cheating.”
The continuous click of the balls appeared to irritate Parker Steel,
as he sat huddled up in his chair with the telegram on his knee. He
found himself listening—without curiosity—to the young lady in the
blue-and-white whose complaints suggested that the immoral Mrs.
Sallow was the cleverer player of the two. Dishonesty is only
dishonest, to many people, when it comes within the cognizance of
the law, and how thoroughly symbolical those four balls were of the
opportunities mortals manipulate in life, Parker Steel might have
realized had not his mind been clogged with other things.
The boy returned with a time-table and the whiskey and soda on
a tray.
“A fast train leaves at 2.30, sir.”
“Thanks; get me a table. You can keep the change.”
“Much obliged, sir,” and he touched a carefully watered forelock;
“will you drive, sir, or walk?”
“Order me a cab.”
“Right, sir.”
And the boy noticed, as he turned away, that the hand shook
that reached for the glass, and that some of the stuff was spilled
before it came to the man’s lips.

No one met Parker Steel at Roxton station that June evening. A

porter piled his luggage on a cab, for the physician’s own carriage
was not forthcoming. A sense of isolation and neglect took hold
upon him as he drove through the sleepy streets of the old town.
Loneliness is never comforting to a man who is cursed with an
irrepressible conscience, and his own restless imaginings rose like a
cold fog into the June air. Parker Steel shivered as he had often
shivered when driving through moonlit mists to answer a midnight
message. The very elms about St. Antonia’s spire had a shadowy
strangeness for him, a gloom that gave nothing of the glow of a
return home.
Parker Steel stood in his own dining-room, waiting and listening,
as though he were in a stranger’s house. Symons, the starched
servant, had opened the door to him without a smile; his luggage
had been carried up-stairs. He had heard voices, faint, distant
voices, that had tantalized him with words that he could not
understand. He had been ready to ask the woman Symons a dozen
questions, but had faltered from a self-conscious fear of betraying
his own thoughts. The house seemed full of some indefinable dread
as the dusk deepened towards night.
A door opened above. He heard footsteps descending the stairs,
so slowly in the silence of the darkening house, that the sound
reminded the man of the slow drip of water into a well. Parker Steel
found himself counting them as they descended towards the hall. If
it was Betty, how was he to construe the message of the morning?
The suffering of suspense drove him to action. He turned sharply,
crossed the room, and, opening the door, looked out into the hall.
“Hallo, dear, is it you?”
She was in white, and her foot was on the last step of the stairs.
“I am glad that you have come, Parker.”
“I had your wire early. I imagined—”
“That I was ill?”
“Yes, that you were ill.”
She halted with one hand on the carved foot-post of the
balustrading. The dusk of the hall showed nothing but a white figure
and a gray oval to mark her face. Some mysterious psychic force
seemed to hold husband and wife apart. Their two personalities had
become incompatible through some subtle ferment of distrust.
“Parker!”
He made a step forward.
 “No, I want you to go into that room and light the gas.”
The insistent note in her voice repulsed him. His walk
approached a self-conscious shuffle as he turned and re-entered the
darkening room. Betty heard him groping for the matches. A sudden
glare of light followed the sharp purr of a flaring match. She drew a
deep and sighing breath, pressed her hands to her breast, and
entered the room.
Parker Steel was drawing the blinds. His wife closed the door, and
waited for him to turn.
“When I had your wire, dear—”
“Yes.”
“I wondered what I should find—here. The wording—Good
Heavens, Betty—”
She stood back from him and leaned against the sideboard, the
glare from the gas falling full upon her face. It was red, repulsive,
tinged with an ooze that had hardened here and there into yellow
scabs.
“You see, Parker, why I sent for you.”
He looked for the moment like a man shocked into immobility by
a sudden storm of wind and sleet beating on his face.
“When did this appear?”
He moved towards her, the shallow gleam of sympathy in his
eyes darkened by something more terrible than mere fear. Betty
stood her ground. It was the man who betrayed the incoherency of
panic.
“Come, tell me.”
His eyes were fixed upon her face, upon her mouth.
“It is I, Parker, who want to know—”
“Yes, yes, of course, dear, I can understand. You should have
sent for me sooner.”
Intuition is a gift of the gods to women, a power—almost unholy
in its brilliant reading of the hearts of others. Betty’s eyes were
searching her husband’s face as though it were some delicately
finished miniature in which every piece of shading had significance.
Her breath came and went more deeply than when life had a normal
flow. For all else she was cold, very quiet, the mistress even of her
own repulsive face.
“I want you to tell me, Parker—”
She saw the muscles about his mouth quiver.
“Have you seen any one?”
“Yes.”
“Who?”
“Dr. Little, and Dr. Brimley.”
“Well? What—?”
“They would tell me nothing.”
“Nothing?”
She saw him breathe out deeply like a man who has seen a child
escape the wheels of a heavy cart.
“They gave me mere phrases, Parker. A woman can tell when
men are hiding the truth.”
“What had they to hide, dear? Come closer—here—to the light.”
She did not stir.
“I must know, Parker.”
“Yes, of course.”
“The whole truth. Listen—I happened to go yesterday morning
into your consulting-room. Dr. Little had been reading; he had left
the book open—at a certain page. You know, Parker, that many men
only read the big text-books when they are puzzled by a particular
case.”
Steel’s face seemed nothing but a gray and frightened mask to
her.
“Betty, you are imagining things—”
“Well, tell me the truth.”
“A form of eczema.”
“Parker!”
Her voice had the ring of iron in it.
“That was not the word I read.”
“Good God, Betty!”
“It was this.”
She spoke the word without flinching, with a distinctness that
had that cold and terrible conciseness that science loves. Her eyes
did not leave her husband’s face. Even as he answered her, hotly,
haltingly, she knew him to be a liar.
“Impossible! You are seizing on a mad coincidence, a mere
ridiculous conclusion. I can swear—”
“Yes, swear—”
“That it is nothing, nothing of what you have said.”
His eyes had the furtive fierceness of eyes searching her soul for
unbelief.
“Come, Betty, wife—”
She remained unmoved.
“What? You think that I—”
“No, don’t touch me. I don’t believe that you have told me the
truth.”
“Not believe—that I—!”
“No, God help me, I cannot!”
Her body had hardly changed the pose that it had taken from the
first moment. It was as though it had stiffened with the slow, pitiless
hardening of her heart. Parker Steel looked at her like the moral
coward that he was, too crushed by his own keen consciousness of
shame to pretend to the courage that he could not boast.
“Betty, am I—?”
She flung aside from him with an indescribable gesture of
passionate repulsion.
“Don’t. I can’t look at you, or be looked at. Madge is waiting for
me. They will bring you your dinner. Good-night.”
She moved towards the door.
“Betty—”
He would have hindered her, but the manhood in him had neither
the power nor the pride. She swept out and left him. He heard the
sound of sobbing as she climbed the stairs.
“Good God—!”
Parker Steel stood listening, staring at the door, a man who could
neither think nor act.
 CHAPTER XXXVII
On two successive days the society of loafers that lounged
outside the gates of Roxton station for the ostensible purpose of
carrying hand-bags and parcels, had noticed Major Murray’s red-
wheeled dog-cart meet the afternoon express from town. The
society of luggage loafers boasted a membership of four. It was not
an energetic brotherhood, and had put up a living protest against
the unseemly scurry and bustle of twentieth-century methods. The
society’s loafing ground ran along the white fence that closed in the
“goods” yard, a fence that carried, from four distinct patches of
discoloration, the marks left by the brothers’ bodies in their postures
of dignified and independent ease.
All the comings and goings of Roxton seemed known to these
four gentlemen, whose eyes were ever on the alert, though their
hands remained in their trousers-pockets. A fly basking on the
sidewalk within six feet would be seen and dislodged by a brisk
discharge of saliva from between one of the member’s lips. Like
Diogenes, they “had reduced impertinence to a fine art”; and the
major portion of the society’s funds was patriotically disbursed to
swell the state’s revenue on beer.
“Psst—’Ere ’e is ag’in.”
“’oo?”
A mouth was wiped by the back of a hand.
“Murray’s man.”
“Same un?”
“Yas. Little feller with the twirly mustache. What d’yer guess ’e
be, Jack?”
“Looks as though ’e might have come t’ wind the clocks.”
“You bet! Ter do with the babies, I’ve ’eard.”
“Ah, ’ow was that?”
“Murray’s man, ’e told me, t’other evening. This little feller be
what they call a ‘Lonnan Special.’ Dunno what edition.”
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