A Woman's War by Warwick Deeping (top romance novels txt) 📕

class="calibre1">both admirable and inspiring, and yet no one who respects his banking account could ever seriously accept

so unbusiness-like a theory. There was more shrewd,

honest, and unflinching truth-telling in Hobbes than in

the vaporings of a flimsy sentimentalism.

 

Now Mrs. Betty had no more love for a washerwoman

sick with a carbuncle on her neck than she had for an old

and mildewed boot. Poverty and the inevitable sordidness thereof were more than distasteful to her, and yet

she was so far sound in her worldly philosophy as to dissemble her distaste for expediency’s sake. It is never

foolish to be suspected of generosity. And in Roxton,

where the ladies counted one another’s yearly record as

to hats, it was necessary to assume some sort of benignant

attitude towards the heathen or the poor. Betty Steel, as

the leading physician’s wife, recognized the power of

judicious and moral self-advertisement. She had lived

down her mischievous desire to shock the good people

who paid her husband’s pleasant bills. No doubt she

derived some delicate satisfaction from playing the fair

lady in her furs, and from conferring favors on her humbler neighbors. The sense of superiority is always pleasant. That man is a liar who describes himself as utterly

indifferent to obloquy or favor.

 

Mrs. Betty stopped at a florist’s shop on her way and

bought three bundles of Scilla flowers. The golden

blooms made a kind of splendor beside her sable coat.

Colonel Feveril, Roxton’s most antique dandy, passed as

she returned towards her brougham, and the brisk sweep

of the soldier’s hat saved her the trouble of remembering

her mirror.

 

At the top of one of the alleys leading to the river, Dr.

Steel’s wife disembarked upon her errand of mercy. A

small boy whipping a top on the narrow sidewalk served

as a porter for the carrying of her jellies. One or two

greasy heads were poked out of the pigeon-holes of windows. Mrs. Betty, demure and sweet as any Dorcas,

knocked at the door of No. 5.

 

“Good-day, Mrs. Ripstone.”

 

An elderly woman in a faded blue flannel blouse had

thrust a beak of a nose round the edge of the door.

 

“Good-day, ma’am.”

 

The thin, hard face offered no very fulsome welcome.

 

“How is your husband? Dr. Steel told me yesterday

that he was a little better.”

 

Mrs. Ripstone’s lethargic eyes rested for a moment on

the small boy carrying the parcels. Mrs. Betty herself

bore the golden flowers.

 

“Much obliged, ma’am; my ‘usband is doin’ as well as

can be expected. Will you step in? We ain’t particular

tidy.”

 

Mrs. Betty stepped in, and sat down calmly on a very

rickety chair.

 

“I have brought you a little soup, and two glasses of

jelly.”

 

“Much obliged to you, ma’am.”

 

The two women looked curiously at each other. They

were utterly unlike in any characteristic. Mrs. Betty in

her furs looked like a Russian countess in the hovel of a

peasant.

 

The room was unconditionally dirty, and smelled of

burned fat. There was nothing to admire in it, nothing

to provide the lady with a subject for enthusiasm.

 

“I am glad your husband is better, Mrs. Ripstone.”

 

“Thank you, ma’am.”

 

The woman in the blue blouse stood stolidly by the

table. Mrs. Betty’s words made no evident impression

on her. It was as though she regarded the visit as a

necessary evil, and was only persuaded to be polite by

such tangible blessings as might accrue.

 

“Have you any children?”

 

Mrs. Ripstone stared.

 

“Ten, ma’am.”

 

Her brevity was expressive.

 

“You must be very busy.”

 

“I am that, ma’am.”

 

“Are they all grown up?”

 

“Grow’d up?”

 

“Yes.”

 

“Well, ma’am,” and the woman in the blue blouse gave

a peculiar smile, “if you’ll listen you’ll ‘ear the baby

‘ammerin’ a tin pot in the yard.”

 

The reek of the burned fat began to prove too powerful for Mrs. Betty’s sensitive soul. She and Mrs. Ripstone

seemed out of sympathy. Conversation languished. The

lady, with all her cleverness, was wholly at a loss what to

say next.

 

Two minutes had passed when Dr. Steel’s wife rose.

She smiled one of her perfunctory smiles at the woman

in the blue blouse, and turned with a rustling petticoat

towards the door.

 

“I hope your husband will like the soup, Mrs. Ripstone.”

 

“Thank you, ma’am.”

 

“Good-afternoon.”

 

“Good-afternoon, ma’am.”

 

The woman watched Mrs. Betty to her carriage, and

then closed the door with an expression of rather sour

relief. She turned to the flowers and parcels on the

table, untied the string, and examined the contents.

 

“Wonder what she’s left ‘em for;” such was Mrs.

Ripstone’s solitary and cynical remark.

 

In her carriage Mrs. Betty was holding an enamelled

scent-bottle to her nose.

 

“I wonder why they are so dirty and so reserved,” she

thought; “I don’t think that woman was the least bit

grateful. I don’t like the poor. Anyway, I have done

my duty.”

 

The west was wreathed with the torn crimson of a

wind-blown sky at sunset when Mrs. Betty drove home

from her essay in almsgiving. St. Antonia’s spire, a

black and slender wedge, seemed to cleave the vastness of the flaming west. The tall elms about the

church were very restless with the wailing of the

wind.

 

In Parker Steel’s diningroom there was an air of

warmth and luxury, a sense of deep shelter from the blustering melancholy of the dying day. The table was laid

for tea, a silver kettle singing above the spiritlamp, a

plate of hot cakes on the trivet before the piled-up fire.

It was the hour of soft, slanting shadows, and of the wayward yet sleepy flickering of the flames. Betty swept

into the room with the sensuous satisfaction of a cat. The

thick Turkey carpet muffled her footsteps like the moss

of a forest “ride.”

 

At the window, his figure outlined by the gold and

purple of a fading sky, she saw her husband standing

motionless, his head bent forward over an out-stretched

hand. He appeared to be examining something closely

in the twilight. She could see his keen, clear profile,

intent and a little stern.

 

“Parker, Parker, the cakes are burning!”

 

Her husband turned with a start, taken unawares, like

the hero of Wessex in the swineherd’s hut. Betty Steel

had glided towards the fire.

 

“Preoccupation thy name is man! Parker, quick,

your handkerchief. The dish is as hot as Say something, do.”

 

Before the glow of the fire she noticed the irritable frown

upon her husband’s face.

 

“Most worried of men, what is the matter?”

 

“Matter!”

 

“Fate cannot touch us, the cakes are saved. Misery,

Parker! Quick, the kettle!”

 

The silver spout was spouting hot water over Mrs.

Betty’s treasured Japanese tray. Her husband with a

“damn the thing,” turned down the cap of the spiritlamp with a spoon.

 

“What an infernal fool that girl Symons is!”

 

Mrs. Betty drew a chair forward with her foot, reached

for the tea-caddy, and glanced whimsically across the

table at her much grieved mate.

 

“The king did not try to shift the responsibility, Parker.”

 

Dr. Steel sat down abruptly, with the air of a man in

no mood for persiflage.

 

“What were you studying so intently?”

 

“I?”

 

“Learning palmistry?”

 

Parker Steel helped himself to one of the hot cakes.

 

“Oh, nothing,” he said, curtly.

 

His wife laughed.

 

“What a retort to give a woman!”

 

The physician shifted his chair.

 

“Really, Betty, am I to go into a lengthy dissertation on every trifle because you happen to be inquisitive?”

 

“Tell me the trifle, and you shall have your tea.”

 

“I was looking at a chilblain on my finger.”

 

“What admirable bathos, Parker! I might have taken

you for Hamlet soliloquizing for the last time over Ophelia’s

tokens.”

 

“Oh, quite possibly,” and he began to sip his tea;

“you have forgotten the sugar. What execrable memories

you women have!”