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

CHAPTER XLI

BETTY STEEL sat alone at the open window of her

room one evening as the sun went down over the

red roofs of the old town. Lying back in her chair, with

her head on a cushion of yellow silk, she could see nothing of the life in the square below, but only the tops of

the elm-trees, the black spire of the church, and an infinite expanse of cloud-barred sky. The west stood one

great splendor of scarlet and of gold. Above, at the

zenith, the clouds were bathed in a radiance of auriferous

rose. A cold chalcedony blue held the eastern arch,

where the purple rim of the night merged into the amethystine shadows of the woodland hills.

 

Betty Steel was alone, save for the cat Mignon, curled

up asleep in her mistress’s lap. Half covering the cat

was a crumpled letter, a letter that had been read and

reread by eyes that were blind to the pageant of the summer sky. She stirred now and again in her chair, and

shivered. The evening seemed cold to her despite all

this chaos of color, this kindling of the torches of the

west. The house, too, had an empty silence, like a

lonely house where death had been and set a seal upon

its lips.

 

Betty lifted Mignon from her lap, rose, crossed the

room, and rang the bell. She took a crimson opera-cloak

from a wardrobe in the corner, flung it across her shoulders, and returned to her chair, with the crumpled letter

still in her hand.

 

“—”

 

“Yes, ma am.”

 

A white cap and apron were framed by the shadows

of the landing.

 

“Is Miss Ellison back yet, Symons?”

 

“No, ma’am. She said—”

 

“Listen! Isn’t that the front door?”

 

“Yes, ma’am.”

 

“Will you ask her to come to me here?”

 

The white cap and apron vanished into the shadows.

Betty, lying back in her chair, looked vacantly at the

paling sky, with the blood-red cloak deepening the darkness of her hair. The cat Mignon sprang into her lap.

Dreamily, and as by habit, she began to stroke the cat,

while listening to the murmur of the two voices in the

hall below.

 

Brisk footsteps ascended the stairs, with the swish of

silk, and the soft sighing of a woman’s breath.

 

“Here I am, dear, at last.”

 

“Shut the door, Madge.”

 

“I missed my train. You must have wondered what

had happened.”

 

“I have ceased to wonder at anything in life.”

 

Madge Ellison looked curiously at Betty lying back in

her chair, and crossed the room slowly, unbuttoning her

gloves.

 

“You sound rather down, dear. What’s that? Have

you heard?”

 

Betty Steel’s hand closed spasmodically upon the

crumpled letter that she held. Her face was hard and

reflective in its outlines. And yet in the eyes there was

a pathos of unrest, the unrest of a woman whose gods

have left her utterly alone.

 

“I have heard from Parker.”

 

Madge Ellison threw her gloves on the bed, unpinned

her hat, and waited.

 

“He is leaving England.”

 

“Leaving England?”

 

“Yes, for the Cape.”

 

“And you?”

 

“My own mistress to do everything anything that I

please.”

 

She gave a curious little laugh, and began straightening

out the letter on her knee, looking at it with eyes that

strove to make cynicism cover the wounded instincts of

her womanhood.

 

“Of course he does not care. He was afraid to face

things.”

 

“The coward!”

 

Madge Ellison bent over her, and laid one hand along

her cheek.

 

“And he has left you here?”

 

“I suppose he thought there was nothing else to do.

He says ” and she still smoothed the creased letter under

her hand “you have your own money to live on. The

practice is worth nothing under the circumstances. I

should advise you to let the house. You cannot afford

to live in it on two hundred pounds a year.”

 

“Is that all you have?”

 

“My father left it me.”

 

“Wise father!”

 

“I never thought, Madge, I should value two hundred

pounds so much.”

 

Mignon, who still possessed some of the kittenish spirit

of her youth, rolled over in Betty’s lap, and began to

clutch at the letter with her paws. There was something

pathetic in the way the wife suffered that scrap of paper

to be a plaything for her pet.

 

“Then he says nothing, dear?”

 

“Nothing?”

 

“About your joining him?”

 

Betty’s lips curled into a cynical smile.

 

“Why should he?”

 

“But, surely”

 

“It was I who broke the ties between us. I think I

hated him. He had so little so little manliness and

. strength.”

 

Madge Ellison lifted up her face to the fading sky.

She was serious for one occasion in her life, a woman

touched by the realism of life’s tragedies.

 

“Can you never?”

 

“Don’t ask me that, Madge.”

 

“You will be well, soon, your old self. It is only temporary.”

 

“I know.”

 

“Then”

 

“If it were only skin deep; but it is deeper, deep to the

heart.”

 

The confidante gave a sad shrug of her shapely shoulders.

 

“Don’t say that yet,” she said; “you might repent

of it.”

 

“You think so?”

 

“I don’t know what to think.”

 

The sky had darkened; the clouds had cast their cloaks

of fire, and in the west one broad band of crimson and of

gold held back the banners of the approaching night.

From St. Antonia’s steeple came the chiming of the hour,

slow, solemn tones that filled the silence with mysterious

eddies of lingering sound.

 

Madge Ellison was still leaning over Betty’s chair, her

hands touching her friend’s face.

 

“Try not to brood too much on it, dear. I know I am

not much of a woman to give advice. You might say

that I had no experience.”

 

“And I too much! Listen,” and she straightened in

her chair, “can’t you hear people shouting?”

 

“Shouting?”

 

“Yes; as though there were a fire. It seems to come

from Castle Gate.”

 

They were both silent, listening, and leaning towards

the open window. Vague, scattered cries rose from the

shadowiness of the darkening town. They seemed to

be drawing from Castle Gate towards the square, a low

flux of sound that rose and fell like the cadence of the

sea upon a shore at night.

 

Betty sank back in her chair with a glimmer of impatience on her face.

 

“Of course I remember.”

 

From under the arch of the old gate-house a crowd

of small boys came scattering into the far corner of the

square. A number of men followed, lined along a couple

of stout ropes. They were dragging a carriage over the

gray cobbles and under the dark elms in the direction

of Lombard Street.

 

Madge Ellison drew back from the window. Not so

Betty. She rose from her chair, and stood looking down

upon those rough men of the Roxton lanes who were

shouting and waving caps with the unsophisticated and

exhilarating zest of children.

 

The carriage with its plebeian team passed under Betty’s

window. In it were a man and a woman, the woman

holding a boy upon her knees.

 

Whether some subtle thought -wave passed between

those two or not, it happened that Catherine looked

up and saw the face at the open window overhead. It

seemed to her in the hurly - burly of this little triumph, that the face above looked down at her out of

a gloom of loneliness and humiliation. A sudden cry

of womanly pity sounded in her heart. Catherine’s

arms tightened unconsciously about her boy, and her

eyes, that had been smiling, grew thoughtful and very

sad.

 

The carriage rounded the corner and disappeared into

Lombard Street, with a small