There was a dance that night at one of the Roxton houses, and Mrs. Betty, brilliant in cream and carnation, swept through the room with all the verve of a girl of twenty. Her partners discovered her in wondrous fettle—swift, splendid, and audacious, color in her cheeks, a sparkle of conscious triumph in her eyes. Her tongue was in sympathy with the quickness of her feet. She prattled, laughed, and was as deliciously impertinent as any minx who has a theory of fascination.
Mrs. Hamilton-Hamilton, the hostess of the night, was a patient of James Murchison’s, and Catherine’s more gracious comeliness came as a contrast to Mrs. Betty’s faylike glamour. The Hamiltons were brewers, wealthy plebeians who had assimilated that lowest of all arts, the art of making money, without absorbing a culture that was of the same temper as their gold. Catherine had left her husband to his pipe and his books at Lombard Street. She had come to serve him, because as a doctor’s wife she knew the value of smart publicity. In small towns trifles are of serious moment. Orthodoxy is in the ascendant, and individual singularity of opinion is considered to be “peculiar.” A professional gentleman suspected of free thought may discover his social standing being damaged by the vicaress behind his back. Bigotry dies hard despite the broadening of our culture, and “eccentric” individuals may be ostracized by the sectarians of a town. Forms and formularies produce hypocrites. It is perilous for professional gentlemen to appear eccentric. Even if they abstain from lip service in person, their wives must be regular in helping to populate the parish pews.
Kate Murchison and Mrs. Betty passed and repassed each other in the vortex of many a waltz. To Parker Steel’s wife there was a prophetic triumph on the wind. She found herself calculating, as she chatted to her partners, how long these people would remain loyal to the surgeon of Lombard Street when his repute was damaged by the scandal at Boland’s Farm. Catherine had a peculiar interest for her that night, for Mrs. Betty’s hate was tempered by exultation. She watched for the passing and repassing of Catherine’s aureole of shimmering hair, smiling to herself at the woman’s happy ignorance of the notoriety that threatened her husband’s name.
To Catherine also, with each sweep of the dance, came that olive-skinned and complacent face, whose eyes seemed ever on the watch for her. She caught the rattle of the dark woman’s persiflage as she drifted past to the moan of the violins. She remarked an exaggerated vivacity in Mrs. Betty’s manner, a something that suggested triumph with each nearness of their faces. Always the slightly cynical smile, the teeth glimmering between the lips; always that curious flash of the eyes, sudden and momentary, like the flash of a light over the night sea. With women the vaguest of emotions lead to intuitive gleams of thought, and Mrs. Betty’s exultation inspired Catherine with reasonless unrest.
The two women met in the doorway of the supper-room, Parker Steel’s wife on Mr. Cranston’s arm, Catherine escorted by Captain Hensley, of the Buffs. Their eyes met with a glitter of defiance and distrust. Catherine would have drawn aside, but Betty, with a laugh, gave her a pretty sweep of the hand.
“Seniores priores, dear. How is your husband? What a delicious evening!”
The presentiment of treachery asserted itself with superstitious strangeness. Catherine colored, stung, despite herself, by Parker Steel’s wife’s patronizing drawl.
“Thanks. My husband is very well. Has he been ill?” and the ironical question conveyed a challenge.
Mrs. Betty’s lips parted over their perfect teeth.
“Mr. Cranston is such an enthusiast that I must not lose him the next waltz. Try the paté de foie gras, it is excellent,” and she swept out, with a glitter of amusement, on the lawyer’s arm.
They were soon moving in the midst of the music, a score of rustling dresses swinging their colors over the polished floor.
“Poor Mrs. Murchison,” and the lawyer looked curiously into his partner’s face.
“Strange that we should have met her, just then!”
“After our discussion at supper!”
“Yes; she knows nothing.”
“My dear Mrs. Steel, the penny-post carries more poison than the rings of the old Italians.”
“But then we are more civilized in our methods.”
“Possibly. The cruelties of civilization are more refined, of the soul rather than of the body. Shall we reverse?”
“Yes. There are some fatalities that cannot be reversed, Mr. Cranston, eh?”
Catherine returned to the great house in Lombard Street that night with a vague feeling of melancholy and unrest. She was beginning to know the terror of a secret in a house, a hidden shame to be held sacred from the eyes of the world. Nor was it that she did not trust her husband, nor respect his strength, for few men would have fought as he had fought, and even in defeat she beheld a pathos that was wholly tragic, never sordid.
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