KATIE BURRILL
THREE LOVING LADIES
CHAPTER I
Messrs. Burridge and Co’s pantechnicons bumped majestically along the streets of Millport early in the morning. Mud seemed to be unaccountably falling from the sky through a close filter of smoke draped high above the town; for although there was no fog, the great stucco offices on either side of the street were slimy with coffee-coloured moisture, and the people who hurried along looked cold and slippery, like panic-stricken snails compelled to leave their shelters. The same mysterious mud oozed also from below the paving stones, and would continue to ooze long after the sun had penetrated the smoke filter and made the houses and the pedestrians comparatively dry.
Millport is one of the largest cities of the empire, and one of the richest. I have never heard of anyone living there for choice, or for any reason but an alleged opportunity for making money. Those who settle there are in the habit of transplanting themselves at regular intervals; removing to a house further away from the premises to which the breadwinner carries a neat bag or attaché case every weekday morning, between eight and ten. The removals mark a rise in the social scale, and are celebrated by new responsibilities, in the addition of servants, greenhouses, garages and acres of ground requiring “upkeep.” The heights of Elysium are, in the end, reached by train. Between the main railway station and the outskirts of wealth, lie nearly two miles of shops, and a professional quarter where the inner darkness of blocks and terraces shades into the dim glory of semi-detached houses. The next stage of grandeur is seen in the increase of laurel bushes and gravel paths round each semi-detached pair. When the flower beds in front, and the tennis lawns at the back, reach a certain standard of importance they flow into each other by connecting paths between the buildings, and each house then stands alone, detached, in the full radiance of encircling “grounds.”
It was nearly ten o’clock before Messrs. Burridge’s stately pantechnicons reached their destination, a large, square, cinnamon-coloured house, standing in about two acres of ground on the borders of Millport’s largest and most satisfactory park. General Fulton, who had taken a five years’ lease of it, wondered many times what had induced him to leave his comfortable little house in Westminster. He had meant to retire from the army at the end of the war, and had been turning over in his mind many agreeable plans for the future, when he was offered the command of a military district of which Millport was the centre. In a rash moment he confided the offer to his wife, hoping for some entertainment from her habit of commenting seriously on matters which he regarded as trifling. To his surprise and disgust, she surpassed his expectation, and pointed out unanswerable reasons why the command must be accepted. She confronted him with facts about his income, which had hitherto been sufficient. But he neither read the papers nor practised arithmetic, and, as she observed at the end of the argument, “seemed to suppose that girls’ clothes grew on their backs.” His reply to this last shot produced a silence which he knew to be ominous of a settled programme; he knew that he had thrown away his last chance by “saying something coarse,” and that any further excuses would be flung unregarded into the flame of her spiritual nature (a possession which is supposed by women who boast of it, to guarantee also a sound business judgment). He appealed in vain to his daughters Evangeline and Teresa. Evangeline said carelessly, “Oh, do let’s, father,” and left the room to post a letter. She informed the maid whom she passed on the stairs that, “we are all going to Millport, and isn’t it fun?” Teresa ran her fingers through her untidy hair, done up for the first time, and said, “If it is by the sea couldn’t we have a cottage?”
General Fulton, avoiding his wife’s eye, mixed himself a whisky and soda. It was the only way to drown his bitter regret at having ever mentioned the appointment. “You’ll never get another house as nice as this,” he suggested feebly. “I’ve been to Millport once, and it’s a filthy place. There was a great black church opposite the hotel, and drunken old women poking stale fish about.” Teresa shivered, but said nothing.
“I don’t suppose those poor old women ever thought of drinking until they were taught by their husbands,” said Mrs. Fulton, glancing at the tumbler he held, but she added hurriedly, before he had time to protest, “and I believe it is perfectly necessary to poke fish before you can tell whether it is fresh or not. You would see that kind of thing in any town you went to, Cyril. And, anyhow, one doesn’t live down there. Father and mother lived in Millport for years, and I know father said everyone lived right out.”
“Well, I don’t think I want the thing,” he said bravely. “I am not going to take it.” He gathered up his morning’s correspondence. “I’m out to lunch, Sue.”
“Do you mind paying some money into the bank for me as you go past?” she said gently. “The last quarter hasn’t been nearly enough. I suppose it is the income tax and the price of everything.”