Catherine Murchison sang at the charity concert that night, and Mrs. Betty listened to her with the outward complacency of an angel. The big woman in her black dress, with a white rose in her ruddy hair, bowed and smiled to the enthusiasts of the Roxton slums who knew her nearly as well as they knew her husband. Catherine Murchison’s rare contralto flowed unconcernedly over her rival’s head. She sang finely, and without effort, and the voice seemed part of her, a touch of the sunset, a breath from the fields of June. Catherine’s nature came out before men in her singing. A glorious unaffectedness, a charm with no trick of the self-conscious egoist. It was this very naturalness, this splendid unconcern that had forever baffled Mrs. Betty Steel. The woman was proof against the mundane sneer. Ridicule could not touch her, and the burrs of spite fell away from her smooth completeness.
“By George, what a voice that woman has!”
The bourgeoisie of Roxton was piling up its applause. Mrs. Murchison had half the small boys in the town as her devoted henchmen. Politically her personality would have carried an election.
“It comes from the heart, sir.”
Porteous Carmagee, solicitor and commissioner for oaths, had his bald head tilted towards Mr. Thomas Flemming’s ear. Mr. Flemming was one of the cultured idlers of the town, a gentleman who was an authority on ornithology, who presided often at the county bench, and could dash off a cartoon that was not quite clever enough for Punch.
“What did you say, Carmagee? The beggars are making such a din—”
“From the heart, sir, from the heart.”
“Indigestion, eh?”
Mr. Carmagee was seized with an irritable twitching of his creased, brown face.
“Oh, an encore, that’s good. I said, Tom, that Kate Murchison’s voice came from her heart.”