“You love Murchison for this, I suppose?”
Steel gulped down his tea and laughed.
“Not much,” he confessed.
“Parker, we must remember this. Lie quiet a while, and take the fool’s kindnesses. Our turn will come some day.”
“My dear girl, what are you driving at?”
“The Murchisons are our enemies, Parker. I will show this Kate woman some day that her husband is not without a flaw.”
The great Sir Thomas Campbell arrived that night at Roxton, and was driven over to Marley in Steel’s brougham. The specialist confirmed the private practitioner’s diagnosis, complimented him gracefully in Mr. Pennington’s presence, and elected to operate on the lady forthwith. Parker Steel’s mustache boasted a more jaunty twist when he returned home that night after driving Sir Thomas Campbell to the station. He had despatched a reliable nurse to attend to Miss Julia at Marley, and felt that his reputation was weathering the storm without the loss of a single twig.
As for James Murchison, he kept his own council and said never a word. Even doctors are human, and Murchison remembered many a mild blunder of his own. He received a note in due course from Parker Steel, thanking him formally for services rendered, and informing him that the operation had been eminently successful. Murchison tore up the letter, and thought no more of the matter for many months. Work was pressing heavily on his shoulders with influenza and measles epidemic in the town, and he had his own “dragon of evil” to battle with in the secret arena of his heart.
Gossip is like the wind, every man or woman hears the sound thereof without troubling to discover whence it comes or whither it blows. The details of Miss Julia Pennington’s illness had been wafted half across the county in less than a week. Nothing seems to inspire the tongues of garrulous elderly ladies more than the particulars of some particular gory and luscious slashing of a fellow-creature’s flesh. Miss Pennington’s ordeal had been delicate and almost bloodless, but there were vague and dramatic mutterings in many Roxton side streets, and gusts of gossip whistling through many a keyhole.
It was at a “Church Restoration” conversazione at Canon Stensly’s that Mrs. Steel’s ears were first opened to the tittle-tattle of the town. The month was May, and the respectable and genteel Roxtonians had been turned loose in the Canon’s garden. Mrs. Betty chanced to be sitting under the shelter of a row of cypresses, chatting to Miss Gerraty, a partisan of the Steel faction, when she heard voices on the other side of the trees. The promenaders, whosoever they were, were discussing Miss Pennington’s illness, and the tenor of their remarks was not flattering to Parker Steel. Mrs. Betty reddened under her picture-hat. The thought was instant in her that Catherine Murchison had betrayed the truth, and set the tongues of Roxton wagging.