It was one of the tiring things about Nicholas that he always required
a reply to everything that he said, however obvious.
"Yes."
"But all the same, charity begins at home. Shall we write and tell her
so, eh?"
"She'll come in six weeks," said Lily, smiling without any mirth,
conscious only of overpowering fatigue.
"Six weeks! I should like to think of something for you before that, my
dear."
Two days later, Nicholas came to her exultant. "The very thing! I've
got the very thing for you--splendid!"
Lily tried not to look dismayed.
"Somehow, I thought I shouldn't be defeated. Once I set out to do
something, it generally gets done, I fancy!" He paused to laugh.
"Do you remember old Dickenson, Lily? Nice old boy, with a long family.
I met him yesterday and he was telling me about his eldest girl--quite
a handsome girl too, I remember her as a flapper. It seems she went off
and trained as a hospital nurse. Plucky of her, wasn't it? There were
half a dozen of them at home, and no money, and this girl didn't get on
particularly well with the rest of them, for some reason, so off she
goes. Dickenson was telling me, they thought she'd never get through
her training--they give them a very stiff time, I fancy, but she stuck
it and came through splendidly. She's at home now, I don't quite know
what happened, but she was going to be married, and then it was broken
off. I didn't ask for details, naturally. But there she is, a handsome
wench, and fully trained, and she must be a plucky girl, too. Dickenson
says she's eager for a job. You'd like her, Lily, and she'd be more of
a companion for you than old Stick-in-the-mud. What about having her
here?"
"As a nurse?"
"The doctor's all for it. Stick-in-the-mud's time is up in about a week
anyway, isn't it? and he says you don't really want very much done for
you now--only someone at hand. No night-nursing. How'd it do to get
Miss Dickenson here till your aunt comes? She'd stay with us as a sort
of friend, you know."
The eagerness of Nicholas for his plan was very evident.
"Have you seen her, Nicholas?"
"Not since she was a flapper. I remember her as a very attractive
child. I think she must be a plucky girl, too, to have gone off like
that," said Nicholas, dwelling reflectively upon his catchword. "Plucky
thing for a girl to do."
He reiterated the verdict again, with greater emphasis, after seeking
an interview with Miss Dickenson.
"By George, Lily, you'll like that girl. She's a girl of spirit, quite
good-looking, too. I know you'll get on together."
The complete conviction of his tone was almost infectious, especially
as Lily thought it disloyal to let herself remember how frequently
her estimate of other people had failed to coincide with that of her
husband.
Nicholas rather elaborately urged his case.
"You mustn't think I want to force this idea of mine upon you, on any
account. But it would ease my mind about you, when I have to be away
all day. She's a lively sort of girl, full of spirit, and I don't fancy
she has much of a time at home. They're shockingly badly off, too, and
no doubt it would be a relief--however, that's not the point. But I
think you'd like a girl of your own kind about the house, wouldn't
you? Less professional than a regular nurse, and yet just as useful.
She was most eager about doing anything for you--there'd be no nonsense
about her."
"It would be more amusing for you in the evenings, after dinner," said
Lily reflectively.
He looked vexed.
"That has nothing whatever to do with it, my dear. If you think I'm
urging this idea with a view to my own----"
"No, no," cried Lily hastily.
In her weakness, she felt the tears rising to her throat at the mere
apprehension of having offended him, or appeared to be ungrateful.
"I should really like it for my own sake, Nicholas. She sounds very
nice indeed. Why shouldn't she come next week and stay till Aunt Clo
comes?"
"That's entirely as you wish. It's for you to decide."
He still spoke with the ultra-gravity of tone that denoted that his
curiously childish susceptibilities had been touched.
"It's a splendid idea," said Lily with a trembling lip. "I'd like to
have her very much. It was very clever of you to think of it, Nicholas."
With disproportionate relief, she saw his expression relax.
"That's good, then. I'll arrange it to-morrow. I thought I'd find
something for you, poor old girl! I generally hit on something when
I've made up my mind to it, eh? You'll like Doris Dickenson, Lily,
she's a plucky girl, and I don't fancy she's had too easy a time of it.
I know pretty well whom you'll cotton to by this time, eh?"
"Yes, indeed," said Lily.
She was no more conscious of hypocrisy than if she had been humouring
the boast that a child standing on a table, might make of being taller
than a grown man.
The susceptibility of her husband to feminine beauty was to Lily so
much of a commonplace that her first sight of the object of his new
enthusiasm surprised her quite unexpectedly.
Doris Dickenson belonged to the type of woman whose unfailing
attraction for men remains for ever incomprehensible to her own sex.
Lily did not think her colourless, freckled, and rather heavy face in
the least good-looking, her blue-green eyes were almost without lashes,
her plump hands, with fingers broad at the base and tapering sharply
to a point, were over-manicured. She was both tall and heavily made,
although she moved well, and the only claim to beauty that Lily could
allow her was the flaming colour of her coarse, abundant red hair.
"It makes a difference having her, eh?" said Nicholas contentedly.
It made a great difference.
Lily wondered very much whether anyone had ever considered Doris
Dickenson to be a good nurse. She had the typical faults of the
professional, and but little of her conscientiousness and enthusiasm
for her work.
Lily, more than ever deficient in self-confidence through physical
weakness, wondered despairingly whether it was entirely her own fault
that she sometimes found Miss Dickenson almost unbearable. Was she, as
Nicholas often said, hypercritical?
Things unimportant in themselves assumed monstrous proportions and
took possession of her mind. Amongst them were small characteristics of
Doris Dickenson.
Her flow of incessant talk, concerned almost exclusively with herself,
her experiences, her relations, and her love-affairs.
The recurrence in her conversation of the particular adverb
or adjective that momentarily obsessed her, regardless of its
applicability.
"How devastating!" she would drawl, of a broken wine-glass, a
thunderstorm, a new novel. Even a bunch of flowers was "devastatingly
pretty." But the following week, the events of the hour were all
"preposterous," and the word was introduced into her conversation
in every impossible connection, until a fresh adjective appeared to
replace it.
She also possessed to perfection the trick of the meaningless tag--of
all others perhaps the most characteristic of the second-rate mind.
"Here's your medicine. I say, why do you look like that?"
And, very frequently:
"Don't say it in such a tragic voice! What makes you say it like that?"
Lily at first made futile efforts to find a reasonable answer to the
bewildering senselessness of such enquiries.
But she found that Doris never listened to an answer, never appeared to
expect one.
Lily came to the conclusion that "Why do you look like that?" was
merely meant as a concession to the conventionalities, a hasty passing
assumption of an interest in her welfare, that could not even carry its
pretence through to the end.
Lily grew more and more weary, and wondered why she lacked moral
courage to tell Nicholas that his experiment was not proving
successful. That he would never perceive it without being told, she
took for granted.
Nicholas lacked neither generosity nor tenderness towards his wife, and
she took herself bitterly to task for the involuntary disappointment
that possessed her in her constant perception of his lack of intuition.