THE EPISODE OF THE WIFE WHO DID HER DUTY
To make you understand my next yarn, I must go back to the date of my
introduction to Hilda.
“It is witchcraft!” I said the first time I saw her, at Le Geyt's
luncheon-party.
She smiled a smile which was bewitching, indeed, but by no means
witch-like,--a frank, open smile with just a touch of natural feminine
triumph in it. “No, not witchcraft,” she answered, helping herself with
her dainty fingers to a burnt almond from the Venetian glass dish,--“not
witchcraft,--memory; aided, perhaps, by some native quickness of
perception. Though I say it myself, I never met anyone, I think, whose
memory goes quite as far as mine does.”
“You don't mean quite as far BACK,” I cried, jesting; for she looked
about twenty-four, and had cheeks like a ripe nectarine, just as pink
and just as softly downy.
She smiled again, showing a row of semi-transparent teeth, with a gleam
in the depths of them. She was certainly most attractive. She had that
indefinable, incommunicable, unanalysable personal quality which we know
as CHARM. “No, not as far BACK,” she repeated. “Though, indeed, I often
seem to remember things that happened before I was born (like Queen
Elizabeth's visit to Kenilworth): I recollect so vividly all that I
have heard or read about them. But as far IN EXTENT, I mean. I never
let anything drop out of my memory. As this case shows you, I can recall
even quite unimportant and casual bits of knowledge when any chance clue
happens to bring them back to me.”
She had certainly astonished me. The occasion for my astonishment was
the fact that when I handed her my card, “Dr. Hubert Ford Cumberledge,
St. Nathaniel's Hospital,” she had glanced at it for a second and
exclaimed, without sensible pause or break, “Oh, then, of course, you're
half Welsh, as I am.”
The instantaneous and apparent inconsecutiveness of her inference took
me aback. “Well, m'yes: I AM half Welsh,” I replied. “My mother came
from Carnarvonshire. But, why THEN, and OF COURSE? I fail to perceive
your train of reasoning.”
She laughed a sunny little laugh, like one well accustomed to receive
such inquiries. “Fancy asking A WOMAN to give you 'the train of
reasoning' for her intuitions!” she cried, merrily. “That shows, Dr.
Cumberledge, that you are a mere man--a man of science, perhaps, but NOT
a psychologist. It also suggests that you are a confirmed bachelor. A
married man accepts intuitions, without expecting them to be based on
reasoning.... Well, just this once, I will stretch a point to enlighten
you. If I recollect right, your mother died about three years ago?”
“You are quite correct. Then you knew my mother?”
“Oh, dear me, no! I never even met her. Why THEN?”
Her look was mischievous. “But, unless I mistake, I think she came from
Hendre Coed, near Bangor.”
“Wales is a village!” I exclaimed, catching my breath. “Every Welsh
person seems to know all about every other.”
My new acquaintance smiled again. When she smiled she was irresistible:
a laughing face protruding from a cloud of diaphanous drapery. “Now,
shall I tell you how I came to know that?” she asked, poising a glace
cherry on her dessert fork in front of her. “Shall I explain my trick,
like the conjurers?”
“Conjurers never explain anything,” I answered. “They say: 'So, you see,
THAT'S how it's done!'--with a swift whisk of the hand--and leave you as
much in the dark as ever. Don't explain like the conjurers, but tell me
how you guessed it.”
She shut her eyes and seemed to turn her glance inward.
“About three years ago,” she began slowly, like one who reconstructs
with an effort a half-forgotten scene, “I saw a notice in the
Times--Births, Deaths, and Marriages--'On the 27th of October'--was it
the 27th?” The keen brown eyes opened again for a second and flashed
inquiry into mine.
“Quite right,” I answered, nodding.
“I thought so. 'On the 27th of October, at Brynmor, Bournemouth, Emily
Olwen Josephine, widow of the late Thomas Cumberledge, sometime colonel
of the 7th Bengal Regiment of Foot, and daughter of Iolo Gwyn Ford,
Esq., J.P., of Hendre Coed, near Bangor. Am I correct?” She lifted her
dark eyelashes once more and flooded me.
“You are quite correct,” I answered, surprised. “And that is really all
that you knew of my mother?”
“Absolutely all. The moment I saw your card, I thought to myself, in a
breath: 'Ford, Cumberledge; what do I know of those two names? I have
some link between them. Ah, yes; found Mrs. Cumberledge, wife of Colonel
Thomas Cumberledge, of the 7th Bengals, was a Miss Ford, daughter of
a Mr. Ford, of Bangor.' That came to me like a lightning-gleam. Then I
said to myself again, 'Dr. Hubert Ford Cumberledge must be their son.'
So there you have 'the train of reasoning.' Women CAN reason--sometimes.
I had to think twice, though, before I could recall the exact words of
the Times notice.”
“And can you do the same with everyone?”
“Everyone! Oh, come, now: that is expecting too much! I have not read,
marked, learned, and inwardly digested everyone's family announcements.
I don't pretend to be the Peerage, the Clergy List, and the London
Directory rolled into one. I remembered YOUR family all the more
vividly, no doubt, because of the pretty and unusual old Welsh names,
'Olwen' and 'Iolo Gwyn Ford,' which fixed themselves on my memory by
their mere beauty. Everything about Wales always attracts me; my Welsh
side is uppermost. But I have hundreds--oh, thousands--of such facts
stored and pigeon-holed in my memory. If anybody else cares to try me,”
she glanced round the table, “perhaps we may be able to test my power
that way.”
Two or three of the company accepted her challenge, giving the full
names of their sisters or brothers; and, in three cases out of five,
my witch was able to supply either the notice of their marriage or some
other like published circumstance. In the instance of Charlie Vere, it
is true, she went wrong, just at first, though only in a single
small particular; it was not Charlie himself who was gazetted to a
sub-lieutenancy in the Warwickshire Regiment, but his brother Walter.
However, the moment she was told of this slip, she corrected herself
at once, and added, like lightning, “Ah, yes: how stupid of me! I have
mixed up the names. Charles Cassilis Vere got an appointment on the same
day in the Rhodesian Mounted Police, didn't he?” Which was in point of
fact quite accurate.
But I am forgetting that all this time I have not even now introduced my
witch to you.
Hilda Wade, when I first saw her, was one of the prettiest, cheeriest,
and most graceful girls I have ever met--a dusky blonde, brown-eyed,
brown-haired, with a creamy, waxen whiteness of skin that was yet warm
and peach-downy. And I wish to insist from the outset upon the plain
fact that there was nothing uncanny about her. In spite of her singular
faculty of insight, which sometimes seemed to illogical people almost
weird or eerie, she was in the main a bright, well-educated, sensible,
winsome, lawn-tennis-playing English girl. Her vivacious spirits rose
superior to her surroundings, which were often sad enough. But she
was above all things wholesome, unaffected, and sparkling--a gleam of
sunshine. She laid no claim to supernatural powers; she held no dealings
with familiar spirits; she was simply a girl of strong personal charm,
endowed with an astounding memory and a rare measure of feminine
intuition. Her memory, she told me, she shared with her father and all
her father's family; they were famous for their prodigious faculty in
that respect. Her impulsive temperament and quick instincts, on the
other hand, descended to her, she thought, from her mother and her Welsh
ancestry.
Externally, she seemed thus at first sight little more than the ordinary
pretty, light-hearted English girl, with a taste for field sports
(especially riding), and a native love of the country. But at times
one caught in the brightened colour of her lustrous brown eyes certain
curious undercurrents of depth, of reserve, and of a questioning
wistfulness which made you suspect the presence of profounder elements
in her nature. From the earliest moment of our acquaintance, indeed,
I can say with truth that Hilda Wade interested me immensely. I felt
drawn. Her face had that strange quality of compelling attention for
which we have as yet no English name, but which everybody recognises.
You could not ignore her. She stood out. She was the sort of girl one
was constrained to notice.
It was Le Geyts first luncheon-party since his second marriage.
Big-bearded, genial, he beamed round on us jubilant. He was proud of his
wife and proud of his recent Q.C.-ship. The new Mrs. Le Geyt sat at the
head of the table, handsome, capable, self-possessed; a vivid, vigorous
woman and a model hostess. Though still quite young, she was large and
commanding. Everybody was impressed by her. “Such a good mother to
those poor motherless children!” all the ladies declared in a chorus of
applause. And, indeed, she had the face of a splendid manager.
I said as much in an undertone over the ices to Miss Wade, who sat
beside me--though I ought not to have discussed them at their own table.
“Hugo Le Geyt seems to have made an excellent choice,” I murmured.
“Maisie and Ettie will be lucky, indeed, to be taken care of by such a
competent stepmother. Don't you think so?”
My witch glanced up at her hostess with a piercing dart of the keen
brown eyes, held her wine-glass half raised, and then electrified me by
uttering, in the same low voice, audible to me alone, but quite clearly
and unhesitatingly, these astounding words:
“I think, before twelve mouths are out, MR. LE GEYT WILL HAVE MURDERED
HER!”
For a minute I could not answer, so startling was the effect of this
confident prediction. One does not expect to be told such things at
lunch, over the port and peaches, about one's dearest friends, beside
their own mahogany. And the assured air of unfaltering conviction with
which Hilda Wade said it to a complete stranger took my breath away.
WHY did she think so at all? And IF she thought so why choose ME as the
recipient of her singular confidences?
I gasped and wondered.
“What makes you fancy anything so unlikely?” I asked aside at last,
behind the babel of voices. “You quite alarm me.”
She rolled a mouthful of apricot ice reflectively on her tongue, and
then murmured, in a similar aside, “Don't ask me now. Some other time
will do. But I mean what I say. Believe me; I do not speak at random.”
She was quite right, of course. To continue would have been equally rude
and foolish. I had perforce to bottle up my curiosity for the moment and
wait till my sibyl was in the mood for interpreting.
After lunch we adjourned to the drawing-room. Almost at once, Hilda Wade
flitted up with her brisk step to the corner where I was sitting. “Oh,
Dr. Cumberledge,” she began, as if nothing odd had occurred before, “I
WAS so glad to meet you and have a chance of talking to you, because I
DO so want to get a nurse's place at St. Nathaniel's.”
“A nurse's place!” I exclaimed, a little surprised, surveying her dress
of palest and softest Indian muslin; for she looked to me far too much
of a butterfly for such serious work. “Do you really mean it; or are
you one of the ten thousand modern young ladies who are in quest of a
Mission, without understanding that Missions are unpleasant? Nursing, I
can tell you, is not all crimped cap and becoming uniform.”
“I know that,” she answered, growing grave. “I ought to know it. I am a
nurse already at St. George's Hospital.”
“You are a nurse! And at St. George's! Yet you want to change to
Nathaniel's? Why? St. George's is in a much nicer part of London, and
the patients there come on an average from a much better class than ours
in Smithfield.”
“I know that too; but... Sebastian is at St. Nathaniel's--and I want to
be near Sebastian.”
“Professor Sebastian!” I cried, my face lighting up with a gleam of
enthusiasm at our great teacher's name. “Ah, if it is to be under
Sebastian that you desire, I can see you mean business. I know now you
are in earnest.”
“In earnest?” she echoed, that strange deeper shade coming over her face
as she spoke, while her tone altered. “Yes, I think I am in earnest! It
is my object in life to be near Sebastian--to watch him and observe him.
I mean to succeed.... But I have given you my confidence, perhaps too
hastily, and I must implore you not to mention my wish to him.”
“You may trust me implicitly,” I answered.
“Oh, yes; I saw that,” she put in, with a quick gesture. “Of course, I
saw by your face you were a man of honour--a man one could trust or I
would not have spoken to you. But--you promise me?”
“I promise you,” I replied, naturally flattered. She was delicately
pretty, and her quaint, oracular air, so incongruous with the dainty
face and the fluffy brown hair, piqued me not a little. That special
mysterious commodity of CHARM seemed to pervade all she did and said.
So I added: “And I will mention to Sebastian that you wish for a
nurse's place at Nathaniel's. As you have had experience, and can be
recommended, I suppose, by Le Geyt's sister,” with whom she had come,
“no doubt you can secure an early vacancy.”
“Thanks so much,” she answered, with that delicious smile. It had an
infantile simplicity about it which contrasted most piquantly with her
prophetic manner.
“Only,” I went on, assuming a confidential tone, “you really MUST
tell me why you said that just now about Hugo Le Geyt. Recollect, your
Delphian utterances have gravely astonished and disquieted me. Hugo is
one of my oldest and dearest friends; and I want to know why you have
formed this sudden bad opinion of him.”
“Not of HIM, but of HER,” she answered, to my surprise, taking a small
Norwegian dagger from the what-not and playing with it to distract
attention.
“Come, come, now,” I cried, drawing back. “You are trying to mystify me.
This is deliberate seer-mongery. You are presuming on your powers. But I
am not the sort of man to be caught by horoscopes. I decline to believe
it.”
She turned on me with a meaning glance. Those truthful eyes fixed me. “I
am going from here straight to my hospital,” she murmured, with a quiet
air of knowledge--talking, I mean to say, like one who really knows.
“This room is not the place to discuss this matter, is it? If you will
walk back to St. George's with me, I think I can make you see and
feel that I am speaking, not at haphazard, but from observation and
experience.”
Her confidence roused my most vivid curiosity. When she left I left with
her. The Le Geyts lived in one of those new streets of large houses on
Campden Hill, so that our way eastward lay naturally through Kensington
Gardens.
It was a sunny June day, when light pierced even through the smoke of
London, and the shrubberies breathed the breath of white lilacs. “Now,
what did you mean by that enigmatical saying?” I asked my new Cassandra,
as we strolled down the scent-laden path. “Woman's intuition is all very
well in its way; but a mere man may be excused if he asks for evidence.”
She stopped short as I spoke, and gazed full into my eyes. Her hand
fingered her parasol handle. “I meant what I said,” she answered, with
emphasis. “Within one year, Mr. Le Geyt will have murdered his wife. You
may take my word, for it.”
“Le Geyt!” I cried. “Never! I know the man so well! A big, good-natured,
kindly schoolboy! He is the gentlest and best of mortals. Le Geyt a
murderer! Im--possible!”
Her eyes were far away. “Has it never occurred to you,” she
asked, slowly, with her pythoness air, “that there are murders and
murders?--murders which depend in the main upon the murderer... and also
murders which depend in the main upon the victim?”
“The victim? What do you mean?”
“Well, there are brutal men who commit murder out of sheer
brutality--the ruffians of the slums; and there are sordid men who
commit murder for sordid money--the insurers who want to forestall their
policies, the poisoners who want to inherit property; but have you
ever realised that there are also murderers who become so by accident,
through their victims' idiosyncrasy? I thought all the time while I
was watching Mrs. Le Geyt, 'That woman is of the sort predestined to
be murdered.'... And when you asked me, I told you so. I may have been
imprudent; still, I saw it, and I said it.”
“But this is second sight!” I cried, drawing away. “Do you pretend to
prevision?”
“No, not second sight; nothing uncanny, nothing supernatural. But
prevision, yes; prevision based, not on omens or auguries, but on solid
fact--on what I have seen and noticed.”
“Explain yourself, oh, prophetess!”
She let the point of her parasol make a curved trail on the gravel,
and followed its serpentine wavings with her eyes. “You know our house
surgeon?” she asked at last, looking up of a sudden.
“What, Travers? Oh, intimately.”
“Then come to my ward and see. After you have seen, you will perhaps
believe me.”
Nothing that I could say would get any further explanation out of her
just then. “You would laugh at me if I told you,” she persisted; “you
won't laugh when you have seen it.”
We walked on in silence as far as Hyde Park Corner. There my Sphinx
tripped lightly up the steps of St. George's Hospital. “Get Mr.
Travers's leave,” she said, with a nod, and a bright smile, “to visit
Nurse Wade's ward. Then come up to me there in five minutes.”
I explained to my friend the house surgeon that I wished to see certain
cases in the accident ward of which I had heard; he smiled a restrained
smile--“Nurse Wade, no doubt!” but, of course, gave me permission to
go up and look at them. “Stop a minute,” he added, “and I'll come with
you.” When we got there, my witch had already changed her dress, and was
waiting for us demurely in the neat dove-coloured gown and smooth
white apron of the hospital nurses. She looked even prettier and more
meaningful so than in her ethereal outside summer-cloud muslin.
“Come over to this bed,” she said at once to Travers and myself, without
the least air of mystery. “I will show you what I mean by it.”
“Nurse Wade has remarkable insight,” Travers whispered to me as we went.
“I can believe it,” I answered.
“Look at this woman,” she went on, aside, in a low voice--“no, NOT the
first bed; the one beyond it; Number 60. I don't want the patient
to know you are watching her. Do you observe anything odd about her
appearance?”
“She is somewhat the same type,” I began, “as Mrs.--”
Before I could get out the words “Le Geyt,” her warning eye and
puckering forehead had stopped me. “As the lady we were discussing,”
she interposed, with a quiet wave of one hand. “Yes, in some points
very much so. You notice in particular her scanty hair--so thin and
poor--though she is young and good-looking?”
“It is certainly rather a feeble crop for a woman of her age,” I
admitted. “And pale at that, and washy.”
“Precisely. It's done up behind about as big as a nutmeg.... Now,
observe the contour of her back as she sits up there; it is curiously
curved, isn't it?”
“Very,” I replied. “Not exactly a stoop, nor yet quite a hunch, but
certainly an odd spinal configuration.”
“Like our friend's, once more?”
“Like our friend's, exactly!”
Hilda Wade looked away, lest she should attract the patient's attention.
“Well, that woman was brought in here, half-dead, assaulted by her
husband,” she went on, with a note of unobtrusive demonstration.
“We get a great many such cases,” Travers put in, with true medical
unconcern, “very interesting cases; and Nurse Wade has pointed out to me
the singular fact that in almost all instances the patients resemble one
another physically.”
“Incredible!” I cried. “I can understand that there might well be a type
of men who assault their wives, but not, surely, a type of women who get
assaulted.”
“That is because you know less about it than Nurse Wade,” Travers
answered, with an annoying smile of superior knowledge.
Our instructress moved on to another bed, laying one gentle hand as she
passed on a patient's forehead. The patient glanced gratitude. “That one
again,” she said once more, half indicating a cot at a little distance:
“Number 74. She has much the same thin hair--sparse, weak, and
colourless. She has much the same curved back, and much the same
aggressive, self-assertive features. Looks capable, doesn't she? A born
housewife!... Well, she, too, was knocked down and kicked half-dead the
other night by her husband.”
“It is certainly odd,” I answered, “how very much they both recall--”
“Our friend at lunch! Yes, extraordinary. See here”; she pulled out a
pencil and drew the quick outline of a face in her note-book. “THAT
is what is central and essential to the type. They have THIS sort of
profile. Women with faces like that ALWAYS get assaulted.”
Travers glanced over her shoulder. “Quite true,” he assented, with his
bourgeois nod. “Nurse Wade in her time has shown me dozens of them.
Round dozens: bakers' dozens! They all belong to that species. In fact,
when a woman of this type is brought in to us wounded now, I ask at
once, 'Husband?' and the invariable answer comes pat: 'Well, yes, sir;
we had some words together.' The effect of words, my dear fellow, is
something truly surprising.”
“They can pierce like a dagger,” I mused.
“And leave an open wound behind that requires dressing,” Travers added,
unsuspecting. Practical man, Travers!
“But WHY do they get assaulted--the women of this type?” I asked, still
bewildered.
“Number 87 has her mother just come to see her,” my sorceress
interposed. “SHE'S an assault case; brought in last night; badly kicked
and bruised about the head and shoulders. Speak to the mother. She'll
explain it all to you.”
Travers and I moved over to the cot her hand scarcely indicated. “Well,
your daughter looks pretty comfortable this afternoon, in spite of the
little fuss,” Travers began, tentatively.
“Yus, she's a bit tidy, thanky,” the mother answered, smoothing her
soiled black gown, grown green with long service. “She'll git on naow,
please Gord. But Joe most did for 'er.”
“How did it all happen?” Travers asked, in a jaunty tone, to draw her
out.
“Well, it was like this, sir, yer see. My daughter, she's a lidy as
keeps 'erself TO 'erself, as the sayin' is, an' 'olds 'er 'ead up. She
keeps up a proper pride, an' minds 'er 'ouse an' 'er little uns. She
ain't no gadabaht. But she 'AVE a tongue, she 'ave”; the mother lowered
her voice cautiously, lest the “lidy” should hear. “I don't deny it that
she 'AVE a tongue, at times, through myself 'avin' suffered from it. And
when she DO go on, Lord bless you, why, there ain't no stoppin' of 'er.”
“Oh, she has a tongue, has she?” Travers replied, surveying the “case”
critically. “Well, you know, she looks like it.”
“So she do, sir; so she do. An' Joe, 'e's a man as wouldn't 'urt a
biby--not when 'e's sober, Joe wouldn't. But 'e'd bin aht; that's where
it is; an' 'e cum 'ome lite, a bit fresh, through 'avin' bin at the
friendly lead; an' my daughter, yer see, she up an' give it to 'im.
My word, she DID give it to 'im! An' Joe, 'e's a peaceable man when 'e
ain't a bit fresh; 'e's more like a friend to 'er than an 'usband, Joe
is; but 'e lost 'is temper that time, as yer may say, by reason o' bein'
fresh, an' 'e knocked 'er abaht a little, an' knocked 'er teeth aht. So
we brought 'er to the orspital.”
The injured woman raised herself up in bed with a vindictive scowl,
displaying as she did so the same whale-like curved back as in the other
“cases.” “But we've sent 'im to the lockup,” she continued, the scowl
giving way fast to a radiant joy of victory as she contemplated her
triumph “an' wot's more, I 'ad the last word of 'im. 'An 'e'll git six
month for this, the neighbours says; an' when he comes aht again, my
Gord, won't 'e ketch it!”
“You look capable of punishing him for it,” I answered, and as I spoke,
I shuddered; for I saw her expression was precisely the expression
Mrs. Le Geyt's face had worn for a passing second when her husband
accidentally trod on her dress as we left the dining-room.
My witch moved away. We followed. “Well, what do you say to it now?”
she asked, gliding among the beds with noiseless feet and ministering
fingers.
“Say to it?” I answered. “That it is wonderful, wonderful. You have
quite convinced me.”
“You would think so,” Travers put in, “if you had been in this ward as
often as I have, and observed their faces. It's a dead certainty. Sooner
or later, that type of woman is cock-sure to be assaulted.”
“In a certain rank of life, perhaps,” I answered, still loth to believe
it; “but not surely in ours. Gentlemen do not knock down their wives and
kick their teeth out.”
My Sibyl smiled. “No; there class tells,” she admitted. “They take
longer about it, and suffer more provocation. They curb their tempers.
But in the end, one day, they are goaded beyond endurance; and then--a
convenient knife--a rusty old sword--a pair of scissors--anything
that comes handy, like that dagger this morning. One wild blow--half
unpremeditated--and... the thing is done! Twelve good men and true will
find it wilful murder.”
I felt really perturbed. “But can we do nothing,” I cried, “to warn poor
Hugo?”
“Nothing, I fear,” she answered. “After all, character must work itself
out in its interactions with character. He has married that woman,
and he must take the consequences. Does not each of us in life suffer
perforce the Nemesis of his own temperament?”
“Then is there not also a type of men who assault their wives?”
“That is the odd part of it--no. All kinds, good and bad, quick and
slow, can be driven to it at last. The quick-tempered stab or kick;
the slow devise some deliberate means of ridding themselves of their
burden.”
“But surely we might caution Le Geyt of his danger!”
“It is useless. He would not believe us. We cannot be at his elbow to
hold back his hand when the bad moment comes. Nobody will be there, as
a matter of fact; for women of this temperament--born naggers, in short,
since that's what it comes to--when they are also ladies, graceful and
gracious as she is; never nag at all before outsiders. To the world,
they are bland; everybody says, 'What charming talkers!' They are
'angels abroad, devils at home,' as the proverb puts it. Some night she
will provoke him when they are alone, till she has reached his utmost
limit of endurance--and then,” she drew one hand across her dove-like
throat, “it will be all finished.”
“You think so?”
“I am sure of it. We human beings go straight like sheep to our natural
destiny.”
“But--that is fatalism.”
“No, not fatalism: insight into temperament. Fatalists believe that your
life is arranged for you beforehand from without; willy-nilly, you MUST
act so. I only believe that in this jostling world your life is mostly
determined by your own character, in its interaction with the characters
of those who surround you. Temperament works itself out. It is your own
acts and deeds that make up Fate for you.”
For some months after this meeting neither Hilda Wade nor I saw anything
more of the Le Geyts. They left town for Scotland at the end of the
season; and when all the grouse had been duly slaughtered and all the
salmon duly hooked, they went on to Leicestershire for the opening of
fox-hunting; so it was not till after Christmas that they returned to
Campden Hill. Meanwhile, I had spoken to Dr. Sebastian about Miss Wade,
and on my recommendation he had found her a vacancy at our hospital. “A
most intelligent girl, Cumberledge,” he remarked to me with a rare burst
of approval--for the Professor was always critical--after she had been
at work for some weeks at St. Nathaniel's. “I am glad you introduced
her here. A nurse with brains is such a valuable accessory--unless, of
course, she takes to THINKING. But Nurse Wade never THINKS; she is a
useful instrument--does what she's told, and carries out one's orders
implicitly.”
“She knows enough to know when she doesn't know,” I answered, “which is
really the rarest kind of knowledge.”
“Unrecorded among young doctors!” the Professor retorted, with his
sardonic smile. “They think they understand the human body from top to
toe, when, in reality--well, they might do the measles!”
Early in January, I was invited again to lunch with the Le Geyts. Hilda
Wade was invited, too. The moment we entered the house, we were both of
us aware that some grim change had come over it. Le Geyt met us in the
hall, in his old genial style, it is true; but still with a certain
reserve, a curious veiled timidity which we had not known in him.
Big and good-humoured as he was, with kindly eyes beneath the shaggy
eyebrows, he seemed strangely subdued now; the boyish buoyancy had gone
out of him. He spoke rather lower than was his natural key, and welcomed
us warmly, though less effusively than of old. An irreproachable
housemaid, in a spotless cap, ushered us into the transfigured
drawing-room. Mrs. Le Geyt, in a pretty cloth dress, neatly tailor-made,
rose to meet us, beaming the vapid smile of the perfect hostess--that
impartial smile which falls, like the rain from Heaven, on good and
bad indifferently. “SO charmed to see you again, Dr. Cumberledge!” she
bubbled out, with a cheerful air--she was always cheerful, mechanically
cheerful, from a sense of duty. “It IS such a pleasure to meet dear
Hugo's old friends! AND Miss Wade, too; how delightful! You look so
well, Miss Wade! Oh, you're both at St. Nathaniel's now, aren't you?
So you can come together. What a privilege for you, Dr. Cumberledge, to
have such a clever assistant--or, rather, fellow-worker. It must be a
great life, yours, Miss Wade; such a sphere of usefulness! If we can
only feel we are DOING GOOD--that is the main matter. For my own part,
I like to be mixed up with every good work that's going on in my
neighbourhood. I'm the soup-kitchen, you know, and I'm visitor at the
workhouse; and I'm the Dorcas Society, and the Mutual Improvement Class;
and the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals and to Children, and I'm sure
I don't know how much else; so that, what with all that, and what with
dear Hugo and the darling children”--she glanced affectionately at
Maisie and Ettie, who sat bolt upright, very mute and still, in their
best and stiffest frocks, on two stools in the corner--“I can hardly
find time for my social duties.”
“Oh, dear Mrs. Le Geyt,” one of her visitors said with effusion,
from beneath a nodding bonnet--she was the wife of a rural dean
from Staffordshire--“EVERYBODY is agreed that YOUR social duties are
performed to a marvel. They are the envy of Kensington. We all of us
wonder, indeed, how one woman can find time for all of it!”
Our hostess looked pleased. “Well, yes,” she answered, gazing down
at her fawn-coloured dress with a half-suppressed smile of
self-satisfaction, “I flatter myself I CAN get through about as much
work in a day as anybody!” Her eye wandered round her rooms with a
modest air of placid self-approval which was almost comic. Everything in
them was as well-kept and as well-polished as good servants, thoroughly
drilled, could make it. Not a stain or a speck anywhere. A miracle of
neatness. Indeed, when I carelessly drew the Norwegian dagger from its
scabbard, as we waited for lunch, and found that it stuck in the sheath,
I almost started to discover that rust could intrude into that orderly
household.
I recollected then how Hilda Wade had pointed out to me during those six
months at St. Nathaniel's that the women whose husbands assaulted them
were almost always “notable housewives,” as they say in America--good
souls who prided themselves not a little on their skill in management.
They were capable, practical mothers of families, with a boundless
belief in themselves, a sincere desire to do their duty, as far as they
understood it, and a habit of impressing their virtues upon others
which was quite beyond all human endurance. Placidity was their note;
provoking placidity. I felt sure it must have been of a woman of this
type that the famous phrase was coined--“Elle a toutes les vertus--et
elle est insupportable.”
“Clara, dear,” the husband said, “shall we go in to lunch?”
“You dear, stupid boy! Are we not all waiting for YOU to give your arm
to Lady Maitland?”
The lunch was perfect, and it was perfectly served. The silver glowed;
the linen was marked with H. C. Le G. in a most artistic monogram.
I noticed that the table decorations were extremely pretty. Somebody
complimented our hostess upon them. Mrs. Le Geyt nodded and smiled--“_I_
arranged them. Dear Hugo, in his blundering way--the big darling--forgot
to get me the orchids I had ordered. So I had to make shift with what
few things our own wee conservatory afforded. Still, with a little taste
and a little ingenuity--” She surveyed her handiwork with just pride,
and left the rest to our imaginations.
“Only you ought to explain, Clara--” Le Geyt began, in a deprecatory
tone.
“Now, you darling old bear, we won't harp on that twice-told tale
again,” Clara interrupted, with a knowing smile. “Point da rechauffes!
Let us leave one another's misdeeds and one another's explanations for
their proper sphere--the family circle. The orchids did NOT turn up,
that is the point; and I managed to make shift with the plumbago and the
geraniums. Maisie, my sweet, NOT that pudding, IF you please; too rich
for you, darling. I know your digestive capacities better than you do.
I have told you fifty times it doesn't agree with you. A small slice of
the other one!”
“Yes, mamma,” Maisie answered, with a cowed and cowering air. I felt
sure she would have murmured, “Yes, mamma,” in the selfsame tone if the
second Mrs. Le Geyt had ordered her to hang herself.
“I saw you out in the park, yesterday, on your bicycle, Ettie,” Le
Geyt's sister, Mrs. Mallet, put in. “But do you know, dear, I didn't
think your jacket was half warm enough.”
“Mamma doesn't like me to wear a warmer one,” the child answered, with a
visible shudder of recollection, “though I should love to, Aunt Lina.”
“My precious Ettie, what nonsense--for a violent exercise like
bicycling! Where one gets so hot! So unbecomingly hot! You'd be simply
stifled, darling.” I caught a darted glance which accompanied the words
and which made Ettie recoil into the recesses of her pudding.
“But yesterday was so cold, Clara,” Mrs. Mallet went on, actually
venturing to oppose the infallible authority. “A nipping morning. And
such a flimsy coat! Might not the dear child be allowed to judge for
herself in a matter purely of her own feelings?”
Mrs. Le Geyt, with just the shadow of a shrug, was all sweet
reasonableness. She smiled more suavely than ever. “Surely, Lina,” she
remonstrated, in her frankest and most convincing tone, “_I_ must know
best what is good for dear Ettie, when I have been watching her
daily for more than six months past, and taking the greatest pains
to understand both her constitution and her disposition. She needs
hardening, Ettie does. Hardening. Don't you agree with me, Hugo?”
Le Geyt shuffled uneasily in his chair. Big man as he was, with his
great black beard and manly bearing, I could see he was afraid to differ
from her overtly. “Well,--m--perhaps, Clara,” he began, peering from
under the shaggy eyebrows, “it would be best for a delicate child like
Ettie--”
Mrs. Le Geyt smiled a compassionate smile. “Ah, I forgot,” she cooed,
sweetly. “Dear Hugo never CAN understand the upbringing of children. It
is a sense denied him. We women know”--with a sage nod. “They were wild
little savages when I took them in hand first--weren't you, Maisie? Do
you remember, dear, how you broke the looking-glass in the boudoir, like
an untamed young monkey? Talking of monkeys, Mr. Cotswould, HAVE you
seen those delightful, clever, amusing French pictures at that place in
Suffolk Street? There's a man there--a Parisian--I forget his honoured
name--Leblanc, or Lenoir, or Lebrun, or something--but he's a most
humorous artist, and he paints monkeys and storks and all sorts of queer
beasties ALMOST as quaintly and expressively as you do. Mind, I say
ALMOST, for I never will allow that any Frenchman could do anything
QUITE so good, quite so funnily mock-human, as your marabouts and
professors.”
“What a charming hostess Mrs. Le Geyt makes,” the painter observed to
me, after lunch. “Such tact! Such discrimination!... AND, what a devoted
stepmother!”
“She is one of the local secretaries of the Society for the Prevention
of Cruelty to Children,” I said, drily.
“And charity begins at home,” Hilda Wade added, in a significant aside.
We walked home together as far as Stanhope Gate. Our sense of doom
oppressed us. “And yet,” I said, turning to her, as we left the
doorstep, “I don't doubt Mrs. Le Geyt really believes she IS a model
stepmother!”
“Of course she believes it,” my witch answered. “She has no more doubt
about that than about anything else. Doubts are not in her line. She
does everything exactly as it ought to be done--who should know, if not
she?--and therefore she is never afraid of criticism. Hardening, indeed!
that poor slender, tender, shrinking little Ettie! A frail exotic. She
would harden her into a skeleton if she had her way. Nothing's much
harder than a skeleton, I suppose, except Mrs. Le Geyt's manner of
training one.”
“I should be sorry to think,” I broke in, “that that sweet little
floating thistle-down of a child I once knew was to be done to death by
her.”
“Oh, as for that, she will NOT be done to death,” Hilda answered, in her
confident way. “Mrs. Le Geyt won't live long enough.”
I started. “You think not?”
“I don't think, I am sure of it. We are at the fifth act now. I watched
Mr. Le Geyt closely all through lunch, and I'm more confident than ever
that the end is coming. He is temporarily crushed; but he is like steam
in a boiler, seething, seething, seething. One day she will sit on the
safety-valve, and the explosion will come. When it comes”--she raised
aloft one quick hand in the air as if striking a dagger home--“good-bye
to her!”
For the next few months I saw much of Le Geyt; and the more I saw of
him, the more I saw that my witch's prognosis was essentially correct.
They never quarrelled; but Mrs. Le Geyt, in her unobtrusive way, held a
quiet hand over her husband which became increasingly apparent. In the
midst of her fancy-work (those busy fingers were never idle) she kept
her eyes well fixed on him. Now and again I saw him glance at his
motherless girls with what looked like a tender, protecting regret;
especially when “Clara” had been most openly drilling them; but he dared
not interfere. She was crushing their spirit, as she was crushing their
father's--and all, bear in mind, for the best of motives! She had their
interest at heart; she wanted to do what was right for them. Her manner
to him and to them was always honey-sweet--in all externals; yet one
could somehow feel it was the velvet glove that masked the iron hand;
not cruel, not harsh even, but severely, irresistibly, unflinchingly
crushing. “Ettie, my dear, get your brown hat at once. What's that?
Going to rain? I did not ask you, my child, for YOUR opinion on the
weather. My own suffices. A headache? Oh, nonsense! Headaches are caused
by want of exercise. Nothing so good for a touch of headache as a nice
brisk walk in Kensington Gardens. Maisie, don't hold your sister's hand
like that; it is imitation sympathy! You are aiding and abetting her
in setting my wishes at naught. Now, no long faces! What _I_ require is
CHEERFUL obedience.”
A bland, autocratic martinet: smiling, inexorable! Poor, pale Ettie grew
thinner and wanner under her law daily, while Maisie's temper, naturally
docile, was being spoiled before one's eyes by persistent, needless
thwarting.
As spring came on, however, I began to hope that things were
really mending. Le Geyt looked brighter; some of his own careless,
happy-go-lucky self came back again at intervals. He told me once, with
a wistful sigh, that he thought of sending the children to school in the
country--it would be better for them, he said, and would take a little
work off dear Clara's shoulders; for never even to me was he disloyal
to Clara. I encouraged him in the idea. He went on to say that the
great difficulty in the way was... Clara. She was SO conscientious; she
thought it her duty to look after the children herself, and couldn't
bear to delegate any part of that duty to others. Besides, she had such
an excellent opinion of the Kensington High School!
When I told Hilda Wade of this, she set her teeth together and answered
at once: “That settles it! The end is very near. HE will insist upon
their going, to save them from that woman's ruthless kindness; and SHE
will refuse to give up any part of what she calls her duty. HE will
reason with her; he will plead for his children; SHE will be adamant.
Not angry--it is never the way of that temperament to get angry--just
calmly, sedately, and insupportably provoking. When she goes too far,
he will flare up at last; some taunt will rouse him; the explosion will
come; and... the children will go to their Aunt Lina, whom they dote
upon. When all is said and done, it is the poor man I pity!”
“You said within twelve months.”
“That was a bow drawn at a venture. It may be a little sooner; it may
be a little later. But--next week or next month--it is coming: it is
coming!”
June smiled upon us once more; and on the afternoon of the 13th, the
anniversary of our first lunch together at the Le Geyts, I was up at my
work in the accident ward at St. Nathaniel's. “Well, the ides of June
have come, Sister Wade!” I said, when I met her, parodying Caesar.
“But not yet gone,” she answered; and a profound sense of foreboding
spread over her speaking face as she uttered the words.
Her oracle disquieted me. “Why, I dined there last night,” I cried; “and
all seemed exceptionally well.”
“The calm before the storm, perhaps,” she murmured.
Just at that moment I heard a boy crying in the street: “Pall mall
Gazette; 'ere y'are; speshul edishun! Shocking tragedy at the West-end!
Orful murder! 'Ere y'are! Spechul Globe! Pall Mall, extry speshul!”
A weird tremor broke over me. I walked down into the street and bought
a paper. There it stared me in the face on the middle page: “Tragedy
at Campden Hill: Well-known Barrister Murders his Wife. Sensational
Details.”
I looked closer and read. It was as I feared. The Le Geyts! After I left
their house, the night before, husband and wife must have quarrelled,
no doubt over the question of the children's schooling; and at some
provoking word, as it seemed, Hugo must have snatched up a knife--“a
little ornamental Norwegian dagger,” the report said, “which happened
to lie close by on the cabinet in the drawing-room,” and plunged it
into his wife's heart. “The unhappy lady died instantaneously, by all
appearances, and the dastardly crime was not discovered by the servants
till eight o'clock this morning. Mr. Le Geyt is missing.”
I rushed up with the news to Nurse Wade, who was at work in the accident
ward. She turned pale, but bent over her patient and said nothing.
“It is fearful to think!” I groaned out at last; “for us who know
all--that poor Le Geyt will be hanged for it! Hanged for attempting to
protect his children!”
“He will NOT be hanged,” my witch answered, with the same unquestioning
confidence as ever.
“Why not?” I asked, astonished once more at this bold prediction.
She went on bandaging the arm of the patient whom she was attending.
“Because... he will commit suicide,” she replied, without moving a
muscle.
“How do you know that?”
She stuck a steel safety-pin with deft fingers into the roll of lint.
“When I have finished my day's work,” she answered slowly, still
continuing the bandage, “I may perhaps find time to tell you.”