CHAPTER III
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."
