by Grant Allen
“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.”
