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.
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