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Hilda Wade, a Woman with Tenacity of Purpose

by Grant Allen · English · Gutenberg #4903 · 512,704 chars · public domain (US)

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Title: Hilda Wade, a Woman with Tenacity of Purpose

Author: Grant Allen

Contributor: Arthur Conan Doyle


        
Release date: June 6, 2006 [eBook #4903]
                Most recently updated: March 12, 2018

Language: English

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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK HILDA WADE, A WOMAN WITH TENACITY OF PURPOSE ***




Produced by Don Lainson





HILDA WADE

A WOMAN WITH TENACITY OF PURPOSE


By Grant Allen


1899




PUBLISHERS' NOTE

In putting before the public the last work by Mr. Grant Allen,
the publishers desire to express their deep regret at the author's
unexpected and lamented death--a regret in which they are sure to be
joined by the many thousand readers whom he did so much to entertain. A
man of curiously varied and comprehensive knowledge, and with the
most charming personality; a writer who, treating of a wide variety of
subjects, touched nothing which he did not make distinctive, he filled
a place which no man living can exactly occupy. The last chapter of this
volume had been roughly sketched by Mr. Allen before his final illness,
and his anxiety, when debarred from work, to see it finished, was
relieved by the considerate kindness of his friend and neighbour, Dr.
Conan Doyle, who, hearing of his trouble, talked it over with him,
gathered his ideas, and finally wrote it out for him in the form in
which it now appears--a beautiful and pathetic act of friendship which
it is a pleasure to record.




HILDA WADE



CHAPTER I

THE EPISODE OF THE PATIENT WHO DISAPPOINTED HER DOCTOR


Hilda Wade's gift was so unique, so extraordinary, that I must
illustrate it, I think, before I attempt to describe it. But first let
me say a word of explanation about the Master.

I have never met anyone who impressed me so much with a sense of
GREATNESS as Professor Sebastian. And this was not due to his scientific
eminence alone: the man's strength and keenness struck me quite as
forcibly as his vast attainments. When he first came to St. Nathaniel's
Hospital, an eager, fiery-eyed physiologist, well past the prime of
life, and began to preach with all the electric force of his vivid
personality that the one thing on earth worth a young man's doing was
to work in his laboratory, attend his lectures, study disease, and be
a scientific doctor, dozens of us were infected by his contagious
enthusiasm. He proclaimed the gospel of germs; and the germ of his own
zeal flew abroad in the hospital: it ran through the wards as if it were
typhoid fever. Within a few months, half the students were converted
from lukewarm observers of medical routine into flaming apostles of the
new methods.

The greatest authority in Europe on comparative anatomy, now that Huxley
was taken from us, he had devoted his later days to the pursuit of
medicine proper, to which he brought a mind stored with luminous
analogies from the lower animals. His very appearance held one. Tall,
thin, erect, with an ascetic profile not unlike Cardinal Manning's, he
represented that abstract form of asceticism which consists in absolute
self-sacrifice to a mental ideas, not that which consists in religious
abnegation. Three years of travel in Africa had tanned his skin for
life. His long white hair, straight and silvery as it fell, just curled
in one wave-like inward sweep where it turned and rested on the stooping
shoulders. His pale face was clean-shaven, save for a thin and wiry
grizzled moustache, which cast into stronger relief the deep-set,
hawk-like eyes and the acute, intense, intellectual features. In some
respects, his countenance reminded me often of Dr. Martineau's: in
others it recalled the knife-like edge, unturnable, of his great
predecessor, Professor Owen. Wherever he went, men turned to stare at
him. In Paris, they took him for the head of the English Socialists; in
Russia, they declared he was a Nihilist emissary. And they were not
far wrong--in essence; for Sebastian's stern, sharp face was above all
things the face of a man absorbed and engrossed by one overpowering
pursuit in life--the sacred thirst of knowledge, which had swallowed up
his entire nature.

He WAS what he looked--the most single-minded person I have ever come
across. And when I say single-minded, I mean just that, and no more. He
had an End to attain--the advancement of science, and he went straight
towards the End, looking neither to the right nor to the left for
anyone. An American millionaire once remarked to him of some ingenious
appliance he was describing: “Why, if you were to perfect that
apparatus, Professor, and take out a patent for it, I reckon you'd make
as much money as I have made.” Sebastian withered him with a glance. “I
have no time to waste,” he replied, “on making money!”

So, when Hilda Wade told me, on the first day I met her, that she wished
to become a nurse at Nathaniel's, “to be near Sebastian,” I was not at
all astonished. I took her at her word. Everybody who meant business in
any branch of the medical art, however humble, desired to be close to
our rare teacher--to drink in his large thought, to profit by his clear
insight, his wide experience. The man of Nathaniel's was revolutionising
practice; and those who wished to feel themselves abreast of the modern
movement were naturally anxious to cast in their lot with him. I did not
wonder, therefore, that Hilda Wade, who herself possessed in so large a
measure the deepest feminine gift--intuition--should seek a place
under the famous professor who represented the other side of the same
endowment in its masculine embodiment--instinct of diagnosis.

Hilda Wade herself I will not formally introduce to you: you will learn
to know her as I proceed with my story.

I was Sebastian's assistant, and my recommendation soon procured Hilda
Wade the post she so strangely coveted. Before she had been long at
Nathaniel's, however, it began to dawn upon me that her reasons for
desiring to attend upon our revered Master were not wholly and solely
scientific. Sebastian, it is true, recognised her value as a nurse from
the first; he not only allowed that she was a good assistant, but he
also admitted that her subtle knowledge of temperament sometimes enabled
her closely to approach his own reasoned scientific analysis of a case
and its probable development. “Most women,” he said to me once, “are
quick at reading THE PASSING EMOTION. They can judge with astounding
correctness from a shadow on one's face, a catch in one's breath, a
movement of one's hands, how their words or deeds are affecting us. We
cannot conceal our feelings from them. But underlying character they
do not judge so well as fleeting expression. Not what Mrs. Jones IS in
herself, but what Mrs. Jones is now thinking and feeling--there lies
their great success as psychologists. Most men, on the contrary, guide
their life by definite FACTS--by signs, by symptoms, by observed data.
Medicine itself is built upon a collection of such reasoned facts.
But this woman, Nurse Wade, to a certain extent, stands intermediate
mentally between the two sexes. She recognises TEMPERAMENT--the fixed
form of character, and what it is likely to do--in a degree which I have
never seen equalled elsewhere. To that extent, and within proper limits
of supervision, I acknowledge her faculty as a valuable adjunct to a
scientific practitioner.”

Still, though Sebastian started with a predisposition in favour of
Hilda Wade--a pretty girl appeals to most of us--I could see from the
beginning that Hilda Wade was by no means enthusiastic for Sebastian,
like the rest of the hospital:

“He is extraordinarily able,” she would say, when I gushed to her about
our Master; but that was the most I could ever extort from her in the
way of praise. Though she admitted intellectually Sebastian's gigantic
mind, she would never commit herself to anything that sounded like
personal admiration. To call him “the prince of physiologists” did
not satisfy me on that head. I wanted her to exclaim, “I adore him! I
worship him! He is glorious, wonderful!”

I was also aware from an early date that, in an unobtrusive way, Hilda
Wade was watching Sebastian, watching him quietly, with those wistful,
earnest eyes, as a cat watches a mouse-hole; watching him with mute
inquiry, as if she expected each moment to see him do something
different from what the rest of us expected of him. Slowly I gathered
that Hilda Wade, in the most literal sense, had come to Nathaniel's, as
she herself expressed it, “to be near Sebastian.”

Gentle and lovable as she was in every other aspect, towards Sebastian
she seemed like a lynx-eyed detective. She had some object in view,
I thought, almost as abstract as his own--some object to which, as I
judged, she was devoting her life quite as single-mindedly as Sebastian
himself had devoted his to the advancement of science.

“Why did she become a nurse at all?” I asked once of her friend, Mrs.
Mallet. “She has plenty of money, and seems well enough off to live
without working.”

“Oh, dear, yes,” Mrs. Mallet answered. “She is independent, quite; has
a tidy little income of her own--six or seven hundred a year--and she
could choose her own society. But she went in for this mission fad
early; she didn't intend to marry, she said; so she would like to have
some work to do in life. Girls suffer like that, nowadays. In her case,
the malady took the form of nursing.”

“As a rule,” I ventured to interpose, “when a pretty girl says she
doesn't intend to marry, her remark is premature. It only means--”

“Oh, yes, I know. Every girl says it; 'tis a stock property in the
popular masque of Maiden Modesty. But with Hilda it is different. And
the difference is--that Hilda means it!”

“You are right,” I answered. “I believe she means it. Yet I know one man
at least--” for I admired her immensely.

Mrs. Mallet shook her head and smiled. “It is no use, Dr. Cumberledge,”
 she answered. “Hilda will never marry. Never, that is to say, till she
has attained some mysterious object she seems to have in view, about
which she never speaks to anyone--not even to me. But I have somehow
guessed it!”

“And it is?”

“Oh, I have not guessed what it IS: I am no Oedipus. I have merely
guessed that it exists. But whatever it may be, Hilda's life is bounded
by it. She became a nurse to carry it out, I feel confident. From
the very beginning, I gather, a part of her scheme was to go to St.
Nathaniel's. She was always bothering us to give her introductions
to Dr. Sebastian; and when she met you at my brother Hugo's, it was a
preconcerted arrangement; she asked to sit next you, and meant to induce
you to use your influence on her behalf with the Professor. She was
dying to get there.”

“It is very odd,” I mused. “But there!--women are inexplicable!”

“And Hilda is in that matter the very quintessence of woman. Even I, who
have known her for years, don't pretend to understand her.”

A few months later, Sebastian began his great researches on his new
anaesthetic. It was a wonderful set of researches. It promised so well.
All Nat's (as we familiarly and affectionately styled St. Nathaniel's)
was in a fever of excitement over the drug for a twelvemonth.

The Professor obtained his first hint of the new body by a mere
accident. His friend, the Deputy Prosector of the Zoological Society,
had mixed a draught for a sick raccoon at the Gardens, and, by some
mistake in a bottle, had mixed it wrongly. (I purposely refrain from
mentioning the ingredients, as they are drugs which can be easily
obtained in isolation at any chemist's, though when compounded they form
one of the most dangerous and difficult to detect of organic poisons.
I do not desire to play into the hands of would-be criminals.) The
compound on which the Deputy Prosector had thus accidentally lighted
sent the raccoon to sleep in the most extraordinary manner. Indeed, the
raccoon slept for thirty-six hours on end, all attempts to awake him, by
pulling his tail or tweaking his hair being quite unavailing. This was
a novelty in narcotics; so Sebastian was asked to come and look at the
slumbering brute. He suggested the attempt to perform an operation on
the somnolent raccoon by removing, under the influence of the drug, an
internal growth, which was considered the probable cause of his illness.
A surgeon was called in, the growth was found and removed, and the
raccoon, to everybody's surprise, continued to slumber peacefully on his
straw for five hours afterwards. At the end of that time he awoke, and
stretched himself as if nothing had happened; and though he was, of
course, very weak from loss of blood, he immediately displayed a
most royal hunger. He ate up all the maize that was offered him
for breakfast, and proceeded to manifest a desire for more by most
unequivocal symptoms.

Sebastian was overjoyed. He now felt sure he had discovered a drug
which would supersede chloroform--a drug more lasting in its immediate
effects, and yet far less harmful in its ultimate results on the balance
of the system. A name being wanted for it, he christened it “lethodyne.”
 It was the best pain-luller yet invented.

For the next few weeks, at Nat's, we heard of nothing but lethodyne.
Patients recovered and patients died; but their deaths or recoveries
were as dross to lethodyne, an anaesthetic that might revolutionise
surgery, and even medicine! A royal road through disease, with no
trouble to the doctor and no pain to the patient! Lethodyne held the
field. We were all of us, for the moment, intoxicated with lethodyne.

Sebastian's observations on the new agent occupied several months.
He had begun with the raccoon; he went on, of course, with those poor
scapegoats of physiology, domestic rabbits. Not that in this particular
case any painful experiments were in contemplation. The Professor
tried the drug on a dozen or more quite healthy young animals--with the
strange result that they dozed off quietly, and never woke up again.
This nonplussed Sebastian. He experimented once more on another raccoon,
with a smaller dose; the raccoon fell asleep, and slept like a top for
fifteen hours, at the end of which time he woke up as if nothing out of
the common had happened. Sebastian fell back upon rabbits again, with
smaller and smaller doses. It was no good; the rabbits all died with
great unanimity, until the dose was so diminished that it did not send
them off to sleep at all. There was no middle course, apparently, to
the rabbit kind, lethodyne was either fatal or else inoperative. So it
proved to sheep. The new drug killed, or did nothing.

I will not trouble you with all the details of Sebastian's further
researches; the curious will find them discussed at length in Volume
237 of the Philosophical Transactions. (See also Comptes Rendus de
l'Academie de Medecine: tome 49, pp. 72 and sequel.) I will restrict
myself here to that part of the inquiry which immediately refers to
Hilda Wade's history.

“If I were you,” she said to the Professor one morning, when he was most
astonished at his contradictory results, “I would test it on a hawk.
If I dare venture on a suggestion, I believe you will find that hawks
recover.”

“The deuce they do!” Sebastian cried. However, he had such confidence
in Nurse Wade's judgment that he bought a couple of hawks and tried
the treatment on them. Both birds took considerable doses, and, after a
period of insensibility extending to several hours, woke up in the end
quite bright and lively.

“I see your principle,” the Professor broke out. “It depends upon
diet. Carnivores and birds of prey can take lethodyne with impunity;
herbivores and fruit-eaters cannot recover, and die of it. Man,
therefore, being partly carnivorous, will doubtless be able more or less
to stand it.”

Hilda Wade smiled her sphinx-like smile. “Not quite that, I fancy,” she
answered. “It will kill cats, I feel sure; at least, most domesticated
ones. But it will NOT kill weasels. Yet both are carnivores.”

“That young woman knows too much!” Sebastian muttered to me, looking
after her as she glided noiselessly with her gentle tread down the long
white corridor. “We shall have to suppress her, Cumberledge.... But I'll
wager my life she's right, for all that. I wonder, now, how the dickens
she guessed it!”

“Intuition,” I answered.

He pouted his under lip above the upper one, with a dubious
acquiescence. “Inference, I call it,” he retorted. “All woman's
so-called intuition is, in fact, just rapid and half-unconscious
inference.”

He was so full of the subject, however, and so utterly carried away by
his scientific ardour, that I regret to say he gave a strong dose of
lethodyne at once to each of the matron's petted and pampered Persian
cats, which lounged about her room and were the delight of the
convalescents. They were two peculiarly lazy sultanas of cats--mere
jewels of the harem--Oriental beauties that loved to bask in the sun
or curl themselves up on the rug before the fire and dawdle away their
lives in congenial idleness. Strange to say, Hilda's prophecy came true.
Zuleika settled herself down comfortably in the Professor's easy chair
and fell into a sound sleep from which there was no awaking; while
Roxana met fate on the tiger-skin she loved, coiled up in a circle,
and passed from this life of dreams, without knowing it, into one
where dreaming is not. Sebastian noted the facts with a quiet gleam of
satisfaction in his watchful eye, and explained afterwards, with curt
glibness to the angry matron, that her favourites had been “canonised
in the roll of science, as painless martyrs to the advancement of
physiology.”

The weasels, on the other hand, with an equal dose, woke up after six
hours as lively as crickets. It was clear that carnivorous tastes were
not the whole solution, for Roxana was famed as a notable mouser.

“Your principle?” Sebastian asked our sibyl, in his brief, quick way.

Hilda's cheek wore a glow of pardonable triumph. The great teacher had
deigned to ask her assistance. “I judged by the analogy of Indian hemp,”
 she answered. “This is clearly a similar, but much stronger, narcotic.
Now, whenever I have given Indian hemp by your direction to people of
sluggish, or even of merely bustling temperament, I have noticed that
small doses produce serious effects, and that the after-results are
most undesirable. But when you have prescribed the hemp for nervous,
overstrung, imaginative people, I have observed that they can stand
large amounts of the tincture without evil results, and that the
after-effects pass off rapidly. I who am mercurial in temperament, for
example, can take any amount of Indian hemp without being made ill by
it; while ten drops will send some slow and torpid rustics mad drunk
with excitement--drive them into homicidal mania.”

Sebastian nodded his head. He needed no more explanation. “You have hit
it,” he said. “I see it at a glance. The old antithesis! All men and all
animals fall, roughly speaking, into two great divisions of type: the
impassioned and the unimpassioned; the vivid and the phlegmatic. I catch
your drift now. Lethodyne is poison to phlegmatic patients, who have not
active power enough to wake up from it unhurt; it is relatively harmless
to the vivid and impassioned, who can be put asleep by it, indeed, for a
few hours more or less, but are alive enough to live on through the coma
and reassert their vitality after it.”

I recognised as he spoke that this explanation was correct. The dull
rabbits, the sleepy Persian cats, and the silly sheep had died outright
of lethodyne; the cunning, inquisitive raccoon, the quick hawk, and
the active, intense-natured weasels, all most eager, wary, and alert
animals, full of keenness and passion, had recovered quickly.

“Dare we try it on a human subject?” I asked, tentatively.

Hilda Wade answered at once, with that unerring rapidity of hers: “Yes,
certainly; on a few--the right persons. _I_, for one, am not afraid to
try it.”

“You?” I cried, feeling suddenly aware how much I thought of her. “Oh,
not YOU, please, Nurse Wade. Some other life, less valuable!”

Sebastian stared at me coldly. “Nurse Wade volunteers,” he said. “It is
in the cause of science. Who dares dissuade her? That tooth of yours?
Ah, yes. Quite sufficient excuse. You wanted it out, Nurse Wade.
Wells-Dinton shall operate.”

Without a moment's hesitation, Hilda Wade sat down in an easy chair and
took a measured dose of the new anaesthetic, proportioned to the average
difference in weight between raccoons and humanity. My face displayed my
anxiety, I suppose, for she turned to me, smiling with quiet confidence.
“I know my own constitution,” she said, with a reassuring glance that
went straight to my heart. “I do not in the least fear.”

As for Sebastian, he administered the drug to her as unconcernedly as
if she were a rabbit. Sebastian's scientific coolness and calmness have
long been the admiration of younger practitioners.

Wells-Dinton gave one wrench. The tooth came out as though the patient
were a block of marble. There was not a cry or a movement, such as
one notes when nitrous oxide is administered. Hilda Wade was to all
appearance a mass of lifeless flesh. We stood round and watched. I
was trembling with terror. Even on Sebastian's pale face, usually so
unmoved, save by the watchful eagerness of scientific curiosity, I saw
signs of anxiety.

After four hours of profound slumber--breath hovering, as it seemed,
between life and death--she began to come to again. In half an hour more
she was wide awake; she opened her eyes and asked for a glass of hock,
with beef essence or oysters.

That evening, by six o'clock, she was quite well and able to go about
her duties as usual.

“Sebastian is a wonderful man,” I said to her, as I entered her ward on
my rounds at night. “His coolness astonishes me. Do you know, he watched
you all the time you were lying asleep there as if nothing were the
matter.”

“Coolness?” she inquired, in a quiet voice. “Or cruelty?”

“Cruelty?” I echoed, aghast. “Sebastian cruel! Oh, Nurse Wade, what an
idea! Why, he has spent his whole life in striving against all odds to
alleviate pain. He is the apostle of philanthropy!”

“Of philanthropy, or of science? To alleviate pain, or to learn the
whole truth about the human body?”

“Come, come, now,” I cried. “You analyse too far. I will not let even
YOU put me out of conceit with Sebastian.” (Her face flushed at
that “even you”; I almost fancied she began to like me.) “He is the
enthusiasm of my life; just consider how much he has done for humanity!”

She looked me through searchingly. “I will not destroy your illusion,”
 she answered, after a pause. “It is a noble and generous one. But is it
not largely based on an ascetic face, long white hair, and a moustache
that hides the cruel corners of the mouth? For the corners ARE cruel.
Some day, I will show you them. Cut off the long hair, shave the
grizzled moustache--and what then will remain?” She drew a profile
hastily. “Just that,” and she showed it me. 'Twas a face like
Robespierre's, grown harder and older and lined with observation. I
recognised that it was in fact the essence of Sebastian.

Next day, as it turned out, the Professor himself insisted upon testing
lethodyne in his own person. All Nat's strove to dissuade him. “Your
life is so precious, sir--the advancement of science!” But the Professor
was adamantine.

“Science can only be advanced if men of science will take their lives in
their hands,” he answered, sternly. “Besides, Nurse Wade has tried. Am
I to lag behind a woman in my devotion to the cause of physiological
knowledge?”

“Let him try,” Hilda Wade murmured to me. “He is quite right. It will
not hurt him. I have told him already he has just the proper temperament
to stand the drug. Such people are rare: HE is one of them.”

We administered the dose, trembling. Sebastian took it like a man, and
dropped off instantly, for lethodyne is at least as instantaneous in its
operation as nitrous oxide.

He lay long asleep. Hilda and I watched him.

After he had lain for some minutes senseless, like a log, on the couch
where we had placed him, Hilda stooped over him quietly and lifted up
the ends of the grizzled moustache. Then she pointed one accusing
finger at his lips. “I told you so,” she murmured, with a note of
demonstration.

“There is certainly something rather stern, or even ruthless, about
the set of the face and the firm ending of the lips,” I admitted,
reluctantly.

“That is why God gave men moustaches,” she mused, in a low voice; “to
hide the cruel corners of their mouths.”

“Not ALWAYS cruel,” I cried.

“Sometimes cruel, sometimes cunning, sometimes sensuous; but nine times
out of ten best masked by moustaches.”

“You have a bad opinion of our sex!” I exclaimed.

“Providence knew best,” she answered. “IT gave you moustaches. That was
in order that we women might be spared from always seeing you as you
are. Besides, I said 'Nine times out of ten.' There are exceptions--SUCH
exceptions!”

On second thought, I did not feel sure that I could quarrel with her
estimate.

The experiment was that time once more successful. Sebastian woke up
from the comatose state after eight hours, not quite as fresh as Hilda
Wade, perhaps, but still tolerably alive; less alert, however, and
complaining of dull headache. He was not hungry. Hilda Wade shook her
head at that. “It will be of use only in a very few cases,” she said to
me, regretfully; “and those few will need to be carefully picked by
an acute observer. I see resistance to the coma is, even more than
I thought, a matter of temperament. Why, so impassioned a man as
the Professor himself cannot entirely recover. With more sluggish
temperaments, we shall have deeper difficulty.”

“Would you call him impassioned?” I asked. “Most people think him so
cold and stern.”

She shook her head. “He is a snow-capped volcano!” she answered. “The
fires of his life burn bright below. The exterior alone is cold and
placid.”

However, starting from that time, Sebastian began a course of
experiments on patients, giving infinitesimal doses at first, and
venturing slowly on somewhat larger quantities. But only in his own case
and Hilda's could the result be called quite satisfactory. One dull
and heavy, drink-sodden navvy, to whom he administered no more than
one-tenth of a grain, was drowsy for a week, and listless long after;
while a fat washerwoman from West Ham, who took only two-tenths, fell so
fast asleep, and snored so stertorously, that we feared she was going
to doze off into eternity, after the fashion of the rabbits. Mothers of
large families, we noted, stood the drug very ill; on pale young girls
of the consumptive tendency its effect was not marked; but only
a patient here and there, of exceptionally imaginative and vivid
temperament, seemed able to endure it. Sebastian was discouraged. He
saw the anaesthetic was not destined to fulfil his first enthusiastic
humanitarian expectations. One day, while the investigation was just at
this stage, a case was admitted into the observation-cots in which Hilda
Wade took a particular interest. The patient was a young girl
named Isabel Huntley--tall, dark, and slender, a markedly quick
and imaginative type, with large black eyes which clearly bespoke a
passionate nature. Though distinctly hysterical, she was pretty and
pleasing. Her rich dark hair was as copious as it was beautiful. She
held herself erect and had a finely poised head. From the first moment
she arrived, I could see nurse Wade was strongly drawn towards her.
Their souls sympathised. Number Fourteen--that is our impersonal way of
describing CASES--was constantly on Hilda's lips. “I like the girl,” she
said once. “She is a lady in fibre.”

“And a tobacco-trimmer by trade,” Sebastian added, sarcastically.

As usual, Hilda's was the truer description. It went deeper.

Number Fourteen's ailment was a rare and peculiar one, into which I need
not enter here with professional precision. (I have described the case
fully for my brother practitioners in my paper in the fourth volume
of Sebastian's Medical Miscellanies.) It will be enough for my present
purpose to say, in brief, that the lesion consisted of an internal
growth which is always dangerous and most often fatal, but which
nevertheless is of such a character that, if it be once happily
eradicated by supremely good surgery, it never tends to recur, and
leaves the patient as strong and well as ever. Sebastian was, of course,
delighted with the splendid opportunity thus afforded him. “It is a
beautiful case!” he cried, with professional enthusiasm. “Beautiful!
Beautiful! I never saw one so deadly or so malignant before. We are
indeed in luck's way. Only a miracle can save her life. Cumberledge, we
must proceed to perform the miracle.”

Sebastian loved such cases. They formed his ideal. He did not greatly
admire the artificial prolongation of diseased and unwholesome lives,
which could never be of much use to their owners or anyone else; but
when a chance occurred for restoring to perfect health a valuable
existence which might otherwise be extinguished before its time, he
positively revelled in his beneficent calling. “What nobler object can
a man propose to himself,” he used to say, “than to raise good men and
true from the dead, as it were, and return them whole and sound to the
family that depends upon them? Why, I had fifty times rather cure an
honest coal-heaver of a wound in his leg than give ten years more lease
of life to a gouty lord, diseased from top to toe, who expects to find
a month of Carlsbad or Homburg once every year make up for eleven months
of over-eating, over-drinking, vulgar debauchery, and under-thinking.”
 He had no sympathy with men who lived the lives of swine: his heart was
with the workers.

Of course, Hilda Wade soon suggested that, as an operation was
absolutely necessary, Number Fourteen would be a splendid subject on
whom to test once more the effects of lethodyne. Sebastian, with his
head on one side, surveying the patient, promptly coincided. “Nervous
diathesis,” he observed. “Very vivid fancy. Twitches her hands the right
way. Quick pulse, rapid perceptions, no meaningless unrest, but deep
vitality. I don't doubt she'll stand it.”

We explained to Number Fourteen the gravity of the case, and also the
tentative character of the operation under lethodyne. At first, she
shrank from taking it. “No, no!” she said; “let me die quietly.” But
Hilda, like the Angel of Mercy that she was, whispered in the girl's
ear: “IF it succeeds, you will get quite well, and--you can marry
Arthur.”

The patient's dark face flushed crimson.

“Ah! Arthur,” she cried. “Dear Arthur! I can bear anything you choose to
do to me--for Arthur!”

“How soon you find these things out!” I cried to Hilda, a few minutes
later. “A mere man would never have thought of that. And who is Arthur?”

“A sailor--on a ship that trades with the South Seas. I hope he is
worthy of her. Fretting over Arthur's absence has aggravated the case.
He is homeward-bound now. She is worrying herself to death for fear she
should not live to say good-bye to him.”

“She WILL live to marry him,” I answered, with confidence like her own,
“if YOU say she can stand it.”

“The lethodyne--oh, yes; THAT'S all right. But the operation itself is
so extremely dangerous; though Dr. Sebastian says he has called in
the best surgeon in London for all such cases. They are rare, he tells
me--and Nielsen has performed on six, three of them successfully.”

We gave the girl the drug. She took it, trembling, and went off at once,
holding Hilda's hand, with a pale smile on her face, which persisted
there somewhat weirdly all through the operation. The work of removing
the growth was long and ghastly, even for us who were well seasoned
to such sights; but at the end Nielsen expressed himself as perfectly
satisfied. “A very neat piece of work!” Sebastian exclaimed, looking
on. “I congratulate you, Nielsen. I never saw anything done cleaner or
better.”

“A successful operation, certainly!” the great surgeon admitted, with
just pride in the Master's commendation.

“AND the patient?” Hilda asked, wavering.

“Oh, the patient? The patient will die,” Nielsen replied, in an
unconcerned voice, wiping his spotless instruments.

“That is not MY idea of the medical art,” I cried, shocked at his
callousness. “An operation is only successful if--”

He regarded me with lofty scorn. “A certain percentage of losses,”
 he interrupted, calmly, “is inevitable, of course, in all surgical
operations. We are obliged to average it. How could I preserve my
precision and accuracy of hand if I were always bothered by sentimental
considerations of the patient's safety?”

Hilda Wade looked up at me with a sympathetic glance. “We will pull her
through yet,” she murmured, in her soft voice, “if care and skill can do
it,--MY care and YOUR skill. This is now OUR patient, Dr. Cumberledge.”

It needed care and skill. We watched her for hours, and she showed no
sign or gleam of recovery. Her sleep was deeper than either Sebastian's
or Hilda's had been. She had taken a big dose, so as to secure
immobility. The question now was, would she recover at all from it? Hour
after hour we waited and watched; and not a sign of movement! Only the
same deep, slow, hampered breathing, the same feeble, jerky pulse, the
same deathly pallor on the dark cheeks, the same corpse-like rigidity of
limb and muscle.

At last our patient stirred faintly, as in a dream; her breath faltered.
We bent over her. Was it death, or was she beginning to recover?

Very slowly, a faint trace of colour came back to her cheeks. Her heavy
eyes half opened. They stared first with a white stare. Her arms
dropped by her side. Her mouth relaxed its ghastly smile.... We held our
breath.... She was coming to again!

But her coming to was slow--very, very slow. Her pulse was still weak.
Her heart pumped feebly. We feared she might sink from inanition at
any moment. Hilda Wade knelt on the floor by the girl's side and held a
spoonful of beef essence coaxingly to her lips. Number Fourteen gasped,
drew a long, slow breath, then gulped and swallowed it. After that
she lay back with her mouth open, looking like a corpse. Hilda pressed
another spoonful of the soft jelly upon her; but the girl waved it away
with one trembling hand. “Let me die,” she cried. “Let me die! I feel
dead already.”

Hilda held her face close. “Isabel,” she whispered--and I recognised
in her tone the vast moral difference between “Isabel” and “Number
Fourteen,”--“Is-a-bel, you must take it. For Arthur's sake, I say, you
MUST take it.”

The girl's hand quivered as it lay on the white coverlet. “For Arthur's
sake!” she murmured, lifting her eyelids dreamily. “For Arthur's sake!
Yes, nurse, dear!”

“Call me Hilda, please! Hilda!”

The girl's face lighted up again. “Yes, Hilda, dear,” she answered, in
an unearthly voice, like one raised from the dead. “I will call you what
you will. Angel of light, you have been so good to me.”

She opened her lips with an effort and slowly swallowed another
spoonful. Then she fell back, exhausted. But her pulse improved within
twenty minutes. I mentioned the matter, with enthusiasm, to Sebastian
later. “It is very nice in its way,” he answered; “but... it is not
nursing.”

I thought to myself that that was just what it WAS; but I did not say
so. Sebastian was a man who thought meanly of women. “A doctor, like a
priest,” he used to declare, “should keep himself unmarried. His bride
is medicine.” And he disliked to see what he called PHILANDERING going
on in his hospital. It may have been on that account that I avoided
speaking much of Hilda Wade thenceforth before him.

He looked in casually next day to see the patient. “She will die,”
 he said, with perfect assurance, as we passed down the ward together.
“Operation has taken too much out of her.”

“Still, she has great recuperative powers,” Hilda answered. “They
all have in her family, Professor. You may, perhaps, remember Joseph
Huntley, who occupied Number Sixty-seven in the Accident Ward, some nine
months since--compound fracture of the arm--a dark, nervous engineer's
assistant--very hard to restrain--well, HE was her brother; he caught
typhoid fever in the hospital, and you commented at the time on his
strange vitality. Then there was her cousin, again, Ellen Stubbs. We had
HER for stubborn chronic laryngitis--a very bad case--anyone else would
have died--yielded at once to your treatment; and made, I recollect, a
splendid convalescence.”

“What a memory you have!” Sebastian cried, admiring against his will.
“It is simply marvellous! I never saw anyone like you in my life...
except once. HE was a man, a doctor, a colleague of mine--dead long
ago.... Why--” he mused, and gazed hard at her. Hilda shrank before
his gaze. “This is curious,” he went on slowly, at last; “very curious.
You--why, you resemble him!”

“Do I?” Hilda replied, with forced calm, raising her eyes to his. Their
glances met. That moment, I saw each had recognised something; and from
that day forth I was instinctively aware that a duel was being waged
between Sebastian and Hilda,--a duel between the two ablest and most
singular personalities I had ever met; a duel of life and death--though
I did not fully understand its purport till much, much later.

Every day after that, the poor, wasted girl in Number Fourteen grew
feebler and fainter. Her temperature rose; her heart throbbed weakly.
She seemed to be fading away. Sebastian shook his head. “Lethodyne is
a failure,” he said, with a mournful regret. “One cannot trust it. The
case might have recovered from the operation, or recovered from the
drug; but she could not recover from both together. Yet the operation
would have been impossible without the drug, and the drug is useless
except for the operation.”

It was a great disappointment to him. He hid himself in his room, as was
his wont when disappointed, and went on with his old work at his beloved
microbes.

“I have one hope still,” Hilda murmured to me by the bedside, when our
patient was at her worst. “If one contingency occurs, I believe we may
save her.”

“What is that?” I asked.

She shook her head waywardly. “You must wait and see,” she answered. “If
it comes off, I will tell you. If not, let it swell the limbo of lost
inspirations.”

Next morning early, however, she came up to me with a radiant face,
holding a newspaper in her hand. “Well, it HAS happened!” she cried,
rejoicing. “We shall save poor Isabel Number Fourteen, I mean; our way
is clear, Dr. Cumberledge.”

I followed her blindly to the bedside, little guessing what she could
mean. She knelt down at the head of the cot. The girl's eyes were
closed. I touched her cheek; she was in a high fever. “Temperature?” I
asked.

“A hundred and three.”

I shook my head. Every symptom of fatal relapse. I could not imagine
what card Hilda held in reserve. But I stood there, waiting.

She whispered in the girl's ear: “Arthur's ship is sighted off the
Lizard.”

The patient opened her eyes slowly, and rolled them for a moment as if
she did not understand.

“Too late!” I cried. “Too late! She is delirious--insensible!”

Hilda repeated the words slowly, but very distinctly. “Do you hear,
dear? Arthur's ship... it is sighted.... Arthur's ship... at the
Lizard.”

The girl's lips moved. “Arthur! Arthur!... Arthur's ship!” A deep sigh.
She clenched her hands. “He is coming?” Hilda nodded and smiled, holding
her breath with suspense.

“Up the Channel now. He will be at Southampton tonight. Arthur...
at Southampton. It is here, in the papers; I have telegraphed to him to
hurry on at once to see you.”

She struggled up for a second. A smile flitted across the worn face.
Then she fell back wearily.

I thought all was over. Her eyes stared white. But ten minutes later
she opened her lids again. “Arthur is coming,” she murmured. “Arthur...
coming.”

“Yes, dear. Now sleep. He is coming.”

All through that day and the next night she was restless and agitated;
but still her pulse improved a little. Next morning she was again a
trifle better. Temperature falling--a hundred and one, point three. At
ten o'clock Hilda came in to her, radiant.

“Well, Isabel, dear,” she cried, bending down and touching her cheek
(kissing is forbidden by the rules of the house), “Arthur has come. He
is here... down below... I have seen him.”

“Seen him!” the girl gasped.

“Yes, seen him. Talked with him. Such a nice, manly fellow; and such
an honest, good face! He is longing for you to get well. He says he has
come home this time to marry you.”

The wan lips quivered. “He will NEVER marry me!”

“Yes, yes, he WILL--if you will take this jelly. Look here--he wrote
these words to you before my very eyes: 'Dear love to my Isa!'... If you
are good, and will sleep, he may see you--to-morrow.”

The girl opened her lips and ate the jelly greedily. She ate as much
as she was desired. In three minutes more her head had fallen like a
child's upon her pillow and she was sleeping peacefully.



I went up to Sebastian's room, quite excited with the news. He was busy
among his bacilli. They were his hobby, his pets. “Well, what do you
think, Professor?” I cried. “That patient of Nurse Wade's--”

He gazed up at me abstractedly, his brow contracting. “Yes, yes; I
know,” he interrupted. “The girl in Fourteen. I have discounted her case
long ago. She has ceased to interest me.... Dead, of course! Nothing
else was possible.”

I laughed a quick little laugh of triumph. “No, sir; NOT dead.
Recovering! She has fallen just now into a normal sleep; her breathing
is natural.”

He wheeled his revolving chair away from the germs and fixed me with his
keen eyes. “Recovering?” he echoed. “Impossible! Rallying, you mean. A
mere flicker. I know my trade. She MUST die this evening.”

“Forgive my persistence,” I replied; “but--her temperature has gone down
to ninety-nine and a trifle.”

He pushed away the bacilli in the nearest watch-glass quite angrily. “To
ninety-nine!” he exclaimed, knitting his brows. “Cumberledge, this is
disgraceful! A most disappointing case! A most provoking patient!”

“But surely, sir--” I cried.

“Don't talk to ME, boy! Don't attempt to apologise for her. Such conduct
is unpardonable. She OUGHT to have died. It was her clear duty. I SAID
she would die, and she should have known better than to fly in the face
of the faculty. Her recovery is an insult to medical science. What is
the staff about? Nurse Wade should have prevented it.”

“Still, sir,” I exclaimed, trying to touch him on a tender spot, “the
anaesthetic, you know! Such a triumph for lethodyne! This case shows
clearly that on certain constitutions it may be used with advantage
under certain conditions.”

He snapped his fingers. “Lethodyne! pooh! I have lost interest in it.
Impracticable! It is not fitted for the human species.”

“Why so? Number Fourteen proves--”

He interrupted me with an impatient wave of his hand; then he rose and
paced up and down the room testily. After a pause, he spoke again. “The
weak point of lethodyne is this: nobody can be trusted to say WHEN it
may be used--except Nurse Wade,--which is NOT science.”

For the first time in my life, I had a glimmering idea that I distrusted
Sebastian. Hilda Wade was right--the man was cruel. But I had never
observed his cruelty before--because his devotion to science had blinded
me to it.



CHAPTER II

THE EPISODE OF THE GENTLEMAN WHO HAD FAILED FOR EVERYTHING


One day, about those times, I went round to call on my aunt, Lady
Tepping. And lest you accuse me of the vulgar desire to flaunt my fine
relations in your face, I hasten to add that my poor dear old aunt is
a very ordinary specimen of the common Army widow. Her husband, Sir
Malcolm, a crusty old gentleman of the ancient school, was knighted
in Burma, or thereabouts, for a successful raid upon naked natives, on
something that is called the Shan frontier. When he had grown grey
in the service of his Queen and country, besides earning himself
incidentally a very decent pension, he acquired gout and went to his
long rest in Kensal Green Cemetery. He left his wife with one daughter,
and the only pretence to a title in our otherwise blameless family.

My cousin Daphne is a very pretty girl, with those quiet, sedate manners
which often develop later in life into genuine self-respect and real
depth of character. Fools do not admire her; they accuse her of being
“heavy.” But she can do without fools; she has a fine, strongly built
figure, an upright carriage, a large and broad forehead, a firm chin,
and features which, though well-marked and well-moulded, are yet
delicate in outline and sensitive in expression. Very young men seldom
take to Daphne: she lacks the desired inanity. But she has mind, repose,
and womanly tenderness. Indeed, if she had not been my cousin, I almost
think I might once have been tempted to fall in love with her.

When I reached Gloucester Terrace, on this particular afternoon, I found
Hilda Wade there before me. She had lunched at my aunt's, in fact. It
was her “day out” at St. Nathaniel's, and she had come round to spend it
with Daphne Tepping. I had introduced her to the house some time before,
and she and my cousin had struck up a close acquaintance immediately.
Their temperaments were sympathetic; Daphne admired Hilda's depth and
reserve, while Hilda admired Daphne's grave grace and self-control, her
perfect freedom from current affectations. She neither giggled nor aped
Ibsenism.

A third person stood back in the room when I entered--a tall and
somewhat jerry-built young man, with a rather long and solemn face, like
an early stage in the evolution of a Don Quixote. I took a good look
at him. There was something about his air that impressed me as both
lugubrious and humorous; and in this I was right, for I learned later
that he was one of those rare people who can sing a comic song with
immense success while preserving a sour countenance, like a Puritan
preacher's. His eyes were a little sunken, his fingers long and nervous;
but I fancied he looked a good fellow at heart, for all that, though
foolishly impulsive. He was a punctilious gentleman, I felt sure; his
face and manner grew upon one rapidly.

Daphne rose as I entered, and waved the stranger forward with an
imperious little wave. I imagined, indeed, that I detected in the
gesture a faint touch of half-unconscious proprietorship. “Good-morning,
Hubert,” she said, taking my hand, but turning towards the tall young
man. “I don't think you know Mr. Cecil Holsworthy.”

“I have heard you speak of him,” I answered, drinking him in with my
glance. I added internally, “Not half good enough for you.”

Hilda's eyes met mine and read my thought. They flashed back word, in
the language of eyes, “I do not agree with you.”

Daphne, meanwhile, was watching me closely. I could see she was anxious
to discover what impression her friend Mr. Holsworthy was making on me.
Till then, I had no idea she was fond of anyone in particular; but
the way her glance wandered from him to me and from me to Hilda showed
clearly that she thought much of this gawky visitor.

We sat and talked together, we four, for some time. I found the young
man with the lugubrious countenance improved immensely on closer
acquaintance. His talk was clever. He turned out to be the son of a
politician high in office in the Canadian Government, and he had been
educated at Oxford. The father, I gathered, was rich, but he himself was
making an income of nothing a year just then as a briefless barrister,
and he was hesitating whether to accept a post of secretary that had
been offered him in the colony, or to continue his negative career at
the Inner Temple, for the honour and glory of it.

“Now, which would YOU advise me, Miss Tepping?” he inquired, after we
had discussed the matter some minutes.

Daphne's face flushed up. “It is so hard to decide,” she answered. “To
decide to YOUR best advantage, I mean, of course. For naturally all your
English friends would wish to keep you as long as possible in England.”

“No, do you think so?” the gawky young man jerked out with evident
pleasure. “Now, that's awfully kind of you. Do you know, if YOU tell
me I ought to stay in England, I've half a mind... I'll cable over this
very day and refuse the appointment.”

Daphne flushed once more. “Oh, please don't!” she exclaimed, looking
frightened. “I shall be quite distressed if a stray word of mine should
debar you from accepting a good offer of a secretaryship.”

“Why, your least wish--” the young man began--then checked himself
hastily--“must be always important,” he went on, in a different voice,
“to everyone of your acquaintance.”

Daphne rose hurriedly. “Look here, Hilda,” she said, a little
tremulously, biting her lip, “I have to go out into Westbourne Grove to
get those gloves for to-night, and a spray for my hair; will you excuse
me for half an hour?”

Holsworthy rose too. “Mayn't I go with you?” he asked, eagerly.

“Oh, if you like. How very kind of you!” Daphne answered, her cheek a
blush rose. “Hubert, will you come too? and you, Hilda?”

It was one of those invitations which are given to be refused. I did not
need Hilda's warning glance to tell me that my company would be quite
superfluous. I felt those two were best left together.

“It's no use, though, Dr. Cumberledge!” Hilda put in, as soon as they
were gone. “He WON'T propose, though he has had every encouragement.
I don't know what's the matter; but I've been watching them both for
weeks, and somehow things seem never to get any forwarder.”

“You think he's in love with her?” I asked.

“In love with her! Well, you have eyes in your head, I know; where could
they have been looking? He's madly in love--a very good kind of love,
too. He genuinely admires and respects and appreciates all Daphne's
sweet and charming qualities.”

“Then what do you suppose is the matter?”

“I have an inkling of the truth: I imagine Mr. Cecil must have let
himself in for a prior attachment.”

“If so, why does he hang about Daphne?”

“Because--he can't help himself. He's a good fellow and a chivalrous
fellow. He admires your cousin; but he must have got himself into some
foolish entanglement elsewhere which he is too honourable to break off;
while at the same time he's far too much impressed by Daphne's fine
qualities to be able to keep away from her. It's the ordinary case of
love versus duty.”

“Is he well off? Could he afford to marry Daphne?”

“Oh, his father's very rich: he has plenty of money; a Canadian
millionaire, they say. That makes it all the likelier that some
undesirable young woman somewhere may have managed to get hold of him.
Just the sort of romantic, impressionable hobbledehoy such women angle
for.”

I drummed my fingers on the table. Presently Hilda spoke again. “Why
don't you try to get to know him, and find out precisely what's the
matter?”

“I KNOW what's the matter--now you've told me,” I answered. “It's as
clear as day. Daphne is very much smitten with him, too. I'm sorry for
Daphne! Well, I'll take your advice; I'll try to have some talk with
him.”

“Do, please; I feel sure I have hit upon it. He has got himself engaged
in a hurry to some girl he doesn't really care about, and he is far too
much of a gentleman to break it off, though he's in love quite another
way with Daphne.”

Just at that moment the door opened and my aunt entered.

“Why, where's Daphne?” she cried, looking about her and arranging her
black lace shawl.

“She has just run out into Westbourne Grove to get some gloves and
a flower for the fete this evening,” Hilda answered. Then she added,
significantly, “Mr. Holsworthy has gone with her.”

“What? That boy's been here again?”

“Yes, Lady Tepping. He called to see Daphne.”

My aunt turned to me with an aggrieved tone. It is a peculiarity of my
aunt's--I have met it elsewhere--that if she is angry with Jones, and
Jones is not present, she assumes a tone of injured asperity on his
account towards Brown or Smith, or any other innocent person whom she
happens to be addressing. “Now, this is really too bad, Hubert,” she
burst out, as if _I_ were the culprit. “Disgraceful! Abominable! I'm
sure I can't make out what the young fellow means by it. Here he comes
dangling after Daphne every day and all day long--and never once says
whether he means anything by it or not. In MY young days, such conduct
as that would not have been considered respectable.”

I nodded and beamed benignly.

“Well, why don't you answer me?” my aunt went on, warming up. “DO you
mean to tell me you think his behaviour respectful to a nice girl in
Daphne's position?”

“My dear aunt,” I answered, “you confound the persons. I am not Mr.
Holsworthy. I decline responsibility for him. I meet him here, in YOUR
house, for the first time this morning.”

“Then that shows how often you come to see your relations, Hubert!”
 my aunt burst out, obliquely. “The man's been here, to my certain
knowledge, every day this six weeks.”

“Really, Aunt Fanny,” I said; “you must recollect that a professional
man--”

“Oh, yes. THAT'S the way! Lay it all down to your profession, do,
Hubert! Though I KNOW you were at the Thorntons' on Saturday--saw it in
the papers--the Morning Post--'among the guests were Sir Edward and Lady
Burnes, Professor Sebastian, Dr. Hubert Cumberledge,' and so forth, and
so forth. YOU think you can conceal these things; but you can't. I get
to know them!”

“Conceal them! My dearest aunt! Why, I danced twice with Daphne.”

“Daphne! Yes, Daphne. They all run after Daphne,” my aunt exclaimed,
altering the venue once more. “But there's no respect for age left.
_I_ expect to be neglected. However, that's neither here nor there. The
point is this: you're the one man now living in the family. You ought
to behave like a brother to Daphne. Why don't you board this Holsworthy
person and ask him his intentions?”

“Goodness gracious!” I cried; “most excellent of aunts, that epoch has
gone past. The late lamented Queen Anne is now dead. It's no use asking
the young man of to-day to explain his intentions. He will refer you to
the works of the Scandinavian dramatists.”

My aunt was speechless. She could only gurgle out the words: “Well,
I can safely say that of all the monstrous behaviour--” then language
failed her and she relapsed into silence.

However, when Daphne and young Holsworthy returned, I had as much talk
with him as I could, and when he left the house I left also.

“Which way are you walking?” I asked, as we turned out into the street.

“Towards my rooms in the Temple.”

“Oh! I'm going back to St. Nathaniel's,” I continued. “If you'll allow
me, I'll walk part way with you.”

“How very kind of you!”

We strode side by side a little distance in silence. Then a thought
seemed to strike the lugubrious young man. “What a charming girl your
cousin is!” he exclaimed, abruptly.

“You seem to think so,” I answered, smiling.

He flushed a little; the lantern jaw grew longer. “I admire her, of
course,” he answered. “Who doesn't? She is so extraordinarily handsome.”

“Well, not exactly handsome,” I replied, with more critical and
kinsman-like deliberation. “Pretty, if you will; and decidedly pleasing
and attractive in manner.”

He looked me up and down, as if he found me a person singularly
deficient in taste and appreciation. “Ah, but then, you are her cousin,”
 he said at last, with a compassionate tone. “That makes a difference.”

“I quite see all Daphne's strong points,” I answered, still smiling, for
I could perceive he was very far gone. “She is good-looking, and she is
clever.”

“Clever!” he echoed. “Profound! She has a most unusual intellect. She
stands alone.”

“Like her mother's silk dresses,” I murmured, half under my breath.

He took no notice of my flippant remark, but went on with his rhapsody.
“Such depth; such penetration! And then, how sympathetic! Why, even to a
mere casual acquaintance like myself, she is so kind, so discerning!”

“ARE you such a casual acquaintance?” I inquired, with a smile. (It
might have shocked Aunt Fanny to hear me; but THAT is the way we ask a
young man his intentions nowadays.)

He stopped short and hesitated. “Oh, quite casual,” he replied, almost
stammering. “Most casual, I assure you.... I have never ventured to do
myself the honour of supposing that... that Miss Tepping could possibly
care for me.”

“There is such a thing as being TOO modest and unassuming,” I answered.
“It sometimes leads to unintentional cruelty.”

“No, do you think so?” he cried, his face falling all at once. “I should
blame myself bitterly if that were so. Dr. Cumberledge, you are her
cousin. DO you gather that I have acted in such a way as to--to lead
Miss Tepping to suppose I felt any affection for her?”

I laughed in his face. “My dear boy,” I answered, laying one hand on
his shoulder, “may I say the plain truth? A blind bat could see you are
madly in love with her.”

His mouth twitched. “That's very serious!” he answered, gravely; “very
serious.”

“It is,” I responded, with my best paternal manner, gazing blankly in
front of me.

He stopped short again. “Look here,” he said, facing me. “Are you busy?
No? Then come back with me to my rooms; and--I'll make a clean breast of
it.”

“By all means,” I assented. “When one is young--and foolish--I have
often noticed, as a medical man, that a drachm of clean breast is a
magnificent prescription.”

He walked back by my side, talking all the way of Daphne's many adorable
qualities. He exhausted the dictionary for laudatory adjectives. By the
time I reached his door it was not HIS fault if I had not learned that
the angelic hierarchy were not in the running with my pretty cousin for
graces and virtues. I felt that Faith, Hope, and Charity ought to resign
at once in favour of Miss Daphne Tepping, promoted.

He took me into his comfortably furnished rooms--the luxurious rooms
of a rich young bachelor, with taste as well as money--and offered me a
partaga. Now, I have long observed, in the course of my practice, that
a choice cigar assists a man in taking a philosophic outlook on the
question under discussion; so I accepted the partaga. He sat
down opposite me and pointed to a photograph in the centre of his
mantlepiece. “I am engaged to that lady,” he put in, shortly.

“So I anticipated,” I answered, lighting up.

He started and looked surprised. “Why, what made you guess it?” he
inquired.

I smiled the calm smile of superior age--I was some eight years or so
his senior. “My dear fellow,” I murmured, “what else could prevent you
from proposing to Daphne--when you are so undeniably in love with her?”

“A great deal,” he answered. “For example, the sense of my own utter
unworthiness.”

“One's own unworthiness,” I replied, “though doubtless real--p'f,
p'f--is a barrier that most of us can readily get over when our
admiration for a particular lady waxes strong enough. So THIS is the
prior attachment!” I took the portrait down and scanned it.

“Unfortunately, yes. What do you think of her?”

I scrutinised the features. “Seems a nice enough little thing,” I
answered. It was an innocent face, I admit; very frank and girlish.

He leaned forward eagerly. “That's just it. A nice enough little thing!
Nothing in the world to be said against her. While Daphne--Miss Tepping,
I mean--” His silence was ecstatic.

I examined the photograph still more closely. It displayed a lady of
twenty or thereabouts, with a weak face, small, vacant features, a
feeble chin, a good-humoured, simple mouth, and a wealth of golden hair
that seemed to strike a keynote.

“In the theatrical profession?” I inquired at last, looking up.

He hesitated. “Well, not exactly,” he answered.

I pursed my lips and blew a ring. “Music-hall stage?” I went on,
dubiously.

He nodded. “But a girl is not necessarily any the less a lady because
she sings at a music-hall,” he added, with warmth, displaying an evident
desire to be just to his betrothed, however much he admired Daphne.

“Certainly not,” I admitted. “A lady is a lady; no occupation can in
itself unladify her.... But on the music-hall stage, the odds, one must
admit, are on the whole against her.”

“Now, THERE you show prejudice!”

“One may be quite unprejudiced,” I answered, “and yet allow that
connection with the music-halls does not, as such, afford clear proof
that a girl is a compound of all the virtues.”

“I think she's a good girl,” he retorted, slowly.

“Then why do you want to throw her over?” I inquired.

“I don't. That's just it. On the contrary, I mean to keep my word and
marry her.”

“IN ORDER to keep your word?” I suggested.

He nodded. “Precisely. It is a point of honour.”

“That's a poor ground of marriage,” I went on. “Mind, I don't want for a
moment to influence you, as Daphne's cousin. I want to get at the truth
of the situation. I don't even know what Daphne thinks of you. But you
promised me a clean breast. Be a man and bare it.”

He bared it instantly. “I thought I was in love with this girl, you
see,” he went on, “till I saw Miss Tepping.”

“That makes a difference,” I admitted.

“And I couldn't bear to break her heart.”

“Heaven forbid!” I cried. “It is the one unpardonable sin. Better
anything than that.” Then I grew practical. “Father's consent?”

“MY father's? IS it likely? He expects me to marry into some
distinguished English family.”

I hummed a moment. “Well, out with it!” I exclaimed, pointing my cigar
at him.

He leaned back in his chair and told me the whole story. A pretty girl;
golden hair; introduced to her by a friend; nice, simple little thing;
mind and heart above the irregular stage on to which she had been driven
by poverty alone; father dead; mother in reduced circumstances. “To keep
the home together, poor Sissie decided--”

“Precisely so,” I murmured, knocking off my ash. “The usual
self-sacrifice! Case quite normal! Everything en regle!”

“You don't mean to say you doubt it?” he cried, flushing up, and
evidently regarding me as a hopeless cynic. “I do assure you, Dr.
Cumberledge, the poor child--though miles, of course, below Miss
Tepping's level--is as innocent, and as good--”

“As a flower in May. Oh, yes; I don't doubt it. How did you come to
propose to her, though?”

He reddened a little. “Well, it was almost accidental,” he said,
sheepishly. “I called there one evening, and her mother had a headache
and went up to bed. And when we two were left alone, Sissie talked a
great deal about her future and how hard her life was. And after a while
she broke down and began to cry. And then--”

I cut him short with a wave of my hand. “You need say no more,” I put
in, with a sympathetic face. “We have all been there.”

We paused a moment, while I puffed smoke at the photograph again.
“Well,” I said at last, “her face looks to me really simple and nice. It
is a good face. Do you see her often?”

“Oh, no; she's on tour.”

“In the provinces?”

“M'yes; just at present, at Scarborough.”

“But she writes to you?”

“Every day.”

“Would you think it an unpardonable impertinence if I made bold to
ask whether it would be possible for you to show me a specimen of her
letters?”

He unlocked a drawer and took out three or four. Then he read one
through, carefully. “I don't think,” he said, in a deliberative voice,
“it would be a serious breach of confidence in me to let you look
through this one. There's really nothing in it, you know--just the
ordinary average every-day love-letter.”

I glanced through the little note. He was right. The conventional hearts
and darts epistle. It sounded nice enough: “Longing to see you again;
so lonely in this place; your dear sweet letter; looking forward to the
time; your ever-devoted Sissie.”

“That seems straight,” I answered. “However, I am not quite sure. Will
you allow me to take it away, with the photograph? I know I am asking
much. I want to show it to a lady in whose tact and discrimination I
have the greatest confidence.”

“What, Daphne?”

I smiled. “No, not Daphne,” I answered. “Our friend, Miss Wade. She has
extraordinary insight.”

“I could trust anything to Miss Wade. She is true as steel.”

“You are right,” I answered. “That shows that you, too, are a judge of
character.”

He hesitated. “I feel a brute,” he cried, “to go on writing every day
to Sissie Montague--and yet calling every day to see Miss Tepping. But
still--I do it.”

I grasped his hand. “My dear fellow,” I said, “nearly ninety per cent.
of men, after all--are human!”

I took both letter and photograph back with me to Nathaniel's. When I
had gone my rounds that night, I carried them into Hilda Wade's room and
told her the story. Her face grew grave. “We must be just,” she said at
last. “Daphne is deeply in love with him; but even for Daphne's sake, we
must not take anything for granted against the other lady.”

I produced the photograph. “What do you make of that?” I asked. “_I_
think it an honest face, myself, I may tell you.”

She scrutinised it long and closely with a magnifier. Then she put her
head on one side and mused very deliberately. “Madeline Shaw gave me her
photograph the other day, and said to me, as she gave it, 'I do so like
these modern portraits; they show one WHAT MIGHT HAVE BEEN.'”

“You mean they are so much touched up!”

“Exactly. That, as it stands, is a sweet, innocent face--an honest
girl's face--almost babyish in its transparency but... the innocence has
all been put into it by the photographer.”

“You think so?”

“I know it. Look here at those lines just visible on the cheek. They
disappear, nowhere, at impossible angles. AND the corners of that mouth.
They couldn't go so, with that nose and those puckers. The thing is
not real. It has been atrociously edited. Part is nature's; part, the
photographer's; part, even possibly paint and powder.”

“But the underlying face?”

“Is a minx's.”

I handed her the letter. “This next?” I asked, fixing my eyes on her as
she looked.

She read it through. For a minute or two she examined it. “The letter
is right enough,” she answered, after a second reading, “though its
guileless simplicity is, perhaps, under the circumstances, just a leetle
overdone; but the handwriting--the handwriting is duplicity itself: a
cunning, serpentine hand, no openness or honesty in it. Depend upon it,
that girl is playing a double game.”

“You believe, then, there is character in handwriting?”

“Undoubtedly; when we know the character, we can see it in the writing.
The difficulty is, to see it and read it BEFORE we know it; and I
have practised a little at that. There is character in all we do, of
course--our walk, our cough, the very wave of our hands; the only secret
is, not all of us have always skill to see it. Here, however, I feel
pretty sure. The curls of the g's and the tails of the y's--how full
they are of wile, of low, underhand trickery!”

I looked at them as she pointed. “That is true!” I exclaimed. “I see it
when you show it. Lines meant for effect. No straightness or directness
in them!”

Hilda reflected a moment. “Poor Daphne!” she murmured. “I would do
anything to help her.... I'll tell what might be a good plan.” Her
face brightened. “My holiday comes next week. I'll run down to
Scarborough--it's as nice a place for a holiday as any--and I'll observe
this young lady. It can do no harm--and good may come of it.”

“How kind of you!” I cried. “But you are always all kindness.”

Hilda went to Scarborough, and came back again for a week before going
on to Bruges, where she proposed to spend the greater part of her
holidays. She stopped a night or two in town to report progress, and,
finding another nurse ill, promised to fill her place till a substitute
was forthcoming.

“Well, Dr. Cumberledge,” she said, when she saw me alone, “I was right!
I have found out a fact or two about Daphne's rival!”

“You have seen her?” I asked.

“Seen her? I have stopped for a week in the same house. A very nice
lodging-house on the Spa front, too. The girl's well enough off. The
poverty plea fails. She goes about in good rooms and carries a mother
with her.”

“That's well,” I answered. “That looks all right.”

“Oh, yes, she's quite presentable: has the manners of a lady whenever
she chooses. But the chief point is this: she laid her letters every day
on the table in the passage outside her door for post--laid them all
in a row, so that when one claimed one's own one couldn't help seeing
them.”

“Well, that was open and aboveboard,” I continued, beginning to fear we
had hastily misjudged Miss Sissie Montague.

“Very open--too much so, in fact; for I was obliged to note the fact
that she wrote two letters regularly every day of her life--'to my two
mashes,' she explained one afternoon to a young man who was with her as
she laid them on the table. One of them was always addressed to Cecil
Holsworthy, Esq.”

“And the other?”

“Wasn't.”

“Did you note the name?” I asked, interested.

“Yes; here it is.” She handed me a slip of paper.

I read it: “Reginald Nettlecraft, Esq., 427, Staples Inn, London.”

“What, Reggie Nettlecraft!” I cried, amused. “Why, he was a very little
boy at Charterhouse when I was a big one; he afterwards went to Oxford,
and got sent down from Christ Church for the part he took in burning a
Greek bust in Tom Quad--an antique Greek bust--after a bump supper.”

“Just the sort of man I should have expected,” Hilda answered, with a
suppressed smile. “I have a sort of inkling that Miss Montague likes HIM
best; he is nearer her type; but she thinks Cecil Holsworthy the better
match. Has Mr. Nettlecraft money?”

“Not a penny, I should say. An allowance from his father, perhaps, who
is a Lincolnshire parson; but otherwise, nothing.”

“Then, in my opinion, the young lady is playing for Mr. Holsworthy's
money; failing which, she will decline upon Mr. Nettlecraft's heart.”

We talked it all over. In the end I said abruptly: “Nurse Wade, you have
seen Miss Montague, or whatever she calls herself. I have not. I won't
condemn her unheard. I have half a mind to run down one day next week to
Scarborough and have a look at her.”

“Do. That will suffice. You can judge then for yourself whether or not I
am mistaken.”

I went; and what is more, I heard Miss Sissie sing at her hall--a
pretty domestic song, most childish and charming. She impressed me not
unfavourably, in spite of what Hilda said. Her peach-blossom cheek might
have been art, but looked like nature. She had an open face, a baby
smile and there was a frank girlishness about her dress and manner that
took my fancy. “After all,” I thought to myself, “even Hilda Wade is
fallible.”

So that evening, when her “turn” was over, I made up my mind to go round
and call upon her. I had told Cecil Holsworthy my intentions beforehand,
and it rather shocked him. He was too much of a gentleman to wish to spy
upon the girl he had promised to marry. However, in my case, there need
be no such scruples. I found the house and asked for Miss Montague. As
I mounted the stairs to the drawing-room floor, I heard a sound of
voices--the murmur of laughter; idiotic guffaws, suppressed giggles, the
masculine and feminine varieties of tomfoolery.

“YOU'D make a splendid woman of business, YOU would!” a young man was
saying. I gathered from his drawl that he belonged to that sub-species
of the human race which is known as the Chappie.

“Wouldn't I just?” a girl's voice answered, tittering. I recognised it
as Sissie's. “You ought to see me at it! Why, my brother set up a place
once for mending bicycles; and I used to stand about at the door, as if
I had just returned from a ride; and when fellows came in, with a nut
loose or something, I'd begin talking with them while Bertie tightened
it. Then, when THEY weren't looking, I'd dab the business end of a
darning-needle, so, just plump into their tires; and of course, as soon
as they went off, they were back again in a minute to get a puncture
mended! I call THAT business.”

A roar of laughter greeted the recital of this brilliant incident in a
commercial career. As it subsided, I entered. There were two men in the
room, besides Miss Montague and her mother, and a second young lady.

“Excuse this late call,” I said, quietly, bowing. “But I have only one
night in Scarborough, Miss Montague, and I wanted to see you. I'm a
friend of Mr. Holsworthy's. I told him I'd look you up, and this is my
sole opportunity.”

I FELT rather than saw that Miss Montague darted a quick glance of
hidden meaning at her friends the chappies; their faces, in response,
ceased to snigger and grew instantly sober.

She took my card; then, in her alternative manner as the perfect lady,
she presented me to her mother. “Dr. Cumberledge, mamma,” she said, in a
faintly warning voice. “A friend of Mr. Holsworthy's.”

The old lady half rose. “Let me see,” she said, staring at me. “WHICH is
Mr. Holsworthy, Siss?--is it Cecil or Reggie?”

One of the chappies burst into a fatuous laugh once more at this remark.
“Now, you're giving away the whole show, Mrs. Montague!” he exclaimed,
with a chuckle. A look from Miss Sissie immediately checked him.

I am bound to admit, however, that after these untoward incidents of
the first minute, Miss Montague and her friends behaved throughout
with distinguished propriety. Her manners were perfect--I may even say
demure. She asked about “Cecil” with charming naivete. She was frank and
girlish. Lots of innocent fun in her, no doubt--she sang us a comic
song in excellent taste, which is a severe test--but not a suspicion of
double-dealing. If I had not overheard those few words as I came up
the stairs, I think I should have gone away believing the poor girl an
injured child of nature.

As it was, I went back to London the very next day, determined to renew
my slight acquaintance with Reggie Nettlecraft.

Fortunately, I had a good excuse for going to visit him. I had been
asked to collect among old Carthusians for one of those endless
“testimonials” which pursue one through life, and are, perhaps, the
worst Nemesis which follows the crime of having wasted one's youth at
a public school: a testimonial for a retiring master, or professional
cricketer, or washerwoman, or something; and in the course of my
duties as collector it was quite natural that I should call upon all my
fellow-victims. So I went to his rooms in Staples Inn and reintroduced
myself.

Reggie Nettlecraft had grown up into an unwholesome, spotty,
indeterminate young man, with a speckled necktie, and cuffs of which he
was inordinately proud, and which he insisted on “flashing” every second
minute. He was also evidently self-satisfied; which was odd, for I have
seldom seen anyone who afforded less cause for rational satisfaction.
“Hullo,” he said, when I told him my name. “So it's you, is it,
Cumberledge?” He glanced at my card. “St. Nathaniel's Hospital! What
rot! Why, blow me tight if you haven't turned sawbones!”

“That is my profession,” I answered, unashamed. “And you?”

“Oh, I don't have any luck, you know, old man. They turned me out
of Oxford because I had too much sense of humour for the authorities
there--beastly set of old fogeys! Objected to my 'chucking' oyster
shells at the tutors' windows--good old English custom, fast becoming
obsolete. Then I crammed for the Army. But, bless your heart, a
GENTLEMAN has no chance for the Army nowadays; a pack of blooming cads,
with what they call 'intellect,' read up for the exams, and don't
give US a look-in; I call it sheer piffle. Then the Guv'nor set me on
electrical engineering--electrical engineering's played out. I put no
stock in it; besides, it's such beastly fag; and then, you get your
hands dirty. So now I'm reading for the Bar; and if only my coach can
put me up to tips enough to dodge the examiners, I expect to be called
some time next summer.”

“And when you have failed for everything?” I inquired, just to test his
sense of humour.

He swallowed it like a roach. “Oh, when I've failed for everything,
I shall stick up to the Guv'nor. Hang it all, a GENTLEMAN can't be
expected to earn his own livelihood. England's going to the dogs, that's
where it is; no snug little sinecures left for chaps like you and
me; all this beastly competition. And no respect for the feelings of
gentlemen, either! Why, would you believe it, Cumberground--we used
to call you Cumberground at Charterhouse, I remember, or was it Fig
Tree?--I happened to get a bit lively in the Haymarket last week, after
a rattling good supper, and the chap at the police court--old cove with
a squint--positively proposed to send me to prison, WITHOUT THE OPTION
OF A FINE!--I'll trouble you for that--send ME to prison just--for
knocking down a common brute of a bobby. There's no mistake about it;
England's NOT a country now for a gentleman to live in.”

“Then why not mark your sense of the fact by leaving it?” I inquired,
with a smile.

He shook his head. “What? Emigrate? No, thank you! I'm not taking any.
None of your colonies for ME, IF you please. I shall stick to the old
ship. I'm too much attached to the Empire.”

“And yet imperialists,” I said, “generally gush over the colonies--the
Empire on which the sun never sets.”

“The Empire in Leicester Squire!” he responded, gazing at me with
unspoken contempt. “Have a whisky-and-soda, old chap? What, no? 'Never
drink between meals?' Well, you DO surprise me! I suppose that comes of
being a sawbones, don't it?”

“Possibly,” I answered. “We respect our livers.” Then I went on to the
ostensible reason of my visit--the Charterhouse testimonial. He slapped
his thighs metaphorically, by way of suggesting the depleted condition
of his pockets. “Stony broke, Cumberledge,” he murmured; “stony broke!
Honour bright! Unless Bluebird pulls off the Prince of Wales's Stakes, I
really don't know how I'm to pay the Benchers.”

“It's quite unimportant,” I answered. “I was asked to ask you, and I
HAVE asked you.”

“So I twig, my dear fellow. Sorry to have to say NO. But I'll tell you
what I can do for you; I can put you upon a straight thing--”

I glanced at the mantelpiece. “I see you have a photograph of Miss
Sissie Montague,” I broke in casually, taking it down and examining
it. “WITH an autograph, too. 'Reggie, from Sissie.' You are a friend of
hers?”

“A friend of hers? I'll trouble you. She IS a clinker, Sissie is! You
should see that girl smoke. I give you my word of honour, Cumberledge,
she can consume cigarettes against any fellow I know in London. Hang it
all, a girl like that, you know--well, one can't help admiring her! Ever
seen her?”

“Oh, yes; I know her. I called on her, in fact, night before last, at
Scarborough.”

He whistled a moment, then broke into an imbecile laugh. “My gum,” he
cried; “this IS a start, this is! You don't mean to tell me YOU are the
other Johnnie.”

“What other Johnnie?” I asked, feeling we were getting near it.

He leaned back and laughed again. “Well, you know that girl Sissie,
she's a clever one, she is,” he went on after a minute, staring at me.
“She's a regular clinker! Got two strings to her bow; that's where the
trouble comes in. Me and another fellow. She likes me for love and the
other fellow for money. Now, don't you come and tell me that YOU are the
other fellow.”

“I have certainly never aspired to the young lady's hand,” I answered,
cautiously. “But don't you know your rival's name, then?”

“That's Sissie's blooming cleverness. She's a caulker, Sissie is; you
don't take a rise out of Sissie in a hurry. She knows that if I knew who
the other bloke was, I'd blow upon her little game to him and put him
off her. And I WOULD, s'ep me taters; for I'm nuts on that girl. I tell
you, Cumberledge, she IS a clinker!”

“You seem to me admirably adapted for one another,” I answered,
truthfully. I had not the slightest compunction in handing Reggie
Nettlecraft over to Sissie, nor in handing Sissie over to Reggie
Nettlecraft.

“Adapted for one another? That's just it. There, you hit the right nail
plump on the cocoanut, Cumberground! But Sissie's an artful one, she is.
She's playing for the other Johnnie. He's got the dibs, you know; and
Sissie wants the dibs even more than she wants yours truly.”

“Got what?” I inquired, not quite catching the phrase.

“The dibs, old man; the chink; the oof; the ready rhino. He rolls in
it, she says. I can't find out the chap's name, but I know his Guv'nor's
something or other in the millionaire trade somewhere across in
America.”

“She writes to you, I think?”

“That's so; every blooming day; but how the dummy did you come to know
it?”

“She lays letters addressed to you on the hall table at her lodgings in
Scarborough.”

“The dickens she does! Careless little beggar! Yes, she writes to
me--pages. She's awfully gone on me, really. She'd marry me if it wasn't
for the Johnnie with the dibs. She doesn't care for HIM: she wants his
money. He dresses badly, don't you see; and, after all, the clothes make
the man! I'D like to get at him. I'D spoil his pretty face for him.” And
he assumed a playfully pugilistic attitude.

“You really want to get rid of this other fellow?” I asked, seeing my
chance.

“Get rid of him? Why, of course! Chuck him into the river some nice dark
night if I could once get a look at him!”

“As a preliminary step, would you mind letting me see one of Miss
Montague's letters?” I inquired.

He drew a long breath. “They're a bit affectionate, you know,” he
murmured, stroking his beardless chin in hesitation. “She's a hot 'un,
Sissie is. She pitches it pretty warm on the affection-stop, I can tell
you. But if you really think you can give the other Johnnie a cut on the
head with her letters--well, in the interests of true love, which never
DOES run smooth, I don't mind letting you have a squint, as my friend,
at one of her charming billy-doos.”

He took a bundle from a drawer, ran his eye over one or two with a
maudlin air, and then selected a specimen not wholly unsuitable for
publication. “THERE'S one in the eye for C.,” he said, chuckling. “What
would C. say to that, I wonder? She always calls him C., you know; it's
so jolly non-committing. She says, 'I only wish that beastly old bore
C. were at Halifax--which is where he comes from and then I would fly
at once to my own dear Reggie! But, hang it all, Reggie boy, what's the
good of true love if you haven't got the dibs? I MUST have my comforts.
Love in a cottage is all very well in its way; but who's to pay for the
fizz, Reggie?' That's her refinement, don't you see? Sissie's awfully
refined. She was brought up with the tastes and habits of a lady.”

“Clearly so,” I answered. “Both her literary style and her liking for
champagne abundantly demonstrate it!” His acute sense of humour did not
enable him to detect the irony of my observation. I doubt if it extended
much beyond oyster shells. He handed me the letter. I read it through
with equal amusement and gratification. If Miss Sissie had written it
on purpose in order to open Cecil Holsworthy's eyes, she couldn't have
managed the matter better or more effectually. It breathed ardent love,
tempered by a determination to sell her charms in the best and highest
matrimonial market.

“Now, I know this man, C.,” I said when I had finished. “And I want to
ask whether you will let me show him Miss Montague's letter. It would
set him against the girl, who, as a matter of fact, is wholly unwor--I
mean totally unfitted for him.”

“Let you show it to him? Like a bird! Why, Sissie promised me herself
that if she couldn't bring 'that solemn ass, C.,' up to the scratch by
Christmas, she'd chuck him and marry me. It's here, in writing.” And he
handed me another gem of epistolary literature.

“You have no compunctions?” I asked again, after reading it.

“Not a blessed compunction to my name.”

“Then neither have I,” I answered.

I felt they both deserved it. Sissie was a minx, as Hilda rightly
judged; while as for Nettlecraft--well, if a public school and an
English university leave a man a cad, a cad he will be, and there is
nothing more to be said about it.

I went straight off with the letters to Cecil Holsworthy. He read them
through, half incredulously at first; he was too honest-natured himself
to believe in the possibility of such double-dealing--that one could
have innocent eyes and golden hair and yet be a trickster. He read them
twice; then he compared them word for word with the simple affection and
childlike tone of his own last letter received from the same lady. Her
versatility of style would have done honour to a practised literary
craftsman. At last he handed them back to me. “Do you think,” he said,
“on the evidence of these, I should be doing wrong in breaking with
her?”

“Wrong in breaking with her!” I exclaimed. “You would be doing wrong if
you didn't,--wrong to yourself; wrong to your family; wrong, if I may
venture to say so, to Daphne; wrong even in the long run to the girl
herself; for she is not fitted for you, and she IS fitted for Reggie
Nettlecraft. Now, do as I bid you. Sit down at once and write her a
letter from my dictation.”

He sat down and wrote, much relieved that I took the responsibility off
his shoulders.


“DEAR MISS MONTAGUE,” I began, “the inclosed letters have come into
my hands without my seeking it. After reading them, I feel that I
have absolutely no right to stand between you and the man of your real
choice. It would not be kind or wise of me to do so. I release you
at once, and consider myself released. You may therefore regard our
engagement as irrevocably cancelled.

“Faithfully yours,

“CECIL HOLSWORTHY.”


“Nothing more than that?” he asked, looking up and biting his pen. “Not
a word of regret or apology?”

“Not a word,” I answered. “You are really too lenient.”

I made him take it out and post it before he could invent conscientious
scruples. Then he turned to me irresolutely. “What shall I do next?” he
asked, with a comical air of doubt.

I smiled. “My dear fellow, that is a matter for your own consideration.”

“But--do you think she will laugh at me?”

“Miss Montague?”

“No! Daphne.”

“I am not in not in Daphne's confidence,” I answered. “I don't know how
she feels. But, on the face of it, I think I can venture to assure you
that at least she won't laugh at you.”

He grasped my hand hard. “You don't mean to say so!” he cried. “Well,
that's really very, kind of her! A girl of Daphne's high type! And I,
who feel myself so utterly unworthy of her!”

“We are all unworthy of a good woman's love,” I answered. “But, thank
Heaven, the good women don't seem to realise it.”

That evening, about ten, my new friend came back in a hurry to my rooms
at St. Nathaniel's. Nurse Wade was standing there, giving her report
for the night when he entered. His face looked some inches shorter and
broader than usual. His eyes beamed. His mouth was radiant.

“Well, you won't believe it, Dr. Cumberledge,” he began; “but--”

“Yes, I DO believe it,” I answered. “I know it. I have read it already.”

“Read it!” he cried. “Where?”

I waved my hand towards his face. “In a special edition of the evening
papers,” I answered, smiling. “Daphne has accepted you!”

He sank into an easy chair, beside himself with rapture. “Yes, yes; that
angel! Thanks to YOU, she has accepted me!”

“Thanks to Miss Wade,” I said, correcting him. “It is really all HER
doing. If SHE had not seen through the photograph to the face, and
through the face to the woman and the base little heart of her, we might
never have found her out.”

He turned to Hilda with eyes all gratitude. “You have given me the
dearest and best girl on earth,” he cried, seizing both her hands.

“And I have given Daphne a husband who will love and appreciate her,”
 Hilda answered, flushing.

“You see,” I said, maliciously; “I told you they never find us out,
Holsworthy!”

As for Reggie Nettlecraft and his wife, I should like to add that they
are getting on quite as well as could be expected. Reggie has joined
his Sissie on the music-hall stage; and all those who have witnessed his
immensely popular performance of the Drunken Gentleman before the Bow
Street Police Court acknowledge without reserve that, after “failing
for everything,” he has dropped at last into his true vocation. His
impersonation of the part is said to be “nature itself.” I see no reason
to doubt it.



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.”



CHAPTER IV

THE EPISODE OF THE MAN WHO WOULD NOT COMMIT SUICIDE


After my poor friend Le Geyt had murdered his wife, in a sudden access
of uncontrollable anger, under the deepest provocation, the police
naturally began to inquire for him. It is a way they have; the police
are no respecters of persons; neither do they pry into the question of
motives. They are but poor casuists. A murder is for them a murder, and
a murderer a murderer; it is not their habit to divide and distinguish
between case and case with Hilda Wade's analytical accuracy.

As soon as my duties at St. Nathaniel's permitted me, on the evening of
the discovery, I rushed round to Mrs. Mallet's, Le Geyt's sister. I
had been detained at the hospital for some hours, however, watching a
critical case; and by the time I reached Great Stanhope Street I found
Hilda Wade, in her nurse's dress, there before me. Sebastian, it seemed,
had given her leave out for the evening. She was a supernumerary nurse,
attached to his own observation-cots as special attendant for scientific
purposes, and she could generally get an hour or so whenever she
required it.

Mrs. Mallet had been in the breakfast-room with Hilda before I arrived;
but as I reached the house she rushed upstairs to wash her red eyes and
compose herself a little before the strain of meeting me; so I had the
opportunity for a few words alone first with my prophetic companion.

“You said just now at Nathaniel's,” I burst out, “that Le Geyt would
not be hanged: he would commit suicide. What did you mean by that? What
reason had you for thinking so?”

Hilda sank into a chair by the open window, pulled a flower abstractedly
from the vase at her side, and began picking it to pieces, floret after
floret, with twitching fingers. She was deeply moved. “Well, consider
his family history,” she burst out at last, looking up at me with her
large brown eyes as she reached the last petal. “Heredity counts.... And
after such a disaster!”

She said “disaster,” not “crime”; I noted mentally the reservation
implied in the word.

“Heredity counts,” I answered. “Oh, yes. It counts much. But what about
Le Geyt's family history?” I could not recall any instance of suicide
among his forbears.

“Well--his mother's father was General Faskally, you know,” she replied,
after a pause, in her strange, oblique manner. “Mr. Le Geyt is General
Faskally's eldest grandson.”

“Exactly,” I broke in, with a man's desire for solid fact in place of
vague intuition. “But I fail to see quite what that has to do with it.”

“The General was killed in India during the Mutiny.”

“I remember, of course--killed, bravely fighting.”

“Yes; but it was on a forlorn hope, for which he volunteered, and in
the course of which he is said to have walked straight into an almost
obvious ambuscade of the enemy's.”

“Now, my dear Miss Wade”--I always dropped the title of “Nurse,” by
request, when once we were well clear of Nathaniel's,--“I have every
confidence, you are aware, in your memory and your insight; but I do
confess I fail to see what bearing this incident can have on poor Hugo's
chances of being hanged or committing suicide.”

She picked a second flower, and once more pulled out petal after petal.
As she reached the last again, she answered, slowly: “You must have
forgotten the circumstances. It was no mere accident. General Faskally
had made a serious strategical blunder at Jhansi. He had sacrificed
the lives of his subordinates needlessly. He could not bear to face the
survivors. In the course of the retreat, he volunteered to go on this
forlorn hope, which might equally well have been led by an officer of
lower rank; and he was permitted to do so by Sir Colin in command, as a
means of retrieving his lost military character. He carried his point,
but he carried it recklessly, taking care to be shot through the heart
himself in the first onslaught. That was virtual suicide--honourable
suicide to avoid disgrace, at a moment of supreme remorse and horror.”

“You are right,” I admitted, after a minute's consideration. “I see it
now--though I should never have thought of it.”

“That is the use of being a woman,” she answered.

I waited a second once more, and mused. “Still, that is only one
doubtful case,” I objected.

“There was another, you must remember: his uncle Alfred.”

“Alfred Le Geyt?”

“No; HE died in his bed, quietly. Alfred Faskally.”

“What a memory you have!” I cried, astonished. “Why, that was before our
time--in the days of the Chartist riots!”

She smiled a certain curious sibylline smile of hers. Her earnest face
looked prettier than ever. “I told you I could remember many things that
happened before I was born,” she answered. “THIS is one of them.”

“You remember it directly?”

“How impossible! Have I not often explained to you that I am no diviner?
I read no book of fate; I call no spirits from the vasty deep. I simply
remember with exceptional clearness what I read and hear. And I have
many times heard the story about Alfred Faskally.”

“So have I--but I forget it.”

“Unfortunately, I CAN'T forget. That is a sort of disease with me.... He
was a special constable in the Chartist riots; and being a very strong
and powerful man, like his nephew Hugo, he used his truncheon--his
special constable's baton, or whatever you call it--with excessive force
upon a starveling London tailor in the mob near Charing Cross. The man
was hit on the forehead--badly hit, so that he died almost immediately
of concussion of the brain. A woman rushed out of the crowd at once,
seized the dying man, laid his head on her lap, and shrieked out in
a wildly despairing voice that he was her husband, and the father of
thirteen children. Alfred Faskally, who never meant to kill the man,
or even to hurt him, but who was laying about him roundly, without
realising the terrific force of his blows, was so horrified at what he
had done when he heard the woman's cry, that he rushed off straight to
Waterloo Bridge in an agony of remorse and--flung himself over. He was
drowned instantly.”

“I recall the story now,” I answered; “but, do you know, as it was told
me, I think they said the mob THREW Faskally over in their desire for
vengeance.”

“That is the official account, as told by the Le Geyts and the
Faskallys; they like to have it believed their kinsman was murdered, not
that he committed suicide. But my grandfather”--I started; during the
twelve months that I had been brought into daily relations with Hilda
Wade, that was the first time I had heard her mention any member of her
own family, except once her mother--“my grandfather, who knew him well,
and who was present in the crowd at the time, assured me many times that
Alfred Faskally really jumped over of his own accord, NOT pursued by the
mob, and that his last horrified words as he leaped were, 'I never meant
it! I never meant it!' However, the family have always had luck in their
suicides. The jury believed the throwing-over story, and found a verdict
of 'wilful murder' against some person or persons unknown.”

“Luck in their suicides! What a curious phrase! And you say, ALWAYS.
Were there other cases, then?”

“Constructively, yes; one of the Le Geyts, you must recollect, went down
with his ship (just like his uncle, the General, in India) when he might
have quitted her. It is believed he had given a mistaken order. You
remember, of course, he was navigating lieutenant. Another, Marcus, was
SAID to have shot himself by accident while cleaning his gun--after a
quarrel with his wife. But you have heard all about it. 'The wrong was
on my side,' he moaned, you know, when they picked him up, dying, in the
gun-room. And one of the Faskally girls, his cousin, of whom his wife
was jealous--that beautiful Linda--became a Catholic, and went into a
convent at once on Marcus's death; which, after all, in such cases, is
merely a religious and moral way of committing suicide--I mean, for a
woman who takes the veil just to cut herself off from the world, and who
has no vocation, as I hear she had not.”

She filled me with amazement. “That is true,” I exclaimed, “when one
comes to think of it. It shows the same temperament in fibre.... But I
should never have thought of it.”

“No? Well, I believe it is true, for all that. In every case, one
sees they choose much the same way of meeting a reverse, a blunder, an
unpremeditated crime. The brave way is to go through with it, and face
the music, letting what will come; the cowardly way is to hide one's
head incontinently in a river, a noose, or a convent cell.”

“Le Geyt is not a coward,” I interposed, with warmth.

“No, not, a coward--a manly spirited, great-hearted gentleman--but
still, not quite of the bravest type. He lacks one element. The Le Geyts
have physical courage--enough and to spare--but their moral courage
fails them at a pinch. They rush into suicide or its equivalent at
critical moments, out of pure boyish impulsiveness.”

A few minutes later, Mrs. Mallet came in. She was not broken down--on
the contrary, she was calm--stoically, tragically, pitiably calm;
with that ghastly calmness which is more terrible by far than the most
demonstrative grief. Her face, though deadly white, did not move a
muscle. Not a tear was in her eyes. Even her bloodless hands hardly
twitched at the folds of her hastily assumed black gown. She clenched
them after a minute when she had grasped mine silently; I could see that
the nails dug deep into the palms in her painful resolve to keep herself
from collapsing.

Hilda Wade, with infinite sisterly tenderness, led her over to a chair
by the window in the summer twilight, and took one quivering hand in
hers. “I have been telling Dr. Cumberledge, Lina, about what I most fear
for your dear brother, darling; and... I think... he agrees with me.”

Mrs. Mallet turned to me, with hollow eyes, still preserving her tragic
calm. “I am afraid of it, too,” she said, her drawn lips tremulous. “Dr.
Cumberledge, we must get him back! We must induce him to face it!”

“And yet,” I answered, slowly, turning it over in my own mind; “he
has run away at first. Why should he do that if he means--to commit
suicide?” I hated to utter the words before that broken soul; but there
was no way out of it.

Hilda interrupted me with a quiet suggestion. “How do you know he has
run away?” she asked. “Are you not taking it for granted that, if he
meant suicide, he would blow his brains out in his own house? But surely
that would not be the Le Geyt way. They are gentle-natured folk; they
would never blow their brains out or cut their throats. For all we know,
he may have made straight for Waterloo Bridge,”--she framed her lips to
the unspoken words, unseen by Mrs. Mallet,--“like his uncle Alfred.”

“That is true,” I answered, lip-reading. “I never thought of that
either.”

“Still, I do not attach importance to this idea,” she went on. “I have
some reason for thinking he has run away... elsewhere; and if so, our
first task must be to entice him back again.”

“What are your reasons?” I asked, humbly. Whatever they might be, I knew
enough of Hilda Wade by this time to know that she had probably good
grounds for accepting them.

“Oh, they may wait for the present,” she answered. “Other things are
more pressing. First, let Lina tell us what she thinks of most moment.”

Mrs. Mallet braced herself up visibly to a distressing effort. “You have
seen the body, Dr. Cumberledge?” she faltered.

“No, dear Mrs. Mallet, I have not. I came straight from Nathaniel's. I
have had no time to see it.”

“Dr. Sebastian has viewed it by my wish--he has been so kind--and he
will be present as representing the family at the post-mortem. He notes
that the wound was inflicted with a dagger--a small ornamental Norwegian
dagger, which always lay, as I know, on the little what-not by the blue
sofa.”

I nodded assent. “Exactly; I have seen it there.”

“It was blunt and rusty--a mere toy knife--not at all the sort of weapon
a man would make use of who designed to commit a deliberate murder. The
crime, if there WAS a crime (which we do not admit), must therefore have
been wholly unpremeditated.”

I bowed my head. “For us who knew Hugo that goes without saying.”

She leaned forward eagerly. “Dr. Sebastian has pointed out to me a line
of defence which would probably succeed--if we could only induce poor
Hugo to adopt it. He has examined the blade and scabbard, and finds that
the dagger fits its sheath very tight, so that it can only be withdrawn
with considerable violence. The blade sticks.” (I nodded again.) “It
needs a hard pull to wrench it out.... He has also inspected the
wound, and assures me its character is such that it MIGHT have been
self-inflicted.” She paused now and again, and brought out her words
with difficulty. “Self-inflicted, he suggests; therefore, that THIS may
have happened. It is admitted--WILL be admitted--the servants overheard
it--we can make no reservation there--a difference of opinion, an
altercation, even, took place between Hugo and Clara that evening”--she
started suddenly--“why, it was only last night--it seems like ages--an
altercation about the children's schooling. Clara held strong views on
the subject of the children”--her eyes blinked hard--“which Hugo did not
share. We throw out the hint, then, that Clara, during the course of the
dispute--we must call it a dispute--accidentally took up this dagger and
toyed with it. You know her habit of toying, when she had no knitting or
needlework. In the course of playing with it (we suggest) she tried to
pull the knife out of its sheath; failed; held it up, so, point upward;
pulled again; pulled harder--with a jerk, at last the sheath came off;
the dagger sprang up; it wounded Clara fatally. Hugo, knowing that they
had disagreed, knowing that the servants had heard, and seeing her
fall suddenly dead before him, was seized with horror--the Le Geyt
impulsiveness!--lost his head; rushed out; fancied the accident would be
mistaken for murder. But why? A Q.C., don't you know! Recently married!
Most attached to his wife. It is plausible, isn't it?”

“So plausible,” I answered, looking it straight in the face, “that... it
has but one weak point. We might make a coroner's jury or even a common
jury accept it, on Sebastian's expert evidence. Sebastian can work
wonders; but we could never make--”

Hilda Wade finished the sentence for me as I paused: “Hugo Le Geyt
consent to advance it.”

I lowered my head. “You have said it,” I answered.

“Not for the children's sake?” Mrs. Mallet cried, with clasped hands.

“Not for the children's sake, even,” I answered. “Consider for a moment,
Mrs. Mallet: IS it true? Do you yourself BELIEVE it?”

She threw herself back in her chair with a dejected face. “Oh, as for
that,” she cried, wearily, crossing her hands, “before you and Hilda,
who know all, what need to prevaricate? How CAN I believe it? We
understand how it came about. That woman! That woman!”

“The real wonder is,” Hilda murmured, soothing her white hand, “that he
contained himself so long!”

“Well, we all know Hugo,” I went on, as quietly as I was able; “and,
knowing Hugo, we know that he might be urged to commit this wild act in
a fierce moment of indignation--righteous indignation on behalf of his
motherless girls, under tremendous provocation. But we also know
that, having once committed it, he would never stoop to disown it by a
subterfuge.”

The heart-broken sister let her head drop faintly. “So Hilda told me,”
 she murmured; “and what Hilda says in these matters is almost always
final.”

We debated the question for some minutes more. Then Mrs. Mallet cried
at last: “At any rate, he has fled for the moment, and his flight alone
brings the worst suspicion upon him. That is our chief point. We must
find out where he is; and if he has gone right away, we must bring him
back to London.”

“Where do you think he has taken refuge?”

“The police, Dr. Sebastian has ascertained, are watching the railway
stations, and the ports for the Continent.”

“Very like the police!” Hilda exclaimed, with more than a touch of
contempt in her voice. “As if a clever man-of-the-world like Hugo
Le Geyt would run away by rail, or start off to the Continent! Every
Englishman is noticeable on the Continent. It would be sheer madness!”

“You think he has not gone there, then?” I cried, deeply interested.

“Of course not. That is the point I hinted at just now. He has defended
many persons accused of murder, and he often spoke to me of their
incredible folly, when trying to escape, in going by rail, or in setting
out from England for Paris. An Englishman, he used to say, is least
observed in his own country. In this case, I think I KNOW where he has
gone, how he went there.”

“Where, then?”

“WHERE comes last; HOW first. It is a question of inference.”

“Explain. We know your powers.”

“Well, I take it for granted that he killed her--we must not mince
matters--about twelve o'clock; for after that hour, the servants told
Lina, there was quiet in the drawing-room. Next, I conjecture, he went
upstairs to change his clothes: he could not go forth on the world in
an evening suit; and the housemaid says his black coat and trousers were
lying as usual on a chair in his dressing-room--which shows at least
that he was not unduly flurried. After that, he put on another suit,
no doubt--WHAT suit I hope the police will not discover too soon; for
I suppose you must just accept the situation that we are conspiring to
defeat the ends of justice.”

“No, no!” Mrs. Mallet cried. “To bring him back voluntarily, that he may
face his trial like a man!”

“Yes, dear. That is quite right. However, the next thing, of course,
would be that he would shave in whole or in part. His big black beard
was so very conspicuous; he would certainly get rid of that before
attempting to escape. The servants being in bed, he was not pressed for
time; he had the whole night before him. So, of course, he shaved.
On the other hand, the police, you may be sure, will circulate his
photograph--we must not shirk these points”--for Mrs. Mallet winced
again--“will circulate his photograph, BEARD AND ALL; and that will
really be one of our great safeguards; for the bushy beard so masks the
face that, without it, Hugo would be scarcely recognisable. I conclude,
therefore, that he must have shorn himself BEFORE leaving home; though
naturally I did not make the police a present of the hint by getting
Lina to ask any questions in that direction of the housemaid.”

“You are probably right,” I answered. “But would he have a razor?”

“I was coming to that. No; certainly he would not. He had not shaved for
years. And they kept no men-servants; which makes it difficult for him
to borrow one from a sleeping man. So what he would do would doubtless
be to cut off his beard, or part of it, quite close, with a pair of
scissors, and then get himself properly shaved next morning in the first
country town he came to.”

“The first country town?”

“Certainly. That leads up to the next point. We must try to be cool and
collected.” She was quivering with suppressed emotion herself, as she
said it, but her soothing hand still lay on Mrs. Mallet's. “The next
thing is--he would leave London.”

“But not by rail, you say?”

“He is an intelligent man, and in the course of defending others has
thought about this matter. Why expose himself to the needless risk and
observation of a railway station? No; I saw at once what he would
do. Beyond doubt, he would cycle. He always wondered it was not done
oftener, under similar circumstances.”

“But has his bicycle gone?”

“Lina looked. It has not. I should have expected as much. I told her to
note that point very unobtrusively, so as to avoid giving the police the
clue. She saw the machine in the outer hall as usual.”

“He is too good a criminal lawyer to have dreamt of taking his own,”
 Mrs. Mallet interposed, with another effort.

“But where could he have hired or bought one at that time of night?” I
exclaimed.

“Nowhere--without exciting the gravest suspicion. Therefore, I conclude,
he stopped in London for the night, sleeping at an hotel, without
luggage, and paying for his room in advance. It is frequently done, and
if he arrived late, very little notice would be taken of him. Big hotels
about the Strand, I am told, have always a dozen such casual bachelor
guests every evening.”

“And then?”

“And then, this morning, he would buy a new bicycle--a different make
from his own, at the nearest shop; would rig himself out, at
some ready-made tailor's, with a fresh tourist suit--probably
an ostentatiously tweedy bicycling suit; and, with that in his
luggage-carrier, would make straight on his machine for the country.
He could change in some copse, and bury his own clothes, avoiding the
blunders he has seen in others. Perhaps he might ride for the first
twenty or thirty miles out of London to some minor side-station, and
then go on by train towards his destination, quitting the rail again
at some unimportant point where the main west road crosses the Great
Western or the South-Western line.”

“Great Western or South-Western? Why those two in particular? Then, you
have settled in your own mind which direction he has taken?”

“Pretty well. I judge by analogy. Lina, your brother was brought up in
the West Country, was he not?”

Mrs. Mallet gave a weary nod. “In North Devon,” she answered; “on the
wild stretch of moor about Hartland and Clovelly.”

Hilda Wade seemed to collect herself. “Now, Mr. Le Geyt is essentially
a Celt--a Celt in temperament,” she went on; “he comes by origin and
ancestry from a rough, heather-clad country; he belongs to the moorland.
In other words, his type is the mountaineer's. But a mountaineer's
instinct in similar circumstances is--what? Why, to fly straight to his
native mountains. In an agony of terror, in an access of despair, when
all else fails, he strikes a bee-line for the hills he loves; rationally
or irrationally, he seems to think he can hide there. Hugo Le Geyt, with
his frank boyish nature, his great Devonian frame, is sure to have done
so. I know his mood. He has made for the West Country!”

“You are, right, Hilda,” Mrs. Mallet exclaimed, with conviction. “I'm
quite sure, from what I know of Hugo, that to go to the West would be
his first impulse.”

“And the Le Geyts are always governed by first impulses,” my
character-reader added.

She was quite correct. From the time we two were at Oxford together--I
as an undergraduate, he as a don--I had always noticed that marked trait
in my dear old friend's temperament.

After a short pause, Hilda broke the silence again. “The sea again; the
sea! The Le Geyts love the water. Was there any place on the sea where
he went much as a boy--any lonely place, I mean, in that North Devon
district?”

Mrs. Mallet reflected a moment. “Yes, there was a little bay--a mere
gap in high cliffs, with some fishermen's huts and a few yards
of beach--where he used to spend much of his holidays. It was a
weird-looking break in a grim sea-wall of dark-red rocks, where the tide
rose high, rolling in from the Atlantic.”

“The very thing! Has he visited it since he grew up?”

“To my knowledge, never.”

Hilda's voice had a ring of certainty. “Then THAT is where we shall find
him, dear! We must look there first. He is sure to revisit just such a
solitary spot by the sea when trouble overtakes him.”

Later in the evening, as we were walking home towards Nathaniel's
together, I asked Hilda why she had spoken throughout with such
unwavering confidence. “Oh, it was simple enough,” she answered. “There
were two things that helped me through, which I didn't like to mention
in detail before Lina. One was this: the Le Geyts have all of them an
instinctive horror of the sight of blood; therefore, they almost never
commit suicide by shooting themselves or cutting their throats. Marcus,
who shot himself in the gun-room, was an exception to both rules; he
never minded blood; he could cut up a deer. But Hugo refused to be a
doctor, because he could not stand the sight of an operation; and even
as a sportsman he never liked to pick up or handle the game he had shot
himself; he said it sickened him. He rushed from that room last night,
I feel sure, in a physical horror at the deed he had done; and by now
he is as far as he can get from London. The sight of his act drove him
away; not craven fear of an arrest. If the Le Geyts kill themselves--a
seafaring race on the whole--their impulse is to trust to water.”

“And the other thing?”

“Well, that was about the mountaineer's homing instinct. I have often
noticed it. I could give you fifty instances, only I didn't like to
speak of them before Lina. There was Williams, for example, the Dolgelly
man who killed a game-keeper at Petworth in a poaching affray; he was
taken on Cader Idris, skulking among rocks, a week later. Then there
was that unhappy young fellow, Mackinnon, who shot his sweetheart at
Leicester; he made, straight as the crow flies, for his home in the
Isle of Skye, and there drowned himself in familiar waters. Lindner, the
Tyrolese, again, who stabbed the American swindler at Monte Carlo,
was tracked after a few days to his native place, St. Valentin, in
the Zillerthal. It is always so. Mountaineers in distress fly to their
mountains. It is a part of their nostalgia. I know it from within, too:
if _I_ were in poor Hugo LeGeyt's place, what do you think I would do?
Why, hide myself at once in the greenest recesses of our Carnarvonshire
mountains.”

“What an extraordinary insight into character you have!” I cried.
“You seem to divine what everybody's action will be under given
circumstances.”

She paused, and held her parasol half poised in her hand. “Character
determines action,” she said, slowly, at last. “That is the secret
of the great novelists. They put themselves behind and within their
characters, and so make us feel that every act of their personages
is not only natural but even--given the conditions--inevitable.
We recognise that their story is the sole logical outcome of the
interaction of their dramatis personae. Now, _I_ am not a great
novelist; I cannot create and imagine characters and situations. But I
have something of the novelist's gift; I apply the same method to the
real life of the people around me. I try to throw myself into the person
of others, and to feel how their character will compel them to act in
each set of circumstances to which they may expose themselves.”

“In one word,” I said, “you are a psychologist.”

“A psychologist,” she assented; “I suppose so; and the police--well, the
police are not; they are at best but bungling materialists. They require
a CLUE. What need of a CLUE if you can interpret character?”

So certain was Hilda Wade of her conclusions, indeed, that Mrs. Mallet
begged me next day to take my holiday at once--which I could easily
do--and go down to the little bay in the Hartland district of which she
had spoken, in search of Hugo. I consented. She herself proposed to set
out quietly for Bideford, where she could be within easy reach of me, in
order to hear of my success or failure; while Hilda Wade, whose summer
vacation was to have begun in two days' time, offered to ask for an
extra day's leave so as to accompany her. The broken-hearted sister
accepted the offer; and, secrecy being above all things necessary,
we set off by different routes: the two women by Waterloo, myself by
Paddington.

We stopped that night at different hotels in Bideford; but next morning,
Hilda rode out on her bicycle, and accompanied me on mine for a mile or
two along the tortuous way towards Hartland. “Take nothing for granted,”
 she said, as we parted; “and be prepared to find poor Hugo Le Geyt's
appearance greatly changed. He has eluded the police and their 'clues'
so far; therefore, I imagine he must have largely altered his dress and
exterior.”

“I will find him,” I answered, “if he is anywhere within twenty miles of
Hartland.”

She waved her hand to me in farewell. I rode on after she left me
towards the high promontory in front, the wildest and least-visited part
of North Devon. Torrents of rain had fallen during the night; the slimy
cart-ruts and cattle-tracks on the moor were brimming with water. It
was a lowering day. The clouds drifted low. Black peat-bogs filled the
hollows; grey stone homesteads, lonely and forbidding, stood out here
and there against the curved sky-line. Even the high road was uneven and
in places flooded. For an hour I passed hardly a soul. At last, near a
crossroad with a defaced finger-post, I descended from my machine, and
consulted my ordnance map, on which Mrs. Mallet had marked ominously,
with a cross of red rink, the exact position of the little fishing
hamlet where Hugo used to spend his holidays. I took the turning which
seemed to me most likely to lead to it; but the tracks were so confused,
and the run of the lanes so uncertain--let alone the map being some
years out of date--that I soon felt I had lost my bearings. By a little
wayside inn, half hidden in a deep combe, with bog on every side, I
descended and asked for a bottle of ginger-beer; for the day was hot and
close, in spite of the packed clouds. As they were opening the bottle, I
inquired casually the way to the Red Gap bathing-place.

The landlord gave me directions which confused me worse than ever,
ending at last with the concise remark: “An' then, zur, two or dree more
turns to the right an' to the left 'ull bring 'ee right up alongzide o'
ut.”

I despaired of finding the way by these unintelligible sailing-orders;
but just at that moment, as luck would have it, another cyclist flew
past--the first soul I had seen on the road that morning. He was a man
with the loose-knit air of a shop assistant, badly got up in a
rather loud and obtrusive tourist suit of brown homespun, with baggy
knickerbockers and thin thread stockings. I judged him a gentleman on
the cheap at sight. “Very Stylish; this Suit Complete, only thirty-seven
and sixpence!” The landlady glanced out at him with a friendly nod. He
turned and smiled at her, but did not see me; for I stood in the shade
behind the half-open door. He had a short black moustache and a not
unpleasing, careless face. His features, I thought, were better than his
garments.

However, the stranger did not interest me just then I was far too full
of more important matters. “Why don't 'ee taake an' vollow thik ther
gen'leman, zur?” the landlady said, pointing one large red hand after
him. “Ur do go down to Urd Gap to zwim every marnin'. Mr. Jan Smith, o'
Oxford, they do call un. 'Ee can't go wrong if 'ee do vollow un to the
Gap. Ur's lodgin' up to wold Varmer Moore's, an' ur's that vond o' the
zay, the vishermen do tell me, as wasn't never any gen'leman like un.”

I tossed off my ginger-beer, jumped on to my machine, and followed
the retreating brown back of Mr. John Smith, of Oxford--surely a most
non-committing name--round sharp corners and over rutty lanes, tire-deep
in mud, across the rusty-red moor, till, all at once, at a turn, a gap
of stormy sea appeared wedge-shape between two shelving rock-walls.

It was a lonely spot. Rocks hemmed it in; big breakers walled it. The
sou'-wester roared through the gap. I rode down among loose stones and
water-worn channels in the solid grit very carefully. But the man in
brown had torn over the wild path with reckless haste, zigzagging madly,
and was now on the little three-cornered patch of beach, undressing
himself with a sort of careless glee, and flinging his clothes down
anyhow on the shingle beside him. Something about the action caught my
eye. That movement of the arm! It was not--it could not be--no, no, not
Hugo!

A very ordinary person; and Le Geyt bore the stamp of a born gentleman.

He stood up bare at last. He flung out his arms, as if to welcome
the boisterous wind to his naked bosom. Then, with a sudden burst of
recognition, the man stood revealed. We had bathed together a hundred
times in London and elsewhere. The face, the clad figure, the dress, all
were different. But the body--the actual frame and make of the man--the
well-knit limbs, the splendid trunk--no disguise could alter. It was Le
Geyt himself--big, powerful, vigorous.

That ill-made suit, those baggy knickerbockers, the slouched cap, the
thin thread stockings, had only distorted and hidden his figure. Now
that I saw him as he was, he came out the same bold and manly form as
ever.

He did not notice me. He rushed down with a certain wild joy into the
turbulent water, and, plunging in with a loud cry, buffeted the huge
waves with those strong curving arms of his. The sou'-wester was rising.
Each breaker as it reared caught him on its crest and tumbled him over
like a cork, but like a cork he rose again. He was swimming now, arm
over arm, straight out seaward. I saw the lifted hands between the crest
and the trough. For a moment I hesitated whether I ought to strip
and follow him. Was he doing as so many others of his house had
done--courting death from the water?

But some strange hand restrained me. Who was I that I should stand
between Hugo Le Geyt and the ways of Providence?

The Le Geyts loved ever the ordeal by water.

Presently, he turned again. Before he turned, I had taken the
opportunity to look hastily at his clothes. Hilda Wade had surmised
aright once more. The outer suit was a cheap affair from a big
ready-made tailor's in St. Martin's Lane--turned out by the thousand;
the underclothing, on the other hand, was new and unmarked, but fine
in quality--bought, no doubt, at Bideford. An eerie sense of doom stole
over me. I felt the end was near. I withdrew behind a big rock, and
waited there unseen till Hugo had landed. He began to dress again,
without troubling to dry himself. I drew a deep breath of relief. Then
this was not suicide!

By the time he had pulled on his vest and drawers, I came out suddenly
from my ambush and faced him. A fresh shock awaited me. I could hardly
believe my eyes. It was NOT Le Geyt--no, nor anything like him!

Nevertheless, the man rose with a little cry and advanced, half
crouching, towards me. “YOU are not hunting me down--with the police?”
 he exclaimed, his neck held low and his forehead wrinkling.

The voice--the voice was Le Geyt's. It was an unspeakable mystery.
“Hugo,” I cried, “dear Hugo--hunting you down?--COULD you imagine it?”

He raised his head, strode forward, and grasped my hand. “Forgive me,
Cumberledge,” he cried. “But a proscribed and hounded man! If you knew
what a relief it is to me to get out on the water!”

“You forget all there?”

“I forget IT--the red horror!”

“You meant just now to drown yourself?”

“No! If I had meant it I would have done it.... Hubert, for my
children's sake, I WILL not commit suicide!”

“Then listen!” I cried. I told him in a few words of his sister's
scheme--Sebastian's defence--the plausibility of the explanation--the
whole long story. He gazed at me moodily. Yet it was not Hugo!

“No, no,” he said, shortly; and as he spoke it was HE. “I have done it;
I have killed her; I will not owe my life to a falsehood.”

“Not for the children's sake?”

He dashed his hand down impatiently. “I have a better way for the
children. I will save them still.... Hubert, you are not afraid to speak
to a murderer?”

“Dear Hugo--I know all; and to know all is to forgive all.”

He grasped my hand once more. “Know ALL!” he cried, with a despairing
gesture. “Oh, no; no one knows ALL but myself; not even the children.
But the children know much; THEY will forgive me. Lina knows something;
SHE will forgive me. You know a little; YOU forgive me. The world can
never know. It will brand my darlings as a murderer's children.”

“It was the act of a minute,” I interposed. “And--though she is dead,
poor lady, and one must speak no ill of her--we can at least gather
dimly, for your children's sake, how deep was the provocation.”

He gazed at me fixedly. His voice was like lead. “For the children's
sake--yes,” he answered, as in a dream. “It was all for the children! I
have killed her--murdered her--she has paid her penalty; and, poor dead
soul, I will utter no word against her--the woman I have murdered! But
one thing I will say: If omniscient justice sends me for this to eternal
punishment, I can endure it gladly, like a man, knowing that so I have
redeemed my Marian's motherless girls from a deadly tyranny.”

It was the only sentence in which he ever alluded to her.

I sat down by his side and watched him closely. Mechanically,
methodically, he went on with his dressing. The more he dressed,
the less could I believe it was Hugo. I had expected to find him
close-shaven; so did the police, by their printed notices. Instead
of that, he had shaved his beard and whiskers, but only trimmed his
moustache; trimmed it quite short, so as to reveal the boyish corners
of the mouth--a trick which entirely altered his rugged expression.
But that was not all; what puzzled me most was the eyes--they were not
Hugo's. At first I could not imagine why. By degrees the truth dawned
upon me. His eyebrows were naturally thick and shaggy--great overhanging
growth, interspersed with many of those stiff long hairs to which Darwin
called attention in certain men as surviving traits from a monkey-like
ancestor. In order to disguise himself, Hugo had pulled out all these
coarser hairs, leaving nothing on his brows but the soft and closely
pressed coat of down which underlies the longer bristles in all such
cases. This had wholly altered the expression of the eyes, which no
longer looked out keenly from their cavernous penthouse; but being
deprived of their relief, had acquired a much more ordinary and less
individual aspect. From a good-natured but shaggy giant, my old friend
was transformed by his shaving and his costume into a well-fed and
well-grown, but not very colossal, commercial gentleman. Hugo was
scarcely six feet high, indeed, though by his broad shoulders and bushy
beard he had always impressed one with such a sense of size; and now
that the hirsuteness had been got rid of, and the dress altered, he
hardly struck one as taller or bigger than the average of his fellows.

We sat for some minutes and talked. Le Geyt would not speak of Clara;
and when I asked him his intentions, he shook his head moodily. “I shall
act for the best,” he said--“what of best is left--to guard the dear
children. It was a terrible price to pay for their redemption; but it
was the only one possible, and, in a moment of wrath, I paid it. Now, I
have to pay, in turn, myself. I do not shirk it.”

“You will come back to London, then, and stand your trial?” I asked,
eagerly.

“Come back TO LONDON?” he cried, with a face of white panic. Hitherto
he had seemed to me rather relieved in expression than otherwise;
his countenance had lost its worn and anxious look; he was no longer
watching each moment over his children's safety. “Come back... TO
LONDON... and face my trial! Why, did you think, Hubert, 'twas the court
or the hanging I was shirking? No, no; not that; but IT--the red horror!
I must get away from IT to the sea--to the water--to wash away the
stain--as far from IT--that red pool--as possible!”

I answered nothing. I left him to face his own remorse in silence.

At last he rose to go, and held one foot undecided on his bicycle.

“I leave myself in Heaven's hands,” he said, as he lingered. “IT will
requite.... The ordeal is by water.”

“So I judged,” I answered.

“Tell Lina this from me,” he went on, still loitering: “that if she will
trust me, I will strive to do the best that remains for my darlings. I
will do it, Heaven helping. She will know WHAT, to-morrow.”

He mounted his machine and sailed off. My eyes followed him up the path
with sad forebodings.

All day long I loitered about the Gap. It consisted of two bays--the one
I had already seen, and another, divided from it by a saw-edge of rock.
In the further cove crouched a few low stone cottages. A broad-bottomed
sailing boat lay there, pulled up high on the beach. About three
o'clock, as I sat and watched, two men began to launch it. The sea ran
high; tide coming in; the sou'-wester still increasing in force to a
gale; at the signal-staff on the cliff, the danger-cone was hoisted.
White spray danced in air. Big black clouds rolled up seething from
windward; low thunder rumbling; a storm threatened.

One of the men was Le Geyt, the other a fisherman.

He jumped in, and put off through the surf with an air of triumph. He
was a splendid sailor. His boat leapt through the breakers and flew
before the wind with a mere rag of canvas. “Dangerous weather to be
out!” I exclaimed to the fisherman, who stood with hands buried in his
pockets, watching him.

“Ay that ur be, zur!” the man answered. “Doan't like the look o' ut. But
thik there gen'leman, 'ee's one o' Oxford, 'ee do tell me; and they'm a
main venturesome lot, they college volk. 'Ee's off by 'isself droo the
starm, all so var as Lundy!”

“Will he reach it?” I asked, anxiously, having my own idea on the
subject.

“Doan't seem like ut, zur, do ut? Ur must, an' ur mustn't, an' yit again
ur must. Powerful 'ard place ur be to maake in a starm, to be zure,
Lundy. Zaid the Lord 'ould dezide. But ur 'ouldn't be warned, ur
'ouldn't; an' voolhardy volk, as the zayin' is, must go their own
voolhardy waay to perdition!”

It was the last I saw of Le Geyt alive. Next morning the lifeless body
of “the man who was wanted for the Campden Hill mystery” was cast up by
the waves on the shore of Lundy. The Lord had decided.

Hugo had not miscalculated. “Luck in their suicides,” Hilda Wade said;
and, strange to say, the luck of the Le Geyts stood him in good
stead still. By a miracle of fate, his children were not branded as
a murderer's daughters. Sebastian gave evidence at the inquest on the
wife's body: “Self-inflicted--a recoil--accidental--I am SURE of it.”
 His specialist knowledge--his assertive certainty, combined with that
arrogant, masterful manner of his, and his keen, eagle eye, overbore the
jury. Awed by the great man's look, they brought in a submissive
verdict of “Death by misadventure.” The coroner thought it a most proper
finding. Mrs. Mallet had made the most of the innate Le Geyt horror
of blood. The newspapers charitably surmised that the unhappy husband,
crazed by the instantaneous unexpectedness of his loss, had wandered
away like a madman to the scenes of his childhood, and had there been
drowned by accident while trying to cross a stormy sea to Lundy, under
some wild impression that he would find his dead wife alive on the
island. Nobody whispered MURDER. Everybody dwelt on the utter absence of
motive--a model husband!--such a charming young wife, and such a devoted
stepmother. We three alone knew--we three, and the children.

On the day when the jury brought in their verdict at the adjourned
inquest on Mrs. Le Geyt, Hilda Wade stood in the room, trembling and
white-faced, awaiting their decision. When the foreman uttered the
words, “Death by misadventure,” she burst into tears of relief. “He did
well!” she cried to me, passionately. “He did well, that poor father! He
placed his life in the hands of his Maker, asking only for mercy to his
innocent children. And mercy has been shown to him and to them. He was
taken gently in the way he wished. It would have broken my heart for
those two poor girls if the verdict had gone otherwise. He knew how
terrible a lot it is to be called a murderer's daughter.”

I did not realise at the time with what profound depth of personal
feeling she said it.



CHAPTER V

THE EPISODE OF THE NEEDLE THAT DID NOT MATCH


“Sebastian is a great man,” I said to Hilda Wade, as I sat one afternoon
over a cup of tea she had brewed for me in her own little sitting-room.
It is one of the alleviations of an hospital doctor's lot that he may
drink tea now and again with the Sister of his ward. “Whatever else you
choose to think of him, you must admit he is a very great man.”

I admired our famous Professor, and I admired Hilda Wade: 'twas a
matter of regret to me that my two admirations did not seem in return
sufficiently to admire one another. “Oh, yes,” Hilda answered, pouring
out my second cup; “he is a very great man. I never denied that. The
greatest man, on the whole, I think, that I have ever come across.”

“And he has done splendid work for humanity,” I went on, growing
enthusiastic.

“Splendid work! Yes, splendid! (Two lumps, I believe?) He has done more,
I admit, for medical science than any other man I ever met.”

I gazed at her with a curious glance. “Then why, dear lady, do you keep
telling me he is cruel?” I inquired, toasting my feet on the fender. “It
seems contradictory.”

She passed me the muffins, and smiled her restrained smile.

“Does the desire to do good to humanity in itself imply a benevolent
disposition?” she answered, obliquely.

“Now you are talking in paradox. Surely, if a man works all his life
long for the good of mankind, that shows he is devoured by sympathy for
his species.”

“And when your friend Mr. Bates works all his life long at observing,
and classifying lady-birds, I suppose that shows he is devoured by
sympathy for the race of beetles!”

I laughed at her comical face, she looked at me so quizzically. “But
then,” I objected, “the cases are not parallel. Bates kills and collects
his lady-birds; Sebastian cures and benefits humanity.”

Hilda smiled her wise smile once more, and fingered her apron. “Are the
cases so different as you suppose?” she went on, with her quick glance.
“Is it not partly accident? A man of science, you see, early in life,
takes up, half by chance, this, that, or the other particular form
of study. But what the study is in itself, I fancy, does not greatly
matter; do not mere circumstances as often as not determine it? Surely
it is the temperament, on the whole, that tells: the temperament that is
or is not scientific.”

“How do you mean? You ARE so enigmatic!”

“Well, in a family of the scientific temperament, it seems to me, one
brother may happen to go in for butterflies--may he not?--and another
for geology, or for submarine telegraphs. Now, the man who happens to
take up butterflies does not make a fortune out of his hobby--there is
no money in butterflies; so we say, accordingly, he is an unpractical
person, who cares nothing for business, and who is only happy when he is
out in the fields with a net, chasing emperors and tortoise-shells. But
the man who happens to fancy submarine telegraphy most likely invents a
lot of new improvements, takes out dozens of patents, finds money flow
in upon him as he sits in his study, and becomes at last a peer and a
millionaire; so then we say, What a splendid business head he has got,
to be sure, and how immensely he differs from his poor wool-gathering
brother, the entomologist, who can only invent new ways of hatching
out wire-worms! Yet all may really depend on the first chance direction
which led one brother as a boy to buy a butterfly net, and sent the
other into the school laboratory to dabble with an electric wheel and a
cheap battery.”

“Then you mean to say it is chance that has made Sebastian?”

Hilda shook her pretty head. “By no means. Don't be so stupid. We both
know Sebastian has a wonderful brain. Whatever was the work he undertook
with that brain in science, he would carry it out consummately. He is a
born thinker. It is like this, don't you know.” She tried to arrange her
thoughts. “The particular branch of science to which Mr. Hiram Maxim's
mind happens to have been directed was the making of machine-guns--and
he slays his thousands. The particular branch to which Sebastian's mind
happens to have been directed was medicine--and he cures as many as Mr.
Maxim kills. It is a turn of the hand that makes all the difference.”

“I see,” I said. “The aim of medicine happens to be a benevolent one.”

“Quite so; that's just what I mean. The aim is benevolent; and Sebastian
pursues that aim with the single-minded energy of a lofty, gifted, and
devoted nature--but not a good one!'

“Not good?”

“Oh, no. To be quite frank, he seems to me to pursue it ruthlessly,
cruelly, unscrupulously. He is a man of high ideals, but without
principle. In that respect he reminds one of the great spirits of the
Italian Renaissance--Benvenuto Cellini and so forth--men who could pore
for hours with conscientious artistic care over the detail of a hem in a
sculptured robe, yet could steal out in the midst of their disinterested
toil to plunge a knife in the back of a rival.”

“Sebastian would not do that,” I cried. “He is wholly free from the mean
spirit of jealousy.”

“No, Sebastian would not do that. You are quite right there; there is
no tinge of meanness in the man's nature. He likes to be first in
the field; but he would acclaim with delight another man's scientific
triumph--if another anticipated him; for would it not mean a triumph for
universal science?--and is not the advancement of science Sebastian's
religion? But... he would do almost as much, or more. He would stab a
man without remorse, if he thought that by stabbing him he could advance
knowledge.”

I recognised at once the truth of her diagnosis. “Nurse Wade,” I cried,
“you are a wonderful woman! I believe you are right; but--how did you
come to think of it?”

A cloud passed over her brow. “I have reason to know it,” she answered,
slowly. Then her voice changed. “Take another muffin.”

I helped myself and paused. I laid down my cup, and gazed at her. What a
beautiful, tender, sympathetic face! And yet, how able! She stirred the
fire uneasily. I looked and hesitated. I had often wondered why I never
dared ask Hilda Wade one question that was nearest my heart. I think it
must have been because I respected her so profoundly. The deeper your
admiration and respect for a woman, the harder you find it in the end
to ask her. At last I ALMOST made up my mind. “I cannot think,” I began,
“what can have induced a girl like you, with means and friends, with
brains and”--I drew back, then I plumped it out--“beauty, to take to
such a life as this--a life which seems, in many ways, so unworthy of
you!”

She stirred the fire more pensively than ever, and rearranged the
muffin-dish on the little wrought-iron stand in font of the grate. “And
yet,” she murmured, looking down, “what life can be better than the
service of one's kind? You think it a great life for Sebastian!”

“Sebastian! He is a man. That is different; quite different. But a
woman! Especially YOU, dear lady, for whom one feels that nothing
is quite high enough, quite pure enough, quite good enough. I cannot
imagine how--”

She checked me with one wave of her gracious hand. Her movements were
always slow and dignified. “I have a Plan in my life,” she answered
earnestly, her eyes meeting mine with a sincere, frank gaze; “a Plan to
which I have resolved to sacrifice everything. It absorbs my being. Till
that Plan is fulfilled--” I saw the tears were gathering fast on her
lashes. She suppressed them with an effort. “Say no more,” she added,
faltering. “Infirm of purpose! I WILL not listen.”

I leant forward eagerly, pressing my advantage. The air was electric.
Waves of emotion passed to and fro. “But surely,” I cried, “you do not
mean to say--”

She waved me aside once more. “I will not put my hand to the plough,
and then look back,” she answered, firmly. “Dr. Cumberledge, spare me.
I came to Nathaniel's for a purpose. I told you at the time what that
purpose was--in part: to be near Sebastian. I want to be near him... for
an object I have at heart. Do not ask me to reveal it; do not ask me to
forego it. I am a woman, therefore weak. But I need your aid. Help me,
instead of hindering me.”

“Hilda,” I cried, leaning forward, with quiverings of my heart, “I will
help you in whatever way you will allow me. But let me at any rate help
you with the feeling that I am helping one who means in time--”

At that moment, as unkindly fate would have it, the door opened, and
Sebastian entered.

“Nurse Wade,” he began, in his iron voice, glancing about him with stern
eyes, “where are those needles I ordered for that operation? We must be
ready in time before Nielsen comes.... Cumberledge, I shall want you.”

The golden opportunity had come and gone. It was long before I found a
similar occasion for speaking to Hilda.

Every day after that the feeling deepened upon me that Hilda was there
to watch Sebastian. WHY, I did not know; but it was growing certain
that a life-long duel was in progress between these two--a duel of some
strange and mysterious import.

The first approach to a solution of the problem which I obtained came
a week or two later. Sebastian was engaged in observing a case where
certain unusual symptoms had suddenly supervened. It was a case of some
obscure affection of the heart. I will not trouble you here with the
particular details. We all suspected a tendency to aneurism. Hilda Wade
was in attendance, as she always was on Sebastian's observation cases.
We crowded round, watching. The Professor himself leaned over the cot
with some medicine for external application in a basin. He gave it to
Hilda to hold. I noticed that as she held it her fingers trembled, and
that her eyes were fixed harder than ever upon Sebastian. He turned
round to his students. “Now this,” he began, in a very unconcerned
voice, as if the patient were a toad, “is a most unwonted turn for the
disease to take. It occurs very seldom. In point of fact, I have only
observed the symptom once before; and then it was fatal. The patient in
that instance”--he paused dramatically--“was the notorious poisoner, Dr.
Yorke-Bannerman.”

As he uttered the words, Hilda Wade's hands trembled more than ever, and
with a little scream she let the basin fall, breaking it into fragments.

Sebastian's keen eyes had transfixed her in a second. “How did you
manage to do that?” he asked, with quiet sarcasm, but in a tone full of
meaning.

“The basin was heavy,” Hilda faltered. “My hands were trembling--and it
somehow slipped through them. I am not... quite myself... not quite well
this afternoon. I ought not to have attempted it.”

The Professor's deep-set eyes peered out like gleaming lights from
beneath their overhanging brows. “No; you ought not to have attempted
it,” he answered, withering her with a glance. “You might have let the
thing fall on the patient and killed him. As it is, can't you see
you have agitated him with the flurry? Don't stand there holding your
breath, woman: repair your mischief. Get a cloth and wipe it up, and
give ME the bottle.”

With skilful haste he administered a little sal volatile and nux vomica
to the swooning patient; while Hilda set about remedying the damage.
“That's better,” Sebastian said, in a mollified tone, when she had
brought another basin. There was a singular note of cloaked triumph in
his voice. “Now, we'll begin again.... I was just saying, gentlemen,
before this accident, that I had seen only ONE case of this peculiar
form of the tendency before; and that case was the notorious”--he kept
his glittering eyes fixed harder on Hilda than ever--“the notorious Dr.
Yorke-Bannerman.”

_I_ was watching Hilda, too. At the words, she trembled violently all
over once more, but with an effort restrained herself. Their looks
met in a searching glance. Hilda's air was proud and fearless: in
Sebastian's, I fancied I detected, after a second, just a tinge of
wavering.

“You remember Yorke-Bannerman's case,” he went on. “He committed a
murder--”

“Let ME take the basin!” I cried, for I saw Hilda's hands giving way a
second time, and I was anxious to spare her.

“No, thank you,” she answered low, but in a voice that was full of
suppressed defiance. “I will wait and hear this out. I PREFER to stop
here.”

As for Sebastian, he seemed now not to notice her, though I was aware
all the time of a sidelong glance of his eye, parrot-wise, in
her direction. “He committed a murder,” he went on, “by means of
aconitine--then an almost unknown poison; and, after committing it, his
heart being already weak, he was taken himself with symptoms of aneurism
in a curious form, essentially similar to these; so that he died before
the trial--a lucky escape for him.”

He paused rhetorically once more; then he added in the same tone:
“Mental agitation and the terror of detection no doubt accelerated the
fatal result in that instance. He died at once from the shock of
the arrest. It was a natural conclusion. Here we may hope for a more
successful issue.”

He spoke to the students, of course, but I could see for all that that
he was keeping his falcon eye fixed hard on Hilda's face. I glanced
aside at her. She never flinched for a second. Neither said anything
directly to the other; still, by their eyes and mouths, I knew some
strange passage of arms had taken place between them. Sebastian's tone
was one of provocation, of defiance, I might almost say of challenge.
Hilda's air I took rather for the air of calm and resolute, but assured,
resistance. He expected her to answer; she said nothing. Instead of
that, she went on holding the basin now with fingers that WOULD not
tremble. Every muscle was strained. Every tendon was strung. I could see
she held herself in with a will of iron.

The rest of the episode passed off quietly. Sebastian, having delivered
his bolt, began to think less of Hilda and more of the patient. He
went on with his demonstration. As for Hilda, she gradually relaxed her
muscles, and, with a deep-drawn breath, resumed her natural attitude.
The tension was over. They had had their little skirmish, whatever it
might mean, and had it out; now, they called a truce over the patient's
body.

When the case had been disposed of, and the students dismissed, I went
straight into the laboratory to get a few surgical instruments I had
chanced to leave there. For a minute or two, I mislaid my clinical
thermometer, and began hunting for it behind a wooden partition in the
corner of the room by the place for washing test-tubes. As I stooped
down, turning over the various objects about the tap in my search,
Sebastian's voice came to me. He had paused outside the door, and
was speaking in his calm, clear tone, very low, to Hilda. “So NOW we
understand one another, Nurse Wade,” he said, with a significant sneer.
“I know whom I have to deal with!”

“And _I_ know, too,” Hilda answered, in a voice of placid confidence.

“Yet you are not afraid?”

“It is not _I_ who have cause for fear. The accused may tremble, not the
prosecutor.”

“What! You threaten?”

“No; I do not threaten. Not in words, I mean. My presence here is in
itself a threat, but I make no other. You know now, unfortunately, WHY I
have come. That makes my task harder. But I will NOT give it up. I will
wait and conquer.”

Sebastian answered nothing. He strode into the laboratory alone, tall,
grim, unbending, and let himself sink into his easy chair, looking up
with a singular and somewhat sinister smile at his bottles of microbes.
After a minute he stirred the fire, and bent his head forward, brooding.
He held it between his hands, with his elbows on his knees, and gazed
moodily straight before him into the glowing caves of white-hot coal
in the fireplace. That sinister smile still played lambent around the
corners of his grizzled moustaches.

I moved noiselessly towards the door, trying to pass behind him
unnoticed. But, alert as ever, his quick ears detected me. With a sudden
start, he raised his head and glanced round. “What! you here?” he
cried, taken aback. For a second he appeared almost to lose his
self-possession.

“I came for my clinical,” I answered, with an unconcerned air. “I have
somehow managed to mislay it in the laboratory.”

My carefully casual tone seemed to reassure him. He peered about him
with knit brows. “Cumberledge,” he asked at last, in a suspicious voice,
“did you hear that woman?”

“The woman in 93? Delirious?”

“No, no. Nurse Wade?”

“Hear her?” I echoed, I must candidly admit with intent to deceive.
“When she broke the basin?”

His forehead relaxed. “Oh! it is nothing,” he muttered, hastily. “A mere
point of discipline. She spoke to me just now, and I thought her tone
unbecoming in a subordinate.... Like Korah and his crew, she takes too
much upon her.... We must get rid of her, Cumberledge; we must get rid
of her. She is a dangerous woman!”

“She is the most intelligent nurse we have ever had in the place, sir,”
 I objected, stoutly.

He nodded his head twice. “Intelligent--je vous l'accorde; but
dangerous--dangerous!”

Then he turned to his papers, sorting them out one by one with a
preoccupied face and twitching fingers. I recognised that he desired to
be left alone, so I quitted the laboratory.

I cannot quite say WHY, but ever since Hilda Wade first came to
Nathaniel's my enthusiasm for Sebastian had been cooling continuously.
Admiring his greatness still, I had doubts as to his goodness. That day
I felt I positively mistrusted him. I wondered what his passage of arms
with Hilda might mean. Yet, somehow, I was shy of alluding to it before
her.

One thing, however, was clear to me now--this great campaign that was
being waged between the nurse and the Professor had reference to the
case of Dr. Yorke-Bannerman.

For a time, nothing came of it; the routine of the hospital went on as
usual. The patient with the suspected predisposition to aneurism kept
fairly well for a week or two, and then took a sudden turn for the
worse, presenting at times most unwonted symptoms. He died unexpectedly.
Sebastian, who had watched him every hour, regarded the matter as of
prime importance. “I'm glad it happened here,” he said, rubbing his
hands. “A grand opportunity. I wanted to catch an instance like this
before that fellow in Paris had time to anticipate me. They're all on
the lookout. Von Strahlendorff, of Vienna, has been waiting for just
such a patient for years. So have I. Now fortune has favoured me. Lucky
for us he died! We shall find out everything.”

We held a post-mortem, of course, the condition of the blood being what
we most wished to observe; and the autopsy revealed some unexpected
details. One remarkable feature consisted in a certain undescribed and
impoverished state of the contained bodies which Sebastian, with his
eager zeal for science, desired his students to see and identify.
He said it was likely to throw much light on other ill-understood
conditions of the brain and nervous system, as well as on the peculiar
faint odour of the insane, now so well recognised in all large asylums.
In order to compare this abnormal state with the aspect of the healthy
circulating medium, he proposed to examine a little good living blood
side by side with the morbid specimen under the microscope. Nurse Wade
was in attendance in the laboratory, as usual. The Professor, standing
by the instrument, with one hand on the brass screw, had got the
diseased drop ready arranged for our inspection beforehand, and was
gloating over it himself with scientific enthusiasm. “Grey corpuscles,
you will observe,” he said, “almost entirely deficient. Red, poor in
number, and irregular in outline. Plasma, thin. Nuclei, feeble. A state
of body which tells severely against the due rebuilding of the wasted
tissues. Now compare with typical normal specimen.” He removed his eye
from the microscope, and wiped a glass slide with a clean cloth as
he spoke. “Nurse Wade, we know of old the purity and vigour of your
circulating fluid. You shall have the honour of advancing science once
more. Hold up your finger.”

Hilda held up her forefinger unhesitatingly. She was used to such
requests; and, indeed, Sebastian had acquired by long experience the
faculty of pinching the finger-tip so hard, and pressing the point of a
needle so dexterously into a minor vessel, that he could draw at once a
small drop of blood without the subject even feeling it.

The Professor nipped the last joint between his finger and thumb for a
moment till it was black at the end; then he turned to the saucer at his
side, which Hilda herself had placed there, and chose from it, cat-like,
with great deliberation and selective care, a particular needle. Hilda's
eyes followed his every movement as closely and as fearlessly as
ever. Sebastian's hand was raised, and he was just about to pierce the
delicate white skin, when, with a sudden, quick scream of terror, she
snatched her hand away hastily.

The Professor let the needle drop in his astonishment. “What did you do
that for?” he cried, with an angry dart of the keen eyes. “This is not
the first time I have drawn your blood. You KNEW I would not hurt you.”

Hilda's face had grown strangely pale. But that was not all. I believe
I was the only person present who noticed one unobtrusive piece of
sleight-of-hand which she hurriedly and skilfully executed. When the
needle slipped from Sebastian's hand, she leant forward even as she
screamed, and caught it, unobserved, in the folds of her apron. Then
her nimble fingers closed over it as if by magic, and conveyed it with
a rapid movement at once to her pocket. I do not think even Sebastian
himself noticed the quick forward jerk of her eager hands, which would
have done honour to a conjurer. He was too much taken aback by her
unexpected behaviour to observe the needle.

Just as she caught it, Hilda answered his question in a somewhat
flurried voice. “I--I was afraid,” she broke out, gasping. “One gets
these little accesses of terror now and again. I--I feel rather weak.
I don't think I will volunteer to supply any more normal blood this
morning.”

Sebastian's acute eyes read her through, as so often. With a trenchant
dart he glanced from her to me. I could see he began to suspect a
confederacy. “That will do,” he went on, with slow deliberateness.
“Better so. Nurse Wade, I don't know what's beginning to come over you.
You are losing your nerve--which is fatal in a nurse. Only the other day
you let fall and broke a basin at a most critical moment; and now, you
scream aloud on a trifling apprehension.” He paused and glanced around
him. “Mr. Callaghan,” he said, turning to our tall, red-haired Irish
student, “YOUR blood is good normal, and YOU are not hysterical.” He
selected another needle with studious care. “Give me your finger.”

As he picked out the needle, I saw Hilda lean forward again, alert
and watchful, eyeing him with a piercing glance; but, after a second's
consideration, she seemed to satisfy herself, and fell back without a
word. I gathered that she was ready to interfere, had occasion demanded.
But occasion did not demand; and she held her peace quietly.

The rest of the examination proceeded without a hitch. For a minute or
two, it is true, I fancied that Sebastian betrayed a certain suppressed
agitation--a trifling lack of his accustomed perspicuity and his
luminous exposition. But, after meandering for a while through a few
vague sentences, he soon recovered his wonted calm; and as

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