"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 ap.r.o.n 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, a.s.saulted by her husband," she went on, with a note of un.o.btrusive 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 a.s.sault their wives, but not, surely, a type of women who get a.s.saulted."
"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 pa.s.sed on a patient"s forehead. The patient glanced grat.i.tude. "That one again," she said once more, half indicating a cot at a little distance: "Number 74. She has much the same thin hair--spa.r.s.e, weak, and colourless. She has much the same curved back, and much the same aggressive, self-a.s.sertive 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 a.s.saulted."
Travers glanced over her shoulder. "Quite true," he a.s.sented, 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 a.s.saulted--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 a.s.sault 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 c.u.m "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 pa.s.sing 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 c.o.c.k-sure to be a.s.saulted."
"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 cla.s.s 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 a.s.sault 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!"