“I don’t know why she shouldn’t. All women do.”
“Do they?” asked Lady Haigh, with as little sarcasm in her tone as the subject admitted—and Dick was silent, recognising that he had, to use his own phrase, given himself away. His counsellor went on, “I am going to ask you a personal question, Major North. Why do you want to marry Miss Keeling?”
“Because I love her, and I can’t do without her,” very gruffly.
“But why didn’t you fall in love with that beautiful Miss Hervey, whom we met at Mrs Egerton’s before we came out here?”
“Because she is not my sort—an empty-headed doll!”
“Exactly; but if you want a woman without any mind or reason of her own, she would just suit you. She would adore you, and defer to all your wishes when they didn’t clash with any particular fancies of her own, for six months at least, and you would adore her for the same length of time—until you each found the other out. After that, you would know that you had married a fool, and she a tyrant. Georgia is not a fool. She loves you, but she sees your faults, and she has a certain amount of self-respect. If you wanted her to do anything that seemed to her unreasonable, she would talk it over with you, and she might end by refusing to do it, but she would never cry or sulk until you gave it up in despair. It is a great thing to recognise fully that you are both human beings, after all. Georgie doesn’t imagine that the possession of the Victoria Cross necessarily implies that of all the domestic virtues, any more than she believes herself to be perfect because she possesses a London medical degree. She would consider that she had exactly as much right to be the sole arbiter of the house as you had, and that is none at all.”
Dick murmured a feeble protest against this way of looking at things, to which Lady Haigh refused to listen.
“The fact is, you would wish to marry a clever woman, only she must be willing to let herself be treated like a fool. You can’t reconcile two extremes in that way. Georgia has lived her own life, and that a very full and useful one, and you cannot expect her to become a puppet all at once, simply out of love for you. She is used to acting on her own initiative. Well, I will tell you what I learned from her maid, for she won’t talk about it herself. Do you know that when she was at Bir-ul-Malikat, that wicked old woman Khadija tried to get her to lead you and your men into a trap, on the pretence that by calling to you and beckoning you she would warn you of an ambuscade. An ordinary woman would have yielded to the impulse of the moment—I should have myself—and destroyed you, with the purest desire for your safety; but Georgie had the strength of mind to reason the matter out, all in an instant. She refused to call to you, and you were saved. And it is a woman like that whom you expect to fall down and worship your slightest whim!” with intense scorn.
“Not guilty, Lady Haigh. I abjure, I recant—anything! But why didn’t you tell me this before? What an ungrateful brute she must think me!”
“I didn’t begin by telling you of it, because I wanted to make you see reason, instead of working upon your feelings. I’m sure I hope I may have done both.”