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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Hilda Wade, by Grant Allen
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Hilda Wade
+       A Woman With Tenacity Of Purpose
+
+Author: Grant Allen
+
+Release Date: June 6, 2006 [EBook #4903]
+[Last updated: June 1, 2014]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK HILDA WADE ***
+
+
+
+
+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 he went on
+with his demonstration, throwing himself eagerly into the case, his
+usual scientific enthusiasm came back to him undiminished. He waxed
+eloquent (after his fashion) over the "beautiful" contrast between
+Callaghan's wholesome blood, "rich in the vivifying architectonic grey
+corpuscles which rebuild worn tissues," and the effete, impoverished,
+unvitalised fluid which stagnated in the sluggish veins of the dead
+patient. The carriers of oxygen had neglected their proper task; the
+granules whose duty it was to bring elaborated food-stuffs to supply
+the waste of brain and nerve and muscle had forgotten their cunning.
+The bricklayers of the bodily fabric had gone out on strike; the weary
+scavengers had declined to remove the useless by-products. His vivid
+tongue, his picturesque fancy, ran away with him. I had never heard him
+talk better or more incisively before; one could feel sure, as he spoke,
+that the arteries of his own acute and teeming brain at that moment
+of exaltation were by no means deficient in those energetic and highly
+vital globules on whose reparative worth he so eloquently descanted.
+"Sure, the Professor makes annywan see right inside wan's own vascular
+system," Callaghan whispered aside to me, in unfeigned admiration.
+
+The demonstration ended in impressive silence. As we streamed out of the
+laboratory, aglow with his electric fire, Sebastian held me back with a
+bent motion of his shrivelled forefinger. I stayed behind unwillingly.
+"Yes, sir?" I said, in an interrogative voice.
+
+The Professor's eyes were fixed intently on the ceiling. His look was
+one of rapt inspiration. I stood and waited. "Cumberledge," he said at
+last, coming back to earth with a start, "I see it more plainly each day
+that goes. We must get rid of that woman."
+
+"Of Nurse Wade?" I asked, catching my breath.
+
+He roped the grizzled moustache, and blinked the sunken eyes. "She has
+lost nerve," he went on, "lost nerve entirely. I shall suggest that she
+be dismissed. Her sudden failures of stamina are most embarrassing at
+critical junctures."
+
+"Very well, sir," I answered, swallowing a lump in my throat. To say the
+truth, I was beginning to be afraid on Hilda's account. That morning's
+events had thoroughly disquieted me.
+
+He seemed relieved at my unquestioning acquiescence. "She is a dangerous
+edged-tool; that's the truth of it," he went on, still twirling his
+moustache with a preoccupied air, and turning over his stock of
+needles. "When she's clothed and in her right mind, she is a valuable
+accessory--sharp and trenchant like a clean, bright lancet; but when she
+allows one of these causeless hysterical fits to override her tone, she
+plays one false at once--like a lancet that slips, or grows dull
+and rusty." He polished one of the needles on a soft square of new
+chamois-leather while he spoke, as if to give point and illustration to
+his simile.
+
+I went out from him, much perturbed. The Sebastian I had once admired
+and worshipped was beginning to pass from me; in his place I found a
+very complex and inferior creation. My idol had feet of clay. I was loth
+to acknowledge it.
+
+I stalked along the corridor moodily towards my own room. As I passed
+Hilda Wade's door, I saw it half ajar. She stood a little within, and
+beckoned me to enter.
+
+I passed in and closed the door behind me. Hilda looked at me with
+trustful eyes. Resolute still, her face was yet that of a hunted
+creature. "Thank Heaven, I have ONE friend here, at least!" she said,
+slowly seating herself. "You saw me catch and conceal the needle?"
+
+"Yes, I saw you."
+
+She drew it forth from her purse, carefully but loosely wrapped up in a
+small tag of tissue-paper. "Here it is!" she said, displaying it. "Now,
+I want you to test it."
+
+"In a culture?" I asked; for I guessed her meaning.
+
+She nodded. "Yes, to see what that man has done to it."
+
+"What do you suspect?"
+
+She shrugged her graceful shoulders half imperceptibly.
+
+"How should I know? Anything!"
+
+I gazed at the needle closely. "What made you distrust it?" I inquired
+at last, still eyeing it.
+
+She opened a drawer, and took out several others. "See here," she said,
+handing me one; "THESE are the needles I keep in antiseptic wool--the
+needles with which I always supply the Professor. You observe their
+shape--the common surgical patterns. Now, look at THIS needle, with
+which the Professor was just going to prick my finger! You can see for
+yourself at once it is of bluer steel and of a different manufacture."
+
+"That is quite true," I answered, examining it with my pocket lens,
+which I always carry. "I see the difference. But how did you detect it?"
+
+"From his face, partly; but partly, too, from the needle itself. I had
+my suspicions, and I was watching him closely. Just as he raised the
+thing in his hand, half concealing it, so, and showing only the point,
+I caught the blue gleam of the steel as the light glanced off it. It was
+not the kind I knew. Then I withdrew my hand at once, feeling sure he
+meant mischief."
+
+"That was wonderfully quick of you!"
+
+"Quick? Well, yes. Thank Heaven, my mind works fast; my perceptions are
+rapid. Otherwise--" she looked grave. "One second more, and it would
+have been too late. The man might have killed me."
+
+"You think it is poisoned, then?"
+
+Hilda shook her head with confident dissent. "Poisoned? Oh, no. He
+is wiser now. Fifteen years ago, he used poison. But science has made
+gigantic strides since then. He would not needlessly expose himself
+to-day to the risks of the poisoner."
+
+"Fifteen years ago he used poison?"
+
+She nodded, with the air of one who knows. "I am not speaking at
+random," she answered. "I say what I know. Some day I will explain. For
+the present, it is enough to tell you I know it."
+
+"And what do you suspect now?" I asked, the weird sense of her strange
+power deepening on me every second.
+
+She held up the incriminated needle again.
+
+"Do you see this groove?" she asked, pointing to it with the tip of
+another.
+
+I examined it once more at the light with the lens. A longitudinal
+groove, apparently ground into one side of the needle, lengthwise, by
+means of a small grinding-stone and emery powder, ran for a quarter of
+an inch above the point. This groove seemed to me to have been produced
+by an amateur, though he must have been one accustomed to delicate
+microscopic manipulation; for the edges under the lens showed slightly
+rough, like the surface of a file on a small scale: not smooth and
+polished, as a needle-maker would have left them. I said so to Hilda.
+
+"You are quite right," she answered. "That is just what it shows. I feel
+sure Sebastian made that groove himself. He could have bought grooved
+needles, it is true, such as they sometimes use for retaining small
+quantities of lymphs and medicines; but we had none in stock, and to
+buy them would be to manufacture evidence against himself, in case of
+detection. Besides, the rough, jagged edge would hold the material he
+wished to inject all the better, while its saw-like points would tear
+the flesh, imperceptibly, but minutely, and so serve his purpose."
+
+"Which was?"
+
+"Try the needle, and judge for yourself. I prefer you should find out.
+You can tell me to-morrow."
+
+"It was quick of you to detect it!" I cried, still turning the
+suspicious object over. "The difference is so slight."
+
+"Yes; but you tell me my eyes are as sharp as the needle. Besides, I had
+reason to doubt; and Sebastian himself gave me the clue by selecting
+his instrument with too great deliberation. He had put it there with
+the rest, but it lay a little apart; and as he picked it up gingerly,
+I began to doubt. When I saw the blue gleam, my doubt was at once
+converted into certainty. Then his eyes, too, had the look which I know
+means victory. Benign or baleful, it goes with his triumphs. I have seen
+that look before, and when once it lurks scintillating in the luminous
+depths of his gleaming eyeballs, I recognise at once that, whatever his
+aim, he has succeeded in it."
+
+"Still, Hilda, I am loth--"
+
+She waved her hand impatiently. "Waste no time," she cried, in an
+authoritative voice. "If you happen to let that needle rub carelessly
+against the sleeve of your coat you may destroy the evidence. Take it
+at once to your room, plunge it into a culture, and lock it up safe at
+a proper temperature--where Sebastian cannot get at it--till the
+consequences develop."
+
+I did as she bid me. By this time, I was not wholly unprepared for the
+result she anticipated. My belief in Sebastian had sunk to zero, and was
+rapidly reaching a negative quantity.
+
+At nine the next morning, I tested one drop of the culture under the
+microscope. Clear and limpid to the naked eye, it was alive with small
+objects of a most suspicious nature, when properly magnified. I
+knew those hungry forms. Still, I would not decide offhand on my own
+authority in a matter of such moment. Sebastian's character was at
+stake--the character of the man who led the profession. I called in
+Callaghan, who happened to be in the ward, and asked him to put his eye
+to the instrument for a moment. He was a splendid fellow for the use of
+high powers, and I had magnified the culture 300 diameters. "What do you
+call those?" I asked, breathless.
+
+He scanned them carefully with his experienced eye. "Is it the microbes
+ye mean?" he answered. "An' what 'ud they be, then, if it wasn't the
+bacillus of pyaemia?"
+
+"Blood-poisoning!" I ejaculated, horror-struck.
+
+"Aye; blood-poisoning: that's the English of it."
+
+I assumed an air of indifference. "I made them that myself," I rejoined,
+as if they were mere ordinary experimental germs; "but I wanted
+confirmation of my own opinion. You're sure of the bacillus?"
+
+"An' haven't I been keeping swarms of those very same bacteria under
+close observation for Sebastian for seven weeks past? Why, I know them
+as well as I know me own mother."
+
+"Thank you," I said. "That will do." And I carried off the microscope,
+bacilli and all, into Hilda Wade's sitting-room. "Look yourself!" I
+cried to her.
+
+She stared at them through the instrument with an unmoved face. "I
+thought so," she answered shortly. "The bacillus of pyaemia. A most
+virulent type. Exactly what I expected."
+
+"You anticipated that result?"
+
+"Absolutely. You see, blood-poisoning matures quickly, and kills almost
+to a certainty. Delirium supervenes so soon that the patient has no
+chance of explaining suspicions. Besides, it would all seem so very
+natural! Everybody would say: 'She got some slight wound, which
+microbes from some case she was attending contaminated.' You may be sure
+Sebastian thought out all that. He plans with consummate skill. He had
+designed everything."
+
+I gazed at her, uncertain. "And what will you DO?" I asked. "Expose
+him?"
+
+She opened both her palms with a blank gesture of helplessness. "It
+is useless!" she answered. "Nobody would believe me. Consider the
+situation. YOU know the needle I gave you was the one Sebastian meant to
+use--the one he dropped and I caught--BECAUSE you are a friend of mine,
+and because you have learned to trust me. But who else would credit it?
+I have only my word against his--an unknown nurse's against the great
+Professor's. Everybody would say I was malicious or hysterical. Hysteria
+is always an easy stone to fling at an injured woman who asks for
+justice. They would declare I had trumped up the case to forestall my
+dismissal. They would set it down to spite. We can do nothing against
+him. Remember, on his part, the utter absence of overt motive."
+
+"And you mean to stop on here, in close attendance on a man who has
+attempted your life?" I cried, really alarmed for her safety.
+
+"I am not sure about that," she answered. "I must take time to think. My
+presence at Nathaniel's was necessary to my Plan. The Plan fails for the
+present. I have now to look round and reconsider my position."
+
+"But you are not safe here now," I urged, growing warm. "If Sebastian
+really wishes to get rid of you, and is as unscrupulous as you suppose,
+with his gigantic brain he can soon compass his end. What he plans he
+executes. You ought not to remain within the Professor's reach one hour
+longer."
+
+"I have thought of that, too," she replied, with an almost unearthly
+calm. "But there are difficulties either way. At any rate, I am glad
+he did not succeed this time. For, to have killed me now, would have
+frustrated my Plan"--she clasped her hands--"my Plan is ten thousand
+times dearer than life to me!"
+
+"Dear lady!" I cried, drawing a deep breath, "I implore you in this
+strait, listen to what I urge. Why fight your battle alone? Why refuse
+assistance? I have admired you so long--I am so eager to help you. If
+only you will allow me to call you--"
+
+Her eyes brightened and softened. Her whole bosom heaved. I felt in a
+flash she was not wholly indifferent to me. Strange tremors in the air
+seemed to play about us. But she waved me aside once more. "Don't press
+me," she said, in a very low voice. "Let me go my own way. It is hard
+enough already, this task I have undertaken, without YOUR making it
+harder.... Dear friend, dear friend, you don't quite understand. There
+are TWO men at Nathaniel's whom I desire to escape--because they both
+alike stand in the way of my Purpose." She took my hands in hers. "Each
+in a different way," she murmured once more. "But each I must avoid.
+One is Sebastian. The other--" she let my hand drop again, and broke
+off suddenly. "Dear Hubert," she cried, with a catch, "I cannot help it:
+forgive me!"
+
+It was the first time she had ever called me by my Christian name. The
+mere sound of the word made me unspeakably happy.
+
+Yet she waved me away. "Must I go?" I asked, quivering.
+
+"Yes, yes: you must go. I cannot stand it. I must think this thing out,
+undisturbed. It is a very great crisis."
+
+That afternoon and evening, by some unhappy chance, I was fully engaged
+in work at the hospital. Late at night a letter arrived for me. I
+glanced at it in dismay. It bore the Basingstoke postmark. But, to
+my alarm and surprise, it was in Hilda's hand. What could this change
+portend? I opened it, all tremulous.
+
+"DEAR HUBERT,--" I gave a sigh of relief. It was no longer "Dear Dr.
+Cumberledge" now, but "Hubert." That was something gained, at any rate.
+I read on with a beating heart. What had Hilda to say to me?
+
+
+"DEAR HUBERT,--By the time this reaches you, I shall be far away,
+irrevocably far, from London. With deep regret, with fierce searchings
+of spirit, I have come to the conclusion that, for the Purpose I have
+in view, it would be better for me at once to leave Nathaniel's. Where I
+go, or what I mean to do, I do not wish to tell you. Of your charity,
+I pray, refrain from asking me. I am aware that your kindness and
+generosity deserve better recognition. But, like Sebastian himself, I am
+the slave of my Purpose. I have lived for it all these years, and it is
+still very dear to me. To tell you my plans would interfere with that
+end. Do not, therefore, suppose I am insensible to your goodness....
+Dear Hubert, spare me--I dare not say more, lest I say too much. I dare
+not trust myself. But one thing I MUST say. I am flying from YOU quite
+as much as from Sebastian. Flying from my own heart, quite as much as
+from my enemy. Some day, perhaps, if I accomplish my object, I may tell
+you all. Meanwhile, I can only beg of you of your kindness to trust me.
+We shall not meet again, I fear, for years. But I shall never forget
+you--you, the kind counsellor, who have half turned me aside from my
+life's Purpose. One word more, and I should falter.--In very great
+haste, and amid much disturbance, yours ever affectionately and
+gratefully,
+
+"HILDA."
+
+
+It was a hurried scrawl in pencil, as if written in a train. I felt
+utterly dejected. Was Hilda, then, leaving England?
+
+Rousing myself after some minutes, I went straight to Sebastian's
+rooms, and told him in brief terms that Nurse Wade had disappeared at a
+moment's notice, and had sent a note to tell me so.
+
+He looked up from his work, and scanned me hard, as was his wont. "That
+is well," he said at last, his eyes glowing deep; "she was getting too
+great a hold on you, that young woman!"
+
+"She retains that hold upon me, sir," I answered curtly.
+
+"You are making a grave mistake in life, my dear Cumberledge," he went
+on, in his old genial tone, which I had almost forgotten. "Before you
+go further, and entangle yourself more deeply, I think it is only right
+that I should undeceive you as to this girl's true position. She is
+passing under a false name, and she comes of a tainted stock.... Nurse
+Wade, as she chooses to call herself, is a daughter of the notorious
+murderer, Yorke-Bannerman."
+
+My mind leapt back to the incident of the broken basin.
+Yorke-Bannerman's name had profoundly moved her. Then I thought of
+Hilda's face. Murderers, I said to myself, do not beget such daughters
+as that. Not even accidental murderers, like my poor friend Le Geyt. I
+saw at once the prima facie evidence was strongly against her. But I had
+faith in her still. I drew myself up firmly, and stared him back full in
+the face. "I do not believe it," I answered, shortly.
+
+"You do not believe it? I tell you it is so. The girl herself as good as
+acknowledged it to me."
+
+I spoke slowly and distinctly. "Dr. Sebastian," I said, confronting him,
+"let us be quite clear with one another. I have found you out. I know
+how you tried to poison that lady. To poison her with bacilli which
+_I_ detected. I cannot trust your word; I cannot trust your inferences.
+Either she is not Yorke-Bannerman's daughter at all, or else...
+Yorke-Bannerman was NOT a murderer...." I watched his face closely.
+Conviction leaped upon me. "And someone else was," I went on. "I might
+put a name to him."
+
+With a stern white face, he rose and opened the door. He pointed to it
+slowly. "This hospital is not big enough for you and me abreast," he
+said, with cold politeness. "One or other of us must go. Which, I leave
+to your good sense to determine."
+
+Even at that moment of detection and disgrace, in one man's eyes, at
+least, Sebastian retained his full measure of dignity.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI
+
+THE EPISODE OF THE LETTER WITH THE BASINGSTOKE POSTMARK
+
+
+I have a vast respect for my grandfather. He was a man of forethought.
+He left me a modest little income of seven hundred a-year, well
+invested. Now, seven hundred a-year is not exactly wealth; but it is an
+unobtrusive competence; it permits a bachelor to move about the world
+and choose at will his own profession. _I_ chose medicine; but I was
+not wholly dependent upon it. So I honoured my grandfather's wise
+disposition of his worldly goods; though, oddly enough, my cousin
+Tom (to whom he left his watch and five hundred pounds) speaks MOST
+disrespectfully of his character and intellect.
+
+Thanks to my grandfather's silken-sailed barque, therefore, when I found
+myself practically dismissed from Nathaniel's I was not thrown on my
+beam-ends, as most young men in my position would have been; I had
+time and opportunity for the favourite pastime of looking about me. Of
+course, had I chosen, I might have fought the case to the bitter end
+against Sebastian; he could not dismiss me--that lay with the committee.
+But I hardly cared to fight. In the first place, though I had found
+him out as a man, I still respected him as a great teacher; and in the
+second place (which is always more important), I wanted to find and
+follow Hilda.
+
+To be sure, Hilda, in that enigmatic letter of hers, had implored me not
+to seek her out; but I think you will admit there is one request which
+no man can grant to the girl he loves--and that is the request to keep
+away from her. If Hilda did not want ME, I wanted Hilda; and, being a
+man, I meant to find her.
+
+My chances of discovering her whereabouts, however, I had to confess
+to myself (when it came to the point) were extremely slender. She had
+vanished from my horizon, melted into space. My sole hint of a clue
+consisted in the fact that the letter she sent me had been posted at
+Basingstoke. Here, then, was my problem: given an envelope with the
+Basingstoke postmark, to find in what part of Europe, Asia, Africa, or
+America the writer of it might be discovered. It opened up a fine field
+for speculation.
+
+When I set out to face this broad puzzle, my first idea was: "I must ask
+Hilda." In all circumstances of difficulty, I had grown accustomed to
+submitting my doubts and surmises to her acute intelligence; and her
+instinct almost always supplied the right solution. But now Hilda was
+gone; it was Hilda herself I wished to track through the labyrinth of
+the world. I could expect no assistance in tracking her from Hilda.
+
+"Let me think," I said to myself, over a reflective pipe, with feet
+poised on the fender. "How would Hilda herself have approached this
+problem? Imagine I'm Hilda. I must try to strike a trail by applying her
+own methods to her own character. She would have attacked the question,
+no doubt,"--here I eyed my pipe wisely,--"from the psychological
+side. She would have asked herself"--I stroked my chin--"what such a
+temperament as hers was likely to do under such-and-such circumstances.
+And she would have answered it aright. But then"--I puffed away once or
+twice--"SHE is Hilda."
+
+When I came to reconnoitre the matter in this light, I became at once
+aware how great a gulf separated the clumsy male intelligence from
+the immediate and almost unerring intuitions of a clever woman. I am
+considered no fool; in my own profession, I may venture to say, I was
+Sebastian's favourite pupil. Yet, though I asked myself over and over
+again where Hilda would be likely to go--Canada, China, Australia--as
+the outcome of her character, in these given conditions, I got no
+answer. I stared at the fire and reflected. I smoked two successive
+pipes, and shook out the ashes. "Let me consider how Hilda's temperament
+would work," I said, looking sagacious. I said it several times--but
+there I stuck. I went no further. The solution would not come. I felt
+that in order to play Hilda's part, it was necessary first to have
+Hilda's head-piece. Not every man can bend the bow of Ulysses.
+
+As I turned the problem over in my mind, however, one phrase at last
+came back to me--a phrase which Hilda herself had let fall when we were
+debating a very similar point about poor Hugo Le Geyt: "If I were in his
+place, what do you think I would do?--why, hide myself at once in the
+greenest recesses of our Carnarvonshire mountains."
+
+She must have gone to Wales, then. I had her own authority for saying
+so.... And yet--Wales? Wales? I pulled myself up with a jerk. In that
+case, how did she come to be passing by Basingstoke?
+
+Was the postmark a blind? Had she hired someone to take the letter
+somewhere for her, on purpose to put me off on a false track? I could
+hardly think so. Besides, the time was against it. I saw Hilda at
+Nathaniel's in the morning; the very same evening I received the
+envelope with the Basingstoke postmark.
+
+"If I were in his place." Yes, true; but, now I come to think on it,
+WERE the positions really parallel? Hilda was not flying for her life
+from justice; she was only endeavouring to escape Sebastian--and
+myself. The instances she had quoted of the mountaineer's curious homing
+instinct--the wild yearning he feels at moments of great straits to bury
+himself among the nooks of his native hills--were they not all instances
+of murderers pursued by the police? It was abject terror that drove
+these men to their burrows. But Hilda was not a murderer; she was not
+dogged by remorse, despair, or the myrmidons of the law; it was murder
+she was avoiding, not the punishment of murder. That made, of course, an
+obvious difference. "Irrevocably far from London," she said. Wales is
+a suburb. I gave up the idea that it was likely to prove her place of
+refuge from the two men she was bent on escaping. Hong-Kong, after all,
+seemed more probable than Llanberis.
+
+That first failure gave me a clue, however, as to the best way of
+applying Hilda's own methods. "What would such a person do under the
+circumstances?" that was her way of putting the question. Clearly, then,
+I must first decide what WERE the circumstances. Was Sebastian speaking
+the truth? Was Hilda Wade, or was she not, the daughter of the supposed
+murderer, Dr. Yorke-Bannerman?
+
+I looked up as much of the case as I could, in unobtrusive ways, among
+the old law-reports, and found that the barrister who had had charge of
+the defence was my father's old friend, Mr. Horace Mayfield, a man of
+elegant tastes, and the means to gratify them.
+
+I went to call on him on Sunday evening at his artistically luxurious
+house in Onslow Gardens. A sedate footman answered the bell.
+Fortunately, Mr. Mayfield was at home, and, what is rarer, disengaged.
+You do not always find a successful Q.C. at his ease among his books,
+beneath the electric light, ready to give up a vacant hour to friendly
+colloquy.
+
+"Remember Yorke-Bannerman's case?" he said, a huge smile breaking slowly
+like a wave over his genial fat face--Horace Mayfield resembles a great
+good-humoured toad, with bland manners and a capacious double chin--"I
+should just say I DID! Bless my soul--why, yes," he beamed, "I was
+Yorke-Bannerman's counsel. Excellent fellow, Yorke-Bannerman--most
+unfortunate end, though--precious clever chap, too! Had an astounding
+memory. Recollected every symptom of every patient he ever attended. And
+SUCH an eye! Diagnosis? It was clairvoyance! A gift--no less. Knew what
+was the matter with you the moment he looked at you."
+
+That sounded like Hilda. The same surprising power of recalling facts;
+the same keen faculty for interpreting character or the signs of
+feeling. "He poisoned somebody, I believe," I murmured, casually. "An
+uncle of his, or something."
+
+Mayfield's great squat face wrinkled; the double chin, folding down on
+the neck, became more ostentatiously double than ever. "Well, I can't
+admit that," he said, in his suave voice, twirling the string of his
+eye-glass. "I was Yorke-Bannerman's advocate, you see; and therefore I
+was paid not to admit it. Besides, he was a friend of mine, and I
+always liked him. But I WILL allow that the case DID look a trifle black
+against him."
+
+"Ha? Looked black, did it?" I faltered.
+
+The judicious barrister shrugged his shoulders. A genial smile spread
+oilily once more over his smooth face. "None of my business to say so,"
+he answered, puckering the corners of his eyes. "Still, it was a long
+time ago; and the circumstances certainly WERE suspicious. Perhaps, on
+the whole, Hubert, it was just as well the poor fellow died before the
+trial came off; otherwise"--he pouted his lips--"I might have had
+my work cut out to save him." And he eyed the blue china gods on the
+mantelpiece affectionately.
+
+"I believe the Crown urged money as the motive?" I suggested.
+
+Mayfield glanced inquiry at me. "Now, why do you want to know all this?"
+he asked, in a suspicious voice, coming back from his dragons. "It is
+irregular, very, to worm information out of an innocent barrister in
+his hours of ease about a former client. We are a guileless race, we
+lawyers; don't abuse our confidence."
+
+He seemed an honest man, I thought, in spite of his mocking tone. I
+trusted him, and made a clean breast of it. "I believe," I answered,
+with an impressive little pause, "I want to marry Yorke-Bannerman's
+daughter."
+
+He gave a quick start. "What, Maisie?" he exclaimed.
+
+I shook my head. "No, no; that is not the name," I replied.
+
+He hesitated a moment. "But there IS no other," he hazarded cautiously
+at last. "I knew the family."
+
+"I am not sure of it," I went on. "I have merely my suspicions. I am in
+love with a girl, and something about her makes me think she is probably
+a Yorke-Bannerman."
+
+"But, my dear Hubert, if that is so," the great lawyer went on, waving
+me off with one fat hand, "it must be at once apparent to you that _I_
+am the last person on earth to whom you ought to apply for information.
+Remember my oath. The practice of our clan: the seal of secrecy!"
+
+I was frank once more. "I do not know whether the lady I mean is or is
+not Yorke-Bannerman's daughter," I persisted. "She may be, and she
+may not. She gives another name--that's certain. But whether she is or
+isn't, one thing I know--I mean to marry her. I believe in her; I trust
+her. I only seek to gain this information now because I don't know where
+she is--and I want to track her."
+
+He crossed his big hands with an air of Christian resignation, and
+looked up at the panels of the coffered ceiling. "In that," he answered,
+"I may honestly say, I can't help you. Humbug apart, I have not known
+Mrs. Yorke-Bannerman's address--or Maisie's either--ever since my poor
+friend's death. Prudent woman, Mrs. Yorke-Bannerman! She went away, I
+believe, to somewhere in North Wales, and afterwards to Brittany. But
+she probably changed her name; and--she did not confide in me."
+
+I went on to ask him a few questions about the case, premising that I
+did so in the most friendly spirit. "Oh, I can only tell you what is
+publicly known," he answered, beaming, with the usual professional
+pretence of the most sphinx-like reticence. "But the plain facts, as
+universally admitted, were these. I break no confidence. Yorke-Bannerman
+had a rich uncle from whom he had expectations--a certain Admiral Scott
+Prideaux. This uncle had lately made a will in Yorke-Bannerman's
+favour; but he was a cantankerous old chap--naval, you know
+autocratic--crusty--given to changing his mind with each change of
+the wind, and easily offended by his relations--the sort of cheerful old
+party who makes a new will once every month, disinheriting the nephew
+he last dined with. Well, one day the Admiral was taken ill, at his own
+house, and Yorke-Bannerman attended him. OUR contention was--I speak
+now as my old friend's counsel--that Scott Prideaux, getting as tired of
+life as we were all tired of him, and weary of this recurrent worry of
+will-making, determined at last to clear out for good from a world where
+he was so little appreciated, and, therefore, tried to poison himself."
+
+"With aconitine?" I suggested, eagerly.
+
+"Unfortunately, yes; he made use of aconitine for that otherwise
+laudable purpose. Now, as ill luck would have it"--Mayfield's wrinkles
+deepened--"Yorke-Bannerman and Sebastian, then two rising doctors
+engaged in physiological researches together, had just been occupied in
+experimenting upon this very drug--testing the use of aconitine.
+Indeed, you will no doubt remember"--he crossed his fat hands again
+comfortably--"it was these precise researches on a then little-known
+poison that first brought Sebastian prominently before the public. What
+was the consequence?" His smooth, persuasive voice flowed on as if I
+were a concentrated jury. "The Admiral grew rapidly worse, and insisted
+upon calling in a second opinion. No doubt he didn't like the aconitine
+when it came to the pinch--for it DOES pinch, I can tell you--and
+repented him of his evil. Yorke-Bannerman suggested Sebastian as the
+second opinion; the uncle acquiesced; Sebastian was called in, and,
+of course, being fresh from his researches, immediately recognised the
+symptoms of aconitine poisoning."
+
+"What! Sebastian found it out?" I cried, starting.
+
+"Oh, yes! Sebastian. He watched the case from that point to the end; and
+the oddest part of it all was this--that though he communicated with
+the police, and himself prepared every morsel of food that the poor old
+Admiral took from that moment forth, the symptoms continually increased
+in severity. The police contention was that Yorke-Bannerman somehow
+managed to put the stuff into the milk beforehand; my own theory was--as
+counsel for the accused"--he blinked his fat eyes--"that old Prideaux
+had concealed a large quantity of aconitine in the bed, before his
+illness, and went on taking it from time to time--just to spite his
+nephew."
+
+"And you BELIEVE that, Mr. Mayfield?"
+
+The broad smile broke concentrically in ripples over the great lawyer's
+face. His smile was Mayfield's main feature. He shrugged his shoulders
+and expanded his big hands wide open before him. "My dear Hubert,"
+he said, with a most humorous expression of countenance, "you are a
+professional man yourself; therefore you know that every profession
+has its own little courtesies--its own small fictions. I was
+Yorke-Bannerman's counsel, as well as his friend. 'Tis a point of honour
+with us that no barrister will ever admit a doubt as to a client's
+innocence--is he not paid to maintain it?--and to my dying day I will
+constantly maintain that old Prideaux poisoned himself. Maintain it
+with that dogged and meaningless obstinacy with which we always cling
+to whatever is least provable.... Oh, yes! He poisoned himself; and
+Yorke-Bannerman was innocent.... But still, you know, it WAS the sort of
+case where an acute lawyer, with a reputation to make, would prefer to
+be for the Crown rather than for the prisoner."
+
+"But it was never tried," I ejaculated.
+
+"No, happily for us, it was never tried. Fortune favoured us.
+Yorke-Bannerman had a weak heart, a conveniently weak heart, which the
+inquest sorely affected; and besides, he was deeply angry at what
+he persisted in calling Sebastian's defection. He evidently thought
+Sebastian ought to have stood by him. His colleague preferred the claims
+of public duty--as he understood them, I mean--to those of private
+friendship. It was a very sad case--for Yorke-Bannerman was really a
+charming fellow. But I confess I WAS relieved when he died unexpectedly
+on the morning of his arrest. It took off my shoulders a most serious
+burden."
+
+"You think, then, the case would have gone against him?"
+
+"My dear Hubert," his whole face puckered with an indulgent smile, "of
+course the case must have gone against us. Juries are fools; but they
+are not such fools as to swallow everything--like ostriches: to let me
+throw dust in their eyes about so plain an issue. Consider the facts,
+consider them impartially. Yorke-Bannerman had easy access to aconitine;
+had whole ounces of it in his possession; he treated the uncle from whom
+he was to inherit; he was in temporary embarrassments--that came out at
+the inquest; it was known that the Admiral had just made a twenty-third
+will in his favour, and that the Admiral's wills were liable to
+alteration every time a nephew ventured upon an opinion in politics,
+religion, science, navigation, or the right card at whist, differing by
+a shade from that of the uncle. The Admiral died of aconitine poisoning;
+and Sebastian observed and detailed the symptoms. Could anything be
+plainer--I mean, could any combination of fortuitous circumstances"--he
+blinked pleasantly again--"be more adverse to an advocate sincerely
+convinced of his client's innocence--as a professional duty?" And he
+gazed at me comically.
+
+The more he piled up the case against the man who I now felt sure was
+Hilda's father, the less did I believe him. A dark conspiracy seemed to
+loom up in the background. "Has it ever occurred to you," I asked, at
+last, in a very tentative tone, "that perhaps--I throw out the hint as
+the merest suggestion--perhaps it may have been Sebastian who--"
+
+He smiled this time till I thought his smile would swallow him.
+
+"If Yorke-Bannerman had NOT been my client," he mused aloud, "I might
+have been inclined to suspect rather that Sebastian aided him to avoid
+justice by giving him something violent to take, if he wished
+it: something which might accelerate the inevitable action of the
+heart-disease from which he was suffering. Isn't THAT more likely?"
+
+I saw there was nothing further to be got out of Mayfield. His opinion
+was fixed; he was a placid ruminant. But he had given me already much
+food for thought. I thanked him for his assistance, and returned on foot
+to my rooms at the hospital.
+
+I was now, however, in a somewhat different position for tracking Hilda
+from that which I occupied before my interview with the famous counsel.
+I felt certain by this time that Hilda Wade and Maisie Yorke-Bannerman
+were one and the same person. To be sure, it gave me a twinge to think
+that Hilda should be masquerading under an assumed name; but I waived
+that question for the moment, and awaited her explanations. The great
+point now was to find Hilda. She was flying from Sebastian to mature
+a new plan. But whither? I proceeded to argue it out on her own
+principles; oh, how lamely! The world is still so big! Mauritius, the
+Argentine, British Columbia, New Zealand!
+
+The letter I had received bore the Basingstoke postmark. Now a person
+may be passing Basingstoke on his way either to Southampton or Plymouth,
+both of which are ports of embarcation for various foreign countries.
+I attached importance to that clue. Something about the tone of Hilda's
+letter made me realise that she intended to put the sea between us. In
+concluding so much, I felt sure I was not mistaken. Hilda had too big
+and too cosmopolitan a mind to speak of being "irrevocably far from
+London," if she were only going to some town in England, or even to
+Normandy, or the Channel Islands. "Irrevocably far" pointed rather to a
+destination outside Europe altogether--to India, Africa, America: not to
+Jersey, Dieppe, or Saint-Malo.
+
+Was it Southampton or Plymouth to which she was first bound?--that was
+the next question. I inclined to Southampton. For the sprawling lines
+(so different from her usual neat hand) were written hurriedly in
+a train, I could see; and, on consulting Bradshaw, I found that the
+Plymouth expresses stop longest at Salisbury, where Hilda would,
+therefore, have been likely to post her note if she were going to the
+far west; while some of the Southampton trains stop at Basingstoke,
+which is, indeed, the most convenient point on that route for sending
+off a letter. This was mere blind guesswork, to be sure, compared with
+Hilda's immediate and unerring intuition; but it had some probability
+in its favour, at any rate. Try both: of the two, she was likelier to be
+going to Southampton.
+
+My next move was to consult the list of outgoing steamers. Hilda had
+left London on a Saturday morning. Now, on alternate Saturdays, the
+steamers of the Castle line sail from Southampton, where they call to
+take up passengers and mails. Was this one of those alternate Saturdays?
+I looked at the list of dates: it was. That told further in favour
+of Southampton. But did any steamer of any passenger line sail from
+Plymouth on the same day? None, that I could find. Or from Southampton
+elsewhere? I looked them all up. The Royal Mail Company's boats start
+on Wednesdays; the North German Lloyd's on Wednesdays and Sundays.
+Those were the only likely vessels I could discover. Either, then, I
+concluded, Hilda meant to sail on Saturday by the Castle line for
+South Africa, or else on Sunday by North German Lloyd for some part of
+America.
+
+How I longed for one hour of Hilda to help me out with her almost
+infallible instinct. I realised how feeble and fallacious was my own
+groping in the dark. Her knowledge of temperament would have revealed to
+her at once what I was trying to discover, like the police she despised,
+by the clumsy "clues" which so roused her sarcasm.
+
+However, I went to bed and slept on it. Next morning I determined to set
+out for Southampton on a tour of inquiry to all the steamboat agencies.
+If that failed, I could go on to Plymouth.
+
+But, as chance would have it, the morning post brought me an unexpected
+letter, which helped me not a little in unravelling the problem. It
+was a crumpled letter, written on rather soiled paper, in an uneducated
+hand, and it bore, like Hilda's, the Basingstoke postmark.
+
+
+"Charlotte Churtwood sends her duty to Dr. Cumberledge," it said, with
+somewhat uncertain spelling, "and I am very sorry that I was not able
+to Post the letter to you in London, as the lady ast me, but after her
+train ad left has I was stepping into mine the Ingine started and I was
+knocked down and badly hurt and the lady gave me a half-sovering to
+Post it in London has soon as I got there but bein unable to do so I
+now return it dear sir not knowing the lady's name and adress she having
+trusted me through seeing me on the platform, and perhaps you can send
+it back to her, and was very sorry I could not Post it were she ast me,
+but time bein an objeck put it in the box in Basingstoke station and now
+inclose post office order for ten Shillings whitch dear sir kindly let
+the young lady have from your obedient servant,
+
+"CHARLOTTE CHURTWOOD."
+
+
+In the corner was the address: "11, Chubb's Cottages, Basingstoke."
+
+The happy accident of this letter advanced things for me greatly--though
+it also made me feel how dependent I was upon happy accidents, where
+Hilda would have guessed right at once by mere knowledge of character.
+Still, the letter explained many things which had hitherto puzzled me.
+I had felt not a little surprise that Hilda, wishing to withdraw from
+me and leave no traces, should have sent off her farewell letter from
+Basingstoke--so as to let me see at once in what direction she was
+travelling. Nay, I even wondered at times whether she had really posted
+it herself at Basingstoke, or given it to somebody who chanced to be
+going there to post for her as a blind. But I did not think she would
+deliberately deceive me; and, in my opinion, to get a letter posted at
+Basingstoke would be deliberate deception, while to get it posted in
+London was mere vague precaution. I understood now that she had written
+it in the train, and then picked out a likely person as she passed to
+take it to Waterloo for her.
+
+Of course, I went straight down to Basingstoke, and called at once at
+Chubb's Cottages. It was a squalid little row on the outskirts of the
+town. I found Charlotte Churtwood herself exactly such a girl as Hilda,
+with her quick judgment of character, might have hit upon for such a
+purpose. She was a conspicuously honest and transparent country servant,
+of the lumpy type, on her way to London to take a place as housemaid.
+Her injuries were severe, but not dangerous. "The lady saw me on the
+platform," she said, "and beckoned to me to come to her. She ast me
+where I was going, and I says, 'To London, miss.' Says she, smiling
+kind-like, 'Could you post a letter for me, certain sure?' Says I, 'You
+can depend upon me.' An' then she give me the arf-sovering, an' says,
+says she, 'Mind, it's VERY par-tickler; if the gentleman don't get it,
+'e'll fret 'is 'eart out.' An' through 'aving a young man o' my own,
+as is a groom at Andover, o' course I understood 'er, sir. An' then,
+feeling all full of it, as yu may say, what with the arf-sovering, and
+what with one thing and what with another, an' all of a fluster with not
+being used to travelling, I run up, when the train for London come in,
+an' tried to scramble into it, afore it 'ad quite stopped moving. An'
+a guard, 'e rushes up, an' 'Stand back!' says 'e; 'wait till the train
+stops,' says 'e, an' waves his red flag at me. But afore I could stand
+back, with one foot on the step, the train sort of jumped away from me,
+and knocked me down like this; and they say it'll be a week now afore
+I'm well enough to go on to London. But I posted the letter all the
+same, at Basingstoke station, as they was carrying me off; an' I took
+down the address, so as to return the arf-sovering." Hilda was right, as
+always. She had chosen instinctively the trustworthy person,--chosen her
+at first sight, and hit the bull's-eye.
+
+"Do you know what train the lady was in?" I asked, as she paused. "Where
+was it going, did you notice?"
+
+"It was the Southampton train, sir. I saw the board on the carriage."
+
+That settled the question. "You are a good and an honest girl," I
+said, pulling out my purse; "and you came to this misfortune through
+trying--too eagerly--to help the young lady. A ten-pound note is not
+overmuch as compensation for your accident. Take it, and get well. I
+should be sorry to think you lost a good place through your anxiety to
+help us."
+
+The rest of my way was plain sailing now. I hurried on straight to
+Southampton. There my first visit was to the office of the Castle line.
+I went to the point at once. Was there a Miss Wade among the passengers
+by the Dunottar Castle?
+
+No; nobody of that name on the list.
+
+Had any lady taken a passage at the last moment?
+
+The clerk perpended. Yes; a lady had come by the mail train from London,
+with no heavy baggage, and had gone on board direct, taking what cabin
+she could get. A young lady in grey. Quite unprepared. Gave no name.
+Called away in a hurry.
+
+What sort of lady?
+
+Youngish; good-looking; brown hair and eyes, the clerk thought; a sort
+of creamy skin; and a--well, a mesmeric kind of glance that seemed to go
+right through you.
+
+"That will do," I answered, sure now of my quarry. "To which port did
+she book?"
+
+"To Cape Town."
+
+"Very well," I said, promptly. "You may reserve me a good berth in the
+next outgoing steamer."
+
+It was just like Hilda's impulsive character to rush off in this way at
+a moment's notice; and just like mine to follow her. But it piqued me a
+little to think that, but for the accident of an accident, I might never
+have tracked her down. If the letter had been posted in London as she
+intended, and not at Basingstoke, I might have sought in vain for her
+from then till Doomsday.
+
+Ten days later, I was afloat on the Channel, bound for South Africa.
+
+I always admired Hilda's astonishing insight into character and motive;
+but I never admired it quite so profoundly as on the glorious day when
+we arrived at Cape Town. I was standing on deck, looking out for the
+first time in my life on that tremendous view--the steep and massive
+bulk of Table Mountain,--a mere lump of rock, dropped loose from the
+sky, with the long white town spread gleaming at its base, and the
+silver-tree plantations that cling to its lower slopes and merge by
+degrees into gardens and vineyards--when a messenger from the shore came
+up to me tentatively.
+
+"Dr. Cumberledge?" he said, in an inquiring tone.
+
+I nodded. "That is my name."
+
+"I have a letter for you, sir."
+
+I took it, in great surprise. Who on earth in Cape Town could have
+known I was coming? I had not a friend to my knowledge in the colony.
+I glanced at the envelope. My wonder deepened. That prescient brain! It
+was Hilda's handwriting.
+
+I tore it open and read:
+
+
+"MY DEAR HUBERT,--I KNOW you will come; I KNOW you will follow me. So
+I am leaving this letter at Donald Currie & Co.'s office, giving their
+agent instructions to hand it to you as soon as you reach Cape Town.
+I am quite sure you will track me so far at least; I understand your
+temperament. But I beg you, I implore you, to go no further. You will
+ruin my plan if you do. And I still adhere to it. It is good of you to
+come so far; I cannot blame you for that. I know your motives. But
+do not try to find me out. I warn you, beforehand, it will be quite
+useless. I have made up my mind. I have an object in life, and, dear as
+you are to me--THAT I will not pretend to deny--I can never allow even
+YOU to interfere with it. So be warned in time. Go back quietly by the
+next steamer.
+
+"Your ever attached and grateful,
+
+"HILDA."
+
+
+I read it twice through with a little thrill of joy. Did any man ever
+court so strange a love? Her very strangeness drew me. But go back by
+the next steamer! I felt sure of one thing: Hilda was far too good a
+judge of character to believe that I was likely to obey that mandate.
+
+I will not trouble you with the remaining stages of my quest. Except
+for the slowness of South African mail coaches, they were comparatively
+easy. It is not so hard to track strangers in Cape Town as strangers in
+London. I followed Hilda to her hotel, and from her hotel up
+country, stage after stage--jolted by rail, worse jolted by
+mule-waggon--inquiring, inquiring, inquiring--till I learned at last she
+was somewhere in Rhodesia.
+
+That is a big address; but it does not cover as many names as it covers
+square miles. In time I found her. Still, it took time; and before we
+met, Hilda had had leisure to settle down quietly to her new existence.
+People in Rhodesia had noted her coming, as a new portent, because of
+one strange peculiarity. She was the only woman of means who had ever
+gone up of her own free will to Rhodesia. Other women had gone there
+to accompany their husbands, or to earn their livings; but that a lady
+should freely select that half-baked land as a place of residence--a
+lady of position, with all the world before her where to choose--that
+puzzled the Rhodesians. So she was a marked person. Most people solved
+the vexed problem, indeed, by suggesting that she had designs against
+the stern celibacy of a leading South African politician. "Depend upon
+it," they said, "it's Rhodes she's after." The moment I arrived at
+Salisbury, and stated my object in coming, all the world in the new town
+was ready to assist me. The lady was to be found (vaguely speaking) on
+a young farm to the north--a budding farm, whose general direction was
+expansively indicated to me by a wave of the arm, with South African
+uncertainty.
+
+I bought a pony at Salisbury--a pretty little seasoned sorrel mare--and
+set out to find Hilda. My way lay over a brand-new road, or what
+passes for a road in South Africa--very soft and lumpy, like an English
+cart-track. I am a fair cross-country rider in our own Midlands, but I
+never rode a more tedious journey than that one. I had crawled several
+miles under a blazing sun along the shadeless new track, on my African
+pony, when, to my surprise I saw, of all sights in the world, a bicycle
+coming towards me.
+
+I could hardly believe my eyes. Civilisation indeed! A bicycle in these
+remotest wilds of Africa!
+
+I had been picking my way for some hours through a desolate plateau--the
+high veldt--about five thousand feet above the sea level, and entirely
+treeless. In places, to be sure, a few low bushes of prickly aspect rose
+in tangled clumps; but for the most part the arid table-land was covered
+by a thick growth of short brown grass, about nine inches high, burnt up
+in the sun, and most wearisome to look at. The distressing nakedness of
+a new country confronted me. Here and there a bald farm or two had been
+literally pegged out--the pegs were almost all one saw of them as yet;
+the fields were in the future. Here and there, again, a scattered range
+of low granite hills, known locally as kopjes--red, rocky prominences,
+flaunting in the sunshine--diversified the distance. But the road
+itself, such as it was, lay all on the high plain, looking down now and
+again into gorges or kloofs, wooded on their slopes with scrubby
+trees, and comparatively well-watered. In the midst of all this crude,
+unfinished land, the mere sight of a bicycle, bumping over the rubbly
+road, was a sufficient surprise; but my astonishment reached a climax
+when I saw, as it drew near, that it was ridden by a woman!
+
+One moment later I had burst into a wild cry, and rode forward to her
+hurriedly. "Hilda!" I shouted aloud, in my excitement: "Hilda!"
+
+She stepped lightly from her pedals, as if it had been in the park: head
+erect and proud; eyes liquid, lustrous. I dismounted, trembling, and
+stood beside her. In the wild joy of the moment, for the first time in
+my life, I kissed her fervently. Hilda took the kiss, unreproving. She
+did not attempt to refuse me.
+
+"So you have come at last!" she murmured, with a glow on her face,
+half nestling towards me, half withdrawing, as if two wills tore her
+in different directions. "I have been expecting you for some days; and,
+somehow, to-day, I was almost certain you were coming!"
+
+"Then you are not angry with me?" I cried. "You remember, you forbade
+me!"
+
+"Angry with you? Dear Hubert, could I ever be angry with you, especially
+for thus showing me your devotion and your trust? I am never angry with
+you. When one knows, one understands. I have thought of you so often;
+sometimes, alone here in this raw new land, I have longed for you to
+come. It is inconsistent of me, of course; but I am so solitary, so
+lonely!"
+
+"And yet you begged me not to follow you!"
+
+She looked up at me shyly--I was not accustomed to see Hilda shy. Her
+eyes gazed deep into mine beneath the long, soft lashes. "I begged you
+not to follow me," she repeated, a strange gladness in her tone. "Yes,
+dear Hubert, I begged you--and I meant it. Cannot you understand that
+sometimes one hopes a thing may never happen--and is supremely happy
+because it happens, in spite of one? I have a purpose in life for which
+I live: I live for it still. For its sake I told you you must not come
+to me. Yet you HAVE come, against my orders; and--" she paused, and drew
+a deep sigh--"oh, Hubert, I thank you for daring to disobey me!"
+
+I clasped her to my bosom. She allowed me, half resisting. "I am too
+weak," she murmured. "Only this morning, I made up my mind that when
+I saw you I would implore you to return at once. And now that you are
+here--" she laid her little hand confidingly in mine--"see how foolish I
+am!--I cannot dismiss you."
+
+"Which means to say, Hilda, that, after all, you are still a woman!"
+
+"A woman; oh, yes; very much a woman! Hubert, I love you; I half wish I
+did not."
+
+"Why, darling?" I drew her to me.
+
+"Because--if I did not, I could send you away--so easily! As it is--I
+cannot let you stop--and... I cannot dismiss you."
+
+"Then divide it," I cried gaily; "do neither; come away with me!"
+
+"No, no; nor that, either. I will not stultify my whole past life. I
+will not dishonour my dear father's memory."
+
+I looked around for something to which to tether my horse. A bridle
+is in one's way--when one has to discuss important business. There was
+really nothing about that seemed fit for the purpose. Hilda saw what
+I sought, and pointed mutely to a stunted bush beside a big granite
+boulder which rose abruptly from the dead level of the grass, affording
+a little shade from that sweltering sunlight. I tied my mare to the
+gnarled root--it was the only part big enough--and sat down by Hilda's
+side, under the shadow of a great rock in a thirsty land. I realised at
+that moment the force and appropriateness of the Psalmist's simile. The
+sun beat fiercely on the seeding grasses. Away on the southern horizon
+we could faintly perceive the floating yellow haze of the prairie fires
+lit by the Mashonas.
+
+"Then you knew I would come?" I began, as she seated herself on the
+burnt-up herbage, while my hand stole into hers, to nestle there
+naturally.
+
+She pressed it in return. "Oh, yes; I knew you would come," she
+answered, with that strange ring of confidence in her voice. "Of course
+you got my letter at Cape Town?"
+
+"I did, Hilda--and I wondered at you more than ever as I read it. But if
+you KNEW I would come, why write to prevent me?"
+
+Her eyes had their mysterious far-away air. She looked out upon
+infinity. "Well, I wanted to do my best to turn you aside," she said,
+slowly. "One must always do one's best, even when one feels and believes
+it is useless. That surely is the first clause in a doctor's or a
+nurse's rubric."
+
+"But WHY didn't you want me to come?" I persisted. "Why fight against
+your own heart? Hilda, I am sure--I KNOW you love me."
+
+Her bosom rose and fell. Her eyes dilated. "Love you?" she cried,
+looking away over the bushy ridges, as if afraid to trust herself. "Oh,
+yes, Hubert, I love you! It is not for that that I wish to avoid you.
+Or, rather, it is just because of that. I cannot endure to spoil your
+life--by a fruitless affection."
+
+"Why fruitless?" I asked, leaning forward.
+
+She crossed her hands resignedly. "You know all by this time," she
+answered. "Sebastian would tell you, of course, when you went to
+announce that you were leaving Nathaniel's. He could not do otherwise;
+it is the outcome of his temperament--an integral part of his nature."
+
+"Hilda," I cried, "you are a witch! How COULD you know that? I can't
+imagine."
+
+She smiled her restrained, Chaldean smile. "Because I KNOW Sebastian,"
+she answered, quietly. "I can read that man to the core. He is simple
+as a book. His composition is plain, straightforward, quite natural,
+uniform. There are no twists and turns in him. Once learn the key,
+and it discloses everything, like an open sesame. He has a gigantic
+intellect, a burning thirst for knowledge; one love, one hobby--science;
+and no moral instincts. He goes straight for his ends; and whatever
+comes in his way," she dug her little heel in the brown soil, "he
+tramples on it as ruthlessly as a child will trample on a worm or a
+beetle."
+
+"And yet," I said, "he is so great."
+
+"Yes, great, I grant you; but the easiest character to unravel that
+I have ever met. It is calm, austere, unbending, yet not in the least
+degree complex. He has the impassioned temperament, pushed to its
+highest pitch; the temperament that runs deep, with irresistible force;
+but the passion that inspires him, that carries him away headlong,
+as love carries some men, is a rare and abstract one--the passion of
+science."
+
+I gazed at her as she spoke, with a feeling akin to awe. "It must
+destroy the plot-interest of life for you, Hilda," I cried--out there
+in the vast void of that wild African plateau--"to foresee so well what
+each person will do--how each will act under such given circumstances."
+
+She pulled a bent of grass and plucked off its dry spikelets one by
+one. "Perhaps so," she answered, after a meditative pause; "though, of
+course, all natures are not equally simple. Only with great souls can
+you be sure beforehand like that, for good or for evil. It is essential
+to anything worth calling character that one should be able to predict
+in what way it will act under given circumstances--to feel certain,
+'This man will do nothing small or mean,' 'That one could never act
+dishonestly, or speak deceitfully.' But smaller natures are more
+complex. They defy analysis, because their motives are not consistent."
+
+"Most people think to be complex is to be great," I objected.
+
+She shook her head. "That is quite a mistake," she answered. "Great
+natures are simple, and relatively predictable, since their motives
+balance one another justly. Small natures are complex, and hard to
+predict, because small passions, small jealousies, small discords
+and perturbations come in at all moments, and override for a time the
+permanent underlying factors of character. Great natures, good or bad,
+are equably poised; small natures let petty motives intervene to upset
+their balance."
+
+"Then you knew I would come," I exclaimed, half pleased to find I
+belonged inferentially to her higher category.
+
+Her eyes beamed on me with a beautiful light. "Knew you would come? Oh,
+yes. I begged you not to come; but I felt sure you were too deeply in
+earnest to obey me. I asked a friend in Cape Town to telegraph your
+arrival; and almost ever since the telegram reached me I have been
+expecting you and awaiting you."
+
+"So you believed in me?"
+
+"Implicitly--as you in me. That is the worst of it, Hubert. If you did
+NOT believe in me, I could have told you all--and then, you would have
+left me. But, as it is, you KNOW all--and yet, you want to cling to me."
+
+"You know I know all--because Sebastian told me?"
+
+"Yes; and I think I even know how you answered him."
+
+"How?"
+
+She paused. The calm smile lighted up her face once more. Then she
+drew out a pencil. "You think life must lack plot-interest for me," she
+began, slowly, "because, with certain natures, I can partially guess
+beforehand what is coming. But have you not observed that, in reading
+a novel, part of the pleasure you feel arises from your conscious
+anticipation of the end, and your satisfaction in seeing that you
+anticipated correctly? Or part, sometimes, from the occasional
+unexpectedness of the real denouement? Well, life is like that. I enjoy
+observing my successes, and, in a way, my failures. Let me show you what
+I mean. I think I know what you said to Sebastian--not the words, of
+course, but the purport; and I will write it down now for you. Set down
+YOUR version, too. And then we will compare them."
+
+It was a crucial test. We both wrote for a minute or two. Somehow, in
+Hilda's presence, I forgot at once the strangeness of the scene, the
+weird oddity of the moment. That sombre plain disappeared for me. I was
+only aware that I was with Hilda once more--and therefore in Paradise.
+Pison and Gihon watered the desolate land. Whatever she did seemed to me
+supremely right. If she had proposed to me to begin a ponderous work on
+Medical Jurisprudence, under the shadow of the big rock, I should have
+begun it incontinently.
+
+She handed me her slip of paper; I took it and read: "Sebastian told
+you I was Dr. Yorke-Bannerman's daughter. And you answered, 'If so,
+Yorke-Bannerman was innocent, and YOU are the poisoner.' Is not that
+correct?"
+
+I handed her in answer my own paper. She read it with a faint flush.
+When she came to the words: "Either she is not Yorke-Bannerman's
+daughter; or else, Yorke-Bannerman was not a poisoner, and someone else
+was--I might put a name to him," she rose to her feet with a great rush
+of long-suppressed feeling, and clasped me passionately. "My Hubert!"
+she cried, "I read you aright. I knew it! I was sure of you!"
+
+I folded her in my arms, there, on the rusty-red South African desert.
+"Then, Hilda dear," I murmured, "you will consent to marry me?"
+
+The words brought her back to herself. She unfolded my arms with slow
+reluctance. "No, dearest," she said, earnestly, with a face where pride
+fought hard against love. "That is WHY, above all things, I did not want
+you to follow me. I love you; I trust you: you love me; you trust me.
+But I never will marry anyone till I have succeeded in clearing my
+father's memory. I KNOW he did not do it; I KNOW Sebastian did. But that
+is not enough. I must prove it, I must prove it!"
+
+"I believe it already," I answered. "What need, then, to prove it?"
+
+"To you, Hubert? Oh, no; not to you. There I am safe. But to the world
+that condemned him--condemned him untried. I must vindicate him; I must
+clear him!"
+
+I bent my face close to hers. "But may I not marry you first?" I
+asked--"and after that, I can help you to clear him."
+
+She gazed at me fearlessly. "No, no!" she cried, clasping her hands;
+"much as I love you, dear Hubert, I cannot consent to it. I am too
+proud!--too proud! I will not allow the world to say--not even to say
+falsely"--her face flushed crimson; her voice dropped low--"I will
+not allow them to say those hateful words, 'He married a murderer's
+daughter.'"
+
+I bowed my head. "As you will, my darling," I answered. "I am content to
+wait. I trust you in this, too. Some day, we will prove it."
+
+And all this time, preoccupied as I was with these deeper concerns, I
+had not even asked where Hilda lived, or what she was doing!
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII
+
+THE EPISODE OF THE STONE THAT LOOKED ABOUT IT
+
+
+Hilda took me back with her to the embryo farm where she had pitched her
+tent for the moment; a rough, wild place. It lay close to the main road
+from Salisbury to Chimoio.
+
+Setting aside the inevitable rawness and newness of all things
+Rhodesian, however, the situation itself was not wholly unpicturesque. A
+ramping rock or tor of granite, which I should judge at a rough guess to
+extend to an acre in size, sprang abruptly from the brown grass of the
+upland plain. It rose like a huge boulder. Its summit was crowned by the
+covered grave of some old Kaffir chief--a rude cairn of big stones
+under a thatched awning. At the foot of this jagged and cleft rock the
+farmhouse nestled--four square walls of wattle-and-daub, sheltered by
+its mass from the sweeping winds of the South African plateau. A stream
+brought water from a spring close by: in front of the house--rare sight
+in that thirsty land--spread a garden of flowers. It was an oasis in the
+desert. But the desert itself stretched grimly all round. I could never
+quite decide how far the oasis was caused by the water from the spring,
+and how far by Hilda's presence.
+
+"Then you live here?" I cried, gazing round--my voice, I suppose,
+betraying my latent sense of the unworthiness of the position.
+
+"For the present," Hilda answered, smiling. "You know, Hubert, I have no
+abiding city anywhere, till my Purpose is fulfilled. I came here because
+Rhodesia seemed the farthest spot on earth where a white woman just now
+could safely penetrate--in order to get away from you and Sebastian."
+
+"That is an unkind conjunction!" I exclaimed, reddening.
+
+"But I mean it," she answered, with a wayward little nod. "I wanted
+breathing-space to form fresh plans. I wanted to get clear away for
+a time from all who knew me. And this promised best.... But nowadays,
+really, one is never safe from intrusion anywhere."
+
+"You are cruel, Hilda!"
+
+"Oh, no. You deserve it. I asked you not to come--and you came in spite
+of me. I have treated you very nicely under the circumstances, I think.
+I have behaved like an angel. The question is now, what ought I to do
+next? You have upset my plans so."
+
+"Upset your plans? How?"
+
+"Dear Hubert,"--she turned to me with an indulgent smile,--"for a clever
+man, you are really TOO foolish! Can't you see that you have betrayed my
+whereabouts to Sebastian? _I_ crept away secretly, like a thief in the
+night, giving no name or place; and, having the world to ransack, he
+might have found it hard to track me; for HE had not YOUR clue of the
+Basingstoke letter--nor your reason for seeking me. But now that YOU
+have followed me openly, with your name blazoned forth in the company's
+passenger-lists, and your traces left plain in hotels and stages across
+the map of South Africa--why, the spoor is easy. If Sebastian cares to
+find us, he can follow the scent all through without trouble."
+
+"I never thought of that!" I cried, aghast.
+
+She was forbearance itself. "No, I knew you would never think of it. You
+are a man, you see. I counted that in. I was afraid from the first you
+would wreck all by following me."
+
+I was mutely penitent. "And yet, you forgive me, Hilda?"
+
+Her eyes beamed tenderness. "To know all, is to forgive all," she
+answered. "I have to remind you of that so often! How can I help
+forgiving, when I know WHY you came--what spur it was that drove you?
+But it is the future we have to think of now, not the past. And I must
+wait and reflect. I have NO plan just at present."
+
+"What are you doing at this farm?" I gazed round at it, dissatisfied.
+
+"I board here," Hilda answered, amused at my crestfallen face. "But, of
+course, I cannot be idle; so I have found work to do. I ride out on
+my bicycle to two or three isolated houses about, and give lessons to
+children in this desolate place, who would otherwise grow up ignorant.
+It fills my time, and supplies me with something besides myself to think
+about."
+
+"And what am _I_ to do?" I cried, oppressed with a sudden sense of
+helplessness.
+
+She laughed at me outright. "And is this the first moment that that
+difficulty has occurred to you?" she asked, gaily. "You have hurried all
+the way from London to Rhodesia without the slightest idea of what you
+mean to do now you have got here?"
+
+I laughed at myself in turn. "Upon my word, Hilda," I cried, "I set out
+to find you. Beyond the desire to find you, I had no plan in my head.
+That was an end in itself. My thoughts went no farther."
+
+She gazed at me half saucily. "Then don't you think, sir, the best thing
+you can do, now you HAVE found me, is--to turn back and go home again?"
+
+"I am a man," I said, promptly, taking a firm stand. "And you are
+a judge of character. If you really mean to tell me you think THAT
+likely--well, I shall have a lower opinion of your insight into men than
+I have been accustomed to harbour."
+
+Her smile was not wholly without a touch of triumph.
+
+"In that case," she went on, "I suppose the only alternative is for you
+to remain here."
+
+"That would appear to be logic," I replied. "But what can I do? Set up
+in practice?"
+
+"I don't see much opening," she answered. "If you ask my advice, I
+should say there is only one thing to be done in Rhodesia just now--turn
+farmer."
+
+"It IS done," I answered, with my usual impetuosity. "Since YOU say the
+word, I am a farmer already. I feel an interest in oats that is simply
+absorbing. What steps ought I to take first in my present condition?"
+
+She looked at me, all brown with the dust of my long ride. "I would
+suggest," she said slowly, "a good wash, and some dinner."
+
+"Hilda," I cried, surveying my boots, or what was visible of them,
+"that is REALLY clever of you. A wash and some dinner! So practical, so
+timely! The very thing! I will see to it."
+
+Before night fell, I had arranged everything. I was to buy the next farm
+from the owner of the one where Hilda lodged; I was also to learn
+the rudiments of South African agriculture from him for a valuable
+consideration; and I was to lodge in his house while my own was
+building. He gave me his views on the cultivation of oats. He gave them
+at some length--more length than perspicuity. I knew nothing about oats,
+save that they were employed in the manufacture of porridge--which I
+detest; but I was to be near Hilda once more, and I was prepared to
+undertake the superintendence of the oat from its birth to its reaping
+if only I might be allowed to live so close to Hilda.
+
+The farmer and his wife were Boers, but they spoke English. Mr. Jan
+Willem Klaas himself was a fine specimen of the breed--tall, erect,
+broad-shouldered, and genial. Mrs. Klaas, his wife, was mainly
+suggestive, in mind and person, of suet-pudding. There was one prattling
+little girl of three years old, by name Sannie, a most engaging child;
+and also a chubby baby.
+
+"You are betrothed, of course?" Mrs. Klaas said to Hilda before me,
+with the curious tactlessness of her race, when we made our first
+arrangement.
+
+Hilda's face flushed. "No; we are nothing to one another," she
+answered--which was only true formally. "Dr. Cumberledge had a post at
+the same hospital in London where I was a nurse; and he thought he would
+like to try Rhodesia. That is all."
+
+Mrs. Klaas gazed from one to other of us suspiciously. "You English are
+strange!" she answered, with a complacent little shrug. "But there--from
+Europe! Your ways, we know, are different."
+
+Hilda did not attempt to explain. It would have been impossible to make
+the good soul understand. Her horizon was so simple. She was a harmless
+housewife, given mostly to dyspepsia and the care of her little ones.
+Hilda had won her heart by unfeigned admiration for the chubby baby. To
+a mother, that covers a multitude of eccentricities, such as one expects
+to find in incomprehensible English. Mrs. Klaas put up with me because
+she liked Hilda.
+
+We spent some months together on Klaas's farm. It was a dreary place,
+save for Hilda. The bare daub-and-wattle walls; the clumps of misshapen
+and dusty prickly-pears that girt round the thatched huts of the Kaffir
+workpeople; the stone-penned sheep-kraals, and the corrugated iron roof
+of the bald stable for the waggon oxen--all was as crude and ugly as a
+new country can make things. It seemed to me a desecration that Hilda
+should live in such an unfinished land--Hilda, whom I imagined as moving
+by nature through broad English parks, with Elizabethan cottages and
+immemorial oaks--Hilda, whose proper atmosphere seemed to be one of
+coffee-coloured laces, ivy-clad abbeys, lichen-incrusted walls--all that
+is beautiful and gracious in time-honoured civilisations.
+
+Nevertheless, we lived on there in a meaningless sort of way--I hardly
+knew why. To me it was a puzzle. When I asked Hilda, she shook her head
+with her sibylline air and answered, confidently: "You do not understand
+Sebastian as well as I do. We have to wait for HIM. The next move is
+his. Till he plays his piece, I cannot tell how I may have to checkmate
+him."
+
+So we waited for Sebastian to advance a pawn. Meanwhile, I toyed with
+South African farming--not very successfully, I must admit. Nature did
+not design me for growing oats. I am no judge of oxen, and my views on
+the feeding of Kaffir sheep raised broad smiles on the black faces of my
+Mashona labourers.
+
+I still lodged at Tant Mettie's, as everybody called Mrs. Klaas; she was
+courtesy aunt to the community at large, while Oom Jan Willem was its
+courtesy uncle. They were simple, homely folk, who lived up to their
+religious principles on an unvaried diet of stewed ox-beef and bread;
+they suffered much from chronic dyspepsia, due in part, at least, no
+doubt, to the monotony of their food, their life, their interests. One
+could hardly believe one was still in the nineteenth century; these
+people had the calm, the local seclusion of the prehistoric epoch.
+For them, Europe did not exist; they knew it merely as a place where
+settlers came from. What the Czar intended, what the Kaiser designed,
+never disturbed their rest. A sick ox, a rattling tile on the roof,
+meant more to their lives than war in Europe. The one break in the
+sameness of their daily routine was family prayers; the one weekly
+event, going to church at Salisbury. Still, they had a single
+enthusiasm. Like everybody else for fifty miles around, they believed
+profoundly in the "future of Rhodesia." When I gazed about me at the raw
+new land--the weary flat of red soil and brown grasses--I felt at least
+that, with a present like that, it had need of a future.
+
+I am not by disposition a pioneer; I belong instinctively to the old
+civilisations. In the midst of rudimentary towns and incipient fields, I
+yearn for grey houses, a Norman church, an English thatched cottage.
+
+However, for Hilda's sake, I braved it out, and continued to learn the
+A B C of agriculture on an unmade farm with great assiduity from Oom Jan
+Willem.
+
+We had been stopping some months at Klaas's together when business
+compelled me one day to ride in to Salisbury. I had ordered some goods
+for my farm from England which had at last arrived. I had now to arrange
+for their conveyance from the town to my plot of land--a portentous
+matter. Just as I was on the point of leaving Klaas's, and was
+tightening the saddle-girth on my sturdy little pony, Oom Jan Willem
+himself sidled up to me with a mysterious air, his broad face all
+wrinkled with anticipatory pleasure. He placed a sixpence in my palm,
+glancing about him on every side as he did so, like a conspirator.
+
+"What am I to buy with it?" I asked, much puzzled, and suspecting
+tobacco. Tant Mettie declared he smoked too much for a church elder.
+
+He put his finger to his lips, nodded, and peered round. "Lollipops
+for Sannie," he whispered low, at last, with a guilty smile. "But"--he
+glanced about him again--"give them to me, please, when Tant Mettie
+isn't looking." His nod was all mystery.
+
+"You may rely on my discretion," I replied, throwing the time-honoured
+prejudices of the profession to the winds, and well pleased to aid and
+abet the simple-minded soul in his nefarious designs against little
+Sannie's digestive apparatus. He patted me on the back. "PEPPERMINT
+lollipops, mind!" he went on, in the same solemn undertone. "Sannie
+likes them best--peppermint."
+
+I put my foot in the stirrup, and vaulted into my saddle. "They shall
+not be forgotten," I answered, with a quiet smile at this pretty little
+evidence of fatherly feeling. I rode off. It was early morning, before
+the heat of the day began. Hilda accompanied me part of the way on her
+bicycle. She was going to the other young farm, some eight miles off,
+across the red-brown plateau, where she gave lessons daily to the
+ten-year old daughter of an English settler. It was a labour of love;
+for settlers in Rhodesia cannot afford to pay for what are beautifully
+described as "finishing governesses"; but Hilda was of the sort who
+cannot eat the bread of idleness. She had to justify herself to her kind
+by finding some work to do which should vindicate her existence.
+
+I parted from her at a point on the monotonous plain where one rubbly
+road branched off from another. Then I jogged on in the full morning sun
+over that scorching plain of loose red sand all the way to Salisbury.
+Not a green leaf or a fresh flower anywhere. The eye ached at the hot
+glare of the reflected sunlight from the sandy level.
+
+My business detained me several hours in the half-built town, with its
+flaunting stores and its rough new offices; it was not till towards
+afternoon that I could get away again on my sorrel, across the blazing
+plain once more to Klaas's.
+
+I moved on over the plateau at an easy trot, full of thoughts of Hilda.
+What could be the step she expected Sebastian to take next? She did not
+know, herself, she had told me; there, her faculty failed her. But SOME
+step he WOULD take; and till he took it she must rest and be watchful.
+
+I passed the great tree that stands up like an obelisk in the midst of
+the plain beyond the deserted Matabele village. I passed the low clumps
+of dry karroo-bushes by the rocky kopje. I passed the fork of the
+rubbly roads where I had parted from Hilda. At last, I reached the long,
+rolling ridge which looks down upon Klaas's, and could see in the slant
+sunlight the mud farmhouse and the corrugated iron roof where the oxen
+were stabled.
+
+The place looked more deserted, more dead-alive than ever. Not a black
+boy moved in it. Even the cattle and Kaffir sheep were nowhere to
+be seen.... But then it was always quiet; and perhaps I noticed the
+obtrusive air of solitude and sleepiness even more than usual, because I
+had just returned from Salisbury. All things are comparative. After the
+lost loneliness of Klaas's farm, even brand-new Salisbury seemed busy
+and bustling.
+
+I hurried on, ill at ease. But Tant Mettie would, doubtless, have a cup
+of tea ready for me as soon as I arrived, and Hilda would be waiting at
+the gate to welcome me.
+
+I reached the stone enclosure, and passed up through the flower-garden.
+To my great surprise, Hilda was not there. As a rule, she came to meet
+me, with her sunny smile. But perhaps she was tired, or the sun on the
+road might have given her a headache. I dismounted from my mare,
+and called one of the Kaffir boys to take her to the stable. Nobody
+answered.... I called again. Still silence.... I tied her up to the
+post, and strode over to the door, astonished at the solitude. I began
+to feel there was something weird and uncanny about this home-coming.
+Never before had I known Klaas's so entirely deserted.
+
+I lifted the latch and opened the door. It gave access at once to the
+single plain living-room. There, all was huddled. For a moment my eyes
+hardly took in the truth. There are sights so sickening that the brain
+at the first shock wholly fails to realise them.
+
+On the stone slab floor of the low living-room Tant Mettie lay dead.
+Her body was pierced through by innumerable thrusts, which I somehow
+instinctively recognised as assegai wounds. By her side lay Sannie,
+the little prattling girl of three, my constant playmate, whom I had
+instructed in cat's-cradle, and taught the tales of Cinderella and Red
+Riding Hood. My hand grasped the lollipops in my pocket convulsively.
+She would never need them. Nobody else was about. What had become of Oom
+Jan Willem--and the baby?
+
+I wandered out into the yard, sick with the sight I had already seen.
+There Oom Jan Willem himself lay stretched at full length; a bullet had
+pierced his left temple; his body was also riddled through with assegai
+thrusts.
+
+I saw at once what this meant. A rising of the Matabele!
+
+I had come back from Salisbury, unknowing it, into the midst of a revolt
+of bloodthirsty savages.
+
+Yet, even if I had known, I must still have hurried home with all speed
+to Klaas's--to protect Hilda.
+
+Hilda? Where was Hilda? A breathless sinking crept over me.
+
+I staggered out into the open. It was impossible to say what horror
+might not have happened. The Matabele might even now be lurking about
+the kraal--for the bodies were hardly cold. But Hilda? Hilda? Whatever
+came, I must find Hilda.
+
+Fortunately, I had my loaded revolver in my belt. Though we had not in
+the least anticipated this sudden revolt--it broke like a thunder-clap
+from a clear sky--the unsettled state of the country made even women go
+armed about their daily avocations.
+
+I strode on, half maddened. Beside the great block of granite which
+sheltered the farm there rose one of those rocky little hillocks of
+loose boulders which are locally known in South Africa by the Dutch name
+of kopjes. I looked out upon it drearily. Its round brown ironstones lay
+piled irregularly together, almost as if placed there in some earlier
+age by the mighty hands of prehistoric giants. My gaze on it was blank.
+I was thinking, not of it, but of Hilda, Hilda.
+
+I called the name aloud: "Hilda! Hilda! Hilda!"
+
+As I called, to my immense surprise, one of the smooth round boulders on
+the hillside seemed slowly to uncurl, and to peer about it cautiously.
+Then it raised itself in the slant sunlight, put a hand to its eyes,
+and gazed out upon me with a human face for a moment. After that it
+descended, step by step, among the other stones, with a white object
+in its arms. As the boulder uncurled and came to life, I was aware, by
+degrees... yes, yes, it was Hilda, with Tant Mettie's baby!
+
+In the fierce joy of that discovery I rushed forward to her, trembling,
+and clasped her in my arms. I could find no words but "Hilda! Hilda!"
+
+"Are they gone?" she asked, staring about her with a terrified air,
+though still strangely preserving her wonted composure of manner.
+
+"Who gone? The Matabele?"
+
+"Yes, yes!"
+
+"Did you see them, Hilda?"
+
+"For a moment--with black shields and assegais, all shouting madly. You
+have been to the house, Hubert? You know what has happened?"
+
+"Yes, yes, I know--a rising. They have massacred the Klaases."
+
+She nodded. "I came back on my bicycle, and, when I opened the door,
+found Tant Mettie and little Sannie dead. Poor, sweet little Sannie! Oom
+Jan was lying shot in the yard outside. I saw the cradle overturned,
+and looked under it for the baby. They did not kill her--perhaps did not
+notice her. I caught her up in my arms, and rushed out to my machine,
+thinking to make for Salisbury, and give the alarm to the men there.
+One must try to save others--and YOU were coming, Hubert! Then I
+heard horses' hoofs--the Matabele returning. They dashed back,
+mounted,--stolen horses from other farms,--they have taken poor Oom
+Jan's,--and they have gone on, shouting, to murder elsewhere! I flung
+down my machine among the bushes as they came,--I hope they have not
+seen it,--and I crouched here between the boulders, with the baby in my
+arms, trusting for protection to the colour of my dress, which is just
+like the ironstone."
+
+"It is a perfect deception," I answered, admiring her instinctive
+cleverness even then. "I never so much as noticed you."
+
+"No, nor the Matabele either, for all their sharp eyes. They passed by
+without stopping. I clasped the baby hard, and tried to keep it from
+crying--if it had cried, all would have been lost; but they passed just
+below, and swept on toward Rozenboom's. I lay still for a while, not
+daring to look out. Then I raised myself warily, and tried to listen.
+Just at that moment, I heard a horse's hoofs ring out once more. I
+couldn't tell, of course, whether it was YOU returning, or one of the
+Matabele, left behind by the others. So I crouched again.... Thank God,
+you are safe, Hubert!"
+
+All this took a moment to say, or was less said than hinted. "Now, what
+must we do?" I cried. "Bolt back again to Salisbury?"
+
+"It is the only thing possible--if my machine is unhurt. They may have
+taken it... or ridden over and broken it."
+
+We went down to the spot, and picked it up where it lay, half-concealed
+among the brittle, dry scrub of milk-bushes. I examined the bearings
+carefully; though there were hoof-marks close by, it had received no
+hurt. I blew up the tire, which was somewhat flabby, and went on to
+untie my sturdy pony. The moment I looked at her I saw the poor little
+brute was wearied out with her two long rides in the sweltering sun. Her
+flanks quivered. "It is no use," I cried, patting her, as she turned to
+me with appealing eyes that asked for water. "She CAN'T go back as far
+as Salisbury; at least, till she has had a feed of corn and a drink.
+Even then, it will be rough on her."
+
+"Give her bread," Hilda suggested. "That will hearten her more than
+corn. There is plenty in the house; Tant Mettie baked this morning."
+
+I crept in reluctantly to fetch it. I also brought out from the dresser
+a few raw eggs, to break into a tumbler and swallow whole; for Hilda
+and I needed food almost as sorely as the poor beast herself. There was
+something gruesome in thus rummaging about for bread and meat in the
+dead woman's cupboard, while she herself lay there on the floor; but one
+never realises how one will act in these great emergencies until they
+come upon one. Hilda, still calm with unearthly calmness, took a couple
+of loaves from my hand, and began feeding the pony with them. "Go and
+draw water for her," she said, simply, "while I give her the bread; that
+will save time. Every minute is precious."
+
+I did as I was bid, not knowing each moment but that the insurgents
+would return. When I came back from the spring with the bucket, the mare
+had demolished the whole two loaves, and was going on upon some grass
+which Hilda had plucked for her.
+
+"She hasn't had enough, poor dear," Hilda said, patting her neck. "A
+couple of loaves are penny buns to her appetite. Let her drink the
+water, while I go in and fetch out the rest of the baking."
+
+I hesitated. "You CAN'T go in there again, Hilda!" I cried. "Wait, and
+let me do it."
+
+Her white face was resolute. "Yes, I CAN," she answered. "It is a work
+of necessity; and in works of necessity a woman, I think, should flinch
+at nothing. Have I not seen already every varied aspect of death at
+Nathaniel's?" And in she went, undaunted, to that chamber of horrors,
+still clasping the baby.
+
+The pony made short work of the remaining loaves, which she devoured
+with great zest. As Hilda had predicted, they seemed to hearten her. The
+food and drink, with a bucket of water dashed on her hoofs, gave her
+new vigour like wine. We gulped down our eggs in silence. Then I held
+Hilda's bicycle. She vaulted lightly on to the seat, white and tired
+as she was, with the baby in her left arm, and her right hand on the
+handle-bar.
+
+"I must take the baby," I said.
+
+She shook her head.
+
+"Oh, no. I will not trust her to you."
+
+"Hilda, I insist."
+
+"And I insist, too. It is my place to take her."
+
+"But can you ride so?" I asked, anxiously.
+
+She began to pedal. "Oh, dear, yes. It is quite, quite easy. I shall get
+there all right--if the Matabele don't burst upon us."
+
+Tired as I was with my long day's work, I jumped into my saddle. I saw
+I should only lose time if I disputed about the baby. My little horse
+seemed to understand that something grave had occurred; for, weary as
+she must have been, she set out with a will once more over that great
+red level. Hilda pedalled bravely by my side. The road was bumpy, but
+she was well accustomed to it. I could have ridden faster than she went,
+for the baby weighted her. Still, we rode for dear life. It was a grim
+experience.
+
+All round, by this time, the horizon was dim with clouds of black smoke
+which went up from burning farms and plundered homesteads. The smoke did
+not rise high; it hung sullenly over the hot plain in long smouldering
+masses, like the smoke of steamers on foggy days in England. The sun was
+nearing the horizon; his slant red rays lighted up the red plain, the
+red sand, the brown-red grasses, with a murky, spectral glow of crimson.
+After those red pools of blood, this universal burst of redness appalled
+one. It seemed as though all nature had conspired in one unholy league
+with the Matabele. We rode on without a word. The red sky grew redder.
+
+"They may have sacked Salisbury!" I exclaimed at last, looking out
+towards the brand-new town.
+
+"I doubt it," Hilda answered. Her very doubt reassured me.
+
+We began to mount a long slope. Hilda pedalled with difficulty. Not a
+sound was heard save the light fall of my pony's feet on the soft new
+road, and the shrill cry of the cicalas. Then, suddenly, we started.
+What was that noise in our rear? Once, twice, it rang out. The loud ping
+of a rifle!
+
+Looking behind us, we saw eight or ten mounted Matabele! Stalwart
+warriors they were--half naked, and riding stolen horses. They were
+coming our way! They had seen us! They were pursuing us!
+
+"Put on all speed!" I cried, in my agony. "Hilda, can you manage it?"
+She pedalled with a will. But, as we mounted the slope, I saw they were
+gaining upon us. A few hundred yards were all our start. They had the
+descent of the opposite hill as yet in their favour.
+
+One man, astride on a better horse than the rest, galloped on in front
+and came within range of us. He had a rifle in his hand, he pointed it
+twice, and covered us. But he did not shoot. Hilda gave a cry of relief.
+"Don't you see?" she exclaimed. "It is Oom Jan Willem's rifle! That was
+their last cartridge. They have no more ammunition."
+
+I saw she was probably right; for Klaas was out of cartridges, and was
+waiting for my new stock to arrive from England. If that were correct,
+they must get near enough to attack us with assegais. They are more
+dangerous so. I remembered what an old Boer had said to me at Buluwayo:
+"The Zulu with his assegai is an enemy to be feared; with a gun, he is a
+bungler."
+
+We pounded on up the hill. It was deadly work, with those brutes at our
+heels. The child on Hilda's arm was visibly wearying her. It kept on
+whining. "Hilda," I cried, "that baby will lose your life! You CANNOT go
+on carrying it."
+
+She turned to me with a flash of her eyes. "What! You are a man," she
+broke out, "and you ask a woman to save her life by abandoning a baby!
+Hubert, you shame me!"
+
+I felt she was right. If she had been capable of giving it up, she would
+not have been Hilda. There was but one other way left.
+
+"Then YOU must take the pony," I called out, "and let me have the
+bicycle!"
+
+"You couldn't ride it," she called back. "It is a woman's machine,
+remember."
+
+"Yes, I could," I replied, without slowing. "It is not much too short;
+and I can bend my knees a bit. Quick, quick! No words! Do as I tell
+you!"
+
+She hesitated a second. The child's weight distressed her. "We should
+lose time in changing," she answered, at last, doubtful but still
+pedalling, though my hand was on the rein, ready to pull up the pony.
+
+"Not if we manage it right. Obey orders! The moment I say 'Halt,' I
+shall slacken my mare's pace. When you see me leave the saddle, jump off
+instantly, you, and mount her! I will catch the machine before it falls.
+Are you ready? Halt, then!"
+
+She obeyed the word without one second's delay. I slipped off, held
+the bridle, caught the bicycle, and led it instantaneously. Then I ran
+beside the pony--bridle in one hand, machine in the other--till Hilda
+had sprung with a light bound into the stirrup. At that, a little leap,
+and I mounted the bicycle. It was all done nimbly, in less time than the
+telling takes, for we are both of us naturally quick in our
+movements. Hilda rode like a man, astride--her short, bicycling skirt,
+unobtrusively divided in front and at the back, made this easily
+possible. Looking behind me with a hasty glance, I could see that
+the savages, taken aback, had reined in to deliberate at our unwonted
+evolution. I feel sure that the novelty of the iron horse, with a
+woman riding it, played not a little on their superstitious fears; they
+suspected, no doubt, this was some ingenious new engine of war
+devised against them by the unaccountable white man; it might go off
+unexpectedly in their faces at any moment. Most of them, I observed, as
+they halted, carried on their backs black ox-hide shields, interlaced
+with white thongs; they were armed with two or three assegais apiece and
+a knobkerry.
+
+Instead of losing time by the change, as it turned out, we had actually
+gained it. Hilda was able to put on my sorrel to her full pace, which
+I had not dared to do, for fear of outrunning my companion; the wise
+little beast, for her part, seemed to rise to the occasion, and to
+understand that we were pursued; for she stepped out bravely. On the
+other hand, in spite of the low seat and the short crank of a woman's
+machine, I could pedal up the slope with more force than Hilda, for I am
+a practised hill-climber; so that in both ways we gained, besides having
+momentarily disconcerted and checked the enemy. Their ponies were tired,
+and they rode them full tilt with savage recklessness, making them
+canter up-hill, and so needlessly fatiguing them. The Matabele, indeed,
+are unused to horses, and manage them but ill. It is as foot soldiers,
+creeping stealthily through bush or long grass, that they are really
+formidable. Only one of their mounts was tolerably fresh, the one which
+had once already almost overtaken us. As we neared the top of the slope,
+Hilda, glancing behind her, exclaimed, with a sudden thrill, "He is
+spurting again, Hubert!"
+
+I drew my revolver and held it in my right hand, using my left for
+steering. I did not look back; time was far too precious. I set my teeth
+hard. "Tell me when he draws near enough for a shot," I said, quietly.
+
+Hilda only nodded. Being mounted on the mare, she could see behind
+her more steadily now than I could from the machine; and her eye was
+trustworthy. As for the baby, rocked by the heave and fall of the pony's
+withers, it had fallen asleep placidly in the very midst of this terror!
+
+After a second, I asked once more, with bated breath, "Is he gaining?"
+
+She looked back. "Yes; gaining."
+
+A pause. "And now?"
+
+"Still gaining. He is poising an assegai."
+
+Ten seconds more passed in breathless suspense. The thud of their
+horses' hoofs alone told me their nearness. My finger was on the
+trigger. I awaited the word. "Fire!" she said at last, in a calm,
+unflinching voice. "He is well within distance."
+
+I turned half round and levelled as true as I could at the advancing
+black man. He rode, nearly naked, showing all his teeth and brandishing
+his assegai; the long white feathers stuck upright in his hair gave
+him a wild and terrifying barbaric aspect. It was difficult to preserve
+one's balance, keep the way on, and shoot, all at the same time; but,
+spurred by necessity, I somehow did it. I fired three shots in quick
+succession. My first bullet missed; my second knocked the man over; my
+third grazed the horse. With a ringing shriek, the Matabele fell in
+the road, a black writhing mass; his horse, terrified, dashed back with
+maddened snorts into the midst of the others. Its plunging disconcerted
+the whole party for a minute.
+
+We did not wait to see the rest. Taking advantage of this momentary
+diversion in our favour, we rode on at full speed to the top of the
+slope--I never knew before how hard I could pedal--and began to descend
+at a dash into the opposite hollow.
+
+The sun had set by this time. There is no twilight in those latitudes.
+It grew dark at once. We could see now, in the plain all round, where
+black clouds of smoke had rolled before, one lurid red glare of burning
+houses, mixed with a sullen haze of tawny light from the columns of
+prairie fire kindled by the insurgents.
+
+We made our way still onward across the open plain without one word
+towards Salisbury. The mare was giving out. She strode with a will; but
+her flanks were white with froth; her breath came short; foam flew from
+her nostrils.
+
+As we mounted the next ridge, still distancing our pursuers, I saw
+suddenly, on its crest, defined against the livid red sky like a
+silhouette, two more mounted black men!
+
+"It's all up, Hilda!" I cried, losing heart at last. "They are on both
+sides of us now! The mare is spent; we are surrounded!"
+
+She drew rein and gazed at them. For a moment suspense spoke in all her
+attitude. Then she burst into a sudden deep sigh of relief. "No, no,"
+she cried; "these are friendlies!"
+
+"How do you know?" I gasped. But I believed her.
+
+"They are looking out this way, with hands shading their eyes against
+the red glare. They are looking away from Salisbury, in the direction of
+the attack. They are expecting the enemy. They MUST be friendlies! See,
+see! they have caught sight of us!"
+
+As she spoke, one of the men lifted his rifle and half pointed it.
+"Don't shoot! don't shoot!" I shrieked aloud. "We are English! English!"
+
+The men let their rifles drop, and rode down towards us. "Who are you?"
+I cried.
+
+They saluted us, military fashion. "Matabele police, sah," the leader
+answered, recognising me. "You are flying from Klaas's?"
+
+"Yes," I answered. "They have murdered Klaas, with his wife and child.
+Some of them are now following us."
+
+The spokesman was a well-educated Cape Town negro. "All right sah," he
+answered. "I have forty men here right behind de kopje. Let dem come!
+We can give a good account of dem. Ride on straight wit de lady to
+Salisbury!"
+
+"The Salisbury people know of this rising, then?" I asked.
+
+"Yes, sah. Dem know since five o'clock. Kaffir boys from Klaas's brought
+in de news; and a white man escaped from Rozenboom's confirm it. We
+have pickets all round. You is safe now; you can ride on into Salisbury
+witout fear of de Matabele."
+
+I rode on, relieved. Mechanically, my feet worked to and fro on the
+pedals. It was a gentle down-gradient now towards the town. I had no
+further need for special exertion.
+
+Suddenly, Hilda's voice came wafted to me, as through a mist. "What are
+you doing, Hubert? You'll be off in a minute!"
+
+I started and recovered my balance with difficulty. Then I was aware at
+once that one second before I had all but dropped asleep, dog tired, on
+the bicycle. Worn out with my long day and with the nervous strain,
+I began to doze off, with my feet still moving round and round
+automatically, the moment the anxiety of the chase was relieved, and an
+easy down-grade gave me a little respite.
+
+I kept myself awake even then with difficulty. Riding on through the
+lurid gloom, we reached Salisbury at last, and found the town already
+crowded with refugees from the plateau. However, we succeeded in
+securing two rooms at a house in the long street, and were soon sitting
+down to a much-needed supper.
+
+As we rested, an hour or two later, in the ill-furnished back
+room, discussing this sudden turn of affairs with our host and some
+neighbours--for, of course, all Salisbury was eager for news from the
+scene of the massacres--I happened to raise my head, and saw, to my
+great surprise... a haggard white face peering in at us through the
+window.
+
+It peered round a corner, stealthily. It was an ascetic face, very sharp
+and clear-cut. It had a stately profile. The long and wiry grizzled
+moustache, the deep-set, hawk-like eyes, the acute, intense,
+intellectual features, all were very familiar. So was the outer setting
+of long, white hair, straight and silvery as it fell, and just curled
+in one wave-like inward sweep where it turned and rested on the stooping
+shoulders. But the expression on the face was even stranger than
+the sudden apparition. It was an expression of keen and poignant
+disappointment--as of a man whom fate has baulked of some well-planned
+end, his due by right, which mere chance has evaded.
+
+"They say there's a white man at the bottom of all this trouble," our
+host had been remarking, one second earlier. "The niggers know too much;
+and where did they get their rifles? People at Rozenboom's believe some
+black-livered traitor has been stirring up the Matabele for weeks and
+weeks. An enemy of Rhodes's, of course, jealous of our advance; a
+French agent, perhaps; but more likely one of these confounded Transvaal
+Dutchmen. Depend upon it, it's Kruger's doing."
+
+As the words fell from his lips, I saw the face. I gave a quick little
+start, then recovered my composure.
+
+But Hilda noted it. She looked up at me hastily. She was sitting with
+her back to the window, and therefore, of course, could not see the face
+itself, which indeed was withdrawn with a hurried movement, yet with a
+certain strange dignity, almost before I could feel sure of having seen
+it. Still, she caught my startled expression, and the gleam of surprise
+and recognition in my eye. She laid one hand upon my arm. "You have seen
+him?" she asked quietly, almost below her breath.
+
+"Seen whom?"
+
+"Sebastian."
+
+It was useless denying it to HER. "Yes, I have seen him," I answered, in
+a confidential aside.
+
+"Just now--this moment--at the back of the house--looking in at the
+window upon us?"
+
+"You are right--as always."
+
+She drew a deep breath. "He has played his game," she said low to me,
+in an awed undertone. "I felt sure it was he. I expected him to play;
+though what piece, I knew not; and when I saw those poor dead souls,
+I was certain he had done it--indirectly done it. The Matabele are his
+pawns. He wanted to aim a blow at ME; and THIS was the way he chose to
+aim it."
+
+"Do you think he is capable of that?" I cried. For, in spite of all,
+I had still a sort of lingering respect for Sebastian. "It seems so
+reckless--like the worst of anarchists--when he strikes at one head, to
+involve so many irrelevant lives in one common destruction."
+
+Hilda's face was like a drowned man's.
+
+"To Sebastian," she answered, shuddering, "the End is all; the Means
+are unessential. Who wills the End, wills the Means; that is the sum and
+substance of his philosophy of life. From first to last, he has always
+acted up to it. Did I not tell you once he was a snow-clad volcano?"
+
+"Still, I am loth to believe--" I cried.
+
+She interrupted me calmly. "I knew it," she said. "I expected it.
+Beneath that cold exterior, the fires of his life burn fiercely still. I
+told you we must wait for Sebastian's next move; though I confess,
+even from HIM, I hardly dreamt of this one. But, from the moment when
+I opened the door on poor Tant Mettie's body, lying there in its red
+horror, I felt it must be he. And when you started just now, I said to
+myself in a flash of intuition--'Sebastian has come! He has come to see
+how his devil's work has prospered.' He sees it has gone wrong. So now
+he will try to devise some other."
+
+I thought of the malign expression on that cruel white face as it stared
+in at the window from the outer gloom, and I felt convinced she was
+right. She had read her man once more. For it was the desperate,
+contorted face of one appalled to discover that a great crime attempted
+and successfully carried out has failed, by mere accident, of its
+central intention.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII
+
+THE EPISODE OF THE EUROPEAN WITH THE KAFFIR HEART
+
+
+Unfashionable as it is to say so, I am a man of peace. I belong to a
+profession whose province is to heal, not to destroy. Still there
+ARE times which turn even the most peaceful of us perforce into
+fighters--times when those we love, those we are bound to protect, stand
+in danger of their lives; and at moments like that, no man can doubt
+what is his plain duty. The Matabele revolt was one such moment. In a
+conflict of race we MUST back our own colour. I do not know whether the
+natives were justified in rising or not; most likely, yes; for we had
+stolen their country; but when once they rose, when the security of
+white women depended upon repelling them, I felt I had no alternative.
+For Hilda's sake, for the sake of every woman and child in Salisbury,
+and in all Rhodesia, I was bound to bear my part in restoring order.
+
+For the immediate future, it is true, we were safe enough in the little
+town; but we did not know how far the revolt might have spread; we could
+not tell what had happened at Charter, at Buluwayo, at the outlying
+stations. The Matabele, perhaps, had risen in force over the whole vast
+area which was once Lo-Bengula's country; if so, their first object
+would certainly be to cut us off from communication with the main body
+of English settlers at Buluwayo.
+
+"I trust to you, Hilda," I said, on the day after the massacre at
+Klaas's, "to divine for us where these savages are next likely to attack
+us."
+
+She cooed at the motherless baby, raising one bent finger, and then
+turned to me with a white smile. "Then you ask too much of me," she
+answered. "Just think what a correct answer would imply! First, a
+knowledge of these savages' character; next, a knowledge of their mode
+of fighting. Can't you see that only a person who possessed my trick of
+intuition, and who had also spent years in warfare among the Matabele,
+would be really able to answer your question?"
+
+"And yet such questions have been answered before now by people far less
+intuitive than you," I went on. "Why, I've read somewhere how, when the
+war between Napoleon the First and the Prussians broke out, in 1806,
+Jomini predicted that the decisive battle of the campaign would be
+fought near Jena; and near Jena it was fought. Are not YOU better than
+many Jominis?"
+
+Hilda tickled the baby's cheek. "Smile, then, baby, smile!" she said,
+pouncing one soft finger on a gathering dimple. "And who WAS your friend
+Jomini?"
+
+"The greatest military critic and tactician of his age," I answered.
+"One of Napoleon's generals. I fancy he wrote a book, don't you know--a
+book on war--Des Grandes Operations Militaires, or something of that
+sort."
+
+"Well, there you are, then! That's just it! Your Jomini, or Hominy, or
+whatever you call him, not only understood Napoleon's temperament, but
+understood war and understood tactics. It was all a question of the lie
+of the land, and strategy, and so forth. If _I_ had been asked, I could
+never have answered a quarter as well as Jomini Piccolomini--could I,
+baby? Jomini would have been worth a good many me's. There, there, a
+dear, motherless darling! Why, she crows just as if she hadn't lost all
+her family!"
+
+"But, Hilda, we must be serious. I count upon you to help us in this
+matter. We are still in danger. Even now these Matabele may attack and
+destroy us."
+
+She laid the child on her lap, and looked grave. "I know it, Hubert; but
+I must leave it now to you men. I am no tactician. Don't take ME for one
+of Napoleon's generals."
+
+"Still," I said, "we have not only the Matabele to reckon with,
+recollect. There is Sebastian as well. And, whether you know your
+Matabele or not, you at least know your Sebastian."
+
+She shuddered. "I know him; yes, I know him.... But this case is so
+difficult. We have Sebastian--complicated by a rabble of savages,
+whose habits and manners I do not understand. It is THAT that makes the
+difficulty."
+
+"But Sebastian himself?" I urged. "Take him first, in isolation."
+
+She paused for a full minute, with her chin on her hand and her elbow
+on the table. Her brow gathered. "Sebastian?" she repeated.
+"Sebastian?--ah, there I might guess something. Well, of course, having
+once begun this attempt, and being definitely committed, as it were, to
+a policy of killing us, he will go through to the bitter end, no matter
+how many other lives it may cost. That is Sebastian's method."
+
+"You don't think, having once found out that I saw and recognised him,
+he would consider the game lost, and slink away to the coast again?"
+
+"Sebastian? Oh, no; that is the absolute antipodes of his type and
+temperament."
+
+"He will never give up because of a temporary check, you think?"
+
+"No, never. The man has a will of sheer steel--it may break, but it will
+not bend. Besides, consider: he is too deeply involved. You have seen
+him; you know; and he knows you know. You may bring this thing home to
+him. Then what is his plain policy? Why, to egg on the natives whose
+confidence he has somehow gained into making a further attack, and
+cutting off all Salisbury. If he had succeeded in getting you and me
+massacred at Klaas's, as he hoped, he would no doubt have slunk off to
+the coast at once, leaving his black dupes to be shot down at leisure by
+Rhodes's soldiers."
+
+"I see; but having failed in that?"
+
+"Then he is bound to go through with it, and kill us if he can, even if
+he has to kill all Salisbury with us. That, I feel sure, is Sebastian's
+plan. Whether he can get the Matabele to back him up in it or not is a
+different matter."
+
+"But taking Sebastian himself; alone?"
+
+"Oh, Sebastian himself alone would naturally say: 'Never mind Buluwayo!
+Concentrate round Salisbury, and kill off all there first; when that
+is done, then you can move on at your ease and cut them to pieces
+in Charter and Buluwayo.' You see, he would have no interest in the
+movement, himself, once he had fairly got rid of us here. The Matabele
+are only the pieces in his game. It is ME he wants, not Salisbury. He
+would clear out of Rhodesia as soon as he had carried his point. But he
+would have to give some reasonable ground to the Matabele for his first
+advice; and it seems a reasonable ground to say, 'Don't leave Salisbury
+in your rear, so as to put yourselves between two fires. Capture
+the outpost first; that down, march on undistracted to the principal
+stronghold.'"
+
+"Who is no tactician?" I murmured, half aloud.
+
+She laughed. "That's not tactics, Hubert; that's plain common sense--and
+knowledge of Sebastian. Still, it comes to nothing. The question is
+not, 'What would Sebastian wish?' it is, 'Could Sebastian persuade these
+angry black men to accept his guidance?'"
+
+"Sebastian!" I cried; "Sebastian could persuade the very devil! I know
+the man's fiery enthusiasm, his contagious eloquence. He thrilled me
+through, myself, with his electric personality, so that it took me six
+years--and your aid--to find him out at last. His very abstractness
+tells. Why, even in this war, you may be sure, he will be making notes
+all the time on the healing of wounds in tropical climates, contrasting
+the African with the European constitution."
+
+"Oh, yes; of course. Whatever he does, he will never forget the
+interests of science. He is true to his lady-love, to whomever else he
+plays false. That is his saving virtue."
+
+"And he will talk down the Matabele," I went on, "even if he doesn't
+know their language. But I suspect he does; for, you must remember,
+he was three years in South Africa as a young man, on a scientific
+expedition, collecting specimens. He can ride like a trooper; and he
+knows the country. His masterful ways, his austere face, will cow the
+natives. Then, again, he has the air of a prophet; and prophets always
+stir the negro. I can imagine with what air he will bid them drive
+out the intrusive white men who have usurped their land, and draw them
+flattering pictures of a new Matabele empire about to arise under a new
+chief, too strong for these gold-grubbing, diamond-hunting mobs from
+over sea to meddle with."
+
+She reflected once more. "Do you mean to say anything of our suspicions
+in Salisbury, Hubert?" she asked at last.
+
+"It is useless," I answered. "The Salisbury folk believe there is a
+white man at the bottom of this trouble already. They will try to catch
+him; that's all that is necessary. If we said it was Sebastian, people
+would only laugh at us. They must understand Sebastian, as you and I
+understand him, before they would think such a move credible. As a rule
+in life, if you know anything which other people do not know, better
+keep it to yourself; you will only get laughed at as a fool for telling
+it."
+
+"I think so, too. That is why I never say what I suspect or infer
+from my knowledge of types--except to a few who can understand and
+appreciate. Hubert, if they all arm for the defence of the town, you
+will stop here, I suppose, to tend the wounded?"
+
+Her lips trembled as she spoke, and she gazed at me with a strange
+wistfulness. "No, dearest," I answered at once, taking her face in my
+hands. "I shall fight with the rest. Salisbury has more need to-day of
+fighters than of healers."
+
+"I thought you would," she answered, slowly. "And I think you do right."
+Her face was set white; she played nervously with the baby. "I would not
+urge you; but I am glad you say so. I want you to stop; yet I could not
+love you so much if I did not see you ready to play the man at such a
+crisis."
+
+"I shall give in my name with the rest," I answered.
+
+"Hubert, it is hard to spare you--hard to send you to such danger.
+But for one other thing, I am glad you are going.... They must take
+Sebastian alive; they must NOT kill him."
+
+"They will shoot him red-handed if they catch him," I answered
+confidently. "A white man who sides with the blacks in an insurrection!"
+
+"Then YOU must see that they do not do it. They must bring him in alive,
+and try him legally. For me--and therefore for you--that is of the first
+importance."
+
+"Why so, Hilda?"
+
+"Hubert, you want to marry me." I nodded vehemently. "Well, you know
+I can only marry you on one condition--that I have succeeded first in
+clearing my father's memory. Now, the only man living who can clear
+it is Sebastian. If Sebastian were to be shot, it could NEVER be
+cleared--and then, law of Medes and Persians, I could never marry you."
+
+"But how can you expect Sebastian, of all men, to clear it, Hilda?" I
+cried. "He is ready to kill us both, merely to prevent your attempting
+a revision; is it likely you can force him to confess his crime, still
+less induce him to admit it voluntarily?"
+
+She placed her hands over her eyes and pressed them hard with a strange,
+prophetic air she often had about her when she gazed into the future. "I
+know my man," she answered, slowly, without uncovering her eyes. "I know
+how I can do it--if the chance ever comes to me. But the chance must
+come first. It is hard to find. I lost it once at Nathaniel's. I must
+not lose it again. If Sebastian is killed skulking here in Rhodesia, my
+life's purpose will have failed; I shall not have vindicated my father's
+good name; and then, we can never marry."
+
+"So I understand, Hilda, my orders are these: I am to go out and fight
+for the women and children, if possible; that Sebastian shall be made
+prisoner alive, and on no account to let him be killed in the open!"
+
+"I give you no orders, Hubert. I tell you how it seems best to me.
+But if Sebastian is shot dead--then you understand it must be all over
+between us. I NEVER can marry you until, or unless, I have cleared my
+father."
+
+"Sebastian shall not be shot dead," I cried, with my youthful
+impetuosity. "He shall be brought in alive, though all Salisbury as one
+man try its best to lynch him."
+
+I went out to report myself as a volunteer for service. Within the
+next few hours the whole town had been put in a state of siege, and all
+available men armed to oppose the insurgent Matabele. Hasty preparations
+were made for defence. The ox-waggons of settlers were drawn up outside
+in little circles here and there, so as to form laagers, which acted
+practically as temporary forts for the protection of the outskirts. In
+one of these I was posted. With our company were two American scouts,
+named Colebrook and Doolittle, irregular fighters whose value in South
+African campaigns had already been tested in the old Matabele war
+against Lo-Bengula. Colebrook, in particular, was an odd-looking
+creature--a tall, spare man, bodied like a weasel. He was red-haired,
+ferret-eyed, and an excellent scout, but scrappier and more inarticulate
+in his manner of speech than any human being I had ever encountered.
+His conversation was a series of rapid interjections, jerked out at
+intervals, and made comprehensible by a running play of gesture and
+attitude.
+
+"Well, yes," he said, when I tried to draw him out on the Matabele mode
+of fighting. "Not on the open. Never! Grass, if you like. Or bushes. The
+eyes of them! The eyes!..." He leaned eagerly forward, as if looking for
+something. "See here, Doctor; I'm telling you. Spots. Gleaming. Among
+the grass. Long grass. And armed, too. A pair of 'em each. One to
+throw"--he raised his hand as if lancing something--"the other for close
+fighting. Assegais, you know. That's the name of it. Only the eyes.
+Creeping, creeping, creeping. No noise. One raised. Waggons drawn up in
+laager. Oxen out-spanned in the middle. Trekking all day. Tired out; dog
+tired. Crawl, crawl, crawl! Hands and knees. Might be snakes. A wriggle.
+Men sitting about the camp fire. Smoking. Gleam of their eyes! Under the
+waggons. Nearer, nearer, nearer! Then, the throwing ones in your midst.
+Shower of 'em. Right and left. 'Halloa! stand by, boys!' Look up; see
+'em swarming, black like ants, over the waggons. Inside the laager.
+Snatch up rifles! All up! Oxen stampeding, men running, blacks sticking
+'em like pigs in the back with their assegais. Bad job, the whole thing.
+Don't care for it, myself. Very tough 'uns to fight. If they once break
+laager."
+
+"Then you should never let them get to close quarters," I suggested,
+catching the general drift of his inarticulate swift pictures.
+
+"You're a square man, you are, Doctor! There you touch the spot.
+Never let 'em get at close quarters. Sentries?--creep past 'em.
+Outposts?--crawl between. Had Forbes and Wilson like that. Cut 'em off.
+Perdition!... But Maxims will do it! Maxims! Never let em get near.
+Sweep the ground all round. Durned hard, though, to know just WHEN
+they're coming. A night; two nights; all clear; only waste ammunition.
+Third, they swarm like bees; break laager; all over!"
+
+This was not exactly an agreeable picture of what we had to expect--the
+more so as our particular laager happened to have no Maxims. However, we
+kept a sharp lookout for those gleaming eyes in the long grass of which
+Colebrook warned us; their flashing light was the one thing to be
+seen, at night above all, when the black bodies could crawl unperceived
+through the tall dry herbage. On our first night out we had no
+adventures. We watched by turns outside, relieving sentry from time to
+time, while those of us who slept within the laager slept on the bare
+ground with our arms beside us. Nobody spoke much. The tension was too
+great. Every moment we expected an attack of the enemy.
+
+Next day news reached us by scouts from all the other laagers. None of
+them had been attacked; but in all there was a deep, half-instinctive
+belief that the Matabele in force were drawing step by step closer
+and closer around us. Lo-Bengula's old impis, or native regiments, had
+gathered together once more under their own indunas--men trained and
+drilled in all the arts and ruses of savage warfare. On their own
+ground, and among their native scrub, those rude strategists are
+formidable. They know the country, and how to fight in it. We had
+nothing to oppose to them but a handful of the new Matabeleland police,
+an old regular soldier or two, and a raw crowd of volunteers, most of
+whom, like myself, had never before really handled a rifle.
+
+That afternoon, the Major in command decided to send out the two
+American scouts to scour the grass and discover, if possible, how near
+our lines the Matabele had penetrated. I begged hard to be permitted to
+accompany them. I wanted, if I could, to get evidence against Sebastian;
+or, at least, to learn whether he was still directing and assisting the
+enemy. At first, the scouts laughed at my request; but when I told them
+privately that I believed I had a clue against the white traitor who had
+caused the revolt, and that I wished to identify him, they changed their
+tone, and began to think there might be something in it.
+
+"Experience?" Colebrook asked in his brief shorthand of speech, running
+his ferret eyes over me.
+
+"None," I answered; "but a noiseless tread and a capacity for crawling
+through holes in hedges which may perhaps be useful."
+
+He glanced inquiry at Doolittle, who was a shorter and stouter man, with
+a knack of getting over obstacles by sheer forcefulness.
+
+"Hands and knees!" he said, abruptly, in the imperative mood, pointing
+to a clump of dry grass with thorny bushes ringed about it.
+
+I went down on my hands and knees, and threaded my way through the long
+grasses and matted boughs as noiselessly as I could. The two old hands
+watched me. When I emerged several yards off, much to their surprise,
+Colebrook turned to Doolittle. "Might answer," he said curtly. "Major
+says, 'Choose your own men.' Anyhow, if they catch him, nobody's fault
+but his. Wants to go. Will do it."
+
+We set out through the long grass together, walking erect at first,
+till we had got some distance from the laager, and then, creeping as the
+Matabele themselves creep, without displacing the grass-flowers, for
+a mere wave on top would have betrayed us at once to the quick eyes
+of those observant savages. We crept on for a mile or so. At last,
+Colebrook turned to me, one finger on his lips. His ferret eyes gleamed.
+We were approaching a wooded hill, all interspersed with boulders.
+"Kaffirs here!" he whispered low, as if he knew by instinct. HOW he
+knew, I cannot tell; he seemed almost to scent them.
+
+We stole on farther, going more furtively than ever now. I could notice
+by this time that there were waggons in front, and could hear men
+speaking in them. I wanted to proceed, but Colebrook held up one warning
+hand. "Won't do," he said, shortly, in a low tone. "Only myself. Danger
+ahead! Stop here and wait for me."
+
+Doolittle and myself waited. Colebrook kept on cautiously, squirming his
+long body in sinuous waves like a lizard's through the grass, and was
+soon lost to us. No snake could have been lither. We waited, with ears
+intent. One minute, two minutes, many minutes passed. We could catch the
+voices of the Kaffirs in the bush all round. They were speaking freely,
+but what they said I did not know, as I had picked up only a very few
+words of the Matabele language.
+
+It seemed hours while we waited, still as mice in our ambush, and alert.
+I began to think Colebrook must have been lost or killed--so long was he
+gone--and that we must return without him. At last--we leaned forward--a
+muffled movement in the grass ahead! A slight wave at the base! Then
+it divided below, bit by bit, while the tops remained stationary. A
+weasel-like body slank noiselessly through. Finger on lips once more,
+Colebrook glided beside us. We turned and crawled back, stifling our
+very pulses. For many minutes none of us spoke. But we heard in our rear
+a loud cry and a shaking of assegais; the Kaffirs behind us were yelling
+frightfully. They must have suspected something--seen some movement in
+the tufted heads of grass, for they spread abroad, shouting. We halted,
+holding our breath. After a time, however; the noise died down. They
+were moving another way. We crept on again, stealthily.
+
+When, at last, after many minutes, we found ourselves beyond a
+sheltering belt of brushwood, we ventured to rise and speak. "Well?" I
+asked of Colebrook. "Did you discover anything?"
+
+He nodded assent. "Couldn't see him," he said shortly. "But he's there,
+right enough. White man. Heard 'em talk of him."
+
+"What did they say?" I asked, eagerly.
+
+"Said he had a white skin, but his heart was a Kaffir's. Great induna;
+leader of many impis. Prophet, wise weather doctor! Friend of old
+Moselekatse's. Destroy the white men from over the big water; restore
+the land to the Matabele. Kill all in Salisbury, especially the white
+women. Witches--all witches. They give charms to the men; cook lions'
+hearts for them; make them brave with love-drinks."
+
+"They said that?" I exclaimed, taken aback. "Kill all the white women!"
+
+"Yes. Kill all. White witches, every one. The young ones worst. Word of
+the great induna."
+
+"And you could not see him?"
+
+"Crept near waggons, close. Fellow himself inside. Heard his voice;
+spoke English, with a little Matabele. Kaffir boy who was servant at the
+mission interpreted."
+
+"What sort of voice? Like this?" And I imitated Sebastian's cold,
+clear-cut tone as well as I was able.
+
+"The man! That's him, Doctor. You've got him down to the ground. The
+very voice. Heard him giving orders."
+
+That settled the question. I was certain of it now. Sebastian was with
+the insurgents.
+
+We made our way back to our laager, flung ourselves down, and slept a
+little on the ground before taking our turn in the fatigues of the night
+watch. Our horses were loosely tied, ready for any sudden alarm. About
+midnight, we three were sitting with others about the fire, talking low
+to one another. All at once Doolittle sprang up, alert and eager. "Look
+out, boys!" he cried, pointing his hands under the waggons. "What's
+wriggling in the grass there?"
+
+I looked, and saw nothing. Our sentries were posted outside, about a
+hundred yards apart, walking up and down till they met, and exchanging
+"All's well" aloud at each meeting.
+
+"They should have been stationary!" one of our scouts exclaimed, looking
+out at them. "It's easier for the Matabele to see them so, when they
+walk up and down, moving against the sky. The Major ought to have posted
+them where it wouldn't have been so simple for a Kaffir to see them and
+creep in between them!"
+
+"Too late now, boys!" Colebrook burst out, with a rare effort of
+articulateness. "Call back the sentries, Major! The blacks have broken
+line! Hold there! They're in upon us!"
+
+Even as he spoke, I followed his eager pointing hand with my eyes,
+and just descried among the grass two gleaming objects, seen under the
+hollow of one of the waggons. Two: then two; then two again; and behind,
+whole pairs of them. They looked like twin stars; but they were eyes,
+black eyes, reflecting the starlight and the red glare of the camp-fire.
+They crept on tortuously in serpentine curves through the long, dry
+grasses. I could feel, rather than see, that they were Matabele,
+crawling prone on their bellies, and trailing their snake-like way
+between the dark jungle. Quick as thought, I raised my rifle and blazed
+away at the foremost. So did several others. But the Major shouted,
+angrily: "Who fired? Don't shoot, boys, till you hear the word of
+command! Back, sentries, to laager! Not a shot till they're safe inside!
+You'll hit your own people!"
+
+Almost before he said it, the sentries darted back. The Matabele,
+crouching on hands and knees in the long grass, had passed between them
+unseen. A wild moment followed. I can hardly describe it; the whole
+thing was so new to me, and took place so quickly. Hordes of black human
+ants seemed to surge up all at once over and under the waggons. Assegais
+whizzed through the air, or gleamed brandished around one. Our men fell
+back to the centre of the laager, and formed themselves hastily under
+the Major's orders. Then a pause; a deadly fire. Once, twice, thrice we
+volleyed. The Matabele fell by dozens--but they came on by hundreds. As
+fast as we fired and mowed down one swarm, fresh swarms seemed to spring
+from the earth and stream over the waggons. Others appeared to grow up
+almost beneath our feet as they wormed their way on their faces along
+the ground between the wheels, squirmed into the circle, and then rose
+suddenly, erect and naked, in front of us. Meanwhile, they yelled and
+shouted, clashing their spears and shields. The oxen bellowed. The
+rifles volleyed. It was a pandemonium of sound in an orgy of gloom.
+Darkness, lurid flame, blood, wounds, death, horror!
+
+Yet, in the midst of all this hubbub, I could not help admiring the cool
+military calm and self-control of our Major. His voice rose clear above
+the confused tumult. "Steady, boys, steady! Don't fire at random. Pick
+each your likeliest man, and aim at him deliberately. That's right;
+easy--easy! Shoot at leisure, and don't waste ammunition!"
+
+He stood as if he were on parade, in the midst of this palpitating
+turmoil of savages. Some of us, encouraged by his example, mounted the
+waggons, and shot from the tops at our approaching assailants.
+
+How long the hurly-burly went on, I cannot say. We fired, fired, fired,
+and Kaffirs fell like sheep; yet more Kaffirs rose fresh from the long
+grass to replace them. They swarmed with greater ease now over the
+covered waggons, across the mangled and writhing bodies of their
+fellows; for the dead outside made an inclined plane for the living to
+mount by. But the enemy were getting less numerous, I thought, and less
+anxious to fight. The steady fire told on them. By-and-by, with a little
+halt, for the first time they wavered. All our men now mounted the
+waggons, and began to fire on them in regular volleys as they came up.
+The evil effects of the surprise were gone by this time; we were acting
+with coolness and obeying orders. But several of our people dropped
+close beside me, pierced through with assegais.
+
+All at once, as if a panic had burst over them, the Matabele, with one
+mind, stopped dead short in their advance and ceased fighting. Till that
+moment, no number of deaths seemed to make any difference to them. Men
+fell, disabled; others sprang up from the ground by magic. But now, of
+a sudden, their courage flagged--they faltered, gave way, broke, and
+shambled in a body. At last, as one man, they turned and fled. Many
+of them leapt up with a loud cry from the long grass where they were
+skulking, flung away their big shields with the white thongs interlaced,
+and ran for dear life, black, crouching figures, through the dense, dry
+jungle. They held their assegais still, but did not dare to use them. It
+was a flight, pell-mell--and the devil take the hindmost.
+
+Not until then had I leisure to THINK, and to realise my position. This
+was the first and only time I had ever seen a battle. I am a bit of a
+coward, I believe--like most other men--though I have courage enough to
+confess it; and I expected to find myself terribly afraid when it came
+to fighting. Instead of that, to my immense surprise, once the Matabele
+had swarmed over the laager, and were upon us in their thousands, I had
+no time to be frightened. The absolute necessity for keeping cool, for
+loading and reloading, for aiming and firing, for beating them off at
+close quarters--all this so occupied one's mind, and still more one's
+hands, that one couldn't find room for any personal terrors. "They
+are breaking over there!" "They will overpower us yonder!" "They are
+faltering now!" Those thoughts were so uppermost in one's head, and
+one's arms were so alert, that only after the enemy gave way, and began
+to run at full pelt, could a man find breathing-space to think of his
+own safety. Then the thought occurred to me, "I have been through my
+first fight, and come out of it alive; after all, I was a deal less
+afraid than I expected!"
+
+That took but a second, however. Next instant, awaking to the altered
+circumstances, we were after them at full speed; accompanying them on
+their way back to their kraals in the uplands with a running fire as a
+farewell attention.
+
+As we broke laager in pursuit of them, by the uncertain starlight we saw
+a sight which made us boil with indignation. A mounted man turned and
+fled before them. He seemed their leader, unseen till then. He was
+dressed like a European--tall, thin, unbending, in a greyish-white suit.
+He rode a good horse, and sat it well; his air was commanding, even as
+he turned and fled in the general rout from that lost battle.
+
+I seized Colebrook's arm, almost speechless with anger. "The white man!"
+I cried. "The traitor!"
+
+He did not answer a word, but with a set face of white rage loosed his
+horse from where it was tethered among the waggons. At the same moment,
+I loosed mine. So did Doolittle. Quick as thought, but silently, we led
+them out all three where the laager was broken. I clutched my mare's
+mane, and sprang to the stirrup to pursue our enemy. My sorrel bounded
+off like a bird. The fugitive had a good two minutes start of us; but
+our horses were fresh, while his had probably been ridden all day. I
+patted my pony's neck; she responded with a ringing neigh of joy. We
+tore after the outlaw, all three of us abreast. I felt a sort of fierce
+delight in the reaction after the fighting. Our ponies galloped wildly
+over the plain; we burst out into the night, never heeding the Matabele
+whom we passed on the open in panic-stricken retreat. I noticed that
+many of them in their terror had even flung away their shields and their
+assegais.
+
+It was a mad chase across the dark veldt--we three, neck to neck,
+against that one desperate runaway. We rode all we knew. I dug my heels
+into my sorrel's flanks, and she responded bravely. The tables were
+turned now on our traitor since the afternoon of the massacre. HE was
+the pursued, and WE were the pursuers. We felt we must run him down, and
+punish him for his treachery.
+
+At a breakneck pace, we stumbled over low bushes; we grazed big
+boulders; we rolled down the sides of steep ravines; but we kept him
+in sight all the time, dim and black against the starry sky; slowly,
+slowly--yes, yes!--we gained upon him. My pony led now. The mysterious
+white man rode and rode--head bent, neck forward--but never looked
+behind him. Bit by bit we lessened the distance between us. As we drew
+near him at last, Doolittle called out to me, in a warning voice: "Take
+care, Doctor! Have your revolvers ready! He's driven to bay now! As we
+approach, he'll fire at us!"
+
+Then it came home to me in a flash. I felt the truth of it. "He DARE not
+fire!" I cried. "He dare not turn towards us. He cannot show his face!
+If he did, we might recognise him!"
+
+On we rode, still gaining. "Now, now," I cried, "we shall catch him!"
+
+Even as I leaned forward to seize his rein, the fugitive, without
+checking his horse, without turning his head, drew his revolver from
+his belt, and, raising his hand, fired behind him at random. He fired
+towards us, on the chance. The bullet whizzed past my ear, not hitting
+anyone. We scattered, right and left, still galloping free and strong.
+We did not return his fire, as I had told the others of my desire to
+take him alive. We might have shot his horse; but the risk of hitting
+the rider, coupled with the confidence we felt of eventually hunting him
+to earth, restrained us. It was the great mistake we made.
+
+He had gained a little by his shots, but we soon caught it up. Once more
+I said, "We are on him!"
+
+A minute later, we were pulled up short before an impenetrable thicket
+of prickly shrubs, through which I saw at once it would have been quite
+impossible to urge our staggering horses.
+
+The other man, of course, reached it before us, with his mare's last
+breath. He must have been making for it, indeed, of set purpose; for the
+second he arrived at the edge of the thicket he slipped off his tired
+pony, and seemed to dive into the bush as a swimmer dives off a rock
+into the water.
+
+"We have him now!" I cried, in a voice of triumph. And Colebrook echoed,
+"We have him!"
+
+We sprang down quickly. "Take him alive, if you can!" I exclaimed,
+remembering Hilda's advice. "Let us find out who he is, and have him
+properly tried and hanged at Buluwayo! Don't give him a soldier's death!
+All he deserves is a murderer's!"
+
+"You stop here," Colebrook said, briefly, flinging his bridle to
+Doolittle to hold. "Doctor and I follow him. Thick bush. Knows the ways
+of it. Revolvers ready!"
+
+I handed my sorrel to Doolittle. He stopped behind, holding the three
+foam-bespattered and panting horses, while Colebrook and I dived after
+our fugitive into the matted bushes.
+
+The thicket, as I have said, was impenetrable above; but it was burrowed
+at its base by over-ground runs of some wild animal--not, I think, a
+very large one; they were just like the runs which rabbits make among
+gorse and heather, only on a bigger scale--bigger, even, than a fox's
+or badger's. By crouching and bending our backs, we could crawl through
+them with difficulty into the scrubby tangle. It was hard work creeping.
+The runs divided soon. Colebrook felt with his hands on the ground: "I
+can make out the spoor!" he muttered, after a minute. "He has gone on
+this way!"
+
+We tracked him a little distance in, crawling at times, and rising now
+and again where the runs opened out on to the air for a moment. The
+spoor was doubtful and the tunnels tortuous. I felt the ground from time
+to time, but could not be sure of the tracks with my fingers; I was not
+a trained scout, like Colebrook or Doolittle. We wriggled deeper into
+the tangle. Something stirred once or twice. It was not far from me. I
+was uncertain whether it was HIM--Sebastian--or a Kaffir earth-hog, the
+animal which seemed likeliest to have made the burrows. Was he going to
+elude us, even now? Would he turn upon us with a knife? If so, could we
+hold him?
+
+At last, when we had pushed our way some distance in, we heard a wild
+cry from outside. It was Doolittle's voice. "Quick! quick! out again!
+The man will escape! He has come back on his tracks, and rounded!"
+
+I saw our mistake at once. We had left our companion out there alone,
+rendered helpless by the care of all three horses.
+
+Colebrook said never a word. He was a man of action. He turned with
+instinctive haste, and followed our own spoor back again with his hands
+and knees to the opening in the thicket by which we had first entered.
+
+Before we could reach it, however, two shots rang out clear in the
+direction where we had left poor Doolittle and the horses. Then a sharp
+cry broke the stillness--the cry of a wounded man. We redoubled our
+pace. We knew we were outwitted.
+
+When we reached the open, we saw at once by the uncertain light what had
+happened. The fugitive was riding away on my own little sorrel,--riding
+for dear life; not back the way we came from Salisbury, but sideways
+across the veldt towards Chimoio and the Portuguese seaports. The other
+two horses, riderless and terrified, were scampering with loose heels
+over the dark plain. Doolittle was not to be seen; he lay, a black lump,
+among the black bushes about him.
+
+We looked around for him, and found him. He was severely, I may even say
+dangerously, wounded. The bullet had lodged in his right side. We had to
+catch our two horses, and ride them back with our wounded man, leading
+the fugitive's mare in tow, all blown and breathless. I stuck to
+the fugitive's mare; it was the one clue we had now against him. But
+Sebastian, if it WAS Sebastian, had ridden off scot-free. I understood
+his game at a glance. He had got the better of us once more. He would
+make for the coast by the nearest road, give himself out as a settler
+escaped from the massacre, and catch the next ship for England or the
+Cape, now this coup had failed him.
+
+Doolittle had not seen the traitor's face. The man rose from the bush,
+he said, shot him, seized the pony, and rode off in a second with
+ruthless haste. He was tall and thin, but erect--that was all the
+wounded scout could tell us about his assailant. And THAT was not enough
+to identify Sebastian.
+
+All danger was over. We rode back to Salisbury. The first words Hilda
+said when she saw me were: "Well, he has got away from you!"
+
+"Yes; how did you know?"
+
+"I read it in your step. But I guessed as much before. He is so very
+keen; and you started too confident."
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX
+
+THE EPISODE OF THE LADY WHO WAS VERY EXCLUSIVE
+
+
+The Matabele revolt gave Hilda a prejudice against Rhodesia. I will
+confess that I shared it. I may be hard to please; but it somehow sets
+one against a country when one comes home from a ride to find all the
+other occupants of the house one lives in massacred. So Hilda decided
+to leave South Africa. By an odd coincidence, I also decided on the
+same day to change my residence. Hilda's movements and mine, indeed,
+coincided curiously. The moment I learned she was going anywhere, I
+discovered in a flash that I happened to be going there too. I commend
+this strange case of parallel thought and action to the consideration of
+the Society for Psychical Research.
+
+So I sold my farm, and had done with Rhodesia. A country with a future
+is very well in its way; but I am quite Ibsenish in my preference for a
+country with a past. Oddly enough, I had no difficulty in getting rid of
+my white elephant of a farm. People seemed to believe in Rhodesia
+none the less firmly because of this slight disturbance. They treated
+massacres as necessary incidents in the early history of a colony with a
+future. And I do not deny that native risings add picturesqueness. But I
+prefer to take them in a literary form.
+
+"You will go home, of course?" I said to Hilda, when we came to talk it
+all over.
+
+She shook her head. "To England? Oh, no. I must pursue my Plan.
+Sebastian will have gone home; he expects me to follow."
+
+"And why don't you?"
+
+"Because--he expects it. You see, he is a good judge of character; he
+will naturally infer, from what he knows of my temperament, that after
+this experience I shall want to get back to England and safety. So I
+should--if it were not that I know he will expect it. As it is, I must
+go elsewhere; I must draw him after me."
+
+"Where?"
+
+"Why do you ask, Hubert?"
+
+"Because--I want to know where I am going myself. Wherever you go, I
+have reason to believe, I shall find that I happen to be going also."
+
+She rested her little chin on her hand and reflected a minute. "Does it
+occur to you," she asked at last, "that people have tongues? If you go
+on following me like this, they will really begin to talk about us."
+
+"Now, upon my word, Hilda," I cried, "that is the very first time I have
+ever known you show a woman's want of logic! I do not propose to follow
+you; I propose to happen to be travelling by the same steamer. I ask you
+to marry me; you won't; you admit you are fond of me; yet you tell me
+not to come with you. It is _I_ who suggest a course which would prevent
+people from chattering--by the simple device of a wedding. It is YOU
+who refuse. And then you turn upon me like this! Admit that you are
+unreasonable."
+
+"My dear Hubert, have I ever denied that I was a woman?"
+
+"Besides," I went on, ignoring her delicious smile, "I don't intend to
+FOLLOW you. I expect, on the contrary, to find myself beside you. When
+I know where you are going, I shall accidentally turn up on the same
+steamer. Accidents WILL happen. Nobody can prevent coincidences from
+occurring. You may marry me, or you may not; but if you don't marry
+me, you can't expect to curtail my liberty of action, can you? You had
+better know the worst at once; if you won't take me, you must count upon
+finding me at your elbow all the world over--till the moment comes when
+you choose to accept me."
+
+"Dear Hubert, I am ruining your life!"
+
+"An excellent reason, then, for taking my advice, and marrying me
+instantly! But you wander from the question. Where are you going? That
+is the issue now before the house. You persist in evading it."
+
+She smiled, and came back to earth. "Oh, if you MUST know, to India, by
+the east coast, changing steamers at Aden."
+
+"Extraordinary!" I cried. "Do you know, Hilda, as luck will have it, _I_
+also shall be on my way to Bombay by the very same steamer!"
+
+"But you don't know what steamer it is?"
+
+"No matter. That only makes the coincidence all the odder. Whatever the
+name of the ship may be, when you get on board, I have a presentiment
+that you will be surprised to find me there."
+
+She looked up at me with a gathering film in her eyes. "Hubert, you are
+irrepressible!"
+
+"I am, my dear child; so you may as well spare yourself the needless
+trouble of trying to repress me."
+
+If you rub a piece of iron on a loadstone, it becomes magnetic. So, I
+think, I must have begun to acquire some part of Hilda's own prophetic
+strain; for, sure enough, a few weeks later, we both of us found
+ourselves on the German East African steamer Kaiser Wilhelm, on our way
+to Aden--exactly as I had predicted. Which goes to prove that there is
+really something after all in presentiments!
+
+"Since you persist in accompanying me," Hilda said to me, as we sat in
+our chairs on deck the first evening out, "I see what I must do. I
+must invent some plausible and ostensible reason for our travelling
+together."
+
+"We are not travelling together," I answered. "We are travelling by
+the same steamer; that is all--exactly like the rest of our
+fellow-passengers. I decline to be dragged into this imaginary
+partnership."
+
+"Now do be serious, Hubert! I am going to invent an object in life for
+us."
+
+"What object?"
+
+"How can I tell yet? I must wait and see what turns up. When we tranship
+at Aden, and find out what people are going on to Bombay with us, I
+shall probably discover some nice married lady to whom I can attach
+myself."
+
+"And am I to attach myself to her, too?"
+
+"My dear boy, I never asked you to come. You came unbidden. You must
+manage for yourself as best you may. But I leave much to the chapter of
+accidents. We never know what will turn up, till it turns up in the end.
+Everything comes at last, you know, to him that waits."
+
+"And yet," I put in, with a meditative air, "I have never observed that
+waiters are so much better off than the rest of the community. They seem
+to me--"
+
+"Don't talk nonsense. It is YOU who are wandering from the question now.
+Please return to it."
+
+I returned at once. "So I am to depend on what turns up?"
+
+"Yes. Leave that to me. When we see our fellow-passengers on the Bombay
+steamer, I shall soon discover some ostensible reason why we two should
+be travelling through India with one of them."
+
+"Well, you are a witch, Hilda," I answered. "I found that out long ago;
+but if you succeed between here and Bombay in inventing a Mission, I
+shall begin to believe you are even more of a witch than I ever thought
+you."
+
+At Aden we changed into a P. and O. steamer. Our first evening out on
+our second cruise was a beautiful one; the bland Indian Ocean wore
+its sweetest smile for us. We sat on deck after dinner. A lady with a
+husband came up from the cabin while we sat and gazed at the placid
+sea. I was smoking a quiet digestive cigar. Hilda was seated in her deck
+chair next to me.
+
+The lady with the husband looked about her for a vacant space on which
+to place the chair a steward was carrying for her. There was plenty of
+room on the quarter-deck. I could not imagine why she gazed about her
+with such obtrusive caution. She inspected the occupants of the
+various chairs around with deliberate scrutiny through a long-handled
+tortoise-shell optical abomination. None of them seemed to satisfy her.
+After a minute's effort, during which she also muttered a few words very
+low to her husband, she selected an empty spot midway between our group
+and the most distant group on the other side of us. In other words, she
+sat as far away from everybody present as the necessarily restricted
+area of the quarter-deck permitted.
+
+Hilda glanced at me and smiled. I snatched a quick look at the lady
+again. She was dressed with an amount of care and a smartness of detail
+that seemed somewhat uncalled for on the Indian Ocean. A cruise on a P.
+and O. steamer is not a garden party. Her chair was most luxurious, and
+had her name painted on it, back and front, in very large letters, with
+undue obtrusiveness. I read it from where I sat, "Lady Meadowcroft."
+
+The owner of the chair was tolerably young, not bad looking, and most
+expensively attired. Her face had a certain vacant, languid, half
+ennuyee air which I have learned to associate with women of the
+nouveau-riche type--women with small brains and restless minds,
+habitually plunged in a vortex of gaiety, and miserable when left for a
+passing moment to their own resources.
+
+Hilda rose from her chair, and walked quietly forward towards the bow of
+the steamer. I rose, too, and accompanied her. "Well?" she said, with a
+faint touch of triumph in her voice when we had got out of earshot.
+
+"Well, what?" I answered, unsuspecting.
+
+"I told you everything turned up at the end!" she said, confidently.
+"Look at the lady's nose!"
+
+"It does turn up at the end--certainly," I answered, glancing back at
+her. "But I hardly see--"
+
+"Hubert, you are growing dull! You were not so at Nathaniel's.... It
+is the lady herself who has turned up, not her nose--though I grant you
+THAT turns up too--the lady I require for our tour in India; the not
+impossible chaperon."
+
+"Her nose tells you that?"
+
+"Her nose, in part; but her face as a whole, too, her dress, her chair,
+her mental attitude to things in general."
+
+"My dear Hilda, you can't mean to tell me you have divined her whole
+nature at a glance, by magic!"
+
+"Not wholly at a glance. I saw her come on board, you know--she
+transhipped from some other line at Aden as we did, and I have been
+watching her ever since. Yes, I think I have unravelled her."
+
+"You have been astonishingly quick!" I cried.
+
+"Perhaps--but then, you see, there is so little to unravel! Some books,
+we all know, you must 'chew and digest'; they can only be read slowly;
+but some you can glance at, skim, and skip; the mere turning of the
+pages tells you what little worth knowing there is in them."
+
+"She doesn't LOOK profound," I admitted, casting an eye at her
+meaningless small features as we paced up and down. "I incline to agree
+you might easily skim her."
+
+"Skim her--and learn all. The table of contents is SO short.... You see,
+in the first place, she is extremely 'exclusive'; she prides herself on
+her 'exclusiveness': it, and her shoddy title, are probably all she has
+to pride herself upon, and she works them both hard. She is a sham great
+lady."
+
+As Hilda spoke, Lady Meadowcroft raised a feebly querulous voice.
+"Steward! this won't do! I can smell the engine here. Move my chair. I
+must go on further."
+
+"If you go on further that way, my lady," the steward answered,
+good-humouredly, but with a man-servant's deference for any sort of
+title, "you'll smell the galley, where they're cooking the dinner.
+I don't know which your ladyship would like best--the engine or the
+galley."
+
+The languid figure leaned back in the chair with an air of resignation.
+"I'm sure I don't know why they cook the dinners up so high," she
+murmured, pettishly, to her husband. "Why can't they stick the kitchens
+underground--in the hold, I mean--instead of bothering us up here on
+deck with them?"
+
+The husband was a big, burly, rough-and-ready Yorkshireman--stout,
+somewhat pompous, about forty, with hair wearing bald on the forehead:
+the personification of the successful business man. "My dear Emmie," he
+said, in a loud voice, with a North Country accent, "the cooks have got
+to live. They've got to live like the rest of us. I can never persuade
+you that the hands must always be humoured. If you don't humour 'em,
+they won't work for you. It's a poor tale when the hands won't work.
+Even with galleys on deck, the life of a sea-cook is not generally thowt
+an enviable position. Is not a happy one--not a happy one, as the fellah
+says in the opera. You must humour your cooks. If you stuck 'em in the
+hold, you'd get no dinner at all--that's the long and the short of it."
+
+The languid lady turned away with a sickly, disappointed air. "Then they
+ought to have a conscription, or something," she said, pouting her lips.
+"The Government ought to take it in hand and manage it somehow. It's bad
+enough having to go by these beastly steamers to India at all, without
+having one's breath poisoned by--" the rest of the sentence died away
+inaudibly in a general murmur of ineffective grumbling.
+
+"Why do you think she is EXCLUSIVE?" I asked Hilda as we strolled on
+towards the stern, out of the spoilt child's hearing.
+
+"Why, didn't you notice?--she looked about her when she came on deck to
+see whether there was anybody who WAS anybody sitting there, whom she
+might put her chair near. But the Governor of Madras hadn't come up from
+his cabin yet; and the wife of the chief Commissioner of Oude had
+three civilians hanging about her seat; and the daughters of the
+Commander-in-Chief drew their skirts away as she passed. So she did the
+next best thing--sat as far apart as she could from the common herd:
+meaning all the rest of us. If you can't mingle at once with the Best
+People, you can at least assert your exclusiveness negatively, by
+declining to associate with the mere multitude."
+
+"Now, Hilda, that is the first time I have ever known you to show any
+feminine ill-nature!"
+
+"Ill-nature! Not at all. I am merely trying to arrive at the lady's
+character for my own guidance. I rather like her, poor little thing.
+Don't I tell you she will do? So far from objecting to her, I mean to go
+the round of India with her."
+
+"You have decided quickly."
+
+"Well, you see, if you insist upon accompanying me, I MUST have a
+chaperon; and Lady Meadowcroft will do as well as anybody else. In fact,
+being be-ladied, she will do a little better, from the point of view
+of Society, though THAT is a detail. The great matter is to fix upon a
+possible chaperon at once, and get her well in hand before we arrive at
+Bombay."
+
+"But she seems so complaining!" I interposed. "I'm afraid, if you take
+her on, you'll get terribly bored with her."
+
+"If SHE takes ME on, you mean. She's not a lady's-maid, though I intend
+to go with her; and she may as well give in first as last, for I'm
+going. Now see how nice I am to you, sir! I've provided you, too, with
+a post in her suite, as you WILL come with me. No, never mind asking me
+what it is just yet; all things come to him who waits; and if you will
+only accept the post of waiter, I mean all things to come to you."
+
+"All things, Hilda?" I asked, meaningly, with a little tremor of
+delight.
+
+She looked at me with a sudden passing tenderness in her eyes. "Yes, all
+things, Hubert. All things. But we mustn't talk of that--though I begin
+to see my way clearer now. You shall be rewarded for your constancy
+at last, dear knight-errant. As to my chaperon, I'm not afraid of her
+boring me; she bores herself, poor lady; one can see that, just to look
+at her; but she will be much less bored if she has us two to travel
+with. What she needs is constant companionship, bright talk, excitement.
+She has come away from London, where she swims with the crowd; she has
+no resources of her own, no work, no head, no interests. Accustomed to a
+whirl of foolish gaieties, she wearies her small brain; thrown back upon
+herself, she bores herself at once, because she has nothing interesting
+to tell herself. She absolutely requires somebody else to interest her.
+She can't even amuse herself with a book for three minutes together.
+See, she has a yellow-backed French novel now, and she is only able to
+read five lines at a time; then she gets tired and glances about her
+listlessly. What she wants is someone gay, laid on, to divert her all
+the time from her own inanity."
+
+"Hilda, how wonderfully quick you are at reading these things! I see you
+are right; but I could never have guessed so much myself from such small
+premises."
+
+"Well, what can you expect, my dear boy? A girl like this, brought up in
+a country rectory, a girl of no intellect, busy at home with the fowls,
+and the pastry, and the mothers' meetings--suddenly married offhand to a
+wealthy man, and deprived of the occupations which were her salvation in
+life, to be plunged into the whirl of a London season, and stranded at
+its end for want of the diversions which, by dint of use, have become
+necessaries of life to her!"
+
+"Now, Hilda, you are practising upon my credulity. You can't possibly
+tell from her look that she was brought up in a country rectory."
+
+"Of course not. You forget. There my memory comes in. I simply remember
+it."
+
+"You remember it? How?"
+
+"Why, just in the same way as I remembered your name and your mother's
+when I was first introduced to you. I saw a notice once in the births,
+deaths, and marriages--'At St. Alphege's, Millington, by the Rev.
+Hugh Clitheroe, M.A., father of the bride, Peter Gubbins, Esq., of The
+Laurels, Middleston, to Emilia Frances, third daughter of the Rev. Hugh
+Clitheroe, rector of Millington.'"
+
+"Clitheroe--Gubbins; what on earth has that to do with it? That would be
+Mrs. Gubbins: this is Lady Meadowcroft."
+
+"The same article, as the shopmen say--only under a different name. A
+year or two later I read a notice in the Times that 'I, Ivor de Courcy
+Meadowcroft, of The Laurels, Middleston, Mayor-elect of the Borough of
+Middleston, hereby give notice, that I have this day discontinued the
+use of the name Peter Gubbins, by which I was formerly known, and
+have assumed in lieu thereof the style and title of Ivor de Courcy
+Meadowcroft, by which I desire in future to be known.'
+
+"A month or two later, again I happened to light upon a notice in
+the Telegraph that the Prince of Wales had opened a new hospital for
+incurables at Middleston, and that the Mayor, Mr. Ivor Meadowcroft, had
+received an intimation of Her Majesty's intention of conferring upon him
+the honour of knighthood. Now what do you make of it?"
+
+"Putting two and two together," I answered, with my eye on our subject,
+"and taking into consideration the lady's face and manner, I should
+incline to suspect that she was the daughter of a poor parson, with
+the usual large family in inverse proportion to his means. That she
+unexpectedly made a good match with a very wealthy manufacturer who had
+raised himself; and that she was puffed up accordingly with a sense of
+self-importance."
+
+"Exactly. He is a millionaire, or something very like it; and, being an
+ambitious girl, as she understands ambition, she got him to stand for
+the mayoralty, I don't doubt, in the year when the Prince of Wales was
+going to open the Royal Incurables, on purpose to secure him the chance
+of a knighthood. Then she said, very reasonably, 'I WON'T be Lady
+Gubbins--Sir Peter Gubbins!' There's an aristocratic name for you!--and,
+by a stroke of his pen, he straightway dis-Gubbinised himself, and
+emerged as Sir Ivor de Courcy Meadowcroft."
+
+"Really, Hilda, you know everything about everybody! And what do you
+suppose they're going to India for?"
+
+"Now, you've asked me a hard one. I haven't the faintest notion....
+And yet... let me think. How is this for a conjecture? Sir Ivor is
+interested in steel rails, I believe, and in railway plant generally.
+I'm almost sure I've seen his name in connection with steel rails in
+reports of public meetings. There's a new Government railway now being
+built on the Nepaul frontier--one of these strategic railways, I think
+they call them--it's mentioned in the papers we got at Aden. He MIGHT be
+going out for that. We can watch his conversation, and see what part of
+India he talks about."
+
+"They don't seem inclined to give us much chance of talking," I
+objected.
+
+"No; they are VERY exclusive. But I'm very exclusive, too. And I mean to
+give them a touch of my exclusiveness. I venture to predict that, before
+we reach Bombay, they'll be going down on their knees and imploring us
+to travel with them."
+
+At table, as it happened, from next morning's breakfast the Meadowcrofts
+sat next to us. Hilda was on one side of me; Lady Meadowcroft on the
+other; and beyond her again, bluff Yorkshire Sir Ivor, with his cold,
+hard, honest blue North Country eyes, and his dignified, pompous
+English, breaking down at times into a North Country colloquialism. They
+talked chiefly to each other. Acting on Hilda's instructions, I took
+care not to engage in conversation with our "exclusive" neighbour,
+except so far as the absolute necessities of the table compelled me. I
+"troubled her for the salt" in the most frigid voice. "May I pass you
+the potato salad?" became on my lips a barrier of separation. Lady
+Meadowcroft marked and wondered. People of her sort are so anxious to
+ingratiate themselves with "all the Best People" that if they find
+you are wholly unconcerned about the privilege of conversation with
+a "titled person," they instantly judge you to be a distinguished
+character. As the days rolled on, Lady Meadowcroft's voice began to melt
+by degrees. Once, she asked me, quite civilly, to send round the ice;
+she even saluted me on the third day out with a polite "Good-morning,
+doctor."
+
+Still, I maintained (by Hilda's advice) my dignified reserve, and took
+my seat severely with a cold "Good-morning." I behaved like a high-class
+consultant, who expects to be made Physician in Ordinary to Her Majesty.
+
+At lunch that day, Hilda played her first card with delicious
+unconsciousness--apparent unconsciousness; for, when she chose, she was
+a consummate actress. She played it at a moment when Lady Meadowcroft,
+who by this time was burning with curiosity on our account, had paused
+from her talk with her husband to listen to us. I happened to say
+something about some Oriental curios belonging to an aunt of mine in
+London. Hilda seized the opportunity. "What did you say was her name?"
+she asked, blandly.
+
+"Why, Lady Tepping," I answered, in perfect innocence. "She has a fancy
+for these things, you know. She brought a lot of them home with her from
+Burma."
+
+As a matter of fact, as I have already explained, my poor dear aunt is
+an extremely commonplace old Army widow, whose husband happened to get
+knighted among the New Year's honours for some brush with the natives on
+the Shan frontier. But Lady Meadowcroft was at the stage where a title
+is a title; and the discovery that I was the nephew of a "titled person"
+evidently interested her. I could feel rather than see that she glanced
+significantly aside at Sir Ivor, and that Sir Ivor in return made a
+little movement of his shoulders equivalent to "I told you so."
+
+Now Hilda knew perfectly well that the aunt of whom I spoke WAS
+Lady Tepping; so I felt sure that she had played this card of malice
+prepense, to pique Lady Meadowcroft.
+
+But Lady Meadowcroft herself seized the occasion with inartistic
+avidity. She had hardly addressed us as yet. At the sound of the magic
+passport, she pricked up her ears, and turned to me suddenly. "Burma?"
+she said, as if to conceal the true reason for her change of front.
+"Burma? I had a cousin there once. He was in the Gloucestershire
+Regiment."
+
+"Indeed?" I answered. My tone was one of utter unconcern in her cousin's
+history. "Miss Wade, will you take Bombay ducks with your curry?"
+In public, I thought it wise under the circumstances to abstain from
+calling her Hilda. It might lead to misconceptions; people might suppose
+we were more than fellow-travellers.
+
+"You have had relations in Burma?" Lady Meadowcroft persisted.
+
+I manifested a desire to discontinue the conversation. "Yes," I
+answered, coldly, "my uncle commanded there."
+
+"Commanded there! Really! Ivor, do you hear? Dr. Cumberledge's uncle
+commanded in Burma." A faint intonation on the word commanded drew
+unobtrusive attention to its social importance. "May I ask what was his
+name?--my cousin was there, you see." An insipid smile. "We may have
+friends in common."
+
+"He was a certain Sir Malcolm Tepping," I blurted out, staring hard at
+my plate.
+
+"Tepping! I think I have heard Dick speak of him, Ivor."
+
+"Your cousin," Sir Ivor answered, with emphatic dignity, "is certain to
+have mixed with nobbut the highest officials in Burma."
+
+"Yes, I'm sure Dick used to speak of a certain Sir Malcolm. My cousin's
+name, Dr. Cumberledge, was Maltby--Captain Richard Maltby."
+
+"Indeed," I answered, with an icy stare. "I cannot pretend to the
+pleasure of having met him."
+
+Be exclusive to the exclusive, and they burn to know you. From that
+moment forth Lady Meadowcroft pestered us with her endeavours to scrape
+acquaintance. Instead of trying how far she could place her chair from
+us, she set it down as near us as politeness permitted. She entered into
+conversation whenever an opening afforded itself, and we two stood off
+haughtily. She even ventured to question me about our relation to one
+another: "Miss Wade is your cousin, I suppose?" she suggested.
+
+"Oh, dear, no," I answered, with a glassy smile. "We are not connected
+in any way."
+
+"But you are travelling together!"
+
+"Merely as you and I are travelling together--fellow-passengers on the
+same steamer."
+
+"Still, you have met before."
+
+"Yes, certainly. Miss Wade was a nurse at St. Nathaniel's, in London,
+where I was one of the house doctors. When I came on board at Cape Town,
+after some months in South Africa, I found she was going by the same
+steamer to India." Which was literally true. To have explained the rest
+would have been impossible, at least to anyone who did not know the
+whole of Hilda's history.
+
+"And what are you both going to do when you get to India?"
+
+"Really, Lady Meadowcroft," I said, severely, "I have not asked Miss
+Wade what she is going to do. If you inquire of her point-blank, as you
+have inquired of me, I dare say she will tell you. For myself, I am just
+a globe-trotter, amusing myself. I only want to have a look round at
+India."
+
+"Then you are not going out to take an appointment?"
+
+"By George, Emmie," the burly Yorkshireman put in, with an air of
+annoyance, "you are cross-questioning Dr. Cumberledge; nowt less than
+cross-questioning him!"
+
+I waited a second. "No," I answered, slowly. "I have not been practising
+of late. I am looking about me. I travel for enjoyment."
+
+That made her think better of me. She was of the kind, indeed, who think
+better of a man if they believe him to be idle.
+
+She dawdled about all day on deck chairs, herself, seldom even reading;
+and she was eager now to drag Hilda into conversation. Hilda resisted;
+she had found a volume in the library which immensely interested her.
+
+"What ARE you reading, Miss Wade?" Lady Meadowcroft cried at last, quite
+savagely. It made her angry to see anybody else pleased and occupied
+when she herself was listless.
+
+"A delightful book!" Hilda answered. "The Buddhist Praying Wheel, by
+William Simpson."
+
+Lady Meadowcroft took it from her and turned the pages over with a
+languid air. "Looks awfully dull!" she observed, with a faint smile, at
+last, returning it.
+
+"It's charming," Hilda retorted, glancing at one of the illustrations.
+"It explains so much. It shows one why one turns round one's chair at
+cards for luck; and why, when a church is consecrated, the bishop walks
+three times about it sunwise."
+
+"Our Bishop is a dreadfully prosy old gentleman," Lady Meadowcroft
+answered, gliding off at a tangent on a personality, as is the wont of
+her kind; "he had, oh, such a dreadful quarrel with my father over the
+rules of the St. Alphege Schools at Millington."
+
+"Indeed," Hilda answered, turning once more to her book. Lady
+Meadowcroft looked annoyed. It would never have occurred to her that
+within a few weeks she was to owe her life to that very abstruse work,
+and what Hilda had read in it.
+
+That afternoon, as we watched the flying fish from the ship's side,
+Hilda said to me abruptly, "My chaperon is an extremely nervous woman."
+
+"Nervous about what?"
+
+"About disease, chiefly. She has the temperament that dreads
+infection--and therefore catches it."
+
+"Why do you think so?"
+
+"Haven't you noticed that she often doubles her thumb under her
+fingers--folds her fist across it--so--especially when anybody talks
+about anything alarming? If the conversation happens to turn on jungle
+fever, or any subject like that, down goes her thumb instantly, and she
+clasps her fist over it with a convulsive squeeze. At the same time,
+too, her face twitches. I know what that trick means. She's horribly
+afraid of tropical diseases, though she never says so."
+
+"And you attach importance to her fear?"
+
+"Of course. I count upon it as probably our chief means of catching and
+fixing her."
+
+"As how?"
+
+She shook her head and quizzed me. "Wait and see. You are a doctor; I, a
+trained nurse. Before twenty-four hours, I foresee she will ask us.
+She is sure to ask us, now she has learned that you are Lady Tepping's
+nephew, and that I am acquainted with several of the Best People."
+
+That evening, about ten o'clock, Sir Ivor strolled up to me in the
+smoking-room with affected unconcern. He laid his hand on my arm and
+drew me aside mysteriously. The ship's doctor was there, playing a quiet
+game of poker with a few of the passengers. "I beg your pardon, Dr.
+Cumberledge," he began, in an undertone, "could you come outside with me
+a minute? Lady Meadowcroft has sent me up to you with a message."
+
+I followed him on to the open deck. "It is quite impossible, my dear
+sir," I said, shaking my head austerely, for I divined his errand. "I
+can't go and see Lady Meadowcroft. Medical etiquette, you know; the
+constant and salutary rule of the profession!"
+
+"Why not?" he asked, astonished.
+
+"The ship carries a surgeon," I replied, in my most precise tone. "He is
+a duly qualified gentleman, very able in his profession, and he ought to
+inspire your wife with confidence. I regard this vessel as Dr. Boyell's
+practice, and all on board it as virtually his patients."
+
+Sir Ivor's face fell. "But Lady Meadowcroft is not at all well," he
+answered, looking piteous; "and--she can't endure the ship's doctor.
+Such a common man, you know! His loud voice disturbs her. You MUST
+have noticed that my wife is a lady of exceptionally delicate nervous
+organisation." He hesitated, beamed on me, and played his trump card.
+"She dislikes being attended by owt but a GENTLEMAN."
+
+"If a gentleman is also a medical man," I answered, "his sense of duty
+towards his brother practitioners would, of course, prevent him from
+interfering in their proper sphere, or putting upon them the unmerited
+slight of letting them see him preferred before them."
+
+"Then you positively refuse?" he asked, wistfully, drawing back. I could
+see he stood in a certain dread of that imperious little woman.
+
+I conceded a point. "I will go down in twenty minutes," I admitted,
+looking grave,--"not just now, lest I annoy my colleague,--and I will
+glance at Lady Meadowcroft in an unprofessional way. If I think her
+case demands treatment, I will tell Dr. Boyell." And I returned to the
+smoking-room and took up a novel.
+
+Twenty minutes later I knocked at the door of the lady's private cabin,
+with my best bedside manner in full play. As I suspected, she was
+nervous--nothing more--my mere smile reassured her. I observed that
+she held her thumb fast, doubled under in her fist, all the time I was
+questioning her, as Hilda had said; and I also noticed that the fingers
+closed about it convulsively at first, but gradually relaxed as my voice
+restored confidence. She thanked me profusely, and was really grateful.
+
+On deck next day she was very communicative. They were going to make the
+regular tour first, she said, but were to go on to the Tibetan frontier
+at the end, where Sir Ivor had a contract to construct a railway, in a
+very wild region. Tigers? Natives? Oh, she didn't mind either of THEM;
+but she was told that that district--what did they call it? the Terai,
+or something--was terribly unwholesome. Fever was what-you-may-call-it
+there--yes, "endemic"--that was the word; "oh, thank you, Dr.
+Cumberledge." She hated the very name of fever. "Now you, Miss Wade, I
+suppose," with an awestruck smile, "are not in the least afraid of it?"
+
+Hilda looked up at her calmly. "Not in the least," she answered. "I have
+nursed hundreds of cases."
+
+"Oh, my, how dreadful! And never caught it?"
+
+"Never. I am not afraid, you see."
+
+"I wish _I_ wasn't! Hundreds of cases! It makes one ill to think of
+it!... And all successfully?"
+
+"Almost all of them."
+
+"You don't tell your patients stories when they're ill about your other
+cases who died, do you?" Lady Meadowcroft went on, with a quick little
+shudder.
+
+Hilda's face by this time was genuinely sympathetic. "Oh, never!" she
+answered, with truth. "That would be very bad nursing! One's object in
+treating a case is to make one's patient well; so one naturally avoids
+any sort of subject that might be distressing or alarming."
+
+"You really mean it?" Her face was pleading.
+
+"Why, of course. I try to make my patients my friends; I talk to them
+cheerfully; I amuse them and distract them; I get them away, as far as I
+can, from themselves and their symptoms."
+
+"Oh, what a lovely person to have about one when one's ill!" the languid
+lady exclaimed, ecstatically. "I SHOULD like to send for you if I wanted
+nursing! But there--it's always so, of course, with a real lady; common
+nurses frighten one so. I wish I could always have a lady to nurse me!"
+
+"A person who sympathises--that is the really important thing," Hilda
+answered, in her quiet voice. "One must find out first one's patient's
+temperament. YOU are nervous, I can see." She laid one hand on her new
+friend's arm. "You need to be kept amused and engaged when you are ill;
+what YOU require most is--insight--and sympathy."
+
+The little fist doubled up again; the vacant face grew positively sweet.
+"That's just it! You have hit it! How clever you are! I want all that. I
+suppose, Miss Wade, YOU never go out for private nursing?"
+
+"Never," Hilda answered. "You see, Lady Meadowcroft, I don't nurse for a
+livelihood. I have means of my own; I took up this work as an occupation
+and a sphere in life. I haven't done anything yet but hospital nursing."
+
+Lady Meadowcroft drew a slight sigh. "What a pity!" she murmured,
+slowly. "It does seem hard that your sympathies should all be thrown
+away, so to speak, on a horrid lot of wretched poor people, instead of
+being spent on your own equals--who would so greatly appreciate them."
+
+"I think I can venture to say the poor appreciate them, too," Hilda
+answered, bridling up a little--for there was nothing she hated so much
+as class-prejudices. "Besides, they need sympathy more; they have fewer
+comforts. I should not care to give up attending my poor people for the
+sake of the idle rich."
+
+The set phraseology of the country rectory recurred to Lady
+Meadowcroft--"our poorer brethren," and so forth. "Oh, of course," she
+answered, with the mechanical acquiescence such women always give to
+moral platitudes. "One must do one's best for the poor, I know--for
+conscience' sake and all that; it's our duty, and we all try hard to do
+it. But they're so terribly ungrateful! Don't you think so? Do you know,
+Miss Wade, in my father's parish--"
+
+Hilda cut her short with a sunny smile--half contemptuous toleration,
+half genuine pity. "We are all ungrateful," she said; "but the poor, I
+think, the least so. I'm sure the gratitude I've often had from my poor
+women at St. Nathaniel's has made me sometimes feel really ashamed of
+myself. I had done so little--and they thanked me so much for it."
+
+"Which only shows," Lady Meadowcroft broke in, "that one ought always to
+have a LADY to nurse one."
+
+"Ca marche!" Hilda said to me, with a quiet smile, a few minutes
+after, when her ladyship had disappeared in her fluffy robe down the
+companion-ladder.
+
+"Yes, ca marche," I answered. "In an hour or two you will have succeeded
+in landing your chaperon. And what is most amusing, landed her, too,
+Hilda, just by being yourself--letting her see frankly the actual truth
+of what you think and feel about her and about everyone!"
+
+"I could not do otherwise," Hilda answered, growing grave. "I must be
+myself, or die for it. My method of angling consists in showing myself
+just as I am. You call me an actress, but I am not really one; I am only
+a woman who can use her personality for her own purposes. If I go
+with Lady Meadowcroft, it will be a mutual advantage. I shall really
+sympathise with her for I can see the poor thing is devoured with
+nervousness."
+
+"But do you think you will be able to stand her?" I asked.
+
+"Oh, dear, yes. She's not a bad little thing, au fond, when you get to
+know her. It is society that has spoilt her. She would have made a nice,
+helpful, motherly body if she'd married the curate."
+
+As we neared Bombay, conversation grew gradually more and more Indian;
+it always does under similar circumstances. A sea voyage is half
+retrospect, half prospect; it has no personal identity. You leave
+Liverpool for New York at the English standpoint, and are full of what
+you did in London or Manchester; half-way over, you begin to discuss
+American custom-houses and New York hotels; by the time you reach Sandy
+Hook, the talk is all of quick trains west and the shortest route
+from Philadelphia to New Orleans. You grow by slow stages into the new
+attitude; at Malta you are still regretting Europe; after Aden, your
+mind dwells most on the hire of punkah-wallahs and the proverbial
+toughness of the dak-bungalow chicken.
+
+"How's the plague at Bombay now?" an inquisitive passenger inquired of
+the Captain at dinner our last night out. "Getting any better?"
+
+Lady Meadowcroft's thumb dived between her fingers again. "What! is
+there plague in Bombay?" she asked, innocently, in her nervous fashion.
+
+"Plague in Bombay!" the Captain burst out, his burly voice resounding
+down the saloon. "Why, bless your soul, ma'am, where else would you
+expect it? Plague in Bombay! It's been there these five years. Better?
+Not quite. Going ahead like mad. They're dying by thousands."
+
+"A microbe, I believe, Dr. Boyell," the inquisitive passenger observed
+deferentially, with due respect for medical science.
+
+"Yes," the ship's doctor answered, helping himself to an olive. "Forty
+million microbes to each square inch of the Bombay atmosphere."
+
+"And we are going to Bombay!" Lady Meadowcroft exclaimed, aghast.
+
+"You must have known there was plague there, my dear," Sir Ivor put in,
+soothingly, with a deprecating glance. "It's been in all the papers. But
+only the natives get it."
+
+The thumb uncovered itself a little. "Oh, only the natives!" Lady
+Meadowcroft echoed, relieved; as if a few thousand Hindus more or less
+would hardly be missed among the blessings of British rule in India.
+"You know, Ivor, I never read those DREADFUL things in the papers. _I_
+read the Society news, and Our Social Diary, and columns that are headed
+'Mainly About People.' I don't care for anything but the Morning Post
+and the World and Truth. I hate horrors.... But it's a blessing to think
+it's only the natives."
+
+"Plenty of Europeans, too, bless your heart," the Captain thundered
+out unfeelingly. "Why, last time I was in port, a nurse died at the
+hospital."
+
+"Oh, only a nurse--" Lady Meadowcroft began, and then coloured up
+deeply, with a side glance at Hilda.
+
+"And lots besides nurses," the Captain continued, positively delighted
+at the terror he was inspiring. "Pucka Englishmen and Englishwomen. Bad
+business this plague, Dr. Cumberledge! Catches particularly those who
+are most afraid of it."
+
+"But it's only in Bombay?" Lady Meadowcroft cried, clutching at the
+last straw. I could see she was registering a mental determination to go
+straight up-country the moment she landed.
+
+"Not a bit of it!" the Captain answered, with provoking cheerfulness.
+"Rampaging about like a roaring lion all over India!"
+
+Lady Meadowcroft's thumb must have suffered severely. The nails dug into
+it as if it were someone else's.
+
+Half an hour later, as we were on deck in the cool of the evening, the
+thing was settled. "My wife," Sir Ivor said, coming up to us with a
+serious face, "has delivered her ultimatum. Positively her ultimatum.
+I've had a mort o' trouble with her, and now she's settled. EITHER, she
+goes back from Bombay by the return steamer; OR ELSE--you and Miss
+Wade must name your own terms to accompany us on our tour, in case of
+emergencies." He glanced wistfully at Hilda. "DO you think you can help
+us?"
+
+Hilda made no hypocritical pretence of hanging back. Her nature was
+transparent. "If you wish it, yes," she answered, shaking hands upon the
+bargain. "I only want to go about and see India; I can see it quite
+as well with Lady Meadowcroft as without her--and even better. It is
+unpleasant for a woman to travel unattached. I require a chaperon, and
+am glad to find one. I will join your party, paying my own hotel and
+travelling expenses, and considering myself as engaged in case your wife
+should need my services. For that, you can pay me, if you like, some
+nominal retaining fee--five pounds or anything. The money is immaterial
+to me. I like to be useful, and I sympathise with nerves; but it may
+make your wife feel she is really keeping a hold over me if we put the
+arrangement on a business basis. As a matter of fact, whatever sum
+she chooses to pay, I shall hand it over at once to the Bombay Plague
+Hospital."
+
+Sir Ivor looked relieved. "Thank you ever so much!" he said, wringing
+her hand warmly. "I thowt you were a brick, and now I know it. My wife
+says your face inspires confidence, and your voice sympathy. She MUST
+have you with her. And you, Dr. Cumberledge?"
+
+"I follow Miss Wade's lead," I answered, in my most solemn tone, with
+an impressive bow. "I, too, am travelling for instruction and amusement
+only; and if it would give Lady Meadowcroft a greater sense of security
+to have a duly qualified practitioner in her suite, I shall be glad on
+the same terms to swell your party. I will pay my own way; and I will
+allow you to name any nominal sum you please for your claim on my
+medical attendance, if necessary. I hope and believe, however, that our
+presence will so far reassure our prospective patient as to make our
+post in both cases a sinecure."
+
+Three minutes later Lady Meadowcroft rushed on deck and flung her arms
+impulsively round Hilda. "You dear, good girl!" she cried; "how sweet
+and kind of you! I really COULDN'T have landed if you hadn't promised
+to come with us. And Dr. Cumberledge, too! So nice and friendly of
+you both. But there, it IS so much pleasanter to deal with ladies and
+gentlemen!"
+
+So Hilda won her point; and what was best, won it fairly.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X
+
+THE EPISODE OF THE GUIDE WHO KNEW THE COUNTRY
+
+
+We toured all round India with the Meadowcrofts; and really the lady who
+was "so very exclusive" turned out not a bad little thing, when once
+one had succeeded in breaking through the ring-fence with which she
+surrounded herself. She had an endless, quenchless restlessness, it is
+true; her eyes wandered aimlessly; she never was happy for two
+minutes together, unless she was surrounded by friends, and was seeing
+something. What she saw did not interest her much; certainly her tastes
+were on the level with those of a very young child. An odd-looking
+house, a queerly dressed man, a tree cut into shape to look like a
+peacock, delighted her far more than the most glorious view of the
+quaintest old temple. Still, she must be seeing. She could no more sit
+still than a fidgety child or a monkey at the Zoo. To be up and
+doing was her nature--doing nothing, to be sure; but still, doing it
+strenuously.
+
+So we went the regulation round of Delhi and Agra, the Taj Mahal, and
+the Ghats at Benares, at railroad speed, fulfilling the whole duty of
+the modern globe-trotter. Lady Meadowcroft looked at everything--for ten
+minutes at a stretch; then she wanted to be off, to visit the next thing
+set down for her in her guide-book. As we left each town she murmured
+mechanically: "Well, we've seen THAT, thank Heaven!" and straightway
+went on, with equal eagerness, and equal boredom, to see the one after
+it.
+
+The only thing that did NOT bore her, indeed, was Hilda's bright talk.
+
+"Oh, Miss Wade," she would say, clasping her hands, and looking up
+into Hilda's eyes with her own empty blue ones, "you ARE so funny! So
+original, don't you know! You never talk or think of anything like other
+people. I can't imagine how such ideas come up in your mind. If _I_ were
+to try all day, I'm sure I should never hit upon them!" Which was so
+perfectly true as to be a trifle obvious.
+
+Sir Ivor, not being interested in temples, but in steel rails, had gone
+on at once to his concession, or contract, or whatever else it was, on
+the north-east frontier, leaving his wife to follow and rejoin him in
+the Himalayas as soon as she had exhausted the sights of India. So,
+after a few dusty weeks of wear and tear on the Indian railways, we met
+him once more in the recesses of Nepaul, where he was busy constructing
+a light local line for the reigning Maharajah.
+
+If Lady Meadowcroft had been bored at Allahabad and Ajmere, she was
+immensely more bored in a rough bungalow among the trackless depths of
+the Himalayan valleys. To anybody with eyes in his head, indeed, Toloo,
+where Sir Ivor had pitched his headquarters, was lovely enough to keep
+one interested for a twelvemonth. Snow-clad needles of rock hemmed it
+in on either side; great deodars rose like huge tapers on the hillsides;
+the plants and flowers were a joy to look at. But Lady Meadowcroft did
+not care for flowers which one could not wear in one's hair; and what
+was the good of dressing here, with no one but Ivor and Dr. Cumberledge
+to see one? She yawned till she was tired; then she began to grow
+peevish.
+
+"Why Ivor should want to build a railway at all in this stupid, silly
+place," she said, as we sat in the veranda in the cool of evening,
+"I'm sure _I_ can't imagine. We MUST go somewhere. This is maddening,
+maddening! Miss Wade--Dr. Cumberledge--I count upon you to discover
+SOMETHING for me to do. If I vegetate like this, seeing nothing all day
+long but those eternal hills"--she clenched her little fist--"I shall go
+MAD with ennui."
+
+Hilda had a happy thought. "I have a fancy to see some of these Buddhist
+monasteries," she said, smiling as one smiles at a tiresome child whom
+one likes in spite of everything. "You remember, I was reading that book
+of Mr. Simpson's on the steamer--coming out--a curious book about the
+Buddhist Praying Wheels; and it made me want to see one of their temples
+immensely. What do you say to camping out? A few weeks in the hills? It
+would be an adventure, at any rate."
+
+"Camping out?" Lady Meadowcroft exclaimed, half roused from her languor
+by the idea of a change. "Oh, do you think that would be fun? Should
+we sleep on the ground? But, wouldn't it be dreadfully, horribly
+uncomfortable?"
+
+"Not half so uncomfortable as you'll find yourself here at Toloo in a
+few days, Emmie," her husband put in, grimly. "The rains will soon be
+on, lass; and when the rains are on, by all accounts, they're precious
+heavy hereabouts--rare fine rains, so that a man's half-flooded out of
+his bed o' nights--which won't suit YOU, my lady."
+
+The poor little woman clasped her twitching hands in feeble agony. "Oh,
+Ivor, how dreadful! Is it what they call the mongoose, or monsoon, or
+something? But if they're so bad here, surely they'll be worse in the
+hills--and camping out, too--won't they?"
+
+"Not if you go the right way to work. Ah'm told it never rains t'other
+side o' the hills. The mountains stop the clouds, and once you're
+over, you're safe enough. Only, you must take care to keep well in the
+Maharajah's territory. Cross the frontier t'other side into Tibet,
+an' they'll skin thee alive as soon as look at thee. They don't like
+strangers in Tibet; prejudiced against them, somehow; they pretty well
+skinned that young chap Landor who tried to go there a year ago."
+
+"But, Ivor, I don't want to be skinned alive! I'm not an eel, please!"
+
+"That's all right, lass. Leave that to me. I can get thee a guide, a
+man that's very well acquainted with the mountains. I was talking to a
+scientific explorer here t'other day, and he knows of a good guide who
+can take you anywhere. He'll get you the chance of seeing the inside of
+a Buddhist monastery, if you like, Miss Wade. He's hand in glove with
+all the religion they've got in this part o' the country. They've got
+noan much, but at what there is, he's a rare devout one."
+
+We discussed the matter fully for two or three days before we made up
+our minds. Lady Meadowcroft was undecided between her hatred of dulness
+and her haunting fear that scorpions and snakes would intrude upon our
+tents and beds while we were camping. In the end, however, the desire
+for change carried the day. She decided to dodge the rainy season by
+getting behind the Himalayan-passes, in the dry region to the north of
+the great range, where rain seldom falls, the country being watered only
+by the melting of the snows on the high summits.
+
+This decision delighted Hilda, who, since she came to India, had fallen
+a prey to the fashionable vice of amateur photography. She took to it
+enthusiastically. She had bought herself a first-rate camera of the
+latest scientific pattern at Bombay, and ever since had spent all her
+time and spoiled her pretty hands in "developing." She was also seized
+with a craze for Buddhism. The objects that everywhere particularly
+attracted her were the old Buddhist temples and tombs and sculptures
+with which India is studded. Of these she had taken some hundreds of
+views, all printed by herself with the greatest care and precision.
+But in India, after all, Buddhism is a dead creed. Its monuments alone
+remain; she was anxious to see the Buddhist religion in its living
+state; and that she could only do in these remote outlying Himalayan
+valleys.
+
+Our outfit, therefore, included a dark tent for Hilda's photographic
+apparatus; a couple of roomy tents to live and sleep in; a small
+cooking-stove; a cook to look after it; half-a-dozen bearers; and the
+highly recommended guide who knew his way about the country. In three
+days we were ready, to Sir Ivor's great delight. He was fond of his
+pretty wife, and proud of her, I believe; but when once she was away
+from the whirl and bustle of the London that she loved, it was a relief
+to him, I fancy, to pursue his work alone, unhampered by her restless
+and querulous childishness.
+
+On the morning when we were to make our start, the guide who was "well
+acquainted with the mountains" turned up--as villainous-looking a person
+as I have ever set eyes on. He was sullen and furtive. I judged him at
+sight to be half Hindu, half Tibetan. He had a dark complexion, between
+brown and tawny; narrow slant eyes, very small and beady-black, with a
+cunning leer in their oblique corners; a flat nose much broadened at the
+wings; a cruel, thick, sensuous mouth, and high cheek-bones; the whole
+surmounted by a comprehensive scowl and an abundant crop of lank black
+hair, tied up in a knot at the nape of the neck with a yellow ribbon.
+His face was shifty; his short, stout form looked well adapted to
+mountain climbing, and also to wriggling. A deep scar on his left cheek
+did not help to inspire confidence. But he was polite and civil-spoken.
+Altogether a clever, unscrupulous, wide-awake soul, who would serve you
+well if he thought he could make by it, and would betray you at a pinch
+to the highest bidder.
+
+We set out, in merry mood, prepared to solve all the abstruse problems
+of the Buddhist religion. Our spoilt child stood the camping out better
+than I expected. She was fretful, of course, and worried about trifles;
+she missed her maid and her accustomed comforts; but she minded the
+roughing it less, on the whole, than she had minded the boredom of
+inaction in the bungalow; and, being cast on Hilda and myself for
+resources, she suddenly evolved an unexpected taste for producing,
+developing, and printing photographs. We took dozens, as we went along,
+of little villages on our route, wood-built villages with quaint houses
+and turrets; and as Hilda had brought her collection of prints with
+her, for comparison of the Indian and Nepaulese monuments, we spent the
+evenings after our short day's march each day in arranging and collating
+them. We had planned to be away six weeks, at least. In that time the
+monsoon would have burst and passed. Our guide thought we might see all
+that was worth seeing of the Buddhist monasteries, and Sir Ivor thought
+we should have fairly escaped the dreaded wet season.
+
+"What do you make of our guide?" I asked of Hilda on our fourth day out.
+I began somehow to distrust him.
+
+"Oh, he seems all right," Hilda answered, carelessly--and her voice
+reassured me. "He's a rogue, of course; all guides and interpreters, and
+dragomans and the like, in out-of-the-way places, always ARE rogues. If
+they were honest men, they would share the ordinary prejudices of their
+countrymen, and would have nothing to do with the hated stranger. But
+in this case our friend, Ram Das, has no end to gain by getting us
+into mischief. If he had, he wouldn't scruple for a second to cut our
+throats; but then, there are too many of us. He will probably try to
+cheat us by making preposterous charges when he gets us back to Toloo;
+but that's Lady Meadowcroft's business. I don't doubt Sir Ivor will
+be more than a match for him there. I'll back one shrewd Yorkshireman
+against any three Tibetan half-castes, any day."
+
+"You're right that he would cut our throats if it served his purpose," I
+answered. "He's servile, and servility goes hand in hand with treachery.
+The more I watch him, the more I see 'scoundrel' written in large type
+on every bend of the fellow's oily shoulders."
+
+"Oh, yes, he's a bad lot, I know. The cook, who can speak a little
+English and a little Tibetan, as well as Hindustani, tells me Ram Das
+has the worst reputation of any man in the mountains. But he says he's a
+very good guide to the passes, for all that, and if he's well paid will
+do what he's paid for."
+
+Next day but one we approached at last, after several short marches, the
+neighbourhood of what our guide assured us was a Buddhist monastery.
+I was glad when he told us of it, giving the place the name of a
+well-known Nepaulese village; for, to say the truth, I was beginning
+to get frightened. Judging by the sun, for I had brought no compass,
+it struck me that we seemed to have been marching almost due north
+ever since we left Toloo; and I fancied such a line of march must have
+brought us by this time suspiciously near the Tibetan frontier. Now, I
+had no desire to be "skinned alive," as Sir Ivor put it. I did not wish
+to emulate St. Bartholomew and others of the early Christian martyrs;
+so I was pleased to learn that we were really drawing near to Kulak, the
+first of the Nepaulese Buddhist monasteries to which our well-informed
+guide, himself a Buddhist, had promised to introduce us.
+
+We were tramping up a beautiful high mountain valley, closed round on
+every side by snowy peaks. A brawling river ran over a rocky bed in
+cataracts down its midst. Crags rose abruptly a little in front of us.
+Half-way up the slope to the left, on a ledge of rock, rose a long, low
+building with curious, pyramid-like roofs, crowned at either end by
+a sort of minaret, which resembled more than anything else a huge
+earthenware oil-jar. This was the monastery or lamasery we had come so
+far to see. Honestly, at first sight, I did not feel sure it was worth
+the trouble.
+
+Our guide called a halt, and turned to us with a sudden peremptory air.
+His servility had vanished. "You stoppee here," he said, slowly, in
+broken English, "while me-a go on to see whether Lama-sahibs ready to
+take you. Must ask leave from Lama-sahibs to visit village; if no
+ask leave"--he drew his hand across his throat with a significant
+gesture--"Lama-sahibs cuttee head off Eulopean."
+
+"Goodness gracious!" Lady Meadowcroft cried, clinging tight to Hilda.
+"Miss Wade, this is dreadful! Where on earth have you brought us to?"
+
+"Oh, that's all right," Hilda answered, trying to soothe her, though she
+herself began to look a trifle anxious. "That's only Ram Das's graphic
+way of putting things."
+
+We sat down on a bank of trailing club-moss by the side of the rough
+track, for it was nothing more, and let our guide go on to negotiate
+with the Lamas. "Well, to-night, anyhow," I exclaimed, looking up, "we
+shall sleep on our own mattresses with a roof over our heads. These
+monks will find us quarters. That's always something."
+
+We got out our basket and made tea. In all moments of doubt, your
+Englishwoman makes tea. As Hilda said, she will boil her Etna on
+Vesuvius. We waited and drank our tea; we drank our tea and waited.
+A full hour passed away. Ram Das never came back. I began to get
+frightened.
+
+At last something stirred. A group of excited men in yellow robes issued
+forth from the monastery, wound their way down the hill, and approached
+us, shouting. They gesticulated as they came. I could see they looked
+angry. All at once Hilda clutched my arm: "Hubert," she cried, in an
+undertone, "we are betrayed! I see it all now. These are Tibetans, not
+Nepaulese." She paused a second, then went on: "I see it all--all, all.
+Our guide--Ram Das--he HAD a reason, after all, for getting us into
+mischief. Sebastian must have tracked us; he was bribed by Sebastian! It
+was HE who recommended Ram Das to Sir Ivor!"
+
+"Why do you think so?" I asked, low.
+
+"Because--look for yourself; these men who come are dressed in yellow.
+That means Tibetans. Red is the colour of the Lamas in Nepaul; yellow
+in Tibet and all other Buddhist countries. I read it in the book--The
+Buddhist Praying Wheel, you know. These are Tibetan fanatics, and, as
+Ram Das said, they will probably cut our throats for us."
+
+I was thankful that Hilda's marvellous memory gave us even that moment
+for preparation and facing the difficulty. I saw in a flash that she
+was quite right: we had been inveigled across the frontier. These moutis
+were Tibetans--Buddhist inquisitors--enemies. Tibet is the most jealous
+country on earth; it allows no stranger to intrude upon its borders.
+I had to meet the worst. I stood there, a single white man, armed only
+with one revolver, answerable for the lives of two English ladies,
+and accompanied by a cringing out-caste Ghoorka cook and half-a-dozen
+doubtful Nepaulese bearers. To fly was impossible. We were fairly
+trapped. There was nothing for it but to wait and put a bold face on our
+utter helplessness.
+
+I turned to our spoilt child. "Lady Meadowcroft," I said, very
+seriously, "this is danger; real danger. Now, listen to me. You must do
+as you are bid. No crying; no cowardice. Your life and ours depend upon
+it. We must none of us give way. We must pretend to be brave. Show one
+sign of fear, and these people will probably cut our throats on the spot
+here."
+
+To my immense surprise, Lady Meadowcroft rose to the height of the
+situation. "Oh, as long as it isn't disease," she answered, resignedly;
+"I'm not much afraid of anything. I should mind the plague a great deal
+more than I mind a set of howling savages."
+
+By that time the men in yellow robes had almost come up to us. It
+was clear they were boiling over with indignation; but they still
+did everything decently and in order. One, who was dressed in finer
+vestments than the rest--a portly person, with the fat, greasy cheeks
+and drooping flesh of a celibate church dignitary, whom I therefore
+judged to be the abbot, or chief Lama of the monastery--gave orders
+to his subordinates in a language which we did not understand. His
+men obeyed him. In a second they had closed us round, as in a ring or
+cordon.
+
+Then the chief Lama stepped forward, with an authoritative air, like
+Pooh-Bah in the play, and said something in the same tongue to the cook,
+who spoke a little Tibetan. It was obvious from his manner that Ram
+Das had told them all about us; for the Lama selected the cook as
+interpreter at once, without taking any notice of myself, the ostensible
+head of the petty expedition.
+
+"What does he, say?" I asked, as soon as he had finished speaking.
+
+The cook, who had been salaaming all the time, at the risk of a broken
+back, in his most utterly abject and grovelling attitude, made answer
+tremulously in his broken English: "This is priest-sahib of the temple.
+He very angry, because why? Eulopean-sahib and mem-sahibs come
+into Tibet-land. No Eulopean, no Hindu, must come into Tibet-land.
+Priest-sahib say, cut all Eulopean throats. Let Nepaul man go back like
+him come, to him own country."
+
+I looked as if the message were purely indifferent to me. "Tell him,"
+I said, smiling--though at some little effort--"we were not trying to
+enter Tibet. Our rascally guide misled us. We were going to Kulak, in
+the Maharajah's territory. We will turn back quietly to the Maharajah's
+land if the priest-sahib will allow us to camp out for the night here."
+
+I glanced at Hilda and Lady Meadowcroft. I must say their bearing under
+these trying circumstances was thoroughly worthy of two English ladies.
+They stood erect, looking as though all Tibet might come, and they would
+smile at it scornfully.
+
+The cook interpreted my remarks as well as he was able--his Tibetan
+being probably about equal in quality to his English. But the chief Lama
+made a reply which I could see for myself was by no means friendly.
+
+"What is his answer?" I asked the cook, in my haughtiest voice. I am
+haughty with difficulty.
+
+Our interpreter salaamed once more, shaking in his shoes, if he wore
+any. "Priest-sahib say, that all lies. That all dam-lies. You is
+Eulopean missionary, very bad man; you want to go to Lhasa. But no white
+sahib must go to Lhasa. Holy city, Lhasa; for Buddhists only. This is
+not the way to Kulak; this not Maharajah's land. This place belong-a
+Dalai-Lama, head of all Lamas; have house at Lhasa. But priest-sahib
+know you Eulopean missionary, want to go Lhasa, convert Buddhists,
+because... Ram Das tell him so."
+
+"Ram Das!" I exclaimed, thoroughly angry by this time. "The rogue! The
+scoundrel! He has not only deserted us, but betrayed us as well. He has
+told this lie on purpose to set the Tibetans against us. We must face
+the worst now. Our one chance is, to cajole these people."
+
+The fat priest spoke again. "What does he say this time?" I asked.
+
+"He say, Ram Das tell him all this because Ram Das good man--very good
+man: Ram Das converted Buddhist. You pay Ram Das to guidee you to Lhasa.
+But Ram Das good man, not want to let Eulopean see holy city; bring
+you here instead; then tell priest-sahib about it." And he chuckled
+inwardly.
+
+"What will they do to us?" Lady Meadowcroft asked, her face very white,
+though her manner was more courageous than I could easily have believed
+of her.
+
+"I don't know," I answered, biting my lip. "But we must not give way. We
+must put a bold face upon it. Their bark, after all, may be worse than
+their bite. We may still persuade them to let us go back again."
+
+The men in yellow robes motioned us to move on towards the village and
+monastery. We were their prisoners, and it was useless to resist. So I
+ordered the bearers to take up the tents and baggage. Lady Meadowcroft
+resigned herself to the inevitable. We mounted the path in a long line,
+the Lamas in yellow closely guarding our draggled little procession. I
+tried my best to preserve my composure, and above all else not to look
+dejected.
+
+As we approached the village, with its squalid and fetid huts, we caught
+the sound of bells, innumerable bells, tinkling at regular intervals.
+Many people trooped out from their houses to look at us, all flat-faced,
+all with oblique eyes, all stolidly, sullenly, stupidly passive. They
+seemed curious as to our dress and appearance, but not apparently
+hostile. We walked on to the low line of the monastery with its
+pyramidal roof and its queer, flower-vase minarets. After a moment's
+discussion they ushered us into the temple or chapel, which was
+evidently also their communal council-room and place of deliberation. We
+entered, trembling. We had no great certainty that we would ever get out
+of it alive again.
+
+The temple was a large, oblong hall, with a great figure of Buddha,
+cross-legged, imperturbable, enthroned in a niche at its further end,
+like the apse or recess in a church in Italy. Before it stood an altar.
+The Buddha sat and smiled on us with his eternal smile. A complacent
+deity, carved out of white stone, and gaudily painted; a yellow robe,
+like the Lamas', dangled across his shoulders. The air seemed close with
+incense and also with bad ventilation. The centre of the nave, if I may
+so call it, was occupied by a huge wooden cylinder, a sort of overgrown
+drum, painted in bright colours, with ornamental designs and Tibetan
+letters. It was much taller than a man, some nine feet high, I should
+say, and it revolved above and below on an iron spindle. Looking closer,
+I saw it had a crank attached to it, with a string tied to the crank. A
+solitary monk, absorbed in his devotions, was pulling this string as we
+entered, and making the cylinder revolve with a jerk as he pulled it. At
+each revolution, a bell above rang once. The monk seemed as if his whole
+soul was bound up in the huge revolving drum and the bell worked by it.
+
+We took this all in at a glance, somewhat vaguely at first, for our
+lives were at stake, and we were scarcely in a mood for ethnological
+observations. But the moment Hilda saw the cylinder her eye lighted up.
+I could see at once an idea had struck her. "This is a praying-wheel!"
+she cried, in quite a delighted voice. "I know where I am now,
+Hubert--Lady Meadowcroft--I see a way out of this! Do exactly as you see
+me do, and all may yet go well. Don't show surprise at anything. I think
+we can work upon these people's religious feelings."
+
+Without a moment's hesitation she prostrated herself thrice on the
+ground before the figure of Buddha, knocking her head ostentatiously in
+the dust as she did so. We followed suit instantly. Then Hilda rose and
+began walking slowly round the big drum in the nave, saying aloud at
+each step, in a sort of monotonous chant, like a priest intoning, the
+four mystic words, "Aum, mani, padme, hum," "Aum, mani, padme, hum,"
+many times over. We repeated the sacred formula after her, as if we had
+always been brought up to it. I noticed that Hilda walked the way of
+the sun. It is an important point in all these mysterious, half-magical
+ceremonies.
+
+At last, after about ten or twelve such rounds, she paused, with an
+absorbed air of devotion, and knocked her head three times on the ground
+once more, doing poojah, before the ever-smiling Buddha.
+
+By this time, however, the lessons of St. Alphege's rectory began to
+recur to Lady Meadowcroft's mind. "Oh, Miss Wade," she murmured in an
+awestruck voice, "OUGHT we to do like this? Isn't it clear idolatry?"
+
+Hilda's common sense waved her aside at once. "Idolatry or not, it is
+the only way to save our lives," she answered, in her firmest voice.
+
+"But--OUGHT we to save our lives? Oughtn't we to be... well, Christian
+martyrs?"
+
+Hilda was patience itself. "I think not, dear," she replied, gently
+but decisively. "You are not called upon to be a martyr. The danger of
+idolatry is scarcely so great among Europeans of our time that we need
+feel it a duty to protest with our lives against it. I have better uses
+to which to put my life myself. I don't mind being a martyr--where
+a sufficient cause demands it. But I don't think such a sacrifice is
+required of us now in a Tibetan monastery. Life was not given us to
+waste on gratuitous martyrdoms."
+
+"But... really... I'm afraid..."
+
+"Don't be afraid of anything, dear, or you will risk all. Follow my
+lead; _I_ will answer for your conduct. Surely, if Naaman, in the midst
+of idolaters, was permitted to bow down in the house of Rimmon, to save
+his place at court, you may blamelessly bow down to save your life in
+a Buddhist temple. Now, no more casuistry, but do as I tell you! 'Aum,
+mani, padme, hum,' again! Once more round the drum there!"
+
+We followed her a second time, Lady Meadowcroft giving in after a feeble
+protest. The priests in yellow looked on, profoundly impressed by our
+circumnavigation. It was clear they began to reconsider the question of
+our nefarious designs on their holy city.
+
+After we had finished our second tour round the drum, with the utmost
+solemnity, one of the monks approached Hilda, whom he seemed to take now
+for an important priestess. He said something to her in Tibetan, which,
+of course, we did not understand; but, as he pointed at the same time
+to the brother on the floor who was turning the wheel, Hilda nodded
+acquiescence. "If you wish it," she said in English--and he appeared to
+comprehend. "He wants to know whether I would like to take a turn at the
+cylinder."
+
+She knelt down in front of it, before the little stool where the brother
+in yellow had been kneeling till that moment, and took the string in her
+hand, as if she were well accustomed to it. I could see that the abbot
+gave the cylinder a surreptitious push with his left hand, before she
+began, so as to make it revolve in the opposite direction from that in
+which the monk had just been moving it. This was obviously to try her.
+But Hilda let the string drop, with a little cry of horror. That was
+the wrong way round--the unlucky, uncanonical direction; the evil way,
+widdershins, the opposite of sunwise. With an awed air she stopped
+short, repeated once more the four mystic words, or mantra, and bowed
+thrice with well-assumed reverence to the Buddha. Then she set the
+cylinder turning of her own accord, with her right hand, in the
+propitious direction, and sent it round seven times with the utmost
+gravity.
+
+At this point, encouraged by Hilda's example, I too became possessed
+of a brilliant inspiration. I opened my purse and took out of it four
+brand-new silver rupees of the Indian coinage. They were very handsome
+and shiny coins, each impressed with an excellent design of the head of
+the Queen as Empress of India. Holding them up before me, I approached
+the Buddha, and laid the four in a row submissively at his feet,
+uttering at the same time an appropriate formula. But as I did not know
+the proper mantra for use upon such an occasion, I supplied one from
+memory, saying, in a hushed voice, "Hokey--pokey--winky--wum," as I laid
+each one before the benignly-smiling statue. I have no doubt from their
+faces the priests imagined I was uttering a most powerful spell or
+prayer in my own language.
+
+As soon as I retreated, with my face towards the image, the chief Lama
+glided up and examined the coins carefully. It was clear he had never
+seen anything of the sort before, for he gazed at them for some minutes,
+and then showed them round to his monks with an air of deep reverence. I
+do not doubt he took the image of her gracious Majesty for a very mighty
+and potent goddess. As soon as all had inspected them, with many cries
+of admiration, he opened a little secret drawer or relic-holder in the
+pedestal of the statue, and deposited them in it with a muttered prayer,
+as precious offerings from a European Buddhist.
+
+By this time, we could easily see we were beginning to produce a most
+favourable impression. Hilda's study of Buddhism had stood us in good
+stead. The chief Lama or abbot motioned to us to be seated, in a much
+politer mood; after which he and his principal monks held a long and
+animated conversation together. I gathered from their looks and gestures
+that the head Lama inclined to regard us as orthodox Buddhists, but that
+some of his followers had grave doubts of their own as to the depth and
+reality of our religious convictions.
+
+While they debated and hesitated, Hilda had another splendid idea.
+She undid her portfolio, and took out of it the photographs of ancient
+Buddhist topes and temples which she had taken in India. These she
+produced triumphantly. At once the priests and monks crowded round us
+to look at them. In a moment, when they recognised the meaning of the
+pictures, their excitement grew quite intense. The photographs were
+passed round from hand to hand, amid loud exclamations of joy and
+surprise. One brother would point out with astonishment to another some
+familiar symbol or some ancient text; two or three of them, in their
+devout enthusiasm, fell down on their knees and kissed the pictures.
+
+We had played a trump card! The monks could see for themselves by this
+time that we were deeply interested in Buddhism. Now, minds of that
+calibre never understand a disinterested interest; the moment they saw
+we were collectors of Buddhist pictures, they jumped at once to the
+conclusion that we must also, of course, be devout believers. So far did
+they carry their sense of fraternity, indeed, that they insisted
+upon embracing us. That was a hard trial to Lady Meadowcroft, for the
+brethren were not conspicuous for personal cleanliness. She suspected
+germs, and she dreaded typhoid far more than she dreaded the Tibetan
+cutthroat.
+
+The brethren asked, through the medium of our interpreter, the cook,
+where these pictures had been made. We explained as well as we could by
+means of the same mouthpiece, a very earthen vessel, that they came from
+ancient Buddhist buildings in India. This delighted them still more,
+though I know not in what form our Ghoorka retainer may have conveyed
+the information. At any rate, they insisted on embracing us again;
+after which the chief Lama said something very solemnly to our amateur
+interpreter.
+
+The cook interpreted. "Priest-sahib say, he too got very sacred thing,
+come from India. Sacred Buddhist poojah-thing. Go to show it to you."
+
+We waited, breathless. The chief Lama approached the altar before the
+recess, in front of the great cross-legged, vapidly smiling Buddha.
+He bowed himself to the ground three times over, as well as his portly
+frame would permit him, knocking his forehead against the floor, just
+as Hilda had done; then he proceeded, almost awestruck, to take from
+the altar an object wrapped round with gold brocade, and very carefully
+guarded. Two acolytes accompanied him. In the most reverent way,
+he slowly unwound the folds of gold cloth, and released from its
+hiding-place the highly sacred deposit. He held it up before our eyes
+with an air of triumph. It was an English bottle!
+
+The label on it shone with gold and bright colours. I could see it was
+figured. The figure represented a cat, squatting on its haunches. The
+sacred inscription ran, in our own tongue, "Old Tom Gin, Unsweetened."
+
+The monks bowed their heads in profound silence as the sacred thing was
+produced. I caught Hilda's eye. "For Heaven's sake," I murmured low,
+"don't either of you laugh! If you do, it's all up with us."
+
+They kept their countenances with admirable decorum.
+
+Another idea struck me. "Tell them," I said to the cook, "that we,
+too, have a similar and very powerful god, but much more lively." He
+interpreted my words to them.
+
+Then I opened our stores, and drew out with a flourish--our last
+remaining bottle of Simla soda-water.
+
+Very solemnly and seriously I unwired the cork, as if performing an
+almost sacrosanct ceremony. The monks crowded round, with the deepest
+curiosity. I held the cork down for a second with my thumb, while
+I uttered once more, in my most awesome tone, the mystic words:
+"Hokey--pokey--winky--wum!" then I let it fly suddenly. The soda-water
+was well up. The cork bounded to the ceiling; the contents of the bottle
+spurted out over the place in the most impressive fashion.
+
+For a minute the Lamas drew back alarmed. The thing seemed almost
+devilish. Then slowly, reassured by our composure, they crept back and
+looked. With a glance of inquiry at the abbot, I took out my pocket
+corkscrew, and drew the cork of the gin-bottle, which had never been
+opened. I signed for a cup. They brought me one, reverently. I poured
+out a little gin, to which I added some soda-water, and drank first of
+it myself, to show them it was not poison. After that, I handed it to
+the chief Lama, who sipped at it, sipped again, and emptied the cup at
+the third trial. Evidently the sacred drink was very much to his taste,
+for he smacked his lips after it, and turned with exclamations of
+surprised delight to his inquisitive companions.
+
+The rest of the soda-water, duly mixed with gin, soon went the round of
+the expectant monks. It was greatly approved of. Unhappily, there was
+not quite enough soda water to supply a drink for all of them; but those
+who tasted it were deeply impressed. I could see that they took the bite
+of carbonic-acid gas for evidence of a most powerful and present deity.
+
+That settled our position. We were instantly regarded, not only as
+Buddhists, but as mighty magicians from a far country. The monks made
+haste to show us rooms destined for our use in the monastery. They were
+not unbearably filthy, and we had our own bedding. We had to spend the
+night there, that was certain. We had, at least, escaped the worst and
+most pressing danger. I may add that I believe our cook to have been
+a most arrant liar--which was a lucky circumstance. Once the wretched
+creature saw the tide turn, I have reason to infer that he supported our
+cause by telling the chief Lama the most incredible stories about our
+holiness and power. At any rate, it is certain that we were regarded
+with the utmost respect, and treated thenceforth with the affectionate
+deference due to acknowledged and certified sainthood.
+
+It began to strike us now, however, that we had almost overshot the mark
+in this matter of sanctity. We had made ourselves quite too holy. The
+monks, who were eager at first to cut our throats, thought so much of us
+now that we grew a little anxious as to whether they would not wish to
+keep such devout souls in their midst for ever. As a matter of fact, we
+spent a whole week against our wills in the monastery, being very well
+fed and treated meanwhile, yet virtually captives. It was the camera
+that did it. The Lamas had never seen any photographs before. They asked
+how these miraculous pictures were produced; and Hilda, to keep up
+the good impression, showed them how she operated. When a full-length
+portrait of the chief Lama, in his sacrificial robes, was actually
+printed off and exhibited before their eyes, their delight knew no
+bounds. The picture was handed about among the astonished brethren, and
+received with loud shouts of joy and wonder. Nothing would satisfy them
+then but that we must photograph every individual monk in the place.
+Even the Buddha himself, cross-legged and imperturbable, had to sit
+for his portrait. As he was used to sitting--never, indeed, having done
+anything else--he came out admirably.
+
+Day after day passed; suns rose and suns set; and it was clear that
+the monks did not mean to let us leave their precincts in a hurry. Lady
+Meadowcroft, having recovered by this time from her first fright, began
+to grow bored. The Buddhists' ritual ceased to interest her. To vary the
+monotony, I hit upon an expedient for killing time till our too pressing
+hosts saw fit to let us depart. They were fond of religious processions
+of the most protracted sort--dances before the altar, with animal masks
+or heads, and other weird ceremonial orgies. Hilda, who had read herself
+up in Buddhist ideas, assured me that all these things were done in
+order to heap up Karma.
+
+"What is Karma?" I asked, listlessly.
+
+"Karma is good works, or merit. The more praying-wheels you turn, the
+more bells you ring, the greater the merit. One of the monks is always
+at work turning the big wheel that moves the bell, so as to heap up
+merit night and day for the monastery."
+
+This set me thinking. I soon discovered that, no matter how the wheel is
+turned, the Karma or merit is equal. It is the turning it that counts,
+not the personal exertion. There were wheels and bells in convenient
+situations all over the village, and whoever passed one gave it a twist
+as he went by, thus piling up Karma for all the inhabitants. Reflecting
+upon these facts, I was seized with an idea. I got Hilda to take
+instantaneous photographs of all the monks during a sacred procession,
+at rapid intervals. In that sunny climate we had no difficulty at all in
+printing off from the plates as soon as developed. Then I took a small
+wheel, about the size of an oyster-barrel--the monks had dozens of
+them--and pasted the photographs inside in successive order, like what
+is called a zoetrope, or wheel of life. By cutting holes in the side,
+and arranging a mirror from Lady Meadowcroft's dressing-bag, I completed
+my machine, so that, when it was turned round rapidly, one saw the
+procession actually taking place as if the figures were moving. The
+thing, in short, made a living picture like a cinematograph. A mountain
+stream ran past the monastery, and supplied it with water. I had a
+second inspiration. I was always mechanical. I fixed a water-wheel in
+the stream, where it made a petty cataract, and connected it by means
+of a small crank with the barrel of photographs. My zoetrope thus
+worked off itself, and piled up Karma for all the village whether anyone
+happened to be looking at it or not.
+
+The monks, who were really excellent fellows when not engaged in cutting
+throats in the interest of the faith, regarded this device as a great
+and glorious religious invention. They went down on their knees to it,
+and were profoundly respectful. They also bowed to me so deeply, when I
+first exhibited it, that I began to be puffed up with spiritual pride.
+Lady Meadowcroft recalled me to my better self by murmuring, with a
+sigh: "I suppose we really can't draw a line now; but it DOES seem to me
+like encouraging idolatry!"
+
+"Purely mechanical encouragement," I answered, gazing at my handicraft
+with an inventor's pardonable pride. "You see, it is the turning itself
+that does good, not any prayers attached to it. I divert the idolatry
+from human worshippers to an unconscious stream--which must surely be
+meritorious." Then I thought of the mystic sentence, "Aum, mani, padme,
+hum." "What a pity it is," I cried, "I couldn't make them a phonograph
+to repeat their mantra! If I could, they might fulfil all their
+religious duties together by machinery!"
+
+Hilda reflected a second. "There is a great future," she said at
+last, "for the man who first introduces smoke-jacks into Tibet! Every
+household will buy one, as an automatic means of acquiring Karma."
+
+"Don't publish that idea in England!" I exclaimed, hastily--"if ever
+we get there. As sure as you do, somebody will see in it an opening for
+British trade; and we shall spend twenty millions on conquering Tibet,
+in the interests of civilisation and a smoke-jack syndicate."
+
+How long we might have stopped at the monastery I cannot say, had it not
+been for the intervention of an unexpected episode which occurred just a
+week after our first arrival. We were comfortable enough in a rough way,
+with our Ghoorka cook to prepare our food for us, and our bearers to
+wait; but to the end I never felt quite sure of our hosts, who, after
+all, were entertaining us under false pretences. We had told them, truly
+enough, that Buddhist missionaries had now penetrated to England; and
+though they had not the slightest conception where England might be,
+and knew not the name of Madame Blavatsky, this news interested them.
+Regarding us as promising neophytes, they were anxious now that we
+should go on to Lhasa, in order to receive full instruction in the
+faith from the chief fountainhead, the Grand Lama in person. To this we
+demurred. Mr. Landor's experiences did not encourage us to follow his
+lead. The monks, for their part, could not understand our reluctance.
+They thought that every well-intentioned convert must wish to make the
+pilgrimage to Lhasa, the Mecca of their creed. Our hesitation threw
+some doubt on the reality of our conversion. A proselyte, above all men,
+should never be lukewarm. They expected us to embrace the opportunity
+with fervour. We might be massacred on the way, to be sure; but what did
+that matter? We should be dying for the faith, and ought to be charmed
+at so splendid a prospect.
+
+On the day-week after our arrival time chief Lama came to me at
+nightfall. His face was serious. He spoke to me through our accredited
+interpreter, the cook. "Priest-sahib say, very important; the sahib and
+mem-sahibs must go away from here before sun get up to-morrow morning."
+
+"Why so?" I asked, as astonished as I was pleased.
+
+"Priest-sahib say, he like you very much; oh, very, very much; no want
+to see village people kill you."
+
+"Kill us! But I thought they believed we were saints!"
+
+"Priest say, that just it; too much saint altogether. People hereabout
+all telling that the sahib and the mem-sahibs very great saints; much
+holy, like Buddha. Make picture; work miracles. People think, if them
+kill you, and have your tomb here, very holy place; very great Karma;
+very good for trade; plenty Tibetan man hear you holy men, come here on
+pilgrimage. Pilgrimage make fair, make market, very good for village. So
+people want to kill you, build shrine over your body."
+
+This was a view of the advantages of sanctity which had never before
+struck me. Now, I had not been eager even for the distinction of being
+a Christian martyr; as to being a Buddhist martyr, that was quite out of
+the question. "Then what does the Lama advise us to do?" I asked.
+
+"Priest-sahib say he love you; no want to see village people kill you.
+He give you guide--very good guide--know mountains well; take you back
+straight to Maharajah's country."
+
+"Not Ram Das?" I asked, suspiciously.
+
+"No, not Ram Das. Very good man--Tibetan."
+
+I saw at once this was a genuine crisis. All was hastily arranged. I
+went in and told Hilda and Lady Meadowcroft. Our spoilt child cried
+a little, of course, at the idea of being enshrined; but on the whole
+behaved admirably. At early dawn next morning, before the village was
+awake, we crept with stealthy steps out of the monastery, whose inmates
+were friendly. Our new guide accompanied us. We avoided the village, on
+whose outskirts the lamasery lay, and made straight for the valley. By
+six o'clock, we were well out of sight of the clustered houses and
+the pyramidal spires. But I did not breathe freely till late in the
+afternoon, when we found ourselves once more under British protection in
+the first hamlet of the Maharajah's territory.
+
+As for that scoundrel, Ram Das, we heard nothing more of him. He
+disappeared into space from the moment he deserted us at the door of the
+trap into which he had led us. The chief Lama told me he had gone back
+at once by another route to his own country.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI
+
+THE EPISODE OF THE OFFICER WHO UNDERSTOOD PERFECTLY
+
+
+After our fortunate escape from the clutches of our too-admiring Tibetan
+hosts, we wound our way slowly back through the Maharajah's territory
+towards Sir Ivor's headquarters. On the third day out from the lamasery
+we camped in a romantic Himalayan valley--a narrow, green glen, with a
+brawling stream running in white cataracts and rapids down its midst.
+We were able to breathe freely now; we could enjoy the great tapering
+deodars that rose in ranks on the hillsides, the snow-clad needles of
+ramping rock that bounded the view to north and south, the feathery
+bamboo-jungle that fringed and half-obscured the mountain torrent, whose
+cool music--alas, fallaciously cool--was borne to us through the dense
+screen of waving foliage. Lady Meadowcroft was so delighted at having
+got clear away from those murderous and saintly Tibetans that for a
+while she almost forgot to grumble. She even condescended to admire the
+deep-cleft ravine in which we bivouacked for the night, and to admit
+that the orchids which hung from the tall trees were as fine as any at
+her florist's in Piccadilly. "Though how they can have got them out here
+already, in this outlandish place--the most fashionable kinds--when we
+in England have to grow them with such care in expensive hot-houses,"
+she said, "really passes my comprehension."
+
+She seemed to think that orchids originated in Covent Garden.
+
+Early next morning I was engaged with one of my native men in lighting
+the fire to boil our kettle--for in spite of all misfortunes we still
+made tea with creditable punctuality--when a tall and good-looking
+Nepaulese approached us from the hills, with cat-like tread, and stood
+before me in an attitude of profound supplication. He was a well-dressed
+young man, like a superior native servant; his face was broad and flat,
+but kindly and good-humoured. He salaamed many times, but still said
+nothing.
+
+"Ask him what he wants," I cried, turning to our fair-weather friend,
+the cook.
+
+The deferential Nepaulese did not wait to be asked. "Salaam, sahib," he
+said, bowing again very low till his forehead almost touched the ground.
+"You are Eulopean doctor, sahib?"
+
+"I am," I answered, taken aback at being thus recognised in the forests
+of Nepaul. "But how in wonder did you come to know it?"
+
+"You camp near here when you pass dis way before, and you doctor little
+native girl, who got sore eyes. All de country here tell you is very
+great physician. So I come and to see if you will turn aside to my
+village to help us."
+
+"Where did you learn English?" I exclaimed, more and more astonished.
+
+"I is servant one time at British Lesident's at de Maharajah's city.
+Pick up English dere. Also pick up plenty lupee. Velly good business
+at British Lesident's. Now gone back home to my own village, letired
+gentleman." And he drew himself up with conscious dignity.
+
+I surveyed the retired gentleman from head to foot. He had an air of
+distinction, which not even his bare toes could altogether mar. He was
+evidently a person of local importance. "And what did you want me to
+visit your village for?" I inquired, dubiously.
+
+"White traveller sahib ill dere, sir. Vely ill; got plague. Great
+first-class sahib, all same like Governor. Ill, fit to die; send me out
+all times to try find Eulopean doctor."
+
+"Plague?" I repeated, startled. He nodded.
+
+"Yes, plague; all same like dem hab him so bad down Bombay way."
+
+"Do you know his name?" I asked; for though one does not like to desert
+a fellow-creature in distress, I did not care to turn aside from my
+road on such an errand, with Hilda and Lady Meadowcroft, unless for some
+amply sufficient reason.
+
+The retired gentleman shook his head in the most emphatic fashion. "How
+me know?" he answered, opening the palms of his hands as if to show
+he had nothing concealed in them. "Forget Eulopean name all times so
+easily. And traveller sahib name very hard to lemember. Not got English
+name. Him Eulopean foleigner."
+
+"A European foreigner!" I repeated. "And you say he is seriously ill?
+Plague is no trifle. Well, wait a minute; I'll see what the ladies say
+about it. How far off is your village?"
+
+He pointed with his hand, somewhat vaguely, to the hillside. "Two hours'
+walk," he answered, with the mountaineer's habit of reckoning distance
+by time, which extends, under the like circumstances, the whole world
+over.
+
+I went back to the tents, and consulted Hilda and Lady Meadowcroft. Our
+spoilt child pouted, and was utterly averse to any detour of any sort.
+"Let's get back straight to Ivor," she said, petulantly. "I've had enough
+of camping out. It's all very well in its way for a week but when they
+begin to talk about cutting your throat and all that, it ceases to be
+a joke and becomes a wee bit uncomfortable. I want my feather bed. I
+object to their villages."
+
+"But consider, dear," Hilda said, gently. "This traveller is ill, all
+alone in a strange land. How can Hubert desert him? It is a doctor's
+duty to do what he can to alleviate pain and to cure the sick. What
+would we have thought ourselves, when we were at the lamasery, if a body
+of European travellers had known we were there, imprisoned and in danger
+of our lives, and had passed by on the other side without attempting to
+rescue us?"
+
+Lady Meadowcroft knit her forehead. "That was us," she said, with an
+impatient nod, after a pause--"and this is another person. You can't
+turn aside for everybody who's ill in all Nepaul. And plague, too!--so
+horrid! Besides, how do we know this isn't another plan of these hateful
+people to lead us into danger?"
+
+"Lady Meadowcroft is quite right," I said, hastily. "I never thought
+about that. There may be no plague, no patient at all. I will go up with
+this man alone, Hilda, and find out the truth. It will only take me five
+hours at most. By noon I shall be back with you."
+
+"What? And leave us here unprotected among the wild beasts and the
+savages?" Lady Meadowcroft cried, horrified. "In the midst of the
+forest! Dr. Cumberledge, how can you?"
+
+"You are NOT unprotected," I answered, soothing her. "You have Hilda
+with you. She is worth ten men. And besides, our Nepaulese are fairly
+trustworthy."
+
+Hilda bore me out in my resolve. She was too much of a nurse, and had
+imbibed too much of the true medical sentiment, to let me desert a
+man in peril of his life in a tropical jungle. So, in spite of Lady
+Meadowcroft, I was soon winding my way up a steep mountain track,
+overgrown with creeping Indian weeds, on my road to the still
+problematical village graced by the residence of the retired gentleman.
+
+After two hours' hard climbing we reached it at last. The retired
+gentleman led the way to a house in a street of the little wooden
+hamlet. The door was low; I had to stoop to enter it. I saw in a moment
+this was indeed no trick. On a native bed, in a corner of the one room,
+a man lay desperately ill; a European, with white hair and with a skin
+well bronzed by exposure to the tropics. Ominous dark spots beneath the
+epidermis showed the nature of the disease. He tossed restlessly as he
+lay, but did not raise his fevered head or look at my conductor. "Well,
+any news of Ram Das?" he asked at last, in a parched and feeble voice.
+Parched and feeble as it was, I recognised it instantly. The man on the
+bed was Sebastian--no other!
+
+"No news of Lam Das," the retired gentleman replied, with an unexpected
+display of womanly tenderness. "Lam Das clean gone; not come any more.
+But I bling you back Eulopean doctor, sahib."
+
+Sebastian did not look up from his bed even then. I could see he
+was more anxious about a message from his scout than about his own
+condition. "The rascal!" he moaned, with his eyes closed tight. "The
+rascal! he has betrayed me." And he tossed uneasily.
+
+I looked at him and said nothing. Then I seated myself on a low stool by
+the bedside and took his hand in mine to feel his pulse. The wrist was
+thin and wasted. The face, too, I noticed, had fallen away greatly. It
+was clear that the malignant fever which accompanies the disease had
+wreaked its worst on him. So weak and ill was he, indeed, that he let me
+hold his hand, with my fingers on his pulse, for half a minute or more
+without ever opening his eyes or displaying the slightest curiosity at
+my presence. One might have thought that European doctors abounded in
+Nepaul, and that I had been attending him for a week, with "the mixture
+as before" at every visit.
+
+"Your pulse is weak and very rapid," I said slowly, in a professional
+tone. "You seem to me to have fallen into a perilous condition."
+
+At the sound of my voice, he gave a sudden start. Yet even so, for a
+second, he did not open his eyes. The revelation of my presence seemed
+to come upon him as in a dream. "Like Cumberledge's," he muttered to
+himself, gasping. "Exactly like Cumberledge's.... But Cumberledge is
+dead... I must be delirious.... If I didn't KNOW to the contrary, I
+could have sworn it was Cumberledge's!"
+
+I spoke again, bending over him. "How long have the glandular swellings
+been present, Professor?" I asked, with quiet deliberativeness.
+
+This time he opened his eyes sharply, and looked up in my face. He
+swallowed a great gulp of surprise. His breath came and went. He
+raised himself on his elbows and stared at me with a fixed stare.
+"Cumberledge!" he cried; "Cumberledge! Come back to life, then! They
+told me you were dead! And here you are, Cumberledge!"
+
+"WHO told you I was dead?" I asked, sternly.
+
+He stared at me, still in a dazed way. He was more than half comatose.
+"Your guide, Ram Das," he answered at last, half incoherently. "He came
+back by himself. Came back without you. He swore to me he had seen
+all your throats cut in Tibet. He alone had escaped. The Buddhists had
+massacred you."
+
+"He told you a lie," I said, shortly.
+
+"I thought so. I thought so. And I sent him back for confirmatory
+evidence. But the rogue has never brought it." He let his head drop on
+his rude pillow heavily. "Never, never brought it!"
+
+I gazed at him, full of horror. The man was too ill to hear me, too ill
+to reason, too ill to recognise the meaning of his own words, almost.
+Otherwise, perhaps, he would hardly have expressed himself quite so
+frankly. Though to be sure he had said nothing to criminate himself in
+any way; his action might have been due to anxiety for our safety.
+
+I fixed my glance on him long and dubiously. What ought I to do next?
+As for Sebastian, he lay with his eyes closed, half oblivious of my
+presence. The fever had gripped him hard. He shivered, and looked
+helpless as a child. In such circumstances, the instincts of my
+profession rose imperative within me. I could not nurse a case properly
+in this wretched hut. The one thing to be done was to carry the patient
+down to our camp in the valley. There, at least, we had air and pure
+running water.
+
+I asked a few questions from the retired gentleman as to the possibility
+of obtaining sufficient bearers in the village. As I supposed, any
+number were forthcoming immediately. Your Nepaulese is by nature a beast
+of burden; he can carry anything up and down the mountains, and spends
+his life in the act of carrying.
+
+I pulled out my pencil, tore a leaf from my note-book, and scribbled a
+hasty note to Hilda: "The invalid is--whom do you think?--Sebastian!
+He is dangerously ill with some malignant fever. I am bringing him down
+into camp to nurse. Get everything ready for him." Then I handed it
+over to a messenger, found for me by the retired gentleman, to carry to
+Hilda. My host himself I could not spare, as he was my only interpreter.
+
+In a couple of hours we had improvised a rough, woven-grass hammock as
+an ambulance couch, had engaged our bearers, and had got Sebastian under
+way for the camp by the river.
+
+When I arrived at our tents, I found Hilda had prepared everything for
+our patient with her usual cleverness. Not only had she got a bed ready
+for Sebastian, who was now almost insensible, but she had even cooked
+some arrowroot from our stores beforehand, so that he might have a
+little food, with a dash of brandy in it, to recover him after the
+fatigue of the journey down the mountain. By the time we had laid him
+out on a mattress in a cool tent, with the fresh air blowing about him,
+and had made him eat the meal prepared for him, he really began to look
+comparatively comfortable.
+
+Lady Meadowcroft was now our chief trouble. We did not dare to tell her
+it was really plague; but she had got near enough back to civilisation
+to have recovered her faculty for profuse grumbling; and the idea of the
+delay that Sebastian would cause us drove her wild with annoyance. "Only
+two days off from Ivor," she cried, "and that comfortable bungalow! And
+now to think we must stop here in the woods a week or ten days for this
+horrid old Professor! Why can't he get worse at once and die like a
+gentleman? But, there! with YOU to nurse him, Hilda, he'll never get
+worse. He couldn't die if he tried. He'll linger on and on for weeks and
+weeks through a beastly convalescence!"
+
+"Hubert," Hilda said to me, when we were alone once more; "we mustn't
+keep her here. She will be a hindrance, not a help. One way or another
+we must manage to get rid of her."
+
+"How can we?" I asked. "We can't turn her loose upon the mountain roads
+with a Nepaulese escort. She isn't fit for it. She would be frantic with
+terror."
+
+"I've thought of that, and I see only one thing possible. I must go on
+with her myself as fast as we can push to Sir Ivor's place, and then
+return to help you nurse the Professor."
+
+I saw she was right. It was the sole plan open to us. And I had no fear
+of letting Hilda go off alone with Lady Meadowcroft and the bearers. She
+was a host in herself, and could manage a party of native servants at
+least as well as I could.
+
+So Hilda went, and came back again. Meanwhile, I took charge of the
+nursing of Sebastian. Fortunately, I had brought with me a good stock
+of jungle-medicines in my little travelling-case, including plenty of
+quinine; and under my careful treatment the Professor passed the crisis
+and began to mend slowly. The first question he asked me when he felt
+himself able to talk once more was, "Nurse Wade--what has become of
+her?"--for he had not yet seen her. I feared the shock for him.
+
+"She is here with me," I answered, in a very measured voice. "She is
+waiting to be allowed to come and help me in taking care of you."
+
+He shuddered and turned away. His face buried itself in the pillow. I
+could see some twinge of remorse had seized upon him. At last he spoke.
+"Cumberledge," he said, in a very low and almost frightened tone, "don't
+let her come near me! I can't bear it. I can't bear it."
+
+Ill as he was, I did not mean to let him think I was ignorant of his
+motive. "You can't bear a woman whose life you have attempted," I said,
+in my coldest and most deliberate way, "to have a hand in nursing you!
+You can't bear to let her heap coals of fire on your head! In that you
+are right. But, remember, you have attempted MY life too; you have twice
+done your best to get me murdered."
+
+He did not pretend to deny it. He was too weak for subterfuges. He only
+writhed as he lay. "You are a man," he said, shortly, "and she is a
+woman. That is all the difference." Then he paused for a minute or two.
+"Don't let her come near me," he moaned once more, in a piteous voice.
+"Don't let her come near me!"
+
+"I will not," I answered. "She shall not come near you. I spare you
+that. But you will have to eat the food she prepares; and you know SHE
+will not poison you. You will have to be tended by the servants she
+chooses; and you know THEY will not murder you. She can heap coals
+of fire on your head without coming into your tent. Consider that you
+sought to take her life--and she seeks to save yours! She is as anxious
+to keep you alive as you are anxious to kill her."
+
+He lay as in a reverie. His long white hair made his clear-cut, thin
+face look more unearthly than ever, with the hectic flush of fever upon
+it. At last he turned to me. "We each work for our own ends," he said,
+in a weary way. "We pursue our own objects. It suits ME to get rid of
+HER: it suits HER to keep ME alive. I am no good to her dead; living,
+she expects to wring a confession out of me. But she shall not have
+it. Tenacity of purpose is the one thing I admire in life. She has the
+tenacity of purpose--and so have I. Cumberledge, don't you see it is a
+mere duel of endurance between us?"
+
+"And may the just side win," I answered, solemnly.
+
+It was several days later before he spoke to me of it again. Hilda had
+brought some food to the door of the tent and passed it in to me for our
+patient. "How is he now?" she whispered.
+
+Sebastian overheard her voice, and, cowering within himself, still
+managed to answer: "Better, getting better. I shall soon be well now.
+You have carried your point. You have cured your enemy."
+
+"Thank God for that!" Hilda said, and glided away silently.
+
+Sebastian ate his cup of arrowroot in silence; then he looked at me with
+wistful, musing eyes. "Cumberledge," he murmured at last; "after all,
+I can't help admiring that woman. She is the only person who has ever
+checkmated me. She checkmates me every time. Steadfastness is what I
+love. Her steadfastness of purpose and her determination move me."
+
+"I wish they would move you to tell the truth," I answered.
+
+He mused again. "To tell the truth!" he muttered, moving his head up and
+down. "I have lived for science. Shall I wreck all now? There are
+truths which it is better to hide than to proclaim. Uncomfortable
+truths--truths that never should have been--truths which help to make
+greater truths incredible. But, all the same, I cannot help admiring
+that woman. She has Yorke-Bannerman's intellect, with a great deal more
+than Yorke-Bannerman's force of will. Such firmness! such energy! such
+resolute patience! She is a wonderful creature. I can't help admiring
+her!"
+
+I said no more to him just then. I thought it better to let nascent
+remorse and nascent admiration work out their own natural effects
+unimpeded. For I could see our enemy was beginning to feel some sting
+of remorse. Some men are below it. Sebastian thought himself above it. I
+felt sure he was mistaken.
+
+Yet even in the midst of these personal preoccupations, I saw that our
+great teacher was still, as ever, the pure man of science. He noted
+every symptom and every change of the disease with professional
+accuracy. He observed his own case, whenever his mind was clear enough,
+as impartially as he would have observed any outside patient's. "This is
+a rare chance, Cumberledge," he whispered to me once, in an interval of
+delirium. "So few Europeans have ever had the complaint, and probably
+none who were competent to describe the specific subjective and
+psychological symptoms. The delusions one gets as one sinks into the
+coma, for example, are of quite a peculiar type--delusions of wealth and
+of absolute power, most exhilarating and magnificent. I think myself
+a millionaire or a Prime Minister. Be sure you make a note of that--in
+case I die. If I recover, of course I can write an exhaustive monograph
+on the whole history of the disease in the British Medical Journal. But
+if I die, the task of chronicling these interesting observations
+will devolve upon you. A most exceptional chance! You are much to be
+congratulated."
+
+"You MUST not die, Professor," I cried, thinking more, I will confess,
+of Hilda Wade than of himself. "You must live... to report this case for
+science." I used what I thought the strongest lever I knew for him.
+
+He closed his eyes dreamily. "For science! Yes, for science! There you
+strike the right chord! What have I not dared and done for science? But,
+in case I die, Cumberledge, be sure you collect the notes I took as I
+was sickening--they are most important for the history and etiology of
+the disease. I made them hourly. And don't forget the main points to
+be observed as I am dying. You know what they are. This is a rare,
+rare chance! I congratulate you on being the man who has the first
+opportunity ever afforded us of questioning an intelligent European
+case, a case where the patient is fully capable of describing with
+accuracy his symptoms and his sensations in medical phraseology."
+
+He did not die, however. In about another week he was well enough to
+move. We carried him down to Mozufferpoor, the first large town in the
+plains thereabouts, and handed him over for the stage of convalescence
+to the care of the able and efficient station doctor, to whom my thanks
+are due for much courteous assistance.
+
+"And now, what do you mean to do?" I asked Hilda, when our patient was
+placed in other hands, and all was over.
+
+She answered me without one second's hesitation: "Go straight to Bombay,
+and wait there till Sebastian takes passage for England."
+
+"He will go home, you think, as soon as he is well enough?"
+
+"Undoubtedly. He has now nothing more to stop in India for."
+
+"Why not as much as ever?"
+
+She looked at me curiously. "It is so hard to explain," she replied,
+after a moment's pause, during which she had been drumming her little
+forefinger on the table. "I feel it rather than reason it. But don't you
+see that a certain change has lately come over Sebastian's attitude? He
+no longer desires to follow me; he wants to avoid me. That is why I wish
+more than ever to dog his steps. I feel the beginning of the end has
+come. I am gaining my point. Sebastian is wavering."
+
+"Then when he engages a berth, you propose to go by the same steamer?"
+
+"Yes. It makes all the difference. When he tries to follow me, he is
+dangerous; when he tries to avoid me, it becomes my work in life to
+follow him. I must keep him in sight every minute now. I must quicken
+his conscience. I must make him FEEL his own desperate wickedness. He is
+afraid to face me: that means remorse. The more I compel him to face me,
+the more the remorse is sure to deepen."
+
+I saw she was right. We took the train to Bombay. I found rooms at the
+hospitable club, by a member's invitation, while Hilda went to stop with
+some friends of Lady Meadowcroft's on the Malabar Hill. We waited for
+Sebastian to come down from the interior and take his passage. Hilda,
+with her intuitive certainty, felt sure he would come.
+
+A steamer, two steamers, three steamers, sailed, and still no Sebastian.
+I began to think he must have made up his mind to go back some other
+way. But Hilda was confident, so I waited patiently. At last one morning
+I dropped in, as I had often done before, at the office of one of the
+chief steamship companies. It was the very morning when a packet was to
+sail. "Can I see the list of passengers on the Vindhya?" I asked of the
+clerk, a sandy-haired Englishman, tall, thin, and sallow.
+
+The clerk produced it.
+
+I scanned it in haste. To my surprise and delight, a pencilled entry
+half-way down the list gave the name, "Professor Sebastian."
+
+"Oh, Sebastian is going by this steamer?" I murmured, looking up.
+
+The sandy-haired clerk hummed and hesitated. "Well, I believe he's
+going, sir," he answered at last; "but it's a bit uncertain. He's a
+fidgety man, the Professor. He came down here this morning and asked
+to see the list, the same as you have done. Then he engaged a berth
+provisionally--'mind, provisionally,' he said--that's why his name
+is only put in on the list in pencil. I take it he's waiting to know
+whether a party of friends he wishes to meet are going also."
+
+"Or wishes to avoid," I thought to myself, inwardly; but I did not say
+so. I asked instead, "Is he coming again?"
+
+"Yes, I think so: at 5.30."
+
+"And she sails at seven?"
+
+"At seven, punctually. Passengers must be aboard by half-past six at
+latest."
+
+"Very good," I answered, making up my mind promptly. "I only called to
+know the Professor's movements. Don't mention to him that I came. I may
+look in again myself an hour or two later."
+
+"You don't want a passage, sir? You may be the friend he's expecting."
+
+"No, I don't want a passage--not at present certainly." Then I ventured
+on a bold stroke. "Look here," I said, leaning across towards him, and
+assuming a confidential tone: "I am a private detective"--which was
+perfectly true in essence--"and I'm dogging the Professor, who, for all
+his eminence, is gravely suspected of a great crime. If you will help
+me, I will make it worth your while. Let us understand one another. I
+offer you a five-pound note to say nothing of all this to him."
+
+The sallow clerk's fishy eye glistened. "You can depend upon me," he
+answered, with an acquiescent nod. I judged that he did not often get
+the chance of earning some eighty rupees so easily.
+
+I scribbled a hasty note and sent it round to Hilda: "Pack your boxes
+at once, and hold yourself in readiness to embark on the Vindhya at six
+o'clock precisely." Then I put my own things straight; and waited at
+the club till a quarter to six. At that time I strolled on unconcernedly
+into the office. A cab outside held Hilda and our luggage. I had
+arranged it all meanwhile by letter.
+
+"Professor Sebastian been here again?" I asked.
+
+"Yes, sir; he's been here; and he looked over the list again; and he's
+taken his passage. But he muttered something about eavesdroppers, and
+said that if he wasn't satisfied when he got on board, he would return
+at once and ask for a cabin in exchange by the next steamer."
+
+"That will do," I answered, slipping the promised five-pound note into
+the clerk's open palm, which closed over it convulsively. "Talked about
+eavesdroppers, did he? Then he knows he's been shadowed. It may console
+you to learn that you are instrumental in furthering the aims of justice
+and unmasking a cruel and wicked conspiracy. Now, the next thing
+is this: I want two berths at once by this very steamer--one for
+myself--name of Cumberledge; one for a lady--name of Wade; and look
+sharp about it."
+
+The sandy-haired man did look sharp; and within three minutes we were
+driving off with our tickets to Prince's Dock landing-stage.
+
+We slipped on board unobtrusively, and instantly took refuge in our
+respective staterooms till the steamer was well under way, and fairly
+out of sight of Kolaba Island. Only after all chance of Sebastian's
+avoiding us was gone for ever did we venture up on deck, on purpose to
+confront him.
+
+It was one of those delicious balmy evenings which one gets only at sea
+and in the warmer latitudes. The sky was alive with myriads of twinkling
+and palpitating stars, which seemed to come and go, like sparks on a
+fire-back, as one gazed upward into the vast depths and tried to
+place them. They played hide-and-seek with one another and with the
+innumerable meteors which shot recklessly every now and again across the
+field of the firmament, leaving momentary furrows of light behind them.
+Beneath, the sea sparkled almost like the sky, for every turn of the
+screw churned up the scintillating phosphorescence in the water, so that
+countless little jets of living fire seemed to flash and die away at the
+summit of every wavelet. A tall, spare man in a picturesque cloak, and
+with long, lank, white hair, leant over the taffrail, gazing at the
+numberless flashing lights of the surface. As he gazed, he talked on in
+his clear, rapt voice to a stranger by his side. The voice and the ring
+of enthusiasm were unmistakable. "Oh, no," he was saying, as we stole up
+behind him, "that hypothesis, I venture to assert, is no longer tenable
+by the light of recent researches. Death and decay have nothing to do
+directly with the phosphorescence of the sea, though they have a little
+indirectly. The light is due in the main to numerous minute living
+organisms, most of them bacilli, on which I once made several close
+observations and crucial experiments. They possess organs which may be
+regarded as miniature bull's-eye lanterns. And these organs--"
+
+"What a lovely evening, Hubert!" Hilda said to me, in an apparently
+unconcerned voice, as the Professor reached this point in his
+exposition.
+
+Sebastian's voice quavered and stammered for a moment. He tried just at
+first to continue and complete his sentence: "And these organs," he
+went on, aimlessly, "these bull's-eyes that I spoke about, are so
+arranged--so arranged--I was speaking on the subject of crustaceans, I
+think--crustaceans so arranged--" then he broke down utterly and turned
+sharply round to me. He did not look at Hilda--I think he did not dare;
+but he faced me with his head down and his long, thin neck protruded,
+eyeing me from under those overhanging, penthouse brows of his. "You
+sneak!" he cried, passionately. "You sneak! You have dogged me by false
+pretences. You have lied to bring this about! You have come aboard under
+a false name--you and your accomplice!"
+
+I faced him in turn, erect and unflinching. "Professor Sebastian," I
+answered, in my coldest and calmest tone, "you say what is not true. If
+you consult the list of passengers by the Vindhya, now posted near
+the companion-ladder, you will find the names of Hilda Wade and Hubert
+Cumberledge duly entered. We took our passage AFTER you inspected the
+list at the office to see whether our names were there--in order to
+avoid us. But you cannot avoid us. We do not mean that you shall avoid
+us. We will dog you now through life--not by lies or subterfuges, as you
+say, but openly and honestly. It is YOU who need to slink and cower,
+not we. The prosecutor need not descend to the sordid shifts of the
+criminal."
+
+The other passenger had sidled away quietly the moment he saw our
+conversation was likely to be private; and I spoke in a low voice,
+though clearly and impressively, because I did not wish for a scene.
+I was only endeavouring to keep alive the slow, smouldering fire of
+remorse in the man's bosom. And I saw I had touched him on a spot that
+hurt. Sebastian drew himself up and answered nothing. For a minute or
+two he stood erect, with folded arms, gazing moodily before him. Then he
+said, as if to himself: "I owe the man my life. He nursed me through
+the plague. If it had not been for that--if he had not tended me
+so carefully in that valley in Nepaul--I would throw him overboard
+now--catch him in my arms and throw him overboard! I would--and be
+hanged for it!"
+
+He walked past us as if he saw us not, silent, erect, moody. Hilda
+stepped aside and let him pass. He never even looked at her. I knew why;
+he dared not. Every day now, remorse for the evil part he had played in
+her life, respect for the woman who had unmasked and outwitted him, made
+it more and more impossible for Sebastian to face her. During the whole
+of that voyage, though he dined in the same saloon and paced the same
+deck, he never spoke to her, he never so much as looked at her. Once or
+twice their eyes met by accident, and Hilda stared him down; Sebastian's
+eyelids dropped, and he stole away uneasily. In public, we gave no overt
+sign of our differences; but it was understood on board that relations
+were strained: that Professor Sebastian and Dr. Cumberledge had been
+working at the same hospital in London together; and that owing to some
+disagreement between them Dr. Cumberledge had resigned--which made it
+most awkward for them to be travelling together by the same steamer.
+
+We passed through the Suez Canal and down the Mediterranean. All the
+time, Sebastian never again spoke to us. The passengers, indeed,
+held aloof from the solitary, gloomy old man, who strode along the
+quarter-deck with his long, slow stride, absorbed in his own thoughts,
+and intent only on avoiding Hilda and myself. His mood was unsociable.
+As for Hilda, her helpful, winning ways made her a favourite with all
+the women, as her pretty face did with all the men. For the first
+time in his life, Sebastian seemed to be aware that he was shunned. He
+retired more and more within himself for company; his keen eye began to
+lose in some degree its extraordinary fire, his expression to forget
+its magnetic attractiveness. Indeed, it was only young men of scientific
+tastes that Sebastian could ever attract. Among them, his eager zeal,
+his single-minded devotion to the cause of science, awoke always a
+responsive chord which vibrated powerfully.
+
+Day after day passed, and we steamed through the Straits and neared the
+Channel. Our thoughts began to assume a home complexion. Everybody was
+full of schemes as to what he would do when he reached England. Old
+Bradshaws were overhauled and trains looked out, on the supposition that
+we would get in by such an hour on Tuesday. We were steaming along the
+French coast, off the western promontory of Brittany. The evening was
+fine, and though, of course, less warm than we had experienced of late,
+yet pleasant and summer-like. We watched the distant cliffs of the
+Finistere mainland and the numerous little islands that lie off the
+shore, all basking in the unreal glow of a deep red sunset. The first
+officer was in charge, a very cock-sure and careless young man, handsome
+and dark-haired; the sort of young man who thought more of creating an
+impression upon the minds of the lady passengers than of the duties of
+his position.
+
+"Aren't you going down to your berth?" I asked of Hilda, about half-past
+ten that night; "the air is so much colder here than you have been
+feeling it of late, that I'm afraid of your chilling yourself."
+
+She looked up at me with a smile, and drew her little fluffy, white
+woollen wrap closer about her shoulders. "Am I so very valuable to you,
+then?" she asked--for I suppose my glance had been a trifle too tender
+for a mere acquaintance's. "No, thank you, Hubert; I don't think I'll
+go down, and, if you're wise, you won't go down either. I distrust this
+first officer. He's a careless navigator, and to-night his head's
+too full of that pretty Mrs. Ogilvy. He has been flirting with her
+desperately ever since we left Bombay, and to-morrow he knows he will
+lose her for ever. His mind isn't occupied with the navigation at all;
+what HE is thinking of is how soon his watch will be over, so that he
+may come down off the bridge on to the quarter-deck to talk to her.
+Don't you see she's lurking over yonder, looking up at the stars and
+waiting for him by the compass? Poor child! she has a bad husband, and
+now she has let herself get too much entangled with this empty young
+fellow. I shall be glad for her sake to see her safely landed and out of
+the man's clutches."
+
+As she spoke, the first officer glanced down towards Mrs. Ogilvy, and
+held out his chronometer with an encouraging smile which seemed to say,
+"Only an hour and a half more now! At twelve, I shall be with you!"
+
+"Perhaps you're right, Hilda," I answered, taking a seat beside her and
+throwing away my cigar. "This is one of the worst bits on the French
+coast that we're approaching. We're not far off Ushant. I wish
+the captain were on the bridge instead of this helter-skelter,
+self-conceited young fellow. He's too cock-sure. He knows so much about
+seamanship that he could take a ship through any rocks on his course,
+blindfold--in his own opinion. I always doubt a man who is so much at
+home in his subject that he never has to think about it. Most things in
+this world are done by thinking."
+
+"We can't see the Ushant light," Hilda remarked, looking ahead.
+
+"No; there's a little haze about on the horizon, I fancy. See, the stars
+are fading away. It begins to feel damp. Sea mist in the Channel."
+
+Hilda sat uneasily in her deck-chair. "That's bad," she answered; "for
+the first officer is taking no more heed of Ushant than of his latter
+end. He has forgotten the existence of the Breton coast. His head is
+just stuffed with Mrs. Ogilvy's eyelashes. Very pretty, long eyelashes,
+too; I don't deny it; but they won't help him to get through the narrow
+channel. They say it's dangerous."
+
+"Dangerous!" I answered. "Not a bit of it--with reasonable care. Nothing
+at sea is dangerous--except the inexplicable recklessness of navigators.
+There's always plenty of sea-room--if they care to take it. Collisions
+and icebergs, to be sure, are dangers that can't be avoided at times,
+especially if there's fog about. But I've been enough at sea in my time
+to know this much at least--that no coast in the world is dangerous
+except by dint of reckless corner-cutting. Captains of great ships
+behave exactly like two hansom-drivers in the streets of London; they
+think they can just shave past without grazing; and they DO shave past
+nine times out of ten. The tenth time they run on the rocks through
+sheer recklessness, and lose their vessel; and then, the newspapers
+always ask the same solemn question--in childish good faith--how did
+so experienced and able a navigator come to make such a mistake in his
+reckoning? He made NO mistake; he simply tried to cut it fine, and cut
+it too fine for once, with the result that he usually loses his own life
+and his passengers. That's all. We who have been at sea understand that
+perfectly."
+
+Just at that moment another passenger strolled up and joined us--a
+Bengal Civil servant. He drew his chair over by Hilda's, and began
+discussing Mrs. Ogilvy's eyes and the first officer's flirtations. Hilda
+hated gossip, and took refuge in generalities. In three minutes the talk
+had wandered off to Ibsen's influence on the English drama, and we had
+forgotten the very existence of the Isle of Ushant.
+
+"The English public will never understand Ibsen," the newcomer said,
+reflectively, with the omniscient air of the Indian civilian. "He is
+too purely Scandinavian. He represents that part of the Continental
+mind which is farthest removed from the English temperament. To him,
+respectability--our god--is not only no fetish, it is the unspeakable
+thing, the Moabitish abomination. He will not bow down to the golden
+image which our British Nebuchadnezzar, King Demos, has made, and which
+he asks us to worship. And the British Nebuchadnezzar will never get
+beyond the worship of his Vishnu, respectability, the deity of the pure
+and blameless ratepayer. So Ibsen must always remain a sealed book to
+the vast majority of the English people."
+
+"That is true," Hilda answered, "as to his direct influence; but don't
+you think, indirectly, he is leavening England? A man so wholly out of
+tune with the prevailing note of English life could only affect it, of
+course, by means of disciples and popularisers--often even popularisers
+who but dimly and distantly apprehend his meaning. He must be
+interpreted to the English by English intermediaries, half Philistine
+themselves, who speak his language ill, and who miss the greater part of
+his message. Yet only by such half-hints--Why, what was that? I think I
+saw something!"
+
+Even as she uttered the words, a terrible jar ran fiercely through the
+ship from stem to stern--a jar that made one clench one's teeth and hold
+one's jaws tight--the jar of a prow that shattered against a rock. I
+took it all in at a glance. We had forgotten Ushant, but Ushant had not
+forgotten us. It had revenged itself upon us by revealing its existence.
+
+In a moment all was turmoil and confusion on deck. I cannot describe the
+scene that followed. Sailors rushed to and fro, unfastening ropes and
+lowering boats, with admirable discipline. Women shrieked and cried
+aloud in helpless terror. The voice of the first officer could be heard
+above the din, endeavouring to atone by courage and coolness in the
+actual disaster for his recklessness in causing it. Passengers rushed on
+deck half clad, and waited for their turn to take places in the boats.
+It was a time of terror, turmoil, and hubbub. But, in the midst of
+it all, Hilda turned to me with infinite calm in her voice. "Where is
+Sebastian?" she asked, in a perfectly collected tone. "Whatever happens,
+we must not lose sight of him."
+
+"I am here," another voice, equally calm, responded beside her. "You
+are a brave woman. Whether I sink or swim, I admire your courage, your
+steadfastness of purpose." It was the only time he had addressed a word
+to her during the entire voyage.
+
+They put the women and children into the first boats lowered. Mothers
+and little ones went first; single women and widows after. "Now, Miss
+Wade," the first officer said, taking her gently by the shoulders when
+her turn arrived. "Make haste; don't keep us waiting!"
+
+But Hilda held back. "No, no," she said, firmly. "I won't go yet. I am
+waiting for the men's boat. I must not leave Professor Sebastian."
+
+The first officer shrugged his shoulders. There was no time for protest.
+"Next, then," he said, quickly. "Miss Martin--Miss Weatherly!"
+
+Sebastian took her hand and tried to force her in. "You MUST go," he
+said, in a low, persuasive tone. "You must not wait for me!"
+
+He hated to see her, I knew. But I imagined in his voice--for I noted it
+even then--there rang some undertone of genuine desire to save her.
+
+Hilda loosened his grasp resolutely. "No, no," she answered, "I cannot
+fly. I shall never leave you."
+
+"Not even if I promise--"
+
+She shook her head and closed her lips hard. "Certainly not," she said
+again, after a pause. "I cannot trust you. Besides, I must stop by your
+side and do my best to save you. Your life is all in all to me. I dare
+not risk it."
+
+His gaze was now pure admiration. "As you will," he answered. "For he
+that loseth his life shall gain it."
+
+"If ever we land alive," Hilda answered, glowing red in spite of the
+danger, "I shall remind you of that word. I shall call upon you to
+fulfil it."
+
+The boat was lowered, and still Hilda stood by my side. One second
+later, another shock shook us. The Vindhya parted amidships, and we
+found ourselves struggling and choking in the cold sea water.
+
+It was a miracle that every soul of us was not drowned that moment, as
+many of us were. The swirling eddy which followed as the Vindhya sank
+swamped two of the boats, and carried down not a few of those who were
+standing on the deck with us. The last I saw of the first officer was
+a writhing form whirled about in the water; before he sank, he shouted
+aloud, with a seaman's frank courage, "Say it was all my fault; I accept
+the responsibility. I ran her too close. I am the only one to blame for
+it." Then he disappeared in the whirlpool caused by the sinking ship,
+and we were left still struggling.
+
+One of the life-rafts, hastily rigged by the sailors, floated our way.
+Hilda struck out a stroke or two and caught it. She dragged herself
+on to it, and beckoned me to follow. I could see she was holding on to
+something tightly. I struck out in turn and reached the raft, which was
+composed of two seats, fastened together in haste at the first note
+of danger. I hauled myself up by Hilda's side. "Help me to pull him
+aboard!" she cried, in an agonised voice. "I am afraid he has lost
+consciousness!" Then I looked at the object she was clutching in her
+hands. It was Sebastian's white head, apparently quite lifeless.
+
+I pulled him up with her and laid him out on the raft. A very faint
+breeze from the south-west had sprung up; that and a strong seaward
+current that sets round the rocks were carrying us straight out from the
+Breton coast and all chance of rescue, towards the open channel.
+
+But Hilda thought nothing of such physical danger. "We have saved him,
+Hubert!" she cried, clasping her hands. "We have saved him! But do you
+think he is alive? For unless he is, MY chance, OUR chance, is gone
+forever!"
+
+I bent over and felt his pulse. As far as I could make out, it still
+beat feebly.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII
+
+THE EPISODE OF THE DEAD MAN WHO SPOKE
+
+
+
+I will not trouble you with details of those three terrible days and
+nights when we drifted helplessly about at the mercy of the currents
+on our improvised life-raft up and down the English Channel. The first
+night was the worst. Slowly after that we grew used to the danger, the
+cold, the hunger, and the thirst. Our senses were numbed; we passed
+whole hours together in a sort of torpor, just vaguely wondering whether
+a ship would come in sight to save us, obeying the merciful law that
+those who are utterly exhausted are incapable of acute fear, and
+acquiescing in the probability of our own extinction. But however
+slender the chance--and as the hours stole on it seemed slender
+enough--Hilda still kept her hopes fixed mainly on Sebastian. No
+daughter could have watched the father she loved more eagerly and
+closely than Hilda watched her life-long enemy--the man who had wrought
+such evil upon her and hers. To save our own lives without him would be
+useless. At all hazards, she must keep him alive, on the bare chance of
+a rescue. If he died, there died with him the last hope of justice and
+redress.
+
+As for Sebastian, after the first half-hour, during which he lay white
+and unconscious, he opened his eyes faintly, as we could see by the
+moonlight, and gazed around him with a strange, puzzled state of
+inquiry. Then his senses returned to him by degrees. "What! you,
+Cumberledge?" he murmured, measuring me with his eye; "and you, Nurse
+Wade? Well, I thought you would manage it." There was a tone almost of
+amusement in his voice, a half-ironical tone which had been familiar to
+us in the old hospital days. He raised himself on one arm and gazed at
+the water all round. Then he was silent for some minutes. At last he
+spoke again. "Do you know what I ought to do if I were consistent?" he
+asked, with a tinge of pathos in his words. "Jump off this raft, and
+deprive you of your last chance of triumph--the triumph which you have
+worked for so hard. You want to save my life for your own ends, not for
+mine. Why should I help you to my own undoing?"
+
+Hilda's voice was tenderer and softer than usual as she answered: "No,
+not for my own ends alone, and not for your undoing, but to give you one
+last chance of unburdening your conscience. Some men are too small to be
+capable of remorse; their little souls have no room for such a feeling.
+You are great enough to feel it and to try to crush it down. But you
+CANNOT crush it down; it crops up in spite of you. You have tried to
+bury it in your soul, and you have failed. It is your remorse that has
+driven you to make so many attempts against the only living souls who
+knew and understood. If ever we get safely to land once more--and God
+knows it is not likely--I give you still the chance of repairing the
+mischief you have done, and of clearing my father's memory from the
+cruel stain which you and only you can wipe away."
+
+Sebastian lay long, silent once more, gazing up at her fixedly, with the
+foggy, white moonlight shining upon his bright, inscrutable eyes. "You
+are a brave woman, Maisie Yorke-Bannerman," he said, at last, slowly; "a
+very brave woman. I will try to live--I too--for a purpose of my own. I
+say it again: he that loseth his life shall gain it."
+
+Incredible as it may sound, in half an hour more he was lying fast
+asleep on that wave-tossed raft, and Hilda and I were watching him
+tenderly. And it seemed to us as we watched him that a change had come
+over those stern and impassive features. They had softened and melted
+until his face was that of a gentler and better type. It was as if
+some inward change of soul was moulding the fierce old Professor into a
+nobler and more venerable man.
+
+Day after day we drifted on, without food or water. The agony was
+terrible; I will not attempt to describe it, for to do so is to bring it
+back too clearly to my memory. Hilda and I, being younger and stronger,
+bore up against it well; but Sebastian, old and worn, and still weak
+from the plague, grew daily weaker. His pulse just beat, and sometimes
+I could hardly feel it thrill under my finger. He became delirious, and
+murmured much about Yorke-Bannerman's daughter. Sometimes he forgot
+all, and spoke to me in the friendly terms of our old acquaintance at
+Nathaniel's, giving me directions and advice about imaginary operations.
+Hour after hour we watched for a sail, and no sail appeared. One could
+hardly believe we could toss about so long in the main highway of
+traffic without seeing a ship or spying more than the smoke-trail of
+some passing steamer.
+
+As far as I could judge, during those days and nights, the wind veered
+from south-west to south-east, and carried us steadily and surely
+towards the open Atlantic. On the third evening out, about five o'clock,
+I saw a dark object on the horizon. Was it moving towards us? We
+strained our eyes in breathless suspense. A minute passed, and then
+another. Yes, there could be no doubt. It grew larger and larger. It was
+a ship--a steamer. We made all the signs of distress we could manage. I
+stood up and waved Hilda's white shawl frantically in the air. There was
+half an hour of suspense, and our hearts sank as we thought that they
+were about to pass us. Then the steamer hove to a little and seemed to
+notice us. Next instant we dropped upon our knees, for we saw they were
+lowering a boat. They were coming to our aid. They would be in time to
+save us.
+
+Hilda watched our rescuers with parted lips and agonised eyes. Then she
+felt Sebastian's pulse. "Thank Heaven," she cried, "he still lives! They
+will be here before he is quite past confession."
+
+Sebastian opened his eyes dreamily. "A boat?" he asked.
+
+"Yes, a boat!"
+
+"Then you have gained your point, child. I am able to collect myself.
+Give me a few hours' more life, and what I can do to make amends to you
+shall be done."
+
+I don't know why, but it seemed longer between the time when the boat
+was lowered and the moment when it reached us than it had seemed during
+the three days and nights we lay tossing about helplessly on the open
+Atlantic. There were times when we could hardly believe it was really
+moving. At last, however, it reached us, and we saw the kindly faces and
+outstretched hands of our rescuers. Hilda clung to Sebastian with a wild
+clasp as the men reached out for her.
+
+"No, take HIM first!" she cried, when the sailors, after the custom of
+men, tried to help her into the gig before attempting to save us; "his
+life is worth more to me than my own. Take him--and for God's sake lift
+him gently, for he is nearly gone!"
+
+They took him aboard and laid him down in the stern. Then, and then
+only, Hilda stepped into the boat, and I staggered after her. The
+officer in charge, a kind young Irishman, had had the foresight to bring
+brandy and a little beef essence. We ate and drank what we dared as
+they rowed us back to the steamer. Sebastian lay back, with his white
+eyelashes closed over the lids, and the livid hue of death upon his
+emaciated cheeks; but he drank a teaspoonful or two of brandy, and
+swallowed the beef essence with which Hilda fed him.
+
+"Your father is the most exhausted of the party," the officer said, in a
+low undertone. "Poor fellow, he is too old for such adventures. He seems
+to have hardly a spark of life left in him."
+
+Hilda shuddered with evident horror. "He is not my father--thank
+Heaven!" she cried, leaning over him and supporting his drooping head,
+in spite of her own fatigue and the cold that chilled our very bones.
+"But I think he will live. I mean him to live. He is my best friend
+now--and my bitterest enemy!"
+
+The officer looked at her in surprise, and then touched his forehead,
+inquiringly, with a quick glance at me. He evidently thought cold and
+hunger had affected her reason. I shook my head. "It is a peculiar
+case," I whispered. "What the lady says is right. Everything depends for
+us upon our keeping him alive till we reach England."
+
+They rowed us to the boat, and we were handed tenderly up the side.
+There, the ship's surgeon and everybody else on board did their best to
+restore us after our terrible experience. The ship was the Don, of
+the Royal Mail Steamship Company's West Indian line; and nothing could
+exceed the kindness with which we were treated by every soul on board,
+from the captain to the stewardess and the junior cabin-boy. Sebastian's
+great name carried weight even here. As soon as it was generally
+understood on board that we had brought with us the famous physiologist
+and pathologist, the man whose name was famous throughout Europe, we
+might have asked for anything that the ship contained without fear of a
+refusal. But, indeed, Hilda's sweet face was enough in itself to win the
+interest and sympathy of all who saw it.
+
+By eleven next morning we were off Plymouth Sound; and by midday we had
+landed at the Mill Bay Docks, and were on our way to a comfortable hotel
+in the neighbourhood.
+
+Hilda was too good a nurse to bother Sebastian at once about his implied
+promise. She had him put to bed, and kept him there carefully.
+
+"What do you think of his condition?" she asked me, after the second day
+was over. I could see by her own grave face that she had already formed
+her own conclusions.
+
+"He cannot recover," I answered. "His constitution, shattered by the
+plague and by his incessant exertions, has received too severe a shock
+in this shipwreck. He is doomed."
+
+"So I think. The change is but temporary. He will not last out three
+days more, I fancy."
+
+"He has rallied wonderfully to-day," I said; "but 'tis a passing rally;
+a flicker--no more. If you wish to do anything, now is the moment. If
+you delay, you will be too late."
+
+"I will go in and see him," Hilda answered. "I have said nothing more to
+him, but I think he is moved. I think he means to keep his promise.
+He has shown a strange tenderness to me these last few days. I almost
+believe he is at last remorseful, and ready to undo the evil which he
+has done."
+
+She stole softly into the sick room. I followed her on tip-toe, and
+stood near the door behind the screen which shut off the draught from
+the patient. Sebastian stretched his arms out to her. "Ah, Maisie,
+my child," he cried, addressing her by the name she had borne in her
+childhood--both were her own--"don't leave me any more! Stay with me
+always, Maisie! I can't get on without you."
+
+"But you hated once to see me!"
+
+"Because I have so wronged you."
+
+"And now? Will you do nothing to repair the wrong?"
+
+"My child, I can never undo that wrong. It is irreparable, for the
+past can never be recalled; but I will try my best to minimise it. Call
+Cumberledge in. I am quite sensible now, quite conscious. You will be
+my witness, Cumberledge, that my pulse is normal and that my brain is
+clear. I will confess it all. Maisie, your constancy and your firmness
+have conquered me. And your devotion to your father. If only I had had
+a daughter like you, my girl, one whom I could have loved and trusted,
+I might have been a better man. I might even have done better work for
+science--though on that side, at least, I have little with which to
+reproach myself."
+
+Hilda bent over him. "Hubert and I are here," she said, slowly, in
+a strangely calm voice; "but that is not enough. I want a public, an
+attested, confession. It must be given before witnesses, and signed and
+sworn to. Somebody might throw doubt upon my word and Hubert's."
+
+Sebastian shrank back. "Given before witnesses, and signed and sworn to!
+Maisie, is this humiliation necessary; do you exact it?"
+
+Hilda was inexorable. "You know yourself how you are situated. You have
+only a day or two to live," she said, in an impressive voice. "You must
+do it at once, or never. You have postponed it all your life. Now, at
+this last moment, you must make up for it. Will you die with an act of
+injustice unconfessed on your conscience?"
+
+He paused and struggled. "I could--if it were not for you," he answered.
+
+"Then do it for me," Hilda cried. "Do it for me! I ask it of you not
+as a favour, but as a right. I DEMAND it!" She stood, white, stern,
+inexorable, by his couch, and laid her hand upon his shoulder.
+
+He paused once more. Then he murmured feebly, in a querulous tone, "What
+witnesses? Whom do you wish to be present?"
+
+Hilda spoke clearly and distinctly. She had thought it all out with
+herself beforehand. "Such witnesses as will carry absolute conviction
+to the mind of all the world; irreproachable, disinterested witnesses;
+official witnesses. In the first place, a commissioner of oaths. Then a
+Plymouth doctor, to show that you are in a fit state of mind to make a
+confession. Next, Mr. Horace Mayfield, who defended my father. Lastly,
+Dr. Blake Crawford, who watched the case on your behalf at the trial."
+
+"But, Hilda," I interposed, "we may possibly find that they cannot come
+away from London just now. They are busy men, and likely to be engaged."
+
+"They will come if I pay their fees. I do not mind how much this costs
+me. What is money compared to this one great object of my life?"
+
+"And then--the delay! Suppose that we are too late?"
+
+"He will live some days yet. I can telegraph up at once. I want no
+hole-and-corner confession, which may afterwards be useless, but an open
+avowal before the most approved witnesses. If he will make it, well and
+good; if not, my life-work will have failed. But I had rather it failed
+than draw back one inch from the course which I have laid down for
+myself."
+
+I looked at the worn face of Sebastian. He nodded his head slowly. "She
+has conquered," he answered, turning upon the pillow. "Let her have
+her own way. I hid it for years, for science' sake. That was my motive,
+Cumberledge, and I am too near death to lie. Science has now nothing
+more to gain or lose by me. I have served her well, but I am worn out in
+her service. Maisie may do as she will. I accept her ultimatum."
+
+We telegraphed up, at once. Fortunately, both men were disengaged, and
+both keenly interested in the case. By that evening, Horace Mayfield was
+talking it all over with me in the hotel at Southampton. "Well, Hubert,
+my boy," he said, "a woman, we know, can do a great deal"; he smiled
+his familiar smile, like a genial fat toad; "but if your Yorke-Bannerman
+succeeds in getting a confession out of Sebastian, she'll extort my
+admiration." He paused a moment, then he added, in an afterthought: "I
+say that she'll extort my admiration; but, mind you, I don't know that
+I shall feel inclined to believe it. The facts have always appeared
+to me--strictly between ourselves, you know--to admit of only one
+explanation."
+
+"Wait and see," I answered. "You think it more likely that Miss Wade
+will have persuaded Sebastian to confess to things that never happened
+than that he will convince you of Yorke-Bannerman's innocence?"
+
+The great Q.C. fingered his cigarette-holder affectionately.
+
+"You hit it first time," he answered. "That is precisely my attitude.
+The evidence against our poor friend was so peculiarly black. It would
+take a great deal to make me disbelieve it."
+
+"But surely a confession--"
+
+"Ah, well, let me hear the confession, and then I shall be better able
+to judge."
+
+Even as he spoke Hilda had entered the room.
+
+"There will be no difficulty about that, Mr. Mayfield. You shall hear
+it, and I trust that it will make you repent for taking so black a view
+of the case of your own client."
+
+"Without prejudice, Miss Bannerman, without prejudice," said the lawyer,
+with some confusion. "Our conversation is entirely between ourselves,
+and to the world I have always upheld that your father was an innocent
+man."
+
+But such distinctions are too subtle for a loving woman.
+
+"He WAS an innocent man," said she, angrily. "It was your business not
+only to believe it, but to prove it. You have neither believed it nor
+proved it; but if you will come upstairs with me, I will show you that I
+have done both."
+
+Mayfield glanced at me and shrugged his fat shoulders. Hilda had led
+the way, and we both followed her. In the room of the sick man our other
+witnesses were waiting: a tall, dark, austere man who was introduced to
+me as Dr. Blake Crawford, whose name I had heard as having watched the
+case for Sebastian at the time of the investigation. There were present
+also a commissioner of oaths, and Dr. Mayby, a small local practitioner,
+whose attitude towards the great scientist was almost absurdly
+reverential. The three men were grouped at the foot of the bed, and
+Mayfield and I joined them. Hilda stood beside the dying man, and
+rearranged the pillow against which he was propped. Then she held some
+brandy to his lips. "Now!" said she.
+
+The stimulant brought a shade of colour into his ghastly cheeks, and the
+old quick, intelligent gleam came back into his deep sunk eyes.
+
+"A remarkable woman, gentlemen," said he, "a very noteworthy woman.
+I had prided myself that my willpower was the most powerful in the
+country--I had never met any to match it--but I do not mind admitting
+that, for firmness and tenacity, this lady is my equal. She was anxious
+that I should adopt one course of action. I was determined to adopt
+another. Your presence here is a proof that she has prevailed."
+
+He paused for breath, and she gave him another small sip of the brandy.
+
+"I execute her will ungrudgingly and with the conviction that it is the
+right and proper course for me to take," he continued. "You will forgive
+me some of the ill which I have done you, Maisie, when I tell you that
+I really died this morning--all unknown to Cumberledge and you--and that
+nothing but my will force has sufficed to keep spirit and body together
+until I should carry out your will in the manner which you suggested. I
+shall be glad when I have finished, for the effort is a painful one,
+and I long for the peace of dissolution. It is now a quarter to seven. I
+have every hope that I may be able to leave before eight."
+
+It was strange to hear the perfect coolness with which he discussed his
+own approaching dissolution. Calm, pale, and impassive, his manner was
+that of a professor addressing his class. I had seen him speak so to a
+ring of dressers in the old days at Nathaniel's.
+
+"The circumstances which led up to the death of Admiral Scott Prideaux,
+and the suspicions which caused the arrest of Doctor Yorke-Bannerman,
+have never yet been fully explained, although they were by no means so
+profound that they might not have been unravelled at the time had a man
+of intellect concentrated his attention upon them. The police, however,
+were incompetent and the legal advisers of Dr. Bannerman hardly less so,
+and a woman only has had the wit to see that a gross injustice has been
+done. The true facts I will now lay before you."
+
+Mayfield's broad face had reddened with indignation; but now his
+curiosity drove out every other emotion, and he leaned forward with the
+rest of us to hear the old man's story.
+
+"In the first place, I must tell you that both Dr. Bannerman and
+myself were engaged at the time in an investigation upon the nature and
+properties of the vegetable alkaloids, and especially of aconitine. We
+hoped for the very greatest results from this drug, and we were both
+equally enthusiastic in our research. Especially, we had reason to
+believe that it might have a most successful action in the case of a
+certain rare but deadly disease, into the nature of which I need not
+enter. Reasoning by analogy, we were convinced that we had a certain
+cure for this particular ailment.
+
+"Our investigation, however, was somewhat hampered by the fact that the
+condition in question is rare out of tropical countries, and that in our
+hospital wards we had not, at that time, any example of it. So serious
+was this obstacle, that it seemed that we must leave other men more
+favourably situated to reap the benefit of our work and enjoy the credit
+of our discovery, but a curious chance gave us exactly what we were
+in search of, at the instant when we were about to despair. It was
+Yorke-Bannerman who came to me in my laboratory one day to tell me that
+he had in his private practice the very condition of which we were in
+search.
+
+"'The patient,' said he, 'is my uncle, Admiral Scott Prideaux.'
+
+"'Your uncle!' I cried, in amazement. 'But how came he to develop such a
+condition?'
+
+"'His last commission in the Navy was spent upon the Malabar Coast,
+where the disease is endemic. There can be do doubt that it has been
+latent in his system ever since, and that the irritability of temper
+and indecision of character, of which his family have so often had to
+complain, were really among the symptoms of his complaint.'
+
+"I examined the Admiral in consultation with my colleague, and I
+confirmed his diagnosis. But, to my surprise, Yorke-Bannerman showed
+the most invincible and reprehensible objection to experiment upon his
+relative. In vain I assured him that he must place his duty to science
+high above all other considerations. It was only after great pressure
+that I could persuade him to add an infinitesimal portion of aconitine
+to his prescriptions. The drug was a deadly one, he said, and the toxic
+dose was still to be determined. He could not push it in the case of a
+relative who trusted himself to his care. I tried to shake him in what I
+regarded as his absurd squeamishness--but in vain.
+
+"But I had another resource. Bannerman's prescriptions were made up by
+a fellow named Barclay, who had been dispenser at Nathaniel's and
+afterwards set up as a chemist in Sackville Street. This man was
+absolutely in my power. I had discovered him at Nathaniel's in dishonest
+practices, and I held evidence which would have sent him to gaol. I held
+this over him now, and I made him, unknown to Bannerman, increase the
+doses of aconitine in the medicine until they were sufficient for my
+experimental purposes. I will not enter into figures, but suffice it
+that Bannerman was giving more than ten times what he imagined.
+
+"You know the sequel. I was called in, and suddenly found that I had
+Bannerman in my power. There had been a very keen rivalry between us in
+science. He was the only man in England whose career might impinge upon
+mine. I had this supreme chance of putting him out of my way. He could
+not deny that he had been giving his uncle aconitine. I could prove that
+his uncle had died of aconitine. He could not himself account for
+the facts--he was absolutely in my power. I did not wish him to
+be condemned, Maisie. I only hoped that he would leave the court
+discredited and ruined. I give you my word that my evidence would have
+saved him from the scaffold."
+
+Hilda was listening, with a set, white face.
+
+"Proceed!" said she, and held out the brandy once more.
+
+"I did not give the Admiral any more aconitine after I had taken over
+the case. But what was already in his system was enough. It was evident
+that we had seriously under-estimated the lethal dose. As to your
+father, Maisie, you have done me an injustice. You have always thought
+that I killed him."
+
+"Proceed!" said she.
+
+"I speak now from the brink of the grave, and I tell you that I did
+not. His heart was always weak, and it broke down under the strain.
+Indirectly I was the cause--I do not seek to excuse anything; but it was
+the sorrow and the shame that killed him. As to Barclay, the chemist,
+that is another matter. I will not deny that I was concerned in that
+mysterious disappearance, which was a seven days' wonder in the Press.
+I could not permit my scientific calm to be interrupted by the
+blackmailing visits of so insignificant a person. And then after many
+years you came, Maisie. You also got between me and that work which was
+life to me. You also showed that you would rake up this old matter and
+bring dishonour upon a name which has stood for something in science.
+You also--but you will forgive me. I have held on to life for your sake
+as an atonement for my sins. Now, I go! Cumberledge--your notebook.
+Subjective sensations, swimming in the head, light flashes before the
+eyes, soothing torpor, some touch of coldness, constriction of the
+temples, humming in the ears, a sense of sinking--sinking--sinking!"
+
+It was an hour later, and Hilda and I were alone in the chamber of
+death. As Sebastian lay there, a marble figure, with his keen eyes
+closed and his pinched, thin face whiter and serener than ever, I could
+not help gazing at him with some pangs of recollection. I could not
+avoid recalling the time when his very name was to me a word of
+power, and when the thought of him roused on my cheek a red flush
+of enthusiasm. As I looked I murmured two lines from Browning's
+Grammarian's Funeral:
+
+
+     This is our Master, famous, calm, and dead,
+     Borne on our shoulders.
+
+
+Hilda Wade, standing beside me, with an awestruck air, added a stanza
+from the same great poem:
+
+
+     Lofty designs must close in like effects:
+       Loftily lying,
+     Leave him--still loftier than the world suspects,
+       Living and dying.
+
+
+I gazed at her with admiration. "And it is YOU, Hilda, who pay him this
+generous tribute!" I cried, "YOU, of all women!"
+
+"Yes, it is I," she answered. "He was a great man, after all, Hubert.
+Not good, but great. And greatness by itself extorts our unwilling
+homage."
+
+"Hilda," I cried, "you are a great woman; and a good woman, too. It
+makes me proud to think you will soon be my wife. For there is now no
+longer any just cause or impediment."
+
+Beside the dead master, she laid her hand solemnly and calmly in
+mine. "No impediment," she answered. "I have vindicated and cleared my
+father's memory. And now, I can live. 'Actual life comes next.' We have
+much to do, Hubert."
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Hilda Wade, by Grant Allen
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