Hilda Wade | Page 3

"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