Hilda Wade | Page 5

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