"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 circ.u.mstances 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 b.u.t.terflies--may he not?--and another for geology, or for submarine telegraphs. Now, the man who happens to take up b.u.t.terflies does not make a fortune out of his hobby--there is no money in b.u.t.terflies; 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-sh.e.l.ls. 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 b.u.t.terfly 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 antic.i.p.ated 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 pa.s.sed over her brow. "I have reason to know it," she answered, slowly. Then her voice changed. "Take another m.u.f.fin."
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 m.u.f.fin-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 pa.s.sed 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. c.u.mberledge, 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.... c.u.mberledge, 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 pa.s.sage 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 a.s.sured, 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 pa.s.sed 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 att.i.tude.
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 part.i.tion 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.