Hilda Wade | Page 6

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