Hilda Wade, a Woman with Tenacity of Purpose Part 36

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. c.u.mberledge, 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 pa.s.sed 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 G.o.d 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. "c.u.mberledge," 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, c.u.mberledge," 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, c.u.mberledge, 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 a.s.sistance.

"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 pa.s.sage 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 att.i.tude? 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 we, 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 pa.s.sage. 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 pa.s.sengers 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. Pa.s.sengers 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 pa.s.sage, sir? You may be the friend he's expecting."

"No, I don't want a pa.s.sage--not at present certainly." Then I ventured on a bold stroke. "Look here," I said, leaning across towards him, and a.s.suming a confidential tone: "I am a private detective"--which was perfectly true in essence--"and I'm d.o.g.g.i.ng 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 pa.s.sage. 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 c.u.mberledge; 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 un.o.btrusively, 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 lat.i.tudes. 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 phosph.o.r.escence 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 a.s.sert, is no longer tenable by the light of recent researches. Death and decay have nothing to do directly with the phosph.o.r.escence 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, pa.s.sionately. "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!"