Chapter 6

THE EPISODE OF THE LETTER WITH THE BASINGSTOKE POSTMARK

I have a vast respect for my grandfather. He was a man of forethought.
He left me a modest little income of seven hundred a-year, well
invested. Now, seven hundred a-year is not exactly wealth; but it is an
unobtrusive competence; it permits a bachelor to move about the world
and choose at will his own profession. _I_ chose medicine; but I was
not wholly dependent upon it. So I honoured my grandfather's wise
disposition of his worldly goods; though, oddly enough, my cousin
Tom (to whom he left his watch and five hundred pounds) speaks MOST
disrespectfully of his character and intellect.

Thanks to my grandfather's silken-sailed barque, therefore, when I found
myself practically dismissed from Nathaniel's I was not thrown on my
beam-ends, as most young men in my position would have been; I had
time and opportunity for the favourite pastime of looking about me. Of
course, had I chosen, I might have fought the case to the bitter end
against Sebastian; he could not dismiss me--that lay with the committee.
But I hardly cared to fight. In the first place, though I had found
him out as a man, I still respected him as a great teacher; and in the
second place (which is always more important), I wanted to find and
follow Hilda.

To be sure, Hilda, in that enigmatic letter of hers, had implored me not
to seek her out; but I think you will admit there is one request which
no man can grant to the girl he loves--and that is the request to keep
away from her. If Hilda did not want ME, I wanted Hilda; and, being a
man, I meant to find her.

My chances of discovering her whereabouts, however, I had to confess
to myself (when it came to the point) were extremely slender. She had
vanished from my horizon, melted into space. My sole hint of a clue
consisted in the fact that the letter she sent me had been posted at
Basingstoke. Here, then, was my problem: given an envelope with the
Basingstoke postmark, to find in what part of Europe, Asia, Africa, or
America the writer of it might be discovered. It opened up a fine field
for speculation.

When I set out to face this broad puzzle, my first idea was: "I must ask
Hilda." In all circumstances of difficulty, I had grown accustomed to
submitting my doubts and surmises to her acute intelligence; and her
instinct almost always supplied the right solution. But now Hilda was
gone; it was Hilda herself I wished to track through the labyrinth of
the world. I could expect no assistance in tracking her from Hilda.

"Let me think," I said to myself, over a reflective pipe, with feet
poised on the fender. "How would Hilda herself have approached this
problem? Imagine I'm Hilda. I must