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Updated: May 23, 2025
Sebastian ate his cup of arrowroot in silence; then he looked at me with wistful, musing eyes. "Cumberledge," 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."
"You dear, good girl!" she cried; "how sweet and kind of you! I really COULDN'T have landed if you hadn't promised to come with us. And Dr. Cumberledge, too! So nice and friendly of you both. But there, it IS so much pleasanter to deal with ladies and gentlemen!" So Hilda won her point; and what was best, won it fairly.
"She retains that hold upon me, sir," I answered curtly. "You are making a grave mistake in life, my dear Cumberledge," he went on, in his old genial tone, which I had almost forgotten. "Before you go further, and entangle yourself more deeply, I think it is only right that I should undeceive you as to this girl's true position.
Nurse Wade was standing there, giving her report for the night when he entered. His face looked some inches shorter and broader than usual. His eyes beamed. His mouth was radiant. "Well, you won't believe it, Dr. Cumberledge," he began; "but " "Yes, I DO believe it," I answered. "I know it. I have read it already." "Read it!" he cried. "Where?" I waved my hand towards his face.
"Exactly like Cumberledge's.... But Cumberledge is dead... I must be delirious.... If I didn't KNOW to the contrary, I could have sworn it was Cumberledge's!" I spoke again, bending over him. "How long have the glandular swellings been present, Professor?" I asked, with quiet deliberativeness. This time he opened his eyes sharply, and looked up in my face. He swallowed a great gulp of surprise.
Hilda went to Scarborough, and came back again for a week before going on to Bruges, where she proposed to spend the greater part of her holidays. She stopped a night or two in town to report progress, and, finding another nurse ill, promised to fill her place till a substitute was forthcoming. "Well, Dr. Cumberledge," she said, when she saw me alone, "I was right!
She spoke to me just now, and I thought her tone unbecoming in a subordinate.... Like Korah and his crew, she takes too much upon her.... We must get rid of her, Cumberledge; we must get rid of her. She is a dangerous woman!" "She is the most intelligent nurse we have ever had in the place, sir," I objected, stoutly. He nodded his head twice.
"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.... Cumberledge, I shall want you." The golden opportunity had come and gone. It was long before I found a similar occasion for speaking to Hilda.
The occasion for my astonishment was the fact that when I handed her my card, "Dr. Hubert Ford Cumberledge, St. Nathaniel's Hospital," she had glanced at it for a second and exclaimed, without sensible pause or break, "Oh, then, of course, you're half Welsh, as I am." The instantaneous and apparent inconsecutiveness of her inference took me aback. "Well, m'yes: I AM half Welsh," I replied.
"What! you, Cumberledge?" he murmured, measuring me with his eye; "and you, Nurse Wade? Well, I thought you would manage it." There was a tone almost of amusement in his voice, a half-ironical tone which had been familiar to us in the old hospital days. He raised himself on one arm and gazed at the water all round. Then he was silent for some minutes. At last he spoke again.
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