“What a memory you have!” Sebastian cried, admiring against his will. “It is simply marvellous! I never saw anyone like you in my life…except once. He was a man, a doctor, a colleague of mine—dead long ago.… Why—” he mused, and gazed hard at her. Hilda shrank before his gaze. “This is curious,” he went on slowly, at last; “very curious. You—why, you resemble him!”
“Do I?” Hilda replied, with forced calm, raising her eyes to his. Their glances met. That moment, I saw each had recognised something; and from that day forth I was instinctively aware that a duel was being waged between Sebastian and Hilda,—a duel between the two ablest and most singular personalities I had ever met; a duel of life and death—though I did not fully understand its purport till much, much later.
Every day after that, the poor, wasted girl in Number Fourteen grew feebler and fainter. Her temperature rose; her heart throbbed weakly. She seemed to be fading away. Sebastian shook his head. “Lethodyne is a failure,” he said, with a mournful regret. “One cannot trust it. The case might have recovered from the operation, or recovered from the drug; but she could not recover from both together. Yet the operation would have been impossible without the drug, and the drug is useless except for the operation.”
It was a great disappointment to him. He hid himself in his room, as was his wont when disappointed, and went on with his old work at his beloved microbes.
“I have one hope still,” Hilda murmured to me by the bedside, when our patient was at her worst. “If one contingency occurs, I believe we may save her.”
“What is that?” I asked.
She shook her head waywardly. “You must wait and see,” she answered. “If it comes off, I will tell you. If not, let it swell the limbo of lost inspirations.”
Next morning early, however, she came up to me with a radiant face, holding a newspaper in her hand. “Well, it has happened!” she cried, rejoicing. “We shall save poor Isabel Number Fourteen, I mean; our way is clear, Dr. Cumberledge.”
I followed her blindly to the bedside, little guessing what she could mean. She knelt down at the head of the cot. The girl’s eyes were closed. I touched her cheek; she was in a high fever. “Temperature?” I asked.
“A hundred and three.”
I shook my head. Every symptom of fatal relapse. I could not imagine what card Hilda held in reserve. But I stood there, waiting.
She whispered in the girl’s ear: “Arthur’s ship is sighted off the Lizard.”
The patient opened her eyes slowly, and rolled them for a moment as if she did not understand.
“Too late!” I cried. “Too late! She is delirious—insensible!”
Hilda repeated the words slowly, but very distinctly. “Do you hear, dear? Arthur’s ship…it is sighted.… Arthur’s ship…at the Lizard.”
The girl’s lips moved. “Arthur! Arthur!…Arthur’s ship!” A deep sigh. She clenched her hands. “He is coming?” Hilda nodded and smiled, holding her breath with suspense.
“Up the Channel now. He will be at Southampton tonight. Arthur…at Southampton. It is here, in the papers; I have telegraphed to him to hurry on at once to see you.”
She struggled up for a second. A smile flitted across the worn face. Then she fell back wearily.