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The Doctor's Dilemma by Hesba Stretton

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Very slowly the winter wore on. How shall I describe the peaceful
monotony, the dull, lonely safety of those dark days and long nights? I
had been violently tossed from a life of extreme trouble and peril into
a profound, unbroken, sleepy security. At first the sudden change
stupefied me; but after a while there came over me an uneasy
restlessness, a longing to get away from the silence and solitude, even
if it were into insecurity and danger. I began to wonder how the world
beyond the little island was going on. No news reached us from without.
Sometimes for weeks together it was impossible for an open boat to cross
over to Guernsey; even when a cutter accomplished its voyage out and in,
no letters could arrive for me. The season was so far advanced when I
went to Sark, that those visitors who had been spending a portion of the
summer there had already taken their departure, leaving the islanders to
themselves. They were sufficient for themselves; they and their own
affairs formed the world. Tardif would bring home almost daily little
scraps of news about the other families scattered about Sark; but of the
greater affairs of life in other countries he could tell me nothing.

Yet why should I call these greater affairs? Each to himself is the
centre of the world. It was a more important thing to me that I was
safe, than that the freedom of England itself should be secure.




CHAPTER THE SIXTH.

TOO MUCH ALONE.


Yet looking back upon that time, now it is past, and has "rounded itself
into that perfect star I saw not when I dwelt therein," it would be
untrue to represent myself as in any way unhappy. At times I wished
earnestly that I had been born among these people, and could live
forever among them.

By degrees I discovered that Tardif led a somewhat solitary life
himself, even in this solitary island, with its scanty population. There
was an ugly church standing in as central and prominent a situation as
possible, but Tardif and his mother did not frequent it. They belonged
to a little knot of dissenters, who met for worship in a small room,
when Tardif generally took the lead. For this reason a sort of coldness
existed between him and the larger portion of his fellow-islanders. But
there was a second and more important cause for a slight estrangement.
He had married an Englishwoman many years ago, much to the astonishment
and disappointment of his neighbors; and since her death he had held
himself aloof from all the good women who would have been glad enough to
undertake the task of consoling him for her loss. Tardif, therefore, was
left very much to himself in his isolated cottage, and his mother's
deafness caused her also to be no very great favorite with any of the
gossips of the island. It was so difficult to make her understand any
thing that could not be expressed by signs, that no one except her son
attempted to tell her the small topics of the day.

All this told upon me, and my standing among them. At first I met a few
curious glances as I roamed about the island; but my dress was as poor
and plain as any of theirs, and I suppose there was nothing in my
appearance, setting aside my dress, which could attract them. I learned
afterward that Tardif had told those who asked him that my name was
Ollivier, and they jumped to the conclusion that I belonged to a family
of that name in Guernsey; this shielded me from the curiosity that might
otherwise have been troublesome and dangerous. I was nobody but a poor
young woman from Guernsey, who was lodging in the spare room of Tardif's
cottage.

I set myself to grow used to their mode of life, and if possible to
become so useful to them that, when my money was all spent, they might
be willing to keep me with them; for I shrank from the thought of the
time when I must be thrust out of this nest, lonely and silent as it
was. As the long, dismal nights of winter set in, with the wind sweeping
across the island for several days together with a dreary, monotonous
moan which never ceased, I generally sat by their fire, for I had nobody
but Tardif to talk to; and now and then there arose an urgent need
within me to listen to some friendly voice, and to hear my own speaking
in reply. There were only two books in the house, the Bible and the
"Pilgrim's Progress," both of them in French; and I had not learned
French beyond the few phrases necessary for travelling. But Tardif began
to teach me that, and also to mend fishing-nets, which I persevered in,
though the twine cut my fingers. Could I by any means make myself useful
to them?

As the spring came on, half my dullness vanished. Sark was more
beautiful in its cliff scenery than any thing I had ever seen, or could
have imagined. Why cannot I describe it to you? I have but to close my
eyes, and my memory paints it for me in my brain, with its innumerable
islets engirdling it, as if to ward off its busy, indefatigable enemy,
the sea. The long, sunken reefs, lying below the water at high tide, but
at the ebb stretching like fortifications about it, as if to make of it
a sure stronghold in the sea. The strange architecture and carving of
the rocks, with faces and crowned heads but half obliterated upon them;
the lofty arches, with columns of fretwork bearing them; the pinnacles,
and sharp spires; the fallen masses heaped against the base of the
cliffs, covered with seaweed, and worn out of all form, yet looking like
the fragments of some great temple, with its treasures of sculpture; and
about them all the clear, lucid water swelling and tossing, throwing
over them sparkling sheets of foam. And the brilliant tone of the golden
and saffron lichens, and the delicate tint of the gray and silvery ones,
stealing about the bosses and angles and curves of the rocks, as if the
rain and the wind and the frost had spent their whole power there to
produce artistic effects. I say my memory paints it again for me; but it
is only a memory, a shadow that my mind sees; and how can I describe to
you a shadow? When words are but phantoms themselves, how can I use them
to set forth a phantom?

Whenever the grandeur of the cliffs had wearied me, as one grows weary
sometimes of too long and too close a study of what is great, there was
a little, enclosed, quiet graveyard that lay in the very lap of the
island, where I could go for rest. It was a small patch of ground, a
God's acre, shut in on every side by high hedge-rows, which hid every
view from sight except that of the heavens brooding over it. Nothing was
to be seen but the long mossy mounds above the dead, and the great,
warm, sunny dome rising above them. Even the church was not there, for
it was built in another spot, and had a few graves of its own scattered
about it.

I was sitting there one evening in the early spring, after the sun had
dipped below the line of the high hedge-row, though it was still shining
in level rays through it. No sound had disturbed the deep silence for a
long time, except the twittering of birds among the branches; for up
here even the sea could not be heard when it was calm. I suppose my face
was sad, as most human faces are apt to be when the spirit is busy in
its citadel, and has left the outworks of the eyes and mouth to
themselves. So I was sitting quiet, with my hands clasped about my
knees, and my face bent down, when a grave, low voice at my side
startled me back to consciousness. Tardif was standing beside me, and
looking down upon me with a world of watchful anxiety in his deep eyes.

"You are sad, mam'zelle," he said; "too sad for one so young as you
are."

"Oh! everybody is sad, Tardif," I answered; "there is a great deal of
trouble for every one in this world. You are often very sad indeed."

"Ah! but I have a cause," he said. "Mam'zelle does not know that she is
sitting on the grave of my little wife."

He knelt down beside it as he spoke, and laid his hand gently on the
green turf. I would have risen, but he would not let me.

"No," he said, "sit still, mam'zelle. Yes, you would have loved her,
poor little soul! She was an Englishwoman, like you, only not a lady; a
pretty little English girl, so little I could carry her like a baby.
None of my people took to her, and she was very lonely, like you again;
and she pined and faded away, just quietly, never saying one word
against them. No, no, mam'zelle, I like to see you here. This is a
favorite place with you, and it gives me pleasure. I ask myself a
hundred times a day, 'Is there any thing I can do to make my young lady
happy? Tell me what I can do more than I have done."

"There is nothing, Tardif," I answered, "nothing whatever. If you see me
sad sometimes, take no notice of it, for you can do no more for me than
you are doing. As it is, you are almost the only friend, perhaps the
only true friend, I have in the world."

"May God be true to me only as I am true to you!" he said, solemnly,
while his dark skin flushed and his eyes kindled. I looked at him
closely. A more honest face one could never see, and his keen blue eyes
met my gaze steadfastly. Heavy-hearted as I was just then, I could not
help but smile, and all his face brightened, as the sea at its dullest
brightens suddenly tinder a stray gleam of sunshine. Without another
word we both rose to our feet, and stood side by side for a minute,
looking down on the little grave beneath us. I would have gladly changed
places then with the lonely English girl, who had pined away in this
remote island.

After that short, silent pause, we went slowly homeward along the quiet,
almost solitary lanes. Twice we met a fisherman, with his creel and nets
across his shoulders, who bade us good-night; but no one else crossed
our path.

It was a profound monotony, a seclusion I should not have had courage to
face wittingly. But I had been led into it, and I dared not quit it. How
long was it to last?




CHAPTER THE SEVENTH.

A FALSE STEP.


A day came after the winter storms, early, in March, with all the
strength and sweetness of spring in it; though there was sharpness
enough in the air to make my veins tingle. The sun was shining with so
much heat in it, that I might be out-of-doors all day under the shelter
of the rocks, in the warm, southern nooks where the daisies were
growing. The birds sang more blithely than they had ever done before; a
lark overhead, flinging down his triumphant notes; a thrush whistling
clearly in a hawthorn-bush hanging over the cliff; and the cry of the
gulls flitting about the rocks; I could hear them all at the same
moment, with the deep, quiet tone of the sea sounding below their gay
music. Tardif was going out to fish, and I had helped him to pack his
basket. From my niche in the rocks I could see him getting out of the
harbor, and he had caught a glimpse of me, and stood up in his boat,
bareheaded, bidding me good-by. I began to sing before he was quite out
of hearing, for he paused upon his oars listening, and had given me a
joyous shout, and waved his hat round his head, when he was sure it was
I who was singing. Nothing could be plainer than that he had gone away
more glad at heart than he had been all the winter, simply because he
believed that I was growing lighter-hearted. I could not help laughing,
yet being touched and softened at the thought of his pleasure. What a
good fellow he was! I had proved him by this time, and knew him to be
one of the truest, bravest, most unselfish men on God's earth. How good
a thing it was that I had met with him that wild night last October,
when I had fled like one fleeing from a bitter slavery! For a few
minutes my thoughts hovered about that old, miserable, evil time; but I
did not care to ponder over past troubles. It was easy to forget them
to-day, and I would forget them. I plucked the daisies, and listened
almost drowsily to the birds and the sea, and felt all through me the
delicious light and heat of the sun. Now and then I lifted up my eyes,
to watch Tardif tacking about on the water. There were several boats
out, but I kept his in sight, by the help of a queer-shaped patch upon
one of the sails. I wished lazily for a book, but I should not have read
it if I had had one. I was taking into my heart the loveliness of the
spring day.

By twelve o'clock I knew my dinner would be ready, and I had been out in
the fresh air long enough to be quite ready for it. Old Mrs. Tardif
would be looking out for me impatiently, that she might get the meal
over, and the things cleared away, and order restored in her dwelling.
So I quitted my warm nook with a feeling of regret, though I knew I
could return to it in an hour.

But one can never return to any thing that is once left. When we look
for it again, even though the place may remain, something has vanished
from it which can never come back. I never returned to my spring-day
upon the cliffs of Sark.

A little crumbling path led round the rock and along the edge of the
ravine. I chose it because from it I could see all the fantastic shore,
bending in a semicircle toward the isle of Breckhou, with tiny,
untrodden bays, covered at this hour with only glittering ripples, and
with all the soft and tender shadows of the headlands falling across
them. I had but to look straight below me, and I could see long tresses
of glossy seaweed floating under the surface of the sea. Both my head
and my footing were steady, for I had grown accustomed to giddy heights
and venturesome climbing. I walked on slowly, casting many a reluctant
glance behind me at the calm waters, with the boats gliding to and fro
among the islets. I was just giving my last look to them when the loose
stones on the crumbling path gave way under my tread, and before I could
recover my foothold I found myself slipping down the almost
perpendicular face of the cliff, and vainly clutching at every bramble
and tuft of grass growing in its clefts.




CHAPTER THE EIGHTH.

AN ISLAND WITHOUT A DOCTOR.


I had not time to feel any fear, for, almost before I could realize the
fact that I was falling, I touched the ground. The point from which I
had slipped was above the reach of the water, but I fell upon the
shingly beach so heavily that I was hardly conscious for a few minutes.
When I came to my senses again, I lay still for a little while, trying
to make out where I was, and how I came there. I was stunned and
bewildered. Underneath me were the smooth, round pebbles, which lie
above the line of the tide on a shore covered with shingles. Above me
rose a dark, frowning rock, the chilly shadow of which lay across me.
Without lifting my head I could see the water on a level with me, but it
did not look on a level; its bright crested waves seemed swelling upward
to the sky, ready to pour over me and bury me beneath them. I was very
faint, and sick, and giddy. The ground felt as if it were about to sink
under me. My eyelids closed languidly when I did not keep them open by
an effort; and my head ached, and my brain swam with confused fancies.

After some time, and with some difficulty, I comprehended what had
happened to me, and recollected that it was already past mid-day, and
Mrs. Tardif would be waiting for me. I attempted to stand up, but an
acute pain in my foot compelled me to desist. I tried to turn myself
upon the pebbles, and my left arm refused to help me. I could not check
a sharp cry of suffering as my left hand fell back upon the stones on
which I was lying. My fall had cost me something more than a few
minutes' insensibility and an aching head. I had no more power to move
than one who is bound hand and foot.

After a few vain efforts I lay quite still again, trying to deliberate
as well as I could for the pain which racked me. I reckoned up, after
many attempts in which first my memory failed me, and then my faculty of
calculation, what the time of the high tide would be, and how soon
Tardif would come home. As nearly as I could make out, it would be high
water in about two hours. Tardif had set off at low water, as his boat
had been anchored at the foot of the rock, where the ladder hung; but
before starting he had said something about returning at high tide, and
running up his boat on the beach of our little bay. If he did that, he
must pass close by me. It was Saturday morning, and he was not in the
habit of staying out late on Saturdays, that he might prepare for the
services of the next day. I might count, then, upon the prospect of him
running the boat into the bay, and finding me there in about two hours'
time.

It took me a very long time to make out all this, for every now and then
my brain seemed to lose its power for a while, and every thing whirled
about me. Especially there was that awful sensation of sinking down,
down through the pebbles into some chasm that was bottomless. I had
never either felt pain or fainted before, and all this alarmed me.

Presently I began to listen to the rustle of the pebbles, as the rising
tide flowed over them and fell back again, leaving them all ajar and
grating against one another--strange, gurgling, jangling sound that
seemed to have some meaning. It was very cold, and a creeping moisture
was oozing up from the water. A vague wonder took hold of me as to
whether I was really above the line of the tide, for, now the March
tides were come, I did not know how high their flood was. But I thought
of it without any active feeling of terror or pain. I was numbed in body
and mind. The ceaseless chime of the waves, and the regularity of the
rustling play of the pebbles, seemed to lull and soothe me, almost in
spite of myself. Cold I was, and in sharp pain, but my mind had not
energy enough either for fear or effort. What appeared to me most
terrible was the sensation, coming back time after time, of sinking,
sinking into the fancied chasm beneath me.

I remember also watching a spray of ivy, far above my head, swaying and
waving about in the wind; and a little bird, darting here and there with
a brisk flutter of its tiny wings, and a chirping note of satisfaction;
and the cloud drifting in soft, small cloudlets across the sky. These
things I saw, not as if they were real, but rather as if they were
memories of things that had passed before my eyes many years before.

At last--- whether years or hours only had gone by, I could not then
have told you--I heard the regular and careful beat of oars upon the
water, and presently the grating of a boat's keel upon the shingle, with
the rattle of a chain cast out with the grapnel. I could not turn round
or raise my head, but I was sure it was Tardif, and that he did not yet
see me, for he was whistling softly to himself. I had never heard him
whistle before.

"Tardif!" I cried, attempting to shout, but my voice sounded very weak
in my own ears, and the other sounds about me seemed very loud. He went
on with his unlading, half whistling and half humming his tune, as he
landed the nets and creel on the beach.

"Tardif!" I called again, summoning all my strength, and raising my head
an inch or two from the hard pebbles which had been its resting-place.

He paused then, and stood quite still, listening. I knew it, though I
could not see him. I ran the fingers of my right hand through the loose
pebbles about me, and his ear caught the slight noise. In a moment I
heard his strong feet coming across them toward me.

"Mon Dieu! mam'zelle," he exclaimed, "what has happened to you?"

I tried to smile as his honest, brown face bent over me, full of alarm.
It was so great a relief to see a face like his after that long, weary
agony, for it had been agony to me, who did not know what bodily pain
was like. But in trying to smile I felt my lips drawn, and my eyes
blinded with tears.

"I've fallen down the cliff," I said, feebly, "and I am hurt."

"Mon Dieu!" he cried again. The strong man shook, and his hand trembled
as he stooped down and laid it under my head to lift it up a little. His
agitation touched me to the heart, even then, and I did my best to speak
more calmly.

"Tardif," I whispered, "it is not very much, and I might have been
killed. I think my foot is hurt, and I am quite sure my arm is broken."

Speaking made me feel giddy and faint again, so I said no more. He
lifted me in his arms as easily and tenderly as a mother lifts up her
child, and carried me gently, taking slow and measured strides up the
steep slope which led homeward. I closed my eyes, glad to leave myself
wholly in his charge, and to have nothing further to dread; yet moaning
a little, involuntarily, whenever a fresh pang of pain shot through me.
Then he would cry again, "Mon Dieu!" in a beseeching tone, and pause for
an instant as if to give me rest. It seemed a long time before we
reached the farm-yard gate, and he shouted, with a tremendous voice, to
his mother to come and open it. Fortunately she was in sight, and came
toward us quickly.

He carried me into the house, and laid me down on the _lit de
fouaille_--a wooden frame forming a sort of couch, and filled with dried
fern, which forms the principal piece of furniture in every farm-house
kitchen in the Channel Islands. Then he cut away the boot from my
swollen ankle, with a steady but careful touch, speaking now and then a
word of encouragement, as if I were a child whom he was tending. His
mother stood by, looking on helplessly and in bewilderment, for he had
not had time to explain my accident to her.

But for my arm, which hung helplessly at my side, and gave me
excruciating pain when he touched it, it was quite evident he could do
nothing.

"Is there nobody who could set it?" I asked, striving very hard to keep
calm.

"We have no doctor in Sark now," he answered. "There is no one but
Mother Renouf. I will fetch her."

But when she came she declared herself unable to set a broken limb. They
all three held a consultation over it in their own dialect; but I saw by
the solemn shaking of their heads, and Tardif's troubled expression,
that it was entirely beyond her skill to set it right. She would
undertake my sprained ankle, for she was famous for the cure of sprains
and bruises, but my arm was past her? The pain I was enduring bathed my
face with perspiration, but very little could be done to alleviate it.
Tardif's expression grew more and more distressed.

"Mam'zelle knows," he said, stooping down to speak the more softly to
me, "there is no doctor nearer than Guernsey, and the night is not far
off. What are we to do?"

"Never mind, Tardif," I answered, resolving to be brave; "let the women
help me into bed, and perhaps I shall be able to sleep. We must wait
till morning."

It was more easily said than done. The two old women did their best, but
their touch was clumsy and their help slight, compared to Tardif's. I
was thoroughly worn out before I was in bed. But it was a great deal to
find myself there, safe and warm, instead of on the cold, hard pebbles
on the beach. Mother Renouf put my arm to rest upon a pillow, and bathed
and fomented my ankle till it felt much easier.

Never, never shall I forget that night. I could not sleep; but I suppose
my mind wandered a little. Hundreds of times I felt myself down on the
shore, lying helplessly, while great green waves curled themselves over,
and fell just within reach of me, ready to swallow me up, yet always
missing me. Then I was back again in my own home in Adelaide, on my
father's sheep-farm, and he was still alive, and with no thought but how
to make every thing bright and gladsome for me; and hundreds of times I
saw the woman who was afterward to be my step-mother, stealing up to the
door and trying to get in to him and me. Sometimes I caught myself
sobbing aloud, and then Tardif's voice, whispering at the door to ask
how mam'zelle was, brought me back to consciousness. Now and then I
looked round, fancying I heard my mother's voice speaking to me, and I
saw only the wrinkled, yellow face of his mother, nodding drowsily in
her seat by the fire. Twice Tardif brought me a cup of tea, freshly
made. I could not distinctly made out who he was, or where I was, but I
tried to speak loudly enough for him to hear me thank him.

I was very thankful when the first gleam of daylight shone into my room.
It seemed to bring clearness to my brain.

"Mam'zelle," said Tardif, coming to my side very early in his
fisherman's dress, "I am going to fetch a doctor."

"But it is Sunday," I answered faintly. I knew that no boatman put out
to sea willingly on a Sunday from Sark; and the last fatal accident,
being on a Sunday, had deepened their reluctance.

"It will be right, mam'zelle," he answered, with glowing eyes. "I have
no fear."

"Do not be long away, Tardif," I said, sobbing.

"Not one moment longer than I can help," he replied.




PART THE SECOND.




CHAPTER THE FIRST.

DR. MARTIN DOBREE.


My name is Martin Dobree. Martin or Doctor Martin I was called
throughout Guernsey. It will be necessary to state a few particulars
about my family and position, before I proceed with my part of this
narrative.

My father was Dr. Dobree. He belonged to one of the oldest families in
the island--a family of distinguished _pur sang_; but our branch of it
had been growing poorer instead of richer during the last three or four
generations. We had been gravitating steadily downward.

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