The Doctor's Dilemma. Stretton Hesba
had been away less than an hour, but an advantage had been taken of my absence. I found Tardif seated at the table, with a tangle of silky, shining hair lying before him. A tear or two had fallen upon it from his eyes. I understood at a glance what it meant. Mother Renouf had cut off my patient's pretty curls as soon as I was out of the house. I could not be angry with her, though I did not suppose it would do much good, and I felt a sort of resentment, such as a mother would feel, at this sacrifice of a natural beauty. They were all disordered and ravelled. Tardif's great hand caressed them tenderly, and I drew out one long, glossy tress and wound it about my fingers, with a heavy heart.
"It is like the pretty feathers of a bird that has been wounded," said Tardif, sorrowfully.
Just then there came a knock at the door and a sharp click of the latch, loud enough to penetrate Dame Tardif's deaf ears, or to arouse our patient, if she had been sleeping. Before either of us could move, the door was thrust open, and two young ladies appeared upon the door-sill.
They were—it flashed across me in an instant—old school-fellows and friends of Julia's. I declare to you honestly, I had scarcely had one thought of Julia till now. My mother I had wished for, to take her place by this poor girl's side, but Julia had hardly crossed my mind. Why, in Heaven's name, should the appearance of these friends of hers be so distasteful to me just now? I had known them all my life, and liked them as well as any girls I knew; but at this moment the very sight of them was annoying. They stood in the doorway, as much astonished and thunderstricken as I was, glaring at me, so it seemed to me, with that soft, bright-brown lock of hair curling and clinging round my finger. Never had I felt so foolish or guilty.
"Martin Dobrée!" ejaculated both in one breath.
"Yes, mesdemoiselles," I said, uncoiling the tress of hair as if it had been a serpent, and going forward to greet them; "are you surprised to see me?"
"Surprised!" echoed the elder. "No; we are amazed—petrified! However did you get here? When did you come?"
"Quite easily," I replied. "I came on Sunday, and Tardif fetched me in his own boat. If the weather had permitted, I should have paid you a call; but you know what it has been."
"To be sure," answered Emma; "and how is dear Julia? She will be very anxious about you."
"She was on the verge of a bilious attack when I left her," I said; "that will tend to increase her anxiety."
"Poor, dear girl," she replied, sympathetically. "But, Martin, is this young woman here so very ill? We have heard from the Renoufs she had had a dangerous fall. To think of your being in Sark ever since Sunday, and we never heard a word of it!"
No, thanks to Tardif's quiet tongue, and Mother Renouf's assiduous attendance upon mam'zelle, my sojourn in the island had been kept a secret; now that was at an end.
"Is that the young woman's hair?" asked Emma, as Tardif gathered together the scattered tresses and tied them up quickly in a little white handkerchief, out of their sight and mine. I saw them again afterward. The handkerchief had been his wife's—white, with a border of pink roses.
"Yes," I replied to her question, "it was necessary to cut it off. She is dangerously ill with fever."
Both of them shrank a little toward the door. A sudden temptation assailed me, and took me so much by surprise that I had yielded before I knew I was attacked. It was their shrinking movement that did it. My answer was almost as automatic and involuntary as their retreat.
"You see it would not be wise for any of us to go about," I said. "A fever breaking out in the island, especially now you have no resident doctor, would be very serious. I think it will be best to isolate this case till we see the nature of the fever. You will do me a favor by warning the people away from us at present. The storm has saved us so far, but now we must take other precautions."
This I said with a grave tone and face, knowing all the while that there was no fear whatever for the people of Sark. Was there a propensity in me, not hitherto developed, to make the worst of a case?
"Good-by, Martin, good-by," cried Emma, backing out through the open door. "Come away, Maria. We have run no risk yet, Martin, have we? Do not come any nearer to us. We have touched nothing, except shaking hands with you. Are we quite safe?"
"Is the young woman so very ill?" inquired Maria from a safe distance outside the house.
I shook my head in silence, and pointed to the door of the inner room, intimating to them that she was no farther away than there. An expression of horror came over both their faces. Scarcely waiting to bestow upon me a gesture of farewell, they fled, and I saw them hurrying with unusual rapidity across the fold.
I had at least secured isolation for myself and my patient. But why had I been eager to do so? I could not answer that question to myself, and I did not ponder over it many minutes. I was impatient, yet strangely reluctant, to look at the sick girl again, after the loss of her beautiful hair. It was still daylight. The change in her appearance struck me as singular. Her face before had a look of suffering and trouble, making it almost old, charming as it was; now she had the aspect of quite a young girl, scarcely touching upon womanhood. Her hair had not been shorn off closely—the woman could not manage that—and short, wavy tresses, like those of a young child, were curling about her exquisitely-shaped head. The white temples, with their blue, throbbing veins, were more visible, with the small, delicately-shaped ears. I should have guessed her age now as barely fifteen—almost that of a child. Thus changed, I felt more myself in her presence, more as I should have been in attendance upon any child. I scanned her face narrowly, and it struck me that there was a perceptible alteration; an expression of exhaustion or repose was creeping over it. The crisis of the fever was at hand. The repose of death or the wholesome sleep of returning health was not far off. Mother Renouf saw it as well as myself.
CHAPTER THE SIXTH.
WHO IS SHE?
We sat up again together that night, Tardif and I. He would not smoke, lest the scent of the tobacco should get in through the crevices of the door, and lessen the girl's chance of sleep; but he held his pipe between his teeth, taking an imaginary puff now and then, that he might keep himself wide awake. We talked to one another in whispers.
"Tell me all you know about mam'zelle," I said. He had been chary of his knowledge before, but his heart seemed open at this moment. Most hearts are more open at midnight than at any other hour.
"There's not much to tell, doctor," he answered. "Her name is Ollivier, as I said to you; but she does not think she is any kin to the Olliviers of Guernsey. She is poor, though she does not look as if she had been born poor, does she?"
"Not in the least degree," I said. "If she is not a lady of birth, she is one of the first specimens of Nature's gentlefolks I have ever come across."
"Ah, there is a difference!" he said, sighing. "I feel it, doctor, in every word I speak to her, and every step I walk with her eyes upon me. Why cannot I be like her, or like you? You'll be on a level with her, and I am down far below her."
I looked at him curiously. The slouching figure—well shaped as it was—the rough, knotted hands, the unkempt mass of hair about his head and face, marked him for what he was—a toiler on the sea as well as on the land. He understood my scrutiny, and colored under it like a girl.
"You are a better fellow than I am, Tardif," I said; "but that has nothing to do with our talk. I think we ought to communicate with the young lady's friends, whoever they may be, as soon as there are any means of communicating with the rest of the world. We should be in a fix if any thing should happen to her. Have you no clew to her friends?"
"She is not going to die!" he cried. "No, no, doctor. God must hear my prayers for her. I have never ceased to lift up my voice to Him in my heart since I found her on the shingle. She will not die!"
"I am not so sure," I said;