The westerly gale, rising every few hours into a squall, gave me no
chance of leaving Sark the next day, nor for some days afterward; but I
was not at all put out by my captivity. All my interest--my whole
being, in fact--was absorbed in the care of this girl, stranger as she
was. I thought and moved, lived and breathed, only to fight step by step
against delirium and death, and to fight without my accustomed weapons.
Sometimes I could do nothing but watch the onset and inroads of the
fever most helplessly. There was no possibility of aid. The stormy
waters which beat against that little rock in the sea came swelling and
rolling in from the vast plain of the Atlantic, and broke in tempestuous
surf against the island. The wind howled, and the rain and hail beat
across us almost incessantly for two days, and Tardif himself was kept a
prisoner in the house, except when he went to look after his live-stock.
No doubt it would have been practicable for me to get as far as the
hotel, but to what good? It would be quite deserted, for there were no
visitors to Sark at this season, and I did not give it a second thought.
I was entirely engrossed in my patient, and I learned for the first time
what their task is who hour after hour watch the progress of disease in
the person, of one dear to them.
Tardif occupied himself with mending his nets, pausing frequently with
his solemn eyes fixed upon the door of the girl's room, very much as a
patient mastiff watches the spot where he knows his master is near to
him, though out of sight. His mother went about her household work
ploddingly, and Mother Renouf kept manfully to her post, in turn with
me, as sentinel over the sickbed. There the young girl lay whispering
from morning till night, and from night till morning again--always
whispering. The fever gained ground from hour to hour. I had no data by
which to calculate her chances of getting through it; but my hopes were
very low at times.
On the Tuesday afternoon, in a temporary lull of the hail and wind, I
started off on a walk across the island. The wind was still blowing from
the southwest, and filling all the narrow sea between us and Guernsey
with boiling surge. Very angry looked the masses of foam whirling about
the sunken reefs, and very ominous the low-lying, hard blocks of clouds
all along the horizon. I strolled as far as the Coupée, that giddy
pathway between Great and Little Sark, where one can see the seething of
the waves at the feet of the cliffs on both sides, three hundred feet
below one. Something like a panic seized me. My nerves were too far
unstrung for me to venture across the long, narrow isthmus. I turned
abruptly again, and hurried as fast as my legs would carry me back to
Tardif's cottage.
I 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.