I was more than half-numb with cold by the time we landed at the quay,
opposite the Sark office. The place was all alive, seeming the more busy
and animated to me for the solitary six days I had been spending since
last Sunday. The arrival of our boat, and especially my appearance in
it, created quite a stir among the loungers who are always hanging about
the pier. By this time every individual in St. Peter-Port knew that Dr.
Martin Dobrée had been missing for several days, having gone out in a
fisherman's boat to Sark the Sunday before. I had seen myself in the
glass before leaving my chamber at Vaudin's, and to some extent I
presented the haggard appearance of a shipwrecked man. A score of voices
greeted me; some welcoming, some chaffing. "Glad to see you again, old
fellow!" "What news from Sark?" "Been in quod for a week?" "His hair is
not cut short!" "No; he has tarried in Sark till his beard be grown!"
There was a circling laugh at this last jest at my appearance, which had
been uttered by a good-tempered, jovial clergyman, who was passing by on
his way to the town church. I did my best to laugh and banter in return,
but it was like a bear dancing with a sore head. I felt gloomy and
uncomfortable. A change had come over me since I left home, for my
return was by no means an unmixed pleasure.
As I was proceeding along the quay, with a train of sympathizing
attendants, a man, who was driving a large cart piled with packages in
cases, as if they had come in from England by the steamer, touched his
hat to me, and stopped the horse. It was in order to inform me that he
was conveying furniture which we--that is, Julia and I--had ordered, up
to our new house, the windows of which I could see glistening in the
morning sun. My spirits did not rise, even at this cheerful information.
I looked coldly at the cases, bade the man go on, and shook off my train
by taking an abrupt turn up a flight of steps, leading directly into the
Haute Rue.
I had chosen instinctively the nearest by-way homeward, but, once in the
Haute Rue, I did not pursue it. I turned again upon a sudden thought
toward the Market Square, to see if I could pick up any dainties to
tempt the delicate appetite of my Sark patient. Every step I took
brought me into contact with some friend or acquaintance, whom I would
have avoided gladly. The market was sure to be full of them, for the
ladies of Guernsey, like Frenchwomen, would be there in shoals, with
their maidservants behind them to carry their purchases. Yet I turned
toward it, as I said, braving both congratulations and curiosity, to
see what I could buy for Tardif's "mam'zelle."
The square had all the peculiar animation of an early market where
ladies do their own bargaining. As I had known beforehand, most of my
acquaintances were there; for in Guernsey the feminine element
predominates terribly, and most of my acquaintances were ladies. The
peasant-women behind the stalls also knew me. Most of them nodded to me
as I strolled slowly through the crowd, but they were much too busy to
suspend their purchases in order to catechise me just then, being sure
of me at a future time. I had not done badly in choosing the busiest
street for my way home.
But as I left the Market Square I came suddenly upon Julia, face to
face. It had all the effect of a shock upon me. Like many other women,
she seldom looked well out-of-doors. The prevailing fashion never suited
her, however the bonnets were worn, whether hanging down the neck or
slouched over the forehead, rising spoon-shaped toward the sky, or lying
like a flat plate on the crown. Julia's bonnet always looked as if it
had been made for somebody else. She was fond of wearing a shawl, which
hung ungracefully about her, and made her figure look squarer and her
shoulders higher than they really were. Her face struck sharply upon my
brain, as if I had never seen it distinctly before; not a bad face, but
unmistakably plain, and just now with a frown upon it, and her heavy
eyebrows knitted forbiddingly. A pretty little basket was in her hand,
and her mind was full of the bargains she was bent upon. She was even
more surprised and startled by our encounter than I was, and her manner,
when taken by surprise, was apt to be abrupt.
"Why, Martin!" she ejaculated.
"Well, Julia!" I said.
We stood looking at one another much in the same way as we used to do
years before, when she had detected me in some boyish prank, and assumed
the mentor while I felt a culprit. How really I felt a culprit at that
moment she could not guess.
"I told you just how it would be," she said, in her mentor voice. "I
knew there was a storm coming, and I begged and entreated of you not to
go. Your mother has been ill all the week, and your father has been as
cross as--as--"
"As two sticks," I suggested, precisely as I might have done when I was
thirteen.
"It is nothing to laugh at," said Julia, severely. "I shall say nothing
about myself and my own feelings, though they have been most acute, the
wind blowing a hurricane for twenty-four hours together, and we not sure
that you had even reached Sark in safety. Your mother and I wanted to
charter the Rescue, and send her over to fetch you home as soon as the
worst of the storm was over, but my uncle pooh-poohed it."
"I am very glad he did," I replied, involuntarily.
"He said you would be more than ready to come back in the first cutter
that sailed," she went on. "I suppose you have just come in?"
"Yes," I said, "and I'm half numbed with cold, and nearly famished with
hunger. You don't give me as good a welcome as the Prodigal Son got,
Julia."
"No," she answered, softening a little; "but I'm not sorry to see you
safe again. I would turn back with you, but I like to do the marketing
myself, for the servants will buy any thing. Martin, a whole cartload of
our furniture is come in. You will find the invoice inside my davenport.
We must go down this afternoon and superintend the unpacking."
"Very well," I said; "but I cannot stay longer now."
I did not go on with any lighter heart than before this meeting with
Julia. I had scrutinized her face, voice, and manner, with unwonted
criticism. As a rule, a face that has been before us all our days is as
seldom an object of criticism as any family portrait which has hung
against the same place on the wall all our lifetime. The latter fills up
a space which would otherwise be blank; the former does very little
else. It never strikes you; it is almost invisible to you. There would
be a blank space left if it disappeared, and you could not fill it up
from memory. A phantom has been living, breathing, moving beside you,
with vanishing features and no very real presence.
I had, therefore, for the first time criticised my future wife. It was a
good, honest, plain, sensible face, with some fine, insidious lines
about the corners of the eyes and lips, and across the forehead. They
could hardly be called wrinkles yet, but they were the first faint
sketch of them, and it is impossible to obliterate the slightest touch
etched by Time. She was five years older than I--thirty-three last
birthday. There was no more chance for our Guernsey girls to conceal
their age than for the unhappy daughters of peers, whose dates are
faithfully kept, and recorded in the Peerage. The upper classes of the
island, who were linked together by endless and intricate ramifications
of relationship, formed a kind of large family, with some of its
advantages and many of its drawbacks. In one sense we had many things in
common; our family histories were public property, as also our private
characters and circumstances. For instance, my own engagement to Julia,
and our approaching marriage, gave almost as much interest to the island
as though we were members of each household.
I have looked out a passage in the standard work upon the Channel
Islands. They are the words of an Englishman who was studying us more
philosophically than we imagined. Unknown to ourselves we had been under
his microscope. "At a period not very distant, society in Guernsey
grouped itself into two divisions--one, including those families who
prided themselves on ancient descent and landed estates, and who
regarded themselves as the _pur sang_; and the other, those whose
fortunes had chiefly been made during the late war or in trade. The
former were called _Sixties_, the latter were the _Forties_."
Now Julia and I belonged emphatically to the Sixties. We had never been
debased by trade, and a _mésalliance_ was not known in our family. To be
sure, my father had lost a fortune instead of making one in any way; but
that did not alter his position or mine. We belonged to the aristocracy
of Guernsey, and _noblesse oblige_. As for my marriage with Julia, it
was so much the more interesting as the number of marriageable men was
extremely limited; and she was considered favored indeed by Fate, which
had provided for her a cousin willing to settle down for life in the
island.
Still more greetings, more inquiries, more jokes, as I wended my way
homeward. I had become very weary of them before I turned into our own
drive. My father was just starting off on horseback. He looked
exceedingly well on horseback, being a very handsome man, and in
excellent preservation. His hair, as white as snow, was thick and well
curled, and his face almost without a wrinkle. He had married young, and
was not more than twenty-five years older than myself. He stopped, and
extended two fingers to me.
"So you are back, Martin?" he said. "It has been a confounded nuisance,
you being out of the way; and such weather for a man of my years! I had
to ride out three miles to lance a baby's gums, confound it! in all that
storm on Tuesday. Mrs. Durande has been very ill too; all your patients
have been troublesome. But it must have been awfully dull work for you
out yonder. What did you do with yourself, eh? Make love to some of the
pretty Sark girls behind Julia's back, eh?"
My father kept himself young, as he was very fond of stating; his style
of conversation was eminently so. It jarred upon my ears more than ever
after Tardif's grave and solemn words, and often deep thoughts. I was on
the point of answering sharply, but I checked myself.
"The weather has been awful," I said. "How did my mother bear it?"
"She has been like an old hen clucking after her duckling in the water,"
he replied. "She has been fretting and fuming after you all the week. If
it had been me out in Sark, she would have slept soundly and ate
heartily; as it was you, she has neither slept nor ate. You are quite an
old woman's pet, Martin. As for me, there is no love lost between old
women and me."
"Good-morning, sir," I said, turning away, and hurrying on to the house.
I heard him laugh lightly, and hum an opera-air as he rode off, sitting
his horse with the easy seat of a thorough horseman. He would never set
up a carriage as long as he could ride like that. I watched him out of
sight, and then went in to seek my poor mother.