Rensselaer Semi-Weekly Republican, Volume 22, Number 78, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 18 June 1901 — The Doctor’s Dilemma CHAPTER IV. [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

The Doctor’s Dilemma

CHAPTER IV.

By Hesba Stretton

CHAPTER ll.—(Continued.) A little crumbling path led round the rock and along the edge of the ravine. I chose it because from it I could see *ll the fantastic shore, bending in a semicircle towards 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 head-lands falling across them. 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 perpen~4icular face of the cliff, and vainly -clutching at every bramble and tuft of .grass growing in its clefts. I landed with a shock far below, and for some time lay insensible. As nearly as I could make out, it would be high water in about two hours. Tardif had set off at low water, but before starting he had said something about returning at high tide, and running up his boat on the heach of our little bay. If he did that 'he must pass close by me. It was Saturday morning, and he was in the habit of returning early on Saturdays, that be might prepare for the services of the next day. At last—whether years or hours only had gone by, I could not then have told yon—l heard the regular and careful beat -of oars upon the water, and presently the grating of a boat's keel upon the shingle. I could not turn round or raise im’ head, but I was sure it was Tardif. ** “Tardif!” I cried, attempting to shout, hut ray voice sounded very weak in my own ears, and the other sounds about me -seemed very loud. He paused then, and stood quite still, listening. I ran the fingers of my right hand through the loose pebbles about me, and his ear caught the slight noise. In * moment I heard his strong feet coming .across them towards me. “Mam’zelle,” he exclaimed, “what has 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. “I’ve fallen down the cliff,” I said .•feebly, “and I am hurt.” The strong man shook, and his hand •trelhbled as he stooped down and laid It under my head to lift it up a little. His agitation touched me to the heart. “Tardif,” I whispered, “it is not very much, and I might have been killed. I ■think my foot is hurt, and I gm quite sure my arm is broken.” He lifted me in his arms as easily and tenderly as a mother lifts up her child, and carried me gently up the steep slope which led homewards. It seemed a long time before we reached the farmyard gate, and he shouted, with a tremendous yglje, to his mother to come and open it. Vever. never shall I forget that night. T oonld not sfeep; but I suppose my mind wanderer! a little. Hundreds of times I felt myself down on the shore, lying helpless. 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 everything i bright .and gladsome for me; and hundreds <of times I saw the woman who Vas afterwards to be my stepmother, stealing up to the door and trying to get in to him and me. Twice Tardif brought me a cup of tea, freshly made. I was very glad when the first gleam of daylight shone into my froom. It seemed to bring clearness to rtny brain. “Mam’zelle,” said Tardif, coming to my side, “I am going to fetch a doctor.” “But it is Sunday,” I answered faintly. I knew that no boatman put out to sen 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.

CHAPTER 111. I, Martin Dobree, come into the Grange, belonged to Julia; and fully half of the year’s household expenses were defrayed by her. Our practice, which he ■.story to tell my remarkable share in its events. Martin, or Doctor Martin, I was called throughout Guernsey. My father ■was Dr. Dobree. He belonged to one of the oldest families in the island, but our branch of it had been growing poorer instead of richer during the last three or four generations. We had been gravitating steadily downwards. My father lived ostensibly by his profession, but actually upon the income of my cousin, Julia Dobree, who had been his ward from her childhood. The house we dwelt in, a pleasant one in the and I shared between us, was not a large-one, though for its extent it wm lucrative enough. But there always is an immense number of medical men in ■Guernsey in proportion to its population, and the island is healthy. There was -small chance for any of us to make a fortune. My engagement to Julia came about so easily and naturally that I was perfectly contented with it. We had been engaged since Christmas, and were to be married in the early summer. We were to set up housekeeping for ourselves; that was a point Julia was bent upon. A suitable house had fallen vacant in one of the higher streets of St. Peter-port, which commanded a noble view of the sea and the surrounding islands. We had taken it, though it was farther from the ■grange and my mother than I should have chosen my home to be. She and Julia were busy, pleasantly busy, about the furnishing. 'That was about the middle of March. 1 had been to church one Sunday morning with these two women, both devoted to me and centering all their love - and hopes In me, when, aa we entered the house on my return. I heard my father calling "Martin! Martin!" as loudly as he could from his consalting room. I nnswered the call Instantly, and whom should I

see but a very old friend of mine, Tardif, of the Havre Gosselin. His handsome but weather-beaten face betrayed great anxiety. My father looked chagrined and irresolute. “Here’s a pretty piece of work, Martin,” he said; wants one of us to go back with him to Sark, to see a woman who has fallen from the cliffs and broken her arm, confound it!” “Dr. Martin,” cried Tardif excitedly, “I beg of you to come this instant even. She has been lying in anguish sinee midday yesterday—twenty-four hours now, sir. I started at dawn this morning, but both wind and tide were against me, and I have been waiting here some time. Be quick, doctor! If she should bo dead!” The poor fellow's voice faltered, and his eyes met mine imploringly. He and 1 had been fast friends in my boyhood, and our friendship was still firm and true. I shook his hand heartily—a grip which he returned with his fingers of iron till my own tingled again. “I knew you’d come,” he gasped. “Ah, I’ll go, Tardif;” I said; “only I must get a snatch of something to eat while Dr t Dobree puts up what I shall fiave need of. I’ll be ready in half an hour.” «• The tide was with us, and carried us over buoyantly. We anchored at the fisherman’s-landing place below the cliff of the Havre-Gosselin, and I climbed readily up the rough ladder which leads to the path. Tardif made his boat secure, and followed me; he passed me, and strode on up the steep track to the summit of the cliff, as if impatient to reach his home. It was then that I

gave my first serious thought to the woman who had met with the accident. “Tardif, who is this person that is hurt?” I asked, “and whereabout did she fall?’’ “She fell down yonder,” he answered, with an odd quaver in his voice, aa he pointed to a rough and rather high portion of the cliff running inland; “the stones rolled from under her feet so,” he added, crushing down a quantity of the loose gravel with his foot, “and she slipped. She lay on the shingle underneath for two hours before I found her —two hours, Dr. Martin!” Tardif’s mother came to us as we entered the house. She beckoned me to follow her into an inner room. It was small, with a ceiling so low, it seemed to rest upon the four posts of the bedstead. There were of course none of the little dainty luxuries about it, with which I -was familiar in my mother’s bedroom. A long low window opposite the head of the bed threw a strong light upon it. There were check curtains drawn round it, and a patchwork quilt, and rough, home-spun linen. Everything was clean, but coarse and frugal, such as I expected to find about my Sark patient; in the home of a fisherman. But when my eye fell upon the face resting oh the rough pillow I paused involuntarily, only just controlling an exclamation of surprise. There was absolutely nothing in the surroundings to mark her as a lady, yet I felt in a moment that she was one. There lay a delicate refined face, white as the linen, with beautiful lips almost as white; and a mass of light, shining silky hair tossed about the pillow; and large dark gray eyes gazing at me beseechingly, with an expression that made my heart leap as it had never leapt before. That was what I saw, and could not forbear seeing. I tried to close my eyes to the pathetic beauty of the face before me; but it was altogether in vain. If 1 had seen her before, or if I had been prepared to see any one like her, I might have succeeded; but 1 was completely thrown off my guard. There the charming face lay; the eyes gleaming, the white forehead tinted, and the delicate mouth contracting with pain; the bright silky curls tossed about in confusion. I see it now, just ns I saw it then.

I suppose I did not stand still more than five seconds, yet during that pause a host of questions had flashed through my brain. Who was this beautiful creature? Where had she come from? How did it happen that she was in Tardif’s house? and so on. But I recalled myself sharply to my senses; I was here us her physician, and common sense and duty demanded of me to keep my heau clear. I advanced to her side and took the small, blue-Vcinetl hand into mine, and felt her pulse with my fingers. “You ure in very great pain, I fear,” I said, lowering my voice. “Yes,” her white lips answered, snd she tried to smile a patient though a dreary smile, as she looked up info my face; “my arm is broken. Are you a doctor?” “I am Dr. Martin Dobree,” I said, passing my hand softly down her arm. The fracture was above tho elbow, and was of a kind to make the setting of it give her sharp, acute pain. I could see ■he was scarcely fit to bear any further suffering Just then; but what was to be

done? She was not likely to get much rest till the bone was set. “Did you ever take chloroform?" I asked. * “No; I never needed it,” she answered. “Should yon object to taking it?” “Anything,” she replied passively. ‘‘l will do anything you wish.” I went back into the kitchen and opened the portmanteau my father had put up for me. Splints and bandages were there in abundance, enough to set half the arms in the islapd, but neither chloroform nor anything in the shape of an opiate could I find. I might almost as well have come to Sark altogether Unprepared for my ease. I stood for a few minutes, deep in thought. The daylight was going, and it was useless to waste time; yet I found myself shrinking oddly from the duty before me. Tardif could not help but see my chagrin and hesitation. “Doctor,” he cried, “she is not going to dia?” ’ “No, no,” I answered, calling back my wandering thoughts and energies; “there is not the smallest danger of that. I must go and set her arm at once, and then she will sleep.” I returned to the room and raised her as gently and painlessly as I could. She moaned, though very’ softly, and she tried to smile again as her eyes met mine looking anxiously at her. That smile made me feel like a child. If she did it again I knew my hands would be unsteady, and her pain be tenfold greater. “I would rather you cried out or shouted,” I said. “Don't try to control yourself when I hurt you. You need not be afraid of seeming impatient, and a loud scream or two would do you good.” I felt the ends of the broken bone grating together as I drew them into their right places, and the sensation went through and through me. I had set scores of broken limbs before with no feeling like this, which was so near unnerving me. All the time the girl’s white face and firmly set lips lay under my gaze, with the wide open, unflinching eyes looking straight at me; a mournful, silent, appealing face, which betrayed the pain I made her suffer ten times more than any cries or shrieks could have done. I smoothed the coarse pillows for her t<? lie more comfortably upon them.

and I spread my cambric handkerchief in a double fold between her cheek and the rough linen—too rough for a soft cheek like hers. “Lie quite still,” I said. “Do not stir, but go to sleep as fast as you can.” Then I went out to Tardif. “The arm is set,” I said, “and now she must get some sleep. There is not the least danger, only we will keep the house as quiet as possible.” “I must go and bring in the boat,” he replied, bestirring himself as if some spell was at an end. “There will be a storm to-night, and I should sleep the sounder if she was safe ashore.” The feeble light entering by the door, which I left open, showed me the old woman comfortably asleep in her chair, but not so the girl. I had told her when I laid her down that she must lie quite still, and she was obeying me implicitly. Her cheek still rested upon my handkerchief, and the broken arm remained undisturbed upon the pillow which I had placed under it. But her eyes were wide open and shining in the dimness, and I fancied I could see her lips moving incessantly, though soundlessly. The gale that Tardif had foretold came with great violence about the middle of the night. -The wind howled up the long, narrow ravine like a pack of wolves; mighty storms of hail and rain beat in torrents against the windows, and the sea lifted up its voice with unmistakable energy. Now and again a stronger gust than the others appeared to threaten to carry off the thatched roof bodily, and leave us exposed to the tempest with only the thick stone walls about us; and the latch of the outer door rattled'as if some one was striving to enter. The westerly gale, rising every few hours into a squall, gave me no chance of leaving Sark the next day, nor for some days afterwards; but I was not at all put out by my captivity. All my interests—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. There seemed to me to be no possibility of aid. The stormy waters which l>eat against that little rock in the sen came swelling and rolling in from the vast plain of the Atluntie, and broke in tempestuous surf against the island. Tardif himself was kept a prisoner in the house, except when he went to look ufter his live stock. No doubt it would have been practicable for me to get as far ns the hotel, but to whnt good? It would ,be quite deserted, for there were no visitors to Sark at this season. I was entirely engrossed in my patient, and 1 learned for the first time what their task

is who hour afterMionr watch the progress of disease in the person of one dear to them. On the Tuesday afternoon, in a temporary lull of tile 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 aud Guernsey with boiling surge. Very angry looked the masses of foam whirling about the sunken reefs, nn<l very ominous the low-lying, hard blocks of clouds all along the horizon. I strolled as far ns the Coupee, that giddy pathway between Great and Little Sark, where one can see the seething fit the waves at the feet of the cliffs onTJoth 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 fould 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, whom he had seeured as a nurse, had cut off my patient’s pretty curls as soon as 1 was out of the house. Tardif’s great hand caressed them tenderly, and I drew out one Tong, 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 ah 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 npw? 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. (To be continued.)

“HE PAUSED THEN.”