So, when my mother, with her pleading, wistful eyes, spoke day after day of Julia, of her dutiful love toward her, and her growing love for me, I drifted, almost without an effort of my own volition, into an engagement with her. You see there was no counter-balance. I was acquainted with every girl on the island of my own class; pretty girls were many of them, but there was after all not one that I preferred to my cousin. My old dreams and romances about love, common to every young fellow, had all faded into a very commonplace, everyday vision of having a comfortable house of my own, and a wife as good as most other men's wives. Just in the same way, my ambitious plans of rising to the very top of the tree in my profession had dwindled down to satisfaction with the very limited practice of one of our island doctors. I found myself chained to this rock in the sea; all my future life would probably be spent there; and Fate offered me Julia as the companion fittest for me. I was contented with my fate, and laughed off my boyish fancy that I ought to be ready to barter the world for love.
Added to these two strong ties keeping me in Guernsey, there were the hundred, the thousand small associations which made that island, and my people living upon it, dearer than any other place, or any other people, in the world. Taking the strength of the rope which held me to the pier-head as represented by one hundred, then my love for my mother would stand at sixty-six and a half, my engagement to Julia at about twenty and the remainder may go toward my old associations. That is pretty nearly the sum of it.
My engagement to Julia came about so easily and naturally that, as I said, I was perfectly contented with it. We had been engaged since the previous Christmas, and were to be married in the early summer, as soon as a trip through Switzerland would be agreeable. 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 of it. Never had I seen my mother look so happy, or so young. Even my father paid her a compliment or two, which had the effect of bringing a pretty pink flush to her white cheeks, and of making her sunken eyes shine. As to myself, I was quietly happy, without a doubt. Julia was a good girl, everybody said that, and Julia loved me devotedly. I was on the point of becoming master of a house and owner of a considerable income; for Julia would not hear of there being any marriage settlements which would secure to her the property she was bringing to me. I found that making love, even to my cousin, who was like a sister to me, was upon the whole a pleasurable occupation. Every thing was going on smoothly.
That was till about the middle of March. I had been to church one Sunday morning with these two women, both devoted to me, and centring all their love and hopes in me, when, as we entered the house on our return, I heard my father calling "Martin! Martin!" as loudly as he could from his consulting-room. I answered the call instantly, and whom should I see but a very old friend of mine, Tardif of the Havre Gosselin. He was standing near the door, as if in too great a hurry to sit down. His handsome but weather-beaten face betrayed great anxiety, and his shaggy mustache rose and fell, as if the mouth below it was tremulously at work. My father looked chagrined and irresolute.
"Here's a pretty piece of work, Martin," he said; "Tardif 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!"
"For the sake of the good God, Dr. Martin," cried Tardif, excitedly, and of course speaking in the Sark dialect, "I beg of you to come this instant even. She has been lying in anguish since mid-day 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. Mon Dieu! if she should be dead!"
The poor fellow's voice faltered, and his eyes met mine imploringly. He and I had been fast friends in my boyhood, when all my holidays were spent in Sark, though he was some years older than I; and our friendship was still firm and true, though it had slackened a little from absence. I shook his hand heartily, giving it a good hard grip in token of my unaltered friendship—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. Dobrée puts up what I shall have need of. I'll be ready in half an hour. Go into the kitchen, and get some dinner yourself."
"Thank you, Dr. Martin," he answered, his voice still unsteady, and his mustache quivering; "but I can eat nothing. I'll go down and have the boat ready. You'll waste no time?"