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- Herausgeber: Booksell-Verlag
- Kategorie: Gesellschafts- und Liebesromane
- Sprache: Englisch
In "The Doctor's Dilemma," Hesba Stretton weaves a compelling narrative that intertwines themes of moral conflict, duty, and the human spirit. Set against the backdrop of Victorian England, the novel explores the complexities faced by medical professionals torn between their moral obligations to save lives and the harsh realities imposed by societal norms. Stretton'Äôs engaging prose combines vivid character development with a keen psychological insight, allowing readers to engage deeply with the dilemmas faced by the protagonist. The book serves as a poignant commentary on the ethical quandaries prevalent in the medical field, reflecting the broader Victorian concerns of compassion and responsibility. Hesba Stretton, an acclaimed English novelist of the 19th century, was known for her profound empathy and social awareness. She often drew inspiration from her experiences in various charitable endeavors, particularly her work with the poor and destitute. This personal connection to societal issues infused her writing with authenticity and urgency, as seen in "The Doctor's Dilemma," where she seeks to address the often-overlooked moral struggles faced by healthcare providers. This book is highly recommended for readers interested in historical fiction that blends ethical inquiry with engaging storytelling. Stretton'Äôs narrative not only illuminates the medical dilemmas of her time but also resonates with contemporary discussions surrounding ethics in healthcare, making it a relevant and thought-provoking read for those seeking both structure and substance in their literary journey.
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Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2019
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The Doctor's Dilemma
Table of Contents
Introduction
In The Doctor’s Dilemma, a healer’s duty collides with human frailty and the demands of conscience, testing how far compassion and truth must go when professional obligations meet the urgent needs of ordinary lives, and asking what it means to do no harm amid scarcity, suffering, and imperfect knowledge.
Hesba Stretton, the pen name of the Victorian writer Sarah Smith, built a wide readership with morally serious, accessible fiction, and The Doctor’s Dilemma belongs to that tradition. Emerging from the social and religious currents of nineteenth-century Britain, it sits within the domestic-realist, evangelical mode that shaped much popular reading of the period. Its concerns are distinctly Victorian—duty, charity, and the ethics of care—yet its questions outlast their moment. Readers should note that this is a work by Stretton and not the later play of the same title by George Bernard Shaw; the two are unrelated in authorship and approach.
The book offers a sober, empathetic narrative that places a medical professional at the center of a moral crossroads, where choices carry consequences for self and community. Without relying on melodrama, Stretton crafts an intimate story attentive to everyday pressures—illness, responsibility, reputation, and trust. The voice is clear and earnest, guiding readers through the dilemma’s contours with measured pacing and a steady moral focus. Scenes unfold in recognizably Victorian social spaces, but the experience is less about historical spectacle than about close observation of character under strain and the quiet courage required to act rightly.
Key themes include the nature of professional duty, the cost of telling or withholding truth, the obligations of care within families and neighborhoods, and the tension between worldly prudence and spiritual conviction. Stretton’s fiction often interrogates how power and vulnerability meet—how expertise, money, and social standing shape the possibilities open to those in need. The Doctor’s Dilemma draws that inquiry into a medical frame, asking what compassion demands when resources are limited and outcomes uncertain. It invites readers to weigh not only what can be done, but what ought to be done, and by whom.
Stylistically, Stretton favors plain, direct prose and a compassionate narrative presence, building feeling through close attention to motive and consequence rather than sensational incident. Moral questions are presented concretely—anchored in recognizable situations—so that readers engage the issues as lived realities, not abstractions. The structure is purposeful and steady, with turning points shaped by small decisions, private conversations, and the slow accrual of responsibility. The result is a reading experience that is reflective without being ponderous, emotionally candid without sentimentality, and attuned to the dignity of ordinary people caught in difficult circumstances.
For contemporary readers, the book’s focus on ethical deliberation in caregiving resonates with ongoing discussions about medical responsibility, equitable access to help, and the human dimensions of professional judgment. It raises enduring questions: How should one balance expertise with humility, policy with mercy, and individual need with communal well-being? Its social consciousness, rooted in the Victorian concern for reform, translates into a timeless call to attention—seeing those who are suffering, hearing the claims they make upon us, and considering how institutions and individuals might answer them with integrity.
Approached as a compact moral study, The Doctor’s Dilemma offers a contemplative, quietly dramatic journey rather than a puzzle to be solved, inviting readers to inhabit the pressure of a difficult choice and the character it forms. It will appeal to admirers of Victorian social fiction, faith-inflected narratives, and stories that treat ethical conflict with gravity and care. Without disclosing outcomes, it is enough to say that Stretton guides the dilemma toward clarity through empathy and responsibility, leaving readers with questions that linger—about duty, truth, and the everyday labor of doing right in an imperfect world.
Synopsis
Set in a provincial English town, The Doctor’s Dilemma follows a conscientious physician whose reputation for skill and kindness anchors a community marked by sharp contrasts of wealth and poverty. The opening chapters trace his daily rounds through neat villas and crowded alleys, revealing the breadth of his practice and the burdens it lays upon him. Stretton sketches the rhythms of Victorian life, the fragility of health, and the dependence of families on a single healer’s judgment. Early scenes establish the doctor’s sense of vocation and his careful balance between scientific caution, religious feeling, and practical charity, laying the groundwork for the conflict to come.
As the narrative unfolds, the doctor encounters a series of patients whose circumstances highlight the limits of medicine and the demands of conscience. Ailing children, overworked mothers, and proud laborers appear briefly but indelibly, each case illuminating a facet of social need. The doctor’s remedies, though competent, cannot always remedy want, and he quietly supplements prescriptions with help and counsel. These episodes introduce a tone of restrained urgency: the town’s wellbeing depends not only on treatment but also on truth, character, and courage. They also hint at fault lines between private duty and public responsibility, themes that will shape the central dilemma.
Complications arise when the physician’s work intersects with local influence. A patron eager to support charitable efforts offers resources with implied conditions, while a colleague urges brisk, modern efficiencies that leave little room for hesitation. Meanwhile, the doctor becomes a confidant to a household whose health troubles conceal deeper anxieties. Stretton presents these threads plainly, allowing readers to observe how gratitude, obligation, and professional pride can tug a healer in opposing directions. The doctor’s careful habit of weighing causes and consequences is tested by pressures that cannot be measured by symptoms alone, foreshadowing a decision that will reach beyond an individual case.
The dilemma clarifies around a sensitive case where medical judgment intersects with moral testimony. The doctor holds knowledge that might protect the vulnerable but could harm reputations and strain fragile livelihoods. Silence promises to safeguard relationships and access to care; candor promises fairness and prevention of harm. Stretton frames the conflict without melodrama, attending to the practical risks of either course. The doctor’s notes, observations, and consultations cannot reduce the question to pathology, for it involves character, trust, and the consequences of disclosure. This tension, once identified, deepens through small, cumulative choices rather than a single dramatic revelation.
Pressures mount as gossip stirs and expectations converge. Patients lean on the doctor’s authority, while town leaders seek reassurance. A trusted confidant cautions prudence, and a younger assistant urges decisiveness, reflecting generational differences in training and temperament. The physician’s tiredness and the unending calls of the sick intensify his uncertainty. He weighs duty to the many against fidelity to the one, mindful that missteps can undo years of service. Stretton emphasizes routine details—appointments kept, fees forgiven, hurried meals—to show how moral strain accrues in ordinary hours. The town’s calm surface begins to ripple, heralding a test of character and conviction.
A public health scare brings matters to a head without resolving them outright. An outbreak in crowded quarters exposes the fragile threads binding the community, amplifying the consequences of action or delay. The doctor’s rounds become a map of risk, and his decisions carry new weight. In the dim light of late calls and hastily convened meetings, he recognizes that truth, once spoken, will travel beyond the sickroom. The moment of choice is presented in quiet tones rather than grand gesture, preserving the story’s restraint while sharpening its stakes. The physician moves toward a course that reflects both duty and compassion.
The immediate aftermath is practical and human rather than sensational. Some doors close, others open; gratitude and resentment are expressed with equal clarity. The doctor faces the administrative tangles that accompany any decisive act: records to review, arrangements to adjust, families to guide. He also contemplates the limits of his control, seeing how outcomes unfold through many hands. Stretton keeps the narrative close to the work itself, showing the physician continuing his rounds even as support shifts around him. The consequences of the choice register in small exchanges and altered routines, indicating a lasting but measured change in the town’s pattern of life.
Resolution develops through acceptance and renewed steadiness. The community, having tested its values, settles into a new equilibrium shaped by clearer expectations and quieter safeguards. The doctor’s relationships, though altered, retain mutual respect where honesty prevails. Without dwelling on triumph or defeat, Stretton lets the conclusion emerge from sustained effort rather than a single climactic scene. Reconciliations are partial, and losses are acknowledged without bitterness. The physician’s vocation, scrutinized and refined, remains intact. The story closes with a sense of earned clarity: the work of healing persists, grounded in modest courage and the willingness to bear the costs of doing right.
The Doctor’s Dilemma conveys a central message about integrity in service: that medical skill is inseparable from moral responsibility, and that compassion requires truthful action even when it is difficult. The narrative underscores how private choices influence public welfare, especially where poverty and dependence intensify the stakes. By charting the doctor’s measured path through competing claims of loyalty, gratitude, and justice, Stretton affirms the value of steady conscience over convenience. Without prescribing a formula, the book suggests that genuine care involves both tenderness and resolve. Its enduring impression is one of sober hope: that principled practice, though costly, sustains a community.
Historical Context
Hesba Stretton situates The Doctor’s Dilemma in mid-Victorian England, a period of rapid urbanization, religious philanthropy, and contested medical authority. The physical backdrop is recognizably the overcrowded districts of London and analogous industrial towns, where courts and alleys—such as those in St Giles or Stepney—were marked by poor drainage, contaminated water, and precarious employment. Voluntary hospitals, workhouse infirmaries, and private surgeries coexisted uneasily, while evangelical networks and the Religious Tract Society shaped a moral discourse around charity and reform. The temporal horizon runs from the 1850s into the 1870s, when questions of public health, professional accreditation, and the ethics of treating the poor converged. Within this milieu, a physician’s decisions are inseparable from the new municipal structures governing sanitation and relief, and from the religiously inflected debates on duty and conscience.
Industrial expansion and sanitary crisis formed the immediate social canvas. London’s “Great Stink” of 1858, caused by untreated sewage overwhelming the Thames, forced Parliament to fund a comprehensive sewer system under Chief Engineer Joseph Bazalgette. Between 1859 and 1865, over 80 miles of main intercepting sewers and more than 1,000 miles of street sewers were constructed at a cost exceeding £4 million, overseen by the Metropolitan Board of Works. The scheme permanently altered the governance of urban health. The book mirrors this transformation by depicting medicine as inseparable from civic engineering: the doctor’s moral quandaries are not only clinical but infrastructural, shaped by whether polluted environments can be remedied and by who—ratepayers, philanthropists, or the state—will bear the burden of prevention.
Successive cholera epidemics (1831–32; 1848–49; 1853–54; 1866) catalyzed a revolution in disease thinking. The 1848–49 wave killed more than 50,000 in Britain; in 1854 over 600 died around Broad Street, Soho, prompting John Snow to remove the pump handle and argue, in On the Mode of Communication of Cholera (1849; 1855), for waterborne transmission. The 1866 East London outbreak, claiming about 5,600 lives in the metropolis, further implicated contaminated supplies. In parallel, Louis Pasteur’s germ theory (1860s) and Joseph Lister’s antiseptic surgery (The Lancet, 1867) shifted practice from miasma to microbial causation. The book engages these controversies obliquely by dramatizing diagnostic uncertainty and public mistrust: its physician must weigh older habits against emergent evidence, deciding whose testimony—engineers, statisticians, nurses, or paupers—counts as truth in life-and-death choices.
The professionalization of medicine intensified after the Medical Act of 1858 established the General Medical Council and a national Medical Register (from 1859), standardizing credentials across England, Scotland, and Ireland. A unified British Pharmacopoeia appeared in 1864, promoting consistency in prescriptions. Simultaneously, hospital care evolved with Florence Nightingale’s training school at St Thomas’ Hospital (1860), which professionalized nursing, emphasized sanitation, and instituted ward discipline informed by wartime data from the Crimean conflict (1853–56). The book reflects this shifting hierarchy—registered physicians, trained nurses, and dispensers—by depicting the social authority tied to certificates and the tension between bedside experience and laboratory or administrative dictates. Its dilemmas often pivot on whether professional status guarantees moral reliability in districts where reputation and survival are intimately linked.
Medical relief for the poor was reshaped by the Poor Law framework. Under the 1834 Poor Law Amendment, paupers relied on parish doctors and workhouse infirmaries, many notoriously overcrowded. The Lancet Sanitary Commission (1865–66) exposed London infirmaries’ abuses, prompting the Metropolitan Poor Act (1867) under Gathorne Hardy, which created separate fever and smallpox hospitals and improved infirmary management. In places like St Pancras and Whitechapel, Boards of Guardians negotiated budgets that directly affected beds, drugs, and staffing. This is the crucible of the book’s central ethical tests: when funds are finite and admission rules rigid, a doctor must triage among destitute patients, negotiate with guardians and relieving officers, and decide whether to obey regulations or conscience. The narrative thus echoes concrete administrative practices that governed who received timely care—and who was turned away.
The Contagious Diseases Acts (1864, extended 1866 and 1869) authorized compulsory medical examinations for suspected prostitutes in garrison and naval towns such as Chatham, Aldershot, and Plymouth, aiming to protect soldiers from venereal disease. Resistance crystallized in 1869 with Josephine Butler’s Ladies’ National Association; after years of agitation, the Acts were suspended in 1883 and repealed in 1886. These measures exposed tensions between public health and civil liberties, and between male privilege and women’s bodily autonomy. The book invokes these conflicts through its depiction of medical authority over vulnerable women, casting the doctor’s “dilemma” as not merely curative but juridical: whether medicine should police morality, and at what cost to consent, privacy, and trust in clinical encounters.
Compulsory vaccination sharpened disputes about state power and medical duty. The Vaccination Act of 1853 mandated infant smallpox vaccination; the 1867 and 1871 Acts strengthened enforcement via local officers and fines, provoking organized resistance that culminated in mass demonstrations, notably at Leicester in 1885. While mortality from smallpox fell where uptake was high, the movement exposed class and liberty anxieties. Concurrently, philanthropy professionalized: the Charity Organization Society (1869), associated with Octavia Hill and others, promoted “scientific charity” over indiscriminate almsgiving; the Ragged School Union (founded 1844 under Lord Shaftesbury) and Dr. Barnardo’s Stepney Causeway homes (from 1867) structured aid to children. The book’s medical choices are enmeshed in these currents, presenting treatment as a node within contested regimes of compulsion, persuasion, and rationed benevolence.
As a social and political critique, the book exposes how Victorian medicine operated at the intersection of poverty, morality, and governance. It indicts the structural neglect that made sanitation a privilege, shows how credentialed authority could mask gendered coercion under the Contagious Diseases Acts, and scrutinizes Poor Law economies that forced triage by class. By staging the physician’s decisions within public health failures and philanthropic gatekeeping, it contests the idea that charity suffices where rights are absent. The narrative thus challenges readers to view clinical ethics as inseparable from municipal infrastructure, equitable funding, and legal protections, arguing that a just society requires systemic reform rather than discretionary mercy alone.
The Doctor's Dilemma
PART THE FIRST.
CHAPTER THE FIRST.
AN OPEN DOOR.
I think I was as nearly mad as I could be; nearer madness, I believe, than I shall ever be again, thank God! Three weeks of it had driven me to the very verge of desperation. I cannot say here what had brought me to this pass, for I do not know into whose hands these pages may fall; but I had made up my mind to persist in a certain line of conduct which I firmly believed to be right, while those who had authority over me, and were stronger than I was, were resolutely bent upon making me submit to their will. The conflict had been going on, more or less violently, for months; now I had come very near the end of it. I felt that I must either yield or go mad. There was no chance of my dying; I was too strong for that.[1q] There was no other alternative than subjection or insanity.
It had been raining all the day long, in a ceaseless, driving torrent, which had kept the streets clear of passengers. I could see nothing but wet flag-stones, with little pools of water lodging in every hollow, in which the rain-drops splashed heavily whenever the storm grew more in earnest. Now and then a tradesman's cart[3], or a cab, with their drivers wrapped in mackintoshes[1], dashed past; and I watched them till they were out of my sight. It had been the dreariest of days. My eyes had followed the course of solitary drops rolling down the window-panes, until my head ached. Toward nightfall I could distinguish a low, wailing tone, moaning through the air; a quiet prelude to a coming change in the weather, which was foretold also by little rents in the thick mantle of cloud, which had shrouded the sky all day. The storm of rain was about to be succeeded by a storm of wind. Any change would be acceptable to me.
There was nothing within my room less dreary than without. I was in London, but in what part of London I did not know. The house was one of those desirable family residences, advertised in the Times as to be let furnished, and promising all the comforts and refinements of a home. It was situated in a highly-respectable, though not altogether fashionable quarter; as I judged by the gloomy, monotonous rows of buildings which I could see from my windows: none of which were shops, but all private dwellings. The people who passed up and down the streets on line days were all of one stamp, well-to-do persons, who could afford to wear good and handsome clothes; but who were infinitely less interesting than the dear, picturesque beggars of Italian towns, or the sprightly, well-dressed peasantry of French cities. The rooms on the third floor—my rooms, which I had not been allowed to leave since we entered the house, three weeks before—were very badly furnished, indeed, with comfortless, high horse-hair-seated chairs, and a sofa of the same uncomfortable material, cold and slippery, on which it was impossible to rest. The carpet was nearly threadbare, and the curtains of dark-red moreen were very dingy; the mirror over the chimney-piece seemed to have been made purposely to distort my features, and produce in me a feeling of depression. My bedroom, which communicated with this agreeable sitting-room by folding-doors, was still smaller and gloomier; and opened upon a dismal back-yard, where a dog in a kennel howled dejectedly from time to time, and rattled his chain, as if to remind me that I was a prisoner like himself. I had no books, no work, no music. It was a dreary place to pass a dreary time in; and my only resource was to pace to and fro—to and fro from one end to another of those wretched rooms.
I watched the day grow dusk, and then dark. The rifts in the driving clouds were growing larger, and the edges were torn. I left off roaming up and down my room, like some entrapped creature, and sank down on the floor by the window, looking out for the pale, sad blue of the sky which gleamed now and then through the clouds, till the night had quite set in. I did not cry, for I am not given to overmuch weeping, and my heart was too sore to be healed by tears; neither did I tremble, for I held out my hand and arm to make sure they were steady; but still I felt as if I were sinking down—down into an awful, profound despondency, from which I should never rally; it was all over with me. I had nothing before me but to give up, and own myself overmatched and conquered. I have a half-remembrance that as I crouched there in the darkness I sobbed once, and cried under my breath, "God help me![5]"
A very slight sound grated on my ear, and a fresh thrill of strong, resentful feeling quivered all through me; it was the hateful click of the key turning in the lock. It gave me force enough to carry out my defiance a little longer. Before the door could be opened I sprang to my feet, and stood erect, and outwardly very calm, gazing through the window, with my face turned away from the persons who were coming in; I was so placed that I could see them reflected in the mirror over the fireplace. A servant came first, carrying in a tray, upon which were a lamp and my tea—such a meal as might be prepared for a school-girl in disgrace.
She came up to me, as if to draw down the blinds and close the shutters.
"Leave them," I said; "I will do it myself by-and-by."
"He's not coming home to-night," said a woman's voice behind me, in a scoffing tone.
I could see her too without turning round. A handsome woman, with bold black eyes, and a rouged face, which showed coarsely in the ugly looking-glass. She was extravagantly dressed, and wore a profusion of ornaments—tawdry ones, mostly, but one or two I recognized as my own. She was not many years older than myself. I took no notice whatever of her, or her words, or her presence; but continued to gaze out steadily at the lamp-lit streets and stormy sky. Her voice grew hoarse with passion, and I knew well how her face would burn and flush under the rouge.
"It will be no better for you when he is at home," she said, fiercely. "He hates you; he swears so a hundred times a day, and he is determined to break your proud spirit for you. We shall force you to knock under sooner or later; and I warn you it will be best for you to be sooner rather than later. What friends have you got anywhere to take your side? If you'd made friends with me, my fine lady, you'd have found it good for yourself; but you've chosen to make me your enemy, and I'll make him your enemy. You know, as well as I do, he can't hear the sight of your long, puling face[2]."
Still I did not answer by word or sign. I set my teeth together, and gave no indication that I had heard one of her taunting speeches. My silence only served to fan her fury.
"Upon my soul, madam," she almost shrieked, "you are enough to drive me to murder! I could beat you, standing there so dumb, as if I was not worthy to speak a word to. Ay! and I would, but for him. So, then, three weeks of this hasn't broken you down yet! but you are only making it the worse for yourself; we shall try other means to-morrow."
She had no idea how nearly my spirit was broken, for I gave her no reply. She came up to where I stood, and shook her clinched hand in my face—a large, well-shaped hand, with bejewelled fingers, that could have given me a heavy blow. Her face was dark with passion; yet she was maintaining some control over herself, though with great difficulty. She had never struck me yet, but I trembled and shrank from her, and was thankful when she flung herself out of the room, pulling the door violently after her, and locking it noisily, as if the harsh, jarring sounds would be more terrifying than the tones of her own voice.
Left to myself I turned round to the light, catching a fresh glimpse of my face in the mirror—a pale and sadder and more forlorn face than before. I almost hated myself in that glass. But I was hungry, for I was young, and my health and appetite were very good; and I sat down to my plain fare, and ate it heartily. I felt stronger and in better spirits by the time I had finished the meal; I resolved to brave it out a little longer. The house was very quiet; for at present there was no one in it except the woman and the servant who had been up to my room. The servant was a poor London drudge, who was left in charge by the owners of the house, and who had been forbidden to speak to me. After a while I heard her heavy, shambling footsteps coming slowly up the staircase, and passing my door on her way to the attics above; they sounded louder than usual, and I turned my head round involuntarily. A thin, fine streak of light, no thicker than a thread, shone for an instant in the dark corner of the wall close by the door-post, but it died away almost before I saw it. My heart stood still for a moment, and then beat like a hammer. I stole very softly to the door, and discovered that the bolt had slipped beyond the hoop of the lock; probably in the sharp bang with which it had been closed. The door was open for me!
CHAPTER THE SECOND.
TO SOUTHAMPTON.
There was not a moment to be lost. When the servant came downstairs again from her room in the attics, she would be sure to call for the tea-tray, in order to save herself another journey; how long she would be up-stairs was quite uncertain. If she was gone to "clean" herself, as she called it, the process might be a very long one, and a good hour might be at my disposal; but I could not count upon that. In the drawing-room below sat my jailer and enemy, who might take a whim into her head, and come up to see her prisoner at any instant. It was necessary to be very quick, very decisive, and very silent.
I had been on the alert for such a chance ever since my imprisonment began. My seal-skin hat and jacket lay ready to my hand in a drawer; but I could find no gloves; I could not wait for gloves. Already there were ominous sounds overhead, as if the servant had dispatched her brief business there, and was about to come down. I had not time to put on thicker boots; and it was perhaps essential to the success of my flight to steal down the stairs in the soft, velvet slippers I was wearing. I stepped as lightly as I could—lightly but very swiftly, for the servant was at the top of the upper flight, while I had two to descend. I crept past the drawing-room door. The heavy house-door opened with a grating of the hinges; but I stood outside it, in the shelter of the portico; free, but with the rain and wind of a stormy night in October beating against me, and with no light save the glimmer of the feeble street-lamps flickering across the wet pavement.
I knew very well that my escape was almost hopeless, for the success of it depended very much upon which road of the three lying before me I should happen to take. I had no idea of the direction of any one of them, for I had never been out of the house since the night I was brought to it. The strong, quick running of the servant, and the passionate fury of the woman, would overtake me if we were to have a long race; and if they overtook me they would force me back. I had no right to seek freedom in this wild way, yet it was the only way. Even while I hesitated in the portico of the house that ought to have been my home, I heard the shrill scream of the girl within when she found my door open, and my room empty. If I did not decide instantaneously, and decide aright, it would have been better for me never to have tried this chance of escape.
But I did not linger another moment. I could almost believe an angel took me by the hand, and led me. I darted straight across the muddy road, getting my thin slippers wet through at once, ran for a few yards, and then turned sharply round a corner into a street at the end of which I saw the cheery light of shop-windows, all in a glow in spite of the rain. On I fled breathlessly, unhindered by any passer-by, for the rain was still falling, though more lightly. As I drew nearer to the shop-windows, an omnibus-driver, seeing me run toward him, pulled up his horses in expectation of a passenger. The conductor shouted some name which I did not hear, but I sprang in, caring very little where it might carry me, so that I could get quickly enough and far enough out of the reach of my pursuers. There had been no time to lose, and none was lost. The omnibus drove on again quickly, and no trace was left of me.
I sat quite still in the farthest corner of the omnibus, hardly able to recover my breath after my rapid running. I was a little frightened at the notice the two or three other passengers appeared to take of me, and I did my best to seem calm and collected. My ungloved hands gave me some trouble, and I hid them as well as I could in the folds of my dress; for there was something remarkable about the want of gloves in any one as well dressed as I was. But nobody spoke to me, and one after another they left the omnibus, and fresh persons took their places, who did not know where I had got in. I did not stir, for I determined to go as far as I could in this conveyance. But all the while I was wondering what I should do with myself, and where I could go, when it readied its destination.
There was one trifling difficulty immediately ahead of me. When the omnibus stopped I should have no small change for paying my fare. There was an Australian sovereign fastened to my watch-chain which I could take off, but it would be difficult to detach it while we were jolting on. Besides, I dreaded to attract attention to myself. Yet what else could I do?
Before I had settled this question, which occupied me so fully that I forgot other and more serious difficulties, the omnibus drove into a station-yard, and every passenger, inside and out, prepared to alight. I lingered till the last, and sat still till I had unfastened my gold-piece. The wind drove across the open space in a strong gust as I stepped down upon the pavement. A man had just descended from the roof, and was paying the conductor: a tall, burly man, wearing a thick water-proof coat, and a seaman's hat of oil-skin, with a long flap lying over the back of his neck. His face was brown and weather-beaten, but he had kindly-looking eyes, which glanced at me as I stood waiting to pay my fare.
"Going down to Southampton?" said the conductor to him.
"Ay, and beyond Southampton," he answered.
"You'll have a rough night of it," said the conductor.—"Sixpence, if you please, miss."
I offered him my Australian sovereign, which he turned over curiously, asking me if I had no smaller change. He grumbled when I answered no, and the stranger, who had not passed on, but was listening to what was said, turned pleasantly to me.
"You have no change, mam'zelle?" he asked, speaking rather slowly, as if English was not his ordinary speech. "Very well! are you going to Southampton?"
"Yes, by the next train," I answered, deciding upon that course without hesitation.
"So am I, mam'zelle," he said, raising his hand to his oil-skin cap; "I will pay this sixpence, and you can give it me again, when you buy your ticket in the office."
I smiled quickly, gladly; and he smiled back upon me, but gravely, as if his face was not used to a smile. I passed on into the station, where a train was standing, and people hurrying about the platform, choosing their carriages. At the ticket-office they changed my Australian gold-piece without a word; and I sought out my seaman friend to return the sixpence he had paid to me. He had done me a greater kindness than he could ever know, and I thanked him heartily. His honest, deep-set, blue eyes glistened under their shaggy eyebrows as they looked down upon me.
"Can I do nothing more for you, mam'zelle?" he asked. "Shall I see after your luggage?"
"Oh! that will be all right, thank you," I replied, "but is this the train for Southampton, and how soon will it start?"
I was watching anxiously the stream of people going to and fro, lest I should see some person who knew me. Yet who was there in London who could know me?
"It will be off in five minutes," answered the seaman. "Shall I look out a carriage for you?"
He was somewhat careful in making his selection; finally he put me into a compartment where there were only two ladies, and he stood in front of the door, but with his back turned toward it, until the train was about to start. Then he touched his hat again with a gesture of farewell, and ran away to a second-class carriage.
I sighed with satisfaction as the train rushed swiftly through the dimly-lighted suburbs of London, and entered upon the open country. A wan, watery line of light lay under the brooding clouds in the west, tinged with a lurid hue; and all the great field of sky stretching above the level landscape was overcast with storm-wrack, fleeing swiftly before the wind. At times the train seemed to shake with the Wast, when it was passing oyer any embankment more than ordinarily exposed; but it sped across the country almost as rapidly as the clouds across the sky. No one in the carriage spoke. Then came over me that weird feeling familiar to all travellers, that one has been doomed to travel thus through many years, and has not half accomplished the time. I felt as if I had been fleeing from my home, and those who should have been my friends, for a long and weary while; yet it was scarcely an hour since I had made my escape.
In about two hours or more—but exactly what time I did not know, for my watch had stopped—my fellow-passengers, who had scarcely condescended to glance at me, alighted at a large, half-deserted station, where only a few lamps were burning. Through the window I could see that very few other persons were leaving the train, and I concluded we had not yet reached the terminus. A porter came up to me as I leaned my head through the window.
"Going on, miss?" he asked.
"Oh, yes!" I answered, shrinking back into my corner-seat. He remained upon the step, with his arm over the window-frame, while the train moved on at a slackened pace for a few minutes, and then pulled up, but at no station. Before me lay a dim, dark, indistinct scene, with little specks of light twinkling here and there in the night, but whether on sea or shore I could not tell. Immediately opposite the train stood the black hulls and masts and funnels of two steamers, with a glimmer of lanterns on their decks, and up and down their shrouds. The porter opened the door for me.
"You've only to go on board, miss," he said, "your luggage will be seen to all right." And he hurried away to open the doors of the other carriages.
I stood still, utterly bewildered, for a minute or two, with the wind tossing my hair about, and the rain beating in sharp, stinging drops like hailstones upon my face and hands. It must have been close upon midnight, and there was no light but the dim, glow-worm glimmer of the lanterns on deck. Every one was hurrying past me. I began almost to repent of the desperate step I had taken; but I had learned already that there is no possibility of retracing one's steps. At the gangways of the two vessels there were men shouting hoarsely. "This way for the Channel Islands[4]!" "This way for Havre and Paris!" To which boat should I trust myself and my fate? There was nothing to guide me. Yet once more that night the moment had come when I was compelled to make a prompt, decisive, urgent choice. It was almost a question of life and death to me: a leap in the dark that must be taken. My great terror was lest my place of refuge should be discovered, and I be forced back again. Where was I to go? To Paris, or to the Channel Islands?
CHAPTER THE THIRD.
A ROUGH NIGHT AT SEA.
A mere accident decided it. Near the fore-part of the train I saw the broad, tall figure of my new friend, the seaman, making his way across to the boat for the Channel Islands; and almost involuntarily I made up my mind to go on board the same steamer, for I had an instinctive feeling that he would prove a real friend, if I had need of one. He did not see me following; no doubt he supposed I had left the train at Southampton, having only taken my ticket so far; though how I had missed Southampton I could not tell. The deck was wet and slippery, and the confusion upon it was very great. I was too much at home upon a steamer to need any directions; and I went down immediately into the ladies' cabin, which was almost empty, and chose a berth for myself in the darkest corner. It was not far from the door, and presently two other ladies came down, with a gentleman and the captain, and held an anxious parley close to me. I listened absently and mechanically, as indifferent to the subject as if it could be of no consequence to me.
"Is there any danger?" asked one of the ladies.
"Well, I cannot say positively there will be no danger," answered the captain; "there's not danger enough to keep me and the crew in port; but it will be a very dirty night in the Channel. If there's no actual necessity for crossing to-night I should advise you to wait, and see how it will be to-morrow. Of course we shall use extra caution, and all that sort of thing. No; I cannot say I expect any great danger."
"But it will be awfully rough?" said the gentleman.
The captain answered only by a sound between a groan and a whistle, as if he could not trust himself to think of words that would describe the roughness. There could be no doubt of his meaning. The ladies hastily determined to drive back to their hotel, and gathered up their small packages and wrappings quickly. I fancied they were regarding me somewhat curiously, but I kept my face away from them carefully. They could only see my seal-skin jacket and hat, and my rough hair; and they did not speak to me.
"You are going to venture, miss?" said the captain, stepping into the cabin as the ladies retreated up the steps.
"Oh, yes," I answered. "I am obliged to go, and I am not in the least afraid."
"You needn't be," he replied, in a hearty voice. "We shall do our best, for our own sakes, and you would be our first care if there was any mishap. Women and children first always. I will send the stewardess to you; she goes, of course."
I sat down on one of the couches, listening for a few minutes to the noises about me. The masts were groaning, and the planks creaking under the heavy tramp of the sailors, as they got ready to start, with shrill cries to one another. Then the steam-engine began to throb like a pulse through all the vessel from stem to stern. Presently the stewardess came down, and recommended me to lie down in my berth at once, which I did very obediently, but silently, for I did not wish to enter into conversation with the woman, who seemed inclined to be talkative. She covered me up well with several blankets, and there I lay with my face turned from the light of the swinging lamp, and scarcely moved hand or foot throughout the dismal and stormy night.
For it was very stormy and dismal as soon as we were out of Southampton waters, and in the rush and swirl of the Channel. I did not fall asleep for an instant. I do not suppose I should have slept had the Channel been, as it is sometimes, smooth as a mill-pond, and there had been no clamorous hissing and booming of waves against the frail planks, which I could touch with my hand. I could see nothing of the storm, but I could hear it: and the boat seemed tossed, like a mere cockle-shell, to and fro upon the rough sea. It did not alarm me so much as it distracted my thoughts, and kept them from dwelling upon possibilities far more perilous to me than the danger of death by shipwreck. A short suffering such a death would be.
My escape and flight had been so unexpected, so unhoped for, that it had bewildered me, and it was almost a pleasure to lie still and listen to the din and uproar of the sea and the swoop of the wind rushing down upon it. Was I myself or no? Was this nothing more than a very coherent, very vivid dream, from which I should awake by-and-by to find myself a prisoner still, a creature as wretched and friendless as any that the streets of London contained? My flight had been too extraordinary a success, so far, for my mind to be able to dwell upon it calmly.
I watched the dawn break through a little port-hole opening upon my berth, which had been washed and beaten by the water all the night long. The level light shone across the troubled and leaden-colored surface of the sea, which seemed to grow a little quieter under its touch. I had fancied during the night that the waves were running mountains high; but now I could see them, they only rolled to and fro in round, swelling hillocks, dull green against the eastern sky, with deep, sullen troughs of a livid purple between them. But the fury of the storm had spent itself, that was evident, and the steamer was making way steadily now.
The stewardess had gone away early in the night, being frightened to death, she said, to seek more genial companionship than mine. So I was alone, with the blending light of the early dawn and that of the lamp burning feebly from the ceiling. I sat up in my berth and cautiously unstitched the lining in the breast of my jacket. Here, months ago, when I first began to foresee this emergency, and while I was still allowed the use of my money, I had concealed one by one a few five-pound notes of the Bank of England. I counted them over, eight of them; forty pounds in all, my sole fortune, my only means of living. True, I had besides these a diamond ring, presented to me under circumstances which made it of no value to me, except for its worth in money, and a watch and chain given to me years ago by my father. A jeweller had told me that the ring was worth sixty pounds, and the watch and chain forty; but how difficult and dangerous it would be for me to sell either of them! Practically my means were limited to the eight bank-notes of five pounds each. I kept out one for the payment of my passage, and then replaced the rest, and carefully pinned them into the unstitched lining.
Then I began to wonder what my destination was. I knew nothing whatever of the Channel Islands, except the names which I had learned at school—Jersey, Guernsey, Alderney, and Sark. I repeated these over and over again to myself; but which of them we were bound for, or if we were about to call at each one of them, I did not know. I should have been more at home had I gone to Paris.
As the light grew I became restless, and at last I left my berth and ventured to climb the cabin-steps. The fresh air smote upon me almost painfully. There was no rain falling, and the wind had been lulling since the dawn. The sea itself was growing brighter, and glittered here and there in spots where the sunlight fell upon it. All the sailors looked beaten and worn out with the night's toil, and the few passengers who had braved the passage, and were now well enough to come on deck, were weary and sallow-looking. There was still no land in sight, for the clouds hung low on the horizon, and overhead the sky was often overcast and gloomy. It was so cold that, in spite of my warm mantle, I shivered from head to foot.
But I could not bear to go back to the close, ill-smelling cabin, which had been shut up all night. I stayed on deck in the biting wind, leaning over the wet bulwarks and gazing across the desolate sea till my spirits sank like lead. The reaction upon the violent strain on my nerves was coming, and I had no power to resist its influence. I could feel the tears rolling down my cheeks and falling on my hands without caring to wipe them away; the more so as there was no one to see them. What did my tears signify to any one? I was cold, and hungry, and miserable. How lonely I was! how poor! with neither a home nor a friend in the world!—a mere castaway upon the waves of this troublous life!
"Mam'zelle is a brave sailor," said a voice behind me, which I recognized as my seaman of the night before, whom I had wellnigh forgotten; "but the storm is over now, and we shall be in port only an hour or two behind time."
"What port shall we reach?" I asked, not caring to turn round lest he should see my wet eyes and cheeks.
"St. Peter-Port," he answered. "Mam'zelle, then, does not know our islands?"
"No," I said. "Where is St. Peter-Port?"
"In Guernsey," he replied. "Is mam'zelle going to Guernsey or Jersey? Jersey is about two hours' sail from Guernsey. If you were going to land at St. Peter-Port, I might be of some service to you."
I turned round then, and looked at him steadily. His voice was a very pleasant one, full of tones that went straight to my heart and filled me with confidence. His face did not give the lie to it, or cause me any disappointment. He was no gentleman, that was plain; his face was bronzed and weather-beaten, as if he often encountered rough weather. But his deep-set eyes had a steadfast, quiet power in them, and his mouth, although it was almost hidden by hair, had a pleasant curve about it. I could not guess how old he was; he looked a middle-aged man to me. His great, rough hands, which had never worn gloves, were stained and hard with labor; and he had evidently been taking a share in the toil of the night, for his close-fitting, woven blue jacket was wet through, and his hair was damp and rough with the wind and rain. He raised his cap as my eyes looked straight into his, and a faint smile flitted across his grave face.
"I want," I said, suddenly, "to find a place where I can live very cheaply. I have not much money, and I must make it last a long time. I do not mind how quiet the place, or how poor; the quieter the better for me. Can you tell me of such a place?"
"You would want a place fit for a lady?" he said, in a half-questioning tone, and with a glance at my silk dress.
"No," I answered, eagerly. "I mean such a cottage as you would live in. I would do all my own work, for I am very poor, and I do not know yet how I can get my living. I must be very careful of my money till I find out what I can do. What sort of a place do you and your wife live in?"
His face was clouded a little, I thought; and he did not answer me till after a short silence.
"My poor little wife is dead," he answered, "and I do not live in Guernsey or Jersey. We live in Sark, my mother and I. I am a fisherman, but I have also a little farm, for with us the land goes from the father to the eldest son, and I was the eldest. It is true we have one room to spare, which might do for mam'zelle; but the island is far away, and very triste. Jersey is gay, and so is Guernsey, but in the winter Sark is too mournful."
"It will be just the place I want," I said, eagerly; "it would suit me exactly. Can you let me go there at once? Will you take me with you?"
"Mam'zelle," he replied, smiling, "the room must be made ready for you, and I must speak to my mother. Besides, Sark is six miles from Guernsey, and to-day the passage would be too rough for you. If God sends us fair weather I will come back to St. Peter-Port for you in three days. My name is Tardif. You can ask the people in Peter-Port what sort of a man Tardif of the Havre Gosselin is."
"I do not want any one to tell me what sort of a man you are," I said, holding out my hand, red and cold with the keen air. He took it into his large, rough palm, looking down upon me with an air of friendly protection.
"What is your name, mam'zelle?" he inquired.
"Oh! my name is Olivia," I said; then I stopped abruptly, for there flashed across me the necessity for concealing it. Tardif did not seem to notice my embarrassment.
"There are some Olliviers in St. Peter-Port," he said. "Is mam'zelle of the same family? But no, that is not probable."
"I have no relations," I answered, "not even in England. I have very few friends, and they are all far away in Australia. I was born there, and lived there till I was seventeen."'
The tears sprang to my eyes again, and my new friend saw them, but said nothing. He moved off at once to the far end of the dock, to help one of the crew in some heavy piece of work. He did not come hack until the rain began to return—a fine, drizzling rain, which came in scuds across the sea.
"Mam'zelle," he said, "you ought to go below; and I will tell you when we are in sight of Guernsey."
I went below, inexpressibly more satisfied and comforted. What it was in this man that won my complete, unquestioning confidence, I did not know; but his very presence, and the sight of his good, trustworthy face, gave me a sense of security such as I have never felt before or since. Surely God had sent him to me in my great extremity.
CHAPTER THE FOURTH.
A SAFE HAVEN.
We were two hours after time at St. Peter-Port; and then all was hurry and confusion, for goods and passengers had to be landed and embarked for Jersey. Tardif, who was afraid of losing the cutter which would convey him to Sark, had only time to give me the address of a person with whom I could lodge until he came to fetch me to his island, and then he hastened away to a distant part of the quay. I was not sorry that he should miss finding out that I had no luggage of any kind with me.
I was busy enough during the next three days, for I had every thing to buy. The widow with whom I was lodging came to the conclusion that I had lost all my luggage, and I did not try to remove the false impression. Through her assistance I was able to procure all I required, without exciting more notice and curiosity. My purchases, though they were as simple and cheap as I could make them, drew largely upon my small store of money, and as I saw it dwindling away, while I grudged every shilling I was obliged to part with, my spirits sank lower and lower. I had never known the dread of being short of money, and the new experience was, perhaps, the more terrible to me. There was no chance of disposing of the costly dress in which I had journeyed, without arousing too much attention and running too great a risk. I stayed in-doors as much as possible, and, as the weather continued cold and gloomy, I did not meet many persons when I ventured out into the narrow, foreign-looking streets of the town.
But on the third day, when I looked out from my window, I saw that the sky had cleared, and the sun was shining joyously. It was one of those lovely days which come as a lull sometimes in the midst of the equinoctial gales, as if they were weary of the havoc they had made, and were resting with folded wings. For the first time I saw the little island of Sark lying against the eastern sky. The whole length of it was visible, from north to south, with the waves beating against its headlands, and a fringe of silvery foam girdling it. The sky was of a pale blue, as though the rains had washed it as well as the earth, and a few filmy clouds were still lingering about it. The sea beneath was a deeper blue, with streaks almost like a hoar frost upon it, with here and there tints of green, like that of the sky at sunset. A boat with three white sails, which were reflected in the water, was tacking about to enter the harbor, and a second, with amber sails, was a little way behind, but following quickly in its wake. I watched them for a long time. Was either of them Tardif's boat?
That question was answered in about two hours' time by Tardif's appearance at the house. He lifted my little box on to his broad shoulders, and marched away with it, trying vainly to reduce his long strides into steps that would suit me, as I walked beside him. I felt overjoyed that he was come. So long as I was in Guernsey, when every morning I could see the arrival of the packet that had brought me, I could not shake off the fear that it was bringing some one in pursuit of me; but in Sark that would be all different. Besides, I felt instinctively that this man would protect me, and take my part to the very utmost, should any circumstances arise that compelled me to appeal to him and trust him with my secret. I knew nothing of him, but his face was stamped with God's seal of trustworthiness, if ever a human face was.
A second man was in the boat when we reached it, and it looked well laden. Tardif made a comfortable seat for me amid the packages, and then the sails were unfurled, and we were off quickly out of the harbor and on the open sea.
A low, westerly wind was blowing, and fell upon the sails with a strong and equal pressure. We rode before it rapidly, skimming over the low, crested waves almost without a motion. Never before had I felt so perfectly secure upon the water. Now I could breathe freely, with the sense of assured safety growing stronger every moment as the coast of Guernsey receded on the horizon, and the rocky little island grew nearer. As we approached it no landing-place was to be seen, no beach or strand. An iron-bound coast of sharp and rugged crags confronted us, which it seemed impossible to scale. At last we cast anchor at the foot of a great cliff, rising sheer out of the sea, where a ladder hung down the face of the rock for a few feet. A wilder or lonelier place I had never seen. Nobody could pursue and surprise me here.
The boatman who was with us climbed up the ladder, and, kneeling down, stretched out his hand to help me, while Tardif stood waiting to hold me steadily on the damp and slippery rungs. For a moment I hesitated, and looked round at the crags, and the tossing, restless sea.
"I could carry you through the water, mam'zelle," said Tardif, pointing to a hand's breadth of shingle lying between the rocks, "but you will get wet. It will be better for you to mount up here."
I fastened both of my hands tightly round one of the upper rungs, before lifting my feet from the unsteady prow of the boat. But the ladder once climbed, the rest of the ascent was easy. I walked on up a zigzag path, cut in the face of the cliff, until I gained the summit, and sat down to wait for Tardif and his comrade. I could not have fled to a securer hiding-place. So long as my money held out, I might live as peacefully and safely as any fugitive had ever lived.
For a little while I sat looking out at the wild and beautiful scene before me, which no words can tell and no fancy picture to those who have never seen it. The white foam of the waves was so near, that I could see the rainbow colors playing through the bubbles as the sun shone on them. Below the clear water lay a girdle of sunken rocks, pointed as needles, and with edges as sharp as swords, about which the waves fretted ceaselessly, drawing silvery lines about their notched and dented ridges. The cliffs ran up precipitously from the sea, carved grotesquely over their whole surface into strange and fantastic shapes; while the golden and gray lichens embroidered them richly, and bright sea-flowers, and stray tufts of grass, lent them the most vivid and gorgeous hues. Beyond the channel, against the clear western sky, lay the island of Guernsey, rising like a purple mountain out of the opal sea, which lay like a lake between us, sparkling and changing every minute under the light of the afternoon sun.
But there was scarcely time for the exquisite beauty of this scene to sink deeply into my heart just then. Before long I heard the tramp of Tardif and his comrade following me; their heavy tread sent down the loose stones on the path plunging into the sea. They were both laden with part of the boat's cargo. They stopped to rest for a minute or two at the spot where I had sat down, and the other boatman began talking earnestly to Tardif in his patois, of which I did not understand a word. Tardif's face was very grave and sad, indescribably so; and, before he turned to me and spoke, I knew it was some sorrowful catastrophe he had to tell.
