CHAPTER THE SIXTH.

Too much alone.

Yet looking back upon that time, now it is past, and has “rounded itself into that perfect star I saw not when I dwelt therein,” it would be untrue to represent myself as in any way unhappy.  At times I wished earnestly that I had been born among these people, and could live forever among them.

By degrees I discovered that Tardif led a somewhat solitary life himself, even in this solitary island, with its scanty population.  There was an ugly church standing in as central and prominent a situation as possible, but Tardif and his mother did not frequent it.  They belonged to a little knot of dissenters, who met for worship in a small room, when Tardif generally took the lead.  For this reason a sort of coldness existed between him and the larger portion of his fellow-islanders.  But there was a second and more important cause for a slight estrangement.  He had married an Englishwoman many years ago, much to the astonishment and disappointment of his neighbors; and since her death he had held himself aloof from all the good women who would have been glad enough to undertake the task of consoling him for her loss.  Tardif, therefore, was left very much to himself in his isolated cottage, and his mother’s deafness caused her also to be no very great favorite with any of the gossips of the island.  It was so difficult to make her understand any thing that could not be expressed by signs, that no one except her son attempted to tell her the small topics of the day.

All this told upon me, and my standing among them.  At first I met a few curious glances as I roamed about the island; but my dress was as poor and plain as any of theirs, and I suppose there was nothing in my appearance, setting aside my dress, which could attract them.  I learned afterward that Tardif had told those who asked him that my name was Ollivier, and they jumped to the conclusion that I belonged to a family of that name in Guernsey; this shielded me from the curiosity that might otherwise have been troublesome and dangerous.  I was nobody but a poor young woman from Guernsey, who was lodging in the spare room of Tardif’s cottage.

I set myself to grow used to their mode of life, and if possible to become so useful to them that, when my money was all spent, they might be willing to keep me with them; for I shrank from the thought of the time when I must be thrust out of this nest, lonely and silent as it was.  As the long, dismal nights of winter set in, with the wind sweeping across the island for several days together with a dreary, monotonous moan which never ceased, I generally sat by their fire, for I had nobody but Tardif to talk to; and now and then there arose an urgent need within me to listen to some friendly voice, and to hear my own speaking in reply.  There were only two books in the house, the Bible and the “Pilgrim’s Progress,” both of them in French; and I had not learned French beyond the few phrases necessary for travelling.  But Tardif began to teach me that, and also to mend fishing-nets, which I persevered in, though the twine cut my fingers.  Could I by any means make myself useful to them?