Hetty's Strange History Part 13

XII.

The station-master at Fairfield, if he had been asked whether a woman took the midnight train north at Fairfield that night, would have unhesitatingly said, "No." An instinctive wisdom seemed to direct Hetty's every step. She waited at some little distance from the station till the train came up: then, without going upon the station platform at all, she entered the rear car from the opposite side of the road. No one saw her; not even a brakeman. When the train began to move, the sense of what she had done smote her with a sudden terror, and she sprang to her feet, but sank down again, before any of the sleepy pa.s.sengers had observed her motion. In a few moments she was calm. Her long habits of firm, energetic action began to resume sway: she compelled herself to look forward into the future, and not backward into the past she was so resolutely leaving behind her. Strangely enough, it was not her husband that she found hardest to banish from her thoughts now, but Raby. She could not escape from the vivid imagination of the dear child running in terror alone through the long stretch of woods.

"I wonder if he will cry," thought poor Hetty: "I hope not." And the tears filled her eyes. Then she fell to wondering if there would be any doubt in anybody's mind that her boat had suddenly capsized. "They will think I leaned over to pick something off the bushes on the edge of the island," said she. "I have come very near capsizing that way more than once, and I have always told Eben when it had happened. That is the first thing he will think of." And thus, in a maze of incoherent crowding conjectures and imaginings, all making up one great misery, Hetty sat whirling away from her home. By and by, her brain grew less active; thought was paralyzed by pain. She sat motionless, taking no note of the hours of the night as they sped by, and roused from her dull reverie only when she saw the first faint red tinge of dawn in the eastern sky. Then she started up, with a fresh realization of all. "Oh, it is morning!" she said. "Have they given over looking for me, I wonder. I suppose they have been looking all night. By this time, they must be sure I am drowned. After I know all that is over, I shall feel easier. It can't be quite so hard to bear as this."

In all Hetty's imaginings of her plan, she had leaped over the interval of transition from the life she left to the life she proposed to lead.

She had pictured herself always as having attained the calm rest of the shelter she would seek, the strong moral support of the work she would do. She had not dwelt on this wretched interval of concealment and flight; she had not thought of this period of being an unknown outcast.

A sense of ignominy began to crush her. It was a new thing for her to avoid a human eye: she felt guilty, ashamed, terror-stricken; and, doubly veiling her face, she sat with her eyes closed, and her head turned away, like one asleep or ill. The day dragged slowly on. Now and then she left the train, and bought a new ticket to carry her farther.

Even had there been suspicions of her flight, it would have been impossible to have traced her, so skilfully had she managed. She had provided herself with a time-table of the entire route, and bought new tickets only at points of junction where several roads met, and no attention could possibly be drawn to any one traveller.

At night she reached the city, where she had planned to remain for some days, to make purchases. When she entered the hotel, and was asked to register her name, no one who saw the quick and ready signature which she wrote would have dreamed that it was not her own:

"Mrs. HIBBA SMAILLI, St. Mary's, Canada."

"One of those Welsh women, from St. Mary's, I guess," said the clerk; "they all have those fresh, florid skins when they first come over here." And with this remark he dismissed Hetty from his mind, only wondering now and then, as he saw her so often coming in, laden with parcels, "what a St. Mary's woman wanted with so many things."

During these days, while Hetty was unflinchingly going forward with all her preparations for her new home, the home she had left was a scene of terrible dismay and suffering.

It was long after dark when little Raby, breathless and sobbing, had burst open the sitting-room door, crying out:

"Auntie's drowned in the lake. I know she is; or else a bear's eaten her up. She said she'd be back in an hour. And here's her watch,"--opening his little hot hand, in which he had held the watch tight through all his running,--"she gave it to me to hold till she came back. And she said it would be five; and I stayed till seven, and she never came; and a man brought me home." And Raby flung himself on the floor, crying convulsively.

His father and mother tried to calm him, and to get a more exact account from him of what had happened; but, between their alarm and his hysterical crying, all was confusion.

Presently, the man entered who had brought Raby home in his wagon. He was a stranger to them all. His narrative merely corroborated Raby's, but threw no light on what had gone before. He had found the child on the main road, running very fast, and crying aloud. He had asked him to jump into his wagon; and Raby had replied: "Yes, sir: if you will whip your horse and make him run all the way to my house? My auntie's drowned in the lake;" and this was all the child had said.

Poor Raby! his young nerves had entirely given way under the strain of those hours of anxious waiting. He had borne the first hour very well.

When the watch said it was five o'clock, and Hetty was not in sight, he thought, as she had hoped he would, that she was searching for the shawl; but, when six o'clock came, and her boat was not in sight, his childish heart took alarm. He ran to the shanty where the old boatman lived; and pounded furiously on the door, shouting loud, for the man was very deaf. The door was locked; no one answered. Raby pushed logs under the windows, and, climbing up, looked in. The house was empty. Then the little fellow jumped into the only boat which was there, and began to row out into the lake in search of Hetty.

Alas! the boat leaked so fast that it was with difficulty he got back to the sh.o.r.e. Perhaps, if Hetty, from her hiding-place, had seen the dear, brave child rowing to her rescue, it might have been a rescue indeed. It might have changed for ever the current of her life. But this was not to be. Wet and chilled, and clogged by his dripping shoes, Raby turned towards home. The woods were dark and full of shadows. The child had never been alone in them at night before; and the gloom added to his terrors. His feet seemed as if they would fail him at every step, and his sobbing cries left him little breath with which to run.

Jim and Sally turned helplessly to the stranger, as he concluded his story.

"Oh, what shall we do! what shall we do!" they said. "Oh, take us right back to the lake, won't you? and the rest will follow: we may find her."

"There isn't any boat," cried Raby, from the floor. "I tried to go for her, and the boat is all full of holes, and she must have been drowned ever so long by this time; she told me it only took half an hour, that n.o.body could be brought to life after that," and Raby's cries rose almost to shrieks, and brought old Caesar and Nan from the kitchen. As the first words of what had happened reached their ears, they broke into piercing lamentations. Nan, with inarticulate groans, and Caesar with, "d.a.m.n! d.a.m.n! bress de Lord! No, d.a.m.n! d.a.m.n! dat lake. Haven't I always told Miss Hetty not to be goin' there. Oh, d.a.m.n! d.a.m.n! no, no, bress de Lord!" and the old man, clasping both hands above his head, rushed to the barn to put the horses into the big farm-wagon. With anguished hearts, and hopelessly, Jim and Sally piled blankets and pillows into the wagon, and took all the restoratives they could think of. They knew in their hearts all would be of no use. As they drove through the village they gave the alarm; and, in an incredibly short time, the whole sh.o.r.e of the lake was twinkling with lights borne high in the hands of men who were searching. Two boats were rowing back and forth on the lake, with bright lights at stern and prow; and loud shouts filled the air. No answer; no clew: at last, from the island, came a pistol shot,--the signal agreed on. Every man stood still and listened. Slowly the boats came back to sh.o.r.e, drawing behind them Hetty's boat; bringing one of the oars, and also Hetty's shawl, which they had found, just where Raby had told them they would, in the wild-grape thicket.

"Found it bottom-side up," was all that the men said, as they shoved the boat high up on the sand. Then they all looked in each other's faces, and said no more. There was nothing more to be done: it was now ten o'clock. Slowly the sad procession wound back to town through the rayless hemlock woods. Midway in them, they met a rider, riding at the maddest gallop. It was the doctor! No one had known where to send for him; and there was no time to be lost. Coming home, and wondering, as he entered, at the open doors and the unlighted windows, he had found Norah sitting on the floor by the weeping Raby, and trying to comfort him.

Barely comprehending, in his sudden distress what they told him, the doctor had sprung upon his horse and galloped towards the lake. As he saw the group of people moving towards him, looking shadowy and dim in the darkness, his heart stood still. Were they bearing home Hetty's body? Would he see it presently, lying lifeless and cold in their arms?

He dashed among them, reining his horse back on his haunches, and looking with a silent anguish into face after face. n.o.body spoke. That first instant seemed a century long. n.o.body could speak. At a glance the doctor saw that they were not bearing the sad burden he had feared.

"Not found her?" he gasped.

"No, doctor," replied one nearest him, laying his hand on his arm.

"Then by G.o.d what have you come away for! have you got the souls of men in you?" exclaimed Eben Williams, in a voice which seemed to shake the very trees, as he plunged onward.

"It's no use, doctor," they replied sadly.

"We found her boat bottom up, and one of the oars; and it was hours since it capsized."

"What then!" he shouted back. "My wife was as strong as any man: she can't have drowned; Hetty can't have drowned;" and his horse's hoofs struck sparks from the stones as he galloped on. A few of the younger men turned back and followed him; but, when they reached the lake, he was nowhere to be seen. Old Caesar, who was sitting on the ground, his head buried on his knees, said:

"He wouldn't hear a word. He jest jumped into one of thim boats, and he was gone like lightning: he's 'way across the lake by this time."

Silently the young men re-entered their boats and rowed out, carrying torches. Presently they overtook the doctor.

"Oh, thank G.o.d for that light!" he exclaimed, "Give one to me; let me have it here in my boat: I shall find her."

Like a being of superhuman strength, the doctor rowed; no one could keep up with him. Round and round the lake, into every inlet, close under the shadows of the islands; again and again, over every mile of that treacherous, gla.s.sy, beautiful water, he rowed, calling every few moments, in heart-breaking tones, "Hetty! Hetty! Hetty! I am here, Hetty!"

As the hours wore on, his strength began to flag; he rowed more and more slowly: but, when they begged him to give over the search, and return home, he replied impatiently. "Never! I'll never leave this lake till I find her." It was useless to reason with him. He hardly heard the words.

At last, his friends, worn out by the long strain, rowed to the sh.o.r.e, and left him alone. As he bade them good-by, he groaned, "Oh, G.o.d! will it never be morning? If only it were light, I am sure I should find some trace of her." But, when the morning broke, the pitiless lake shone clear and still, and all the hopelessness of his search flashed on the bereaved man's mind: he dropped his oars, and gazed vacantly over the rippleless surface. Then he buried his face in his hands, and sat motionless for a long time: he was trying to recall Hetty's last looks, last words. He recollected her last kisses. "It was as if they were to bid me good-bye," he thought. Presently, he took up the oars and rowed back to the sh.o.r.e. Old Caesar still sat there on the ground. The doctor touched him on the shoulder. He lifted a face so wan, so altered, that the doctor started.

"My poor old fellow," he said, "you ought not to have sat here all night. We will go home now. There is nothing more to be done."

"Oh, yer ain't a goin' to give up, doctor, be yer?" cried Caesar. "Oh, don't never give up. She must be here somewheres. Bodies floats allers in fresh water: she'll come to sh.o.r.e before long. Oh, don't give up!

I'll set here an' watch, an' you go home an' git somethin' to eat. You looks dreadful."

"No, no, Caesar," the doctor replied, with the first tears he had felt yet welling up in his eyes, "you must come home with me. There is no hope of finding her."

Caesar did not move, but fixed a sullen gaze on the water. The doctor spoke again, more firmly:

"You must come, Caesar. Your mistress would tell you so herself." At this Caesar rose, docile, and the two went home in silence through the hemlock woods.

For three days the search for Hetty continued. It was suggested that possibly she might have gone over to the Springton sh.o.r.e for some purpose, and there have met with some accident or a.s.sault. This suggestion opened up new vistas of conjecture, almost more terrible than the certainty of her death would have been. Parties of three and four scoured the woods in all directions. Again and again Dr. Eben pa.s.sed over the spot where she had lain crouched so long: the bushes which had been brushed back as she pa.s.sed, bent back again to let him go over her very footsteps; but nothing could speak to betray her secret. Nature seems most mute when we most need her help: she keeps, through all our distresses, a sort of dumb and faithful neutrality, which is not, perhaps, so devoid of sympathy as it appears.

After the third day was over, it was accepted by tacit consent that farther search would be useless. Hetty was mourned as dead: in every home her name was tenderly and sorrowingly spoken; old memories of her gay and mirthful youth, of her cheery and busy womanhood, were revived and dwelt upon. But in her own home was silence that could be felt. The grief there was grief that could not speak. Only little Raby, of all the household, found words to use; and his childish and inconsolable laments made the speechless anguish around him all the greater. To Dr. Eben, the very sight of the child was a bitter and unreasonable pain. Except for Raby, he thought, Hetty would still be alive. He had never approved of her taking him on the water; had remonstrated with her in the beginning, but had been overruled by her impetuous confidence in her own strength and skill. Now, as often as he saw the poor little fellow's woe-begone face, he had a strange mixture of pity and hatred towards him. In vain he reasoned against it. "He has lost his best friend, as well as I," he said to himself; "I ought to try to comfort him." But it was impossible: the child's presence grew more and more irksome to him, until, at last, he said to Sally, one day:

"Sally, you and Raby are both looking very ill. I want you to go away for a time. How would you like to go to 'The Runs,' for a month?"

"Oh, not there, dear doctor! please do not send us there!" cried Sally.

"Indeed I could not bear it. We might go to father's for a while. That would be change enough; and Raby would have children to play with there, in the village, all the time, and that would be the best thing for him."

So Jim and Sally went to Deacon Little's to stay for a time. Mrs. Little welcomed them with a cordiality which it would have done Hetty's heart good to see. Her old aversion to Sally had been so thoroughly conquered that she was more than half persuaded in her own mind it had never existed. When the doctor was left alone in the house, he found it easier to bear the burden of his grief. It is only after the first shock of a great sorrow is past that we are helped by faces and voices and the clasping of hands. At the first, there is but one help, but one healing; and that is solitude.

Dr. Eben came out from this grief an altered man. Poor Hetty! How little she had understood her value to her husband! Could she have seen him walking slowly from house to house, his eyes fixed on the ground, his head bent forward; all his old elasticity of tread gone; his ready smile gone; the light, glad look of his eyes gone,--how would she have repented her rash and cruel deed! how would the scales have fallen from her eyes, revealing to her the monstrous misapprehension to which she had sacrificed her life and his! Even long after people had ceased to talk about Hetty's death, or to remember it unless they saw the doctor, the first sight of his tall bowed figure recalled it all; and again and again, as he pa.s.sed men on the street, they turned and said to each other, with a sad shake of the head:

"He's never got over it."

"No, nor ever will."

On the surface, life seemed to be going on at "Gunn's" much as before.

Jim and Sally and Raby made a family centre, to which the lonely doctor attached himself more and more. He came more and more to feel that Raby was a legacy left by Hetty to him. He had ceased to have any unjust resentment towards the child from his innocent a.s.sociation with her death: he knew that she had loved the boy as if he were her own; and, in his long sad reveries about the future, he found a sort of melancholy pleasure in planning for Raby as he would have done had he been Hetty's child. These plans for Raby, and his own devotion to his profession, were Dr. Eben's only pleasure. He was fast becoming a physician of note.

He was frequently sent for in consultation to all parts of the county; and his contributions to medical journals were held in high esteem. The physician, the student, had gained unspeakably by the loss which had so nearly crushed the man.

Development and strength, gained at such cost, are like harvests springing out of land which had to be burned black with fire before it would yield its increase.