Hetty's Strange History Part 8

When night falls on the earth, the sky Looks like a wide, a boundless main; Who knows what voyagers sail there?

Who names the ports they seek and gain?

Are not the stars like beacons set, To guide the argosies that go From universe to universe, Our little world above, below?

On their great errands solemn bent, In their vast journeys unaware Of our small planet's name or place Revolving in the lower air.

Oh thought too vast! oh thought too glad: An awe most rapturous it stirs.

From world to world G.o.d's beacons s.h.i.+ne: G.o.d means to save his mariners!

Hetty was silent. The mention of light-houses had carried her thoughts back to that last night at "The Runs," when, with Dr. Eben by her side, she had watched the great revolving light in the stone tower on the bar.

Dr. Eben was thinking of the same thing; he wondered if Hetty were not: after a few moments' silence, he became so sure of it that he said:

"You have not forgotten that night, have you?"

"Oh, no!" replied Hetty, in a low voice.

"I should like to think that you did not wish to forget it," said the doctor, in a tender tone.

"Oh, don't, please don't say any thing about it," exclaimed Hetty, in a tone so full of emotion, that Dr. Eben's heart gave a bound of joy. In that second, he believed that the time would come when Hetty would love him. He had never heard such a tone from her lips before. Her hand rested on his arm. He laid his upon it,--the first caressing touch he had ever dared to offer to Hetty; the first caressing touch which Hetty had ever received from hand of man.

"I will not, Hetty, till you are willing I should," he said. He had never called her "Hetty" before. A tumult filled Hetty's heart; but all she said was, in a most matter-of-fact tone:

"That's right! we must go in now. It is too cold out here."

Dr. Eben did not care what her words were: nature had revealed herself in a tone.

"I'll make her love me yet," he thought. "It won't take a great while either; she's beginning, and she doesn't know it." He was so happy that he did not know at first that Hetty had left him alone in front of the fire. When he found she had gone, he drew up a big arm-chair, sank back in its depths, put his feet on the fender, and fell to thinking how, by spring, perhaps, he might marry Hetty. In the midst of this lover-like reverie, he fell asleep in the most unlover-like way. He was worn out with his long night's watching. In a few minutes, Hetty came back with hot broth which she had prepared for him. Her light step did not rouse him. She stood still by his chair, looking down on his face. His clear-cut features, always handsome, were grand in sleep. The solemnity of closed eyes adds to a n.o.ble face something which is always very impressive. He stirred uneasily, and said in his sleep, "Hetty." A great wave of pa.s.sionate feeling swept over her face, as, standing there, she heard this tender sound of her name on his unconscious lips.

"Oh what will become of me if I love him after all," she thought.

"Why not, why not?" answered her heart; wakened now and struggling for its craved and needed rights. "Why not, why not?" and no answer came to Hetty's mind.

Moving noiselessly, she set the broth on a low table by the doctor's side, covered him carefully with her own heavy cloak, and left the room.

On the threshold, she turned back and looked again at his face. Her conscious thoughts were more than she could bear. In sudden impatience with herself, she exclaimed, "Pshaw! how silly I am!" and hastened upstairs, more like the old original Hetty than she had been for many days. Love could not enthrone himself easily in Hetty's nature: it was a rebellious kingdom. "Thirty-seven years old! Hetty Gunn, you 're a goose," were Hetty's last thoughts as she fell asleep that night. But when she awoke the next morning, the same refrain, "Why not, why not?"

filled her thoughts; and, when she bade Dr. Eben good-morning, the rosy color that mounted to her very temples gave him a new happiness.

Why prolong the story of the next few days? They were just such days as every man and every woman who has loved has lived through, and knows far better than can be said or sung. Love's beginnings are varied, and his final crises of avowal take individual shape in each individual instance: but his processes and symptoms of growth are alike in all cases; the indefinable delight,--the dreamy wondering joy,--the half avoidance which really means seeking,--the seeking which shelters itself under endless pleas,--the ceaseless questioning of faces,--the mute caresses of looks, and the eloquent caresses of tones,--are they not written in the books of the chronicles of all lovers? What matter how or when the crowning moment of full surrender comes? It came to Eben and Hetty, however, more suddenly at last than it often comes; came in a way so characteristic of them both, that perhaps to tell it may not be a sin, since we aim at a complete setting forth of their characters.

VIII.

For three days little Raby had been so ill that the doctor had not left the house day nor night, except for imperative calls from other patients. Each night the paroxysms of croup returned with great severity, and the little fellow's strength seemed fast giving way under them. Sally and Hetty, his two mothers, were very differently affected by the grief they bore in common. Sally was speechless, calm, almost dogged in her silence. When Dr. Eben trying to comfort her, said:

"Don't feel so, Mrs. Little: I think we shall pull the boy through all right." She looked up in his face, and shook her head, speaking no word.

"I am not saying it merely to comfort you; indeed, I am not, Mrs.

Little," said the doctor. "I really believe he will get well. These attacks of croup seem much worse than they really are."

"I don't know that it comforts me," replied Sally, speaking very slowly. "I don't know that I want him to live; but I think perhaps he might be allowed to die easier, if I didn't need so much punis.h.i.+ng. It is worse than death to see him suffer so."

"Oh, Mrs. Little! how can you think thus of G.o.d?" exclaimed the doctor.

"He never treats us like that, any more than you could Raby."

"The minister at the Corners said so," moaned Sally. "He said it was till the third and fourth generations."

At such moments, Dr. Eben, in his heart, thought undevoutly of ministers. "A bruised reed, he will not break," came to his mind, often as he looked at this anguish-stricken woman, watching her only child's suffering, and morbidly believing that it was the direct result of her own sin. But Dr. Eben found little time to spare for his ministrations to Sally, when Hetty was in such distress. He had never seen any thing like it. She paced the house like a wounded lioness. She could not bear to stay in the room: all day, all night, she walked, walked, walked; now in the hall outside his door; now in the rooms below. Every few moments, she questioned the doctor fiercely: "Is he no better?" "Will he have another?" "Can't you do something more?" "Do you think there is a possibility that any other doctor might know something you do not?"

"Shan't I send Caesar over to Springton for Dr. Wilkes; he might think of something different?" These, and a thousand other such questions, Hetty put to the hara.s.sed and tortured Dr. Eben, over and over, till even his loving patience was wellnigh outworn. It was strengthened, however, by his anxiety for her. She did not eat; she did not drink; she looked haggard and feverish. This child had been to her from the day of his birth like her own: she loved him with all the pent-up forces of the great womanhood within her, which thus far had not found the natural outlet of its affections.

"Doctor," she would cry vehemently, "why should Raby die? G.o.d never means that any children should die. It is all our ignorance and carelessness; all the result of broken law. I've heard you say a hundred times, that it is a thwarting of G.o.d's plan whenever a child dies: why don't you cure Raby?"

"That is all true, Hetty," Dr. Eben would reply; "all very true: it is a thwarting of G.o.d's plan whenever any human being dies before he is fully ripe of old age. But the acc.u.mulated weight of generations of broken law is on our heads. Raby's little life has been all well ordered, so far as we can see; but, farther back, was something wrong or he would not be ill to-day. I have done my best to learn, in my little life, all that is known of methods of cure; but I have only the records of human ignorance to learn from, and I must fail again and again."

At last, on the fourth night, Raby slept: slept for hours, quietly, naturally, and with a gentle dew on his fair forehead. The doctor sat motionless by his bed and watched him. Sally, exhausted by the long watch, had fallen asleep on a lounge. The sound of Hetty's restless steps, in the hall outside, had ceased for some time. The doctor sat wondering uneasily where she had gone. She had not entered the room for more than an hour; the house grew stiller and stiller; not a sound was to be heard except little Raby's heavy breathing, and now and then one of those fine and mysterious noises which the timbers of old houses have a habit of making in the night-time. At last the lover got the better of the physician. Doctor Eben rose, and, stealing softly to the door, opened it as cautiously as a thief. All was dark.

"Hetty," he whispered. No answer. He looked back at Raby. The child was sleeping so soundly it seemed impossible that he could wake for some time. Doctor Eben groped his way to the head of the great stairway, and listened again. All was still.

"Hetty!" he called in a low voice, "Hetty!" No answer.

"She must have fallen asleep somewhere. She will surely take cold," the doctor said to himself; persuading his conscience that it was his duty to go and find her. Slowly feeling his way, he crept down the staircase.

On the last step but one, he suddenly stumbled, fell, and barely recovered himself by his firm hold of the banisters, in time to hear Hetty's voice in a low imperious whisper:

"Good heavens, doctor! what do you want?"

"Oh Hetty! did I hurt you?" he exclaimed; "I never dreamed of your being on the stairs."

"I sat down a minute to listen. It was all so still in the room, I was frightened; and I must have been asleep a good while, I think, I am so cold," answered Hetty; her teeth beginning to chatter, and her whole body shaking with cold. "Why, how dark it is!" she continued; "the hall lamp has gone out: let me get a match."

But Dr. Eben had her two cold hands in his. "No, Hetty," he said, "come right back into the room: Raby is so sound asleep it will not wake him; and Sally is asleep too;" and he led her slowly towards the door. The night-lamp was burning low; its pale flame, and the flickering blaze of the big hickory logs on the hearth, made a glimmering twilight, whose fantastic lights and shadows shot out through the doorway into the gloom of the hall. As the first of these lights fell on Hetty's face, Dr. Eben started to see how white it was. Involuntarily he put his arm around her; and exclaimed "How pale you are, my poor Hetty! you are all worn out;" and, half supporting her with his arm, he laid his free hand gently on her hair.

Hetty was very tired; very cold; half asleep, and half frightened. She dropped her head on his shoulder for a second, and said: "Oh, what a comfort you are!"

The words had hardly left her lips when Doctor Eben threw both his arms around her, and held her tightly to his breast, whispering:

"Indeed, I will be a comfort to you, Hetty, if you will only let me."

Hetty struggled and began to speak.

"Hus.h.!.+ you will wake Raby," he said, and still held her firmly, looking unpityingly down into her face.

"You do love me, Hetty," he whispered triumphantly.

The front stick on the fire broke, fell in two blazing upright brands to right and left, and cast a sudden flood of light on the two figures in the doorway. Sally and Raby slept on. Still Doctor Eben held Hetty close, and looked with a keen and exultant gaze into her eyes.

"It isn't fair when I am so cold and sleepy," whispered Hetty, with a half twinkle in her half-open eyes.

"It is fair! It is fair! Any thing is fair! Every thing is fair,"