X.

And now we shall pass over an interval of eight years in the history of

"Gunn's." For it is only the "strange history" of Eben and Hetty that

was to be told in this story, and in these years' history was nothing

strange; unless, indeed, it might be said that they were strangely happy

years. The household remained unchanged, except that there were three

more babies in Mike's cottage, and Hetty had been obliged to build on

another room for him. Old Nan and Caesar still reigned. Caesar's head was

as white and tight-curled as the fleece of a pet lamb. He was now a

shining light in the Methodist meeting; but he had not yet broken

himself of his oaths. "Damn--bress de Lord" was still heard on occasion:

but everybody, even Nan, had grown so used to it that it did not pass

for an oath; and, no doubt, even the recording angel had long since

ceased to put it down.

James Little and his wife were now as much a part of the family as if

they had had the old Squire's blood in their veins; and nobody thought

about the old time of their disgrace,--nobody but Jim and Sally

themselves. From their thoughts it was never absent, when they looked on

the beautiful, joyous face of Raby. He had grown beyond his years, and

looked like a boy of twelve. He was manly, frank, impulsive; a child

after Hetty's own heart, and much more like her than he was like his

father or his mother. It was a question, also, if he did not love her

more than he loved either of his parents: all his hours with her were

unclouded; over his intercourse with them, there always hung the

undefined cloud of an unexpressed sadness.

Hetty was changed. Her hair was gray; her fair skin weather-beaten; and

the fine wrinkles around the corners of her merry eyes radiated like the

spokes of a wheel. She had looked young at thirty-seven; she looked old

at forty-five. The phlegmatic and lazy sometimes seem to keep their

youth better than the sanguine and active. It is a cruel thing that

laughter should age a woman's face almost as much as weeping; but it

does. Sunny as Hetty's face was, it had come to have a look older than

it ought, simply because the kindly eyes had so often twinkled and half

closed in merry laughter.

Time had dealt more kindly with Doctor Eben. He was a handsomer man at

forty-one than he had been at thirty-three: the eight years had left no

other trace upon him. Face, figure, step, all were as full of youth and

vigor as upon the day when Hetty first met him walking down the

pine-shaded road. The precise moment when the first pang of

consciousness of the discrepancy between her husband's looks and her own

entered Hetty's mind would be hard to determine. It began probably in

some thoughtless jest of her own, or even of his; for, in his absolute

loyalty of love, his unquestioning and long-established acceptance of

their relation as a perfect one, it would never have crossed Doctor

Eben's mind that Hetty could possibly care whether she looked older or

younger than he. He never thought about her age at all: in fact, he

could not have told either her age or his own with exactness; he was

curiously forgetful of such matters. He did not see the wrinkles around

her eyes. He did not know that her skin was weather-beaten, her figure

less graceful, her hair fast turning gray. To him she was simply

"Hetty:" the word meant as it always had meant, fulness of love,

delight, life. Doctor Eben was a man of that fine fibre of organic

loyalty, to which there is not possible, even a temptation to forsake or

remove from its object. Men having this kind of uprightness and loyalty,

rarely are much given to words or demonstrations of affection. To them

love takes its place, side by side with the common air, the course of

the sun, the succession of days and nights, and all other unquestioned

and unalterable things in the world. To suggest to such a man the

possibility of lessening in his allegiance to a wife, is like proposing

to him to overthrow the whole course of nature. He simply cannot

conceive of such a thing; and he has no tolerance for it. He is by the

very virtue of his organic structure incapable of charity for men who

sin in that way. There are not many such men, but the type exists; and

well may any woman felicitate herself to whom it is given to rest her

life on such sure foundations. If there be some lack of the daily

manifestations of tenderness, the ready word, the ever-present caress,

she may recollect that these are often the first fruits of a passion

whose early way-side harvest will be scorched and shrivelled as soon as

the sun is high; while the seed which bringeth forth a hundred, nay a

thousand fold, of true grain, sleeps in long silence, and grows up

noiseless and slow.

Doctor Eben did not know that he was in many small ways an unlover-like

husband. He did not know that his absorption in his professional studies

made him often seem unaware of Hetty's presence for hours together, when

she was watching and waiting for a word. He did not know that he

sometimes did not hear when she spoke, and did not answer when he heard.

He did not know a hundred things which he would have known, if he had

been a less upright and loyal man, and if Hetty had been a less

unselfish woman. Neither did Hetty know any of these things, or note

them, until the poisoned consciousness awoke in her mind that she was

fast growing old, and her face was growing less lovely. This was the

first germ of Hetty's unhappiness. It had been very hard for her in the

beginning to believe herself loved: now all her old incredulity returned

with fourfold strength; and now it was not met as then by constant and

vehement evidence to conquer it. Here again, had Hetty been like other

women, she might have been spared her suffering. Had it been possible

for her to demand, to even invite, she would have won from her husband,

at any instant, all that her anxiety could have asked; but it was not

possible. She simply went on silently, day after day, watching her

husband more intently; keeping record, in her morbid feeling, of every

moment, every look, every word which she misapprehended. Beyond this

morbidness of misapprehension, there was no other morbidness in Hetty's

state. She did not pine or grieve; she only began slowly to wonder what

she could do for Eben now. Her sense of loss and disappointment, in that

she had borne him no children, began to weigh more heavily upon her. "If

I were mother of his children," she said to herself, "it would not make

so much difference if I did grow old and ugly. He would have the

children to give him pleasure." "I don't see what there is left for me

to do," she said again and again. Sometimes she made pathetic attempts

to change the simplicity of her dress. "Perhaps if I wore better

clothes, I should look younger," she thought. But the result was not

satisfactory. Her severe style had always been so essentially her own

that any departure from it only made her look still more altered. All

this undercurrent of annoyance and distress added continually to the

change in her face: gradually its expression grew more grave; she smiled

less frequently; had fits of abstraction and reverie, which she had

never been known to have before.

In a vague way, Doctor Eben observed these, and wondered what Hetty was

thinking about; but he never asked. Often they drove for a whole day

together, without a dozen words being spoken; but the doctor was buried

in meditations upon his patients, and did not dislike the silence. Hetty

did not realize that the change here was more in her than in him: in the

old days it had been she who talked, not the doctor; now that she was

silent, he went on with his trains of thought undisturbed, and was as

content as before, for she was by his side. He felt her presence

perpetually, even when he gave no sign of doing so.

Many months went by in this way, a summer, a winter, part of a spring,

and Hetty's forty-fifth birthday came, and found her a seriously unhappy

woman. Yet, strange to say, nobody dreamed of it. So unchanged was the

external current of her life: such magnificent self-control had she, and

such absolute disinterestedness. Little Raby was the only one who ever

had a consciousness that things were not right. He was Hetty's closest

comrade and companion now. All the hours that she did not spend driving

with the doctor (and she drove with him less now than had been her

custom) she spent with Raby. They took long rambles together, and long

rides, Raby being already an accomplished and fearless little rider. By

the subtle instinct of a loving child, Raby knew that "Aunt Hetty" was

changed. A certain something was gone out of the delight they used to

take together. Once, as they were riding, he exclaimed:

"Aunt Hetty, you haven't spoken for ever so long! What's the matter? you

don't talk half so much as you used to."

And Hetty, conscience-stricken, thought to herself: "Dear me, how

selfish it makes one to be unhappy! Here I am, letting it fall on this

dear, innocent darling. I ought to be ashamed." But she answered gayly:

"Oh, Raby! aunty is growing old and stupid, isn't she? She must look

out, or you'll get tired of her."

"I shan't either: you 're the nicest aunty in the whole world," cried

Raby. "You ain't a bit old; but I wish you'd talk."

Then and there, Hetty resolved that never again should Raby have

occasion to think thus; and he never did. Before long he had forgotten

all about this conversation, and all was as before. This was in May. One

day, in the following June, as Hetty and the doctor were driving through

Springton, he said suddenly:

"Oh, Hetty! I want you to come in with me at one place this morning.

There is the most perfectly beautiful creature there I ever saw,--the

oldest daughter of a Methodist minister who has just come here to

preach. Poor child! she cannot sit up, or turn herself in bed; but she

is an angel, and has the face of one, if ever a human creature had. They

are very poor and we must help them all we can. I have great hopes of

curing the child, if she can be well fed. It is a serious spinal

disease, but I believe it can be cured."

When Hetty first looked on the face of Rachel Barlow, she said in her

heart: "Eben was right. It is the face of an angel;" and when she heard

Rachel's voice, she added, "and the voice also." Some types of spinal

disease seem to have a marvellously refining effect on the countenance;

producing an ethereal clearness of skin, and brightness of eye, and a

spiritual expression, which are seen on no other faces. Rachel Barlow

was a striking instance of this almost abnormal beauty. As her fair face

looked up at you from her pillow, your impulse was to fall on your

knees. Not till she smiled did you feel sure she was human; but when she

smiled, the smile was so winningly warm, you forgot you had thought her

an angel. For two years she had not moved from her bed, except as she

was lifted in the strong arms of her father. For two years she had not

been free from pain for a moment. Often the pain was so severe that she

fainted. And yet her brow was placid, unmarked by a line, and her face

in repose as serene as a happy child's.

Doctor Eben and Hetty sat together by the bed.

"Rachel," said the doctor, "I have brought my wife to help cure you. She

is as good a doctor as I am." And he turned proudly to Hetty.

Rachel gazed at her earnestly, but did not speak. Hetty felt herself

singularly embarrassed by the gaze.

"I wish I could help you," she said; "but I think my husband will make

you well."

Rachel colored.

"I never permit myself to hope for it," she replied. "If I did, I should

be discontented at once."

"Why! are you contented as it is?" exclaimed Hetty impetuously.

"Oh, yes!" said Rachel. "I enjoy every minute, except when the pain is

too hard: you don't know what a beautiful thing life seems to me. I

always have the sky you know" (glancing at the window), "and that is

enough for a lifetime. Every day birds fly by too; and every day my

father reads to me at least two hours. So I have great deal to think

about."

"Miss Barlow, I envy you," said Hetty in a tone which startled even

herself. Again Rachel bent on her the same clairvoyant gaze which had so

embarrassed her before. Hetty shrank from it still more than at first,

and left the room, saying to her husband: "I will wait for you outside."

As they drove away, Hetty said:

"Eben, what is it in her look which makes me so uneasy? I don't like to

have her look at me."

"Now that is strange," replied the doctor. "After you had left the room,

the child said to me: 'What is the matter with your wife? She is not

well,' and I laughed at the idea, and told her I never knew any woman

half so well or strong. Rachel is a sort of clairvoyant, as persons in

her condition are so apt to be; but she made a wrong guess this time,

didn't she?"

Hetty did not answer; and the doctor turning towards her saw that her

eyes were fixed on the sky with a dreamy expression.

"Why, Hetty!" he exclaimed. "Why do you look so? You are perfectly well,

are you not, dear?"

"Oh, yes! oh, yes!" Hetty answered, quickly rousing herself. "I am

perfectly well; and always have been, ever since I can remember."

After this, Hetty went no more with her husband to see Rachel. When he

asked her, she said: "No, Eben: I am going to see her alone. I will not

go with you again. She makes me uncomfortable. If she makes me feel so,

when I am alone with her, I shall not go at all. I don't like

clairvoyants."

"Why, what a queer notion that is for you, wife!" laughed the doctor,

and thought no more of it.

Hetty's first interview with Rachel was a constrained one. Nothing in

Hetty's life had prepared her for intercourse with so finely organized a

creature: she felt afraid to speak, lest she should wound her; her own

habits of thought and subjects of interest seemed too earthy to be

mentioned in this presence; she was vaguely conscious that all Rachel's

being was set to finer issues than her own. She found in this an

unspeakable attraction; and yet it also withheld her at every point and

made her dumb. In spite of these conflicting emotions, she wanted to

love Rachel, to help her, to be near her; and she went again and again,

until the constraint wore off, and a very genuine affection grew up

between them. Never, after the first day, had she felt any peculiar

embarrassment under Rachel's gaze, and her memory of it had nearly died

away, when one day, late in the autumn, it was suddenly revived with

added intensity. It was a day on which Hetty had been feeling unusually

sad. Even by Rachel's bedside she could not quite throw off the sadness.

Unconsciously, she had been sitting for a long time silent. As she

looked up, she met Rachel's eyes fixed full on hers, with the same

penetrating gaze which had so disturbed her in their first interview.

Rachel did not withdraw her gaze, but continued to look into Hetty's

eyes, steadily, piercingly, with an expression which held Hetty

spell-bound. Presently she said:

"Dear Mrs. Williams, you are thinking something which is not true. Do

not let it stay with you."

"What do you mean, Rachel?" asked Hetty, resentfully. "No one can read

another person's thoughts."

"Not exactly," replied Rachel, in a timid voice, "but very nearly. Since

I have been ill, I have had a strange power of telling what people were

thinking about: I can sometimes tell the exact words. I cannot tell how

it is. I seem to read them in the air, or to hear them spoken. And I can

always tell if a person is thinking either wicked thoughts or untrue

ones. A wicked person always looks to me like a person in a fog. There

have been some people in this room that my father thought very good; but

I knew they were very bad. I could hardly see their faces clear. When a

person is thinking mistaken or untrue thoughts, I see something like a

shimmer of light all around them: it comes and goes, like a flicker from

a candle. When you first came in to see me, you looked so."

"Pshaw, Rachel," said Hetty, resolutely. "That is all nonsense. It is

just the nervous fancy of a sick girl. You mustn't give way to it."

"I should think so too," replied Rachel, meekly. "If it did not so

often come exactly true. My father will tell you how often we have tried

it."

"Well, then, tell me what I was thinking just now," laughed Hetty.

Rachel colored. "I would rather not," she replied, in an earnest tone.

"Oh! you're afraid it won't prove true," said Hetty. "I'll take the

risk, if you will."

Rachel hesitated, but finally repeated her first answer. "I would rather

not."

Hetty persisted, and Rachel, with great reluctance, answered her as

follows:

"You were thinking about yourself: you were dissatisfied about something

in yourself; you are not happy, and you ought to be; you are so good."

Hetty listened with a wonder-struck face. She disliked this more than

she had ever in her life disliked any thing which had happened to her.

She did not speak.

"Do not be angry," said Rachel. "You made me tell you."

"Oh! I am not angry," said Hetty. "I'm not so stupid as that; but it's

the most disagreeable thing, I ever knew. Can you help seeing these

things, if you try?"

"Yes, I suppose I might," said Rachel. "I never try. It interests me to

see what people are thinking about."

"Humph!" said Hetty, sarcastically. "I should think so. You might make

your fortune as a detective, if you were well enough to go about in the

world."

"If I were that, I should lose the power," replied Rachel. "The doctors

say it is part of the disease."

"Rachel," exclaimed Hetty, vehemently, "I'll never come near you again,

if you don't promise not to use this power of yours upon me. I should

never feel comfortable one minute where you are, if I thought you were

reading my thoughts. Not that I have any special secrets," added Hetty,

with a guilty consciousness; "but I suppose everybody thinks thoughts he

would rather not have read."

"I'll promise you, indeed I will, dear Mrs. Williams," cried Rachel,

much distressed. "I never have read you, except that first day. It

seemed forced upon me then, and to-day too. But I promise you, I will

not do it again."

"I suppose I shouldn't know if you were doing it, unless you told me,"

said Hetty, reflectively.

"I think you would," answered Rachel. "Do I not look peculiarly? My

father tells me that I do."

"Yes, you do," replied Hetty, recollecting that, in each of these

instances, she had been much disturbed by Rachel's look. "I will trust

you, then, seeing that you probably can't deceive me."

When Hetty told the doctor of this, expecting that he would dismiss it

as unworthy of attention, she was much surprised at the interest he

showed in the account. He questioned her closely as to the expression of

Rachel's face, her tones of voice, during the interval.

"And was it true, Hetty?" he asked; "was what she said true? Were you

thinking of something in yourself which troubled you?"

"Yes, I was," said Hetty, in a low voice, fearing that her husband would

ask her what; but he was only studying the incident from professional

curiosity.

"You are sure of that, are you?" he asked.

"Yes, very sure," replied Hetty.

"Extraordinary! 'pon my word extraordinary!" ejaculated the doctor. "I

have read of such cases, but I have never more than half believed them.

I'd give my right hand to cure that girl."

"Your right hand is not yours to give," said Hetty, playfully. The

doctor made no reply. He was deep in meditation on Rachel's

clairvoyance. Hetty looked at him for some moments, as earnestly as

Rachel had looked at her. "Oh if I could only have that power Rachel

has!" she thought.

"Eben," she said, "is it impossible for a healthy person to be a

clairvoyant?"

"Quite," answered the doctor, with a sudden instinct of what Hetty

meant. "No chance for you, dear. You'll never get at any of my secrets

that way. You might as well try to make yourself Rachel's age as to

acquire this mysterious power she has."

Unlucky words! Hetty bore them about with her. "That showed that he

feels that I am old," she said, as often as she recalled them.

A month later, as she was sitting with Rachel one morning, there was a

knock at the door. Hetty was sitting in such a position that she could

not be seen from the door, but could see, in the looking-glass at the

foot of Rachel's bed, any person entering the room. As the door opened,

she looked up, and, to her unspeakable surprise, saw her husband coming

in; saw, in the same swift second's glance, the look of gladness and

welcome on his face, and heard him say, in tones of great tenderness:

"How are you to-day, precious child?" In the next instant, he had seen

his wife, and was, in his turn, so much astonished, that the look of

glad welcome which he had bent upon Rachel, was instantaneously

succeeded by one of blank surprise, bent upon Hetty; surprise, and

nothing else, but so great surprise that it looked almost like dismay

and confusion. "Why, Hetty!" he said, "I did not expect to see you

here."

"Nor I you," said Hetty, lightly; but the lightness of tone had a

certain something of constraint in it. This incident was one of those

inexplicably perverse acts of Fate which make one almost believe

sometimes in the depravity of spirits, if not in that of men. When Dr.

Eben had left home that morning, Hetty had said to him:

"Are you going to Springton, to-day?"

"No, not to-day," was the reply.

"I am very sorry," answered Hetty. "I wanted to send some jelly to

Rachel."

"Can't go to-day, possibly," the doctor had said. "I have to go the

other way."

But later in the morning he had met a messenger from Springton, riding

post-haste, with an imperative call which could not be deferred. And, as

he was in the village, he very naturally stopped to see Rachel. All of

this he explained with some confusion; feeling, for the first time in

his long married life, that it was awkward for a man to have to account

for his presence in any particular spot at any particular time. Hetty

betrayed no annoyance or incredulity: she felt none. She was too

sensible and reasonable a woman to have felt either, even if it had been

simply a change of purpose on the doctor's own part which had brought

him to Springton. The thing which had lent the shade of constraint to

Hetty's voice, and which lay like an icy mountain on Hetty's heart, was

the look which she had seen on his face, the tone which she had heard in

his voice, as he greeted Rachel. In that instant was planted the second

germ of unhappiness in Hetty's bosom. Of jealousy, in the ordinary

acceptation of the term; of its caprices, suspicions, subterfuges; and,

above all, of its resentments,--Hetty was totally incapable. If it had

been made evident to her in any one moment, that her husband loved

another woman, her first distinct thoughts would have been of sorrow for

him rather than for herself, and of perplexity as to what could be done

to make him happy again. At this moment, however, nothing took distinct

shape in Hetty's mind. It was merely the vague pain of a loving woman's

sensitive heart, surprised by the sight of tender looks and tones given

by her husband to another woman. It was wholly a vague pain, but it was

the germ of a great one; and, falling as it did on Hetty's already

morbid consciousness of her own loss of youth and beauty and

attractiveness, it fell into soil where such germs ripen as in a

hot-bed. In a less noble nature than Hetty's there would have grown up

side by side with this pain a hatred of Rachel, or, at least, an

antagonism towards her. In the fine equilibrium of Hetty's moral nature,

such a thing was impossible. She felt from that day a new interest in

Rachel. She looked at her, often scrutinizingly, and thought: "Ah, if

she were but well, what a sweet young wife she might make! I wish Eben

could have had such a wife! How much better it would have been for him

than having me!" She began now to go oftener with her husband to visit

Rachel. Closely, but with no sinister motive, no trace of ill-feeling,

she listened to all which they said. She observed the peculiar

gentleness with which the doctor spoke, and the docility with which

Rachel listened; and she said to herself: "That is quite unlike Eben's

manner to me, or mine to him. I wonder if that is not more nearly the

way it ought to be between husbands and wives. The wife ought to look

up to her husband as a little child does." Now, much as Hetty loved Dr.

Eben, passionately as her whole life centred around him, there had never

been such a feeling as this: they were the heartiest of comrades, but

each life was on a plane of absolute independence. Hetty pondered much

on this.