Hetty's Strange History Part 11

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 embarra.s.sed 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 embarra.s.sed 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 embarra.s.sment 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!" e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed 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.