Hetty's Strange History Part 21

"I know I have lived, acted, told a lie, Eben. Don't taunt me with it.

How can you, if you really believe all I have told you of the reasons which led me to it?"

"My Hetty," said Dr. Eben, "I don't taunt you with it. I do believe all you have told me. I do know that you did it for love of me, monstrous though it sounds to say so. But when you refuse now to do the only thing which seems to me possible to be done to repair the mistake, and say your reason for not doing it is that it would be a lie, how can I help pointing back to the long ten years' lie you have lived, acted, told? If your love for me bore you up through that lie, it can bear you up through this."

"Shall we never go home, Eben?" asked Hetty sadly.

"To Welbury? to New England? never!" replied her husband with a terrible emphasis. "Never will I take you there to draw down upon our heads all the intolerable shame, and gossiping talk which would follow. I tell you, Hetty, you are dead! I am shielding your name, the name of my dead wife! You don't seem to comprehend in the least that you have been dead for ten years. You talk as if it would be nothing more to explain your reappearance than if you had been away somewhere for a visit longer than you intended."

The longer they discussed the subject, the more vehement Dr. Eben grew, and the feebler grew Hetty's opposition. She could not gainsay his arguments. She had nothing to oppose to them, except her wifely instinct that the old bond and ceremony were by implication desecrated in a.s.suming a second: "But what right have I to fall back on that old bond," thought poor Hetty, wringing her hands as the burden of her long, sad ten years' mistake weighed upon her.

Not until Hetty had yielded this point was there any real joy between her and her husband. As soon as it was yielded, his happiness began to grow and increase, like a plant in spring-time.

"Now you are mine again! Now we will be happy! Life and the world are before us!" he exclaimed.

"But where shall we live, Eben?" asked the practical Hetty.

"Live! live!" he cried, like a boy; "live anywhere, so that we live together!"

"There is always plenty to do, everywhere," said Hetty, reflectively: "we should not have to be idle."

Dr. Eben looked at her with mingled admiration and anger.

"Hetty!" he exclaimed, "I wish you'd leave off 'doing,' for a while. All our misery came of that. At any rate, don't ever try to 'do' any thing for me again as long as you live! I'll look out for my own happiness, the rest of the time, if you please."

His healing had begun when he could make an affectionate jest, like this; but healing would come far slower to Hetty than to him. Complete healing could perhaps never come. Remorse could never wholly be banished from her heart.

When it had once been settled that the marriage should take place, there seemed no reason for deferring it; no reason, except that Father Antoine's carnations were for some cause or other, not yet in full bloom, and both he and Marie were much discontented at their tardiness.

However, the weather grew suddenly hot, with sharp showers in the afternoons, and both the carnations and the Ayrshire roses flowered out by scores every morning, until even Marie was satisfied there would be enough. There was no tint of Ayrshire rose which could not be found in Father Antoine's garden,--white, pink, deep red, purple: the bushes grew like trees, and made almost a thicket, along the western boundary of the garden. Early on the morning of Hetty's wedding, Marie carried heaped basketfuls of these roses, into the chapel, and covered the altar with them. Pierre Michaud, now a fine stalwart fellow of twenty-one, just married to that little sister of Jean Cochot, about whom he had once told so big a lie, had begged for the privilege of adorning the rest of the chapel. For two days, he and Jean, his brother-in-law, had worked in the forests, cutting down young trees of fir, balsam, and dogwood. The balsams were full of small cones of a brilliant purple color; and the dogwoods were waving with showy white flowers. Pierre set each tree in a box of moist earth, so that it looked as thriving and fresh as it had done in the forest; first, a fir, and then a dogwood, all the way from the door to the altar, reached the gay and fragrant wall. Great ma.s.ses of Linnea vines, in full bloom, hung on the walls, and big vases of Father Antoine's carnations stood in the niches, with the wax saints.

The delicate odor of the roses, the Linnea blossoms, and carnations, blended with the spicy scent of the firs, and made a fragrance as strong as if it had been distilled from centuries of summer. The villagers had been told by Father Antoine, that this stranger who was to marry their good "Tantibba," was one who had known and loved her for twenty years, and who had been seeking her vainly all these years that she had lived in St. Mary's. The tale struck a warm chord in the b.r.e.a.s.t.s of the affectionate and enthusiastic people. The whole village was in great joy, both for love of "Tantibba," and for the love of romance, so natural to the French heart. Every one who had a flower in blossom picked it, or brought the plant to place in the chapel. Every man, woman, and child in the town, dressed as for a _fete_, was in the chapel, and praying for "Tantibba," long before the hour for the ceremony. When Eben and Hetty entered the door, the fragrance, the waving flowers, the murmuring crowd, unnerved Hetty. She had not been prepared for this.

"Oh, Eben!" she whispered, and, halting for a moment, clung tighter to his arm. He turned a look of affectionate pride upon her, and, pressing her hand, led her on. Father Antoine's face glowed with loving satisfaction as he p.r.o.nounced the words so solemn to him, so significant to them. As for Marie, she could hardly keep quiet on her knees: her silver necklace fairly rattled on her shoulders with her excitement.

"Ah, but she looks like an angel! may the saints keep her," she muttered; "but what will comfort M'sieur Antoine for the loss of her, when she is gone?"

After the ceremony was over, all the people walked with the bride and bridegroom to the inn, where the diligence was waiting in which they were to begin their journey; the same old vehicle in which Hetty had come ten years before alone to St. Mary's, and Doctor Eben had come a few weeks ago alone to St. Mary's, "not knowing the things which should befall him there."

It was an incongruous old vehicle for a wedding journey; and the flowers at the ancient horses' heads, and the knots of green at the cracked windows, would have made one laugh who had no interest in the meaning of the decorations. But it was the only four-wheeled vehicle in St. Mary's, and to these simple villagers' way of thinking, there was nothing unbecoming in Tantibba's going away in it with her husband.

"Farewell to thee! Farewell to thee! The saints keep thee, Bo Tantibba and thy husband! and thy husband!" rose from scores of voices as the diligence moved slowly away.

Dr. Macgowan, who had somewhat reluctantly persuaded himself to be present at the wedding, and had walked stiffly in the merry procession from the chapel to the inn, stood on the inn steps, and raised his hat in a dignified manner for a second. Father Antoine stood bareheaded by his side, waving a large white handkerchief, and trying to think only of Hetty's happiness, not at all of his own and the village's loss. As the shouts of the people continued to ring on the air, Dr. Macgowan turned slowly to Father Antoine.

"Most extraordinary scene!" he said, "'pon my word, most extraordinary scene; never could happen in England, sir, never." "Which is perfectly true; worse luck for England," Father Antoine might have replied; but did not. A few of the younger men and maidens ran for a short distance by the side of the diligence, and threw flowers into the windows.

"Thou wilt return! thou wilt return!" they cried. "Say thou wilt return!"

"Yes, G.o.d willing, I will return," answered Hetty, bending to the right and to the left, taking loving farewell looks of them all. "We will surely return." And as the last face disappeared from sight, and the last merry voice died away, she turned to her husband, and, laying her hand in his, said, "Why not, Eben? Will not that be our best home, our best happiness, to come back and live and die among these simple people?"

"Yes," answered Dr. Eben, "it will. Tantibba, we will come back."

And now is told all that I have to tell of the Strange History of Eben and Hetty Williams. If there be any who find the history incredible, I have for such a few words more.

First: I myself have seen, in the old graveyard at Welbury, the "beautiful and high monument of marble," of which Father Antoine spoke to Dr. Macgowan. It bears the following inscription:

"Sacred to the Memory of HENRIETTA GUNN, Beloved Wife of Dr. Ebenezer Williams, Who was drowned in Welbury Lake."

The dates, which I have my own reasons for not giving, come below; and also a verse of the Bible, which I will not quote.

Second: I myself was in Welbury when there was brought to the town by some traveller a copy of a Canadian newspaper, in which, among the marriages, appeared this one:

"In the parish of St. Mary's, Canada, W., by Rev. Antoine Ladeau, Mrs. Hibba Smailli to Dr. Ebenezer Williams."

The condition of Welbury, when this piece of news was fairly in circulation in the town, could be compared to nothing but the buzz of a bee hive at swarming time. A letter which was received by the Littles, a few days later, from Dr. Williams himself, did not at first allay the buzzing. He wrote, simply: "You will be much surprised at the slip which I enclose" (it was the newspaper announcement of his marriage). "You can hardly be more surprised than I am myself; but the lady is one whom I knew and loved a great many years ago. We are going abroad, and shall probably remain there for some years. When I shall see Welbury again is very uncertain."

Thirdly: Since neither of these facts proves my "Strange History" true, I add one more.

I know Hetty Williams.

_Messrs. Roberts Brothers' Publications._

RAMONA: A Story.

By HELEN JACKSON (H. H.).

_The Atlantic Monthly_ says of the author that she is "a Murillo in literature," and that the story "is one of the most artistic creations of American literature." Says a lady: "To me it is the most distinctive piece of work we have had in this country since 'Uncle Tom's Cabin,' and its exquisite finish of style is beyond that cla.s.sic." "The book is truly an American novel," says the _Boston Advertiser_. "Ramona is one of the most charming creations of modern fiction," says Charles D.

Warner. "The romance of the story is irresistibly fascinating," says _The Independent_.

"The best novel written by a woman since George Eliot died, as it seems to me, is Mrs. Jackson's 'Ramona.' What action is there! What motion!

How _entrainant_ it is! It carries us along as if mounted on a swift horse's back, from beginning to end, and it is only when we return for a second reading that we can appreciate the fine handling of the characters, and especially the Spanish mother, drawn with a stroke as keen and firm as that which portrayed George Eliot's 'Dorothea.'"--_T.

W. Higginson._

Unsolicited tribute of a stranger, a lady in Wisconsin:--

"I beg leave to thank you with an intense heartiness for your public espousal of the cause of the Indian. In your 'Century of Dishonor' you showed to the country its own disgrace. In 'Ramona' you have dealt most tenderly with the Indians as men and women. You have shown that their stoicism is not indifference, that their squalor is not always of their own choosing. You have shown the tender grandeur of their love, the endurance of their constancy. While, by 'Ramona,' you have made your name immortal, you have done something which is far greater. You are but one: they are many. You have helped those who cannot help themselves. As a novel, 'Ramona' must stand beside 'Romola,' both as regards literary excellence and the portrayal of life's deepest, most vital, most solemn interests. I think nothing in literature since Goldsmith's 'Vicar of Wakefield' equals your description of the flight of Ramona and Alessandro. Such delicate pathos and tender joy, such pure conception of life's realities, and such loftiness of self-abnegating love! How much richer and happier the world is with 'Ramona' in it!"

A KEY TO "RAMONA."

A Century of Dishonor.

A Sketch of the United States Government's Dealings with some of the Indian Tribes.

By Helen Jackson (H. H.)