Hetty's Strange History Part 4

"Oh, they don't?" said Hetty, in a sarcastic tone; "well then I'd like to ask them what they mean by treating her as they do. I'd like to ask them what the Lord does to sinners that repent. He says they are to come and be with him in Heaven, I believe; and I'd like to know whether after He's taken them to Heaven, they're going to be reminded every minute of all the sins they've repented of. Oh, but I've no patience with it!"

As Hetty was walking slowly back to the house after this injudicious outburst, she met Dr. Eben Williams coming down the avenue. Her first impulse was to plunge into the shrubbery, on the right hand or the left, and escape him. The baby was now four weeks old, and yet Hetty had never till to-day seen the doctor. It had been a very sore point between her and Sally, that Sally would persist in having this young Dr. Williams from the "Corners," instead of old Dr. Tuthill, who had been the family doctor at "Gunn's" for nearly fifty years. It was the only quarrel that Hetty and Sally had ever had; and it came near being a very serious one: but Hetty suddenly recollected herself, and exclaiming:

"Why bless me, Sally, I haven't any right to decide what doctor you're to have when you're sick; I'll never say another word about it; only you needn't expect me ever to speak to that Eben Williams; I never expected to see him under my roof," she dropped the subject and never alluded to it again.

Her first impulse, as we said, when she saw the obnoxious doctor coming towards her now, was to fly; her second one of anger with herself for the first.

"I'm on my own ground," she thought with some of the old Squire's honest pride stirring her veins, "I think I will not run away from the popinjay."

It was hard to know just how such a dislike to Dr. Eben Williams had grown up in Hetty's friendly heart. He had come some four years before to practise medicine at Lonway Four Corners. His bright and cordial face, his social manner, his superior education, readiness, and resource, had quickly won away many patients from old Dr. Tuthill, who still drove about the country as he had driven for half a century, with a ponderous black leather case full of calomel and jalap swung under his sulky. A few old families, the Gunns among the number, adhered faithfully to the old doctor, and became bitter partisans against the new one.

"Let him stick to the Corners: if they like him there, they're welcome to him. He needn't be trying to get all Welbury besides," they said angrily. "Welbury's done very well for a doctor, these good many years: since before Eben Williams was born, for that matter;" and words ran high in the warfare. Squire Gunn was one of the most violent of Dr.

Williams's opposers; and when, a few days before his death, old Dr.

Tuthill had timidly suggested that it might be well to have a consultation, the Squire broke out with:

"Not that d.a.m.ned Eben Williams then. I won't have that d.a.m.ned rascal set foot in this house. You're a fool, Tuthill, to let that young upstart get all your practice as he's a doing."

The old man smiled sadly. He did not in the least share his friends'

hostility to the handsome, young, and energetic physician who was so plainly soon to be his successor in the county.

"Ah, Squire!" he said, "you forget how old you and I are. It is nearly my time to pa.s.s on, and make room for a younger man. Eben's a good doctor. I'd rather he'd have the circuit here than anybody I know."

"d.a.m.ned interloper! let him wait till you're dead," growled the Squire.

"He shan't have a hand in finishing me off at any rate. I don't want any of their new-fangled notions." And the Squire died as he had lived, on the old plan, with the old doctor.

When Eben Williams saw that he was about to meet Hetty Gunn, his emotions were hardly less conflicting than hers. He, too, would have liked to escape the meeting, for he had understood clearly that his presence in her house was most unwelcome to her. But he, too, had his own pride, as distinct and as strong as hers, and at the very moment that Hetty was saying to herself, "I'm on my own ground: I won't run away from the popinjay," Dr. Eben was thinking in his heart, "What a fool I am to care a straw about meeting her! I'm about my own business, and she is an obstinate simpleton."

The expressions of their faces as they met, and pa.s.sed, with cold bows, were truly comical; each so thoroughly conscious of the other's antagonism, and endeavoring to look unconscious of it.

"By Jove, she's got a charming face, if she didn't look so obstinate,"

said Dr. Eben to himself, as he hurried on.

"He looked at me as he'd have looked at a snake," thought Hetty. "I guess he's an honest fellow after all. He's got a handsome beard of his own."

When she entered Sally's room, Sally exclaimed, "Oh, Hetty! didn't you meet the doctor?"

"Yes," said Hetty, coolly. Sally looked wistfully at her for a few seconds. "Oh, Hetty!" she said, "I thought, perhaps, if you saw him, you'd like him better."

"I never said any thing against his looks, did I?" laughed Hetty. "He is a very handsome man: he is the handsomest man I ever saw, if that's all!"

"But it isn't all; it isn't any thing!" exclaimed Sally. "If he were an ugly dwarf, I should love him just as well. Oh, Hetty, if you only knew how good he was to me, when I was sick seven years ago! I should have died if it hadn't been for him. There wasn't a woman at the Corners that ever came near me, except Mrs. Patrick, the Irish woman I boarded with; and, he used to stop and make broth for me, on my stove, with his own hands, and sit and hold the baby on his knees, and talk to me so beautifully about her. He just kept me alive."

Hetty's face flushed. Sally had never told her so much before; she could not help a glow at her heart, at the picture of the handsome young doctor sitting with the poor, outcast baby on his knees, and comforting the poor outcast mother. But Hetty was a Gunn; and, as Dr. Eben had said, obstinate. She could not forget her partisanship for Dr. Tuthill.

She was even all the angrier with the young doctor for being so clever, so kind, so skilful, so handsome, and so pleasant, that everybody wanted him.

"I dare say," she replied. "He'd do anything to curry favor. He's been determined from the first to get all the practice of the whole county, and I suppose as soon as Doctor Tuthill dies, he'll have it; and he may as well, for I don't doubt he's a good doctor: but I think it was a mean underhand thing to come in here and try to cut another man out."

"Why, Hetty!" remonstrated Sally, in a tone of unusual vehemence for her. "Why, Hetty; there wasn't any doctor at the Corners: he didn't cut anybody out there; and I'm sure they needed a doctor bad enough; and it was his native place too."

"Oh! that's all very well to say," answered Hetty. "It's a likely story, isn't it, that anybody'd settle in Lonway Four Corners, just for the little practice there is in that handful of a village. He knew very well he'd get Welbury, and Springton, and all the county."

"But, Hetty," persisted Sally. "He wasn't to blame, if people in these towns sent for him, hearing how good he was. Indeed, indeed, Hetty, he don't care for the money. He wouldn't take a cent from Jim, and he never does from poor people. I've heard him say a dozen times, that he should have come home to live on the old farm, even if they hadn't needed a doctor there: he loves the country so, he can't be happy in the city; and he loves every stick and stone of the old farm."

"Humph!" said Hetty. "He looks like a country fellow, doesn't he, with his fine clothes, and his gauntlet gloves! Don't tell me! I say he is a popinjay, with all his learning. Now don't talk any more about it, little woman, for your cheeks are getting too red," and Hetty took up the baby, and began to toss him and talk to him.

Hetty knew in her heart that she was unjust. More than she would have owned to herself, and still more than she would have acknowledged to Sally, she had admired Eben Williams's honest, straightforward, warm-hearted face. But she preferred to dislike Eben Williams: her father had disliked him, and had said he should never set foot in the house; and Hetty felt a certain sort of filial obligation to keep up the animosity.

But Nature had other plans for Hetty. In fact if one were disposed to be superst.i.tious, one might well have said that fate itself had determined to thwart Hetty's resolution of hostility.

V.

Sally did not recover rapidly from her illness: her long mental suffering had told upon her vitality, and left her unprepared for any strain. The little baby also languished, sharing its mother's depressed condition. Day after day, Doctor Eben came to the house. His quick step sounded in the hall and on the stairs; his voice rang cheery, whenever the door of Sally's room stood open. Hetty found herself more and more conscious of his presence: each day she felt a half guilty desire to see him again; she caught herself watching for his knock, listening for his step; she even went so far as to wonder in a half impatient way why he never sent for her, to give her the directions about Sally, instead of giving them to the nurse. She little dreamed that Doctor Eben was as anxious to avoid seeing her, as she had been to avoid seeing him. He had a strangely resentful feeling towards Hetty, as if she were a personal friend who had been treacherous to him. She was the only one of all the partisans of Doctor Tuthill that he could not sympathize with and heartily forgive. He would have found it very hard to explain why he thus singled out Hetty, but he had done so from the outset. Strange forerunning instinct of love, which uttered its prophecy in an unknown tongue in an alien country! There came a day before long, when Doctor Eben and Hetty were forced to forget all their prejudices, and to come together on a common ground, where no antagonisms could exist.

Sally and the baby were both very ill. Hetty, in her inexperience of illness, had not realized how serious a symptom Sally's long continued prostration was. In her own busy and active life, the days flew by almost uncounted: she was out early and late, walking or riding over the farm; and when she came back to Sally's room, and found her always with the same placid smile, and fair untroubled face, and heard always the same patient reply, "Very comfortable, thank you, dear Hetty," it never occurred to her that any thing was wrong. It seemed strange to her that the baby was so still, that he neither cried nor laughed like other babies; and it seemed to her very hard for Sally to have to be shut up in the house so long: but this was all; she was totally unprepared for any thought of danger, and the shock was terrible to her, when the thought came. It was on a sunny day in May, one of those incredible summer days which New England sometimes flashes out like frost-set jewels in her icy spring. Hetty had listened, as usual, to hear the Doctor leave Sally's room: she was more than usually impatient to have him go, for she was waiting to take in to Sally a big basket of arbutus blossoms which old Caesar had gathered, and had brought to Hetty with a characteristic speech.

"Seems's if the Lord meant'em for baby's cheeks, don't it, Miss Hetty?

they're so rosy."

"Our poor little man's cheeks are not so pink yet," said Hetty, and as she looked at the pearly pink bells nestling in their green leaves, she sighed, and wished that the baby did not look so pale. "But he'll be all right as soon as we can get him out of doors in the June sunshine," she added, and turned from the dining-room into the hall, with the great basket of arbutus in her hand. As she turned, she gave a cry, and dropped her flowers: there sat Dr. Eben, in a big arm-chair, by the doorway. He sprang to pick up the flowers. Hetty looked at him without speaking. "I was waiting here to see you, Miss Gunn," he said, as he gave back the flowers. "I am very sorry to be obliged to speak to you,"--here Hetty's eyes twinkled, and a slight, almost imperceptible, but very comic grimace pa.s.sed over her face. She was thinking to herself, "Honest, that! I expect he is very sorry,"--"I am very sorry to have to speak to you about Mrs. Little," he continued; "but I think it is my duty to tell you that she is sinking very fast."

"What! Sally! what is the matter with her?" exclaimed Hetty. "Come right in here, doctor;" and she threw open the sitting-room door, and, leading him in, sank into the nearest chair, and said, like a little child:

"Oh, dear! what shall I do?"

Dr. Eben looked at her for a second, scrutinizingly.

This was not the sort of person he had expected to see in Miss Hetty Gunn. This was an impulsive, outspoken, loving woman, without a trace of any thing masculine about her, unless it were a certain something in the quality of her frankness, which was masculine rather than feminine; it was more purely objective than women's frankness is wont to be: this Dr.

Eben thought out later; at present, he only thought:

"Poor girl! I've got to hurt her sadly."

"You don't mean that Sally's going to die, do you?" said Hetty, in a clear, unflinching tone.

"I am afraid she will, Miss Gunn," replied Dr. Eben, "not immediately; perhaps not for some months: but there seems to be a general failure of all the vital forces. I cannot rouse her, body or soul."

"Nonsense!" said Hetty. "If rousing is all she wants, surely we can rouse her somehow. Isn't there any thing wrong with her anywhere?"

Dr. Eben smiled in spite of himself at this offhand, non-professional view of the case; but he answered, sadly:

"Not what you mean by any thing wrong; if there were, it would be easier to cure her."

Hetty knitted her brows, and looked at him in her turn, scrutinizingly.

"Have you had patients like her before?"