Hetty's Strange History Part 5

"Yes," said Dr. Eben.

"Did they all die? Didn't you cure one?" continued Hetty, inexorably.

"I have known persons in such a condition to recover," said Dr. Eben, with dignity; "but not by the help of medicine so much as by an entire change of conditions."

"What do you mean by conditions?" said Hetty, never having heard, in her simple and healthful life, of anybody's needing what is called a "change of scene." Dr. Eben smiled again, and, as he smiled, he noted with an involuntary professional delight the clear, fine skin, the firm flesh, the l.u.s.trous eye, the steady poise of every muscle in this woman, who was catechising him, with so evident a doubt as to his skill and information.

"I hardly think, Miss Gunn," he went on, "that I could make you understand, in your superb health, just all I mean by change of conditions. It means change of food, air, surroundings; every thing in short, which addresses itself to the senses. It means an entire new set of nerve impressions."

"Sally isn't in the least nervous," broke in Hetty. "She's always as quiet as a mouse."

"You mean that she isn't in the least fidgety," replied the doctor.

"That is quite another thing. Some of the most nervous people I know have absolute quiet of manner. Mrs. Little's nervous system has been for several years under a terrible strain. When I was first called to her, I thought her trouble and suffering would kill her; and I didn't think it would take so long. But it is that which is killing her now."

Hetty was not listening: she was thinking very perplexedly of what the doctor had said a few moments before; interrupting him now, she said, "Would it do Sally good to take her to another place? that is easily done." Dr. Eben hesitated.

"I think sea-air might help her; but I am not sure," he replied.

"Would you go with us?" asked Hetty. "She wouldn't go without you." The doctor hesitated again. He looked into Hetty's eyes: they were fixed on his as steadily, as unembarra.s.sedly, as if he and Hetty had been comrades for years. "What a woman she is," he thought to himself, "to coolly ask me to become their travelling physician, when for six weeks I have been coming to the house every day, and she would not even speak to me!"

"I am not sure that I could, Miss Gunn," he replied. Hetty's face changed. A look of distress stamped every feature.

"Oh, Dr. Williams, do!" she exclaimed. "Sally would never go without you; and she will die, you say, unless she has change." Then hesitating, and turning very red, Hetty stammered, "I can pay you any thing--which would be necessary to compensate you: we have money enough." Dr. Eben bowed, and answered with some asperity:

"The patients that I had hesitancy about leaving are patients who pay me nothing. It is not in the least a question of money, Miss Gunn."

"Forgive me," exclaimed Hetty, "I did not know--I thought--"

"Your thought was a perfectly natural one, Miss Gunn," interrupted the doctor, pitying her confusion. "I have never had need to make my profession a source of income: I have no ambition to be rich; and, as I am alone in the world, I can afford to do what many other physicians could not."

"When can you tell if you could go?" continued Hetty, not apparently hearing what the doctor had said.

"She only thinks of me as she would of a chair or a carriage which would make her friend more comfortable," thought the doctor; "and why should she think of me in any other way," he added, impatient with himself for the selfish thought.

"To-morrow," said he, curtly. "If I can go, I will; and there is no time to be lost."

Hetty nodded her head, but did not speak another word: she was too near crying; and to have cried in the presence of Dr. Eben Williams would have mortified Hetty to the core.

"Oh, to think," she said to herself, "that, after all, I should have to be under such obligations to that man! But it is all for Sally's sake, poor dear child. How good he is to her! If he were anybody else, I should like him with all my heart."

The next morning, as Dr. Williams walked slowly up the avenue, he saw Hetty standing in the doorway, shading her eyes with her hand and looking towards him. The morning sun shone full upon her, and made glints of golden light here and there in her thick brown curls. Hetty had worn her hair in the same style for fifteen years; short, cl.u.s.tering curls close to her head on either side, and a great ma.s.s of curls falling over a comb at the back. If Hetty had a vanity it was of her hair; and it was a vanity one was forced to forgive,--it had such excellent reason for being. The picture which she made in the doorway, at this moment, Dr. Eben never forgot: a strange pleasure thrilled through him at the sight. As he drew near, she ran down the steps towards him; ran down with no more thought or consciousness of the appearance of welcoming him, than if she had been a child of seven: she was impatient to know whether Sally could go to the sea-sh.o.r.e. This man who approached held the decision in his hands; and he was, at that moment, no more to Hetty than any messenger bringing word which she was eager to hear. But Dr. Eben would have been more or less than man, could he have seen, unmoved, the swift motion, the outstretched hands, the eager eyes, the bright cheeks, the sunlit hair, of the beautiful woman who ran to meet him.

"Well?" was all that Hetty said, as, panting for want of breath, she turned as shortly as a wild creature turns, and began to walk by Dr.

Eben's side. He forgot, for the instant, all the old antagonisms; he forgot that, until yesterday, he had never spoken with Hetty Gunn; and, meeting her eager gaze with one about as eager, he said in a familiar tone:

"Yes; well! I am going."

Hetty stopped short, and, looking up at him, exclaimed:

"Oh, I am so glad!"

The words were simple enough, but the tone made them electric. The doctor felt the blood mounting in his face, under the unconscious look of this middle-aged child. She did not perceive his expression. She did not perceive any thing, except, the fact that Sally's doctor would help her take Sally away, and save Sally's life. She continued:

"We'll take her to 'The Runs.' Did you ever go there, doctor? It is only a day's journey from here, the loveliest little sea-side place I ever saw. It isn't like the big sea-side places with their naked rocks, and their great, cruel, thundering beaches. I hate those. They make me sad and desperate. I know Sally wouldn't like them. But this little place is as sweet and quiet as a lake; and yet it is the sea. It is hugged in between two tongues of land, and there are ever so many little threads of the sea, running way up into the meadows, which are thick with high strong gra.s.s, so different from all the gra.s.ses we have here. I buy salt hay from there every year, and the cattle like it, just a little of it, as well as we like a bit of broiled bacon for breakfast. There is a nice bit of beach, too,--real beach; but there are trees on it, and it looks friendly: not as if it were just made on purpose for wrecks to drift up on, like the big beaches: oh, but I hate a great, long sea-beach! There is a farmhouse there, not two minutes' walk from this beach, where they always take summer boarders. In July it wouldn't be pleasant, because it is crowded; but now it will be empty, and we can have it all to ourselves. There is a dear, old, retired, sea captain there, too, who takes people out in such a nice sail-boat. I shall keep Sally and the baby out on the water all day long. I am afraid you will find it very dull, Dr. Williams. Do you like the sea? Of course you will stay with us all the time. I don't mean in the least, that you are to come only once a day to see Sally, as you do here. You will be our guest, you understand. I dare say you will do more to cure Sally than all the sea-air and all the medicine put together. She has had so few people to love in this world, poor girl, that those she does love are very dear to her. She is more grateful to you than to anybody else in the world."

"Except you, Miss Gunn," replied the doctor, earnestly. "You have done for her far more than I ever could. I could show only a personal sympathy; but you have added to the personal sympathy material aid."

"Yes, yes, I know," said Hetty, absently. She did not wish to hear any thing said about this. "We can set out to-morrow, if you can be ready,"

she continued. "I shall have Caesar drive the horses over next week. They can't very well be spared this week. The worst thing is, we have to set out so early in the morning, and Sally is always so much weaker then.

Could you"--Hetty hesitated, and fairly stammered in her embarra.s.sment.

"Couldn't you come over here to-night and sleep, so as to be here when she first wakes up? You might do something to help her." Before Hetty had finished her sentence, her face was crimson. Dr. Eben's was full of a humorous amus.e.m.e.nt. Already, in twenty-four hours, had it come to this, that Hetty was urging that popinjay Dr. Ebenezer Williams, to come and sleep under her roof? The twinkle in his face showed her plainly what he was thinking. He began to reply:

"You are very kind, Miss Gunn"--Hetty interrupted him:

"No, I am not at all kind, Dr. Williams; and I see you are laughing at me, because I've had to speak to you, after all, as if I liked you. But, of course, you understand that it is all for Sally's sake. If I were to be ill myself, I should have Dr. Tuthill," said Hetty, in a tone meant to be very resolute and dignified, but only succeeding in being comical.

The doctor bowed ceremoniously, replying:

"I will be as frank as you are, Miss Gunn. As you say, 'of course' I understand that any apparent welcome which you extend to me is entirely for Mrs. Little's sake; and that it is sorely against your will that you have been obliged to speak to me; and that it is solely in my capacity as physician that I am asked to sleep under your roof to-night; and I beg your pardon for saying that I accept the invitation in that capacity, and no other, solely because I believe it will be for the interest of my patient that I do so. Good morning, Miss Gunn," and, as at that moment they reached the house, Dr. Eben bowed again as ceremoniously as before, sprang up the piazza steps, and ran up the staircase, two steps at a time, to Sally's room. Hetty stood still in the doorway: she felt herself discomfited. She was half angry, half amused. She did not like what the doctor had said; but she admitted to herself that it was precisely what she would have said in his place.

"I don't blame him," she thought, "I don't blame him a bit; but, it is horridly disagreeable. I don't see how we're ever to get on; and it is so provoking, for, if he were anybody else, we'd be real good friends.

He isn't in the least what I thought he was. I hope he won't come over before tea. It would be awkward enough. But then, he's got to take all his meals with us at 'The Runs.' Oh, dear!" and Hetty went about her preparations for the journey, with feelings by no means of unalloyed pleasure.

No danger of Dr. Eben's coming before tea. It was very late when he appeared, valise in hand, and said in a formal tone to Hetty, who met him at the door, in fact had been nervously watching for him for four whole hours:

"I am very sorry to see you still up, Miss Gunn. I ought to have recollected to tell you that I should not be here until late: I have been saying good-by to my patients. Will you have the kindness to let me be shown to my room?" and like a very courteous traveller, awaiting a landlady's pleasure, he stood at foot of the stairs.

With some confusion of manner, and in a constrained tone, unlike her usual cheery voice, Hetty replied:

"The next door to Sally's, doctor." She wished to say something more, but she could not think of a word.

"What a fool I am!" she mentally e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed, as the doctor, with a hasty "good-night," entered his room. "What a fool I am to let him make me so uncomfortable. I don't see what it is. I wish I hadn't asked him to go."

"That woman's a jewel!" the doctor was saying to himself the other side of the door: "she is as honest as a man could be. I didn't know there could be any thing so honest in shape of a woman under fifty: she doesn't look a day over twenty-five; but, they say she's nearly forty; it's the strangest thing in life she's never married. I'll wager any thing, she's wishing this minute I was in Guinea; but she'll put it through bravely for sake of Sally, as she calls her, and I'll keep out of her way all I can. If it weren't for the confounded notion she's taken up against me, I'd like to know her. She's a woman a man could make a friend of, I do believe," and Dr. Eben jumped into bed, and was fast asleep in five minutes, and dreamed that Hetty came towards him, dressed like an Indian, with her brown curls stuck full of painted porcupine quills, and a tomahawk brandished in her hand.

VI.

The journey was a hard one, though so short. How many times an hour did Hetty bless the good fortune which had given them Dr. Williams for an escort! Sally had been so much excited and pleased at the prospect of the trip to the sea-sh.o.r.e, that she had seemed in the outset far stronger than she really was. Before mid-day a reaction had set in, and she had grown so weak that the doctor was evidently alarmed. The baby disturbed, and frightened by the noise and jar, had wailed almost incessantly; and Hetty was more nearly at her wits' end than she had ever been in her life. It was piteous to see her,--usually so brisk, so authoritative, so unhesitating,--looking helplessly into the face of the doctor, and saying:

"Oh, what shall we do! what shall we do!" At last, the weary day came to an end; and when Hetty saw her two sufferers quietly asleep in snowy beds, in a great airy room, with a blazing log-fire on the hearth, she drew a long breath, and said to the doctor:

"This is the most awful day I ever lived through."

Dr. Eben smiled. "You have had a life singularly free from troubles, Miss Gunn."