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Updated: May 27, 2025
"Nonsense! she belongs to some of the Orders." Very emphatically would he have said this, if it had chanced to be on one of the evenings when Father Antoine was walking by Hetty's side. Father Antoine knew her custom of lingering at the great spring, and sometimes walked down there at sunset to meet her, to observe her talk with the villagers, and to walk home with her later.
Rowe-Martin departed, much to Hetty's secret relief, but not before she had increased the girl's burthens by introducing her into a cold-nosed cosmopolitan set from which there were but three ways of escape. She refused to marry one of them, denied another the privilege of making love to her, and declined to play auction bridge with all of them.
And the doctor would spring to his feet, and run hastily, saying: "You see I am under orders too: my doctor is waiting outside." Under the seat, side by side with the doctor's medicine case, always went a hamper which Hetty called "the other medicine case;" and far the more important it was of the two. Many a poor patient got well by help of Hetty's soups and jellies and good bread.
It might have been said of him that he was always on the lookout for the things that most people were unlikely to notice: the trivial things that really were important. He not only took in his father's amiable blunder, but caught the curious expression in Hetty's dark blue eyes, and the sharp almost inaudible catch of her breath. The gleam was gone in an instant, but it made an impression on him.
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.
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.
Eben stopped short: his face grew stern. "Hetty," he said, "do you mean to tell me that you have put my very name away from you all these years?" Tears came to Hetty's eyes. "Why, Eben," she replied, "what else could I do? It would have been absurd to keep my name. Any day it might have been recognized. Don't you see?" "Yes, I see," answered Dr. Eben, bitterly.
Even long after people had ceased to talk about Hetty's death, or to remember it unless they saw the doctor, the first sight of his tall bowed figure recalled it all; and again and again, as he passed men on the street, they turned and said to each other, with a sad shake of the head: "He's never got over it." "No, nor ever will."
Eben sauntered out listlessly. The sound of merry voices in the Square repelled him; unlike Hetty, he shrank from strange faces: turning in the direction where it seemed stillest, he walked slowly towards the woods. He looked curiously at the little red chapel, and at Father Antoine's cottage, now literally imbedded in flowers. Then he paused before Hetty's tiny house.
Doctor Eben did not know that he was in many small ways an unloverlike 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.
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