Hetty's Strange History

by Helen Hunt Jackson

Dr. Eben was just going over to town for the letters. As he walked slowly down to the beach, he said to himself:

“Haying! By Jove!” and this was pretty much all he thought during the whole of the hour that he spent in rowing to and from the Safe Haven wharf. “Haying!” he ejaculated again, and again. “What a woman that is! I believe if we were all dead, she'd have just as keen an eye to that haying!”

By “we all” in that sentence of his soliloquy, Dr. Eben really meant “I.” He was beginning to be half aware of a personal unhappiness, because Hetty showed no more consciousness of his existence. Her few words this morning about returning home had produced startling results in his mind; like those a chemist sometimes sees in his crucible, when, on throwing in a single drop of some powerful agent, he discovers by its instantaneous and infallible test, the presence of things he had not suspected were there. Dr. Eben Williams clenched his hands as he paced up and down the beach. He did not wish to love Hetty Gunn. He did not approve of loving Hetty Gunn; but love her he did with the whole strength of his soul. In this one brief hour, he had become aware of it. What would be its result, in vain he tried to conjecture. One moment, he said to himself that it was not in Hetty's nature to love any man; the next moment, with a lover's inconsistency, he reproached himself for a thought so unjust to her: one moment, he rated himself soundly for his weakness, and told himself sternly that it was plain Hetty cared no more for him than she did for one of her farm laborers; the next moment, he fell into reverie full of a vague and hopeful recalling of all the kind and familiar things she had ever done or said. The sum and substance of his meditations was, however, that nothing should lead him to commit the folly of asking Hetty to marry him, unless her present manner toward him changed.

“I dare say she would laugh in my face,” thought he; “I don't know but that she would in any man's face who should ask her,” and, armed and panoplied in this resolution, Dr. Eben walked up to the spot where Hetty sat under one of the old Balm of Gilead trees sewing, with the baby in its cradle at her feet. It was still early morning: the Safe Haven spires shone in the sun, and the little fishing schooners were racing out to sea before the wind. This was one of the prettiest sights from the beach at “The Runs.” Every morning scores of little fishing vessels came down the river, shot past like arrows, and disappeared beyond the bar. At night they came home again slowly; sometimes with their sails cross-set, which made them look like great white butterflies skimming the water. Hetty never wearied of watching them: still pictures never wholly pleased her. The things in nature which had motion, evident aim, purpose, arrested her eye, and gave her delight.

“I haven't learned to sail a boat yet, after all,” she said regretfully, as the doctor came up. “Only see how lovely they are. I wish I could buy this whole place, and carry it home. I think we will all come here again next summer.”

“Not all,” said Dr. Eben; “I shall not be here with you.”

“No, I hope not,” replied Hetty, unconsciously. Dr. Eben laughed outright: her tone was so unaffectedly honest.

“Oh, you know what I mean,” exclaimed Hetty, “I mean, I hope Sally will not have to bring you as a physician. Of course, there is nothing to hinder your coming here at any time, if you like,” she added, in a kindly but indifferent tone.

“But I should not want to come alone,” said the doctor.

“No,” said Hetty, reflectively. “It would be dull, I shouldn't like it myself, to be here all alone. The sea is the loneliest of things in the universe, I think. The fields and the woods and the hills all look as if they had good fellowship with each other perpetually; but the great, blank, bare sea, looks for ever alone; and sometimes the waves seem to me to run up on the shore as fiercely as starved wolves leaping on prey!”