Eben. He was a handsomer man at
forty-one than he had been at thirty-three: the eight years had left no
other trace upon him. Face, figure, step, all were as full of youth and
vigor as upon the day when Hetty first met him walking down the
pine-shaded road. The precise moment when the first pang of
consciousness of the discrepancy between her husband's looks and her own
entered Hetty's mind would be hard to determine. It began probably in
some thoughtless jest of her own, or even of his; for, in his absolute
loyalty of love, his unquestioning and long-established acceptance of
their relation as a perfect one, it would never have crossed Doctor
Eben's mind that Hetty could possibly care whether she looked older or
younger than he. He never thought about her age at all: in fact, he
could not have told either her age or his own with exactness; he was
curiously forgetful of such matters. He did not see the wrinkles around
her eyes. He did not know that her skin was weather-beaten, her figure
less graceful, her hair fast turning gray. To him she was simply
"Hetty:" the word meant as it always had meant, fulness of love,
delight, life. Doctor Eben was a man of that fine fibre of organic
loyalty, to which there is not possible, even a temptation to forsake or
remove from its object. Men having this kind of uprightness and loyalty,
rarely are much given to words or demonstrations of affection. To them
love takes its place, side by side with the common air, the course of
the sun, the succession of days and nights, and all other unquestioned
and unalterable things in the world. To suggest to such a man the
possibility of lessening in his allegiance to a wife, is like proposing
to him to overthrow the whole course of nature. He simply cannot
conceive of such a thing; and he has no tolerance for it. He is by the
very virtue of his organic structure incapable of charity for men who
sin in that way. There are not many such men, but the type exists; and
well may any woman felicitate herself to whom it is given to rest her
life on such sure foundations. If there be some lack of the daily
manifestations of tenderness, the ready word, the ever-present caress,
she may recollect that these are often the first fruits of a passion
whose early way-side harvest will be scorched and shrivelled as soon as
the sun is high; while the seed which bringeth forth a hundred, nay a
thousand fold, of true grain, sleeps in long silence, and grows up
noise