When he waked in the morning, his first thoughts were bewildered:
nothing in nature is so powerful in association as a perfume. A sound,
a sight, is feeble in comparison; the senses are ever alert, and the
mind is accustomed always to act promptly on their evidence. But a
subtle perfume, which has been associated with a person, a place, a
scene, can ever afterward arrest us; can take us unawares, and hold us
spell-bound, while both memory and knowledge are drugged by its charm.
Dr. Eben did not open his eyes. In an ecstasy of half consciousness he
murmured, "Hetty." As he stirred, his hand came in contact with the
withered flowers. Touch was more potent than smell. He roused, lifted
his head, saw the little blossoms now faded and gray lying near his
cheek; and saying, "Oh, I remember," sank back again into a few moments'
drowsy reverie.
The morning was clear and cool, one window of the doctor's room looked
east; the splendor of the sunrise shone in and illuminated the whole
place. While he was dressing, he found himself persistently thinking of
the strange name, "Tantibba." "It is odd how that name haunts me," he
thought. "I wish I could see it written: I haven't the least idea how it
is spelled. I wonder if she is an impostor. Her garden didn't look like
it." Presently he sauntered out: the morning stir was just beginning in
the village. The child to whom he had spoken at "Tantibba's" gate, the
night before, came up, driving the same flock of goats. The little
fellow, as he passed, pulled the ragged tassel of his cap in token of
recognition of the stranger who had accosted him. Without any definite
purpose, Dr. Eben followed slowly on, watching a pair of young kids, who
fell behind the flock, frolicking and half-fighting in antics so
grotesque that they looked more like gigantic grasshoppers than like
goats. Before he knew how far he had walked, he suddenly perceived that
he was very near "Tantibba's" house.
"I'll walk on and steal another handful of the lavender," he thought;
"and if the old woman's up, perhaps I'll get a sight of her. I'd like to
see what sort of a face answers to that outlandish name."
As the doctor leaned over the paling, and looked again at Hetty's
garden, he saw something which had escaped his notice before, and at
which he started again, and muttered--this time aloud, and with an
expression almost of terror,--"Good Heavens, if there isn't a
chrysanthemum bed too, exactly like ours! what does this mean?" Hetty
had little thought when she was laying out her garden, as nearly as
possible like the garden she had left behind her, that she was writing a
record which any eye but her own would note.
"I believe I'll go in and see this old French woman," he thought: "it is
such a strange thing that she should have just the same flowers Hetty
had. I don't believe she's an adventuress, after all."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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