Hetty first entered the village of St. Mary's at sunset. The chapel bell
was ringing for the Angelus, and as the nondescript little vehicle, half
diligence half coach, crept through the sandy streets, Hetty, looking
eagerly out, saw men, women, and children falling on their knees by the
road-side. She recollected having noted this custom when she was in St.
Mary's before: then it had seemed to her senseless mummery; now it
seemed beautiful. Hetty had just come through dark places, in which she
had wanted help from God more than she had ever in her life wanted it;
and these evident signs of faith, of an established relation between
earth and heaven, fell most gratefully upon her aching heart. The
village of St. Mary's is a mere handful of houses, on a narrow stretch
of sandy plain, lying between two forests of firs. Many years ago,
hunters, finding in the depths of these forests springs of great
medicinal value, made a little clearing about them, and built there a
few rough shanties to which they might at any time resort for the
waters. Gradually, the fame of the waters was noised abroad, and drew
settlers to the spot. The clearing was widened; houses were built; a
village grew up; line after line, as a new street was needed, the
forests were cut down, but remained still a solid, dark-green wall and
background to the east and the west. On the outskirts of the village, in
the edge of the western forest, stood the Roman Catholic chapel,--a low
wooden building, painted red, and having a huge silver cross on the top.
At the moment of Hetty's arrival, a burial service was just about to
take place in this little chapel, and the procession was slowly
approaching: the priest walking in front, lifting up a high gilt
crucifix; a little white-robed acolyte carrying holy water in a silver
basin; a few Sisters of Charity with their long black gowns and flapping
white bonnets; behind these the weeping villagers, bearing the coffin on
a rude sort of litter. As Hetty saw this procession, she was seized with
an irresistible desire to join it. She was the only passenger in the
diligence, and the door was locked. She called to the driver, and at
last succeeded in making him hear, and also understand that she wished
to be set down immediately: she would walk on to the inn. She wished
first to go into the church. The driver was a good Catholic; very
seriously he said: "It is bad luck to say one's prayers while there is
going on the mass for the dead; there is another chapel which Madame
would find less sad at this hour. It is only a short distance farther
on."
But Hetty reiterated her request; and the driver, shrugging his
shoulders, and saying in an altered tone:
"As Madame pleases; it is all the same to me: nevertheless, it is bad
luck;" assisted her to alight.
The procession had just entered the church. Dim lights twinkled on the
altar, and a smell of incense filled the place. Hetty fell on her knees
with the rest, and prayed for those she had left behind her. Her prayer
was simple and short, repeated many times: "Oh God, make them happy!
make them happy!" When the mass was over, Hetty waited near the door,
and watched anxiously to see if the priest were the same whom her father
had known so well twenty years before. Yes, it was--no--could this be
Father Antoine? This fat, red-faced, jovial-looking old man? Father
Antoine had been young, slender and fair; but there was no mistaking
the calm and serious hazel eyes. It was Father Antoine, but how changed!
"If I have changed as much as that," thought Hetty, "he'll never believe
I am I; and I dare say I have. Dear me, what a frightful thing is this
old age!"
Hetty had resolved, in the outset, that she would take Father Antoine
into her confidence. She knew the sacredness of secrecy in which Roman
Catholic priests are accustomed to hold all confessions made to them.
She felt that her secret would be too heavy to bear unshared, and that
times might arise when she would need advice or help from one knowing
all the truth.
Early the next morning, she went to Father Antoine's house. The good old
man was at work in his garden. His little cottage was surrounded by beds
which were gay with flowers from June till November. Nothing was left in
bloom now, except asters and chrysanthemums: but there was no flower,
not even his July carnations, in which he took such pride, as in his
chrysanthemums. As he heard the little gate shut, he looked up; saw that
it was a stranger; and came forward to meet her, bearing in his hand
one great wine-colored chrysanthemum blossom, as large as a blush rose:
"Is it to see me, daughter?" he said, with his inalienable old French
courtesy. Father Antoine had come of a race which had noble blood in its
veins. His ancestry had worn swords, and lived at courts, and Antoine
Ladeau never once, in his half century of work in these Canadian
forests, forgot that fact. Hetty looked him full in the face, and
colored scarlet, before she began to speak.
"You do not remember me," she said.
Father Antoine shook his head. "It is that I see so many faces each
year," he replied apologetically, "that it is not possible to remember;"
and he gazed earnestly into Hetty's expressive face.
"It is twenty years since I was here," Hetty continued. She felt a great
longing that Father Antoine should recollect her. It would seem to make
her task easier.
A reminiscence dawned on the priest's mind. "Twenty years?" he said,
"ah, but that is long! we were both young then. Is it--ah, is it
possible that it is the daughter with the father that I see?" Father
Antoine had never forgotten the beautiful relation between Hetty and her
father.
"Yes, I came with my father: you knew him very well," replied Hetty,
"and I always thought then that, if I had any trouble, I would like to
have you help me."
Father Antoine's merry face clouded over instantly. "And have you
trouble, my daughter? If the good God permits that I help you, I shall
be glad. I had a love for your father. He is no longer alive, or you
would not be in trouble;" and, leading Hetty into his little study,
Father Antoine sat down opposite her, and said:
"Tell me, my daughter."
Hetty's voice trembled, and tears filled her eyes: sympathy was harder
to bear than loneliness. The story was hard to tell, but she told it,
without pause, without reserve. Father Antoine's face grew stern as she
proceeded. When she ceased speaking, he said:
"My daughter, you have sinned; sinned grievously: you must return to
your husband. You have violated a holy sacrament of the Church. I
command you to return to your husband."
Hetty stared at him in undisguised wonder. At last she said:
"Why do you speak to me like that, sir? I can obey no man: only my own
conscience is my law. I will never return to my husband."
"The Church is the conscience of all her erring children," replied
Father Antoine, "and disobedience is at the peril of one's soul. I lay
it upon you, as the command of the Church, that you return, my daughter.
You have sinned most grievously."
"Oh," said Hetty, with apparent irrelevance. "I understand now. You took
me for a Catholic."
It was Father Antoine's turn to stare.
"Why then, if you are not, came you to me?" he said sternly. "I am here
only as priest."
Hetty clasped her hands, and said pleadingly:
"Oh no! not only as priest: you are a good man. My father always said
so. We were not Catholics; and I could not be of any other religion than
my father's, now he is dead," (here Hetty unconsciously touched a chord
in Antoine Ladeau's breast, which gave quick response): "but I
recollected how he trusted you, and I said, if I can hide myself in that
little village, Father Antoine will be good to me for my father's sake.
But you must not tell me to go back to my home: no one can judge about
that but me. The thing I have done is best: I shall not go back. And, if
you will not keep my secret and be my friend, I will go away at once and
hide myself in some other place still farther away, and will ask no one
again to be my friend, ever till I die!"
Father Antoine was perplexed. All the blood of ancient knighthood which
was in his veins was stirred with chivalrous desire to help Hetty: but,
on the other hand, both as man and as priest, he felt that she had
committed a great wrong, and that he could not even appear to
countenance it. He studied Hetty's face: in spite of its evident marks
of pain, it was as indomitable as rock.
"You have the old Huguenot soul, my daughter," he said. "Antoine Ladeau
knows better than to try to cause you to swerve from the path you have
chosen. But the good God can give you light: it may be that he has
directed you here to find it in his true Church. Be sure that your
father was a good Catholic at heart."
"Oh, no! he wasn't," exclaimed Hetty, impetuously. "There was nothing he
disliked so much as a Catholic. He always said you were the only
Catholic he ever saw that he could trust."
Father Antoine's rosy face turned rosier. He was not used among his
docile Canadians to any such speech as this. The unvarnished fashions of
New England honesty grated on his ear.
"It is not well for men of one religion to rail at the men of another,"
he said gravely. "I doubt not, there are those whom the Lord loves in
all religions; but there is but one true Church."
"Forgive me," said Hetty, in a meeker tone. "I did not mean to be rude:
but I thought I ought not to let you have such a mistaken idea about
father. Oh, please, be my friend, Father Antoine!"
Father Antoine was silent for a time. Never had he been so sorely
perplexed. The priest and the man were arrayed against each other.
Presently he said:
"What is it that you would have me do, my daughter? I do not see that
there is any thing; since you have so firm a will and acknowledge not
the Church."
"Oh!" said Hetty, perceiving that he relented, "there is not any thing
that I want you to do, exactly. I only want to feel that there is one
person who knows all about me, and will keep my secret, and is willing
to be my friend. I shall not want any help about any thing, unless it is
to get work; but I suppose they always want nurses here. There will be
plenty to do."
"Daughter, I will keep your secret," said Father Antoine, solemnly:
"about that you need have had no fear. No man of my race has ever
betrayed a trust; and I will be your friend, if you need aught that I
can do, while you choose to live in this place. But I shall pray daily
to the good God to open your eyes, and make you see that you are living
in heinous sin each day that you live away from your husband;" and
Father Antoine rose with the involuntary habit of the priest of
dismissing a parishioner when there was no more needful to be said.
Hetty took her leave with a feeling of meek gratitude, hitherto unknown
in her bosom. Spite of Father Antoine's disapproval, spite of his
arbitrary Romanism, she trusted and liked him.
"It is no matter if he does think me wrong," she said to herself. "That
needn't disturb me if I know I am right. I think he is wrong to pray to
the Virgin and the saints."
Hetty had brought with her a sum of money more than sufficient to buy a
little cottage, and fit it up with all needful comforts. She had no
sentimental dispositions towards deprivation and wretchedness. All her
plannings looked toward a useful, cheery, comfortable life. Among her
purchases were gardening utensils, which she could use herself, and
seeds and shrubs suited to the soil of St. Mary's. Strangely enough,
the only cottage which she could find at all adapted to her purpose was
one very near Father Antoine's, and almost precisely like it. It stood
in the edge of the forest, and had still left in its enclosure many of
the stumps of recently felled trees. All Hetty's farmer's instincts
revived in full force; and, only a few days after Father Antoine's
conversation with her, he found her one morning superintending the
uprooting of these stumps, and making preparations for grading the land.
As he watched her active movements, energetic tones, and fresh open
face, he fell into a maze of wondering thought. This was no morbid
sentimentalist; no pining, heart-broken woman. Except that truthfulness
was stamped on every lineament of Hetty's countenance, Father Antoine
would have doubted her story; and, except that her every act showed such
vigorous common sense, he would have doubted her sanity. As it was, his
perplexity deepened; so also did his interest in her. It was impossible
not to admire this brisk, kindly, outspoken woman, who already moved
about in the village with a certain air of motherly interest in every
thing and everybody; had already begun to "help" in her own sturdy
fashion, and had already won the good-will of old and young.
"The good God will surely open her eyes in his own time," thought Father
Antoine, and in his heart he pondered much what a good thing it would
be, if, when that time came, Hetty could be persuaded to become the Lady
Superior of the Convent of the Bleeding Heart, only a few miles from St.
Mary's. "She is born for an abbess," he said to himself: "her will is
like the will of a man, but she is full of succor and tender offices.
She would be a second Angelique, in her fervor and zeal." And the good
old priest said rosaries full of prayers for Hetty, night and day.
There were two "Houses of Cure" in St. Mary's, both under the care of
skilful physicians, who made specialties of treatment with the waters of
the springs. One of these physicians was a Roman Catholic, and employed
no nurses except the Sisters from the Convent of the Bleeding Heart.
They came in turn, in bands of six or eight; and stayed three months at
a time. In the other House, under the care of an English physician,
nurses were hired without reference to their religion. As soon as
Hetty's house was all in order, and her shrubs and trees set out, she
went one morning to this House, and asked to see the physician in
charge. With characteristic brevity, she stated that she had come to
St. Mary's to earn her living as a nurse, and would like to secure a
situation. The doctor looked at her scrutinizingly.
"Have you ever nursed?"
"No, sir."
"What do you know about it then?"
"I have seen a great many sick people."
"How was that?"
Hetty hesitated, but with some confusion replied:
"My husband was a doctor, and I often went with him to see his
patients."
"You are a widow then?"
"No, sir."
"What then?" said the physician, severely.
Poor Hetty! She rose to her feet; but, recollecting that she had no
right to be indignant, sat down, and replied in a trembling voice:
"I cannot tell you, sir, any thing about my trouble. I have come here to
live, and I want to be a nurse."
"Father Antoine knows me," she added, with dignity.
Father Antoine's name was a passport. Doctor Macgowan had often wished
that he could have all his nurses from the convent.
"You are a Catholic, then?" he said.
"No, indeed!" exclaimed Hetty, emphatically. "I am nothing of the sort."
"How is it that you mention Father Antoine, then?"
"He knew my father well, and me also, years ago; and he is the only
friend I have here."
Dr. Macgowan had an Englishman's instinctive dislike of unexplained
things and mysterious people. But Hetty's face and voice were better
than pedigrees and certificates. Her confident reference to Father
Antoine was also enough to allay any immediate uneasiness, and, "for the
rest, time will show," thought the doctor; and, without any farther
delay, he engaged Hetty as one of the day nurses in his establishment.
In after years Dr. Macgowan often looked back to this morning, and
thought, with the sort of shudder with which one looks back on a danger
barely escaped:
"Good God! what if I had let that woman go?"
All Hetty's native traits especially adapted her to the profession of
nursing; and her superb physical health was of itself a blessing to
every sick man or sick woman with whom she came in contact. Before she
had been in Dr. Macgowan's house one week, all the patients had learned
to listen in the morning for her step and her voice: they all wanted
her, and begged to be put under her charge.
"Really, Mrs. Smailli, I shall have to cut you up into parcels," said
the doctor one day: "there is not enough of you to go round. You have a
marvellous knack at making sick people like you. Did you really never
nurse before?"
"Not with my hands and feet," replied Hetty, "but I think I have always
been a nurse at heart. I have always been so well that to be sick seems
to me the most dreadful thing in the world. I believe it is the only
trouble I couldn't bear."
"You do not look as if you had ever had any very hard trouble of any
kind," said the doctor in a light tone, but watching keenly the effect
of his words.
Dr. Macgowan was beginning to be tormented by a great desire to know
more in regard to his new nurse. Father Antoine's guarded replies to all
his inquiries about her had only stimulated his curiosity.
"She is a good woman. You may trust her with all your house," Father
Antoine had said; and had told the doctor that he had known both her and
her father twenty years ago. More than this he would not say, farther
than to express the opinion that she would live and die in St. Mary's,
and devote herself to her work so long as she lived.
"She has for it a grand vocation, as we say."
Father Antoine exclaimed, "A grand vocation! Ah! if we but had her in
our convent!"
"You'll never get her there as long as I'm alive, Father Antoine!" Dr.
Macgowan had replied. "You may count upon that."
When Dr. Macgowan said to Hetty:
"You do not look as if you had ever had any very hard trouble of any
kind," Hetty looked in his face eagerly, and answered:
"Do I not, really? I am so thankful, doctor! I have always had such a
dread of looking woe-begone, and making everybody around me
uncomfortable. I think that's a sin, if one can possibly help it."
And by no sudden surprise of remark or question, could the doctor ever
come any nearer to Hetty's trouble than this. Her words always glanced
off from direct personal issues, as subtlely and successfully as if she
had been a practised diplomatist. Sometimes these perpetual evadings and
non-committals seemed to Dr. Macgowan like art; but they were really
the very simplicity of absolute unselfishness; and, gradually, as he
came to perceive and understand this, he came to have a reverence for
Hetty. He began to be ashamed of the curiosity he had felt as to the
details of the sorrow which had driven her to this refuge of isolation
and hard work. He began to feel about her as Father Antoine did, that
there was a certain sacredness in her vocation which almost demanded a
recognition of title, an investiture of office. Hetty would have been
astonished, and would have very likely laughed, had she known with what
a halo of sentiment her daily life was fast being surrounded in the
minds of people. To her it was simply a routine of good, wholesome work;
of a kind for which she was best fitted, and which enabled her to earn a
comfortable living most easily to herself, and most helpfully to others;
and left her "less time to think," as she often said to herself, "than
any thing else I could possibly have done." "Time to think" was the one
thing Hetty dreaded. As resolutely as if they were a sin, she strove to
keep out of her mind all reminiscences of her home, all thoughts of her
husband, of Raby. Whenever she gave way to them, she was unfitted for
work; and, therefore, her conscience said they were wrong. While she
was face to face with suffering ones, and her hands were busy in
ministering to their wants, such thoughts never intruded upon her. It
was literally true that, in such hours, she never recollected that she
was any other than Hibba Smailli, the nurse. But, when her day's work
was done, and she went home to the little lonely cottage, memories
flocked in at the silent door, shut themselves in with her, and refused
to be banished. Hence she formed the habit of lingering in the street,
of chatting with the villagers on their door-steps, playing with the
children, and often, when there was illness in any of the houses, going
into them, and volunteering her services as nurse.
The St. Mary's people were, almost without exception, of French descent,
and still kept up many of the old French customs of out-door _fetes_ and
ceremonies. Hetty found their joyous, child-like ways and manners
singularly attractive and interesting. After the grim composure, and
substantial, reflective methods of her New England life, the _abandon_
and unthinkingness of these French-Canadians were bewildering and
delightful to her.
"The whole town is every night like a Sunday-school picnic in our
country," she said once to Father Antoine. "What children all these
people are!"
"Yes, daughter, it is so," replied the priest; "and it is well. Does not
our good Lord say that we cannot enter into His kingdom except we become
as little children?"
"Yes, I know," replied Hetty; "but I don't believe this is exactly what
he meant, do you?"
"A part of what he meant," answered the priest; "not all. First,
docility; and, second, joy: that is what the Church teaches."
"Your Church is better than ours in that respect," said Hetty candidly:
"ours doesn't teach joy; it is pretty much all terror."
"Should a child know terror of its mother?" asked Father Antoine. "The
Church is mother, and the Holy Virgin is mother. Ah, daughter! it will
be a glad day when I see you in the beautiful sheltering arms."
Tears sometimes came to Hetty's eyes at such words as these; and good
Father Antoine went with renewed fervor to his prayers for her
conversion.
In the centre of the village was a square laid out in winding paths, and
surrounded by fir trees. In the middle of this square was a great stone
basin, in which a spring perpetually bubbled up; the basin had a broad
brim, on which the villagers sat when they came of an evening to fill
jugs and bottles with the water. On a bright summer night, the circle
would often widen and widen, by men throwing themselves on the ground;
children toddling from knee to knee; groups standing in eager talk here
and there, until it seemed as if the whole village were gathered around
the spring. These were the times when all the village affairs were
discussed, and all the village gossip retailed from neighbor to
neighbor. The scene was as gay and picturesque as you might see in a
little town of Brittany; and the jargon of the Canadian _patois_ much
more confusing than any dialect one would hear on French soil. Hetty's
New England tongue utterly refused to learn this new mode of speech; but
her quick and retentive ear soon learned its meanings sufficiently to
follow the people in their talk. She often made one of this evening
circle at the spring, and it was a pleasant sight to see the quick stir
of welcome with which her approach was observed.
"Here comes the good Aunt Hibba from the Doctor's House," and mothers
would push children away, and gossips would crowd, and men would stand
up, all to make room for Hetty: then they would gather about her, and
those who could speak English would translate for those who could not;
and everybody would have something to tell her. It was an odd thing that
lovers sought her more than any one else. Many a quarrel Aunt Hibba's
good sense healed over; and many a worthless fellow was sent about his
business, as he deserved to be, because Aunt Hibba took his sweetheart
in hand, and made her see the rights of things. If a traveller,
strolling about St. Mary's of a June night, had come upon these
chattering groups, and seen how they centred around the sturdy,
genial-faced woman, in a straight gray gown and a close white cap, he
would have been arrested by the picture at once; and have wondered much
who and what Hetty could be: but if you had told him that she was a
farmer's daughter from Northern New England, he would have laughed in
your face, and said. "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. Nothing could be stronger
proof of the reverence in which the whole village held Hetty, than the
fact that it seemed to them all the most fitting and natural thing that
she and Father Antoine should stand side by side speaking to the people,
should walk away side by side in earnest conversation with each other.
If any man had ventured upon a jest or a ribald word concerning them, a
dozen quick hands would have given him a plunge head-foremost into the
great stone basin, which was the commonest expression of popular
indignation in St. Mary's; a practice which, strangely enough, did not
appear to interfere with anybody's relish of the waters.
Father Antoine had an old servant woman, Marie, who had lived in the
Ladeau family since before he was born. She had been by the death-bed of
his mother, his father, his grandmother, and of an uncle who had died at
some German watering-place: wherever a Ladeau was in any need of
service, thither hasted Marie; and if the need were from illness, Marie
was all the happier; to lie like a hound on the floor all night, and
watch by a sick and suffering Ladeau, was to Marie joy. When the young
Antoine had set out for the wildernesses of North America, Marie had
prayed to be allowed to come with him; and when he refused she had wept
till she fell ill. At the last moment he relented, and bore the poor
creature on board ship, wondering within himself if he would be able to
keep her alive in the forests. But as soon as there was work to do for
him she revived; and all these years she had kept his house, and cared
for him as if he were her son. From the day of Hetty's first arrival,
old Marie had adopted her into her affections: no one, not born a
Ladeau, ever had won such liking from Marie. Much to Hetty's
embarrassment, whenever she met her, she insisted on kissing her hand,
after the fashion of the humble servitors of great houses in France.
Probably, in all these long years of solitary service with Father
Antoine, Marie had pined for the sight of some one of her own sex, to
whom she could give allegiance, for she was fond of telling long stories
about the beautiful ladies of the house of Ladeau; and how she had
attired them for balls, and had seen them ride away with cavaliers.
There was neither splendor nor beauty in Hetty to attract Marie's
fancy; but Marie had a religious side to her nature, almost as strong
as the worldly and passionate one. She saw in Hetty's labors an
exaltation of devotion which reminded her of noble ladies who had done
penances and taken pilgrimages in her own country. Father Antoine's
friendship for Hetty, so unlike any thing Marie had seen him feel
towards any woman he had met in these wilds, also stimulated her fancy.
"Ah! but it is good that he has at last a friend to whom he may speak as
a Ladeau should speak. May the saints keep her! she has the good heart
of one the Virgin loves," said Marie, and many a candle did she buy and
keep burning on the convent's shrines for Hetty's protection and
conversion.
One night Marie overheard Father Antoine say to Hetty, as he bade her
good-night at the garden gate:
"My daughter, you look better and younger every day."
"Do I?" replied Hetty, cheerfully: "that's an odd thing for a woman so
old as I am. My birthday is next month. I shall be forty-six."
"Youth is not a matter of years," replied Father Antoine. "I have known
very young women much older than you."
Hetty smiled sadly, and walked on. Father Antoine's words had given her
a pang. They were almost the same words which Dr. Eben had said to her
again and again, when she had reasoned with him against his love for
her, a woman so much older than himself. "That is all very well to say,"
thought Hetty in her matter-of-fact way, "and no doubt there are great
differences in people: but old age is old age, soften it how you will;
and youth is youth; and youth is beautiful, and old age is ugly. Father
Antoine knows it just as well as any man. Don't I see, good as he is,
every day of my life, with what a different look he blesses the fair
young maidens from that with which he blesses the wrinkled old women.
There is no use minding it. It can't be helped. But things might as well
be called by their right names."
Marie sat down on a garden bench, and reflected. So the good Aunt
Hibba's birthday was next month, and there would be nobody to keep it
for her in this strange country. "How can we find out?" thought Marie,
"and give her a pleasure."
In summer weather, Father Antoine took his simple dinners on the porch.
It was cool there, and the vines and flowers gave to the little nook a
certain air of elegance which Father Antoine enjoyed without recognizing
why. On this evening Marie lingered after she had removed the table. She
fidgeted about, picking up a leaf here and there, and looking at her
master, till he perceived that she had something on her mind.
"What is it, Marie?" he asked.
"Oh, M'sieur Antoine!" she replied, "it is about the good Aunt Hibba's
birthday. Could you not ask her when is the day? and it should be a
_fete_ day, if we only knew it; there is not one that would not be glad
to help make it beautiful."
"Eh, my Marie, what is it then that you plan? The people in the country
from which she comes have no _fetes_. It might be that she would think
it a folly," answered Father Antoine, by no means sure that Hetty would
like such a testimonial.
"All the more, then, she would like it," said Marie. "I have watched
her. It is delight to her when they dance about the spring, and she has
the great love for flowers."
So Father Antoine, by a little circumlocution, discovered when the
birthday would come, and told Marie; and Marie began straightway to go
back and forth in the village, with a pleased air of mystery.