Chapter 11

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 goodwill 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 _fêtes_ 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 headforemost 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.