Hetty's Strange History Part 14

XIII.

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 G.o.d 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 pa.s.senger 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 ma.s.s 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;" a.s.sisted 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 G.o.d, make them happy!

make them happy!" When the ma.s.s 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 n.o.ble 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 G.o.d 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 G.o.d 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 fas.h.i.+ons 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 G.o.d 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 paris.h.i.+oner when there was no more needful to be said.

Hetty took her leave with a feeling of meek grat.i.tude, 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 st.u.r.dy fas.h.i.+on, and had already won the good-will of old and young.

"The good G.o.d 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.