“I do not know how to thank you, friends. I never saw any thing like this before, and it makes me dumb. All I can say is that you have filled my heart with joy, and I feel no more a stranger: your village is my home.”
“Thanks to thee, then, for that! Thanks to thee! And the good saints bless the day thou wert born,” shouted the people, and the little children catching the enthusiasm, and wanting to shout something, shouted: “Bo Tantibba! Bo Tantibba!” till the place rang. Then they placed the pet lamb in a little enclosed paddock which had been built for him during the day, and the children fed him with red clover blossoms through the paling; and presently, Father Antoine considerately led his flock away, saying,—“The good Aunt is weary. See you not that her eyes droop, and she has no words? It is now kind that we go away, and leave her to rest.”
As the gay procession moved away crying, “Good-night, good-night!” Hetty stood on the porch and watched them. She was on the point of calling them back. A strange dread of being left alone seized upon her. Never since she had forsaken her home had she felt such a sense of loneliness, except when she was crouched under the hemlock-trees by the lake. She watched till she could no longer see even a fluttering motion in the distance. Then she went into the house. The silence smote her. She turned and went out again, and went to the paddock, where the little lamb was bleating.
“Poor little creature!” she said, “wert thou torn from thy mother? Dost thou pine for one thou see'st not?” She untied it, led it into the house, and spread down hay and blankets for it, in one corner of her kitchen. The little creature seemed cheered by the light and warmth; cuddled down and went to sleep.
Hetty's heart was full of thoughts. “Oh! what would Eben have said if he could have seen me to-night?” “How Raby would have delighted in it all!” “How long am I to live this strange life?” “Can this be really I?” “What has become of my old life, of my old self?” Like restless waves driven by a wind too powerful to be resisted, thoughts and emotions surged through Hetty's breast. She buried her face in her hands and wept; wept the first unrestrained tears she had wept. Only for a few moments, however. Like the old Hetty Gunn of the old life, she presently sprang to her feet, and said to herself, “Oh, what a selfish soul I am to be spending all my strength this way! I shan't be fit for any thing to-morrow if I go on so.” Then she patted the lamb on its head, and said with a comforting sense of comradeship in the little creature's presence, “Good-night, little motherless one! Sleep warm,” and then she went to bed and slept till morning.
I have dwelt on the surface details of Hetty's life at St. Mary's, and have said little about her mental condition and experiences: this is because I have endeavored to present this part of her life, exactly as she lived it, and as she would tell it herself. That there were many hours of acute suffering; many moments when her courage wellnigh failed; when she was almost ready to go back to her home, fling herself at her husband's feet, and cry, “Let me be but as a servant in thy house,”—it is not needful to say.
Hearts answer to hearts, and no heart could fail to know that a woman in Hetty's position must suffer keenly and constantly. But this story would do great injustice to her, and would be essentially false, if it spoke often of, or dwelt at any length upon the sufferings which Hetty herself never mentioned, and put always away from her with an unflinching resolution. Year after year, the routine of her days went on as we have described; unchanged except that she grew more and more into the affections of the villagers among whom she came and went, and of the hundreds of ill and suffering men and women whom she nursed. She was no nearer becoming a Roman Catholic than she had been when she sat in the Welbury meeting-house: even Father Antoine had given over hoping for her conversion; but her position in St. Mary's was like the position of a Lady Abbess in a religious community; her authority, which rarely took on an authoritative shape, was great; and her influence was greater than her authority. In Dr. Macgowan's House of Cure, she was second only to the doctor himself; and, if the truth were told, it might have been said she was second to none.
Patients went away from St. Mary's every year who stoutly ascribed their cure to her, and not to the waters nor to the physicians. Her straightforward, kindly, common sense was a powerful tonic, morally and physically, to all invalids whom she nursed. She had no tolerance for any weakness which could be conquered. She had infinite tenderness for all weakness which was inevitable; and her discriminations between the two were always just. “I'd trust more to Mrs. Smailli's diagnosis of any case than I would to my own,” said Dr. Macgowan to his fellow-physicians more than once. And, when they scoffed at the idea, he replied: “I do not mean in the technicalities of specific disease, of course. The recognition of those is a matter of specific training; but, in all those respects, a physician's diagnosis may be faultless; and yet he be much mistaken in regard to the true condition of the patient. In this finer, subtler diagnosis of general conditions, especially of moral conditions, Mrs. Smailli is worth more than all the doctors in Canada put together. If she says a patient will get well, he always does, and vice versa. She knows where the real possibility of recuperation lies, and detects it often in patients I despair of.”