The queer home in Rugby Court

Front matter

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UNITED STATES OF AMERICA.

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II Rugby Court

Maurice was not very much given to talking poetically, but, with Lizette, he often thought out-loud.

On this occasion, however, she was a little surprised at the grave quickness with which he answered her, quite as if he had settled to his own satisfaction, long before, this matter of the flowers and the dead. She turned and looked a second into his frank, intelligent face; from his face her glance took in slowly his straight, sinewy figure, and every detail of his dress, as if for the first time it had occurred to her to mark what sort of a person was this Maurice D’Hullin, with whom, when a mere baby, she had quarreled for a plaything. Girl-like, she noted how tanned was the naturally pale skin of his forehead, and took no heed of what technically would be called his “ splendid craniological developments.” She liked the large, brooding black eyes better when they sparkled with fun than when so grave — like “Saint Jerome’s,” as

Lizette often told him ; yet now, notwithstanding the rude simplicity of his dress; she decided that Maurice was, in person as in mind, “ queer, and not at all disagreeable/' In fact, he was much more intellectual than his brother, who secretly acknowledged the superiority, while he guided his studies preparatory to a college course.

“ Maurice will be a priest,” had sounded in the boy’s ears almost since he had any ears ; and as he grew toward manhood, he never said nay.

“ What book have you ? ” he asked, taking the book itself for an answer. “ Where did you get it ? ”

“ From the lower shelf.”

“ I never saw it there.”

“ Maybe it tumbled out from behind the rest. Father D’Hullin said once he kept some pushed back of the others.”

“ Old ones, I suppose. Well, this does not

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look very entertaining ; ” and he tossed it lightly into her lap.

“ Where has your brother gone ? ” asked Lizette, not noticing his verdict on the book.

“He went away a while ago with the priest from B said Maurice, naming a settle-

ment farther up the river.

As he spoke, the fat little person of Father D’Hullin appeared behind them in the churchdoor, whither he had come from the interior of the building. Espying the couple so demurely conversing, a droll smile lit up his face, and he dropped into a seat just within, where he could listen unseen. In spite of his office, the reverend father dearly loved a joke ; and the chance of overhearing something with which to tease Lizette was always tempting. Whoever feels inclined to censure him, must remember the poverty of his social resources.

“I don’t like Father Vignon, of B said the girl, with sudden animation. “ In fact, I detest him ; even his long, sharp nose provokes me. I wish all priests were like our good old father.”

The jolly form, behind the door was agitated in the dark, by noiseless laughter.

“ You will be a priest some day, Maurice, won’t you ? ” and Lizette, suddenly turning again, studied, for a second time, the boy at her side, as if fancying him robed, shaven, and shorn.

“ Yes, when you are a religieuseT

“ A religieuse ! ” she repeated it dreamily after him. “ I suppose so ; but that seems years away, as I want it to be. Living here is so — I don’t know just what to say ; but — -je suis bien contente .”

She did not hear a faint sigh from the background, where sat Father D’Hullin ; for she quietly asked, “ Are you not also contented with the now , Maurice ? ”

“ Yes — no — I can not tell.”

“Are you, then, in a hu ry to be a priest, to be called ‘ Father?”’ and she laughed merrily at the title.

“ I am in a hurry for some things — sometimes ; but I am not in a hurry for a life like my brother’s. It would be dull — yet I lead a duller now, and am on the whole, as you say, content. But the good of this life here can n.ot last — it goes, never to be had again, and the dullness will remain.”

“ What good, for instance ? ”

Maurice did not answer at first ; by and by a quick color flushed his face, and he smiled, as if at an after-thought.

“Well,jw#/ Who ever heard of a priest and a nun going salmon-fishing or skating on a wager ? ”

Lizette’s clear eyes grew darker with thought ; she clasped her hands a moment, then raising both, emphatically exclaimed :

“ I won’t be a religieuse ! I never said I would. It is a holy vocation, without doubt, but— I am not holy. Who wants to be a — to have a vocation, if they are not fitted for it ? I wonder I ever thought of it.”

Her vehemence was so child-like, that Maurice smiled faintly as he said :

“ Then you can skate and fish forever ; but my case is not bettered.”

. “ Don’t be a priest, Maurice ! ”

When he spoke again, it was evident fish and skates were not in his mind, although he asked :

“ What could I be, if not a priest ? ”

“ Why, live right along here in the same way ; and let us all keep together. Father D’Hullin and you are all the friends I have in the world. Why should we separate ? ” Lizette’s ringing voice had toned so suddenly into sadness, that the words were pathetic. Maurice, with the simplicity of a kind-hearted boy, took her hand in his sun-burned one, and held it ; but said nothing, as there seemed nothing to say. She rose up to go in a little while, and Maurice, as if continuing a line of thought aloud, said :

“ Father Vignon said you must be in Quebec before winter ; he found great fault with my brother that he had not sent you before this — I overheard as much.”

“ He is an old meddler,” said Lizette, hotly, a perverse desire arising within her to thwart the priest. “ Father D’Hullin won’t force me to do what I am not ready to — I know he won’t.”

With a passionate toss of her high head, she sprang away down the old stones, and trod carelessly over the grass on the graves. A moment or two after, Maurice saw her skimming lightly on the water, and knew, by the quick plashing of her oars, that she was beating out her temper against the steady current. He wondered, half unconsciously, whether that temper would beat as fiercely against possible opposition in the future, and most of all whether that opposition would not be, in the long run, as resistless as that current. Father D’Hullin peeped out upon him for an instant as he sat musing, his beardless chin in the palm of his hand, his great, solemn eyes fixed on the shining waves. The jolly look had vanished from the priest’s face ; he gazed but a second, and then vanished within. Neither Maurice nor Lizette ever knew that their first outlook into the future — which they had taken hand in hand — had been noted by another.

II.

“ Never stand begging for that which you have power to take.” — D on Quixote.

That same night Father D’Hullin sat in his old leather chair, which was drawn outside the cabin-door, and, for the first time in a good while, was taking anxious thought for the morrow. His two dogs looked up at him in a sort of wondering endurance of this thoughtful mood, in what was usually their time for a frolic. Jolie, the saucy, black terrier, every now and then nipped his fat calves with her sharp white teeth, as much as to say: “ Arouse yourself, father ! Don’t be dumpish ! ” But Jacque, the great Newfoundland dog, on the contrary, supported his chin on the priest’s knee, his gentle eyes plainly saying : “ Think away, master ! If you are

troubled, you have my sympathy.”

*

Every bashful child and every tame animal for miles around loved Father D’Hullin. Mentally he was a man of merely respectable attainments ; for he was much fonder of human sympathy than of learning. Brother priests of his own order complained of what they considered his lax discipline and unwise benevolence, of the comparatively small amount of money he' drew into the church treasury from the resources of his humble flock, and the familiarity with which he entered into their domestic life. But when arraigned before his superiors upon such charges, the kindly old fellow had always disarmed criticism. If it was true that he did cancel this poor man’s pew tax, it was only because his cow was dead and his children clamoring for food — and so on — even the best of excuses for his leniency, and urged so meekly, with just a touch of humor to conciliate, perhaps. Father D’Hullin, in infancy, must have accepted his mother’s religion as

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truth, and never after tried the foundations of his belief. He thought nothing about it as a system any way. His practical religion consisted in trying to love his neighbor as himself, and his gentle, generous disposition made the attempt quite successful. Whether he loved the Lord his God with all his heart, we dare not decide. If he did, was he not a Christian, call him what else you may ? The- Creator alone, through all trammels of superstition, through all false teaching, could read this man’s soul.

Smoking flax He shall not quench. Even in the day when the Heavenly Shepherd walked the earth, He had “other sheep,” whom all the flock knew not. Shall it not be so when He cometh again ?

But we wander from our story. At last Father D’ Hulun shook the ashes from his pipe, pushed it back from him, and remarked to the dogs :

“ Maurice must go to the college at once.”

The nose of the Newfoundland arose in the air, and he blinked his approval.

“ As for Lizette, she will give gp if I work upon her wisely ; no use in being harsh about it. She must not think she is being persecuted. It is for her good! Yes, it is — it must be.”

The fathers face relaxed into its usual cheerfulness; Jolie pricked up her ears, threw up her spry legs, and bounded suddenly into his lap. Jacque looked disgusted, but kept his place, even when Jolie wagged her short tail in his face.

“ Oh, you are home, are you ? ” asked Maurice, suddenly appearing from the woods, which ran close up to the house on one side.

“ Yes, we came back an hour ago. I have had my supper ; let old Marie give you yours while it is warm ; she has baked the best stuffed fish we have had in a long time.”

“ I do not wish anything to eat,” said

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Maurice, flinging himself down upon the turf, and gently pulling Jacque into service as a pillow.

“ Marie,” roared Father D’Hullin to his deaf old servant, somewhere in the rear of the cabin. “Take all that is left of the supper around to Pierre Rougon’s ! He is sick, and the children may be hungry.”

A faint grumble testified that Marie overheard, and Father D’Hullin resumed his pipe, furtively watching with a certain interest this young brother, who did not want his supper. By and by he said, with an evident attempt to seem careless :

“ Father Vignon says they want you at college, Maurice. He rated me soundly for being so slow to get you off. He says they really must have you soon, if at all.”

“ They can have me one time as well as another, then,” said Maurice, calmly smoothing Jacque’s silky ears.

A bland snide of peace overspread the priest’s visage. His supper had been most excellent, Maurice was pliant, and probably Lizette would prove so. The transient trouble of the afternoon fled away*; he leaned back in his chair, and soon his regularlyrepeated snores were the only sounds that broke the silence of the twilight. Maurice rose up, and, followed by both dogs, strolled down to listen to the more musical lap and ripple of the river waves. He had been unusually depressed since his talk with Lizette, and he was almost glad that his brother had called him to action, or at least to change. He sat musing over his coming life at the college, when a low growl from Jacque made him look up, to see Father Vignon returning to the cabin for the night. He threw himself back on the sand, and let the priest go by unrecognized, for something of Lizette’s aversion had been communicated to him. It was not until both priests had been long asleep that Maurice left the river, and his long reverie by its shore.

Lizette reached home that afternoon, only remembering, as she drew her boat high up on the sand near the cabin, that she had forgotten her errand, after all. Jean met her scowling, and announced that if she did not want to eat, when the time came, may be other people did. She was an uncivil old woman, with considerable Indian blood in her veins. She shuffled around on her bare feet, and dished up the food baking in the stone oven outside the cabin-door. She laid the plates on the clean, uncovered table, with such other common articles as were required by their very simple manner of housekeeping ; then muttering that the supper was ready, she waited upon her young mistress, and at her invitation proceeded to eat for both of them. When her day’s work was over, Jean threw an old blanket over her head, and started off for a gossip and pipesmoking within the nearest cabin. Lizette opened wide the outer door, and seated herself on the threshold. Everything without lay in the tender glow of the last sunlight ; pink clouds lingered in the sky, although a new moon had stolen out to see itself in the water as a mirror. Yet, in spite of the beauty of the twilight outside, Lizette soon turned away from it, and sat looking within the room, tracing with her eye the rude outlines of furniture, shadowy in the inner gloom. But that room was not homely or lonely to Lizette. It had sheltered her for sixteen years of quiet and contentment ; she would willingly believe it might shelter her for as many years to come. The restlessness that comes into some girlish minds had never moved this unsophisticated heroine of ours. A long shadow fell suddenly on the grass before the door, and Father Vignon, whom she supposed miles away, stood very erect before

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her. She rose up with a salutation not precisely vivacious, and entered the room to strike a light. The priest followed her, and remained standing — tall, black, and very impressive, by reason of these attributes. Without any circumlocution whatever, he told her the reason of his visit. He was going soon to Quebec, and would like to make all the arrangements for her novitiate in the nunnery. He spoke very concisely, and with less animation in his pale face than Father D’Hullin showed in a glance ; but one never mistook Father Vignon’s sloth and reticence for meekness and indecision. His back-bone was too erect ; while his slowly-uttered sentences had a kind of cold-steel directness. A chilling hopelessness crept over Lizette, and she murmured something half unintelligible, instead of the positive refusal she had meant to make. The priest seemed not to notice this, but went on almost mechani-

“You ought to be dissatisfied with your present life ; it is most unprofitable for your soul. Every one of these days lent you from Heaven, that you might work out your own salvation, you are throwing wickedly away. For each of them now spent in sinful indulgence of your follies, you must suffer torture hereafter. If you go into a community where every moment is employed for good, you will, no matter what your employment may be, lay up for yourself stores of spiritual blessings. The months in which you are a novice will fly faster than any time spent in the world.”

Lizette started at those last words. Then she was going out of the world ! No sounds had fallen so dismally on her ear since she heard the clods drop on her fathers coffin.

“ I am not good enough to like such a life, Father Vignon.”

“ If you are headstrong enough to dislike it, all the more need that you should accept it as a penance,” he returned, in his passionless voice.

An impulsive gesture from Lizette did not escape his eye, and he added, with a shade more of persuasion :

"You will be quite contented, and under little restriction, comparatively speaking — certainly only under such as is wholesome. You can leave, if, after a full trial of the life, you are dissatisfied.”

She retorted unguardedly :

" Children are always told their medicine is nice ; but they never find it so.”

"Yet, if they refuse to take it, they are forced. It is for their good, you know.”

In the candle-light Father Vignon’s face gleamed stilF and white ; so fixed was he in his will to see but one side of the case, that Lizette, after a time of silence, felt compelled, as by an unseen force, to follow his bent.

" What would I do in the nunnery ? ”

“You will — (he did not say would, but made the condition a prophecy) — you will arise at five o’clock ; hear two masses, and say office three times a day ; besides spending much time in prayer and other spiritual exercises. Then you will study ; for your education has been dreadfully neglected. You will have sufficient bodily exercise ; tjiere are garden-walks and flower-beds in the grounds.”

Father Vignon had made a very considerable effort to present the subject in an attractive light; but how he failed! To talk of walks around garden-beds to one who delighted to climb the steepest hills — to rock on the water when the waves were roughest — to gather her flowers from wild spots known only to herself ! Still, Lizette dared not protest against this disposal of her time and her future. She let the priest assume that her silence meant consent, while all the time she was planning an attack on Father D’Hul-

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lin ; just like many a naughty child, who cowers before one parent only to come down like a tempest upon the other. She asked Father Vignon for time to think it all over, and have time more particularly to consult her own priest. To this her unwelcome guest at last consented, and went away as quietly as he had come upon the scene.

Next morning, before the heavy dew had dried off the grave-yard grass, Lizette was in Father D’Hullin’s study, having first assured herself that Father Vignon was not there. Her own poor guardian was at his wits’-end, for his knowledge of feminine tactics was limited. It was his first encounter with one who “when she would she would, and when she wouldn’t she wouldn’t.” Not fearing him as a priest, Lizette had the advantage in being able to attack him on the side of his friendship. She plead, and argued, and coaxed ; she even upbraided him. As a coup d'etat, she laid her head on the arm of his old leather chair, and cried long and passionately. * The two dogs went snuffing around her in a sort of canine surprise ; while the reverend father sat down in dismay, and clasped his fat hands, and stood up again and unclasped them ; then he implored her to have a drink of water — that being about the only consolation he could think to administer. It had come to him forcibly, last night, that Lizette ought to go away from this place, and this free, careless life ; which, as a child, she had not found unprofitable. He tried to show her that she would soon find herself a woman, and a discontented one ; then he drew a much more cunning and attractive view of convent-life than Father Vignon had pictured. But all was in vain. Finally, he consented to wait and let her become more reconciled before he pushed matters ; yet he plainly told her this was childishness and folly — that Father Vignon would call it by some worse name, and he sincerely hoped she would be

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more reasonable before he saw her again. Lizette dried her tears, and for the first time petted faithful old Jacque, who had been grieving over her, with great mournful eyes. She smiled gratefully when Father D’Hullin followed her to the door, and playfully shook her shoulder, saying: .

“ I humor you when I ought to put you on bread-and-water for a week, and I get no thanks for it, either ; but don't look so woebegone, child ! I trotted you on my knees when you were a dreadful, bad-tempered little girl ; I have taught you all you know since you grew to be a big one. I was your father’s best friend ; do you think I would turn against you now ? "

Lizette looked up into the old man’s kindly face, and answered :

“ I always have done as you have said ; but this is so hard ! I dread it — I don’t want to trouble you, but — ”

She hesitated, and the priest laughed.

— “ But — but — Oh ! a woman never knows her own mind, and always makes trouble. You are getting to be a woman; so you must begin, of course. Run along home, now, and come to your senses soon.”

As Lizette walked home by the way of the shore, the most hopeless sadness of her short life settled down upon her. The river glittered like a cloth of gold, the birds sang, and bees, grasshoppers, and everything animate and happy in the sunlight, filled the air with pleasant sounds. She saw and heard it all only to feel as one might in the brief time allotted between a sentence and an imprisonment. Jean was not in the cabin when she returned, and, glad to be relieved from her curious questioning, Lizette sat down, wearied in mind and body ; for she had slept but little the night before. In one corner of this largest room of the cabin stood a cedar desk, in which Lizette kept papers left by her father, as well as a small sum of money that Father

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D’Hullin gave to her after he had sold her father’s little Canadian nag and caleche, with a few other things of which she had no need. “ Keep the money until you have a wise use for it,” the priest had said; “and for the present live off fish and faith.” So she had done as he said, and had never gone cold or hungry. Fish were plenty, and Father D’Hullin saw to it that flesh and fowl were not unknown to old Jean’s simple larder. Lizette’s errand of the afternoon before had been to take Father D’Hullin certain of her father’s papers, for which he had asked, and which she had again to-day forgotten to deliver. Taking them from her pocket, she dropped them back again into the old desk, and stood with the uplifted lid in her hand, idly looking within. Lizette’s father had been a goodintentioned, inefficient man, of very tolerable education. He started in life with a small property, but wasted this little by mismanagement. He left Quebec, his native place, and came to the little settlement where he lived like a hermit, or would have done so, save for the genial companionship of Father D’Hullin. Once in a long time, a letter found him out, and would be from a brother, of whom Lizette knew next to nothing ; for when a young man, he had gone into the States, and had remained there. On this particular day, as Lizette stood at the desk, her glance fell upon one of these letters. As much to divert her mind as from any motive of curiosity, she searched for all of them (there had only been five in twenty-three years), and resolved to read them. She first plunged her throbbing head into cold water, and unbraided the long, heavy hair, whose weight oppressed her, and then carried the letters out to the cool shadow of her favorite great rock at the door, that she might read them at her leisure. From the first, she made up her mind that her uncle had more affection for her father than her father had

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ever had, or at least expressed for him. From the second, she inferred that he was, or had been, a teacher. In the third he wrote as if he were very much interested in natural history. He spoke of Lizette in the fourth — asked her age, and said he would like to see his brother once more ; but it was the fifth and last letter that Lizette read and re-read, while a ray of light stole over her gloomy face, then was followed by a puzzled, thoughtful expression. She remembered that this letter came the week that her father died. He had read it only half through, and then, growing faint, he had told Lizette to put it away until he felt better. He did not think of the letter again before he died. It was dated from a town in Pennsylvania, and contained more personal information than the past epistles. Her uncle was evidently a married man now, if he had not been before ; and in conclusion, he had put down this invitation : “ Your daughter must be old enough to wish a glimpse of the world ; push her out of the nest, and we will take her into ours. Send her to me for a visit.”

That was all, and it was written a year before. “ A glimpse of the world ! ” How much delight seemed summed up in that to Lizette ! How bright compared to its utter renunciation ! She drew a long, free breath, as if she saw a loop-hole in the walls closing about her. It was her first impulse to take the letter of her uncle to Father D’Hullin ; her second thought was merely to tell him that she had such a relative, and to see what his ideas would be in regard to a change which was not a change into a convent.

Three weeks passed, and Lizette saw very little of Father D’Hullin. She heard through Maurice, of whom she saw almost as little, that his brother was about going into a distant part of Canada, where he had been sent by his superiors in the Church, upon some ecclesiastical matters. In his absence, Father

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Vignon was to have the charge of his parish. One evening, in a hurried way, Lizette told Father D’Hullin all the contents of her uncle’s letters, and anxiously awaited his advice. He did not seem very well pleased, and, after a moment of silence, told her that her father had only very seldom spoken of this brother to him, and then, never as one in any way interested in the present life of himself or of Lizette ; that, if he remembered aright, he said that he was not a Catholic. At any rate, she could not, unannounced, present herself to him, with no idea of his disposition toward her, or his circumstances in life. Lizette, with the careless trust of youth, answered, that he seemed to be a good man, and it was probable that he still lived where he did a year before. She wished extremely that Father D’Hullin would try and find out something more about him. This the priest promised in good faith to do ; but delayed, by reason of his journey, and Lizette found the promise still unfulfilled, when one Sunday evening he bade her good-bye.

However, she was relieved from immediate apprehension of being sent away, and in a day or two sank back calmly into the pleasant ease of her old life. Her first annoyance was the sudden strange conduct of old Jean, who, coming home one day from confession to Father Vignon, made known her intention of going to Quebec to take care of a sick son whom Father Vignon said needed her. Now, Jean's son had been sick for a year, and never had other care than his wife’s ; nevertheless, before Lizette had recovered from her surprise, Jean had stowed her worldly goods into a canvas bag, slung them over her shoulder, and departed without further ado. Lizette sat down to ponder upon this new turn of the wheel — to think if she wanted to live all alone, and if she could do so, if she wished. Consulting thus with herself, she heard a gentle rap on the door, and