THE MOTHER'S BLESSING.
It was six o'clock in the afternoon, broad day, when Catherine arrived
home.
Had Isidore been alive and she were coming to visit her mother in
health, she would have got down from the stage at the end of the village
and slipped round upon her father's farm, without going through. But
a widow and a mother, she did not give a thought to rustic jests; she
alighted without fear; it seemed to her that scorn and insult ought to
be warded off from her by her child and her sorrow, the dark and the
bright angel.
At the first she was not recognized; she was so pale and so changed that
she did not seem the same woman; and what set her apart from her class
was the lofty air which she had already caught from community with an
elegant man.
One person knew her again but not till she had passed by.
This was Pitou's aunt Angelique. She was gossiping at the townhouse door
with some cronies about the oath required of the clergy, declaring that
she had heard Father Fortier say that he would never vow allegiance to
the Revolution, preferring to submit to martyrdom than bend his head to
the democratic yoke.
"Bless us and save us!" she broke forth, in the midst of her speech, "if
here ain't Billet's daughter and her fondling a-stepping down off the
coach."
"Catherine?" cried several voices.
"Yes, but look at her running away, down the lane."
Aunt Angelique was making a mistake: Catherine was not running away and
she took the sideway simply because she was in haste to see her mother.
At the cry the children scampered after her, and as she was fond of them
always, and more than ever at present, she gave them some small change
with which they returned.
"What is that?" asked the gossips.
"It is Miss Catherine; she asked how her mother was and when we said the
doctor says she is good for a week yet, she thanked us and gave us some
money."
"Hem! then, she seems to have taken her pigs to a good market in Paris,"
sneered Angelique, "to be able to give silver to the urchins who run at
her heels."
She did not like Catherine because the latter was young and sweet and
Angelique was old and sour; Catherine was tall and well made while the
other was short and limped. Besides, when Angelique turned her nephew
Ange out of doors, it was on Billet's farm that he took refuge.
Again, it was Billet who had lugged Father Fortier out of his rectory to
say the mass for the country on the day of the Declaration of the Rights
of Man.
All these were ample reasons for Angelique to hate Catherine, joined to
her natural asperity, in particular, and the Billet's in general. And
when she hated it was thorough, as becomes a prude and a devotee.
She ran to the priest's to tell him and his sister the fresh scandal of
Billet's daughter returning home with her child.
"Indeed," said Fortier, "I should have thought she would drop it into
the box at the Foundling Hospital."
"The proper thing to do, for then the thing would not have to blush for
his mother."
"That is a new point from which to regard that institution! But what has
she come after here?"
"It looks as if to see her mother, who might not have been living
still."
"Stay, a woman who does not come to confess, methinks?" said the abbé,
with a wicked smile.
"Oh, that is not her fault!" said the old maid, "but she has had
softening of the brain lately; up to the time when her daughter threw
this grief upon her, she was a pious soul who feared God and paid for
two chairs when she came to church, one to sit in, the other to put her
feet upon."
"But how many chairs did her husband pay for, Billet, the Hero of the
Mobs, the Conqueror of the Bastile?" cried the priest, his little eyes
sparkling with spite.
"I do not know," returned Angelique simply, "for he never comes to
church, while his good wife----"
"Very well, we will settle accounts with him on the day of his good
wife's funeral."
In the meantime Catherine continued her way, one long series of memories
of him who was no more, unless his arms were around the little boy whom
she carried on her bosom.
What would the neighbors say of her shame and dishonor? So handsome a
boy would be a shame and disgrace to a peasant!
But she entered the farm without fear though rapidly.
A huge dog barked as she came up, but suddenly recognizing his young
mistress, he neared her to the stretch of his chain, and stood up with
his forepaws in the air to utter little joyous yelps.
At the dog's barking a man ran out to see the cause.
"Miss Catherine," he exclaimed.
"Father Clovis," she said.
"Welcome, dear young mistress--the house much needs you, by heaven!"
"And my poor mother?"
"Sorry to say she is just the same, neither worse nor better--she is
dying out like an oilless lamp, poor dear!"
"Where is she?"
"In her own room."
"Alone?"
"No, no, no! I would not have allowed that. You must excuse me, Miss
Catherine, coming out as the master here, but your having stopped at my
house before you went to town made me one of the family, I thought, in a
manner of speaking, and I was very fond of you and poor Master Isidore."
"So you know?" said Catherine, wiping away her tears.
"Yes, yes, killed for the Queen's sake, like his brother. But he has
left something behind him, a lovely boy, so while we mourn for the
father we must smile for the son."
"Thank you, Clovis," said she, giving her hand: "but my mother?"
"I had Mother Clement the nurse to sit with her, the same who attended
to you----"
"Has my mother her senses yet?" asked the girl hesitating.
"Sometimes I think so, when your name is spoken. That was the great
means of stirring her, but since yesterday she has not showed any signs
even when you are spoken of."
He opened the bedroom door and she could glance in.
Mother Clement was dozing in a large armchair, while her patient seemed
to be asleep: she was not much changed but her complexion was like ivory
in pallor.
"Mother, my dear mother," exclaimed Catherine, rushing into the room.
The dying one opened her eyes and tried to turn her head, as a gleam
of intelligence sparkled in her look; but, babbling, her movement was
abortive, and her arm sank inert on the head of the girl, kneeling by
her side.
From the lethargy of the father and the mother had shot two opposite
feelings: hate from the former, love from the latter.
The girl's arrival caused excitement on the farm, where Billet was
expected, not his daughter. She related the accident to the farmer, and
how he was as near death's door as his wife at home, only he was moving
from it on the right side.
She went into her own room, where there were many tears evoked by the
memories where she had passed in the bright dreams of childhood, and the
girl's burning passions, and returned with the widow's broken heart.
At once she resumed the sway over that house in disorder which her
father had delegated to her to the detriment of her mother.
Father Clovis, thanked and rewarded, retook the road to his "earth," as
his hut was called.
When Dr. Raynal came next day on his tri-weekly visit, he was glad to
see the girl.
He broached the great question which he had not dared debate with
Billet, whether the poor woman should receive the Last Sacrament.
Billet was a rabid Voltairian, while the doctor was a scientist. But he
believed it his duty in such cases to warn the family of the dying and
let them settle it.
Catherine was pious and attached little importance to the wrangles
between her father and the priest.
But the abbé was one of the sombre school, who would have been an
inquisitor in Spain. When he found the sufferer unconscious, he said
that he could not give absolution to those unable to confess, and went
out again.
There was no use applying elsewhere as he was monarch over this parish.
Catherine accepted the refusal as still another grief and went on with
her cares as daughter and mother for eight or nine days and nights.
As she was watching by her mother, frail bark sinking deeper and deeper
on Eternity's sea, the door opened, and Pitou appeared on the sill.
He came from Paris that morning. Catherine shuddered to see him, fearing
that her father was dead. But his countenance, without being what you
would call gay, was not that of the bearer of bad news. Indeed, Billet
was mending; since a few days the doctor had answered for him: that
morning he had been moved from the hospital to the doctor's house.
Pitou feared for Catherine, now. His opinion was that the moment Billet
learned what he was sure to ask, how his wife was, he would start for
home.
What would it be if he found Catherine there?
It was Gilbert who had therefore sent Pitou down into the country.
But when Pitou expressed their fears about their meeting, Catherine
declared that she would not leave her mother's pillow although her
father slew her there.
Pitou groaned at such a determination but he did not combat it.
So he stayed there to intervene, if he might.
During two days and nights, Mother Billet's life seemed going, breath by
breath. It was a wonder how a body lived with so little breath, but how
slightly it lived!
During the night, when all animation seemed extinct, the patient awoke
as it were, and she stared at Catherine, who ran to bring her boy.
The eyes were bright when she returned, a sound was heard, and the arms
were held out.
Catherine fell on her knees beside the bed.
A strange phenomenon took place: Mother Billet rose on her pillow,
slowly held out her arms over the girl's head and the boy, and with a
mighty effort, said:
"Bless you, my children!"
She fell back, dead. Her eyes remained open, as though she longed to see
her daughter from beyond the grave from not having seen enough of her
before.