As Père Barthélemy turned out of the gusty, dusty street, where the wind
had been tugging rudely at his old soutane, and into Mère Bazane’s yard,
he stepped into peace. Smiling, he flicked the dust off his sleeve with
delicate fingers, looking at the tubs under the apple-trees, at the
little gray shanty, and at the sign over the door. It seemed to him that
the tarnished letters were full of little, gaping mouths, ready to snap
at a possible customer. Some penniless student had painted the sign for
her, long ago; “La Blanchisseuse Dorée,” in a fat flourish of gold.
“Long ago,” said Père Barthélemy, with something of a sigh, “when she
was not called the White-foot for nothing.”
But there she was, toiling at her tubs, and Père Barthélemy knew she
needed smiles from him, not sighs.
“The peace of God be upon you, Mère Bazane.”
“And upon you, mon père.” The little woman looked up from her reverie
with a quick smile, and her eyes, in her small, weather-beaten face,
were still as blue as wild flax. “It is a beautiful day, mon père.”
“Dusty and gusty in the streets.”
“Ah, the streets, my father! I am out of them here, and glad to be so.
Sometimes a bird comes to the apple-trees, and when they are in leaf I
look up among their boughs and think I am in my old home again. We had
an orchard there.”
“A beautiful one, my friend?” Père Barthélemy’s keen, brown eyes were
very soft.
“An orchard is always beautiful, my father.”
“That is true. And how is your good husband to-day?”
The accustomed mist of grief dimmed the blue eyes of the Golden
Washerwoman. “Ah, my father, he is no better; he will never be better.
Ah, the poor child, how he suffers! All last night I was rubbing him
with oils. But I mind nothing, if I can keep my strength and get him all
he needs. He is much younger than I.” Her little, knotted hands shook
upon the side of the tub. “I weep in the night when I think of it. What
if I should die first, and leave him uncared for?”
Something, that might have been admiration, rippled over the priest’s
calm, brown face. “I am not old, Mère Bezane. Will you trust me? While I
live I will never forget him.”
“Ah, mon père!” Her hands shook still more. “That is good, that is of a
heavenly kindness. But no one can understand him but I, no one does him
justice, no one can guess his sufferings. And he speaks to me with such
affection! Only this morning, he said, ‘Hola! my little, old cabbage,’
he said, ‘make me some good soup.’ The brave heart! Will you not see
him?”
“I have no time, and I must not hinder you when you are so busy.”
“Yes, I am busy, thank the saints. It is a lady’s dress, my father, and
the work upon it is wonderful.” Her fingers sought the fine lace,
wistfully. “But before it came to me it received, not a washing, but a
massacre.”
That evening, Monsieur le Curé went to see his friend, the doctor.
Le Docteur Simon was hard at work among his hollyhocks when Père
Barthélemy leaned over the gate. “Ha!” said he, pointing a trowel at his
visitor. “I can see where you have been! You have been with our
Blanchisseuse Dorée.”
“Yes,” said the curé, quietly, “and I have come to ask you—is there
anything the matter with that villainous husband of hers?”
“I do not know,” said Simon, gruffly, making the earth fly, like a
digging terrier.
“There were bruises on her arm again,” said Père Barthélemy, slowly. “I
have thought much of that matter, my friend.”
“So have I.” The doctor spoke from a shower of flying earth. “And I will
tell you this. The brute will die, if he dies at all, from eating, and
lying still. Unless by the judgment of God. But that is _your_
department.”
“Our poor little Golden Washerwoman! How long is she to endure?”
“Till her heart breaks. You have all influence. Why do you not have the
brute removed?”
“I have thought much, Simon. And I have thought—I have guessed—that it
would not be for her happiness.”
“Ha!” said the doctor, again, with a look at the curé. “Ha. This Love!”
“Just so, my friend. We cannot meddle with it.”
The doctor grunted among his hollyhocks. “Yes, this Love. I have seen
many manifestations; many symptoms of it. The heroic symptom has never
shown itself so plainly as in the case of our Blanchisseuse Dorée. Name
of a name! If I were _you_, my dear, I should never be surprised to see
a hale young angel or two helping her with the wringing, and half the
powers of heaven on guard among her apple trees.”
“And there is no hope for her release?”
“Speaking as a doctor, no. As a man”—the doctor was small, and of a
wicked, selfish humour—“as a man, I am so greatly tempted to tell the
pig to drink his liniments someday—”
Père Barthélemy laughed. “He is of my flock, and I say that a long
purgatory is his only chance. Well, well! What would she say if she
heard us?”
“Those sort of creatures always live long. Perhaps you can tell me why.
These slugs are manifold as my good intentions, and will have a like
fate. Remember our Blanchisseuse in your prayers.”
But for once, the doctor was wrong. La Blanchisseuse’s husband died,
quite suddenly, and she was a widow. Upon Père Barthélemy came the
weight of her wild grief.
“O, mon père, he is gone, he is gone! Dead before me, and he so much
younger! You should have seen him when he came courting me. Such a fine
lad, and even then I was plain and hard-favoured. I cannot believe it. O
Mother of Sorrows, give him back to me! I was weak, I was wicked. When
he called me, sometimes I came slowly. My legs were stiff with
rheumatism, but I should have hastened. And often I fell asleep when I
was rubbing him. O, my father, how shall I live without him?”
“She will not live,” said the curé. But the doctor said: “Wait. That
grief must find healing.”
The Golden Washerwoman awoke, at last, to a sense of other things than
her loneliness. She need be the Golden Washerwoman no more. There was
the insurance to meet the dues for which she had striven for years,
urged and helped by Père Barthélemy. La Blanchisseuse Dorée was rich,
mon Dieu, as rich as any lonely woman need be. My faith, she had money
in the bank. Regardez la!
“I will buy mourning,” she said, “such mourning as will become my age.”
So she bought cheap, black materials, and made them up herself, after
long-forgotten fashion-plates of twenty years before. A little monument
in grief, veiled in crape, she attended mass and spoke long to the
priest who loved her. “She begins to take an interest in her dresses,”
said he to his friend the doctor. In the luxury of buying, Mère Bazane
found a little comfort.
And presently, the crape upon her gown gave place to black lace, very
deep, and of a heavy pattern, the like of which had never been seen in
the parish. She bought a chain of large jet beads, linked with gold. A
brooch of black enamel, roped with gold, bore a little blackish portrait
of her husband. There was a dreadful mourning ring upon one of her
little, knotted fingers. The flock of Père Barthélemy wondered and
admired.
Upon the day when the old sign, “La Blanchisseuse Dorée” disappeared
from above her door, and she herself appeared in penetrating purple
ribbons, Monsieur le Curé went to see her.
“The peace of God be upon you, Mère Bazane.”
The Golden Washerwoman, smaller and more meagre than ever before,
rustled her heavy, black draperies upon the floor, and wept upon Père
Barthélemy’s hand.
“How is it with you, Mère Bazane?”
“Well, well, mon père. The emptiness of the heart is terrible, and the
nights are full of a voice that does not call me, that will never call
me again. Sometimes I look for my tubs under the trees, and for a little
I am desolate that I need them no more. And then—”
“And then?”
“Then I go and buy things, my father.” She raised brave, blue eyes, like
the eyes of a child. “It helps me to forget, it fills the emptiness,
seest thou? I have never bought things before. When I washed the fine
dresses of rich ladies, I used to lay the lace against my hands, because
I loved it. It was beautiful. And I had never had anything that was
beautiful.” She smoothed the deep, black flounce of her dress with a
little hand that was always tremulous now. “This is beautiful, too, but
it has no colour. Colour warms me like a fire, mon père; fills me like a
food. Is it a sin?”
“It is no sin, my friend.”
“Come then, and I will show. At first I was afraid. That was a sin, to
be afraid of thee.”
She went to a little wooden chest, and raised the lid. It was as if a
rainbow had flashed suddenly into the dark, damp room. La Blanchisseuse
Dorée laid her tremulous hands upon a silk web of pure colour within,
and drew it out—pale blue, the colour of spring skies. Upon that she
shook a length of rose-coloured satin, damasked in a pattern of
butterflies. And then a glow of crimson silk, worked in tiny silver
flowers.
“When my mourning is ended,” she explained, fondling the gorgeous
fabrics, feverishly, “I can wear these. Meantime, I buy them, my
father.”
Something nearer tears than laughter took Père Barthélemy by the throat,
as he thought of the little washerwoman dressed in these silks.
“She will waste all her money,” he said, anxiously, to Le Docteur Simon,
“buying these things.”
“Let her,” answered the doctor, “if it makes her happy.”
“It does not make her happy,” said Père Barthélemy, quietly. He knew his
Blanchisseuse Dorée.
As time went on, the Golden Washerwoman broke further from the bounds of
decorous mourning. The flock was interested, if a little scandalized.
She adopted the royal colour of grief, and upon it played infinite
variations, in which she trotted to church, like an army with banners.
The two men who honoured her were troubled.
“If you had not touched wine for thirty years, it would not take much to
make you drunk,” said Le Docteur Simon.
“She is searching feverishly for happiness,” said Père Barthélemy.
When Mère Bazane appeared in a purple dress, with large white spots, the
curé was taking a hard-earned rest among the hills. But he heard of it.
And on his return, he went straight to her house.
As he turned out of the dusty street, he saw her under the apple trees,
toiling above her old tubs. She was singing as she worked, in a worn,
sweet voice, of a fair Isabeau of long ago, who walked in her garden.
And above her head the leafless apple boughs stretched a gray web of
shadows, and the old sign creaked in the wind.
“Mère Bazane!”
“Ah, mon père! Ah, mon père, I need nothing now to complete my
happiness. It is by the blessing of God that you are returned. I die of
joy.”
“But—my dear, you are working again?”
“Ah, my father, there is need!” She spoke as if in triumph, and her blue
eyes gleamed among the gentle wrinkles.
“Need? Your money—?”
“Safe in the bank, and there it will stay. Come, my father, and see!”
She led him to the open door, and pointed within.
Upon the floor sat a fat, dark child, some three years old. He had
pulled the end of the rose-coloured satin out of the chest, and wrapped
himself in it. He gazed at Mère Bazane and the curé with sullen, dark
eyes, set rather close in a small, heavy face.
“See him, the beautiful! He is the orphan of my dear husband’s nephew.
Now I am so rich, they have let me take him to bring up. Shall I not be
rich for his sake? Mon Dieu, how I will work and save!”
Her voice trembled with her little, knotted, fluttering hands. She moved
to draw the silk away. “Give it to me, my angel.”
The angel wrapped himself in the rich folds tighter than ever, and
screamed harshly, like a fierce bird that has no words. La Blanchisseuse
Dorée looked up, flushed and panting. “See,” she said, proudly, “already
he wants all the fine things he sees, and fights for them. Is he not
clever? Such a determined mind for his age. And he shall have all he
wants, the little one. Mon Dieu! how I will wash and bleach. I will
never grow tired.”
The child, released, wrapped himself again in the soft satin, and
resumed his sullen, steady stare. Père Barthélemy stood, chilled and
silent, seeing the whole tragedy of sacrifice renewed. He saw the small,
dark thing for ever asking, demanding, claiming. La Blanchisseuse
forever toiling to supply, until—until she was cast aside, like a
worn-out husk. He shrank from the child, as from a little full-fed
vampire.
And then the true thought burst winged from his heart,
“She has her reward already,” he thought.
“I shall cut up my dresses to make things for him,” said the Golden
Washerwoman, happily, “and spend no more money, no indeed. He will want
it all, all. And he shall have it. Mon Dieu, how I will work.”
Père Barthélemy’s eyes were dim as he raised his hand and made the sign
of the cross. “Of such are the kingdom of heaven,” he said, softly.
But he did not say them of the child, as the Golden Washerwoman thought.