He drew his breath in sharply as one in bitter pain, and then gently he took Valerie's arms from about him, and his shoulders squared. He had had his moment. This was reality now. He heard Valérie cry out, and saw her run toward the cottage.
“Monsignor,” he said hoarsely, and, moving back, lifted the soutane from the buckboard's seat, “Monsignor, she must not know—and she has asked for me. It is for her sake, Monsignor—that she be not disillusioned in her death, and lose the faith that she has found again. Monsignor, it is for the last time, not to perform any office, Monsignor, for you will do that, but that she may not die in the belief that God, through me, has only mocked her at the end.”
“I understand, my son,” the Bishop answered simply. “Put it on—and come.”
And so Raymond put on the soutane again, and they hurried toward the cottage. And at the doorway Madame Bouchard courtesied in reverence to the Bishop, and Raymond heard her say something about the horse, and that she would remain within call; and then they passed on into Mother Blondin's room.
It was a bare room, poor and meagre in its furnishings—a single rag mat upon the floor; a single chair, and upon the chair the black bag that Valerie had brought from the presbytère; and beside the rough wooden bed, made perhaps by the Grandfather Bouchard in the old carpenter shop by the river bank, was a small table, and upon the table a lamp, and some cups with pewter spoons laid across their tops.
Extraneous things, these details seemed to Raymond to have intruded themselves upon him as by some strange and vivid assertiveness of their own, for he was not conscious that he had looked about him—that he had looked anywhere but at that white and pitifully sunken face that was straining upward from the pillows, and at Valérie who knelt at the bedside and supported old Mother Blondin in her arms.
“Quick!” Valerie cried anxiously. “Give her a teaspoonful from that first cup on the table. She has been trying to say something, and—and I do not understand. Oh, be quick! It is something about that man in the prison.”
The old woman's head bobbed jerkily, as though she fought for strength to hold it up; the eyes, half closed, were dulled; and she struggled, gasping, for her breath.
“Yes—the prison—the man”—the words were almost inarticulate. Raymond, beside her now, was holding the spoonful of stimulant to her lips. She swallowed it eagerly. “I—I lied—I lied—at the trial. Hold me—tighter. Do not let me—go. Not yet—not—not until——” Her body seemed to straighten, then wrench backward, and her eyes closed, and her voice died away.
Raymond felt the Bishop's hand close tensely on his shoulder.