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.”