"It is not too late," he said brokenly. "Listen! Do you remember the _Benedictus?_ Give me your hand, and we will kneel, and say it together."
She drew back, and shook her head, and tried to speak--but no words came, only her lips quivered.
He held out his hand to her--held it silently there for a long time--and then, hesitantly, she laid her hand in his.
And kneeling there in the pew, old Mother Blondin and Raymond Chapelle, Raymond began the solemn words of the _Benedictus_. Low his voice was, and the tears crept to his eyes as the thin hand clutched and clasped spasmodically at his own. And as he came to the end, the tears held back no longer and rolled hot upon his cheeks.
"... Through the tender mercy of our God... to enlighten those who sit in darkness, and in the shade of death: to direct our feet into the way of peace"--his voice died away.
She was sobbing bitterly. He helped her to her feet as she sought to rise, and, holding tightly to her arm for she swayed unsteadily, he led her down the aisle. And they came to the church door, and out upon the green. And here she paused, as though she expected him to leave her.
"I will walk up the hill with you, Mother Blondin," he said. "I do not think you are strong enough to go alone."
They started on along the road. She walked very slowly, very feebly, and leaned heavily upon him. And neither spoke. And they turned up the hill. And halfway up the hill he lifted her in his arms and carried her, for her strength was gone. And somehow he knew that when she had left her bed that night to stumble down this hill to the moonlit church she had left it for the last time--save one.
She was speaking again--almost inaudibly. He bent his head to catch the words.
"It is forty years," said old Mother Blondin. "Forty years--it is a long time--forty years."
|IT hung there precariously. All through the mass that morning Raymond's eyes had kept straying to the great cross on the wall that old Mother Blondin had disturbed the night before. No one else, it was true, had appeared to notice it; but, having no reason to do so, no one else, very probably, had given it any particular attention--nevertheless, a single strand of cord on one end of the horizontal beam was all that now prevented the cross from pitching outward from the wall and crashing down into the body of the church.