At this moment Isabeau called to her from the door of the cottage:
“Take Catherine, Jeanne,” she said. “I do not know what ails the child. She frets so. I will brew a posset. Do you attend to her a few moments. Why, what ails you, my little one?” she broke off abruptly as Jeanne came to her. “Is aught amiss? You look distraught.”
Jeanne opened her lips to reply. She thought to tell her mother of the wonderful thing that had happened, and then, something in Isabeau’s expression checked the words. Perhaps the good woman was unduly worried. She was in truth overburdened with the cares of her household. Little Catherine was ailing, and an ailing child is always exacting. Whatever it may have been, Jeanne found the words checked on her lips, and was unable to relate what had occurred. A girl trembling on the brink of womanhood is always shy and timid about relating the
thoughts and emotions that fill her. The unusual experience was such as needed a sympathetic and tender listener. The mother was too anxious over the younger child to be in a receptive mood for such confidences. So when she said again:
“Is anything amiss, Jeanne?” The little girl only shook her head, and said in a low tone:
“No, mother.”
“I dare say that the trick that Martin played upon you has upset you,”
commented Isabeau. “You ran the race, and then ran home thinking that something was wrong with us here. It was a mean trick, though done in sport. I
shall speak to his mother about it. The boy goes too much with that naughty Colin.”
Jeanne started. The voice had said that it had called her on the uplands. Could it be that that was what Martin had heard?
If so, then it could not have been a dream. It had really happened. She found voice to protest timidly:
“Perhaps he did not mean to trick me, mother. Perhaps he really thought that he heard you calling me.”
“Pouf, child! How could he, when I did not call? There! a truce to the talk while I brew the posset. I hope that Catherine is not coming down with sickness.”
She hurried into the kitchen, while Jeanne, wondering greatly at what had taken place, took her little sister into the garden, and sat down under another tree.
CHAPTER VI
JEANNE’S HARSH WORDS
“The miracle of this girl’s life is best honored by the
simple truth. ”
SAINTE-BEUVE.
So, half from shyness, half from fear of ridicule, the child told no one of her strange experience, but often did the thought of the happening come to her, and she wondered what it could mean. Indeed so much did she dwell upon it that Mengette rallied her upon her abstraction.
“What has come over you, Jeanne?” asked the latter one day when she and Jeanne in company with other girls and women were at the river engaged in one
of the periodical washings of the village. “Twice have I spoken to you, yet you have not answered. Has your mother been scolding you?”
“Mother scolding? Why, no!” Jeanne glanced up in surprise. “There is naught the matter, Mengette. I was just thinking.”
“Of what?” questioned her friend, but as Jeanne made no reply she lowered h
63er
voice and said with some asperity: “You are thinking too much, Jeanne D’Arc.
You are not a bit like yourself, and every one is noticing it. Why, when you come to a washing you come to laugh, to sing, to talk, and to have a good time; but you do naught but mope.” And Mengette gave the garments she was washing a
vicious thump with the clothes-beater.
“Well, I haven’t moped so much but that my clothes are as clean as the ones you are washing,” retorted Jeanne, holding up some linens for inspection, and regarding her friend with a quizzical glance. “Mengette, those poor garments will be beaten to a thread if you pound them much harder.”
Mengette let her paddle drop, and pushed back her hair with her wet hands.
“I’d willingly beat them to a thread to hear you laugh, Jeanne. Now come up closer, and I will tell you something that Hauviette told me last night. I don’t want any one else to hear it.”
So, wooed for the time being from her thoughts, Jeanne moved her washing table closer to her friend’s, and the two girls were soon deep in a low toned conversation, punctuated by many peals of merriment. All along the bank of river the village women and girls kneeled over their box-shaped washing tables, open at one side, set in the water’s edge, talking as they worked, or sometimes singing roundels and catches. As Mengette had said, the pleasure of washing lay in the meeting of many women and girls, and in the chatting, laughter and news-telling between the thump, thump of the clothes-beaters. The sound of the paddles could be heard along the valley as they beat and turned and dipped and
turned again the coarse garments of their families. Thus labor that would have proved irksome performed by two or three alone was lightened by the
communion and fellowship of the many.
It was pleasant by the river, despite the heat of the day. Bluebells and tall white plumes of spiræa vied with the brownish-yellow of mignonette and the rose of meadow pink in embroidering a delicate tracery of color against the vivid green of the valley. The smell of new mown hay made the air fragrant, and hills and meadows smiled under a cloudless sky. The workers laughed, and sang, and chatted, plying always the paddles; but at length the washing was finished. The sun was getting low behind the Domremy hills when the last snowy pieces were
stretched upon the grass to bleach, and then, piling large panniers high with the garments that were dried the women lifted them to their backs, thrusting their arms into the plaited handles to steady them, and so started homeward. Isabeau
Romée lingered to speak to her daughter.
“Leave the tables and paddles, little one,” she said, as she saw Jeanne preparing to take them from the water. “I will send the boys for them, and you have done
enough for one day. Know you where the lads are? I have seen naught of them
since dinner.”
