Bébée; Or, Two Little Wooden Shoes

by Ouida

  CHAPTER VI.

  All the next day she sat under the yellow awning, but she sat alone.

  It was market day; there were many strangers. Flowers were in demand. Thecopper pieces were ringing against one another all the hours through inher leathern bag. The cobbler was in such good humor that he forgot toquarrel with his wife. The fruit was in such plenty that they gave her aleaf-full of white and red currants for her noonday dinner. And thepeople split their sides at the Cheap John's jokes; he was so droll. Noone saw the leaks in his kettles or the hole in his bellows, or the legthat was lacking to his milking stool.

  Everybody was gay and merry that day. But Bebee's eyes looked wistfullyover the throng, and did not find what they sought. Somehow the dayseemed dull, and the square empty.

  The stones and the timbers around seemed more than ever full of athousand stories that they would not tell her because she knew nothing,and was only Bebee.

  She had never known a dull hour before. She, a little bright,industrious, gay thing, whose hands were always full of work, and whosehead was always full of fancies, even in the grimmest winter time, whenshe wove the lace in the gray, chilly workroom, with the frost on thecasements, and the mice running out in their hunger over the bare brickfloor.

  That bare room was a sad enough place sometimes, when the old women wouldbewail how they starved on the pittance they gained, and the young womensighed for their aching heads and their failing eyesight, and thechildren dropped great tears on the bobbins, because they had come outwithout a crust to break their fast.

  She had been sad there often for others, but she had never been dull--notwith this unfamiliar, desolate, dreary dulness, that seemed to take allthe mirth out of the busy life around her, and all the color out of theblue sky above. Why, she had no idea herself. She wondered if she weregoing to be ill; she had never been ill in her life, being strong as alittle bird that has never known cage or captivity.

  When the day was done, Bebee gave a quick sigh as she looked across thesquare. She had so wanted to tell him that she was not ungrateful; andshe had a little moss-rose ready, with a sprig of sweetbrier, and a tinyspray of maidenhair fern that grew under the willows, which she had keptcovered up with a leaf of sycamore all the day long.

  No one would have it now.

  The child went out of the place sadly as the carillon rang. There wasonly the moss-rose in her basket, and the red and white currants that hadbeen given her for her dinner.

  She went along the twisting, many-colored, quaintly fashioned streets,till she came to the water-side.

  It is very ancient there still, there are all manner of old buildings,black and brown and gray, peaked roofs, gabled windows, arched doors,crumbling bridges, twisted galleries leaning to touch the dark surface ofthe canal, dusky wharves crowded with barrels, and bales, and cattle, andtimber, and all the various freightage that the good ships come and gowith all the year round, to and from the ZuyderZee, and the Baltic water,and the wild Northumbrian shores, and the iron-bound Scottish headlands,and the pretty gray Norman seaports, and the white sandy dunes ofHolland, with the toy towns and the straight poplar-trees.

  Bebee was fond of watching the brigs and barges, that looked so big toher, with their national flags flying, and their tall masts standingthick as grass, and their tawny sails flapping in the wind, and aboutthem the sweet, strong smell of that strange, unknown thing, the sea.

  Sometimes the sailors would talk with her; sometimes some old salt,sitting astride of a cask, would tell her a mariner's tale of far-awaylands and mysteries of the deep; sometimes some curly-headed cabin-boywould give her a shell or a plume of seaweed, and try and make herunderstand what the wonderful wild water was like, which was not quietand sluggish and dusky as this canal was, but was forever changing andmoving, and curling and leaping, and making itself now blue as her eyes,now black as that thunder-cloud, now white as the snow that the winterwind tossed, now pearl hued and opaline as the convolvulus that blew inher own garden.

  And Bebee would listen, with the shell in her lap, and try tounderstand, and gaze at the ships and then at the sky beyond them, andtry to figure to herself those strange countries to which these shipswere always going, and saw in fancy all the blossoming orchard provinceof green France, and all the fir-clothed hills and rushing rivers of thesnow-locked Swedish shore, and saw too, doubtless, many lands that had noplace at all except in dreamland, and were more beautiful even than thebeauty of the earth, as poets' countries are, to their own sorrow,oftentimes.

  But this dull day Bebee did not go down upon the wharf; she did not wantthe sailors' tales; she saw the masts and the bits of bunting thatstreamed from them, and they made her restless, which they had never donebefore.

  Instead she went in at a dark old door and climbed up a steep staircasethat went up and up, as though she were mounting St. Gudule's belfrytowers; and at the top of it entered a little chamber in the roof, whereone square unglazed hole that served for light looked out upon the canal,with all its crowded craft, from the dainty schooner yacht, fresh asgilding and holystone could make her, that was running for pleasure tothe Scheldt, to the rude, clumsy coal barge, black as night, that borethe rough diamonds of Belgium to the snow-buried roofs of Christiania andStromstad.

  In the little dark attic there was a very old woman in a red petticoatand a high cap, who sat against the window, and pricked out lace patternswith a pin on thick paper. She was eighty-five years old, and couldhardly keep body and soul together.

  Bebee, running to her, kissed her. "Oh, mother Annemie, look here!Beautiful red and white currants, and a roll; I saved them for you. Theyare the first currants we have seen this year. Me? oh, for me, I haveeaten more than are good! You know I pick fruit like a sparrow, always.Dear mother Annemie, are you better? Are you quite sure you are betterto-day?"

  The little old withered woman, brown as a walnut and meagre as a rush,took the currants, and smiled with a childish glee, and began to eatthem, blessing the child with each crumb she broke off the bread.

  "Why had you not a grandmother of your own, my little one?" she mumbled."How good you would have been to her, Bebee!"

  "Yes," said Bebee seriously, but her mind could not grasp the idea. Itwas easier for her to believe the fanciful lily parentage of Antoine'sstories. "How much work have you done, Annemie? Oh, all that? all that?But there is enough for a week. You work too early and too late, you dearAnnemie."

  "Nay, Bebee, when one has to get one's bread that cannot be. But I amafraid my eyes are failing. That rose now, is it well done?"

  "Beautifully done. Would the Baes take them if they were not? You know heis one that cuts every centime in four pieces."

  "Ah! sharp enough, sharp enough, that is true. But I am always afraid ofmy eyes. I do not see the flags out there so well as I used to do."

  "Because the sun is so bright, Annemie; that is all. I myself, when Ihave been sitting all day in the place in the light, the flowers lookpale to me. And you know it is not age with _me_, Annemie?"

  The old woman and the young girl laughed together at that droll idea.

  "You have a merry heart, dear little one," said old Annemie. "The saintskeep it to you always."

  "May I tidy the room a little?"

  "To be sure, dear, and thank you too. I have not much time, you see; andsomehow my back aches badly when I stoop."

  "And it is so damp here for you, over all that water!" said Bebee as sheswept and dusted and set to rights the tiny place, and put in a littlebroken pot a few sprays of honeysuckle and rosemary that she had broughtwith her. "It is so damp here. You should have come and lived in my hutwith me, Annemie, and sat out under the vine all day, and looked afterthe chickens for me when I was in the town. They are such mischievouslittle souls; as soon as my back is turned one or other is sure to pushthrough the roof, and get out among the flower-beds. Will you neverchange your mind, and live with me, Annemie? I am sure you would behappy, and the starling says your name quite plain, and he is such afunny bird
to talk to; you never would tire of him. Will you never come?It is so bright there, and green and sweet smelling; and to think younever even have seen it!--and the swans and all,--it is a shame."

  "No, dear," said old Annemie, eating her last bunch of currants."You have said so so often, and you are good and mean it, that Iknow. But I could not leave the water. It would kill me. Out of thiswindow you know I saw my Jeannot's brig go away--away--away--till themasts were lost in the mists. Going with iron to Norway; the 'Fleurd'Epine' of this town, a good ship, and a sure, and her mate; and asproud as might be, and with a little blest Mary in lead round his throat.She was to be back in port in eight months, bringing timber. Eightmonths--that brought Easter time. But she never came. Never, never,never, you know. I sat here watching them come and go, and my childsickened and died, and the summer passed, and the autumn, and all thewhile I looked--looked--looked; for the brigs are all much alike; andonly her I always saw as soon as she hove in sight (because he tied ahank of flax to her mizzen-mast); and when he was home safe andsound I spun the hank into hose for him; that was a fancy of his, and foreleven voyages, one on another, he had never missed to tie the flaxnor I to spin the hose. But the hank of flax I never saw this time; northe brave brig; nor my good man with his sunny blue eyes. Only one day inwinter, when the great blocks of ice were smashing hither and thither, acoaster came in and brought tidings of how off in the Danish waters theyhad come on a water-logged brig, and had boarded her, and had found herempty, and her hull riven in two, and her crew all drowned and deadbeyond any manner of doubt. And on her stern there was her name paintedwhite, the 'Fleur d'Epine,' of Brussels, as plain as name could be; andthat was all we ever knew: what evil had struck her, or how they hadperished, nobody ever told. Only the coaster brought that bit of beamaway, with the 'Fleur d'Epine' writ clear upon it. But you see I never_know_ my man is dead. Any day--who can say?--any one of those ships maybring him aboard of her, and he may leap out on the wharf there, and comerunning up the stairs as he used to do, and cry, in his merry voice,'Annemie, Annemie, here is more flax to spin, here is more hose toweave!' For that was always his homeward word; no matter whether he hadhad fair weather or foul, he always knotted the flax to his masthead. Soyou see, dear, I could not leave here. For what if he came and found meaway? He would say it was an odd fashion of mourning for him. And I couldnot do without the window, you know. I can watch all the brigs come in;and I can smell the shipping smell that I have loved all the days of mylife; and I can see the lads heaving, and climbing, and furling, andmending their bits of canvas, and hauling their flags up and down. Andthen who can say?--the sea never took him, I think--I think I shall hearhis voice before I die. For they do say that God is good."

  Bebee, sweeping very noiselessly, listened, and her eyes grew wistful andwondering. She had heard the story a thousand times; always in differentwords, but always the same little tale, and she knew how old Annemie wasdeaf to all the bells that tolled the time, and blind to all thewhiteness of her hair and all the wrinkles of her face, and only thoughtof her sea-slain lover as he had been in the days of her youth.

  But this afternoon the familiar history had a new patheticalness for her,and as the old soul put aside with her palsied hand the square of canvasthat screened the casement, and looked out, with her old dim sad eyesstrained in the longing that God never answered, Bebee felt a strangechill at her own heart, and wondered to herself,--

  "What can it be to care for another creature like that? It must be soterrible, and yet it must be beautiful too. Does every one suffer likethat?"

  She did not speak at all as she finished sweeping the bricks, and wentdown-stairs for a metal cruche full of water, and set over a littlecharcoal on the stove the old woman's brass soup kettle with her supperof stewing cabbage.

  Annemie did not hear or notice; she was still looking out of the hole inthe wall on to the masts, and the sails, and the water.

  It was twilight.

  From the barges and brigs there came the smell of the sea. The sailorswere shouting to each other. The craft were crowded close, and lost inthe growing darkness. On the other side of the canal the belfries wereringing for vespers.

  "Eleven voyages one and another, and he never forgot to tie the flaxto the mast," Annemie murmured, with her old wrinkled face leaning outinto the gray air. "It used to fly there,--one could see it coming uphalf a mile off,--just a pale yellow flake on the wind, like a tress ofmy hair, he would say. No, no, I could not go away; he may come to-night,to-morrow, any time; he is not drowned, not my man; he was all I had, andGod is good, they say."

  Bebee listened and looked; then kissed the old shaking hand and took upthe lace patterns and went softly out of the room without speaking.

  When old Annemie watched at the window it was useless to seek for anyword or sign of her: people said that she had never been quite right inher brain since that fatal winter noon sixty years before, when thecoaster had brought into port the broken beam of the good brig "Fleurd'Epine."

  Bebee did not know about that, nor heed whether her wits were right ornot.

  She had known the old creature in the lace-room where Annemie pricked outdesigns, and she had conceived a great regard and sorrow for her; andwhen Annemie had become too ailing and aged to go herself any longer tothe lace-maker's place, Bebee had begged leave for her to have thepatterns at home, and had carried them to and fro for her for the lastthree or four years, doing many other little useful services for the loneold soul as well,--services which Annemie hardly perceived, she hadgrown so used to them, and her feeble intelligence was so sunk in the oneabsorbing idea that she must watch all the days through and all the yearsthrough for the coming of the dead man and the lost brig.

  Bebee put the lace patterns in her basket, and trotted home, her sabotsclattering on the stones.

  "What it must be to care for any one like that!" she thought, and by somevague association of thought that she could not have pursued, she liftedthe leaves and looked at the moss-rosebud.

  It was quite dead.