by Ouida
CHAPTER VII.
As she got clear of the city and out on her country road, a shadow Fellacross her in the evening light.
"Have you had a good day, little one?" asked a voice that made her stopwith a curious vague expectancy and pleasure.
"It is you!" she said, with a little cry, as she saw her friend of thesilk stockings leaning on a gate midway in the green and solitary roadthat leads to Laeken.
"Yes, it is I," he answered, as he joined her. "Have you forgiven me,Bebee?"
She looked at him with frank, appealing eyes, like those of a child infault.
"Oh, I did not sleep all night!" she said, simply. "I thought I had beenrude and ungrateful, and I could not be sure I had done right, though tohave done otherwise would certainly have been wrong."
He laughed.
"Well, that is a clearer deduction than is to be drawn from most moraluncertainties. Do not think twice about the matter, my dear. I have not,I assure you."
"No!"
She was a little disappointed. It seemed such an immense thing to her;and she had lain awake all the night, turning it about in her littlebrain, and appealing vainly for help in it to the sixteen sleep-angels.
"No, indeed. And where are you going so fast, as if those wooden shoes ofyours were sandals of Mercury?"
"Mercury--is that a shoemaker?"
"No, my dear. He did a terrible bit of cobbling once, when he madeWoman. But he did not shoe her feet with swiftness that I know of; sheonly runs away to be run after, and if you do not pursue her, she comesback--always."
Bebee did not understand at all.
"I thought God made women," she said, a little awe-stricken.
"You call it God. People three thousand years ago called it Mercury orHermes. Both mean the same thing,--mere words to designate an unknownquality. Where are you going? Does your home lie here?"
"Yes, onward, quite far onward," said Bebee, wondering that he hadforgotten all she had told him the day before about her hut, her garden,and her neighbors. "You did not come and finish your picture to-day: whywas that? I had a rosebud for you, but it is dead now."
"I went to Anvers. You looked for me a little, then?"
"Oh, all day long. For I was so afraid I had been ungrateful."
"That is very pretty of you. Women are never grateful, my dear, exceptwhen they are very ill-treated. Mercury, whom we were talking of, gavethem, among other gifts, a dog's heart."
Bebee felt bewildered; she did not reason about it, but the idle,shallow, cynical tone pained her by its levity and its unlikeness tothe sweet, still, gray summer evening.
"Why are you in such a hurry?" he pursued. "The night is cool, and it isonly seven o'clock. I will walk part of the way with you."
"I am in a hurry because I have Annemie's patterns to do," said Bebee,glad that he spoke of a thing that she knew how to answer. "You see,Annemie's hand shakes and her eyes are dim, and she pricks the patternall awry and never perceives it; it would break her heart if one showedher so, but the Baes would not take them as they are; they are of no useat all. So I prick them out myself on fresh paper, and the Baes thinks itis all her doing, and pays her the same money, and she is quite content.And as I carry the patterns to and fro for her, because she cannot walk,it is easy to cheat her like that; and it is no harm to cheat _so_, youknow." He was silent.
"You are a good little girl, Bebee, I can see." he said at last, with agraver sound in his voice. "And who is this Annemie for whom you do somuch? an old woman, I suppose."
"Oh, yes, quite old; incredibly old. Her man was drowned at sea sixtyyears ago, and she watches for his brig still, night and morning."
"The dog's heart. No doubt he beat her, and had a wife in fifty otherports."
"Oh, no!" said Bebee, with a little cry, as though the word against thedead man hurt her. "She has told me so much of him. He was as good asgood could be, and loved her so, and between the voyages they were sohappy. Surely that must have been sixty years now, and she is so sorrystill, and still will not believe that he was drowned."
He looked down on her with a smile that had a certain pity in it.
"Well, yes; there are women like that, I believe. But be very sure, mydear, he beat her. Of the two, one always holds the whip and uses it, theother crouches."
"I do not understand," said Bebee.
"No; but you will."
"I will?--when?"
He smiled again.
"Oh--to-morrow, perhaps, or next year--or when Fate fancies."
"Or rather, when I choose," he thought to himself, and let his eyes restwith a certain pleasure on the little feet, that went beside him in thegrass, and the pretty fair bosom that showed ever and again, as thefrills of her linen bodice were blown back by the wind and her own quickmotion.
Bebee looked also up at him; he was very handsome, and looked so to her,after the broad, blunt, characterless faces of the Walloon peasantryaround her. He walked with an easy grace, he was clad in picture-likevelvets, he had a beautiful poetic head, and eyes like deep brown waters,and a face like one of Jordaens' or Rembrandt's cavaliers in thegalleries where she used to steal in of a Sunday, and look up at thepaintings, and dream of what that world could be in which those peoplehad lived.
"_You_ are of the people of Rubes' country, are you not?" she asked him.
"Of what country, my dear?"
"Of the people that live in the gold frames," said Bebee, quiteseriously. "In the galleries, you know. I know a charwoman that scrubsthe floors of the Arenberg Palace, and she lets me in sometimes to look;and you are just like those great gentlemen in the gold frames, only youhave not a hawk and a sword, and they always have. I used to wonder wherethey came from, for they are not like any of us one bit, and thecharwoman--she is Lisa Dredel, and lives in the street of the Potd'Etain--always said. 'Dear heart, they all belong to Rubes' land: wenever see their like nowadays.' But _you_ must come out of Rubes' land;at least, I think so, do you not?"
He caught her meaning; he knew that Rubes was the homely abbreviation ofRubens that all the Netherlanders used, and he guessed the idea that wasreality to this little lonely fanciful mind.
"Perhaps I do," he answered her with a smile, for it was not worth hiswhile to disabuse her thoughts of any imagination that glorified him toher. "Do you not want to see Rubes' world, little one? To see the goldand the grandeur, and the glitter of it all?--never to toil or gettired?--always to move in a pageant?--always to live like the hawks inthe paintings you talk of, with silver bells hung round you, and a hoodall sewn with pearls?"
"No," said Bebee, simply. "I should like to see it, just to see it, asone looks through a grating into the king's grape-houses here. But Ishould not like to live in it. I love my hut, and the starling, and thechickens, and what would the garden do without me? and the children, andthe old Annemie? I could not anyhow, anywhere, be any happier than I am.There is only one thing I wish."
"And what is that?"
"To know something; not to be so ignorant. Just look--I can read aLittle, it is true: my Hours, and the letters, and when Krebs bringsin a newspaper I can read a little of it, not much. I know French well,because Antoine was French himself, and never did talk Flemish to me;and they being Netherlanders, cannot, of course, read the newspapers atall, and so think it very wonderful indeed in me. But what I want is toknow things, to know all about what _was_ before ever I was living. St.Gudule now--they say it was built hundreds of years before; and Rubesagain--they say he was a painter king in Antwerpen before the oldest,oldest woman like Annemie ever began to count time. I am sure bookstell you all those things, because I see the students coming and goingwith them; and when I saw once the millions of books in the Rue du Musee,I asked the keeper what use they were for, and he said, 'To make menwise, my dear.' But Gringoire Bac, the cobbler, who was with me,--it wasa fete day,--Bac, _he_ said, 'Do not you believe that, Bebee; theyonly muddle folks' brains; for one book tells them one thing, and anotherbook another, and so on, till they are dazed w
ith all the contrarylying; and if you see a bookish man, be sure you see a very poor creaturewho could not hoe a patch, or kill a pig, or stitch an upper-leather,were it ever so.' But I do not believe that Bac said right. Did he?"
"I am not sure. On the whole, I think it is the truest remark onliterature I have ever heard, and one that shows great judgment in Bac.Well?"
"Well, sometimes, you know," said Bebee, not understanding his answer,but pursuing her thoughts confidentially,--"sometimes I talk like this tothe neighbors, and they laugh at me. Because Mere Krebs says that whenone knows how to spin and sweep and make bread and say one's prayers andmilk a goat or a cow, it is all a woman wants to know this side ofheaven. But for me, I cannot help it, when I look at those windows in thecathedral, or at those beautiful twisted little spires that are all overour Hotel de Ville, I want to know who the men were that made them,--whatthey did and thought,--how they looked and spoke,--how they learned toshape stone into leaves and grasses like that,--how they could imagineall those angel faces on the glass. When I go alone in the quite earlymorning or at night when it is still--sometimes in winter I have tostay till it is dark over the lace--I hear their feet come after me, andthey whisper to me close, 'Look what beautiful things we have done,Bebee, and you all forget us quite. We did what never will die, but ournames are as dead as the stones.' And then I am so sorry for them andashamed. And I want to know more. Can you tell me?"
He looked at her earnestly; her eyes were shining, her cheeks were warm,her little mouth was tremulous with eagerness.
"Did any one ever speak to you in that way?" he asked her.
"No," she answered him. "It comes into my head of itself. Sometimes Ithink the cathedral angels put it there. For the angels must be tired,you know; always pointing to God and always seeing men turn away, I usedto tell Antoine sometimes. But he used to shake his head and say that itwas no use thinking; most likely St. Gudule and St. Michael had set thechurch down in the night all ready made, why not? God made the trees, andthey were more wonderful, he thought, for his part. And so perhaps theyare, but that is no answer. And I do _want_ to know. I want some one whowill tell me; and if you come out of Rubes' country as I think, no doubtyou know everything, or remember it?"
He smiled.
"The free pass to Rubes' country lies in books, pretty one. Shall I giveyou some?--nay, lend them, I mean, since giving you are too wilful tohear of without offence. You can read, you said?"
Bebee's eyes glowed as they lifted themselves to his.
"I can read--not very fast, but that would come with doing it more andmore, I think, just as spinning does; one knots the thread and breaks ita million times before one learns to spin as fine as cobwebs. I have readthe stories of St. Anne, and of St. Catherine, and of St. Luven fiftytimes, but they are all the books that Father Francis has; and no oneelse has any among us."
"Very well. You shall have books of mine. Easy ones first, and then thosethat are more serious. But what time will you have? You do so much; youare like a little golden bee."
Bebee laughed happily.
"Oh! give me the books and I will find the time. It is light so earlynow. That gives one so many hours. In winter one has so few one must liein bed, because to buy a candle you know one cannot afford except, ofcourse, a taper now and then, as one's duty is, for our Lady or for thedead. And will you really, really, lend me books?"
"Really, I will. Yes. I will bring you one to the Grande Placeto-morrow, or meet you on your road there with it. Do you know whatpoetry is, Bebee?"
"No."
"But your flowers talk to you?"
"Ah! always. But then no one else hears them ever but me; and so no oneelse ever believes."
"Well, poets are folks who hear the flowers talk as you do, and thetrees, and the seas, and the beasts, and even the stones; but no oneelse ever hears these things, and so, when the poets write them out, therest of the world say, 'That is very fine, no doubt, but only good fordreamers; it will bake no bread.' I will give you some poetry; for Ithink you care more about dreams than about bread."
"I do not know," said Bebee; and she did not know, for her dreams, likeher youth, and her innocence, and her simplicity, and her strength, wereall unconscious of themselves, as such things must be to be pure and trueat all.
Bebee had grown up straight, and clean, and fragrant, and joyous as oneof her own carnations; but she knew herself no more than the carnationknows its color and its root,
"No. you do not know," said he, with a sort of pity; and thought withinhimself, was it worth while to let her know?
If she did not know, these vague aspirations and imaginations would dropoff from her with the years of her early youth, as the lime-flowers dropdownwards with the summer heats. She would forget them. They would lingera little in her head, and, perhaps, always wake at some sunset hour orsome angelus chime, but not to trouble her. Only to make her cradle songa little sadder and softer than most women's was. Unfed, they would sinkaway and bear no blossom.
She would grow into a simple, hardy, hardworking, God-fearing Flemishwoman like the rest. She would marry, no doubt, some time, and rearher children honestly and well; and sit in the market stall every day,and spin and sew, and dig and wash, and sweep, and brave bad weather,and be content with poor food to the end of her harmless and laboriousdays--poor little Bebee!
He saw her so clearly as she would be--if he let her alone.
A little taller, a little broader, a little browner, less sweet of voice,less soft of skin, less flower-like in face; having learned to think onlyas her neighbors thought, of price of wood and cost of bread; laboringcheerily but hardly from daybreak to nightfall to fill hungry mouths:forgetting all things except the little curly-heads clustered round hersoup-pot, and the year-old lips sucking at her breasts.
A blameless life, an eventless life, a life as clear as the dewdrop, andas colorless; a life opening, passing, ending in the little green woodedlane, by the bit of water where the swans made their nests under thewillows; a life like the life of millions, a little purer, a littlebrighter, a little more tender, perhaps, than those lives usually are,but otherwise as like them as one ear of barley is like another as itrises from the soil, and blows in the wind, and turns brown in the strongsummer sun, and then goes down to the sod again under the sickle.
He saw her just as she would be--if he let her alone.
But should he leave her alone?
He cared nothing; only her eyes had such a pretty, frank, innocentlook like a bird's in them, and she had been so brave and bold with himabout those silken stockings; and this little ignorant, dreamful mind ofhers was so like a blush rosebud, which looks so close-shut, and sosweet-smelling, and so tempting fold within fold, that a child will pullit open, forgetful that he will spoil it forever from being a full-grownrose, and that he will let the dust, and the sun, and the bee into itstender bosom--and men are true children, and women are their rosebuds.
Thinking only of keeping well with this strange and beautiful wayfarerfrom that unknown paradise of Rubes' country, Bebee lifted up thevine-leaves of her basket.
"I took a flower for you to-day, but it is dead. Look; to-morrow, if youwill be there, you shall have the best in all the garden."
"You wish to see me again then?" he asked her. Bebee looked at him withtroubled eyes, but with a sweet frank faith that had no hesitation in it.
"Yes! you are not like anything I ever knew, and if you will only help meto learn a little. Sometimes I think I am not stupid, only ignorant; butI cannot be sure unless I try."
He smiled; he was listlessly amused; the day before he had tempted thechild merely because she was pretty, and to tempt her in that way seemedthe natural course of things, but now there was something in her thattouched him differently; the end would be the same, but he would changethe means.
The sun had set. There was a low, dull red glow still on the far edge ofthe plains--that was all. In the distant cottages little lights weretwinkling. The path grew dark.
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sp; "I will go away and let her alone," he thought. "Poor little soul! itwould give itself lavishly, it would never be bought. I will let italone; the mind will go to sleep and the body will keep healthy, andstrong, and pure, as people call it. It would be a pity to play with botha day, and then throw them away as the boy threw the pear-blossom. Sheis a little clod of earth that has field flowers growing in it. I willlet her alone, the flowers under the plough in due course will die, andshe will be content among the other clods,--if I let her alone."
At that moment there went across the dark fields, against the dusky redsky, a young man with a pile of brushwood on his back, and a hatchet inhis hand.
"You are late, Bebee," he called to her in Flemish, and scowled at thestranger by her side.
"A good-looking lad; who is it?" said her companion.
"That is Jeannot, the son of old Sophie," she answered him. "He is sogood--oh, so good, you cannot think; he keeps his mother and three littlesisters, and works so very, very hard in the forest, and yet he oftenfinds time to dig my garden for me, and he chops all my wood in winter."
They had come to where the road goes up by the king's summer palace. Theywere under great hanging beeches and limes. There was a high gray wall,and over it the blossoming fruit boughs hung. In a ditch full of longgrass little kids bleated by their mothers. Away on the left went thegreen fields of colza, and beetroot, and trefoil, with big forest treeshere and there in their midst, and, against the blue low line of the farhorizon, red mill-sails, and gray church spires; dreamy plaintive bellsfar away somewhere were ringing the sad Flemish carillon.
He paused and looked at her.
"I must bid you good night, Bebee; you are near your home now."
She paused too and looked at him.
"But I shall see you to-morrow?"
There was the wistful, eager, anxious unconsciousness of appeal as whenthe night before she had asked him if he were angry.
He hesitated a moment. If he said no, and went away out of the citywherever his listless and changeful whim called him, he knew how it wouldbe with her; he knew what her life would be as surely as he knew thepeach would come out of the peach-flower rosy on the wall there: life inthe little hut; among the neighbors; sleepy and safe and soulless;--if helet her alone.
If he stayed and saw her on the morrow he knew, too, the end as surely ashe knew that the branch of white pear-blossom, which in carelessness hehad knocked down with a stone on the grass yonder, would fade in thenight and would never bring forth its sweet, simple fruit in thesunshine.
To leave the peach-flower to come to maturity and be plucked by apeasant, or to pull down the pear-blossom and rifle the buds?
Carelessly and languidly he balanced the question with himself, whilstBebee, forgetful of the lace patterns and the flight of the hours, stoodlooking at him with anxious and pleading eyes, thinking only--was heangry again, or would he really bring her the books and make her wise,and let her know the stories of the past?
"Shall I see you to-morrow?" she said wistfully.
Should she?--if he left the peach-blossom safe on the wall, Jeannot thewoodcutter would come by and by and gather the fruit.
If he left the clod of earth in its pasture with all its daisiesuntouched, this black-browed young peasant would cut it round with hishatchet and carry it to his wicker cage, that the homely brown lark ofhis love might sing to it some stupid wood note under a cottage eave.
The sight of the strong young forester going over the darkened fieldsagainst the dull red skies was as a feather that suffices to sway to oneside a balance that hangs on a hair.
He had been inclined to leave her alone when he saw in his fancy theclean, simple, mindless, honest life that her fanciful girlhood wouldsettle down into as time should go on. But when in the figure of thewoodman there was painted visibly on the dusky sky that end for her whichhe had foreseen, he was not indifferent to it; he resented it; he wasstirred to a vague desire to render it impossible.
If Jeannot had not gone by across the fields he would have left her andlet her alone from that night thenceforwards; as it was,--
"Good night, Bebee," he said to her. "Tomorrow I will finish theBroodhuis and bring you your first book. Do not dream too much, or youwill prick your lace patterns all awry. Good night, pretty one."
Then he turned and went back through the green dim lanes to the city.
Bebee stood a moment looking after him, with a happy smile; then shepicked up the fallen pear-blossom, and ran home as fast as her feet wouldtake her.
That night she worked very late watering her flowers, and trimming them,and then ironing out a little clean white cap for the morrow; and thensitting down under the open lattice to prick out all old Annemie'sdesigns by the strong light of the full moon that flooded her hut withits radiance.
But she sang all the time she worked, and the gay, pretty, wordless songsfloated across the water and across the fields, and woke some old peoplein their beds as they lay with their windows open, and they turned andcrossed themselves, and said, "Dear heart!--this is the eve of theAscension, and the angels are so near we hear them."
But it was no angel; only the thing that is nearer heaven than anythingelse,--a little human heart that is happy and innocent.
Bebee had only one sorrow that night. The pear-blossoms were all dead;and no care could call them back even for an hour's blooming.
"He did not think when he struck themdown," she said to herself, regretfully.