by Ouida
CHAPTER VIII.
"Can I do any work for you, Bebee?" said black Jeannot in the daybreak,pushing her gate open timidly with one hand.
"There is none to do, Jeannot. They want so little in this time of theyear--the flowers," said she, lifting her head from the sweet-peas shewas tying up to their sticks.
The woodman did not answer; he leaned over the half-open wicket, andswayed it backwards and forwards under his bare arm. He was a good,harmless, gentle fellow, swarthy as charcoal and simple as a child, andquite ignorant, having spent all his days in the great Soignies forestsmaking fagots when he was a little lad, and hewing down trees or burningcharcoal as he grew to manhood.
"Who was that seigneur with you last night, Bebee?" he asked, after along silence, watching her as she moved.
Bebee's eyes grew very soft, but they looked up frankly.
"I am not sure--I think he is a painter--a great painter prince, Imean--as Rubes was in Antwerpen; he wanted roses the night before last inthe cathedral."
"But he was walking with you?"
"He was in the lane as I came home last night--yes."
"What does he give you for your roses?"
"Oh! he pays me well. How is your mother this day, Jeannot?"
"You do not like to talk of him?"
"Why should you want to talk of him? He is nothing to you."
"Did you really see him only two days ago, Bebee?"
"Oh, Jeannot! did I ever tell a falsehood? You would not say that to oneof your little sisters."
The forester swayed the gate to and fro drearily under his folded arms.
Bebee, not regarding him, cut her flowers, and filled her baskets, anddid her other work, and set a ladder against the hut and climbed on itslow roof to seek for eggs, the hens having green tastes sometimes for therushes and lichens of its thatch. She found two eggs, which she promisedherself to take to Annemie, and looking round as she sat on the edge ofthe roof, with one foot on the highest rung of the ladder, saw thatJeannot was still at the gate.
"You will be late in the forest, Jeannot," she cried to him. "It is sucha long, long way in and out. Why do you look so sulky? and you arekicking the wicket to pieces."
"I do not like you to talk with strangers," said Jeannot, sullenly andsadly.
Bebee laughed as she sat on the edge of the thatch, and looked at theshining gray skies of the early day, and the dew-wet garden, and thegreen fields beyond, with happy eyes that made the familiar scenetransfigured to her.
"Oh, Jeannot, what nonsense! As if I do not talk to a million strangersevery summer! as if I could ever sell a flower if I did not! You arecross this morning; that is what it is."
"Do you know the man's name?" said Jeannot, suddenly.
Bebee felt her cheeks grow warm as with some noonday heat of sunshine.She thought it was with anger against blundering Jeannot's curiosity.
"No! and what would his name be to us, if I did know it? I cannot askpeople's names because they buy my roses."
"As if it were only roses!"
There was the length of the garden between them, and Bebee did not hearas she sat on the edge of her roof with that light dreamful enjoymentof air and sky and coolness, and all the beauty of the dawning day, whichthe sweet vague sense of a personal happiness will bring with it to thedullest and the coldest.
"You are cross, Jeannot, that is what it is," she said, after a while."You should not be cross; you are too big and strong and good. Go in andget my bowl of bread and milk for me, and hand it to me up here. It is sopleasant. It is as nice as being perched on an apple-tree."
Jeannot went in obediently and handed up her breakfast to her, looking ather with shy, worshipping eyes. But his face was overcast, and he sighedheavily as he took up his hatchet and turned away; for he was the solesupport of his mother and sisters, and if he did not do his work inSoignies they would starve at home.
"You will be seeing that stranger again?" he asked her.
"Yes!" she answered with a glad triumph in her eyes; not thinking at allof him as she spoke. "You ought to go, Jeannot, now; you are so late. Iwill come and see your mother to-morrow. And do not be cross, you dearbig Jeannot. Days are too short to snip them up into little bits by badtemper; it is only a stupid sheep-shearer that spoils the fleece bysnapping at it sharp and hard; that is what Father Francis says."
Bebee, having delivered her little piece of wisdom, broke her bread intoher milk and ate it, lifting her face to the fresh wind and tossingcrumbs to the wheeling swallows, and watching the rose-bushes nod andtoss below in the breeze, and thinking vaguely how happy a thing it wasto live.
Jeannot looked up at her, then went on his slow sad way through the wetlavender-shrubs and the opening buds of the lilies.
"You will only think of that stranger, Bebee, never of any of us--neveragain," he said; and wearily opened the little gate and went through it,and down the daybreak stillness of the lane. It was a foolish thing tosay; but when were lovers ever wise?
Bebee did not heed; she did not understand herself or him; she only knewthat she was happy; when one knows that, one does not want to seek muchfurther.
She sat on the thatch and took her bread and milk in the gray clear air,with the swallows circling above her head, and one or two of them evenresting a second on the edge of the bowl to peck at the food from the bigwooden spoon; they had known her all the sixteen summers of her life, andwere her playfellows, only they would never tell her anything of whatthey saw in winter over the seas. That was her only quarrel with them.Swallows do not tell their secrets They have the weird of Procne onthem all.
The sun came and touched the lichens of the roof into gold.
Bebee smiled at it gayly as it rose above the tops of the trees, andshone on all the little villages scattered over the plains.
"Ah, dear Sun!" she cried to it. "I am going to be wise. I am going intogreat Rubes' country. I am going to hear of the Past and the Future. I amgoing to listen to what the Poets say. The swallows never would tell meanything; but now I shall know as much as they know. Are you not glad forme, O Sun?"
The Sun came over the trees, and heard and said nothing. If he hadanswered at all he must have said,--
"The only time when a human soul is either wise or happy is in that onesingle moment when the hour of my own shining or of the moon's beamingseems to that single soul to be past and present and future, to be atonce the creation and the end of all things. Faust knew that; so willyou."
But the Sun shone on and held his peace. He sees all things ripen andfall. He can wait. He knows the end. It is always the same.
He brings the fruit out of the peach-flower, and rounds it and touches itinto ruddiest rose and softest gold: but the sun knows well that thepeach must drop--whether into the basket to be eaten by kings, or on tothe turf to be eaten by ants. What matter which very much after all?
The Sun is not a cynic; he is only wise because he is Life and he isDeath, the creator and the corrupter of all things.