by Ouida
CHAPTER IX.
But Bebee, who only saw in the sun the sign of daily work, the brightnessof the face of the world, the friend of the flowers, the harvest-man ofthe poor, the playmate of the birds and butterflies, the kindly lightthat the waking birds and the ringing carillon welcomed,--Bebee, who wasnot at all afraid of him, smiled at his rays and saw in them only fairestpromise of a cloudless midsummer day as she gave her last crumb to theswallows, dropped down off the thatch, and busied herself in making breadthat Mere Krebs would bake for her, until it was time to cut her flowersand go down into the town.
When her loaves were made and she had run over with them to themill-house and back again, she attired herself with more heed thanusual, and ran to look at her own face in the mirror of the deepwell-water--other glass she had none.
She was used to hear herself called pretty; bat she had never thoughtabout it at all till now. The people loved her; she had always believedthat they had only said it as a sort of kindness, as they said, "God keepyou." But now--
"He told me I was like a flower," she thought to herself, and hung overthe well to see. She did not know very well what he had meant; but thesentence stirred in her heart as a little bird under tremulous leaves.
She waited ten minutes full, leaning and looking down, while her eyes,that were like the blue iris, smiled back to her from the brown depthsbelow. Then she went and kneeled down before the old shrine in the wallof the garden.
"Dear and holy Mother of Jesus, I do thank you that you made me a littlegood to look at," she said, softly. "Keep me as you keep the flowers, andlet my face be always fair, because it is a pleasure to _be_ a pleasure.Ah, dear Mother, I say it so badly, and it sounds so vain, I know. But Ido not think you will be angry, will you? And I am going to try to bewise."
Then she murmured an ave or two, to be in form as it were, and then roseand ran along the lanes with her baskets, and brushed the dew lightlyover her bare feet, and sang a little Flemish song for very joyousness,as the birds sing in the apple bough.
She got the money for Annemie and took it to her with fresh patterns toprick, and the new-laid eggs.
"I wonder what he meant by a dog's heart?" she thought to herself, as sheleft the old woman sitting by the hole in the roof pricking out theparchment in all faith that she earned her money, and looking every nowand then through the forests of masts for the brig with the hank of flaxflying,--the brig that had foundered fifty long years before in thenorthern seas, and in the days of her youth.
"What is the dog's heart?" thought Bebee; she had seen a dog she knew--adog which all his life long had dragged heavy loads under brutal stripesalong the streets of Brussels--stretch himself on the grave of histaskmaster and refuse to eat, and persist in lying there until he died,though he had no memory except of stripes, and no tie to the dead exceptpain and sorrow. Was it a heart like this that he meant?
"Was her sailor, indeed, so good to her?" she asked an old gossip ofAnnemie's, as she went down the stairs.
The old soul stopped to think with difficulty of such a far-off time, andresting her brass flagon of milk on the steep step.
"Eh, no; not that I ever saw," she answered at length. "He was fond ofher--very fond; but he was a wilful one, and he beat her sometimes whenhe got tired of being on land. But women must not mind that, you know, mydear, if only a man's heart is right. Things fret them, and then theybelabor what they love best; it is a way they have."
"But she speaks of him as of an angel nearly!" said Bebee, bewildered.
The old woman took up her flagon, with a smile flitting across her wintryface.
"Ay, dear; when the frost kills your brave rose-bush, root and bud,do you think of the thorns that pricked you, or only of the fair,sweet-smelling things that flowered all your summer?"
Bebee went away thoughtfully out of the old crazy water-washed house bythe quay; life seemed growing very strange and intricate and knottedabout her, like the threads of lace that a bad fairy has entangled in thenight.