by Ouida
CHAPTER XIV.
The next day, waking with a radiant little soul as a bird in a forestwakes in summer Bebee was all alone in the lane by the swans' water. Inthe gray of the dawn all the good folk except herself and lame old Jehanhad tramped off to a pilgrimage, Liege way, which the bishop of the cityhad enjoined on all the faithful as a sacred duty.
Bebee doing her work, singing, thinking how good God was, and dreamingover a thousand fancies of the wonderful stories he had told her, and ofthe exquisite delight that would lie for her in watching for him allthrough the shining hours, Bebee felt her little heart leap like asquirrel as the voice that was the music of heaven to her called throughthe stillness,--"Good day, pretty one! you are as early as the lark,Bebee. I go to Mayence, so I thought I would look at you one moment as Ipass."
Bebee ran down through the wet grass in a tumult of joy. She had neverseen him so early in the day--never so early as this, when nobody was upand stirring except birds and beasts and peasant folk.
She did not know how pretty she looked herself; like a rain-washed wildrose; her feet gleaming with dew, her cheeks warm with health and joy;her sunny clustering hair free from the white cap and tumbling a littleabout her throat, because she had been stooping over the carnations.
Flamen loosed the wicket latch, and thought there might be better ways ofspending the day than in the gray shadows of old Mechlin.
"Will you give me a draught of water?" he asked her as he crossed thegarden.
"I will give you breakfast," said Bebee, happy as a bird. She felt noshame for the smallness of her home; no confusion at the poverty ofher little place; such embarrassments are born of self-consciousness,and Bebee had no more self-consciousness than her own sweet, graylavender-bush blowing against the door.
The lavender-bush has no splendor like the roses, has no colors like thehollyhocks; it is a simple, plain, gray thing that the bees love and thatthe cottagers cherish, and that keeps the moth from the homespun linen,and that goes with the dead to their graves.
It has many virtues and infinite sweetness, but it does not know it orthink of it; and if the village girls ever tell it so, it fancies theyonly praise it out of kindness as they put its slender fragrant spearsaway in their warm bosoms. Bebee was like her lavender, and now that thisbeautiful Purple Emperor butterfly came from the golden sunbeams to findpleasure for a second in her freshness, she was only very grateful, asthe lavender-bush was to the village girls.
"I will give you your breakfast," said Bebee, flushing rosily withpleasure, and putting away the ivy coils that he might enter.
"I have very little, you know," she added, wistfully. "Only goat's milkand bread; but if that will do--and there is some honey--and if you wouldeat a salad, I would cut one fresh."
He did enter, and glanced round him with a curious pity and wonder bothin one.
It was such a little, small, square place; and its floor was of beatenclay; and its unceiled roof he could have touched; and its absolutepoverty was so plain,--and yet the child looked so happy in it, and wasso like a flower, and was so dainty and fresh, and even so full of grace.
She stood and looked at him with frank and grateful eyes; she couldhardly believe that he was here; he, the stranger of Rubes' land, in herown little rush-covered home.
But she was not embarrassed by it; she was glad and proud.
There is a dignity of peasants as well as of kings,--the dignity thatcomes from all absence of effort, all freedom from pretence. Bebee hadthis, and she had more still than this: she had the absolute simplicityof childhood with her still.
Some women have it still when they are four-score.
She could have looked at him forever, she was so happy; she carednothing now for those dazzling dahlias--he had left them; he was actuallyhere--here in her own, little dear home, with the cocks looking in at thethreshold, and the sweet-peas nodding at the lattice, and the starlingcrying, "Bonjour! Bonjour!"
"You are tired, I am sure you must be tired," she said, pulling herlittle bed forward for him to sit on, for there were only two woodenstools in the hut, and no chair at all.
Then she took his sketching-easel and brushes from his hand, and wouldhave kneeled and taken the dust off his boots if he would have let her;and went hither and thither gladly and lightly, bringing him a woodenbowl of milk and the rest of the slender fare, and cutting as quick asthought fresh cresses and lettuce from her garden, and bringing him, asthe crown of all, Father Francis's honey-comb on vine-leaves, with somepretty sprays of box and mignonette scattered about it--doing all thiswith a swift, sweet grace that robbed the labor of all look of servitude,and looking at him ever and again with a smile that said as clearly asany words, "I cannot do much, but what I do, I do with all my heart."
There was something in the sight of her going and coming in those simplehousehold errands, across the sunlit floor, that moved him as somemountain air sung on an alp by a girl driving her cows to pasture maymove a listener who indifferent has heard the swell of the organ ofLa Hague, or the recitative of a great singer in San Carlo.
The gray lavender blowing at the house door has its charm for those whoare tired of the camellias that float in the porcelain bowls of midnightsuppers.
This man was not good. He was idle and vain, and amorous and cold, andhad been spoiled by the world in which he had passed his days; but he hadthe temper of an artist: he had something, too, of a poet's fancy; hewas vaguely touched and won by this simple soul that looked at him out ofBebee's eyes with some look that in all its simplicity had a divine gleamin it that made him half ashamed.
He had known women by the thousand, good women and bad; women whom he haddealt ill with and women who had dealt ill with him; but this he had notknown--this frank, fearless, tender, gay, grave, innocent, industriouslittle life, helping itself, feeding itself, defending itself, workingfor itself and for others, and vaguely seeking all the while some unseenlight, some unknown god, with a blind faith so infinitely ignorant andyet so infinitely pathetic.
"All the people are gone on a pilgrimage," she explained to him when heasked her why her village was so silent this bright morning. "They aregone to pray for a fine harvest, and that she wants herself as well--itcosts seven francs apiece. They take their food with them; they go andlaugh and eat in the fields. I think it is nonsense. One can say one'sprayers just as well here. Mere Krebs thinks so too, but then she says,'If I do not go, it will look ill; people will say I am irreligious; andas we make so much by flour, God would think it odd for me to be absent;and, besides, it is only seven francs there and back; and if it doesplease Heaven, that is cheap, you know. One will get it over and overagain in Paradise.' That is what Mere Krebs says. But, for me, Ithink it is nonsense. It cannot please God to go by train and eat galetteand waste a whole day in getting dusty.
"When I give the Virgin my cactus flower, I do give up a thing I love,and I let it wither on her altar instead of pleasing me in bloom hereall the week, and then, of course, she sees that I have done it out ofgratitude. But that is different: that I am sorry to do, and yet I amglad to do it out of love. Do you not know?"
"Yes, I know very well. But is the Virgin all that you love like this?"
"No; there is the garden, and there is Antoine--he is dead, I know. But Ithink that we should love the dead all the better, not the less, becausethey cannot speak or say that they are angry; and perhaps one pains themvery much when one neglects them, and if they are ever so sad, theycannot rise and rebuke one--that is why I would rather forget the flowersfor the Church than I would the flowers for his grave, because God canpunish me, of course, if he like, but Antoine never can--any more--now."
"You are logical in your sentiment, my dear," said Flamen, who was moremoved than he cared to feel. "The union is a rare one in your sex. Whotaught you to reason?"
"No one. And I do not know what to be logical means. Is it that you laughat me?"
"No. I do not laugh. And your pilgrims--they are gone for all day?"
"Yes
. They are gone to the Sacred Heart at St. Marie en Bois. It is onthe way to Liege. They will come back at nightfall. And some of them willbe sure to have drunk too much, and the children will get so cross.Prosper Bar, who is a Calvinist, always says, 'Do not mix up prayer andplay; you would not cut a gherkin in your honey'; but I do not know whyhe called prayer a gherkin, because it is sweet enough--sweeter thananything, I think. When I pray to the Virgin to let me see you next day,I go to bed quite happy, because she will do it, I know, if it will begood for me."
"But if it were not good for you, Bebee? Would you cease to wish itthen?"
He rose as he spoke, and went across the floor and drew away her handthat was parting the flax, and took it in his own and stroked it,indulgently and carelessly, as a man may stroke the soft fur of a youngcat.
Leaning against the little lattice and looking down on her with musingeyes, half smiling, half serious, half amorous, half sad, Bebee lookedup with a sudden and delicious terror that ran through her as the charmof the snake's gaze runs through the bewildered bird.
"Would you cease to wish it if it were not good?" he asked again.
Bebee's face grew pale and troubled. She left her hand in his because shedid not think any shame of his taking it. But the question suddenly flungthe perplexity and darkness of doubt into the clearness of her purechild's conscience. All her ways had been straight and sunlit before her.
She had never had a divided duty.
The religion and the pleasure of her simple little life had always gonehand-in-hand, greeting one another, and never for an instant in conflict.In any hesitation of her own she had always gone to Father Francis, andhe had disentangled the web for her and made all plain.
But here was a difficulty in which she could never go to Father Francis.
Right and wrong, duty and desire, were for the first time arrayed beforeher in their ghastly and unending warfare.
It frightened her with a certain breathless sense of peril--the peril ofa time when in lieu of that gentle Mother of Roses whom she kneeledto among the flowers, she would only see a dusky shadow looming betweenher and the beauty of life and the light of the sun.
What he said was quite vague to her. She attached no definite danger tohis words. She only thought--to see him was so great a joy--if Maryforbade it, would she not take it if she could notwithstanding, always,always, always?
He kept her hand in his, and watched with contentment the changing playof the shade and sorrow, the fear and fascination, on her face.
"You do not know, Bebee?" he said at length, knowing well himself; somuch better than ever she knew. "Well, dear, that is not flattering tome. But it is natural. The good Virgin of course gives you all you have,food, and clothes, and your garden, and your pretty plump chickens; and Iam only a stranger. You could not offend her for me; that is not likely."
The child was cut to the heart by the sadness and humility of words ofwhose studied artifice she had no suspicion.
She thought that she seemed to him ungrateful and selfish, and yet allthe mooring-ropes that held her little boat of life to the harbor ofits simple religion seemed cut away, and she seemed drifting helpless andrudderless upon an unknown sea.
"I never did do wrong--that I know," she said, timidly, and lifted hereyes to his with an unconscious appeal in them.
"But--I do not see why it should be wrong to speak with you. You aregood, and you lend me beautiful things out of other men's minds that willmake me less ignorant: Our Lady could not be angry with that--she mustlike it."
"Our Lady?--oh, poor little simpleton!--where will her reign be whenIgnorance has once been cut down root and branch?" he thought to himself:but he only answered,--
"But whether she like it or not, Bebee?--you beg the question, my dear;you are--you are not so frank as usual--think, and tell me honestly?"
He knew quite well, but it amused him to see the perplexed trouble thatthis, the first divided duty of her short years, brought with it.
Bebee looked at him, and loosened her hand from his, and sat quite still.Her lips had a little quiver in them.
"I think." she said at last, "I think--if it _be_ wrong, still I willwish it--yes. Only I will not tell myself it is right. I will just say toOur Lady, 'I am wicked, perhaps, but I cannot help it' So, I will notdeceive her at all; and perhaps in time she may forgive. But I think youonly say it to try me. It cannot, I am sure, be wrong--any more than itis to talk to Jeannot or to Bac."
He had driven her into the subtleties of doubt, but the honest littlesoul in her found a way out, as a flower in a cellar finds its waythrough the stones to light.
He plucked the ivy leaves and threw them at the chickens on the brickswithout, with a certain impatience in the action. The simplicity and thedirectness of the answer disarmed him; he was almost ashamed to useagainst her the weapons of his habitual warfare. It was like a maitred'armes fencing with bare steel against a little naked child armed with ablest palm-sheaf.
When she had thus brought him all she had, and he to please her had satdown to the simple food, she gathered a spray of roses and set it in apot beside him, then left him and went and stood at a little distance,waiting, with her hands lightly crossed on her chest, to see if therewere anything that he might want.
He ate and drank well to please her, looking at her often as he did so.
"I break your bread, Bebee," he said, with a tone that seemed strange toher,--"I break your bread. I must keep Arab faith with you."
"What is that?"
"I mean--I must never betray you."
"Betray me How could you?"
"Well--hurt you in any way."
"Ah, I am sure you would never do that."
He was silent, and looked at the spray of roses.
"Sit down and spin," he said impatiently. "I am ashamed to see you standthere, and a woman never looks so well as when she spins. Sit down, and Iwill eat the good things you have brought me. But I cannot if you standand look."
"I beg your pardon. I did not know," she said, ashamed lest she shouldhave seemed rude to him; and she drew out her wheel under the light ofthe lattice, and sat down to it, and began to disentangle the threads.
It was a pretty picture--the low, square casement; the frame of ivy, thepink and white of the climbing sweet-peas: the girl's head; the cool, wetleaves: the old wooden spinning-wheel, that purred like a sleepy cat.
"I want to paint you as Gretchen, only it will be a shame." he said.
"Who is Gretchen?"
"You shall read of her by-and-by. And you live here all by yourself?"
"Since Antoine died--yes."
"And are never dull?"
"I have no time, and I do not think I would be if I had time--there is somuch to think of, and one never can understand."
"But you must be very brave and laborious to do all your work yourself.Is it possible a child like you can spin, and wash, and bake, and garden,and do everything?"
"Oh, many do more than I. Babette's eldest daughter is only twelve, andshe does much more, because she has all the children to look after; andthey are very, very poor; they often have nothing but a stew of nettlesand perhaps a few snails, days together."
"That is lean, bare, ugly, gruesome poverty; there is plenty of thateverywhere. But you, Bebee--you are an idyll."
Bebee looked across the hut and smiled, and broke her thread. She did notknow what he meant, but if she were anything that pleased him, it waswell.
"Who were those beautiful women?" she said suddenly, the color mountinginto her cheeks.
"What women, my dear?"
"Those I saw at the window with you, the other night--they had jewels."
"Oh!--women, tiresome enough. If I had seen you, I would have dropped yousome fruit. Poor little Bebee! Did you go by, and I never knew?"
"You were laughing--"
"Was I?"
"Yes, and they _were_ beautiful."
"In their own eyes; not in mine."
"No?"
She stopp
ed her spinning and gazed at him with wistful, wondering eyes.Could it be that they were not beautiful to him? those deep red, glowing,sun-basked dahlia flowers?
"Do you know," she said very softly, with a flush of penitence that cameand went, "when I saw them, I hated them; I confessed it to FatherFrancis next day. You seemed so content with, them, and they looked sogay and glad there--and then the jewels! Somehow, I seemed to myself sucha little thing, and so ugly and mean. And yet, do you know--"
"And yet--well?"
"They did not look to me good--those women," said Bebee, thoughtfully,looking across at him in deprecation of his possible anger. "They weregreat people, I suppose, and they appeared very happy; but though Iseemed nothing to myself after them, still I think I would not change."
"You are wise without books, Bebee."
"Oh, no, I am not wise at all. I only feel. And give me books; oh, pray,give me books! You do not know; I will learn so fast; and I will notneglect anything, that I promise. The neighbors and Jeannot say that Ishall let the flowers die, and the hut get dirty, and never spin or prickAnnemie's patterns; but that is untrue. I will do all, just as I havedone, and more too, if only you will give me things to read, for I dothink when one is happy, one ought to work more--not less."
"But will these books make you happy? If you ask me the truth, I musttell you--no. You are happy as you are, because you know nothing elsethan your own little life; for ignorance _is_ happiness, Bebee, letsages, ancient and modern, say what they will. But when you know alittle, you will want to know more: and when you know much, you will wantto see much also, and then--and then--the thing will grow--you will be nolonger content. That is, you will be unhappy."
Bebee watched him with wistful eyes.
"Perhaps that is true. No doubt it is true, if you say it. But you knowall the world seems full of voices that I hear, but that I cannotunderstand; it is with me as I should think it is with people who go toforeign countries and do not know the tongue that is spoken when theyland; and it makes me unhappy, because I cannot comprehend, and so thebooks will not make me more so, but less. And as for being content--whenI thought you were gone away out of the city, last night, I thoughtI would never be able to pray any more, because I hated myself, and Ialmost hated the angels, and I told Mary that she was cruel, and sheturned her face from me--as it seemed, forever."
She spoke quite quietly and simply, spinning as she spoke, and lookingacross at him with earnest eyes, that begged him to believe her. She wassaying the pure truth, but she did not know the force or the meaning ofthat truth.
He listened with a smile; it was not new to him; he knew her heart muchbetter than she knew it herself, but there was an unconsciousness, andyet a strength, in the words that touched him though.
He threw the leaves away, irritably, and told her to leave off herspinning.
"Some day I shall paint you with that wheel as I painted the Broodhuis.Will you let me, Bebee?"
"Yes."
She answered him as she would have answered if he had told her to go onpilgrimage from one end of the Low Countries to the other.
"What were you going to do to-day?"
"I am going into the market with the flowers; I go every day."
"How much will you make?"
"Two or three francs, if I am lucky."
"And do you never have a holiday?"
"Oh, yes; but not often, you know, because it is on the fete days thatthe people want the most flowers."
"But in the winter?"
"Then I work at the lace."
"Do you never go into the woods?"
"I have been once or twice; but it loses a whole day."
"You are afraid of not earning?"
"Yes. Because I am afraid of owing people anything."
"Well, give up this one day, and we will make holiday. The people areout; they will not know. Come into the forest, and we will dine at a cafein the woods; and we will be as poetic as you like, and I will tell you atale of one called Rosalind, who pranked herself in boy's attire, all forlove, in the Ardennes country yonder. Come, it is the very day for theforest; it will make me a lad again at Meudon, when the lilacs were inbloom. Poor Paris! Come."
"Do you mean it?"
The color was bright in her face, her heart was dancing, her little feetfelt themselves already on the fresh green turf.
She had no thought that there could be any harm in it. She would havegone with Jeannot or old Bac.
"Of course I mean it. Come. I was going to Mayence to see the Magi andVan Dyck's Christ. We will go to Soignies instead, and study greenleaves. I will paint your face by sunlight. It is the best way to paintyou. You belong to the open air. So should Gretchen; or how else shouldshe have the blue sky in her eyes?"
"But I have only wooden shoes!"
Her face was scarlet as she glanced at her feet; he who had wanted togive her the silk stockings--how would he like to be seen walking abroadwith those two clumsy, clattering, work-a-day, little sabots?
"Never mind. My dear, in my time I have had enough of satin shoes and ofsilver gilt heels; they click-clack as loud as yours, and cost much moreto those who walk with them, not to mention that they will seldom deignto walk at all. Your wooden shoes are picturesque. Paganini made a violinout of a wooden shoe. Who knows what music may lurk in yours, only youhave never heard it. Perhaps I have. It was Bac who gave you the redshoes that was the barbarian, not I. Come."
"You really mean it?"
"Come."
"But they will miss me at market."
"They will think you are gone on the pilgrimage: you need never tell themyou have not."
"But if they ask me?"
"Does it never happen that you say any other thing than the truth?"
"Any other thing than the truth! Of course not. People take for grantedthat one tells truth; it would be very base to cheat them. Do you reallymean that I may come?--in the forest!--and you will tell me storieslike those you give me to read?"
"I will tell you a better story. Lock your hut, Bebee, and come."
"And to think you are not ashamed!"
"Ashamed?"
"Yes, because of my wooden shoes."
Was it possible? Bebee thought, as she ran out into the garden andlocked the door behind her, and pushed the key under the waterbutt asusual, being quite content with that prudent precaution against robberswhich had served Antoine all his days. Was it possible, this wonderfuljoy?--her cheeks were like her roses, her eyes had a brilliance like thesun; the natural grace and mirth of the child blossomed in a thousandways and gestures.
As she went by the shrine in the wall, she bent her knee a moment andmade the sign of the cross; then she gathered a little moss-rose thatnodded close under the border of the palisade, and turned and gave it tohim.
"Look, she sends you this. She is not angry, you see, and it is much morepleasure when she is pleased--do you not know?"
He shrank a little as her fingers touched him.
"What a pity you had no mother, Bebee!" he said, on an impulse ofemotion, of which in Paris he would have been more ashamed thanof any guilt.