Bébée; Or, Two Little Wooden Shoes

by Ouida

  CHAPTER XVII.

  Then he took her to dine at one of the wooden cafes under the trees.There was a little sheet of water in front of it and a gay garden around.There was a balcony and a wooden stairway; there were long trellisedarbors, and little white tables, and great rosebushes like her own athome. They had an arbor all to themselves; a cool sweet-smelling bower ofgreen, with a glimpse of scarlet from the flowers of some twisting beans.

  They had a meal, the like of which she had never seen; such a huge melonin the centre of it, and curious wines, and coffee or cream in silverpots, or what looked like silver to her--"just like the altar-vases inthe church," she said to herself.

  "If only the Varnhart children were here!" she cried; but he did not echothe wish.

  It was just sunset. There was a golden glow on the little bit of water.On the other side of the garden some one was playing a guitar. Under alime-tree some girls were swinging, crying, Higher! higher! at each toss.

  In a longer avenue of trellised green, at a long table, there was a noisyparty of students and girls of the city; their laughter was mellowed bydistance as it came over the breadth of the garden, and they sang, withfresh shrill Flemish voices, songs from an opera bouffe of La Monnaie.

  It was all pretty, and gay, and pleasant.

  There was everywhere about an air of light-hearted enjoyment. Bebee satwith a wondering look in her wide-opened eyes, and all the naturalinstincts of her youth, that were like curled-up fruit buds in her,unclosed softly to the light of joy.

  "Is life always like this in your Rubes' land?" she asked him; that vaguefar-away country of which she never asked him anything more definite, andwhich yet was so clear before her fancy.

  "Yes," he made answer to her. "Only--instead of those leaves, flowers andpomegranates; and in lieu of that tinkling guitar, a voice whose notesare esteemed like king's jewels; and in place of those little greenarbors, great white palaces, cool and still, with ilex woods and orangegroves and sapphire seas beyond them. Would you like to come there,Bebee?--and wear laces such as you weave, and hear singing and laughterall night long, and never work any more in the mould of the garden, orspin any more at that tiresome wheel, or go any more out in the wind, andthe rain, and the winter mud to the market?"

  Bebee listened, leaning her round elbows on the table, and her warmcheeks on her hands, as a child gravely listens to a fairy story. Butthe sumptuous picture, and the sensuous phrase he had chosen, passed byher.

  It is of no use to tempt the little chaffinch of the woods with a rubyinstead of a cherry. The bird is made to feed on the brown berries, onthe morning dews, on the scarlet hips of roses, and the blossoms of thewind-tossed pear boughs; the gem, though it be a monarch's, will onlystrike hard and tasteless on its beak.

  "I would like to see it all," said Bebee, musingly trying to follow outher thoughts. "But as for the garden work and the spinning--that I do notwant to leave, because I have done it all my life; and I do not think Ishould care to wear lace--it would tear very soon; one would be afraid torun; and do you see I know how it is made--all that lace. I know howblind the eyes get over it, and how the hearts ache; I know how the oldwomen starve, and the little children cry; I know that there is not asprig of it that is not stitched with pain; the great ladies do notthink, I dare say, because they have never worked at it or watched theothers: but I have. And so, you see, I think if I wore it I should feelsad, and if a nail caught on it I should feel as if it were tearing theflesh of my friends. Perhaps I say it badly; but that is what I feel."

  "You do not say it badly--you speak well, for you speak from the heart,"he answered her, and felt a tinge of shame that he had tempted her withthe gold and purple of a baser world than any that she knew.

  "And yet you want to see new lands?" he pursued. "What is it you want tosee there?"

  "Ah, quite other things than these," cried Bebee, still leaning hercheeks on her hands. "That dancing and singing is very pretty and merry,but it is just as good when old Claude fiddles and the children skip.This wine, you tell me, is something very great; but fresh milk is muchnicer, I think. It is not these kind of things I want--I want to know allabout the people who lived before us; I want to know what the stars are,and what the wind is; I want to know where the lark goes when you losehim out of sight against the sun; I want to know how the old artists gotto see God, that they could paint him and all his angels as they havedone; I want to know how the voices got into the bells, and how they canmake one's heart beat, hanging up there as they do, all alone among thejackdaws; I want to know what it is when I walk in the fields in themorning, and it is all gray and soft and still, and the corn-crake criesin the wheat, and the little mice run home to their holes, that makesme so glad and yet so sorrowful, as if I were so very near God, and yetso all alone, and such a little thing; because you see the mouse shehas her hole, and the crake her own people, but I--"

  Her voice faltered a little and stopped: she had never before thought outinto words her own loneliness; from the long green arbor the voices ofthe girls and the students sang,--

  "Ah! le doux son d'un baiser tendre!"

  Flamen was silent. The poet in him--and in an artist there is always moreor less of the poet--kept him back from ridicule, nay, moved him to pityand respect.

  They were absurdly simple words no doubt, had little wisdom in them, andwere quite childish in their utterance, and yet they moved him curiouslyas a man very base and callous may at times be moved by the look in adying deer's eyes, or by the sound of a song that some lost love oncesang.

  He rose and drew her hands away, and took her small face between his ownhands instead.

  "Poor little Bebee!" he said gently, looking down on her with a breaththat was almost a sigh. "Poor little Bebee!--to envy the corncrake andthe mouse!"

  She was a little startled; her cheeks grew very warm under his touch, buther eyes looked still into his without fear.

  He stooped and touched her forehead with his lips, gently andwithout passion, almost reverently; she grew rose-hued as the brightbean-flowers, up to the light gold ripples of her hair; she trembled alittle and drew back, but she was not alarmed nor yet ashamed; she wastoo simple of heart to feel the fear that is born of passion and ofconsciousness.

  It was as Jeannot kissed his sister Marie, who was fifteen years old andsold milk for the Krebs people in the villages with a little green cartand a yellow dog--no more.

  And yet the sunny arbor leaves and the glimpse of the blue sky swam roundher indistinctly, and the sounds of the guitar grew dull upon her ear andwere lost as in a rushing hiss of water, because of the great suddenunintelligible happiness that seemed to bear her little life away on itas a sea wave bears a young child off its feet.

  "You do not feel alone now, Bebee?" he whispered to her.

  "No!" she answered him softly under her breath, and sat still, while allher body quivered like a leaf.

  No; how could she ever be alone now that this sweet, soft, unutterabletouch would always be in memory upon her; how could she wish ever againnow to be the corn-crake in the summer corn or the gray mouse in thehedge of hawthorn?

  At that moment a student went by past the entrance of the arbor; he had asash round his loins and a paper feather in his cap; he was playing afife and dancing; he glanced in as he went.

  "It is time to go home, Bebee," said Flamen.