by Ouida
CHAPTER XXII.
People saw that Bebee had grown very quiet. But that was all they saw.
Her little face was pale as she sat among her glowing autumn blossoms, bythe side of the cobbler's stall; and when the Varnhart children cried atthe gate to her to come and play, she would answer gently that she wastoo busy to have play-time now.
The fruit girl of the Montagne de la Cour hooted after her, "Gone sosoon?--oh he! what did I say?--a fine pine is sugar in the teeth a secondonly, but the brown nuts you may crack all the seasons round. Well, didyou make good harvest while it lasted? has Jeannot a fat bridal portionpromised?"
And old Jehan, who was the tenderest soul of them all in the lane by theswans' water, would come and look at her wistfully as she worked amongthe flowers, and would say to her,--
"Dear little one, there is some trouble: does it come of that paintedpicture? You never laugh now, Bebee, and that is bad. A girl's laugh ispretty to hear; my girl laughed like little bells ringing--and then itstopped, all at once; they said she was dead. But you are not dead,Bebee. And yet you are so silent; one would say you were."
But to the mocking of the fruit girl, as to the tenderness of old Jehan,Bebee answered nothing; the lines of her pretty curled mouth grew graveand sad, and in her eyes there was a wistful, bewildered, pathetic appeallike the look in the eyes of a beaten dog, which, while it aches withpain, does not cease to love its master.
One resolve upheld and made her feet firm on the stones of the streetsand her lips mute under all they said to her. She would learn all shecould, and be good, and patient, and wise, if trying could make her wise,and so do his will in all things--until he should come back.
"You are not gay, Bebee," said Annemie, who grew so blind that she couldscarce see the flags at the mastheads, and who still thought that shepricked the lace patterns and earned her bread. "You are not gay, dear.Has any lad gone to sea that your heart goes away with, and do you watchfor his ship coming in with the coasters? It is weary work waiting; butit is all the men think us fit for, child. They may set sail as theylike; every new port has new faces for them; but we are to sit still andto pray if we like, and never murmur, be the voyage ever so long, but beready with a smile and a kiss, a fresh pipe of tobacco, and a dry pairof socks;--that is a man. We may have cried our hearts out; we must haveready the pipe and the socks, or, 'Is that what you call love?' theygrumble. You want mortal patience if you love a man,--it is like afretful child that thumps you when your breast is bare to it. Still, beyou patient, dear, just as I am, just as I am."
And Bebee would shudder as she swept the cobwebs from the garretwalls,--patient as she was, she who had sat here fifty years watchingfor a dead man and for a wrecked ship.