Delphi Collected Works of Ouida

by Ouida

  Where she had sat in her babyhood at Antoine’s feet, she would sit so long as she sold flowers in Brussels, — here, underneath the shadow of the Gothic towers that saw Egmont die.

  Old Antoine had never gone into the grand market that is fashioned after the Madeleine of Paris, and where in the cool, wet, sweet-smelling halls, all the flowers of Brabant are spread in bouquets fit for the bridal of Una, and large as the shield of the Red-Cross Knight.

  Antoine could not compete with all those treasures of greenhouse and stove. He had always had his little stall among those which spread their tawny awnings and their merry hardy blossoms under the shadow of the Hôtel de Ville, in the midst of the buyings and sellings, the games and the quarrels, the auctions and the Cheap Johns, the mountebank and the marriage parties, that daily and hourly throng the Grande Place.

  Here Bébée, from three years old, had been used to sit beside him. By nature she was as gay as a lark. The people always heard her singing as they passed the garden. The children never found their games so merry as when she danced their rounds with them; and though she dreamed so much out there in the air among the carnations and the roses, or in the long, low workroom in the town, high against the crocketed pinnacles of the cathedral, yet her dreams, if vaguely wistful, were all bright of hue and sunny in their fantasies. Still, Bébée had one sad unsatisfied desire: she wanted to know so much, and she knew nothing.

  She did not care for the grand gay people.

  When the band played, and the park filled, and the bright little cafés were thronged with pleasure seekers, and the crowds flocked hither and thither to the woods, to the theatres, to the galleries, to the guinguettes, Bébée, going gravely along with her emptied baskets homeward, envied none of these.

  When at Noël the little children hugged their loads of puppets and sugar-plums; when at the Fête Dieu the whole people flocked out be-ribboned and vari-colored like any bed of spring anemones; when in the merry midsummer the chars-a-bancs trundled away into the forest with laughing loads of students and maidens; when in the rough winters the carriages left furred and jewelled women at the doors of the operas or the palaces, — Bébée, going and coming through the city to her flower stall or lace work, looked at them all, and never thought of envy or desire.

  She had her little hut: she could get her bread; she lived with the flowers; the neighbors were good to her, and now and then, on a saint’s day, she too got her day in the woods; it never occurred to her that her lot could be better.

  But sometimes sitting, looking at the dark old beauty of the Broodhuis, or at the wondrous carven fronts of other Spanish houses, or at the painted stories of the cathedral windows, or at the quaint colors of the shipping on the quay, or at the long dark aisles of trees that went away through the forest, where her steps had never wandered, — sometimes Bébée would get pondering on all this unknown world that lay before and behind and around her, and a sense of her own utter ignorance would steal on her; and she would say to herself, “If only I knew a little — just a very little!”

  But it is not easy to know even a very little when you have to work for your bread from sunrise to nightfall, and when none of your friends know how to read or write, and even your old priest is one of a family of peasants, and can just teach you the alphabet, and that is all. For Father Francis could do no more than this; and all his spare time was taken up in digging his cabbage plot and seeing to his beehives; and the only books that Bébée ever beheld were a few tattered lives of saints that lay moth-eaten on a shelf of his cottage.

  But Brussels has stones that are sermons, or rather that are quaint, touching, illuminated legends of the Middle Ages, which those who run may read.

  Brussels is a gay little city that lies as bright within its girdle of woodland as any butterfly that rests upon moss.

  The city has its ways and wiles of Paris. It decks itself with white and gold. It has music under its trees and soldiers in its streets, and troops marching and countermarching along its sunny avenues. It has blue and pink, and yellow and green, on its awnings and on its house fronts. It has a merry open-air life on its pavements at little marble tables before little gay-colored cafés. It has gilded balconies, and tossing flags, and comic operas, and leisurely pleasure seekers, and tries always to believe and make the world believe that it is Paris in very truth.

  But this is only the Brussels of the noblesse and the foreigners.

  There is a Brussels that is better than this — a Brussels that belongs to the old burgher life, to the artists and the craftsmen, to the master-masons of the Moyen-âge, to the same spirit and soul that once filled the free men of Ghent and the citizens of Bruges and the besieged of Leyden, and the blood of Egmont and of Horn.

  Down there by the water-side, where the old quaint walls lean over the yellow sluggish stream, and the green barrels of the Antwerp barges swing against the dusky piles of the crumbling bridges.

  In the gray square desolate courts of the old palaces, where in cobwebbed galleries and silent chambers the Flemish tapestries drop to pieces.

  In the great populous square, where, above the clamorous and rushing crowds, the majestic front of the Maison du Roi frowns against the sun, and the spires and pinnacles of the burgomaster’s gathering-halls tower into the sky in all the fantastic luxuriance of Gothic fancy.

  Under the vast shadowy wings of angels in the stillness of the cathedral, across whose sunny aisles some little child goes slowly all alone, laden with lilies for the Feast of the Assumption, till their white glory hides its curly head.

  In all strange quaint old-world niches withdrawn from men in silent grass-grown corners, where a twelfth-century corbel holds a pot of roses, or a Gothic arch yawns beneath a wool warehouse, or a waterspout with a grinning faun’s head laughs in the grim humor of the Moyen-âge above the bent head of a young lace-worker.

  In all these, Brussels, though more worldly than her sisters of Ghent and Bruges, and far more worldly yet than her Teuton cousins of Freiburg and Nürnberg, is still in her own way like as a monkish story mixed up with the Romaunt of the Rose; or rather like some gay French vaudeville, all fashion and jest, illustrated in old Missal manner with helm and hauberk, cope and cowl, praying knights and fighting priests, winged griffins and nimbused saints, flame-breathing dragons and enamoured princes, all mingled together in the illuminated colors and the heroical grotesque romance of the Middle Ages.

  And it was this side of the city that Bébée knew; and she loved it well, and would not leave it for the market of the Madeleine.

  She had no one to tell her anything, and all Antoine had ever been able to say to her concerning the Broodhuis was that it had been there in his father’s time; and regarding St. Gudule, that his mother had burned many a candle before its altars for a dead brother who had been drowned off the dunes.

  But the child’s mind, unled, but not misled, had pondered on these things, and her heart had grown to love them; and perhaps no student of Spanish architecture, no antiquary of Moyen-âge relics, loved St. Gudule and the Broodhuis as little ignorant Bébée did.

  There had been a time when great dark, fierce men had builded these things, and made the place beautiful. So much she knew; and the little wistful, untaught brain tried to project itself into those unknown times, and failed, and yet found pleasure in the effort. And Bébée would say to herself as she walked the streets, “Perhaps some one will come some day who will tell me all those things.”

  Meanwhile, there were the flowers, and she was quite content.

  Besides, she knew all the people: the old cobbler, who sat next her, and chattered all day long like a magpie; the tinker, who had come up many a summer night to drink a-glass with Antoine; the Cheap John, who cheated everybody else, but who had always given her a toy or a trinket at every Fête Dieu all the summers she had known; the little old woman, sour as a crab, who sold rosaries and pictures of saints, and little waxen Christs upon a tray; the big dogs who pulled the carts in, and lay panting all da
y under the rush-bottomed chairs on which the egg-wives and the fruit sellers sat, and knitted, and chaffered; nay, even the gorgeous huissier and the frowning gendarme, who marshalled the folks into order as they went up for municipal registries, or for town misdemeanors, — she knew them all; had known them all ever since she had first trotted in like a little dog at Antoine’s heels.

  So Bébée stayed there.

  It is, perhaps, the most beautiful square in all Northern Europe, with its black timbers, and gilded carvings, and blazoned windows, and majestic scutcheons, and fantastic pinnacles. That Bébée did not know, but she loved it, and she sat resolutely in front of the Broodhuis, selling her flowers, smiling, chatting, helping the old woman, counting her little gains, eating her bit of bread at noonday like any other market girl, but at times glancing up to the stately towers and the blue sky, with a look on her face that made the old tinker and cobbler whisper together, “What does she see there? — the dead people or the angels?”

  The truth was that even Bébée herself did not know very surely what she saw — something that was still nearer to her than even this kindly crowd that loved her. That was all she could have said had anybody asked her.

  But none did.

  No one wanted to hear what the dead said; and for the angels, the tinker and the cobbler were of opinion that one had only too much of them sculptured about everywhere, and shining on all the casements — in reverence be it spoken, of course.

  CHAPTER III.

  “I remembered it was your name-day, child Here are half a dozen eggs,” said one of the hen wives; and the little cross woman with the pedler’s tray added a waxen St. Agnes, colored red and yellow to the very life no doubt; and the old Cheap John had saved her a cage for the starling; and the tinker had a cream cheese for her in a vine-leaf, and the sweetmeat seller brought her a beautiful gilded horn of sugarplums, and the cobbler had made her actually a pair of shoes — red shoes, beautiful shoes to go to mass in and be a wonder in to all the neighborhood. And they thronged round her, and adored the silver waist buckles; and when Bébée got fairly to her stall, and traffic began, she thought once more that nobody’s feast day had ever dawned like hers.

  When the chimes began to ring all over the city, she could hardly believe that the carillon was not saying its “Laus Deo” with some special meaning in its bells of her.

  The morning went by as usual; the noise of the throngs about her like a driving of angry winds, but no more hurting her than the angels on the roof of St. Gudule are hurt by the storm when it breaks.

  Hard words, fierce passions, low thoughts, evil deeds, passed by the child without resting on her; her heart was in her flowers, and was like one of them with the dew of daybreak on it.

  There were many strangers in the city, and such are always sure to loiter in the Spanish square; and she sold fast and well her lilacs and her roses, and her knots of thyme and sweetbrier.

  She was always a little sorry to see them go, her kindly pretty playmates that, nine times out of ten no doubt, only drooped and died in the hands that purchased them, as human souls soil and shrivel in the grasp of the passions that woo them.

  The day was a busy one, and brought in good profit. Bébée had no less than fifty sous in her leather pouch when it was over, — a sum of magnitude in the green lane by Laeken.

  A few of her moss-roses were still unsold, that was all, when the Ave Maria began ringing over the town and the people dispersed to their homes or their pleasuring.

  It was a warm gray evening: the streets were full; there were blossoms in all the balconies, and gay colors in all the dresses. The old tinker put his tools together, and whispered to her, —

  “Bébée, as it is your feast day, come and stroll in St. Hubert’s gallery, and I will buy you a little gilt heart, or a sugar-apple stick, or a ribbon, and we can see the puppet show afterwards, eh?”

  But the children were waiting at home: she would not spend the evening in the city; she only thought she would just kneel a moment in the cathedral and say a little prayer or two for a minute — the saints were so good in giving her so many friends.

  There is something very touching in the Flemish peasant’s relation with his Deity. It is all very vague to him: a jumble of veneration and familiarity, of sanctity and profanity, without any thought of being familiar, or any idea of being profane.

  There is a homely poetry, an innocent affectionateness in it, characteristic of the people. He talks to his good angel Michael, and to his friend that dear little Jesus, much as he would talk to the shoemaker over the way, or the cooper’s child in the doorway.

  It is a very unreasonable, foolish, clumsy sort of religion, this theology in wooden shoes; it is half grotesque, half pathetic; the grandmothers pass it on to the grandchildren as they pass the bowl of potatoes round the stove in the long winter nights; it is as silly as possible, but it comforts them as they carry fagots over the frozen canals or wear their eyes blind over the squares of lace; and it has in it the supreme pathos of any perfect confidence, of any utterly childlike and undoubting trust.

  This had been taught to Bébée, and she went to sleep every night in the firm belief that the sixteen little angels of the Flemish prayer kept watch and ward over her bed. For the rest, being poetical, as these north folks are not, and having in her — wherever it came from, poor little soul — a warmth of fancy and a spirituality of vision not at all northern, she had mixed up her religion with the fairies of Antoine’s stories, and the demons in which the Flemish folks are profound believers, and the flowers into which she put all manner of sentient life, until her religion was a fantastic medley, so entangled that poor Father Francis had given up in despair any attempt to arrange it more correctly. Indeed, being of the peasantry himself, he was not so very full sure in his own mind that demons were not bodily presences, quite as real and often much more tangible than saints. Anyway, he let her alone; and she believed in the goodness of God as she believed in the shining of the sun.

  People looked after her as she went through the twisting, picture-like streets, where sunlight fell still between the peaked high roofs, and lamps were here and there lit in the bric-à-brac shops and the fruit stalls.

  Her little muslin cap blew back like the wings of a white butterfly. Her sunny hair caught the last sun-rays. Her feet were fair in the brown wooden shoes. Under the short woollen skirts the grace of her pretty limbs moved freely. Her broad silver clasps shone like a shield, and she was utterly unconscious that any one looked; she was simply and gravely intent on reaching St. Gudule to say her one prayer and not keep the children waiting.

  Some one leaning idly over a balcony in the street that is named after Mary of Burgundy saw her going thus. He left the balcony and went down his stairs and followed her.

  The sun-dazzle on the silver had first caught his sight; and then he had looked downward at the pretty feet.

  These are the chances women call Fate.

  Bébée entered the cathedral. It was quite empty. Far away at the west end there was an old custodian asleep on a bench, and a woman kneeling. That was all.

  Bébée made her salutations to the high altar, and stole on into the chapel of the Saint Sacrament; it was the one that she loved best.

  She said her prayer and thanked the saints for all their gifts and goodness, her clasped hand against her silver shield, her basket on the pavement by her, abovehead the sunset rays streaming purple and crimson and golden through the painted windows that are the wonder of the world.

  When her prayer was done she still kneeled there; her head thrown back to watch the light, her hands clasped still, and on her upturned face the look that made the people say, “What does she see? — the angels or the dead?”

  She forgot everything. She forgot the cherries at home, and the children even. She was looking upward at the stories of the painted panes; she was listening to the message of the dying sun-rays; she was feeling vaguely, wistfully, unutterably the tender beauty of the sacred place and t
he awful wonder of the world in which she with her sixteen years was all alone, like a little blue corn-flower among the wheat that goes for grist and the barley that makes men drunk.

  For she was alone, though she had so many friends. Quite alone sometimes; for God had been cruel to her, and had made her a lark without song.

  When the sun faded and the beautiful casements lost all glow and meaning, Bébée rose with a startled look — had she been dreaming? — was it night? — would the children be sorry, and go supperless to bed?

  “Have you a rosebud left to sell to me?” a man’s voice said not far off; it was low and sweet, as became the Sacrament Chapel.

  Bébée looked up; she did not quite know what she saw: only dark eyes smiling into hers.

  By the instinct of habit she sought in her basket and found three moss-roses. She held them out to him.

  “I do not sell flowers here, but I will give them to you,” she said, in her pretty grave childish fashion.

  “I often want flowers,” said the stranger, as he took the buds. “Where do you sell yours? — in the market?”

  “In the Grande Place.”

  “Will you tell me your name, pretty one?”

  “I am Bébée.”

  There were people coming into the church. The bells were booming abovehead for vespers. There was a shuffle of chairs and a stir of feet. Boys in white went to and fro, lighting the candles. Great clouds of shadow drifted up into the roof and hid the angels.

  She nodded her little head to him.

  “Good night; I cannot stay. I have a cake at home to-night, and the children are waiting.”

  “Ah! that is important, no doubt, indeed. Will you buy some more cakes for the children from me?”

  He slid a gold piece in her hand. She looked at it in amaze. In the green lanes by Laeken no one ever saw gold. Then she gave it him back.

  “I will not take money in church, nor anywhere, except what the flowers are worth. Good night.”

  He followed her, and held back the heavy oak door for her, and went out into the air with her.