by Ouida
A blameless life, an eventless life, a life as clear as the dewdrop, and as colorless; a life opening, passing, ending in the little green wooded lane, by the bit of water where the swans made their nests under the willows; a life like the life of millions, a little purer, a little brighter, a little more tender, perhaps, than those lives usually are, but otherwise as like them as one ear of barley is like another as it rises from the soil, and blows in the wind, and turns brown in the strong summer sun, and then goes down to the sod again under the sickle.
He saw her just as she would be — if he let her alone.
But should he leave her alone?
He cared nothing; only her eyes had such a pretty, frank, innocent look like a bird’s in them, and she had been so brave and bold with him about those silken stockings; and this little ignorant, dreamful mind of hers was so like a blush rosebud, which looks so close-shut, and so sweet-smelling, and so tempting fold within fold, that a child will pull it open, forgetful that he will spoil it forever from being a full-grown rose, and that he will let the dust, and the sun, and the bee into its tender bosom — and men are true children, and women are their rosebuds.
Thinking only of keeping well with this strange and beautiful wayfarer from that unknown paradise of Rubes’ country, Bébée lifted up the vine-leaves of her basket.
“I took a flower for you to-day, but it is dead. Look; to-morrow, if you will be there, you shall have the best in all the garden.”
“You wish to see me again then?” he asked her. Bébée looked at him with troubled eyes, but with a sweet frank faith that had no hesitation in it.
“Yes! you are not like anything I ever knew, and if you will only help me to learn a little. Sometimes I think I am not stupid, only ignorant; but I cannot be sure unless I try.”
He smiled; he was listlessly amused; the day before he had tempted the child merely because she was pretty, and to tempt her in that way seemed the natural course of things, but now there was something in her that touched him differently; the end would be the same, but he would change the means.
The sun had set. There was a low, dull red glow still on the far edge of the plains — that was all. In the distant cottages little lights were twinkling. The path grew dark.
“I will go away and let her alone,” he thought. “Poor little soul! it would give itself lavishly, it would never be bought. I will let it alone; the mind will go to sleep and the body will keep healthy, and strong, and pure, as people call it. It would be a pity to play with both a day, and then throw them away as the boy threw the pear-blossom. She is a little clod of earth that has field flowers growing in it. I will let her alone, the flowers under the plough in due course will die, and she will be content among the other clods, — if I let her alone.”
At that moment there went across the dark fields, against the dusky red sky, a young man with a pile of brushwood on his back, and a hatchet in his hand.
“You are late, Bébée,” he called to her in Flemish, and scowled at the stranger by her side.
“A good-looking lad; who is it?” said her companion.
“That is Jeannot, the son of old Sophie,” she answered him. “He is so good — oh, so good, you cannot think; he keeps his mother and three little sisters, and works so very, very hard in the forest, and yet he often finds time to dig my garden for me, and he chops all my wood in winter.”
They had come to where the road goes up by the king’s summer palace. They were under great hanging beeches and limes. There was a high gray wall, and over it the blossoming fruit boughs hung. In a ditch full of long grass little kids bleated by their mothers. Away on the left went the green fields of colza, and beetroot, and trefoil, with big forest trees here and there in their midst, and, against the blue low line of the far horizon, red mill-sails, and gray church spires; dreamy plaintive bells far away somewhere were ringing the sad Flemish carillon.
He paused and looked at her.
“I must bid you good night, Bébée; you are near your home now.”
She paused too and looked at him.
“But I shall see you to-morrow?”
There was the wistful, eager, anxious unconsciousness of appeal as when the night before she had asked him if he were angry.
He hesitated a moment. If he said no, and went away out of the city wherever his listless and changeful whim called him, he knew how it would be with her; he knew what her life would be as surely as he knew the peach would come out of the peach-flower rosy on the wall there: life in the little hut; among the neighbors; sleepy and safe and soulless; — if he let her alone.
If he stayed and saw her on the morrow he knew, too, the end as surely as he knew that the branch of white pear-blossom, which in carelessness he had knocked down with a stone on the grass yonder, would fade in the night and would never bring forth its sweet, simple fruit in the sunshine.
To leave the peach-flower to come to maturity and be plucked by a peasant, or to pull down the pear-blossom and rifle the buds?
Carelessly and languidly he balanced the question with himself, whilst Bébée, forgetful of the lace patterns and the flight of the hours, stood looking at him with anxious and pleading eyes, thinking only — was he angry again, or would he really bring her the books and make her wise, and let her know the stories of the past?
“Shall I see you to-morrow?” she said wistfully.
Should she? — if he left the peach-blossom safe on the wall, Jeannot the woodcutter would come by and by and gather the fruit.
If he left the clod of earth in its pasture with all its daisies untouched, this black-browed young peasant would cut it round with his hatchet and carry it to his wicker cage, that the homely brown lark of his love might sing to it some stupid wood note under a cottage eave.
The sight of the strong young forester going over the darkened fields against the dull red skies was as a feather that suffices to sway to one side a balance that hangs on a hair.
He had been inclined to leave her alone when he saw in his fancy the clean, simple, mindless, honest life that her fanciful girlhood would settle down into as time should go on. But when in the figure of the woodman there was painted visibly on the dusky sky that end for her which he had foreseen, he was not indifferent to it; he resented it; he was stirred to a vague desire to render it impossible.
If Jeannot had not gone by across the fields he would have left her and let her alone from that night thenceforwards; as it was, —
“Good night, Bébée,” he said to her. “Tomorrow I will finish the Broodhuis and bring you your first book. Do not dream too much, or you will prick your lace patterns all awry. Good night, pretty one.”
Then he turned and went back through the green dim lanes to the city.
Bébée stood a moment looking after him, with a happy smile; then she picked up the fallen pear-blossom, and ran home as fast as her feet would take her.
That night she worked very late watering her flowers, and trimming them, and then ironing out a little clean white cap for the morrow; and then sitting down under the open lattice to prick out all old Annémie’s designs by the strong light of the full moon that flooded her hut with its radiance.
But she sang all the time she worked, and the gay, pretty, wordless songs floated across the water and across the fields, and woke some old people in their beds as they lay with their windows open, and they turned and crossed themselves, and said, “Dear heart! — this is the eve of the Ascension, and the angels are so near we hear them.”
But it was no angel; only the thing that is nearer heaven than anything else, — a little human heart that is happy and innocent.
Bébée had only one sorrow that night. The pear-blossoms were all dead; and no care could call them back even for an hour’s blooming.
“He did not think when he struck them down,” she said to herself, regretfully.
CHAPTER VIII.
“Can I do any work for you, Bébée?” said black Jeannot in the daybreak, pushing her gate open t
imidly with one hand.
“There is none to do, Jeannot. They want so little in this time of the year — the flowers,” said she, lifting her head from the sweet-peas she was tying up to their sticks.
The woodman did not answer; he leaned over the half-open wicket, and swayed it backwards and forwards under his bare arm. He was a good, harmless, gentle fellow, swarthy as charcoal and simple as a child, and quite ignorant, having spent all his days in the great Soignies forests making fagots when he was a little lad, and hewing down trees or burning charcoal as he grew to manhood.
“Who was that seigneur with you last night, Bébée?” he asked, after a long silence, watching her as she moved.
Bébée’s eyes grew very soft, but they looked up frankly.
“I am not sure — I think he is a painter — a great painter prince, I mean — as Rubes was in Antwerpen; he wanted roses the night before last in the cathedral.”
“But he was walking with you?”
“He was in the lane as I came home last night — yes.”
“What does he give you for your roses?”
“Oh! he pays me well. How is your mother this day, Jeannot?”
“You do not like to talk of him?”
“Why should you want to talk of him? He is nothing to you.”
“Did you really see him only two days ago, Bébée?”
“Oh, Jeannot! did I ever tell a falsehood? You would not say that to one of your little sisters.”
The forester swayed the gate to and fro drearily under his folded arms.
Bébée, not regarding him, cut her flowers, and filled her baskets, and did her other work, and set a ladder against the hut and climbed on its low roof to seek for eggs, the hens having green tastes sometimes for the rushes and lichens of its thatch. She found two eggs, which she promised herself to take to Annémie, and looking round as she sat on the edge of the roof, with one foot on the highest rung of the ladder, saw that Jeannot was still at the gate.
“You will be late in the forest, Jeannot,” she cried to him. “It is such a long, long way in and out. Why do you look so sulky? and you are kicking the wicket to pieces.”
“I do not like you to talk with strangers,” said Jeannot, sullenly and sadly.
Bébée laughed as she sat on the edge of the thatch, and looked at the shining gray skies of the early day, and the dew-wet garden, and the green fields beyond, with happy eyes that made the familiar scene transfigured to her.
“Oh, Jeannot, what nonsense! As if I do not talk to a million strangers every summer! as if I could ever sell a flower if I did not! You are cross this morning; that is what it is.”
“Do you know the man’s name?” said Jeannot, suddenly.
Bébée felt her cheeks grow warm as with some noonday heat of sunshine.
She thought it was with anger against blundering Jeannot’s curiosity.
“No! and what would his name be to us, if I did know it? I cannot ask people’s names because they buy my roses.”
“As if it were only roses!”
There was the length of the garden between them, and Bébée did not hear as she sat on the edge of her roof with that light dreamful enjoyment of air and sky and coolness, and all the beauty of the dawning day, which the sweet vague sense of a personal happiness will bring with it to the dullest and the coldest.
“You are cross, Jeannot, that is what it is,” she said, after a while. “You should not be cross; you are too big and strong and good. Go in and get my bowl of bread and milk for me, and hand it to me up here. It is so pleasant. It is as nice as being perched on an apple-tree.”
Jeannot went in obediently and handed up her breakfast to her, looking at her with shy, worshipping eyes. But his face was overcast, and he sighed heavily as he took up his hatchet and turned away; for he was the sole support of his mother and sisters, and if he did not do his work in Soignies they would starve at home.
“You will be seeing that stranger again?” he asked her.
“Yes!” she answered with a glad triumph in her eyes; not thinking at all of him as she spoke. “You ought to go, Jeannot, now; you are so late. I will come and see your mother to-morrow. And do not be cross, you dear big Jeannot. Days are too short to snip them up into little bits by bad temper; it is only a stupid sheep-shearer that spoils the fleece by snapping at it sharp and hard; that is what Father Francis says.”
Bébée, having delivered her little piece of wisdom, broke her bread into her milk and ate it, lifting her face to the fresh wind and tossing crumbs to the wheeling swallows, and watching the rose-bushes nod and toss below in the breeze, and thinking vaguely how happy a thing it was to live.
Jeannot looked up at her, then went on his slow sad way through the wet lavender-shrubs and the opening buds of the lilies.
“You will only think of that stranger, Bébée, never of any of us — never again,” he said; and wearily opened the little gate and went through it, and down the daybreak stillness of the lane. It was a foolish thing to say; but when were lovers ever wise?
Bébée did not heed; she did not understand herself or him; she only knew that she was happy; when one knows that, one does not want to seek much further.
She sat on the thatch and took her bread and milk in the gray clear air, with the swallows circling above her head, and one or two of them even resting a second on the edge of the bowl to peck at the food from the big wooden spoon; they had known her all the sixteen summers of her life, and were her playfellows, only they would never tell her anything of what they saw in winter over the seas. That was her only quarrel with them. Swallows do not tell their secrets They have the weird of Procne on them all.
The sun came and touched the lichens of the roof into gold.
Bébée smiled at it gayly as it rose above the tops of the trees, and shone on all the little villages scattered over the plains.
“Ah, dear Sun!” she cried to it. “I am going to be wise. I am going into great Rubes’ country. I am going to hear of the Past and the Future. I am going to listen to what the Poets say. The swallows never would tell me anything; but now I shall know as much as they know. Are you not glad for me, O Sun?”
The Sun came over the trees, and heard and said nothing. If he had answered at all he must have said, —
“The only time when a human soul is either wise or happy is in that one single moment when the hour of my own shining or of the moon’s beaming seems to that single soul to be past and present and future, to be at once the creation and the end of all things. Faust knew that; so will you.”
But the Sun shone on and held his peace. He sees all things ripen and fall. He can wait. He knows the end. It is always the same.
He brings the fruit out of the peach-flower, and rounds it and touches it into ruddiest rose and softest gold: but the sun knows well that the peach must drop — whether into the basket to be eaten by kings, or on to the turf to be eaten by ants. What matter which very much after all?
The Sun is not a cynic; he is only wise because he is Life and he is
Death, the creator and the corrupter of all things.
CHAPTER IX.
But Bébée, who only saw in the sun the sign of daily work, the brightness of the face of the world, the friend of the flowers, the harvest-man of the poor, the playmate of the birds and butterflies, the kindly light that the waking birds and the ringing carillon welcomed, — Bébée, who was not at all afraid of him, smiled at his rays and saw in them only fairest promise of a cloudless midsummer day as she gave her last crumb to the swallows, dropped down off the thatch, and busied herself in making bread that Mère Krebs would bake for her, until it was time to cut her flowers and go down into the town.
When her loaves were made and she had run over with them to the mill-house and back again, she attired herself with more heed than usual, and ran to look at her own face in the mirror of the deep well-water — other glass she had none.
She was used to hear herself called pretty; bat she had never thought
about it at all till now. The people loved her; she had always believed that they had only said it as a sort of kindness, as they said, “God keep you.” But now —
“He told me I was like a flower,” she thought to herself, and hung over the well to see. She did not know very well what he had meant; but the sentence 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 depths below. Then she went and kneeled down before the old shrine in the wall of the garden.
“Dear and holy Mother of Jesus, I do thank you that you made me a little good to look at,” she said, softly. “Keep me as you keep the flowers, and let 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 I do not think you will be angry, will you? And I am going to try to be wise.”
Then she murmured an ave or two, to be in form as it were, and then rose and ran along the lanes with her baskets, and brushed the dew lightly over 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 Annémie and took it to her with fresh patterns to prick, and the new-laid eggs.
“I wonder what he meant by a dog’s heart?” she thought to herself, as she left the old woman sitting by the hole in the roof pricking out the parchment in all faith that she earned her money, and looking every now and then through the forests of masts for the brig with the hank of flax flying, — the brig that had foundered fifty long years before in the northern seas, and in the days of her youth.
“What is the dog’s heart?” thought Bébée; she had seen a dog she knew — a dog which all his life long had dragged heavy loads under brutal stripes along the streets of Brussels — stretch himself on the grave of his taskmaster 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 except pain and sorrow. Was it a heart like this that he meant?