Bébée; Or, Two Little Wooden Shoes

"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 timidly 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.