Bébée; Or, Two Little Wooden Shoes

It was quite night when she reached the street, and sought the number of his house. She spoke his name softly, and trembling very much with joy, not with any fear, but it seemed to her too sacred a thing ever to utter aloud.

An old man looked out of a den by the door, and told her to go straight up the stairs to the third floor, and then turn to the right. The old man chuckled as he glanced after her, and listened to the wooden shoes pattering wearily up the broad stone steps.

Bébée climbed them—ten, twenty, thirty, forty. "He must be very poor!" she thought, "to live so high"; and yet the place was wide and handsome, and had a look of riches. Her heart beat so fast, she felt suffocated; her limbs shook, her eyes had a red blood-like mist floating before them; but she thanked God each step she climbed; a moment, and she would look upon the only face she loved.

"He will be glad; oh, I am sure he will be glad!" she said to herself, as a fear that had never before come near her touched her for a moment—if he should not care?

But even then, what did it matter? Since he was ill she should be there to watch him night and day; and when he was well again, if he should wish her to go away—one could always die.

"But he will be glad—oh, I know he will be glad!" she said to the rosebuds that she carried to him. "And if God will only let me save his life, what else do I want more?"

His name was written on a door before her. The handle of a bell hung down; she pulled it timidly. The door unclosed; she saw no one, and went through. There were low lights burning. There were heavy scents that were strange to her. There was a fantastic gloom from old armor, and old weapons, and old pictures in the dull rich chambers. The sound of her wooden shoes was lost in the softness and thickness of the carpets.

It was not the home of a poor man. A great terror froze her heart,—if she were not wanted here?

She went quickly through three rooms, seeing no one and at the end of the third there were folding doors.

"It is I—Bébée." she said softly, as she pushed them gently apart; and she held out the two moss-rosebuds.

Then the words died on her lips, and a great horror froze her, still and silent, there.

She saw the dusky room as in a dream. She saw him stretched on the bed, leaning on his elbow, laughing, and playing cards upon the lace coverlet. She saw women with loose shining hair and bare limbs, and rubies and diamonds glimmering red and white. She saw men lying about upon the couch, throwing dice and drinking and laughing one with another.

Beyond all she saw against the pillows of his bed a beautiful brown wicked looking thing like some velvet snake, who leaned over him as he threw down the painted cards upon the lace, and who had cast about his throat her curved bare arm with the great coils of dead gold all a-glitter on it.

And above it all there were odors of wines and flowers, clouds of smoke, shouts of laughter, music of shrill gay voices.

She stood like a frozen creature and saw—the rosebuds' in her hand. Then with a great piercing cry she let the little roses fall, and turned and fled. At the sound he looked up and saw her, and shook his beautiful brown harlot off him with an oath.

But Bébée flew down through the empty chambers and the long stairway as a hare flies from the hounds; her tired feet never paused, her aching limbs never slackened; she ran on, and on, and on, into the lighted streets, into the fresh night air; on, and on, and on, straight to the river.

From its brink some man's strength caught and held her. She struggled with it.

"Let me die! let me die!" she shrieked to him, and strained from him to get at the cool gray silent water that waited for her there.

Then she lost all consciousness, and saw the stars no more.

When she came back to any sense of life, the stars were shining still, and the face of Jeannot was bending over her, wet with tears.

He had followed her to Paris when they had missed her first, and had come straight by train to the city, making sure it was thither she had come, and there had sought her many days, watching for her by the house of Flamen.

She shuddered away from him as he held her, and looked at him with blank, tearless eyes.

"Do not touch me—take me home."

That was all she ever said to him. She never asked him or told him anything. She never noticed that it was strange that he should have been here upon the river-bank. He let her be, and took her silently in the cool night back by the iron ways to Brabant.

CHAPTER XXVIII

She sat quite still and upright in the wagon with the dark lands rushing by her. She never spoke at all. She had a look that frightened him upon her face. When he tried to touch her hand, she shivered away from him.

The charcoal-burner, hardy and strong among forest-reared men, cowered like a child in a corner, and covered his eyes and wept.

So the night wore away.

She had no perception of anything that happened to her until she was led through her own little garden in the early day, and her starling cried to her, "Bonjour, Bonjour!" Even then she only looked about her in a bewildered way, and never spoke.

Were the sixteen days a dream?

She did not know.

The women whom Jeannot summoned, his mother and sisters, and Mère Krebs, and one or two others, weeping for what had been the hardness of their hearts against her, undressed her, and laid her down on her little bed, and opened the shutters to the radiance of the sun.

She let them do as they liked, only she seemed neither to hear nor speak, and she never spoke.

All that Jeannot could tell was that he had found her in Paris, and had saved her from the river.

The women were sorrowful, and reproached themselves. Perhaps she had done wrong, but they had been harsh, and she was so young.

The two little sabots with the holes worn through the soles touched them; and they blamed themselves for having shut their hearts and their doors against her as they saw the fixed blue eyes, without any light in them, and the pretty mouth closed close against either sob or smile.

After all she was Bébée—the little bright blithe thing that had danced with their children, and sung to their singing, and brought them always the first roses of the year. If she had been led astray, they should have been gentler with her.

So they told themselves and each other.

What had she seen in that terrible Paris to change her like this?—they could not tell She never spoke.

The cock crowed gayly to the sun. The lamb bleated in the meadow. The bees boomed among the pear-tree blossoms. The gray lavender blew in the open house door. The green leaves threw shifting shadows on the floor.

All things were just the same as they had been the year before, when she had woke to the joy of being a girl of sixteen.

But Bébée now lay quite still and silent on her little bed; as quiet as the waxen Gesù that they laid in the manger at the Nativity.

"If she would only speak!" the women and the children wailed, weeping sorely.

But she never spoke; nor did she seem to know any one of them. Not even the starling as he flew on her pillow and called her.

"Give her rest," they all said; and one by one moved away, being poor folk and hard working, and unable to lose a whole day.

Mère Krebs stayed with her, and Jeannot sat in the porch where her little spinning-wheel stood, and rocked himself to and fro; in vain agony, powerless.

He had done all he could, and it was of no avail.

Then people who had loved her, hearing, came up the green lanes from the city—the cobbler and the tinman, and the old woman who sold saints' pictures by the Broodhuis. The Varnhart children hung about the garden wicket, frightened and sobbing. Old Jehan beat his knees with his hands, and said only over and over again, "Another dead—another dead!—the red mill and I see them all dead!"

The long golden day drifted away, and the swans swayed to and fro, and the willows grew silver in the sunshine.

Bébée, only, lay quite still and never spoke. The starling sat above her head; his wings drooped, and he was silent too.