Bebee Part 9

"Yes, it is I," he answered, as he joined her. "Have you forgiven me, Bebee?"

She looked at him with frank, appealing eyes, like those of a child in fault.

"Oh, I did not sleep all night!" she said, simply. "I thought I had been rude and ungrateful, and I could not be sure I had done right, though to have done otherwise would certainly have been wrong."

He laughed.

"Well, that is a clearer deduction than is to be drawn from most moral uncertainties. Do not think twice about the matter, my dear. I have not, I a.s.sure you."

"No!"

She was a little disappointed. It seemed such an immense thing to her; and she had lain awake all the night, turning it about in her little brain, and appealing vainly for help in it to the sixteen sleep-angels.

"No, indeed. And where are you going so fast, as if those wooden shoes of yours were sandals of Mercury?"

"Mercury--is that a shoemaker?"

"No, my dear. He did a terrible bit of cobbling once, when he made Woman. But he did not shoe her feet with swiftness that I know of; she only runs away to be run after, and if you do not pursue her, she comes back--always."

Bebee did not understand at all.

"I thought G.o.d made women," she said, a little awe-stricken.

"You call it G.o.d. People three thousand years ago called it Mercury or Hermes. Both mean the same thing,--mere words to designate an unknown quality. Where are you going? Does your home lie here?"

"Yes, onward, quite far onward," said Bebee, wondering that he had forgotten all she had told him the day before about her hut, her garden, and her neighbors. "You did not come and finish your picture to-day: why was that? I had a rosebud for you, but it is dead now."

"I went to Anvers. You looked for me a little, then?"

"Oh, all day long. For I was so afraid I had been ungrateful."

"That is very pretty of you. Women are never grateful, my dear, except when they are very ill-treated. Mercury, whom we were talking of, gave them, among other gifts, a dog's heart."

Bebee felt bewildered; she did not reason about it, but the idle, shallow, cynical tone pained her by its levity and its unlikeness to the sweet, still, gray summer evening.

"Why are you in such a hurry?" he pursued. "The night is cool, and it is only seven o'clock. I will walk part of the way with you."

"I am in a hurry because I have Annemie's patterns to do," said Bebee, glad that he spoke of a thing that she knew how to answer. "You see, Annemie's hand shakes and her eyes are dim, and she p.r.i.c.ks the pattern all awry and never perceives it; it would break her heart if one showed her so, but the Baes would not take them as they are; they are of no use at all. So I p.r.i.c.k them out myself on fresh paper, and the Baes thinks it is all her doing, and pays her the same money, and she is quite content.

And as I carry the patterns to and fro for her, because she cannot walk, it is easy to cheat her like that; and it is no harm to cheat _so_, you know." He was silent.

"You are a good little girl, Bebee, I can see." he said at last, with a graver sound in his voice. "And who is this Annemie for whom you do so much? an old woman, I suppose."

"Oh, yes, quite old; incredibly old. Her man was drowned at sea sixty years ago, and she watches for his brig still, night and morning."

"The dog's heart. No doubt he beat her, and had a wife in fifty other ports."

"Oh, no!" said Bebee, with a little cry, as though the word against the dead man hurt her. "She has told me so much of him. He was as good as good could be, and loved her so, and between the voyages they were so happy. Surely that must have been sixty years now, and she is so sorry still, and still will not believe that he was drowned."

He looked down on her with a smile that had a certain pity in it.

"Well, yes; there are women like that, I believe. But be very sure, my dear, he beat her. Of the two, one always holds the whip and uses it, the other crouches."

"I do not understand," said Bebee.

"No; but you will."

"I will?--when?"

He smiled again.

"Oh--to-morrow, perhaps, or next year--or when Fate fancies."

"Or rather, when I choose," he thought to himself, and let his eyes rest with a certain pleasure on the little feet, that went beside him in the gra.s.s, and the pretty fair bosom that showed ever and again, as the frills of her linen bodice were blown back by the wind and her own quick motion.

Bebee looked also up at him; he was very handsome, and looked so to her, after the broad, blunt, characterless faces of the Walloon peasantry around her. He walked with an easy grace, he was clad in picture-like velvets, he had a beautiful poetic head, and eyes like deep brown waters, and a face like one of Jordaens' or Rembrandt's cavaliers in the galleries where she used to steal in of a Sunday, and look up at the paintings, and dream of what that world could be in which those people had lived.

"_You_ are of the people of Rubes' country, are you not?" she asked him.

"Of what country, my dear?"

"Of the people that live in the gold frames," said Bebee, quite seriously. "In the galleries, you know. I know a charwoman that scrubs the floors of the Arenberg Palace, and she lets me in sometimes to look; and you are just like those great gentlemen in the gold frames, only you have not a hawk and a sword, and they always have. I used to wonder where they came from, for they are not like any of us one bit, and the charwoman--she is Lisa Dredel, and lives in the street of the Pot d'Etain--always said. 'Dear heart, they all belong to Rubes' land: we never see their like nowadays.' But _you_ must come out of Rubes' land; at least, I think so, do you not?"

He caught her meaning; he knew that Rubes was the homely abbreviation of Rubens that all the Netherlanders used, and he guessed the idea that was reality to this little lonely fanciful mind.

"Perhaps I do," he answered her with a smile, for it was not worth his while to disabuse her thoughts of any imagination that glorified him to her. "Do you not want to see Rubes' world, little one? To see the gold and the grandeur, and the glitter of it all?--never to toil or get tired?--always to move in a pageant?--always to live like the hawks in the paintings you talk of, with silver bells hung round you, and a hood all sewn with pearls?"

"No," said Bebee, simply. "I should like to see it, just to see it, as one looks through a grating into the king's grape-houses here. But I should not like to live in it. I love my hut, and the starling, and the chickens, and what would the garden do without me? and the children, and the old Annemie? I could not anyhow, anywhere, be any happier than I am.

There is only one thing I wish."

"And what is that?"

"To know something; not to be so ignorant. Just look--I can read a Little, it is true: my Hours, and the letters, and when Krebs brings in a newspaper I can read a little of it, not much. I know French well, because Antoine was French himself, and never did talk Flemish to me; and they being Netherlanders, cannot, of course, read the newspapers at all, and so think it very wonderful indeed in me. But what I want is to know things, to know all about what _was_ before ever I was living. St.

Gudule now--they say it was built hundreds of years before; and Rubes again--they say he was a painter king in Antwerpen before the oldest, oldest woman like Annemie ever began to count time. I am sure books tell you all those things, because I see the students coming and going with them; and when I saw once the millions of books in the Rue du Musee, I asked the keeper what use they were for, and he said, 'To make men wise, my dear.' But Gringoire Bac, the cobbler, who was with me,--it was a fete day,--Bac, _he_ said, 'Do not you believe that, Bebee; they only muddle folks' brains; for one book tells them one thing, and another book another, and so on, till they are dazed with all the contrary lying; and if you see a bookish man, be sure you see a very poor creature who could not hoe a patch, or kill a pig, or st.i.tch an upper-leather, were it ever so.' But I do not believe that Bac said right. Did he?"

"I am not sure. On the whole, I think it is the truest remark on literature I have ever heard, and one that shows great judgment in Bac.

Well?"

"Well, sometimes, you know," said Bebee, not understanding his answer, but pursuing her thoughts confidentially,--"sometimes I talk like this to the neighbors, and they laugh at me. Because Mere Krebs says that when one knows how to spin and sweep and make bread and say one's prayers and milk a goat or a cow, it is all a woman wants to know this side of heaven. But for me, I cannot help it, when I look at those windows in the cathedral, or at those beautiful twisted little spires that are all over our Hotel de Ville, I want to know who the men were that made them,--what they did and thought,--how they looked and spoke,--how they learned to shape stone into leaves and gra.s.ses like that,--how they could imagine all those angel faces on the gla.s.s. When I go alone in the quite early morning or at night when it is still--sometimes in winter I have to stay till it is dark over the lace--I hear their feet come after me, and they whisper to me close, 'Look what beautiful things we have done, Bebee, and you all forget us quite. We did what never will die, but our names are as dead as the stones.' And then I am so sorry for them and ashamed. And I want to know more. Can you tell me?"

He looked at her earnestly; her eyes were s.h.i.+ning, her cheeks were warm, her little mouth was tremulous with eagerness.

"Did any one ever speak to you in that way?" he asked her.

"No," she answered him. "It comes into my head of itself. Sometimes I think the cathedral angels put it there. For the angels must be tired, you know; always pointing to G.o.d and always seeing men turn away, I used to tell Antoine sometimes. But he used to shake his head and say that it was no use thinking; most likely St. Gudule and St. Michael had set the church down in the night all ready made, why not? G.o.d made the trees, and they were more wonderful, he thought, for his part. And so perhaps they are, but that is no answer. And I do _want_ to know. I want some one who will tell me; and if you come out of Rubes' country as I think, no doubt you know everything, or remember it?"

He smiled.

"The free pa.s.s to Rubes' country lies in books, pretty one. Shall I give you some?--nay, lend them, I mean, since giving you are too wilful to hear of without offence. You can read, you said?"