Wisdom, Wit, and Pathos of Ouida Part 21

_TWO LITTLE WOODEN SHOES._

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 b.u.t.terfly 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 counter-marching 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-coloured cafes. 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 n.o.blesse 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 Moyen-age, 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 Horne.

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 grey 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 rus.h.i.+ng 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 a.s.sumption, till their white glory hides its curly head:

In all strange quaint old-world niches withdrawn from men in silent gra.s.s-grown corners, where a twelfth-century corbel holds a pot of roses, or a Gothic arch yawns beneath a wool-warehouse, or a water-spout with a grinning faun's head laughs in the grim humour of the Moyen-age above the bent head of a young lace-worker;----

In all these, Brussels, although more worldly than her sisters of Ghent and Bruges, and far more worldly yet than her Teuton cousins of Freiburg and Nurnberg, Brussels is in her own way still like some monkish story, mixed up with the Romaunt of the Rose, or rather like some light French vaudeville, all jests and smiles, ill.u.s.trated in motley contrast 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 colours and the heroical grotesque romance of the Middle Ages.

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

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

"Bebee, as it is your feast-day, come and stroll in St. Hubert's gallery, and I will buy you a horn of sugarplums 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 Netherlander's relation with his Deity. It is all very vague to him; a jumble of veneration and familiarity, of sanct.i.ty 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 Michel, 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 pa.s.s it on to the grandchildren, as they pa.s.s 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 f.a.ggots over the frozen ca.n.a.ls or wear their eyes blind over the squares of lace; and it has in it the supreme pathos of a perfect confidence, of an utter childlike and undoubting trust.

This had been taught to Bebee, 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.

She said her prayer, and thanked the saints for all their gifts and goodness, her clasped hands against her silver s.h.i.+eld; 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 the awful wonder of the world in which she with her sixteen years was all alone, like a little blue cornflower amongst 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 G.o.d had been cruel to her, and had made her a lark without song.

He went leisurely, travelling up the bright Meuse river, and across the monotony of the plains, then green with wheat a foot high, and musical with the many bells of the Easter kermesses in the quaint old-world villages.

There was something so novel, so sleepy, so harmless, so mediaeval, in the Flemish life, that it soothed him. He had been swimming all his life in salt, sea-fed rapids; this sluggish, dull ca.n.a.l-water, mirroring between its rushes a life that had scarcely changed for centuries, had a charm for him.

He stayed awhile in Antwerpen. The town is ugly and beautiful; it is like a dull, quaint, gres de Flandre jug, that has precious stones set inside its rim. It is a burgher ledger of bales and barrels, of sale and barter, of loss and gain; but in the heart of it there are illuminated leaves of missal vellum, all gold and colour, and monkish story and heroic ballad, that could only have been executed in the days when Art was a religion.

"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 neck 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, or seemed so to her, after the broad, blunt, characterless faces of the Brabantois 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 Arenenberg, 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 now-a-days.' 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 grapehouses 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 Flemish, 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. Ste.

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 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 de la Musee, I asked the keeper what use they were for, and he said, 'to make men wise, my dear.' But Bac the cobbler, who was with me,--it was a fete day--Bac, _he_ said, 'Do you not believe that, Bebee? they only muddle folk's 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 neighbours, 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.