Wisdom, Wit, and Pathos of Ouida Part 23

And Bebee would listen, with the sh.e.l.l in her lap, and try to understand, and gaze at the s.h.i.+ps and then at the sky beyond them, and try to figure to herself those strange countries, to which these s.h.i.+ps were always going, and saw in fancy all the blossoming orchard province of green France, and all the fir-clothed hills and rus.h.i.+ng rivers of the snow-locked Swedish sh.o.r.e, and saw too, doubtless, many lands that had no place at all except in dreamland, and were more beautiful even than the beauty of the earth, as poets' countries are, to their own sorrow, oftentimes.

But this dull day Bebee did not go down upon the wharf; she did not want the sailor's tales; she saw the masts and the bits of bunting that streamed from them, and they made her restless, which they had never done before. Instead she went in at a dark old door and climbed up a steep staircase that went up and up and up, as though she were mounting Ste. Gudule's belfry towers; and at the top of it entered a little chamber in the roof, where one square unglazed hole that served for light looked out upon the ca.n.a.l, with all its crowded craft, from the dainty schooner yacht, fresh as gilding and holystone could make her, that was running for pleasure to the Scheldt, to the rude, clumsy coal-barge, black as night, that bore the rough diamonds of Belgium to the snow-buried roofs of Christiania and Stromsoon.

In the little dark attic there was a very old woman in a red petticoat and a high cap, who sat against the window, and p.r.i.c.ked out lace patterns with a pin on thick paper. She was eighty-five years old, and could hardly keep body and soul together.

Bebee, running to her, kissed her.

"O mother Annemie, look here! Beautiful red and white currants, and a roll; I saved them for you. They are the first currants we have seen this year. Me? oh, for me, I have eaten more than are good! You know I pick fruit like a sparrow, always. Dear mother Annemie, are you better?

Are you quite sure you are better to-day?"

The little old withered woman, brown as a walnut and meagre as a rush, took the currants, and smiled with a childish glee, and began to eat them, blessing the child with each crumb she broke off the bread.

"Why had you not a grandmother of your own, my little one?" she mumbled.

"How good you would have been to her, Bebee?"

"Yes," said Bebee seriously, but her mind could not grasp the idea. It was easier for her to believe the fanciful lily-parentage of Antoine's stories. "How much work have you done, Annemie? Oh, all that? all that?

But there is enough for a week. You work too early and too late, you dear Annemie."

"Nay, Bebee, when one has to get one's bread, that cannot be. But I am afraid my eyes are failing. That rose now, is it well done?"

"Beautifully done. Would the Baes take them if they were not? You know he is one that cuts every centime in four pieces."

"Ah! sharp enough, sharp enough--that is true. But I am always afraid of my eyes. I do not see the flags out there so well as I used to do."

"Because the sun is so bright, Annemie; that is all. I myself, when I have been sitting all day in the Place in the light, the flowers look pale to me. And you know it is not age with _me_, Annemie?"

The old woman and the young girl laughed together at that droll idea.

"You have a merry heart, dear little one," said old Annemie. "The saints keep it to you always."

"May I tidy the room a little?"

"To be sure, dear, and thank you too. I have not much time, you see; and somehow my back aches badly when I stoop."

"And it is so damp here for you, over all that water!" said Bebee, as she swept and dusted and set to rights the tiny place, and put in a little broken pot a few sprays of honeysuckle and rosemary that she had brought with her. "It is so damp here. You should have come and lived in my hut with me, Annemie, and sat out under the vine all day, and looked after the chickens for me when I was in the town. They are such mischievous little souls; as soon as my back is turned one or other is sure to push through the roof, and get out amongst the flower-beds. Will you never change your mind, and live with me, Annemie? I am sure you would be happy, and the starling says your name quite plain, and he is such a funny bird to talk to; you never would tire of him. Will you never come? It is so bright there, and green and sweet-smelling, and to think you never even have seen it!--and the swans and all,--it is a shame."

"No, dear," said old Annemie, eating her last bunch of currants. "You have said so so often, and you are good and mean it, that I know. But I could not leave the water. It would kill me.

"Out of this window you know I saw my Jeannot's brig go away--away--away--till the masts were lost in the mists. Going with iron to Norway; the Fleur d'Epine of this town, a good s.h.i.+p, and a sure, and he her mate; and as proud as might be, and with a little blest Mary in lead round his throat.

"She was to be back in port in eight months bringing timber. Eight months--that brought Easter time.

"But she never came. Never, never, never, you know.

"I sat here watching them come and go, and my child sickened and died, and the summer pa.s.sed, and the autumn, and all the while I looked--looked--looked; for the brigs are all much alike; only his I always saw as soon as she hove in sight because he tied a hank of flax to her mizzen mast; and when he was home safe and sound I spun the hank into hose for him; that was a fancy of his, and for eleven voyages, one on another, he had never missed to tie the flax nor I to spin the hose.

"But the hank of flax I never saw this time; nor the brave brig; nor my good man with his sunny blue eyes.

"Only one day in winter, when the great blocks of ice were smas.h.i.+ng hither and thither, a coaster came in and brought tidings of how off in the Danish waters they had come on a waterlogged brig, and had boarded her, and had found her empty, and her hull riven in two, and her crew all drowned and dead beyond any manner of doubt. And on her stern there was her name painted white, the Fleur d'Epine, of Brussels, as plain as name could be; and that was all we ever knew--what evil had struck her, or how they had perished, n.o.body ever told.

"Only the coaster brought that bit of beam away, with the Fleur d'Epine writ clear upon it.

"But you see I never _know_ my man is dead.

"Any day--who can say?--any of those s.h.i.+ps may bring him aboard of her, and he may leap out on the wharf there, and come running up the stairs as he used to do, and cry, in his merry voice, 'Annemie, Annemie, here is more flax to spin, here is more hose to weave!' For that was always his homeward word; no matter whether he had had fair weather or foul, he always knotted the flax to his mast-head.

"So you see, dear, I could not leave here. For what if he came and found me away? He would say it was an odd fas.h.i.+on of mourning for him.

"And I could not do without the window, you know. I can watch all the brigs come in; and I can smell the s.h.i.+pping smell that I have loved all the days of my life; and I can see the lads heaving, and climbing, and furling, and mending their bits of canvas, and hauling their flags up and down.

"And then who can say?--the sea never took him, I think--I think I shall hear his voice before I die.

"For they do say that G.o.d is good."

Bebee sweeping very noiselessly, listened, and her eyes grew wistful and wondering. She had heard the story a thousand times; always in different words, but always the same little tale, and she knew how old Annemie was deaf to all the bells that tolled the time, and blind to all the whiteness of her hair, and all the wrinkles of her face, and only thought of her sea-slain lover as he had been in the days of her youth.

When we suffer very much ourselves, anything that smiles in the sun seems cruel--a child, a bird, a dragonfly--nay, even a fluttering ribbon, or a spear-gra.s.s that waves in the wind.

Bebee, whose religion was the sweetest and vaguest mingling of Pagan and Christian myths, and whose faith in fairies and in saints was exactly equal in strength and in ignorance--Bebee filled the delf pot anew carefully, then knelt down on the turf in that little green corner, and prayed in devout hopeful childish good faith to the awful unknown Powers who were to her only as gentle guides and kindly playmates.

Was she too familiar with the Holy Mother?

She was almost fearful that she was; but then the Holy Mother loved flowers so well, Bebee could not feel aloof from her, nor be afraid.

"When one cuts the best blossoms for her, and tries to be good, and never tells a lie," thought Bebee, "I am quite sure, as she loves the lilies, that she will never altogether forget me."

The loveliest love is that which dreams high above all storms, unsoiled by all burdens; but, perhaps, the strongest love is that which, whilst it adores, drags its feet through mire, and burns its brow in heat for the thing beloved.

It is, perhaps, the most beautiful square in all Northern Europe, with its black timbers and gilded carvings, and blazoned windows, and majestic scutcheons, and fantastic pinnacles. This Bebee did not know, but she loved it, and she sat resolutely in front of the Broodhuis, selling her flowers, smiling, chatting, helping the old woman, counting her little gains, eating her bit of bread at noon-day like any other market girl; but, at times, glancing up to the stately towers and the blue sky, with a look on her face that made the old tinker and cobbler whisper together--"What does she see there?--the dead people or the angels?"

The truth was that even Bebee herself did not know very surely what she saw--something that was still nearer to her than even this kindly crowd that loved her. That was all she could have said had anybody asked her.

But none did.

No one wanted to hear what the dead said; and for the angels, the tinker and the cobbler were of opinion that one had only too much of them sculptured about everywhere, and s.h.i.+ning on all the cas.e.m.e.nts--in reverence be it spoken of course.

_FAME._