Bebee Part 17

The religion and the pleasure of her simple little life had always gone hand-in-hand, greeting one another, and never for an instant in conflict.

In any hesitation of her own she had always gone to Father Francis, and he had disentangled the web for her and made all plain.

But here was a difficulty in which she could never go to Father Francis.

Right and wrong, duty and desire, were for the first time arrayed before her in their ghastly and unending warfare.

It frightened her with a certain breathless sense of peril--the peril of a time when in lieu of that gentle Mother of Roses whom she kneeled to among the flowers, she would only see a dusky shadow looming between her and the beauty of life and the light of the sun.

What he said was quite vague to her. She attached no definite danger to his words. She only thought--to see him was so great a joy--if Mary forbade it, would she not take it if she could notwithstanding, always, always, always?

He kept her hand in his, and watched with contentment the changing play of the shade and sorrow, the fear and fascination, on her face.

"You do not know, Bebee?" he said at length, knowing well himself; so much better than ever she knew. "Well, dear, that is not flattering to me. But it is natural. The good Virgin of course gives you all you have, food, and clothes, and your garden, and your pretty plump chickens; and I am only a stranger. You could not offend her for me; that is not likely."

The child was cut to the heart by the sadness and humility of words of whose studied artifice she had no suspicion.

She thought that she seemed to him ungrateful and selfish, and yet all the mooring-ropes that held her little boat of life to the harbor of its simple religion seemed cut away, and she seemed drifting helpless and rudderless upon an unknown sea.

"I never did do wrong--that I know," she said, timidly, and lifted her eyes to his with an unconscious appeal in them.

"But--I do not see why it should be wrong to speak with you. You are good, and you lend me beautiful things out of other men's minds that will make me less ignorant: Our Lady could not be angry with that--she must like it."

"Our Lady?--oh, poor little simpleton!--where will her reign be when Ignorance has once been cut down root and branch?" he thought to himself: but he only answered,--

"But whether she like it or not, Bebee?--you beg the question, my dear; you are--you are not so frank as usual--think, and tell me honestly?"

He knew quite well, but it amused him to see the perplexed trouble that this, the first divided duty of her short years, brought with it.

Bebee looked at him, and loosened her hand from his, and sat quite still.

Her lips had a little quiver in them.

"I think." she said at last, "I think--if it _be_ wrong, still I will wish it--yes. Only I will not tell myself it is right. I will just say to Our Lady, 'I am wicked, perhaps, but I cannot help it' So, I will not deceive her at all; and perhaps in time she may forgive. But I think you only say it to try me. It cannot, I am sure, be wrong--any more than it is to talk to Jeannot or to Bac."

He had driven her into the subtleties of doubt, but the honest little soul in her found a way out, as a flower in a cellar finds its way through the stones to light.

He plucked the ivy leaves and threw them at the chickens on the bricks without, with a certain impatience in the action. The simplicity and the directness of the answer disarmed him; he was almost ashamed to use against her the weapons of his habitual warfare. It was like a maitre d'armes fencing with bare steel against a little naked child armed with a blest palm-sheaf.

When she had thus brought him all she had, and he to please her had sat down to the simple food, she gathered a spray of roses and set it in a pot beside him, then left him and went and stood at a little distance, waiting, with her hands lightly crossed on her chest, to see if there were anything that he might want.

He ate and drank well to please her, looking at her often as he did so.

"I break your bread, Bebee," he said, with a tone that seemed strange to her,--"I break your bread. I must keep Arab faith with you."

"What is that?"

"I mean--I must never betray you."

"Betray me How could you?"

"Well--hurt you in any way."

"Ah, I am sure you would never do that."

He was silent, and looked at the spray of roses.

"Sit down and spin," he said impatiently. "I am ashamed to see you stand there, and a woman never looks so well as when she spins. Sit down, and I will eat the good things you have brought me. But I cannot if you stand and look."

"I beg your pardon. I did not know," she said, ashamed lest she should have seemed rude to him; and she drew out her wheel under the light of the lattice, and sat down to it, and began to disentangle the threads.

It was a pretty picture--the low, square cas.e.m.e.nt; the frame of ivy, the pink and white of the climbing sweet-peas: the girl's head; the cool, wet leaves: the old wooden spinning-wheel, that purred like a sleepy cat.

"I want to paint you as Gretchen, only it will be a shame." he said.

"Who is Gretchen?"

"You shall read of her by-and-by. And you live here all by yourself?"

"Since Antoine died--yes."

"And are never dull?"

"I have no time, and I do not think I would be if I had time--there is so much to think of, and one never can understand."

"But you must be very brave and laborious to do all your work yourself.

Is it possible a child like you can spin, and wash, and bake, and garden, and do everything?"

"Oh, many do more than I. Babette's eldest daughter is only twelve, and she does much more, because she has all the children to look after; and they are very, very poor; they often have nothing but a stew of nettles and perhaps a few snails, days together."

"That is lean, bare, ugly, gruesome poverty; there is plenty of that everywhere. But you, Bebee--you are an idyll."

Bebee looked across the hut and smiled, and broke her thread. She did not know what he meant, but if she were anything that pleased him, it was well.

"Who were those beautiful women?" she said suddenly, the color mounting into her cheeks.

"What women, my dear?"

"Those I saw at the window with you, the other night--they had jewels."

"Oh!--women, tiresome enough. If I had seen you, I would have dropped you some fruit. Poor little Bebee! Did you go by, and I never knew?"

"You were laughing--"

"Was I?"

"Yes, and they _were_ beautiful."

"In their own eyes; not in mine."