Bebee Part 23

"Go away!"

She trembled in his arms and turned cold as ice; a great terror and darkness fell upon her; she had never thought that he would ever go away. He caressed her, and played with her as a boy may with a bird before he wrings its neck.

"You will come back?"

He kissed her: "Surely."

"To-morrow?"

"Nay--not so soon."

"In a week?"

"Hardly."

"In a month, then?"

"Perhaps."

"Before winter, anyway?"

He looked aside from the beseeching, tearful, candid eyes, and kissed her hair and her throat, and said, "Yes, dear--beyond a doubt."

She clung to him, crying silently; he wished that women would not weep.

"Come, Bebee, listen," he said coaxingly, thinking to break the bitterness to her. "This is not wise, and it gives me pain. There is so much for you to do. You know so little. There is so much to learn. I will leave you many books, and you must grow quite learned in my absence. The Virgin is all very well in her way, but she cannot teach us much, poor lady. For her kingdom is called Ignorance. You must teach yourself. I leave you that to do. The days will go by quickly if you are laborious and patient. Do you love me, little one?"

For an answer she kissed his hand.

"You are a busy little Bebee always," he said, with his lips caressing her soft brown arms that were round his neck. "But you must be busier than ever whilst I am gone. So you will forget. No, no, I do not mean that:--I mean so the time will pa.s.s quickest. And I shall finish your picture, Bebee, and all Paris will see you, and the great ladies will envy the little girl with her two wooden shoes. Ah! that does not please you?--you care for none of these vanities. No. Poor little Bebee, why did G.o.d make you, or Chance breathe life into you? You are so far away from us all. It was cruel. What harm has your poor little soul ever done that, pure as a flower, it should have been sent to the h.e.l.l of this world?"

She clung to him, sobbing without sound. "You will come back? You will come back?" she moaned, clasping him closer and closer.

Flamen's own eyes grew dim. But he lied to her: "I will--I promise."

It was so much easier to say so, and it would break her sorrow. So he thought.

For the moment again he was tempted to take her with him--but, he resisted it--he would tire, and she would cling to him forever.

There was a long silence. The bleating of the little kid in the shed without was the only sound; the gray lavender blew to and fro.

Her arms were close about his throat; he kissed them again, and kissed her eyes, her cheek, her mouth; then put her from him quickly and went out.

She ran to him, and threw herself on the damp ground and held him there, and leaned her forehead on his feet. But though he looked at her with wet eyes, he did not yield, and he still said,--

"I will come back soon--very soon; be quiet, dear, let me go."

Then he kissed her once more many times, and put her gently within the door and closed it.

A low, sharp, sudden cry reached him, went to his heart, but he did not turn; he went on through the wet, green little garden, and the curling leaves, where he had found peace and had left desolation.

CHAPTER XXI.

"I will let her alone, and she will marry Jeannot," thought Flamen; and he believed himself a good man for once in his life, and pitied himself for having become a sentimentalist.

She would marry Jeannot, and bear many children, as those people always did; and ruddy little peasants would cling about these pretty, soft, little b.r.e.a.s.t.s of hers; and she would love them after the manner of such women, and be very content clattering over the stones in her wooden shoes; and growing brown and stout, and more careful after money, and ceasing to dream of unknown things, and not seeing G.o.d at all in the fields, but looking low and beholding only the ears of the gleaning wheat and the feet of the tottering children; and so gaining her bread, and losing her soul, and stooping nearer and nearer to earth till she dropped into it like one of her own wind-blown wall-flowers when the bee has sucked out all its sweetness and the heats have scorched up all its bloom:--yes, of course, she would marry Jeannot and end so!

Meanwhile he had his Gretchen, and that was the one great matter.

So he left the street of Mary of Burgundy, and went on his way out of the chiming city as its matin bells were rung, and took with him a certain regret, and the only innocent affection that had ever awakened in him; and thought of his self-negation with half admiration and half derision; and so drifted away into the whirlpool of his amorous, cynical, changeful, pa.s.sionate, callous, many-colored life, and said to himself as he saw the last line of the low green plains s.h.i.+ne against the sun, "She will marry Jeannot--of course, she will marry Jeannot. And my Gretchen is greater than Scheffer's."

What else mattered very much, after all, except what they would say in Paris of Gretchen?

CHAPTER XXII.

People saw that Bebee had grown very quiet. But that was all they saw.

Her little face was pale as she sat among her glowing autumn blossoms, by the side of the cobbler's stall; and when the Varnhart children cried at the gate to her to come and play, she would answer gently that she was too busy to have play-time now.

The fruit girl of the Montagne de la Cour hooted after her, "Gone so soon?--oh he! what did I say?--a fine pine is sugar in the teeth a second only, but the brown nuts you may crack all the seasons round. Well, did you make good harvest while it lasted? has Jeannot a fat bridal portion promised?"

And old Jehan, who was the tenderest soul of them all in the lane by the swans' water, would come and look at her wistfully as she worked among the flowers, and would say to her,--

"Dear little one, there is some trouble: does it come of that painted picture? You never laugh now, Bebee, and that is bad. A girl's laugh is pretty to hear; my girl laughed like little bells ringing--and then it stopped, all at once; they said she was dead. But you are not dead, Bebee. And yet you are so silent; one would say you were."

But to the mocking of the fruit girl, as to the tenderness of old Jehan, Bebee answered nothing; the lines of her pretty curled mouth grew grave and sad, and in her eyes there was a wistful, bewildered, pathetic appeal like the look in the eyes of a beaten dog, which, while it aches with pain, does not cease to love its master.

One resolve upheld and made her feet firm on the stones of the streets and her lips mute under all they said to her. She would learn all she could, and be good, and patient, and wise, if trying could make her wise, and so do his will in all things--until he should come back.

"You are not gay, Bebee," said Annemie, who grew so blind that she could scarce see the flags at the mastheads, and who still thought that she p.r.i.c.ked the lace patterns and earned her bread. "You are not gay, dear.

Has any lad gone to sea that your heart goes away with, and do you watch for his s.h.i.+p coming in with the coasters? It is weary work waiting; but it is all the men think us fit for, child. They may set sail as they like; every new port has new faces for them; but we are to sit still and to pray if we like, and never murmur, be the voyage ever so long, but be ready with a smile and a kiss, a fresh pipe of tobacco, and a dry pair of socks;--that is a man. We may have cried our hearts out; we must have ready the pipe and the socks, or, 'Is that what you call love?' they grumble. You want mortal patience if you love a man,--it is like a fretful child that thumps you when your breast is bare to it. Still, be you patient, dear, just as I am, just as I am."

And Bebee would shudder as she swept the cobwebs from the garret walls,--patient as she was, she who had sat here fifty years watching for a dead man and for a wrecked s.h.i.+p.

CHAPTER XXIII.

The wheat was reapen in the fields, and the brown earth turned afresh.