Bebee Part 29

But Bebee flew down through the empty chambers and the long stairway as a hare flies from the hounds; her tired feet never paused, her aching limbs never slackened; she ran on, and on, and on, into the lighted streets, into the fresh night air; on, and on, and on, straight to the river.

From its brink some man's strength caught and held her. She struggled with it.

"Let me die! let me die!" she shrieked to him, and strained from him to get at the cool gray silent water that waited for her there.

Then she lost all consciousness, and saw the stars no more.

When she came back to any sense of life, the stars were s.h.i.+ning still, and the face of Jeannot was bending over her, wet with tears.

He had followed her to Paris when they had missed her first, and had come straight by train to the city, making sure it was thither she had come, and there had sought her many days, watching for her by the house of Flamen.

She shuddered away from him as he held her, and looked at him with blank, tearless eyes.

"Do not touch me--take me home."

That was all she ever said to him. She never asked him or told him anything. She never noticed that it was strange that he should have been here upon the river-bank. He let her be, and took her silently in the cool night back by the iron ways to Brabant.

CHAPTER XXVIII.

She sat quite still and upright in the wagon with the dark lands rus.h.i.+ng by her. She never spoke at all. She had a look that frightened him upon her face. When he tried to touch her hand, she s.h.i.+vered away from him.

The charcoal-burner, hardy and strong among forest-reared men, cowered like a child in a corner, and covered his eyes and wept.

So the night wore away.

She had no perception of anything that happened to her until she was led through her own little garden in the early day, and her starling cried to her, "Bonjour, Bonjour!" Even then she only looked about her in a bewildered way, and never spoke.

Were the sixteen days a dream?

She did not know.

The women whom Jeannot summoned, his mother and sisters, and Mere Krebs, and one or two others, weeping for what had been the hardness of their hearts against her, undressed her, and laid her down on her little bed, and opened the shutters to the radiance of the sun.

She let them do as they liked, only she seemed neither to hear nor speak, and she never spoke.

All that Jeannot could tell was that he had found her in Paris, and had saved her from the river.

The women were sorrowful, and reproached themselves. Perhaps she had done wrong, but they had been harsh, and she was so young.

The two little sabots with the holes worn through the soles touched them; and they blamed themselves for having shut their hearts and their doors against her as they saw the fixed blue eyes, without any light in them, and the pretty mouth closed close against either sob or smile.

After all she was Bebee--the little bright blithe thing that had danced with their children, and sung to their singing, and brought them always the first roses of the year. If she had been led astray, they should have been gentler with her.

So they told themselves and each other.

What had she seen in that terrible Paris to change her like this?--they could not tell She never spoke.

The c.o.c.k crowed gayly to the sun. The lamb bleated in the meadow. The bees boomed among the pear-tree blossoms. The gray lavender blew in the open house door. The green leaves threw s.h.i.+fting shadows on the floor.

All things were just the same as they had been the year before, when she had woke to the joy of being a girl of sixteen.

But Bebee now lay quite still and silent on her little bed; as quiet as the waxen Gesu that they laid in the manger at the Nativity.

"If she would only speak!" the women and the children wailed, weeping sorely.

But she never spoke; nor did she seem to know any one of them. Not even the starling as he flew on her pillow and called her.

"Give her rest," they all said; and one by one moved away, being poor folk and hard working, and unable to lose a whole day.

Mere Krebs stayed with her, and Jeannot sat in the porch where her little spinning-wheel stood, and rocked himself to and fro; in vain agony, powerless.

He had done all he could, and it was of no avail.

Then people who had loved her, hearing, came up the green lanes from the city--the cobbler and the tinman, and the old woman who sold saints'

pictures by the Broodhuis. The Varnhart children hung about the garden wicket, frightened and sobbing. Old Jehan beat his knees with his hands, and said only over and over again, "Another dead--another dead!--the red mill and I see them all dead!"

The long golden day drifted away, and the swans swayed to and fro, and the willows grew silver in the suns.h.i.+ne.

Bebee, only, lay quite still and never spoke. The starling sat above her head; his wings drooped, and he was silent too.

Towards sunset Bebee raised herself and called aloud: they ran to her.

"Get me a rosebud--one with the moss round it," she said to them.

They went out into the garden, and brought her one wet with dew.

She kissed it, and laid it in one of her little wooden shoes that stood upon the bed.

"Send them to him," she said wearily; "tell him I walked all the way."

Then her head drooped; then momentary consciousness died out: the old dull lifeless look crept over her face again like the shadow of death.

The starling spread his broad black wings above her head. She lay quite still once more. The women left the rosebud in the wooden shoe, not knowing what she meant.

Night fell. Mere Krebs watched beside her. Jeannot went down to the old church to beseech heaven with all his simple, ignorant, tortured soul.

The villagers hovered about, talking in low sad voices, and wondering, and dropping one by one into their homes. They were sorry, very sorry; but what could they do?

It was quite night. The lights were put out in the lane. Jeannot, with Father Francis, prayed before the shrine of the Seven Sorrows. Mere Krebs slumbered in her rush-bottomed chair; she was old and worked hard. The starling was awake.

Bebee rose in her bed, and looked around, as she had done when she had asked for the moss-rosebud.

A sense of unutterable universal pain ached over all her body.

She did not see her little home, its four white walls, its lattice s.h.i.+ning in the moon, its wooden bowls and plates, its oaken shelf and presses, its plain familiar things that once had been so dear,--she did not see them; she only saw the brown woman with her arm about his throat.