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Bebee; Or, Two Little Wooden Shoes, a fiction by Ouida |
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CHAPTER XXVIII |
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_ She sat quite still and upright in the wagon with the dark lands rushing 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 shivered 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 cock 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 shifting 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 sunshine. 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 shining 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. She sat up in her bed and slipped her feet on to the floor; the pretty little rosy feet that he had used to want to clothe in silken stockings. Poor little feet! she felt a curious compassion for them; they had served her so well, and they were so tired. She sat up a moment with that curious dull agony, aching everywhere in body and in brain. She kissed the rosebud once more and laid it gently down in the wooden shoe. She did not see anything that was around her. She felt a great dulness that closed in on her, a great weight that was like iron on her head. She thought she was in the strange, noisy, cruel city, with' the river close to her, and all her dead dreams drifting down it like murdered children, whilst that woman kissed him. She slipped her feet on to the floor, and rose and stood upright. There was a door open to the moonlight--the door where she had sat spinning and singing in a thousand happy days; the lavender blew; the tall, unbudded green lilies swayed in the wind; she looked at them, and knew none of them. The night air drifted through her linen dress, and played on her bare arms, and lifted the curls of her hair; the same air that had played with her so many times out of mind when she had been a little tottering thing that measured its height by the red rosebush. But it brought her no sense of where she was. All she saw was the woman who kissed him. There was the water beyond; the kindly calm water, all green with the moss and the nests of the ouzels and the boughs of the hazels and willows, where the swans were asleep in the reeds, and the broad lilies spread wide and cool. But she did not see any memory in it. She thought it was the cruel gray river in the strange white city: and she cried to it; and went out into the old familiar ways, and knew none of them; and ran feebly yet fleetly through the bushes and flowers, looking up once at the stars with a helpless broken blind look, like a thing that is dying. "He does not want me!" she said to them; "he does not want me!--other women kiss him there!" Then with a low fluttering sound like a bird's when its wings are shot, and yet it tries to rise, she hovered a moment over the water, and stretched her arms out to it. "He does not want me!" she murmured; "he does not want me--and I am so tired. Dear God!" Then she crept down, as a weary child creeps to its mother, and threw herself forward, and let the green dark waters take her where they had found her amidst the lilies, a little laughing yearling thing. There she soon lay, quite quiet, with her face turned to the stars, and the starling poised above to watch her as she slept. She had been only Bebee: the ways of God and man had been too hard for her. When the messengers of Flamen came that day, they took him back a dead moss-rose and a pair of little wooden shoes worn through with walking. "One creature loved me once," he says to women who wonder why the wooden shoes are there. [THE END] _ |
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