BEBEE
Or, Two Little Wooden Shoes
by
LOUISA DE LA RAMEE ("OUIDA")
1896
CHAPTER I.
Bebee sprang out of bed at daybreak. She was sixteen.
It seemed a very wonderful thing to be as much as that--sixteen--a womanquite.
A cock was crowing under her lattice. He said how old you are!--how oldyou are! every time that he sounded his clarion.
She opened the lattice and wished him good day, with a laugh. It was sopleasant to be woke by him, and to think that no one in all the worldcould ever call one a child any more.
There was a kid bleating in the shed. There was a thrush singing in thedusk of the sycamore leaves. There was a calf lowing to its mother awaythere beyond the fence. There were dreamy muffled bells ringing in thedistance from many steeples and belfries where the city was; they allsaid one thing, "How good it is to be so old as that--how good, how verygood!"
Bebee was very pretty.
No one in all Brabant ever denied that. To look at her it seemed as ifshe had so lived among the flowers that she had grown like them, and onlylooked a bigger blossom--that was all.
She wore two little wooden shoes and a little cotton cap, and a graykirtle--linen in summer, serge in winter; but the little feet in theshoes were like rose leaves, and the cap was as white as a lily, and thegray kirtle was like the bark of the bough that the apple-blossom parts,and peeps out of, to blush in the sun.
The flowers had been the only godmothers that she had ever had, and fairygodmothers too.
The marigolds and the sunflowers had given her their ripe, rich gold totint her hair; the lupins and irises had lent their azure to her eyes;the moss-rosebuds had made her pretty mouth; the arum lilies had uncurledtheir softness for her skin; and the lime-blossoms had given her theirfrank, fresh, innocent fragrance.
The winds had blown, and the rains had rained, and the sun had shone onher, indeed, and had warmed the whiteness of her limbs, but they had onlygiven to her body and her soul a hardy, breeze-blown freshness like thatof a field cowslip.
She had never been called anything but Bebee.
One summer day Antoine Maees--a French subject, but a Belgian by adoptionand habit, an old man who got his meagre living by tilling the gardenplot about his hut and selling flowers in the city squares--Antoine,going into Brussels for his day's trade, had seen a gray bundle floatingamong the water-lilies in the bit of water near his hut and had hookedit out to land, and found a year-old child in it, left to drown, nodoubt, but saved by the lilies, and laughing gleefully at fate.
Some lace-worker, blind with the pain of toil, or some peasant womanharder of heart than the oxen in her yoke, had left it there to driftaway to death, not reckoning for the inward ripple of the current or thetoughness of the lily leaves and stems.
Old Antoine took it to his wife, and the wife, a childless and aged soul,begged leave to keep it; and the two poor lonely, simple folks grew tocare for the homeless, motherless thing, and they and the people aboutall called it Bebee--only Bebee.
The church got at it and added to it a saint's name; but for all itslittle world it remained Bebee--Bebee when it trotted no higher thanthe red carnation heads;--Bebee when its yellow curls touched as high asthe lavender-bush;--Bebee on this proud day when the thrush's song andthe cock's crow found her sixteen years old.
Old Antoine's hut stood in a little patch of garden ground with a brierhedge all round it, in that byway which lies between Laeken and Brussels,in the heart of flat, green Brabant, where there are beautiful meadowsand tall, flowering hedges, and forest trees, and fern-filled ditches,and a little piece of water, deep and cool, where the swans sail all daylong, and the silvery willows dip and sway with the wind.
Turn aside from the highway, and there it lies to-day, and all the placebrims over with grass, and boughs, and blossoms, and flowering beans, andwild dog-roses; and there are a few cottages and cabins there near thepretty water, and farther there is an old church, sacred to St. Guido;and beyond go the green level country and the endless wheat-fields, andthe old mills with their red sails against the sun; and beyond all thesethe pale blue, sea-like horizon of the plains of Flanders.
It was a pretty little hut, pink all over like a sea-shell, in thefashion that the Netherlanders love; and its two little square latticeswere dark with creeping plants and big rose-bushes, and its roof, so lowthat you could touch it, was golden and green with all the lichens andstoneworts that are known on earth.
Here Bebee grew from year to year; and soon learned to be big enough andhardy enough to tie up bunches of stocks and pinks for the market, andthen to carry a basket for herself, trotting by Antoine's side along thegreen roadway and into the white, wide streets; and in the market thebuyers--most often of all when they were young mothers--would seek outthe little golden head and the beautiful frank blue eyes, and buy Bebee'slilies and carnations whether they wanted them or not. So that old Maeesused to cross himself and say that, thanks to Our Lady, trade was thriceas stirring since the little one had stretched out her rosy fingers withthe flowers.
All the same, however stirring trade might be in summer, when the longwinters came and the Montagne de la Cour was a sharp slope of ice, andthe pinnacles of St. Gudule were all frosted white with snow, and thehot-house flowers alone could fill the market, and the country gardenswere bitter black wind-swept desolations where the chilly roots huddledthemselves together underground like homeless children in a cellar,--thenthe money gained in the time of leaf and blossom was all needed to buy ablack loaf and fagot of wood; and many a day in the little pink hut Bebeerolled herself up in her bed like a dormouse, to forget in sleep that shewas supperless and as cold as a frozen robin.
So that when Antoine Maees grew sick and died, more from age and weaknessthan any real disease, there were only a few silver crowns in the brownjug hidden in the thatch; and the hut itself, with its patch of ground,was all that he could leave to Bebee.
"Live in it, little one, and take nobody in it to worry you, and be goodto the bird and the goat, and be sure to keep the flowers blowing," saidthe old man with his last breath; and sobbing her heart out by hisbedside, Bebee vowed to do his bidding.
She was not quite fourteen then, and when she had laid her old friend torest in the rough green graveyard about St. Guido, she was very sorrowfuland lonely, poor little, bright Bebee, who had never hardly known a worsewoe than to run the thorns of the roses into her fingers, or to crybecause a thrush was found starved to death in the snow.
Bebee went home, and sat down in a corner and thought.
The hut was her own, and her own the little green triangle just thencrowded with its Mayday blossom in all the colors of the rainbow. She wasto live in it, and never let the flowers die, so he had said; good, roughold ugly Antoine Maees, who had been to her as father, mother, country,king, and law.
The sun was shining.
Through the little square of the lattice she could see the great tulipsopening in the grass and a bough of the apple-tree swaying in the wind. Achaffinch clung to the bough, and swung to and fro singing. The doorstood open, with the broad, bright day beaming through; and Bebee'slittle world came streaming in with it,--the world which dwelt in thehalf-dozen cottages that fringed this green lane of hers like beavers'nests pushed out under the leaves on to the water's edge.
They came in, six or eight of them, all women; trim, clean, plain Brabantpeasants, hard-working, kindly of nature, and shrewd in their own simplematters; people who labored in the fields all the day long, or workedthemselves blind over the lace pillows in the city.
"You are too young to live alone, Bebee," said the first of them. "My
oldmother shall come and keep house for you."
"Nay, better come and live with me, Bebee," said the second. "I will giveyou bit and drop, and clothing, too, for the right to your plot ofground."
"That is to cheat her," said the third. "Hark, here, Bebee: my sister,who is a lone woman, as you know well, shall come and bide with you, andask you nothing--nothing at all--only you shall just give her a crust,perhaps, and a few flowers to sell sometimes."
"No, no," said the fourth; "that will not do. You let me have the gardenand the hut, Bebee, and my sons shall till the place for you; and I willlive with you myself, and leave the boys the cabin, so you will have allthe gain, do you not see, dear little one?"
"Pooh!" said the fifth, stouter and better clothed than the rest. "Youare all eager for your own good, not for hers. Now I--Father Francis sayswe should all do as we would be done by--I will take Bebee to live withme, all for nothing; and we will root the flowers up and plant it withgood cabbages and potatoes and salad plants. And I will stable my cows inthe hut to sweeten it after a dead man, and I will take my chance ofmaking money out of it, and no one can speak more fair than that when onesees what weather is, and thinks what insects do; and all the year round,winter and summer, Bebee here will want for nothing, and have to take nocare for herself whatever."
She who spoke, Mere Krebs, was the best-to-do woman in the little lane,having two cows of her own and ear-rings of solid silver, and a greencart, and a big dog that took the milk into Brussels. She was heard,therefore, with respect, and a short silence followed her words.
But it was very short; and a hubbub of voices crossed each other after itas the speakers grew hotter against one another and more eager toconvince each other of the disinterestedness and delicacy of their offersof aid.
Through it all Bebee sat quite quiet on the edge of the littletruckle-bed, with her eyes fixed on the apple bough and the singingchaffinch.
She heard them all patiently.
They were all her good friends, friends old and true. This one had givenher cherries for many a summer. That other had bought her a little waxenJesus at the Kermesse. The old woman in the blue linen skirt had takenher to her first communion. She who wanted her sister to have the crustand the flowers, had brought her a beautiful painted book of hours thathad cost a whole franc. Another had given her the solitary wonder,travel, and foreign feast of her whole life,--a day fifteen miles away atthe fair at Mechlin. The last speaker of all had danced her on her knee ahundred times in babyhood, and told her legends, and let her ride in thegreen cart behind big curly-coated Tambour.
Bebee did not doubt that these trusty old friends meant well by her, andyet a certain heavy sense fell on her that in all these counsels therewas not the same whole-hearted and frank goodness that had prompted thegifts to her of the waxen Jesus, and the Kermesse of Mechlin.
Bebee did not reason, because she was too little a thing and tootrustful; but she felt, in a vague, sorrowful fashion, that they were allof them trying to make some benefit out of her poor little heritage, withsmall regard for herself at the root of their speculations.
Bebee was a child, wholly a child; body and soul were both as fresh inher as a golden crocus just born out of the snows. But she was not alittle fool, though people sometimes called her so because she would sitin the moments of her leisure with her blue eyes on the far-away cloudslike a thing in a dream.
She heard them patiently till the cackle of shrill voices had exhausteditself, and the six women stood on the sunny mud floor of the hut eyeingeach other with venomous glances; for though they were good neighbors atall times, each, in this matter, was hungry for the advantages to be gotout of old Antoine's plot of ground. They were very poor; they toiled inthe scorched or frozen fields all weathers, or spent from dawn tonightfall poring over their cobweb lace; and to save a son or gain acabbage was of moment to them only second to the keeping of their soulssecure of heaven by Lenten mass and Easter psalm.
Bebee listened to them all, and the tears dried on her cheeks, and herpretty rosebud lips curled close in one another.
"You are very good, no doubt, all of you," she said at last. "But Icannot tell you that I am thankful, for my heart is like a stone, and Ithink it is not so very much for me as it is for the hut that you arespeaking. Perhaps it is wrong in me to say so; yes, I am wrong, I amsure,--you are all kind, and I am only Bebee. But you see he told me tolive here and take care of the flowers, and I must do it, that iscertain. I will ask Father Francis, if you wish: but if he tells me I amwrong, as you do. I shall stay here all the same."
And in answer to their expostulations and condemnation, she only said thesame thing over again always, in different words, but to the samesteadfast purpose. The women clamored about her for an hour in reproachand rebuke; she was a baby indeed, she was a little fool, she was anaughty, obstinate child, she was an ungrateful, wilful little creature,who ought to be beaten till she was blue, if only there was anybody thathad the right to do it!
"But there is nobody that has the right," said Bebee, getting angry andstanding upright on the floor, with Antoine's old gray cat in her roundarms. "He told me to stay here, and he would not have said so if it hadbeen wrong; and I am old enough to do for myself, and I am not afraid,and who is there that would hurt me? Oh, yes; go and tell Father Francis,if you like! I do not believe he will blame me, but if he do, I must bearit. Even if he shut the church door on me, I will obey Antoine, and theflowers will know I am right, and they will let no evil spirits touch me,for the flowers are strong for that; they talk to the angels in thenight."
What use was it to argue with a little idiot like this? Indeed, peasantsnever do argue; they use abuse.
It is their only form of logic.
They used it to Bebee, rating her soundly, as became people who were oldenough to be her grandmothers, and who knew that she had been raked outof their own pond, and had no more real place in creation than a waterrat, as one might say.
The women were kindly, and had never thrown this truth against herbefore, and in fact, to be a foundling was no sort of disgrace to theirsight; but anger is like wine, and makes the depths of the mind shineclear, and all the mud that is in the depths stink in the light; and intheir wrath at not sharing Antoine's legacy, the good souls said bitterthings that in calm moments they would no more have uttered than theywould have taken up a knife to slit her throat.
They talked themselves hoarse with impatience and chagrin, and wentbackwards over the threshold, their wooden shoes and their shrill voiceskeeping a clattering chorus. By this time it was evening; the sun hadgone off the floor, and the bird had done singing.
Bebee stood in the same place, hardening her little heart, whilst big andbitter tears swelled into her eyes, and fell on the soft fur of thesleeping cat.
She only very vaguely understood why it was in any sense shameful to havebeen raked out of the water-lilies like a drowning field mouse, as theyhad said it was.
She and Antoine had often talked of that summer morning when he had foundher there among the leaves, and Bebee and he had laughed over it gayly,and she had been quite proud in her innocent fashion that she had had afairy and the flowers for her mother and godmothers, which Antoine alwaystold her was the case beyond any manner of doubt. Even Father Francis,hearing the pretty harmless fiction, had never deemed it his duty todisturb her pleasure in it, being a good, cheerful old man, who thoughtthat woe and wisdom both come soon enough to bow young shoulders andto silver young curls without his interference.
Bebee had always thought it quite a fine thing to have been born ofwater-lilies, with the sun for her father, and when people in Brusselshad asked her of her parentage, seeing her stand in the market with acertain look on her that was not like other children, had always gravelyanswered in the purest good faith,--
"My mother was a flower."
"You are a flower, at any rate," they would say in return; and Bebee hadbeen always quite content.
But now she was doubtful; she was rather perp
lexed than sorrowful.
These good friends of hers seemed to see some new sin about her. Perhaps,after all, thought Bebee, it might have been better to have had a humanmother who would have taken care of her now that old Antoine was dead,instead of those beautiful, gleaming, cold water-lilies which went tosleep on their green velvet beds, and did not certainly care when thethorns ran into her fingers, or the pebbles got in her wooden shoes.
In some vague way, disgrace and envy--the twin Discords of theworld--touched her innocent cheek with their hot breath, and as theevening fell, Bebee felt very lonely and a little wistful.
She had been always used to run out in the pleasant twilight-time amongthe flowers and water them, Antoine filling the can from the well; andthe neighbors would come and lean against the little low wall, knittingand gossiping; and the big dogs, released from harness, would poke theirheads through the wicket for a crust; and the children would dance andplay Colin Maillard on the green by the water; and she, when the flowerswere no longer thirsted, would join them, and romp and dance and sing thegayest of them all.
But now the buckets hung at the bottom of the well, and the flowershungered in vain, and the neighbors held aloof, and she shut to the hutdoor and listened to the rain which began to fall, and cried herself tosleep all alone in her tiny kingdom.
When the dawn came the sun rose red and warm; the grass and boughssparkled; a lark sang; Bebee awoke sad in heart, indeed, for her lost oldfriend, but brighter and braver.
"Each of them wants to get something out of me," thought the child."Well, I will live alone, then, and do my duty, just as he said. Theflowers will never let any real harm come, though they do look soindifferent and smiling sometimes, and though not one of them hung theirheads when his coffin was carried through them yesterday."
That want of sympathy in the flower troubled her.
The old man had loved them so well; and they had all looked as glad asever, and had laughed saucily in the sun, and not even a rosebud turnedthe paler as the poor still stiffened limbs went by in the wooden shell.
"I suppose God cares; but I wish they did." said Bebee, to whom thegarden was more intelligible than Providence.
"Why do you not care?" she asked the pinks, shaking the raindrops offtheir curled rosy petals.
The pinks leaned lazily against their sticks, and seemed to say, "Whyshould we care for anything, unless a slug be eating us?--_that_ isreal woe, if you like."
Bebee, without her sabots on, wandered thoughtfully among the sweet wetsunlightened labyrinths of blossom, her pretty bare feet treading thenarrow grassy paths with pleasure in their coolness.
"He was so good to you!" she said reproachfully to the great gaudygillyflowers and the painted sweet-peas. "He never let you know heat orcold, he never let the worm gnaw or the snail harm you; he would get upin the dark to see after your wants; and when the ice froze over you, hewas there to loosen your chains. Why do you not care, anyone of you?"
"How silly you are!" said the flowers. "You must be a butterfly or apoet, Bebee, to be as foolish as that. Some one will do all he did. Weare of market value, you know. Care, indeed! when the sun is so warm, andthere is not an earwig in the place to trouble us."
The flowers were not always so selfish as this; and perhaps the sorrow inBebee's heart made their callousness seem harder than it really was.
When we suffer very much ourselves, anything that smiles in the sun seemscruel--a child, a bird, a dragon-fly--nay, even a fluttering ribbon, or aspear-grass that waves in the wind.
There was a little shrine at the corner of the garden, set into the wall;a niche with a bit of glass and a picture of the Virgin, so battered thatno one could trace any feature of it.
It had been there for centuries, and was held in great veneration; andold Antoine had always cut the choicest buds of his roses and set them ina delf pot in front of it, every other morning all the summer long.Bebee, whose religion was the sweetest, vaguest mingling of Pagan andChristian myths, and whose faith in fairies and in saints was exactlyequal in strength and in ignorance,--Bebee filled the delf pot anewcarefully, then knelt down on the turf in that little green corner, andprayed in devout hopeful childish good faith to the awful unknown Powerswho 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 lovedflowers so well, Bebee would not feel aloof from her, nor be afraid.
"When one cuts the best blossoms for her, and tries to be good, and nevertells a lie," thought Bebee, "I am quite sure, as she loves the lilies,that she will never altogether forget me."
So she said to the Mother of Christ fearlessly, and nothing doubting; andthen rose for her daily work of cutting the flowers for the market inBrussels.
By the time her baskets were full, her fowls fed, her goat foddered, herstarling's cage cleaned, her hut door locked, and her wooden shoesclattering on the sunny road into the city, Bebee was almost contentagain, though ever and again, as she trod the familiar ways, the tearsdimmed her eyes as she remembered that old Antoine would never againhobble over the stones beside her.
"You are a little wilful one, and too young to live alone," said FatherFrancis, meeting her in the lane.
But he did not scold her seriously, and she kept to her resolve; and thewomen, who were good at heart, took her back into favor again; and soBebee had her own way, and the fairies, or the saints, or both together,took care of her; and so it came to pass that all alone she heard thecock crow whilst it was dark, and woke to the grand and amazing truththat this warm, fragrant, dusky June morning found her full sixteen yearsold.