CHAPTER XXIII.
The wheat was reapen in the fields, and the brown earth turned afresh.The white and purple chrysanthemums bloomed against the flowerlessrose-bushes, and the little gray Michaelmas daisy flourished where thedead carnations had spread their glories. Leaves began to fall and chillywinds to sigh among the willows; the squirrels began to store away theirnuts, and the poor to pick up the broken bare boughs.
"He said he would come before winter," thought Bebee, every day when sherose and felt each morning cooler and grayer than the one before it;winter was near.
Her little feet already were cold in their wooden shoes; and the robinalready sang in the twigs of the sear sweetbrier; but she had the bravesweet faith which nothing kills, and she did not doubt--oh! no, she didnot doubt, she was only tired.
Tired of the strange, sleepless, feverish nights; tired of the long,dull, empty days: tired of watching down the barren, leafless lane:tired of hearkening breathless to each step on the rustling dead leaves;tired of looking always, always, always, into the ruddy autumn eveningsand the cold autumn starlight, and never hearing what she listened for,never seeing what she sought; tired as a child may be lost in a wood, andwearily wearing its small strength and breaking its young heart in searchof the track forever missed, of the home forever beyond the horizon.
Still she did her work and kept her courage.
She took her way into the town with her basket full of the ruby and amberof the dusky autumn blossoms, and when those failed, and the garden wasquite desolate, except for a promise of haws and of holly, she went, asshe had always done, to the lace-room, and gained her bread and thechickens' corn each day by winding the thread round the bobbins; and atnightfall when she had plodded home through the darksome roads and overthe sodden turf, and had lit her rushlight and sat down to her books,with her hand buried in her hair, and her eyes smarting from the strainof the lace-work and her heart aching with that new and deadly pain whichnever left her now, she would read--read--read--read, and try and storeher brain with knowledge, and try and grasp these vast new meanings oflife that the books opened to her, and try and grow less ignorant againsthe should return.
There was much she could not understand,bait there was also much she could.
Her mind was delicate and quick, her intelligence swift and strong; shebought old books at bookstalls with pence that she saved by going withouther dinner. The keeper of the stall, a shrewd old soul, explained somehard points to her, and chose good volumes for her, and lent others tothis solitary little student in her wooden shoes and with her palechild's face.
So she toiled hard and learned much, and grew taller and very thin, andgot a look in her eyes like a lost dog's, and yet never lost heart orwandered in the task that he had set her, or in her faith in his return.
"Burn the books, Bebee," whispered the children again and again, clingingto her skirts. "Burn the wicked, silent things. Since you have had themyou never sing, or romp, or laugh, and you look so white--so white."
Bebee kissed them, but kept to her books.
Jeannot going by from the forest night after night saw the lighttwinkling in the hut window, and sometimes crept softly up and lookedthrough the chinks of the wooden shutter, and saw her leaning over somebig old volume with her pretty brows drawn together, and her mouth shutclose in earnest effort, and he would curse the man who had changed herso and go away with rage in his breast and tears in his eyes, not daringto say anything, but knowing that never would Bebee's little brown handlie in love within his own.
Nor even in friendship, for he had rashly spoken rough words against thestranger from Rubes' land, and Bebee ever since then had passed him bywith a grave, simple greeting, and when he had brought her in timid giftsa barrow-load of fagots, had thanked him, but had bidden him take thewood home to his mother.
"You think evil things of me, Bebee?" good Jeannot had pleaded, with asob in his voice; and she had answered gently,--
"No; but do not speak to me, that is all."
Then he had cursed her absent lover, and Bebee gone within and closed herdoor.
She had no idea that the people thought ill of her. They were cold toher, and such coldness made her heart ache a little more. But the onegreat love in her possessed her so strongly that all other things werehalf unreal.
She did her daily housework from sheer habit, and she studied because hehad told her to do it, and because with the sweet, stubborn, credulousfaith of her youth, she never doubted that he would return.
Otherwise there was no perception of real life in her; she dreamed andprayed, and prayed and dreamed, and never ceased to do either one or theother, even when she was scattering potato-peels to the fowls, or shakingcarrots loose of the soil, or sweeping the snow from her hut door, orgoing out in the raw dark dawn as the single little sad bell of St. Guidotolled through the stillness for the first mass.
For though even Father Francis looked angered at her because he thoughtshe was stubborn, and hid some truth and some shame from him atconfession, yet she went resolutely and oftener than ever to kneel in thedusty, dusky, crumbling old church, for it was all she could do for himwho was absent--so she thought--and she did not feel quite so far awayfrom him when she was beseeching Christ to have care of his soul and ofhis body.
All her pretty dreams were dead.
She never heard any story in the robin's song, or saw any promise in thesunset clouds, or fancied that angels came about her in the night--nevernow.
The fields were gray and sad; the birds were little brown things; thestars were cold and far off; the people she had used to care for werelike mere shadows that went by her meaningless and without interest, andall she thought of was the one step that never came: all she wanted wasthe one touch she never felt.
"You have done wrong, Bebee, and you will not own it," said the fewneighbors who ever spoke to her.
Bebee looked at them with wistful, uncomprehending eyes.
"I have done no wrong," she said gently, but no one believed her.
A girl did not shut herself up and wane pale and thin for nothing, sothey reasoned. She might have sinned as she had liked if she had beensensible after it, and married Jeannot.
But to fret mutely, and shut her lips, and seem as though she had donenothing,--that was guilt indeed.
For her village, in its small way, thought as the big world thinks.