Bébée ran home as fast as her feet would take her.
The children were all gathered about her gate in the dusky dewy evening;
they met her with shouts of welcome and reproach intermingled; they had
been watching for her since first the sun had grown low and red, and now
the moon was risen.
But they forgave her when they saw the splendor of her presents, and she
showered out among them Père Melchior's horn of comfits.
They dashed into the hut; they dragged the one little table out among the
flowers; the cherries and cake were spread on it; and the miller's wife
had given a big jug of milk, and Father Francis himself had sent some
honeycomb.
The early roses were full of scent in the dew; the great gillyflowers
breathed\out fragrance in the dusk; the goat came and nibbled the
sweetbrier unrebuked; the children repeated the Flemish bread-grace, with
clasped hands and reverent eyes, "Oh, dear little Jesus, come and sup
with us, and bring your beautiful Mother, too; we will not forget you are
God." Then, that said, they ate, and drank, and laughed, and picked
cherries from each other's mouths like little blackbirds; the big white
dog gnawed a crust at their feet; old Krebs who had a fiddle, and could
play it, came out and trilled them rude and ready Flemish tunes, such as
Teniers or Mieris might have jumped to before an alehouse at the
Kermesse; Bébée and the children joined hands, and danced round together
in the broad white moonlight, on the grass by the water-side; the idlers
came and sat about, the women netting or spinning, and the men smoking a
pipe before bedtime; the rough hearty Flemish bubbled like a brook in
gossip, or rung like a horn over a jest; Bébée and the children, tired of
their play, grew quiet, and chanted together the "Ave Maria Stella
Virginis"; a nightingale among the willows sang to the sleeping swans.
All was happy, quiet, homely; lovely also in its simple way.
They went early to their beds, as people must do who rise at dawn.
Bébée leaned out a moment from her own little casement ere she too went
to rest.
Through an open lattice there sounded the murmur of some little child's
prayer; the wind sighed among the willows; the nightingales sang on in
the dark--all was still.
Hard work awaited her on the morrow, and on all the other days of the
year.
She was only a little peasant--she must sweep, and spin, and dig, and
delve, to get daily her bit of black bread,--but that night she was as
happy as a little princess in a fairy tale; happy in her playmates, in
her flowers, in her sixteen years, in her red shoes, in her silver
buckles, because she was half a woman; happy in the dewy leaves, in the
singing birds, in the hush of the night, in the sense of rest, in the
fragrance of flowers, in the drifting changes of moon and cloud; happy
because she was half a woman, because she was half a poet, because
she was wholly a poet.
"Oh, dear swans, how good it is to be sixteen!--how good it is to live at
all!--do you not tell the willows so?" said Bébée to the gleam of silver
under the dark leaves by the water's side, which showed her where her
friends were sleeping, with their snowy wings closed over their stately
heads, and the veiled gold and ruby of their eyes.
The swans did not awake to answer.
Only the nightingale answered from the willows, with Desdemona's song.
But Bébée had never heard of Desdemona, and the willows had no sigh for
her.
"Good night!" she said, softly, to all the green dewy sleeping world, and
then she lay down and slept herself.--The nightingale sang on, and the
willows trembled.