"If I could save a centime a day, I could buy a pair of stockings this
time next year," thought Bébée, locking her shoes with her other
treasures in her drawer the next morning, and taking her broom and pail
to wash down her little palace.
But a centime a day is a great deal in Brabant, when one has not always
enough for bare bread, and when, in the long chill winter, one must weave
thread lace all through the short daylight for next to nothing at all;
for there are so many women in Brabant, and every one of them, young or
old, can make lace, and if one do not like the pitiful wage, one may
leave it and go and die, for what the master lacemakers care or know;
there will always be enough, many more than enough, to twist the thread
round the bobbins, and weave the bridal veils, and the trains for the
courts.
"And besides, if I can save a centime, the Varnhart children ought to
have it," thought Bébée, as she swept the dust together. It was so
selfish of her to be dreaming about a pair of stockings, when those
little things often went for days on a stew of nettles.
So she looked at her own pretty feet,--pretty and slender, and arched,
rosy, and fair, and uncramped by the pressure of leather,--and resigned
her day-dream with a brave heart, as she put up her broom and went out to
weed, and hoe, and trim, and prune the garden that had been for once
neglected the night before.
"One could not move half so easily in stockings," she thought with true
philosophy as she worked among the black, fresh, sweet-smelling mould,
and kissed a rose now and then as she passed one.
When she got into the city that day, her rush-bottomed chair, which was
always left upside down in case rain should fall in the night, was set
ready for her, and on its seat was a gay, gilded box, such as rich people
give away full of bonbons.
Bébée stood and looked from the box to the Broodhuis, from the Broodhuis
to the box; she glanced around, but no one had come there so early as
she, except the tinker, who was busy quarrelling with his wife and
letting his smelting fire burn a hole in his breeches.
"The box was certainly for her, since it was set upon her chair?"--Bébée
pondered a moment; then little by little opened the lid.
Within, on a nest of rose-satin, were two pair of silk stockings!--real
silk!--with the prettiest clocks worked up their sides in color!
Bébée gave a little scream, and stood still, the blood hot in her cheeks;
no one heard her, the tinker's wife, who alone was near, having just
wished Heaven to send a judgment on her husband, was busy putting out his
smoking smallclothes. It is a way that women and wives have, and they
never see the bathos of it.
The place filled gradually.
The customary crowds gathered. The business of the day began underneath
the multitudinous tones of the chiming bells. Bébée's business began too;
she put the box behind her with a beating heart, and tied up her flowers.
It was the fairies, of course! but they had never set a rush-bottomed
chair on its legs before, and this action of theirs frightened her.
It was rather an empty morning. She sold little, and there was the more
time to think.
About an hour after noon a voice addressed her,--
"Have you more moss-roses for me?"
Bébée looked up with a smile, and found some. It was her companion of the
cathedral. She had thought much of the red shoes and the silver clasps,
but she had thought nothing at all of him.
"You are not too proud to be paid to-day?" he said, giving her a silver
franc; he would not alarm her with any more gold; she thanked him, and
slipped it in her little leathern pouch, and went on sorting some
clove-pinks.
"You do not seem to remember me?" he said, with a little sadness.
"Oh, I remember you," said Bébée, lifting her frank eyes. "But you know I
speak to so many people, and they are all nothing to me."
"Who is anything to you?" It was softly and insidiously spoken, but it
awoke no echo.
"Varnhart's children," she answered him, instantly. "And old Annémie by
the wharfside--and Tambour--and Antoine's grave--and the starling--and,
of course, above all, the flowers."
"And the fairies, I suppose?--though they do nothing for you."
She looked at him eagerly,--
"They have done something to-day. I have found a box, and some
stockings--such beautiful stockings! Silk ones! Is it not very odd?"
"It is more odd they should have forgotten you so long. May I see them?"
"I cannot show them to you now. Those ladies are going to buy. But you
can see them later--if you wait."
"I will wait and paint the Broodhuis."
"So many people do that; you are a painter then?"
"Yes--in a way."
He sat down on an edge of the stall, and spread his things there, and
sketched, whilst the traffic went on around them. He was very many years
older than she; handsome, with a dark, and changeful, and listless face;
he wore brown velvet, and had a red ribbon at his throat; he looked a
little as Egmont might have done when wooing Claire.
Bébée, as she sold the flowers and took the change fifty times in the
hour, glanced at him now and then, and watched the movements of his
hands, she could not have told why.
Always among men and women, always in the crowds of the streets, people
were nothing to her; she went through them as through a field of standing
corn,--only in the field she would have tarried for poppies, and in the
town she tarried for no one.
She dealt with men as with women, simply, truthfully, frankly, with the
innocent fearlessness of a child. When they told her she was pretty, she
smiled; it was just as they said that her flowers were sweet.
But this man's hands moved so swiftly; and as she saw her Broodhuis
growing into color and form beneath them, she could not choose but look
now and then, and twice she gave her change wrong.
He spoke to her rarely, and sketched on and on in rapid bold strokes the
quaint graces and massive richness of the Maison du Roi.
There is no crowd so busy in Brabant that it will not find leisure to
stare. The Fleming or the Walloon has nothing of the Frenchman's
courtesy; he is rough and rude; he remains a peasant even when town bred,
and the surly insolence of the "Gueux" is in him still. He is kindly to
his fellows, though not to beasts; he is shrewd, patient, thrifty,
industrious, and good in very many ways, but civil never.
A good score of them left off their occupations and clustered round the
painter, staring, chattering, pushing, pointing, as though a brush had
never been seen in all the land of Rubens.
Bébée, ashamed of her people, got up from her chair and rebuked them.
"Oh, men of Brussels; fie then for shame!" she called to them as
clearly as a robin sings. "Did never you see a drawing before? and are
there not saints and martyrs enough to look at in the galleries? and have
you never some better thing to do than to gape wide-mouthed at a
stranger? What laziness--ah! Just worthy of a people who sleep and smoke
while their dogs work for them! Go away, all of you; look, there comes
the gendarme--it will be the worse for you. Sir, sit under my stall; they
will not dare trouble you then."
He moved under the awning, thanking her with a smile; and the people,
laughing, shuffled unwillingly aside and let him paint on in peace. It
was only little Bébée, but they had spoilt the child from her infancy,
and were used to obey her.
The painter took a long time. He set about it with the bold ease of one
used to all the intricacies of form and color, and he had the skill of a
master. But he spent more than half the time looking idly at the humors
of the populace or watching how the treasures of Bébée's garden
went away one by one in the hands of strangers.
Meanwhile, ever and again, sitting on the edge of her stall, with
his colors and brushes tossed out on the board, he talked to her, and,
with the soft imperceptible skill of long practice in those arts, he drew
out the details of her little simple life.
There were not always people to buy, and whilst she rested and sheltered
the flowers from the sun, she answered him willingly, and in one of her
longer rests showed him the wonderful stockings.
"Do you think it _could_ be the fairies?" she asked him a little
doubtfully.
It was easy to make her believe any fantastical nonsense; but her fairies
were ethereal divinities. She could scarcely believe that they had laid
that box on her chair.
"Impossible to doubt it!" he replied, unhesitatingly. "Given a belief in
fairies at all, why should there be any limit to what they can do? It is
the same with the saints, is it not?"
"Yes," said Bébée, thoughtfully.
The saints were mixed up in her imagination with the fairies in an
intricacy that would have defied the best reasonings of Father
Francis.
"Well, then, you will wear the stockings, will you not? Only, believe me,
your feet are far prettier without them."
Bébée laughed happily, and took another peep in the cosy rose-satin nest.
But her little face had a certain perplexity. Suddenly she turned on him.
"Did not _you_ put them there?"
"I?--never!"
"Are you quite sure?"
"Quite; but why ask?"
"Because," said Bébée, shutting the box resolutely and pushing it a
little away,--"because I would not take it if you did. You are a
stranger, and a present is a debt, so Antoine always said."
"Why take a present then from the Varnhart children, or your old friend
who gave you the clasps?"
"Ah, that is very different. When people are very, very poor, equally
poor, the one with the other, little presents that they save for and
make with such a difficulty are just things that are a pleasure;
sacrifices; like your sitting up with a sick person at night, and then
she sits up with you another year when you want it. Do you not know?"
"I know you talk very prettily. But why should you not take any one
else's present, though he may not be poor?"
"Because I could not return it."
"Could you not?"
The smile in his eyes dazzled her a little; it was so strange, and yet
had so much light in it; but she did not understand him one whit.
"No; how could I?" she said earnestly. "If I were to save for two years,
I could not get francs enough to buy anything worth giving back; and I
should be so unhappy, thinking of the debt of it always. Do tell me if
you put those stockings there?"
"No"; he looked at her, and the trivial lie faltered and died away; the
eyes, clear as crystal, questioned him so innocently. "Well, if I did?"
he said, frankly; "you wished for them; what harm was there? Will you be
so cruel as to refuse them from me?"
The tears sprang into Bébée's eyes. She was sorry to lose the beautiful
box, but more sorry he had lied to her.
"It was very kind and good," she said, regretfully. "But I cannot think
why you should have done it, as you had never known me at all. And,
indeed, I could not take them, because Antoine would not let me if he
were alive; and if I gave you a flower every day all the year round I
should not pay you the worth of them, it would be quite impossible; and
why should you tell me falsehoods about such a thing? A falsehood is
never a thing for a man."
She shut the box and pushed it towards him, and turned to the selling of
her bouquets. Her voice shook a little as she tied up a bunch of
mignonette and told the price of it.
Those beautiful stockings! why had she ever seen them, and why had he
told her a lie?
It made her heart heavy. For the first time in her brief life the
Broodhuis seemed to frown between her and the sun.
Undisturbed, he painted on and did not look at her.
The day was nearly done. The people began to scatter. The shadows grew
very long. He painted, not glancing once elsewhere than at his study.
Bébée's baskets were quite empty.
She rose, and lingered, and regarded him wistfully: he was angered;
perhaps she had been rude? Her little heart failed her.
If he would only look up!
But he did not look up; he kept his handsome dark face studiously over
the canvas of the Broodhuis. She would have seen a smile in his eyes if
he had lifted them; but he never raised his lids.
Bébée hesitated: take the stockings she would not; but perhaps she had
refused them too roughly. She wished so that he would look up and save
her speaking first; but he knew what he was about too warily and well to
help her thus.
She waited awhile, then took one little red moss-rosebud that she had
saved all day in a corner of her basket, and held it out to him frankly,
shyly, as a peace offering.
"Was I rude? I did not mean to be. But I cannot take the stockings; and
why did you tell me that falsehood?"
He took the rosebud and rose too, and smiled; but he did not meet her
eyes.
"Let us forget the whole matter; it is not worth a sou. If you do not
take the box, leave it; it is of no use to me."
"I cannot take it."
She knew she was doing right. How was it that he could make her feel as
though she were acting wrongly?
"Leave it then, I say. You are not the first woman, my dear, who has
quarrelled with a wish fulfilled. It is a way your sex has of rewarding
gods and men.--Here, you old witch, here is a treasure-trove for you. You
can sell it for ten francs in the town anywhere."
As he spoke he tossed the casket and the stockings in it to an old
decrepit woman, who was passing by with a baker's cart drawn by a dog;
and, not staying to heed her astonishment, gathered his colors and easel
together.
The tears swam in Bébée's eyes as she saw the box whirled through the
air.
She had done right; she was sure she had done right.
He was a stranger, and she could never have repaid him; but he made her
feel herself wayward and ungrateful, and it was hard to see the beautiful
fairy gift borne away forever by the chuckling, hobbling, greedy old
baker's woman. If he had only taken it himself, she would have been glad
then to have been brave and to have done her duty.
But it was not in his design that she should be glad.
He saw her tears, but he seemed not to see them.
"Good night, Bébée," he said carelessly, as he sauntered aside from her.
"Good night, my dear. To-morrow I will finish my painting; but I will not
offend you by any more gifts."
Bébée lifted her drooped head, and looked him in the eyes eagerly, with a
certain sturdy resolve and timid wistfulness intermingled in her look.
"Sir, see, you speak to me quite wrongly," she said with a quick
accent, that had pride as well as pain in it. "Say it was kind to
bring me what I wished for; yes, it was kind I know; but you never saw
me till last night, and I cannot tell even your name; and it is very
wrong to lie to any one, even to a little thing like me; and I am only
Bébée, and cannot give you anything back, because I have only just enough
to feed myself and the starling, and not always that in winter. I thank
you very much for what you wished to do; but if I had taken those things,
I think you would have thought me very mean and full of greed; and
Antoine always said, 'Do not take what you cannot pay--not ever what you
cannot pay--that is the way to walk with pure feet.' Perhaps I spoke ill,
because they spoil me, and they say I am too swift to say my mind. But I
am not thankless--not thankless, indeed--it is only I could not take what
I cannot pay. That is all. You are angry still--not now--no?"
There was, anxiety in the pleading. What did it matter to her what a
stranger thought?
And yet Bébée's heart was heavy as he laughed a little coldly, and bade
her good day, and left her alone to go out of the city homewards. A sense
of having done wrong weighed on her; of having been rude and ungrateful.
She had no heart for the children that evening. Mère Krebs was sitting
out before her door shelling peas, and called to her to come in and have
a drop of coffee. Krebs had come in from Vilvöorde fair, and brought a
stock of rare good berries with him. But Bébée thanked her, and went on
to her own garden to work.
She had always liked to sit out on the quaint wooden steps of the mill
and under the red shadow of the sails, watching the swallows flutter to
and fro in the sunset, and hearing the droll frogs croak in the rushes,
while the old people told her tales of the time of how in their babyhood
they had run out, fearful yet fascinated, to see the beautiful Scots
Grays flash by in the murky night, and the endless line of guns and
caissons crawl black as a snake through the summer dust and the
trampled corn, going out past the woods to Waterloo.
But to-night she had no fancy for it: she wanted to be alone with the
flowers.
Though, to be sure, they had been very heartless when Antoine's coffin
had gone past them, still they had sympathy; the daisies smiled at her
with their golden eyes, and the roses dropped tears on her hand, just as
her mood might be; the flowers were closer friends, after all, than any
human souls; and besides, she could say so much to them!
Flowers belong to fairyland; the flowers and the birds and the
butterflies are all that the world has kept of its Golden Age; the only
perfectly beautiful things on earth, joyous, innocent, half divine,
useless, say they who are wiser than God.
Bébée went home and worked among her flowers.
A little laborious figure, with her petticoats twisted high, and her feet
wet with the night dews, and her back bowed to the hoeing and clipping
and raking among the blossoming plants.
"How late you are working to-night, Bébée!" one or two called out, as
they passed the gate. She looked up and smiled; but went on working while
the white moon rose.
She did not know what ailed her.
She went to bed without supper, leaving her bit of bread and bowl of
goat's milk to make a meal for the fowls in the morning.
"Little ugly, shameful, naked feet!" she said to them, sitting on the
edge of her mattress, and looking at them in the moonlight. They were
very pretty feet, and would not have been half so pretty in silk hose and
satin shoon; but she did not know that: he had told her she wanted those
vanities.
She sat still a long while, her rosy feet swaying to and fro like two
roses that grow on one stalk and hang down in the wind. The little
lattice was open; the sweet and dusky garden was beyond; there was a
hand's breadth of sky, in which a single star was shining; the leaves
of the vine hid all the rest.
But for once she saw none of it.
She only saw the black Broodhuis; the red and gold sunset overhead; the
gray stones, with the fallen rose leaves and crushed fruits; and in the
shadows two dark, reproachful eyes, that looked at hers.
Had she been ungrateful?
The little tender, honest heart of her was troubled and oppressed. For
once, that night she slept ill.