"Can I do any work for you, Bébée?" said black Jeannot in the daybreak,
pushing her gate open timidly with one hand.
"There is none to do, Jeannot. They want so little in this time of the
year--the flowers," said she, lifting her head from the sweet-peas she
was tying up to their sticks.
The woodman did not answer; he leaned over the half-open wicket, and
swayed it backwards and forwards under his bare arm. He was a good,
harmless, gentle fellow, swarthy as charcoal and simple as a child, and
quite ignorant, having spent all his days in the great Soignies forests
making fagots when he was a little lad, and hewing down trees or burning
charcoal as he grew to manhood.
"Who was that seigneur with you last night, Bébée?" he asked, after a
long silence, watching her as she moved.
Bébée's eyes grew very soft, but they looked up frankly.
"I am not sure--I think he is a painter--a great painter prince, I
mean--as Rubes was in Antwerpen; he wanted roses the night before last in
the cathedral."
"But he was walking with you?"
"He was in the lane as I came home last night--yes."
"What does he give you for your roses?"
"Oh! he pays me well. How is your mother this day, Jeannot?"
"You do not like to talk of him?"
"Why should you want to talk of him? He is nothing to you."
"Did you really see him only two days ago, Bébée?"
"Oh, Jeannot! did I ever tell a falsehood? You would not say that to one
of your little sisters."
The forester swayed the gate to and fro drearily under his folded arms.
Bébée, not regarding him, cut her flowers, and filled her baskets, and
did her other work, and set a ladder against the hut and climbed on its
low roof to seek for eggs, the hens having green tastes sometimes for the
rushes and lichens of its thatch. She found two eggs, which she promised
herself to take to Annémie, and looking round as she sat on the edge of
the roof, with one foot on the highest rung of the ladder, saw that
Jeannot was still at the gate.
"You will be late in the forest, Jeannot," she cried to him. "It is such
a long, long way in and out. Why do you look so sulky? and you are
kicking the wicket to pieces."
"I do not like you to talk with strangers," said Jeannot, sullenly and
sadly.
Bébée laughed as she sat on the edge of the thatch, and looked at the
shining gray skies of the early day, and the dew-wet garden, and the
green fields beyond, with happy eyes that made the familiar scene
transfigured to her.
"Oh, Jeannot, what nonsense! As if I do not talk to a million strangers
every summer! as if I could ever sell a flower if I did not! You are
cross this morning; that is what it is."
"Do you know the man's name?" said Jeannot, suddenly.
Bébée felt her cheeks grow warm as with some noonday heat of sunshine.
She thought it was with anger against blundering Jeannot's curiosity.
"No! and what would his name be to us, if I did know it? I cannot ask
people's names because they buy my roses."
"As if it were only roses!"
There was the length of the garden between them, and Bébée did not hear
as she sat on the edge of her roof with that light dreamful enjoyment
of air and sky and coolness, and all the beauty of the dawning day, which
the sweet vague sense of a personal happiness will bring with it to the
dullest and the coldest.
"You are cross, Jeannot, that is what it is," she said, after a while.
"You should not be cross; you are too big and strong and good. Go in and
get my bowl of bread and milk for me, and hand it to me up here. It is so
pleasant. It is as nice as being perched on an apple-tree."
Jeannot went in obediently and handed up her breakfast to her, looking at
her with shy, worshipping eyes. But his face was overcast, and he sighed
heavily as he took up his hatchet and turned away; for he was the sole
support of his mother and sisters, and if he did not do his work in
Soignies they would starve at home.
"You will be seeing that stranger again?" he asked her.
"Yes!" she answered with a glad triumph in her eyes; not thinking at all
of him as she spoke. "You ought to go, Jeannot, now; you are so late. I
will come and see your mother to-morrow. And do not be cross, you dear
big Jeannot. Days are too short to snip them up into little bits by bad
temper; it is only a stupid sheep-shearer that spoils the fleece by
snapping at it sharp and hard; that is what Father Francis says."
Bébée, having delivered her little piece of wisdom, broke her bread into
her milk and ate it, lifting her face to the fresh wind and tossing
crumbs to the wheeling swallows, and watching the rose-bushes nod and
toss below in the breeze, and thinking vaguely how happy a thing it was
to live.
Jeannot looked up at her, then went on his slow sad way through the wet
lavender-shrubs and the opening buds of the lilies.
"You will only think of that stranger, Bébée, never of any of us--never
again," he said; and wearily opened the little gate and went through it,
and down the daybreak stillness of the lane. It was a foolish thing to
say; but when were lovers ever wise?
Bébée did not heed; she did not understand herself or him; she only knew
that she was happy; when one knows that, one does not want to seek much
further.
She sat on the thatch and took her bread and milk in the gray clear air,
with the swallows circling above her head, and one or two of them even
resting a second on the edge of the bowl to peck at the food from the big
wooden spoon; they had known her all the sixteen summers of her life, and
were her playfellows, only they would never tell her anything of what
they saw in winter over the seas. That was her only quarrel with them.
Swallows do not tell their secrets They have the weird of Procne on
them all.
The sun came and touched the lichens of the roof into gold.
Bébée smiled at it gayly as it rose above the tops of the trees, and
shone on all the little villages scattered over the plains.
"Ah, dear Sun!" she cried to it. "I am going to be wise. I am going into
great Rubes' country. I am going to hear of the Past and the Future. I am
going to listen to what the Poets say. The swallows never would tell me
anything; but now I shall know as much as they know. Are you not glad for
me, O Sun?"
The Sun came over the trees, and heard and said nothing. If he had
answered at all he must have said,--
"The only time when a human soul is either wise or happy is in that one
single moment when the hour of my own shining or of the moon's beaming
seems to that single soul to be past and present and future, to be at
once the creation and the end of all things. Faust knew that; so will
you."
But the Sun shone on and held his peace. He sees all things ripen and
fall. He can wait. He knows the end. It is always the same.
He brings the fruit out of the peach-flower, and rounds it and touches it
into ruddiest rose and softest gold: but the sun knows well that the
peach must drop--whether into the basket to be eaten by kings, or on to
the turf to be eaten by ants. What matter which very much after all?
The Sun is not a cynic; he is only wise because he is Life and he is
Death, the creator and the corrupter of all things.