"To be Gretchen, you must count the leaves of your daisies," he said to
her, as he painted,--painted her just as she was, with her two little
white feet in the wooden shoes, and the thick green leaves behind; the
simplest picture possible, the dress of gray--only cool dark gray--with
white linen bodice, and no color anywhere except in the green of the
foliage; but where he meant the wonder and the charm of it to lie was in
the upraised, serious, child-like face, and the gaze of the grave,
smiling eyes.
It was Gretchen, spinning, out in the open air among the flowers.
Gretchen, with the tall dog-daisies growing up about her feet, among
the thyme and the roses, before she had had need to gather, one to ask
her future of its parted leaves.
The Gretchen of Scheffer tells no tale; she is a fair-haired,
hard-working, simple-minded peasant, with whom neither angels nor devils
have anything to do, and whose eyes never can open to either hell or
heaven. But the Gretchen of Flamen said much more than this: looking
at it, men would sigh from shame, and women weep from sorrow.
"Count the daisies?" echoed Bébée. "Oh, I know what you mean. A
little--much--passionately--until death--not at all. What the girls say
when they want to see if any one loves them? Is that it?"
She looked at him without any consciousness, except as she loved the
flowers.
"Do you think the daisies know?" she went on, seriously, parting their
petals with her fingers. "Flowers do know many things--that is certain."
"Ask them for yourself."
"Ask them what?"
"How much--any one--loves you?"
"Oh, but every one loves me; there is no one that is bad. Antoine used to
say to me. 'Never think of yourself, Bébée; always think of other people,
so every one will love you.' And I always try to do that, and every one
does."
"But that is not the love the daisy tells of to your sex."
"No?"
"No; the girls that you see count the flowers--they are thinking, not of
all the village, but of some one unlike all the rest, whose shadow falls
across theirs in the moonlight! You know that?"
"Ah, yes--and they marry afterwards--yes."
She said it softly, musingly, with no embarrassment; it was an unreal,
remote thing to her, and yet it stirred her heart a little with a vague
trouble that was infinitely sweet.
There is little talk of love in the lives of the poor; they have no space
for it; love to them means more mouths to feed, more wooden shoes to buy,
more hands to dive into the meagre bag of coppers. Now and then a girl
of the commune had been married, and had ploughing in the fields or to
her lace-weaving in the city. Bébée had thought little of it.
"They marry or they do not marry. That is as it may be," said Flamen,
with a smile. "Bébée, I must paint you as Gretchen before she made a
love-dial of the daisies. What is the story? Oh, I have told you stories
enough. Gretchen's you would not understand, just yet."
"But what did the daisies say to her?"
"My dear, the daisies always say the same thing, because daisies always
tell the truth and know men. The daisies always say 'a little'; it is the
girl's ear that tricks her, and makes her hear 'till death,'--a folly and
falsehood of which the daisy is not guilty."
"But who says it if the daisy does not?"
"Ah, the devil perhaps--who knows? He has so much to do in these things."
But Bébée did not smile; she had a look of horror in her blue eyes; she
belonged to a peasantry who believed in exorcising the fiend by the aid
of the cross, and who not so very many generations before had driven him
out of human bodies by rack and flame.
She looked with a little wistful fear on the white, golden-eyed
marguerites that lay on her lap.
"Do you think the fiend is in these?" she whispered, with awe in her
voice.
Flamen smiled. "When you count them he will be there, no doubt."
Bébée threw them with a shudder on the grass.
"Have I spoilt your holiday, dear?" he said, with a certain
self-reproach.
She was silent a minute, then she gathered up the daisies again, and
stroked them and put them to her lips.
"It is not they that do wrong. You say the girls' ears deceive them. It
is the girls who want a lie and will not believe a truth because it
humbles them; it is the girls that are to blame, not the daisies. As for
me, I will not ask the daisies anything ever, so the fiend will not enter
into them."
"Nor into you. Poor little Bébée!"
"Why, you pity me for that?"
"Yes. Because, if women never see the serpent's face, neither do they
ever scent the smell of the paradise roses; and it will be hard for you
to die without a single rose d'amour in your pretty breast, poor little
Bébée?"
"I do not understand. But you frighten me a little."
He rose and left his easel and threw himself at her feet on the grass; he
took the little wooden shoes in his hands as reverently as he would have
taken the broidered shoes of a duchess; he looked up at her with tender,
smiling eyes.
"Poor little Bébée!" he said again. "Did I frighten you indeed? Nay, that
was very base of me. We will not spoil our summer holiday. There is no
such thing as a fiend, my dear. There are only men--such as I am. Say the
daisy spell over for me, Bébée. See if I do not love you a little, just
as you love your flowers."
She smiled, and the happy laughter came again over her face.
"Oh, I am sure you care for me a little," she said, softly, "or you would
not be so good and get me books and give me pleasure; and I do not want
the daisies to tell me that, because you say it yourself, which is
better."
"Much better." he answered her dreamily, and lay there in the grass,
holding the little wooden shoes in his hands.
He was not in love with her. He was in no haste. He preferred to play
with her softly, slowly, as one separates the leaves of a rose, to see
the deep rose of its heart.
Her own ignorance of what she felt had a charm for him. He liked to lift
the veil from her eyes by gentle degrees, watching each new pulse-beat,
each fresh instinct tremble into life.
It was an old, old story to him; he knew each chapter and verse to
weariness, though there still was no other story that he still read as
often. But to her it was so new.
To him it was a long beaten track; he knew every turn of it; he
recognized every wayside blossom; he had passed over a thousand times
each tremulous bridge; he knew so well beforehand where each shadow would
fall, and where each fresh bud would blossom, and where each harvest
would be reaped.
But to her it was so new.
She followed him as a blind child a man that guides her through a garden
and reads her a wonder tale.
He was good to her, that was all she knew. When he touched her ever so
lightly she felt a happiness so perfect, and yet so unintelligible, that
she could have wished to die in it.
And in her humility and her ignorance she wondered always how he--so
great, so wise, so beautiful--could have thought it ever worth his while
to leave the paradise of Rubes' land to wait with her under her little
rush-thatched roof, and bring her here to see the green leaves and the
living things of the forest.
As they went, a man was going under the trees with a load of wood upon
his back. Bébée gave a little cry of recognition.
"Oh, look, that is Jeannot! How he will wonder to see me here!"
Flamen drew her a little downward, so that the forester passed onward
without perceiving them.
"Why do you do that?" said Bébée. "Shall I not speak to him?"
"Why? To have all your neighbors chatter of your feast in the forest? It
is not worth while."
"Ah, but I always tell them everything," said Bébée. whose imagination
had been already busy with the wonders that she would unfold to Mère
Krebs and the Varnhart children.
"Then you will see but little of me, my dear. Learn to be silent, Bébée.
It is a woman's first duty, though her hardest."
"Is it?"
She did not speak for some time. She could not imagine a state of
things in which she would not narrate the little daily miracles of her
life to the good old garrulous women and the little open-mouthed romps.
And yet--she lifted her eyes to his.
"I am glad you have told me that," she said. "Though indeed. I do not see
why one should not say what one does, yet--somehow--I do not like to talk
about you. It is like the pictures in the galleries, and the music in
the cathedral, and the great still evenings, when the fields are all
silent, and it is as if Christ walked abroad in them; I do not know how
to talk of those things to the others--only to you--and I do not like to
talk _about_ you to them--do you not know?"
"Yes, I know. But what affinity have I. Bébée, to your thoughts of your
God walking in His cornfields?"
Bébée's eyes glanced down through the green aisle of the forests, with
the musing seriousness in them that was like the child-angels of
Botticelli's dreams.
"I cannot tell you very well. But when I am in the fields at evening and
think of Christ. I feel so happy, and of such good will to all the rest,
and I seem to see heaven quite plain through the beautiful gray air where
the stars are--and so I feel when I am with you--that is all. Only--"
"Only what?"
"Only in those evenings, when I was all alone, heaven seemed up there,
where the stars are, and I longed for wings; but now, it is _here_, and I
would only shut my wings if I had them, and not stir."
He looked at her, and took, her hands and kissed them--but reverently--as
a believer may kiss a shrine. In that moment to Flamen she was sacred; in
that moment he could no more have hurt her with passion than he could
have hurt her with a blow.
It was an emotion with him, and did not endure. But whilst it lasted, it
was true.