So it came to pass that Bébée's day in the big forest came and went as
simply almost as any day that she had played away with the Varnhart
children under the beech shadows of Cambre woods.
And when he took her to her hut at sunset before the pilgrims had
returned there was a great bewildered tumult of happiness in her heart,
but there was no memory with her that prevented her from looking at the
shrine in the wall as she passed it, and saying with a quick gesture of
the cross on brow and bosom,--
"Ah, dear Holy Mother, how good you have been! and I am back again, you
see, and I will work harder than ever because of all this joy that you
have given me."
And she took another moss-rose and changed it for that of the morning,
which was faded, and said to Flamen.--
"Look--she sends you this. Now do you know what I mean? One is more
content when She is content."
He did not answer, but he held her hands against him a moment as they
fastened in the rose bud.
"Not a word to the pilgrims, Bébée--you remember?"
"Yes, I will remember. I do not tell them every time I pray--it will be
like being silent about that--it will be no more wrong than that."
But there was a touch of anxiety in the words; she was not quite certain;
she wanted to be reassured. Instinct moved her not to speak of him; but
habit made it seem wrong to her to have any secret from the people who
had been about her from her birth.
He did not reassure her; her anxiety was pretty to watch, and he left the
trouble in her heart like a bee in the chalice of a lily. Besides, the
little wicket gate was between them; he was musing whether he would push
it open once more.
Her fate was in the balance, though she did not dream it: he had dealt
with her tenderly, honestly, sacredly all that day--almost as much so as
stupid Jeannot could have done. He had been touched by her trust in him,
and by the unconscious beauty of her fancies, into a mood that was unlike
all his life and habits. But after all, he said to himself--
After all!--
Where he stood in the golden evening he saw the rosy curled mouth, the
soft troubled eves, the little brown hands that still tried to fasten
the rosebud, the young peach-like skin where the wind stirred the
bodice;--she was only a little Flemish peasant, this poor little Bébée, a
little thing of the fields and the streets, for all the dreams of God
that abode with her. After all--soon or late--the end would be always the
same. What matter!
She would weep a little to-morrow, and she would not kneel any more at
the shrine in the garden wall; and then--and then--she would stay here
and marry the good boor Jeannot, just the same after a while; or drift
away after him to Paris, and leave her two little wooden shoes, and her
visions of Christ in the fields at evening, behind her forevermore, and
do as all the others did, and take not only silken stockings but the
Cinderella slipper that is called Gold, which brings all other good
things in its train;--what matter!
He had meant this from the first, because she was so pretty, and those
little wooden sabots ran so lithely over the stones; though he was not in
love with her, but only idly stretched his hand for her as a child by
instinct stretches to a fruit that hangs in the sun a little rosier and a
little nearer than the rest.
What matter--he said to himself--she loved him, poor little soul, though
she did not know it; and there would always be Jeannot glad enough of a
handful of bright French gold.
He pushed the gate gently against her; her hands fastened the rosebud and
drew open the latch themselves.
"Will you come in a little?" she said, with the happy light in her face.
"You must not stay long, because the flowers must be watered, and then
there are Annémie's patterns--they must be done or she will have no money
and so no food--but if you would come in for a little? And see, if you
wait a minute I will show you the roses that I shall cut to-morrow the
first thing, and take down to St. Guido to Our Lady's altar in
thank-offering for to-day. I should like you to choose them--you
yourself--and if you would just touch them I should feel as if you gave
them to her too. Will you?"
She spoke with the pretty outspoken frankness of her habitual speech,
just tempered and broken with the happy, timid hesitation, the curious
sense at once of closer nearness and of greater distance, that had come
on her since he had kissed her among the bright beanflowers.
He turned from her quickly.
"No, dear, no. Gather your roses alone, Bébée; if I touch them their
leaves will fall."
Then, with a hurriedly backward glance down the dusky lane to see that
none were looking, he bent his head and kissed her again quickly and with
a sort of shame, and swung the gate behind him and went away through
the boughs and the shadows.