Full winter came.
The snow was deep, and the winds drove the people with whips of ice along
the dreary country roads and the steep streets of the city. The bells of
the dogs and the mules sounded sadly through the white misty silence of
the Flemish plains, and the weary horses slipped and fell on the frozen
ruts and on the jagged stones in the little frost-shut Flemish towns.
Still the Flemish folk were gay enough in many places.
There were fairs and kermesses; there were puppet plays and church
feasts; there were sledges on the plains and skates on the canals; there
were warm woollen hoods and ruddy wood fires; there were tales of demons
and saints, and bowls of hot onion soup; sugar images for the little
children, and blessed beads for the maidens clasped on rosy throats with
lovers' kisses; and in the city itself there was the high tide of the
winter pomp and mirth, with festal scenes in the churches, and balls at
the palaces, and all manner of gay things in toys and jewels, and music
playing cheerily under the leafless trees, and flashes of scarlet cloth,
and shining furs, and happy faces, and golden curls, in the carriages
that climbed the Montagne de la Cour, and filled the big place around the
statue of stout Godfrey.
In the little village above St. Guido, Bébée's neighbors were merry too,
in their simple way.
The women worked away wearily at their lace in the dim winter light, and
made a wretched living by it, but all the same they got penny playthings
for their babies, and a bit of cake for their Sunday-hearth. They drew
together in homely and cordial friendship, and of an afternoon when dusk
fell wove their lace in company in Mère Krebs's mill-house kitchen with
the children and the dogs at their feet on the bricks, so that one big
fire might serve for all, and all be lighted with one big rush candle,
and all be beguiled by chit-chat and songs, stories of spirits, and
whispers of ghosts, and now and then when the wind howled at its worst, a
paternoster or two said in common for the men toiling in the barges or
drifting up the Scheldt.
In these gatherings Bébée's face was missed, and the blithe soft sound of
her voice, like a young thrush singing, was never heard.
The people looked in, and saw her sitting over a great open book; often
her hearth had no fire.
Then the children grew tired of asking her to play; and their elders
began to shake their heads; she was so pale and so quiet, there must be
some evil in it--so they began to think.
Little by little people dropped away from her. Who knew, the gossips
said, what shame or sin the child might not have on her sick little soul?
True, Bébée worked hard just the same, and just the same was seen
trudging to and fro in the dusk of dawns and afternoons in her two little
wooden shoes. She was gentle and laborious, and gave the children her
goat's milk, and the old women the brambles of her garden.
But they grew afraid of her--afraid of that sad, changeless, far-away
look in her eves, and of the mute weariness that was on her--and, being
perplexed, were sure, like all ignorant creatures, that what was secret
must be also vile.
So they hung aloof, and let her alone, and by and by scarcely nodded as
they passed her but said to Jeannot,--
"You were spared a bad thing, lad: the child was that grand painter's
light-o'-love, that is plain to see. The mischief all comes of the stuff
old Antoine filled her head with--a stray little by-blow of chickweed
that he cockered up like a rare carnation. Oh! do not fly in a rage,
Jeannot; the child is no good, and would have made an honest man rue.
Take heart of grace, and praise the saints, and marry Katto's Lisa."
But Jeannot would never listen to the slanderers, and would never look at
Lisa, even though the door of the little hut was always closed against
him; and whenever he met Bébée on the highway she never seemed to see
him more than she saw the snow that her sabots were treading.
One night in the midwinter-time old Annémie died.
Bébée found her in the twilight with her head against the garret window,
and her left side all shrivelled and useless. She had a little sense
left, and a few fleeting breaths to draw.
"Look for the brig," she muttered. "You will not see the flag at the
masthead for the fog to-night; but his socks are dry and his pipe is
ready. Keep looking--keep looking--she will be in port to-night."
But her dead sailor never came into port; she went to him. The poor,
weakened, faithful old body of her was laid in the graveyard of the poor,
and the ships came and went under the empty garret window, and Bébée was
all alone.
She had no more anything to work for, or any bond with the lives of
others. She could live on the roots of her garden and the sale of her
hens' eggs, and she could change the turnips and carrots that grew in a
little strip of her ground for the quantity of bread that she needed.
So she gave herself up to the books, and drew herself more and more
within from the outer world. She did not know that the neighbors thought
very evil of her; she had only one idea in her mind--to be more worthy of
him against he should return.
The winter passed away somehow, she did not know how.
It was a long, cold, white blank of frozen silence: that was all. She
studied hard, and had got a quaint, strange, deep, scattered knowledge
out of her old books; her face had lost all its roundness and color, but,
instead, the forehead had gained breadth and the eyes had the dim fire of
a student's.
Every night when she shut her volumes she thought,--
"I am a little nearer him. I know a little more."
Just so every morning, when she bathed her hands in the chilly water, she
thought to herself, "I will make my skin as soft as I can for him, that
it may be like the ladies' he has loved."
Love to be perfect must be a religion, as well as a passion. Bébée's was
so. Like George Herbert's serving-maiden, she swept no specks of dirt
away from a floor without doing it to the service of her lord.
Only Bébée's lord was a king of earth, made of earth's dust and vanities.
But what did she know of that?