CHAPTER XV.
In the deserted lane by the swans' water, under the willows, thehorses waited to take him to Mechlin; little, quick, rough horses, withround brass bells, in the Flemish fashion, and gay harness, and a lowchar-a-banc, in which a wolf-skin and red rugs, and all a painter's manynecessities, were tossed together.
He lifted her in, and the little horses flew fast through the greencountry, ringing chimes at each step, till they plunged into the deepglades of the woods of Cambre and Soignies.
Bebee sat breathless with delight.
She had never gone behind horses in all her life, except once or twicein a wagon when the tired teamsters had dragged a load of corn acrossthe plains, or when the miller's old gray mare had hobbled wearily beforea cart-load of noisy, happy, mischievous children going home from themasses and fairs, and flags, and flowers, and church banners, andpuppet-shows, and lighted altars, and whirling merry-go-rounds of theFete Dieu.
She had never known what it was to sail as on the wings of the wind alongbroad roads, with yellow wheat-lands, and green hedges, and waysidetrees, and little villages, and reedy canal water, all flying by her tothe sing-song of the joyous bells.
"Oh, how good it is to live!" she cried, clapping her hands in a veryecstasy, as the clear morning broadened into gold and the west wind roseand blew from the sands by the sea.
"Yes--it is good--if one did not tire so soon," said he, watching herwith a listless pleasure.
But she did not hear; she was beyond the reach of any power to saddenher; she was watching the white oxen that stood on the purple brow ofthe just reapen lands, and the rosy clouds that blew like a shower ofapple-blossoms across the sky to the south.
There was a sad darkling Calvary on the edge of the harvest-field thatlooked black against the blue sky; its shadow fell across the road, butshe did not see it: she was looking at the sun.
There is not much change in the great Soignies woods. They are aisles onaisles of beautiful green trees, crossing and recrossing; tunnels of darkfoliage that look endless; long avenues of beech, of oak, of elm, or offir, with the bracken and the brushwood growing dense between; adelicious forest growth everywhere, shady even at noon, and by a littlepast midday dusky as evening; with the forest fragrance, sweet and dewy,all about, and under the fern the stirring of wild game, and the whitegleam of little rabbits, and the sound of the wings of birds.
Soignies is not legend-haunted like the Black Forest, nor king-hauntedlike Fontainebleau, nor sovereign of two historic streams like the bravewoods of Heidelberg; nor wild and romantic, arid broken with black rocks,and poetized by the shade of Jaques, and swept through by a perfectriver, like its neighbors of Ardennes; nor throned aloft on mightymountains like the majestic oak glades of the Swabian hills of the ivorycarvers.
Soignies is only a Flemish forest in a plain, throwing its shadows overcorn-fields and cattle pastures, with no panorama beyond it and nowonders in its depth. But it is a fresh, bold, beautiful forest for allthat.
It has only green leaves to give,--green leaves always, league afterleague; but there is about it that vague mystery which all forests have,and this universe of leaves seems boundless, and Pan might dwell in it,and St. Hubert, and John Keats.
Bebee, in her rare holidays with the Bac children or with Jeannot'ssisters, had never penetrated farther than the glades of the Cambre,and had never entered the heart of the true forest, which is much stillwhat it must have been in the old days when the burghers of Brabant cuttheir yew bows and their pike staves from it to use against the hosts ofSpain.
To Bebee it was as an enchanted land, and every play of light and shade,every hare speeding across the paths, every thrush singing in the leaves,every little dog-rose or harebell that blossomed in the thickets, was toher a treasure, a picture, a poem, a delight.
He had seen girls thus in the woods of Vincennes and of Versailles in thestudent days of his youth: little work-girls fresh from chalets of theJura or from vine-hung huts of the Loire, who had brought their poorlittle charms to perish in Paris; and who dwelt under the hot tiles andamidst the gilded shop signs till they were as pale and thin as their ownstarved balsams; and who, when they saw the green woods, laughed andcried a little, and thought of the broad sun-swept fields, and wishedthat they were back again behind their drove of cows, or weeding amongthe green grapes.
But those little work-girls had been mere homely daisies, and daisiesalready with the dust of the pavement and of the dancing-gardens uponthem.
Bebee was as pure and fresh as these dew-wet dog-roses that she found inthe thickets of thorn.
He had meant to treat her as he had used to do those work-girls--a littlewine, a little wooing, a little folly and passion, idle as a butterflyand brief as a rainbow--one midsummer day and night--then a handful ofgold, a caress, a good-morrow, and forgetfulness ever afterwards--thatwas what he had meant when he had brought her out to the forest ofSoignies.
But--she was different, this child.
He made the great sketch of her for his Gretchen, sitting on a moss-growntrunk, with marguerites in her hand; he sent for their breakfast far intothe woods, and saw her set her pearly teeth into early peaches and costlysweetmeats; he wandered with her hither and thither, and told her talesout of the poets and talked to her in the dreamy, cynical, poeticalmanner that was characteristic of him, being half artificial and halfsorrowful, as his temper was.
But Bebee, all unconscious, intoxicated with happiness, and yet touchedby it into that vague sadness which the summer sun brings with it even toyoung things, if they have soul in them,--Bebee said to him what thework-girls of Paris never had done.
Beautiful things: things fantastic, ignorant, absurd, very simple, veryunreasonable oftentimes, but things beautiful always, and sometimes evenvery wise by a wisdom not of the world; by a certain light divine thatdoes shine now and then as through an alabaster lamp, through minds thathave no grossness to obscure them.
Her words were not equal to the burden of her thoughts at times, but heknew how to take the pearl of the thought from the broken shell andtangled sea-weed of her simple, untutored speech.
"If there be a God anywhere," he thought to himself, "this little Flemingis very near him."
She was so near that, although he had no belief in any God, he could notdeal with her as he had used to do with the work-girls in the primrosepaths of old Vincennes.