CHAPTER XXVI.
One day in the May weather she sat within doors with a great book uponher table, but no sight for it in her aching eyes. The starling hopped toand fro on the sunny floor; the bees boomed in the porch; the tinkle ofsheep's bells came in on the stillness. All was peaceful and happy exceptthe little weary, breaking, desolate heart that beat in her like a cagedbird's.
"He will come; I am sure he will come," she said to herself; but she wasso tired, and it was so long--oh, dear God!--so very long.
A hand tapped at the lattice. The shrill voice of Reine, thesabot-maker's wife, broken with anguish, called through the hangingivy,--
"Bebee, you are a wicked one, they say, but the only one there is at homein the village this day. Get you to town for the love of Heaven, and sendDoctor Max hither, for my pet, my flower, my child lies dying, and not asoul near, and she black as a coal with choking--go, go, go!--and Marywill forgive you your sins. Save the little one, dear Bebee, do you hear?and I will pray God and speak fair the neighbors for you. Go!"
Bebee rose up, startled by the now unfamiliar sound of a human voice, andlooked at the breathless mother with eyes of pitying wonder.
"Surely I will go," she said, gently; "but there is no need to bribe me.I have not sinned greatly--that I know."
Then she went out quickly and ran through the lanes and into the city forthe sick child, and found the wise man, and sent him, and did the errandrather in a sort of sorrowful sympathetic instinct than in any reasoningconsciousness of doing good.
When she was moving through the once familiar and happy ways as the sunwas setting on the golden fronts of the old houses, and the chimes wereringing from the many towers, a strange sense of unreality, ofnon-existence, fell upon her.
Could it be she?--she indeed--who had gone there the year before thegladdest thing that the earth bore, with no care except to shelter herflowers from the wind, and keep the freshest blossoms for theburgomaster's housewife?
She did not think thus to herself; but a vague doubt that she could everhave been the little gay, laborious, happy Bebee, with troops of friendsand endless joys for every day that dawned, came over her as she went bythe black front of the Broodhuis.
The strong voice of Lisa, the fruit girl, jarred on her as she passed thestall under its yellow awning that was flapping sullenly in the eveningwind.
"Oh he, little fool," the mocking voice cried, "the rind of the fine pineis full of prickles, and stings the lips when the taste is gone?--to besure--crack common nuts like me and you are never wanting--hazels growfree in every copse. Prut, tut! your grand lover lies a-dying; so thestudents read out of this just now; and you such a simpleton as not toget a roll of napoleons out of him before he went to rot in Paris. I daresay he was poor as sparrows, if one knew the truth. He was only apainter after all."
Lisa tossed her as she spoke a torn sheet, in which she was wrappinggentians: it was a piece of newspaper some three weeks old, and in itthere was a single line or so which said that the artist Flamen, whoseGretchen was the wonder of the Salon of the year, lay sick unto death inhis rooms in Paris.
Bebee stood and read; the strong ruddy western light upon the type, thetaunting laughter of the fruit girl on her ear.
A bitter shriek rang from her that made even the cruelty of Lisa's mirthstop in a sudden terror.
She stood staring like a thing changed to stone down on the one name thatto her rilled all the universe.
"Ill--he is ill--do you hear?" she echoed piteously, looking at Lisa;"and you say he is poor?"
"Poor? for sure! is he not a painter?" said the fruit girl, roughly. Shejudged by her own penniless student lads; and she was angered withherself for feeling sorrow for this little silly thing that she had lovedto torture.
"You have been bad and base to me; but now--I bless you, I love you, Iwill pray for you," said Bebee, in a swift broken breath, and with a lookupon her face that startled into pain her callous enemy.
Then without another word, she thrust the paper in her bosom, and ran outof the square breathless with haste and with a great resolve.
He was ill--and he was poor! The brave little soul of her leaped at onceto action. He was sick, and far away; and poor they said. All danger andall difficulty faded to nothing before the vision of his need.
Bebee was only a little foundling who ran about in wooden shoes; but shehad the "dog's soul" in her--the soul that will follow faithfully thoughto receive a curse, that will defend loyally though to meet a blow, andthat will die mutely loving to the last.
She went home, how she never knew; and without the delay of a momentpacked up a change of linen, and fed the fowls and took the key of thehut down to old Jehan's cabin. The old man was only half-witted by reasonof his affliction for his dead daughter, but he was shrewd enough tounderstand what she wanted of him, and honest enough to do it.
"I am going into the city," she said to him: "and if I am not backto-night, will you feed the starling and the hens, and water the flowersfor me?"
Old Jehan put his head out of his lattice: it was seven in the evening,and he was going to bed.
"What are you after, little one?" he asked: going to show the finebuckles at a students' ball? Nay, fie; that is not like you."
"I am going to--pray--dear Jehan," she answered, with a sob in her throatand the first falsehood she ever had told. "Do what I ask you--do foryour dead daughter's sake--or the birds and the flowers will die ofhunger and thirst. Take the key and promise me."
He took the key, and promised.
"Do not let them see those buckles shine; they will rob you," he added.
Bebee ran from him fast; every moment that was lost was so precious andso terrible. To pause a second for fear's sake never occurred to her. Shewent forth as fearlessly as a young swallow, born in northern April days,flies forth on instinct to new lands and over unknown seas when autumnfalls.
Necessity and action breathed new life into her. The hardy and bravepeasant ways of her were awoke once more. She had been strong to waitsilently with the young life in her dying out drop by drop in theheart-sickness of long delay. She was strong now to throw herself intostrange countries and dim perils and immeasurable miseries, on the solechance that she might be of service to him.
A few human souls here and there can love like dogs. Bebee's was one.