Bébée; Or, Two Little Wooden Shoes

The old man made a little comedy at the barrier, and scolded her as though she were his daughter for losing her way as she came to meet him, and then crying like a baby.

The guards looked at her carelessly, joked the hawker on her pretty face, looked the papers over, and let her through, believing her the child of the clock-maker of the Hartz. Some lies are blessed as truth.

"I have done wrong in the law, but not before God, I think, little one," said the pedler. "Nay, do not thank me, or go on like that; we are in sight of the customs men still, and if they suspected, it would be the four walls of a cell only that you and I should see to-night. And now tell me your story, poor maiden: why are you on foot through a strange country?"

But Bébée would not tell him her story: she was confused and dazed still. She did not know rightly what had happened to her; but she could not talk of herself, nor of why she travelled thus to Paris.

The old hawker got cross at her silence, and called her an unthankful jade, and wished that he had left her to her fate, and parted company with her at two cross-roads, saying his path did not lie with hers; and then when he had done that, was sorry, and being a tenderhearted soul, hobbled back, and would fain press a five-franc piece on her; and Bébée, refusing it all the while, kissed his old brown hands and blessed him, and broke away from him, and so went on again solitary towards St. Quentin.

The country was very flat and poor, and yet the plains had a likeness in them to her own wide Brabant downs, where the tall green wheat was blowing and the barges dropping down the sluggish streams.

She was very footsore; very weary; very hungry so often; but she was in France—in his country; and her spirit rose with the sense of that nearness to him.

After all, God was so good to her; there were fine bright days and nights; a few showers had fallen, but merely passing ones; the air was so cool and so balmy that it served her almost as food; and she seldom found people so unkind that they refused for her single little sou to give her a crust of bread and let her lie in an outhouse.

After all, God was very good; and by the sixteenth or seventeenth day she would be in the city of Paris.

She was a little light-headed at times from insufficient nourishment: especially after waking from strange dreams in unfamiliar places; sometimes the soil felt tremulous under her, and the sky spun round; but she struggled against the feeling, and kept a brave heart, and tried to be afraid of nothing.

Sometimes at night she thought she saw old Annémie. "But what if I do?" she said to herself; "Annémie never will hurt me."

And now, as she grew nearer her goal, her natural buoyancy of spirit returned as it had never done to her since the evening that he had kissed and left her. As her body grew lighter and more exhausted, her fancy grew keener and more dominant. All things of the earth and air spoke to her as she went along as they had used to do. All that she had learned from the books in the long cold months came to her clear and wonderful. She was not so very ignorant now—ignorant, indeed, beside him—but still knowing something that would make her able to read to him if he liked it, and to understand if he talked of grave things.

She had no fixed thought of what she would be to him when she reached him.

She fancied she would wait on him, and tend him, and make him well, and be caressed by him, and get all gracious pretty things of leaf and blossom about him, and kneel at his feet, and be quite happy if he only touched her now and then with his lips;—her thoughts went no further than that;—her love for him was of that intensity and absorption in which nothing But itself is remembered.

When a creature loves much, even when it is as little and as simple a soul as Bébée, the world and all its people and all its laws and ways are as naught. They cease to exist; they are as though they had never been.

Whoever recollects an outside world may play with passion, or may idle with sentiment, but does not love.

She did not hear what the villagers said to her. She did not see the streets of the towns as she passed them. She kept herself clean always, and broke fast now and then by sheer instinct of habit, nothing more. She had no perception what she did, except of walking—walking—walking always, and seeing the white road go by like pale ribbons unrolled.

She got a dreamy, intense, sleepless light in her blue eyes that frightened some of those she passed. They thought she had been fever-stricken, and was not in her senses.

So she went across the dreary lowlands, wearing out her little sabots, but not wearing out her patience and her courage.

She was very dusty and jaded. Her woollen skirt was stained with weather and torn with briers. But she had managed always to wash her cap white in brook water, and she had managed always to keep her pretty bright curls soft and silken—for he had liked them so much, and he would soon draw them through his hand again. So she told herself a thousand times to give her strength when the mist would come over her sight, and the earth would seem to tremble as she went. On the fifteenth day from the night when she had left her hut by the swans' water, Bébée saw Paris.

Shining away in the sun; white and gold; among woods and gardens she saw Paris.

She was so tired—oh, so tired—but she could not rest now. There were bells ringing always in her ears, and a heavy pain always in her head. But what of that?—she was so near to him.

"Are you ill, you little thing?" a woman asked her who was gathering early cherries in the outskirts of the great city.

Bébée looked at her and smiled: "I do not know—I am happy."

And she went onward.

It was evening. The sun had set. She had not eaten for twenty-four hours. But she could not pause for anything now. She crossed the gleaming river, and she heard the cathedral chimes. Paris in all its glory was about her, but she took no more note of it than a pigeon that flies through it intent on reaching home.

No one looked at or stopped her; a little dusty peasant with a bundle on a stick over her shoulder.

The click-clack of her wooden shoes on the hot pavements made none look up; little rustics came up every day like this to make their fortunes in Paris. Some grew into golden painted silken flowers, the convolvuli of their brief summer days; and some drifted into the Seine water, rusted, wind-tossed, fallen leaves, that were wanted of no man. Anyhow it was so common to see them, pretty but homely things, with their noisy shoes and their little all in a bundle, that no one even looked once at Bébée.

She was not bewildered. As she had gone through her own city, only thinking of the roses in her basket and of old Annémie in her garret, so she went through Paris, only thinking of him for whose sake she had come thither.

Now that she was really in his home she was happy,—happy though her head ached with that dull odd pain, and all the sunny glare went round and round like a great gilded humming-top, such as the babies clapped their hands at, at the Kermesse.

She was happy: she felt sure now that God would not let him die till she got to him. She was quite glad that he had left her all that long, terrible winter, for she had learned so much and was so much more fitted to be with him.

Weary as she was, and strange as the pain in her head made her feel, she was happy, very happy; a warm flush came on her little pale cheeks as she thought how soon he would kiss them, her whole body thrilled with the old sweet nameless joy that she had sickened for in vain so long.

Though she saw nothing else that was around her, she saw some little knots of moss-roses that a girl was selling on the quay, as she used to sell them in front of the Maison du Roi. She had only two sous left, but she stopped and bought two little rosebuds to take to him. He had used to care for them so much in the summer in Brabant.

The girl who sold them told her the way to the street he lived in; it was not very far of the quay. She seemed to float on air, to have wings like the swallows, to hear beautiful musk all around. She felt for her beads, and said aves of praise. God was so good.

It was quite night when she reached the street, and sought the number of his house. She spoke his name softly, and trembling very much with joy, not with any fear, but it seemed to her too sacred a thing ever to utter aloud.

An old man looked out of a den by the door, and told her to go straight up the stairs to the third floor, and then turn to the right. The old man chuckled as he glanced after her, and listened to the wooden shoes pattering wearily up the broad stone steps.

Bébée climbed them—ten, twenty, thirty, forty. "He must be very poor!" she thought, "to live so high"; and yet the place was wide and handsome, and had a look of riches. Her heart beat so fast, she felt suffocated; her limbs shook, her eyes had a red blood-like mist floating before them; but she thanked God each step she climbed; a moment, and she would look upon the only face she loved.

"He will be glad; oh, I am sure he will be glad!" she said to herself, as a fear that had never before come near her touched her for a moment—if he should not care?

But even then, what did it matter? Since he was ill she should be there to watch him night and day; and when he was well again, if he should wish her to go away—one could always die.

"But he will be glad—oh, I know he will be glad!" she said to the rosebuds that she carried to him. "And if God will only let me save his life, what else do I want more?"

His name was written on a door before her. The handle of a bell hung down; she pulled it timidly. The door unclosed; she saw no one, and went through. There were low lights burning. There were heavy scents that were strange to her. There was a fantastic gloom from old armor, and old weapons, and old pictures in the dull rich chambers. The sound of her wooden shoes was lost in the softness and thickness of the carpets.

It was not the home of a poor man. A great terror froze her heart,—if she were not wanted here?

She went quickly through three rooms, seeing no one and at the end of the third there were folding doors.

"It is I—Bébée." she said softly, as she pushed them gently apart; and she held out the two moss-rosebuds.

Then the words died on her lips, and a great horror froze her, still and silent, there.

She saw the dusky room as in a dream. She saw him stretched on the bed, leaning on his elbow, laughing, and playing cards upon the lace coverlet. She saw women with loose shining hair and bare limbs, and rubies and diamonds glimmering red and white. She saw men lying about upon the couch, throwing dice and drinking and laughing one with another.

Beyond all she saw against the pillows of his bed a beautiful brown wicked looking thing like some velvet snake, who leaned over him as he threw down the painted cards upon the lace, and who had cast about his throat her curved bare arm with the great coils of dead gold all a-glitter on it.

And above it all there were odors of wines and flowers, clouds of smoke, shouts of laughter, music of shrill gay voices.

She stood like a frozen creature and saw—the rosebuds' in her hand. Then with a great piercing cry she let the little roses fall, and turned and fled. At the sound he looked up and saw her, and shook his beautiful brown harlot off him with an oath.

But Bébée flew down through the empty chambers and the long stairway as a hare flies from the hounds; her tired feet never paused, her aching limbs never slackened; she ran on, and on, and on, into the lighted streets, into the fresh night air; on, and on, and on, straight to the river.

From its brink some man's strength caught and held her. She struggled with it.

"Let me die! let me die!" she shrieked to him, and strained from him to get at the cool gray silent water that waited for her there.

Then she lost all consciousness, and saw the stars no more.

When she came back to any sense of life, the stars were shining still, and the face of Jeannot was bending over her, wet with tears.

He had followed her to Paris when they had missed her first, and had come straight by train to the city, making sure it was thither she had come, and there had sought her many days, watching for her by the house of Flamen.

She shuddered away from him as he held her, and looked at him with blank, tearless eyes.

"Do not touch me—take me home."

That was all she ever said to him. She never asked him or told him anything. She never noticed that it was strange that he should have been here upon the river-bank. He let her be, and took her silently in the cool night back by the iron ways to Brabant.