The white and purple chrysanthemums bloomed against the flowerless rose-bushes, and the little gray Michaelmas daisy flourished where the dead carnations had spread their glories. Leaves began to fall and chilly winds to sigh among the willows; the squirrels began to store away their nuts, and the poor to pick up the broken bare boughs.

"He said he would come before winter," thought Bebee, every day when she rose and felt each morning cooler and grayer than the one before it; winter was near.

Her little feet already were cold in their wooden shoes; and the robin already sang in the twigs of the sear sweetbrier; but she had the brave sweet faith which nothing kills, and she did not doubt--oh! no, she did not doubt, she was only tired.

Tired of the strange, sleepless, feverish nights; tired of the long, dull, empty days: tired of watching down the barren, leafless lane: tired of hearkening breathless to each step on the rustling dead leaves; tired of looking always, always, always, into the ruddy autumn evenings and the cold autumn starlight, and never hearing what she listened for, never seeing what she sought; tired as a child may be lost in a wood, and wearily wearing its small strength and breaking its young heart in search of the track forever missed, of the home forever beyond the horizon.

Still she did her work and kept her courage.

She took her way into the town with her basket full of the ruby and amber of the dusky autumn blossoms, and when those failed, and the garden was quite desolate, except for a promise of haws and of holly, she went, as she had always done, to the lace-room, and gained her bread and the chickens' corn each day by winding the thread round the bobbins; and at nightfall when she had plodded home through the darksome roads and over the sodden turf, and had lit her rushlight and sat down to her books, with her hand buried in her hair, and her eyes smarting from the strain of the lace-work and her heart aching with that new and deadly pain which never left her now, she would read--read--read--read, and try and store her brain with knowledge, and try and grasp these vast new meanings of life that the books opened to her, and try and grow less ignorant against he should return.

There was much she could not understand, bait there was also much she could.

Her mind was delicate and quick, her intelligence swift and strong; she bought old books at bookstalls with pence that she saved by going without her dinner. The keeper of the stall, a shrewd old soul, explained some hard points to her, and chose good volumes for her, and lent others to this solitary little student in her wooden shoes and with her pale child's face.

So she toiled hard and learned much, and grew taller and very thin, and got a look in her eyes like a lost dog's, and yet never lost heart or wandered in the task that he had set her, or in her faith in his return.

"Burn the books, Bebee," whispered the children again and again, clinging to her skirts. "Burn the wicked, silent things. Since you have had them you never sing, or romp, or laugh, and you look so white--so white."

Bebee kissed them, but kept to her books.

Jeannot going by from the forest night after night saw the light twinkling in the hut window, and sometimes crept softly up and looked through the c.h.i.n.ks of the wooden shutter, and saw her leaning over some big old volume with her pretty brows drawn together, and her mouth shut close in earnest effort, and he would curse the man who had changed her so and go away with rage in his breast and tears in his eyes, not daring to say anything, but knowing that never would Bebee's little brown hand lie in love within his own.

Nor even in friendship, for he had rashly spoken rough words against the stranger from Rubes' land, and Bebee ever since then had pa.s.sed him by with a grave, simple greeting, and when he had brought her in timid gifts a barrow-load of f.a.gots, had thanked him, but had bidden him take the wood home to his mother.

"You think evil things of me, Bebee?" good Jeannot had pleaded, with a sob in his voice; and she had answered gently,--

"No; but do not speak to me, that is all."

Then he had cursed her absent lover, and Bebee gone within and closed her door.

She had no idea that the people thought ill of her. They were cold to her, and such coldness made her heart ache a little more. But the one great love in her possessed her so strongly that all other things were half unreal.

She did her daily housework from sheer habit, and she studied because he had told her to do it, and because with the sweet, stubborn, credulous faith of her youth, she never doubted that he would return.

Otherwise there was no perception of real life in her; she dreamed and prayed, and prayed and dreamed, and never ceased to do either one or the other, even when she was scattering potato-peels to the fowls, or shaking carrots loose of the soil, or sweeping the snow from her hut door, or going out in the raw dark dawn as the single little sad bell of St. Guido tolled through the stillness for the first ma.s.s.

For though even Father Francis looked angered at her because he thought she was stubborn, and hid some truth and some shame from him at confession, yet she went resolutely and oftener than ever to kneel in the dusty, dusky, crumbling old church, for it was all she could do for him who was absent--so she thought--and she did not feel quite so far away from him when she was beseeching Christ to have care of his soul and of his body.

All her pretty dreams were dead.

She never heard any story in the robin's song, or saw any promise in the sunset clouds, or fancied that angels came about her in the night--never now.

The fields were gray and sad; the birds were little brown things; the stars were cold and far off; the people she had used to care for were like mere shadows that went by her meaningless and without interest, and all she thought of was the one step that never came: all she wanted was the one touch she never felt.

"You have done wrong, Bebee, and you will not own it," said the few neighbors who ever spoke to her.

Bebee looked at them with wistful, uncomprehending eyes.

"I have done no wrong," she said gently, but no one believed her.

A girl did not shut herself up and wane pale and thin for nothing, so they reasoned. She might have sinned as she had liked if she had been sensible after it, and married Jeannot.

But to fret mutely, and shut her lips, and seem as though she had done nothing,--that was guilt indeed.

For her village, in its small way, thought as the big world thinks.

CHAPTER XXIV.

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 ca.n.a.ls; 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 b.a.l.l.s 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 G.o.dfrey.

In the little village above St. Guido, Bebee'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 Mere 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 Bebee'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, Bebee 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 pa.s.sed 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 c.o.c.kered 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 Bebee 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 Annemie died.

Bebee 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."