Bébée | Page 4

Easter
psalm.
Bébée listened to them all, and the tears dried on her cheeks, and her
pretty rosebud lips curled close in one another.
"You are very good, no doubt, all of you," she said at last. "But I
cannot tell you that I am thankful, for my heart is like a stone, and I
think it is not so very much for me as it is for the hut that you are
speaking. Perhaps it is wrong in me to say so; yes, I am wrong, I am
sure,--you are all kind, and I am only Bébée. But you see he told me to
live here and take care of the flowers, and I must do it, that is certain. I
will ask Father Francis, if you wish: but if he tells me I am wrong, as
you do. I shall stay here all the same."
And in answer to their expostulations and condemnation, she only said
the same thing over again always, in different words, but to the same
steadfast purpose. The women clamored about her for an hour in
reproach and rebuke; she was a baby indeed, she was a little fool, she
was a naughty, obstinate child, she was an ungrateful, wilful little
creature, who ought to be beaten till she was blue, if only there was
anybody that had the right to do it!
"But there is nobody that has the right," said Bébée, getting angry and
standing upright on the floor, with Antoine's old gray cat in her round
arms. "He told me to stay here, and he would not have said so if it had
been wrong; and I am old enough to do for myself, and I am not afraid,
and who is there that would hurt me? Oh, yes; go and tell Father

Francis, if you like! I do not believe he will blame me, but if he do, I
must bear it. Even if he shut the church door on me, I will obey
Antoine, and the flowers will know I am right, and they will let no evil
spirits touch me, for the flowers are strong for that; they talk to the
angels in the night."
What use was it to argue with a little idiot like this? Indeed, peasants
never do argue; they use abuse.
It is their only form of logic.
They used it to Bébée, rating her soundly, as became people who were
old enough to be her grandmothers, and who knew that she had been
raked out of their own pond, and had no more real place in creation
than a water rat, as one might say.
The women were kindly, and had never thrown this truth against her
before, and in fact, to be a foundling was no sort of disgrace to their
sight; but anger is like wine, and makes the depths of the mind shine
clear, and all the mud that is in the depths stink in the light; and in their
wrath at not sharing Antoine's legacy, the good souls said bitter things
that in calm moments they would no more have uttered than they would
have taken up a knife to slit her throat.
They talked themselves hoarse with impatience and chagrin, and went
backwards over the threshold, their wooden shoes and their shrill
voices keeping a clattering chorus. By this time it was evening; the sun
had gone off the floor, and the bird had done singing.
Bébée stood in the same place, hardening her little heart, whilst big and
bitter tears swelled into her eyes, and fell on the soft fur of the sleeping
cat.
She only very vaguely understood why it was in any sense shameful to
have been raked out of the water-lilies like a drowning field mouse, as
they had said it was.
She and Antoine had often talked of that summer morning when he had

found her there among the leaves, and Bébée and he had laughed over
it gayly, and she had been quite proud in her innocent fashion that she
had had a fairy and the flowers for her mother and godmothers, which
Antoine always told her was the case beyond any manner of doubt.
Even Father Francis, hearing the pretty harmless fiction, had never
deemed it his duty to disturb her pleasure in it, being a good, cheerful
old man, who thought that woe and wisdom both come soon enough to
bow young shoulders and to silver young curls without his interference.
Bébée had always thought it quite a fine thing to have been born of
water-lilies, with the sun for her father, and when people in Brussels
had asked her of her parentage, seeing her stand in the market with a
certain look on her that was not like other children, had