“She was only a little peasant; she must sweep, and spin, and dig, and delve, to get daily her bit of black bread; but that night she was as happy as a little princess in a fairy tale; happy in her playmates, in her flowers. in her sixteen years, in her red shoes, in her silver buckles, happy in the dewy leaves, in the singing birds, in the hush of the night, in the sense of rest, in the fragrance of flowers, in the drifting changes of moon and cloud, happy because she was half a woman, because she was half a poet, because she was wholly a child.” (p.63-4).
A tale, almost fairytale-like, of how naivety and open-heartedness can be swayed and taken advantage of by the world. Bebée, the central character, is a Belgian peasant who lives a very contented life as a flower grower and seller. She is lured away from her happy life by a beguiling young man who promises her things that prove false.
Bebée was named by her guardians, an old couple who found her as a small child, floating among the waterlilies in the stream near their cottage. She is brought up by them in peace and simplicity. When the old man’s dies Bebée inherits the cottage - he instructs her, with his last breath: “Live in it, little one, and take nobody in it to worry you, and be good to the bird and the goat, and be sure to keep the flowers blowing.” Soon after a series of women come to the cottage to make Bebée various deals, but she sticks to her course, determined to make her own way with her cottage and her flower selling. She finds it harder to reject the young man who spies her amidst the streets of Brussels, follows her, and begins to offer her a variety of things, which initially do not appeal; but soon the seeds sown by silk stockings and the promises of finer things take root. His silver-tongued offerings persuade Bebée over time to fall in love with him. When he leaves to return to Paris, she follows him on foot, walking all the wall in her wooden shoes. On arrival she discovers him in bohemian surrounds, in the arms of another. Returned to her cottage by a friend who had followed her to Paris, she sees nothing of the surroundings she used to love. She ends her life in the waters in which she had been found as a child. Her wooden shoes, worn almost through, end up with the man, a sad keepsake of a prematurely lost life.
Some wear to extremities, a bright example of a ‘yellowback’.
