A Dog of Flanders
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Louisa de la Rame) >> A Dog of Flanders
It was quite night when he passed the mill-house: he knew the little
window of her room. It could be no harm, he thought, if he gave her his
little piece of treasure-trove, they had been playfellows so long. There
was a shed with a sloping roof beneath her casement: he climbed it and
tapped softly at the lattice: there was a little light within. The child
opened it and looked out half frightened. Nello put the tambourine-player
into her hands. "Here is a doll I found in the snow, Alois. Take it," he
whispered--"take it, and God bless thee, dear!"
He slid down from the shed-roof before she had time to thank him, and ran
off through the darkness.
That night there was a fire at the mill. Outbuildings and much corn were
destroyed, although the mill itself and the dwelling-house were unharmed.
All the village was out in terror, and engines came tearing through the
snow from Antwerp. The miller was insured, and would lose nothing:
nevertheless, he was in furious wrath, and declared aloud that the fire
was due to no accident, but to some foul intent.
Nello, awakened from his sleep, ran to help with the rest: Baas Cogez
thrust him angrily aside. "Thou wert loitering here after dark," he said
roughly. "I believe, on my soul, that thou dost know more of the fire than
any one."
Nello heard him in silence, stupefied, not supposing that any one could
say such things except in jest, and not comprehending how any one could
pass a jest at such a time.
Nevertheless, the miller said the brutal thing openly to many of his
neighbors in the day that followed; and though no serious charge was ever
preferred against the lad, it got bruited about that Nello had been seen
in the mill-yard after dark on some unspoken errand, and that he bore Baas
Cogez a grudge for forbidding his intercourse with little Alois; and so
the hamlet, which followed the sayings of its richest landowner servilely,
and whose families all hoped to secure the riches of Alois in some future
time for their sons, took the hint to give grave looks and cold words to
old Jehan Daas's grandson. No one said anything to him openly, but all the
village agreed together to humor the miller's prejudice, and at the
cottages and farms where Nello and Patrasche called every morning for the
milk for Antwerp, downcast glances and brief phrases replaced to them the
broad smiles and cheerful greetings to which they had been always used. No
one really credited the miller's absurd suspicion, nor the outrageous
accusations born of them, but the people were all very poor and very
ignorant, and the one rich man of the place had pronounced against him.
Nello, in his innocence and his friendlessness, had no strength to stem
the popular tide.
"Thou art very cruel to the lad," the miller's wife dared to say, weeping,
to her lord. "Sure he is an innocent lad and a faithful, and would never
dream of any such wickedness, however sore his heart might be."
But Baas Cogez being an obstinate man, having once said a thing held to it
doggedly, though in his innermost soul he knew well the injustice that he
was committing.
Meanwhile, Nello endured the injury done against him with a certain proud
patience that disdained to complain: he only gave way a little when he was
quite alone with old Patrasche. Besides, he thought, "If it should win!
They will be sorry then, perhaps."
Still, to a boy not quite sixteen, and who had dwelt in one little world
all his short life, and in his childhood had been caressed and applauded
on all sides, it was a hard trial to have the whole of that little world
turn against him for naught. Especially hard in that bleak, snow-bound,
famine-stricken winter-time, when the only light and warmth there could be
found abode beside the village hearths and in the kindly greetings of
neighbors. In the winter-time all drew nearer to each other, all to all,
except to Nello and Patrasche, with whom none now would have anything to
do, and who were left to fare as they might with the old paralyzed,
bedridden man in the little cabin, whose fire was often low, and whose
board was often without bread, for there was a buyer from Antwerp who had
taken to drive his mule in of a day for the milk of the various dairies,
and there were only three or four of the people who had refused his terms
of purchase and remained faithful to the little green cart. So that the
burden which Patrasche drew had become very light, and the centime-pieces
in Nello's pouch had become, alas! very small likewise.
The dog would stop, as usual, at all the familiar gates, which were now
closed to him, and look up at them with wistful, mute appeal; and it cost
the neighbors a pang to shut their doors and their hearts, and let
Patrasche draw his cart on again, empty. Nevertheless, they did it, for
they desired to please Baas Cogez.
Noel was close at hand.
The weather was very wild and cold. The snow was six feet deep, and the
ice was firm enough to bear oxen and men upon it everywhere. At this
season the little village was always gay and cheerful. At the poorest
dwelling there were possets and cakes, joking and dancing, sugared saints
and gilded Jesus. The merry Flemish bells jingled everywhere on the
horses; everywhere within doors some well-filled soup-pot sang and smoked
over the stove; and everywhere over the snow without laughing maidens
pattered in bright kerchiefs and stout kirtles, going to and from the
mass. Only in the little hut it was very dark and very cold.
Nello and Patrasche were left utterly alone, for one night in the week
before the Christmas Day, Death entered there, and took away from life
forever old Jehan Daas, who had never known life aught save its poverty
and its pains. He had long been half dead, incapable of any movement
except a feeble gesture, and powerless for anything beyond a gentle word;
and yet his loss fell on them both with a great horror in it: they mourned
him passionately. He had passed away from them in his sleep, and when in
the gray dawn they learned their bereavement, unutterable solitude and
desolation seemed to close around them. He had long been only a poor,
feeble, paralyzed old man, who could not raise a hand in their defence,
but he had loved them well: his smile had always welcomed their return.
They mourned for him unceasingly, refusing to be comforted, as in the
white winter day they followed the deal shell that held his body to the
nameless grave by the little gray church. They were his only mourners,
these two whom he had left friendless upon earth--the young boy and the
old dog.
"Surely, he will relent now and let the poor lad come hither?" thought the
miller's wife, glancing at her husband smoking by the hearth.
Baas Cogez knew her thought, but he hardened his heart, and would not
unbar his door as the little, humble funeral went by. "The boy is a
beggar," he said to himself: "he shall not be about Alois."
The woman dared not say anything aloud, but when the grave was closed and
the mourners had gone, she put a wreath of immortelles into Alois's hands
and bade her go and lay it reverently on the dark, unmarked mound where
the snow was displaced.
Nello and Patrasche went home with broken hearts. But even of that poor,
melancholy, cheerless home they were denied the consolation. There was a
month's rent over-due for their little home, and when Nello had paid the
last sad service to the dead he had not a coin left. He went and begged
grace of the owner of the hut, a cobbler who went every Sunday night to
drink his pint of wine and smoke with Baas Cogez. The cobbler would grant
no mercy. He was a harsh, miserly man, and loved money. He claimed in
default of his rent every stick and stone, every pot and pan, in the hut,
and bade Nello and Patrasche be out of it on the morrow.
Now, the cabin was lowly enough, and in some sense miserable enough, and
yet their hearts clove to it with a great affection. They had been so
happy there, and in the summer, with its clambering vine and its flowering
beans, it was so pretty and bright in the midst of the sunlighted fields!
There life in it had been full of labor and privation, and yet they had
been so well content, so gay of heart, running together to meet the old
man's never-failing smile of welcome!
All night long the boy and the dog sat by the fireless hearth in the
darkness, drawn close together for warmth and sorrow. Their bodies were
insensible to the cold, but their hearts seemed frozen in them.
When the morning broke over the white, chill earth it was the morning of
Christmas Eve. With a shudder, Nello clasped close to him his only friend,
while his tears fell hot and fast on the dog's frank forehead. "Let us go,
Patrasche--dear, dear Patrasche," he murmured. "We will not wait to be
kicked out: let us go."
Patrasche had no will but his, and they went sadly, side by side, out from
the little place which was so dear to them both, and in which every
humble, homely thing was to them precious and beloved. Patrasche drooped
his head wearily as he passed by his own green cart: it was no longer
his--it had to go with the rest to pay the rent, and his brass harness lay
idle and glittering on the snow. The dog could have lain down beside it
and died for very heart-sickness as he went, but whilst the lad lived and
needed him Patrasche would not yield and give way.
They took the old accustomed road into Antwerp. The day had yet scarce
more than dawned, most of the shutters were still closed, but some of the
villagers were about. They took no notice whilst the dog and the boy
passed by them. At one door Nello paused and looked wistfully within: his
grandfather had done many a kindly turn in neighbor's service to the
people who dwelt there.
"Would you give Patrasche a crust?" he said, timidly. "He is old, and he
has had nothing since last forenoon."
The woman shut the door hastily, murmuring some vague saying about wheat
and rye being very dear that season. The boy and the dog went on again
wearily: they asked no more.
By slow and painful ways they reached Antwerp as the chimes tolled ten.
"If I had anything about me I could sell to get him bread!" thought Nello,
but he had nothing except the wisp of linen and serge that covered him,
and his pair of wooden shoes. Patrasche understood, and nestled his nose
into the lad's hand, as though to pray him not to be disquieted for any
woe or want of his.
The winner of the drawing-prize was to be proclaimed at noon, and to the
public building where he had left his treasure Nello made his way. On the
steps and in the entrance-hall there was a crowd of youths--some of his
age, some older, all with parents or relatives or friends. His heart was
sick with fear as he went among them, holding Patrasche close to him. The
great bells of the city clashed out the hour of noon with brazen clamor.
The doors of the inner hall were opened; the eager, panting throng rushed
in: it was known that the selected picture would be raised above the rest
upon a wooden dais..
A mist obscured Nello's sight, his head swam, his limbs almost failed him.
When his vision cleared he saw the drawing raised on high: it was not his
own! A slow, sonorous voice was proclaiming aloud that victory had been
adjudged to Stephen Kiesslinger, born in the burgh of Antwerp, son of a
wharfinger in that town.
When Nello recovered his consciousness he was lying on the stones without,
and Patrasche was trying with every art he knew to call him back to life.
In the distance a throng of the youths of Antwerp were shouting around
their successful comrade, and escorting him with acclamations to his home
upon the quay.
The boy staggered to his feet and drew the dog into his embrace. "It is
all over, dear Patrasche," he murmured--"all over!"
He rallied himself as best he could, for he was weak from fasting, and
retraced his steps to the village. Patrasche paced by his side with his
head drooping and his old limbs feeble from hunger and sorrow.
The snow was falling fast: a keen hurricane blew from the north: it was
bitter as death on the plains. It took them long to traverse the familiar
path, and the bells were sounding four of the clock as they approached the
hamlet. Suddenly Patrasche paused, arrested by a scent in the snow,
scratched, whined, and drew out with his teeth a small case of brown
leather. He held it up to Nello in the darkness. Where they were there
stood a little Calvary, and a lamp burned dully under the cross: the boy
mechanically turned the case to the light: on it was the name of Baas
Cogez, and within it were notes for two thousand francs.
The sight roused the lad a little from his stupor. He thrust it in his
shirt, and stroked Patrasche and drew him onward. The dog looked up
wistfully in his face.
Nello made straight for the mill-house, and went to the house-door and
struck on its panels. The miller's wife opened it weeping, with little
Alois clinging close to her skirts. "Is it thee, thou poor lad?" she said
kindly through her tears. "Get thee gone ere the Baas see thee. We are in
sore trouble to-night. He is out seeking for a power of money that he has
let fall riding homeward, and in this snow he never will find it; and God
knows it will go nigh to ruin us. It is Heaven's own judgment for the
things we have done to thee."
Nello put the note-case in her hand and called Patrasche within the house.
"Patrasche found the money to-night," he said quickly. "Tell Baas Cogez
so: I think he will not deny the dog shelter and food in his old age. Keep
him from pursuing me, and I pray of you to be good to him."
Ere either woman or dog knew what he meant he had stooped and kissed
Patrasche: then closed the door hurriedly, and disappeared in the gloom of
the fast--falling night.
The woman and the child stood speechless with joy and fear: Patrasche
vainly spent the fury of his anguish against the iron-bound oak of the
barred house-door. They did not dare unbar the door and let him forth:
they tried all they could to solace him. They brought him sweet cakes and
juicy meats; they tempted him with the best they had; they tried to lure
him to abide by the warmth of the hearth; but it was of no avail.
Patrasche refused to be comforted or to stir from the barred portal.
It was six o'clock when from an opposite entrance the miller at last came,
jaded and broken, into his wife's presence. "It is lost forever," he said,
with an ashen cheek and a quiver in his stern voice. "We have looked with
lanterns everywhere: it is gone--the little maiden's portion and all!"
His wife put the money into his hand, and told him how it had come to her.
The strong man sank trembling into a seat and covered his face, ashamed
and almost afraid. "I have been cruel to the lad," he muttered at length:
"I deserved not to have good at his hands."
Little Alois, taking courage, crept close to her father and nestled
against him her fair curly head. "Nello may come here again, father?" she
whispered. "He may come to-morrow as he used to do?"
The miller pressed her in his arms: his hard, sunburned face was very pale
and his mouth trembled. "Surely, surely," he answered his child. "He shall
bide here on Christmas Day, and any other day he will. God helping me, I
will make amends to the boy--I will make amends."
Little Alois kissed him in gratitude and joy, then slid from his knees and
ran to where the dog kept watch by the door. "And to-night I may feast
Patrasche?" she cried in a child's thoughtless glee.
Her father bent his head gravely: "Ay, ay: let the dog have the best;" for
the stern old man was moved and shaken to his heart's depths.
It was Christmas Eve, and the mill-house was filled with oak logs and
squares of turf, with cream and honey, with meat and bread, and the
rafters were hung with wreaths of evergreen, and the Calvary and the
cuckoo clock looked out from a mass of holly. There were little paper
lanterns, too, for Alois, and toys of various fashions and sweetmeats in
bright-pictured papers. There were light and warmth and abundance
everywhere, and the child would fain have made the dog a guest honored and
feasted.
But Patrasche would neither lie in the warmth nor share in the cheer.
Famished he was and very cold, but without Nello he would partake neither
of comfort nor food. Against all temptation he was proof, and close
against the door he leaned always, watching only for a means of escape.
"He wants the lad," said Baas Cogez. "Good dog! good dog! I will go over
to the lad the first thing at day-dawn." For no one but Patrasche knew
that Nello had left the hut, and no one but Patrasche divined that Nello
had gone to face starvation and misery alone.
The mill-kitchen was very warm: great logs crackled and flamed on the
hearth; neighbors came in for a glass of wine and a slice of the fat goose
baking for supper. Alois, gleeful and sure of her playmate back on the
morrow, bounded and sang and tossed back her yellow hair. Baas Cogez, in
the fulness of his heart, smiled on her through moistened eyes, and spoke
of the way in which he would befriend her favorite companion; the
house-mother sat with calm, contented face at the spinning-wheel; the
cuckoo in the clock chirped mirthful hours. Amidst it all Patrasche was
bidden with a thousand words of welcome to tarry there a cherished guest.
But neither peace nor plenty could allure him where Nello was not.
When the supper smoked on the board, and the voices were loudest and
gladdest, and the Christ-child brought choicest gifts to Alois, Patrasche,
watching always an occasion, glided out when the door was unlatched by a
careless new-comer, and as swiftly as his weak and tired limbs would bear
him sped over the snow in the bitter, black night. He had only one
thought--to follow Nello. A human friend might have paused for the
pleasant meal, the cheery warmth, the cosey slumber; but that was not the
friendship of Patrasche. He remembered a bygone time, when an old man and
a little child had found him sick unto death in the wayside ditch.
Snow had fallen freshly all the evening long; it was now nearly ten; the
trail of the boy's footsteps was almost obliterated. It took Patrasche
long to discover any scent. When at last he found it, it was lost again
quickly, and lost and recovered, and again lost and again recovered, a
hundred times or more.
The night was very wild. The lamps under the wayside crosses were blown
out; the roads were sheets of ice; the impenetrable darkness hid every
trace of habitations; there was no living thing abroad. All the cattle
were housed, and in all the huts and homesteads men and women rejoiced and
feasted. There was only Patrasche out in the cruel cold--old and famished
and full of pain, but with the strength and the patience of a great love
to sustain him in his search.
The trail of Nello's steps, faint and obscure as it was under the new
snow, went straightly along the accustomed tracks into Antwerp. It was
past midnight when Patrasche traced it over the boundaries of the town and
into the narrow, tortuous, gloomy streets. It was all quite dark in the
town, save where some light gleamed ruddily through the crevices of
house-shutters, or some group went homeward with lanterns chanting
drinking-songs. The streets were all white with ice: the high walls and
roofs loomed black against them. There was scarce a sound save the riot of
the winds down the passages as they tossed the creaking signs and shook
the tall lamp-irons.
[Illustration: The portals of the cathedral were unclosed after the
Midnight Mass]
So many passers-by had trodden through and through the snow, so many
diverse paths had crossed and recrossed each other, that the dog had a
hard task to retain any hold on the track he followed. But he kept on his
way, though the cold pierced him to the bone, and the jagged ice cut his
feet, and the hunger in his body gnawed like a rat's teeth. He kept on his
way, a poor gaunt, shivering thing, and by long patience traced the steps
he loved into the very heart of the burgh and up to the steps of the great
cathedral.
"He is gone to the things that he loved," thought Patrasche: he could not
understand, but he was full of sorrow and of pity for the art-passion that
to him was so incomprehensible and yet so sacred.
The portals of the cathedral were unclosed after the midnight mass. Some
heedlessness in the custodians, too eager to go home and feast or sleep,
or too drowsy to know whether they turned the keys aright, had left one of
the doors unlocked. By that accident the foot-falls Patrasche sought had
passed through into the building, leaving the white marks of snow upon the
dark stone floor. By that slender white thread, frozen as it fell, he was
guided through the intense silence, through the immensity of the vaulted
space--guided straight to the gates of the chancel, and, stretched there
upon the stones, he found Nello. He crept up and touched the face of the
boy. "Didst thou dream that I should be faithless and forsake thee? I--a
dog?" said that mute caress.
The lad raised himself with a low cry and clasped him close. "Let us lie
down and die together," he murmured. "Men have no need of us, and we are
all alone."
In answer, Patrasche crept closer yet, and laid his head upon the young
boy's breast. The great tears stood in his brown, sad eyes: not for
himself--for himself he was happy.
They lay close together in the piercing cold. The blasts that blew over
the Flemish dikes from the northern seas were like waves of ice, which
froze every living thing they touched. The interior of the immense vault
of stone in which they were was even more bitterly chill than the
snow-covered plains without. Now and then a bat moved in the shadows--now
and then a gleam of light came on the ranks of carven figures. Under the
Rubens they lay together quite still, and soothed almost into a dreaming
slumber by the numbing narcotic of the cold. Together they dreamed of the
old glad days when they had chased each other through the flowering
grasses of the summer meadows, or sat hidden in the tall bulrushes by the
water's side, watching the boats go seaward in the sun.
Suddenly through the darkness a great white radiance streamed through the
vastness of the aisles; the moon, that was at her height, had broken
through the clouds, the snow had ceased to fall, the light reflected from
the snow without was clear as the light of dawn. It fell through the
arches full upon the two pictures above, from which the boy on his
entrance had flung back the veil: the Elevation and the Descent of the
Cross were for one instant visible.
Nello rose to his feet and stretched his arms to them; the tears of a
passionate ecstasy glistened on the paleness of his face. "I have seen
them at last!" he cried aloud. "O God, it is enough!"
His limbs failed under him, and he sank upon his knees, still gazing
upward at the majesty that he adored. For a few brief moments the light
illumined the divine visions that had been denied to him so long--light
clear and sweet and strong as though it streamed from the throne of
Heaven. Then suddenly it passed away: once more a great darkness covered
the face of Christ.
The arms of the boy drew close again the body of the dog. "We shall see
His face--_there,_" he murmured; "and He will not part us, I think." On
the morrow, by the chancel of the cathedral, the people of Antwerp found
them both. They were both dead: the cold of the night had frozen into
stillness alike the young life and the old. When the Christmas morning
broke and the priests came to the temple, they saw them lying thus on the
stones together. Above the veils were drawn back from the great visions of
Rubens, and the fresh rays of the sunrise touched the thorn-crowned head
of the Christ.
As the day grew on there came an old, hard-featured man who wept as women
weep. "I was cruel to the lad," he muttered, "and now I would have made
amends--yea, to the half of my substance--and he should have been to me as
a son."
There came also, as the day grew apace, a painter who had fame in the
world, and who was liberal of hand and of spirit. "I seek one who should
have had the prize yesterday had worth won," he said to the people--"a boy
of rare promise and genius. An old wood-cutter on a fallen tree at
eventide--that was all his theme. But there was greatness for the future
in it. I would fain find him, and take him with me and teach him Art."
And a little child with curling fair hair, sobbing bitterly as she clung
to her father's arm, cried aloud, "Oh, Nello, come! We have all ready for
thee. The Christ-child's hands are full of gifts, and the old piper will
play for us; and the mother says thou shalt stay by the hearth and burn
nuts with us all the Noel week long--yes, even to the Feast of the Kings!
And Patrasche will be so happy! Oh, Nello, wake and come!"
But the young pale face, turned upward to the light of the great Rubens
with a smile upon its mouth, answered them all, "It is too late."
For the sweet, sonorous bells went ringing through the frost, and the
sunlight shone upon the plains of snow, and the populace trooped gay and
glad through the streets, but Nello and Patrasche no more asked charity at
their hands. All they needed now Antwerp gave unbidden.