Journeys Through Bookland Volume Iv Part 8

Patrasche had lain quiet countless hours watching its gradual creation after the labor of each day was done, and he knew that Nello had a hope--vain and wild perhaps, but strongly cherished--of sending this great drawing to compete for a prize of 200 francs a year, which it was announced in Antwerp would be open to every lad of talent, scholar or peasant, under eighteen, who attempted to win it with unaided work of chalk or pencil. Three of the foremost artists in the town of Rubens were to be the judges and elect the victor according to his merits.

All the spring and summer and autumn Nello had been at work upon this treasure, which, if triumphant, would build him his first steps toward independence and the mysteries of the arts, which he blindly, ignorantly and yet pa.s.sionately adored.

The drawings were to go in on the 1st of December and the decision to be given on the 24th, so that he who should win might rejoice with all his people at the Christmas season.

In the twilight of a bitter winter day, and with a beating heart, now quick with hope, now faint with fear, Nello placed the great picture on his little green milk cart and left it, as enjoined, at the doors of a public building.

He took heart as he went by the cathedral. The lordly form of Rubens seemed to rise from the fog and darkness and to loom in its magnificence before him, whilst the lips, with their kindly smile, seemed to him to murmur, "Nay, have courage! It was not by a weak heart and by faint fears that I wrote my name for all time upon Antwerp."

The winter was sharp already. That night, after they reached the hut, snow fell, and it fell for many days after that, so that the paths and the divisions of the fields were all obliterated, and all the smaller streams were frozen over and the cold was intense upon the plains.

Then, indeed, it became hard work to go round for milk, while the world was all dark, and carry it through the darkness to the silent town.

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, because the miller had frowned upon the child. Nello and Patrasche were left to fare as they might with the old, paralyzed, bedridden man in the little cabin, whose fire often was cold, and whose board often was 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 the terms of purchase and remained faithful to the little green cart. So that the burden which Patrasche drew had become light, and the centime pieces in Nello's pouch had become, alas! light likewise.

The weather was wild and cold. The snow was six feet deep; the ice was firm enough to bear oxen and men upon it everywhere. At this season the little village always was gay and cheerful. At the poorest dwelling there were possets and cakes, 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 skirts going to and from ma.s.s. Only in the little hut it was dark and cold.

[Ill.u.s.tration: NELLO LEFT HIS PICTURE AT THE DOOR]

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 of life aught save poverty and pain. 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 pa.s.sionately. He had pa.s.sed away from them in his sleep, and when in the gray dawn they learned their bereavement, unbearable 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 defense, but he had loved them well; his smile always had welcomed their return. They mourned for him unceasingly, refusing to be comforted, as in the white winter day they followed the deal sh.e.l.l that held his body to the nameless grave by the little church. They were his only mourners, these two whom he had left friendless upon the earth-- the young boy and the old dog.

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 rental overdue for the little place, 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 claimed in default of his rent every stick and stone, every pot and pan in the hut, and bade Nello and Patrasche to be out of it by to-morrow.

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 forehead.

"Let us go, Patrasche; dear, dear Patrasche!" he murmured. "We will not wait to be kicked out. Let us go."

They took the old accustomed road into Antwerp. 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 step 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 amongst 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 Stephan Kiesslinger, born in the burg of Antwerp, son of a wharfinger in that town.

When Nello recovered 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 youths of Antwerp were shouting around their successful comrade and escorting him with acclamation to his home upon the quay.

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 strong limbs feeble under him 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 paths, 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 bag to the light. On it was the name of Baas Cogez and within it were notes for 6,000 francs.

The sight aroused the lad a little from his stupor. He thrust it in his shirt and stroked Patrasche and drew him onward.

Nello made straight for the millhouse and went to the house-door and struck on the panels. The miller's wife opened it, weeping, with little Alois clinging close to her skirts.

"Is it thee, thou poor lad?" she asked kindly through her tears. "Get thee gone ere the Baas sees 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 G.o.d 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 within her hand and signed to 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 woman or dog knew what he did he had stooped and kissed Patrasche, then had closed the door hurriedly on him and had disappeared in the gloom of the fast falling night.

It was six o'clock at night 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 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 back to her. The strong man sank, trembling, into a seat and covered his face with his hands, ashamed, almost afraid.

"I have been cruel to the lad," he murmured at length. "I deserve not to have good at his hands."

Little Alois, taking courage, crept close to her father, and nestled against him her curly, fair 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 pale and his mouth trembled. "Surely, surely," he answered his child. "He shall bide here on Christmas day and any other day he will. In my greed I sinned, and the Lord chastened me. G.o.d helping me, I will make amends to the boy--I will make amends."

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 newcomer, 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.

Snow had fallen freshly all evening long. It was now nearly ten o'clock. The trail of the boy's footsteps was almost obliterated. It took Patrasche long and arduous labor to discover any scent which could guide him in pursuit. When at last he found it, it was lost again quickly, and lost and recovered, and again lost, and again recovered a hundred times and more. It was all quite dark in the town. Now and then some light gleamed ruddily through the crevices and house shutters, or some group went homeward with lanterns, chanting drinking songs. The streets were all white with ice, and high walls and roofs loomed black against them. There was scarce a sound save the riot of the wind down the pa.s.sages as it tossed the creaking signs.

So many pa.s.sers-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 of 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 tooth. But he kept on his way--a poor, gaunt, shivering, drooping thing--in the frozen darkness, that no one pitied as he went--and by long patience traced the steps he loved into the heart of the burg 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 pa.s.sion that to him was so incomprehensible and yet so sacred.

The portals of the cathedral were unclosed after the midnight ma.s.s.

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 footfalls Patrasche sought had pa.s.sed through into the building, leaving the white marks of the 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 s.p.a.ce--guided straight to the gates of the chancel--and stretched there upon the stones, he found Nello. He crept up noiselessly 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 man's breast. The tears stood in his great, brown, sad eyes. Not for himself; for himself he was happy.

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 from the Cross" for one instant were visible as by day.

Nello rose to his feet and stretched his arms to them. The tears of a pa.s.sionate ecstasy glistened on the paleness of his face.

"I have seen them at last!" he cried aloud. "Oh G.o.d, it is enough!"

When the Christmas morning broke and the priests came to the temple they saw them lying 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 G.o.d.

As the day grew on there came an old, hard-featured man who wept as women weep.

"I was cruel to the lad," he murmured, "and now I would have made amends--yea, to the half of my substance--and he should have been to me as a son."