The Path of Life Part 1

The Path of Life.

by Stijn Streuvels.

NOTE

In introducing this new writer to the English-speaking public, I may be permitted to give a few particulars of himself and his life. Stijn Streuvels is accepted not only in Belgium, but also in Holland as the most distinguished Low-Dutch author of our time: his vogue, in fact, is even greater in the North Netherlands than in the southern kingdom. And I will go further and say that I know no greater living writer of imaginative prose in any land or any language. His medium is the West-Flemish dialect, which is spoken by perhaps a million people inhabiting the stretch of country that forms the province of West Flanders and is comprised within the irregular triangle outlined by the North Sea on the west, the French frontier of Flanders on the south and a line drawn at one-third of the distance between Bruges and Ghent on the east. In addition to Bruges and Ostend, this province of West Flanders includes such towns as Poperinghe, Ypres and Courtrai; and so subtly subdivided is the West-Flemish dialect that there are words which a man of Bruges will use to a man of Poperinghe and not be understood.

It is one of the most interesting dialects known to me, containing numbers of mighty mediaeval words which survive in daily use; and it is one of the richest: rich especially--and this is not usual in dialects--in words expressive of human characteristics and of physical sensations.

Thus there is a word to describe a man who is not so much a poor wretch, _un miserable_, as what Tom Hood loved to call "a hapless wight:" one who is poor and wretched and outcast and out of work, not through any fault of his own, through idleness or f.e.c.klessness, but through sheer ill-luck.

There is a word to describe what we feel when we hear the tearing of silk or the ripping of calico, a word expressing that sense of angry irritation which gives a man a gnawing in the muscles of the arms, a word that tells what we really feel in our hair when we pretend that it "stands on end." It is a st.u.r.dy, manly dialect, moreover, spoken by a fine, upstanding race of "chaps," "fellows," "mates," "wives," and "women-persons," for your Fleming rarely talks of "men" or "women." It is also a very beautiful dialect, having many words that possess a charm all their own. Thus _monkelen_, the West-Flemish for the verb "to smile," is prettier and has an archer sound than its Dutch equivalent, _glimlachen_.

And it is a dialect of sufficient importance to boast a special dictionary (_Westvlaamsch Idiotikon_, by the Rev. L. L. De Bo: Bruges, 1873) of 1,488 small-quarto pages, set in double column.

In translating Streuvels' sketches, I have given a close rendering: to use a homely phrase, their flavour is very near the knuckle; and I have been anxious to lose no more of it than must inevitably be lost through the mere act of translation. I hope that I may be forgiven for one or two phrases, which, though not existing, so far as I am aware, in any country or district where the English tongue is spoken, are not entirely foreign to the genius of that tongue. Here and there, but only where necessary, I have added an explanatory foot-note.

For those interested in such matters, I may say that Stijn Streuvels'

real name is Frank Lateur. He is a nephew of Guido Gezelle, the poet-priest, whose statue graces the public square at Courtrai, unless indeed by this time those shining apostles of civilization, the Germans, have destroyed it. Until ten years ago, when he began to come into his own, he lived at Avelghem, in the south-east corner of West Flanders, hard by Courtrai and the River Lys, and there baked bread for the peasant-fellows and peasant-wives. For you must know that this foremost writer of the Netherlands was once a baker and stood daily at sunrise, bare-chested, before his glowing oven, drawing bread for the folk of his village. The stories and sketches in the present volume all belong to that period.

Of their number, _Christmas Night_, _A Pipe or no Pipe_, _On Sundays_ and _The End_ have appeared in the _Fortnightly Review_, which was the first to give Stijn Streuvels the hospitality of its pages; _In Early Winter_ and _White Life_ in the _English Review_; _The White Sand-path_ in the _Ill.u.s.trated London News_; _An Accident in Everyman_; and _Loafing_ in the _Lady's Realm_. The remainder are now printed in English for the first time.

ALEXANDER TEIXEIRA DE MATTOS.

Chelsea, _April_, 1915.

THE WHITE SAND-PATH

I. THE WHITE SAND-PATH

I was a devil of a scapegrace in my time. No tree was too high for me, no water too deep; and, when there was mischief going, I was the ring-leader of the band. Father racked his head for days together to find a punishment that I should remember; but it was all no good: he wore out three or four birch-rods on my back; his hands pained him merely from hitting my hard head; and bread and water was a welcome change to me from the everyday monotony of potatoes and bread-and-b.u.t.ter. After a sound drubbing followed by half a day's fasting, I felt more like laughing than like crying; and, in half a while, all was forgotten and my wickedness began afresh and worse than ever.

One summer's evening, I came home in fine fettle. I and ten of my school-fellows had played truant: we had gone to pick apples in the priest's orchard; and we had pulled the burgomaster's calf into the brook to teach it to swim, but the banks were too high and the beast was drowned. Father, who had heard of these happenings, laid hold of me in a rage and gave me a furious trouncing with a poker, after which, instead of turning me into the road, as his custom was, he caught me up fair and square, carried me to the loft, flung me down on the floor and bolted the trap-door behind him.

In the loft! Heavenly goodness, in the loft!

Of an evening I never dared think of the place; and in bright sunshine I went there but seldom and then always in fear.

I lay as dead, pinched my eyes to and pondered on my wretched plight.

'Twas silent all around; I heard nothing, nothing. That lasted pretty long, till I began to feel that the boards were so hard and that my body, which had been thrashed black and blue, was hurting me. My back was stiff and my arms and legs grew cold. And yet I nor wished nor meant to stir: that was settled in my head. In the end, it became unbearable: I drew in my right leg, shifted my arm and carefully opened my eyes. 'Twas so ghastly, oh, so frightfully dark and warm: I could see the warm darkness; so funny, that steep, slanting tiled roof, crossed by black rafters, beams and laths, and all that s.p.a.ce beyond, which disappeared in the dark ridgework: 'twas like a deserted, haunted booth at a fair, during the night. Over my head, like threatening blunderbusses, old trousers and jackets hung swinging, with empty arms and legs: they looked just like fellows that had been hanged! And it grew darker, steadily darker.

My eyes stood fixed and I heard my breath come and go. I pondered how 'twould end here. That lasting silence affrighted me; the anxious waiting for that coming night: to have to spend a long, long night here alone! My hair itched and p.r.i.c.ked on my head. And the rats! I gave a great loud scream. It rang in anguish through the sloping vault of the loft. I listened as it died away ... and nothing followed. I screamed again and again and went on, till my throat was torn.

The gruesome thought of those rats and of that long night drove me mad with fear. I rolled about on the floor, I struck out with my arms and legs, like one possessed, in violent, childish fury. Then, worn out, I let my arms and legs rest; at last, tired, swallowed up in my helplessness, left without will or feeling, I waited for what was to come. I had terribly wicked thoughts: of escaping from the house, of setting fire to the house, of _murder_! I was an outcast, I was being tortured. I should have liked to show them what I could do, who I was; to see them hunting for me and crying; and then to run away, always farther away, and never come back again.

Downstairs, the plates and forks were clattering for supper. I was not hungry; I did not wish nor mean to eat. I heard soft, quiet voices talking: that made me desperate; they were not speaking of me! They had no thought nor care for the miscreant; they would liefst have him dead, out of the way. And I was in the loft!

Later, very much later, I heard my little brother's voice saying evening prayers--I would not pray--and then I heard nothing more, nothing; and I lay there, upstairs, lonely and forlorn....

I walked all alone in the forest, through the brushwood. 'Twas half-dark below; but, above the bushes, the sun was playing as through a green curtain. I went on and on. The bushes here grew thick now and the tiny path was lost. After long creeping and stumbling, I leapt across a ditch and entered the wide drove. It did not seem strange to me that 'twas even darker here and that the light, instead of from above, came streaming low down from between the trunks of the trees. The vault was closed leaf-tight and the trunks hung down from out of it like pillars. 'Twas silent all around. I went, as I thought that I must see the sun, round behind the trunks, half anxious at last to get out of that magic forest; but new trees kept coming up, as though out of the ground, and hid the sun. I would have liked to run, but felt I know not what in my legs that made me drag myself on.

Far beyond, on the road-side gra.s.s, sat two boys. It was ... but no, they were sitting there too glumly! I went up to them and, after all, knew them for Sarelke and Lowietje, the village-constable's children. They sat with their legs in the ditch, their elbows on their knees, earnestly chatting. I sat down beside them, but they did not even look up, did not notice me. Those two boys, my schoolmates, the worst two scamps in the village, sat there like two worn-out old fogies: they did not know me.

This ought to have surprised me, and yet I thought that it must be right and that it had always been so. They chatted most calmly of the price of marbles, of the way to tell the best hoops, of buying a new box of tin soldiers; and they mumbled their words as slowly as the priest in his pulpit. I became uncomfortable, felt ill at ease in that stifling air, under that half-dusk of the twilight, where everything was happening so earnestly, so very slowly and so heavily. I, who was all for sport and child's-play, now found my own chums so altered; and they no longer knew me. I would have liked to shout, to grip them hard by the shoulder and call out that it was I: I, I, I! But I durst not, or could not.

"There--comes--the--keeper," droned Sarelke.

Lowietje looked down the drove with his great gla.s.sy eyes. The two boys stood up and, without speaking, shuffled away. I saw them get smaller and smaller, till they became two black, hovering little specks that vanished round the bend.

I was alone again! Alone, with all those trees, in that frightful silence all around me. And the keeper, where was he? He would come, I knew it; and I felt afraid of the awful fellow. I must get away from this, I must hide myself. I lay down, very slowly, deep in the ditch. I now felt that I had been long, long dead and that I was lying here alone, waiting for I forget what. That keeper: was there such a person? He now seemed to me an awesome clod of earth, which came rolling down, slowly but steadily, and which would fall heavily upon me. Then he turned into a lovely white ashplant, which stood there waving its boughs in a stately manner. I would let him go past and then would go away. People were waiting for me, I had to be somewhere: I tried mightily to remember where, but could not.

The keeper did not come.

The ditch was cold, the bottom was of smooth, worn stone and very hard. I lay there with gleaming eyes: above my head stood the giant oaks, silently, and their knotted branches ran up and were lost in the dark sky.

The keeper came, I heard his coming; and the wind blew fearfully through the trees. I shivered....

I woke with fright and I was still lying in my loft. The hard bottom of the ditch was the boarded floor and the tree-trunks were the legs of father's trousers and the branches ran up and were lost in the darksome roofwork. Two sharp rays of light beamed through the shut dormer-window.

It must be day then! And this awful night was past! All my dismay was gone and a bold feeling came over me, something like the feeling of gladness that follows on a solved problem. I would make Lowietje and Sarelke and all the boys at school hark to my tale, that I would! I had slept a whole night alone in the loft! And the rats! And the ghosts! Ooh!

And not a whit afraid!

I got up, but that was such a slow business. I still felt that dream and that slackness in my limbs. I was so stiff; that heavy gloom, that slow pa.s.sing of time still lingered--just as in my dream--in my slow breathing. I still saw that forest and, shut up as I was, with not a single touchstone for my thoughts, I began to doubt if my dream was done and I had to feel the trouser-legs to make sure that they were not really trees.

Time stood still and there was no getting out of my mind the strange things seen in that dream-forest, with those earnest, sluggish, elderly children and that queer keeper. 'Twas as though some one were holding my arms and legs tight to make them move heavily, deadly heavily; and I felt myself, within my head, grown quite thirty years older, become suddenly an old man. I walked about the loft; I wanted to make myself heard, but my footsteps gave no sound.

I grew awfully hungry. Near the ladder-door, I found my prison fare. I nibbled greedily at my crust of bread and took a good drink of water.

I now felt better, but this doing nothing wearied me; I became sad and felt sorry to be sitting alone. If things had gone their usual gait, I should now be with my mates at school or playing somewhere under the open sky; and that open sky now first revealed all its delightfulness. The usual gait, when all was said, was by far the best.... All alone like this, up here.... Should I go down and beg father's pardon? Then 'twould all be over and done with....

"No!" said something inside me, "I stay here!"

And I stayed.

I shoved a box under the dormer-window, I pushed open the wooden shutter ... and there! Before me lay the wide stretch in the blazing sunlight! My eyes were quite blind with it.

'Twas good up here and funny to see everything from so high up, so endlessly far! And the people were no bigger than tiny tadpoles!

Just under my dormer-window came a path, a white sand-path winding from behind the house and then running forwards to the horizon in a line straight as an arrow. It looked like a naked strip of ground, powdered white and showing up sharply, like a flat snake, in the middle of the green fields which, broken into their many-coloured squares, lay blinking in the sun.

This path was deserted, lonely, as though nor man nor beast had ever trodden it. It lay very near the house and I did not know it from up here; it looked now like a long strip of drab linen, which lay bleaching in a boundless meadow. And that again suited my loneliness so well! At last, I looked and saw nothing more. And that path!...

Slowly, overcome by that silent, restful idleness, I fell a-dreaming; and that path, that long, white path seemed to me to have become a part of my own being, something like a life that began over there, far away yonder in the clear blue, to end in the unknown, here, behind the gable-end, cut off at that fatal bend.

After long looking, I saw something, very far off; it came so slowly, so softly, like a thing that grows, and those two little black patches grew into two romping schoolboys, who, rolling and leaping along, came running down the white sand-path and, at last, disappeared in the bend behind the gable-end.

Then, for another long while, nothing more, nothing but sand, green and sunshine.