Loadstar 161/161.d81/sr.flanders 3

Text File | 2022-08-26 | 26KB | 834 lines

    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. Out-buildings 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.

                  XI

    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 sun-lighted 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 brok