Copyright laws are changing all over the world, be sure to check
the laws for your country before redistributing these files!!!
Please take a look at the important information in this header.
We encourage you to keep this file on your own disk, keeping an
electronic path open for the next readers.
Please do not remove this.
This should be the first thing seen when anyone opens the book.
Do not change or edit it without written permission. The words
are carefully chosen to provide users with the information they
need about what they can legally do with the texts.
**Welcome To The World of Free Plain Vanilla Electronic Texts**
**Etexts Readable By Both Humans and By Computers, Since 1971**
*These Etexts Prepared By Hundreds of Volunteers and Donations*
Information on contacting Project Gutenberg to get Etexts, and
further information is included below. We need your donations.
The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation is a 501(c)(3)
organization with EIN [Employee Identification Number] 64-6221541
As of 12/12/00 contributions are only being solicited from people in:
Colorado, Connecticut, Idaho, Indiana, Iowa,
Kentucky, Louisiana, Massachusetts, Montana,
Nevada, Oklahoma, South Carolina, South Dakota,
Texas, Vermont, and Wyoming.
International donations are accepted,
but we don't know ANYTHING about how
to make them tax-deductible, or
even if they CAN be made deductible,
and don't have the staff to handle it
even if there are ways.
As the requirements for other states are met,
additions to this list will be made and fund raising
will begin in the additional states. Please feel
free to ask to check the status of your state.
International donations are accepted,
but we don't know ANYTHING about how
to make them tax-deductible, or
even if they CAN be made deductible,
and don't have the staff to handle it
even if there are ways.
These donations should be made to:
Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation
PMB 113
1739 University Ave.
Oxford, MS 38655-4109
Title: The Garotters
Author: William D. Howells
Release Date: May, 2002 [Etext #3237]
[Yes, we are about one year ahead of schedule]
[The actual date this file first posted = 02/05/01]
Edition: 10
Language: English
Project Gutenberg Etext of The Garotters, by William D. Howells
*****This file should be named gartt10.txt or gartt10.zip*****
Corrected EDITIONS of our etexts get a new NUMBER, gartt11.txt
VERSIONS based on separate sources get new LETTER, gartt10a.txt
This etext was produced from the 1897 David Douglas edition by David
Price, email ccx074@coventry.ac.uk
Project Gutenberg Etexts are usually created from multiple editions,
all of which are in the Public Domain in the United States, unless a
copyright notice is included. Therefore, we usually do NOT keep any
of these books in compliance with any particular paper edition.
We are now trying to release all our books one year in advance
of the official release dates, leaving time for better editing.
Please be encouraged to send us error messages even years after
the official publication date.
Please note: neither this list nor its contents are final till
midnight of the last day of the month of any such announcement.
The official release date of all Project Gutenberg Etexts is at
Midnight, Central Time, of the last day of the stated month. A
preliminary version may often be posted for suggestion, comment
and editing by those who wish to do so.
Most people start at our sites at:
http://gutenberg.net
http://promo.net/pg
Those of you who want to download any Etext before announcement
can surf to them as follows, and just download by date; this is
also a good way to get them instantly upon announcement, as the
indexes our cataloguers produce obviously take a while after an
announcement goes out in the Project Gutenberg Newsletter.
http://www.ibiblio.org/gutenberg/etext02
or
ftp://ftp.ibiblio.org/pub/docs/books/gutenberg/etext02
Or /etext01, 00, 99, 98, 97, 96, 95, 94, 93, 92, 92, 91 or 90
Just search by the first five letters of the filename you want,
as it appears in our Newsletters.
Information about Project Gutenberg (one page)
We produce about two million dollars for each hour we work. The
time it takes us, a rather conservative estimate, is fifty hours
to get any etext selected, entered, proofread, edited, copyright
searched and analyzed, the copyright letters written, etc. This
projected audience is one hundred million readers. If our value
per text is nominally estimated at one dollar then we produce $2
million dollars per hour this year as we release fifty new Etext
files per month, or 500 more Etexts in 2000 for a total of 3000+
If they reach just 1-2% of the world's population then the total
should reach over 300 billion Etexts given away by year's end.
The Goal of Project Gutenberg is to Give Away One Trillion Etext
Files by December 31, 2001. [10,000 x 100,000,000 = 1 Trillion]
This is ten thousand titles each to one hundred million readers,
which is only about 4% of the present number of computer users.
At our revised rates of production, we will reach only one-third
of that goal by the end of 2001, or about 3,333 Etexts unless we
manage to get some real funding.
The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation has been created
to secure a future for Project Gutenberg into the next millennium.
We need your donations more than ever!
Presently, contributions are only being solicited from people in:
Colorado, Connecticut, Idaho, Indiana, Iowa,
Kentucky, Louisiana, Massachusetts, Nevada,
Montana, Nevada, Oklahoma, South Carolina,
South Dakota, Texas, Vermont, and Wyoming.
As the requirements for other states are met,
additions to this list will be made and fund raising
will begin in the additional states.
These donations should be made to:
Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation
PMB 113
1739 University Ave.
Oxford, MS 38655-4109
Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation,
EIN [Employee Identification Number] 64-6221541,
has been approved as a 501(c)(3) organization by the US Internal
Revenue Service (IRS). Donations are tax-deductible to the extent
permitted by law. As the requirements for other states are met,
additions to this list will be made and fund raising will begin in the
additional states.
All donations should be made to the Project Gutenberg Literary
Archive Foundation. Mail to:
Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation
PMB 113
1739 University Avenue
Oxford, MS 38655-4109 [USA]
We need your donations more than ever!
You can get up to date donation information at:
http://www.gutenberg.net/donation.html
***
If you can't reach Project Gutenberg,
you can always email directly to:
Michael S. Hart
hart@pobox.com forwards to hart@prairienet.org and archive.org
if your mail bounces from archive.org, I will still see it, if
it bounces from prairienet.org, better resend later on. . . .
Prof. Hart will answer or forward your message.
We would prefer to send you information by email.
***
Example command-line FTP session:
ftp ftp.ibiblio.org
login: anonymous
password: your@login
cd pub/docs/books/gutenberg
cd etext90 through etext99 or etext00 through etext02, etc.
dir [to see files]
get or mget [to get files. . .set bin for zip files]
GET GUTINDEX.?? [to get a year's listing of books, e.g., GUTINDEX.99]
GET GUTINDEX.ALL [to get a listing of ALL books]
**The Legal Small Print**
(Three Pages)
***START**THE SMALL PRINT!**FOR PUBLIC DOMAIN ETEXTS**START***
Why is this "Small Print!" statement here? You know: lawyers.
They tell us you might sue us if there is something wrong with
your copy of this etext, even if you got it for free from
someone other than us, and even if what's wrong is not our
fault. So, among other things, this "Small Print!" statement
disclaims most of our liability to you. It also tells you how
you may distribute copies of this etext if you want to.
*BEFORE!* YOU USE OR READ THIS ETEXT
By using or reading any part of this PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm
etext, you indicate that you understand, agree to and accept
this "Small Print!" statement. If you do not, you can receive
a refund of the money (if any) you paid for this etext by
sending a request within 30 days of receiving it to the person
you got it from. If you received this etext on a physical
medium (such as a disk), you must return it with your request.
ABOUT PROJECT GUTENBERG-TM ETEXTS
This PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm etext, like most PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm etexts,
is a "public domain" work distributed by Professor Michael S. Hart
through the Project Gutenberg Association (the "Project").
Among other things, this means that no one owns a United States copyright
on or for this work, so the Project (and you!) can copy and
distribute it in the United States without permission and
without paying copyright royalties. Special rules, set forth
below, apply if you wish to copy and distribute this etext
under the "PROJECT GUTENBERG" trademark.
Please do not use the "PROJECT GUTENBERG" trademark to market
any commercial products without permission.
To create these etexts, the Project expends considerable
efforts to identify, transcribe and proofread public domain
works. Despite these efforts, the Project's etexts and any
medium they may be on may contain "Defects". Among other
things, Defects may take the form of incomplete, inaccurate or
corrupt data, transcription errors, a copyright or other
intellectual property infringement, a defective or damaged
disk or other etext medium, a computer virus, or computer
codes that damage or cannot be read by your equipment.
LIMITED WARRANTY; DISCLAIMER OF DAMAGES
But for the "Right of Replacement or Refund" described below,
[1] Michael Hart and the Foundation (and any other party you may
receive this etext from as a PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm etext) disclaims
all liability to you for damages, costs and expenses, including
legal fees, and [2] YOU HAVE NO REMEDIES FOR NEGLIGENCE OR
UNDER STRICT LIABILITY, OR FOR BREACH OF WARRANTY OR CONTRACT,
INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO INDIRECT, CONSEQUENTIAL, PUNITIVE
OR INCIDENTAL DAMAGES, EVEN IF YOU GIVE NOTICE OF THE
POSSIBILITY OF SUCH DAMAGES.
If you discover a Defect in this etext within 90 days of
receiving it, you can receive a refund of the money (if any)
you paid for it by sending an explanatory note within that
time to the person you received it from. If you received it
on a physical medium, you must return it with your note, and
such person may choose to alternatively give you a replacement
copy. If you received it electronically, such person may
choose to alternatively give you a second opportunity to
receive it electronically.
THIS ETEXT IS OTHERWISE PROVIDED TO YOU "AS-IS". NO OTHER
WARRANTIES OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, ARE MADE TO YOU AS
TO THE ETEXT OR ANY MEDIUM IT MAY BE ON, INCLUDING BUT NOT
LIMITED TO WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY OR FITNESS FOR A
PARTICULAR PURPOSE.
Some states do not allow disclaimers of implied warranties or
the exclusion or limitation of consequential damages, so the
above disclaimers and exclusions may not apply to you, and you
may have other legal rights.
INDEMNITY
You will indemnify and hold Michael Hart, the Foundation,
and its trustees and agents, and any volunteers associated
with the production and distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm
texts harmless, from all liability, cost and expense, including
legal fees, that arise directly or indirectly from any of the
following that you do or cause: [1] distribution of this etext,
[2] alteration, modification, or addition to the etext,
or [3] any Defect.
DISTRIBUTION UNDER "PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm"
You may distribute copies of this etext electronically, or by
disk, book or any other medium if you either delete this
"Small Print!" and all other references to Project Gutenberg,
or:
[1] Only give exact copies of it. Among other things, this
requires that you do not remove, alter or modify the
etext or this "small print!" statement. You may however,
if you wish, distribute this etext in machine readable
binary, compressed, mark-up, or proprietary form,
including any form resulting from conversion by word
processing or hypertext software, but only so long as
*EITHER*:
[*] The etext, when displayed, is clearly readable, and
does *not* contain characters other than those
intended by the author of the work, although tilde
(~), asterisk (*) and underline (_) characters may
be used to convey punctuation intended by the
author, and additional characters may be used to
indicate hypertext links; OR
[*] The etext may be readily converted by the reader at
no expense into plain ASCII, EBCDIC or equivalent
form by the program that displays the etext (as is
the case, for instance, with most word processors);
OR
[*] You provide, or agree to also provide on request at
no additional cost, fee or expense, a copy of the
etext in its original plain ASCII form (or in EBCDIC
or other equivalent proprietary form).
[2] Honor the etext refund and replacement provisions of this
"Small Print!" statement.
[3] Pay a trademark license fee to the Foundation of 20% of the
gross profits you derive calculated using the method you
already use to calculate your applicable taxes. If you
don't derive profits, no royalty is due. Royalties are
payable to "Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation"
the 60 days following each date you prepare (or were
legally required to prepare) your annual (or equivalent
periodic) tax return. Please contact us beforehand to
let us know your plans and to work out the details.
WHAT IF YOU *WANT* TO SEND MONEY EVEN IF YOU DON'T HAVE TO?
Project Gutenberg is dedicated to increasing the number of
public domain and licensed works that can be freely distributed
in machine readable form.
The Project gratefully accepts contributions of money, time,
public domain materials, or royalty free copyright licenses.
Money should be paid to the:
"Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation."
If you are interested in contributing scanning equipment or
software or other items, please contact Michael Hart at:
hart@pobox.com
*END THE SMALL PRINT! FOR PUBLIC DOMAIN ETEXTS*Ver.12.12.00*END*
CONTENTS
THE BIRD ON ITS JOURNEY, Beatrice Harraden
KOOSJE: A STUDY OF DUTCH LIFE, John Strange Winter
A DOG OF FLANDERS, Ouida
MARKHEIM, R. L. Stevenson
QUEEN TITA'S WAGER, William Black
THE BIRD ON ITS JOURNEY
BY BEATRICE HARRADEN
It was about four in the afternoon when a young girl came into the salon of the little hotel at C---- in Switzerland,
and drew her chair up
to the fire.
"You are soaked through,"
said an elderly lady,
who was herself trying
to get roasted.
"You ought
to lose no time in changing your clothes."
"I have not anything
to change,"
said the young girl,
laughing.
"Oh,
I shall soon be dry!"
"Have you lost all your luggage?"
asked the lady,
sympathetically.
"No,"
said the young girl;
"I had none
to lose."
And she smiled a little mischievously,
as though she knew by instinct that her companion's sympathy would at once degenerate into suspicion!
"I don't mean
to say that I have not a knapsack,"
she added,
considerately.
"I have walked a long distance--in fact,
from Z----."
"And where did you leave your companions?"
asked the lady,
with a touch of forgiveness in her voice.
"I am without companions,
just as I am without luggage,"
laughed the girl.
And then she opened the piano,
and struck a few notes.
There was something caressing in the way in which she touched the keys;
whoever she was,
she knew how
to make sweet music;
sad music,
too,
full of that undefinable longing,
like the holding out of one's arms
to one's friends in the hopeless distance.
The lady bending over the fire looked up at the little girl,
and forgot that she had brought neither friends nor luggage
with her.
She hesitated
for one moment,
and then she took the childish face between her hands and kissed it.
"Thank you,
dear,
for your music,"
she said,
gently.
"The piano is terribly out of tune,"
said the little girl,
suddenly;
and she ran out of the room,
and came back carrying her knapsack.
"What are you going
to do?"
asked her companion.
"I am going
to tune the piano,"
the little girl said;
and she took a tuning-hammer out of her knapsack,
and began her work in real earnest.
She evidently knew what she was about,
and pegged away at the notes as though her whole life depended upon the result.
The lady by the fire was lost in amazement.
Who could she be?
Without luggage and without friends,
and
with a tuning-hammer! Meanwhile one of the gentlemen had strolled into the salon;
but hearing the sound of tuning,
and being in secret possession of nerves,
he fled,
saying,
"The tuner,
by Jove!"
A few minutes afterward Miss Blake,
whose nerves were no secret possession,
hastened into the salon,
and,
in her usual imperious fashion,
demanded instant silence.
"I have just done,"
said the little girl.
"The piano was so terribly out of tune,
I could not resist the temptation."
Miss Blake,
who never listened
to what any one said,
took it
for granted that the little girl was the tuner
for whom M.
le Proprietaire had promised
to send;
and having bestowed on her a condescending nod,
passed out into the garden,
where she told some of the visitors that the piano had been tuned at last,
and that the tuner was a young woman of rather eccentric appearance.
"Really,
it is quite abominable how women thrust themselves into every profession,"
she remarked,
in her masculine voice.
"It is so unfeminine,
so unseemly."
There was nothing of the feminine about Miss Blake;
her horse-cloth dress,
her waistcoat and high collar,
and her billycock hat were of the masculine genus;
even her nerves could not be called feminine,
since we learn from two or three doctors
(taken off their guard)
that nerves are neither feminine nor masculine,
but common.
"I should like
to see this tuner,"
said one of the tennis-players,
leaning against a tree.
"Here she comes,"
said Miss Blake,
as the little girl was seen sauntering into the garden.
The men put up their eye-glasses,
and saw a little lady
with a childish face and soft brown hair,
of strictly feminine appearance and bearing.
The goat came toward her and began nibbling at her frock.
She seemed
to understand the manner of goats,
and played
with him
to his heart's content.
One of the tennis players,
Oswald Everard by name,
strolled down
to the bank where she was having her frolic.
"Good-afternoon,"
he said,
raising his cap.
"I hope the goat is not worrying you.
Poor little fellow! this is his last day of play.
He is
to be killed to-morrow
for /table d'hote/."
"What a shame!"
she said.
"Fancy
to be killed,
and then grumbled at!"
"That is precisely what we do here,"
he said,
laughing.
"We grumble at everything we eat.
And I own
to being one of the grumpiest;
though the lady in the horse-cloth dress yonder follows close upon my heels."
"She was the lady who was annoyed at me because I tuned the piano,"
the little girl said.
"Still,
it had
to be done.
It was plainly my duty.
I seemed
to have come
for that purpose."
"It has been confoundedly annoying having it out of tune,"
he said.
"I've had
to give up singing altogether.
But what a strange profession you have chosen! Very unusual,
isn't it?"
"Why,
surely not,"
she answered,
amused.
"It seems
to me that every other woman has taken
to it.
The wonder
to me is that any one ever scores a success.
Nowadays,
however,
no one could amass a huge fortune out of it."
"No one,
indeed!"
replied Oswald Everard,
laughing.
"What on earth made you take
to it?"
"It took
to me,"
she said simply.
"It wrapped me round
with enthusiasm.
I could think of nothing else.
I vowed that I would rise
to the top of my profession.
I worked day and night.
But it means incessant toil
for years if one wants
to make any headway."
"Good gracious! I thought it was merely a matter of a few months,"
he said,
smiling at the little girl.
"A few months!"
she repeated,
scornfully.
"You are speaking the language of an amateur.
No;
one has
to work faithfully year after year;
to grasp the possibilities,
and pass on
to greater possibilities.
You imagine what it must feel like
to touch the notes,
and know that you are keeping the listeners spellbound;
that you are taking them into a fairy-land of sound,
where petty personality is lost in vague longing and regret."
"I confess I had not thought of it in that way,"
he said,
humbly.
"I have only regarded it as a necessary every-day evil;
and
to be quite honest
with you,
I fail
to see now how it can inspire enthusiasm.
I wish I could see,"
he added,
looking up at the engaging little figure before him.
"Never mind,"
she said,
laughing at his distress;
"I forgive you.
And,
after all,
you are not the only person who looks upon it as a necessary evil.
My poor old guardian abominated it.
He made many sacrifices
to come and listen
to me.
He knew I liked
to see his kind old face,
and that the presence of a real friend inspired me
with confidence."
"I should not have thought it was nervous work,"
he said.
"Try it and see,"
she answered.
"But surely you spoke of singing.
Are you not nervous when you sing?"
"Sometimes,"
he replied,
rather stiffly.
"But that is slightly different."
(He was very proud of his singing,
and made a great fuss about it.)
"Your profession,
as I remarked before,
is an unavoidable nuisance.
When I think what I have suffered from the gentlemen of your profession,
I only wonder that I have any brains left.
But I am uncourteous."
"No,
no,"
she said;
"let me hear about your sufferings."
"Whenever I have specially wanted
to be quiet,"
he said--and then he glanced at her childish little face,
and he hesitated.
"It seems so rude of me,"
he added.
He was the soul of courtesy,
although he was an amateur tenor singer.
"Please tell me,"
the little girl said,
in her winning way.
"Well,"
he said,
gathering himself together,
"it is the one subject on which I can be eloquent.
Ever since I can remember,
I have been worried and tortured by those rascals.
I have tried in every way
to escape from them,
but there is no hope
for me.
Yes;
I believe that all the tuners in the universe are in league against me,
and have marked me out
for their special prey."
"/All the what/?"
asked the little girl,
with a jerk in her voice.
"All the tuners,
of course,"
he replied,
rather snappishly.
"I know that we cannot do without them;
but good heavens! they have no tact,
no consideration,
no mercy.
Whenever I've wanted
to write or read quietly,
that fatal knock has come at the door,
and I've known by instinct that all chance of peace was over.
Whenever I've been giving a luncheon party,
the tuner has arrived,
with his abominable black bag,
and his abominable card which has
to be signed at once.
On one occasion I was just proposing
to a girl in her father's library when the tuner struck up in the drawing-room.
I left off suddenly,
and fled from the house.
But there is no escape from these fiends;
I believe they are swarming about in the air like so many bacteria.
And how,
in the name of goodness,
you should deliberately choose
to be one of them,
and should be so enthusiastic over your work,
puzzles me beyond all words.
Don't say that you carry a black bag,
and present cards which have
to be filled up at the most inconvenient time;
don't--"
He stopped suddenly,
for the little girl was convulsed
with laughter.
She laughed until the tears rolled down her cheeks,
and then she dried her eyes and laughed again.
"Excuse me,"
she said;
"I can't help myself;
it's so funny."
"It may be funny
to you,"
he said,
laughing in spite of himself;
"but it is not funny
to me."
"Of course it isn't,"
she replied,
making a desperate effort
to be serious.
"Well,
tell me something more about these tuners."
"Not another word,"
he said,
gallantly.
"I am ashamed of myself as it is.
Come
to the end of the garden,
and let me show you the view down into the valley."
She had conquered her fit of merriment,
but her face wore a settled look of mischief,
and she was evidently the possessor of some secret joke.
She seemed in capital health and spirits,
and had so much
to say that was bright and interesting that Oswald Everard found himself becoming reconciled
to the whole race of tuners.
He was amazed
to learn that she had walked all the way from Z----,
and quite alone,
too.
"Oh,
I don't think anything of that,"
she said;
"I had a splendid time,
and I caught four rare butterflies.
I would not have missed those
for anything.
As
for the going about by myself,
that is a second nature.
Besides,
I do not belong
to any one.
That has its advantages,
and I suppose its disadvantages;
but at present I have only discovered the advantages.
The disadvantages will discover themselves!"
"I believe you are what the novels call an advanced young woman,"
he said.
"Perhaps you give lectures on woman's suffrage,
or something of that sort?"
"I have very often mounted the platform,"
she answered.
"In fact,
I am never so happy as when addressing an immense audience.
A most unfeminine thing
to do,
isn't it?
What would the lady yonder in the horse-cloth dress and billycock hat say?
Don't you think you ought
to go and help her drive away the goat?
She looks so frightened.
She interests me deeply.
I wonder whether she has written an essay on the feminine in woman.
I should like
to read it;
it would do me so much good."
"You are at least a true woman,"
he said,
laughing,
"for I see you can be spiteful.
The tuning has not driven that away."
"Ah,
I had forgotten about the tuning,"
she answered,
brightly;
"but now you remind me,
I have been seized
with a great idea."
"Won't you tell it
to me?"
he asked.
"No,"
she answered;
"I keep my great ideas
for myself,
and work them out in secret.
And this one is particularly amusing.
What fun I shall have!"
"But why keep the fun
to yourself?"
he said.
"We all want
to be amused here;
we all want
to be stirred up;
a little fun would be a charity."
"Very well,
since you wish it,
you shall be stirred up,"
she answered;
"but you must give me time
to work out my great idea.
I do not hurry about things,
not even about my professional duties;
for I have a strong feeling that it is vulgar
to be always amassing riches! As I have neither a husband nor a brother
to support,
I have chosen less wealth,
and more leisure
to enjoy all the loveliness of life! So you see I take my time about everything.
And to-morrow I shall catch butterflies at my leisure,
and lie among the dear old pines,
and work at my great idea."
"I shall catch butterflies,"
said her companion;
"and I too shall lie among the dear old pines."
"Just as you please,"
she said;
and at that moment the /table d'hote/ bell rang.
The little girl hastened
to the bureau,
and spoke rapidly in German
to the cashier.
"/Ach,
Fraulein/!"
he said.
"You are not really serious?"
"Yes,
I am,"
she said.
"I don't want them
to know my name.
It will only worry me.
Say I am the young lady who tuned the piano."
She had scarcely given these directions and mounted
to her room when Oswald Everard,
who was much interested in his mysterious companion,
came
to the bureau,
and asked
for the name of the little lady.
"/Es ist das Fraulein welches das Piano gestimmt hat/,"
answered the man,
returning
with unusual quickness
to his account-book.
No one spoke
to the little girl at /table d'hote/,
but
for all that she enjoyed her dinner,
and gave her serious attention
to all the courses.
Being thus solidly occupied,
she had not much leisure
to bestow on the conversation of the other guests.
Nor was it specially original;
it treated of the short-comings of the chef,
the tastelessness of the soup,
the toughness of the beef,
and all the many failings which go
to complete a mountain hotel dinner.
But suddenly,
so it seemed
to the little girl,
this time-honoured talk passed into another phase;
she heard the word
"music"
mentioned,
and she became at once interested
to learn what these people had
to say on a subject which was dearer
to her than any other.
"For my own part,"
said a stern-looking old man,
"I have no words
to describe what a gracious comfort music has been
to me all my life.
It is the noblest language which man may understand and speak.
And I sometimes think that those who know it,
or know something of it,
are able at rare moments
to find an answer
to life's perplexing probleMs. "
The little girl looked up from her plate.
Robert Browning's words rose
to her lips,
but she did not give them utterance:
God has a few of us whom He whispers in the ear;
The rest may reason,
and welcome;
'tis we musicians know.
"I have lived through a long life,"
said another elderly man,
"and have therefore had my share of trouble;
but the grief of being obliged
to give up music was the grief which held me longest,
or which perhaps has never left me.
I still crave
for the gracious pleasure of touching once more the strings of the violoncello,
and hearing the dear,
tender voice singing and throbbing,
and answering even
to such poor skill as mine.
I still yearn
to take my part in concerted music,
and be one of those privileged
to play Beethoven's string-quartettes.
But that will have
to be in another incarnation,
I think."
He glanced at his shrunken arm,
and then,
as though ashamed of this allusion
to his own personal infirmity,
he added hastily:
"But when the first pang of such a pain is over,
there remains the comfort of being a listener.
At first one does not think it is a comfort;
but as time goes on there is no resisting its magic influence.
And Lowell said rightly that
'one of God's great charities is music.'
"
"I did not know you were musical,
Mr. Keith,"
said an English lady.
"You have never before spoken of music."
"Perhaps not,
madam,"
he answered.
"One does not often speak of what one cares
for most of all.
But when I am in London I rarely miss hearing our best players."
At this point others joined in,
and the various merits of eminent pianists were warmly discussed.
"What a wonderful name that little English lady has made
for herself!"
said the major,
who was considered an authority on all subjects.
I would go anywhere
to hear Miss Thyra Flowerdew.
We all ought
to be very proud of her.
She has taken even the German musical world by storm,
and they say her recitals at Paris have been brilliantly successful.
I myself have heard her at New York,
Leipsic,
London,
Berlin,
and even Chicago."
The little girl stirred uneasily in her chair.
"I don't think Miss Flowerdew has ever been
to Chicago,"
she said.
There was a dead silence.
The admirer of Miss Thyra Flowerdew looked much annoyed,
and twiddled his watch-chain.
He had meant
to say
"Philadelphia,"
but he did not think it necessary
to own
to his mistake.
"What impertinence!"
said one of the ladies
to Miss Blake.
"What can she know about it?
Is she not the young person who tuned the piano?"
"Perhaps she tunes Miss Thyra Flowerdew's piano!"
suggested Miss Blake,
in a loud whisper.
"You are right,
madam,"
said the little girl,
quietly.
"I have often tuned Miss Flowerdew's piano."
There was another embarrassing silence;
and then a lovely old lady,
whom every one reverenced,
came
to the rescue.
"I think her playing is simply superb,"
she said.
"Nothing that I ever hear satisfies me so entirely.
She has all the tenderness of an angel's touch."
"Listening
to her,"
said the major,
who had now recovered from his annoyance at being interrupted,
"one becomes unconscious of her presence,
for she /is the music itself/.
And that is rare.
It is but seldom nowadays that we are allowed
to forget the personality of the player.
And yet her personality is an unusual one;
having once seen her,
it would not be easy
to forget her.
I should recognise her anywhere."
As he spoke,
he glanced at the little tuner,
and could not help admiring her dignified composure under circumstances which might have been distressing
to any one;
and when she rose
with the others he followed her,
and said stiffly:
"I regret that I was the indirect cause of putting you in an awkward position."
"It is really of no consequence,"
she said,
brightly.
"If you think I was impertinent,
I ask your forgiveness.
I did not mean
to be officious.
The words were spoken before I was aware of them."
She passed into the salon,
where she found a quiet corner
for herself,
and read some of the newspapers.
No one took the slightest notice of her;
not a word was spoken
to her;
but when she relieved the company of her presence her impertinence was commented on.
"I am sorry that she heard what I said,"
remarked Miss Blake;
"but she did not seem
to mind.
These young women who go out into the world lose the edge of their sensitiveness and femininity.
I have always observed that."
"How much they are spared then!"
answered some one.
Meanwhile the little girl slept soundly.
She had merry dreams,
and finally woke up laughing.
She hurried over her breakfast,
and then stood ready
to go
for a butterfly hunt.
She looked thoroughly happy,
and evidently had found,
and was holding tightly,
the key
to life's enjoyment.
Oswald Everard was waiting on the balcony,
and he reminded her that he intended
to go
with her.
"Come along then,"
she answered;
"we must not lose a moment."
They caught butterflies;
they picked flowers;
they ran;
they lingered by the wayside;
they sang;
they climbed,
and he marvelled at her easy speed.
Nothing seemed
to tire her,
and everything seemed
to delight her--the flowers,
the birds,
the clouds,
the grasses,
and the fragrance of the pine woods.
"Is it not good
to live?"
she cried.
"Is it not splendid
to take in the scented air?
Draw in as many long breaths as you can.
Isn't it good?
Don't you feel now as though you were ready
to move mountains?
I do.
What a dear old nurse Nature is! How she pets us,
and gives us the best of her treasures!"
Her happiness invaded Oswald Everard's soul,
and he felt like a school-boy once more,
rejoicing in a fine day and his liberty,
with nothing
to spoil the freshness of the air,
and nothing
to threaten the freedom of the moment.
"Is it not good
to live?"
he cried.
"Yes,
indeed it is,
if we know how
to enjoy."
They had come upon some haymakers,
and the little girl hastened up
to help them,
laughing and talking
to the women,
and helping them
to pile up the hay on the shoulders of a broad-backed man,
who then conveyed his burden
to a pear-shaped stack.
Oswald Everard watched his companion
for a moment,
and then,
quite forgetting his dignity as an amateur tenor singer,
he too lent his aid,
and did not leave off until his companion sank exhausted on the ground.
"Oh,"
she laughed,
"what delightful work
for a very short time! Come along;
let us go into that brown chatlet yonder and ask
for some milk.
I am simply parched
with thirst.
Thank you,
but I prefer
to carry my own flowers."
"What an independent little lady you are!"
he said.
"It is quite necessary in our profession,
I can assure you,"
she said,
with a tone of mischief in her voice.
"That reminds me that my profession is evidently not looked upon
with any favour by the visitors at the hotel.
I am heartbroken
to think that I have not won the esteem of that lady in the billycock hat.
What will she say
to you
for coming out
with me?
And what will she say of me
for allowing you
to come?
I wonder whether she will say,
'How unfeminine!'
I wish I could hear her!"
"I don't suppose you care,"
he said.
"You seem
to be a wild little bird."
"I don't care what a person of that description says,"
replied his companion.
"What on earth made you contradict the major at dinner last night?"
he asked.
"I was not at the table,
but some one told me of the incident;
and I felt very sorry about it.
What could you know of Miss Thyra Flowerdew?"
"Well,
considering that she is in my profession,
of course I know something about her,"
said the little girl.
"Confound it all!"
he said,
rather rudely.
"Surely there is some difference between the bellows-blower and the organist."
"Absolutely none,"
she answered;
"merely a variation of the original theme!"
As she spoke she knocked at the door of the chalet,
and asked the old dame
to give them some milk.
They sat in the /Stube/,
and the little girl looked about,
and admired the spinning-wheel and the quaint chairs and the queer old jugs and the pictures on the walls.
"Ah,
but you shall see the other room,"
the old peasant woman said;
and she led them into a small apartment which was evidently intended
for a study.
It bore evidences of unusual taste and care,
and one could see that some loving hand had been trying
to make it a real sanctum of refinement.
There was even a small piano.
A carved book- rack was fastened
to the wall.
The old dame did not speak at first;
she gave her guests time
to recover from the astonishment which she felt they must be experiencing;
then she pointed proudly
to the piano.
"I bought that
for my daughters,"
she said,
with a strange mixture of sadness and triumph.
"I wanted
to keep them at home
with me,
and I saved and saved,
and got enough money
to buy the piano.
They had always wanted
to have one,
and I thought they would then stay
with me.
They liked music and books,
and I knew they would be glad
to have a room of their own where they might read and play and study;
and so I gave them this corner."
"Well,
mother,"
asked the little girl,
"and where are they this afternoon?"
"Ah,"
she answered sadly,
"they did not care
to stay;
but it was natural enough,
and I was foolish
to grieve.
Besides,
they come
to see me."
"And then they play
to you?"
asked the little girl,
gently.
"They say the piano is out of tune,"
the old dame said.
"I don't know.
Perhaps you can tell."
The little girl sat down
to the piano,
and struck a few chords.
"Yes,"
she said;
"it is badly out of tune.
Give me the tuning-hammer.
I am sorry,"
she added,
smiling at Oswald Everard,
"but I cannot neglect my duty.
Don't wait
for me."
"I will wait
for you,"
he said,
sullenly;
and he went into the balcony and smoked his pipe,
and tried
to possess his soul in patience.
When she had faithfully done her work she played a few simple melodies,
such as she knew the old woman would love and understand;
and she turned away when she saw that the listener's eyes were moist.
"Play once again,"
the old woman whispered.
"I am dreaming of beautiful things."
So the little tuner touched the keys again
with all the tenderness of an angel.
"Tell your daughters,"
she said,
as she rose
to say good-bye,
"that the piano is now in good tune.
Then they will play
to you the next time they come."
"I shall always remember you,
mademoiselle,"
the old woman said;
and,
almost unconsciously,
she took the childish face and kissed it.
Oswald Everard was waiting in the hay-field
for his companion;
and when she apologised
to him
for this little professional intermezzo,
as she called it,
he recovered from his sulkiness and readjusted his nerves,
which the noise of the tuning had somewhat disturbed.
"It was very good of you
to tune the old dame's piano,"
he said,
looking at her
with renewed interest.
"Some one had
to do it,
of course,"
she answered,
brightly,
"and I am glad the chance fell
to me.
What a comfort it is
to think that the next time those daughters come
to see her they will play
to her and make her very happy! Poor old dear!"
"You puzzle me greatly,"
he said.
"I cannot
for the life of me think what made you choose your calling.
You must have many gifts;
any one who talks
with you must see that at once.
And you play quite nicely,
too."
"I am sorry that my profession sticks in your throat,"
she answered.
"Do be thankful that I am nothing worse than a tuner.
For I might be something worse--a snob,
for instance."
And,
so speaking,
she dashed after a butterfly,
and left him
to recover from her words.
He was conscious of having deserved a reproof;
and when at last he overtook her he said as much,
and asked
for her kind indulgence.
"I forgive you,"
she said,
laughing.
"You and I are not looking at things from the same point of view;
but we have had a splendid morning together,
and I have enjoyed every minute of it.
And to-morrow I go on my way."
"And to-morrow you go,"
he repeated.
"Can it not be the day after to-morrow?"
"I am a bird of passage,"
she said,
shaking her head.
"You must not seek
to detain me.
I have taken my rest,
and off I go
to other climes."
They had arrived at the hotel,
and Oswald Everard saw no more of his companion until the evening,
when she came down rather late
for /table d'hote/.
She hurried over her dinner and went into the salon.
She closed the door,
and sat down
to the piano,
and lingered there without touching the keys;
once or twice she raised her hands,
and then she let them rest on the notes,
and,
half unconsciously,
they began
to move and make sweet music;
and then they drifted into Schumann's
"Abendlied,"
and then the little girl played some of his
"Kinderscenen,"
and some of his
"Fantasie Stucke,"
and some of his songs.
Her touch and feeling were exquisite,
and her phrasing betrayed the true musician.
The strains of music reached the dining-room,
and,
one by one,
the guests came creeping in,
moved by the music and anxious
to see the musician.
The little girl did not look up;
she was in a Schumann mood that evening,
and only the players of Schumann know what enthralling possession he takes of their very spirit.
All the passion and pathos and wildness and longing had found an inspired interpreter;
and those who listened
to her were held by the magic which was her own secret,
and which had won
for her such honour as comes only
to the few.
She understood Schumann's music,
and was at her best
with him.
Had she,
perhaps,
chosen
to play his music this evening because she wished
to be at her best?
Or was she merely being impelled by an overwhelming force within her?
Perhaps it was something of both.
Was she wishing
to humiliate these people who had received her so coldly?
This little girl was only human;
perhaps there was something of that feeling too.
Who can tell?
But she played as she had never played in London,
or Paris,
or Berlin,
or New York,
or Philadelphia.
At last she arrived at the
"Carnaval,"
and those who heard her declared afterward that they had never listened
to a more magnificent rendering.
The tenderness was so restrained;
the vigour was so refined.
When the last notes of that spirited
"Marche des Davidsbundler contre les Philistins"
had died away,
she glanced at Oswald Everard,
who was standing near her almost dazed.
"And now my favourite piece of all,"
she said;
and she at once began the
"Second Novelette,"
the finest of the eight,
but seldom played in public.
What can one say of the wild rush of the leading theme,
and the pathetic longing of the intermezzo?
.
.
.
The murmuring dying notes,
That fall as soft as snow on the sea;
and The passionate strain that,
deeply going,
Refines the bosom it trembles through.
What can one say of those vague aspirations and finest thoughts which possess the very dullest among us when such music as that which the little girl had chosen catches us and keeps us,
if only
for a passing moment,
but that moment of the rarest worth and loveliness in our unlovely lives?
What can one say of the highest music except that,
like death,
it is the great leveller:
it gathers us all
to its tender keeping--and we rest.
The little girl ceased playing.
There was not a sound
to be heard;
the magic was still holding her listeners.
When at last they had freed themselves
with a sigh,
they pressed forward
to greet her.
"There is only one person who can play like that,"
cried the major,
with sudden inspiration--"she is Miss Thyra Flowerdew."
The little girl smiled.
"That is my name,"
she said,
simply;
and she slipped out of the room.
The next morning,
at an early hour,
the bird of passage took her flight onward,
but she was not destined
to go off unobserved.
Oswald Everard saw the little figure swinging along the road,
and she overtook her.
"You little wild bird!"
he said.
"And so this was your great idea--to have your fun out of us all,
and then play
to us and make us feel I don't know how,
and then
to go."
"You said the company wanted stirring up,"
she answered,
"and I rather fancy I have stirred them up."
"And what do you suppose you have done
for me?"
he asked.
"I hope I have proved
to you that the bellows-blower and the organist are sometimes identical,"
she answered.
But he shook his head.
"Little wild bird,"
he said,
"you have given me a great idea,
and I will tell you what it is:
/to tame you/.
So good-bye
for the present."
"Good-bye,"
she said.
"But wild birds are not so easily tamed."
Then she waved her hand over her head,
and went on her way singing.
KOOSJE:
A STUDY OF DUTCH LIFE by JOHN STRANGE WINTER Her name was Koosje van Kampen,
and she lived in Utrecht,
that most quaint of quaint cities,
the Venice of the North.
All her life had been passed under the shadow of the grand old Dom Kerk;
she had played bo-peep behind the columns and arcades of the ruined,
moss-grown cloisters;
had slipped up and fallen down the steps leading
to the /grachts/;
had once or twice,
in this very early life,
been fished out of those same slimy,
stagnant waters;
had wandered under the great lindens in the Baan,
and gazed curiously up at the stork's nest in the tree by the Veterinary School;
had pattered about the hollow-sounding streets in her noisy wooden /klompen/;
had danced and laughed,
had quarrelled and wept,
and fought and made friends again,
to the tune of the silver chimes high up in the Dom--chimes that were sometimes old /Nederlandsche/ hymns,
sometimes Mendelssohn's melodies and tender
"Lieder ohne Worte."
But that was ever so long ago,
and now she had left her romping childhood behind her,
and had become a maid-servant--a very dignified and aristocratic maid-servant indeed--with no less a sum than eight pounds ten a year in wages.
She lived in the house of a professor,
who dwelt on the Munster Kerkhoff,
one of the most aristocratic parts of that wonderfully aristocratic city;
and once or twice every week you might have seen her,
if you had been there
to see,
busily engaged in washing the red tile and blue slate pathway in front of the professor's house.
You would have seen that she was very pleasant
to look at,
this Koosje,
very comely and clean,
whether she happened
to be very busy,
or whether it had been Sunday,
and,
with her very best gown on,
she was out
for a promenade in the Baan,
after duly going
to service as regularly as the Sabbath dawned in the grand old Gothic choir of the cathedral.
During the week she wore always the same costume as does every other servant in the country:
a skirt of black stuff,
short enough
to show a pair of very neat-set and well-turned ankles,
clad in cloth shoes and knitted stockings that showed no wrinkles;
over the skirt a bodice and a kirtle of lilac,
made
with a neatly gathered frilling about her round brown throat;
above the frilling five or six rows of unpolished garnet beads fastened by a massive clasp of gold filigree,
and on her head a spotless white cap tied
with a neat bow under her chin--as neat,
let me tell you,
as an Englishman's tie at a party.
But it was on Sunday that Koosje shone forth in all the glory of a black gown and her jewellery--with great ear-rings
to match the clasp of her necklace,
and a heavy chain and cross
to match that again,
and one or two rings;
while on her head she wore an immense cap,
much too big
to put a bonnet over,
though
for walking she was most particular
to have gloves.
Then,
indeed,
she was a young person
to be treated
with respect,
and
with respect she was undoubtedly treated.
As she passed along the quaint,
resounding streets,
many a head was turned
to look after her;
but Koosje went on her way like the staid maiden she was,
duly impressed
with the fact that she was principal servant of Professor van Dijck,
the most celebrated authority on the study of osteology in Europe.
So Koosje never heeded the looks,
turned her head neither
to the right nor
to the left,
but went sedately on her business or pleasure,
whichever it happened
to be.
It was not likely that such a treasure could remain long unnoticed and unsought after.
Servants in the Netherlands,
I hear,
are not so good but that they might be better;
and most people knew what a treasure Professor van Dijck had in his Koosje.
However,
as the professor conscientiously raised her wages from time
to time,
Koosje never thought of leaving him.
But there is one bribe no woman can resist--the bribe that is offered by love.
As Professor van Dijck had expected and feared,
that bribe ere long was held out
to Koosje,
and Koosje was too weak
to resist it.
Not that he wished her
to do so.
If the girl had a chance of settling well and happily
for life,
he would be the last
to dream of throwing any obstacle in her way.
He had come
to be an old man himself;
he lived all alone,
save
for his servants,
in a great,
rambling house,
whose huge apartments were all set out
with horrible anatomical preparations and grisly skeletons;
and,
though the stately passages were paved
with white marble,
and led into rooms which would easily have accommodated crowds of guests,
he went into no society save that of savants as old and fossil-like as himself;
in other words,
he was an old bachelor who lived entirely
for his profession and the study of the great masters by the interpretation of a genuine old Stradivari.
Yet the old professor had a memory;
he recalled the time when he had been young who now was old--the time when his heart was a good deal more tender,
his blood a great deal warmer,
and his fancy very much more easily stirred than nowadays.
There was a dead-and-gone romance which had broken his heart,
sentimentally speaking--a romance long since crumbled into dust,
which had sent him
for comfort into the study of osteology and the music of the Stradivari;
yet the memory thereof made him considerably more lenient
to Koosje's weakness than Koosje herself had ever expected
to find him.
Not that she had intended
to tell him at first;
she was only three and twenty,
and,
though Jan van der Welde was as fine a fellow as could be seen in Utrecht,
and had good wages and something put by,
Koosje was by no means inclined
to rush headlong into matrimony
with undue hurry.
It was more pleasant
to live in the professor's good house,
to have delightful walks arm in arm
with Jan under the trees in the Baan or round the Singels,
parting under the stars
with many a lingering word and promise
to meet again.
It was during one of those very partings that the professor suddenly became aware,
as he walked placidly home,
of the change that had come into Koosje's life.
However,
Koosje told him blushingly that she did not wish
to leave him just at present;
so he did not trouble himself about the matter.
He was a wise man,
this old authority on osteology,
and quoted oftentimes,
"Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof."
So the courtship sped smoothly on,
seeming
for once
to contradict the truth of the old saying,
"The course of true love never did run smooth."
The course of their love did,
of a truth,
run marvellously smooth indeed.
Koosje,
if a trifle coy,
was pleasant and sweet;
Jan as fine a fellow as ever waited round a corner on a cold winter night.
So brightly the happy days slipped by,
when suddenly a change was effected in the professor's household which made,
as a matter of course,
somewhat of a change in Koosje's life.
It came about in this wise.
Koosje had been on an errand
for the professor,--one that had kept her out of doors some time,--and it happened that the night was bitterly cold;
the cold,
indeed,
was fearful.
The air had that damp rawness so noticeable in Dutch climate,
a thick mist overhung the city,
and a drizzling rain came down
with a steady persistence such as quickly soaked through the stoutest and thickest garments.
The streets were well-nigh empty.
The great thoroughfare,
the Oude Gracht,
was almost deserted,
and as Koosje hurried along the Meinerbroederstraat--for she had a second commission there--she drew her great shawl more tightly round her,
muttering crossly,
"What weather! yesterday so warm,
to-day so cold.
'Tis enough
to give one the fever."
She delivered her message,
and ran on through Oude Kerkhoff as fast as her feet could carry her,
when,
just as she turned the corner into the Domplein,
a fierce gust of wind,
accompanied by a blinding shower of rain,
assailed her;
her foot caught against something soft and heavy,
and she fell.
"Bless us!"
she ejaculated,
blankly.
"What fool has left a bundle out on the path on such a night?
Pitch dark,
with half the lamps out,
and rain and mist enough
to blind one."
She gathered herself up,
rubbing elbows and knees vigorously,
casting the while dark glances at the obnoxious bundle which had caused the disaster.
Just then the wind was lulled,
the lamp close at hand gave out a steady light,
which shed its rays through the fog upon Koosje and the bundle,
from which,
to the girl's horror and dismay,
came a faint moan.
Quickly she drew nearer,
when she perceived that what she had believed
to be a bundle was indeed a woman,
apparently in the last stage of exhaustion.
Koosje tried
to lift her;
but the dead-weight was beyond her,
young and strong as she was.
Then the rain and the wind came on again in fiercer gusts than before;
the woman's moans grew louder and louder,
and what
to do Koosje knew not.
She struggled on
for the few steps that lay between her and the professor's house,
and then she rang a peal which resounded through the echoing passages,
bringing Dortje,
the other maid,
running out;
after the manner of her class,
imagining all sorts of terrible catastrophes had happened.
She uttered a cry of relief when she perceived it was only Koosje,
who,
without vouchsafing any explanation,
dashed past her and ran straight into the professor's room.
"O professor!"
she gasped out;
but,
between her efforts
to remove the woman,
her struggle
with the elements,
and her race down the passage,
her breath was utterly gone.
The professor looked up from his book and his tea-tray in surprise.
For a moment he thought that Koosje,
his domestic treasure,
had altogether taken leave of her senses;
for she was streaming
with water,
covered
with mud,
and head and cap were in a state of disorder,
such as neither he nor any one else had ever seen them in since the last time she had been fished out of the Nieuwe Gracht.
"What is the matter,
Koosje?"
he asked,
regarding her gravely over his spectacles.
"There's a woman outside--dying,"
she panted,
"I fell over her."
"You had better try
to get her in then,"
the old gentleman said,
in quite a relieved tone.
"You and Dortje must bring her in.
Dear,
dear,
poor soul! but it is a dreadful night."
The old gentleman shivered as he spoke,
and drew a little nearer
to the tall white porcelain stove.
It was,
as he had said a minute before,
a terrible night.
He could hear the wind beating about the house and rattling about the casements and moaning down the chimneys;
and
to think any poor soul should be out on such a night,
/dying/! Heaven preserve others who might be belated or houseless in any part of the world! He fell into a fit of abstraction,--a habit not uncommon
with learned men,--wondering why life should be so different
with different people;
why he should be in that warm,
handsome room,
with its soft rich hangings and carpet,
with its beautiful furniture of carved wood,
its pictures,
and the rare china scattered here and there among the grim array of skeletons which were his delight.
He wondered why he should take his tea out of costly and valuable Oriental china,
sugar and cream out of antique silver,
while other poor souls had no tea at all,
and nothing
to take it out of even if they had.
He wondered why he should have a lamp under his teapot that was a very marvel of art transparencies;
why he should have every luxury,
and this poor creature should be dying in the street amid the wind and the rain.
It was all very unequal.
It was very odd,
the professor argued,
leaning his back against the tall,
warm stove;
it was very odd indeed.
He began
to feel that,
grand as the study of osteology undoubtedly is,
he ought not
to permit it
to become so engrossing as
to blind him
to the study of the greater philosophies of life.
His reverie was,
however,
broken by the abrupt reentrance of Koosje,
who this time was a trifle less breathless than she had been before.
"We have got her into the kitchen,
professor,"
she announced.
"She is a child--a mere baby,
and so pretty! She has opened her eyes and spoken."
"Give her some soup and wine--hot,"
said the professor,
without stirring.
"But won't you come?"
she asked.
The professor hesitated;
he hated attending in cases of illness,
though he was a properly qualified doctor and in an emergency would lay his prejudice aside.
"Or shall I run across
for the good Dr. Smit?"
Koosje asked.
"He would come in a minute,
only it is /such/ a night!"
At that moment a fiercer gust than before rattled at the casements,
and the professor laid aside his scruples.
He followed his housekeeper down the chilly,
marble-flagged passage into the kitchen,
where he never went
for months together--a cosey enough,
pleasant place,
with a deep valance hanging from the mantel- shelf,
with many great copper pans,
bright and shining as new gold,
and furniture all scrubbed
to the whiteness of snow.
In an arm-chair before the opened stove sat the rescued girl--a slight,
golden-haired thing,
with wistful blue eyes and a frightened air.
Every moment she caught her breath in a half-hysterical sob,
while violent shivers shook her from head
to foot.
The professor went and looked at her over his spectacles,
as if she had been some curious specimen of his favourite study;
but at the same time he kept at a respectful distance from her.
"Give her some soup and wine,"
he said,
at length,
putting his hands under the tails of his long dressing-gown of flowered cashmere.
"Some soup and wine--hot;
and put her
to bed."
"Is she then
to remain
for the night?"
Koosje asked,
a little surprised.
"Oh,
don't send me away!"
the golden-haired girl broke out,
in a voice that was positively a wail,
and clasping a pair of pretty,
slender hands in piteous supplication.
"Where do you come from?"
the old gentleman asked,
much as if he expected she might suddenly jump up and bite him.
"From Beijerland,
mynheer,"
she answered,
with a sob.
"So! Koosje,
she is remarkably well dressed,
is she not?"
the professor said,
glancing at the costly lace head-gear,
the heavy gold head-piece,
which lay on the table together
with the great gold spiral ornaments and filigree pendants--a dazzling head of richness.
He looked,
too,
at the girl's white hands,
at the rich,
crape-laden gown,
at their delicate beauty,
and shower of waving golden hair,
which,
released from the confinement of the cap and head-piece,
floated in a rich mass of glittering beauty over the pillows which his servant had placed beneath her head.
The professor was old;
the professor was wholly given up
to his profession,
which he jokingly called his sweetheart;
and,
though he cut half of his acquaintances in the street through inattention and the shortness of his sight,
he had eyes in his head,
and upon occasions could use them.
He therefore repeated the question.
"Very well dressed indeed,
professor,"
returned Koosje,
promptly.
"And what are you doing in Utrecht--in such a plight as this,
too?"
he asked,
still keeping at a safe distance.
"O mynheer,
I am all alone in the world,"
she answered,
her blue misty eyes filled
with tears.
"I had a month ago a dear,
good,
kind father,
but he has died,
and I am indeed desolate.
I always believed him rich,
and
to these things,"
with a gesture that included her dress and the ornaments on the table,
"I have ever been accustomed.
Thus I ordered without consideration such clothes as I thought needful.
And then I found there was nothing
for me--not a hundred guilders
to call my own when all was paid."
"But what brought you
to Utrecht?"
"He sent me here,
mynheer.
In his last illness,
only of three days'
duration,
he bade me gather all together and come
to this city,
where I was
to ask
for a Mevrouw Baake,
his cousin."
"Mevrouw Baake,
of the Sigaren Fabrijk,"
said Dortje,
in an aside,
to the others.
"I lived servant
with her before I came here."
"I had heard very little about her,
only my father had sometimes mentioned his cousin
to me;
they had once been betrothed,"
the stranger continued.
"But when I reached Utrecht I found she was dead-- two years dead;
but we had never heard of it."
"Dear,
dear,
dear!"
exclaimed the professor,
pityingly.
"Well,
you had better let Koosje put you
to bed,
and we will see what can be done
for you in the morning."
"Am I
to make up a bed?"
Koosje asked,
following him along the passage.
The professor wheeled round and faced her.
"She had better sleep in the guest room,"
he said,
thoughtfully,
regardless of the cold which struck
to his slippered feet from the marble floor.
"That is the only room which does not contain specimens that would probably frighten the poor child.
I am very much afraid,
Koosje,"
he concluded,
doubtfully,
"that she is a lady;
and what we are
to do
with a lady I can't think."
With that the old gentleman shuffled off
to his cosey room,
and Koosje turned back
to her kitchen.
"He'll never think of marrying her,"
mused Koosje,
rather blankly.
If she had spoken the thoughts
to the professor himself,
she would have received a very emphatic assurance that,
much as the study of osteology and the Stradivari had blinded him
to the affairs of this workaday world,
he was not yet so thoroughly foolish as
to join his fossilised wisdom
to the ignorance of a child of sixteen or seventeen.
However,
on the morrow matters assumed a somewhat different aspect.
Gertrude van Floote proved
to be not exactly a gentlewoman.
It is true that her father had been a well-to-do man
for his station in life,
and had very much spoiled and indulged his one motherless child.
Yet her education was so slight that she could do little more than read and write,
besides speaking a little English,
which she had picked up from the yachtsmen frequenting her native town.
The professor found she had been but a distant relative of the Mevrouw Baake,
to seek whom she had come
to Utrecht,
and that she had no kinsfolk upon whom she could depend--a fact which accounted
for the profusion of her jewellery,
all her golden trinkets having descended
to her as heirlooMs. "I can be your servant,
mynheer,"
she suggested.
"Indeed,
I am a very useful girl,
as you will find if you will but try me."
Now,
as a rule,
the professor vigorously set his face against admitting young servants into his house.
They broke his china,
they disarranged his bones,
they meddled
with his papers,
and made general havoc.
So,
in truth,
he was not very willing
to have Gertrude van Floote as a permanent member of his household,
and he said so.
But Koosje had taken a fancy
to the girl;
and having an eye
to her own departure at no very distant date,--for she had been betrothed more than two years,--she pleaded so hard
to keep her,
promising
to train her in all the professor's ways,
to teach her the value of old china and osteologic specimens,
that eventually,
with a good deal of grumbling,
the old gentleman gave way,
and,
being a wise as well as an old gentleman,
went back
to his studies,
dismissing Koosje and the girl alike from his thoughts.
Just at first Truide,
poor child,
was charmed.
She put away her splendid ornaments,
and some lilac frocks and black skirts were purchased
for her.
Her box,
which she had left at the station,
supplied all that was necessary
for Sunday.
It was great fun!
for a whole week this young person danced about the rambling old house,
playing at being a servant.
Then she began
to grow a little weary of it all.
She had been accustomed,
of course,
to performing such offices as all Dutch ladies fulfil--the care of china,
of linen,
the dusting of rooms,
and the like;
but she had done them as a mistress,
not as an underling.
And that was not the worst;
it was when it came
to her pretty feet having
to be thrust into klompen,
and her having
to take a pail and syringe and mop and clean the windows and the pathway and the front of the house,
that the game of maid- servant began
to assume a very different aspect.
When,
after having been as free as air
to come and go as she chose,
she was only permitted
to attend service on Sundays,
and
to take an hour's promenade
with Dortje,
who was dull and heavy and stupid,
she began
to feel positively desperate;
and the result of it all was that when Jan van der Welde came,
as he was accustomed
to do nearly every evening,
to see Koosje,
Miss Truide,
from sheer longing
for excitement and change,
began
to make eyes at him,
with what effect I will endeavour
to show.
Just at first Koosje noticed nothing.
She herself was of so faithful a nature that an idea,
a suspicion,
of Jan's faithlessness never entered her mind.
When the girl laughed and blushed and dimpled and smiled,
when she cast her great blue eyes at the big young fellow,
Koosje only thought how pretty she was,
and it was must a thousand pities she had not been born a great lady.
And thus weeks slipped over.
Never very demonstrative herself,
Koosje saw nothing,
Dortje,
for her part,
saw a great deal;
but Dortje was a woman of few words,
one who quite believed in the saying,
"If speech is silver,
silence is gold;"
so she held her peace.
Now Truide,
rendered fairly frantic by her enforced confinement
to the house,
grew
to look upon Jan as her only chance of excitement and distraction;
and Jan,
poor,
thick-headed noodle of six feet high,
was thoroughly wretched.
What
to do he knew not.
A strange,
mad,
fierce passion
for Truide had taken possession of him,
and an utter distaste,
almost dislike,
had come in place of the old love
for Koosje.
Truide was unlike anything he had ever come in contact
with before;
she was so fairy-like,
so light,
so delicate,
so dainty.
Against Koosje's plumper,
maturer charms,
she appeared
to the infatuated young man like --if he had ever heard of it he would probably have said like a Dresden china image;
but since he had not,
he compared her in his own foolish heart
to an angel.
Her feet were so tiny,
her hands so soft,
her eyes so expressive,
her waist so slim,
her manner so bewitching! Somehow Koosje was altogether different;
he could not endure the touch of her heavy hand,
the tones of her less refined voice;
he grew impatient at the denser perceptions of her mind.
It was very foolish,
very short-sighted;
for the hands,
though heavy,
were clever and willing;
the voice,
though a trifle coarser in accent than Truide's childish tones,
would never tell him a lie;
the perceptions,
though not brilliant,
were the perceptions of good,
every-day common sense.
It really was very foolish,
for what charmed him most in Truide was the merest outside polish,
a certain ease of manner which doubtless she had caught from the English aristocrats whom she had known in her native place.
She had not half the sterling good qualities and steadfastness of Koosje;
but Jan was in love,
and did not stop
to argue the matter as you or I are able
to do.
Men in love--very wise and great men,
too--are often like Jan van der Welde.
They lay aside pro tem.
the whole amount,
be it great or small,
of wisdom they possess.
And it must be remembered that Jan van der Welde was neither a wise nor a great man.
Well,
in the end there came what the French call /un denouement/,-- what we in forcible modern English would call a /smash/,--and it happened thus.
It was one evening toward the summer that Koosje's eyes were suddenly opened,
and she became aware of the free-and-easy familiarity of Truide's manner toward her betrothed lover,
Jan.
It was some very slight and trivial thing that led her
to notice it,
but in an instant the whole truth flashed across her mind.
"Leave the kitchen!"
she said,
in a tone of authority.
But it happened that,
at the very instant she spoke,
Jan was furtively holding Truide's fingers under the cover of the table-cloth;
and when,
on hearing the sharp words,
the girl would have snatched them away,
he,
with true masculine instinct of opposition,
held them fast.
"What do you mean by speaking
to her like that?"
he demanded,
an angry flush overspreading his dark face.
"What is the maid
to you?"
Koosje asked,
indignantly.
"Maybe more than you are,"
he retorted;
in answer
to which Koosje deliberately marched out of the kitchen,
leaving them alone.
To say she was indignant would be but very mildly
to express the state of her feelings;
she was /furious/.
She knew that the end of her romance had come.
No thoughts of making friends
with Jan entered her mind;
only a great storm filled her heart till it was ready
to burst
with pain and anguish.
As she went along the passage the professor's bell sounded,
and Koosje,
being close
to the door,
went abruptly in.
The professor looked up in mild astonishment,
quickly enough changed
to dismay as he caught sight of his valued Koosje's face,
from out of which anger seemed in a moment
to have thrust all the bright,
comely beauty.
"How now,
my good Koosje?"
said the old gentleman.
"Is aught amiss?"
"Yes,
professor,
there is,"
returned Koosje,
all in a blaze of anger,
and moving,
as she spoke,
the tea-tray,
which she set down upon the oaken buffet
with a bang,
which made its fair and delicate freight fairly jingle again.
"But you needn't break my china,
Koosje,"
suggested the old gentleman,
mildly,
rising from his chair and getting into his favourite attitude before the stove.
"You are quite right,
professor,"
returned Koosje,
curtly;
she was sensible even in her trouble.
"And what is the trouble?"
he asked,
gently.
"It's just this,
professor,"
cried Koosje,
setting her arms akimbo and speaking in a high-pitched,
shrill voice;
"you and I have been warming a viper in our bosoms,
and,
viper-like,
she has turned round and bitten me."
"Is it Truide?"
"Truide,"
she affirmed,
disdainfully.
"Yes,
it is Truide,
who but
for me would be dead now of hunger and cold--or /worse/.
And she has been making love
to that great fool,
Jan van der Welde,--great oaf that he is,--after all I have done
for her;
after my dragging her in out of the cold and rain;
after all I have taught her.
Ah,
professor,
but it is a vile,
venomous viper that we have been warming in our bosoms!"
"I must beg,
Koosje,"
said the old gentleman,
sedately,
"that you will exonerate me from any such proceeding.
If you remember rightly,
I was altogether against your plan
for keeping her in the house."
He could not resist giving her that little dig,
kind of heart as he was.
"Serves me right
for being so soft-hearted!"
thundered Koosje.
"I'll be wiser next time I fall over a bundle,
and leave it where I find it."
"No,
no,
Koosje;
don't say that,"
the old gentleman remonstrated,
gently.
"After all,
it may be but a blessing in disguise.
God sends all our trials
for some good and wise purpose.
Our heaviest afflictions are often,
nay,
most times,
Koosje,
means
to some great end which,
while the cloud of adversity hangs over us,
we are unable
to discern."
"Ah!"
sniffed Koosje,
scornfully.
"This oaf--as I must say you justly term him,
for you are a good clever woman,
Koosje,
as I can testify after the experience of years-- has proved that he can be false;
he has shown that he can throw away substance
for shadow
(for,
of a truth,
that poor,
pretty child would make a sad wife
for a poor man);
yet it is better you should know it now than at some future date,
when--when there might be other ties
to make the knowledge more bitter
to you."
"Yes,
that is true,"
said Koosje,
passing the back of her hand across her trembling lips.
She could not shed tears over her trouble;
her eyes were dry and burning,
as if anger had scorched the blessed drops up ere they should fall.
She went on washing up the cups and saucers,
or at least /the/ cup and saucer,
and other articles the professor had used
for his tea;
and after a few minutes'
silence he spoke again.
"What are you going
to do?
Punish her,
or turn her out,
or what?"
"I shall let him--/marry/ her,"
replied Koosje,
with a portentous nod.
The old gentleman couldn't help laughing.
"You think he will pay off your old scores?"
"Before long,"
answered Koosje,
grimly,
"she will find him out--as I have done."
Then,
having finished washing the tea-things,
which the professor had shuddered
to behold in her angry hands,
she whirled herself out of the room and left him alone.
"Oh,
these women--these women!"
he cried,
in confidence,
to the pictures and skeletons.
"What a worry they are! An old bachelor has the best of it in the main,
I do believe.
But oh,
Jan van der Welde,
what a donkey you must be
to get yourself mixed up in such a broil! and yet--ah!"
The fossilised old gentleman broke off
with a sigh as he recalled the memory of a certain dead-and-gone romance which had happened--goodness only knows how many years before--when he,
like Jan van der Welde,
would have thrown the world away
for a glance of a certain pair of blue eyes,
at the bidding of a certain English tongue,
whose broken /Nederlandsche taal/ was
to him the sweetest music ever heard on earth --sweeter even than the strains of the Stradivari when from under his skilful fingers rose the perfect melodies of old masters.
Ay,
but the sweet eyes had been closed in death many a long,
long,
year,
the sweet voice hushed in silence.
He had watched the dear life ebb away,
the fire in the blue eyes fade out.
He had felt each day that the clasp of the little greeting fingers was less close;
each day he had seen the outline of the face grow sharper;
and at last there had come one when the poor little English-woman met him
with the gaze of one who knew him not,
and babbled,
not of green fields,
but of horses and dogs,
and of a brother Jack,
who,
five years before,
had gone down
with her Majesty's ship /Alligator/ in mid-Atlantic.
Ay,
but that was many and many a year agone.
His young,
blue-eyed love stood out alone in life's history,
a thing apart.
Of the gentler sex,
in a general way,
the old professor had not seen that which had raised it in his estimation
to the level of the one woman over whose memory hung a bright halo of romance.
Fifteen years had passed away;
the old professor of osteology had passed away
with them;
and in the large house on the Domplein lived a baron,
with half a dozen noisy,
happy,
healthy children,--young /fraulas/ and /jonkheers/,--who scampered up and down the marble passages,
and fell headlong down the steep,
narrow,
unlighted stairways,
to the imminent danger of dislocating their aristocratic little necks.
There was a new race of neat maids,
clad in the same neat livery of lilac and black,
who scoured and cleaned,
just as Koosje and Dortje had done in the old professor's day.
You might,
indeed,
have heard the selfsame names resounding through the echoing rooms:
"Koos-je! Dort-je!"
But the Koosje and Dortje were not the same.
What had become of Dortje I cannot say;
but on the left-hand side of the busy,
bustling,
picturesque Oude Gracht there was a handsome shop filled
with all manner of cakes,
sweeties,
confections,
and liquors--from absinthe
to Benedictine,
or arrack
to chartreuse.
In that shop was a handsome,
prosperous,
middle-aged woman,
well dressed and well mannered,
no longer Professor van Dijck's Koosje,
but the Jevrouw van Kampen.
Yes;
Koosje had come
to be a prosperous tradeswoman of good position,
respected by all.
But she was Koosje van Kampen still;
the romance which had come
to so disastrous and abrupt an end had sufficed
for her life.
Many an offer had been made
to her,
it is true;
but she had always declared that she had had enough of lovers--she had found out their real value.
I must tell you that at the time of Jan's infidelity,
after the first flush of rage was over,
Koosje disdained
to show any sign of grief or regret.
She was very proud,
this Netherland servant-maid,
far too proud
to let those by whom she was surrounded imagine she was wearing the willow
for the faithless Jan;
and when Dortje,
on the day of the wedding,
remarked that
for her part she had always considered Koosje remarkably cool on the subject of matrimony,
Koosje
with a careless out-turning of her hands,
palms uppermost,
answered that she was right.
Very soon after their marriage Jan and his young wife left Utrecht
for Arnheim,
where Jan had promise of higher wages;
and thus they passed,
as Koosje thought,
completely out of her life.
"I don't wish
to hear anything more about them,
if--you--please,"
she said,
severely and emphatically,
to Dortje.
But not so.
In time the professor died,
leaving Koosje the large legacy
with which she set up the handsome shop in the Oude Gracht;
and several years passed on.
It happened one day that Koosje was sitting in her shop sewing.
In the large inner room a party of ladies and officers were eating cakes and drinking chocolates and liquors
with a good deal of fun and laughter,
when the door opened timidly,
thereby letting in a gust of bitter wind,
and a woman crept fearfully in,
followed by two small,
crying children.
Could the lady give her something
to eat?
she asked;
they had had nothing during the day,
and the little ones were almost famished.
Koosje,
who was very charitable,
lifted a tray of large,
plain buns,
and was about
to give her some,
when her eyes fell upon the poor beggar's faded face,
and she exclaimed:
"Truide!"
Truide,
for it was she,
looked up in startled surprise.
"I did not know,
or I would not have come in,
Koosje,"
she said,
humbly;
"for I treated you very badly."
"Ve-ry bad-ly,"
returned Koosje,
emphatically.
"Then where is Jan?"
"Dead!"
murmured Truide,
sadly.
"Dead! so--ah,
well! I suppose I must do something
for you.
Here Yanke!"
opening the door and calling,
"Yanke!"
"/Je,
jevrouw/,"
a voice cried,
in reply.
The next moment a maid came running into the shop.
"Take these people into the kitchen and give them something
to eat.
Put them by the stove while you prepare it.
There is some soup and that smoked ham we had
for /koffy/.
Then come here and take my place
for a while."
"/Je,
jevrouw/,"
said Yanke,
disappearing again,
followed by Truide and her children.
Then Koosje sat down again,
and began
to think.
"I said,"
she mused,
presently,
"/that/ night that the next time I fell over a bundle I'd leave it where I found it.
Ah,
well! I'm not a barbarian;
I couldn't do that.
I never thought,
though,
it would be Truide."
"/Hi,
jevrouw/,"
was called from the inner room.
"/Je,
mynheer/,"
jumping up and going
to her customers.
She attended
to their wants,
and presently bowed them out.
"I never thought it would be Truide,"
she repeated
to herself,
as she closed the door behind the last of the gay uniforms and jingling scabbards.
"And Jan is dead--ah,
well!"
Then she went into the kitchen,
where the miserable children--girls both of them,
and pretty had they been clean and less forlornly clad-- were playing about the stove.
"So Jan is dead,"
began Koosje,
seating herself.
"Yes,
Jan is dead,"
Truide answered.
"And he left you nothing?"
Koosje asked.
"We had had nothing
for a long time,"
Truide replied,
in her sad,
crushed voice.
"We didn't get on very well;
he soon got tired of me."
"That was a weakness of his,"
remarked Koosje,
drily.
"We lost five little ones,
one after another,"
Truide continued.
"And Jan was fond of them,
and somehow it seemed
to sour him.
As
for me,
I was sorry enough at the time,
Heaven knows,
but it was as well.
But Jan said it seemed as if a curse had fallen upon us;
he began
to wish you back again,
and
to blame me
for having come between you.
And then he took
to /genever/,
and then
to wish
for something stronger;
so at last every stiver went
for absinthe,
and once or twice he beat me,
and then he died."
"Just as well,"
muttered Koosje,
under her breath.
"It is very good of you
to have fed and warmed us,"
Truide went on,
in her faint,
complaining tones.
"Many a one would have let me starve,
and I should have deserved it.
It is very good of you and we are grateful;
but
'tis time we were going,
Koosje and Mina;"
then added,
with a shake of her head,
"but I don't know where."
"Oh,
you'd better stay,"
said Koosje,
hurriedly.
"I live in this big house by myself,
and I dare say you'll be more useful in the shop than Yanke--if your tongue is as glib as it used
to be,
that is.
You know some English,
too,
don't you?"
"A little,"
Truide answered,
eagerly.
"And after all,"
Koosje said,
philosophically,
shrugging her shoulders,
"you saved me from the beatings and the starvings and the rest.
I owe you something
for that.
Why,
if it hadn't been
for you I should have been silly enough
to have married him."
And then she went back
to her shop,
saying
to herself:
"The professor said it was a blessing in disguise;
God sends all our trials
to work some great purpose.
Yes;
that was what he said,
and he knew most things.
Just think if I were trailing about now
with those two little ones,
with nothing
to look back
to but a schnapps-drinking husband who beat me! Ah,
well,
well! things are best as they are.
I don't know that I ought not
to be very much obliged
to her--and she'll be very useful in the shop."
A DOG OF FLANDERS by OUIDA Nello and Patrasche were left all alone in the world.
They were friends in a friendship closer than brotherhood.
Nello was a little Ardennois;
Patrasche was a big Fleming.
They were both of the same age by length of years;
yet one was still young,
and the other was already old.
They had dwelt together almost all their days;
both were orphaned and destitute,
and owed their lives
to the same hand.
It had been the beginning of the tie between them,--their first bond of sympathy,--and it had strengthened day by day,
and had grown
with their growth,
firm and indissoluble,
until they loved one another very greatly.
Their home was a little hut on the edge of a little village--a Flemish village a league from Antwerp,
set amidst flat breadths of pasture and corn-lands,
with long lines of poplars and of alders bending in the breeze on the edge of the great canal which ran through it.
It had about a score of houses and homesteads,
with shutters of bright green or sky blue,
and roofs rose red or black and white,
and walls whitewashed until they shone in the sun like snow.
In the centre of the village stood a windmill,
placed on a little moss-grown slope;
it was a landmark
to all the level country round.
It had once been painted scarlet,
sails and all;
but that had been in its infancy,
half a century or more earlier,
when it had ground wheat
for the soldiers of Napoleon;
and it was now a ruddy brown,
tanned by wind and weather.
It went queerly by fits and starts,
as though rheumatic and stiff in the joints from age;
but it served the whole neighborhood,
which would have thought it almost as impious
to carry grain elsewhere as
to attend any other religious service than the mass that was performed at the altar of the little old gray church,
with its conical steeple,
which stood opposite
to it,
and whose single bell rang morning,
noon,
and night
with that strange,
subdued,
hollow sadness which every bell that hangs in the Low Countries seems
to gain as an integral part of its melody.
Within sound of the little melancholy clock almost from their birth upward,
they had dwelt together,
Nello and Patrasche,
in the little hut on the edge of the village,
with the cathedral spire of Antwerp rising in the northeast,
beyond the great green plain of seeding grass and spreading corn that stretched away from them like a tideless,
changeless sea.
It was the hut of a very old man,
of a very poor man-- of old Jehan Daas,
who in his time had been a soldier,
and who remembered the wars that had trampled the country as oxen tread down the furrows,
and who had brought from his service nothing except a wound,
which had made him a cripple.
When old Jehan Daas had reached his full eighty,
his daughter had died in the Ardennes,
hard by Stavelot,
and had left him in legacy her two- year-old son.
The old man could ill contrive
to support himself,
but he took up the additional burden uncomplainingly,
and it soon became welcome and precious
to him.
Little Nello,
which was but a pet diminutive
for Nicolas,
throve
with him,
and the old man and the little child lived in the poor little hut contentedly.
It was a very humble little mud hut indeed,
but it was clean and white as a sea-shell,
and stood in a small plot of garden ground that yielded beans and herbs and pumpkins.
They were very poor,
terribly poor;
many a day they had nothing at all
to eat.
They never by any chance had enough;
to have had enough
to eat would have been
to have reached paradise at once.
But the old man was very gentle and good
to the boy,
and the boy was a beautiful,
innocent,
truthful,
tender- natured creature;
and they were happy on a crust and a few leaves of cabbage,
and asked no more of earth or heaven--save indeed that Patrasche should be always
with them,
since without Patrasche where would they have been?
For Patrasche was their alpha and omega;
their treasury and granary;
their store of gold and wand of wealth;
their bread-winner and minister;
their only friend and comforter.
Patrasche dead or gone from them,
they must have laid themselves down and died likewise.
Patrasche was body,
brains,
hands,
head,
and feet
to both of them;
Patrasche was their very life,
their very soul.
For Jehan Daas was old and a cripple,
and Nello was but a child;
and Patrasche was their dog.
A dog of Flanders--yellow of hide,
large of head and limb,
with wolf- like ears that stood erect,
and legs bowed and feet widened in the muscular development wrought in his breed by many generations of hard service.
Patrasche came of a race which had toiled hard and cruelly from sire
to son in Flanders many a century--slaves of slaves,
dogs of the people,
beasts of the shafts and the harness,
creatures that lived straining their sinews in the gall of the cart,
and died breaking their hearts on the flints of the streets.
Patrasche had been born of parents who had labored hard all their days over the sharp-set stones of the various cities and the long,
shadowless,
weary roads of the two Flanders and of Brabant.
He had been born
to no other heritage than those of pain and of toil.
He had been fed on curses and baptized
with blows.
Why not?
It was a Christian country,
and Patrasche was but a dog.
Before he was fully grown he had known the bitter gall of the cart and the collar.
Before he had entered his thirteenth month he had become the property of a hardware dealer,
who was accustomed
to wander over the land north and south,
from the blue sea
to the green mountains.
They sold him
for a small price,
because he was so young.
This man was a drunkard and a brute.
The life of Patrasche was a life of hell.
To deal the tortures of hell on the animal creation is a way which the Christians have of showing their belief in it.
His purchaser was a sullen,
ill-living,
brutal Brabantois,
who heaped his cart full
with pots and pans and flagons and buckets,
and other wares of crockery and brass and tin,
and left Patrasche
to draw the load as best he might,
while he himself lounged idly by the side in fat and sluggish ease,
smoking his black pipe and stopping at every wineshop or cafe on the road.
Happily
for Patrasche,
or unhappily,
he was very strong;
he came of an iron race,
long born and bred
to such cruel travail;
so that he did not die,
but managed
to drag on a wretched existence under the brutal burdens,
the scarifying lashes,
the hunger,
the thirst,
the blows,
the curses,
and the exhaustion which are the only wages
with which the Flemings repay the most patient and laborious of all their four-footed victiMs. One day,
after two years of this long and deadly agony,
Patrasche was going on as usual along one of the straight,
dusty,
unlovely roads that lead
to the city of Rubens.
It was full midsummer,
and very warm.
His cart was very heavy,
piled high
with goods in metal and in earthenware.
His owner sauntered on without noticing him otherwise than by the crack of the whip as it curled round his quivering loins.
The Brabantois had paused
to drink beer himself at every wayside house,
but he had forbidden Patrasche
to stop a moment
for a draught from the canal.
Going along thus,
in the full sun,
on a scorching highway,
having eaten nothing
for twenty-four hours,
and,
which was far worse
to him,
not having tasted water
for near twelve,
being blind
with dust,
sore
with blows,
and stupefied
with the merciless weight which dragged upon his loins,
Patrasche staggered and foamed a little at the mouth,
and fell.
He fell in the middle of the white,
dusty road,
in the full glare of the sun;
he was sick unto death,
and motionless.
His master gave him the only medicine in his pharmacy--kicks and oaths and blows
with a cudgel of oak,
which had been often the only food and drink,
the only wage and reward,
ever offered
to him.
But Patrasche was beyond the reach of any torture or of any curses.
Patrasche lay,
dead
to all appearances,
down in the white powder of the summer dust.
After a while,
finding it useless
to assail his ribs
with punishment and his ears
with maledictions,
the Brabantois--deeming life gone in him,
or going,
so nearly that his carcass was forever useless,
unless,
indeed,
some one should strip it of the skin
for gloves--cursed him fiercely in farewell,
struck off the leathern bands of the harness,
kicked his body aside into the grass,
and,
groaning and muttering in savage wrath,
pushed the cart lazily along the road uphill,
and left the dying dog
for the ants
to sting and
for the crows
to pick.
It was the last day before kermess away at Louvain,
and the Brabantois was in haste
to reach the fair and get a good place
for his truck of brass wares.
He was in fierce wrath,
because Patrasche had been a strong and much-enduring animal,
and because he himself had now the hard task of pushing his /charette/ all the way
to Louvain.
But
to stay
to look after Patrasche never entered his thoughts;
the beast was dying and useless,
and he would steal,
to replace him,
the first large dog that he found wandering alone out of sight of its master.
Patrasche had cost him nothing,
or next
to nothing,
and
for two long,
cruel years he had made him toil ceaselessly in his service from sunrise
to sunset,
through summer and winter,
in fair weather and foul.
He had got a fair use and a good profit out of Patrasche;
being human,
he was wise,
and left the dog
to draw his last breath alone in the ditch,
and have his bloodshot eyes plucked out as they might be by the birds,
whilst he himself went on his way
to beg and
to steal,
to eat and
to drink,
to dance and
to sing,
in the mirth at Louvain.
A dying dog,
a dog of the cart--why should he waste hours over its agonies at peril of losing a handful of copper coins,
at peril of a shout of laughter?
Patrasche lay there,
flung in the grass-green ditch.
It was a busy road that day,
and hundreds of people,
on foot and on mules,
in waggons or in carts,
went by,
tramping quickly and joyously on
to Louvain.
Some saw him;
most did not even look;
all passed on.
A dead dog more or less--it was nothing in Brabant;
it would be nothing anywhere in the world.
After a time,
among the holiday-makers,
there came a little old man who was bent and lame,
and very feeble.
He was in no guise
for feasting;
he was very poorly and miserably clad,
and he dragged his silent way slowly through the dust among the pleasure-seekers.
He looked at Patrasche,
paused,
wondered,
turned aside,
then kneeled down in the rank grass and weeds of the ditch,
and surveyed the dog
with kindly eyes of pity.
There was
with him a little rosy,
fair-haired,
dark-eyed child of a few years old,
who pattered in amid the bushes,
that were
for him breast-high,
and stood gazing
with a pretty seriousness upon the poor,
great,
quiet beast.
Thus it was that these two first met--the little Nello and the big Patrasche.
The upshot of that day was,
that old Jehan Daas,
with much laborious effort,
drew the sufferer homeward
to his own little hut,
which was a stone's throw off amidst the fields;
and there tended him
with so much care that the sickness,
which had been a brain seizure brought on by heat and thirst and exhaustion,
with time and shade and rest passed away,
and health and strength returned,
and Patrasche staggered up again upon his four stout,
tawny legs.
Now
for many weeks he had been useless,
powerless,
sore,
near
to death;
but all this time he had heard no rough word,
had felt no harsh touch,
but only the pitying murmurs of the child's voice and the soothing caress of the old man's hand.
In his sickness they two had grown
to care
for him,
this lonely man and the little happy child.
He had a corner of the hut,
with a heap of dry grass
for his bed;
and they had learned
to listen eagerly
for his breathing in the dark night,
to tell them that he lived;
and when he first was well enough
to essay a loud,
hollow,
broken bay,
they laughed aloud,
and almost wept together
for joy at such a sign of his sure restoration;
and little Nello,
in delighted glee,
hung round his rugged neck chains of marguerites,
and kissed him
with fresh and ruddy lips.
So then,
when Patrasche arose,
himself again,
strong,
big,
gaunt,
powerful,
his great wistful eyes had a gentle astonishment in them that there were no curses
to rouse him and no blows
to drive him;
and his heart awakened
to a mighty love,
which never wavered once in its fidelity while life abode
with him.
But Patrasche,
being a dog,
was grateful.
Patrasche lay pondering long
with grave,
tender,
musing brown eyes,
watching the movements of his friends.
Now,
the old soldier,
Jehan Daas,
could do nothing
for his living but limp about a little
with a small cart,
with which he carried daily the milk-cans of those happier neighbours who owned cattle away into the town of Antwerp.
The villagers gave him the employment a little out of charity;
more because it suited them well
to send their milk into the town by so honest a carrier,
and bide at home themselves
to look after their gardens,
their cows,
their poultry,
or their little fields.
But it was becoming hard work
for the old man.
He was eighty-three,
and Antwerp was a good league off,
or more.
Patrasche watched the milk-cans come and go that one day when he had got well and was lying in the sun
with the wreath of marguerites round his tawny neck.
The next morning,
Patrasche,
before the old man had touched the cart,
arose and walked
to it and placed himself betwixt its handles,
and testified as plainly as dumb-show could do his desire and his ability
to work in return
for the bread of charity that he had eaten.
Jehan Daas resisted long,
for the old man was one of those who thought it a foul shame
to bind dogs
to labor
for which Nature never formed them.
But Patrasche would not be gainsaid;
finding they did not harness him,
he tried
to draw the cart onward
with his teeth.
At length Jehan Daas gave way,
vanquished by the persistence and the gratitude of this creature whom he had succored.
He fashioned his cart so that Patrasche could run in it,
and this he did every morning of his life thenceforward.
When the winter came,
Jehan Daas thanked the blessed fortune that had brought him
to the dying dog in the ditch that fair-day of Louvain;
for he was very old,
and he grew feebler
with each year,
and he would ill have known how
to pull his load of milk-cans over the snows and through the deep ruts in the mud if it had not been
for the strength and the industry of the animal he had befriended.
As
for Patrasche,
it seemed heaven
to him.
After the frightful burdens that his old master had compelled him
to strain under,
at the call of the whip at every step,
it seemed nothing
to him but amusement
to step out
with this little light,
green cart,
with its bright brass cans,
by the side of the gentle old man who always paid him
with a tender caress and
with a kindly word.
Besides,
his work was over by three or four in the day,
and after that time he was free
to do as he would--to stretch himself,
to sleep in the sun,
to wander in the fields,
to romp
with the young child,
or
to play
with his fellow-dogs.
Patrasche was very happy.
Fortunately
for his peace,
his former owner was killed in a drunken brawl at the kermess of Mechlin,
and so sought not after him nor disturbed him in his new and well-loved home.
A few years later,
old Jehan Daas,
who had always been a cripple,
became so paralyzed
with rheumatism that it was impossible
for him
to go out
with the cart any more.
Then little Nello,
being now grown
to his sixth year of age,
and knowing the town well from having accompanied his grandfather so many times,
took his place beside the cart,
and sold the milk and received the coins in exchange,
and brought them back
to their respective owners
with a pretty grace and seriousness which charmed all who beheld him.
The little Ardennois was a beautiful child,
with dark,
grave,
tender eyes,
and a lovely bloom upon his face,
and fair locks that clustered
to his throat;
and many an artist sketched the group as it went by him --the green cart
with the brass flagons of Teniers and Mieris and Van Tal,
and the great,
tawny-colored,
massive dog,
with his belled harness that chimed cheerily as he went,
and the small figure that ran beside him which had little white feet in great wooden shoes,
and a soft,
grave,
innocent,
happy face like the little fair children of Rubens.
Nello and Patrasche did the work so well and so joyfully together that Jehan Daas himself,
when the summer came and he was better again,
had no need
to stir out,
but could sit in the doorway in the sun and see them go forth through the garden wicket,
and then doze and dream and pray a little,
and then awake again as the clock tolled three and watch
for their return.
And on their return Patrasche would shake himself free of his harness
with a bay of glee,
and Nello would recount
with pride the doings of the day;
and they would all go in together
to their meal of rye bread and milk or soup,
and would see the shadows lengthen over the great plain,
and see the twilight veil the fair cathedral spire;
and then lie down together
to sleep peacefully while the old man said a prayer.
So the days and the years went on,
and the lives of Nello and Patrasche were happy,
innocent,
and healthful.
In the spring and summer especially were they glad.
Flanders is not a lovely land,
and around the burg of Rubens it is perhaps least lovely of all.
Corn and colza,
pasture and plough,
succeed each other on the characterless plain in wearying repetition,
and,
save by some gaunt gray tower,
with its peal of pathetic bells,
or some figure coming athwart the fields,
made picturesque by a gleaner's bundle or a woodman's fagot,
there is no change,
no variety,
no beauty anywhere;
and he who has dwelt upon the mountains or amid the forests feels oppressed as by imprisonment
with the tedium and the endlessness of that vast and dreary level.
But it is green and very fertile,
and it has wide horizons that have a certain charm of their own even in their dulness and monotony;
and among the rushes by the waterside the flowers grow,
and the trees rise tall and fresh where the barges glide,
with their great hulks black against the sun,
and their little green barrels and vari-coloured flags gay against the leaves.
Anyway,
there is greenery and breadth of space enough
to be as good as beauty
to a child and a dog;
and these two asked no better,
when their work was done,
than
to lie buried in the lush grasses on the side of the canal,
and watch the cumbrous vessels drifting by and bringing the crisp salt smell of the sea among the blossoming scents of the country summer.
True,
in the winter it was harder,
and they had
to rise in the darkness and the bitter cold,
and they had seldom as much as they could have eaten any day;
and the hut was scarce better than a shed when the nights were cold,
although it looked so pretty in warm weather,
buried in a great kindly clambering vine,
that never bore fruit,
indeed,
but which covered it
with luxuriant green tracery all through the months of blossom and harvest.
In winter the winds found many holes in the walls of the poor little hut,
and the vine was black and leafless,
and the bare lands looked very bleak and drear without,
and sometimes within the floor was flooded and then frozen.
In winter it was hard,
and the snow numbed the little white limbs of Nello,
and the icicles cut the brave,
untiring feet of Patrasche.
But even then they were never heard
to lament,
either of them.
The child's wooden shoes and the dog's four legs would trot manfully together over the frozen fields
to the chime of the bells on the harness;
and then sometimes,
in the streets of Antwerp,
some housewife would bring them a bowl of soup and a handful of bread,
or some kindly trader would throw some billets of fuel into the little cart as it went homeward,
or some woman in their own village would bid them keep a share of the milk they carried
for their own food;
and they would run over the white lands,
through the early darkness,
bright and happy,
and burst
with a shout of joy into their home.
So,
on the whole,
it was well
with them--very well;
and Patrasche,
meeting on the highway or in the public streets the many dogs who toiled from daybreak into nightfall,
paid only
with blows and curses,
and loosened from the shafts
with a kick
to starve and freeze as best they might--Patrasche in his heart was very grateful
to his fate,
and thought it the fairest and the kindliest the world could hold.
Though he was often very hungry indeed when he lay down at night;
though he had
to work in the heats of summer noons and the rasping chills of winter dawns;
though his feet were often tender
with wounds from the sharp edges of the jagged pavement;
though he had
to perform tasks beyond his strength and against his nature--yet he was grateful and content;
he did his duty
with each day,
and the eyes that he loved smiled down on him.
It was sufficient
for Patrasche.
There was only one thing which caused Patrasche any uneasiness in his life,
and it was this.
Antwerp,
as all the world knows,
is full at every turn of old piles of stones,
dark and ancient and majestic,
standing in crooked courts,
jammed against gateways and taverns,
rising by the water's edge,
with bells ringing above them in the air,
and ever and again out of their arched doors a swell of music pealing.
There they remain,
the grand old sanctuaries of the past,
shut in amid the squalor,
the hurry,
the crowds,
the unloveliness,
and the commerce of the modern world;
and all day long the clouds drift and the birds circle and the winds sigh around them,
and beneath the earth at their feet there sleeps--RUBENS.
And the greatness of the mighty master still rests upon Antwerp,
and wherever we turn in its narrow streets his glory lies therein,
so that all mean things are thereby transfigured;
and as we pace slowly through the winding ways,
and by the edge of the stagnant water,
and through the noisome courts,
his spirit abides
with us,
and the heroic beauty of his visions is about us,
and the stones that once felt his footsteps and bore his shadow seem
to arise and speak of him
with living voices.
For the city which is the tomb of Rubens still lives
to us through him,
and him alone.
It is so quiet there by that great white sepulchre--so quiet,
save only when the organ peals and the choir cries aloud the Salve Regina or the Kyrie eleison.
Sure no artist ever had a greater gravestone than that pure marble sanctuary gives
to him in the heart of his birthplace in the chancel of St. Jacques.
Without Rubens,
what were Antwerp?
A dirty,
dusky,
bustling mart,
which no man would ever care
to look upon save the traders who do business on its wharves.
With Rubens,
to the whole world of men it is a sacred name,
a sacred soil,
a Bethlehem where a god of art saw light,
a Golgotha where a god of art lies dead.
O nations! closely should you treasure your great men;
for by them alone will the future know of you.
Flanders in her generations has been wise.
In his life she glorified this greatest of her sons,
and in his death she magnifies his name.
But her wisdom is very rare.
Now,
the trouble of Patrasche was this.
Into these great,
sad piles of stones,
that reared their melancholy majesty above the crowded roofs,
the child Nello would many and many a time enter,
and disappear through their dark,
arched portals,
while Patrasche,
left without upon the pavement,
would wearily and vainly ponder on what could be the charm which thus allured from him his inseparable and beloved companion.
Once or twice he did essay
to see
for himself,
clattering up the steps
with his milk-cart behind him;
but thereon he had been always sent back again summarily by a tall custodian in black clothes and silver chains of office;
and fearful of bringing his little master into trouble,
he desisted,
and remained couched patiently before the churches until such time as the boy reappeared.
It was not the fact of his going into them which disturbed Patrasche;
he knew that people went
to church;
all the village went
to the small,
tumble-down,
gray pile opposite the red windmill.
What troubled him was that little Nello always looked strangely when he came out,
always very flushed or very pale;
and whenever he returned home after such visitations would sit silent and dreaming,
not caring
to play,
but gazing out at the evening skies beyond the line of the canal,
very subdued and almost sad.
What was it?
wondered Patrasche.
He thought it could not be good or natural
for the little lad
to be so grave,
and in his dumb fashion he tried all he could
to keep Nello by him in the sunny fields or in the busy market-place.
But
to the churches Nello would go;
most often of all would he go
to the great cathedral;
and Patrasche,
left without on the stones by the iron fragments of Quentin Matsys's gate,
would stretch himself and yawn and sigh,
and even howl now and then,
all in vain,
until the doors closed and the child perforce came forth again,
and winding his arms about the dog's neck would kiss him on his broad,
tawny-colored forehead,
and murmur always the same words,
"If I could only see them,
Patrasche!--if I could only see them!"
What were they?
pondered Patrasche,
looking up
with large,
wistful,
sympathetic eyes.
One day,
when the custodian was out of the way and the doors left ajar,
he got in
for a moment after his little friend and saw.
"They"
were two great covered pictures on either side of the choir.
Nello was kneeling,
rapt as in an ecstasy,
before the altar-picture of the Assumption,
and when he noticed Patrasche,
and rose and drew the dog gently out into the air,
his face was wet
with tears,
and he looked up at the veiled places as he passed them,
and murmured
to his companion,
"It is so terrible not
to see them,
Patrasche,
just because one is poor and cannot pay! He never meant that the poor should not see them when he painted them,
I am sure.
He would have had us see them any day,
every day;
that I am sure.
And they keep them shrouded there--shrouded! in the dark,
the beautiful things! And they never feel the light,
and no eyes look on them,
unless rich people come and pay.
If I could only see them,
I would be content
to die."
But he could not see them,
and Patrasche could not help him,
for
to gain the silver piece that the church exacts as the price
for looking on the glories of the
"Elevation of the Cross"
and the
"Descent of the Cross"
was a thing as utterly beyond the powers of either of them as it would have been
to scale the heights of the cathedral spire.
They had never so much as a sou
to spare;
if they cleared enough
to get a little wood
for the stove,
a little broth
for the pot,
it was the utmost they could do.
And yet the heart of the child was set in sore and endless longing upon beholding the greatness of the two veiled Rubens.
The whole soul of the little Ardennois thrilled and stirred
with an absorbing passion
for art.
Going on his ways through the old city in the early days before the sun or the people had risen,
Nello,
who looked only a little peasant boy,
with a great dog drawing milk
to sell from door
to door,
was in a heaven of dreams whereof Rubens was the god.
Nello,
cold and hungry,
with stockingless feet in wooden shoes,
and the winter winds blowing among his curls and lifting his poor thin garments,
was in a rapture of meditation,
wherein all that he saw was the beautiful fair face of the Mary of the Assumption,
with the waves of her golden hair lying upon her shoulders,
and the light of an eternal sun shining down upon her brow.
Nello,
reared in poverty,
and buffeted by fortune,
and untaught in letters,
and unheeded by men,
had the compensation or the curse which is called genius.
No one knew it;
he as little as any.
No one knew it.
Only,
indeed,
Patrasche,
who,
being
with him always,
saw him draw
with chalk upon the stones any and every thing that grew or breathed,
heard him on his little bed of hay murmur all manner of timid,
pathetic prayers
to the spirit of the great master;
watched his gaze darken and his face radiate at the evening glow of sunset or the rosy rising of the dawn;
and felt many and many a time the tears of a strange,
nameless pain and joy,
mingled together,
fall hotly from the bright young eyes upon his own wrinkled yellow forehead.
"I should go
to my grave quite content if I thought,
Nello,
that when thou growest a man thou couldst own this hut and the little plot of ground,
and labor
for thyself,
and be called Baas by thy neighbours,"
said the old man Jehan many an hour from his bed.
For
to own a bit of soil,
and
to be called Baas
(master)
by the hamlet round,
is
to have achieved the highest ideal of a Flemish peasant;
and the old soldier,
who had wandered over all the earth in his youth,
and had brought nothing back,
deemed in his old age that
to live and die on one spot in contented humility was the fairest fate he could desire
for his darling.
But Nello said nothing.
The same leaven was working in him that in other times begat Rubens and Jordaens and the Van Eycks,
and all their wondrous tribe,
and in times more recent begat in the green country of the Ardennes,
where the Meuse washes the old walls of Dijon,
the great artist of the Patroclus,
whose genius is too near us
for us aright
to measure its divinity.
Nello dreamed of other things in the future than of tilling the little rood of earth,
and living under the wattle roof,
and being called Baas by neighbours a little poorer or a little less poor than himself.
The cathedral spire,
where it rose beyond the fields in the ruddy evening skies or in the dim,
gray,
misty mornings,
said other things
to him than this.
But these he told only
to Patrasche,
whispering,
childlike,
his fancies in the dog's ear when they went together at their work through the fogs of the daybreak,
or lay together at their rest among the rustling rushes by the water's side.
For such dreams are not easily shaped into speech
to awake the slow sympathies of human auditors;
and they would only have sorely perplexed and troubled the poor old man bedridden in his corner,
who,
for his part,
whenever he had trodden the streets of Antwerp,
had thought the daub of blue and red that they called a Madonna,
on the walls of the wine-shop where he drank his sou's worth of black beer,
quite as good as any of the famous altarpieces
for which the stranger folk trave