firm enough to bear oxen and men upon it everywhere. At this season the
little village always was gay and cheerful. At the poorest dwelling
there were possets and cakes, sugared saints and gilded Jesus. The
merry Flemish bells jingled everywhere on the horses, everywhere within
doors some well-filled soup pot sang and smoked over the stove, and
everywhere over the snow without laughing maidens pattered in bright
kerchiefs and stout skirts going to and from mass. Only in the little
hut it was dark and cold.
[Illustration: NELLO LEFT HIS PICTURE AT THE DOOR]
Nello and Patrasche were left utterly alone; for one night in the week
before the Christmas day death entered there and took away from life
forever old Jehan Daas. who had never known of life aught save poverty
and pain. He had long been half dead, incapable of any movement except
a feeble gesture, and powerless for anything beyond a gentle word. And
yet his loss fell on them both with a great horror in it; they mourned
him passionately. He had passed away from them in his sleep, and when
in the gray dawn they learned their bereavement, unbearable solitude
and desolation seemed to close around them. He had long been only a
poor, feeble, paralyzed old man who could not raise a hand in their
defense, but he had loved them well; his smile always had welcomed
their return. They mourned for him unceasingly, refusing to be
comforted, as in the white winter day they followed the deal shell that
held his body to the nameless grave by the little church. They were his
only mourners, these two whom he had left friendless upon the earth--
the young boy and the old dog.
Nello and Patrasche went home with broken hearts. But even of that
poor, melancholy, cheerless home they were denied the consolation.
There was a month's rental overdue for the little place, and when Nello
had paid the last sad service to the dead he had not a coin left. He
went and begged grace of the owner of the hut, a cobbler who went every
Sunday night to drink his pint of wine and smoke with Baas Cogez. The
cobbler would grant no mercy. He claimed in default of his rent every
stick and stone, every pot and pan in the hut, and bade Nello and
Patrasche to be out of it by to-morrow.
All night long the boy and the dog sat by the fireless hearth in the
darkness, drawn close together for warmth and sorrow. Their bodies were
insensible to the cold, but their hearts seemed frozen in them.
When the morning broke over the white, chill earth it was the morning
of Christmas eve. With a shudder Nello clasped close to him his only
friend, while his tears fell hot and fast on the dog's forehead.
"Let us go, Patrasche; dear, dear Patrasche!" he murmured. "We will not
wait to be kicked out. Let us go."
They took the old accustomed road into Antwerp. The winner of the
drawing prize was to be proclaimed at noon, and to the public building
where he had left his treasure Nello made his way. On the step and in
the entrance hall there was a crowd of youths--some of his age, some
older, all with parents or relatives or friends. His heart was sick
with fear as he went amongst them, holding Patrasche close to him.
The great bells of the city clashed out the hour of noon with brazen
clamor. The doors of the inner hall were opened; the eager, panting
throng rushed in. It was known that the selected picture would be
raised above the rest upon a wooden dais.
A mist obscured Nello's sight, his head swam, his limbs almost failed
him. When his vision cleared he saw the drawing raised on high; it was
not his own. A slow, sonorous voice was proclaiming aloud that victory
had been adjudged to Stephan Kiesslinger, born in the burg of Antwerp,
son of a wharfinger in that town.
When Nello recovered consciousness he was lying on the stones without,
and Patrasche was trying with every art he knew to call him back to
life. In the distance a throng of youths of Antwerp were shouting
around their successful comrade and escorting him with acclamation to
his home upon the quay.
He rallied himself as best he could, for he was weak from fasting, and
retraced his steps to the village. Patrasche paced by his side with his
head drooping and his strong limbs feeble under him from hunger and
sorrow.
The snow was falling fast; a keen hurricane blew from the north; it was
bitter as death on the plains. It took them long to traverse the
familiar paths, and the bells were sounding four of the clock as they
approached the hamlet. Suddenly Patrasche paused, arrested by a scent
in the snow, scratched, whined, and drew out with his teeth a small
case of brown leather. He held it up to Nello in the darkness. Where
they were there stood a little Calvary, and a lamp burned dully under
the cross. The boy mechanically turned the bag to the light. On it was
the name of Baas Cogez and within it were notes for 6,000 francs.
The sight aroused the lad a little from his stupor. He thrust it in his
shirt and stroked Patrasche and drew him onward.
Nello made straight for the millhouse and went to the house-door and
struck on the panels. The miller's wife opened it, weeping, with little
Alois clinging close to her skirts.
"Is it thee, thou poor lad?" she asked kindly through her tears. "Get
thee gone ere the Baas sees thee. We are in sore trouble to-night. He
is out seeking for a power of money that he has let fall riding
homeward, and in this snow he never will find it. And God knows it will
go nigh to ruin us. It is heaven's own judgment for the things we have
done to thee."
Nello put the note case within her hand and signed to Patrasche within
the house.
"Patrasche found the money to-night," he said quickly. "Tell Baas Cogez
so. I think he will not deny the dog shelter and food in his old age.
Keep him from pursuing me, and I pray of you to be good to him."
Ere woman or dog knew what he did he had stooped and kissed Patrasche,
then had closed the door hurriedly on him and had disappeared in the
gloom of the fast falling night.
It was six o'clock at night when, from an opposite entrance, the miller
at last came, jaded and broken, into his wife's presence. "It is lost
forever," he said, with an ashen cheek and a quiver in his voice. "We
have looked with lanterns everywhere. It is gone--the little maiden's
portion and all."
His wife put the money into his hand and told him how it had come back
to her. The strong man sank, trembling, into a seat and covered his
face with his hands, ashamed, almost afraid.
"I have been cruel to the lad," he murmured at length. "I deserve not
to have good at his hands."
Little Alois, taking courage, crept close to her father, and nestled
against him her curly, fair head.
"Nello may come here again, father?" she whispered. "He may come to-
morrow, as he used to do?"
The miller pressed her in his arms. His hard, sunburned face was pale
and his mouth trembled. "Surely, surely," he answered his child. "He
shall bide here on Christmas day and any other day he will. In my greed
I sinned, and the Lord chastened me. God helping me, I will make amends
to the boy--I will make amends."
When the supper smoked on the board and the voices were loudest and
gladdest, and the Christ child brought choicest gifts to Alois,
Patrasche, watching always an occasion, glided out when the door was
unlatched by a careless newcomer, and as swiftly as his weak and tired
limbs would bear him, sped over the snow in the bitter, black night. He
had only one thought--to follow Nello.
Snow had fallen freshly all evening long. It was now nearly ten
o'clock. The trail of the boy's footsteps was almost obliterated. It
took Patrasche long and arduous labor to discover any scent which could
guide him in pursuit. When at last he found it, it was lost again
quickly, and lost and recovered, and again lost, and again recovered a
hundred times and more. It was all quite dark in the town. Now and then
some light gleamed ruddily through the crevices and house shutters, or
some group went homeward with lanterns, chanting drinking songs. The
streets were all white with ice, and high walls and roofs loomed black
against them. There was scarce a sound save the riot of the wind down
the passages as it tossed the creaking signs.
So many passers-by had trodden through and through the snow, so many
diverse paths had crossed and recrossed each other that the dog had a
hard task to retain any hold of the track he followed. But he kept on
his way though the cold pierced him to the bone and the jagged ice cut
his feet, and the hunger in his body gnawed like a rat's tooth. But he
kept on his way--a poor, gaunt, shivering, drooping thing--in the
frozen darkness, that no one pitied as he went--and by long patience
traced the steps he loved into the heart of the burg and up to the
steps of the great cathedral.
"He is gone to the things that he loved," thought Patrasche. He could
not understand, but he was full of sorrow and of pity for the art
passion that to him was so incomprehensible and yet so sacred.
The portals of the cathedral were unclosed after the midnight mass.
Some heedlessness in the custodians, too eager to go home and feast or
sleep, or too drowsy to know whether they turned the keys aright, had
left one of the doors unlocked. By that accident the footfalls
Patrasche sought had passed through into the building, leaving the
white marks of the snow upon the dark stone floor.
By that slender white thread, frozen as it fell, he was guided through
the intense silence, through the immensity of the vaulted space--guided
straight to the gates of the chancel--and stretched there upon the
stones, he found Nello. He crept up noiselessly and touched the face of
the boy.
"Didst thou dream that I should be faithless and forsake thee? I--a
dog?" said that mute caress.
The lad raised himself with a low cry and clasped him close.
"Let us lie down and die together," he murmured. "Men have no need of
us, and we are all alone."
In answer Patrasche crept closer yet and laid his head upon the young
man's breast. The tears stood in his great, brown, sad eyes. Not for
himself; for himself he was happy.
Suddenly through the darkness a great white radiance streamed through
the vastness of the aisles. The moon, that was at her height, had
broken through the clouds. The snow had ceased to fall. The light
reflected from the snow without was clear as the light of dawn. It fell
through the arches full upon the two pictures above, from which the
boy, on his entrance, had flung back the veil. "The Elevation" and "The
Descent from the Cross" for one instant were visible as by day.
Nello rose to his feet and stretched his arms to them. The tears of a
passionate ecstasy glistened on the paleness of his face.
"I have seen them at last!" he cried aloud. "Oh God, it is enough!"
When the Christmas morning broke and the priests came to the temple
they saw them lying on the stones together. Above, the veils were drawn
back from the great visions of Rubens, and the fresh rays of the
sunrise touched the thorn-crowned head of God.
As the day grew on there came an old, hard-featured man who wept as
women weep.
"I was cruel to the lad," he murmured, "and now I would have made
amends--yea, to the half of my substance--and he should have been to me
as a son."
There came also as the day grew apace a painter who had fame in the
world and who was liberal of hand and of spirit.
"I seek one who should have had the prize yesterday had worth won," he
said to the people, "a boy of rare promise and genius. An old
woodcutter on a fallen tree at eventide, that was all his theme. I
would find him and take him with me and teach him art."
And a little child with curling fair hair, sobbing bitterly as she
clung to her father's arm, cried aloud: "O Nello, come! We have all
ready for thee. The Christ child's hands are full of gifts, and the old
piper will play for us; and the mother says thou shalt stay by the
hearth and burn nuts with us all the Noel week long--yes even to the
feast of the kings! And Patrasche will be happy! O Nello, wake and
come!"
But the young, pale face, turned upward to the great Rubens with a
smile upon its mouth, answered them all, "It is too late."
For the sweet sonorous hells went ringing through the frost, and the
sunlight shone upon the plains of snow, and the populace trooped gay
and glad through the streets, but Nello and Patrasche no more asked
charity at their hands. All they needed now Antwerp gave unbidden.
When they were found the arms of the boy were folded so closely around
the dog that it was difficult to draw them away. The people of the
little village, contrite and ashamed, took the little boy tenderly in
their arms and bore him away to his last resting place. Patrasche was
not forgotten, for all the villagers felt the strength of his devotion.
* * * * *
Of all the characters in this story, which is the most important and
the most interesting? The author has showed us which she considers the
most important by the title she has given to the tale--_A Dog of
Flanders_. Let us see just what she has told us about Patrasche,
that we may know whether he is worthy of being the hero of a story.
First, as to his appearance, we are given the following facts:
1. Yellow of hide.
2. Large of limb.
3. Wolflike ears.
4. Legs bowed and feet widened.
5. Large, wistful, sympathetic eyes.
6. Great, tawny head.
7. (Later) Drooping and feeble; gaunt.
The picture which the author paints for us of Patrasche's appearance is
not beautiful; we do not love him just for his looks. As to his
character and abilities, we are told, or are enabled to find out from
his actions, the following things:
1. Strong and industrious. He used to draw the heavy cart of the
hardware dealer.
2. Grateful. He loved those who had saved his life, and worked for them
willingly.
3. Careful of his young master. He was troubled when Nello went into
the dim churches.
4. Wise. He felt that it was good for Nello to be as much as possible
in the sunny fields or among happy people.
5. Sympathetic. He looked at Nello with _wistful, sympathetic eyes_.
6. Understanding. He realized that the picture that Nello was drawing
was something which meant much to him.
7. Loving. He grieved passionately with Nello at the old man's death.
8. Acute of sense. He discovered the pocket book in the snow.
9. Faithful. He refused to stay in the miller's warm kitchen while
Nello was out in the cold.
10. Persistent and patient. He never gave up the search, difficult
though it was, until he had found his master.
11. Unselfish. He was happy for himself, but he wept because his master
was unhappy.
Do you think a dog could have all these qualities, or do you think the
author, in her anxiety to have us like the dog, has given him
characteristics which he could not really possess? Have you not,
yourself, known dogs that were as intelligent, as affectionate and as
faithful as Patrasche?
ALICE AND PHOEBE CARY
_By_ ANNA McCALEB
In the writings of Alice and Phoebe Cary are to be found many
references which show how fondly they remembered the little brown house
in which they were born. This house was on a farm in the Miami Valley
in Ohio, eight miles north of Cincinnati. Alice was born April 26th,
1820, and Phoebe, September 24th, 1824, and there was one brother
between them. Robert Gary, the father, was a kindly, gentle man, fond
of reading, especially romances and poetry. The education for which he
had so much longed he had been unable to obtain, and this made him
quiet and diffident with strangers, although in his own family he was
most loving and most companionable. Even the animals on the farm loved
him, and the horses and cattle would follow him about watching for the
kindly word and pat, or for the lump of salt or sugar which he was so
certain to have for them. This Robert Cary was a descendant of Sir
Robert Cary, a famous English knight of the time of Henry V, and Phoebe
was always very proud of this ancestry of hers--so proud, in fact, that
she had the Gary arms engraved on a seal ring.
It would seem that the enthusiastic admiration which the daughters all
their life had for their mother was nothing beyond her deserts, for she
seems to have been far from an ordinary woman. Despite the fact that
she had nine children, and that she did the work for the entire family,
she managed to keep up her interest in public affairs, and to read
history, essays, biography and politics, as often as books on such
subjects came to her hand.
In the little brown house with its overhanging cherry tree, which
tapped the roof and scratched the attic window-panes, and with its
sweetbrier under the window, the children lived a simple and happy
life. Naturally in a family of this size they divided themselves into
groups, and Alice and Phoebe, who in their later life were so
inseparable, do not seem to have singled each other out as companions
in their childhood. Alice's special comrade was her next older sister,
Rhoda, Thom she persisted to her dying day in thinking of as the real
genius of the family, while the constant playmate of the active Phoebe
was her next younger brother. The children spent much time out-of-
doors, gathering nuts and flowers in their season, and gaining that
love of nature which stayed with them all their lives. As they grew
older, they were sent to the district school, and were taught household
tasks, Alice taking readily enough to housekeeping, while Phoebe
became, even as a child, remarkably proficient with the needle.
The struggle to keep out of debt was a constant one with the Cary
family, and Alice said long years afterward, "For the first fourteen
years of my life it seemed as if there was actually nothing in
existence but work." However, By 1832 family affairs had improved
somewhat, and a new and larger house was built upon the farm. It seemed
as if all the ill luck of the family dated from the building of the new
house, in which they were never as happy as they had been in the little
brown house.
When she was a woman, Alice told with perfect faith the "family ghost
story," which concerned this new house. She said that just before the
removal of the family to the new house, they were all driven to the
shelter of the old house by a sudden and violent summer storm. As Alice
herself stood at the window looking out, she exclaimed to her mother,
"Why is Rhoda at the new house with baby Lucy, and why does she have
the door open?"
They all looked, and all saw Rhoda standing in the doorway of the new
house, with the baby in her arms.
"She was probably out with the child and took shelter in the nearest
place when the storm came up," said the mother, and then she called
loudly, "Rhoda!"
The figure in the doorway did not move, and in a few moments Rhoda came
down from upstairs, where she had left little Lucy asleep, declaring
that she had not been near the new house.
The family believed most sincerely that this was a warning of trouble
to come, and certain it is that in 1833, within one month of each
other, Rhoda and little Lucy died. Lucy had been Alice's special
charge, as Rhoda had been her special companion, and the girl's heart
was almost broken by this double loss. How deep and lasting her grief
was may be seen from a remark that she made to one of her friends,
speaking of Lucy's death.
"I was not fourteen when she died--I am almost fifty now. It may seem
strange when I tell you that I do not believe that there has been an
hour of any day since her death in which I have not thought of her and
mourned for her."
In 1835 Mrs. Cary died, and two years later the father married again.
The stepmother, a hard-headed, practical woman, could see nothing but
laziness in the desire of Alice and Phoebe to read and write. During
the day she insisted that they must keep busy about the house; in the
evening she refused to allow them to burn candles, and thus the girls
often worked with no light except what was afforded by a saucer of lard
with a twist of rag stuck into it for a wick. For books they had but
the Bible, a Hymn Book, a _History of the Jews, Lewis and Clark's
Travels_, Pope's _Essays_, _Charlotte Temple_, a romance, and a
mutilated novel, _The Black Penitents_. The last pages of this novel
were missing, and Alice often declared that it was a lifelong regret to
her that she never learned how the story "turned out."
With these meager helps and with no incentives to work except their own
desires, Alice and Phoebe constantly wrote poems and stories. At the
age of fourteen, Phoebe, without telling her father or even her sister,
sent a poem to a Boston publisher. She heard nothing from it, but some
time later came upon it, copied in a Cincinnati paper from the Boston
journal. She laughed and cried in her excitement, but still she told no
one.
About this time the father and stepmother removed to another house
which had been built on the farm, and left the children in possession
of the old one, so that their life was decidedly happier and their
chances for work were multiplied.
Alice from this time on published numerous poems, chiefly in church
papers, and her writings began to attract attention throughout the
country. There was a freshness and charm about her little poems which
won for them the favorable opinion of some of the best judges of poetry
in the country. Of her "Pictures of Memory," Poe said that it was one
of the most rhythmically perfect lyrics in the English language.
Whittier wrote to the sisters, and Horace Greeley visited them in 1849,
and thus slowly they gained the recognition and the encouragement which
led them in 1850 to a rather daring step.
This was no less than a removal to New York. Alice went first, but she
soon sent for Phoebe and their younger sister Elmina. In thus setting
out for the great city and settling down to earn her living, Alice Cary
was no doubt influenced by a rather painful circumstance which had
taken place in her life. There had come to their neighborhood, some
little time before, a man, her superior in age and education, who had
recognized her unusual gifts and attractiveness, and had spent much
time with her. She came to love him deeply and sincerely, and it would
seem that he was but little less attracted by her. However, his family
managed to persuade him that his best interests demanded that he should
not marry this country-bred girl, and he returned to his home, leaving
Alice to watch and hope for his coming. The gradual relinquishment of
her dream and the final conviction that the sort of home life for which
she felt herself most fitted was not after all to be hers, led Alice
Cary to feel that she must take up some definite work to support
herself and to help her sisters. She herself said later, in speaking
about the removal to New York, "Ignorance stood me in the stead of
courage and of books"--she knew so little about the great city to which
she was going that she feared it little.
The sisters made up their minds from the first that they would have a
home; they had a horror of the boarding-house atmosphere. Their first
home was but two, or three rooms, high up in a big building in an
unfashionable part of the town. Alice papered rooms, Phoebe painted
doors and framed pictures; but the impress of their individuality was
on the rooms, and every one who entered them felt their coziness and
"hominess." Papers and magazines paid but little for contributions in
those days, and it was only by living in the most economical and humble
way that they managed to avoid their great horror--debt. But their life
was by no means barren, for they became acquainted with many pleasant
people, who were always glad and proud to be invited to the little tea
parties in the three rooms under the roof.
The publication in 1852 of Alice's _Clovernook Papers_ brought to
her increasing recognition and new friends. These simple, original
little sketches of rural scenery and rural life were just the things
which Alice Cary knew best how to write, and they became very popular
all over the country. Before 1856 the sisters had removed to the pretty
house in Twentieth Street which was their home for the rest of their
lives. Alice bought the house and the furnishings; indeed it was she
who did most of the planning for the household, and who paid most of
the bills. She worked early and late, driven always by the obligations
to be met. A biographer says of her: "I have never known any other
woman so systematically and persistently industrious as Alice Cary."
Phoebe worked indeed, but spasmodically--she waited on her moods.