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THE PATH OF LIFE
By Stijn Streuvels
Translated from the West-Flemish by
Alexander Teixeira De Mattos
TRANSLATOR’s NOTE
In introducing this new writer to the English-speaking public, I may be
permitted to give a few particulars of himself and his life. Stijn
Streuvels is accepted not only in Belgium, but also in Holland as the
most distinguished Low-Dutch author of our time: his vogue, in fact, is
even greater in the North Netherlands than in the southern kingdom. And I
will go further and say that I know no greater living writer of
imaginative prose in any land or any language. His medium is the
West-Flemish dialect, which is spoken by perhaps a million people
inhabiting the stretch of country that forms the province of West
Flanders and is comprised within the irregular triangle outlined by the
North Sea on the west, the French frontier of Flanders on the south and a
line drawn at one-third of the distance between Bruges and Ghent on the
east. In addition to Bruges and Ostend, this province of West Flanders
includes such towns as Poperinghe, Ypres and Courtrai; and so subtly
subdivided is the West-Flemish dialect that there are words which a man
of Bruges will use to a man of Poperinghe and not be understood.
It is one of the most interesting dialects known to me, containing
numbers of mighty mediaeval words which survive in daily use; and it is
one of the richest: rich especially--and this is not usual in
dialects--in words expressive of human characteristics and of physical
sensations.
Thus there is a word to describe a man who is not so much a poor wretch,
_un misérable_, as what Tom Hood loved to call “a hapless wight:” one who
is poor and wretched and outcast and out of work, not through any fault
of his own, through idleness or fecklessness, but through sheer ill-luck.
There is a word to describe what we feel when we hear the tearing of silk
or the ripping of calico, a word expressing that sense of angry
irritation which gives a man a gnawing in the muscles of the arms, a word
that tells what we really feel in our hair when we pretend that it
“stands on end.” It is a sturdy, manly dialect, moreover, spoken by a
fine, upstanding race of “chaps,” “fellows,” “mates,” “wives,” and
“women-persons,” for your Fleming rarely talks of “men” or “women.” It is
also a very beautiful dialect, having many words that possess a charm all
their own. Thus _monkelen_, the West-Flemish for the verb “to smile,” is
prettier and has an archer sound than its Dutch equivalent, _glimlachen_.
And it is a dialect of sufficient importance to boast a special
dictionary (_Westvlaamsch Idiotikon_, by the Rev. L. L. De Bo: Bruges,
1873) of 1,488 small-quarto pages, set in double column.
In translating Streuvels’ sketches, I have given a close rendering: to
use a homely phrase, their flavour is very near the knuckle; and I have
been anxious to lose no more of it than must inevitably be lost through
the mere act of translation. I hope that I may be forgiven for one or two
phrases, which, though not existing, so far as I am aware, in any country
or district where the English tongue is spoken, are not entirely foreign
to the genius of that tongue. Here and there, but only where necessary, I
have added an explanatory foot-note.
For those interested in such matters, I may say that Stijn Streuvels’
real name is Frank Lateur. He is a nephew of Guido Gezelle, the
poet-priest, whose statue graces the public square at Courtrai, unless
indeed by this time those shining apostles of civilization, the Germans,
have destroyed it. Until ten years ago, when he began to come into his
own, he lived at Avelghem, in the south-east corner of West Flanders,
hard by Courtrai and the River Lys, and there baked bread for the
peasant-fellows and peasant-wives. For you must know that this foremost
writer of the Netherlands was once a baker and stood daily at sunrise,
bare-chested, before his glowing oven, drawing bread for the folk of his
village. The stories and sketches in the present volume all belong to
that period.
Of their number, _Christmas Night_, _A Pipe or no Pipe_, _On Sundays_ and
_The End_ have appeared in the _Fortnightly Review_, which was the first
to give Stijn Streuvels the hospitality of its pages; _In Early Winter_
and _White Life_ in the _English Review_; _The White Sand-path_ in the
_Illustrated London News_; _An Accident in Everyman_; and _Loafing_ in
the _Lady’s Realm_. The remainder are now printed in English for the
first time.
ALEXANDER TEIXEIRA DE MATTOS.
Chelsea, _April_, 1915.
CONTENTS
TRANSLATOR’S NOTE
I. THE WHITE SAND-PATH
II. IN EARLY WINTER.
III. CHRISTMAS NIGHT.
IV. LOAFING
V. SPRING
VI. IN THE SQUALL
VII. A PIPE OR NO PIPE
VIII. ON SUNDAYS
IX. AN ACCIDENT
X. WHITE LIFE
XI. THE END.
THE WHITE SAND-PATH
I. THE WHITE SAND-PATH
I was a devil of a scapegrace in my time. No tree was too high for me, no
water too deep; and, when there was mischief going, I was the ring-leader
of the band. Father racked his head for days together to find a
punishment that I should remember; but it was all no good: he wore out
three or four birch-rods on my back; his hands pained him merely from
hitting my hard head; and bread and water was a welcome change to me from
the everyday monotony of potatoes and bread-and-butter. After a sound
drubbing followed by half a day’s fasting, I felt more like laughing than
like crying; and, in half a while, all was forgotten and my wickedness
began afresh and worse than ever.
One summer’s evening, I came home in fine fettle. I and ten of my
school-fellows had played truant: we had gone to pick apples in the
priest’s orchard; and we had pulled the burgomaster’s calf into the brook
to teach it to swim, but the banks were too high and the beast was
drowned. Father, who had heard of these happenings, laid hold of me in a
rage and gave me a furious trouncing with a poker, after which, instead
of turning me into the road, as his custom was, he caught me up fair and
square, carried me to the loft, flung me down on the floor and bolted the
trap-door behind him.
In the loft! Heavenly goodness, in the loft!
Of an evening I never dared think of the place; and in bright sunshine I
went there but seldom and then always in fear.
I lay as dead, pinched my eyes to and pondered on my wretched plight.
‘Twas silent all around; I heard nothing, nothing. That lasted pretty
long, till I began to feel that the boards were so hard and that my body,
which had been thrashed black and blue, was hurting me. My back was stiff
and my arms and legs grew cold. And yet I nor wished nor meant to stir:
that was settled in my head. In the end, it became unbearable: I drew in
my right leg, shifted my arm and carefully opened my eyes. ‘Twas so
ghastly, oh, so frightfully dark and warm: I could see the warm darkness;
so funny, that steep, slanting tiled roof, crossed by black rafters,
beams and laths, and all that space beyond, which disappeared in the dark
ridgework: ‘twas like a deserted, haunted booth at a fair, during the
night. Over my head, like threatening blunderbusses, old trousers and
jackets hung swinging, with empty arms and legs: they looked just like
fellows that had been hanged! And it grew darker, steadily darker.
My eyes stood fixed and I heard my breath come and go. I pondered how
‘twould end here. That lasting silence affrighted me; the anxious waiting
for that coming night: to have to spend a long, long night here alone! My
hair itched and pricked on my head. And the rats! I gave a great loud
scream. It rang in anguish through the sloping vault of the loft. I
listened as it died away ... and nothing followed. I screamed again and
again and went on, till my throat was torn.
The gruesome thought of those rats and of that long night drove me mad
with fear. I rolled about on the floor, I struck out with my arms and
legs, like one possessed, in violent, childish fury. Then, worn out, I
let my arms and legs rest; at last, tired, swallowed up in my
helplessness, left without will or feeling, I waited for what was to
come. I had terribly wicked thoughts: of escaping from the house, of
setting fire to the house, of _murder_! I was an outcast, I was being
tortured. I should have liked to show them what I could do, who I was; to
see them hunting for me and crying; and then to run away, always farther
away, and never come back again.
Downstairs, the plates and forks were clattering for supper. I was not
hungry; I did not wish nor mean to eat. I heard soft, quiet voices
talking: that made me desperate; they were not speaking of me! They had
no thought nor care for the miscreant; they would liefst have him dead,
out of the way. And I was in the loft!
Later, very much later, I heard my little brother’s voice saying evening
prayers--I would not pray--and then I heard nothing more, nothing; and I
lay there, upstairs, lonely and forlorn....
I walked all alone in the forest, through the brushwood. ‘Twas half-dark
below; but, above the bushes, the sun was playing as through a green
curtain. I went on and on. The bushes here grew thick now and the tiny
path was lost. After long creeping and stumbling, I leapt across a ditch
and entered the wide drove. It did not seem strange to me that ‘twas even
darker here and that the light, instead of from above, came streaming low
down from between the trunks of the trees. The vault was closed
leaf-tight and the trunks hung down from out of it like pillars. ‘Twas
silent all around. I went, as I thought that I must see the sun, round
behind the trunks, half anxious at last to get out of that magic forest;
but new trees kept coming up, as though out of the ground, and hid the
sun. I would have liked to run, but felt I know not what in my legs that
made me drag myself on.
Far beyond, on the road-side grass, sat two boys. It was ... but no, they
were sitting there too glumly! I went up to them and, after all, knew
them for Sarelke and Lowietje, the village-constable’s children. They sat
with their legs in the ditch, their elbows on their knees, earnestly
chatting. I sat down beside them, but they did not even look up, did not
notice me. Those two boys, my schoolmates, the worst two scamps in the
village, sat there like two worn-out old fogies: they did not know me.
This ought to have surprised me, and yet I thought that it must be right
and that it had always been so. They chatted most calmly of the price of
marbles, of the way to tell the best hoops, of buying a new box of tin
soldiers; and they mumbled their words as slowly as the priest in his
pulpit. I became uncomfortable, felt ill at ease in that stifling air,
under that half-dusk of the twilight, where everything was happening so
earnestly, so very slowly and so heavily. I, who was all for sport and
child’s-play, now found my own chums so altered; and they no longer knew
me. I would have liked to shout, to grip them hard by the shoulder and
call out that it was I: I, I, I! But I durst not, or could not.
“There--comes--the--keeper,” droned Sarelke.
Lowietje looked down the drove with his great glassy eyes. The two boys
stood up and, without speaking, shuffled away. I saw them get smaller and
smaller, till they became two black, hovering little specks that vanished
round the bend.
I was alone again! Alone, with all those trees, in that frightful silence
all around me. And the keeper, where was he? He would come, I knew it;
and I felt afraid of the awful fellow. I must get away from this, I must
hide myself. I lay down, very slowly, deep in the ditch. I now felt that
I had been long, long dead and that I was lying here alone, waiting for I
forget what. That keeper: was there such a person? He now seemed to me an
awesome clod of earth, which came rolling down, slowly but steadily, and
which would fall heavily upon me. Then he turned into a lovely white
ashplant, which stood there waving its boughs in a stately manner. I
would let him go past and then would go away. People were waiting for me,
I had to be somewhere: I tried mightily to remember where, but could not.
The keeper did not come.
The ditch was cold, the bottom was of smooth, worn stone and very hard. I
lay there with gleaming eyes: above my head stood the giant oaks,
silently, and their knotted branches ran up and were lost in the dark
sky.
The keeper came, I heard his coming; and the wind blew fearfully through
the trees. I shivered....
I woke with fright and I was still lying in my loft. The hard bottom of
the ditch was the boarded floor and the tree-trunks were the legs of
father’s trousers and the branches ran up and were lost in the darksome
roofwork. Two sharp rays of light beamed through the shut dormer-window.
It must be day then! And this awful night was past! All my dismay was
gone and a bold feeling came over me, something like the feeling of
gladness that follows on a solved problem. I would make Lowietje and
Sarelke and all the boys at school hark to my tale, that I would! I had
slept a whole night alone in the loft! And the rats! And the ghosts! Ooh!
And not a whit afraid!
I got up, but that was such a slow business. I still felt that dream and
that slackness in my limbs. I was so stiff; that heavy gloom, that slow
passing of time still lingered--just as in my dream--in my slow
breathing. I still saw that forest and, shut up as I was, with not a
single touchstone for my thoughts, I began to doubt if my dream was done
and I had to feel the trouser-legs to make sure that they were not really
trees.
Time stood still and there was no getting out of my mind the strange
things seen in that dream-forest, with those earnest, sluggish, elderly
children and that queer keeper. ‘Twas as though some one were holding my
arms and legs tight to make them move heavily, deadly heavily; and I felt
myself, within my head, grown quite thirty years older, become suddenly
an old man. I walked about the loft; I wanted to make myself heard, but
my footsteps gave no sound.
I grew awfully hungry. Near the ladder-door, I found my prison fare. I
nibbled greedily at my crust of bread and took a good drink of water.
I now felt better, but this doing nothing wearied me; I became sad and
felt sorry to be sitting alone. If things had gone their usual gait, I
should now be with my mates at school or playing somewhere under the open
sky; and that open sky now first revealed all its delightfulness. The
usual gait, when all was said, was by far the best.... All alone like
this, up here.... Should I go down and beg father’s pardon? Then ‘twould
all be over and done with....
“No!” said something inside me, “I stay here!”
And I stayed.
I shoved a box under the dormer-window, I pushed open the wooden
shutter ... and there! Before me lay the wide stretch in the blazing
sunlight! My eyes were quite blind with it.
‘Twas good up here and funny to see everything from so high up, so
endlessly far! And the people were no bigger than tiny tadpoles!
Just under my dormer-window came a path, a white sand-path winding from
behind the house and then running forwards to the horizon in a line
straight as an arrow. It looked like a naked strip of ground, powdered
white and showing up sharply, like a flat snake, in the middle of the
green fields which, broken into their many-coloured squares, lay blinking
in the sun.
This path was deserted, lonely, as though nor man nor beast had ever
trodden it. It lay very near the house and I did not know it from up
here; it looked now like a long strip of drab linen, which lay bleaching
in a boundless meadow. And that again suited my loneliness so well! At
last, I looked and saw nothing more. And that path!...
Slowly, overcome by that silent, restful idleness, I fell a-dreaming; and
that path, that long, white path seemed to me to have become a part of my
own being, something like a life that began over there, far away yonder
in the clear blue, to end in the unknown, here, behind the gable-end, cut
off at that fatal bend.
After long looking, I saw something, very far off; it came so slowly, so
softly, like a thing that grows, and those two little black patches grew
into two romping schoolboys, who, rolling and leaping along, came running
down the white sand-path and, at last, disappeared in the bend behind the
gable-end.
Then, for another long while, nothing more, nothing but sand, green and
sunshine.
Later, ‘twas three labourers, who came stepping up briskly, with their
gear over their shoulders. Half-way up the path, they jumped across the
ditch and went to work in the field. They toiled on, without looking up
or round, toiled on till I got tired of watching and tired of those three
stooping men and of seeing that gleaming steel flicker in the sun and go
in and out of the earth.
When now ‘twas mid-day and fiercely hot in my loft, my three labourers
sat down behind a tree and ate their noonday meal.
I went to the loft-door and devoured my second crust of bread and took a
fresh gulp of water.
Very calmly, without thinking, lame with the heat and with that old-man’s
feeling still inside me, I went and sat at the window.
The three men worked on, always, without stopping.
And that went on, went on, until the evening! When ‘twas nearly dark,
they gathered up their tools, jumped over the ditch, walked down the path
the way they had come and disappeared behind the gable-end.
Now it became deadly.
In the distance appeared a great black patch, which came slowly nearer
and nearer. The patch turned into a lazy, slow-stepping ox, with a
jolting, creaking waggon, in which sat a little old man who gazed
stupidly in front of him into the dark distance. The cart dragged along
wearily, creeping through the sand, and first the ox, then the little
fellow, then the waggon disappeared behind the gable-end.
Now I felt something like fear and I shivered: the evening was coming so
slowly, so sadly; and I dared not think of the night that was to follow.
‘Twas the first time in my life that I fell earnestly a-thinking. So that
path there became a life, a long-drawn-out, earnest life.... That was
quite plain in my head; and those boys had rolled and tumbled along that
path; next, those big men had burdensomely, most burdensomely turned over
their bit of earth; and the ox and the little old fellow had joggled
along it so piteously.... That life was so earnest and I had seen it all
from so far, from the outside of it: I did nothing, I took no part in it
and yet I lived ... and must also one day go along that path!
And how?
Getting up in the morning, eating, playing, going to school, misbehaving,
playing, eating, sleeping....
The mist rose out of the fields and I saw nothing more.
I jumped off my box, begged father’s pardon and crept into bed.
Never again was I shut up in the loft.
II. IN EARLY WINTER
First the leaves had become pale, deathly pale; later they turned
yellow-brown; and then they went fluttering and flickering, so wearily,
so slackly, like the wings of dying birds; and, one after the other, they
began to fall, dancing gently downwards, in eddies. They whirled in the
air, were carried on by the wind and at last fell dead and settled
somewhere in the mud.
Not a living thing was to be seen and the cottages that sat huddled close
to the ground remained fast shut; the smoke from the chimneys alone still
gave a sign of life.
The green drove now stood bare and bleak: two rows of straight trunks
which grew less and faded away in the blue mist.
Yonder comes something creeping up: a shapeless thing, like two little
black stripes, with something else; and it approaches....
At last and at length, out of those little stripes, appear a man and a
wife; and, out of the other thing, a barrel-organ on a cart, with a dog
between the wheels.
It all looked the worse for wear. The little fellow went bent between the
shafts and tugged; the little old woman’s lean arms pushed against the
organ-case; and the wheeled thing jolted on like that over the cart-ruts,
along the drove and through the wide gate of an honest homestead.
A flight of black crows sailed across the sky. The wind soughed through
the naked tree-tops; the mist rose and the world thinned away in a bluey
haze; this all vanished and slowly it became dark black night.
Man, woman and dog, they crept, all three, high into the loft and deep
into the hay; and they dozed away, like all else outside them and around.
Warm they lay there! And dream they did, of the cold, of the dark and of
the sad moaning wind!
At early morning, before it was bright day, they were on the tramp, over
the fallow fields, and drowned in a huge sea of thick blue mist. They
pulled for all they could: the little fellow in the shafts, the little
old woman behind the cart and the dog, with his head to the ground, for
the road’s sake.
A red glow broke in the east and a new day brightened. ‘Twas all white,
snow-white, as if the blue mist had bleached, melted and stuck fast on
the black fields, on the half-withered autumn fruits and on the dark
fretwork of the trees. Great drops dripped from the boughs.
From under the peak of his cap, the fellow peered into the distance with
his one eye, and he saw a church and houses. They went that way.
‘Twas low-roofed cottages they saw, all covered with hoar-frost; here and
there stood one alone and then a whole little row, crowded close
together: a street.
They were in the village.
It was lone and still, like a cloister, with here a little woman who,
tucked into her hooded cloak, crept along the houses to the church; there
a smith who hammered ... and the little church-bell, which tinkled over
the house-tops.
They stopped. The dog sat down to look. The little fellow threw off his
shoulder-strap, pulled his cap down lower and felt under the red-brown
organ-cloth for the handle. He gave a look at the houses that stood
before him, pinched his sunken mouth, wiped the seam of his sleeve over
his face and started grinding. Half-numbed sounds came trickling into the
chill street from under the organ-cloth: a sad--once, perhaps,
dance-provoking--tune, which now, false, dragging and twisted out of
shape, was like a muddled crawling of sounds all jumbled up together;
some came too soon, the others too late, as in a weariful dream; and, in
between, a sighing and creaking which came from very deep down, at each
third or fourth turn, and was deadened again at once in those
ever-recurring rough organ-sounds or dragged on and deafened in a mad
dance. ‘Twas like a poor little huddled soul uttering its plaint amid the
hullabaloo of rude men shouting aloud in the street.
The dog also had begun to howl when the tune started.
The little wife had settled her kerchief above her sharp-featured
old-wife’s face; and, with one hand in her apron-pocket and the other
holding a little tin can, she now went from door to door:
“For the poor blind man.... God reward you.”
And this through the whole street and farther, to the farmhouses, from
the one to the other, all day long, till evening fell again and that same
thick mist came to wrap everything in its grey, dark breath.
And again they wandered, through a drove, to a homestead and into the
hay.
“The dog has pupped,” said the little old woman; and she shook her man.
“Pupped?...”
And he turned in the nest which he had made for himself, pushed his head
deeper in the hay and drowsed on. He dreamt of dogs and of pups and of
organs and of ear-splitting yelps and howls.
The dog lay in a fine, round little nest of his own, rolled into a ball
and moaning. And he[1] looked so sadly and kindly into the little old
woman’s eyes; and he licked, never stopped licking his puppies. They were
like three red-brown moles, each with a fat head; they wriggled their
thick little bodies together and sought about and squeaked.
[1] The West-Fleming talks of dogs of either sex invariably as “he.”
When the tramps had swallowed their slice of rye-bread and their dish of
porridge, they went on, elsewhither. The little fellow tugged, the little
old woman pushed and the dogs hung swinging between the wheels, in a
fig-basket. So they went begging, from hamlet to hamlet, the wide world
through: an old man and woman, with their organ; and a dog with his three
young pups.
*****
Much later....
The thick mist had changed into bright, glittering dewdrops and the sun
shone high in the heaven. Now four dogs lay harnessed to the cart, four
red-brown dogs. And, when the handle turned and the organ played, all
those four dogs lifted their noses on high and howled uglily.
Inside, deep-hidden under the organ-cloth, sat the little soul, the
mysterious, shabby little organ-soul, grown quite hoarse now and almost
dumb.
III. CHRISTMAS NIGHT
Over there, high up among the pines, stood the house where he lived alone
with the trees and the birds; and there, every morning, he saw the sun
rise and, in the evening, sink away again. And for how many years!
In summer, the white clouds floated high over his head; the blackbirds
sang in the wood around his door; and before him, in a blue vista, lay
the whole world.
When his harvest was gathered and the days drew in, when the sky closed
up, when the dry pines shook and rocked in the sad wind and the crows
dropped like black flakes and came cawing over the fields, he closed his
windows and sat down in the dark to brood.
He must go down yonder now, to the village below.
He fetched his Christmas star from the loft, restuck the gold flowers and
paper strips and fastened them in the cleft of the long wand. Then he put
on his greatcoat, drew the hood over his head and went.
From behind the black clouds came a light, a dull copper glow, without
rays, high up where the stars were; it set golden edges to the hem of the
clouds; the heaven remained black. There appeared a little streak of
glowing copper, which grew and grew, became a sickle, a half-disk and at
last a great, round, giant gold moon, which rose and rose. It went up
like a huge round orange behind the heaven and, more and more swiftly,
shot up into the sky, growing smaller and smaller, till it became just a
common moon, the laughing moon among the stars.
He alone had seen it.
Now he took his star on his shoulder, pulled his hood deep over his head
and wandered down the little path, all over the snow, to where the lights
were burning. It was lonely, lifeless, that white plain under that
burnished sky; and he was all alone, the black fellow on the snow. And he
saw the world so big, so monotonously bleak; a flat, white wilderness,
with here and there a straight, thin poplar and a row of black, lean,
knotty willows.
He went down towards the lights.
The village lay still. The street was black with people. Great crowds of
womenfolk, tucked and muffled in black hooded cloaks, tramped as in a
dream along the houses, over the squeaking snow. They shuffled from door
to door, stuck out their bony hands and asked plaintively for their
God’s-penny. They disappeared at the end of the street and went trudging
into the endless moonlight.
Children went with lights and stars and stood gathered in groups, their
black faces glowing in the shine of their lanterns; they made a huge din
with their tooting-horns[2] and rumble-pot[3] and sang of
The Babe born in the straw
and
The shepherds they come here.
They’re bringing wood and fire
And this and that and t’other:
Now bring us a pot of beer.
[2] A cow’s horn fitted with a mouthpiece.
[3] An iron pot with a bladder stretched across the top, beaten with
sticks, like a drum.
Mad Wanne went alone; she kept on lurching across the street with her
long legs, which stuck out far from under her skirt, and held her arms
wide open under her hooded cloak, like a demon bat. She snuffled
something about:
‘Twas hailing, ‘twas snowing and ‘twas bad weather
And over the roofs the wind it flew.
Saint Joseph said to Mary Maid:
“Mary, what shall we do?”
Top[4] Dras, Wulf and Grendel, three fellows, tall as trees, were also
loafing round. They were the three Kings: Top had turned his big jacket
and blackened his face; Grendel wore a white sheet over his back and blew
the horn; and Wulf had a mitre on and carried a great star with a lantern
on a stick. So they dragged along the street, singing at every door:
Three Kings with a star
Came travelling from afar,
Over mountains, hills and dale,
To go and look
In every nook,
To go and look for the Lord of All.
[4] Beggar.
Their rough voices droned and three great shadows walked far ahead of
them on the white street-snow. All those people came and went and twisted
and turned and came and went again. Each sang his own little song and
fretted his whining prayer. Above all this rose the dull toot of the
baker’s horn, as he kept on shouting:
“Hot bread! Hot bread!”
High hung the moon and blinked the stars; and fine white shafts fell
through the air, upon everything around, like silver pollen.
“Maarten of the mountain!” whispered the children behind the window.
“Maarten the Freezyman!”[5]
[5] A legendary figure of a snow-covered bogie, who comes down to the
villages at Christmas-time and runs away with the children.
And they crept back into the kitchen, beside the fire.
And the black man stood outside the door, tugging at the string of his
twirling star, and sang through his nose:
Come, star, come, star, you must not so still stand!
You must go with me to Bethlehem Land,
To Bethlehem, that comely city,
Where Mary sits with her Babe on her knee....
Along the country-roads, the farmhouses stood snowed in, with black
window-shutters, which showed dark against the walls and shut in the
light, and stumpy chimneys, with thick smoke curling from them. Indoors,
there was no seeing clearly: the lamp hung from the ceiling in a ring of
steam and smoke and everything lay black and tumbled. In the hearth, the
yule-log lay blazing. The farmer’s wife baked waffles and threw them in
batches on the straw-covered floor.
In one corner, under the light and wound from head to foot in
tobacco-smoke, were the farm-hands, playing cards. They sat wrapped up in
their game, bending over their little table, very quiet. Now and then
came a half-oath and the thud of a fist on the table and then again
peaceful shuffling and stacking and playing of their cards.
The Freezyman sat in the midst of the children, who listened open-mouthed
to his tale of _The Mighty Hunter_.
His star stood in the corner.
Later, the big table was drawn out and supper served. All gathered round
and sat down and ate. First came potatoes and pork, red kale and pigs’
chaps, then stewed apples and sausages ... and waffles, waffles, waffles.
They drank beer out of little glass mugs. The table was cleared, coffee
poured out, spirits fetched from the cupboard and gin burnt with sugar.
Then the chairs were pushed close, right round the hearth, and Maarten
stood up, took his star, smoothed his long beard and, keeping time by
tugging the string of his star, droned out:
On Christmas night
Is Jesus born
To fight our fight
Against the night
Of Satan and his devil-spawn.
And a manger is His cot
And all humble is His lot;
_So, mortal, make you humble, too,
To serve Him Who thus served you_.
Three wise men and each a king
Come to make Him offering;
Gold, frankincense and myrrh they bring.
Angels sweet
Kiss His feet,
As they sing:
“Hail, Lord and King!”
Telling all mankind the story
Of His wonder and His glory;
_So, mortal, make you humble, too,
To serve Him Who thus served you_.
All else was still. The men sat drinking their hot gin, the children
listened with their heads on one side and the farmer’s wife, with her
hands folded over her great lap, sat crying.
The door opened and the Kings stood in the middle of the floor. They were
white with snow and their faces blue with cold; the ice hung from
Grendel’s moustache. They looked hard under their hats at the table, the
hearth and the little glasses and at Maarten, who was still standing up.
Wulf made his star turn, Top banged his rumble-pot to time and they sang:
Three Kings came out of the East;
‘Twas to comfort Mary....
When the song was ended, each got two little glasses; then they could go.
Grendel cursed aloud.
“That damned hill-devil swallows it all up,” muttered Wulf.
And they went off through the snow.
The others sang and played and played cards for ever so long and ‘twas
late when Maarten took his star and, with a “Good-night till next year,”
pulled the door behind him.
It was still light outside, but the sky hung full of snow; above, a grey
fleece and, lower, a swirl of great white flakes, which fell down slowly
swarming one on top of the other.
He plunged deep into it.... It was still so far to go; and his house and
his pines, he had left them all so far behind.
He was so old, so lone; it was so cold; and all the roads were white ...
all sky and snow. In the hollow lay the village: a little group of
sleeping houses round the white church-steeple; and behind it lay his
mountain, but it was like a cloud, a shapeless monster, very far away.
Above his head, stars, stars in long rows. He stood still and looked up
and found one which he saw every evening, a pale, dead star, like an old
acquaintance, which would lead him--for the last time, perhaps--back to
his mountain, back home.
And he trudged on.
There was a light in the three narrow pointed windows of the chapel and
the bell tinkled within. He went to rest a bit against the wall. What a
noise and what a bustle all the evening ... and the gin! And those rough
chaps had looked at him so brutally. In there, it was still; those
windows gleamed so brightly; and, after the sound of the bell, there came
so softly a woman’s voice:
“_Venite adoremus_....”
Then all was silence, the lights went out. And he fared on.
The village lay behind him and the road began to climb. There, on the
right, stood “The Jolly Hangman.” Now he knows his way and ‘tis no longer
far from home. From out of the ditch comes something creeping, a black
shape that runs across the plain, chattering like a magpie: Mad Wanne,
with her thin legs and her cloak wide open. She ran as fast as she could
run and vanished behind the inn.
He had started; he became so frightened, so uneasy, that he hastened his
steps and longed to be at home.
There was still a light in “The Jolly Hangman” and a noise of drunken
men. He passed, but then turned back again ... to sing his last song,
according to old custom. They opened the door and asked him in. He saw
Grendel sitting there and tried to get away. Then the three of them
rushed out and called after him. When they saw that he went on, they
broke into a run:
“Stop, you brute!... Here, you with your star!... Oh, you damned singer
of songs!” they howled and ran and caught him and threw him down.
Grendel dug his knee into his chest and held his arms stretched wide
against the ground. Wulf and Dras gripped whole handfuls of snow and
crammed it into his mouth and went on until all his face was thickly
covered and he lay powerless. Then they planted his star beside him in
the snow and began to turn and sing to the echo:
_A, a, a_--glory be to Him on high to-day!
_E, e, e_--upon earth peace there shall be!
_I, i, i_--come and see with your own eye!
_O, o, o_--His little bed of straw below!
Like a flash, Mad Wanne shot past, yelling and shrieking. Wulf flung his
stick against her legs. She waved her arms under her cloak and vanished
in the dark.
The three men sat down by the ditch and laughed full-throated. Then they
started for the village. Long it rang:
Three Kings came out of the East;
‘Twas to comfort Mary ...
Great white flakes fell from the starry sky, wriggled and swarmed, one on
top of the other.
IV. LOAFING
He went, ever on the move, with the slow, shuffling step of wandering
beggars who are nowhere at home.
They had discharged him, some time ago, and now he was walking alone like
a wild man. For whole days he had dragged himself through the moorland,
from farm to farm, looking for his bread like the dogs. Now he came to a
wide lane of lime-trees and before him lay the town, asleep. He went into
it. The streets lay dead, the doors were shut, the windows closed: all
the people were resting; and he loafed. It was dreary, to walk alone like
that, all over the country-side, and with such a body: a giant with huge
legs and arms, which were doomed to do nothing, and that belly, that
craving belly, which he carried about with him wherever he went.
And nobody wanted him: ‘twas as though they were afraid of his strong
limbs and his stubborn head--because his glowing eyes could not entreat
meekly enough--and his blackguardly togs....
Morning came; the working-folk were early astir. Lean men and pale women,
carrying their kettles and food-satchels in their hands, beat the
slippery pavements with their wooden shoes. Doors and windows flew open;
life began; every one walked with a busy air, knew where he was going;
and they vanished here and there, through a big gate or behind a narrow
door that shut with a bang. Carts with green stuff, waggons with sand and
coal drove this way and that. Fellows with milk and bread went round; and
it grew to a din of calls and cries, each shouting his loudest.
And he loafed. Nobody looked at him, noticed him or wanted him. In the
middle of the forenoon, a young lady had stared at him for a long time
and said to her mother:
“What a huge fellow!”
He had heard her and it did him good. He looked round, but mother and
daughter were gone, behind a corner, and stood gazing into a shop full of
bows and ribbons.
It began to whirl terribly in his belly; and his stomach hurt him so; and
his legs were tired.
The streets and houses and all those strange people annoyed him. He
wanted to get away, far away, and to see men like himself: workers
without work, who were hungry!
He looked for the narrow alleys and the poor quarter.
Out of a side-street a draycart came jogging along. Half a score of
labourers lay tugging in the shoulder-strap or leant with all the force
of their bodies against the cart, which rolled on toilsomely. ‘Twas a
load of flax, packed tightly in great square bales standing one against
the other, the whole cart full. The dray caught its right wheel in the
grating of an open gutter and remained stock-still, leaning aslant, as
though planted there. The workmen racked and wrung to get the wheel out,
but it was no good. Then they stood there, staring at one another, at
their wits’ end and throwing glances into the eyes of that big fellow who
had come to look on. Without saying or speaking, he caught a spoke in
either hand, pressed with his mighty shoulder against the inside of the
wheel, bent and wrung and in a turn brought the cart on the level. Then
he went behind among the other workmen to go and help them shove. They
looked at him queerly, as if to say that they no longer needed his help
and had rather done without him. The cart rolled on, another street or
two, and then through the open gate of the warehouse. The labourers
looked into one another’s eyes uneasily, moved about, pulled the bales
off the cart and dragged them a little farther along the wall. Then they
tailed off, one by one, through a small inner door; and he stood there
alone, like a fool. A bit later, he heard them laugh and whisper under
their breaths. When he was tired of waiting, he went up the street again.
Nobody, nobody, nobody wanted him!
He ground his teeth and clenched his fists. In the street through which
he had to go, on the spaces outside the hotels sat ladies and gentlemen
toying with strange foods and sipping their wine out of long goblets.
They chattered gaily and tasted and pecked with dainty lips and turned-up
noses. The waiters ran here, there, like slaves. Those coaxing smells
stung like adders and roused evil thoughts in his brain. His stomach
fretted awfully and his empty head turned.
He hurried away.
In a street with windowless house-fronts, a street without people in it,
he felt better. He let his body lean against the iron post of a gas-lamp,
stuck his hands in his trouser-pockets and stood there looking at the
paving-stones. Now he was damned if he would take another step, he would
rather croak here like a beast; then they would have to take him up and
know that he existed.
The boys coming from school mocked him; they danced in a ring, with him,
the big fellow, in the middle. They hung paper flags on his back and
sang:
Hat, hat,
Ugly old hat!
It serves as a slop-pail and as a hat!
He did not stir.
Yon came a milk-maid driving up in a cart drawn by dogs. He got a gnawing
in his arms, a spout of blood shot to his head and he suddenly felt as if
something was going to happen. Just as she drove past, he put his great
hand on the edge of the little cart, with one pull took a copper can from
its straw, put it to his mouth and drank; then he sent the can clattering
through the window of the first-best house, till the panes rattled again.
Looking round--as if bewildered and set going, roused by what he had
done--he caught sight of the frightened little dairy-maid. A mocking grin
played on his cruel face; he flung his rough arm round her little body
and lifted the girl out of the cart right up to his face in a fierce hug.
The boys had fled shrieking. He felt two pairs of hands pulling at his
sleeves from below. He loosed the girl and saw two policemen who held him
fast and ordered him to go with them. They held him by the arm on either
side and stepped hurriedly to keep pace with his great strides. They
looked in dismay at that huge fellow, with his wicked eyes, and then at
each other, as if to ask what they should do.
They came to a narrow little street, with nobody in it, and stopped at a
public-house:
“Could you do with a dram, mate?” they asked him.
He looked bewildered, astounded. They all three went inside; and each of
them drank a big glass of gin.
The policemen whispered something together; the elder wiped the drink
from his moustache and then said, very severely:
“And now, clear out; hurry up! And mind your manners, will you, next
time!”
He was outside once more, loafing on, along the houses.
V. SPRING
Mother stood like a clucking hen among her red-cheeked youngsters. She
was holding a loaf against her fat stomach and, with a curved
pruning-knife, was cutting off good thick slices which the youngsters
snatched away one by one and stuffed into their pockets. Horieneke
fetched her basket of knitting and her school-books. She first pulled
Fonske’s stocking up once more, buttoned Sarelke’s breeches and wiped
Lowietje’s nose; and, with an admonishing “Straight to school, do you
hear, boys?” from mother, the whole band rushed out of the door, through
the little flower-garden and up the broad unmetalled road, straight
towards the great golden sun which was rising yonder, far behind the
pollard alders, in a mighty fire of rays. It was cool outside; the sky
was bright blue streaked with glowing shafts aslant the hazy-white clouds
deep, deep in the heavens. Over the level fields, ever so far, lay a
stain of pale green and brown; and the slender stalks of the wheat stood
like needles, quivering in their glittering moisture. The trees were
still nearly bare; and their trunks and tops stood tall and black against
the clear sky; but, when you saw them together, in rows or little
clusters, there was a soft yellow-green colour over them, spotted with
gleaming buds ready to burst. A soft wind, just warm enough to thaw the
frost, worked its way into and through everything and made it all shake
and swarm till it was twisted full of restless, growing life. That wind
curled through the youngsters’ tangled hair and coloured their round
cheeks cherry-red. They ran and romped through the dry sand, stamping
till it flew above their heads. They were mad with enjoyment.
Trientje stood in the doorway, in her little shirt, with her stomach
sticking out, watching her brothers as they disappeared; and, when she
saw them no longer, she thrust her fists into her sockets, opened her
mouth wide and started a-crying, until mother’s hands lifted her up by
the arms and mother’s thick lips gave her a hearty kiss.
Horieneke came walking step by step under the lime-trees, along the
narrow grass-path beside the sand, keeping her eyes fixed on the play of
her knitting-needles. When she reached the bridge that crossed the brook,
she looked round after her brothers. They had run down the slope and were
now trotting wildly one after the other through the rich brown grass,
pulling up all the white and yellow flowers, one by one, till their arms
were crammed with them. Horieneke took out her catechism, laid it open on
the low rail and sat there cheerfully waiting. Sarelke had crept through
the water-flags until he was close to the brook and, through the clear,
gleaming blue water, watched a little fish frisking about. In a moment,
his wooden shoes and his stockings were off and one leg was in the water,
trying it: it was cold; and he felt a shiver right down his back. Ripples
played on the smooth blue and widened out to the bank. The little fish
was gone, but so was the cold; and he saw more fish, farther away: quick
now, the other leg in the water! He pulled his breeches up high and there
he stood, with the water well above his knees, peering out for fish. The
water was clear as glass; and he saw swarms of them playing, darting
swiftly up and down, to and fro like arrows: they shot past in shoals
that held together like long snakes, in among the moss and the reeds and
between the stones, winding through slits and crannies. He shouted aloud
for joy. Bertje and Wartje and the others all had their stockings off and
stood in the water bending down to look, making funnels of their hands in
the water, where it rustled in little streams between two grass-sods
through which the fish had to pass. Whenever they felt one wriggling in
their hands they yelled and screamed and sprang out of the brook to put
it into their wooden shoes, which stood on the bank, scooped full of
water. There they loitered examining those beasties from close by: those
fish were theirs now; and they would let them swim about in the big tub
at home and give them a bit of their bread and butter every day, so that
they might grow into great big pike. And now back to the runnel for more.
“Boys, I’ll tell mother!” cried Horieneke.
But they did not hear and just kept on as before. Fonske had not been
able to catch one yet and his fat legs were turning blue with the cold.
In front of him stood Bertje, stooping and peering into the water, with
his hands ready to grasp; and Fonske saw such a lovely little runnel from
his neck to halfway down his back, all bare skin. He carefully scooped
his hands full of water and let it trickle gently inside Bertje’s shirt.
The boy growled; and Fonske, screaming with laughter, skipped out of the
brook. Now came a romping and stamping in the water, a dashing and
splashing with their hands till it turned to a rain of gleaming drops
that fell on their heads and wetted their clothes through and through.
And a bawling! And a plashing with their bare legs till the spray spouted
high over the bank.
“The constable!” cried Horieneke.
The sport was over. Like lightning they all sprang out of the brook,
caught up their wooden shoes with the little fish in them and ran as hard
as they could through the grass to the bridge. There only did they
venture to look round. Hurriedly they turned down their breeches, dried
their shiny cheeks and dripping hair with one another’s handkerchiefs and
then marched all together through the sun and wind to school.
In the village square they wandered about among the other boys, silently
showed their catch, hid their shoes in the hawthorn-hedge behind the
churchyard and stayed playing until schoolmaster’s bell rang.
Boys and girls, each on their own side, disappeared through the gate; and
the street was now silent as the grave. After a while, there came through
the open window of the school first a sort of buzzing and humming and
then a repetition in chorus, a rhythmical spelling aloud: b-u-t, but;
t-e-r, ter: butter; B-a, Ba; b-e-l, bel: Babel; ever on and more and more
noisily. In between it all, the sparrows chattered and chirped and
fluttered safely in the powdery sand of the playground.
The sun was now high in the sky and the light glittered on the young
leaves, full of the glad life of youth and gleaming with gold.