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Fortunately for his peace, his former owner waskilled in a drunken brawl at the Kermessa of
Meklin, and so sought not after him nor disturbedhim in his new and well-loved home.
A few years later, old Jehandas, who had alwaysbeen a cripple, became so paralyzed with
rheumatism that it was impossible for him to goout with the cart anymore.
Then little Nello, being now grown to his sixthyear of age, and knowing the town well from having
accompanied his grandfather so many times, tookhis place beside the cart, and sold the milk and
received the coins in exchange, and brought themback to their respective owners with a pretty
grace and seriousness which charmed all who beheldhim.
The little Ardennas was a beautiful child, withdark, grave, tender eyes, and a lovely bloom upon
his face, and fair locks that clustered to histhroat, and many an artist sketched the group as
it went by him, the green cart with the brassflagons of Tenere and Miris and Van Tal, and the
great tawny-colored, massive dog, with his beltharness that chimed cheerily as he went, and the
small figure that ran beside him which had littlewhite feet and great wooden shoes, and a soft,
brave, innocent, happy face like the little fairchildren of Rubens.
Nello and Patrusky did the work so well and sojoyfully together that Jehandas himself, when the
summer came and he was better again, had no needto stir out, but could sit in the doorway in the
sun and see them go forth through the gardenwicket, and then doze and dream and pray a little,
and then awake again as the clock told three andwatch for their return.
And on their return Patrusky would shake himselffree 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 theshadows lengthen over the great plain, and see the
twilight veil the fair cathedral spire, and thenlie down together to sleep peacefully while the
old man said a prayer.
So the days and the years went on, and the livesof Nello and Patrusky were happy, innocent and
healthful. In the spring and summer especiallywere they glad. Flanders is not a lovely land, and
around the Burg of Rubens it is perhaps leastlovely of all.
Corn and calza, pasture and plough, succeed eachother on the characterless plain in wearying
repetition, and save by some gaunt grey tower,with its peal of pathetic bells, or some figure
coming athwart the fields, made picturesque by agleaner's bundle or a woodman's faggot, there is
no change, no variety, no beauty anywhere, and hewho has dwelt upon the mountains or amidst the
forests feels oppressed as by imprisonment withthe tedium and the endlessness of that vast and
dreary level.
But it is green and very fertile, and it has widehorizons that have a certain charm of their own
even in their dullness and monotony, and among therushes by the waterside the flowers grow, and the
trees rise tall and fresh where the barges glidewith their great hulks black against the sun, and
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their little green barrels and vari-coloured flagsgay against the leaves.
Anyway, there is greenery and breadth of spaceenough to be as good as beauty to a child and a
dog, and these two asked no better, when theirwork was done, than to lie buried in the lush
grasses on the side of the canal, and watch thecumbrous vessels drifting by and bring the crisp
salt smell of the sea among the blossoming scentsof the country summer.
True, in the winter it was harder, and they had torise in the darkness and the bitter cold, and they
had seldom as much as they could have eaten anyday, and the hut was scarce better than a shed
when the nights were cold, although it looked sopretty 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 wallsof the poor little hut, and the vine was black and
leafless, and the bare lands looked very bleak anddrear without, and sometimes within the floor was
flooded and then frozen.
In winter it was hard, and the snow numbed thelittle white limbs of Nello, and the icicles cut
the brave, untiring feet of Patrusky.
But even then they were never heard to lament,either of them.
The child's wooden shoes and the dog's four legswould 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 anda handful of bread, or some kindly trader would
throw some billets of fuel into the little cart asit went homeward, or some woman in their own
village would bid them keep a share of the milkthey carried for their own food,
and they would run over the white lands, throughthe early darkness, bright and happy, and burst
with a shout of joy into their home.
So, on the whole, it was well with them, verywell, and Patrusky, meeting on the highway or in
the public streets the many dogs who toiled fromdaybreak into nightfall, paid only with blows and
curses, and loosened from the shafts with a kickto starve and freeze as best they might, Patrusky
in his heart was very grateful to his fate, andthought it the fairest and the kindliest the world
could hold.
Though he was often very hungry indeed when he laydown at night, though he had to work in the heats
of summer noons and the rasping chills of winterdawns, though his feet were often tender with
wounds from the sharp edges of the jaggedpavement, though he had to perform tasks beyond
his strength and against his nature, yet he wasgrateful and content, he did his duty with each
day, and the eyes that he loved smiled down onhim.
It was sufficient for Patrusky.
There was only one thing which caused Patrusky anyuneasiness in his life, and it was this.
Antwerp, as all the world knows, is full at everyturn of old piles of stones, dark and ancient and
majestic, standing in crooked courts, jammedagainst gateways and taverns, rising by the
water's edge, with bells ringing above them in theair, and ever and again out of their arched doors
a swell of music pealing.
There they remain, the grand old sanctuaries ofthe past, shut in amidst the squalor, the hurry,
the crowds, the unloveliness and the commerce ofthe modern world, and all day long the clouds
drift and the birds circle and the winds sigharound them, and beneath the earth at their feet
their sleeps, Rubens.
And the greatness of the mighty master still restsupon Antwerp, and wherever we turn in its narrow
streets his glory lies therein, so that all meanthings are thereby transfigured, and as we pace
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slowly through the winding ways, and by the edgeof the stagnant water, and through the noisome
courts, his spirit abides with us, and the heroicbeauty of his visions is about us, and the stones
that once felt his footsteps and bore his shadowseem to arise and speak of him with living voices.
For the city which is the tomb of Rubens stilllives to us through him, and him alone.
It is so quiet there by that great whitesepulchre, so quiet, save only when the organ
peals and the
choir cries aloud the Sav Regina or the KyrieEleison. Sure no artist ever had a greater
gravestone than that pure marble sanctuary givesto him in the heart of his birthplace in the
chancel of St. Jacques. Without Rubens, what wereAntwerp? A dirty, dusky, bustling mart,
which no man would ever care to look upon save thetraders who do business on its wharves.
With Rubens, to the whole world of man it is asacred name, a sacred soil, a Bethlehem where
a God of art saw light, a Golgotha where a God ofart lies dead. O nations! closely should you
treasure your great men, for by them alone willthe future know of you. Flanders in her
generations
has been wise. In his life she glorified thisgreatest of her sons, and in his death she
magnifies his name. But her wisdom is very rare.Now, the trouble of Patrusky was this.
Into these great, sad piles of stones, that rearedtheir melancholy majesty above the crowded roofs,
the child Nella would many and many a time enter,and disappear through their dark-arched portals,
whilst Patrusky, left without upon the pavement,would wearily and vainly ponder on what could be
the charm which thus allured from him hisinseparable and beloved companion.
Once or twice he did essay to sea for himself,clattering up the steps with his milk-cart behind
him, but thereon he had been always sent backagain summarily by a tall custodian in black
clothes and silver chains of office, and fearfulof bringing his little master into trouble,
he desisted, and remained couched patiently beforethe churches until such time as the boy
reappeared. It was not the fact of his going intothem which disturbed Patrusky, he knew that people
went to church, all the village went to the small,tumble-down grey pile opposite the red windmill.
What troubled him was that little Nella alwayslooked strangely when he came out,
always very flushed or very pale, and whenever hereturned home after such visitations would sit
silent and dreaming, not caring to play, butgazing out at the evening skies beyond the line
of the canal, very subdued and almost sad. Whatwas it? wondered Patrusky. He thought it could not
be good or natural for the little lad to be sograve, and in his dumb fashion he tried all he
could to keep Nella by him in the sunny fields orin the busy marketplace. But to the churches
Nella would go, most often of all would he go tothe great cathedral, and Patrusky, left without
on the stones by the iron fragments of QuentinMatsys' 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 thedog's neck would kiss him on his broad,
tawny-coloured forehead, and murmur always thesame words, If I could only see them Patrusky!
If I could only see them! What were they? ponderedPatrusky, looking up with large,
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wistful, sympathetic eyes. One day, when thecustodian was out of the way and the doors left
ajar, he got in for a moment after his littlefriend and saw. They were two great covered
pictures on either side of the choir. Nella waskneeling, wrapped as in an ecstasy, before the
altar picture of the Assumption, and when henoticed Patrusky, and rose and drew the dog
gently out into the air, his face was wet withtears, and he looked up at the veiled places as
he passed them, and murmured to his companion, Itis so terrible not to see them, Patrusky,
just because one is poor and cannot pay. He nevermeant that the poor should not see them when he
painted them, I am sure. He would have had to seethem any day, every day, that I am sure.
And they keep them shrouded there, shrouded in thedark, the beautiful things, and they never
feel the light and no eyes look on them, unlessrich people come and pay. If I could only see
them, I would be content to die. But he could notsee them, and Patrusky could not help him,
for to gain the silver piece that the Churchexacts as the price for looking on the glories
of the elevation of the cross and the descent ofthe cross was a thing as utterly beyond the
powers of either of them as it would have been toscale the heights of the cathedral spire.
They had never so much as a suit of spare, if theycleared enough to get a little wood for the stove,
a little broth for the pot, it was the utmost theycould do. And yet the heart of the child
was set in sore and endless longing upon beholdingthe greatness of the two veiled Rubens.
The whole soul of the little Ardennes thrilled andstirred with an absorbing passion for art.
Going on his ways through the old city in theearly days before the sun or the people had risen,
Nello, who looked only a little peasant boy, witha great dog drawing milk to sell from door to
door, was in a heaven of dreams where of Rubenswas the God. Nello, cold and hungry, with
stockingless
feet in wooden shoes, and the winter winds blowingamong 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 wavesof her golden hair lying upon her shoulders,
and the light of an eternal sun shining down uponher 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 calledgenius.
