The Path of Life Part 10

"They're planting potatoes to-morrow and we were to go and work; and Horieneke was to come too."

"Ay."

"But she'll stay here!"

"What do you mean, stay here?"

"Yes, she's got her work to do at home."

"All right; but if she has to go?"

"Don't care."

And mother stood with her arms akimbo, looking at her husband, waiting for his answer.

"And if he turns us out and leaves us without work!"

"And suppose our child comes home with a present ... from that beast of a farmer!"

Ivo knocked out his pipe:

"Pooh, that could happen to her anywhere; and, after all, she won't be tied to her mother's ap.r.o.n-strings all her life long!... When you live in a man's house and eat his bread, you've got to work for it and do his will: the master is the master. Come, let's go to bed; we've a lot to do tomorrow."

Suppressed sobs came from the little bedroom. Mother looked in. Horieneke lay with her hands before her eyes, crying convulsively.

"Well, what's the matter?"

The child pressed her head to the wall and wept harder than ever.

"Come along, wife, d.a.m.n it! It's time that all this foolery was over, or she'll lose her senses altogether."

Mother grew impatient, bit her teeth:

"Oh, you blessed cry-baby!"

And angrily she thumped the child on the hip with her clenched fist and left her lying there.

"A nice thing, getting children: one'd rather bring up puppies any day!"

She turned out the light and it was now dark and still; outside, the thin rain dripped and the white blossoms blew from the trees and the whole air smelt wonderfully good. In the distance, the nightingale hidden in the wood jugged and gurgled without stopping; and it was like the pealing of a church-organ all night long.

The weather had broken up and the day dawned with a melancholy drizzle and a cold wind. The sky remained grey, discharging misty raindrops which soaked into everything and hung trembling like strung pearls on the leaves of the beech-hedge and on the gra.s.s and on the cornstalks in the fields. It was suddenly winter again. On the hilly field the people stood black, wrapped up, with their caps drawn over their ears and their red handkerchiefs round their necks. The hoes went up in the air one after the other and struck the moist earth, which opened into straight furrows from one end to the other of the field. Here wives walked barefoot, bent, with baskets on their arm from which they kept taking potatoes and laying them, at a foot's distance, in the open trench. In a corner of the field stood the farmer, his big body leaning on a stick; and his dark eyes watched his labourers.

There, in the midst of them, was Horieneke, bent also like the others, in her coa.r.s.e workaday clothes, with a basket of seed-potatoes on her arm; and her red-gold curls now hung, like long corkscrews, wet against her face; and every now and then she would draw herself up, tossing her head back to keep them out of her eyes.

VI. IN THE SQUALL

At noon, under the blazing sun, all three started for the wood, after blackberries.

Trientje was in her cotton pinafore, with a straw hat on her head and a wicker basket on her arm. Lowietje stood in his worn breeches and his torn s.h.i.+rt; in his pocket he had a new climbing-cord. Each dragged Poentje by one hand, Poentje who still went about in his little s.h.i.+rt and, with his wide-straddling little bare legs, trotted on between brother and sister.

They went along narrow, winding foot-paths, between the cornfields, high as a man, through the flax-meadows and the yellow blinking mustard-flower. The sun bit into Lowietje's bare head and sent the sweat trickling down his cheeks.

They went always on, with their eyes fixed upon that thick crowd of blue trees full of blithe green and of dark depths behind the farthermost trunks.

Poentje became tired and let himself be dragged along by his hands. When he began to cry, they sat down in the ditch beside the corn to rest.

Trientje opened her basket and they ate up all their bread-and-b.u.t.ter.

Near them, in the gra.s.s, ants crept in and out of a little hole. Lowietje poked with a stick and the whole nest came crawling out. The children sat looking to see all those beasties swarm about and run away with their eggs.

All three stood up and went past the old mill, then through the meadow and so, at last, they came to the wood and into the cool shade. On the banks of the deep, hollowed path, it all stood thick as hail and black with the brambleberries. Lowietje picked, never stopped picking, and put them one by one in his mouth; and his nose and cheeks were smeared with red, like blood. Trientje steadily picked her whole basket full and Poentje sat playing on the way-side gra.s.s with a bunch of cornflowers.

In the wood, everything was still: the trees stood firmly in the blaze of the sun and the young leaves hung gleaming, without stirring. A bird sat very deep down whistling and its song rang out as in a great church.

Turtle-doves cooed far away. Round the children's ears hummed big fat bees, buzzing from flower to flower. When the bank was stripped, they went deeper into the wood, Lowietje going ahead to show the way. They crept through the trees where it twilighted and where the sun played so prettily with little golden arrows in the leaf.a.ge; from there they came into the high pine-wood. Look, look! There were other boys ... and they knew where birds lived!

"Listen, Trientje," said Lowietje. "You stay here with Poentje: I'll come back at once and bring your pinafore full of birds' eggs ... and young ones."

He fetched out his climbing-cord and, in a flash, all the boys were gone, behind the trees. Trientje heard them shout and yell and, a little later, she saw her little brother sitting high up on the slippery trunk of a beech. She put her hands to her mouth and screamed:

"Lo--wie!..."

It echoed three or four times over the low shoots and against the tall trees, but Lowietje did not hear.

A man now came striding down the path; he carried a gun on his shoulder.

The boys had only just seen him and, on every side, they came scrambling out of the tree-tops, slid down the trunks and darted into the underwood.

Breathless, bewildered and scared to death, Lowietje came to his sister and, with his two hands, held the rents of his trousers together:

"There were eight eggs there, Trientje, but the keeper came and, in the sliding, my trousers...."

And he let a strip fall. They were torn from end to end, from top to bottom, in each leg.

"Mother will be angry," said Trientje, very earnestly.

She took some pins from her frock and fastened the tears, so that the skin did not show.

Suddenly fell a rumbling thunder-clap that droned through all the wood and died away in a long chain of rough sounds. The children looked at one another and then at the trees and the sky. All stood black now, the sun was gone and a warm wind came working through the boughs, by gusts. It grew dark as night and at times most terribly silent.

And now--they all crossed themselves--a ball of fire flew through the sky and it cracked and broke and it tore all that was in the wood. The wind came up, the branches rocked and writhed and the leaves fluttered and tugged and heavy drops beat into the sand.

"Quick, quick!" said Trientje. "It's going to lighten!"

Lowietje said nothing and Poentje cried. Each took the child by one hand and they ran as fast as they could to get from under the trees.

"Ooh! Ooh!"