Christ in Flanders | Page 4

Night was falling. It was scarcely
possible to see the coast of Flanders by the dying fires of the sunset, or
to make out upon the hither shore any forms of belated passengers
hurrying along the wall of the dykes that surrounded the open country,
or among the tall reeds of the marshes. The boat was full.
"What are you waiting for? Let us put off!" they cried.
Just at that moment a man appeared a few paces from the jetty, to the
surprise of the skipper, who had heard no sound of footsteps. The
traveler seemed to have sprung up from the earth, like a peasant who
had laid himself down on the ground to wait till the boat should start,
and had slept till the sound of the horn awakened him. Was he a thief?
or some one belonging to the custom-house or the police?

As soon as the man appeared on the jetty to which the boat was moored,
seven persons who were standing in the stern of the shallop hastened to
sit down on the benches, so as to leave no room for the newcomer. It
was the swift and instinctive working of the aristocratic spirit, an
impulse of exclusiveness that comes from the rich man's heart. Four of
the seven personages belonged to the most aristocratic families in
Flanders. First among them was a young knight with two beautiful
greyhounds; his long hair flowed from beneath a jeweled cap; he
clanked his gilded spurs, curled the ends of his moustache from time to
time with a swaggering grace, and looked round disdainfully on the rest
of the crew. A high-born damsel, with a falcon on her wrist, only spoke
with her mother or with a churchman of high rank, who was evidently a
relation. All these persons made a great deal of noise, and talked among
themselves as though there were no one else in the boat; yet close
beside them sat a man of great importance in the district, a stout
burgher of Bruges, wrapped about with a vast cloak. His servant, armed
to the teeth, had set down a couple of bags filled with gold at his side.
Next to the burgher came a man of learning, a doctor of the University
of Louvain, who was traveling with his clerk. This little group of folk,
who looked contemptuously at each other, was separated from the
passengers in the forward part of the boat by the bench of rowers.
The belated traveler glanced about him as he stepped on board, saw that
there was no room for him in the stern, and went to the bows in quest
of a seat. They were all poor people there. At first sight of the
bareheaded man in the brown camlet coat and trunk-hose, and plain
stiff linen collar, they noticed that he wore no ornaments, carried no
cap nor bonnet in his hand, and had neither sword nor purse at his
girdle, and one and all took him for a burgomaster sure of his authority,
a worthy and kindly burgomaster like so many a Fleming of old times,
whose homely features and characters have been immortalized by
Flemish painters. The poorer passengers, therefore, received him with
demonstrations of respect that provoked scornful tittering at the other
end of the boat. An old soldier, inured to toil and hardship, gave up his
place on the bench to the newcomer, and seated himself on the edge of
the vessel, keeping his balance by planting his feet against one of those
traverse beams, like the backbone of a fish, that hold the planks of a
boat together. A young mother, who bore her baby in her arms, and

seemed to belong to the working class in Ostend, moved aside to make
room for the stranger. There was neither servility nor scorn in her
manner of doing this; it was a simple sign of the goodwill by which the
poor, who know by long experience the value of a service and the
warmth that fellowship brings, give expression to the open-heartedness
and the natural impulses of their souls; so artlessly do they reveal their
good qualities and their defects. The stranger thanked her by a gesture
full of gracious dignity, and took his place between the young mother
and the old soldier. Immediately behind him sat a peasant and his son, a
boy ten years of age. A beggar woman, old, wrinkled, and clad in rags,
was crouching, with her almost empty wallet, on a great coil of rope
that lay in the prow. One of the rowers, an old sailor, who had known
her in the days of her beauty and prosperity, had let her come in "for
the love of God," in the beautiful phrase that the common people use.