Page:Eekhoud - The New Carthage.djvu/309

Rh which passed his. And no more was needed for Laurent to link to him this being whom he would never see again. For eternity he would relish that too rapid minute; not one jot of its atmosphere would be lost: it was near a viaduct, and in the air undulated an odor of stagnant water and the song of a track-walker. A foul effluence and a sad melopœia framed the supreme nobility of attitude and great affective eyes of the unknown …

Such incidents became for Laurent powerful pictures, of a magnetic color, of a highly conceived relief, but with, in addition, perfume, music and symbol, and the indefinable that differentiated from all others the chosen object or person. What masterpieces, he thought, if anyone could succeed in rendering these pictures as he himself reviewed them and ruminated them, with closed eyes!

This one also!

A farm-hand was taking back to the stable his unyoked, but not yet unharnessed horses. The fore-parts of the team had already disappeared into the darkness; only their rumps shone in the half-light within the barn-door. Outside, the pole clenched in his fist, the farm-hand, a hardy fellow, wide of shoulder, in shirt sleeves, seen from the back, was bending over slightly toward the right, in the action of holding back his too impatient animals. One could have heard his "hiuho!" or the chatter of his coaxing words, or his imperative oath, but one remembered, above all, the pattern of his gesture so unique, harmonious and almost sublimated, and inseparable from the man himself was that muscular pose.

With the mental image of this gesture, Laurent recreated the scene in all its accessory details. In truth,