NOT long after this, as the little family at Tergou sat at dinner, Luke
Peterson burst in on them, covered with dust.
"Good people, Mistress Catherine is wanted instantly at Rotterdam."
"My name is Catherine, young man. Kate, it will be Margaret."
"Ay dame, she said to me, 'Good Luke, hie thee to Tergou, and ask for
Eli the hosier, and pray his wife Catherine to come to me, for God his
love.' I didn't wait for daylight."
"Holy saints! He has come home, Kate. Nay, she would sure have said so.
What on earth can it be?" And she heaped conjecture on conjecture.
"Mayhap the young man can tell us," hazarded Kate, timidly.
"That I can," said Luke. "Why, her babe is a-dying. And she was so
wrapped up in it!"
Catherine started up: "What is his trouble?"
"Nay, I know not. But it has been peaking and pining worse and worse
this while."
A furtive glance of satisfaction passed between Cornelis and Sybrandt.
Luckily for them Catherine did not see it. Her face was turned towards
her husband. "Now, Eli," cried she, furiously, "if you say a word
against it, you and I shall quarrel, after all these years."
"Who gainsays thee, foolish woman? Quarrel with your own shadow; while I
go borrow Peter's mule for ye."
"Bless thee, my good man! Bless thee! Didst never yet fail me at a
pinch. Now eat your dinners who can, while I go and make ready."
She took Luke back with her in the cart, and, on the way, questioned and
cross-questioned him, severely, and seductively, by turns, till she had
turned his mind inside out, what there was of it.
Margaret met her at the door, pale and agitated, and threw her arms
round her neck, and looked imploringly in her face.
"Come, he is alive, thank God," said Catherine, after scanning her
eagerly.
She looked at the failing child, and then at the poor hollow-eyed
mother, alternately. "Lucky you sent for me," said she. "The child is
poisoned."
"Poisoned! by whom?"
"By you. You have been fretting."
"Nay, indeed, mother. How can I help fretting?"
"Don't tell me, Margaret. A nursing mother has no business to fret. She
must turn her mind away from her grief to the comfort that lies in her
lap. Know you not that the child pines if the mother vexes herself? This
comes of your reading and writing. Those idle crafts befit a man; but
they keep all useful knowledge out of a woman. The child must be
weaned."
"Oh, you cruel woman," cried Margaret, vehemently; "I am sorry I sent
for you. Would you rob me of the only bit of comfort I have in the
world? A-nursing my Gerard, I forget I am the most unhappy creature
beneath the sun."
"That you do not," was the retort, "or he would not be the way he is."
"Mother!" said Margaret, imploringly.
"'Tis hard," replied Catherine, relenting. "But bethink thee; would it
not be harder to look down and see his lovely wee face a-looking up at
you out of a little coffin?"
"O, Jesu!"
"And how could you face your other troubles with your heart aye full,
and your lap empty?"
"Oh, mother, I consent to anything. Only save my boy."
"That is a good lass. Trust to me! I do stand by, and see clearer than
thou."
Unfortunately there was another consent to be gained; the babe's: and he
was more refractory than his mother.
"There," said Margaret, trying to affect regret at his misbehaviour; "he
loves me too well."
But Catherine was a match for them both. As she came along she had
observed a healthy young woman, sitting outside her own door, with an
infant hard by. She went and told her the case; and would she nurse the
pining child for the nonce, till she had matters ready to wean him?
The young woman consented with a smile, and popped her child into the
cradle and came into Margaret's house. She dropped a curtsy, and
Catherine put the child into her hands. She examined, and pitied it, and
purred over it, and proceeded to nurse it, just as if it had been her
own.
Margaret, who had been paralyzed at her assurance, cast a rueful look at
Catherine, and burst out crying.
The visitor looked up. "What is to do? Wife, ye told me not the mother
was unwilling."
"She is not: she is only a fool. Never heed her: and you, Margaret, I am
ashamed of you."
"You are a cruel, hard-hearted woman," sobbed Margaret.
"Them as take in hand to guide the weak, need be hardish. And you will
excuse me; but you are not my flesh and blood: and your boy is."
After giving this blunt speech time to sink, she added, "Come now, she
is robbing her own to save yours, and you can think of nothing better
than bursting out a-blubbering in the woman's face. Out fie, for shame?"
"Nay, wife," said the nurse. "Thank Heaven, I have enough for my own and
for hers to boot. And prithee wyte not on her! Maybe the troubles o'
life ha' soured her own milk."
"And her heart into the bargain," said the remorseless Catherine.
Margaret looked her full in the face; and down went her eyes.
"I know I ought to be very grateful to you," sobbed Margaret to the
nurse: then turned her head and leaned away over the chair, not to
witness the intolerable sight of another nursing her Gerard, and Gerard
drawing no distinction between this new mother, and her the banished
one.
The nurse replied, "You are very welcome, my poor woman. And so are you,
Mistress Catherine, which are my townswoman, and know it not."
"What, are ye from Tergou? all the better. But I cannot call your face
to mind."
"Oh, you know not me: my husband and me, we are very humble folk by you.
But true Eli and his wife are known of all the town; and respected. So I
am at your call, dame; and at yours, wife; and yours, my pretty poppet;
night or day."
"There's a woman of the right old sort," said Catherine, as the door
closed upon her.
"I HATE her. I HATE her. I HATE her," said Margaret, with wonderful
fervour.
Catherine only laughed at this outburst.
"That is right," said she, "better say it, as set sly and think it. It
is very natural after all. Come, here is your bundle o' comfort. Take
and hate that; if ye can:" and she put the child in her lap.
"No, no;" said Margaret, turning her head half away from him: she could
not for her life turn the other half. "He is not my child now; he is
hers. I know not why she left him here, for my part. It was very good of
her not to take him to her house, cradle and all; oh! oh! oh! oh! oh!
oh! oh! oh!"
"Ah! well, one comfort, _he_ is not dead. This gives me light; some
other woman has got him away from me; like father, like son; oh! oh! oh!
oh! oh!"
Catherine was sorry for her, and let her cry in peace. And after that,
when she wanted Joan's aid, she used to take Gerard out, to give him a
little fresh air. Margaret never objected; nor expressed the least
incredulity; but on their return was always in tears.
This connivance was short lived. She was now altogether as eager to wean
little Gerard. It was done; and he recovered health and vigour: and
another trouble fell upon him directly: teething. But here Catherine's
experience was invaluable: and now, in the midst of her grief and
anxiety about the father, Margaret had moments of bliss, watching the
son's tiny teeth come through. "Teeth, mother? I call them not teeth,
but pearls of pearls." And each pearl that peeped and sparkled on his
red gums, was to her the greatest feat Nature had ever achieved.
Her companion partook the illusion. And, had we told them a field of
standing corn was equally admirable, Margaret would have changed to a
reproachful gazelle, and Catherine turned us out of doors; so each
pearl's arrival was announced with a shriek of triumph by whichever of
them was the fortunate discoverer.
* * * * *
Catherine gossiped with Joan and learned that she was the wife of Jorian
Ketel of Tergou, who had been servant to Ghysbrecht Van Swieten, but
fallen out of favour, and come back to Rotterdam, his native place. His
friends had got him the place of sexton to the parish, and what with
that and carpentering, he did pretty well.
Catherine told Joan in return whose child it was she had nursed, and all
about Margaret and Gerard, and the deep anxiety his silence had plunged
them in. "Ay," said Joan, "the world is full of trouble." One day she
said to Catherine, "It's my belief my man knows more about your Gerard
than anybody in these parts: but he has got to be closer than ever of
late. Drop in some day just afore sunset, and set him talking. And, for
our Lady's sake, say not I set you on. The only hiding he ever gave me
was for babbling his business: and I do not want another. Gramercy! I
married a man for the comfort of the thing: not to be hided."
Catherine dropped in. Jorian was ready enough to tell her how he had
befriended her son and perhaps saved his life. But this was no news to
Catherine: and the moment she began to cross-question him as to whether
he could guess why her lost boy neither came, nor wrote, he cast a grim
look at his wife, who received it with a calm air of stolid candour and
innocent unconsciousness; and his answers became short and sullen. "What
should he know more than another?" and so on. He added, after a pause,
"Think you the burgomaster takes such as me into his secrets?"
"Oh, then the burgomaster knows something?" said Catherine, sharply.
"Likely. Who else should?"
"I'll ask him."
"I would."
"And tell him you say he knows."
"That is right, dame. Go make him mine enemy. That is what a poor fellow
always gets if he says a word to you women." And Jorian from that moment
shrunk in and became impenetrable as a hedgehog, and almost as prickly.
His conduct caused both the poor women agonies of mind; alarm, and
irritated curiosity. Ghysbrecht was for some cause Gerard's mortal
enemy; had stopped his marriage, imprisoned him, hunted him. And here
was his late servant, who when off his guard had hinted that this enemy
had the clue to Gerard's silence. After sifting Jorian's every word and
look, all remained dark and mysterious. Then Catherine told Margaret to
go herself to him. "You are young; you are fair. You will, maybe, get
more out of him than I could."
The conjecture was a reasonable one.
Margaret went with her child in her arms and tapped timidly at Jorian's
door just before sunset. "Come in," said a sturdy voice. She entered,
and there sat Jorian by the fireside. At sight of her he rose, snorted,
and burst out of the house. "Is that for me, wife?" inquired Margaret,
turning very red.
"You must excuse him," replied Joan, rather coldly; "he lays it to your
door that he is a poor man instead of a rich one. It is something about
a piece of parchment. There was one missing, and he got nought from the
burgomaster all along of that one."
"Alas! Gerard took it!"
"Likely. But my man says you should not have let him: you were pledged
to him to keep them all safe. And, sooth to say, I blame not my Jorian
for being wroth. 'Tis hard for a poor man to be so near fortune and
lose it by those he has befriended. However, I tell him another story.
Says I, 'Folk that are out o' trouble, like you and me, didn't ought to
be too hard on folk that are in trouble: and she has plenty.' Going
already? What is all your hurry, mistress?"
"Oh, it is not for me to drive the good man out of his own house."
"Well, let me kiss the bairn afore ye go. He is not in fault any way,
poor innocent."
Upon this cruel rebuff Margaret came to a resolution, which she did not
confide even to Catherine.
After six weeks' stay that good woman returned home.
On the child's birthday, which occurred soon after, Margaret did no
work: but put on her Sunday clothes, and took her boy in her arms and
went to the church and prayed there long and fervently for Gerard's safe
return.
That same day and hour Father Clement celebrated a mass and prayed for
Margaret's departed soul in the minster church at Basle.