The Hearth
WRITING an earnest letter seldom leaves the mind in _statu quo_.
Margaret, in hers, vented her energy and her faith in her dying father's
vision, or illusion; and, when this was done, and Luke gone, she
wondered at her credulity, and her conscience pricked her about Luke;
and Catherine came and scolded her, and she paid the price of false
hopes, and elevation of spirits, by falling into deeper despondency. She
was found in this state by a stanch friend she had lately made; Joan
Ketel. This good woman came in radiant with an idea.
"Margaret, I know the cure for thine ill: the hermit of Gouda, a
wondrous holy man. Why, he can tell what is coming, when he is in the
mood."
"Ay, I have heard of him," said Margaret hopelessly. Joan with some
difficulty persuaded her to walk out as far as Gouda, and consult the
hermit. They took some butter, and eggs, in a basket, and went to his
cave.
What had made the pair such fast friends? Jorian some six weeks ago fell
ill of a bowel disease; it began with raging pain; and when this went
off, leaving him weak, an awkward symptom succeeded; nothing, either
liquid or solid, would stay in his stomach a minute. The doctor said:
"He must die if this goes on many hours; therefore, boil thou now a
chicken with a golden angel in the water, and let him sup that!" Alas!
Gilt chicken broth shared the fate of the humbler viands, its
predecessors. Then the curé steeped the thumb of St. Sergius in beef
broth. Same result. Then Joan ran weeping to Margaret to borrow some
linen to make his shroud. "Let me see him," said Margaret. She came in
and felt his pulse. "Ah!" said she, "I doubt they have not gone to the
root. Open the window! Art stifling him; now change all his linen."
"Alack, woman, what for? Why foul more linen for a dying man?" objected
the mediæval wife.
"Do as thou art bid," said Margaret dully, and left the room.
Joan somehow found herself doing as she was bid. Margaret returned with
her apron full of a flowering herb. She made a decoction, and took it to
the bedside; and before giving it to the patient, took a spoonful
herself, and smacked her lips hypocritically. "That is fair," said he
with a feeble attempt at humour. "Why, 'tis sweet, and now 'tis bitter."
She engaged him in conversation as soon as he had taken it. This
bitter-sweet stayed by him. Seeing which she built on it as cards are
built: mixed a very little schiedam in the third spoonful, and a little
beaten yolk of egg in the seventh. And so with the patience of her sex
she coaxed his body out of Death's grasp; and finally, Nature, being
patted on the back, instead of kicked under the bed, set Jorian Ketel on
his legs again. But the doctress made them both swear never to tell a
soul her guilty deed. "They would put me in prison, away from my child."
The simple that saved Jorian was called sweet feverfew. She gathered it
in his own garden. Her eagle eye had seen it growing out of the window.
Margaret and Joan, then, reached the hermit's cave, and placed their
present on the little platform. Margaret then applied her mouth to the
aperture, made for that purpose, and said: "Holy hermit, we bring thee
butter and eggs of the best: and I a poor deserted girl, wife, yet no
wife, and mother of the sweetest babe, come to pray thee tell me whether
he is quick or dead, true to his vows or false."
A faint voice issued from the cave: "Trouble me not with the things of
earth, but send me a holy friar. I am dying."
"Alas!" cried Margaret. "Is it e'en so, poor soul? Then let us in to
help thee."
"Saints forbid! Thine is a woman's voice. Send me a holy friar!"
They went back as they came. Joan could not help saying, "Are women imps
o' darkness then, that they must not come anigh a dying bed?"
But Margaret was too deeply dejected to say anything. Joan applied rough
consolation. But she was not listened to till she said: "And Jorian will
speak out ere long; he is just on the boil. He is very grateful to thee,
believe it."
"Seeing is believing," replied Margaret with quiet bitterness.
"Not but what he thinks you might have saved him with something more out
o' the common than yon. 'A man of my inches to be cured wi' feverfew,'
says he. 'Why, if there is a sorry herb,' says he. 'Why, I was thinking
o' pulling all mine up,' says he. I up and told him remedies were none
the better for being far-fetched; you and feverfew cured him, when the
grand medicines came up faster than they went down. So says I, 'You may
go down on your four bones to feverfew.' But indeed, he is grateful at
bottom; you are all his thought and all his chat. But he sees Gerard's
folk coming around ye, and good friends, and he said only last night--"
"Well?"
"He made me vow not to tell ye."
"Prithee, tell me."
"Well, he said: 'An' if I tell what little I know, it won't bring him
back, and it will set them all by the ears. I wish I had more
head-piece,' said he, 'I am sore perplexed. But least said is soonest
mended.' Yon is his favourite word; he comes back to't from a mile off."
Margaret shook her head. "Ay, we are wading in deep waters, my poor babe
and me."
It was Saturday night: and no Luke.
"Poor Luke!" said Margaret. "It was very good of him to go on such an
errand."
"He is one out of a hundred," replied Catherine warmly.
"Mother, do you think he would be kind to little Gerard?"
"I am sure he would. So do you be kinder to _him_ when he comes back!
Will ye now?"
"Ay."
The Cloister
Brother Clement, directed by the nuns, avoided a bend in the river, and,
striding lustily forward, reached a station some miles nearer the coast
than that where Luke lay in wait for Gerard Eliassoen. And the next
morning he started early, and was in Rotterdam at noon. He made at once
for the port, not to keep Jerome waiting.
He observed several monks of his order on the quay; he went to them: but
Jerome was not amongst them. He asked one of them whether Jerome had
arrived? "Surely, brother," was the reply.
"Prithee, where is he?"
"Where? Why, there!" said the monk, pointing to a ship in full sail. And
Clement now noticed that all the monks were looking seaward.
"What, gone without me! Oh Jerome! Jerome!" cried he in a voice of
anguish. Several of the friars turned round and stared.
"You must be brother Clement," said one of them at length; and on this
they kissed him and greeted him with brotherly warmth, and gave him a
letter Jerome had charged them with for him. It was a hasty scrawl. The
writer told him coldly a ship was about to sail for England, and he was
loth to lose time. He (Clement) might follow if he pleased, but he would
do much better to stay behind, and preach to his own country folk. "Give
the glory to God, brother; you have a wonderful power over Dutch hearts:
but you are no match for those haughty islanders: you are too tender.
"Know thou that on the way I met one, who asked me for thee under the
name thou didst bear in the world. Be on thy guard! Let not the world
catch thee again by any silken net. And remember, Solitude, Fasting, and
Prayer are the sword, spear, and shield of the soul. Farewell."
Clement was deeply shocked and mortified at this contemptuous desertion,
and this cold-blooded missive.
He promised the good monks to sleep at the convent, and to preach
wherever the prior should appoint (for Jerome had raised him to the
skies as a preacher), and then withdrew abruptly, for he was cut to the
quick, and wanted to be alone. He asked himself, was there some
incurable fault in him, repulsive to so true a son of Dominic? Or was
Jerome himself devoid of that Christian Love which St. Paul had placed
above Faith itself? Shipwrecked with him, and saved on the same fragment
of the wreck; his pupil, his penitent, his son in the Church, and now
for four hundred miles his fellow-traveller in Christ; and to be shaken
off like dirt, the first opportunity, with harsh and cold disdain. "Why,
worldly hearts are no colder nor less trusty than this," said he. "The
only one that ever really loved me lies in a grave hard by. Fly me, fly
to England, man born without a heart; I will go and pray over a grave at
Sevenbergen."
Three hours later he passed Peter's cottage. A troop of noisy children
were playing about the door, and the house had been repaired, and a new
outhouse added. He turned his head hastily away, not to disturb a
picture his memory treasured; and went to the churchyard.
He sought among the tombstones for Margaret's. He could not find it. He
could not believe they had begrudged her a tombstone, so searched the
churchyard all over again.
"Oh, poverty! stern poverty! Poor soul, thou wert like me; no one was
left that loved thee, when Gerard was gone."
He went into the church, and after kissing the steps, prayed long and
earnestly for the soul of her whose resting-place he could not find.
Coming out of the church he saw a very old man looking over the little
churchyard gate. He went towards him, and asked him did he live in the
place.
"Four score and twelve years, man and boy. And I come here every day of
late, holy father, to take a peep. This is where I look to bide ere
long."
"My son, can you tell me where Margaret lies?"
"Margaret? There's a many Margarets here."
"Margaret Brandt. She was daughter to a learned physician."
"As if I didn't know that," said the old man, pettishly. "But she
doesn't lie here. Bless you, they left this a longful while ago. Gone in
a moment, and the house empty. What, is she dead? Margaret a Peter
dead? Now only think on't. Like enow; like enow. They great towns do
terribly disagree wi' country folk."
"What great towns, my son?"
"Well 'twas Rotterdam they went to from here, so I heard tell; or was it
Amsterdam? Nay, I trow 'twas Rotterdam. And gone there to die!"
Clement sighed.
"'Twas not in her face now, that I saw. And I can mostly tell. Alack,
there was a blooming young flower to be cut off so soon, and an old weed
like me left standing still. Well, well, she was a May rose yon; dear
heart, what a winsome smile she had, and--"
"God bless thee, my son," said Clement; "farewell!" and he hurried away.
He reached the convent at sunset, and watched and prayed in the chapel
for Jerome, and Margaret, till it was long past midnight, and his soul
had recovered its cold calm.