The Cloister and The Hearth
THE cool church, chequered with sunbeams and crowned with heavenly
purple, soothed and charmed father Clement, as it did Margaret; and
more, it carried his mind direct to the Creator of all good and pure
delights. Then his eye fell on the great aisle crammed with his
country-folk; a thousand snowy caps, filigreed with gold. Many a hundred
leagues he had travelled; but seen nothing like them, except snow. In
the morning he had thundered: but this sweet afternoon seemed out of
tune with threats. His bowels yearned over that multitude; and he must
tell them of God's love: poor souls, they heard almost as little of it
from the pulpit then a days as the heathen used. He told them the glad
tidings of salvation. The people hung upon his gentle, earnest tongue.
He was not one of those preachers who keep gyrating in the pulpit like
the weathercock on the steeple. He moved the hearts of others more than
his own body. But on the other hand he did not entirely neglect those
who were in bad places. And presently, warm with this theme, that none
of all that multitude might miss the joyful tidings of Christ's love, he
turned him towards the south aisle.
And there, in a stream of sunshine from the window, was the radiant face
of Margaret Brandt. He gazed at it without emotion. It just benumbed him
soul and body.
But soon the words died in his throat, and he trembled as he glared at
it.
There, with her auburn hair bathed in sunbeams, and glittering like the
gloriola of a saint, and her face glowing doubly, with its own beauty,
and the sunshine it was set in--stood his dead love.
She was leaning very lightly against a white column. She was listening
with tender, downcast lashes.
He had seen her listen so to him a hundred times.
There was no change in _her_. This was the blooming Margaret he had
left: only a shade riper and more lovely.
He stared at her with monstrous eyes and bloodless cheeks.
The people died out of his sight. He heard, as in a dream, a rustling
and rising all over the church; but could not take his prodigy-stricken
eyes off that face, all life, and bloom, and beauty, and that wondrous
auburn hair glistening gloriously in the sun.
He gazed, thinking she must vanish.
She remained.
All in a moment she was looking at him, full.
Her own violet eyes!!
At this he was beside himself, and his lips parted to shriek out her
name, when she turned her head swiftly, and soon after vanished, but not
without one more glance, which, though rapid as lightning, encountered
his, and left her crouching and quivering with her mind in a whirl, and
him panting and gripping the pulpit convulsively. For this glance of
hers, though not recognition, was the startled inquiring, nameless,
indescribable look, that precedes recognition. He made a mighty effort,
and muttered something nobody could understand: then feebly resumed his
discourse; and stammered and babbled on a while, till by degrees forcing
himself, now she was out of sight, to look on it as a vision from the
other world, he rose into a state of unnatural excitement, and concluded
in a style of eloquence that electrified the simple; for it bordered on
rhapsody.
The sermon ended, he sat down on the pulpit stool, terribly shaken. But
presently an idea very characteristic of the time took possession of
him. He had sought her grave at Sevenbergen in vain. She had now been
permitted to appear to him, and show him that she was buried _here_;
probably hard by that very pillar, where her spirit had showed itself to
him.
This idea once adopted soon settled on his mind with all the certainty
of a fact. And he felt he had only to speak to the sexton, (whom to his
great disgust he had seen working during the sermon) to learn the spot,
where she was laid.
The church was now quite empty. He came down from the pulpit and stepped
through an aperture in the south wall onto the grass, and went up to the
sexton. He knew him in a moment. But Jorian never suspected the poor
lad, whose life he had saved, in this holy friar. The loss of his
shapely beard had wonderfully altered the outline of his face. This had
changed him even more than his tonsure, his short hair sprinkled with
premature grey, and his cheeks thinned and paled by fasts and
vigils.[C]
"My son," said friar Clement, softly, "if you keep any memory of those
whom you lay in the earth, prithee tell me is any Christian buried
inside the church, near one of the pillars."
"Nay, father," said Jorian, "here in the churchyard lie buried all that
buried be. Why?"
"No matter. Prithee tell me then where lieth Margaret Brandt."
"Margaret Brandt?" And Jorian stared stupidly at the speaker.
"She died about three years ago, and was buried here."
"Oh, that is another matter," said Jorian; "that was before my time; the
vicar could tell you, likely; if so be she was a gentlewoman, or at
least rich enough to pay him his fee."
"Alas, my son, she was poor (and paid a heavy penalty for it); but born
of decent folk. Her father, Peter, was a learned physician; she came
hither from Sevenbergen--to die."
When Clement had uttered these words his head sunk upon his breast, and
he seemed to have no power nor wish to question Jorian more. I doubt
even if he knew where he was. He was lost in the past.
Jorian put down his spade, and standing upright in the grave, set his
arms akimbo, and said sulkily, "Are you making a fool of me, holy sir,
or has some wag been making a fool of you?"
And having relieved his mind thus, he proceeded to dig again, with a
certain vigour that showed his somewhat irritable temper was ruffled.
Clement gazed at him with a puzzled but gently reproachful eye; for the
tone was rude, and the words unintelligible.
Good natured, though crusty, Jorian had not thrown up three spadesful
ere he became ashamed of it himself. "Why what a base churl am I to
speak thus to thee, holy father; and thou standing there, looking at me
like a lamb. Aha! I have it; 'tis Peter Brandt's grave, you would fain
see, not Margaret's. He does lie here; hard by the west door. There;
I'll show you." And he laid down his spade, and put on his doublet and
jerkin to go with the friar.
He did not know there was anybody sitting on Peter's tomb. Still less
that she was watching for this holy friar.
FOOTNOTE:
[C] Pietro Vanucci, and Andrea, did not recognize him without his beard.
The fact is, that the beard, which has never known a razor, grows in a
very picturesque and characteristic form, and becomes a feature in the
face; so that its removal may in some cases be an effectual disguise.