HER attitude was one to excite pity rather than terror, in eyes not
blinded by a preconceived notion. Her bosom was fluttering like a bird,
and the red and white coming and going in her cheeks, and she had her
hand against the wall by the instinct of timid things, she trembled so;
and the marvellous mixed gaze of love, and pious awe, and pity, and
tender memories, those purple eyes cast on the emaciated and glaring
hermit, was an event in nature.
"Aha!" he cried. "Thou art come at last in flesh and blood; come to me
as thou camest to holy Anthony. But I am ware of thee; I thought thy
wiles were not exhausted. I am armed." With this he snatched up his
small crucifix and held it out at her, astonished, and the candle in the
other hand, both crucifix and candle shaking violently, "Exorcizo te."
"Ah, no!" cried she, piteously; and put out two pretty deprecating
palms. "Alas! work me no ill! It is Margaret."
"Liar!" shouted the hermit. "Margaret was fair, but not so supernatural
fair as thou. Thou didst shrink at that sacred name, thou subtle
hypocrite. In Nomine Dei exorcizo vos."
"Ah, Jesu!" gasped Margaret, in extremity of terror, "curse me not! I
will go home. I thought _I_ might come. For very manhood be-Latin me
not! Oh Gerard, is it thus you and I meet after all; after all?"
And she cowered almost to her knees, and sobbed with superstitious fear,
and wounded affection.
Impregnated as he was with Satanophobia, he might perhaps have doubted
still whether this distressed creature, all woman, and nature, was not
all art, and fiend. But her spontaneous appeal to that sacred name
dissolved his chimera; and let him see with his eyes, and hear with his
ears.
He uttered a cry of self-reproach, and tried to raise her; but what with
fasts, what with the over-powering emotion of a long solitude so broken,
he could not. "What," he gasped shaking over her, "and is it thou? And
have I met thee with hard words? Alas!" And they were both choked with
emotion, and could not speak for a while.
"I heed it not much," said Margaret, bravely, struggling with her tears;
"you took me for another: for a devil; oh! oh! oh! oh! oh!"
"Forgive me, sweet soul!" And as soon as he could speak more than a word
at a time, he said, "I have been much beset by the evil one since I came
here."
Margaret looked round with a shudder. "Like enow. Then oh take my hand,
and let me lead thee from this foul place."
He gazed at her with astonishment.
"What, desert my cell; and go into the world again? Is it for that thou
hast come to me?" said he, sadly and reproachfully.
"Ay, Gerard. I am come to take thee to thy pretty vicarage: art vicar of
Gouda, thanks to Heaven and thy good brother Giles: and mother and I
have made it so neat for thee, Gerard. 'Tis well enow in winter I
promise thee. But bide a bit till the hawthorn bloom, and anon thy walls
put on their kirtle of brave roses, and sweet woodbine. Have we
forgotten thee, and the foolish things thou lovest? And, dear Gerard,
thy mother is waiting; and 'tis late for her to be out of her bed:
prithee; prithee; come! And the moment we are out of this foul hole I'll
show thee a treasure thou hast gotten, and knowest nought on't, or sure
hadst never fled from us so. Alas! what is to do? What have I ignorantly
said; to be regarded thus?"
For he had drawn himself all up into a heap, and was looking at her with
a strange gaze of fear and suspicion blended.
"Unhappy girl," said he, solemnly, yet deeply agitated, "would you have
me risk my soul and yours for a miserable vicarage and the flowers that
grow on it? But this is not thy doing: the bowelless fiend sends thee,
poor simple girl, to me with this bait. But oh, cunning fiend, I will
unmask thee even to this thine instrument, and she shall see thee, and
abhor thee as I do. Margaret, my lost love, why am I here? Because I
love thee."
"Oh! no, Gerard, you love me not, or you would not have hidden from me;
there was no need."
"Let there be no deceit between us twain: that have loved so true; and
after this night, shall meet no more on earth."
"Now God forbid!" said she.
"I love thee, and thou hast not forgotten me, or thou hadst married ere
this, and hadst not been the one to find me, buried here from sight of
man. I am a priest, a monk: what but folly or sin can come of you and me
living neighbours, and feeding a passion innocent once, but now (so
Heaven wills it) impious and unholy? No, though my heart break I must be
firm. 'Tis I that am the man, 'tis I that am the priest. You and I must
meet no more, till I am schooled by solitude, and thou art wedded to
another."
"I consent to my doom but not to thine. I would ten times liever die;
yet I will marry, ay, wed misery itself sooner than let thee lie in this
foul dismal place, with yon sweet manse a waiting for thee." Clement
groaned; at each word she spoke out stood clearer and clearer, two
things--his duty, and the agony it must cost.
"My beloved," said he, with a strange mixture of tenderness and dogged
resolution, "I bless thee for giving me one more sight of thy sweet
face, and may God forgive thee, and bless thee, for destroying in a
minute the holy peace it hath taken six months of solitude to build. No
matter. A year of penance will, Dei gratiâ, restore me to my calm. My
poor Margaret, I seem cruel: yet I am kind: 'tis best we part; ay, this
moment."
"Part, Gerard? Never: we have seen what comes of parting. Part? Why you
have not heard half my story; no nor the tithe. 'Tis not for thy mere
comfort I take thee to Gouda manse. Hear me!"
"I may not. Thy very voice is a temptation with its music, memory's
delight."
"But I say you shall hear me, Gerard, for forth this place I go not
unheard."
"Then must we part by other means," said Clement, sadly.
"Alack! what other means? Wouldst put me to thine own door, being the
stronger?"
"Nay, Margaret, well thou knowest I would suffer many deaths rather than
put force on thee; thy sweet body is dearer to me than my own: but a
million times dearer to me are our immortal souls, both thine and mine.
I have withstood this direst temptation of all long enow. Now I must fly
it: farewell! farewell!"
He made to the door, and had actually opened it and got half out, when
she darted after and caught him by the arm.
"Nay, then another must speak for me. I thought to reward thee for
yielding to me: but unkind that thou art, I need his help I find; turn
then this way one moment."
"Nay, nay."
"But I say ay! And then turn thy back on us an thou canst." She somewhat
relaxed her grasp, thinking he would never deny her so small a favour.
But at this he saw his opportunity and seized it.
"Fly, Clement, fly!" he almost shrieked, and, his religious enthusiasm
giving him for a moment his old strength, he burst wildly away from her,
and after a few steps bounded over the little stream and ran beside it,
but finding he was not followed, stopped and looked back.
She was lying on her face, with her hands spread out.
Yes, without meaning it, he had thrown her down and hurt her.
When he saw that, he groaned and turned back a step; but suddenly, by
another impulse, flung himself into the icy water instead.
"There, kill my body!" he cried, "but save my soul!"
Whilst he stood there, up to his throat in liquid ice, so to speak,
Margaret uttered one long, piteous moan, and rose to her knees.
He saw her as plain almost as in midday. Saw her face pale and her eyes
glistening; and then in the still night he heard these words:
"Oh, God! thou that knowest all, thou seest how I am used. Forgive me
then! For I will not live another day." With this she suddenly started
to her feet, and flew like some wild creature, wounded to death, close
by his miserable hiding-place, shrieking:
"CRUEL!--CRUEL!--CRUEL!--CRUEL!"
* * * * *
What manifold anguish may burst from a human heart in a single syllable.
There were wounded love, and wounded pride, and despair, and coming
madness, all in that piteous cry. Clement heard, and it froze his heart
with terror and remorse, worse than the icy water chilled the marrow of
his bones.
He felt he had driven her from him for ever, and in the midst of his
dismal triumph, the greatest he had won, there came an almost
incontrollable impulse to curse the Church, to curse religion itself,
for exacting such savage cruelty from mortal man. At last he crawled
half dead out of the water, and staggered to his den. "I am safe here,"
he groaned; "she will never come near me again; unmanly, ungrateful
wretch that I am." And he flung his emaciated, frozen body down on the
floor, not without a secret hope that it might never rise thence alive.
But presently he saw by the hour-glass that it was past midnight. On
this he rose slowly and took off his wet things, and moaning all the
time at the pain he had caused her he loved, put on the old hermit's
cilice of bristles, and over that his breastplate. He had never worn
either of these before, doubting himself worthy to don the arms of that
tried soldier. But now he must give himself every aid: the bristles
might distract his earthly remorse by bodily pain, and there might be
holy virtue in the breastplate.
[Illustration: HE SCANNED, WITH GREAT TEARFUL EYES, THIS STRANGE FIGURE
THAT LOOKED SO WILD]
Then he kneeled down and prayed God humbly to release him that very
night from the burden of the flesh. Then he lighted all his candles and
recited his psalter doggedly: each word seemed to come like a lump of
lead from a leaden heart, and to fall leaden to the ground; and in this
mechanical office every now and then he moaned with all his soul. In
the midst of which he suddenly observed a little bundle in the corner he
had not seen before in the feebler light, and at one end of it something
like gold spun into silk.
He went to see what it could be; and he had no sooner viewed it closer
than he threw up his hands with rapture, "It is a seraph," he whispered,
"a lovely seraph. Heaven hath witnessed my bitter trial, and approves my
cruelty; and this flower of the skies is sent to cheer me, fainting
under my burden."
He fell on his knees, and gazed with ecstasy on its golden hair, and its
tender skin and cheeks like a peach.
"Let me feast my sad eyes on thee ere thou leavest me for thine
ever-blessed abode, and my cell darkens again at thy parting, as it did
at hers."
With all this the hermit disturbed the lovely visitor. He opened wide
two eyes, the colour of heaven; and seeing a strange figure kneeling
over him, he cried piteously: "MUM--MA! MUM--MA!" And the tears began to
run down his little cheeks.
Perhaps, after all, Clement, who for more than six months had not looked
on the human face divine, estimated childish beauty more justly than we
can; and in truth, this fair northern child, with its long golden hair,
was far more angelic than any of our imagined angels. But now the spell
was broken.
Yet not unhappily. Clement, it may be remembered, was fond of children,
and true monastic life fosters this sentiment. The innocent distress on
the cherubic face, the tears that ran so smoothly from those transparent
violets, his eyes, and his pretty, dismal cry for his only friend, his
mother, went through the hermit's heart. He employed all his gentleness
and all his art to sooth him, and, as the little soul was wonderfully
intelligent for his age, presently succeeded so far that he ceased to
cry out, and wonder took the place of fear, while in silence, broken
only in little gulps, he scanned, with great tearful eyes, this strange
figure that looked so wild, but spoke so kindly, and wore armour, yet
did not kill little boys, but coaxed them. Clement was equally perplexed
to know how this little human flower came to lie sparkling and blooming
in his gloomy cave. But he remembered he had left the door wide open,
and he was driven to conclude that, owing to this negligence, some
unfortunate creature of high or low degree had seized this opportunity
to get rid of her child for ever.[I] At this his bowels yearned so over
the poor deserted cherub that the tears of pure tenderness stood in his
eyes, and still, beneath the crime of the mother, he saw the divine
goodness, which had so directed her heartlessness as to comfort his
servant's breaking heart.
"Now bless thee, bless thee, bless thee, sweet innocent, I would not
change thee for e'en a cherub in heaven."
"At's pooty," replied the infant, ignoring contemptuously, after the
manner of infants, all remarks that did not interest him.
"What is pretty here, my love, beside thee?"
"Ookum-gars,"[J] said the boy, pointing to the hermit's breastplate.
"Quot liberi, tot sententiunculæ!" Hector's child screamed at his
father's glittering casque and nodding crest: and here was a mediæval
babe charmed with a polished cuirass, and his griefs assuaged.
"There are prettier things here than that," said Clement, "there are
little birds; lovest thou birds?"
"Nay. Ay. En um ittle, ery ittle? Not ike torks. Hate torks; um bigger
an baby."
He then confided, in very broken language, that the storks, with their
great flapping wings, scared him, and were a great trouble and worry to
him, darkening his existence more or less.
"Ay, but my birds are very little, and good, and oh, so pretty!"
"Den I ikes 'm," said the child, authoritatively. "I ont my mammy."
"Alas, sweet dove! I doubt I shall have to fill her place as best I may.
Hast thou no daddy as well as mammy, sweet one?"
Now not only was this conversation from first to last, the relative
ages, situations, and all circumstances of the parties considered, as
strange a one as ever took place between two mortal creatures, but at or
within a second or two of the hermit's last question, to turn the
strange into the marvellous, came an unseen witness, to whom every word
that passed carried ten times the force it did to either of the
speakers.
Since, therefore, it is with her eyes you must now see, and hear with
her ears, I go back a step for her.
Margaret, when she ran past Gerard, was almost mad. She was in that
state of mind in which affectionate mothers have been known to kill
their children, sometimes along with themselves, sometimes alone, which
last is certainly maniacal. She ran to Reicht Heynes pale and trembling,
and clasped her round the neck. "Oh, Reicht! oh, Reicht!" and could say
no more. Reicht kissed her and began to whimper; and, would you believe
it, the great mastiff uttered one long whine: even his glimmer of sense
taught him grief was afoot.
"Oh, Reicht!" moaned the despised beauty, as soon as she could utter a
word for choking, "see how he has served me;" and she showed her hands
that were bleeding with falling on the stony ground. "He threw me down,
he was so eager to fly from me. He took me for a devil; he said I came
to tempt him. Am I the woman to tempt a man? you know me, Reicht."
"Nay, in sooth, sweet Mistress Margaret, the last i' the world."
"And he would not look at my child. I'll fling myself and him into the
Rotter this night."
"Oh fie, fie! eh, my sweet woman, speak not so. Is any man that breathes
worth your child's life?"
"My child! where is he? Why, Reicht, I have left him behind. Oh shame!
is it possible I can love him to that degree as to forget my child? Ah!
I am rightly served for it."
And she sat down, and faithful Reicht beside her, and they sobbed in one
another's arms.
After a while Margaret left off sobbing and said, doggedly, "Let us go
home."
"Ay, but the bairn?"
"Oh! he is well where he is. My heart is turned against my very child.
_He_ cares nought for him; wouldn't see him, nor hear speak of him; and
I took him there so proud, and made his hair so nice I did, and put his
new frock and cowl on him. Nay, turn about: it's his child as well as
mine; let him keep it awhile: mayhap that will learn him to think more
of its mother and his own."
"High words off an empty stomach," said Reicht.
"Time will show. Come thou home."
They departed, and Time did show quicker than he levels abbeys, for at
the second step Margaret stopped, and could neither go one way nor the
other, but stood stock still.
"Reicht," said she, piteously, "what else have I on earth? I cannot."
"Who ever said you could? Think you I paid attention? Words are woman's
breath. Come back for him without more ado; 'tis time we were in our
beds, much more he."
Reicht led the way, and Margaret followed readily enough in that
direction; but as they drew near the cell she stopped again.
"Reicht, go you and ask him will he give me back my boy; for I could not
bear the sight of him."
"Alas! mistress, this do seem a sorry ending after all that hath been
betwixt you twain. Bethink thee now, doth thine heart whisper no excuse
for him? dost verily hate him for whom thou hast waited so long? Oh
weary world!"
"Hate him, Reicht? I would not harm a hair of his head for all that is
in nature; but look on him I cannot; I have taken a horror of him. Oh!
when I think of all I have suffered for him, and what I came here this
night to do for him, and brought my own darling to kiss him and call him
father. Ah; Luke, my poor chap, my wound showeth me thine. I have
thought too little of thy pangs, whose true affection I despised: and
now my own is despised. Reicht, if the poor lad was here now, he would
have a good chance."
"Well, he is not far off," said Reicht Heynes, but somehow she did not
say it with alacrity.
"Speak not to me of any man," said Margaret, bitterly, "I hate them
all."
"For the sake of one?"
"Flout me not, but prithee go forward and get me what _is_ my own, my
sole joy in the world. Thou knowest I am on thorns till I have him to my
bosom again."
Reicht went forward; Margaret sat by the roadside and covered her face
with her apron, and rocked herself after the manner of her country, for
her soul was full of bitterness and grief. So severe, indeed, was the
internal conflict, that she did not hear Reicht running back to her, and
started violently when the young woman laid a hand upon her shoulder.
"Mistress Margaret!" said Reicht, quietly, "take a fool's advice that
loves ye. Go softly to yon cave wi' all the ears and eyes your mother
ever gave you."
"Why?--what,--Reicht?" stammered Margaret.
"I thought the cave was afire, 'twas so light inside; and there were
voices."
"Voices?"
"Ay, not one, but twain, and all unlike--a man's and a little child's,
talking as pleasant as you and me. I am no great hand at a keyhole for
my part, 'tis paltry work; but if so be voices were talking in yon cave,
and them that owned those voices were so near to me as those are to
thee, I'd go on all fours like a fox, and I'd crawl on my belly like a
serpent, ere I'd lose one word that passes _atwixt those twain_."
"Whisht, Reicht! Bless thee! Bide thou here. Buss me! Pray for me!"
And almost ere the agitated words had left her lips Margaret was flying
towards the hermitage as noiselessly as a lapwing. Arrived near it, she
crouched, and there was something truly serpentine in the gliding,
flexible, noiseless movements by which she reached the very door, and
there she found a chink and listened. And often it cost her a struggle
not to burst in upon them, but warned by defeat, she was cautious and
resolute to let well alone. And after a while slowly and noiselessly she
reared her head, like a snake its crest, to where she saw the broadest
chink of all, and looked with all her eyes and soul, as well as
listened.
The little boy then being asked whether he had no daddy, at first shook
his head, and would say nothing; but being pressed, he suddenly seemed
to remember something, and said he, "Dad--da ill man; run away and leave
poor mum--ma."
She who heard this winced. It was as new to her as to Clement. Some
interfering foolish woman had gone and said this to the boy, and now out
it came in Gerard's very face. His answer surprised her; he burst out,
"The villain! the monster! he must be born without bowels to desert
thee, sweet one. Ah! he little knows the joy he hath turned his back on.
Well, my little dove, I must be father and mother to thee, since the one
runs away, and t'other abandons thee to my care. Now to-morrow I shall
ask the good people, that bring me my food, to fetch some nice eggs and
milk for thee as well; for bread is good enough for poor old
good-for-nothing me, but not for thee. And I shall teach thee to read."
"I can yead, I can yead."
"Ay verily, so young? all the better; we will read good books together,
and I shall show thee the way to heaven. Heaven is a beautiful place, a
thousand times fairer and better than earth, and there be little cherubs
like thyself, in white, glad to welcome thee and love thee. Wouldst like
to go to heaven one day?"
"Ay, along wi'--my--mammy."
"What, not without her then?"
"Nay. I ont my mammy. Where is my mammy?"
(Oh! what it cost poor Margaret not to burst in and clasp him to her
heart!)
"Well, fret not, sweetheart, mayhap she will come when thou art asleep.
Wilt thou be good now and sleep?"
"I not eepy. Ikes to talk."
"Well, talk we then; tell me thy pretty name."
"Baby." And he opened his eyes with amazement at this great hulking
creature's ignorance.
"Hast none other?"
"Nay."
"What shall I do to pleasure thee, baby? Shall I tell thee a story?"
"I ikes tories," said the boy, clapping his hands.
"Or sing thee a song?"
"I ikes tongs," and he became excited.
"Choose then, a song or a story."
"Ting I a tong. Nay, tell I a tory. Nay, ting I a tong. Nay--." And the
corners of his little mouth turned down and he had half a mind to weep
because he could not have both, and could not tell which to forego.
Suddenly his little face cleared, "Ting I a tory," said he.
"Sing thee a story, baby? Well, after all, why not? And wilt thou sit o'
my knee and hear it?"
"Yea."
"Then I must 'een doff this breastplate. 'Tis too hard for thy soft
cheek. So. And now I must doff this bristly cilice; they would prick thy
tender skin, perhaps make it bleed, as they have me, I see. So. And now
I put on my best pelisse, in honour of thy worshipful visit. See how
soft and warm it is; bless the good soul that sent it; and now I sit me
down; so. And I take thee on my left knee, and put my arm under thy
little head; so. And then the psaltery, and play a little tune; so, not
too loud."
"I ikes dat."
"I am right glad on't. Now list the story."
He chanted a child's story in a sort of recitative, singing a little
moral refrain now and then. The boy listened with rapture.
"I ikes oo," said he. "Ot is oo? is oo a man?"
"Ay, little heart, and a great sinner to boot."
"I ikes great tingers. Ting one other tory."
Story No. 2 was chanted.
"I ubbs oo," cried the child, impetuously. "Ot caft[K] is oo?"
"I am a hermit, love."
"I ubbs vermins. Ting other one."
But during this final performance, Nature suddenly held out her leaden
sceptre over the youthful eyelids. "I is not eepy," whined he very
faintly, and succumbed.
Clement laid down his psaltery softly and began to rock his new treasure
in his arms, and to crone over him a little lullaby well known in
Tergou, with which his own mother had often set him off.
And the child sank into a profound sleep upon his arm. And he stopped
crooning, and gazed on him with infinite tenderness, yet sadness; for,
at that moment he could not help thinking what might have been but for a
piece of paper with a lie in it.
He sighed deeply.
The next moment the moonlight burst into his cell, and with it, and in
it, and almost as swift as it, Margaret Brandt was down at his knee with
a timorous hand upon his shoulder.
"GERARD, YOU DO NOT REJECT US. YOU CANNOT."
FOOTNOTES:
[I] More than one hermit had received a present of this kind.
[J] Query? "looking-glass."
[K] Craft. He means trade or profession.