It was near four o'clock in the afternoon. Eli was in the shop. His
eldest and youngest sons were abroad. Catherine and her little crippled
daughter had long been anxious about Gerard, and now they were gone a
little way down the road, to see if by good luck he might be visible
in the distance; and Giles was alone in the sitting-room, which I will
sketch, furniture and dwarf included.
The Hollanders were always an original and leading people. They claim
to have invented printing (wooden type), oil-painting, liberty,
banking, gardening, etc. Above all, years before my tale, they invented
cleanliness. So, while the English gentry, in velvet jerkins and
chicken-toed shoes, trode floors of stale rushes, foul receptacle of
bones, decomposing morsels, spittle, dogs, eggs, and all abominations,
this hosier's sitting-room at Tergou was floored with Dutch tiles, so
highly glazed and constantly washed, that you could eat off them. There
was one large window; the cross stone-work in the centre of it was
very massive, and stood in relief, looking like an actual cross to the
inmates, and was eyed as such in their devotions. The panes were very
small and lozenge-shaped, and soldered to one another with strips of
lead: the like you may see to this day in our rural cottages. The chairs
were rude and primitive, all but the arm-chair, whose back, at right
angles with its seat, was so high that the sitter's head stopped two
feet short of the top. This chair was of oak, and carved at the summit.
There was a copper pail, that went in at the waist, holding holy water,
and a little hand-besom to sprinkle it far and wide; and a long, narrow,
but massive oak table, and a dwarf sticking to its rim by his teeth, his
eyes glaring, and his claws in the air like a pouncing vampire. Nature,
it would seem, did not make Giles a dwarf out of malice prepense; she
constructed a head and torso with her usual care; but just then her
attention was distracted, and she left the rest to chance; the result
was a human wedge, an inverted cone. He might justly have taken her to
task in the terms of Horace,
“Amphora coepit
Institui; currente rota cur urceus exit?”
His centre was anything but his centre of gravity. Bisected, upper Giles
would have outweighed three lower Giles. But this very disproportion
enabled him to do feats that would have baffled Milo. His brawny arms
had no weight to draw after them; so he could go up a vertical pole like
a squirrel, and hang for hours from a bough by one hand like a cherry by
its stalk. If he could have made a vacuum with his hands, as the lizard
is said to do with its feet, he would have gone along a ceiling. Now,
this pocket-athlete was insanely fond of gripping the dinner-table with
both hands, and so swinging; and then--climax of delight! he would seize
it with his teeth, and, taking off his hands, hold on like grim death by
his huge ivories.
But all our joys, however elevating, suffer interruption. Little Kate
caught Sampsonet in this posture, and stood aghast. She was her mother's
daughter, and her heart was with the furniture, not with the 12mo
gymnast.
“Oh, Giles! how can you? Mother is at hand. It dents the table.”
“Go and tell her, little tale-bearer,” snarled Giles. “You are the one
for making mischief.”
“Am I?” inquired Kate calmly; “that is news to me.”
“The biggest in Tergou,” growled Giles, fastening on again.
“Oh, indeed!” said Kate drily.
This piece of unwonted satire launched, and Giles not visibly blasted,
she sat down quietly and cried.
Her mother came in almost at that moment, and Giles hurled himself under
the table, and there glared.
“What is to do now?” said the dame sharply. Then turning her experienced
eyes from Kate to Giles, and observing the position he had taken up, and
a sheepish expression, she hinted at cuffing of ears.
“Nay, mother,” said the girl; “it was but a foolish word Giles spoke.
I had not noticed it at another time; but I was tired and in care for
Gerard, you know.”
“Let no one be in care for me,” said a faint voice at the door, and in
tottered Gerard, pale, dusty, and worn out; and amidst uplifted hands
and cries of delight, curiosity, and anxiety mingled, dropped exhausted
into the nearest chair.
Beating Rotterdam, like a covert, for Margaret, and the long journey
afterwards, had fairly knocked Gerard up. But elastic youth soon
revived, and behold him the centre of an eager circle. First of all they
must hear about the prizes. Then Gerard told them he had been admitted
to see the competitors' works, all laid out in an enormous hall before
the judges pronounced.
“Oh, mother! oh, Kate! when I saw the goldsmiths' work, I had liked to
have fallen on the floor. I thought not all the goldsmiths on earth had
so much gold, silver, jewels, and craft of design and facture. But, in
sooth, all the arts are divine.”
Then, to please the females, he described to them the reliquaries,
feretories, calices, crosiers, crosses, pyxes, monstrances, and other
wonders ecclesiastical, and the goblets, hanaps, watches, Clocks,
chains, brooches, &c., so that their mouths watered.
“But, Kate, when I came to the illuminated work from Ghent and Bruges,
my heart sank. Mine was dirt by the side of it. For the first minute I
could almost have cried; but I prayed for a better spirit, and presently
I was able to enjoy them, and thank God for those lovely works, and
for those skilful, patient craftsmen, whom I own my masters. Well, the
coloured work was so beautiful I forgot all about the black and white.
But next day, when all the other prizes had been given, they came to the
writing, and whose name think you was called first?”
“Yours,” said Kate.
The others laughed her to scorn.
“You may well laugh,” said Gerard, “but for all that, Gerard Eliassoen
of Tergou was the name the herald shouted. I stood stupid; they thrust
me forward. Everything swam before my eyes. I found myself kneeling on
a cushion at the feet of the Duke. He said something to me, but I was so
fluttered I could not answer him. So then he put his hand to his side,
and did not draw a glaive and cut off my dull head, but gave me a gold
medal, and there it is.” There was a yell and almost a scramble. “And
then he gave me fifteen great bright golden angels. I had seen one
before, but I never handled one. Here they are.”
“Oh, Gerard! oh, Gerard!”
“There is one for you, our eldest; and one for you, Sybrandt, and for
you, Little Mischief; and two for thee, Little Lily, because God hath
afflicted thee; and one for myself, to buy colours and vellum; and nine
for her that nursed us all, and risked the two crowns upon poor Gerard's
hand.”
The gold drew out their characters. Cornelis and Sybrandt clutched each
his coin with one glare of greediness and another glare of envy at Kate,
who had got two pieces. Giles seized his and rolled it along the floor
and gambolled after it. Kate put down her crutches and sat down, and
held out her little arms to Gerard with a heavenly gesture of love and
tenderness; and the mother, fairly benumbed at first by the shower of
gold that fell on her apron, now cried out, “Leave kissing him, Kate;
he is my son, not yours. Ah. Gerard! my boy! I have not loved you as you
deserved.”
Then Gerard threw himself on his knees beside her, and she flung her
arms round him and wept for joy and pride upon his neck.
“Good lad! good lad!” cried the hosier, with some emotion. “I must go
and tell the neighbours. Lend me the medal, Gerard; I'll show it my good
friend Peter Buyskens; he is ever regaling me with how his son Jorian
won the tin mug a shooting at the butts.”
“Ay, do, my man; and show Peter Buyskens one of the angels. Tell him
there are fourteen more where that came from. Mind you bring it me
back!”
“Stay a minute, father; there is better news behind,” said Gerard,
flushing with joy at the joy he caused.
“Better! better than this?”
Then Gerard told his interview with the Countess, and the house rang
with joy.
“Now, God bless the good lady, and bless the dame Van Eyck! A benefice?
our son! My cares are at an end. Eli, my good friend and master, now we
two can die happy whenever our time comes. This dear boy will take our
place, and none of these loved ones will want a home or a friend.”
From that hour Gerard was looked upon as the stay of the family. He
was a son apart, but in another sense. He was always in the right, and
nothing too good for him. Cornelis and Sybrandt became more and more
jealous of him, and longed for the day he should go to his benefice;
they would get rid of the favourite, and his reverence's purse would be
open to them. With these views he co-operated. The wound love had
given him throbbed duller and duller. His success and the affection and
admiration of his parents made him think more highly of himself, and
resent with more spirit Margaret's ingratitude and discourtesy. For all
that, she had power to cool him towards the rest of her sex, and now for
every reason he wished to be ordained priest as soon as he could pass
the intermediate orders. He knew the Vulgate already better than most of
the clergy, and studied the rubric and the dogmas of the Church with
his friends the monks; and, the first time the bishop came that way, he
applied to be admitted “exorcist,” the third step in holy orders. The
bishop questioned him, and ordained him at once. He had to kneel, and,
after a short prayer, the bishop delivered to him a little MS. full of
exorcisms, and said: “Take this, Gerard, and have power to lay hands
on the possessed, whether baptized or catechumens!” and he took it
reverently, and went home invested by the Church with power to cast out
demons.
Returning home from the church, he was met by little Kate on her
crutches.
“Oh, Gerard! who, think you, hath sent to our house seeking you?--the
burgomaster himself.”
“Ghysbrecht Van Swieten! What would he with me?”
“Nay, Gerard, I know not. But he seems urgent to see you. You are to go
to his house on the instant.”
“Well, he is the burgomaster: I will go; but it likes me not. Kate, I
have seen him cast such a look on me as no friend casts. No matter; such
looks forewarn the wise. To be sure, he knows.”
“Knows what, Gerard?”
“Nothing.”
“Nothing?”
“Kate, I'll go.”