years, seemed now to be clearing; he had intervals of intelligence; and
then he and Margaret used to talk of Gerard, till he wandered again. But
one day, returning after an absence of some hours, Margaret found
him conversing with Catherine, in a way he had never done since his
paralytic stroke. “Eh, girl, why must you be out?” said she. “But
indeed I have told him all; and we have been a-crying together over thy
troubles.”
Margaret stood silent, looking joyfully from one to the other.
Peter smiled on her, and said, “Come, let me bless thee.”
She kneeled at his feet, and he blessed her most eloquently.
He told her she had been all her life the lovingest, truest, and most
obedient daughter Heaven ever sent to a poor old widowed man. “May thy
son be to thee what thou hast been to me!”
After this he dozed. Then the females whispered together; and Catherine
said--“All our talk e'en now was of Gerard. It lies heavy on his mind.
His poor head must often have listened to us when it seemed quite dark.
Margaret, he is a very understanding man; he thought of many things: 'He
may be in prison, says he, 'or forced to go fighting for some king,
or sent to Constantinople to copy books there, or gone into the Church
after all.' He had a bent that way.”
“Ah, mother,” whispered Margaret, in reply, “he doth but deceive himself
as we do.”
Ere she could finish the sentence, a strange interruption occurred.
A loud voice cried out, “I SEE HIM, I SEE HIM.”
And the old man with dilating eyes seemed to be looking right through
the wall of the house.
“IN A BOAT; ON A GREAT RIVER; COMING THIS WAY. Sore disfigured; but I
knew him. Gone! gone! all dark.”
And he sank back, and asked feebly where was Margaret.
“Dear father, I am by thy side, Oh, mother! mother, what is this?”
“I cannot see thee, and but a moment agone I saw all round the world,
Ay, ay. Well, I am ready. Is this thy hand? Bless thee, my child, bless
thee! Weep not! The tree is ripe.”
The old physician read the signs aright. These calm words were his last.
The next moment he drooped his head, and gently, placidly, drifted away
from earth, like an infant sinking to rest, The torch had flashed up
before going out.
CHAPTER LXXIX
She who had wept for poor old Martin was not likely to bear this blow so
stoically as the death of the old is apt to be borne. In vain Catherine
tried to console her with commonplaces; in vain told her it was a happy
release for him; and that, as he himself had said, the tree was ripe.
But her worst failure was, when she urged that there were now but two
mouths to feed; and one care the less.
“Such cares are all the joys I have,” said Margaret. “They fill my
desolate heart, which now seems void as well as waste. Oh, empty chair,
my bosom it aches to see thee. Poor old man, how could I love him by
halves, I that did use to sit and look at him and think, 'But for me
thou wouldst die of hunger.' He, so wise, so learned erst, was got to
be helpless as my own sweet babe, and I loved him as if he had been
my child instead of my father. Oh, empty chair! Oh, empty heart!
Well-a-day! well-a-day!”
And the pious tears would not be denied.
Then Catherine held her peace; and hung her head. And one day she made
this confession, “I speak to thee out o' my head, and not out o' my
bosom; thou dost well to be deaf to me. Were I in thy place I should
mourn the old man all one as thou dost.”
Then Margaret embraced her, and this bit of true sympathy did her a
little good. The commonplaces did none.
Then Catherine's bowels yearned over her, and she said, “My poor girl,
you were not born to live alone. I have got to look on you as my own
daughter. Waste not thine youth upon my son Gerard. Either he is dead or
he is a traitor. It cuts my heart to say it; but who can help seeing it?
Thy father is gone; and I cannot always be aside thee. And here is
an honest lad that loves thee well this many a day. I'd take him and
Comfort together. Heaven hath sent us these creatures to torment us and
comfort us and all; we are just nothing in the world without 'em,” Then
seeing Margaret look utterly perplexed, she went on to say, “Why, sure
you are not so blind as not to see it?”
“What? Who?”
“Who but this Luke Peterson.”
“What, our Luke? The boy that carries my basket?”
“Nay, he is over nineteen, and a fine healthy lad; and I have made
inquiries for you; and they all do say he is a capable workman, and
never touches a drop; and that is much in a Rotterdam lad, which they
are mostly half man, half sponge.”
Margaret smiled for the first time this many days. “Luke loves dried
puddings dearly,” said she, “and I make them to his mind, 'Tis them he
comes a-courting here.” Then she suddenly turned red. “But if I thought
he came after your son's wife that is, or ought to be, I'd soon put him
to the door.”
“Nay, nay; for Heaven's sake let me not make mischief. Poor lad! Why,
girl, Fancy will not be bridled, Bless you, I wormed it out of him near
a twelvemonth agone.”
“Oh, mother, and you let him?”
“Well, I thought of you. I said to myself, 'If he is fool enough to
be her slave for nothing, all the better for her. A lone woman is lost
without a man about her to fetch and carry her little matters,' But now
my mind is changed, and I think the best use you can put him to is to
marry him.”
“So then, his own mother is against him, and would wed me to the first
comer. An, Gerard, thou hast but me; I will not believe thee dead till
I see thy tomb, nor false till I see thee with another lover in thine
hand. Foolish boy, I shall ne'er be civil to him again.”
Afflicted with the busybody's protection, Luke Peterson met a cold
reception in the house where he had hitherto found a gentle and kind
one. And by-and-by, finding himself very little spoken to at all, and
then sharply and irritably, the great soft fellow fell to whimpering,
and asked Margaret plump if he had done anything to offend her.
“Nothing. I am to blame. I am curst. If you will take my counsel you
will keep out of my way awhile.”
“It is all along of me, Luke,” said the busybody.
“You, Mistress Catherine, Why, what have I done for you to set her
against me?”
“Nay, I meant all for the best. I told her I saw you were looking
towards her through a wedding ring, But she won't hear of it.”
“There was no need to tell her that, wife; she knows I am courting her
this twelvemonth.”
“Not I,” said Margaret; “or I should never have opened the street door
to you.
“Why, I come here every Saturday night. And that is how the lads in
Rotterdam do court. If we sup with a lass o' Saturdays, that wooing.”
“Oh, that is Rotterdam, is it? Then next time you come, let it be
Thursday or Friday. For my part, I thought you came after my puddings,
boy.”
“I like your puddings well enough. You make them better than mother
does, But I like you still better than the puddings,” said Luke
tenderly.
“Then you have seen the last of them. How dare you talk so to another
man's wife, and him far away?” She ended gently, but very firmly, “You
need not trouble yourself to come here any more, Luke; I can carry my
basket myself.”
“Oh, very well,” said Luke; and after sitting silent and stupid for a
little while, he rose, and said sadly to Catherine, “Dame, I daresay I
have got the sack;” and went out.
But the next Saturday Catherine found him seated on the doorstep
blubbering. He told her he had got used to come there, and every other
place seemed strange. She went in, and told Margaret; and Margaret
sighed, and said, “Poor Luke, he might come in for her, if he could
know his place, and treat her like a married wife.” On this being
communicated to Luke, he hesitated, “Pshaw!” said Catherine, “promises
are pie-crusts. Promise her all the world, sooner than sit outside
like a fool, when a word will carry you inside, now you humour her in
everything, and then, if Poor Gerard come not home and claim her, you
will be sure to have her--in time. A lone woman is aye to be tired out,
thou foolish boy.”
CHAPTER LXXX
THE CLOISTER
Brother Clement had taught and preached in Basle more than a
twelvemonth, when one day Jerome stood before him, dusty, with a
triumphant glance in his eye.
“Give the glory to God, Brother Clement; thou canst now wend to England
with me.”
“I am ready, Brother Jerome; and expecting thee these many months, have
in the intervals of teaching and devotion studied the English tongue
somewhat closely.”
“'Twas well thought of,” said Jerome. He then told him he had but
delayed till he could obtain extraordinary powers from the Pope to
collect money for the Church's use in England, and to hear confession
in all the secular monasteries. “So now gird up thy loins, and let us go
forth and deal a good blow for the Church, and against the Franciscans.”
The two friars went preaching down the Rhine for England. In the larger
places they both preached. At the smaller they often divided, and took
different sides of the river, and met again at some appointed spot. Both
were able orators, but in different styles.
Jerome's was noble and impressive, but a little contracted in religious
topics, and a trifle monotonous in delivery compared with Clement's,
though in truth not so, compared with most preachers.
Clement's was full of variety, and often remarkably colloquial. In its
general flow, tender and gently winning, it curled round the reason and
the heart. But it always rose with the rising thought; and so at times
Clement soared as far above Jerome as his level speaking was below him.
Indeed, in these noble heats he was all that we hue read of inspired
prophet or heathen orator: Vehemens ut procella, excitatus ut torrens,
incensus ut fulmen, tonabat, fulgurabat, et rapidis eloquentiae
fiuctibus cuncta proruebat et perturbabat.
I would give literal specimens, but for five objections; it is
difficult; time is short; I have done it elsewhere; an able imitator
has since done it better and similarity, a virtue in peas, is a vice in
books.
But (not to evade the matter entirely) Clement used secretly to try and
learn the recent events and the besetting sin of each town he was to
preach in.
But Jerome, the unbending, scorned to go out of his way for any people's
vices. At one great town, some leagues from the Rhine, they mounted
the same pulpit in turn. Jerome preached against vanity in dress, a
favourite theme of his. He was eloquent and satirical, and the people
listened with complacency. It was a vice that they were little given to.
Clement preached against drunkenness. It was a besetting sin, and sacred
from preaching in these parts: for the clergy themselves were infected
with it, and popular prejudice protected it, Clement dealt it merciless
blows out of Holy Writ and worldly experience. A crime itself, it was
the nursing mother of most crimes, especially theft and murder. He
reminded them of a parricide that had lately been committed in their
town by all honest man in liquor; and also how a band of drunkards had
roasted one of their own comrades alive at a neighbouring village. “Your
last prince,” said he, “is reported to have died of apoplexy, but well
you know he died of drink; and of your aldermen one perished miserably
last month dead drunk, suffocated in a puddle. Your children's backs go
bare that you may fill your bellies with that which makes you the
worst of beasts, silly as calves, yet fierce as boars; and drives your
families to need, and your souls to hell. I tell ye your town, ay, and
your very nation, would sink to the bottom of mankind did your women
drink as you do. And how long will they be temperate, and contrary to
nature, resist the example of their husbands and fathers? Vice ne'er
yet stood still. Ye must amend yourselves, or see them come down to
your mark, Already in Bohemia they drink along with the men. How shows
a drunken woman? Would you love to see your wives drunken, your mothers
drunken?” At this there was a shout of horror, for mediaeval audiences
had not learned to sit mumchance at a moving sermon. “Ah, that comes
home to you,” cried the friar. “What madmen! think you it doth not
more shock the all-pure God to see a man, His noblest work, turned to
a drunken beast, than it can shock you creatures of sin and unreason to
see a woman turned into a thing no better nor worse than yourselves.”
He ended with two pictures: a drunkard's house and family, and a sober
man's; both so true and dramatic in all their details that the wives
fell all to “ohing” and “ahing,” and “Eh, but that is a true word.”
This discourse caused quite all uproar. The hearers formed knots; the
men were indignant; so the women flattered them and took their part
openly against the preacher. A married man had a right to a drop; he
needed it, working for all the family. And for their part they did not
care to change their men for milksops.
The double faces! That very evening a hand of men caught near a hundred
of them round Brother Clement, filling his wallet with the best, and
offering him the very roses off their heads, and kissing his frock, and
blessing him “for taking in hand to mend their sots.”
Jerome thought this sermon too earthly.
“Drunkenness is not heresy, Clement, that a whole sermon should be
preached against it.”
As they went on, he found to his surprise that Clement's sermons sank
into his hearers deeper than his own; made them listen, think, cry, and
sometimes even amend their ways. “He hath the art of sinking to their
peg,” thought Jerome, “Yet he can soar high enough at times.”
Upon the whole it puzzled Jerome, who had a secret sense of superiority
to his tenderer brother. And after about two hundred miles of it, it
got to displease him as well as puzzle him. But he tried to check this
sentiment as petty and unworthy. “Souls differ like locks,” said he,
“and preachers must differ like keys, or the fewer should the Church
open for God to pass in. And certes, this novice hath the key to these
northern souls, being himself a northern man.”
And so they came slowly down the Rhine, sometimes drifting a few miles
down the stream; but in general walking by the banks preaching, and
teaching, and confessing sinners in the towns and villages; and they
reached the town of Dusseldorf.
There was the little quay where Gerard and Denys had taken boat up the
Rhine, The friars landed on it. There were the streets, there was
“The Silver Lion.” Nothing had changed but he, who walked through it
barefoot, with his heart calm and cold, his hands across his breast,
and his eyes bent meekly on the ground, a true son of Dominic and Holy
Church.
CHAPTER LXXXI
THE HEARTH
“Eli,” said Catherine, “answer me one question like a man, and I'll ask
no more to-day. What is wormwood?”
Eli looked a little helpless at this sudden demand upon his faculties;
but soon recovered enough to say it was something that tasted main
bitter.
“That is a fair answer, my man, but not the one I look for.”
“Then answer it yourself.”
“And shall. Wormwood is--to have two in the house a-doing nought, but
waiting for thy shoes and mine,” Eli groaned. The shaft struck home.
“Methinks waiting for their best friend's coffin, that and nothing to
do, are enow to make them worse than Nature meant. Why not set them up
somewhere, to give 'em a chance?”
Eli said he was willing, but afraid they would drink and gamble their
very shelves away.
“Nay,” said Catherine, “Dost take me for a simpleton? Of course I mean
to watch them at starting, and drive them wi' a loose rein, as the
saying is.”
“Where did you think of? Not here; to divide our own custom.”
“Not likely. I say Rotterdam against the world. Then I could start
them.”
Oh, self-deception! The true motive of all this was to get near little
Gerard.
After many discussions and eager promises of amendment on these terms
from Cornelis and Sybrandt, Catherine went to Rotterdam shop-hunting,
and took Kate with her; for a change, They soon found one, and in a good
street; but it was sadly out of order. However, they got it cheaper for
that, and instantly set about brushing it up, fitting proper shelves for
the business, and making the dwelling-house habitable.
Luke Peterson was always asking Margaret what he could do for her. The
answer used to be in a sad tone, “Nothing, Luke, nothing.”
“What, you that are so clever, can you think of nothing for me to do for
you?”
“Nothing, Luke, nothing.”
But at last she varied the reply thus: “If you could make something to
help my sweet sister Kate about.”
The slave of love consented joyfully, and soon made Kate a little cart,
and cushioned it, and yoked himself into it, and at eventide drew her
out of the town, and along the pleasant boulevard, with Margaret and
Catherine walking beside. It looked a happier party than it was.
Kate, for one, enjoyed it keenly, for little Gerard was put in her
lap, and she doted on him; and it was like a cherub carried by a little
angel, or a rosebud lying in the cup of a lily.
So the vulgar jeered; and asked Luke how a thistle tasted, and if his
mistress could not afford one with four legs, etc.
Luke did not mind these jeers; but Kate minded them for him.
“Thou hast made the cart for me, good Luke,” said she, “'Twas much. I
did ill to let thee draw me too; we can afford to pay some poor soul for
that. I love my rides, and to carry little Gerard; but I'd liever ride
no more than thou be mocked fort.”
“Much I care for their tongues,” said Luke; “if I did care I'd knock
their heads together. I shall draw you till my mistress says give over.
“Luke, if you obey Kate, you will oblige me.”
“Then I will obey Kate.”
An honourable exception to popular humour was Jorian Ketel's wife. “That
is strength well laid out, to draw the weak. And her prayers will be
your guerdon; she is not long for this world; she smileth in pain.”
These were the words of Joan.
Single-minded Luke answered that he did not want the poor lass's prayers
he did it to please his mistress, Margaret.
After that Luke often pressed Margaret to give him something to
do--without success.
But one day, as if tired with his importuning, she turned on him, and
said with a look and accent I should in vain try to convey:
“Find me my boy's father.”
CHAPTER LXXXII
“Mistress, they all say he is dead.”
“Not so. They feed me still with hopes.”
“Ay, to your face, but behind your back they all say he is dead.”
At this revelation Margaret's tears began to flow'.
Luke whimpered for company. He had the body of a man but the heart of a
girl.
“Prithee, weep not so, sweet mistress,” said he. “I'd bring him back to
life an I could, rather than see thee weed so sore.”
Margaret said she thought she was weeping because they were so
double-tongued with her.
She recovered herself, and laying her hand on his shoulder, said
solemnly, “Luke, he is not dead. Dying men are known to have a strange
sight. And listen, Luke! My poor father, when he was a-dying, and I,
simple fool, was so happy, thinking he was going to get well altogether,
he said to mother and me--he was sitting in that very chair where you
are now, and mother was as might be here, and I was yonder making a
sleeve--said he, 'I see him!' I see him! Just so. Not like a failing man
at all, but all o' fire. 'Sore disfigured-on a great river-coming this
way.'
“Ah, Luke, if you were a woman, and had the feeling for me you think you
have, you would pity me, and find him for me. Take a thought! The father
of my child!”
“Alack, I would if I knew how,” said Luke, “but how can I?”
“Nay, of course you cannot. I am mad to think it. But oh, if any one
really cared for me, they would; that is all I know.”
Luke reflected in silence for some time.
“The old folk all say dying men can see more than living wights. Let me
think: for my mind cannot gallop like thine. On a great river Well, the
Maas is a great river.” He pondered on.
“Coming this way? Then if it 'twas the Maas, he would have been here
by this time, so 'tis not the Maas. The Rhine is a great river, greater
than the Maas; and very long. I think it will be the Rhine.”
“And so do I, Luke; for Denys bade him come down the Rhine. But even if
it is, he may turn off before he comes anigh his birthplace. He does not
pine for me as I for him; that is clear. Luke, do you not think he has
deserted me?” She wanted him to contradict her, but he said, “It looks
very like it; what a fool he must be!”
“What do we know?” objected Margaret imploringly.
“Let me think again,” said Luke. “I cannot gallop.”
The result of this meditation was this. He knew a station about sixty
miles up the Rhine, where all the public boats put in; and he would go
to that station, and try and cut the truant off. To be sure he did not
even know him by sight; but as each boat came in he would mingle with
the passengers, and ask if one Gerard was there. “And, mistress, if you
were to give me a bit of a letter to him; for, with us being strangers,
mayhap a won't believe a word I say.”
“Good, kind, thoughtful Luke, I will (how I have undervalued thee!).
But give me till supper-time to get it writ.” At supper she put a letter
into his hand with a blush; it was a long letter, tied round with silk
after the fashion of the day, and sealed over the knot.
Luke weighed it in his hand, with a shade of discontent, and said to her
very gravely, “Say your father was not dreaming, and say I have the luck
to fall in with this man, and say he should turn out a better bit of
stuff than I think him, and come home to you then and there--what is to
become o' me?”
Margaret coloured to her very brow. “Oh, Luke, Heaven will reward thee.
And I shall fall on my knees and bless thee; and I shall love thee all
my days, sweet Luke, as a mother does her son. I am so old by thee:
trouble ages the heart. Thou shalt not go 'tis not fair of me. Love
maketh us to be all self.”
“Humph!” said Luke. “And if,” resumed he, in the same grave way, “yon
scapegrace shall read thy letter, and hear me tell him how thou pinest
for him, and yet, being a traitor, or a mere idiot, will not turn to
thee what shall become of me then? Must I die a bachelor, and thou fare
lonely to thy grave, neither maid, wife, nor widow?”
Margaret panted with fear and emotion at this terrible piece of good
sense, and the plain question which followed it. But at last she
faltered out, “If, which our Lady be merciful to me, and forbid--Oh!”
“Well, mistress?”
“If he should read my letter, and hear thy words--and, sweet Luke, be
just and tell him what a lovely babe he hath, fatherless, fatherless.
Oh, Luke, can he be so cruel?”
“I trow not but if?”
“Then he will give thee up my marriage lines, and I shall be an honest
woman, and a wretched one, and my boy will not be a bastard; and of
course, then we could both go into any honest man's house that would
be troubled with us; and even for thy goodness this day, I will--I
will--ne'er be so ungrateful as go past thy door to another man's.”
“Ay, but will you come in at mine? Answer me that!”
“Oh, ask me not! Some day, perhaps, when my wounds leave bleeding. Alas,
I'll try. If I don't fling myself and my child into the Maas. Do not go,
Luke! do not think of going! 'Tis all madness from first to last.”
But Luke was as slow to forego an idea as to form one.
His reply showed how fast love was making a man of him. “Well,” said he,
“madness is something, anyway; and I am tired of doing nothing for thee;
and I am no great talker. To-morrow, at peep of day, I start. But hold,
I have no money. My mother, she takes care of all mine; and I ne'er see
it again.”
Then Margaret took out Catherine's gold angel, which had escaped so
often, and gave it to Luke; and he set out on his mad errand.
It did not, however, seem so mad to him as to us. It was a superstitious
age; and Luke acted on the dying man's dream, or vision, or illusion, or
whatever it was, much as we should act on respectable information.
But Catherine was downright angry when she heard of it, “To send the
poor lad on such a wild-goose chase! But you are like a many more
girls; and mark my words; by the time you have worn that Luke fairly
out, and made him as sick of you as a dog, you will turn as fond on him
as a cow on a calf, and 'Too late' will be the cry.”
THE CLOISTER
The two friars reached Holland from the south just twelve hours after
Luke started up the Rhine.
Thus, wild-goose chase or not, the parties were nearing each other, and
rapidly too. For Jerome, unable to preach in low Dutch, now began
to push on towards the coast, anxious to get to England as soon as
possible.
And having the stream with them, the friars would in point of fact have
missed Luke by passing him in full stream below his station, but for the
incident which I am about to relate.
About twenty miles above the station Luke was making for, Clement landed
to preach in a large village; and towards the end of his sermon he
noticed a grey nun weeping.
He spoke to her kindly, and asked her what was her grief.
“Nay,” said she, “'tis not for myself flow these tears; 'tis for my lost
friend. Thy words reminded me of what she was, and what she is, poor
wretch, But you are a Dominican, and I am a Franciscan nun.”
“It matters little, my sister, if we are both Christians, and if I can
aid thee in aught.”
The nun looked in his face, and said, “These are strange words, but
methinks they are good; and thy lips are oh, most eloquent, I will tell
thee our grief.”
She then let him know that a young nun, the darling of the convent, and
her bosom friend, had been lured away from her vows, and after various
gradations of sin, was actually living in a small inn as chambermaid,
in reality as a decoy, and was known to be selling her favours to the
wealthier customers, She added, “Anywhere else we might, by kindly
violence, force her away from perdition, But this innkeeper was the
servant of the fierce baron on the height there, and hath his ear still,
and he would burn our convent to the ground, were we to take her by
force.”
“Moreover, souls will not be saved by brute force,” said Clement.
While they were talking Jerome came up, and Clement persuaded him to lie
at the convent that night, But when in the morning Clement told him he
had had a long talk with the abbess, and that she was very sad, and he
had promised her to try and win back her nun, Jerome objected, and said,
“It was not their business, and was a waste of time,” Clement, however,
was no longer a mere pupil. He stood firm, and at last they agreed that
Jerome should go forward, and secure their passage in the next ship for
England, and Clement be allowed time to make his well-meant but idle
experiment.
About ten o'clock that day, a figure in a horseman's cloak, and great
boots to match, and a large flapping felt hat, stood like a statue near
the auberge, where was the apostate nun, Mary. The friar thus disguised
was at that moment truly wretched. These ardent natures undertake
wonders; but are dashed when they come hand to hand with the sickening
difficulties. But then, as their hearts are steel, though their nerves
are anything but iron, they turn not back, but panting and dispirited,
struggle on to the last.
Clement hesitated long at the door, prayed for help and wisdom, and at
last entered the inn and sat down faint at heart, and with his body in a
cold perspiration, But inside he was another man. He called lustily for
a cup of wine: it was brought him by the landlord, He paid for it with
money the convent had supplied him; and made a show of drinking it.
“Landlord,” said he, “I hear there is a fair chambermaid in thine
house.”
“Ay, stranger, the buxomest in Holland. But she gives not her company to
all comers only to good customers.”
Friar Clement dangled a massive gold chain in the landlord's sight. He
laughed, and shouted, “Here, Janet, here is a lover for thee would
bind thee in chains of gold; and a tall lad into the bargain, I promise
thee.”
“Then I am in double luck,” said a female voice; “send him hither.”
Clement rose, shuddered, and passed into the room, where Janet was
seated playing with a piece of work, and laying it down every minute, to
sing a mutilated fragment of a song. For, in her mode of life, she had
not the patience to carry anything out.
After a few words of greeting, the disguised visitor asked her if they
could not be more private somewhere.
“Why not?” said she. And she rose and smiled, and went tripping before
him, He followed, groaning inwardly, and sore perplexed.
“There,” said she. “Have no fear! Nobody ever comes here, but such as
pay for the privilege.”
Clement looked round the room, and prayed silently for wisdom. Then he
went softly, and closed the window-shutters carefully.
“What on earth is that for?” said Janet, in some uneasiness.
“Sweetheart,” whispered the visitor, with a mysterious air, “it is that
God may not see us.
“Madman,” said Janet; “think you a wooden shutter can keep out His eye?”
“Nay, I know not. Perchance He has too much on hand to notice us, But I
would not the saints and angels should see us. Would you?”
“My poor soul, hope not to escape their sight! The only way is not to
think of them; for if you do, it poisons your cup. For two pins I'd run
and leave thee. Art pleasant company in sooth.”
“After all, girl, so that men see us not, what signify God and the
saints seeing us? Feel this chain! 'Tis virgin gold. I shall cut two of
these heavy links off for thee.”
“Ah! now thy discourse is to the point,” And she handled the chain
greedily. “Why, 'tis as massy as the chain round the virgin's neck at
the conv--” She did not finish the word.
“Whisht! whisht! whisht! 'Tis it. And thou shalt have thy share. But
betray me not.”
“Monster!” cried Janet, drawing back from him with repugnance; “what,
rob the blessed Virgin of her chain, and give it to an--”
“You are none,” cried Clement exultingly, “or you had not recked for
that-Mary!”
“Ah! ah! ah!”
“Thy patron saint, whose chain this is, sends me to greet thee”
She ran screaming to the window and began to undo the shutters.
Her fingers trembled, and Clement had time to debarass himself of his
boots and his hat before the light streamed in upon him, He then let his
cloak quietly fall, and stood before her, a Dominican friar, calm and
majestic as a statue, and held his crucifix towering over her with a
loving, sad, and solemn look, that somehow relieved her of the physical
part of fear, but crushed her with religious terror and remorse. She
crouched and cowered against the wall.
“Mary,” said he gently; “one word! Are you happy?”
“As happy as I shall be in hell.”
“And they are not happy at the convent; they weep for you.”
“For me?”
“Day and night; above all, the Sister Ursula.”
“Poor Ursula!” And the strayed nun began to weep herself at the thought
of her friend.
“The angels weep still more. Wilt not dry all their tears in earth and
heaven and save thyself?”
“Ay! would I could; but it is too late.”
“Satan avaunt,” cried the monk sternly. “'Tis thy favourite temptation;
and thou, Mary, listen not to the enemy of man, belying God, and
whispering despair. I who come to save thee have been a far greater
sinner than thou. Come, Mary, sin, thou seest, is not so sweet, e'n in
this world, as holiness; and eternity is at the door.”
“How can they ever receive me again?”
“'Tis their worthiness thou doubtest now. But in truth they pine for
thee. 'Twas in pity of their tears that I, a Dominican, undertook this
task; and broke the rule of my order by entering an inn; and broke it
again by donning these lay vestments. But all is well done, and quit for
a light penance, if thou wilt let us rescue thy soul from this den of
wolves, and bring thee back to thy vows.”
The nun gazed at him with tears in her eyes. “And thou, a Dominican,
hast done this for a daughter of St. Francis! Why, the Franciscans and
Dominicans hate one another.”
“Ay, my daughter; but Francis and Dominic love one another.”
The recreant nun seemed struck and affected by this answer
Clement now reminded her how shocked she had been that the Virgin should
be robbed of her chain. “But see now,” said he, “the convent, and
the Virgin too, think ten times more of their poor nun than of golden
chains; for they freely trusted their chain to me a stranger, that
peradventure the sight of it might touch their lost Mary and remind her
of their love,” Finally he showed her with such terrible simplicity the
end of her present course, and on the other hand so revived her dormant
memories and better feelings, that she kneeled sobbing at his feet, and
owned she had never known happiness nor peace since she betrayed her
vows; and said she would go back if he would go with her; but alone
she dared not, could not: even if she reached the gate she could never
enter. How could she face the abbess and the sisters? He told her he
would go with her as joyfully as the shepherd bears a strayed lamb to
the fold.
But when he urged her to go at once, up sprung a crop of those
prodigiously petty difficulties that entangle her sex, like silken nets,
liker iron cobwebs.
He quietly swept them aside.
“But how can I walk beside thee in this habit?”
“I have brought the gown and cowl of thy holy order. Hide thy bravery
with them. And leave thy shoes as I leave these” (pointing to his
horseman's boots).
She collected her jewels and ornaments.
“What are these for?” inquired Clement.
“To present to the convent, father.”
“Their source is too impure.”
“But,” objected the penitent, “it would be a sin to leave them here.
They can be sold to feed the poor.”
“Mary, fix thine eye on this crucifix, and trample those devilish
baubles beneath thy feet.”
She hesitated; but soon threw them down and trampled on them.
“Now open the window and fling them out on that dunghill. 'Tis well
done. So pass the wages of sin from thy hands, its glittering yoke from
thy neck, its pollution from thy soul. Away, daughter of St. Francis, we
tarry in this vile place too long.” She followed him.
But they were not clear yet.
At first the landlord was so astounded at seeing a black friar and a
grey nun pass through his kitchen from the inside, that he gaped, and
muttered, “Why, what mummery is this?” But he soon comprehended the
matter, and whipped in between the fugitives and the door. “What ho!
Reuben! Carl! Gavin! here is a false friar spiriting away our Janet.”
The men came running in with threatening looks. The friar rushed at them
crucifix in hand. “Forbear,” he cried, in a stentorian voice. “She is
a holy nun returning to her vows. The hand that touches her cowl or her
robe to stay her, it shall wither, his body shall lie unburied, cursed
by Rome, and his soul shall roast in eternal fire.” They shrank back as
if a flame had met them. “And thou--miserable panderer!”
He did not end the sentence in words, but seized the man by the neck,
and strong as a lion in his moments of hot excitement, hurled him
furiously from the door and sent him all across the room, pitching head
foremost on to the stone floor; then tore the door open and carried the
screaming nun out into the road.
“Hush! poor trembler,” he gasped; “they dare not molest thee on the
highroad. Away!”
The landlord lay terrified, half stunned, and bleeding; and Mary, though
she often looked back apprehensively, saw no more of him.
On the road he bade her observe his impetuosity.
“Hitherto,” said he, “we have spoken of thy faults: now for mine. My
choler is ungovernable; furious. It is by the grace of God I am not a
murderer, I repent the next moment; but a moment too late is all too
late. Mary, had the churls laid finger on thee, I should have scattered
their brains with my crucifix, Oh, I know myself; go to; and tremble at
myself. There lurketh a wild beast beneath this black gown of mine.”
“Alas, father,” said Mary, “were you other than you are I had been lost.
To take me from that place needed a man wary as a fox; yet bold as a
lion.”
Clement reflected. “This much is certain: God chooseth well his fleshly
instruments; and with imperfect hearts doeth His perfect work, Glory be
to God!”
When they were near the convent Mary suddenly stopped, and seized the
friar's arm, and began to cry. He looked at her kindly, and told her she
had nothing to fear. It would be the happiest day she had ever spent.
He then made her sit down and compose herself till he should return, He
entered the convent, and desired to see the abbess.
“My sister, give the glory to God: Mary is at the gate.”
The astonishment and delight of the abbess were unbounded.
She yielded at once to Clement's earnest request that the road of
penitence might be smoothed at first to this unstable wanderer, and
after some opposition, she entered heartily into his views as to her
actual reception. To give time for their little preparations Clement
went slowly back, and seating himself by Mary soothed her; and heard her
confession.
“The abbess has granted me that you shall propose your own penance.”
“It shall be none the lighter,” said she.
“I trow not,” said he; “but that is future: to-day is given to joy
alone.”
He then led her round the building to the abbess's postern.
As they went they heard musical instruments and singing.
“'Tis a feastday,” said Mary; “and I come to mar it.”
“Hardly,” said Clement, smiling; “seeing that you are the queen of the
fete.”
“I, father? what mean you?”
“What, Mary, have you never heard that there is more joy in heaven over
one sinner that repenteth, than over ninety-nine just persons which need
no repentance? Now this convent is not heaven; nor the nuns angels; yet
are there among then, some angelic spirits; and these sing and exult
at thy return. But here methinks comes one of them; for I see her hand
trembles at the keyhole.”
The postern was flung open, and in a moment Sister Ursula clung sobbing
and kissing round her friend's neck. The abbess followed more sedately,
but little less moved.
Clement bade them farewell. They entreated him to stay; but he told them
with much regret he could not. He had already tried his good Brother
Jerome's patience, and must hasten to the river; and perhaps sail for
England to-morrow.
So Mary returned to the fold, and Clement strode briskly on towards the
Rhine, and England.
This was the man for whom Margaret's boy lay in wait with her letter.
THE HEARTH
And that letter was one of those simple, touching appeals only her sex
can write to those who have used them cruelly, and they love them. She
began by telling him of the birth of the little boy, and the comfort he
had been to her in all the distress of mind his long and strange silence
had caused her. She described the little Gerard minutely, not forgetting
the mole on his little finger.
“Know you any one that hath the like on his? If you only saw him you
could not choose but be proud of him; all the mothers in the street do
envy me; but I the wives; for thou comest not to us. My own Gerard, some
say thou art dead. But if thou wert dead, how could I be alive? Others
say that thou, whom I love so truly, art false. But this will I believe
from no lips but thine. My father loved thee well; and as he lay a-dying
he thought he saw thee on a great river, with thy face turned towards
thy Margaret, but sore disfigured. Is't so, perchance? Have cruel men
scarred thy sweet face? or hast thou lost one of thy precious limbs?
Why, then thou hast the more need of me, and I shall love thee not
worse, alas! thinkest thou a woman's love is light as a man's? but
better, than I did when I shed those few drops from my arm, not worth
the tears, thou didst shed for them; mindest thou? 'tis not so very long
agone, dear Gerard.”
The letter continued in this strain, and concluded without a word of
reproach or doubt as to his faith and affection. Not that she was free
from most distressing doubts; but they were not certainties; and to show
them might turn the scale, and frighten him away from her with fear of
being scolded. And of this letter she made soft Luke the bearer.
So she was not an angel after all.
Luke mingled with the passengers of two boats, and could hear nothing of
Gerard Eliassoen. Nor did this surprise him.
He was more surprised when, at the third attempt, a black friar said
to him, somewhat severely, “And what would you with him you call Gerard
Eliassoen?”
“Why, father, if he is alive I have got a letter for him.”
“Humph!” said Jerome. “I am sorry for it, However, the flesh is weak.
Well, my son, he you seek will be here by the next boat, or the next
boat after. And if he chooses to answer to that name--After all, I am
not the keeper of his conscience.”
“Good father, one plain word, for Heaven's sake, This Gerard Eliassoen
of Tergou--is he alive?”
“Humph! Why, certes, he that went by that name is alive.”
“Well, then, that is settled,” said Luke drily. But the next moment he
found it necessary to run out of sight and blubber.
“Oh, why did the Lord make any women?” said he to himself. “I was
content with the world till I fell in love. Here his little finger is
more to her than my whole body, and he is not dead, And here I have got
to give him this.” He looked at the letter and dashed it on the ground.
But he picked it up again with a spiteful snatch, and went to the
landlord, with tears in his eyes, and begged for work, The landlord
declined, said he had his own people.
“Oh, I seek not your money,” said Luke, “I only want some work to keep
me from breaking my heart about another man's lass.”
“Good lad! good lad!” exploded the landlord; and found him lots of
barrels to mend--on these terms, And he coopered with fury in the
interval of the boats coming down the Rhine.
CHAPTER LXXXIII
THE HEARTH
Waiting 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 staunch 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 cure 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 mediaeval 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 yoke 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
headpiece,' 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 grudged 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 all 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.
CHAPTER LXXXIV
THE HEARTH
The next day, Sunday, after mass, was a bustling day at Catherine's
house in the Hoog Straet. The shop was now quite ready, and Cornelis and
Sybrandt were to open it next day; their names were above the door; also
their sign, a white lamb sucking a gilt sheep. Eli had come, and brought
them some more goods from his store to give them a good start. The
hearts of the parents glowed at what they were doing, and the pair
themselves walked in the garden together, and agreed they were sick of
their old life, and it was more pleasant to make money than waste it;
they vowed to stick to business like wax. Their mother's quick and ever
watchful ear overheard this resolution through an open window, and she
told Eli, The family supper was to include Margaret and her boy, and be
a kind of inaugural feast, at which good trade advice was to flow from
the elders, and good wine to be drunk to the success of the converts
to Commerce from Agriculture in its unremunerative form--wild oats. So
Margaret had come over to help her mother-in-law, and also to shake
off her own deep languor; and both their faces were as red as the fire.
Presently in came Joan with a salad from Jorian's garden.
“He cut it for you, Margaret; you are all his chat; I shall be jealous.
I told him you were to feast to-day. But oh, lass, what a sermon in the
new kerk! Preaching? I never heard it till this day.”
“Would I had been there then,” said Margaret; “for I am dried up for
want of dew from heaven.”
“Why, he preacheth again this afternoon. But mayhap you are wanted
here.”
“Not she,” said Catherine. “Come, away ye go, if y'are minded.”
“Indeed,” said Margaret, “methinks I should not be such a damper at
table if I could come to 't warm from a good sermon.”
“Then you must be brisk,” observed Joan. “See the folk are wending that
way, and as I live, there goes the holy friar. Oh, bless us and save us,
Margaret; the hermit! We forgot.” And this active woman bounded out of
the house, and ran across the road, and stopped the friar. She returned
as quickly. “There, I was bent on seeing him nigh hand.”
“What said he to thee?”
“Says he, 'My daughter, I will go to him ere sunset, God willing.' The
sweetest voice. But oh, my mistresses, what thin cheeks for a young man,
and great eyes, not far from your colour, Margaret.”
“I have a great mind to go hear him,” said Margaret. “But my cap is not
very clean, and they will all be there in their snow-white mutches.”
“There, take my handkerchief out of the basket,” said Catherine; “you
cannot have the child, I want him for my poor Kate. It is one of her ill
days.”
Margaret replied by taking the boy upstairs. She found Kate in bed.
“How art thou, sweetheart? Nay, I need not ask. Thou art in sore pain;
thou smilest so, See,' I have brought thee one thou lovest.”
“Two, by my way of counting,” said Kate, with an angelic smile. She had
a spasm at that moment would have made some of us roar like bulls.
“What, in your lap?” said Margaret, answering a gesture of the suffering
girl. “Nay, he is too heavy, and thou in such pain.”
“I love him too dear to feel his weight,” was the reply.
Margaret took this opportunity, and made her toilet. “I am for the
kerk,” said she, “to hear a beautiful preacher.” Kate sighed. “And a
minute ago, Kate, I was all agog to go; that is the way with me this
month past; up and down, up and down, like the waves of the Zuyder Zee.
I'd as lieve stay aside thee; say the word!”
“Nay,” said Kate, “prithee go; and bring me back every word. Well-a-day
that I cannot go myself.” And the tears stood in the patient's eyes.
This decided Margaret, and she kissed Kate, looked under her lashes at
the boy, and heaved a little sigh. “I trow I must not,” said she. “I
never could kiss him a little; and my father was dead against waking
a child by day or night When 'tis thy pleasure to wake, speak thy aunt
Kate the two new words thou hast gotten.” And she went out, looking
lovingly over her shoulder, and shut the door inaudibly.
“Joan, you will lend me a hand, and peel these?” said Catherine.
“That I will, dame.” And the cooking proceeded with silent vigour.
“Now, Joan, them which help me cook and serve the meat, they help me eat
it; that's a rule.”
“There's worse laws in Holland than that. Your will is my pleasure,
mistress; for my Luke hath got his supper i' the air. He is digging
to-day by good luck.” (Margaret came down.)
“Eh, woman, yon is an ugly trade. There she has just washed her face
and gi'en her hair a turn, and now who is like her? Rotterdam, that for
you!” and Catherine snapped her fingers at the capital. “Give us a buss,
hussy! Now mind, Eli won't wait supper for the duke. Wherefore, loiter
not after your kerk is over.”
Joan and she both followed her to the door, and stood at it watching
her a good way down the street. For among homely housewives going out
o' doors is half an incident. Catherine commented on the launch: “There,
Joan, it is almost to me as if I had just started my own daughter for
kerk, and stood a looking after: the which I've done it manys and manys
the times. Joan, lass, she won't hear a word against our Gerard; and
he be alive, he has used her cruel; that is why my bowels yearn for the
poor wench. I'm older and wiser than she; and so I'll wed her to yon
simple Luke, and there an end. What's one grandchild?”
CHAPTER LXXXV
THE CLOISTER AND THE HEARTH
The sermon had begun when Margaret entered the great church of St.
Laurens. It was a huge edifice, far from completed. Churches were not
built in a year. The side aisles were roofed, but not the mid aisle nor
the chancel; the pillars and arches were pretty perfect, and some of
them whitewashed. But only one window in the whole church was glazed;
the rest were at present great jagged openings in the outer walls.
But to-day all these uncouth imperfections made the church beautiful.
It was a glorious summer afternoon, and the sunshine came broken into
marvellous forms through those irregular openings, and played bewitching
pranks upon so many broken surfaces.
It streamed through the gaping walls, and clove the dark cool side
aisles with rivers of glory, and dazzled and glowed on the white pillars
beyond.
And nearly the whole central aisle was chequered with light and shade in
broken outlines; the shades seeming cooler and more soothing than ever
shade was, and the lights like patches of amber diamond animated with
heavenly fire. And above, from west to east the blue sky vaulted the
lofty aisle, and seemed quite close.
The sunny caps of the women made a sea of white contrasting exquisitely
with that vivid vault of blue.
For the mid aisle, huge as it was, was crammed, yet quite still. The
words and the mellow, gentle, earnest voice of the preacher held them
mute.
Margaret stood spellbound at the beauty, the devotion, “the great calm,”
She got behind a pillar in the north aisle; and there, though she could
hardly catch a word, a sweet devotional langour crept over her at the
loveliness of the place and the preacher's musical voice; and balmy oil
seemed to trickle over the waves in her heart and smooth them. So she
leaned against the pillar with eyes half closed, and all seemed soft and
dreamy.
She felt it good to be there.
Presently she saw a lady leave an excellent place opposite to get out of
the sun, which was indeed pouring on her head from the window. Margaret
went round softly but swiftly; and was fortunate enough to get the
place. She was now beside a pillar of the south aisle, and not above
fifty feet from the preacher. She was at his side, a little behind him,
but could hear every word.
Her attention, however, was soon distracted by the shadow of a man's
head and shoulders bobbing up and down so drolly she had some ado to
keep from smiling.
Yet it was nothing essentially droll.
It was the sexton digging.
She found that out in a moment by looking behind her, through the
window, to whence the shadow came.
Now as she was looking at Jorian Ketel digging, suddenly a tone of the
preacher's voice fell upon her ear and her mind so distinctly, it seemed
literally to strike her, and make her vibrate inside and out.
Her hand went to her bosom, so strange and sudden was the thrill. Then
she turned round, and looked at the preacher. His back was turned, and
nothing visible but his tonsure. She sighed. That tonsure, being all she
saw, contradicted the tone effectually.
Yet she now leaned a little forward with downcast eyes, hoping for that
accent again. It did not come. But the whole voice grew strangely upon
her. It rose and fell as the preacher warmed; and it seemed to waken
faint echoes of a thousand happy memories. She would not look to dispel
the melancholy pleasure this voice gave her.
Presently, in the middle of an eloquent period, the preacher stopped.
She almost sighed; a soothing music had ended. Could the sermon be ended
already? No; she looked round; the people did not move.
A good many faces seemed now to turn her way.' She looked behind her
sharply. There was nothing there.
Startled countenances near her now eyed the preacher. She followed their
looks; and there, in the pulpit, was a face as of a staring corpse. The
friar's eyes, naturally large, and made larger by the thinness of his
cheeks, were dilated to supernatural size, and glaring her way out of a
bloodless face.
She cringed and turned fearfully round: for she thought there must be
some terrible thing near her. No; there was nothing; she was the outside
figure of the listening crowd.
At this moment the church fell into commotion, Figures got up all over
the building, and craned forward; agitated faces by hundreds gazed from
the friar to Margaret, and from Margaret to the friar. The turning to
and fro of so many caps made a loud rustle. Then came shrieks of nervous
women, and buzzing of men; and Margaret, seeing so many eyes levelled at
her, shrank terrified behind the pillar, with one scared, hurried glance
at the preacher.
Momentary as that glance was, it caught in that stricken face an
expression that made her shiver.
She turned faint, and sat down on a heap of chips the workmen had left,
and buried her face in her hands, The sermon went on again. She heard
the sound of it; but not the sense. She tried to think, but her mind was
in a whirl, Thought would fix itself in no shape but this: that on that
prodigy-stricken face she had seen a look stamped. And the recollection
of that look now made her quiver from head to foot.
For that look was “RECOGNITION.”
The sermon, after wavering some time, ended in a strain of exalted,
nay, feverish eloquence, that went far to make the crowd forget the
preacher's strange pause and ghastly glare. Margaret mingled hastily
with the crowd, and went out of the church with them.
They went their ways home. But she turned at the door, and went into the
churchyard; to Peter's grave. Poor as she was, she had given him a slab
and a headstone. She sat down on the slab, and kissed it. Then threw her
apron over her head that no one might distinguish her by her hair.
“Father,” she said, “thou hast often heard me say I am wading in deep
waters; but now I begin to think God only knows the bottom of them. I'll
follow that friar round the world, but I'll see him at arm's length. And
he shall tell me why he looked towards me like a dead man wakened; and
not a soul behind me. Oh, father; you often praised me here: speak a
word for me there. For I am wading in deep waters.”
Her father's tomb commanded a side view of the church door. And on that
tomb she sat, with her face covered, waylaying the holy preacher.
CHAPTER LXXXVI
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 started 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 couching 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 on to 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.
“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 the
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 spadefuls ere he became ashamed
of it himself. “Why, what a base churl am I to speak thus to thee, holy
father; and thou a 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.
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.
CHAPTER LXXXVII
While Jorian was putting on his doublet and jerkin to go to Peter's
tomb, his tongue was not idle. “They used to call him a magician out
Sevenbergen way. And they do say he gave 'em a touch of his trade at
parting; told 'em he saw Margaret's lad a-coming down Rhine in brave
clothes and store o' money, but his face scarred by foreign glaive,
and not altogether so many arms and legs as a went away wi'. But, dear
heart, nought came on't. Margaret is still wearying for her lad; and
Peter, he lies as quiet as his neighbours; not but what she hath put a
stone slab over him, to keep him where he is: as you shall see.”
He put both hands on the edge of the grave, and was about to raise
himself out of it, but the friar laid a trembling hand on his shoulder,
and said in a strange whisper--
“How long since died Peter Brandt?”
“About two months, Why?”
“And his daughter buried him, say you?”
“Nay, I buried him, but she paid the fee and reared the stone.”
“Then--but he had just one daughter; Margaret?”
“No more leastways, that he owned to.”
“Then you think Margaret is--is alive?”
“Think? Why, I should be dead else. Riddle me that.”
“Alas, how can I? You love her!”
“No more than reason, being a married man, and father of four more
sturdy knaves like myself. Nay, the answer is, she saved my life scarce
six weeks agone. Now had she been dead she couldn't ha' kept me alive.
Bless your heart, I couldn't keep a thing on my stomach; nor doctors
couldn't make me. My Joan says, ''Tis time to buy thee a shroud.' 'I dare
say, so 'tis,' says I; but try and borrow one first.' In comes my lady,
this Margaret, which she died three years ago, by your way on't,
opens the windows, makes 'em shift me where I lay, and cures me in the
twinkling of a bedpost; but wi' what? there pinches the shoe; with the
scurviest herb, and out of my own garden, too; with sweet feverfew. A
herb, quotha, 'tis a weed; leastways it was a weed till it cured me,
but now whene'er I pass my hunch I doff bonnet, and says I, 'fly service
t'ye.' Why, how now, father, you look wondrous pale, and now you are
red, and now you are white? Why, what is the matter? What, in Heaven's
name, is the matter?”
“The surprise--the joy--the wonder--the fear,” gasped Clement.
“Why, what is it to thee? Art thou of kin to Margaret Brandt?”
“Nay; but I knew one that loved her well, so well her death nigh killed
him, body and soul. And yet thou sayest she lives. And I believe thee.”
Jorian stared, and after a considerable silence said very gravely,
“Father, you have asked me many questions, and I have answered them
truly; now for our Lady's sake answer me but two. Did you in very sooth
know one who loved this poor lass? Where?”
Clement was on the point of revealing himself, but he remembered
Jerome's letter, and shrank from being called by the name he had borne
in the world.
“I knew him in Italy,” said he.
“If you knew him you can tell me his name,” said Jorian cautiously.
“His name was Gerard Eliassoen.”
“Oh, but this is strange. Stay, what made thee say Margaret Brandt was
dead?”
“I was with Gerard when a letter came from Margaret Van Eyck. The letter
told him she he loved was dead and buried. Let me sit down, for my
strength fails me, Foul play! Foul play!”
“Father,” said Jorian, “I thank Heaven for sending thee to me, Ay, sit
ye down; ye do look like a ghost; ye fast overmuch to be strong. My mind
misgives me; methinks I hold the clue to this riddle, and if I do, there
be two knaves in this town whose heads I would fain batter to pieces as
I do this mould;” and he clenched his teeth and raised his long spade
above his head, and brought it furiously down upon the heap several
times. “Foul play? You never said a truer word i' your life; and if you
know where Gerard is now, lose no time, but show him the trap they have
laid for him. Mine is but a dull head, but whiles the slow hound puzzles
out the scent--go to, And I do think you and I ha' got hold of two ends
o' one stick, and a main foul one.”
Jorian then, after some of those useless preliminaries men of his class
always deal in, came to the point of the story. He had been employed by
the burgomaster of Tergou to repair the floor of an upper room in his
house, and when it was almost done, Coming suddenly to fetch away his
tools, curiosity had been excited by some loud words below, and he had
lain down on his stomach, and heard the burgomaster talking about a
letter which Cornelis and Sybrandt were minded to convey into the place
of one that a certain Hans Memling was taking to Gerard; “and it seems
their will was good, but their stomach was small; so to give them
courage the old man showed them a drawer full of silver, and if they did
the trick they should each put a hand in, and have all the silver they
could hold in't. Well, father,” continued Jorian, “I thought not much
on't at the time, except for the bargain itself, that kept me awake
mostly all night. Think on't! Next morning at peep of day who should I
see but my masters Cornelis and Sybrandt come out of their house each
with a black eye. 'Oho,' says I, 'what yon Hans hath put his mark on ye;
well now I hope that is all you have got for your pains.' Didn't they
make for the burgomaster's house? I to my hiding-place.”
At this part of Jorian's revelation the monk's nostril dilated, and his
restless eye showed the suspense he was in.
“Well, father,” continued Jorian, “the burgomaster brought them into
that same room. He had a letter in his hand; but I am no scholar;
however, I have got as many eyes in my head as the Pope hath, and I saw
the drawer opened, and those two knaves put in each a hand and draw it
out full. And, saints in glory, how they tried to hold more, and more,
and more o' yon stuff! And Sybrandt, he had daubed his hand in something
sticky, I think 'twas glue, and he made shift to carry one or two pieces
away a sticking to the back of his hand, he! he! he! 'Tis a sin to
laugh. So you see luck was on the wrong side as usual; they had done
the trick; but how they did it, that, methinks, will never be known till
doomsday. Go to, they left their immortal jewels in yon drawer. Well,
they got a handful of silver for them; the devil had the worst o' yon
bargain. There, father, that is off my mind; often I longed to tell it
some one, but I durst not to the women; or Margaret would not have had
a friend left in the world; for those two black-hearted villains are the
favourites, 'Tis always so. Have not the old folk just taken a brave new
shop for them in this very town, in the Hoog Straet? There may you see
their sign, a gilt sheep and a lambkin; a brace of wolves sucking their
dam would be nigher the mark. And there the whole family feast this day;
oh, 'tis a fine world. What, not a word, holy father; you sit there like
stone, and have not even a curse to bestow on them, the stony-hearted
miscreants. What, was it not enough the poor lad was all alone in a
strange land; must his own flesh and blood go and lie away the one
blessing his enemies had left him? And then think of her pining and
pining all these years, and sitting at the window looking adown the
street for Gerard! and so constant, so tender, and true: my wife says
she is sure no woman ever loved a man truer than she loves the lad those
villains have parted from her; and the day never passes but she weeps
salt tears for him. And when I think, that, but for those two greedy
lying knaves, yon winsome lad, whose life I saved, might be by her side
this day the happiest he in Holland; and the sweet lass, that saved my
life, might be sitting with her cheek upon her sweetheart's shoulder,
the happiest she in Holland in place of the saddest; oh, I thirst for
their blood, the nasty, sneaking, lying, cogging, cowardly, heartless,
bowelless--how now?”
The monk started wildly up, livid with fury and despair, and rushed
headlong from the place with both hands clenched and raised on high.
So terrible was this inarticulate burst of fury, that Jorian's puny ire
died out at sight of it, and he stood looking dismayed after the human
tempest he had launched.
While thus absorbed he felt his arm grasped by a small, tremulous hand.
It was Margaret Brandt.
He started; her coming there just then seemed so strange. She had waited
long on Peter's tombstone, but the friar did not come, So she went into
the church to see if he was there still. She could not find him.
Presently, going up the south aisle, the gigantic shadow of a friar came
rapidly along the floor and part of a pillar, and seemed to pass through
her. She was near screaming; but in a moment remembered Jorian's shadow
had come in so from the churchyard; and tried to clamber out the nearest
way. She did so, but with some difficulty; and by that time Clement was
just disappearing down the street; yet, so expressive at times is the
body as well as the face, she could see he was greatly agitated. Jorian
and she looked at one another, and at the wild figure of the distant
friar.
“Well?” said she to Jorian, trembling.
“Well,” said he, “you startled me. How come you here of all people?”
“Is this a time for idle chat? What said he to you? He has been speaking
to you; deny it not.”
“Girl, as I stand here, he asked me whereabout you were buried in this
churchyard.”
“Ah!”
“I told him, nowhere, thank Heaven: you were alive and saving other folk
from the churchyard.”
“Well?”
“Well, the long and the short is, he knew thy Gerard in Italy; and a
letter came saying you were dead; and it broke thy poor lad's heart. Let
me see; who was the letter written by? Oh, by the demoiselle van
Eyck. That was his way of it. But I up and told him nay; 'twas neither
demoiselle nor dame that penned yon lie, but Ghysbrecht Van Swieten, and
those foul knaves, Cornelis and Sybrandt; these changed the true letter
for one of their own; I told him as how I saw the whole villainy done
through a chink; and now, if I have not been and told you!”
“Oh, cruel! cruel! But he lives. The fear of fears is gone. Thank God!”
“Ay, lass; and as for thine enemies, I have given them a dig. For yon
friar is friendly to Gerard, and he is gone to Eli's house, methinks.
For I told him where to find Gerard's enemies and thine, and wow but he
will give them their lesson. If ever a man was mad with rage, its yon.
He turned black and white, and parted like a stone from a sling. Girl,
there was thunder in his eye and silence on his lips. Made me cold a
did.”
“Oh, Jorian, what have you done?” cried Margaret. “Quick! quick! help me
thither, for the power is gone all out of my body. You know him not as
I do. Oh, if you had seen the blow he gave Ghysbrecht; and heard the
frightful crash! Come, save him from worse mischief. The water is deep
enow; but not bloody yet, come!”
Her accents were so full of agony that Jorian sprang out of the grave
and came with her, huddling on his jerkin as he went.
But as they hurried along, he asked her what on earth she meant? “I talk
of this friar, and you answer me of Gerard.”
“Man, see you not, this is Gerard!”
“This, Gerard? what mean ye?”
“I mean, yon friar is my boy's father. I have waited for him long,
Jorian. Well, he is come to me at last. And thank God for it. Oh, my
poor child! Quicker, Jorian, quicker!”
“Why, thou art mad as he. Stay! By St. Bavon, yon was Gerard's face;
'twas nought like it; yet somehow--'twas it. Come on! come on! let me
see the end of this.”
“The end? How many of us will live to see that?”
They hurried along in breathless silence, till they reached Hoog Straet.
Then Jorian tried to reassure her. “You are making your own trouble,”
said he; “who says he has gone thither? more likely to the convent to
weep and pray, poor soul. Oh, cursed, cursed villains!”
“Did not you tell him where those villains bide?”
“Ay, that I did.”
“Then quicker, oh, Jorian, quicker. I see the house. Thank God and all
the saints, I shall be in time to calm him. I know what I'll say to him;
Heaven forgive me! Poor Catherine; 'tis of her I think: she has been a
mother to me.”
The shop was a corner house, with two doors; one in the main street, for
customers, and a house-door round the corner.
Margaret and Jorian were now within twenty yards of the shop, when they
heard a roar inside, like as of some wild animal, and the friar burst
out, white and raging, and went tearing down the street.
Margaret screamed, and sank fainting on Jorian's arm.
Jorian shouted after him, “Stay, madman, know thy friends.” But he was
deaf, and went headlong, shaking his clenched fists high, high in the
air.
“Help me in, good Jorian,” moaned Margaret, turning suddenly calm. “Let
me know the worst; and die.”
He supported her trembling limbs into the house.
It seemed unnaturally still; not a sound.
Jorian's own heart beat fast.
A door was before him, unlatched. He pushed it softly with his left
hand, and Margaret and he stood on the threshold.
What they saw there you shall soon know.
CHAPTER LXXXVIII
It was supper-time. Eli's family were collected round the board;
Margaret only was missing. To Catherine's surprise, Eli said he would
wait a bit for her.
“Why, I told her you would not wait for the duke.”
“She is not the duke; she is a poor, good lass, that hath waited not
minutes, but years, for a graceless son of mine. You can put the meat
on the board all the same; then we can fall to, without farther loss o'
time, when she does come.”
The smoking dishes smelt so savoury that Eli gave way. “She will come if
we begin,” said he; “they always do, Come, sit ye down, Mistress Joan;
y'are not here for a slave, I trow, but a guest. There, I hear a quick
step off covers, and fall to.”
The covers were withdrawn, and the knives brandished.
Then burst into the room, not the expected Margaret, but a Dominican
friar, livid with rage.
He was at the table in a moment, in front of Cornelis and Sybrandt,
threw his tall body over the narrow table, and with two hands hovering
above their shrinking heads, like eagles over a quarry, he cursed
them by name, soul and body, in this world and the next. It was an age
eloquent in curses; and this curse was so full, so minute, so blighting,
blasting, withering, and tremendous, that I am afraid to put all the
words on paper. “Cursed be the lips,” he shrieked, “which spoke the
lie that Margaret was dead; may they rot before the grave, and kiss
white-hot iron in hell thereafter; doubly cursed be the hands that
changed those letters, and be they struck off by the hangman's knife,
and handle hell fire for ever; thrice accursed be the cruel hearts
that did conceive that damned lie, to part true love for ever; may they
sicken and wither on earth joyless, loveless, hopeless; and wither to
dust before their time; and burn in eternal fire,” He cursed the meat
at their mouths and every atom of their bodies, from their hair to the
soles of their feet. Then turning from the cowering, shuddering pair,
who had almost hid themselves beneath the table, he tore a letter out of
his bosom, and flung it down before his father.
“Read that, thou hard old man, that didst imprison thy son, read, and
see what monsters thou hast brought into the world, The memory of my
wrongs and hers dwell with you all for ever! I will meet you again at
the judgment day; on earth ye will never see me more.”
And in a moment, as he had come, so he was gone, leaving them stiff, and
cold, and white as statues round the smoking board.
And this was the sight that greeted Margaret's eyes and Jorian's--pale
figures of men and women petrified around the untasted food, as Eastern
poets feigned.
Margaret glanced her eye round, and gasped out, “Oh, joy! all here; no
blood hath been shed. Oh, you cruel, cruel men! I thank God he hath not
slain you.”
At sight of her Catherine gave an eloquent scream; then turned her head
away. But Eli, who had just cast his eye over the false letter, and
begun to understand it all, seeing the other victim come in at that very
moment with her wrongs reflected in her sweet, pale face, started to his
feet in a transport of rage, and shouted, “Stand clear, and let me get
at the traitors, I'll hang for them,” And in a moment he whipped out his
short sword, and fell upon them.
“Fly!” screamed Margaret. “Fly!”
They slipped howling under the table, and crawled out the other side.
But ere they could get to the door, the furious old man ran round and
intercepted them. Catherine only screamed and wrung her hands; your
notables are generally useless at such a time; and blood would certainly
have flowed, but Margaret and Jorian seized the fiery old man's arms,
and held them with all their might, whilst the pair got clear of the
house; then they let him go; and he went vainly raging after them out
into the street.
They were a furlong off, running like hares.
He hacked down the board on which their names were written, and brought
it indoors, and flung it into the chimney-place. Catherine was sitting
rocking herself with her apron over her head. Joan had run to her
husband. Margaret had her arms round Catherine's neck; and pale and
panting, was yet making efforts to comfort her.
But it was not to be done, “Oh, my poor children!” she cried. “Oh,
miserable mother! 'Tis a mercy Kate was ill upstairs. There, I have
lived to thank God for that!” she cried, with a fresh burst of sobs. “It
would have killed her. He had better have stayed in Italy, as come home
to curse his own flesh and blood and set us all by the ears.
“Oh, hold your chat, woman,” cried Eli angrily; “you are still on the
side of the ill-doer, You are cheap served; your weakness made the
rogues what they are; I was for correcting them in their youth: for
sore ills, sharp remedies; but you still sided with their faults, and
undermined me, and baffled wise severity. And you, Margaret, leave
comforting her that ought rather to comfort you; for what is her hurt
to yours? But she never had a grain of justice under her skin; and never
will. So come thou to me, that am thy father from this hour.”
This was a command; so she kissed Catherine, and went tottering to him,
and he put her on a chair beside him, and she laid her feeble head on
his honest breast; but not a tear: it was too deep for that.
“Poor lamb,” said he. After a while--“Come, good folks,” said true Eli,
in a broken voice, to Jorian and Joan, “we are in a little trouble, as
you see; but that is no reason you should starve. For our Lady's sake,
fall to; and add not to my grief the reputation of a churl. What the
dickens!” added he, with a sudden ghastly attempt at stout-heartedness,
“the more knaves I have the luck to get shut of, the more my need of
true men and women, to help me clear the dish, and cheer mine eye with
honest faces about me where else were gaps. Fall to, I do entreat ye.”
Catherine, sobbing, backed his request. Poor, simple, antique,
hospitable souls! Jorian, whose appetite, especially since his illness,
was very keen, was for acting on this hospitable invitation; but Joan
whispered a word in his ear, and he instantly drew back, “Nay, I'll
touch no meat that Holy Church hath cursed.”
“In sooth, I forgot,” said Eli apologetically. “My son, who was reared
at my table, hath cursed my victuals. That seems strange. Well, what God
wills, man must bow to.”
The supper was flung out into the yard.
Jorian took his wife home, and heavy sadness reigned in Eli's house that
night.
Meantime, where was Clement?
Lying at full length upon the floor of the convent church, with his lips
upon the lowest step of the altar, in an indescribable state of terror,
misery, penitence, and self-abasement: through all which struggled
gleams of joy that Margaret was alive.
Night fell and found him lying there weeping and praying; and morning
would have found him there too; but he suddenly remembered that,
absorbed in his own wrongs and Margaret's, he had committed another sin
besides intemperate rage. He had neglected a dying man.
He rose instantly, groaning at his accumulated wickedness, and set out
to repair the omission. The weather had changed; it was raining hard,
and when he got clear of the town, he heard the wolves baying; they were
on the foot, But Clement was himself again, or nearly; he thought little
of danger or discomfort, having a shameful omission of religious duty to
repair: he went stoutly forward through rain and darkness.
And as he went, he often beat his breast, and cried, “MEA CULPA! MEA
CULPA!”
CHAPTER LXXXIX
What that sensitive mind, and tender conscience, and loving heart, and
religious soul, went through even in a few hours, under a situation so
sudden and tremendous, is perhaps beyond the power of words to paint.
Fancy yourself the man; and then put yourself in his place! Were I to
write a volume on it, we should have to come to that at last.
I shall relate his next two overt acts. They indicate his state of mind
after the first fierce tempest of the soul had subsided. After
spending the night with the dying hermit in giving and receiving holy
consolations, he set out not for Rotterdam, but for Tergou. He went
there to confront his fatal enemy the burgomaster, and by means of that
parchment, whose history, by-the-by was itself a romance, to make him
disgorge; and give Margaret her own.
Heated and dusty, he stopped at the fountain, and there began to eat his
black bread and drink of the water. But in the middle of his frugal meal
a female servant came running, and begged him to come and shrive her
dying master, He returned the bread to his wallet, and followed her
without a word.
She took him--to the Stadthouse.
He drew back with a little shudder when he saw her go in.
But he almost instantly recovered himself, and followed her into the
house, and up the stairs. And there in bed, propped up by pillows, lay
his deadly enemy, looking already like a corpse.
Clement eyed him a moment from the door, and thought of all the tower,
the wood, the letter. Then he said in a low voice, “Pax vobiscum!” He
trembled a little while he said it.
The sick man welcomed him as eagerly as his weak state permitted. “Thank
Heaven, thou art come in time to absolve me from my sins, father, and
pray for my soul, thou and thy brethren.”
“My son,” said Clement, “before absolution cometh confession. In which
act there must be no reservation, as thou valuest thy soul's weal.
Bethink thee, therefore, wherein thou hast most offended God and the
Church, while I offer up a prayer for wisdom to direct thee.”
Clement then kneeled and prayed; and when he rose from his knees, he
said to Ghysbrecht, with apparent calmness, “My son, confess thy sins.”
“Ah, father,” said the sick man, “they are many and great.”
“Great, then, be thy penitence, my son; so shalt thou find God's mercy
great.”
Ghysbrecht put his hands together, and began to confess with every
appearance of contrition.
He owned he had eaten meat in mid-Lent. He had often absented himself
from mass on the Lord's day, and saints' days; and had trifled with
other religious observances, which he enumerated with scrupulous
fidelity.
When he had done, the friar said quietly, “'Tis well, my son, These be
faults. Now to thy crimes, Thou hadst done better to begin with them.”
“Why, father, what crimes lie to my account if these be none?”
“Am I confessing to thee, or thou to me?” said Clement somewhat
severely.
“Forgive me, father! Why, surely, I to you. But I know not what you call
crimes.”
“The seven deadly sins, art thou clear of them?”
“Heaven forefend I should be guilty of them. I know them not by name.”
“Many do them all that cannot name them. Begin with that one which leads
to lying, theft, and murder.”
“I am quit of that one, any way. How call you it?”
“AVARICE, my son.”
“Avarice? Oh, as to that, I have been a saving man all my day; but I
have kept a good table, and not altogether forgotten the poor. But,
alas, I am a great sinner, Mayhap the next will catch me, What is the
next?”
“We have not yet done with this one. Bethink thee, the Church is not to
be trifled with.”
“Alas! am I in a condition to trifle with her now? Avarice? Avarice?”
He looked puzzled and innocent.
“Hast thou ever robbed the fatherless?” inquired the friar.
“Me? robbed the fatherless?” gasped Ghysbrecht; “not that I mind.”
“Once more, my son, I am forced to tell thee thou art trifling with the
Church. Miserable man! another evasion, and I leave thee, and fiends
will straightway gather round thy bed, and tear thee down to the
bottomless pit.”
“Oh, leave me not! leave me not!” shrieked the terrified old man. “The
Church knows all. I must have robbed the fatherless. I will confess. Who
shall I begin with? My memory for names is shaken.”
The defence was skilful, but in this case failed.
“Hast thou forgotten Floris Brandt?” said Clement stonily.
The sick man reared himself in bed in a pitiable state of terror. “How
knew you that?” said he.
“The Church knows many things,” said Clement coldly, “and by many ways
that are dark to thee, Miserable impenitent, you called her to your
side, hoping to deceive her, You said, 'I will not confess to the cure
but to some friar who knows not my misdeeds. So will I cheat the Church
on my deathbed, and die as I have lived,' But God, kinder to thee than
thou art to thyself, sent to thee one whom thou couldst not deceive. He
has tried thee; He was patient with thee, and warned thee not to trifle
with Holy Church; but all is in vain; thou canst not confess; for thou
art impenitent as a stone. Die, then, as thou hast lived. Methinks I see
the fiends crowding round the bed for their prey. They wait but for me
to go. And I go.”
He turned his back; but Ghysbrecht, in extremity of terror, caught him
by the frock. “Oh, holy man, mercy! stay. I will confess all, all. I
robbed my friend Floris, Alas! would it had ended there; for he lost
little by me; but I kept the land from Peter his son, and from Margaret,
Peter's daughter. Yet I was always going to give it back; but I
couldn't, I couldn't.”
“Avarice, my son, avarice, Happy for thee 'tis not too late.”
“No; I will leave it her by will. She will not have long to wait for it
now; not above a month or two at farthest.”
“For which month's possession thou wouldst damn thy soul for ever, Thou
fool!”
The sick man groaned, and prayed the friar to be reasonable.
The friar firmly, but gently and persuasively, persisted, and with
infinite patience detached the dying man's gripe from another's
property. There were times when his patience was tried, and he was on
the point of thrusting his hand into his bosom and producing the deed,
which he had brought for that purpose; but after yesterday's outbreak
he was on his guard against choler; and to conclude, he conquered his
impatience; he conquered a personal repugnance to the man, so strong
as to make his own flesh creep all the time he was struggling with this
miser for his soul; and at last, without a word about the deed, he won
upon him to make full and prompt restitution.
How the restitution was made will be briefly related elsewhere: also
certain curious effects produced upon Ghysbrecht by it; and when and on
what terms Ghysbrecht and Clement parted.
I promised to relate two acts of the latter, indicative of his mind.
This is one. The other is told in two words.
As soon as he was quite sure Margaret had her own, and was a rich
woman--
He disappeared.
CHAPTER XC
It was the day after that terrible scene: the little house in the
Hoog Straet was like a grave, and none more listless and dejected than
Catherine, so busy and sprightly by nature, After dinner, her eyes red
with weeping, she went to the convent to try and soften Gerard, and lay
the first stone at least of a reconciliation.
It was some time before she could make the porter understand whom she
was seeking. Eventually she learned he had left late last night, and was
not expected back, She went sighing with the news to Margaret. She found
her sitting idle, like one with whom life had lost its savour; she had
her boy clasped so tight in her arms, as if he was all she had left, and
she feared some one would take him too. Catherine begged her to come to
the Hoog Straet.
“What for?” sighed Margaret. “You cannot but say to yourselves, she is
the cause of all.”
“Nay, nay,” said Catherine, “we are not so ill-hearted, and Eli is so
fond on you; you will maybe soften him.”
“Oh, if you think I can do any good, I'll come,” said Margaret, with a
weary sigh.
They found Eli and a carpenter putting up another name in place of
Cornelis and Sybrandt's; and what should that name be but Margaret
Brandt's.
With all her affection for Margaret, this went through poor Catherine
like a knife. “The bane of one is another's meat,” said she.
“Can he make me spend the money unjustly?” replied Margaret coldly.
“You are a good soul,” said Catherine. “Ay, so best, sith he is the
strongest.”
The next day Giles dropped in, and Catherine told the story all in
favour of the black sheep, and invited his pity for them, anathematized
by their brother, and turned on the wide world by their father. But
Giles's prejudices ran the other way; he heard her out, and told her
bluntly the knaves had got off cheap; they deserved to be hanged at
Margaret's door into the bargain, and dismissing them with contempt,
crowed with delight at the return of his favourite. “I'll show him,”
said he, “what 'tis to have a brother at court with a heart to serve a
friend, and a head to point the way.”
“Bless thee, Giles,” murmured Margaret softly.
“Thou wast ever his stanch friend, dear Giles,” said little Kate; “but
alack, I know not what thou canst do for him now.”
Giles had left them, and all was sad and silent again, when a
well-dressed man opened the door softly, and asked was Margaret Brandt
here.
“D'ye hear, lass? You are wanted,” said Catherine briskly. In her the
Gossip was indestructible.
“Well, mother,” said Margaret listlessly, “and here I am.”
A shuffling of feet was heard at the door, and a colourless, feeble old
man was assisted into the room. It was Ghysbrecht Van Swieten. At
sight of him Catherine shrieked, and threw her apron over her head, and
Margaret shuddered violently, and turned her head swiftly away, not to
see him.
A feeble voice issued from the strange visitor's lips, “Good people, a
dying man hath come to ask your forgiveness.”
“Come to look on your work, you mean,” said Catherine, taking down her
apron and bursting out sobbing. “There, there, she is fainting; look to
her, Eli, quick.”
“Nay,” said Margaret, in a feeble voice, “the sight of him gave me a
turn, that is all, Prithee, let him say his say, and go; for he is the
murderer of me and mine.”
“Alas,” said Ghysbrecht, “I am too feeble to say it standing and no one
biddeth me sit down.”
Eli, who had followed him into the house, interfered here, and said,
half sullenly, half apologetically, “Well, burgomaster, 'tis not our
wont to leave a visitor standing whiles we sit. But man, man, you have
wrought us too much ill.” And the honest fellow's voice began to shake
with anger he fought hard to contain, because it was his own house.
Then Ghysbrecht found an advocate in one who seldom spoke in vain in
that family.
It was little Kate. “Father, mother,” said she, “my duty to you, but
this is not well. Death squares all accounts, And see you not death in
his face? I shall not live long, good friends; and his time is shorter
than mine.”
Eli made haste and set a chair for their dying enemy with his own hands.
Ghysbrecht's attendants put him into it. “Go fetch the boxes,” said he.
They brought in two boxes, and then retired, leaving their master alone
in the family he had so cruelly injured.
Every eye was now bent on him, except Margaret's. He undid the boxes
with unsteady fingers, and brought out of one the title-deeds of a
property at Tergou. “This land and these houses belonged to Floris
Brandt, and do belong to thee of right, his granddaughter. These I did
usurp for a debt long since defrayed with interest. These I now restore
their rightful owner with penitent tears. In this other box are three
hundred and forty golden angels, being the rent and fines I have
received from that land more than Floris Brandt's debt to me, I have
kept it compt, still meaning to be just one day; but Avarice withheld
me, pray, good people, against temptation! I was not born dishonest: yet
you see.”
“Well, to be sure!” cried Catherine. “And you the burgomaster! Hast
whipt good store of thieves in thy day. However,” said she, on second
thoughts, “'tis better late than never, What, Margaret, art deaf? The
good man hath brought thee back thine own. Art a rich woman. Alack, what
a mountain o' gold!”