"With mercy and with judgment
My web of time He wove,
And ay the dews of sorrow
Were lustred with His love:
I'll bless the hand that guided,
I'll bless the heart that planned,
When throned where glory dwelleth,
In Immanuel's land."
Mrs Cousins.
It was a very tiny house in Tower Street, at the corner of Mark Lane.
There were but two rooms--above and below, as in Isel's house, but these
were smaller than hers, and the lower chamber was made smaller still by
a panel screen dividing it in two unequal parts.
The front division, which was a very little one, was a jeweller's shop;
the back was larger, and was the family living-room. In it to-night the
family were sitting, for business hours were over, and the shop was
closed.
The family had a singular appearance. It consisted of four persons, and
these were derived from three orders of the animate creation. Two were
human. The third was an aged starling, for whose convenience a wicker
cage hung in one corner; but the owner was hopping in perfect freedom
about the hearth, and occasionally varying that exercise by pausing to
give a mischievous peck to the tail of the fourth, a very large white
and tan dog. The dog appeared so familiarised with this treatment as
scarcely to notice it, unless the starling gave a harder peck than
usual, when he merely moved his tail out of its way, accompanying the
action in specially severe cases by the most subdued of growls, an
action which seemed to afford great amusement to that impertinent and
irrepressible fowl.
The relationship of the human inhabitants of the little chamber would
not have been easy to guess. The elder, seated on a cushioned bench by
the fire, was one whose apparent age was forty or perhaps rather more.
She was a woman of extremely dark complexion, her hair jet-black, her
eyes scarcely lighter--a woman who had once been very handsome, and
whose lost youth and beauty now and then seemed to flash back into her
face, when eagerness, anger, or any other strong feeling lent animation
to her features. The other was a young man about half her years, and as
unlike her as he well could be. His long flaxen hair waved over a brow
as white as hers was dark, and his eyes were a light clear blue. He sat
on a stool in front of the fire, gazing into the charred wooden embers
with intent fixed eyes. The woman had glanced at him several times, but
neither had spoken for above half an hour. Now she broke the silence.
"Well, Ralph?"
"Well, Mother?" echoed the youth with a smile. Both spoke in German--a
language then as unfamiliar in England as Persian.
"What are you thinking about so intently?"
"Life," was the ready but unexpected answer.
"Past, present, future?"
"Past and future--hardly present. The past chiefly--the long ago."
The woman moved uneasily, but did not answer.
"Mother, if I am of age to-day, I think I have the right to ask you a
few questions. Do you accord it?"
"Ah!" she said, with a deep intonation. "I knew it would come some
time. Well! what is to be must be. Speak, my son."
The young man laid his hand affectionately on hers.
"Had it not better come?" he said. "You would not prefer that I asked
my questions of others than yourself, nor that I shut them in my own
soul, and fretted my heart out, trying to find the answer."
"I should prefer any suffering rather than the loss of thy love and
confidence, my Ralph," she answered tenderly. "To the young, it is easy
to look back, for they have only just left the flowery garden. To the
old, it may be so, when there is only a little way to go, and they will
then be gathered to their fathers. But half-way through the long
journey--with all the graves behind, and the dreary stretch of trackless
heath before--Speak thy will, Ralph."
"Forgive me if I pain you, Mother. I feel as if I must speak, and
something has happened to-day which bids me do it now."
It was evident that these words startled and discomposed the mother.
She had been leaning back rather wearily in the corner of the bench, as
one resting from bodily strain. Now she sat up, the rich crimson
mantling her dark cheek.
"What! Hast thou seen--hast thou heard something?"
"I have seen," answered Ralph slowly, as if almost unwilling to say it,
"a face from the long ago. At any rate, a face which carried my memory
thither."
"Whose?" she said, almost in tones of alarm.
"I cannot tell you. Let me make it as plain as I can. You may be able
to piece the disjointed strands together, when I cannot."
"Go on," she said, settling herself to listen.
"You know, Mother," he began, "that I have always known and remembered
one thing from my past. I know you are not my real mother. Kindest and
truest and dearest of mothers and friends you have been to me; my true
mother, whoever and wherever she may be, could have loved and tended me
no better than you. That much I know: but as to other matters my
recollection is far more uncertain. Some persons and things I recall
clearly; others are mixed together, and here and there, as if in a
dream, some person, or more frequently some action of such a person,
stands out vividly, like a picture, from the general haze. Now, for
instance, I can remember that there was somebody called `Mother Isel':
but whether she were my mother, or yours, or who she was, that I do not
know. Again, I recollect a man, who must have been rather stern to my
childish freaks, I suppose, for he brings with him a sense of fear.
This man does not come into my life till I was some few years old; there
is another whom I remember better, an older friend, a man with light
hair and grave, kindly blue eyes. There are some girls, too, but I
cannot clearly recall them--they seem mixed together in my memory,
though the house in which I and they lived I recollect perfectly. But I
do not know how it is--I never see you there. I clearly recall a big
book, which the man with the blue eyes seems to be constantly reading:
and when he reads, a woman sits by him with a blue check apron, and I
sit on her lap. Perhaps such a thing happened only once, but it appears
to me as if I can remember it often and often. There is another man
whose face I recall--I doubt if he lived in the house; I think he came
in now and then: a man with brown hair and a pleasant, lively face, who
often laughed and had many a merry saying. I cannot certainly remember
any one else connected with that house, except one other--a woman: a
woman with a horrible chattering tongue, who often left people in tears
or very cross: a woman whom I don't like at all."
"And after, Ralph?" suggested the mother in a low voice, when the young
man paused.
"After? Ah, Mother, that is harder to remember still. A great tumult,
cross voices, a sea of faces which all looked angry and terrified me,
and then it suddenly changes like a dream to a great lonely expanse of
shivering snow: and I and some others--whom, I know not--wander about in
it--for centuries, as it appears to me. Then comes a blank, and then--
you."
"You remember better than I should have expected as to some things:
others worse. Can you recollect no name save `Mother Isel'?"
"I can, but I don't know whose they are. I can hear somebody call from
the upper chamber--`Gerard, is that you?' and the pleasant-faced man
says, `Tell Ermine' something. That is what made me ask you, Mother. I
met a man to-day in Cheapside who looked hard at me, and who made me
think both of that pleasant-faced man, and also of the stern man; and as
I had to wait for a cart to pass, another man and woman came and spoke
to him, and he said to the woman, `Well, when are you coming to see
Ermine?' The face, and his curious, puzzled look at me, and the name,
carried me back all at once to that house and the people there. He
looked as if he thought he ought to know me, and could not tell exactly
who I was. And just as I came away, I fancied I heard another word or
two, spoken low as if not for me or somebody to hear--something
about--`like him and Agnes too.' I wonder if I ever knew any one called
Agnes? I have a faint impression that I did. Can you tell me, Mother?"
"I will tell thee, Ralph. But answer me first. Wert thou always called
Ralph?"
"I cannot tell, Mother," replied the youth, with an interested look. "I
fancy, somehow, that I once used to be called something not that
exactly, and yet very like it. I have tried to recover it, and cannot.
Was it some pet name used by somebody?"
"No. It was your own name--which Ralph is not."
"O Mother! what was it?"
"Wait a moment. Did you ever hear of any one called--Countess?"
She brought out the second name with hesitation, as if she spoke it
unwillingly. The youth shook his head.
"Let that pass."
"But who was it, Mother?"
"Never mind who it was. No relative of yours--Rudolph."
"Rudolph!" The young man sprang to his feet. "That was my name! I
know it was, but I never could get hold of it. I shall not forget it
again."
"Do not forget it again. But let it be for ourselves only. To the
world outside you are still `Ralph.' It is wiser."
"Very well, Mother."
This youth had been well trained, and was far more obedient to his
adopted mother than most sons at that time were to their real parents.
With the Saxons a mother had always been under the control of an adult
son; and the Normans who had won possession of England had by no means
abolished either the social customs or modes of thought of the
vanquished people. In fact, the moral ascendancy soon rested with the
subject race. The Norman noble who dried his washed hands in the air,
sneered at the Saxon thrall who wiped his on a towel; but the towel was
none the less an article of necessary furniture in the house of the
Norman's grandson. It has often been the case in the history of the
world, that the real victory has rested with the vanquished: but it has
always been brought about by the one race mixing with and absorbing the
other. Where that does not take place, the conquerors remain dominant.
"Now, my son, listen and think. I have some questions to ask. What
faith have I taught thee?"
"You have taught me," said Rudolph slowly, "to believe in God Almighty,
and in His Son, our Lord Jesus Christ, who suffered on the cross to
expiate the sins of His chosen."
"Is that the creed of those around us?"
"Mother, I cannot tell. One half of my brain answers, Ay, it is; but
the other half says, No, there is a difference. Yet I cannot quite see
what the difference is, and you have always so strictly forbidden me to
speak to any one except yourself on religious subjects, that I have had
no opportunity to learn what it is. Others, when I hear them talking to
you, speak of God, of our Lord, and of our Lady, as we ourselves do: and
they speak of the holy Apostles and others of whom we always read in the
big book. Mother, is that the same big book out of which the grave-eyed
man used to read? But they mention a great many people who are not in
the book,--Martin, and Benedict, and Margaret, and plenty more--and they
call them all `Saint,' but I do not know who they were. You never told
me about those people."
There was silence for a moment, till she said--"Thou hast learnt well,
and hast been an obedient boy. In the years that lie before thee, thou
mayest have cause to thank God for it. My questions are done: thou
mayest ask thine."
"Then, Mother, who am I?" was the eager inquiry. "Thou art Rudolph, son
of Gerhardt of Mainz, and of Agnes his wife, who both gave their lives
for the Lord Christ's sake, fourteen years ago."
"Mother!--were my real parents martyrs?"
"That is the word which is written after their names in the Lamb's Book
of Life. But in the books written by men the word is different."
"What is that word, then, Mother?"
"Rudolph, canst thou bear to hear it? The word is--`heretic'."
"But those are wicked people, who are called heretics!"
"I think it depends on who uses the word."
Rudolph sat an instant in blank silence.
"Then what did my father believe that was so wrong?"
"He believed what I have taught you."
"Then were they wicked, and not he?"
"Judge for thyself. There were about thirty of thy father's countrymen,
who came over to this country to preach the pure Word of God: and those
who called them heretics took them, and branded them, and turned them
out into the snow to die. Would our Lord have done that?"
"Never! Did they die?"
"Every one, except the child I saved."
"And that was I, Mother?"
"That was thou."
"So I am not an Englishman!" said Rudolph, almost regretfully.
"No. Thou seest now why I taught thee German. It is thine own tongue."
"Mother, this story is terrible. I shall feel the world a worse place
to my life's end, after hearing it. But suffer me to ask--who are you?
We are so unlike, that sometimes I have fancied we might not be related
at all."
"We are not related at all."
"But you are German?"
"No."
"You are English! I always imagined you a foreigner."
"No--I am not English."
"Italian?--Spanish?"
She shook her head, and turned away her face.
"I never cared for the scorn of these other creatures," she said in a
low troubled voice. "I could give them back scorn for scorn. But it
will be hard to be scorned by the child whom I saved from death."
"Mother! I scorn you? Why, the thing could not be. You are all the
world to me."
"It will not be so always, my son. Howbeit, thou shalt hear the truth.
Rudolph, I am a Jewess. My old name is Countess, the daughter of
Benefei of Oxford."
"Mother," said Rudolph softly, "you are what our Lady was. If I could
scorn you, it would not be honouring her."
"True enough, boy: but thou wilt not find the world say so."
"If the world speak ill of you, Mother, I will have none of it! Now
please tell me about others. Who was Mother Isel?"
"A very dear and true friend of thy parents."
"And Ermine?"
"Thy father's sister--one of the best and sweetest maidens that God ever
made."
"Is it my father that I remember, with the grave blue eyes--the man who
read in the book?"
"I have no doubt of it. It is odd--" and a smile flitted over
Countess's lips--"that all thou canst recollect of thy mother should be
her checked apron."