"I should guess the stern man to be Manning Brown, the husband of Isel.
The merry, pleasant-faced man, I think, must be his nephew Stephen.
`Stephen the Watchdog' they used to call him; he was one of the Castle
watchmen."
"At Oxford? Was it Oxford, then, where we used to live?"
"It was Oxford."
"I should like to go there again."
"Take heed thou do not so. Thou are so like both thy father and mother
that I should fear for thy safety. No one would know me, I think. But
for thee I am not so sure. And if they were to guess who thou art, they
would have thee up before the bishops, and question thee, and brand thee
with the dreadful name of `heretic,' as they did to thy parents."
"Mother, why would they do these things?--why did they do them?"
"Because they loved idols, and after them they would go. We worship
only the Lord our God, blessed be He! And thou wilt find always,
Rudolph, that not only doth light hate darkness, but the darkness also
hateth the light, and tries hard to extinguish it."
"Yet if they worship the same God that we do--"
"Do they? I cannot tell. Sometimes I think He can hardly reckon it so.
The God they worship seems to be no jealous God, but one that hath no
law to be broken, no power to be dreaded, no majesty to be revered. `If
I be a Master,' said the Holy One by Malachi the Prophet, `where is My
fear?' And our Lord spake to the Sadducees, saying, `Do ye not
therefore err, because ye know not the Scriptures, neither the power of
God?' They seem to be strangely fearless of breaking His most solemn
commands--even the words that He spake to Moses in the sight of all
Israel, on the mount that burned with fire. Strangely fearless! when
the Master spake expressly against making the commands of God of no
effect through man's tradition. What do they think He meant? Let them
spill a drop of consecrated wine--which He never told them to be careful
over--and they are terrified of His anger: let them deliberately break
His distinct laws, and they are not terrified at all. The world has
gone very, very far from God."
They sat for a little while in silence.
"Mother," said Rudolph at last, "who do you think that man was whom I
met, that looked so hard at me, and seemed to think me like my parents?
He spoke of `Ermine,' too."
"I can only guess, Rudolph. I think it might be a son of Mother Isel--
she had two. The Ermine of whom he spoke, no doubt, is some girl named
after thine aunt. Perhaps it may be a child of their sister Flemild. I
cannot say."
"You think it could not be my aunt, Mother? I should like to know one
of my own kin."
"Not possible, my boy. She must have died with the rest."
"Are you sure they all died, Mother?"
"I cannot say that I saw it, Rudolph: though I did see the dead faces of
several, when I was searching for thee. But I do not see how she could
possibly have escaped."
"Might she not--if she had escaped--say the same of me?"
Countess seemed scarcely willing to admit even so much as this.
"It is time for sleep, my son," she said; and Rudolph rose, lighted the
lantern, and followed her upstairs. The chamber above was divided in
two by a curtain drawn across it. As Rudolph was about to pass beyond
it, he stopped to ask another question.
"Mother, if I should meet that man again,--suppose he were to speak to
me?"
A disquieted look came into the dark eyes.
"Bring him to me," she said. "Allow nothing--deny nothing. Leave me to
deal with him."
Rudolph dropped the curtain behind him, and silence fell upon the little
house in Mark Lane.
A few hours earlier, our old friend Stephen, now a middle-aged man, had
come home from his daily calling, to his house in Ivy Lane. He was
instantly surrounded by his five boys and girls, their ages between six
and thirteen, all of whom welcomed him with tumultuous joyfulness.
"Father, I've construed a whole book of Virgil!"
"And, Father, I'm to begin Caesar next week!"
"I've made a gavache for you, Father--done every stitch myself!"
"Father, I've learnt how to make pancakes!"
"Father, I stirred the posset!"
"Well, well! have you, now?" answered the kindly-faced father. "You're
all of you mighty clever, I'm very sure. But now, if one or two of you
could get out of the way, I might shut the door; no need to let in more
snow than's wanted.--Where's Mother?"
"Here's Mother," said another voice; and a fair-haired woman of the age
of Countess, but looking younger, appeared in a doorway, drawing back
the curtain. "I am glad you have come, Stephen. It is rather a stormy
night."
"Oh, just a basinful of snow," said Stephen lightly. "Supper ready?
Gerard--" to his eldest boy--"draw that curtain a bit closer, to keep
the wind off Mother. Now let us ask God's blessing."
It was a very simple supper--cheese, honey, roasted apples, and brown
bread; but the children had healthy appetites, and had not been
enervated by luxuries. Conversation during the meal was general. When
it was over, the three younger ones were despatched to bed with a
benediction, under charge of their eldest sister; young Gerard seated
himself on the bench, with a handful of slips of wood, which he was
ambitiously trying to carve into striking likenesses of the twelve
Apostles; and when the mother's household duties were over, she came and
sat by her husband in the chimney-corner. Stephen laid his hand upon
her shoulder.
"Ermine," he said, "dear heart, wilt thou reckon me cruel, if I carry
thy thoughts back--for a reason I have--to another snowy night, fourteen
years ago?"
"Stephen!" she exclaimed, with a sudden start. "Oh no, I could never
think _thee_ cruel. But what has happened?"
"Dost thou remember, when I first saw thee in Mother Haldane's house, my
telling thee that I could not find Rudolph?"
"Of course I do. O Stephen! have you--do you think--"
Gerard looked up from his carving in amazement, to see the mother whom
he knew as the calmest and quietest of women transformed into an eager,
excited creature, with glowing cheeks and radiant eyes.
"Let me remind thee of one other point,--that Mother Haldane said God
would either take the child to Himself, or would some day show us what
had become of him."
"She did,--much to my surprise."
"And mine. But I think, Ermine--I think it is going to come true."
"Stephen, what have you heard?"
"I believe, Ermine, I have seen him."
"Seen _him_--Rudolph?"
"I feel almost sure it was he. I was standing this morning near Chepe
Cross, to let a waggon pass, when I looked up, and all at once I saw a
young man of some twenty years standing likewise till it went by. The
likeness struck me dumb for a moment. Gerard's brow--no, lad, not thou!
Thy mother knows--Gerard's brow, and his fair hair, with the very wave
it used to have about his temples; his eyes and nose too; but Agnes's
mouth, and somewhat of Agnes in the way he held his head. And as I
stood there, up came Leuesa and her husband, passing the youth; and
before I spoke a word about him, `Saw you ever one so like Gerard?'
saith she. I said, `Ay, him and Agnes too.' We watched the lad cross
the street, and parting somewhat hastily from our friends, I followed
him at a little distance. I held him in sight as far as Tower Street,
but ere he had quite reached Mark Lane, a company of mummers, going
westwards, came in betwixt and parted us. I lost sight of him but for a
moment, yet when they had passed, I could see no more of him--north,
south, east, nor west--than if the earth had swallowed him up. I reckon
he went into an house in that vicinage. To-morrow, if the Lord will, I
will go thither, and watch. And if I see him again, I will surely
speak."
"Stephen! O Stephen, if it should be our lost darling!"
"Ay, love, if it should be! It was always possible, of course, that he
might have been taken in somewhere. There are many who would have no
compassion on man or woman, and would yet shrink from turning out a
little child to perish. And he was a very attractive child. Still, do
not hope too much, Ermine; it may be merely an accidental likeness."
"If I could believe," replied Ermine, "that Countess had been anywhere
near, I should think it more than possible that she had saved him."
"Countess? Oh, I remember--that Jewish maiden who petted him so much.
But she went to some distance when she married, if I recollect rightly."
"She went to Reading. But she might not have been there always."
"True. Well, I will try to find out something to-morrow night."
The little jeweller's shop at the corner of Mark Lane had now been
established for fourteen years. For ten of those years, David and
Christian had lived with Countess; but when Rudolph was old enough and
sufficiently trained to manage the business for himself, Countess had
thought it desirable to assist David in establishing a shop of his own
at some distance. She had more confidence in David's goodness than in
his discretion, and one of her chief wishes was to have as few
acquaintances as possible. Happily for her aim, Rudolph's disposition
was not inconveniently social. He liked to sit in a cushioned corner
and dream the hours away; but he shrank as much as Countess herself from
the rough, noisy, rollicking life of the young people by whom they were
surrounded. Enough to live on, in a simple and comfortable fashion--a
book or two, leisure, and no worry--these were Rudolph's desiderata, and
he found them in Mark Lane.
He had no lack of subjects for thought as he sat behind his tiny counter
on the evening of the following day. Shop-counters, at that date, were
usually the wooden shutter of the window, let down table-wise into the
street; but in the case of plate and jewellery the stock was too
valuable to be thus exposed, and customers had to apply for admission
within. It had been a very dull day for business, two customers only
having appeared, and one of these had gone away without purchasing.
There was one wandering about outside who would have been only too glad
to become a customer, had he known who sat behind the counter. Stephen
had searched in vain for Rudolph in the neighbourhood where he had so
mysteriously vanished from sight. He could not recognise him under the
alias of "Ralph le Juwelier," by which name alone his neighbours knew
him. Evening after evening he watched the corner of Mark Lane, and some
fifty yards on either side of it, but only to go back every time to
Ermine with no tale to tell. There were no detectives nor inquiry
offices in those days; nothing was easier than for a man to lose himself
in a great city under a feigned name. For Countess he never inquired;
nor would he have taken much by the motion had he done so, since she was
known to her acquaintances as Sarah la Juweliere. Her features were not
so patently Jewish as those of some daughters of Abraham, and most
people imagined her to be of foreign extraction.
"It seems of no use, Ermine," said Stephen mournfully, when a month had
passed and Rudolph had not been seen again. "Maybe it was the boy's
ghost I saw, come to tell us that he is not living."
Stephen was gifted with at least an average amount of common sense, but
he would have regarded a man who denied the existence of apparitions as
a simpleton.
"We can only wait," said Ermine, looking up from the tunic she was
making for her little Derette. "I have asked the Lord to send him to
us; we can only wait His time."
"But, Wife, suppose His time should be--never?"
"Then, dear," answered Ermine softly, "it will still be the right time."
The morning after that conversation was waning into afternoon, when
Rudolph, passing up Paternoster Row, heard hurried steps behind him, and
immediately felt a grasp on his shoulder--a grasp which seemed as if it
had no intention of letting him go in a hurry. He looked up in some
surprise, into the face of the man whose intent gaze and disconnected
words had so roused his attention a month earlier.
"Caught you at last!" were the first words of his captor. "Now don't
fall to and fight me, but do me so much grace as to tell me your name in
a friendly way. You would, if you knew why I ask you."
The kindliness and honest sincerity of the speaker's face were both so
apparent, that Rudolph smiled as he said--
"Suppose you tell me yours?"
"I have no cause to be ashamed of it. My name is Stephen, and men call
me `le Bulenger.'"
"Have they always called you so?"
"Are you going to catechise me?" laughed Stephen. "No--you are right
there. Fifteen years ago they called me `Esueillechien.' Now, have you
heard my name before?"
"I cannot say either `yes' or `no,' unless you choose to come home with
me to see my mother. She may know you better than I can."
"I'll come home with you fast enough," Stephen was beginning, when the
end of the sentence dashed his hopes down. "`To see your--mother!'
That won't do, young man. I have looked myself on her dead face--or
else you are not the man for whom I took you."
"I can answer you no questions till you do so," replied Rudolph firmly.
"Come, then, have with you," returned Stephen, linking his arm in that
of the younger man. "Best to make sure. I shall get to know something,
if it be only that you are not the right fellow."
"Now?" asked Rudolph, rather disconcertedly. He was not in the habit of
acting in this ready style about everything that happened, but required
a little while to make up his mind to a fresh course.
"Have you not found out yet," said Stephen, marching him into Saint
Paul's Churchyard, "that _now_ is the only time a man ever has for
anything?"
"Well, you don't let the grass grow under your feet," observed Rudolph,
laughing.
Being naturally of a rather dreamy and indolent temperament, he was not
accustomed to getting over the ground with the rapidity at which Stephen
led him.
"There's never time to waste time," was the sententious reply.
In a shorter period than Rudolph would have thought possible, they
arrived at the corner of Mark Lane.
"You live somewhere about here," said Stephen coolly, "but I don't know
where exactly. You'll have to show me your door."
"You seem to know a great deal about me," answered Rudolph in an amused
tone. "This is my door. Come in."
Stephen followed him into the jeweller's shop, where Countess sat
waiting for customers, with the big white dog lying at her feet.
"I'm thankful to see, young man, that your `mother' is no mother of
yours. Your flaxen locks were never cut from those jet tresses. But I
don't know who you are--" he turned to her--"unless Ermine be right that
Countess the Jewess took the boy. Is that it?"
"That is it," she replied, flushing at the sound of her old name. "You
are Stephen the Watchdog, if I mistake not? Yes, I am Countess--or
rather, I was Countess, till I was baptised into the Christian faith.
So Ermine is yet alive? I should like to see her. I would fain have
her to come forward as my witness, when I deliver the boy unhurt to his
father at the last day."
"But how on earth did you do it?" broke out Stephen in amazement. "Why,
you could scarcely have heard at Reading of what had happened,--I should
have thought you could not possibly have heard, until long after all was
over."
"I was not at Reading," she said in a constrained tone. "I was living
in Dorchester. And I heard of the arrest from Regina."
"Do, for pity's sake, tell me all about it!"
"I will tell you every thing: but let me tell Ermine with you. And,--
Stephen--you will not try to take him from me? He is all I have."
"No, Countess," said Stephen gravely. "You have a right to the life
that you have saved. Will you come with me now? But perhaps you cannot
leave together? Will the house be rifled when you return?"
"Not at all," calmly replied Countess. "We will both go with you."
She rose, disappeared for a moment, and came back clad in a fur-lined
cloak and hood. Turning the key in the press which held the stock, she
stooped down and attached the key to the dog's collar.
"On guard, Olaf! Keep it!" was all she said to the dog. "Now, Stephen,
we are ready to go with you."
Olaf got up somewhat sleepily, shook himself, and then lay down close to
the screen, his head between his paws, so that he could command a view
of both divisions of the chamber. He evidently realised his
responsibility.
Stephen had no cause to complain that Countess wasted any time. She
walked even faster than he had done, only pausing to let him take the
lead at the street corner. But when he had once told her that his home
was in Ivy Lane, she paused no more, but pressed on steadily and quickly
until they reached the little street. Stephen opened his door, and she
went straight in to where Ermine stood.
"Ermine!" she said, with a pleading cadence in her voice, "I have
brought back the child unhurt."
"Countess!" was Ermine's cry.
She took Ermine's hands in hers.
"I may touch you now," she said. "You will not shrink from me, for I am
a Christian. But I have kept my vow. I have never permitted the boy to
worship idols. I have kept him, so far as lay in my power, from all
contact with those men and things which his father held evil. God bear
me witness to you, and God and you to him, that the poor scorned Jewess
has fulfilled her oath, and that the boy is unharmed in body and soul!--
Rudolph! this is thine Aunt Ermine. Come and show thyself to her."
"Did I ever shrink from you?" replied Ermine with a sob, as she clasped
Countess to her heart. "My friend, my sister! As thou hast dealt with
us outcasts, may God reward thee! and as thou has mothered our Rudolph,
may He comfort thee!--O my darling, my Gerhardt's boy!--nay, I could
think that Gerhardt himself stood before me. Wilt thou love me a
little, my Rudolph?--for I have loved thee long, and have never failed,
for one day, to pray God's blessing on thee if thou wert yet alive."
"I think I shall not find it hard, Aunt Ermine," said Rudolph, as he
kissed without knowing it that spot on Ermine's brow where the terrible
brand had once been. "I have often longed to find one of my own
kindred, for I knew that Mother was not my real mother, good and true as
she has been to me."
Countess brought out from under her cloak a large square parcel, wrapped
in a silken kerchief.
"This is Rudolph's fortune," she said.
Stephen looked on with some curiosity, fully expecting to see a box of
golden ornaments, or perhaps of uncut gems. But when the handkerchief
was carefully unfolded, there lay before them an old, worn book, in a
carved wooden case.
Stephen--who could not read--was a little disappointed, though the
market value of any book was very high. But Ermine recognised the
familiar volume with a cry of delight, and took it into her hands,
reading half-sentences here and there as she turned over the leaves.
"Oh, how have I wished for this! How I have wondered what became of it!
Gerhardt's dear old Gospel-Book! Countess, how couldst thou get it?
It was taken from him when we were arrested."
"I know it," answered Countess with a low laugh.
"But you were at Reading!" exclaimed Ermine.
"I was at Oxford, though you knew it not. I had arrived on a visit to
my father, the morning of that very day. I was in the crowd around when
you went down to the prison, though I saw none of you save Gerhardt.
But I saw the sumner call his lad, and deliver the book to him, bidding
him bear it to the Castle, there to be laid up for the examination of
the Bishops. Finding that I could not get the child, I followed the
book. Rubi was about, and I begged him to challenge the lad to a trial
of strength, which he was ready enough to accept. He laid down the book
on the window-ledge of a house, and--I do not think he picked it up
again."
"You stole it, sinner!" laughed Stephen.
"Why not?" inquired Countess with a smile. "I took it for its lawful
owner, from one that had no right to it. You do not call that theft?"
"Could you read it?"
"I could learn to do anything for Rudolph."
"But how did you ever find him?"
"We were living at Dorchester. Regina came to stay with me in the
winter, and she told me that you were to be examined before the King and
the bishops, and on what day. All that day I watched to see you pass
through the town, and having prepared myself to save the child if I
possibly could, when I caught a glimpse of Guelph, who was among the
foremost, I followed in the rabble, with a bottle of broth, which I kept
warm in my bosom, to revive such as I might be able to reach. Ermine, I
looked in vain for you, for Gerhardt or Agnes. But I saw Rudolph, whom
Adelheid was leading. The crowd kept pressing before me, and I could
not keep him in sight; but as they went out of Dorchester, I ran
forward, and came up with them again a little further, when I missed
Rudolph. Then I turned back, searching all the way--until I found him."
"And your husband let you keep him?" asked Ermine in a slightly
surprised tone.
"My oath let me keep him," said Countess in a peculiar voice.
"Are you a widow?" responded Ermine pityingly.
"Very likely," was the short, dry answer.
Ermine asked no more. "Poor Countess!" was all she said.
"Don't pity me for _that_," replied the Jewess. "You had better know.
We quarrelled, Ermine, over the boy, and at my own request he divorced
me, and let me go. It was an easy choice to make--gold and down
cushions on the one hand, love and the oath of God upon the other. I
never missed the down cushions; and I think the child found my breast as
soft as they would have been. I sold my jewels, and set up a little
shop. We have had the blessing of the Holy One, to whom be praise!"
"That is a Jewish way of talking, is it not?" said Stephen, smiling. "I
thought you were a Catholic now."
"I am a Christian. I know nothing about `Catholic'--unless the idols in
the churches are Catholic, and with them I will have nought to do.
Gerhardt never taught me to worship them, and Gerhardt's book has never
taught it either. I believe in the Lord my God, and His Son Jesus
Christ, the Messiah of Israel: but these gilded vanities are
abominations to me. Oh, why have ye Christian folk added your folly to
God's wisdom, and have held off the sons and daughters of Israel from
faith in Messiah the King?"
"Ah, why, indeed!" echoed Ermine softly.
"Can you tell me anything of our old friends at Oxford?" asked Countess
suddenly, after a moment's pause.
"Yes, we heard of them from Leuesa, who married and came to live in
London about six years ago," said Stephen. "Your people were all well,
Countess; your sister Regina has married Samuel, the nephew of your
uncle Jurnet's wife, and has a little family about her--one very pretty
little maid, Leuesa told us, with eyes like yours."
"Thank you," said Countess in a tone of some emotion. "They would not
own me now."
"Dear," whispered Ermine lovingly, "whosoever shall confess Christ
before men,--not the creed, nor the Church, but Him whom the Father
sent, and the truth to which He bore witness--him will He also confess
before our Father which is in Heaven. And I think there are a very few
of those whom He will present before the presence of His glory, who
shall hear Him say of them those words of highest praise that He ever
spoke on earth,--`She hath done what she could.'"