The Cloister and the Hearth by Charles Reade (page 14)

damni?” said he, “Dic; et cito solvam.” The podesta snuffed the gold: fined him a ducat for the duke; about the value of the whole tree; and pouched the coin.

The Englishman shook off his ire the moment he was liberated, and laughed heartily at the whole thing; but was very grateful to Clement.

“You are too good for this hole of a country, father,” said he, “Come to England! That is the only place in the world, I was an uneasy fool to leave it, and wander among mulberries and their idiots. I am a Kentish squire, and educated at Cambridge University. My name it is Rolfe, my place Betshanger, The man and the house are both at your service. Come over and stay till domesday. We sit down forty to dinner every day at Betshanger. One more or one less at the board will not be seen. You shall end your days with me and my heirs if you will, Come now! What an Englishman says he means.” And he gave him a great hearty grip of the hand to confirm it,

“I will visit thee some day, my son,” said Clement; “but not to weary thy hospitality.”

The Englishman then begged Clement to shrive him. “I know not what will become of my soul,” said he, “I live like a heathen since I left England.”

Clement consented gladly, and soon the islander was on his knees to him by the roadside, confessing the last month’s sins.

Finding him so pious a son of the Church, Clement let him know he was really coming to England. He then asked him whether it was true that country was overrun with Lollards and Wickliffites.

The other coloured up a little. “There be black sheep in every land,” said he. Then after some reflection he said gravely, “Holy father, hear the truth about these heretics. None are better disposed towards Holy Church than we English. But we are ourselves, and by ourselves. We love our own ways, and above all, our own tongue. The Norman could conquer our bill-hooks, but not our tongues; and hard they tried it for many a long year by law and proclamation. Our good foreign priests utter God to plain English folk in Latin, or in some French or Italian lingo, like the bleating of a sheep. Then come the fox Wickliff and his crew, and read him out of his own book in plain English, that all men’s hearts warm to. Who can withstand this? God forgive me, I believe the English would turn deaf ears to St, Peter himself, spoke he not to them in the tongue their mothers sowed in their ears and their hearts along with mothers’ kisses.” He added hastily, “I say not this for myself; I am Cambridge bred; and good words come not amiss to me in Latin; but for the people in general. Clavis ad corda Anglorum est lingua materna.”

“My son,” said Clement, “blessed be the hour I met thee; for thy words are sober and wise. But alas! how shall I learn your English tongue? No book have I.”

“I would give you my book of hours, father. ‘Tis in English and Latin, cheek by jowl. But then, what would become of my poor soul, wanting my ‘hours’ in a strange land? Stay, you are a holy man, and I am an honest one; let us make a bargain; you to pray for me every day for two months, and I to give you my book of hours. Here it is. What say you to that?” And his eyes sparkled, and he was all on fire with mercantility.

Clement smiled gently at this trait; and quietly detached a MS. from his girdle, and showed him that it was in Latin and Italian.

“See, my son,” said he, “Heaven hath foreseen our several needs, and given us the means to satisfy them: let us change books; and, my dear son, I will give thee my poor prayers and welcome, not sell them thee. I love not religious bargains.”

The islander was delighted. “So shall I learn the Italian tongue without risk to my eternal weal, Near is my purse, but nearer is my soul.”

He forced money on Clement. In vain the friar told him it was contrary to his vow to carry more of that than was barely necessary.

“Lay it out for the good of the Church and of my soul,” said the islander. “I ask you not to keep it, but take it you must and shall.” And he grasped Clement’s hand warmly again; and Clement kissed him on the brow, and blessed him, and they went each his way.

About a mile from where they parted, Clement found two tired wayfarers lying in the deep shade of a great chestnut-tree, one of a thick grove the road skirted. Near the men was a little cart, and in it a printing-press, rude and clumsy as a vine-press, A jaded mule was harnessed to the cart.

And so Clement stood face to face with his old enemy.

And as he eyed it, and the honest, blue-eyed faces of the wearied craftsmen, he looked back as on a dream at the bitterness he had once felt towards this machine. He looked kindly down on them, and said softly –

“Sweynheim!”

The men started to their feet.

“Pannartz.!”

They scuttled into the wood, and were seen no more.

Clement was amazed, and stood puzzling himself.

Presently a face peeped from behind a tree.

Clement addressed it, “What fear ye?”

A quavering voice replied –

“Say, rather, by what magic you, a stranger, can call us by our names! I never clapt eyes on you till now.”

“O, superstition! I know ye, as all good workmen are known – by your works. Come hither and I will tell ye.”

They advanced gingerly from different sides; each regulating his advance by the other’s.

“My children,” said Clement, “I saw a Lactantius in Rome, printed by Sweynheim and Pannartz, disciples of Fust.”

“D’ye hear that, Pannartz? our work has gotten to Rome already.”

“By your blue eyes and flaxen hair I wist ye were Germans; and the printing-press spoke for itself. Who then should ye be but Fust’s disciples, Pannartz and Sweynheim?”

The honest Germans were now astonished that they had suspected magic in so simple a matter,

“The good father hath his wits about him, that is all,” said Pannartz,

“Ay,” said Sweynheim, “and with those wits would he could tell us how to get this tired beast to the next town.”

“Yea,” said Sweynheim, “and where to find money to pay for his meat and ours when we get there.”

“I will try,” said Clement. “Free the mule of the cart, and of all harness but the bare halter.”

This was done, and the animal immediately lay down and rolled on his back in the dust like a kitten. Whilst he was thus employed, Clement assured them he would rise up a new mule.

“His Creator hath taught him this art to refresh himself, which the nobler horse knoweth not. Now, with regard to money, know that a worthy Englishman hath entrusted me with a certain sum to bestow in charity. To whom can I better give a stranger’s money than to strangers? Take it, then, and be kind to some Englishman or other stranger in his need; and may all nations learn to love one another one day.”

The tears stood in the honest workmen’s eyes. They took the money with heartfelt thanks.

“It is your nation we are bound to thank and bless, good father, if we but knew it.”

“My nation is the Church.”

Clement was then for bidding them farewell, but the honest fellows implored him to wait a little; they had no silver nor gold, but they had something they could give their benefactor, They took the press out of the cart, and while Clement fed the mule, they hustled about, now on the white hot road, now in the deep cool shade, now half in and half out, and presently printed a quarto sheet of eight pages, which was already set up. They had not type enough to print two sheets at a time. When, after the slower preliminaries, the printed sheet was pulled all in a moment, Clement was amazed in turn.

“What, are all these words really fast upon the paper?” said he. “Is it verily certain they will not go as swiftly as they came? And you took me for a magician! ‘Tis ‘Augustine de civitate Dei.’ My sons, you carry here the very wings of knowledge. Oh, never abuse this great craft! Print no ill books! They would fly abroad countless as locusts, and lay waste men’s souls.

The workmen said they would sooner put their hands under the screw than so abuse their goodly craft.

And so they parted.

There is nothing but meeting and parting in this world.

At a town in Tuscany the holy friar had a sudden and strange recontre with the past. He fell in with one of those motley assemblages of patricians and plebeians, piety and profligacy, “a company of pilgrims;” a subject too well painted by others for me to go and daub,

They were in an immense barn belonging to the inn, Clement, dusty and wearied, and no lover of idle gossip, sat in a corner studying the Englishman’s hours, and making them out as much by his own Dutch as by the Latin version.

Presently a servant brought a bucket half full of water, and put it down at his feet. A female servant followed with two towels. And then a woman came forward, and crossing herself, kneeled down without a word at the bucket-side, removed her sleeves entirely, and motioned to him to put his feet into the water. It was some lady of rank doing penance. She wore a mask scarce an inch broad, but effectual. Moreover, she handled the friar’s feet more delicately than those do who are born to such offices.

These penances were not uncommon; and Clement, though he had little faith in this form of contrition, received the services of the incognita as a matter of course. But presently she sighed deeply, and with her heartfelt sigh and her head bent low over her menial office, she seemed so bowed with penitence, that he pitied her, and said calmly but gently, “Can I aught for your soul’s weal, my daughter?”

She shook her head with a faint sob. “Nought, holy father, nought; only to hear the sin of her who is most unworthy to touch thy holy feet. ‘Tis part of my penance to tell sinless men how vile I am.”

“Speak, my daughter.”

“Father,” said the lady, bending lower and lower, “these hands of mine look white, but they are stained with blood – the blood of the man I loved. Alas! you withdraw your foot. Ah me! What shall I do? All holy things shrink from me.”

“Culpa mea! culpa mea!” said Clement eagerly. “My daughter, it was an unworthy movement of earthly weakness, for which I shall do penance. Judge not the Church by her feebler servants, Not her foot, but her bosom, is offered to thee, repenting truly. Take courage, then, and purge thy conscience of its load,”

On this the lady, in a trembling whisper, and hurriedly, and cringing a little, as if she feared the Church would strike her bodily for what she had done, made this confession.

“He was a stranger, and base-born, but beautiful as Spring, and wise beyond his years. I loved him, I had not the prudence to conceal my love. Nobles courted me. I ne’er thought one of humble birth could reject me. I showed him my heart oh, shame of my sex! He drew back; yet he admired me; but innocently, He loved another; and he was constant. I resorted to a woman’s wiles, They availed not. I borrowed the wickedness of men, and threatened his life, and to tell his true lover he died false to her, Ah! you shrink your foot trembles. Am I not a monster? Then he wept and prayed to me for mercy; then my good angel helped me; I bade him leave Rome. Gerard, Gerard, why did you not obey me? I thought he was gone. But two months after this I met him, Never shall I forget it. I was descending the Tiber in my galley, when he came up it with a gay company, and at his side a woman beautiful as an angel, but bold and bad. That woman claimed me aloud for her rival. Traitor and hypocrite, he had exposed me to her, and to all the loose tongues in Rome. In terror and revenge I hired-a bravo. When he was gone on his bloody errand, I wavered too late. The dagger I had hired struck, He never came back to his lodgings. He was dead. Alas! perhaps he was not so much to blame: none have ever cast his name in my teeth. His poor body is not found: or I should kiss its wounds; and slay myself upon it. All around his very name seems silent as the grave, to which this murderous hand hath sent him.” (Clement’s eye was drawn by her movement. He recognized her shapely arm, and soft white hand.) “And oh! he was so young to die. A poor thoughtless boy, that had fallen a victim to that bad woman’s arts, and she had made him tell her everything. Monster of cruelty, what penance can avail me? Oh, holy father, what shall I do?”

Clement’s lips moved in prayer, but he was silent. He could not see his duty clear.

Then she took his feet and began to dry them. She rested his foot upon her soft arm, and pressed it with the towel so gently she seemed incapable of hurting a fly. Yet her lips had just told another story, and a true one.

While Clement was still praying for wisdom, a tear fell upon his foot. It decided him. “My daughter,” said he, “I myself have been a great sinner,”

“You, father?”

“I; quite as great a sinner as thou; though not in the same way. The devil has gins and snares, as well as traps. But penitence softened my impious heart, and then gratitude remoulded it. Therefore, seeing you penitent, I hope you can be grateful to Him, who has been more merciful to you than you have to your fellow-creature. Daughter, the Church sends you comfort.”

“Comfort to me? ah! never! unless it can raise my victim from the dead.”

“Take this crucifix in thy hand, fix thine eyes on it, and listen to me,” was all the reply.

“Yes, father; but let me thoroughly dry your feet first; ’tis ill sitting in wet feet; and you are the holiest man of all whose feet I have washed. I know it by your voice.”

“Woman, I am not. As for my feet, they can wait their turn. Obey thou me.

“Yes, father,” said the lady humbly. But with a woman’s evasive pertinacity she wreathed one towel swiftly round the foot she was drying, and placed his other foot on the dry napkin; then obeyed his command.

And as she bowed over the crucifix, the low, solemn tones of the friar fell upon her ear, and his words soon made her whole body quiver with various emotion, in quick succession.

“My daughter, he you murdered – in intent – was one Gerard, a Hollander. He loved a creature, as men should love none but their Redeemer and His Church. Heaven chastised him. A letter came to Rome. She was dead.”

“Poor Gerard! Poor Margaret!” moaned the penitent.

Clement’s voice faltered at this a moment. But soon, by a strong effort, he recovered all his calmness.

“His feeble nature yielded, body and soul, to the blow, He was stricken down with fever. He revived only to rebel against Heaven. He said, ‘There is no God.'”

“Poor, poor Gerard!”

“Poor Gerard? thou feeble, foolish woman! Nay, wicked, impious Gerard. He plunged into vice, and soiled his eternal jewel: those you met him with were his daily companions; but know, rash creature, that the seeming woman you took to be his leman was but a boy, dressed in woman’s habits to flout the others, a fair boy called Andrea. What that Andrea said to thee I know not; but be sure neither he, nor any layman, knows thy folly, This Gerard, rebel against Heaven, was no traitor to thee, unworthy.”

The lady moaned like one in bodily agony, and the crucifix began to tremble in her trembling hands.

Courage!” said Clement. “Comfort is at hand.”

“From crime he fell into despair, and bent on destroying his soul, he stood one night by Tiber, resolved on suicide. He saw one watching him. It was a bravo.”

“Holy saints!”

“He begged the bravo to despatch him; he offered him all his money, to slay him body and soul. The bravo would not. Then this desperate sinner, not softened even by that refusal, flung himself into Tiber.”

“Ah!”

“And the assassin saved his life. Thou hadst chosen for the task Lodovico, husband of Teresa, whom this Gerard had saved at sea, her and her infant child.”

“He lives! he lives! he lives! I am faint.”

The friar took the crucifix from her hands, fearing it might fall, A shower of tears relieved her. The friar gave her time; then continued calmly, “Ay, he lives; thanks to thee and thy wickedness, guided to his eternal good by an almighty and all-merciful hand. Thou art his greatest earthly benefactor.”

“Where is he? where? where?”

“What is that to thee?”

“Only to see him alive. To beg him on my knees forgive me. I swear to you I will never presume again to- How could I? He knows all. Oh, shame! Father, does he know?”

“All.”

“Then never will I meet his eye; I should sink into the earth. But I would repair my crime. I would watch his life unseen. He shall rise in the world, whence I so nearly thrust him, poor soul; the Caesare, my family, are all-powerful in Rome; and I am near their head.”

“My daughter,” said Clement coldly, “he you call Gerard needs nothing man can do for him. Saved by a miracle from double death, he has left the world, and taken refuge from sin and folly in the bosom of the Church.”

“A priest?”

“A priest, and a friar.”

“A friar? Then you are not his confessor? Yet you know all. That gentle voice!”

She raised her head slowly, and peered at him through her mask.

The next moment she uttered a faint shriek, and lay with her brow upon his bare feet,

CHAPTER LXXV

Clement sighed. He began to doubt whether he had taken the wisest course with a creature so passionate.

But young as he was, he had already learned many lessons of ecclesiastical wisdom. For one thing he had been taught to pause, i,e., in certain difficulties, neither to do nor to say anything, until the matter should clear itself a little.

He therefore held his peace and prayed for wisdom,

All he did was gently to withdraw his foot.

But his penitent flung her arms round it with a piteous cry, and held it convulsively, and wept over it.

And now the agony of shame, as well as penitence, she was in, showed itself by the bright red that crept over her very throat, as she lay quivering at his feet.

“My daughter,” said Clement gently, “take courage. Torment thyself no more about this Gerard, who is not. As for me, I am Brother Clement, whom Heaven hath sent to thee this day to comfort thee, and help thee save thy soul. Thou last made me thy confessor, I claim, then, thine obedience.”

“Oh, yes,” sobbed the penitent.

“Leave this pilgrimage, and instant return to Rome. Penitence abroad is little worth. There where we live lie the temptations we must defeat, or perish; not fly in search of others more showy, but less lethal. Easy to wash the feet of strangers, masked ourselves, Hard to be merely meek and charitable with those about us,”

“I’ll never, never lay finger on her again.”

“Nay, I speak not of servants only, but of dependents, kinsmen, friends. This be thy penance; the last thing at night, and the first thing after matins, call to mind thy sin, and God His goodness; and so be humble and gentle to the faults of those around thee. The world it courts the rich; but seek thou the poor: not beggars; these for the most are neither honest nor truly poor. But rather find out those who blush to seek thee, yet need thee sore. Giving to them shalt lend to Heaven. Marry a good son of the Church.”

“Me? I will never marry.”

“Thou wilt marry within the year. I do entreat and command thee to marry one that feareth God. For thou art very clay. Mated ill thou shalt be naught. But wedding a worthy husband thou mayest, Dei gratia, live a pious princess; ay, and die a saint,”

“I?”

“Thou,”

He then desired her to rise and go about the good work he had set her,

She rose to her knees, and removing her mask, cast an eloquent look upon him, then lowered her eyes meekly.

“I will obey you as I would an angel. How happy I am, yet unhappy; for oh, my heart tells me I shall never look on you again. I will not go till I have dried your feet.”

“It needs not. I have excused thee this bootless penance.”

“‘Tis no penance to me. Ah! you do not forgive me, if you will not let me dry your poor feet.”

“So be it then,” said Clement resignedly; and thought to himself, “Levius quid foemina.”

But these weak creatures, that gravitate towards the small, as heavenly bodies towards the great, have yet their own flashes of angelic intelligence.

When the princess had dried the friar’s feet, she looked at him with tears in her beautiful eyes, and murmured with singular tenderness and goodness –

“I will have masses said for her soul. May I?” she added timidly.

This brought a faint blush into the monk’s cheek, and moistened his cold blue eye. It came so suddenly from one he was just rating so low.

“It is a gracious thought,” he said. “Do as thou wilt: often such acts fall back on the doer like blessed dew. I am thy confessor, not hers; thine is the soul I must now do my all to save, or woe be to my own. My daughter, my dear daughter, I see good and ill angels fighting for thy soul this day, ay, this moment; oh, fight thou on thine own side. Dost thou remember all I bade thee?”

“Remember!” said the princess. “Sweet saint, each syllable of thine is graved in my heart.”

“But one word more, then. Pray much to Christ, and little to his saints.”

“I will.”

“And that is the best word I have light to say to thee. So part we on it. Thou to the place becomes thee best, thy father’s house, I to my holy mother’s work.”

“Adieu,” faltered the princess. “Adieu, thou that I have loved too well, hated too ill, known and revered too late; forgiving angel, adieu – for ever.”

The monk caught her words, though but faltered in a sigh.

“For ever?” he cried aloud, with sudden ardour. “Christians live ‘for ever,’ and love ‘for ever,’ but they never part ‘for ever. They part, as part the earth and sun, to meet more brightly in a little while. You and I part here for life. And what is our life? One line in the great story of the Church, whose son and daughter we are; one handful in the sand of time, one drop in the ocean of ‘For ever.’ Adieu – for the little moment called ‘a life!’ We part in trouble, we shall meet in peace: we part creatures of clay, we shall meet immortal spirits: we part in a world of sin and sorrow, we shall meet where all is purity and love divine; where no ill passions are, but Christ is, and His saints around Him clad in white. There, in the turning of an hour-glass, in the breaking of a bubble, in the passing of a cloud, she, and thou, and I, shall meet again; and sit at the feet of angels and archangels, apostles and saints, and beam like them with joy unspeakable, in the light of the shadow of God upon His throne, FOR EVER – AND EVER – AND EVER.”

And so they parted. The monk erect, his eyes turned heavenwards and glowing with the sacred fire of zeal; the princess slowly retiring and turning more than once to cast a lingering glance of awe and tender regret on that inspired figure.

She went home subdued, and purified. Clement, in due course, reached Basle, and entered on his duties, teaching in the University, and preaching in the town and neighbourhood. He led a life that can be comprised in two words; deep study, and mortification. My reader has already a peep into his soul. At Basle he advanced in holy zeal and knowledge.

The brethren of his order began to see in him a descendant of the saints and martyrs.

CHAPTER LXXVI

THE HEARTH

When little Gerard was nearly three months old, a messenger came hot from Tergou for Catherine,

“Now just you go back,” said she, “and tell them I can’t come, and I won’t: they have got Kate,” So he departed, and Catherine continued her sentence; “there, child, I must go: they are all at sixes and sevens: this is the third time of asking; and to-morrow my man would come himself and take me home by the ear, with a flea in’t.” She then recapitulated her experiences of infants, and instructed Margaret what to do in each coming emergency, and pressed money upon her, Margaret declined it with thanks, Catherine insisted, and turned angry. Margaret made excuses all so reasonable that Catherine rejected them with calm contempt; to her mind they lacked femininity,

“Come, out with your heart,” said she “and you and me parting; and mayhap shall never see one another’s face again,”

“Oh! mother, say not so.”

“Alack, girl, I have seen it so often; ’twill come into my mind now at each parting, When I was your age, I never had such a thought, Nay, we were all to live for ever then: so out wi’ it,”

“Well, then, mother – I would rather not have told you – your Cornelis must say to me, ‘So you are come to share with us, eh, mistress?’ those were his words, I told him I would be very sorry.

“Beshrew his ill tongue! What signifies it? He will never know,

“Most likely he would sooner or later, But whether or no, I will take no grudged bounty from any family; unless I saw my child starving, and – Heaven only knows what I might do, Nay, mother, give me but thy love – I do prize that above silver, and they grudge me not that, by all I can find – for not a stiver of money will I take out of your house,”

“You are a foolish lass, Why, were it me, I’d take it just to spite him,”

“No, you would not, You and I are apples off one tree”

Catherine yielded with a good grace; and when the actual parting came, embraces and tears burst forth on both sides,

When she was gone the child cried a good deal; and all attempts to pacify him failing, Margaret suspected a pin, and searching between his clothes and his skin, found a gold angel incommoding his backbone,

“There, now, Gerard,” said she to the babe; “I thought granny gave in rather sudden.”

She took the coin and wrapped it in a piece of linen, and laid it at the bottom of her box, bidding the infant observe she could be at times as resolute as granny herself.

Catherine told Eli of Margaret’s foolish pride, and how she had baffled it. Eli said Margaret was right, and she was wrong.

Catherine tossed her head. Eli pondered.

Margaret was not without domestic anxieties. She had still two men to feed, and could not work so hard as she had done. She had enough to do to keep the house, and the child, and cook for them all. But she had a little money laid by, and she used to tell her child his father would be home to help them before it was spent. And with these bright hopes, and that treasury of bliss, her boy, she spent some happy months.

Time wore on; and no Gerard came; and stranger still, no news of him.

Then her mind was disquieted, and contrary to her nature, which was practical, she was often lost in sad reverie; and sighed in silence. And while her heart was troubled, her money was melting. And so it was, that one day she found the cupboard empty, and looked in her dependents’ faces; and at the sight of them, her bosom was all pity; and she appealed to the baby whether she could let grandfather and poor old Martin want a meal; and went and took out Catherine’s angel. As she unfolded the linen a tear of gentle mortification fell on it. She sent Martin out to change it. While he was gone a Frenchman came with one of the dealers in illuminated work, who had offered her so poor a price. He told her he was employed by his sovereign to collect masterpieces for her book of hours. Then she showed him the two best things she had; and he was charmed with one of them, viz., the flowers and raspberries and creeping things, which Margaret Van Eyck had shaded. He offered her an unheard-of price. “Nay, flout not my need, good stranger,” said she; “three mouths there be in this house, and none to fill them but me.”

Curious arithmetic! Left out No. 1,

“I’d out thee not, fair mistress. My princess charged me strictly, ‘Seek the best craftsmen’; but I will no hard bargains; make them content with me, and me with them.'”

The next minute Margaret was on her knees kissing little Gerard in the cradle, and showering four gold pieces on him again and again, and relating the whole occurrence to him in very broken Dutch,

“And oh, what a good princess: wasn’t she? We will pray for her, won’t we, my lambkin; when we are old enough?”

Martin came in furious. “They will not change it. I trow they think I stole it.”

“I am beholden to thee,” said Margaret hastily, and almost snatched it from Martin, and wrapped it up again, and restored it to its hiding-place.

Ere these unexpected funds were spent, she got to her ironing and starching again. In the midst of which Martin sickened; and died after an illness of nine days.

Nearly all her money went to bury him decently.

He was gone; and there was an empty chair by her fireside, For he had preferred the hearth to the sun as soon as the Busy Body was gone.

Margaret would not allow anybody to sit in this chair now. Yet whenever she let her eye dwell too long on it vacant, it was sure to cost her a tear.

And now there was nobody to carry her linen home, To do it herself she must leave little Gerard in charge of a neighbour, But she dared not trust such a treasure to mortal; and besides she could not bear him out of her sight for hours and hours. So she set inquiries on foot for a boy to carry her basket on Saturday and Monday.

A plump, fresh-coloured youth, called Luke Peterson, who looked fifteen, but was eighteen, came in, and blushing, and twiddling his bonnet, asked her if a man would not serve her turn as well as a boy.

Before he spoke she was saying to herself, “This boy will just do.”

But she took the cue, and said, “Nay; but a man will maybe seek more than I can well pay.

“Not I,” said Luke warmly. “Why, Mistress Margaret, I am your neighbour, and I do very well at the coopering. I can carry your basket for you before or after my day’s work, and welcome, You have no need to pay me anything. ‘Tisn’t as if we were strangers, ye know.”

“Why, Master Luke, I know your face, for that matter; but I cannot call to mind that ever a word passed between us.”

“Oh yes, you did, Mistress Margaret. What, have you forgotten? One day you were trying to carry your baby and eke your pitcher full o’ water; and quo’ I, ‘Give me the baby to carry.’ ‘Nay, says you, ‘I’ll give you the pitcher, and keep the bairn myself;’ and I carried the pitcher home, and you took it from me at this door, and you said to me, ‘I am muckle obliged to you, young man,’ with such a sweet voice; not like the folk in this street speak to a body.”

“I do mind now, Master Luke; and methinks it was the least I could say.”

“Well, Mistress Margaret, if you will say as much every time I carry your basket, I care not how often I bear it, nor how far.”

“Nay, nay,” said Margaret, colouring faintly. “I would not put upon good nature, You are young, Master Luke, and kindly. Say I give you your supper on Saturday night, when you bring the linen home, and your dawn-mete o’ Monday; would that make us anyways even?”

“As you please; only say not I sought a couple o’ diets,I, for such a trifle as yon.”

With chubby-faced Luke’s timely assistance, and the health and strength which Heaven gave this poor young woman, to balance her many ills, the house went pretty smoothly awhile. But the heart became more and more troubled by Gerard’s long, and now most mysterious silence.

And then that mental torturer, Suspense, began to tear her heavy heart with his hot pincers, till she cried often and vehemently, “Oh, that I could know the worst.”

Whilst she was in this state, one day she heard a heavy step mount the stair. She started and trembled, “That is no step that I know. Ill tidings?”

The door opened, and an unexpected visitor, Eli, came in, looking grave and kind,

Margaret eyed him in silence, and with increasing agitation,

“Girl.” said he, “the skipper is come back.”

“One word,” gasped Margaret; “is he alive?”

“Surely I hope so. No one has seen him dead.”

“Then they must have seen him alive.”

“No, girl; neither dead nor alive hath he been seen this many months in Rome. My daughter Kate thinks he is gone to some other city. She bade me tell you her thought.”

“Ay, like enough,” said Margaret gloomily; “like enough. My poor babe!”

The old man in a faintish voice asked her for a morsel to eat: he had come fasting.

The poor thing pitied him with the surface of her agitated mind, and cooked a meal for him, trembling, and scarce knowing what she was about.

Ere he went he laid his hand upon her head, and said, “Be he alive, or be he dead, I look on thee as my daughter. Can I do nought for thee this day? bethink thee now,

“Ay, old man. Pray for him; and for me!”

Eli sighed, and went sadly and heavily down the stairs.

She listened half stupidly to his retiring footsteps till they ceased. Then she sank moaning down by the cradle, and drew little Gerard tight to her bosom. “Oh, my poor fatherless boy; my fatherless boy!”

CHAPTER LXXVII

Not long after this, as the little family at Tergou sat at dinner, Luke Peterson burst in on them, covered with dust. “Good people, Mistress Catherine is wanted instantly at Rotterdam.”

“My name is Catherine, young man. Kate, it will be Margaret.”

“Ay, dame, she said to me, ‘Good Luke, hie thee to Tergou, and ask for Eli the hosier, and pray his wife Catherine to come to me, for God His love.’ I didn’t wait for daylight.”

“Holy saints! He has come home, Kate. Nay, she would sure have said so. What on earth can it be?” And she heaped conjecture on conjecture.

“Mayhap the young man can tell us,” hazarded Kate timidly,

“That I can,” said Luke, “Why, her babe is a-dying, And she was so wrapped up in it! “

Catherine started up: “What is his trouble?”

“Nay, I know not. But it has been peaking and pining worse and worse this while,”

A furtive glance of satisfaction passed between Cornelis and Sybrandt. Luckily for them Catherine did not see it. Her face was turned towards her husband. “Now, Eli,” cried she furiously, “if you say a word against it, you and I shall quarrel, after all these years.’

“Who gainsays thee, foolish woman? Quarrel with your own shadow, while I go borrow Peter’s mule for ye.”

“Bless thee, my good man! Bless thee! Didst never yet fail me at a pinch, Now eat your dinners who can, while I go and make ready.”

She took Luke back with her in the cart, and on the way questioned and cross-questioned him severely and seductively by turns, till she had turned his mind inside out, what there was of it.

Margaret met her at the door, pale and agitated, and threw her arms round her neck, and looked imploringly in her face.

“Come, he is alive, thank God,” said Catherine, after scanning her eagerly,

She looked at the failing child, and then at the poor hollow-eyed mother, alternately, “Lucky you sent for me,” said she, “The child is poisoned.”

“Poisoned! by whom?”

“By you. You have been fretting.”

“Nay, indeed, mother. How can I help fretting?”

“Don’t tell me, Margaret. A nursing mother has no business to fret. She must turn her mind away from her grief to the comfort that lies in her lap. Know you not that the child pines if the mother vexes herself? This comes of your reading and writing. Those idle crafts befit a man; but they keep all useful knowledge out of a woman. The child must be weaned.”

“Oh, you cruel woman,” cried Margaret vehemently; “I am sorry I sent for you. Would you rob me of the only bit of comfort I have in the world? A-nursing my Gerard, I forget I am the most unhappy creature beneath the sun.”

“That you do not,” was the retort, “or he would not be the way he is.”

“Mother!” said Margaret imploringly,

“‘Tis hard,” replied Catherine, relenting. “But bethink thee; would it not be harder to look down and see his lovely wee face a-looking up at you out of a little coffin?”

“Oh, Jesu!”

“And how could you face your other troubles with your heart aye full, and your lap empty?”

“Oh, mother, I consent to anything. Only save my boy.”

“That is a good lass, Trust to me! I do stand by, and see clearer than thou.”

Unfortunately there was another consent to be gained – the babe’s; and he was more refractory than his mother.

“There,” said Margaret, trying to affect regret at his misbehaviour; “he loves me too well.”

But Catherine was a match for them both. As she came along she had observed a healthy young woman, sitting outside her own door, with an infant, hard by. She went and told her the case; and would she nurse the pining child for the nonce, till she had matters ready to wean him?

The young woman consented with a smile, and popped her child into the cradle, and came into Margaret’s house. She dropped a curtsey, and Catherine put the child into her hands. She examined, and pitied it, and purred over it, and proceeded to nurse it, just as if it had been her own,

Margaret, who had been paralyzed at her assurance, cast a rueful look at Catherine, and burst out crying.

The visitor looked up. “What is to do? Wife, ye told me not the mother was unwilling.”

“She is not: she is only a fool. Never heed her; and you, Margaret, I am ashamed of you.”

“You are a cruel, hard-hearted woman,” sobbed Margaret.

“Them as take in hand to guide the weak need be hardish. And you will excuse me; but you are not my flesh and blood; and your boy is.”

After giving this blunt speech time to sink, she added, “Come now, she is robbing her own to save yours, and you can think of nothing better than bursting out a-blubbering in the woman’s face. Out fie, for shame!”

“Nay, wife,” said the nurse. ‘Thank Heaven, I have enough for my own and for hers to boot. And prithee wyte not on her! Maybe the troubles o’ life ha’ soured her own milk.”

“and her heart into the bargain,” said the remorseless Catherine.

Margaret looked her full in the face; and down went her eyes.

“I know I ought to be very grateful to you,” sobbed Margaret to the nurse: then turned her head and leaned away over the chair, not to witness the intolerable sight of another nursing her Gerard, and Gerard drawing no distinction between this new mother and her the banished one.

The nurse replied, “You are very welcome, my poor woman. And so are you, Mistress Catherine, which are my townswoman, and know it not,”

“What, are ye from Tergou? all the better, But I cannot call your face to mind.”

“Oh, you know not me: my husband and me, we are very humble folk by you. But true Eli and his wife are known of all the town; and respected, So, I am at your call, dame; and at yours, wife; and yours, my pretty poppet; night or day.”

“There’s a woman of the right old sort,” said Catherine, as the door closed upon her.

“I HATE her. I HATE her. I HATE her,” said Margaret, with wonderful fervour.

Catherine only laughed at this outburst.

“That is right,” said she; “better say it, as set sly and think it. It is very natural after all, Come, here is your bundle o’ comfort. Take and hate that, if ye can;” and she put the child in her lap,

“No, no,” said Margaret, turning her head half way from him; she could not for her life turn the other half. “He is not my child now; he is hers. I know not why she left him here, for my part. It was very good of her not to take him to her house, cradle and all; oh! oh! oh! oh! oh! oh oh! oh!”

“Ah! well, one comfort, he is not dead. This gives me light: some other woman has got him away from me; like father, like son; oh! oh! oh! oh! oh!”

Catherine was sorry for her, and let her cry in peace. And after that, when she wanted Joan’s aid, she used to take Gerard out, to give him a little fresh air. Margaret never objected; nor expressed the least incredulity; but on their return was always in tears.

This connivance was short-lived. She was now altogether as eager to wean little Gerard. It was done; and he recovered health and vigour; and another trouble fell upon him directly teething, But here Catherine’s experience was invaluable; and now, in the midst of her grief and anxiety about the father, Margaret had moments of bliss, watching the son’s tiny teeth come through. “Teeth, mother? I call them not teeth, but pearls of pearls.” And each pearl that peeped and sparkled on his red gums, was to her the greatest feat Nature had ever achieved.

Her companion partook the illusion. And had we told them standing corn was equally admirable, Margaret would have changed to a reproachful gazelle, and Catherine turned us out of doors; so each pearl’s arrival was announced with a shriek of triumph by whichever of them was the fortunate discoverer,

Catherine gossiped with Joan, and learned that she was the wife of Jorian Ketel of Tergou, who had been servant to Ghysbrecht Van Swieten, but fallen out of favour, and come back to Rotterdam, his native place. His friends had got him the place of sexton to the parish, and what with that and carpentering, he did pretty well.

Catherine told Joan in return whose child it was she had nursed, and all about Margaret and Gerard, and the deep anxiety his silence had plunged them in. “Ay,” said Joan, “the world is full of trouble.” One day she said to Catherine, “It’s my belief my man knows more about your Gerard than anybody in these parts; but he has got to be closer than ever of late. Drop in some day just afore sunset, and set him talking. And for our Lady’s sake say not I set you on. The only hiding he ever gave me was for babbling his business; and I do not want another. Gramercy! I married a man for the comfort of the thing, not to be hided.”

Catherine dropped in. Jorian was ready enough to tell her how he had befriended her son and perhaps saved his life. But this was no news to Catherine; and the moment she began to cross-question him as to whether he could guess why her lost boy neither came nor wrote, he cast a grim look at his wife, who received it with a calm air of stolid candour and innocent unconsciousness; and his answers became short and sullen.

“What should he know more than another?” and so on. He added, after a pause, “Think you the burgomaster takes such as me into his secrets?”

“Oh, then the burgomaster knows something?” said Catherine sharply.

“Likely. Who else should?”

“I’ll ask him.”

“I would.”

“And tell him you say he knows.”

“That is right, dame. Go make him mine enemy. That is what a poor fellow always gets if he says a word to you women.”

And Jorian from that moment shrunk in and became impenetrable as a hedgehog, and almost as prickly.

His conduct caused both the poor women agonies of mind, alarm, and irritated curiosity. Ghysbrecht was for some cause Gerard’s mortal enemy; had stopped his marriage, imprisoned him, hunted him. And here was his late servant, who when off his guard had hinted that this enemy had the clue to Gerard’s silence. After sifting Jorian’s every word and look, all remained dark and mysterious. Then Catherine told Margaret to go herself to him. “You are young, you are fair. You will maybe get more out of him than I could.”

The conjecture was a reasonable one.

Margaret went with her child in her arms and tapped timidly at Jorian’s door just before sunset. “Come in,” said a sturdy voice. She entered, and there sat Jorian by the fireside. At sight of her he rose, snorted, and burst out of the house. “Is that for me, wife?” inquired Margaret, turning very red.

“You must excuse him,” replied Joan, rather coldly; “he lays it to your door that he is a poor man instead of a rich one. It is something about a piece of parchment, There was one amissing, and he got nought from the burgomaster all along of that one.”

“Alas! Gerard took it.”

“Likely, But my man says you should not have let him: you were pledged to him to keep them all safe. And sooth to Say, I blame not my Jorian for being wroth, ‘Tis hard for a poor man to be so near fortune and lose it by those he has befriended. However, I tell him another story. Says I, ‘Folk that are out o’ trouble like you and me didn’t ought to be too hard on folk that are in trouble; and she has plenty, Going already? What is all your hurry, mistress?”

“Oh, it is not for me to drive the goodman out of his own house.”

“Well, let me kiss the bairn afore ye go. He is not in fault anyway, poor innocent.”

Upon this cruel rebuff Margaret came to a resolution, which she did not confide even to Catherine.

After six weeks’ stay that good woman returned home,

On the child’s birthday, which occurred soon after, Margaret did no work; but put on her Sunday clothes, and took her boy in her arms and went to the church and prayed there long and fervently for Gerard’s safe return.

That same day and hour Father Clement celebrated a mass and prayed for Margaret’s departed soul in the minster church at Basle,

CHAPTER LXXVIII

Some blackguard or other, I think it was Sybrandt, said, “A lie is not like a blow with a curtal axe.”

True: for we can predict in some degree the consequences of a stroke with any material weapon. But a lie has no bounds at all. The nature of the thing is to ramify beyond human calculation,

Often in the everyday world a lie has cost a life, or laid waste two or three,

And so, in this story, what tremendous consequences of that one heartless falsehood!

Yet the tellers reaped little from it.

The brothers, who invented it merely to have one claimant the less for their father’s property, saw little Gerard take their brother’s place in their mother’s heart. Nay, more, one day Eli openly proclaimed that, Gerard being lost, and probably dead, he had provided by will for little Gerard, and also for Margaret, his poor son’s widow.

At this the look that passed between the black sheep was a caution to traitors. Cornelis had it on his lips to say. Gerard was most likely alive, But he saw his mother looking at him, and checked himself in time,

Ghysbrecht Van Swieten, the other partner in that lie, was now a failing man. He saw the period fast approaching when all his wealth would drop from his body, and his misdeeds cling to his soul.

Too intelligent to deceive himself entirely, he had never been free from gusts of remorse. In taking Gerard’s letter to Margaret he had compounded. “I cannot give up land and money,” said his giant Avarice. “I will cause her no unnecessary pain,” said his dwarf Conscience.

So, after first tampering with the seal, and finding there was not a syllable about the deed, he took it to her with his own hand; and made a merit of it to himself: a set-off; and on a scale not uncommon where the self-accuser is the judge.

The birth of Margaret’s child surprised and shocked him, and put his treacherous act in a new light. Should his letter take effect he should cause the dishonour of her who was the daughter of one friend, the granddaughter of another, and whose land he was keeping from her too.

These thoughts preying on him at that period of life when the strength of body decays, and the memory of old friends revives, filled him with gloomy horrors. Yet he was afraid to confess. For the cure was an honest man, and would have made him disgorge. And with him Avarice was an ingrained habit, Penitence only a sentiment.

Matters were thus when, one day, returning from the town hall to his own house, he found a woman waiting for him in the vestibule, with a child in her arms. She was veiled, and so, concluding she had something to be ashamed of, he addressed her magisterially, On this she let down her veil and looked him full in the face.

It was Margaret Brandt.

Her sudden appearance and manner startled him, and he could not conceal his confusion.

“Where is my Gerard?” cried she, her bosom heaving. “Is he alive?”

“For aught I know,” stammered Ghysbrecht. “I hope so, for your sake. Prithee come into this room. The servants!”

“Not a step,” said Margaret, and she took him by the shoulder, and held him with all the energy of an excited woman. “You know the secret of that which is breaking my heart. Why does not my Gerard come, nor send a line this many months? Answer me, or all the town is like to hear me, let alone thy servants, My misery is too great to be sported with.”

In vain he persisted he knew nothing about Gerard. She told him those who had sent her to him told her another tale,

“You do know why he neither comes nor sends,” said she firmly,

At this Ghysbrecht turned paler and paler; but he summoned all his dignity, and said, “Would you believe those two knaves against a man of worship?”

“What two knaves?” said she keenly,

He stammered, “Said ye not -? There I am a poor old broken man, whose memory is shaken. And you come here, and confuse me so, I know not what I say.”

“Ay, sir, your memory is shaken, or sure you would not be my enemy. My father saved you from the plague, when none other would come anigh you; and was ever your friend. My grandfather Floris helped you in your early poverty, and loved you, man and boy. Three generations of us you have seen; and here is the fourth of us; this is your old friend Peter’s grandchild, and your old friend Floris his great-grandchild. Look down on his innocent face, and think of theirs!”

“Woman, you torture me,” sighed Ghysbrecht, and sank upon a bench. But she saw her advantage, and kneeled before him, and put the boy on his knees. “This fatherless babe is poor Margaret Brandt’s, that never did you ill, and comes of a race that loved you. Nay, look at his face. ‘Twill melt thee more than any word of mine, Saints of heaven, what can a poor desolate girl and her babe have done to wipe out all memory of thine own young days, when thou wert guiltless as he is, that now looks up in thy face and implores thee to give him back his father?”

And with her arms under the child she held him up higher and higher, smiling under the old man’s eyes,

He cast a wild look of anguish on the child, and another on the kneeling mother, and started up shrieking, “Avaunt, ye pair of adders.”

The stung soul gave the old limbs a momentary vigour, and he walked rapidly, wringing his hands and clutching at his white hair. “Forget those days? I forget all else. Oh, woman, woman, sleeping or waking I see but the faces of the dead, I hear but the voices of the dead, and I shall soon be among the dead, There, there, what is done is done. I am in hell. I am in hell,”

And unnatural force ended in prostration.

He staggered, and but for Margaret would have fallen, With her one disengaged arm she supported him as well as she could and cried for help.

A couple of servants came running, and carried him away in a state bordering on syncope, The last Margaret saw of him was his old furrowed face, white and helpless as his hair that hung down over the servant’s elbow.

“Heaven forgive me,” she said. “I doubt I have killed the poor old man.”

Then this attempt to penetrate the torturing mystery left it as dark, or darker than before. For when she came to ponder every word, her suspicion was confirmed that Ghysbrecht did know something about Gerard. “And who were the two knaves he thought had done a good deed, and told me? Oh, my Gerard, my poor deserted babe, you and I are wading in deep waters.”

The visit to Tergou took more money than she could well afford; and a customer ran away in her debt. She was once more compelled to unfold Catherine’s angel. But strange to say, as she came down stairs with it in her hand she found some loose silver on the table, with a written line –
For Gerard his wife.

She fell with a cry of surprise on the writing; and soon it rose into a cry of joy.

“He is alive. He sends me this by some friendly hand.”

She kissed the writing again and again, and put it in her bosom.

Time rolled on, and no news of Gerard.

And about every two months a small sum in silver found its way into the house. Sometimes it lay on the table. Once it was flung in through the bedroom window in a purse. Once it was at the bottom of Luke’s basket. He had stopped at the public-house to talk to a friend. The giver or his agent was never detected. Catherine disowned it. Margaret Van Eyck swore she had no hand in it. So did Eli. And Margaret, whenever it came, used to say to little Gerard, “Oh, my poor deserted child, you and I are wading in deep waters.

She applied at least half this modest, but useful supply, to dressing the little Gerard beyond his station in life. “If it does come from Gerard, he shall see his boy neat.” All the mothers in the street began to sneer, especially such as had brats out at elbows.

The months rolled on, and dead sickness of heart succeeded to these keener torments. She returned to her first thought: “Gerard must be dead. She should never see her boy’s father again, nor her marriage lines.” This last grief, which had been somewhat allayed by Eli and Catherine recognizing her betrothal, now revived in full force; others would not look so favourably on her story. And often she moaned over her boy’s illegitimacy.

“Is it not enough for us to be bereaved? Must we be dishonoured too? Oh, that we had ne’er been born.”

A change took place in Peter Brandt. His mind, clouded for nearly two 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!”