Chapter Nine.The Secret that was not told.“Thine eye is on Thy wandering sheep;Thou knowest where they are, and Thou wilt keepAnd bring them home.”Hetty Bowman.“So you’ve really come back at last! Well, I did wonder what you’d gone after! Such lots of folks have asked me—old Turguia, and Franna, and Aunt Isel, and Derette—leastwise Leuesa—and ever such a lot: and I couldn’t tell ne’er a one of them a single word about it.”Anania spoke in the tone of an injured woman, defrauded of her rights by the malice prepense of Stephen.“Well,” said Stephen calmly, “you may tell them all that I went after my own business; and if any of them thinks that’s what a man shouldn’t do, she can come and tell me so.”“Well, to be sure! But what business could you have to carry you out of the town for such a time, and nobody to know a word about it? Tell me that, if you please.”“Don’t you tell her nought!” said Osbert in the chimney-corner. “If you went to buy a new coat, she’ll want to know where the money was minted, and who sheared the sheep.”“I’ll finish my pie first, I think,” answered Stephen, “for I am rather too hungry for talk; and I dare say she’ll take no harm by that.”He added, in mental reservation,—“And meantime I can be thinking what to say.”“Oh,younever want to know nought!” exclaimed Anania derisively. “Turguia, she said you were gone after rabbits—as if any man in his senses would do that in the snow: and Aunt Isel thought you were off on a holiday; and Franna was certain sure you were gone a-courting.”Stephen laughed to himself, but made no other reply.“Baint you a-going to tell me, now?” demanded Anania.“Aunt Isel wasn’t so far out,” said Stephen, helping himself to a second wedge of pie.“And Franna?”Anania was really concerned on that point. She found Stephen very useful, and his wages, most of which he gave her, more than paid for his board. If he were to marry and set up house for himself, it would deprive her of the means to obtain sundry fashionable frivolities wherein her soul delighted. Stephen was quite aware of these facts, which put an amusing edge on his determination to keep the truth from the inquisitive gossip.“Franna?” he repeated. “Did you say she thought I’d gone after squirrels? because I’ve brought ne’er a one.”“No, stupid! She said you’d gone a-courting, and I want to know who.”“You must ask Franna that, not me. I did not say so.”“You’ll say nothing, and that’s the worst of signs. When folks won’t answer a reasonable question, ten to one they’ve been in some mischief.”“I haven’t finished the pie.”“Much you’ll tell me when you have!”“Oh, I’ll answer any reasonable question,” said Stephen, with a slight emphasis on the adjective.Osbert laughed, and Anania was more vexed than ever.“You’re a pair!” said he.“Now, look you here! I’ll have an answer, if I stand here while Christmas; and you sha’n’t have another bite till you’ve given it. Did you go a-courting?”As Anania had laid violent hands on the pie, which she held out of his grasp, and as Stephen had no desire to get into a genuine quarrel with her, he was obliged to make some reply.“Will you give me back the pie, if I tell you?”“Yes, I will.”“Then, I’d no such notion in my head. Let’s have the pie.”“When?” Anania still withheld the pie.“When what?”“When hadn’t you such a notion? when you set forth, or when you came back?”“Eat thy supper, lad, and let them buzzing things be!” said Osbert. “There’ll never be no end to it, and thou mayest as well shut the portcullis first as last.”“Them’s my thoughts too,” said Stephen.“Then you sha’n’t have another mouthful.”“Nay, you’re off your bargain. I answered the question, I’m sure.”“You’ve been after some’at ill, as I’m a living woman! You’d have told me fast enough if you hadn’t. There’s the pie,”—Anania set it up on a high shelf—“take it down if you dare!”“I’ve no wish to quarrel with you, Sister. I’ll go and finish my supper at Aunt Isel’s—they’ll give me some’at there, I know.”“Anania, don’t be such a goose!” said Osbert.“Don’t you meddle, or you’ll get what you mayn’t like!” was the conjugal answer.Osbert rose and took down a switch from its hook on the wall.“You’ll get it first, my lady!” said he: and Stephen, who never had any fancy for quarrelling, and was wont to leave the house when such not unfrequent scenes occurred, shut the door on the ill-matched pair, and went off to Kepeharme Lane.“Stephen, is it? Good even, lad. I’m fain to see thee back. Art only just come?”“Long enough to eat half a supper, and for Anania to get into more than half a temper,” said Stephen, laughing. “I’m come to see, Aunt, if you’ll give me another half.”“That I will, lad, and kindly welcome. What will thou have? I’ve a fat fish pie and some cold pork and beans.”“Let’s have the pork and beans, for I’ve been eating pie up yonder.”“Good, and I’ll put some apples down to roast. Hast thou enjoyed thy holiday?”“Ay, middling, thank you, if it hadn’t been so cold.”“It’s a desperate cold winter!” said Isel, with a sigh, which Stephen felt certain was breathed to the memory of the Germans. “I never remember a worse.”“I’m afraid you feel lonely, Aunt.”“Ay, lonely enough, the saints know!”“Why doesn’t Haimet wed, and bring you a daughter to help you? Mabel’s a bit too grand, I reckon.”“Mabel thinks a deal of herself, that’s true. Well. I don’t know. One’s not another, Stephen.”“I’ll not gainsay you, Aunt Isel. But mayn’t ‘another’ be better than none? Leastwise, some others,”—as a recollection of his amiable sister-in-law crossed his mind.“I don’t know, Stephen. Sometimes that hangs on the ‘one.’ You’ll think it unnatural in me, lad, but I don’t miss Flemild nor Derette as I do Ermine.”“Bless you, dear old thing!” said Stephen in his heart.“O Stephen, lad, I believe you’ve a kind heart; you’ve shown it in a many little ways. Do let me speak to you of them now and again! Your uncle won’t have me say a word, and sometimes I feel as if I should burst. I don’t believe you’d tell on me, if I did, and it would relieve me like, if I could let it out to somebody.”“Catch me at it!” said Stephen significantly. “You say what you’ve a mind, Aunt Isel: I’m as safe as the King’s Treasury.”“Well, lad, do you think they’re all gone—every one?”“I’m afraid there’s no hope for the most of them, Aunt,” said Stephen in a low voice.“Then you do think there might—?”“One, perhaps, or two—ay, theremightbe, that had got taken in somewhere. I can’t say it isn’t just possible. But folks would be afraid of helping them, mostly.”“Ay, I suppose they would,” said Isel sorrowfully.Stephen ate in silence, sorely tempted to tell her what he knew. Had the danger been for himself only, and not for Ermine, he thought he should certainly have braved it.“Well!” said Isel at last, as she stood by the fire, giving frequent twirls to the string which held the apples. “Maybe the good Lord is more merciful than men.Theyhaven’t much mercy.”“Hold you there!” said Stephen.“Now why shouldn’t we?—we that are all sinners, and all want forgiving? We might be a bit kinder to one another, if we tried.”“Some folks might. I’m not sure you could, Aunt Isel.”“Eh, lad, I’m as bad a sinner as other folks. I do pray to be forgiven many a time.”“Maybe that’s a good help to forgiving,” said Stephen.“So you’re back from your holiday?” said Haimet, coming in, and flinging his felt hat on one of the shelves. “Well, where did you go?”“Oh, round-about,” replied Stephen, taking his last mouthful of beans.“Did you go Banbury way?”“No, t’other way,” answered Stephen, without indicating which other way.“Weather sharp, wasn’t it?”“Ay, sharp enough. It’s like to be a hard winter.—Well, Aunt, I’m much obliged to you. I reckon I’d best be turning home now.”“Weather rather sharp there too, perhaps?” suggested Haimet jocosely.“Ay, there’s been a bit of a storm since I got back. I came here to get out of it. I’m a fair-weather-lover, as you know.”Stephen went home by a round-about way, for he took Saint John’s anchorhold in the route. He scarcely knew why he did it; he had an idea that the sight of Derette would be an agreeable diversion of his thoughts. Too deep down to be thoroughly realised, was a vague association of her with Ermine, whose chief friend in the family she had been.Derette came to the casement as soon as she heard from Leuesa who was there.“Good evening, Stephen!” she said cordially. “Leuesa, my maid, while I chat a minute with my cousin, prithee tie on thine hood and run for a cheese. I forgot it with the other marketing this morrow. What are cheeses now? a halfpenny each?”“Three a penny, Lady, they were yesterday.”“Very good; bring a pennyworth, and here is the money.”As soon as Leuesa was out of hearing, Derette turned to Stephen with a changed expression on her face.“Stephen!” she said, in a low whisper, “you have been to see afterthem. Tell me what you found.”“I never said nought o’ the sort,” answered Stephen, rather staggered by his cousin’s penetration and directness.“Maybe your heart said it to mine. You may trust me, Stephen. I would rather let out my life-blood than any secret which would injure them.”“Well, you’re not far wrong, Derette. Gerard and Agnes are gone; they lie under the snow. So does Adelheid; but Berthold was not buried; I reckon he was one of the last. I cannot find Rudolph.”“You have told me all but the one thing my heart yearns to know. Ermine?”Stephen made no reply.“You have found her!” said Derette. “Don’t tell me where. It is enough, if she lives. Keep silence.”“Some folks are hard that you’d have looked to find soft,” answered Stephen, with apparent irrelevance; “and by times folk turn as soft as butter that you’d expect to be as hard as stones.”Derette laid up the remark in her mind for future consideration.“Folks baint all bad that other folks call ill names,” he observed further.Derette gave a little nod. She was satisfied that Ermine had found a refuge, and with some unlikely person.“Wind’s chopped round since morning, seems to me,” pursued Stephen, as if he had nothing particular to say. “Blew on my back as I came up to the gate.”Another nod from Derette. She understood that Ermine’s refuge lay south of Oxford.“Have you seen Flemild?” she asked. “She has sprained her wrist sadly, and cannot use her hand.”“Now just you tell her,” answered Stephen, with a significant wink, “I’ve heard say the White Witch of Bensington makes wonderful cures with marsh-mallows poultice: maybe it would ease her.”“I’ll let her know, be sure,” said Derette: and Stephen took his leave as Leuesa returned with her purchase.He had told her nothing about Ermine: he had told her every thing. Derette thanked God for the—apparently causeless—impulse to mention her sister’s accident, which had just given Stephen the opportunity to utter the last and most important item. Not the slightest doubt disturbed her mind that Ermine was in the keeping of the White Witch of Bensington, and that Stephen was satisfied of the Wise Woman’s kind treatment and good faith. She was sorry for Gerhardt and Agnes; but she had loved Ermine best of all. As for Rudolph, if Ermine were safe, why should he not be likewise? Derette’s was a hopeful nature, not given to look on the dark side of any thing which had a light one: a tone of mind which, as has been well said, is worth a thousand a year to its possessor.Leuesa returned full of excitement. A wolf had been killed only three miles from the city, and the Earl had paid the sportsman fourpence for its head, which was to be sent up to the King—the highest price ever given for a wolf’s head in that county. The popular idea that Edgar exterminated all the wolves in England is an error. Henry Second paid tenpence for three wolves’ heads (Pipe Roll, 13 Henry Second), and Henry Third’s State Papers speak of “hares, wolves, and cats,” in the royal forests (Close Roll, 38 Henry Third).The days went on, and Stephen received no summons to the Wise Woman’s hut. He found it very hard to keep away. If he could only have known that all was going on right! But weeks and months passed by, and all was silence. Stephen almost made up his mind to brave the witch’s anger, and go without bidding. Yet there would be danger in that, for Anania, who had been piqued by his parrying of her queries, watched him as a cat watches a mouse.He was coming home, one evening in early summer, having been on guard all day at the East Gate, when, as he passed the end of Snydyard (now Oriel) Street, a small child of three or four years old toddled up to him, and said—“There! Take it.”Stephen, who had a liking for little toddlers, held out his hand with a smile; and grew suddenly grave when there was deposited in it a ball of grey wool.“Who gave thee this?”“Old man—down there—said, ‘Give it that man with the brown hat,’” was the answer.Stephen thanked the child, threw it a sweetmeat, with which his pocket was generally provided, and ran after the old man, whom he overtook at the end of the street.“What mean you by this?” he asked.The old man looked up blankly.“I know not,” said he. “I was to take it to Stephen the Watchdog,—that’s all I know.”“Tell me who gave it you, then?”“I can’t tell you—a woman I didn’t know.”“Where?”“A bit this side o’ Dorchester.”“That’ll do. Thank you.”The ball was safely stored in Stephen’s pocket, and he hastened to the Castle. At the gate he met his brother.“Here’s a pretty mess!” said Osbert. “There’s Orme of the Fen run off, because I gave him a scolding for his impudence: and it is his turn to watch to-night. I have not a minute to go after him; I don’t know whatever to do.”Stephen grasped the opportunity.“I’ll go after him for you, if you’ll get me leave for a couple of days or more. I have a bit of business of my own I want to see to, and I can manage both at once—only don’t tell Anania of it, or she’ll worry the life out of me.”Osbert laughed.“Make your mind easy!” said he. “Go in and get you ready, lad, and I’ll see to get you the leave.”Stephen turned into the Castle, to fetch his cloak and make up a parcel of provisions, while Osbert went to the Earl, returning in a few minutes with leave of absence for Stephen. To the great satisfaction of the latter, Anania was not at home; so he plundered her larder, and set off, leaving Osbert to make his excuses, and to tell her just as much, or as little, as he found convenient. Stephen was sorely tempted to go first to Bensington, but he knew that both principle and policy directed the previous search for Orme. He found that exemplary gentleman, after an hour’s search, drinking and gambling in a low ale-booth outside South Gate; and having first pumped on him to get him sober, he sent him off to his work with a lecture. Then, going a little way down Grandpont Street, he turned across Presthey, and coming out below Saint Edmund’s Well, took the road to Bensington.The journey was accomplished in much shorter time than on the previous occasion. As Stephen came up to the Witch’s hut, he heard the sound of a low, monotonous voice; and being untroubled, at that period of the world’s history, by any idea that eavesdropping was a dishonourable employment, he immediately applied his ear to the keyhole. To his great satisfaction, he recognised Ermine’s voice. The words were these:—“‘I confess to Thee, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, that Thou hiddest these things from the wise and prudent, and revealedst them unto little children. Even so, Father; for this was well-pleasing before Thee. All things are to Me delivered from My Father; and none knoweth the Son save the Father; neither the Father doth any know, save the Son, and he to whom the Son is willing to reveal Him. Come unto Me, all ye that labour and are burdened, and I will refresh you. Take My yoke upon you, and learn of Me, for I am meek and lowly of heart; and ye shall find rest unto your souls.’”“Did He say that, now, dearie?” asked the voice of the White Witch. “Eh, it sounds good—it does so! I’m burdened, saints knows; I’d like to find a bit o’ rest and refreshing. Life’s a heavy burden, and sin’s a heavier; and there’s a many things I see are sins now, that I never did afore you came. But how am I to know that He’s willing?”“Won’t you come and see, Mother?” said Ermine softly.“Husht! Bide a bit, my dear: there’s a little sound at the door as I don’t rightly understand. Maybe—”In another moment the wicket opened, and Haldane’s face looked out upon Stephen.“Good evening, Mother!” said Stephen, holding up the ball of grey wool.“Ay, you got it, did you? Come in—you’re welcome.”“I hope I am,” replied Stephen, going forward. Ermine was no longer hidden behind the screen, but seated on the form in the chimney-corner. On her calm fair brow there was no scar visible.“Ay, ain’t she a fine cure!” cried the old woman. “That’s white mallows, that is, and just a pinch of—Well, I’d best tell no tales. But she’s a grand cure; I don’t hide her up now. Nobody’d ever guess nought, from the look of her, now, would folks? What think you?”“No, I hope they wouldn’t,” answered Stephen: “leastwise they sha’n’t if I can help it.”Haldane laid her hand on his arm impressively.“Stephen, you must take her away.”“I’ll take her fast enough, if she’ll go, Mother; but why? I reckoned she was as safe here as she could be anywhere.”“Shewas,” said Haldane significantly. “She won’t be, presently. I don’t tell my secrets: but the Wise Woman knows a thing or two. You’d best take her, and waste no time: but it must not be to Oxford. There’s folks there would know her face.”“Ay, to be sure there are. Well, Mother, I’ll do your bidding. Where’ll she be safest?”“You’d best be in London. It’s the biggest place. And when a man wants to hide, he’ll do it better in a large town than a little place, where every body knows his neighbour’s business.”“All right!” said Stephen. “Ermine!”—and he went up to her—“will you go with me?”Ermine lived in an age when it was a most extraordinary occurrence for a woman to have any power to dispose of herself in marriage, and such a thing was almost regarded as unnatural and improper. She held out her hand to Stephen.“I will go where the Lord sends me,” she said simply. “Dear Mother Haldane saved my life, and she has more right to dispose of me than any one else. Be it so.”“When folks are wed, they commonly have gifts made them,” said Haldane with a smile. “I haven’t much to give, and you’ll think my gift a queer one: but I wish you’d take it, Ermine. It’s Gib.”“I will take Gib and welcome, and be very thankful to you,” answered Ermine in some surprise. “But, Mother Haldane, you are leaving yourself all alone. I was afraid you would miss me, after all these weeks, and if you lose Gib too, won’t you be lonely?”“Miss you!” repeated the old woman in a tremulous voice. “Miss you, my white bird that flew into my old arms from the cruel storm? Sha’n’t I miss you? But it won’t be for long. Ay! when one has kept company with the angels for a while, one’s pretty like to miss them when they fly back home. But you’d best take Gib. The Wise Woman knows why. Only I don’t tell all my secrets. And it won’t be for long.”Haldane had been laying fresh sticks on the embers while she spoke. Now she turned to Stephen.“She’d best have Gib,” she said. “He’s like another creature since she came. She’ll take care of him. And you’ll take care of her. I told you last time you were here as I’d do the best for her, not for you. But this is the best for both of you. And maybe the good Lord’ll do the best for me. Ermine says He’s not above keeping a poor old woman company. But whatever comes, and whatever you may hear, you bear in mind that I did my best for you.”“Ay, that I’m sure you’ve done, Mother,” replied Stephen warmly. “As for Gib, I’ll make him welcome for your sake; he looks rather comfortable now, so I think he’ll get along.”It certainly was not too much to say that Gib was another creature. That once dilapidated-looking object, under Ermine’s fostering care, had developed into a sleek, civilised, respectable cat; and as he sat on her lap, purring and blinking at the wood-fire, he suggested no ideas of discomfort.“Ay, I’ve done my best,” repeated the old woman with a sigh. “The Lord above, He knows I’ve done it. You’d best be off with the morning light. I can’t be sure—Well, I mustn’t tell my secrets.”Stephen was inclined to be amused with the Wise Woman’s reiteration of this assertion. What fancy she had taken into her head he could not guess. It was some old-womanly whim, he supposed. If he could have guessed her reason for thus dismissing them in haste—if he had seen in the embers what she saw coming nearer and nearer, and now close to her very door—wild horses would not have carried Stephen away from the woman who had saved Ermine.Haldane’s bidding was obeyed. The dawn had scarcely broken on the following morning, when Stephen and Ermine, with Gib in the arms of the latter, set forth on their journey to London. Haldane stood in her doorway to watch them go.“Thank God!” she said, when she had entirely lost sight of them. “Thank God, my darling is safe! I can bear anything that comes now. It is only what such as me have to look for. And Ermine said the good Lord wouldn’t fail them that trusted Him. I’m only a poor ignorant old woman, and He knows it; but He took the pains to make me, and He’ll not have forgot it; and Ermine says He died for me, and I’m sure He could never forget that, if He did it. I’ve done a many ill things, though I’m not the black witch they reckon me: no, I’ve had more laid to my charge than ever I did; but for all that I’m a sinner, I’m afeared, and I should be sore afeared to meet what’s coming if He wouldn’t take my side. But Ermine, she said He would, if I trusted myself to Him.”Haldane clasped her withered hands and looked heavenwards.“Good Lord!” she said, “I’d fain have Thee on my side, and I do trust Thee. And if I’m doing it wrong way about, bethink Thee that I’m only a poor old woman, that never had no chance like, and I mean to do right, and do put things to rights for me, as Thou wouldst have ’em. Have a care of my darling, and see her safe: and see me through what’s coming, if Thou wilt be so good. Worlds o’ worlds, Amen.”That conclusion was Haldane’s misty idea of the proper way to end a prayer (Note 1). Perhaps the poor petition found its way above the stars as readily as the choral services that were then being chanted in the perfumed cathedrals throughout England.She went in and shut the door. She did not, as usual, shake her straw bed and fold up the rug. A spectator might have thought that she had no heart for it. She only kept up the fire; for though summer was near, it was not over-warm in the crazy hut, and a cold east wind was blowing. For the whole of the long day she sat beside it, only now and then rising to look out of the window, and generally returning to her seat with a muttered exclamation of “Not yet!” The last time she did this, she pulled the faded woollen kerchief over her shoulders with a shiver.“Not yet! I reckon they’ll wait till it’s dusk. Well! all the better: they’ll have more time to get safe away.”The pronouns did not refer to the same persons, but Haldane made no attempt to specify them.She sat still after that, nodding at intervals, and she was almost asleep when the thing that she had feared came upon her. A low sound, like and yet unlike the noise of distant thunder, broke upon her ear. She sat up, wide awake in a moment.“They’re coming! Good Lord, help me through! Don’t let it be very bad to bear, and don’t let it be long!”Ten minutes had not passed when the hut was surrounded by a crowd. An angry crowd, armed with sticks, pitchforks, or anything that could be turned into a weapon—an abusive crowd, from whose lips words of hate and scorn were pouring, mixed with profaner language.“Pull the witch out! Stone her! drown her! burn her!” echoed on all sides.“Good Lord, don’t let them burn me!” said poor old Haldane, inside the hut. “I’d rather be drowned, if Thou dost not mind.”Did the good Lord not mind what became of the helpless old creature, who, in her ignorance and misery, was putting her trust in Him? It looked like it, as the mob broke open the frail door, and roughly hauled out the frailer occupant of the wretched hut.“Burn her!” The cry was renewed: and it came from one of the two persons most prominent in the mob—that handsome girl to whom Haldane had refused the revenge she coveted upon Brichtiva.“Nay!” said the other, who was the Bishop’s sumner, “that would be irregular. Burning’s for heretics. Tie her hands and feet together, and cast her into the pond: that’s the proper way to serve witches.”The rough boys among the crowd, to whom the whole scene was sport—and though we have become more civilised in some ways as time has passed, sport has retained much of its original savagery even now—gleefully tied together Haldane’s hands and feet, and carried her, thus secured, to a large deep pond about a hundred yards from her abode.This was the authorised test for a witch. If she sank and was drowned, she was innocent of the charge of witchcraft; if she swam on the surface, she was guilty, and liable to the legal penalty for her crime. Either way, in nine out of ten cases, the end was death: for very few thought of troubling themselves to save one who proved her innocence after this fashion. (Note 2.)The boys, having thus bound the poor old woman into a ball, lifted her up, and with a cry of—“One—two—three!” flung her into the pond. At that moment a man broke through the ring that had formed outside the principal actors.“What are you doing now? Some sort of mischief you’re at, I’ll be bound—you lads are always up to it. Who are you ducking? If it’s that cheat Wrangecoke, I’ll not meddle, only don’t—What, Mother Haldane! Shame on you! Colgrim, Walding, Oselach, Amfrid!—shame on you! What,you, Erenbald, that she healed of that bad leg that laid you up for three months! Andyou, Baderun, whose child she brought back well-nigh from the grave itself! If you are men, and not demons, come and help me to free her!”The speaker did not content himself with words. He had waded into the pond, and was feeling his way carefully to the spot where the victim was. For Mother Haldane had not struggled nor even protested, but according to all the unwritten laws relating to witchcraft, had triumphantly exhibited her innocence by sinking to the bottom like a stone. The two spectators whom he had last apostrophised joined him in a shamefaced manner, one muttering something about his desire to avoid suspicion of being in league with a witch, and the other that he “didn’t mean no harm:” and among them, amid the more or less discontented murmurs of those around, they at last dragged out the old woman, untied the cords, and laid her on the grass. The life was yet in her; but it was nearly gone.“Who’s got a sup of anything to bring her to?” demanded her rescuer. “She’s not gone; she opened her eyes then.”The time-honoured remedies for drowning were applied. The old woman was set on her head “to let the water run out;” and somebody in the crowd having produced a flask of wine, an endeavour was made to induce her to swallow. Consciousness partially returned, but Haldane did not seem to recognise any one.“Don’t be feared, Mother,” said the man who had saved her. “I’ll look after you. Don’t you know me? I am Wigan, son of Egglas the charcoal-burner, in the wood.”Then Mother Haldane spoke,—slowly, with pauses, and as if in a dream.“Ay, He looked after me. Did all—I asked. He kept them—safe, and—didn’t let it—be long.”She added two words, which some of her hearers said were—“Good night.” A few thought them rather, “Good Lord!”Nobody understood her meaning. Only He knew it, who had kept safe the two beings whom Mother Haldane loved, and had not let the hour of her trial and suffering be long.And then, when the words had died away in one last sobbing sigh, Wigan the son of Egglas stood up from the side of the dead, and spoke to the gazing and now silent multitude.“You can go home,” he said. “You’ve had your revenge. And what was it for? How many of you were there that she had not helped and healed? Which of you did she ever turn away unhelped, save when the malady was beyond her power, or when one came to her for aid to do an evil thing? Men, women, lads! you’ve repeated the deed of Iscariot this day, for you’ve betrayed innocent blood—you have slain your benefactor and friend. Go home and ask God and the saints to forgive you—if they ever can. How they sit calm above yonder, and stand this world, is more than I can tell.—Poor, harmless, kindly soul! may God comfort thee in His blessed Heaven! And for them that have harried thee, and taken thy life, and have the black brand of murder on their souls, God pardon them as He may!”The crowd dispersed silently and slowly. Some among them, who had been more thoughtless than malicious, were already beginning to realise that Wigan’s words were true. The sumner, however, marched away whistling a tune. Then Wigan, with his shamefaced helpers, Erenbald and Baderun, and a fourth who had come near them as if he too were sorry for the evil which he had helped to do, inasmuch as he had not stood out to prevent its being done, lifted the frail light corpse, and bore it a little way into the wood. There, in the soft fresh green, they dug a grave, and laid in it the body of Mother Haldane.“We’d best lay a cross of witch hazel over her,” suggested Baderun. “If things was all right with her, it can’t do no harm; and if so be—”“Lay what you like,” answered Wigan. “I don’t believe, and never did, that she was a witch. What harm did you ever know her do to any one?”“Nay, but Mildred o’ th’ Farm, over yonder, told me her black cow stopped giving milk the night Mother Haldane came up to ask for a sup o’ broth, and she denied it.”“Ay, and Hesela by the Brook—I heard her tell,” added Erenbald, “that her hens, that hadn’t laid them six weeks or more, started laying like mad the day after she’d given the White Witch a gavache. What call you that?”“I call it stuff and nonsense,” replied Wigan sturdily, “save that both of them got what they deserved: and so being, I reckon that God, who rewards both the righteous and the wicked, had more to do with it than the White Witch.”“Eh, Wigan, but them’s downright wicked words! You’d never go to say as God Almighty takes note o’ hens, and cows, and such like?”“Who does, then? How come we to have any eggs and milk?”“Why, man, that’s natur’.”“I heard a man on Bensington Green, one day last year,” answered Wigan, “talking of such things; and he said that ‘nature’ was only a fool’s word for God. And said I to myself, That’s reason.”Wigan, being one of that very rare class who think for themselves, was not comprehended by his commissionary tours, had been to this man’s heart as a match to tinder.“Ay, and he said a deal more too: but it wouldn’t be much use telling you. There—that’s enough. She’ll sleep quiet there. I’ll just go round by her hut, and see if her cat’s there—no need to leave the creature to starve.”“Eh, Wigan, you’d never take that thing into your house? It’s her familiar, don’t you know? They always be, them black cats—they’re worse than the witches themselves.”“Specially when they aren’t black, like this? I tell you, she wasn’t a witch; and as to the cat, thou foolish man, it’s nought more nor less than a cat. I’ll take it home to Brichtiva my wife,—she’s not so white-livered as thou.”“Eh, Wigan, you’ll be sorry one o’ these days!”“I’m as sorry now as I can be, that I didn’t come up sooner: and I don’t look to be sorry for aught else.”Wigan went off to the empty hut. But all his coaxing calls of “Puss, puss!” proved vain. Gib was in Ermine’s arms; and Ermine was travelling towards London in a heavy carrier’s waggon, with Stephen on horseback alongside. He gave up the search at last, and went home; charging Brichtiva that if Gib should make a call on her, she was to be careful to extend to him an amount of hospitality which would induce him to remain.But Gib was never seen in the neighbourhood of Bensington again.“What wonder?” said Erenbald. “The thing was no cat—it was a foul fiend; and having been released from the service of its earthly mistress, had returned as a matter of course to Satan its master.”This conclusion was so patent to every one of his neighbours that nobody dreamed of questioning it. Morally speaking, there is no blindness so hopelessly incurable as that of the man who is determined to keep his eyes shut. Only the Great Physician can heal such a case as this, and He has often to do it by painful means.“Christ save you!” said Isel, coming into the anchorhold one evening, a fortnight after Stephen’s disappearance. “Well, you do look quiet and peaceful for sure! and I’m that tired!—”“Mother, I am afraid you miss me sadly,” responded Derette, almost self-reproachfully.“I’m pleased enough to think you’re out of it, child. Miss you? Well, I suppose I do; but I haven’t scarce time to think what I miss. There’s one thing I’d miss with very great willingness, I can tell you, and that’s that horrid tease, Anania. She’s been at me now every day this week, and she will make me tell her where Stephen is, and what he’s gone after,—and that broom knows as much as I do. She grinds the life out of me, pretty nigh: and what am I to do?”Derette smiled sympathetically. Leuesa said—“It does seem strange he should stay so long away.”“Anania will have it he is never coming again.”“I dare say she is right there,” said Derette suddenly.“Saints alive! what dost thou mean, child? Never coming again?”“I shouldn’t wonder,” said Derette quietly.“Well, I should. I should wonder more than a little, I can tell you. Whatever gives you that fancy, child?”“I have it, Mother; why I cannot tell you.”“I hope you are not a prophetess!”“I don’t think I am,” said Derette with a smile.“I think Ermine was a bit of one, poor soul! She seemed to have some notion what was coming to her. Eh, Derette! I’d give my best gown to know those poor things were out of Purgatory. Father Dolfin says we shouldn’t pray for them: but I do—I can’t help it. If I were a priest, I’d say mass for them every day I lived—ay, I would! I never could understand why we must not pray for heretics. Seems to me, the more wrong they’ve gone, the more they want praying for. Not thattheywent far wrong—I’ll not believe it. Derette, dost thou ever pray for the poor souls?”“Ay, Mother: every one of them.”“Well, I’m glad to hear it. And as to them that ill-used them, let them look to themselves. Maybe they’ll not find themselves at last in such a comfortable place as they look for. The good Lord may think that cruelty to Christian blood (Note 3)—and they were Christian blood, no man can deny—isn’t so very much better than heresy after all. Hope he does.”“I remember Gerard’s saying,” replied Derette, “that all the heresies in the world were only men’s perversions of God’s truths: and that if men would but keep close to Holy Scripture, there would be no heresies.”“Well, it sounds like reason, doesn’t it?” answered Isel with a sigh.“But I remember his saying also,” pursued Derette, “that where one man followed reason and Scripture, ten listened to other men’s voices, and ten more to their own fancies.”Dusk was approaching on the following day, when a rap came on the door of the anchorhold, and a voice said—“Leuesa, pray you, ask my cousin to come to the casement a moment.”“Stephen!” cried Derette, hurrying to her little window when she heard his voice. “So you have come back!”“Shall I go now, Lady, for the fresh fish?” asked Leuesa, very conveniently for Stephen, who wondered if she good-naturedly guessed that he had a private communication to make.“Do,” said Derette, giving her three silver pennies.As soon as Leuesa was out of hearing, Stephen said—“I am only here for a few hours, Derette, and nobody knows it save my Lord, you, and my brother. I have obtained my discharge, and return to London with the dawn.”“Are you not meaning to come back, Stephen? Folks are saying that.”“Folks are saying truth. I shall live in London henceforth. But remember, Derette, that is a secret.”“I shall not utter it, Stephen. Truly, I wish you all happiness, but I cannot help being sorry.”There were tears in Derette’s eyes. Stephen had ever been more brotherly to her than her own brothers. It was Stephen who had begged her off from many a punishment, had helped her over many a difficulty, had made her rush baskets and wooden boats, and had always had a sweetmeat in his pocket for her in childhood. She was grieved to think of losing him.“You may well wish me happiness in my honeymoon,” he said, laughingly.“Are you married? Why, when—O Stephen, Stephen! is it Ermine?”“You are a first-rate guesser, little one. Yes, I have Ermine safe; and I will keep her so, God helping me.”“I am so glad, Steenie!” said Derette, falling into the use of the old pet name, generally laid aside now. “Tell Ermine I am so glad to hear that, and so sorry to lose you both: but I will pray God and the saints to bless you as long as I live, and that will be better for you than our meeting, though it will not be the same thing to me.”“‘So glad, and so sorry!’ It seems to me, Cousin, that’s no inapt picture of life. God keep thee!—to the day when—Ermine says—it will be all ‘glad’ and no ‘sorry.’”“Ay, we shall meet one day. Farewell!”The days passed, and no more was seen or heard of Stephen in Oxford. What had become of him was not known at the Walnut Tree, until one evening when Osbert looked in about supper-time, and was invited to stay for the meal, with the three of whom the family now consisted—Manning, Isel, and Haimet. As Isel set on the table a platter of little pies, she said—“There, that’s what poor Stephen used to like so well. Maybe you’ll fancy them too, Osbert.”“Why do you call him poor Stephen?” questioned Osbert, as he appropriated a pie. “He is not particularly poor, so far as I know.”“Well, we’ve lost him like,” said Isel, with a sigh. “When folks vanish out of your sight like snow in a thaw, one cannot help feeling sorry.”“Oh, I’m sorry for myself, more ways than one: but not so much for Stephen.”“Why, Osbert, do you know where he is, and what he’s doing?”“Will you promise not to let on to Anania, if I tell you?”“Never a word that I can help, trust me.”“Her knowing matters nought, except that she’ll never let me be if she thinks I have half a notion about it. Well, he’s gone south somewhere—I don’t justly know where, but I have a guess of London way.”“What for?”“Dare say he had more reasons than he gave me. He told me he was going to be married.”“Dear saints!—who to?”“Didn’t ask him.”Isel sat looking at Osbert in astonishment, with a piece of pie transfixed on the end of her knife.“You see, if I did not know, I shouldn’t get so much bothered with folks asking me questions: so I thought I’d let it be.”That Osbert’s “folks” might more properly be read “Anania,” Isel knew full well.“Saints love us!—but I would have got to know who was my sister-in-law, if I’d been in your place.”“To tell the truth, Aunt, I don’t care, so long as she is a decent woman who will make Stephen comfortable; and I think he’s old enough to look out for himself.”“But don’t you know even what he was going to do?—seek another watch, or go into service, or take to trade, or what?”“I don’t know a word outside what I have just told you. Oh, he’ll be all right! Stephen has nine lives, like a cat. He always falls on his feet.”“But it don’t seem natural like!”Osbert laughed. “I suppose it is natural to a woman to have more curiosity than a man. I never had much of that stuff. Anania’s got enough for both.”“Well, I’m free to confess she has. Osbert, how do you manage her? I can’t.”“Let her alone as long as I can, and take the mop to her when I can’t,” was the answer.“I should think the mop isn’t often out of your hand,” observed Haimet with painful candour.“It wears out by times,” returned Osbert drily.Note 1. “Into the worlds of worlds” is the Primer’s translation of “in saecula saeculorum.”Note 2. That witchcraft is no fable, but a real sin, which men have committed in past times, and may commit again, is certain from Holy Scripture. But undoubtedly, in the Middle Ages, numbers of persons suffered under accusation of this crime who were entirely innocent: and the so-called “white witches” were in reality mere herbalists and dealers in foolish but harmless charms, often consisting in a kind of nursery rhyme and a few Biblical words.Note 3. The wrong of cruelty to men and women, as such, whether they were Christians or not, had not dawned on men’s minds in the twelfth century, nor did it till the Reformation. But much pity was often expressed for the sufferings of “Christian blood,” and a very few persons had some compassion for animals.
“Thine eye is on Thy wandering sheep;Thou knowest where they are, and Thou wilt keepAnd bring them home.”Hetty Bowman.
“Thine eye is on Thy wandering sheep;Thou knowest where they are, and Thou wilt keepAnd bring them home.”Hetty Bowman.
“So you’ve really come back at last! Well, I did wonder what you’d gone after! Such lots of folks have asked me—old Turguia, and Franna, and Aunt Isel, and Derette—leastwise Leuesa—and ever such a lot: and I couldn’t tell ne’er a one of them a single word about it.”
Anania spoke in the tone of an injured woman, defrauded of her rights by the malice prepense of Stephen.
“Well,” said Stephen calmly, “you may tell them all that I went after my own business; and if any of them thinks that’s what a man shouldn’t do, she can come and tell me so.”
“Well, to be sure! But what business could you have to carry you out of the town for such a time, and nobody to know a word about it? Tell me that, if you please.”
“Don’t you tell her nought!” said Osbert in the chimney-corner. “If you went to buy a new coat, she’ll want to know where the money was minted, and who sheared the sheep.”
“I’ll finish my pie first, I think,” answered Stephen, “for I am rather too hungry for talk; and I dare say she’ll take no harm by that.”
He added, in mental reservation,—“And meantime I can be thinking what to say.”
“Oh,younever want to know nought!” exclaimed Anania derisively. “Turguia, she said you were gone after rabbits—as if any man in his senses would do that in the snow: and Aunt Isel thought you were off on a holiday; and Franna was certain sure you were gone a-courting.”
Stephen laughed to himself, but made no other reply.
“Baint you a-going to tell me, now?” demanded Anania.
“Aunt Isel wasn’t so far out,” said Stephen, helping himself to a second wedge of pie.
“And Franna?”
Anania was really concerned on that point. She found Stephen very useful, and his wages, most of which he gave her, more than paid for his board. If he were to marry and set up house for himself, it would deprive her of the means to obtain sundry fashionable frivolities wherein her soul delighted. Stephen was quite aware of these facts, which put an amusing edge on his determination to keep the truth from the inquisitive gossip.
“Franna?” he repeated. “Did you say she thought I’d gone after squirrels? because I’ve brought ne’er a one.”
“No, stupid! She said you’d gone a-courting, and I want to know who.”
“You must ask Franna that, not me. I did not say so.”
“You’ll say nothing, and that’s the worst of signs. When folks won’t answer a reasonable question, ten to one they’ve been in some mischief.”
“I haven’t finished the pie.”
“Much you’ll tell me when you have!”
“Oh, I’ll answer any reasonable question,” said Stephen, with a slight emphasis on the adjective.
Osbert laughed, and Anania was more vexed than ever.
“You’re a pair!” said he.
“Now, look you here! I’ll have an answer, if I stand here while Christmas; and you sha’n’t have another bite till you’ve given it. Did you go a-courting?”
As Anania had laid violent hands on the pie, which she held out of his grasp, and as Stephen had no desire to get into a genuine quarrel with her, he was obliged to make some reply.
“Will you give me back the pie, if I tell you?”
“Yes, I will.”
“Then, I’d no such notion in my head. Let’s have the pie.”
“When?” Anania still withheld the pie.
“When what?”
“When hadn’t you such a notion? when you set forth, or when you came back?”
“Eat thy supper, lad, and let them buzzing things be!” said Osbert. “There’ll never be no end to it, and thou mayest as well shut the portcullis first as last.”
“Them’s my thoughts too,” said Stephen.
“Then you sha’n’t have another mouthful.”
“Nay, you’re off your bargain. I answered the question, I’m sure.”
“You’ve been after some’at ill, as I’m a living woman! You’d have told me fast enough if you hadn’t. There’s the pie,”—Anania set it up on a high shelf—“take it down if you dare!”
“I’ve no wish to quarrel with you, Sister. I’ll go and finish my supper at Aunt Isel’s—they’ll give me some’at there, I know.”
“Anania, don’t be such a goose!” said Osbert.
“Don’t you meddle, or you’ll get what you mayn’t like!” was the conjugal answer.
Osbert rose and took down a switch from its hook on the wall.
“You’ll get it first, my lady!” said he: and Stephen, who never had any fancy for quarrelling, and was wont to leave the house when such not unfrequent scenes occurred, shut the door on the ill-matched pair, and went off to Kepeharme Lane.
“Stephen, is it? Good even, lad. I’m fain to see thee back. Art only just come?”
“Long enough to eat half a supper, and for Anania to get into more than half a temper,” said Stephen, laughing. “I’m come to see, Aunt, if you’ll give me another half.”
“That I will, lad, and kindly welcome. What will thou have? I’ve a fat fish pie and some cold pork and beans.”
“Let’s have the pork and beans, for I’ve been eating pie up yonder.”
“Good, and I’ll put some apples down to roast. Hast thou enjoyed thy holiday?”
“Ay, middling, thank you, if it hadn’t been so cold.”
“It’s a desperate cold winter!” said Isel, with a sigh, which Stephen felt certain was breathed to the memory of the Germans. “I never remember a worse.”
“I’m afraid you feel lonely, Aunt.”
“Ay, lonely enough, the saints know!”
“Why doesn’t Haimet wed, and bring you a daughter to help you? Mabel’s a bit too grand, I reckon.”
“Mabel thinks a deal of herself, that’s true. Well. I don’t know. One’s not another, Stephen.”
“I’ll not gainsay you, Aunt Isel. But mayn’t ‘another’ be better than none? Leastwise, some others,”—as a recollection of his amiable sister-in-law crossed his mind.
“I don’t know, Stephen. Sometimes that hangs on the ‘one.’ You’ll think it unnatural in me, lad, but I don’t miss Flemild nor Derette as I do Ermine.”
“Bless you, dear old thing!” said Stephen in his heart.
“O Stephen, lad, I believe you’ve a kind heart; you’ve shown it in a many little ways. Do let me speak to you of them now and again! Your uncle won’t have me say a word, and sometimes I feel as if I should burst. I don’t believe you’d tell on me, if I did, and it would relieve me like, if I could let it out to somebody.”
“Catch me at it!” said Stephen significantly. “You say what you’ve a mind, Aunt Isel: I’m as safe as the King’s Treasury.”
“Well, lad, do you think they’re all gone—every one?”
“I’m afraid there’s no hope for the most of them, Aunt,” said Stephen in a low voice.
“Then you do think there might—?”
“One, perhaps, or two—ay, theremightbe, that had got taken in somewhere. I can’t say it isn’t just possible. But folks would be afraid of helping them, mostly.”
“Ay, I suppose they would,” said Isel sorrowfully.
Stephen ate in silence, sorely tempted to tell her what he knew. Had the danger been for himself only, and not for Ermine, he thought he should certainly have braved it.
“Well!” said Isel at last, as she stood by the fire, giving frequent twirls to the string which held the apples. “Maybe the good Lord is more merciful than men.Theyhaven’t much mercy.”
“Hold you there!” said Stephen.
“Now why shouldn’t we?—we that are all sinners, and all want forgiving? We might be a bit kinder to one another, if we tried.”
“Some folks might. I’m not sure you could, Aunt Isel.”
“Eh, lad, I’m as bad a sinner as other folks. I do pray to be forgiven many a time.”
“Maybe that’s a good help to forgiving,” said Stephen.
“So you’re back from your holiday?” said Haimet, coming in, and flinging his felt hat on one of the shelves. “Well, where did you go?”
“Oh, round-about,” replied Stephen, taking his last mouthful of beans.
“Did you go Banbury way?”
“No, t’other way,” answered Stephen, without indicating which other way.
“Weather sharp, wasn’t it?”
“Ay, sharp enough. It’s like to be a hard winter.—Well, Aunt, I’m much obliged to you. I reckon I’d best be turning home now.”
“Weather rather sharp there too, perhaps?” suggested Haimet jocosely.
“Ay, there’s been a bit of a storm since I got back. I came here to get out of it. I’m a fair-weather-lover, as you know.”
Stephen went home by a round-about way, for he took Saint John’s anchorhold in the route. He scarcely knew why he did it; he had an idea that the sight of Derette would be an agreeable diversion of his thoughts. Too deep down to be thoroughly realised, was a vague association of her with Ermine, whose chief friend in the family she had been.
Derette came to the casement as soon as she heard from Leuesa who was there.
“Good evening, Stephen!” she said cordially. “Leuesa, my maid, while I chat a minute with my cousin, prithee tie on thine hood and run for a cheese. I forgot it with the other marketing this morrow. What are cheeses now? a halfpenny each?”
“Three a penny, Lady, they were yesterday.”
“Very good; bring a pennyworth, and here is the money.”
As soon as Leuesa was out of hearing, Derette turned to Stephen with a changed expression on her face.
“Stephen!” she said, in a low whisper, “you have been to see afterthem. Tell me what you found.”
“I never said nought o’ the sort,” answered Stephen, rather staggered by his cousin’s penetration and directness.
“Maybe your heart said it to mine. You may trust me, Stephen. I would rather let out my life-blood than any secret which would injure them.”
“Well, you’re not far wrong, Derette. Gerard and Agnes are gone; they lie under the snow. So does Adelheid; but Berthold was not buried; I reckon he was one of the last. I cannot find Rudolph.”
“You have told me all but the one thing my heart yearns to know. Ermine?”
Stephen made no reply.
“You have found her!” said Derette. “Don’t tell me where. It is enough, if she lives. Keep silence.”
“Some folks are hard that you’d have looked to find soft,” answered Stephen, with apparent irrelevance; “and by times folk turn as soft as butter that you’d expect to be as hard as stones.”
Derette laid up the remark in her mind for future consideration.
“Folks baint all bad that other folks call ill names,” he observed further.
Derette gave a little nod. She was satisfied that Ermine had found a refuge, and with some unlikely person.
“Wind’s chopped round since morning, seems to me,” pursued Stephen, as if he had nothing particular to say. “Blew on my back as I came up to the gate.”
Another nod from Derette. She understood that Ermine’s refuge lay south of Oxford.
“Have you seen Flemild?” she asked. “She has sprained her wrist sadly, and cannot use her hand.”
“Now just you tell her,” answered Stephen, with a significant wink, “I’ve heard say the White Witch of Bensington makes wonderful cures with marsh-mallows poultice: maybe it would ease her.”
“I’ll let her know, be sure,” said Derette: and Stephen took his leave as Leuesa returned with her purchase.
He had told her nothing about Ermine: he had told her every thing. Derette thanked God for the—apparently causeless—impulse to mention her sister’s accident, which had just given Stephen the opportunity to utter the last and most important item. Not the slightest doubt disturbed her mind that Ermine was in the keeping of the White Witch of Bensington, and that Stephen was satisfied of the Wise Woman’s kind treatment and good faith. She was sorry for Gerhardt and Agnes; but she had loved Ermine best of all. As for Rudolph, if Ermine were safe, why should he not be likewise? Derette’s was a hopeful nature, not given to look on the dark side of any thing which had a light one: a tone of mind which, as has been well said, is worth a thousand a year to its possessor.
Leuesa returned full of excitement. A wolf had been killed only three miles from the city, and the Earl had paid the sportsman fourpence for its head, which was to be sent up to the King—the highest price ever given for a wolf’s head in that county. The popular idea that Edgar exterminated all the wolves in England is an error. Henry Second paid tenpence for three wolves’ heads (Pipe Roll, 13 Henry Second), and Henry Third’s State Papers speak of “hares, wolves, and cats,” in the royal forests (Close Roll, 38 Henry Third).
The days went on, and Stephen received no summons to the Wise Woman’s hut. He found it very hard to keep away. If he could only have known that all was going on right! But weeks and months passed by, and all was silence. Stephen almost made up his mind to brave the witch’s anger, and go without bidding. Yet there would be danger in that, for Anania, who had been piqued by his parrying of her queries, watched him as a cat watches a mouse.
He was coming home, one evening in early summer, having been on guard all day at the East Gate, when, as he passed the end of Snydyard (now Oriel) Street, a small child of three or four years old toddled up to him, and said—
“There! Take it.”
Stephen, who had a liking for little toddlers, held out his hand with a smile; and grew suddenly grave when there was deposited in it a ball of grey wool.
“Who gave thee this?”
“Old man—down there—said, ‘Give it that man with the brown hat,’” was the answer.
Stephen thanked the child, threw it a sweetmeat, with which his pocket was generally provided, and ran after the old man, whom he overtook at the end of the street.
“What mean you by this?” he asked.
The old man looked up blankly.
“I know not,” said he. “I was to take it to Stephen the Watchdog,—that’s all I know.”
“Tell me who gave it you, then?”
“I can’t tell you—a woman I didn’t know.”
“Where?”
“A bit this side o’ Dorchester.”
“That’ll do. Thank you.”
The ball was safely stored in Stephen’s pocket, and he hastened to the Castle. At the gate he met his brother.
“Here’s a pretty mess!” said Osbert. “There’s Orme of the Fen run off, because I gave him a scolding for his impudence: and it is his turn to watch to-night. I have not a minute to go after him; I don’t know whatever to do.”
Stephen grasped the opportunity.
“I’ll go after him for you, if you’ll get me leave for a couple of days or more. I have a bit of business of my own I want to see to, and I can manage both at once—only don’t tell Anania of it, or she’ll worry the life out of me.”
Osbert laughed.
“Make your mind easy!” said he. “Go in and get you ready, lad, and I’ll see to get you the leave.”
Stephen turned into the Castle, to fetch his cloak and make up a parcel of provisions, while Osbert went to the Earl, returning in a few minutes with leave of absence for Stephen. To the great satisfaction of the latter, Anania was not at home; so he plundered her larder, and set off, leaving Osbert to make his excuses, and to tell her just as much, or as little, as he found convenient. Stephen was sorely tempted to go first to Bensington, but he knew that both principle and policy directed the previous search for Orme. He found that exemplary gentleman, after an hour’s search, drinking and gambling in a low ale-booth outside South Gate; and having first pumped on him to get him sober, he sent him off to his work with a lecture. Then, going a little way down Grandpont Street, he turned across Presthey, and coming out below Saint Edmund’s Well, took the road to Bensington.
The journey was accomplished in much shorter time than on the previous occasion. As Stephen came up to the Witch’s hut, he heard the sound of a low, monotonous voice; and being untroubled, at that period of the world’s history, by any idea that eavesdropping was a dishonourable employment, he immediately applied his ear to the keyhole. To his great satisfaction, he recognised Ermine’s voice. The words were these:—
“‘I confess to Thee, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, that Thou hiddest these things from the wise and prudent, and revealedst them unto little children. Even so, Father; for this was well-pleasing before Thee. All things are to Me delivered from My Father; and none knoweth the Son save the Father; neither the Father doth any know, save the Son, and he to whom the Son is willing to reveal Him. Come unto Me, all ye that labour and are burdened, and I will refresh you. Take My yoke upon you, and learn of Me, for I am meek and lowly of heart; and ye shall find rest unto your souls.’”
“Did He say that, now, dearie?” asked the voice of the White Witch. “Eh, it sounds good—it does so! I’m burdened, saints knows; I’d like to find a bit o’ rest and refreshing. Life’s a heavy burden, and sin’s a heavier; and there’s a many things I see are sins now, that I never did afore you came. But how am I to know that He’s willing?”
“Won’t you come and see, Mother?” said Ermine softly.
“Husht! Bide a bit, my dear: there’s a little sound at the door as I don’t rightly understand. Maybe—”
In another moment the wicket opened, and Haldane’s face looked out upon Stephen.
“Good evening, Mother!” said Stephen, holding up the ball of grey wool.
“Ay, you got it, did you? Come in—you’re welcome.”
“I hope I am,” replied Stephen, going forward. Ermine was no longer hidden behind the screen, but seated on the form in the chimney-corner. On her calm fair brow there was no scar visible.
“Ay, ain’t she a fine cure!” cried the old woman. “That’s white mallows, that is, and just a pinch of—Well, I’d best tell no tales. But she’s a grand cure; I don’t hide her up now. Nobody’d ever guess nought, from the look of her, now, would folks? What think you?”
“No, I hope they wouldn’t,” answered Stephen: “leastwise they sha’n’t if I can help it.”
Haldane laid her hand on his arm impressively.
“Stephen, you must take her away.”
“I’ll take her fast enough, if she’ll go, Mother; but why? I reckoned she was as safe here as she could be anywhere.”
“Shewas,” said Haldane significantly. “She won’t be, presently. I don’t tell my secrets: but the Wise Woman knows a thing or two. You’d best take her, and waste no time: but it must not be to Oxford. There’s folks there would know her face.”
“Ay, to be sure there are. Well, Mother, I’ll do your bidding. Where’ll she be safest?”
“You’d best be in London. It’s the biggest place. And when a man wants to hide, he’ll do it better in a large town than a little place, where every body knows his neighbour’s business.”
“All right!” said Stephen. “Ermine!”—and he went up to her—“will you go with me?”
Ermine lived in an age when it was a most extraordinary occurrence for a woman to have any power to dispose of herself in marriage, and such a thing was almost regarded as unnatural and improper. She held out her hand to Stephen.
“I will go where the Lord sends me,” she said simply. “Dear Mother Haldane saved my life, and she has more right to dispose of me than any one else. Be it so.”
“When folks are wed, they commonly have gifts made them,” said Haldane with a smile. “I haven’t much to give, and you’ll think my gift a queer one: but I wish you’d take it, Ermine. It’s Gib.”
“I will take Gib and welcome, and be very thankful to you,” answered Ermine in some surprise. “But, Mother Haldane, you are leaving yourself all alone. I was afraid you would miss me, after all these weeks, and if you lose Gib too, won’t you be lonely?”
“Miss you!” repeated the old woman in a tremulous voice. “Miss you, my white bird that flew into my old arms from the cruel storm? Sha’n’t I miss you? But it won’t be for long. Ay! when one has kept company with the angels for a while, one’s pretty like to miss them when they fly back home. But you’d best take Gib. The Wise Woman knows why. Only I don’t tell all my secrets. And it won’t be for long.”
Haldane had been laying fresh sticks on the embers while she spoke. Now she turned to Stephen.
“She’d best have Gib,” she said. “He’s like another creature since she came. She’ll take care of him. And you’ll take care of her. I told you last time you were here as I’d do the best for her, not for you. But this is the best for both of you. And maybe the good Lord’ll do the best for me. Ermine says He’s not above keeping a poor old woman company. But whatever comes, and whatever you may hear, you bear in mind that I did my best for you.”
“Ay, that I’m sure you’ve done, Mother,” replied Stephen warmly. “As for Gib, I’ll make him welcome for your sake; he looks rather comfortable now, so I think he’ll get along.”
It certainly was not too much to say that Gib was another creature. That once dilapidated-looking object, under Ermine’s fostering care, had developed into a sleek, civilised, respectable cat; and as he sat on her lap, purring and blinking at the wood-fire, he suggested no ideas of discomfort.
“Ay, I’ve done my best,” repeated the old woman with a sigh. “The Lord above, He knows I’ve done it. You’d best be off with the morning light. I can’t be sure—Well, I mustn’t tell my secrets.”
Stephen was inclined to be amused with the Wise Woman’s reiteration of this assertion. What fancy she had taken into her head he could not guess. It was some old-womanly whim, he supposed. If he could have guessed her reason for thus dismissing them in haste—if he had seen in the embers what she saw coming nearer and nearer, and now close to her very door—wild horses would not have carried Stephen away from the woman who had saved Ermine.
Haldane’s bidding was obeyed. The dawn had scarcely broken on the following morning, when Stephen and Ermine, with Gib in the arms of the latter, set forth on their journey to London. Haldane stood in her doorway to watch them go.
“Thank God!” she said, when she had entirely lost sight of them. “Thank God, my darling is safe! I can bear anything that comes now. It is only what such as me have to look for. And Ermine said the good Lord wouldn’t fail them that trusted Him. I’m only a poor ignorant old woman, and He knows it; but He took the pains to make me, and He’ll not have forgot it; and Ermine says He died for me, and I’m sure He could never forget that, if He did it. I’ve done a many ill things, though I’m not the black witch they reckon me: no, I’ve had more laid to my charge than ever I did; but for all that I’m a sinner, I’m afeared, and I should be sore afeared to meet what’s coming if He wouldn’t take my side. But Ermine, she said He would, if I trusted myself to Him.”
Haldane clasped her withered hands and looked heavenwards.
“Good Lord!” she said, “I’d fain have Thee on my side, and I do trust Thee. And if I’m doing it wrong way about, bethink Thee that I’m only a poor old woman, that never had no chance like, and I mean to do right, and do put things to rights for me, as Thou wouldst have ’em. Have a care of my darling, and see her safe: and see me through what’s coming, if Thou wilt be so good. Worlds o’ worlds, Amen.”
That conclusion was Haldane’s misty idea of the proper way to end a prayer (Note 1). Perhaps the poor petition found its way above the stars as readily as the choral services that were then being chanted in the perfumed cathedrals throughout England.
She went in and shut the door. She did not, as usual, shake her straw bed and fold up the rug. A spectator might have thought that she had no heart for it. She only kept up the fire; for though summer was near, it was not over-warm in the crazy hut, and a cold east wind was blowing. For the whole of the long day she sat beside it, only now and then rising to look out of the window, and generally returning to her seat with a muttered exclamation of “Not yet!” The last time she did this, she pulled the faded woollen kerchief over her shoulders with a shiver.
“Not yet! I reckon they’ll wait till it’s dusk. Well! all the better: they’ll have more time to get safe away.”
The pronouns did not refer to the same persons, but Haldane made no attempt to specify them.
She sat still after that, nodding at intervals, and she was almost asleep when the thing that she had feared came upon her. A low sound, like and yet unlike the noise of distant thunder, broke upon her ear. She sat up, wide awake in a moment.
“They’re coming! Good Lord, help me through! Don’t let it be very bad to bear, and don’t let it be long!”
Ten minutes had not passed when the hut was surrounded by a crowd. An angry crowd, armed with sticks, pitchforks, or anything that could be turned into a weapon—an abusive crowd, from whose lips words of hate and scorn were pouring, mixed with profaner language.
“Pull the witch out! Stone her! drown her! burn her!” echoed on all sides.
“Good Lord, don’t let them burn me!” said poor old Haldane, inside the hut. “I’d rather be drowned, if Thou dost not mind.”
Did the good Lord not mind what became of the helpless old creature, who, in her ignorance and misery, was putting her trust in Him? It looked like it, as the mob broke open the frail door, and roughly hauled out the frailer occupant of the wretched hut.
“Burn her!” The cry was renewed: and it came from one of the two persons most prominent in the mob—that handsome girl to whom Haldane had refused the revenge she coveted upon Brichtiva.
“Nay!” said the other, who was the Bishop’s sumner, “that would be irregular. Burning’s for heretics. Tie her hands and feet together, and cast her into the pond: that’s the proper way to serve witches.”
The rough boys among the crowd, to whom the whole scene was sport—and though we have become more civilised in some ways as time has passed, sport has retained much of its original savagery even now—gleefully tied together Haldane’s hands and feet, and carried her, thus secured, to a large deep pond about a hundred yards from her abode.
This was the authorised test for a witch. If she sank and was drowned, she was innocent of the charge of witchcraft; if she swam on the surface, she was guilty, and liable to the legal penalty for her crime. Either way, in nine out of ten cases, the end was death: for very few thought of troubling themselves to save one who proved her innocence after this fashion. (Note 2.)
The boys, having thus bound the poor old woman into a ball, lifted her up, and with a cry of—“One—two—three!” flung her into the pond. At that moment a man broke through the ring that had formed outside the principal actors.
“What are you doing now? Some sort of mischief you’re at, I’ll be bound—you lads are always up to it. Who are you ducking? If it’s that cheat Wrangecoke, I’ll not meddle, only don’t—What, Mother Haldane! Shame on you! Colgrim, Walding, Oselach, Amfrid!—shame on you! What,you, Erenbald, that she healed of that bad leg that laid you up for three months! Andyou, Baderun, whose child she brought back well-nigh from the grave itself! If you are men, and not demons, come and help me to free her!”
The speaker did not content himself with words. He had waded into the pond, and was feeling his way carefully to the spot where the victim was. For Mother Haldane had not struggled nor even protested, but according to all the unwritten laws relating to witchcraft, had triumphantly exhibited her innocence by sinking to the bottom like a stone. The two spectators whom he had last apostrophised joined him in a shamefaced manner, one muttering something about his desire to avoid suspicion of being in league with a witch, and the other that he “didn’t mean no harm:” and among them, amid the more or less discontented murmurs of those around, they at last dragged out the old woman, untied the cords, and laid her on the grass. The life was yet in her; but it was nearly gone.
“Who’s got a sup of anything to bring her to?” demanded her rescuer. “She’s not gone; she opened her eyes then.”
The time-honoured remedies for drowning were applied. The old woman was set on her head “to let the water run out;” and somebody in the crowd having produced a flask of wine, an endeavour was made to induce her to swallow. Consciousness partially returned, but Haldane did not seem to recognise any one.
“Don’t be feared, Mother,” said the man who had saved her. “I’ll look after you. Don’t you know me? I am Wigan, son of Egglas the charcoal-burner, in the wood.”
Then Mother Haldane spoke,—slowly, with pauses, and as if in a dream.
“Ay, He looked after me. Did all—I asked. He kept them—safe, and—didn’t let it—be long.”
She added two words, which some of her hearers said were—“Good night.” A few thought them rather, “Good Lord!”
Nobody understood her meaning. Only He knew it, who had kept safe the two beings whom Mother Haldane loved, and had not let the hour of her trial and suffering be long.
And then, when the words had died away in one last sobbing sigh, Wigan the son of Egglas stood up from the side of the dead, and spoke to the gazing and now silent multitude.
“You can go home,” he said. “You’ve had your revenge. And what was it for? How many of you were there that she had not helped and healed? Which of you did she ever turn away unhelped, save when the malady was beyond her power, or when one came to her for aid to do an evil thing? Men, women, lads! you’ve repeated the deed of Iscariot this day, for you’ve betrayed innocent blood—you have slain your benefactor and friend. Go home and ask God and the saints to forgive you—if they ever can. How they sit calm above yonder, and stand this world, is more than I can tell.—Poor, harmless, kindly soul! may God comfort thee in His blessed Heaven! And for them that have harried thee, and taken thy life, and have the black brand of murder on their souls, God pardon them as He may!”
The crowd dispersed silently and slowly. Some among them, who had been more thoughtless than malicious, were already beginning to realise that Wigan’s words were true. The sumner, however, marched away whistling a tune. Then Wigan, with his shamefaced helpers, Erenbald and Baderun, and a fourth who had come near them as if he too were sorry for the evil which he had helped to do, inasmuch as he had not stood out to prevent its being done, lifted the frail light corpse, and bore it a little way into the wood. There, in the soft fresh green, they dug a grave, and laid in it the body of Mother Haldane.
“We’d best lay a cross of witch hazel over her,” suggested Baderun. “If things was all right with her, it can’t do no harm; and if so be—”
“Lay what you like,” answered Wigan. “I don’t believe, and never did, that she was a witch. What harm did you ever know her do to any one?”
“Nay, but Mildred o’ th’ Farm, over yonder, told me her black cow stopped giving milk the night Mother Haldane came up to ask for a sup o’ broth, and she denied it.”
“Ay, and Hesela by the Brook—I heard her tell,” added Erenbald, “that her hens, that hadn’t laid them six weeks or more, started laying like mad the day after she’d given the White Witch a gavache. What call you that?”
“I call it stuff and nonsense,” replied Wigan sturdily, “save that both of them got what they deserved: and so being, I reckon that God, who rewards both the righteous and the wicked, had more to do with it than the White Witch.”
“Eh, Wigan, but them’s downright wicked words! You’d never go to say as God Almighty takes note o’ hens, and cows, and such like?”
“Who does, then? How come we to have any eggs and milk?”
“Why, man, that’s natur’.”
“I heard a man on Bensington Green, one day last year,” answered Wigan, “talking of such things; and he said that ‘nature’ was only a fool’s word for God. And said I to myself, That’s reason.”
Wigan, being one of that very rare class who think for themselves, was not comprehended by his commissionary tours, had been to this man’s heart as a match to tinder.
“Ay, and he said a deal more too: but it wouldn’t be much use telling you. There—that’s enough. She’ll sleep quiet there. I’ll just go round by her hut, and see if her cat’s there—no need to leave the creature to starve.”
“Eh, Wigan, you’d never take that thing into your house? It’s her familiar, don’t you know? They always be, them black cats—they’re worse than the witches themselves.”
“Specially when they aren’t black, like this? I tell you, she wasn’t a witch; and as to the cat, thou foolish man, it’s nought more nor less than a cat. I’ll take it home to Brichtiva my wife,—she’s not so white-livered as thou.”
“Eh, Wigan, you’ll be sorry one o’ these days!”
“I’m as sorry now as I can be, that I didn’t come up sooner: and I don’t look to be sorry for aught else.”
Wigan went off to the empty hut. But all his coaxing calls of “Puss, puss!” proved vain. Gib was in Ermine’s arms; and Ermine was travelling towards London in a heavy carrier’s waggon, with Stephen on horseback alongside. He gave up the search at last, and went home; charging Brichtiva that if Gib should make a call on her, she was to be careful to extend to him an amount of hospitality which would induce him to remain.
But Gib was never seen in the neighbourhood of Bensington again.
“What wonder?” said Erenbald. “The thing was no cat—it was a foul fiend; and having been released from the service of its earthly mistress, had returned as a matter of course to Satan its master.”
This conclusion was so patent to every one of his neighbours that nobody dreamed of questioning it. Morally speaking, there is no blindness so hopelessly incurable as that of the man who is determined to keep his eyes shut. Only the Great Physician can heal such a case as this, and He has often to do it by painful means.
“Christ save you!” said Isel, coming into the anchorhold one evening, a fortnight after Stephen’s disappearance. “Well, you do look quiet and peaceful for sure! and I’m that tired!—”
“Mother, I am afraid you miss me sadly,” responded Derette, almost self-reproachfully.
“I’m pleased enough to think you’re out of it, child. Miss you? Well, I suppose I do; but I haven’t scarce time to think what I miss. There’s one thing I’d miss with very great willingness, I can tell you, and that’s that horrid tease, Anania. She’s been at me now every day this week, and she will make me tell her where Stephen is, and what he’s gone after,—and that broom knows as much as I do. She grinds the life out of me, pretty nigh: and what am I to do?”
Derette smiled sympathetically. Leuesa said—
“It does seem strange he should stay so long away.”
“Anania will have it he is never coming again.”
“I dare say she is right there,” said Derette suddenly.
“Saints alive! what dost thou mean, child? Never coming again?”
“I shouldn’t wonder,” said Derette quietly.
“Well, I should. I should wonder more than a little, I can tell you. Whatever gives you that fancy, child?”
“I have it, Mother; why I cannot tell you.”
“I hope you are not a prophetess!”
“I don’t think I am,” said Derette with a smile.
“I think Ermine was a bit of one, poor soul! She seemed to have some notion what was coming to her. Eh, Derette! I’d give my best gown to know those poor things were out of Purgatory. Father Dolfin says we shouldn’t pray for them: but I do—I can’t help it. If I were a priest, I’d say mass for them every day I lived—ay, I would! I never could understand why we must not pray for heretics. Seems to me, the more wrong they’ve gone, the more they want praying for. Not thattheywent far wrong—I’ll not believe it. Derette, dost thou ever pray for the poor souls?”
“Ay, Mother: every one of them.”
“Well, I’m glad to hear it. And as to them that ill-used them, let them look to themselves. Maybe they’ll not find themselves at last in such a comfortable place as they look for. The good Lord may think that cruelty to Christian blood (Note 3)—and they were Christian blood, no man can deny—isn’t so very much better than heresy after all. Hope he does.”
“I remember Gerard’s saying,” replied Derette, “that all the heresies in the world were only men’s perversions of God’s truths: and that if men would but keep close to Holy Scripture, there would be no heresies.”
“Well, it sounds like reason, doesn’t it?” answered Isel with a sigh.
“But I remember his saying also,” pursued Derette, “that where one man followed reason and Scripture, ten listened to other men’s voices, and ten more to their own fancies.”
Dusk was approaching on the following day, when a rap came on the door of the anchorhold, and a voice said—
“Leuesa, pray you, ask my cousin to come to the casement a moment.”
“Stephen!” cried Derette, hurrying to her little window when she heard his voice. “So you have come back!”
“Shall I go now, Lady, for the fresh fish?” asked Leuesa, very conveniently for Stephen, who wondered if she good-naturedly guessed that he had a private communication to make.
“Do,” said Derette, giving her three silver pennies.
As soon as Leuesa was out of hearing, Stephen said—“I am only here for a few hours, Derette, and nobody knows it save my Lord, you, and my brother. I have obtained my discharge, and return to London with the dawn.”
“Are you not meaning to come back, Stephen? Folks are saying that.”
“Folks are saying truth. I shall live in London henceforth. But remember, Derette, that is a secret.”
“I shall not utter it, Stephen. Truly, I wish you all happiness, but I cannot help being sorry.”
There were tears in Derette’s eyes. Stephen had ever been more brotherly to her than her own brothers. It was Stephen who had begged her off from many a punishment, had helped her over many a difficulty, had made her rush baskets and wooden boats, and had always had a sweetmeat in his pocket for her in childhood. She was grieved to think of losing him.
“You may well wish me happiness in my honeymoon,” he said, laughingly.
“Are you married? Why, when—O Stephen, Stephen! is it Ermine?”
“You are a first-rate guesser, little one. Yes, I have Ermine safe; and I will keep her so, God helping me.”
“I am so glad, Steenie!” said Derette, falling into the use of the old pet name, generally laid aside now. “Tell Ermine I am so glad to hear that, and so sorry to lose you both: but I will pray God and the saints to bless you as long as I live, and that will be better for you than our meeting, though it will not be the same thing to me.”
“‘So glad, and so sorry!’ It seems to me, Cousin, that’s no inapt picture of life. God keep thee!—to the day when—Ermine says—it will be all ‘glad’ and no ‘sorry.’”
“Ay, we shall meet one day. Farewell!”
The days passed, and no more was seen or heard of Stephen in Oxford. What had become of him was not known at the Walnut Tree, until one evening when Osbert looked in about supper-time, and was invited to stay for the meal, with the three of whom the family now consisted—Manning, Isel, and Haimet. As Isel set on the table a platter of little pies, she said—
“There, that’s what poor Stephen used to like so well. Maybe you’ll fancy them too, Osbert.”
“Why do you call him poor Stephen?” questioned Osbert, as he appropriated a pie. “He is not particularly poor, so far as I know.”
“Well, we’ve lost him like,” said Isel, with a sigh. “When folks vanish out of your sight like snow in a thaw, one cannot help feeling sorry.”
“Oh, I’m sorry for myself, more ways than one: but not so much for Stephen.”
“Why, Osbert, do you know where he is, and what he’s doing?”
“Will you promise not to let on to Anania, if I tell you?”
“Never a word that I can help, trust me.”
“Her knowing matters nought, except that she’ll never let me be if she thinks I have half a notion about it. Well, he’s gone south somewhere—I don’t justly know where, but I have a guess of London way.”
“What for?”
“Dare say he had more reasons than he gave me. He told me he was going to be married.”
“Dear saints!—who to?”
“Didn’t ask him.”
Isel sat looking at Osbert in astonishment, with a piece of pie transfixed on the end of her knife.
“You see, if I did not know, I shouldn’t get so much bothered with folks asking me questions: so I thought I’d let it be.”
That Osbert’s “folks” might more properly be read “Anania,” Isel knew full well.
“Saints love us!—but I would have got to know who was my sister-in-law, if I’d been in your place.”
“To tell the truth, Aunt, I don’t care, so long as she is a decent woman who will make Stephen comfortable; and I think he’s old enough to look out for himself.”
“But don’t you know even what he was going to do?—seek another watch, or go into service, or take to trade, or what?”
“I don’t know a word outside what I have just told you. Oh, he’ll be all right! Stephen has nine lives, like a cat. He always falls on his feet.”
“But it don’t seem natural like!”
Osbert laughed. “I suppose it is natural to a woman to have more curiosity than a man. I never had much of that stuff. Anania’s got enough for both.”
“Well, I’m free to confess she has. Osbert, how do you manage her? I can’t.”
“Let her alone as long as I can, and take the mop to her when I can’t,” was the answer.
“I should think the mop isn’t often out of your hand,” observed Haimet with painful candour.
“It wears out by times,” returned Osbert drily.
Note 1. “Into the worlds of worlds” is the Primer’s translation of “in saecula saeculorum.”
Note 2. That witchcraft is no fable, but a real sin, which men have committed in past times, and may commit again, is certain from Holy Scripture. But undoubtedly, in the Middle Ages, numbers of persons suffered under accusation of this crime who were entirely innocent: and the so-called “white witches” were in reality mere herbalists and dealers in foolish but harmless charms, often consisting in a kind of nursery rhyme and a few Biblical words.
Note 3. The wrong of cruelty to men and women, as such, whether they were Christians or not, had not dawned on men’s minds in the twelfth century, nor did it till the Reformation. But much pity was often expressed for the sufferings of “Christian blood,” and a very few persons had some compassion for animals.
Chapter Ten.Barriers in the Way.“Christ is my readiness: who lives in HimCan scarcely be unready.”S.W. Partridge.A little way out of Dorchester, surrounded by pollard willow trees, and on a narrow slip of ground which sloped down towards the river, stood a tiny mud hut, the inhabitants of which lived in great misery even for that time. One small chamber, with a smaller lean-to, constituted the whole dwelling. As to furniture, a modern eye, glancing round, would have said there was none. There was a bundle of rags, covering a heap of straw, in one corner; and in another was a broken bench, which with a little contrivance might have seated three persons of accommodating tempers. A hole in the roof let out the smoke—when it chose to go; and let in the rain and snow, which generally chose to come. On a niche in the wall stood a single pan, an axe, and a battered tin bowl, which comprised all the family riches. The axe was the tool which obtained bread—and very little of it; the pan did all the cooking; the bowl served for pail, jug, and drinking-vessel. An iron socket let into the wall held a piece of half-burnt pinewood, which was lamp and candle to the whole house. A handful of chips of wood, branches, and dried leaves, in one corner, represented the fuel; and a heap of snow underneath the hole showed that its influence was not potent.On the heap of rags, five persons were lying, huddled close together for warmth’s sake—father, mother, and three children. How had they come into such a condition as this? Ah, they had not always lived thus. Only a few years ago, this man had been a prosperous silversmith at Reading; his wife had been well dressed, his children well fed, his acquaintance large, and himself generally respected. How had it come about that they were now in this pitiable condition? Had the man been idle and neglectful of his business? By no means; he had been diligent and hard-working. Was he a drunken profligate? Not at all; he was, for the age, unusually sober. Had he committed some terrible crime which had brought him to ruin?The only true answer seems scarcely possible: and yet the only answer possible is awfully true. The man was born a Jew, and had become a Christian. It was only natural that this should turn the Jewish community against him; and all his acquaintances deserted him as a matter of course. But surely this very fact should have made the Christian community more friendly and helpful! Alas, the Christian community, in bondage to the iron yoke of Rome, hated him more as a Jew than they welcomed him as a Christian. Rome has always been the hater and opponent of Israel. The law of England at that time was actually this: that if a Jew became converted to Christianity, he forfeited everything he possessed to the Crown, and had to begin the world again. This had been the lot of poor David ben Mossi, and his wife Ruth, whose conversion had taken place under Gerhardt’s preaching. They were too honest to hide the change in their convictions, though to reveal it meant worldly ruin. They applied for baptism, and by so doing literally gave up all for Christ—home, goods, gain, and occupation, not to speak of friends. David obtained work as a woodcutter, which brought them in just enough to keep life in them and rags about them; and he built with his own hands, aided by his faithful Ruth, the mud hovel, wherein they found the only shelter that this cold world had for them. They had left Reading, preferring solitude to averted looks and abusive tongues; and not a creature in Dorchester came near them. Alike as Jews and as poor people, they were not worth cultivating.David had retained his name, being one used also by Christians; but Ruth had been required to change hers. She had chosen the name of Christian, as the most truthful and expressive that she could take.“And I like to feel,” she said to David, “that I have something of our blessed Lord in my name.”“Let us keep Him in our hearts, Wife,” was the answer: “then it will not much matter whether or no we have Him any where else.”It was bitterly cold in the hovel that snowy night. The children had cried themselves to sleep, and the parents felt as if they could easily have done the same. The lights were out at Dorchester, and all nature had settled down to rest, when Christian, who could not sleep for the cold, fancied she heard a voice outside the hut.“David!” it seemed to say.But the voice, if voice there were, was faint, and Christian did not like to rouse the husband who had lost his suffering in sleep, for what might have been a mere fancy. The voice spoke again.“Ruth!” it said this time.Christian hesitated no longer.“David! There is one without, calling on us. And it must be one we knew of old, for it calls me by my old name. Pray thee, get up, and let the poor soul in; ’tis not a night for a dog to tarry without, never speak of a human creature, who must be in some trouble.”David sat up and listened.“I hear nothing, Wife. I think thou must have been dreaming.”“Nay, I have been wide awake this hour gone. I am sure some one spoke.”“I think it’s fancy, Christian. However—”“There’s no harm in making sure.”“There’s the harm of letting in a lot of snow,” said David, not suiting the action to the word, for he had risen and was pulling on his hose. They required careful pulling, as they were so nearly in pieces that very little rough handling would have damaged them past repair. He was fastening the last clasp when the voice spoke again. It was nearer now, close at the door, and it was low and trembling, as if the applicant had hard work to speak at all.“For the love of the Crucified,” it said, “take in a Christian child!”David’s response was to open the door instantly.Something at once staggered in, and sank down on the bench:—something which looked at first sight more like a statue of white marble than a human being, so thick lay the snow over the wrappers which enfolded it. But when David had succeeded in unfolding the wrappers, and brushing off the snow, they discovered that their visitor was a woman, and that in her arms a child lay clasped, either dead or sleeping.The moment that Christian perceived so much as this, she hastily rose, throwing her poor mantle over her, and drew near to the stranger.“Poor soul, you’re heartily welcome,” she said, “whoever you are. We have little beside a roof to offer you, for we have scarcely food or raiment ourselves, nor money to buy either; but such as we have we will give you with all our hearts.”“May the Blessed bless you!” was the faint answer. “Don’t you know me, Ruth?”“Know you!” Christian studied the face of her unexpected guest. “Nay, I do almost believe—Countess! Is it you?”“Ay.”“Whatever has brought you to this? The richest Jewess in Reading! Have you, too, become a Christian like us?”Countess did not give a direct answer to that direct question.“I am not poor now,” she said. “I can find you money for food for us all, if you will suffer me to stay here till the storm has abated, and the roads can be travelled again.”“That won’t be this s’ennight,” interjected David.“But how—what?” queried Christian helplessly.“This brought me,” said Countess, touching the child. “I was under vow to save him. And—well, I could not do it otherwise.”“Is he alive?” asked Christian pityingly.“Yes, only very fast asleep. Lay him down with your little ones, and wrap this coverlet over them all, which has sheltered us in our journey.”It was a down coverlet of rich damask silk. Christian’s fingers touched it as with a feeling of strangeness, and yet familiarity—as a handling of something long unfelt, but well-known years ago.“I have nothing to offer you save a crust of barley bread,” she said hesitatingly. “I am sorry for it, but it is really all I have.”“Then,” said Countess with a smile, “play the widow of Zarephath. Give me thy ‘little cake,’ and when the light dawns, you shall have a new cruse and barrel in reward.”“Nay, we look for no reward,” answered Christian heartily. “I am only grieved that it should be so little. You are spent with your journey.”“I am most spent with the weight. I had to carry the child, and this,” she replied, touching a large square parcel, tied in a silk handkerchief round her waist. “It is the child’s property—all he has in the world. May the Blessed One be praised that I have saved them both!”“‘To them that have no might, He increaseth strength,’” quoted Christian softly. “Then—is not this your child?”“Yes—now.”“But not—?”“By gift, not by birth. And it is the Holy One who has given him. Now, good friends, let me not keep you from sleeping. Perhaps I shall sleep myself. We will talk more in the morning.”It was evident when the morning arrived, that the saved child had suffered less than she who had saved him. Both needed care, nourishment, and rest; but Countess wanted it far more than Rudolph. A few days sufficed to restore him to his usual lively good health; but it was weeks ere she recovered the physical strain and mental suffering of that terrible night. But Countess was one of those people who never either “give in” or “give up.” Before any one but herself thought her half fit for it, she went out, not mentioning her destination, on an expedition which occupied the greater part of a day, and returned at night with a satisfied expression on her face.“I have settled every thing,” she said. “And now I will tell you something. Perhaps you were puzzled to know why I sought shelter with you, instead of going to some of my wealthy acquaintances in the town?”“I was, very much,” answered Christian hesitatingly.“I supposed you had some reason for it,” said David.“Right. I had a reason—a strong one. That I shall not tell you at present. But I will tell you what perhaps you have already guessed—that I have been divorced from Leo.”“Well, I fancied you must have had a quarrel with him, or something of that kind,” replied Christian.“Oh, we are on excellent terms,” said Countess in a rather sarcastic tone. “So excellent, that he even proposed himself to lend me an escort of armed retainers to convey me to London.”“To London!” exclaimed Christian, in some surprise. “I thought you would be going back to your father’s house at Oxford.”“Oh, no!—that would not do at all. I did think of it for a moment; not now. London will be much better.”“May I take the liberty to ask how you mean to live?” said David. “Of course it is no business of mine, but—”“Go on,” said Countess, when he hesitated.“Well, I don’t quite see what you can do, without either husband or father. Perhaps your brother Rubi is coming with you? You can’t live alone, surely.”“I could, and get along very well, too; but I suppose one must not defy the world, foolish thing as it is. No, my brother Rubi is not coming, and I don’t want him either. But I want you—David and Ruth.”David and Ruth—as Countess persisted in calling her—looked at each other in surprise and perplexity.“You can take a week to think about it,” resumed Countess, in her coolest manner, which was very cool indeed. “I shall not set forth until the Sabbath is over. But I do not suppose you are so deeply in love with this hovel that you could not bring yourselves to leave it behind.”“What do you mean us to do or be?”“I intend to set up a silversmith’s and jeweller’s shop, and I mean David to be the silversmith, and to train Rudolph to the business.”This sounded practical. David’s heart leaped within him, at the thought of returning to his old status and occupation.“I could do that,” he said, with a gleam in his eyes.“I know you could,” replied Countess.“AndI?” suggested Christian wistfully.“You may see to the house, and keep the children out of mischief. We shall want some cooking and cleaning, I suppose; and I hate it.”“Do you take no servants with you?” asked Christian, in an astonished tone. For a rich lady like Countess to travel without a full establishment, both of servants and furniture, was amazing to her.“I take the child with me,” said Countess.Christian wondered why the one should hinder the other; but she said no more.“But—” David began, and stopped.“I would rather hear all the objections before I set forth,” responded Countess calmly.“Countess, you must clearly understand that we cannot deny our faith.”“Who asked you to do so?”“Nor can we hide it.”“That is your own affair. Do Christians clean silver worse than Jews?”“They should not, if they are real Christians and not mere pretenders.”“Shams—I hate shams. Don’t be a sham anything. Please yourself whether you are a Jew or a Christian, but for goodness’ sake don’t be a sham.”“I hope I am not that,” said David. “If you are content with us, Countess, my wife and I will be only too happy to go with you. The children—”“Oh, you don’t fancy leaving them behind? Very well—they can play with Rudolph, and pull the cat’s tail.”“I shall whip them if they do,” said Christian, referring not to Rudolph, but to the cat.“Countess, do you mean to cut yourself off from all your friends?” asked David, with a mixed feeling of perplexity and pity. “I cannot understand why you should do so.”“‘Friends!’” she replied, with an indescribable intonation. “I fancy I shall take them all with me. Do as I bid thee, David, and trouble not thyself to understand me.”David felt silenced, and asked no more questions.“Rudolph must have an English name,” said Countess abruptly. “Let him be called Ralph henceforth. That is the English version of his own name, and he will soon grow accustomed to it.”“What is he to call you?” asked Christian.“What he pleases,” was the answer.What it pleased Rudolph to do was to copy the other children, and say “Mother;” but he applied the term impartially alike to Countess and to Christian, till the latter took him aside, and suggested that it would be more convenient if he were to restrict the term to one of them.“You see,” she said, “if you call us both by one name, we shall never know which of us you mean.”“Oh, it does not matter,” answered Master Rudolph with imperial unconcern. “Either of you could button me up and tie my shoes. But if you like, I’ll call you Christie.”“I think it would be better if you did,” responded Christian with praiseworthy gravity.From the time that this matter was settled until the journey was fairly begun, Countess showed an amount of impatience and uneasiness which it sometimes took all Christian’s meekness to bear. She spent the whole day, while the light lasted, at the little lattice, silently studying a large square volume, which she carefully wrapped every evening in silk brocade, and then in a woollen handkerchief, placing it under the pillow on which she slept, and which had come from Leo’s house for her use. Beyond that one day’s expedition, she never quitted the hut till they left Dorchester. Of the hardships inseparable from her temporary position she did not once complain; all her impatience was connected with some inner uncertainty or apprehension which she did not choose to reveal. Rudolph looked far more disdainfully than she on the rye-crusts and ragged garments of his companions.At last, on the Sunday morning—for nobody dreamed in those days of not travelling on Sunday after mass—a small party of armed servants arrived at the hut, leading three palfreys and four baggage-mules, beside their own horses. Three of the mules were already loaded. Countess issued her orders, having evidently considered and settled every thing beforehand. Christian was to ride one palfrey, Countess the other, and David the third, with Rudolph in front of him. His children were to be disposed of, in panniers, on the back of the unloaded mule, with a lad of about fifteen years, who was one of the escort, behind them.“Hast thou found us any convoy, Josce?” asked Countess of the man who took direction of the escort.Josce doffed his cap to answer his mistress, to whom he showed considerable deference.“Deuslesalt journeys to-day as far as Wallingford,” he said, “and Simeon the usurer, who has a strong guard, will go thence to-morrow to Windsor.”“Good. Set forth!” said Countess.So they set out from the mud hovel. The snow was still deep in many parts, but it had been trodden down in the well-worn tracks, such as was the high road from Oxford to London. Countess rode first of the party, ordering David to ride beside her; Christian came next, by the mule which bore her children; the armed escort was behind. A mile away from the hut they joined the imposing retinue of Deuslesalt, who was a wealthy silk-merchant, and in their company the journey to Wallingford was accomplished. There Countess and Rudolph found shelter with Deuslesalt in the house of a rich Jew, while David, Christian, and the children were received as travellers in a neighbouring hospital; for an hospital, in those days, was not necessarily a place where the sick were treated, but was more of the nature of a large almshouse, where all the inmates lived and fared in common.On the second day they joined the usurer’s party, which was larger and stronger than that of the silk-merchant. At Windsor they found an inn where they were all lodged; and the following day they entered London. It now appeared that Countess had in some mysterious manner made preparation for her coming; for they rode straight to a small house at the corner of Mark Lane, which they found plainly but comfortably furnished to receive them. Countess paid liberally and dismissed her escort, bade David unpack the goods she had brought, and dispose of the jewels in the strong safes built into the walls, desired Christian to let her know if anything necessary for the house were not provided, and established herself comfortably at the window with her big book, and Rudolph on a hassock at her feet.“David!” she said, looking up, when the unpacking was about half done.David touched his forelock in answer.“I wish thou wouldst buy a dog and cat.”“Both?” demanded David, rather surprised. “They will fight.”“Oh, the cat is for the children,” said Countess coolly; “I don’t want one. But let the dog be the biggest thou canst get.”“I think I’d have the dog by himself,” said David. “The children will be quite as well pleased. And if you want a big one, he is pretty sure to be good-tempered.”So David and Rudolph went to buy a dog, and returned with an amiable shaggy monster quite as tall as the latter—white and tan, with a smile upon his lips, and a fine feathery tail, which little Helwis fell at once to stroking. This eligible member of the family received the name of Olaf, and was clearly made to understand that he must tolerate anything from the children, and nothing from a burglar.Things were settling down, and custom already beginning to come into the little shop, when one evening, as they sat round the fire, Countess surprised David with a question—“David, what did the priest to thee when thou wert baptised?”David looked up in some astonishment.“Why, he baptised me,” said he simply.“I want to know all he did,” said Countess.“Don’t think I could tell you if I tried. He put some oil on me, and some spittle,—and water, of course,—and said ever so many prayers.”“What did he say in his prayers?”“Eh, how can I tell you? They were all in Latin.”“The Lord does not speak French or English, then?” demanded Countess satirically.“Well!” said David, scratching his head, “when you put it that way—”“I don’t see what other way to put it. But I thought they baptised with water?”“Oh, yes, the real baptism is with water.”“Then what is the good of the unreal baptism, with oil and other rubbish?”“I cry you mercy, but you must needs ask the priest. I’m only an ignorant man.”“Dost thou think he knows?”“The priest? Oh, of course.”“I should like to be as sure as thou art. Can any body baptise?—or must it be done by a priest only?”“Oh, only—well—” David corrected himself. “Of course the proper person is a priest. But in case of necessity, it can be done by a layman. A woman, even, may do it, if a child be in danger of death. But then, there is no exorcism nor anointing; only just the baptising with water.”“I should have thought that was all there need be, at any time.”With that remark Countess dropped the subject. But a few days later she resumed the catechising, though this time she chose Christian as her informant.“What do Christians mean by baptism?”Christian paused a moment. She had not hitherto reflected on the esoteric meaning of the ceremony to which she had been ordered to submit as the introductory rite of her new religion.“I suppose,” she said slowly, “it must mean—confession.”“Confession of what?” inquired Countess.“Of our faith in the Lord Jesus,” replied Christian boldly.To Christian’s surprise, Countess made no scornful answer. She sat in silence, looking from the window with eyes that saw neither the knight who was riding past, nor the fish-woman selling salt cod to the opposite neighbour.“Can faith not exist without confession?” she said in a low tone.“Would it not be poor faith?”“Why?” demanded Countess, drawing her brows together, and in a tone that was almost fierce.“I should think there would be no love in it. And faith which had no love in it would be a very mean, shabby, worthless sort of faith.”“I don’t see that,” said Countess stubbornly. “I believe that this book is lying on the window-seat. Can’t I do that without loving either the window-seat or the book?”“Ah, yes, when you only believe things. But the faith which is shown in baptism is not believing a fact; it is trusting yourself, body and soul, with a Person.”“That makes a difference, I dare say,” replied Countess, and relapsed into silence.A week later she came into the shop, where David was busy polishing up the ornaments in stock.“David,” she said abruptly, “what does a Christian do when he is completely perplexed, and cannot tell how to act?”“Well, I don’t exactly know,” said David, looking perplexed himself. “Never was like that, so far as I know. Leastwise—No, I couldn’t just say I ever have been.”“O happy man! Some Christians are, sometimes, I suppose?”“I should think so. I don’t know.”“What wouldst thou do, then, if thou wert in a slough from which thou sawest not the way out?”“Why, I think—I should pray the Lord to show me the way out. I don’t see what else I could do.”“And if no answer came?”“Then I should be a bit afraid it meant that I’d walked in myself, and hadn’t heeded His warnings. Sometimes, I think, when folks do that, He leaves them to flounder awhile before He helps them out.”“That won’t do this time.”“Well, if that’s not it, then maybe it would be because I wanted to get out on my own side, and wouldn’t see His hand held out on the other. The Lord helps you out in His way, not yours: and that often means, up the steeper-looking bank of the two.”Countess was silent. David applied himself to bending the pin of a brooch, which he thought rather too straight.“Is it ever right to do wrong?” she said suddenly.“Why, no!—how could it be?” answered David, looking up.“You put me deeper in the slough, every word you say. I will go no further to-day.”And she turned and walked away.“Christie,” said David to his wife that evening, “thou and I must pray for our mistress.”“Why, what’s the matter with her?”“I don’t know. She’s in some trouble; and I think it is not a little trouble. Unless I mistake, it is trouble of a weary, wearing sort, that she goes round and round in, and can’t see the way out.”“But what are we to ask for, if we know nothing?”“Dear heart! ask the Lord to put it right. He knows the way out; He does not want us to tell Him.”A fortnight elapsed before any further conversation took place. At the end of that time Ash Wednesday came, and David and Christian went to church as usual. The service was half over, when, to their unspeakable astonishment, they perceived Countess standing at the western door, watching every item of the ceremonies, with an expression on her face which was half eager, half displeased, but wholly disturbed and wearied. She seemed desirous to avoid being seen, and slipped out the instant the mass was over.“Whatever brought her there?” asked Christian.David shook his head.“I expect it was either the Lord or the Devil,” he said. “Let us ask Him more earnestly to bring her out of the slough on the right side.”“Did you see me in All Hallows this morning?” asked Countess abruptly, as they sat beside the fire that night. The children were in bed, and Olaf lying on the hearth.“Ay, I did,” replied Christian; and her tone added—“to my surprise.”“What are those things for there?”“What things?”“A number of dolls, all painted and gilt.”“Do you mean the holy images?”“I mean the images. I don’t believe in the holiness.”“They are images of the blessed saints.”“What are they for?” demanded Countess, knitting her brows.“The priest says they are to remind us, and are helps to prayer.”“To whose prayers?” said Countess disdainfully. “No woman in England prays more regularly than I; but I never wanted such rubbish as that to help me.”“Oh, they don’t help me,” said David. “I never pay any attention to them; I just pray straight up.”“I don’t understand praying to God in the House of Baal. ‘Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image.’”“But they say the Church has loosed that command now. And of course we can’t set ourselves up above the Church.”“What on earth do you mean? Art thou God, to kill and to make alive, that thou shouldst style the keeping of His command ‘setting one’s self above the Church?’ The Church shall never guide me, if she speak contrary to God.”“But how can she, when God inspires her?”“There is another question I want settled first. How can I believe that God inspires her, when I see that she contradicts His distinct commands?”“I suppose the priest would say that was very wicked.”“What do I care for that popinjay? How didyouget over it? Had you no sensation of horror, when you were required to bow down to those stocks and stones?”“Well, no,” said Christian, speaking very slowly. “I believed what Gerard had taught us, and—”“When did Gerhardt ever teach you that rubbish?”“He never did,” answered David. “The priests taught us that. And I did find it main hard to swallow at first.”“Ah! I’m afraid I shall find it too hard to swallow at last. But there is nothing of all that in this book.”“I know nought about books. But of course the Church must know the truth,” responded David uneasily.“This is the truth,” answered Countess, laying her hand upon the book. “But if this be, that is not. David—Ruth—I believe as you do in Jesus Christ of Nazareth: but I believe in no gilded images nor priestly lies. I shall take my religion from His words, not from them. I should like to be baptised, if it mean to confess Him before men; but if it only mean to swallow the priests’ fables, and to kneel before gods that cannot hear nor save, I will have none of it. As the Lord liveth, before whom I stand, I will never bow down to the work of men’s hands!”She had risen and stood before them, a grand figure, with hands clenched and eyes on fire. Christian shrank as if alarmed. David spoke in a regretful tone.“Well! I thought that way myself for a while. But they said. I couldn’t be a Christian if I did not go to church, and attend the holy mass. The Church had the truth, and God had given it to her: so I thought I might be mistaken, and I gave in. I’ve wondered sometimes whether I did right.”“If that be what baptism means—to put my soul into the hands of that thing they call the Church, and let it mould me like wax—to defile myself with all the idols and all the follies that I see there—I will not be baptised. I will believe without it. And if He ask me at the Day of Doom why I did not obey His command given in Galilee, I shall say, ‘Lord, I could not do it without disobeying Thy first command, given amid the thunders of Sinai.’ If men drive me to do thus, it will not be my sin, but theirs.”“Well, I don’t know!” answered David, in evident perplexity. “I suppose youcouldbe baptised, with nothing more—but I don’t know any priest that would do it.”“Would you do it?”“Oh, I daren’t!”“David, your religion is very queer.”“What’s the matter?” asked David in astonishment.“The other day, when I told you I was in a great slough, you did not advise me to go and ask those gaudy images to help me out of it; you spoke of nobody but the Lord. Now that we come to talk about images, you flounder about as if you did not know what to say.”“Well, don’t you see, I know one o’ them two, but I’ve only been told the other.”“Oh yes, I see. You are not the first who has had one religion for sunshiny weather, and another for rainy days; only that with you—different from most people—you wear your best robe in the storm.”David rubbed his face upon the sleeve of his jacket, as if he wished to rub some more discrimination into his brains.“Nay, I don’t know—I hope you’ve no call to say that.”“I usually say what I think. But there’s no need to fret; you’ve time to mend.”Both the women noticed that for a few days after that, David was very silent and thoughtful. When the Sunday came he excused himself from going to church, much to the surprise and perplexity of his wife. The day after he asks for a holiday, and did not return till late at night.As they sat round the fire on the following evening, David said suddenly,—“I think I’ve found it out.”“What?” asked his mistress.“Your puzzle—and my own too.”“Let me have the key, by all means, if you possess it.”“Well, I have been to see the hermit of Holywell. They say he is the holiest man within reach of London, go what way you will. And he has read me a bit out of a book that seems to settle the matter. At least I thought so. Maybe you mightn’t see it so easy.”“It takes more than fair words to convince me. However, let me hear what it is. What was the book? I should like to know that first.”“He said it was an epistle written by Paul the Apostle to somebody—I can’t just remember whom.”“Who was he?”“Why, he was one of the saints, wasn’t he?”“I don’t know. There’s no mention of him in my book.”David looked like a man stopped unexpectedly in rapid career. “You always want to know so much about every thing!” he said, rubbing his face on his sleeve, as he had a habit of doing when puzzled. “Now I never thought to ask that.”“But before I can act on a message from my superior, I must surely satisfy myself as to the credentials of the messenger. However, let us hear the message. Perhaps that may tell us something. Some things bear on their faces the evidence of what they are—still more of what they are not.”“Well, what he read was this: ‘If thou shalt confess with thy mouth the Lord Jesus, and shalt believe in thine heart that God hath raised Him from the dead, thou shalt be saved.’ And ‘Look you,’ saith he, ‘there isn’t a word here of any body else.’ ‘If thou shalt confess’ Him—not the saints, nor the images, nor the Church, nor the priest. ‘Baptism,’ saith he, ‘is confessing Him.’ Then he turned over some leaves, and read a bit from another place, how our Lord said, ‘Come unto Me, all ye—’”Countess’s eyes lighted up suddenly. “That’s in my book. ‘All ye that travail and are heavy laden, and I will refresh you.’”“That’s it. And says he, ‘He does not say, “Come to the Church or the priest,” but “Come to Me.”’ ‘Well,’ says I, ‘but how can you do one without the other?’ ‘You may come to the priest easy enough, and never come to Christ,’ saith he, ‘so it’s like to be as easy to come to Christ without the priest.’ ‘Well, but,’ says I, ‘priests doesn’t say so.’ ‘No,’ says he; ‘they don’t’—quite short like. ‘But for all I can see in this book,’ says he, ‘He does.’”“Go on!” said Countess eagerly, when David paused.“Well, then—I hope you’ll excuse me if I said more than I should—says I to him, ‘Now look here, Father: suppose you had somebody coming to you for advice, that had been a Jew like me, and was ready to believe in our Lord, but could not put up with images and such, would you turn him away because he could not believe enough, or would you baptise him?’ ‘I would baptise him,’ saith he. Then he turns over the book again, and reads: ‘“Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and thou shalt be saved.” That is what the Apostles said to one man,’ says he: ‘and if it was enough then, it is enough now.’ ‘But, Father,’ says I, ‘that sounds rather as if you thought the Church might go wrong, or had gone wrong, in putting all these things beside our Lord.’ ‘My son,’ saith he, ‘what meanest thou by the Church? The Holy Ghost cannot teach error. Men in the Church may go wrong, and are continually wandering into error. What said our Lord to the rulers of the Jews, who were the priests of His day? “Ye do err, not knowing the Scriptures.” This book is truth: when men leave this book,’ saith he, ‘they go astray.’ ‘But not holy Church?’ said I. ‘Ah,’ saith he, ‘the elect may stray from the fold; how much more they that are strangers there? The only safe place for any one of us,’ he says, ‘is to keep close to the side of the Good Shepherd.’”“David, where dwells that hermit?”“By the holy well, away on the Stronde, west of Lud Gate. Any body you meet on that road will tell you where to find him. His hut stands a bit back from the high way, on the north.”“Very good. I’ll find him.”The next day, until nearly the hour of curfew, nothing was seen of Countess. She took Olaf with her as guard, and they returned at the last moment, just in time to enter the City before the gates were closed. David and Christian had finished their work, shut up the shop, and put the children to bed, when Olaf made his stately entrance, with his mistress behind him.“Thy old hermit,” she said, addressing David, “is the first decent Christian I have found—the first that goes by his Master’s words, and does not worry me with nonsense.”She drew off her hood, and sat down in the chimney-corner.“You found him then?” answered David. “Had you much trouble?”“I found him. Never mind the trouble.”“Has he settled the puzzle for you, then?”“I think I settled it for him.”“I ask your pardon, but I don’t understand you.”“I don’t suppose you do.”“Countess,” said Christian, coming down the ladder, “I bought the herrings as you bade me; but there is no salt salmon in the market to-day.”“To whom are you speaking?” inquired Countess, with an expression of fun about the corners of her lips.“You,” replied Christian in surprise.“Then, perhaps you will have the goodness to call me by my Christian name, which is Sarah.”“O Countess! have you been baptised?”“I have.”“By the hermit?”“By the hermit.”“But how?”“How? With water. What did you expect?”“But—all at once, without any preparation?”“What preparation was needed? I made my confession of Christ, and he baptised me in His name. The preparation was only to draw the water.”“What on earth did you do for sponsors?”“Had none.”“Did he let you?”A little smothered laugh came from Countess. “He had not much choice,” she said. “He did try it on. But I told him plainly, I was not going to give in to that nonsense: that if he chose to baptise me at once, I was there ready, and would answer any questions and make any confession that he chose. But if not—not. I was not coming again.”“And he accepted it!” said David, with a dozen notes of exclamation in his voice.“Did I not tell you he was the most sensible Christian I ever found? He said, ‘Well!—after all, truly, any thing save the simple baptism with water was a man-made ordinance. The Ethiopian eunuch had no sponsors’—I don’t know who he was, but I suppose the hermit did—‘and he probably made as true a Christian for all that’ ‘In truth,’ said I, ‘the institution of sponsors seems good for little children—friends who promise to see that they shall be brought up good Christians if their parents die early; but for a woman of my age, it is simply absurd, and I won’t have it. Let me confess Christ as my Messiah and Lord, and baptise me with water in His name, and I am sure he will be satisfied with it. And if any of the saints and angels are not satisfied, they can come down and say so, if they think it worth while.’ So—as he saw, I suppose, thatIwas not going to do it—he gave in.”“I hope it’s all right,” said David, rather uneasily.“David, I wish I could put a little sense into you. You are a good man, but you are a very foolish one. ‘All right!’ Of course it is all right. It is man, and not God, who starts at trifles like a frightened horse, and makes men offenders for a word. The Lord looketh on the heart.”“Ay, but Moses (on whom be peace!) was particular enough about some details which look very trifling to us.”“He was particular enough where they concerned the honour of God, or where they formed a part of some symbolism which the alteration would cause to be wrongly interpreted so as to teach untruth. But for all else, he let them go, and so did our Lord. When Aaron explained why he had not eaten the goat of the sin-offering, Moses was content. Nor did Christ condemn David the King, but excused him, for eating the shewbread. I am sure Moses would have baptised me this morning, without waiting for sponsors or Lucca oil. This is a very silly world; I should have thought the Church might have been a trifle wiser, and really it seems to have less common sense of the two. How could I have found sponsors, I should like to know? I know nobody but you and Christian.”“They told us, when we were baptised, that the Church did not allow a husband and wife to be sponsors to the same person. So we could not both have stood for you. It would have had to be Christian and Rudolph, and some other woman.”“Rudolph! That baby! (Note 1.) Would they have let him stand?”“Yes—if you could not find any one else.”“And promise to bring me up in the Catholic faith? Well, if that is not rich!—when I have got to bring him up! I will tell you what, David—if some benevolent saint would put a little common sense into the Church, it would be a blessing to somebody. ‘The Church!’ I am weary of that ceaseless parrot scream. The Church stands in the way to Jesus of Nazareth, not as a door to go in, but as a wall to bar out. I wish we had lived in earlier days, before all that rubbish had had time to grow. Now, mind you,” concluded Countess, as she rose to go to bed, “David and Christian, I don’t mean to be bothered about this. Don’t talk to me, nor to Rudolph, nor to any body else. I shall read the Book, and teach him to do it; but I shall not pray to those gilded things; and he shall not. What Gerhardt taught is enough for him and me. And remember, if too much be said, the King’s officers may come and take every thing away. I do not see that it is my duty to go and tell them. If they come, let them come, and God be my aid and provider! Otherwise, we had better keep quiet.”Note 1. That little children were at times allowed to be sponsors in the Middle Ages, is proved by the instance of John Earl of Kent in 1330, whose brother and sister, the former probably under ten years of age, and the latter aged only eighteen months, stood sponsors for him. (Prob. aet. Johannis Com. Kant., 23 Edward Third, 76.)
“Christ is my readiness: who lives in HimCan scarcely be unready.”S.W. Partridge.
“Christ is my readiness: who lives in HimCan scarcely be unready.”S.W. Partridge.
A little way out of Dorchester, surrounded by pollard willow trees, and on a narrow slip of ground which sloped down towards the river, stood a tiny mud hut, the inhabitants of which lived in great misery even for that time. One small chamber, with a smaller lean-to, constituted the whole dwelling. As to furniture, a modern eye, glancing round, would have said there was none. There was a bundle of rags, covering a heap of straw, in one corner; and in another was a broken bench, which with a little contrivance might have seated three persons of accommodating tempers. A hole in the roof let out the smoke—when it chose to go; and let in the rain and snow, which generally chose to come. On a niche in the wall stood a single pan, an axe, and a battered tin bowl, which comprised all the family riches. The axe was the tool which obtained bread—and very little of it; the pan did all the cooking; the bowl served for pail, jug, and drinking-vessel. An iron socket let into the wall held a piece of half-burnt pinewood, which was lamp and candle to the whole house. A handful of chips of wood, branches, and dried leaves, in one corner, represented the fuel; and a heap of snow underneath the hole showed that its influence was not potent.
On the heap of rags, five persons were lying, huddled close together for warmth’s sake—father, mother, and three children. How had they come into such a condition as this? Ah, they had not always lived thus. Only a few years ago, this man had been a prosperous silversmith at Reading; his wife had been well dressed, his children well fed, his acquaintance large, and himself generally respected. How had it come about that they were now in this pitiable condition? Had the man been idle and neglectful of his business? By no means; he had been diligent and hard-working. Was he a drunken profligate? Not at all; he was, for the age, unusually sober. Had he committed some terrible crime which had brought him to ruin?
The only true answer seems scarcely possible: and yet the only answer possible is awfully true. The man was born a Jew, and had become a Christian. It was only natural that this should turn the Jewish community against him; and all his acquaintances deserted him as a matter of course. But surely this very fact should have made the Christian community more friendly and helpful! Alas, the Christian community, in bondage to the iron yoke of Rome, hated him more as a Jew than they welcomed him as a Christian. Rome has always been the hater and opponent of Israel. The law of England at that time was actually this: that if a Jew became converted to Christianity, he forfeited everything he possessed to the Crown, and had to begin the world again. This had been the lot of poor David ben Mossi, and his wife Ruth, whose conversion had taken place under Gerhardt’s preaching. They were too honest to hide the change in their convictions, though to reveal it meant worldly ruin. They applied for baptism, and by so doing literally gave up all for Christ—home, goods, gain, and occupation, not to speak of friends. David obtained work as a woodcutter, which brought them in just enough to keep life in them and rags about them; and he built with his own hands, aided by his faithful Ruth, the mud hovel, wherein they found the only shelter that this cold world had for them. They had left Reading, preferring solitude to averted looks and abusive tongues; and not a creature in Dorchester came near them. Alike as Jews and as poor people, they were not worth cultivating.
David had retained his name, being one used also by Christians; but Ruth had been required to change hers. She had chosen the name of Christian, as the most truthful and expressive that she could take.
“And I like to feel,” she said to David, “that I have something of our blessed Lord in my name.”
“Let us keep Him in our hearts, Wife,” was the answer: “then it will not much matter whether or no we have Him any where else.”
It was bitterly cold in the hovel that snowy night. The children had cried themselves to sleep, and the parents felt as if they could easily have done the same. The lights were out at Dorchester, and all nature had settled down to rest, when Christian, who could not sleep for the cold, fancied she heard a voice outside the hut.
“David!” it seemed to say.
But the voice, if voice there were, was faint, and Christian did not like to rouse the husband who had lost his suffering in sleep, for what might have been a mere fancy. The voice spoke again.
“Ruth!” it said this time.
Christian hesitated no longer.
“David! There is one without, calling on us. And it must be one we knew of old, for it calls me by my old name. Pray thee, get up, and let the poor soul in; ’tis not a night for a dog to tarry without, never speak of a human creature, who must be in some trouble.”
David sat up and listened.
“I hear nothing, Wife. I think thou must have been dreaming.”
“Nay, I have been wide awake this hour gone. I am sure some one spoke.”
“I think it’s fancy, Christian. However—”
“There’s no harm in making sure.”
“There’s the harm of letting in a lot of snow,” said David, not suiting the action to the word, for he had risen and was pulling on his hose. They required careful pulling, as they were so nearly in pieces that very little rough handling would have damaged them past repair. He was fastening the last clasp when the voice spoke again. It was nearer now, close at the door, and it was low and trembling, as if the applicant had hard work to speak at all.
“For the love of the Crucified,” it said, “take in a Christian child!”
David’s response was to open the door instantly.
Something at once staggered in, and sank down on the bench:—something which looked at first sight more like a statue of white marble than a human being, so thick lay the snow over the wrappers which enfolded it. But when David had succeeded in unfolding the wrappers, and brushing off the snow, they discovered that their visitor was a woman, and that in her arms a child lay clasped, either dead or sleeping.
The moment that Christian perceived so much as this, she hastily rose, throwing her poor mantle over her, and drew near to the stranger.
“Poor soul, you’re heartily welcome,” she said, “whoever you are. We have little beside a roof to offer you, for we have scarcely food or raiment ourselves, nor money to buy either; but such as we have we will give you with all our hearts.”
“May the Blessed bless you!” was the faint answer. “Don’t you know me, Ruth?”
“Know you!” Christian studied the face of her unexpected guest. “Nay, I do almost believe—Countess! Is it you?”
“Ay.”
“Whatever has brought you to this? The richest Jewess in Reading! Have you, too, become a Christian like us?”
Countess did not give a direct answer to that direct question.
“I am not poor now,” she said. “I can find you money for food for us all, if you will suffer me to stay here till the storm has abated, and the roads can be travelled again.”
“That won’t be this s’ennight,” interjected David.
“But how—what?” queried Christian helplessly.
“This brought me,” said Countess, touching the child. “I was under vow to save him. And—well, I could not do it otherwise.”
“Is he alive?” asked Christian pityingly.
“Yes, only very fast asleep. Lay him down with your little ones, and wrap this coverlet over them all, which has sheltered us in our journey.”
It was a down coverlet of rich damask silk. Christian’s fingers touched it as with a feeling of strangeness, and yet familiarity—as a handling of something long unfelt, but well-known years ago.
“I have nothing to offer you save a crust of barley bread,” she said hesitatingly. “I am sorry for it, but it is really all I have.”
“Then,” said Countess with a smile, “play the widow of Zarephath. Give me thy ‘little cake,’ and when the light dawns, you shall have a new cruse and barrel in reward.”
“Nay, we look for no reward,” answered Christian heartily. “I am only grieved that it should be so little. You are spent with your journey.”
“I am most spent with the weight. I had to carry the child, and this,” she replied, touching a large square parcel, tied in a silk handkerchief round her waist. “It is the child’s property—all he has in the world. May the Blessed One be praised that I have saved them both!”
“‘To them that have no might, He increaseth strength,’” quoted Christian softly. “Then—is not this your child?”
“Yes—now.”
“But not—?”
“By gift, not by birth. And it is the Holy One who has given him. Now, good friends, let me not keep you from sleeping. Perhaps I shall sleep myself. We will talk more in the morning.”
It was evident when the morning arrived, that the saved child had suffered less than she who had saved him. Both needed care, nourishment, and rest; but Countess wanted it far more than Rudolph. A few days sufficed to restore him to his usual lively good health; but it was weeks ere she recovered the physical strain and mental suffering of that terrible night. But Countess was one of those people who never either “give in” or “give up.” Before any one but herself thought her half fit for it, she went out, not mentioning her destination, on an expedition which occupied the greater part of a day, and returned at night with a satisfied expression on her face.
“I have settled every thing,” she said. “And now I will tell you something. Perhaps you were puzzled to know why I sought shelter with you, instead of going to some of my wealthy acquaintances in the town?”
“I was, very much,” answered Christian hesitatingly.
“I supposed you had some reason for it,” said David.
“Right. I had a reason—a strong one. That I shall not tell you at present. But I will tell you what perhaps you have already guessed—that I have been divorced from Leo.”
“Well, I fancied you must have had a quarrel with him, or something of that kind,” replied Christian.
“Oh, we are on excellent terms,” said Countess in a rather sarcastic tone. “So excellent, that he even proposed himself to lend me an escort of armed retainers to convey me to London.”
“To London!” exclaimed Christian, in some surprise. “I thought you would be going back to your father’s house at Oxford.”
“Oh, no!—that would not do at all. I did think of it for a moment; not now. London will be much better.”
“May I take the liberty to ask how you mean to live?” said David. “Of course it is no business of mine, but—”
“Go on,” said Countess, when he hesitated.
“Well, I don’t quite see what you can do, without either husband or father. Perhaps your brother Rubi is coming with you? You can’t live alone, surely.”
“I could, and get along very well, too; but I suppose one must not defy the world, foolish thing as it is. No, my brother Rubi is not coming, and I don’t want him either. But I want you—David and Ruth.”
David and Ruth—as Countess persisted in calling her—looked at each other in surprise and perplexity.
“You can take a week to think about it,” resumed Countess, in her coolest manner, which was very cool indeed. “I shall not set forth until the Sabbath is over. But I do not suppose you are so deeply in love with this hovel that you could not bring yourselves to leave it behind.”
“What do you mean us to do or be?”
“I intend to set up a silversmith’s and jeweller’s shop, and I mean David to be the silversmith, and to train Rudolph to the business.”
This sounded practical. David’s heart leaped within him, at the thought of returning to his old status and occupation.
“I could do that,” he said, with a gleam in his eyes.
“I know you could,” replied Countess.
“AndI?” suggested Christian wistfully.
“You may see to the house, and keep the children out of mischief. We shall want some cooking and cleaning, I suppose; and I hate it.”
“Do you take no servants with you?” asked Christian, in an astonished tone. For a rich lady like Countess to travel without a full establishment, both of servants and furniture, was amazing to her.
“I take the child with me,” said Countess.
Christian wondered why the one should hinder the other; but she said no more.
“But—” David began, and stopped.
“I would rather hear all the objections before I set forth,” responded Countess calmly.
“Countess, you must clearly understand that we cannot deny our faith.”
“Who asked you to do so?”
“Nor can we hide it.”
“That is your own affair. Do Christians clean silver worse than Jews?”
“They should not, if they are real Christians and not mere pretenders.”
“Shams—I hate shams. Don’t be a sham anything. Please yourself whether you are a Jew or a Christian, but for goodness’ sake don’t be a sham.”
“I hope I am not that,” said David. “If you are content with us, Countess, my wife and I will be only too happy to go with you. The children—”
“Oh, you don’t fancy leaving them behind? Very well—they can play with Rudolph, and pull the cat’s tail.”
“I shall whip them if they do,” said Christian, referring not to Rudolph, but to the cat.
“Countess, do you mean to cut yourself off from all your friends?” asked David, with a mixed feeling of perplexity and pity. “I cannot understand why you should do so.”
“‘Friends!’” she replied, with an indescribable intonation. “I fancy I shall take them all with me. Do as I bid thee, David, and trouble not thyself to understand me.”
David felt silenced, and asked no more questions.
“Rudolph must have an English name,” said Countess abruptly. “Let him be called Ralph henceforth. That is the English version of his own name, and he will soon grow accustomed to it.”
“What is he to call you?” asked Christian.
“What he pleases,” was the answer.
What it pleased Rudolph to do was to copy the other children, and say “Mother;” but he applied the term impartially alike to Countess and to Christian, till the latter took him aside, and suggested that it would be more convenient if he were to restrict the term to one of them.
“You see,” she said, “if you call us both by one name, we shall never know which of us you mean.”
“Oh, it does not matter,” answered Master Rudolph with imperial unconcern. “Either of you could button me up and tie my shoes. But if you like, I’ll call you Christie.”
“I think it would be better if you did,” responded Christian with praiseworthy gravity.
From the time that this matter was settled until the journey was fairly begun, Countess showed an amount of impatience and uneasiness which it sometimes took all Christian’s meekness to bear. She spent the whole day, while the light lasted, at the little lattice, silently studying a large square volume, which she carefully wrapped every evening in silk brocade, and then in a woollen handkerchief, placing it under the pillow on which she slept, and which had come from Leo’s house for her use. Beyond that one day’s expedition, she never quitted the hut till they left Dorchester. Of the hardships inseparable from her temporary position she did not once complain; all her impatience was connected with some inner uncertainty or apprehension which she did not choose to reveal. Rudolph looked far more disdainfully than she on the rye-crusts and ragged garments of his companions.
At last, on the Sunday morning—for nobody dreamed in those days of not travelling on Sunday after mass—a small party of armed servants arrived at the hut, leading three palfreys and four baggage-mules, beside their own horses. Three of the mules were already loaded. Countess issued her orders, having evidently considered and settled every thing beforehand. Christian was to ride one palfrey, Countess the other, and David the third, with Rudolph in front of him. His children were to be disposed of, in panniers, on the back of the unloaded mule, with a lad of about fifteen years, who was one of the escort, behind them.
“Hast thou found us any convoy, Josce?” asked Countess of the man who took direction of the escort.
Josce doffed his cap to answer his mistress, to whom he showed considerable deference.
“Deuslesalt journeys to-day as far as Wallingford,” he said, “and Simeon the usurer, who has a strong guard, will go thence to-morrow to Windsor.”
“Good. Set forth!” said Countess.
So they set out from the mud hovel. The snow was still deep in many parts, but it had been trodden down in the well-worn tracks, such as was the high road from Oxford to London. Countess rode first of the party, ordering David to ride beside her; Christian came next, by the mule which bore her children; the armed escort was behind. A mile away from the hut they joined the imposing retinue of Deuslesalt, who was a wealthy silk-merchant, and in their company the journey to Wallingford was accomplished. There Countess and Rudolph found shelter with Deuslesalt in the house of a rich Jew, while David, Christian, and the children were received as travellers in a neighbouring hospital; for an hospital, in those days, was not necessarily a place where the sick were treated, but was more of the nature of a large almshouse, where all the inmates lived and fared in common.
On the second day they joined the usurer’s party, which was larger and stronger than that of the silk-merchant. At Windsor they found an inn where they were all lodged; and the following day they entered London. It now appeared that Countess had in some mysterious manner made preparation for her coming; for they rode straight to a small house at the corner of Mark Lane, which they found plainly but comfortably furnished to receive them. Countess paid liberally and dismissed her escort, bade David unpack the goods she had brought, and dispose of the jewels in the strong safes built into the walls, desired Christian to let her know if anything necessary for the house were not provided, and established herself comfortably at the window with her big book, and Rudolph on a hassock at her feet.
“David!” she said, looking up, when the unpacking was about half done.
David touched his forelock in answer.
“I wish thou wouldst buy a dog and cat.”
“Both?” demanded David, rather surprised. “They will fight.”
“Oh, the cat is for the children,” said Countess coolly; “I don’t want one. But let the dog be the biggest thou canst get.”
“I think I’d have the dog by himself,” said David. “The children will be quite as well pleased. And if you want a big one, he is pretty sure to be good-tempered.”
So David and Rudolph went to buy a dog, and returned with an amiable shaggy monster quite as tall as the latter—white and tan, with a smile upon his lips, and a fine feathery tail, which little Helwis fell at once to stroking. This eligible member of the family received the name of Olaf, and was clearly made to understand that he must tolerate anything from the children, and nothing from a burglar.
Things were settling down, and custom already beginning to come into the little shop, when one evening, as they sat round the fire, Countess surprised David with a question—
“David, what did the priest to thee when thou wert baptised?”
David looked up in some astonishment.
“Why, he baptised me,” said he simply.
“I want to know all he did,” said Countess.
“Don’t think I could tell you if I tried. He put some oil on me, and some spittle,—and water, of course,—and said ever so many prayers.”
“What did he say in his prayers?”
“Eh, how can I tell you? They were all in Latin.”
“The Lord does not speak French or English, then?” demanded Countess satirically.
“Well!” said David, scratching his head, “when you put it that way—”
“I don’t see what other way to put it. But I thought they baptised with water?”
“Oh, yes, the real baptism is with water.”
“Then what is the good of the unreal baptism, with oil and other rubbish?”
“I cry you mercy, but you must needs ask the priest. I’m only an ignorant man.”
“Dost thou think he knows?”
“The priest? Oh, of course.”
“I should like to be as sure as thou art. Can any body baptise?—or must it be done by a priest only?”
“Oh, only—well—” David corrected himself. “Of course the proper person is a priest. But in case of necessity, it can be done by a layman. A woman, even, may do it, if a child be in danger of death. But then, there is no exorcism nor anointing; only just the baptising with water.”
“I should have thought that was all there need be, at any time.”
With that remark Countess dropped the subject. But a few days later she resumed the catechising, though this time she chose Christian as her informant.
“What do Christians mean by baptism?”
Christian paused a moment. She had not hitherto reflected on the esoteric meaning of the ceremony to which she had been ordered to submit as the introductory rite of her new religion.
“I suppose,” she said slowly, “it must mean—confession.”
“Confession of what?” inquired Countess.
“Of our faith in the Lord Jesus,” replied Christian boldly.
To Christian’s surprise, Countess made no scornful answer. She sat in silence, looking from the window with eyes that saw neither the knight who was riding past, nor the fish-woman selling salt cod to the opposite neighbour.
“Can faith not exist without confession?” she said in a low tone.
“Would it not be poor faith?”
“Why?” demanded Countess, drawing her brows together, and in a tone that was almost fierce.
“I should think there would be no love in it. And faith which had no love in it would be a very mean, shabby, worthless sort of faith.”
“I don’t see that,” said Countess stubbornly. “I believe that this book is lying on the window-seat. Can’t I do that without loving either the window-seat or the book?”
“Ah, yes, when you only believe things. But the faith which is shown in baptism is not believing a fact; it is trusting yourself, body and soul, with a Person.”
“That makes a difference, I dare say,” replied Countess, and relapsed into silence.
A week later she came into the shop, where David was busy polishing up the ornaments in stock.
“David,” she said abruptly, “what does a Christian do when he is completely perplexed, and cannot tell how to act?”
“Well, I don’t exactly know,” said David, looking perplexed himself. “Never was like that, so far as I know. Leastwise—No, I couldn’t just say I ever have been.”
“O happy man! Some Christians are, sometimes, I suppose?”
“I should think so. I don’t know.”
“What wouldst thou do, then, if thou wert in a slough from which thou sawest not the way out?”
“Why, I think—I should pray the Lord to show me the way out. I don’t see what else I could do.”
“And if no answer came?”
“Then I should be a bit afraid it meant that I’d walked in myself, and hadn’t heeded His warnings. Sometimes, I think, when folks do that, He leaves them to flounder awhile before He helps them out.”
“That won’t do this time.”
“Well, if that’s not it, then maybe it would be because I wanted to get out on my own side, and wouldn’t see His hand held out on the other. The Lord helps you out in His way, not yours: and that often means, up the steeper-looking bank of the two.”
Countess was silent. David applied himself to bending the pin of a brooch, which he thought rather too straight.
“Is it ever right to do wrong?” she said suddenly.
“Why, no!—how could it be?” answered David, looking up.
“You put me deeper in the slough, every word you say. I will go no further to-day.”
And she turned and walked away.
“Christie,” said David to his wife that evening, “thou and I must pray for our mistress.”
“Why, what’s the matter with her?”
“I don’t know. She’s in some trouble; and I think it is not a little trouble. Unless I mistake, it is trouble of a weary, wearing sort, that she goes round and round in, and can’t see the way out.”
“But what are we to ask for, if we know nothing?”
“Dear heart! ask the Lord to put it right. He knows the way out; He does not want us to tell Him.”
A fortnight elapsed before any further conversation took place. At the end of that time Ash Wednesday came, and David and Christian went to church as usual. The service was half over, when, to their unspeakable astonishment, they perceived Countess standing at the western door, watching every item of the ceremonies, with an expression on her face which was half eager, half displeased, but wholly disturbed and wearied. She seemed desirous to avoid being seen, and slipped out the instant the mass was over.
“Whatever brought her there?” asked Christian.
David shook his head.
“I expect it was either the Lord or the Devil,” he said. “Let us ask Him more earnestly to bring her out of the slough on the right side.”
“Did you see me in All Hallows this morning?” asked Countess abruptly, as they sat beside the fire that night. The children were in bed, and Olaf lying on the hearth.
“Ay, I did,” replied Christian; and her tone added—“to my surprise.”
“What are those things for there?”
“What things?”
“A number of dolls, all painted and gilt.”
“Do you mean the holy images?”
“I mean the images. I don’t believe in the holiness.”
“They are images of the blessed saints.”
“What are they for?” demanded Countess, knitting her brows.
“The priest says they are to remind us, and are helps to prayer.”
“To whose prayers?” said Countess disdainfully. “No woman in England prays more regularly than I; but I never wanted such rubbish as that to help me.”
“Oh, they don’t help me,” said David. “I never pay any attention to them; I just pray straight up.”
“I don’t understand praying to God in the House of Baal. ‘Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image.’”
“But they say the Church has loosed that command now. And of course we can’t set ourselves up above the Church.”
“What on earth do you mean? Art thou God, to kill and to make alive, that thou shouldst style the keeping of His command ‘setting one’s self above the Church?’ The Church shall never guide me, if she speak contrary to God.”
“But how can she, when God inspires her?”
“There is another question I want settled first. How can I believe that God inspires her, when I see that she contradicts His distinct commands?”
“I suppose the priest would say that was very wicked.”
“What do I care for that popinjay? How didyouget over it? Had you no sensation of horror, when you were required to bow down to those stocks and stones?”
“Well, no,” said Christian, speaking very slowly. “I believed what Gerard had taught us, and—”
“When did Gerhardt ever teach you that rubbish?”
“He never did,” answered David. “The priests taught us that. And I did find it main hard to swallow at first.”
“Ah! I’m afraid I shall find it too hard to swallow at last. But there is nothing of all that in this book.”
“I know nought about books. But of course the Church must know the truth,” responded David uneasily.
“This is the truth,” answered Countess, laying her hand upon the book. “But if this be, that is not. David—Ruth—I believe as you do in Jesus Christ of Nazareth: but I believe in no gilded images nor priestly lies. I shall take my religion from His words, not from them. I should like to be baptised, if it mean to confess Him before men; but if it only mean to swallow the priests’ fables, and to kneel before gods that cannot hear nor save, I will have none of it. As the Lord liveth, before whom I stand, I will never bow down to the work of men’s hands!”
She had risen and stood before them, a grand figure, with hands clenched and eyes on fire. Christian shrank as if alarmed. David spoke in a regretful tone.
“Well! I thought that way myself for a while. But they said. I couldn’t be a Christian if I did not go to church, and attend the holy mass. The Church had the truth, and God had given it to her: so I thought I might be mistaken, and I gave in. I’ve wondered sometimes whether I did right.”
“If that be what baptism means—to put my soul into the hands of that thing they call the Church, and let it mould me like wax—to defile myself with all the idols and all the follies that I see there—I will not be baptised. I will believe without it. And if He ask me at the Day of Doom why I did not obey His command given in Galilee, I shall say, ‘Lord, I could not do it without disobeying Thy first command, given amid the thunders of Sinai.’ If men drive me to do thus, it will not be my sin, but theirs.”
“Well, I don’t know!” answered David, in evident perplexity. “I suppose youcouldbe baptised, with nothing more—but I don’t know any priest that would do it.”
“Would you do it?”
“Oh, I daren’t!”
“David, your religion is very queer.”
“What’s the matter?” asked David in astonishment.
“The other day, when I told you I was in a great slough, you did not advise me to go and ask those gaudy images to help me out of it; you spoke of nobody but the Lord. Now that we come to talk about images, you flounder about as if you did not know what to say.”
“Well, don’t you see, I know one o’ them two, but I’ve only been told the other.”
“Oh yes, I see. You are not the first who has had one religion for sunshiny weather, and another for rainy days; only that with you—different from most people—you wear your best robe in the storm.”
David rubbed his face upon the sleeve of his jacket, as if he wished to rub some more discrimination into his brains.
“Nay, I don’t know—I hope you’ve no call to say that.”
“I usually say what I think. But there’s no need to fret; you’ve time to mend.”
Both the women noticed that for a few days after that, David was very silent and thoughtful. When the Sunday came he excused himself from going to church, much to the surprise and perplexity of his wife. The day after he asks for a holiday, and did not return till late at night.
As they sat round the fire on the following evening, David said suddenly,—“I think I’ve found it out.”
“What?” asked his mistress.
“Your puzzle—and my own too.”
“Let me have the key, by all means, if you possess it.”
“Well, I have been to see the hermit of Holywell. They say he is the holiest man within reach of London, go what way you will. And he has read me a bit out of a book that seems to settle the matter. At least I thought so. Maybe you mightn’t see it so easy.”
“It takes more than fair words to convince me. However, let me hear what it is. What was the book? I should like to know that first.”
“He said it was an epistle written by Paul the Apostle to somebody—I can’t just remember whom.”
“Who was he?”
“Why, he was one of the saints, wasn’t he?”
“I don’t know. There’s no mention of him in my book.”
David looked like a man stopped unexpectedly in rapid career. “You always want to know so much about every thing!” he said, rubbing his face on his sleeve, as he had a habit of doing when puzzled. “Now I never thought to ask that.”
“But before I can act on a message from my superior, I must surely satisfy myself as to the credentials of the messenger. However, let us hear the message. Perhaps that may tell us something. Some things bear on their faces the evidence of what they are—still more of what they are not.”
“Well, what he read was this: ‘If thou shalt confess with thy mouth the Lord Jesus, and shalt believe in thine heart that God hath raised Him from the dead, thou shalt be saved.’ And ‘Look you,’ saith he, ‘there isn’t a word here of any body else.’ ‘If thou shalt confess’ Him—not the saints, nor the images, nor the Church, nor the priest. ‘Baptism,’ saith he, ‘is confessing Him.’ Then he turned over some leaves, and read a bit from another place, how our Lord said, ‘Come unto Me, all ye—’”
Countess’s eyes lighted up suddenly. “That’s in my book. ‘All ye that travail and are heavy laden, and I will refresh you.’”
“That’s it. And says he, ‘He does not say, “Come to the Church or the priest,” but “Come to Me.”’ ‘Well,’ says I, ‘but how can you do one without the other?’ ‘You may come to the priest easy enough, and never come to Christ,’ saith he, ‘so it’s like to be as easy to come to Christ without the priest.’ ‘Well, but,’ says I, ‘priests doesn’t say so.’ ‘No,’ says he; ‘they don’t’—quite short like. ‘But for all I can see in this book,’ says he, ‘He does.’”
“Go on!” said Countess eagerly, when David paused.
“Well, then—I hope you’ll excuse me if I said more than I should—says I to him, ‘Now look here, Father: suppose you had somebody coming to you for advice, that had been a Jew like me, and was ready to believe in our Lord, but could not put up with images and such, would you turn him away because he could not believe enough, or would you baptise him?’ ‘I would baptise him,’ saith he. Then he turns over the book again, and reads: ‘“Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and thou shalt be saved.” That is what the Apostles said to one man,’ says he: ‘and if it was enough then, it is enough now.’ ‘But, Father,’ says I, ‘that sounds rather as if you thought the Church might go wrong, or had gone wrong, in putting all these things beside our Lord.’ ‘My son,’ saith he, ‘what meanest thou by the Church? The Holy Ghost cannot teach error. Men in the Church may go wrong, and are continually wandering into error. What said our Lord to the rulers of the Jews, who were the priests of His day? “Ye do err, not knowing the Scriptures.” This book is truth: when men leave this book,’ saith he, ‘they go astray.’ ‘But not holy Church?’ said I. ‘Ah,’ saith he, ‘the elect may stray from the fold; how much more they that are strangers there? The only safe place for any one of us,’ he says, ‘is to keep close to the side of the Good Shepherd.’”
“David, where dwells that hermit?”
“By the holy well, away on the Stronde, west of Lud Gate. Any body you meet on that road will tell you where to find him. His hut stands a bit back from the high way, on the north.”
“Very good. I’ll find him.”
The next day, until nearly the hour of curfew, nothing was seen of Countess. She took Olaf with her as guard, and they returned at the last moment, just in time to enter the City before the gates were closed. David and Christian had finished their work, shut up the shop, and put the children to bed, when Olaf made his stately entrance, with his mistress behind him.
“Thy old hermit,” she said, addressing David, “is the first decent Christian I have found—the first that goes by his Master’s words, and does not worry me with nonsense.”
She drew off her hood, and sat down in the chimney-corner.
“You found him then?” answered David. “Had you much trouble?”
“I found him. Never mind the trouble.”
“Has he settled the puzzle for you, then?”
“I think I settled it for him.”
“I ask your pardon, but I don’t understand you.”
“I don’t suppose you do.”
“Countess,” said Christian, coming down the ladder, “I bought the herrings as you bade me; but there is no salt salmon in the market to-day.”
“To whom are you speaking?” inquired Countess, with an expression of fun about the corners of her lips.
“You,” replied Christian in surprise.
“Then, perhaps you will have the goodness to call me by my Christian name, which is Sarah.”
“O Countess! have you been baptised?”
“I have.”
“By the hermit?”
“By the hermit.”
“But how?”
“How? With water. What did you expect?”
“But—all at once, without any preparation?”
“What preparation was needed? I made my confession of Christ, and he baptised me in His name. The preparation was only to draw the water.”
“What on earth did you do for sponsors?”
“Had none.”
“Did he let you?”
A little smothered laugh came from Countess. “He had not much choice,” she said. “He did try it on. But I told him plainly, I was not going to give in to that nonsense: that if he chose to baptise me at once, I was there ready, and would answer any questions and make any confession that he chose. But if not—not. I was not coming again.”
“And he accepted it!” said David, with a dozen notes of exclamation in his voice.
“Did I not tell you he was the most sensible Christian I ever found? He said, ‘Well!—after all, truly, any thing save the simple baptism with water was a man-made ordinance. The Ethiopian eunuch had no sponsors’—I don’t know who he was, but I suppose the hermit did—‘and he probably made as true a Christian for all that’ ‘In truth,’ said I, ‘the institution of sponsors seems good for little children—friends who promise to see that they shall be brought up good Christians if their parents die early; but for a woman of my age, it is simply absurd, and I won’t have it. Let me confess Christ as my Messiah and Lord, and baptise me with water in His name, and I am sure he will be satisfied with it. And if any of the saints and angels are not satisfied, they can come down and say so, if they think it worth while.’ So—as he saw, I suppose, thatIwas not going to do it—he gave in.”
“I hope it’s all right,” said David, rather uneasily.
“David, I wish I could put a little sense into you. You are a good man, but you are a very foolish one. ‘All right!’ Of course it is all right. It is man, and not God, who starts at trifles like a frightened horse, and makes men offenders for a word. The Lord looketh on the heart.”
“Ay, but Moses (on whom be peace!) was particular enough about some details which look very trifling to us.”
“He was particular enough where they concerned the honour of God, or where they formed a part of some symbolism which the alteration would cause to be wrongly interpreted so as to teach untruth. But for all else, he let them go, and so did our Lord. When Aaron explained why he had not eaten the goat of the sin-offering, Moses was content. Nor did Christ condemn David the King, but excused him, for eating the shewbread. I am sure Moses would have baptised me this morning, without waiting for sponsors or Lucca oil. This is a very silly world; I should have thought the Church might have been a trifle wiser, and really it seems to have less common sense of the two. How could I have found sponsors, I should like to know? I know nobody but you and Christian.”
“They told us, when we were baptised, that the Church did not allow a husband and wife to be sponsors to the same person. So we could not both have stood for you. It would have had to be Christian and Rudolph, and some other woman.”
“Rudolph! That baby! (Note 1.) Would they have let him stand?”
“Yes—if you could not find any one else.”
“And promise to bring me up in the Catholic faith? Well, if that is not rich!—when I have got to bring him up! I will tell you what, David—if some benevolent saint would put a little common sense into the Church, it would be a blessing to somebody. ‘The Church!’ I am weary of that ceaseless parrot scream. The Church stands in the way to Jesus of Nazareth, not as a door to go in, but as a wall to bar out. I wish we had lived in earlier days, before all that rubbish had had time to grow. Now, mind you,” concluded Countess, as she rose to go to bed, “David and Christian, I don’t mean to be bothered about this. Don’t talk to me, nor to Rudolph, nor to any body else. I shall read the Book, and teach him to do it; but I shall not pray to those gilded things; and he shall not. What Gerhardt taught is enough for him and me. And remember, if too much be said, the King’s officers may come and take every thing away. I do not see that it is my duty to go and tell them. If they come, let them come, and God be my aid and provider! Otherwise, we had better keep quiet.”
Note 1. That little children were at times allowed to be sponsors in the Middle Ages, is proved by the instance of John Earl of Kent in 1330, whose brother and sister, the former probably under ten years of age, and the latter aged only eighteen months, stood sponsors for him. (Prob. aet. Johannis Com. Kant., 23 Edward Third, 76.)