NOT long after this, as the little family at Tergou sat at dinner, Luke Peterson burst in on them, covered with dust.
"Good people, Mistress Catherine is wanted instantly at Rotterdam."
"My name is Catherine, young man. Kate, it will be Margaret."
"Ay dame, she said to me, 'Good Luke, hie thee to Tergou, and ask for Eli the hosier, and pray his wife Catherine to come to me, for God his love.' I didn't wait for daylight."
"Holy saints! He has come home, Kate. Nay, she would sure have said so. What on earth can it be?" And she heaped conjecture on conjecture.
"Mayhap the young man can tell us," hazarded Kate, timidly.
"That I can," said Luke. "Why, her babe is a-dying. And she was so wrapped up in it!"
Catherine started up: "What is his trouble?"
"Nay, I know not. But it has been peaking and pining worse and worse this while."
A furtive glance of satisfaction passed between Cornelis and Sybrandt. Luckily for them Catherine did not see it. Her face was turned towards her husband. "Now, Eli," cried she, furiously, "if you say a word against it, you and I shall quarrel, after all these years."
"Who gainsays thee, foolish woman? Quarrel with your own shadow; while I go borrow Peter's mule for ye."
"Bless thee, my good man! Bless thee! Didst never yet fail me at a pinch. Now eat your dinners who can, while I go and make ready."
She took Luke back with her in the cart, and, on the way, questioned and cross-questioned him, severely, and seductively, by turns, till she had turned his mind inside out, what there was of it.
Margaret met her at the door, pale and agitated, and threw her arms round her neck, and looked imploringly in her face.
"Come, he is alive, thank God," said Catherine, after scanning her eagerly.
She looked at the failing child, and then at the poor hollow-eyed mother, alternately. "Lucky you sent for me," said she. "The child is poisoned."
"Poisoned! by whom?"
"By you. You have been fretting."
"Nay, indeed, mother. How can I help fretting?"
"Don't tell me, Margaret. A nursing mother has no business to fret. She must turn her mind away from her grief to the comfort that lies in her lap. Know you not that the child pines if the mother vexes herself? This comes of your reading and writing.Those idle crafts befit a man; but they keep all useful knowledge out of a woman. The child must be weaned."
"Oh, you cruel woman," cried Margaret, vehemently; "I am sorry I sent for you. Would you rob me of the only bit of comfort I have in the world? A-nursing my Gerard, I forget I am the most unhappy creature beneath the sun."
"That you do not," was the retort, "or he would not be the way he is."
"Mother!" said Margaret, imploringly.
"'Tis hard," replied Catherine, relenting. "But bethink thee; would it not be harder to look down and see his lovely wee face a-looking up at you out of a little coffin?"
"O, Jesu!"
"And how could you face your other troubles with your heart aye full, and your lap empty?"
"Oh, mother, I consent to anything. Only save my boy."
"That is a good lass. Trust to me! I do stand by, and see clearer than thou."
Unfortunately there was another consent to be gained; the babe's: and he was more refractory than his mother.
"There," said Margaret, trying to affect regret at his misbehaviour; "he loves me too well."
But Catherine was a match for them both. As she came along she had observed a healthy young woman, sitting outside her own door, with an infant hard by. She went and told her the case; and would she nurse the pining child for the nonce, till she had matters ready to wean him?
The young woman consented with a smile, and popped her child into the cradle and came into Margaret's house. She dropped a curtsy, and Catherine put the child into her hands. She examined, and pitied it, and purred over it, and proceeded to nurse it, just as if it had been her own.
Margaret, who had been paralyzed at her assurance, cast a rueful look at Catherine, and burst out crying.
The visitor looked up. "What is to do? Wife, ye told me not the mother was unwilling."
"She is not: she is only a fool. Never heed her: and you, Margaret, I am ashamed of you."
"You are a cruel, hard-hearted woman," sobbed Margaret.
"Them as take in hand to guide the weak, need be hardish. And you will excuse me; but you are not my flesh and blood: and your boy is."
After giving this blunt speech time to sink, she added, "Come now, she is robbing her own to save yours, and you can think of nothing better than bursting out a-blubbering in the woman's face. Out fie, for shame?"
"Nay, wife," said the nurse. "Thank Heaven, I have enough for my own and for hers to boot. And prithee wyte not on her! Maybe the troubles o' life ha' soured her own milk."
"And her heart into the bargain," said the remorseless Catherine.
Margaret looked her full in the face; and down went her eyes.
"I know I ought to be very grateful to you," sobbed Margaret to the nurse: then turned her head and leaned away over the chair, not to witness the intolerable sight of another nursing her Gerard, and Gerard drawing no distinction between this new mother, and her the banished one.
The nurse replied, "You are very welcome, my poor woman. And so are you, Mistress Catherine, which are my townswoman, and know it not."
"What, are ye from Tergou? all the better. But I cannot call your face to mind."
"Oh, you know not me: my husband and me, we are very humble folk by you. But true Eli and his wife are known of all the town; and respected. So I am at your call, dame; and at yours, wife; and yours, my pretty poppet; night or day."
"There's a woman of the right old sort," said Catherine, as the door closed upon her.
"I HATE her. I HATE her. I HATE her," said Margaret, with wonderful fervour.
Catherine only laughed at this outburst.
"That is right," said she, "better say it, as set sly and think it. It is very natural after all. Come, here is your bundle o' comfort. Take and hate that; if ye can:" and she put the child in her lap.
"No, no;" said Margaret, turning her head half away from him: she could not for her life turn the other half. "He is not my child now; he is hers. I know not why she left him here, for my part. It was very good of her not to take him to her house, cradle and all; oh! oh! oh! oh! oh! oh! oh! oh!"
"Ah! well, one comfort,heis not dead. This gives me light; some other woman has got him away from me; like father, like son; oh! oh! oh! oh! oh!"
Catherine was sorry for her, and let her cry in peace. And after that, when she wanted Joan's aid, she used to take Gerard out, to give him a little fresh air. Margaret never objected; nor expressed the least incredulity; but on their return was always in tears.
This connivance was short lived. She was now altogether as eager to wean little Gerard. It was done; and he recovered health and vigour: and another trouble fell upon him directly: teething. But here Catherine's experience was invaluable: and now, in the midst of her grief and anxiety about the father, Margaret had moments of bliss, watching the son's tiny teeth come through. "Teeth, mother? I call them not teeth, but pearls of pearls." And each pearl that peeped and sparkled on his red gums, was to her the greatest feat Nature had ever achieved.
Her companion partook the illusion. And, had we told them a field of standing corn was equally admirable, Margaret would have changed to a reproachful gazelle, and Catherine turned us out of doors; so each pearl's arrival was announced with a shriek of triumph by whichever of them was the fortunate discoverer.
Catherine gossiped with Joan and learned that she was the wife of Jorian Ketel of Tergou, who had been servant to Ghysbrecht Van Swieten, but fallen out of favour, and come back to Rotterdam, his native place. His friends had got him the place of sexton to the parish, and what with that and carpentering, he did pretty well.
Catherine told Joan in return whose child it was she had nursed, and all about Margaret and Gerard, and the deep anxiety his silence had plunged them in. "Ay," said Joan, "the world is full of trouble." One day she said to Catherine, "It's my belief my man knows more about your Gerard than anybody in these parts: but he has got to be closer than ever of late. Drop in some day just afore sunset, and set him talking. And, for our Lady's sake, say not I set you on. The only hiding he ever gave me was for babbling his business: and I do not want another. Gramercy! I married a man for the comfort of the thing: not to be hided."
Catherine dropped in. Jorian was ready enough to tell her how he had befriended her son and perhaps saved his life. But thiswas no news to Catherine: and the moment she began to cross-question him as to whether he could guess why her lost boy neither came, nor wrote, he cast a grim look at his wife, who received it with a calm air of stolid candour and innocent unconsciousness; and his answers became short and sullen. "What should he know more than another?" and so on. He added, after a pause, "Think you the burgomaster takes such as me into his secrets?"
"Oh, then the burgomaster knows something?" said Catherine, sharply.
"Likely. Who else should?"
"I'll ask him."
"I would."
"And tell him you say he knows."
"That is right, dame. Go make him mine enemy. That is what a poor fellow always gets if he says a word to you women." And Jorian from that moment shrunk in and became impenetrable as a hedgehog, and almost as prickly.
His conduct caused both the poor women agonies of mind; alarm, and irritated curiosity. Ghysbrecht was for some cause Gerard's mortal enemy; had stopped his marriage, imprisoned him, hunted him. And here was his late servant, who when off his guard had hinted that this enemy had the clue to Gerard's silence. After sifting Jorian's every word and look, all remained dark and mysterious. Then Catherine told Margaret to go herself to him. "You are young; you are fair. You will, maybe, get more out of him than I could."
The conjecture was a reasonable one.
Margaret went with her child in her arms and tapped timidly at Jorian's door just before sunset. "Come in," said a sturdy voice. She entered, and there sat Jorian by the fireside. At sight of her he rose, snorted, and burst out of the house. "Is that for me, wife?" inquired Margaret, turning very red.
"You must excuse him," replied Joan, rather coldly; "he lays it to your door that he is a poor man instead of a rich one. It is something about a piece of parchment. There was one missing, and he got nought from the burgomaster all along of that one."
"Alas! Gerard took it!"
"Likely. But my man says you should not have let him: you were pledged to him to keep them all safe. And, sooth to say, I blame not my Jorian for being wroth. 'Tis hard for a poor man to be so nearfortune and lose it by those he has befriended. However, I tell him another story. Says I, 'Folk that are out o' trouble, like you and me, didn't ought to be too hard on folk that are in trouble: and she has plenty.' Going already? What is all your hurry, mistress?"
"Oh, it is not for me to drive the good man out of his own house."
"Well, let me kiss the bairn afore ye go. He is not in fault any way, poor innocent."
Upon this cruel rebuff Margaret came to a resolution, which she did not confide even to Catherine.
After six weeks' stay that good woman returned home.
On the child's birthday, which occurred soon after, Margaret did no work: but put on her Sunday clothes, and took her boy in her arms and went to the church and prayed there long and fervently for Gerard's safe return.
That same day and hour Father Clement celebrated a mass and prayed for Margaret's departed soul in the minster church at Basle.
SOME blackguard or other, I think it was Sybrandt, said, "A lie is not like a blow with a curtal axe."
True: for we can predict in some degree the consequences of a stroke with any material weapon. But a lie has no bounds at all. The nature of the thing is to ramify beyond human calculation.
Often in the every-day world a lie has cost a life, or laid waste two or three.
And so, in this story, what tremendous consequences of that one heartless falsehood!
Yet the tillers reaped little from it.
The brothers, who invented it merely to have one claimant the less for their father's property, saw little Gerard take their brother's place in their mother's heart. Nay, more, one day Eli openly proclaimed that, Gerard being lost, and probably dead, he had provided by will for little Gerard, and also for Margaret, his poor son's widow.
At this the look that passed between the black sheep was a caution to traitors. Cornelis had it on his lips to say Gerard was most likely alive. But he saw his mother looking at him, and checked himself in time.
Ghysbrecht Van Swieten, the other partner in that lie, was now a failing man. He saw the period fast approaching when all his wealth would drop from his body, and his misdeeds cling to his soul.
Too intelligent to deceive himself entirely, he had never been free from gusts of remorse. In taking Gerard's letter to Margaret he had compounded. "I cannot give up land and money," said his giant Avarice. "I will cause her no unnecessary pain," said his dwarf Conscience.
So, after first tampering with the seal, and finding there was not a syllable about the deed, he took it to her with his own hand; and made a merit of it to himself: a set-off; and on a scale not uncommon where the self-accuser is the judge.
The birth of Margaret's child surprised and shocked him, and put his treacherous act in a new light. Should his letter take effect he should cause the dishonour of her, who was the daughter of one friend, the granddaughter of another, and whose land he was keeping from her too.
These thoughts preying on him at that period of life, when the strength of body decays, and the memory of old friends revives, filled him with gloomy horrors. Yet he was afraid to confess. For the curé was an honest man, and would have made him disgorge. And with him Avarice was an ingrained habit, Penitence only a sentiment.
Matters were thus when, one day, returning from the town-hall to his own house, he found a woman waiting for him in the vestibule, with a child in her arms. She was veiled, and so, concluding she had something to be ashamed of, he addressed her magisterially. On this she let down her veil and looked him full in the face.
It was Margaret Brandt.
Her sudden appearance and manner startled him, and he could not conceal his confusion.
"Where is my Gerard?" cried she, her bosom heaving. "Is he alive?"
"For aught I know," stammered Ghysbrecht. "I hope so, for your sake. Prithee come into this room. The servants!"
"Not a step," said Margaret, and she took him by the shoulder, and held him with all the energy of an excited woman. "You know the secret of that which is breaking my heart. Why does not my Gerardcome, nor send a line this many months? Answer me, or all the town is like to hear me; let alone thy servants. My misery is too great to be sported with."
In vain he persisted he knew nothing about Gerard. She told him those who had sent her to him told her another tale. "You do know why he neither comes nor sends," said she, firmly.
At this Ghysbrecht turned paler and paler; but he summoned all his dignity, and said, "Would you believe those two knaves against a man of worship?"
"What two knaves?" said she, keenly.
He stammered, "Said ye not—? There, I am a poor old broken man, whose memory is shaken. And you come here, and confuse me so. I know not what I say."
"Ay, sir, your memory is shaken, or sure you would not be my enemy. My father saved you from the plague, when none other would come anigh you; and was ever your friend. My grandfather Floris helped you in your early poverty, and loved you, man and boy. Three generations of us you have seen; and here is the fourth of us; this is your old friend Peter's grandchild, and your old friend Floris his great-grandchild. Look down on his innocent face, and think of theirs!"
"Woman, you torture me," sighed Ghysbrecht, and sank upon a bench. But she saw her advantage, and kneeled before him, and put the boy on his knees. "This fatherless babe is poor Margaret Brandt's, that never did you ill, and comes of a race that loved you. Nay, look at his face. 'Twill melt thee more than any word of mine. Saints of heaven, what can a poor desolate girl and her babe have done to wipe out all memory of thine own young days, when thou wert guiltless as he is, that now looks up in thy face and implores thee to give him back his father?"
And with her arms under the child she held him up higher and higher, smiling under the old man's eyes.
He cast a wild look of anguish on the child, and another on the kneeling mother, and started up shrieking, "Avaunt, ye pair of adders."
The stung soul gave the old limbs a momentary vigour, and he walked rapidly, wringing his hands and clutching at his white hair. "Forget those days? I forget all else. Oh, woman, woman, sleepingor waking I see but the faces of the dead, I hear but the voices of the dead, and I shall soon be among the dead. There, there, what is done is done. I am in hell. I am in hell."
And unnatural force ended in prostration.
He staggered, and but for Margaret would have fallen. With her one disengaged arm she supported him as well as she could, and cried for help.
A couple of servants came running, and carried him away in a state bordering on syncope. The last Margaret saw of him was his old furrowed face, white and helpless as his hair that hung down over the servant's elbow.
"Heaven forgive me," she said. "I doubt I have killed the poor old man."
Then this attempt to penetrate the torturing mystery left it as dark, or darker than before. For when she came to ponder every word, her suspicion was confirmed that Ghysbrecht did know something about Gerard. "And who were the two knaves he thought had done a good deed, and told me? Oh, my Gerard, my poor deserted babe, you and I are wading in deep waters."
The visit to Tergou took more money than she could well afford: and a customer ran away in her debt. She was once more compelled to unfold Catherine's angel. But, strange to say, as she came down stairs with it in her hand she found some loose silver on the table, with a written line—
For Gerard His Wife
She fell with a cry of surprise on the writing: and soon it rose into a cry of joy.
"He is alive. He sends me this by some friendly hand."
She kissed the writing again and again, and put it in her bosom.
Time rolled on: and no news of Gerard.
And about every two months a small sum in silver found its way into the house. Sometimes it lay on the table. Once it was flung in through the bedroom window in a purse. Once it was at the bottom of Luke's basket. He had stopped at the public-house to talk to a friend. The giver or his agent was never detected. Catherine disowned it. Margaret Van Eyck swore she had no hand in it. So did Eli. And Margaret, whenever it came, used to say to little Gerard,"Oh, my poor deserted child, you and I are wading in deep waters."
She applied at least half this modest, but useful supply, to dressing the little Gerard beyond his station in life. "If it does come from Gerard, he shall see his boy neat." All the mothers in the street began to sneer, especially such as had brats out at elbows.
The months rolled on, and dead sickness of heart succeeded to these keener torments. She returned to her first thought: "Gerard must be dead. She should never see her boy's father again, nor her marriage lines." This last grief, which had been somewhat allayed by Eli and Catherine recognizing her betrothal, now revived in full force; others would not look so favourably on her story. And often she moaned over her boy's illegitimacy. "Is it not enough for us to be bereaved? Must we be dishonoured too? Oh, that we had ne'er been born."
A change took place in Peter Brandt. His mind, clouded for nearly two years, seemed now to be clearing; he had intervals of intelligence; and then he and Margaret used to talk of Gerard till he wandered again. But one day, returning after an absence of some hours, Margaret found him conversing with Catherine, in a way he had never done since his paralytic stroke. "Eh, girl, why must you be out?" said she. "But indeed I have told him all; and we have been a-crying together over thy troubles."
Margaret stood silent, looking joyfully from one to the other.
Peter smiled on her, and said, "Come, let me bless thee."
She kneeled at his feet, and he blessed her most eloquently. He told her she had been all her life the lovingest, truest, and most obedient daughter Heaven ever sent to a poor old widowed man. "May thy son be to thee what thou hast been to me!"
After this he dozed. Then the females whispered together: and Catherine said—"All our talk e'en now was of Gerard. It lies heavy on his mind. His poor head must often have listened to us when it seemed quite dark. Margaret, he is a very understanding man; he thought of many things: 'He may be in prison,' says he, 'or forced to go fighting for some king, or sent to Constantinople to copy books there, or gone into the Church after all.' He had a bent that way."
"Ah, mother," whispered Margaret, in reply, "he doth but deceive himself as we do."
Ere she could finish the sentence, a strange interruption occurred.
A loud voice cried out, "I SEE HIM. I SEE HIM."
And the old man with dilating eyes seemed to be looking right through the wall of the house.
"IN A BOAT; on a GREAT RIVER; COMING THIS WAY. Sore disfigured; but I knew him. Gone! gone! all dark."
And he sank back, and asked feebly where was Margaret.
"Dear father, I am by thy side. Oh, mother! mother, what is this?"
"I cannot see thee, and but a moment agone I saw all round the world. Ay, ay. Well, I am ready. Is this thy hand? Bless thee, my child, bless thee! Weep not! The tree is ripe."
The old physician read the signs aright. These calm words were his last. The next moment he drooped his head, and gently, placidly, drifted away from earth, like an infant sinking to rest. The torch had flashed up, before going out.
SHE who had wept for poor old Martin was not likely to bear this blow so stoically as the death of the old is apt to be borne. In vain Catherine tried to console her with commonplaces; in vain told her it was a happy release for him; and that, as he himself had said, the tree was ripe. But her worst failure was, when she urged that there were now but two mouths to feed: and one care the less.
"Such cares are all the joys I have," said Margaret. "They fill my desolate heart, which now seems void as well as waste. Oh, empty chair, my bosom it aches to see thee. Poor old man, how could I love him by halves, I that did use to sit and look at him and think 'But for me thou wouldst die of hunger.' He, so wise, so learned erst, was got to be helpless as my own sweet babe, and I loved him as if he had been my child instead of my father. Oh, empty chair! Oh, empty heart! Well-a-day! well-a-day!"
And the pious tears would not be denied.
Then Catherine held her peace: and hung her head. And one day she made this confession, "I speak to thee out o' my head, and not out o' my bosom; thou dost well to be deaf to me. Were I inthy place I should mourn the old man all one as thou dost."
Then Margaret embraced her, and this bit of true sympathy did her a little good. The commonplaces did none.
Then Catherine's bowels yearned over her, and she said, "My poor girl, you were not born to live alone. I have got to look on you as my own daughter. Waste not thine youth upon my son Gerard. Either he is dead or he is a traitor. It cuts my heart to say it; but who can help seeing it? Thy father is gone: and I cannot always be aside thee. And here is an honest lad that loves thee well this many a day. I'd take him and Comfort together. Heaven hath sent us these creatures to torment us and comfort us and all; we are just nothing in the world without 'em." Then seeing Margaret look utterly perplexed, she went on to say, "Why sure you are not so blind as not to see it?"
"What? Who?"
"Who but this Luke Peterson."
"What, our Luke? The boy that carries my basket?"
"Nay, he is over nineteen, and a fine, healthy lad: and I have made inquiries for you; and they all do say he is a capable workman and never touches a drop; and that is much in a Rotterdam lad, which they are mostly half man, half sponge."
Margaret smiled for the first time this many days. "Luke loves dried puddings dearly," said she: "and I made them to his mind. 'Tis them he comes a-courting here." Then she suddenly turned red. "But if I thought he came after your son's wife that is, or ought to be, I'd soon put him to the door."
"Nay, nay; for Heaven's sake let me not make mischief. Poor lad! Why, girl, Fancy will not be bridled. Bless you, I wormed it out of him near a twelvemonth agone."
"Oh, mother, and youlethim!?"
"Well, I thought of you. I said to myself, 'If he is fool enough to be her slave for nothing, all the better for her. A lone woman is lost without a man about her to fetch and carry her little matters.' But now my mind is changed, and I think the best use you can put him to is to marry him."
"So then his own mother is against him, and would wed me to the first comer. Ah, Gerard, thou hast but me; I will not believe thee dead till I see thy tomb, nor false till I see thee with another lover in thine hand. Foolish boy, I shall ne'er be civil to him again."
Afflicted with the busybody's protection, Luke Peterson met a cold reception in the house where he had hitherto found a gentle and kind one. And by-and-by, finding himself very little spoken to at all, and then sharply and irritably, the great, soft, fellow fell to whimpering, and asked Margaret plump if he had done anything to offend her.
"Nothing. I am to blame. I am curst. If you will take my counsel you will keep out of my way awhile."
"It is all along of me, Luke," said the busybody.
"You, Mistress Catherine. Why what have I done for you to set her against me?"
"Nay, I meant all for the best. I told her I saw you were looking towards her through a wedding-ring. But she won't hear of it."
"There was no need to tell her that, wife, she knows I am courting her this twelvemonth."
"Not I," said Margaret, "or I should never have opened the street door to you."
"Why, I come here every Saturday night. And that is how the lads in Rotterdam do court. If we sup with a lass o' Saturdays, that's wooing."
"Oh, that is Rotterdam, is it? Then next time you come let it be Thursday, or Friday. For my part I thought you came after my puddings, boy."
"I like your puddings well enough. You make them better than mother does. But I like you still better than the puddings," said Luke, tenderly.
"Then you have seen the last of them. How dare you talk so to another man's wife, and him far away?" She ended gently, but very firmly, "You need not trouble yourself to come here any more, Luke; I can carry my basket myself."
"Oh, very well," said Luke, and after sitting silent and stupid for a little while, he rose, and said sadly to Catherine, "Dame, I dare say I have got the sack;" and went out.
But the next Saturday Catherine found him seated on the door-step blubbering. He told her he had got used to come there, and every other place seemed strange. She went in and told Margaret and Margaret sighed and said, "Poor Luke, he might come in for her, if he could know his place, and treat her like a married wife." On this being communicated to Luke, he hesitated. "Pshaw!" said Catherine, "promises are pie-crusts. Promise her all the world,sooner than sit outside like a fool, when a word will carry you inside. Now you humour her in everything, and then, if poor Gerard come not home and claim her, you will be sure to have her—in time. A lone woman is aye to be tired out, thou foolish boy."
The Cloister
BROTHER CLEMENT had taught and preached in Basle more than a twelvemonth, when one day Jerome stood before him, dusty, with a triumphant glance in his eye.
"Give the glory to God, brother Clement; thou canst now wend to England with me."
"I am ready, brother Jerome: and, expecting thee these many months, have in the intervals of teaching and devotion studied the English tongue somewhat closely."
"'Twas well thought of," said Jerome. He then told him he had but delayed till he could obtain extraordinary powers from the Pope to collect money for the Church's use in England, and to hear confession in all the secular monasteries. "So now gird up thy loins and let us go forth and deal a good blow for the Church, and against the Franciscans."
The two friars went preaching down the Rhine, for England. In the larger places they both preached. At the smaller they often divided, and took different sides of the river, and met again at some appointed spot. Both were able orators, but in different styles.
Jerome's was noble and impressive, but a little contracted in religious topics, and a trifle monotonous in delivery compared with Clement's, though in truth not so compared with most preachers.
Clement's was full of variety, and often remarkably colloquial. In its general flow tender and gently winning, it curled round the reason and the heart. But it always rose with the rising thought; and so at times Clement soared as far above Jerome as his level speaking was below him. Indeed, in these noble heats he was all that we have read of inspired prophet or heathen orator: Vehemens ut procella, excitatus ut torrens, incensus ut fulmen, tonabat, fulgurabat, et rapidis eloquentiæ fluctibus cuncta proruebat et porturbabat.
I would give liberal specimens, but for five objections: it is difficult;time is short; I have done it elsewhere; an able imitator has since done it better; and similarity, a virtue in peas, is a vice in books.
But (not to evade the matter entirely) Clement used secretly to try and learn the recent events and the besetting sin of each town he was to preach in.
But Jerome the unbending scorned to go out of his way for any people's vices. At one great town some leagues from the Rhine, they mounted the same pulpit in turn. Jerome preached against vanity in dress, a favourite theme of his. He was eloquent and satirical, and the people listened with complacency. It was a vice that they were little given to.
Clement preached against drunkenness. It was a besetting sin, and sacred from preaching in these parts: for the clergy themselves were infected with it, and popular prejudice protected it. Clement dealt it merciless blows out of Holy Writ and worldly experience. A crime itself, it was the nursing-mother of most crimes, especially theft and murder. He reminded them of a parricide that had lately been committed in their town by an honest man in liquor, and also how a band of drunkards had roasted one of their own comrades alive at a neighbouring village. "Your last prince," said he, "is reported to have died of apoplexy, but well you know he died of drink: and of your aldermen one perished miserably last month dead drunk, suffocated in a puddle. Your children's backs go bare that you may fill your bellies with that which makes you the worst of beasts, silly as calves, yet fierce as boars; and drive your families to need, and your souls to hell. I tell ye your town, ay, and your very nation would sink to the bottom of mankind did your women drink as you do. And how long will they be temperate, and, contrary to nature, resist the example of their husbands and fathers? Vice ne'er yet stood still. Ye must amend yourselves or see them come down to your mark. Already in Bohemia they drink along with the men. How shows a drunken woman? Would you love to see your wives drunken, your mothers drunken?" At this there was a shout of horror, for mediæval audiences had not learned to sit mumchance at a moving sermon. "Ah, that comes home to you," cried the friar. "What? madmen! think you it doth not more shock the all pure God to see a man, his noblest work, turned to a drunken beast, than it can shock you creatures of sin and unreason to see a woman turned into a thing no better nor worse than yourselves?"
He ended with two pictures; a drunkard's house and family, and a sober man's; both so true and dramatic in all their details that the wives fell to "ohing" and "ahing," and "Eh, but that is a true word."
This discourse caused quite an uproar. The hearers formed knots: the men were indignant; so the women flattered them, and took their part openly against the preacher. A married man had a right to a drop: he needed it, working for all the family. And for their part they did not care to change their men for milksops.
The double faces! That very evening a band of men caught near a hundred of them round brother Clement, filling his wallet with the best, and offering him the very roses off their heads, and kissing his frock, and blessing him "for taking in hand to mend their sots."
Jerome thought this sermon too earthly.
"Drunkenness is not heresy, Clement, that a whole sermon should be preached against it."
As they went on he found to his surprise that Clement's sermons sank into his hearers deeper than his own; made them listen, think, cry, and sometimes even amend their ways. "He hath the art of sinking to their peg," thought Jerome. "Yet he can soar high enough at times."
Upon the whole, it puzzled Jerome, who had a secret sense of superiority to his tenderer brother. And, after about two hundred miles of it, it got to displease him as well as puzzle him. But he tried to check this sentiment as petty and unworthy. "Souls differ like locks," said he, "and preachers must differ like keys, or the fewer should the Church open for God to pass in. And, certes, this novice hath the key to these northern souls, being himself a northern man."
And so they came slowly down the Rhine, sometimes drifting a few miles on the stream: but in general walking by the banks preaching, and teaching, and confessing sinners in the towns and villages; and they reached the town of Dusseldorf.
There was the little quay where Gerard and Denys had taken boat up the Rhine. The friars landed on it. There were the streets, there was "The Silver Lion." Nothing had changed but he, who walked through it barefoot, with his heart calm and cold, his hands across his breast, and his eyes bent meekly on the ground, a true son of Dominic and holy Church.
The Hearth
"ELI," said Catherine, "answer me one question like a man, and I'll ask no more to-day. What is wormwood?"
Eli looked a little helpless at this sudden demand upon his faculties; but soon recovered enough to say it was something that tasted main bitter.
"That is a fair answer, my man, but not the one I look for."
"Then answer it yourself."
"And shall. Wormwood is—to have two in the house a-doing nought, but waiting for thy shoes and mine." Eli groaned. The shaft struck home.
"Methinks waiting for their best friend's coffin, that and nothing to do, are enow to make them worse than Nature meant. Why not set them up somewhere, to give 'em a chance?"
Eli said he was willing, but afraid they would drink and gamble their very shelves away.
"Nay," said Catherine. "Dost take me for a simpleton? Of course I mean to watch them at starting, and drive them wi' a loose rein, as the saying is."
"Where did you think of? Not here; to divide our own custom."
"Not likely. I say Rotterdam, against the world. Then I could start them."
Oh, self-deception! The true motive of all this was to get near little Gerard.
After many discussions, and eager promises of amendment on these terms from Cornelis and Sybrandt, Catherine went to Rotterdam shop-hunting, and took Kate with her; for a change. They soon found one, and in a good street: but it was sadly out of order. However they got it cheaper for that, and instantly set about brushing it up, fitting proper shelves for the business, and making the dwelling house habitable.
Luke Peterson was always asking Margaret what he could do forher. The answer used to be in a sad tone, "Nothing, Luke, nothing."
"What you that are so clever, can you think of nothing for me to do for you?"
"Nothing, Luke, nothing."
But at last she varied the reply thus: "If you could make something to help my sweet sister Kate about."
The slave of love consented joyfully, and soon made Kate a little cart, and cushioned it, and yoked himself into it, and at eventide drew her out of the town, and along the pleasant boulevard, with Margaret and Catherine walking beside. It looked a happier party than it was.
Kate, for one, enjoyed it keenly; for little Gerard was put in her lap, and she doted on him: and it was like a cherub carried by a little angel, or a rosebud lying in the cup of a lily.
So the vulgar jeered: and asked Luke how a thistle tasted, and if his mistress could not afford one with four legs, etc.
Luke did not mind these jeers; but Kate minded them for him.
"Thou hast made the cart for me, good Luke," said she. "'Twas much. I did ill to let thee draw me too; we can afford to pay some poor soul for that. I love my rides, and to carry little Gerard; but I'd liever ride no more than thou be mocked for't."
"Much I care for their tongues," said Luke, "if I did care I'd knock their heads together. I shall draw you till my mistress says give over."
"Luke, if you obey Kate, you will oblige me."
"Then I will obey Kate."
An honourable exception to popular humour was Jorian Ketel's wife. "That is strength well laid out, to draw the weak. And her prayers will be your guerdon: she is not long for this world: she smileth in pain." These were the words of Joan.
Singleminded Luke answered that he did not want the poor lass's prayers; he did it to please his mistress, Margaret.
After that Luke often pressed Margaret to give him something to do—without success.
But one day, as if tired with his importuning, she turned on him, and said with a look and accent, I should in vain try to convey—
"Find me my boy's father!"
"MISTRESS, they all say he is dead."
"Not so. They feed me still with hopes."
"Ay, to your face, but behind your back they all say he is dead."
At this revelation Margaret's tears began to flow.
Luke whimpered for company. He had the body of a man, but the heart of a girl.
"Prithee, weep not so, sweet mistress," said he. "I'd bring him back to life, an' I could, rather than see thee weep so sore."
Margaret said she thought she was weeping because they were so double-tongued with her.
She recovered herself, and laying her hand on his shoulder, said solemnly, "Luke, he is not dead. Dying men are known to have a strange sight. And listen, Luke! My poor father, when he was a-dying, and I, simple fool, was so happy, thinking he was going to get well altogether, he said to mother and me—he was sitting in that very chair where you are now, and mother was as might be here, and I was yonder making a sleeve—said he, 'I see him! I see him!' Just so. Not like a failing man at all, but all o' fire. 'Sore disfigured—on a great river—coming this way.'
"Ah, Luke, if you were a woman, and had the feeling for me you think you have, you would pity me, and find him for me. Take a thought! The father of my child!"
"Alack, I would, if I knew how," said Luke. "But how can I?"
"Nay, of course you cannot. I am mad to think it. But, oh, if any one really cared for me, theywould;that is all I know."
Luke reflected in silence for some time.
"The old folk all say dying men can see more than living wights. Let me think: for my mind cannot gallop like thine. On a great river? Well, the Maas is a great river." He pondered on.
"Coming this way? Then if it 'twas the Maas, he would have been here by this time, so 'tis not the Maas. The Rhine is a great river, greater than the Maas; and very long. I think it will be the Rhine."
"And so do I, Luke; for Denys bade him come down the Rhine. But even if it is, he may turn off before he comes anigh his birthplace. He does not pine for me as I for him; that is clear. Luke, do you not think he has deserted me?" She wanted him to contradict her; but he said "It looks very like it; what a fool he must be!"
"What do we know?" objected Margaret, imploringly.
"Let me think again," said Luke. "I cannot gallop."
The result of this meditation was this. He knew a station about sixty miles up the Rhine, where all the public boats put in; and he would go to that station, and try and cut the truant off. To be sure he did not even know him by sight; but as each boat came in he would mingle with the passengers, and ask if one Gerard was there. "And, mistress, if you were to give me a bit of a letter to him; for, with us being strangers, mayhap a won't believe a word I say."
"Good, kind, thoughtful Luke, I will (how I have undervalued thee!). But give me till supper-time to get it writ." At supper she put a letter into his hand with a blush: it was a long letter tied round with silk after the fashion of the day, and sealed over the knot.
Luke weighed it in his hand, with a shade of discontent, and said to her very gravely, "Say your father was not dreaming, and say I have the luck to fall in with this man, and say he should turn out a better bit of stuff than I think him, and come home to you then and there—what is to become o' me?"
Margaret coloured to her very brow. "Oh, Luke, Heaven will reward thee. And I shall fall on my knees and bless thee; and I shall love thee all my days, sweet Luke; as a mother does her son. I am so old by thee: trouble ages the heart. Thou shalt not go: 'tis not fair of me; Love maketh us to be all self."
"Humph!" said Luke. "And if," resumed he, in the same grave way, "yon scapegrace shall read thy letter, and hear me tell him how thou pinest for him, and yet, being a traitor, or a mere idiot, will not turn to thee—what shall become of me then? Must I die a bachelor, and thou fare lonely to thy grave, neither maid, wife, nor widow?"
Margaret panted with fear and emotion at this terrible piece of good sense, and the plain question that followed it. But at lastshe faltered out, "If, which our Lady be merciful to me, and forbid—Oh!"
"Well, mistress?"
"If he should read my letter, and hear thy words—and, sweet Luke, be just and tell him what a lovely babe he hath, fatherless, fatherless. Oh Luke, can he be so cruel?"
"I trow not: but if?"
"Then he will give thee up my marriage lines, and I shall be an honest woman; and a wretched one; and my boy will not be a bastard: and, of course, then wecouldboth go into any honest man's house that would be troubled with us: and even for thy goodness this day, I will—I will—ne'er be so ungrateful as go past thy door to another man's."
"Ay, but will you come in at mine? Answer me that!"
"Oh, ask me not! Some day, perhaps, when my wounds leave bleeding. Alas, I'll try. If I don't fling myself and my child into the Maas. Do not go, Luke! do not think of going! 'Tis all madness from first to last."
But Luke was as slow to forego an idea as to form one.
His reply showed how fast love was making a man of him. "Well," said he, "madness is something any way; and I am tired of doing nothing for thee: and I am no great talker. To-morrow, at peep of day, I start. But, hold, I have no money. My mother, she takes care of all mine; and I ne'er see it again."
Then Margaret took out Catherine's gold angel, which had escaped so often, and gave it to Luke; and he set out on his mad errand.
It did not however seem so mad to him as to us. It was a superstitious age: and Luke acted on the dying man's dream, or vision, or illusion, or whatever it was, much as we should act on respectable information.
But Catherine was downright angry when she heard of it. To send the poor lad on such a wild-goose chase! "But you are like a many more girls; and mark my words: by the time you have worn that Luke fairly out, and made him as sick of you as a dog, you will turn as fond on him as a cow on a calf, and 'Too late' will be the cry."