(1) Beat down Satan under our feet.(2) Up, hearts!(3) O God our refuge and strength.(4) O Lamb of God, that takest away the sins of the world,have mercy upon me!(5) O Holy Trinity, one God, have mercy upon us.(6) From the assaults of demons—from the wrath to come—from everlasting damnation, deliver us, O Lord!(7) See the English collect, St., Michael and all Angels.(8) Of whom may we seek succour but of Thee, O Lord, who forour sins art justly displeased (and that torrent of prayer,the following verse).(9) Dr. Dickson, author of Fallacies of the Faculty, etc.(10) It is related of a mediaeval hermit, that being offereda garment made of cats' skins, he rejected it, saying, “Ihave heard of a lamb of God but I never heard of a cat ofGod.”
HER attitude was one to excite pity rather than terror, in eyes not blinded by a preconceived notion. Her bosom was fluttering like a bird, and the red and white coming and going in her cheeks, and she had her hand against the wall by the instinct of timid things, she trembled so; and the marvellous mixed gaze of love, and pious awe, and pity, and tender memories, those purple eyes cast on the emaciated and glaring hermit, was an event in nature.
“Aha!” he cried. “Thou art come at last in flesh and blood; come to me as thou camest to holy Anthony. But I am ware of thee. I thought thy wiles were not exhausted. I am armed.” With this he snatched up his small crucifix and held it out at her, astonished, and the candle in the other hand, both crucifix and candle shaking violently. “Exorcizo te.”
“Ah, no!” cried she piteously; and put out two pretty deprecating palms. “Alas! work me no ill! It is Margaret.”
“Liar!” shouted the hermit. “Margaret was fair, but not so supernatural fair as thou. Thou didst shrink at that sacred name, thou subtle hypocrite. In Nomine Dei exorcizo vos.”
“Ah, Jesu!” gasped Margaret, in extremity of terror, “curse me not! I will go home. I thought I might come. For very manhood be-Latin me not! Oh, Gerard, is it thus you and I meet after all, after all?”
And she cowered almost to her knees and sobbed with superstitious fear and wounded affection.
Impregnated as he was with Satanophobia he might perhaps have doubted still whether this distressed creature, all woman and nature, was not all art and fiend. But her spontaneous appeal to that sacred name dissolved his chimera; and let him see with his eyes, and hear with his ears.
He uttered a cry of self-reproach, and tried to raise her but what with fasts, what with the overpowering emotion of a long solitude so broken, he could not. “What,” he gasped, shaking over her, “and is it thou? And have I met thee with hard words? Alas!” And they were both choked with emotion and could not speak for a while.
“I heed it not much,” said Margaret bravely, struggling with her tears; “you took me for another: for a devil; oh! oh! oh! oh! oh!”
“Forgive me, sweet soul!” And as soon as he could speak more than a word at a time, he said, “I have been much beset by the evil one since I came here.”
Margaret looked round with a shudder. “Like enow. Then oh take my hand, and let me lead thee from this foul place.”
He gazed at her with astonishment.
“What, desert my cell; and go into the world again? Is it for that thou hast come to me?” said he sadly and reproachfully.
“Ay, Gerard, I am come to take thee to thy pretty vicarage: art vicar of Gouda, thanks to Heaven and thy good brother Giles; and mother and I have made it so neat for thee, Gerard. 'Tis well enow in winter I promise thee. But bide a bit till the hawthorn bloom, and anon thy walls put on their kirtle of brave roses, and sweet woodbine, Have we forgotten thee, and the foolish things thou lovest? And, dear Gerard, thy mother is waiting; and 'tis late for her to be out of her bed: prithee, prithee, come! And the moment we are out of this foul hole I'll show thee a treasure thou hast gotten, and knowest nought on't, or sure hadst never fled from us so. Alas! what is to do? What have I ignorantly said, to be regarded thus?”
For he had drawn himself all up into a heap, and was looking at her with a strange gaze of fear and suspicion blended.
“Unhappy girl,” said he solemnly, yet deeply agitated, “would you have me risk my soul and yours for a miserable vicarage and the flowers that grow on it? But this is not thy doing: the bowelless fiend sends thee, poor simple girl, to me with this bait. But oh, cunning fiend, I will unmask thee even to this thine instrument, and she shall see thee, and abhor thee as I do, Margaret, my lost love, why am I here? Because I love thee.”
“Oh! no, Gerard, you love me not or you would not have hidden from me; there was no need.”
“Let there be no deceit between us twain, that have loved so true; and after this night, shall meet no more on earth.”
“Now God forbid!” said she.
“I love thee, and thou hast not forgotten me, or thou hadst married ere this, and hadst not been the one to find me, buried here from sight of man. I am a priest, a monk: what but folly or sin can come of you and me living neighbours, and feeding a passion innocent once, but now (so Heaven wills it) impious and unholy? No, though my heart break I must be firm. 'Tis I that am the man, 'tis I that am the priest. You and I must meet no more, till I am schooled by solitude, and thou art wedded to another.”
“I consent to my doom but not to thine. I would ten times liever die; yet I will marry, ay, wed misery itself sooner than let thee lie in this foul dismal place, with yon sweet manse awaiting for thee.” Clement groaned; at each word she spoke out stood clearer and clearer two things—his duty, and the agony it must cost.
“My beloved,” said he, with a strange mixture of tenderness and dogged resolution, “I bless thee for giving me one more sight of thy sweet face, and may God forgive thee, and bless thee, for destroying in a minute the holy peace it hath taken six months of solitude to build. No matter. A year of penance will, Dei gratia, restore me to my calm. My poor Margaret, I seem cruel: yet I am kind: 'tis best we part; ay, this moment.”
“Part, Gerard? Never: we have seen what comes of parting. Part? Why, you have not heard half my story; no, nor the tithe, 'Tis not for thy mere comfort I take thee to Gouda manse. Hear me!”
“I may not. Thy very voice is a temptation with its music, memory's delight.”
“But I say you shall hear me, Gerard, for forth this place I go not unheard.”
“Then must we part by other means,” said Clement sadly.
“Alack! what other means? Wouldst put me to thine own door, being the stronger?”
“Nay, Margaret, well thou knowest I would suffer many deaths rather than put force on thee; thy sweet body is dearer to me than my own; but a million times dearer to me are our immortal souls, both thine and mine. I have withstood this direst temptation of all long enow. Now I must fly it: farewell! farewell!”
He made to the door, and had actually opened it and got half out, when she darted after and caught him by the arm.
“Nay, then another must speak for me. I thought to reward thee for yielding to me; but unkind that thou art, I need his help I find; turn then this way one moment.”
“Nay, nay.”
“But I say ay! And then turn thy back on us an thou canst.” She somewhat relaxed her grasp, thinking he would never deny her so small a favour. But at this he saw his opportunity and seized it.
“Fly, Clement, fly!” he almost shrieked; and his religious enthusiasm giving him for a moment his old strength, he burst wildly away from her, and after a few steps bounded over the little stream and ran beside it, but finding he was not followed stopped, and looked back.
She was lying on her face, with her hands spread out.
Yes, without meaning it, he had thrown her down and hurt her.
When he saw that, he groaned and turned back a step; but suddenly, by another impulse flung himself into the icy water instead.
“There, kill my body!” he cried, “but save my soul!”
Whilst he stood there, up to his throat in liquid ice, so to speak, Margaret uttered one long, piteous moan, and rose to her knees.
He saw her as plain almost as in midday. Saw her pale face and her eyes glistening; and then in the still night he heard these words:
“Oh, God! Thou that knowest all, Thou seest how I am used. Forgive me then! For I will not live another day.” With this she suddenly started to her feet, and flew like some wild creature, wounded to death, close by his miserable hiding-place, shrieking:
“CRUEL!—CRUEL!—CRUEL!—CRUEL!”
What manifold anguish may burst from a human heart in a single syllable. There were wounded love, and wounded pride, and despair, and coming madness all in that piteous cry. Clement heard, and it froze his heart with terror and remorse, worse than the icy water chilled the marrow of his bones.
He felt he had driven her from him for ever, and in the midst of his dismal triumph, the greatest he had won, there came an almost incontrollable impulse to curse the Church, to curse religion itself, for exacting such savage cruelty from mortal man. At last he crawled half dead out of the water, and staggered to his den. “I am safe here,” he groaned; “she will never come near me again; unmanly, ungrateful wretch that I am.” And he flung his emaciated, frozen body down on the floor, not without a secret hope that it might never rise thence alive.
But presently he saw by the hour-glass that it was past midnight.
On this, he rose slowly and took off his wet things, and moaning all the time at the pain he had caused her he loved, put on the old hermit's cilice of bristles, and over that his breastplate. He had never worn either of these before, doubting himself worthy to don the arms of that tried soldier. But now he must give himself every aid; the bristles might distract his earthly remorse by bodily pain, and there might be holy virtue in the breastplate. Then he kneeled down and prayed God humbly to release him that very night from the burden of the flesh. Then he lighted all his candles, and recited his psalter doggedly; each word seemed to come like a lump of lead from a leaden heart, and to fall leaden to the ground; and in this mechanical office every now and then he moaned with all his soul. In the midst of which he suddenly observed a little bundle in the corner he had not seen before in the feebler light, and at one end of it something like gold spun into silk.
He went to see what it could be; and he had no sooner viewed it closer, than he threw up his hands with rapture. “It is a seraph,” he whispered, “a lovely seraph. Heaven hath witnessed my bitter trial, and approves my cruelty; and this flower of the skies is sent to cheer me, fainting under my burden.”
He fell on his knees, and gazed with ecstasy on its golden hair, and its tender skin, and cheeks like a peach.
“Let me feast my sad eyes on thee ere thou leavest me for thine ever-blessed abode, and my cell darkens again at thy parting, as it did at hers.”
With all this, the hermit disturbed the lovely visitor. He opened wide two eyes, the colour of heaven; and seeing a strange figure kneeling over him, he cried piteously, “MUMMA! MUM-MA!” And the tears began to run down his little cheeks.
Perhaps, after all, Clement, who for more than six months had not looked on the human face divine, estimated childish beauty more justly than we can; and in truth, this fair northern child, with its long golden hair, was far more angelic than any of our imagined angels. But now the spell was broken.
Yet not unhappily. Clement it may be remembered, was fond of children, and true monastic life fosters this sentiment. The innocent distress on the cherubic face, the tears that ran so smoothly from those transparent violets, his eyes, and his pretty, dismal cry for his only friend, his mother, went through the hermit's heart. He employed all his gentleness and all his art to soothe him; and as the little soul was wonderfully intelligent for his age, presently succeeded so far that he ceased to cry out, and wonder took the place of fear; while, in silence, broken only in little gulps, he scanned, with great tearful eyes, this strange figure that looked so wild, but spoke so kindly, and wore armour, yet did not kill little boys, but coaxed them. Clement was equally perplexed to know how this little human flower came to lie sparkling and blooming in his gloomy cave. But he remembered he had left the door wide open, and he was driven to conclude that, owing to this negligence, some unfortunate creature of high or low degree had seized this opportunity to get rid of her child for ever.(1). At this his bowels yearned so over the poor deserted cherub, that the tears of pure tenderness stood in his eyes, and still, beneath the crime of the mother, he saw the divine goodness, which had so directed her heartlessness as to comfort His servant's breaking heart.
“Now bless thee, bless thee, bless thee, sweet innocent, I would not change thee for e'en a cherub in heaven.”
“At's pooty,” replied the infant, ignoring contemptuously, after the manner of infants, all remarks that did not interest him.
“What is pretty here, my love, besides thee?”
“Ookum-gars,(2) said the boy, pointing to the hermit's breastplate.
“Quot liberi, tot sententiunculae!” Hector's child screamed at his father's glittering casque and nodding crest; and here was a mediaeval babe charmed with a polished cuirass, and his griefs assuaged.
“There are prettier things here than that,” said Clement, “there are little birds; lovest thou birds?”
“Nay. Ay. En um ittle, ery ittle? Not ike torks. Hate torks um bigger an baby.”
He then confided, in very broken language, that the storks with their great flapping wings scared him, and were a great trouble and worry to him, darkening his existence more or less.
“Ay, but my birds are very little, and good, and oh, so pretty!”
“Den I ikes 'm,” said the child authoritatively, “I ont my mammy.”
“Alas, sweet dove! I doubt I shall have to fill her place as best I may. Hast thou no daddy as well as mammy, sweet one?”
Now not only was this conversation from first to last, the relative ages, situations, and all circumstances of the parties considered, as strange a one as ever took place between two mortal creatures, but at or within a second or two of the hermit's last question, to turn the strange into the marvellous, came an unseen witness, to whom every word that passed carried ten times the force it did to either of the speakers.
Since, therefore, it is with her eyes you must now see, and hear with her ears, I go back a step for her.
Margaret, when she ran past Gerard, was almost mad. She was in that state of mind in which affectionate mothers have been known to kill their children, sometimes along with themselves, sometimes alone, which last is certainly maniacal, She ran to Reicht Heynes pale and trembling, and clasped her round the neck, “Oh, Reicht! oh, Reicht!” and could say no more.
Reicht kissed her, and began to whimper; and would you believe it, the great mastiff uttered one long whine: even his glimmer of sense taught him grief was afoot.
“Oh, Reicht!” moaned the despised beauty, as soon as she could utter a word for choking, “see how he has served me!” and she showed her hands, that were bleeding with falling on the stony ground. “He threw me down, he was so eager to fly from me, He took me for a devil; he said I came to tempt him. Am I the woman to tempt a man? you know me, Reicht.”
“Nay, in sooth, sweet Mistress Margaret, the last i' the world.”
“And he would not look at my child. I'll fling myself and him into the Rotter this night.”
“Oh, fie! fie! eh, my sweet woman, speak not so. Is any man that breathes worth your child's life?”
“My child! where is he? Why, Reicht, I have left him behind. Oh, shame! is it possible I can love him to that degree as to forget my child? Ah! I am rightly served for it.”
And she sat down, and faithful Reicht beside her, and they sobbed in one another's arms.
After a while Margaret left off sobbing and said doggedly, “let us go home.”
“Ay, but the bairn?”
“Oh! he is well where he is. My heart is turned against my very child, He cares nought for him; wouldn't see him, nor hear speak of him; and I took him there so proud, and made his hair so nice, I did, and put his new frock and cowl on him. Nay, turn about: it's his child as well as mine; let him keep it awhile: mayhap that will learn him to think more of its mother and his own.”
“High words off an empty stomach,” said Reicht.
“Time will show. Come you home.”
They departed, and Time did show quicker than he levels abbeys, for at the second step Margaret stopped, and could neither go one way nor the other, but stood stock still.
“Reicht,” said she piteously, “what else have I on earth? I cannot.”
“Whoever said you could? Think you I paid attention? Words are woman's breath. Come back for him without more ado; 'tis time we were in our beds, much more he.”
Reicht led the way, and Margaret followed readily enough in that direction; but as they drew near the cell, she stopped again.
“Reicht, go you and ask him, will he give me back my boy; for I could not bear the sight of him.”
“Alas! mistress, this do seem a sorry ending after all that hath been betwixt you twain. Bethink thee now, doth thine heart whisper no excuse for him? dost verily hate him for whom thou hast waited so long? Oh, weary world!”
“Hate him, Reicht? I would not harm a hair of his head for all that is in nature; but look on him I cannot; I have taken a horror of him. Oh! when I think of all I have suffered for him, and what I came here this night to do for him, and brought my own darling to kiss him and call him father. Ah, Luke, my poor chap, my wound showeth me thine. I have thought too little of thy pangs, whose true affection I despised; and now my own is despised, Reicht, if the poor lad was here now, he would have a good chance.”
“Well, he is not far off,” said Reicht Heynes; but somehow she did not say it with alacrity.
“Speak not to me of any man,” said Margaret bitterly; “I hate them all.”
“For the sake of one?”
“Flout me not, but prithee go forward, and get me what is my own, my sole joy in the world. Thou knowest I am on thorns till I have him to my bosom again.”
Reicht went forward; Margaret sat by the roadside and covered her face with her apron, and rocked herself after the manner of her country, for her soul was full of bitterness and grief. So severe, indeed, was the internal conflict, that she did not hear Reicht running back to her, and started violently when the young woman laid a hand upon her shoulder.
“Mistress Margaret!” said Reicht quietly, “take a fool's advice that loves ye. Go softly to yon cave, wi' all the ears and eyes your mother ever gave you.”
“Why? Reicht?” stammered Margaret.
“I thought the cave was afire, 'twas so light inside; and there were voices.”
“Voices?”
“Ay, not one, but twain, and all unlike—a man's and a little child's talking as pleasant as you and me. I am no great hand at a keyhole for my part, 'tis paltry work; but if so be voices were a talking in yon cave, and them that owned those voices were so near to me as those are to thee, I'd go on all fours like a fox, and I'd crawl on my belly like a serpent, ere I'd lose one word that passes atwixt those twain.”
“Whisht, Reicht! Bless thee! Bide thou here. Buss me! Pray for me!”
And almost ere the agitated words had left her lips, Margaret was flying towards the hermitage as noiselessly as a lapwing.
Arrived near it, she crouched, and there was something truly serpentine in the gliding, flexible, noiseless movements by which she reached the very door, and there she found a chink, and listened. And often it cost her a struggle not to burst in upon them; but warned by defeat, she was cautious, and resolute, let well alone, And after a while, slowly and noiselessly she reared her head, like a snake its crest, to where she saw the broadest chink of all, and looked with all her eyes and soul, as well as listened.
The little boy then being asked whether he had no daddy, at first shook his head, and would say nothing; but being pressed he suddenly seemed to remember something, and said he, “Dad-da ill man; run away and left poor mum-ma.”
She who heard this winced. It was as new to her as to Clement. Some interfering foolish woman had gone and said this to the boy, and now out it came in Gerard's very face. His answer surprised her; he burst out, “The villain! the monster! he must be born without bowels to desert thee, sweet one, Ah! he little knows the joy he has turned his back on. Well, my little dove, I must be father and mother to thee, since the one runs away, and t'other abandons thee to my care. Now to-morrow I shall ask the good people that bring me my food to fetch some nice eggs and milk for thee as well; for bread is good enough for poor old good-for-nothing me, but not for thee. And I shall teach thee to read.”
“I can yead, I can yead.”
“Ay, verily, so young? all the better; we will read good books together, and I shall show thee the way to heaven. Heaven is a beautiful place, a thousand times fairer and better than earth, and there be little cherubs like thyself, in white, glad to welcome thee and love thee. Wouldst like to go to heaven one day?”
“Ay, along wi'-my-mammy.”
“What, not without her then?”
“Nay. I ont my mammy. Where is my mammy?”
(Oh! what it cost poor Margaret not to burst in and clasp him to her heart!)
“Well, fret not, sweetheart, mayhap she will come when thou art asleep. Wilt thou be good now and sleep?”
“I not eepy. Ikes to talk.”
“Well, talk we then; tell me thy pretty name.”
“Baby.” And he opened his eyes with amazement at this great hulking creature's ignorance.
“Hast none other?”
“Nay.”
“What shall I do to pleasure thee, baby? Shall I tell thee a story?”
“I ikes tories,” said the boy, clapping his hands.
“Or sing thee a song?”
“I ikes tongs,” and he became excited.
“Choose then, a song or a story.”
“Ting I a tong. Nay, tell I a tory. Nay, ting I a tong. Nay—And the corners of his little mouth turned down and he had half a mind to weep because he could not have both, and could not tell which to forego. Suddenly his little face cleared: “Ting I a tory,” said he.
“Sing thee a story, baby? Well, after all, why not? And wilt thou sit o' my knee and hear it?”
“Yea.”
“Then I must e'en doff this breastplate, 'Tis too hard for thy soft cheek. So. And now I must doff this bristly cilice; they would prick thy tender skin, perhaps make it bleed, as they have me, I see. So. And now I put on my best pelisse, in honour of thy worshipful visit. See how soft and warm it is; bless the good soul that sent it; and now I sit me down; so. And I take thee on my left knee, and put my arm under thy little head; so, And then the psaltery, and play a little tune; so, not too loud.”
“I ikes dat.”
“I am right glad on't. Now list the story.”
He chanted a child's story in a sort of recitative, singing a little moral refrain now and then. The boy listened with rapture.
“I ikes oo,” said he, “Ot is oo? is oo a man?”
“Ay, little heart, and a great sinner to boot.”
“I ikes great tingers. Ting one other tory.”
Story No. 2 was Chanted.
“I ubbs oo,” cried the child impetuously, “Ot caft(3) is oo?”
“I am a hermit, love.”
“I ubbs vermins. Ting other one.”
But during this final performance, Nature suddenly held out her leaden sceptre over the youthful eyelids. “I is not eepy,” whined he very faintly, and succumbed.
Clement laid down his psaltery softly and began to rock his new treasure in his arms, and to crone over him a little lullaby well known in Tergou, with which his own mother had often sent him off.
And the child sank into a profound sleep upon his arm. And he stopped croning and gazed on him with infinite tenderness, yet sadness; for at that moment he could not help thinking what might have been but for a piece of paper with a lie in it.
He sighed deeply.
The next moment the moonlight burst into his cell, and with it, and in it, and almost as swift as it, Margaret Brandt was down at his knee with a timorous hand upon his shoulder.
“GERARD, YOU DO NOT REJECT US, YOU CANNOT.”
(1) More than one hermit had received a present of thiskind.(2) Query, “looking glass.”(3) Craft. He means trade or profession.
The startled hermit glared from his nurseling to Margaret, and from her to him, in amazement, equalled only by his agitation at her so unexpected return. The child lay asleep on his left arm, and she was at his right knee; no longer the pale, scared, panting girl he had overpowered so easily an hour or two ago, but an imperial beauty, with blushing cheeks and sparkling eyes, and lips sweetly parted in triumph, and her whole face radiant with a look he could not quite read; for he had never yet seen it on her: maternal pride.
He stared and stared from the child to her, in throbbing amazement.
“Us?” he gasped at last. And still his wonder-stricken eyes turned to and fro.
Margaret was surprised in her turn, It was an age of impressions not facts, “What!” she cried, “doth not a father know his own child? and a man of God, too? Fie, Gerard, to pretend! nay, thou art too wise, too good, not to have—why, I watched thee; and e'en now look at you twain! 'Tis thine own flesh and blood thou holdest to thine heart.”
Clement trembled, “What words are these,” he stammered, “this angel mine?”
“Whose else? since he is mine.”
Clement turned on the sleeping child, with a look beyond the power of the pen to describe, and trembled all over, as his eyes seemed to absorb the little love.
Margaret's eyes followed his. “He is not a bit like me,” said she proudly; “but oh, at whiles he is thy very image in little; and see this golden hair. Thine was the very colour at his age; ask mother else. And see this mole on his little finger; now look at thine own; there! 'Twas thy mother let me weet thou wast marked so before him; and oh, Gerard, 'twas this our child found thee for me; for by that little mark on thy finger I knew thee for his father, when I watched above thy window and saw thee feed the birds.” Here she seized the child's hand, and kissed it eagerly, and got half of it into her mouth, Heaven knows how, “Ah! bless thee, thou didst find thy poor daddy for her, and now thou hast made us friends again after our little quarrel; the first, the last. Wast very cruel to me but now, my poor Gerard, and I forgive thee; for loving of thy child.”
“Ah! ah! ah! ah! ah!” sobbed Clement, choking. And lowered by fasts, and unnerved by solitude, the once strong man was hysterical, and nearly fainting.
Margaret was alarmed, but having experience, her pity was greater than her fear. “Nay, take not on so,” she murmured soothingly, and put a gentle hand upon his brow. “Be brave! So, so. Dear heart, thou art not the first man that hath gone abroad and come back richer by a lovely little self than he went forth. Being a man of God, take courage, and say He sends thee this to comfort thee for what thou hast lost in me; and that is not so very much, my lamb; for sure the better part of love shall ne'er cool here to thee; though it may in thine, and ought, being a priest, and parson of Gouda.”
“I? priest of Gouda? Never!” murmured Clement in a faint voice; “I am a friar of St. Dominic: yet speak on, sweet music, tell me all that has happened thee, before we are parted again.”
Now some would on this have exclaimed against parting at all, and raised the true question in dispute. But such women as Margaret do not repeat their mistakes. It is very hard to defeat them twice, where their hearts are set on a thing.
She assented, and turned her back on Gouda manse as a thing not to be recurred to; and she told him her tale, dwelling above all on the kindness to her of his parents; and while she related her troubles, his hand stole to hers, and often she felt him wince and tremble with ire, and often press her hand, sympathizing with her in every vein.
“Oh, piteous tale of a true heart battling alone against such bitter odds,” said he.
“It all seems small, when I see thee here again, and nursing my boy. We have had a warning, Gerard. True friends like you and me are rare, and they are mad to part, ere death divideth them.”
“And that is true,” said Clement, off his guard.
And then she would have him tell her what he had suffered for her, and he begged her to excuse him, and she consented; but by questions quietly revoked her consent and elicited it all; and many a sigh she heaved for him, and more than once she hid her face in her hands with terror at his perils, though past. And to console him for all he had gone through, she kneeled down and put her arms under the little boy, and lifted him gently up. “Kiss him softly,” she whispered. “Again, again kiss thy fill if thou canst; he is sound. 'Tis all I can do to comfort thee till thou art out of this foul den and in thy sweet manse yonder.”
Clement shook his head.
“Well,” said she, “let that pass. Know that I have been sore affronted for want of my lines.”
“Who hath dared affront thee?”
“No matter, those that will do it again if thou hast lost them, which the saints forbid.”
“I lose them? nay, there they lie, close to thy hand.”
“Where, where, oh, where?”
Clement hung his head. “Look in the Vulgate. Heaven forgive me: I thought thou wert dead, and a saint in heaven.”
She looked, and on the blank leaves of the poor soul's Vulgate she found her marriage lines.
“Thank God!” she cried, “thank God! Oh, bless thee, Gerard, bless thee! Why, what is here, Gerard?”
On the other leaves were pinned every scrap of paper she had ever sent him, and their two names she had once written together in sport, and the lock of her hair she had given him, and half a silver coin she had broken with him, and a straw she had sucked her soup with the first day he ever saw her.
When Margaret saw these proofs of love and signs of a gentle heart bereaved, even her exultation at getting back her marriage lines was overpowered by gushing tenderness. She almost staggered, and her hand went to her bosom, and she leaned her brow against the stone cell and wept so silently that he did not see she was weeping; indeed she would not let him, for she felt that to befriend him now she must be the stronger; and emotion weakens.
“Gerard,” said she, “I know you are wise and good. You must have a reason for what you are doing, let it seem ever so unreasonable. Talk we like old friends. Why are you buried alive?”
“Margaret, to escape temptation. My impious ire against those two had its root in the heart; that heart then I must deaden, and, Dei gratia, I shall. Shall I, a servant of Christ and of the Church, court temptation? Shall I pray daily to be led out on't, and walk into it with open eyes?”
“That is good sense anyway,” said Margaret, with a consummate affectation of candour.
“'Tis unanswerable,” said Clement, with a sigh.
“We shall see. Tell me, have you escaped temptation here? Why I ask is, when I am alone, my thoughts are far more wild and foolish than in company. Nay, speak sooth; come!”
“I must needs own I have been worse tempted here with evil imaginations than in the world.”
“There now.”
“Ay, but so were Anthony and Jerome, Macarius and Hilarion, Benedict, Bernard, and all the saints. 'Twill wear off.”
“How do you know?”
“I feel sure it will.”
“Guessing against knowledge. Here 'tis men folk are sillier than us that be but women. Wise in their own conceits, they will not let themselves see; their stomachs are too high to be taught by their eyes. A woman, if she went into a hole in a bank to escape temptation, and there found it, would just lift her farthingale and out on't, and not e'en know how wise she was, till she watched a man in like plight.”
“Nay, I grant humility and a teachable spirit are the roads to wisdom; but when all is said, here I wrestle but with imagination. At Gouda she I love as no priest or monk must love any but the angels, she will tempt a weak soul, unwilling, yet not loth to be tempted.”
“Ay, that is another matter; I should tempt thee then? to what, i' God's name?”
“Who knows? The flesh is weak.”
“Speak for yourself, my lad. Why, you are thinking of some other Margaret, not Margaret a Peter. Was ever my mind turned to folly and frailty? Stay, is it because you were my husband once, as these lines avouch? Think you the road to folly is beaten for you more than another? Oh! how shallow are the wise, and how little able are you to read me, who can read you so well from top to toe, Come, learn thine A B C. Were a stranger to proffer me unchaste love, I should shrink a bit, no doubt, and feel sore, but I should defend myself without making a coil; for men, I know, are so, the best of them sometimes. But if you, that have been my husband, and are my child's father, were to offer to humble me so in mine own eyes, and thine, and his, either I should spit in thy face, Gerard, or, as I am not a downright vulgar woman, I should snatch the first weapon at hand and strike thee dead.”
And Margaret's eyes flashed fire, and her nostrils expanded, that it was glorious to see; and no one that did see her could doubt her sincerity.
“I had not the sense to see that,” said Gerard quietly. And he pondered.
Margaret eyed him in silence, and soon recovered her composure.
“Let not you and I dispute,” said she gently; “speak we of other things. Ask me of thy folk.”
“My father?”
“Well, and warms to thee and me. Poor soul, a drew glaive on those twain that day, but Jorian Ketel and I we mastered him, and he drove them forth his house for ever.”
“That may not be; he must take them back.”
“That he will never do for us. You know the man; he is dour as iron; yet would he do it for one word from one that will not speak it.”
“Who?”
“The vicar of Gouda, The old man will be at the manse to-morrow, I hear.”
“How you come back to that.”
“Forgive me: I am but a woman. It is us for nagging; shouldst keep me from it wi' questioning of me.”
“My sister Kate?”
“Alas!”
“What, hath ill befallen e'en that sweet lily? Out and alas!”
“Be calm, sweetheart, no harm hath her befallen. Oh, nay, nay, far fro' that.” Then Margaret forced herself to be composed, and in a low, sweet, gentle voice she murmured to him thus:
“My poor Gerard, Kate hath left her trouble behind her. For the manner on't, 'twas like the rest. Ah, such as she saw never thirty, nor ever shall while earth shall last. She smiled in pain too. A well, then, thus 'twas: she was took wi' a languor and a loss of all her pains.”
“A loss of her pains? I understand you not.”
“Ay, you are not experienced; indeed, e'en thy mother almost blinded herself and said, ''Tis maybe a change for the better.' But Joan Ketel, which is an understanding woman, she looked at her and said, 'Down sun, down wind!' And the gossips sided and said, 'Be brave, you that are her mother, for she is half way to the saints.' And thy mother wept sore, but Kate would not let her; and one very ancient woman, she said to thy mother, 'She will die as easy as she lived hard.' And she lay painless best part of three days, a sipping of heaven afore-hand, And, my dear, when she was just parting, she asked for 'Gerard's little boy,' and I brought him and set him on the bed, and the little thing behaved as peaceably as he does now. But by this time she was past speaking; but she pointed to a drawer, and her mother knew what to look for: it was two gold angels thou hadst given her years ago. Poor soul! she had kept then, till thou shouldst come home. And she nodded towards the little boy, and looked anxious; but we understood her, and put the pieces in his two hands, and when his little fingers closed on them, she smiled content. And so she gave her little earthly treasures to her favourite's child—for you were her favourite—and her immortal jewel to God, and passed so sweetly we none of us knew justly when she left us. Well-a-day, well-a-day!”
Gerard wept.
“She hath not left her like on earth,” he sobbed. “Oh, how the affections of earth curl softly round my heart! I cannot help it; God made them after all. Speak on, sweet Margaret at thy voice the past rolls its tides back upon me; the loves and the hopes of youth come fair and gliding into my dark cell, and darker bosom, on waves of memory and music.”
“Gerard, I am loth to grieve you, but Kate cried a little when she first took ill at you not being there to close her eyes.”
Gerard sighed.
“You were within a league, but hid your face from her.”
He groaned.
“There, forgive me for nagging; I am but a woman; you would not have been so cruel to your own flesh and blood knowingly, would you?”
“Oh, no.”
“Well, then, know that thy brother Sybrandt lies in my charge with a broken back, fruit of thy curse.”
“Mea culpa! mea culpa!”
“He is very penitent; be yourself and forgive him this night.”
“I have forgiven him long ago.”
“Think you he can believe that from any mouth but yours? Come! he is but about two butts' length hence.”
“So near? Why, where?”
“At Gouda manse. I took him there yestreen. For I know you, the curse was scarce cold on your lips when you repented it” (Gerard nodded assent), “and I said to myself, Gerard will thank me for taking Sybrandt to die under his roof; he will not beat his breast and cry mea culpa, yet grudge three footsteps to quiet a withered brother on his last bed. He may have a bee in his bonnet, but he is not a hypocrite, a thing all pious words and uncharitable deeds.”
Gerard literally staggered where he sat at this tremendous thrust.
“Forgive me for nagging,” said she. “Thy mother too is waiting for thee. Is it well done to keep her on thorns so long She will not sleep this night, Bethink thee, Gerard, she is all to thee that I am to this sweet child. Ah, I think so much more of mothers since I had my little Gerard. She suffered for thee, and nursed thee, and tended thee from boy to man. Priest monk, hermit, call thyself what thou wilt, to her thou art but one thing; her child.”
“Where is she?” murmured Gerard, in a quavering voice.
“At Gouda manse, wearing the night in prayer and care.”
Then Margaret saw the time was come for that appeal to his reason she had purposely reserved till persuasion should have paved the way for conviction. So the smith first softens the iron by fire, and then brings down the sledge hammer.
She showed him, but in her own good straightforward Dutch, that his present life was only a higher kind of selfishness, spiritual egotism; whereas a priest had no more right to care only for his own soul than only for his own body. That was not his path to heaven. “But,” said she, “whoever yet lost his soul by saving the souls of others! the Almighty loves him who thinks of others; and when He shall see thee caring for the souls of the folk the duke hath put into thine hand, He will care ten times more for thy soul than He does now.”
Gerard was struck by this remark. “Art shrewd in dispute,” said he.
“Far from it,” was the reply, “only my eyes are not bandaged with conceit.(1) So long as Satan walks the whole earth, tempting men, and so long as the sons of Belial do never lock themselves in caves, but run like ants to and fro corrupting others, the good man that skulks apart plays the devil's game, or at least gives him the odds: thou a soldier of Christ? ask thy Comrade Denys, who is but a soldier of the duke, ask him if ever he skulked in a hole and shunned the battle because forsooth in battle is danger as well as glory and duty. For thy sole excuse is fear; thou makest no secret on't, Go to, no duke nor king hath such cowardly soldiers as Christ hath. What was that you said in the church at Rotterdam about the man in the parable that buried his talent in the earth, and so offended the giver? Thy wonderful gift for preaching, is it not a talent, and a gift from thy Creator?”
“Certes; such as it is.”
“And hast thou laid it out? or buried it? To whom hast thou preached these seven months? to bats and owls? Hast buried it in one hole with thyself and thy once good wits?
“The Dominicans are the friars preachers. 'Tis for preaching they were founded, so thou art false to Dominic as well as to his Master.
“Do you remember, Gerard, when we were young together, which now are old before our time, as we walked handed in the fields, did you but see a sheep cast, ay, three fields off, you would leave your sweetheart (by her good will) and run and lift the sheep for charity? Well, then, at Gouda is not one sheep in evil plight, but a whole flock; some cast, some strayed, some sick, some tainted, some a being devoured, and all for the want of a shepherd. Where is their shepherd? lurking in a den like a wolf, a den in his own parish; out fie! out fie!
“I scented thee out, in part, by thy kindness to the little birds. Take note, you Gerard Eliassoen must love something, 'tis in your blood; you were born to't. Shunning man, you do but seek earthly affection a peg lower than man.”
Gerard interrupted her. “The birds are God's creatures, His innocent creatures, and I do well to love them, being God's creatures.”
“What, are they creatures of the same God that we are, that he is who lies upon thy knee?”
“You know they are.”
“Then what pretence for shunning us and being kind to them? Sith man is one of the animals, why pick him out to shun? Is't because he is of animals the paragon? What, you court the young of birds, and abandon your own young? Birds need but bodily food, and having wings, deserve scant pity if they cannot fly and find it. But that sweet dove upon thy knee, he needeth not carnal only, but spiritual food. He is thine as well as mine; and I have done my share. He will soon be too much for me, and I look to Gouda's parson to teach him true piety and useful lore. Is he not of more value than many sparrows?”
Gerard started and stammered an affirmation. For she waited for his reply.
“You wonder,” continued she, “to hear me quote holy writ so glib. I have pored over it this four years, and why? Not because God wrote it, but because I saw it often in thy hands ere thou didst leave me. Heaven forgive me, I am but a woman. What thinkest thou of this sentence? 'Let your work so shine before men that they may see your good works and glorify your Father which is in heaven!' What is a saint in a sink better than 'a light under a bushel!'
“Therefore, since the sheep committed to thy charge bleat for thee and cry, 'Oh desert us no longer, but come to Gouda manse;' since I, who know thee ten times better than thou knowest thyself, do pledge my soul it is for thy soul's weal to go to Gouda manse—since duty to thy child, too long abandoned, calls thee to Gouda manse—since thy sovereign, whom holy writ again bids thee honour, sends thee to Gouda manse—since the Pope, whom the Church teaches thee to revere hath absolved thee of thy monkish vows, and orders thee to Gouda manse—”
“Ah!”
“Since thy grey-haired mother watches for thee in dole and care, and turneth oft the hour-glass and sigheth sore that thou comest so slow to her at Gouda manse—since thy brother, withered by thy curse, awaits thy forgiveness and thy prayers for his soul, now lingering in his body, at Gouda manse—take thou in thine arms the sweet bird wi' crest of gold that nestles to thy bosom, and give me thy hand; thy sweetheart erst and wife, and now thy friend, the truest friend to thee this night that ere man had, and come with me to Gouda manse!”
“IT IS THE VOICE OF AN ANGEL!” cried Clement loudly.
“Then hearken it, and come forth to Gouda manse!”
The battle was won.
Margaret lingered behind, cast her eye rapidly round the furniture, and selected the Vulgate and the psaltery. The rest she sighed at, and let it lie. The breastplate and the cilice of bristles she took and dashed with feeble ferocity on the floor.
Then seeing Gerard watch her with surprise from the outside, she coloured and said, “I am but a woman: 'little' will still be 'spiteful.'”
“Why encumber thyself with those? They are safe.”
“Oh, she had a reason.”
And with this they took the road to Gouda parsonage, The moon and stars were so bright, it seemed almost as light as day.
Suddenly Gerard stopped. “My poor little birds!”
“What of them?”
“They will miss their food. I feed them every day.”
“The child hath a piece of bread in his cowl, Take that, and feed them now against the morn.”
“I will. Nay, I will not, He is as innocent, and nearer to me and to thee.”
Margaret drew a long breath, “'Tis well, Hadst taken it, I might have hated thee; I am but a woman.”
When they had gone about a quarter of a mile, Gerard sighed.
“Margaret,” said he, “I must e'en rest; he is too heavy for me.”
“Then give him me, and take thou these. Alas! alas! I mind when thou wouldst have run with the child on one shoulder, and the mother on t'other.”
And Margaret carried the boy.
“I trow,” said Gerard, looking down, “overmuch fasting is not good for a man.”
“A many die of it each year, winter time,” replied Margaret.
Gerard pondered these simple words, and eyed her askant, carrying the child with perfect ease. When they had gone nearly a mile he said with considerable surprise, “You thought it was but two butts' length.”
“Not I.”
“Why, you said so.”
“That is another matter.” She then turned on him the face of a Madonna. “I lied,” said she sweetly. “And to save your soul and body, I'd maybe tell a worse lie than that, at need. I am but a woman, Ah, well, it is but two butts' length from here at any rate.”
“Without a lie?”
“Humph! Three, without a lie.”
And sure enough, in a few minutes they came up to the manse.
A candle was burning in the vicar's parlour. “She is waking still,” whispered Margaret.
“Beautiful! beautiful!” said Clement, and stopped to look at it.
“What, in Heaven's name?”
“That little candle, seen through the window at night. Look an it be not like some fair star of size prodigious: it delighteth the eyes, and warmeth the heart of those outside.”
“Come, and I'll show thee something better,” said Margaret, and led him on tiptoe to the window.
They looked in, and there was Catherine kneeling on the hassock, with her “hours” before her.
“Folk can pray out of a cave,” whispered Margaret. “Ay and hit heaven with their prayers; for 'tis for a sight of thee she prayeth, and thou art here. Now, Gerard, be prepared; she is not the woman you knew her; her children's troubles have greatly broken the brisk, light-hearted soul. And I see she has been weeping e'en now; she will have given thee up, being so late.”
“Let me get to her,” said Clement hastily, trembling all over.
“That door! I will bide here.”
When Gerard was gone to the door, Margaret, fearing the sudden surprise, gave one sharp tap at the window and cried, “Mother!” in a loud, expressive voice that Catherine read at once. She clasped her hands together and had half risen from her kneeling posture when the door burst open and Clement flung himself wildly on his knees at her knees, with his arms out to embrace her. She uttered a cry such as only a mother could, “Ah! my darling, my darling!” and clung sobbing round his neck. And true it was, she saw neither a hermit, a priest, nor a monk, but just her child, lost, and despaired of, and in her arms, And after a little while Margaret came in, with wet eyes and cheeks, and a holy calm of affection settled by degrees on these sore troubled ones. And they sat all three together, hand in hand, murmuring sweet and loving converse; and he who sat in the middle drank right and left their true affection and their humble but genuine wisdom, and was forced to eat a good nourishing meal, and at daybreak was packed off to a snowy bed, and by and by awoke, as from a hideous dream, friar and hermit no more, Clement no more, but Gerard Eliassoen, parson of Gouda.