Then Gerard, who had loved her soul so many years, feared lest she should expire with a mind too fixed on earthly affection.
“Oh my daughter,” he cried, “my dear daughter, if indeed thou lovest me as I love thee, give me not the pain of seeing thee die with thy pious soul fixed on mortal things.
“Dearest lamb of all my fold, for whose soul I must answer, oh think not now of mortal love, but of His who died for thee on the tree. Oh, let thy last look be heavenwards, thy last word a word of prayer.”
She turned a look of gratitude and obedience on him. “What saint?” she murmured: meaning doubtless, “what saint should she invoke as an intercessor.”
“He to whom the saints themselves do pray.”
She turned on him one more sweet look of love and submission, and put her pretty hands together in a prayer like a child.
“Jesu!”
This blessed word was her last. She lay with her eyes heavenwards, and her hands put together.
Gerard prayed fervently for her passing spirit. And when he had prayed a long time with his head averted, not to see her last breath, all seemed unnaturally still. He turned his head fearfully. It was so.
She was gone.
Nothing left him now but the earthly shell of as constant, pure, and loving a spirit as eve' adorned the earth.
(1) Let me not be understood to apply this to the bareoutline of the relation. Many bishops and priests, and not afew popes, had wives and children as laymen; and enteringorders were parted from the wives and not from the children.But in the case before the reader are the additionalfeatures of a strong surviving attachment on both sides, andof neighbourhood, besides that here the man had been ledinto holy orders by a false statement of the woman's death.On a summary of all the essential features, the situationwas, to the best of my belief, unique.
A priest is never more thoroughly a priest than in the chamber of death, Gerard did the last offices of the Church for the departed, just as he should have done them for his smallest parishioner. He did this mechanically, then sat down stupefied by the sudden and tremendous blow, and not yet realizing the pangs of bereavement. Then in a transport of religious enthusiasm he kneeled and thanked Heaven for her Christian end.
And then all his thought was to take her away from strangers, and lay her in his own churchyard. That very evening a covered cart with one horse started for Gouda, and in it was a coffin, and a broken-hearted man lying with his arms and chin resting on it.
The mourner's short-lived energy had exhausted itself in the necessary preparations, and now he lay crushed, clinging to the cold lead that held her.
The man of whom the cart was hired walked by the horse's head and did not speak to him, and when he baited the horse spoke but in a whisper respecting that mute agony. But when he stopped for the night, he and the landlord made a well-meaning attempt to get the mourner away to take some rest and food. But Gerard repulsed them, and when they persisted, almost snarled at them, like a faithful dog, and clung to the cold lead all night. So then they drew a cloak over him, and left him in peace.
And at noon the sorrowful cart came up to the manse, and there were full a score of parishioners collected with one little paltry trouble or another. They had missed the parson already. And when they saw what it was, and saw their healer so stricken down, they raised a loud wail of grief, and it roused him from his lethargy of woe, and he saw where he was, and their faces, and tried to speak to them, “Oh, my children! my children!” he cried; but choked with anguish, could say no more.
Yet the next day, spite of all remonstrances, he buried her himself, and read the service with a voice that only trembled now and then, Many tears fell upon her grave. And when the service ended he stayed there standing like a statue, and the people left the churchyard out of respect.
He stood like one in a dream till the sexton, who was, as most men are, a fool, began to fill in the grave without giving him due warning.
But at the sound of earth falling on her Gerard uttered a piercing scream.
The sexton forbore.
Gerard staggered and put his hand to his breast. The sexton supported him, and called for help.
Jorian Ketel, who lingered near mourning his benefactress, ran into the churchyard, and the two supported Gerard into the manse.
“Ah, Jorian! good Jorian!” said he, “something snapped within me; I felt it, and I heard it; here, Jorian, here;” and he put his hand to his breast.
A fortnight after this a pale bowed figure entered the Dominican convent in the suburbs of Gouda, and sought speech with Brother Ambrose, who governed the convent as deputy, the prior having lately died, and his successor, though appointed, not having arrived.
The sick man was Gerard, come to end life as he began it.
He entered as a novice, on probation; but the truth was, he was a failing man, and knew it, and came there to die in peace, near kind and gentle Ambrose, his friend, and the other monks to whom his house and heart had always been open.
His manse was more than he could bear; it was too full of reminiscences of her.
Ambrose, who knew his value, and his sorrow, was not without a kindly hope of curing him, and restoring him to his parish. With this view he put him in a comfortable cell over the gateway, and forbade him to fast or practice any austerities.
But in a few days the new prior arrived, and proved a very Tartar. At first he was absorbed in curing abuses, and tightening the general discipline; but one day hearing the vicar of Gouda had entered the convent as a novice, he said, “'Tis well; let him first give up his vicarage then, or go; I'll no fat parsons in my house.” The prior then sent for Gerard, and he went to him; and the moment they saw one another they both started.
“Clement!”
“Jerome!”
Jerome was as morose as ever in his general character, but he had somewhat softened towards Gerard. All the time he was in England he had missed him more then he thought possible, and since then had often wondered what had become of him. What he heard in Gouda raised his feeble brother in his good opinion; above all, that he had withstood the Pope and the Minorites on “the infernal heresy of the immaculate conception,” as he called it. But when one of his young monks told him with tears in his eyes the Cause of Gerard's illness, all his contempt revived. “Dying for a woman?”
He determined to avert this scandal; he visited Clement twice a day in his cell, and tried all his old influence and all his eloquence to induce him to shake off this unspiritual despondency, and not rob the church of his piety and his eloquence at so critical a period.
Gerard heard him, approved his reasoning, admired his strength, confessed his own weakness, and continued visibly to wear away to the land of the leal. One day Jerome told him he had heard his story, and heard it with pride. “But now,” said he, “you spoil it all, Clement; for this is the triumph of earthly passion. Better have yielded to it and repented, than resist it while she lived, and succumb under it now, body and soul.”
“Dear Jerome,” said Clement, so sweetly as to rob his remonstrance of the tone of remonstrance, “here, I think, you do me some injustice. Passion there is none; but a deep affection, for which I will not blush here, since I shall not blush for it in heaven. Bethink thee, Jerome, the poor dog that dies of grief on his master's grave, is he guilty of passion? Neither am I. Passion had saved my life, and lost my soul, She was my good angel; she sustained me in my duty and charity; her face encouraged me in the pulpit; her lips soothed me under ingratitude. She intertwined herself with all that was good in my life; and after leaning on her so long, I could not go on alone. And, dear Jerome, believe me I am no rebel against Heaven. It is God's will to release me. When they threw the earth upon her poor coffin, something snapped within my bosom here that mended may not be. I heard it, and I felt it. And from that time, Jerome, no food that I put in my mouth had any savour. With my eyes bandaged now I could not tell thee which was bread, and which was flesh, by eating of it.”
“Holy saints!”
“And again, from that same hour my deep dejection left me, and I smiled again. I often smile—why? I read it thus: He in whose hands are the issues of life and death gave me that minute the great summons; 'twas some cord of life snapped in me. He is very pitiful. I should have lived unhappy; but He said, 'No; enough is done, enough is suffered; poor feeble, loving servant, thy shortcomings are forgiven, thy sorrows touch thine end; come thou to thy rest!' I come, Lord, I come!”
Jerome groaned. “The Church had ever her holy but feeble servants,” he said. “Now would I give ten years of my life to save thine. But I see it may not be. Die in peace.”
And so it was that in a few days more Gerard lay a-dying in a frame of mind so holy and happy, that more than one aged saint was there to garner his dying words. In the evening he had seen Giles, and begged him not to let poor Jack starve; and to see that little Gerard's trustees did their duty, and to kiss his parents for him, and to send Denys to his friends in Burgundy: “Poor thing, he will feel so strange here without his comrade.” And after that he had an interview with Jerome alone. What passed between them was never distinctly known; but it must have been something remarkable, for Jerome went from the door with his hands crossed on his breast, his high head lowered, and sighing as he went.
The two monks that watched with him till matins related that all through the night he broke out from time to time in pious ejaculations, and praises, and thanksgivings; only once they said he wandered, and thought he saw her walking in green meadows with other spirits clad in white, and beckoning him; and they all smiled and beckoned him. And both these monks said (but it might have been fancy) that just before dawn there came three light taps against the wall, one after another, very slow; and the dying man heard them, and said.
“I come, love, I come.”
This much is certain, that Gerard did utter these words, and prepare for his departure, having uttered them. He sent for all the monks who at that hour were keeping vigil. They came, and hovered like gentle spirits round him with holy words. Some prayed in silence for him with their faces touching the ground, others tenderly supported his head. But when one of them said something about his life of self-denial and charity, he stopped him, and addressing them all said, “My dear brethren, take note that he who here dies so happy holds not these new-fangled doctrines of man's merit. Oh, what a miserable hour were this to me an if I did! Nay, but I hold, with the Apostles, and their pupils in the Church, the ancient fathers, that we are justified not by our own wisdom, or piety, or the works we have done in holiness of heart, but by faith.'”(1)
Then there was silence, and the monks looked at one another significantly.
“Please you sweep the floor,” said the dying Christian, in a voice to which all its clearance and force seemed supernaturally restored.
They instantly obeyed, not without a sentiment of awe and curiosity.
“Make me a great cross with wood ashes.”
They strewed the ashes in form of a great Cross upon the floor.
“Now lay me down on it, for so will I die.”
And they took him gently from his bed, and laid him on the cross of wood ashes.
“Shall we spread out thine arms, dear brother?”
“Now God forbid! Am I worthy of that?”
He lay silent, but with his eyes raised in ecstasy.
Presently he spoke half to them, half to himself, “Oh,” he said, with a subdued but concentrated rapture, “I feel it buoyant. It lifts me floating in the sky whence my merits had sunk me like lead.”
Day broke; and displayed his face cast upward in silent rapture, and his hands together; like Margaret's.
And just about the hour she died he spoke his last word in this world.
“Jesu!”
And even with that word—he fell asleep.
They laid him out for his last resting-place.
Under his linen they found a horse-hair shirt.
“Ah!” cried the young monks, “behold a saint!”
Under the hair cloth they found a long thick tress of auburn hair.
They started, and were horrified; and a babel of voices arose, some condemning, some excusing.
In the midst of which Jerome came in, and hearing the dispute, turned to an ardent young monk called Basil, who was crying scandal the loudest, “Basil,” said he, “is she alive or dead that owned this hair?”
“How may I know, father?”
“Then for aught you know it may be the relic of a saint?”
“Certes it may be,” said Basil sceptically.
“You have then broken our rule, which saith, 'Put ill construction on no act done by a brother which can be construed innocently.' Who are you to judge such a man as this was? go to your cell, and stir not out for a week by way of penance.”
He then carried off the lock of hair.
And when the coffin was to be closed, he cleared the cell: and put the tress upon the dead man's bosom. “There, Clement,” said he to the dead face. And set himself a penance for doing it; and nailed the coffin up himself.
The next day Gerard was buried in Gouda churchyard. The monks followed him in procession from the convent. Jerome, who was evidently carrying out the wishes of the deceased, read the service. The grave was a deep one, and at the bottom of it was a lead coffin. Poor Gerard's, light as a feather (so wasted was he), was lowered, and placed by the side of it.
After the service Jerome said a few words to the crowd of parishioners that had come to take the last look at their best friend. When he spoke of the virtues of the departed loud wailing and weeping burst forth, and tears fell upon the coffin like rain.
The monks went home. Jerome collected them in the refectory and spoke to them thus: “We have this day laid a saint in the earth. The convent will keep his trentals, but will feast, not fast; for our good brother is freed from the burden of the flesh; his labours are over, and he has entered into his joyful rest. I alone shall fast, and do penance; for to my shame I say it, I was unjust to him, and knew not his worth till it was too late. And you, young monks, be not curious to inquire whether a lock he bore on his bosom was a token of pure affection or the relic of a saint; but remember the heart he wore beneath: most of all, fix your eyes upon his life and conversation, and follow them an ye may: for he was a holy man.”
Thus after life's fitful fever these true lovers were at peace.
The grave, kinder to them than the Church, united them for ever; and now a man of another age and nation, touched with their fate, has laboured to build their tombstone, and rescue them from long and unmerited oblivion.
He asks for them your sympathy, but not your pity.
No, put this story to a wholesome use.
Fiction must often give false views of life and death. Here as it happens, curbed by history, she gives you true ones. Let the barrier that kept these true lovers apart prepare you for this, that here on earth there will nearly always be some obstacle or other to your perfect happiness; to their early death apply your Reason and your Faith, by way of exercise and preparation. For if you cannot bear to be told that these died young, who had they lived a hundred years would still be dead, how shall you bear to see the gentle, the loving, and the true glide from your own bosom to the grave, and fly from your house to heaven?
Yet this is in store for you. In every age the Master of life and death, who is kinder as well as wiser than we are, has transplanted to heaven, young, earth's sweetest flowers.
I ask your sympathy, then, for their rare constancy and pure affection, and their cruel separation by a vile heresy(2) in the bosom of the Church; but not your pity for their early but happy end.
'Beati sunt qui in Domino moriuntur.
(1) He was citing from Clement of Rome—{ou di eautwn dikaioumetha oude dia tys ymeterassophias, y eusebeias y ergwn wn kateirgasametha enosioteeti karthias, alla dia tys pistews}.—Epist.ad Corinth, i. 32.
(2) Celibacy of the clergy, an invention truly fiendish.
In compliance with a Custom I despise, but have not the spirit to resist, I linger on the stage to pick up the smaller fragments of humanity I have scattered about; i.e. some of them, for the wayside characters have no claim on me; they have served their turn if they have persuaded the reader that Gerard travelled from Holland to Rome through human beings, and not through a population of dolls.
Eli and Catherine lived to a great age: lived so long, that both Gerard and Margaret grew to be dim memories. Giles also was longaevous; he went to the court of Bavaria, and was alive there at ninety, but had somehow turned into bones and leather, trumpet toned.
Cornelis, free from all rivals, and forgiven long ago by his mother, who clung to him more and more now all her brood was scattered, waited and waited and waited for his parents' decease. But Catherine's shrewd word came true; ere she and her mate wore out, this worthy rusted away. At sixty-five he lay dying of old age in his mother's arms, a hale woman of eighty-six. He had lain unconscious a while, but came to himself in articulo mortis, and seeing her near him, told her how he would transform the shop and premises as soon as they should be his. “Yes, my darling,” said the poor old woman soothingly, and in another minute he was clay, and that clay was followed to the grave by all the feet whose shoes he had waited for.
Denys, broken-hearted at his comrade's death, was glad to return to Burgundy, and there a small pension the court allowed him kept him until unexpectedly he inherited a considerable sum from a relation. He was known in his native place for many years as a crusty old soldier, who could tell good stories of war when he chose, and a bitter railer against women.
Jerome, disgusted with northern laxity, retired to Italy, and having high connections became at seventy a mitred abbot. He put on the screw of discipline; his monks revered and hated him. He ruled with iron rod ten years. And one night he died, alone; for he had not found the way to a single heart. The Vulgate was on his pillow, and the crucifix in his hand, and on his lips something more like a smile than was ever seen there while he lived; so that, methinks, at that awful hour he was not quite alone. Requiescat in pace. The Master he served has many servants, and they have many minds, and now and then a faithful one will be a surly one, as it is in these our mortal mansions.
The yellow-haired laddie, Gerard Gerardson, belongs not to Fiction but to History. She has recorded his birth in other terms than mine. Over the tailor's house in the Brede Kirk Straet she has inscribed:
“HAEC EST PARVA DOMUS NATUS QUA MAGNUS ERASMUS,”
and she has written half-a-dozen lives of him. But there is something left for her yet to do. She has no more comprehended magnum Erasmum, than any other pigmy comprehends a giant, or partisan a judge.
First scholar and divine of his epoch, he was also the heaven-born dramatist of his century. Some of the best scenes in this new book are from his mediaeval pen, and illumine the pages where they come; for the words of a genius so high as his are not born to die: their immediate work upon mankind fulfilled, they may seem to lie torpid; but at each fresh shower of intelligence Time pours upon their students, they prove their immortal race: they revive, they spring from the dust of great libraries; they bud, they flower, they fruit, they seed, from generation to generation, and from age to age.