Chapter XCIV…

Chapter XCIV

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 this kind.

(2) Query, “looking glass.”

(3) Craft. He means trade or profession.

Chapter XCV

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.

(1) I think she means prejudice.

Chapter XCVI

Margaret went back to Rotterdam long ere Gerard awoke, and actually left her boy behind her. She sent the faithful, sturdy Reicht off to Gouda directly with a vicar's grey frock and large felt hat, and with minute instructions how to govern her new master.

Then she went to Jorian Ketel; for she said to herself, “he is the closest I ever met, so he is the man for me,” and in concert with him she did two mortal sly things; yet not, in my opinion, virulent, though she thought they were; but if I am asked what were these deeds without a name, the answer is, that as she, who was, 'but a woman,' kept them secret till her dying day, I, who am a man--“Verbum non amplius addam.”

She kept away from Gouda parsonage.

Things that pass little noticed in the heat of argument sometimes rankle afterwards; and when she came to go over all that had passed, she was offended at Gerard thinking she could ever forget the priest in the some time lover, “For what did he take me?” said she. And this raised a great shyness which really she would not otherwise have felt, being downright innocent, And pride sided with modesty, and whispered, “Go no more to Gouda parsonage.”

She left little Gerard there to complete the conquest her maternal heart ascribed to him, not to her own eloquence and sagacity, and to anchor his father for ever to humanity.

But this generous stroke of policy cost her heart dear. She had never yet been parted from her boy an hour, and she felt sadly strange as well as desolate without him. After the first day it became intolerable; and what does the poor soul do, but creep at dark up to Gouda parsonage, and lurk about the premises like a thief till she saw Reicht Heynes in the kitchen alone, Then she tapped softly at the window and said, “Reicht, for pity's sake bring him out to me unbeknown.” With Margaret the person who occupied her thoughts at the time ceased to have a name, and sank to a pronoun.

Reicht soon found an excuse for taking little Gerard out, and there was a scene of mutual rapture, followed by mutual tears when mother and boy parted again.

And it was arranged that Reicht should take him half way to Rotterdam every day, at a set hour, and Margaret meet them. And at these meetings, after the raptures, and after mother and child had gambolled together like a young cat and her first kitten, the boy would sometimes amuse himself alone at their feet, and the two women generally seized this opportunity to talk very seriously about Luke Peterson, This began thus:

“Reicht,” said Margaret, “I as good as promised him to marry Luke Peterson. 'Say you the word,' quoth I, 'and I'll wed him.'”

“Poor Luke!”

“Prithee, why poor Luke?”

“To be bandied about so, atwixt yea and nay.”

“Why, Reicht, you have not ever been so simple as to cast an eye of affection on the boy, that you take his part?”

“Me?” said Reicht, with a toss of the head.

“Oh, I ask your pardon. Well, then, you can do me a good turn.”

“Whisht! whisper! that little darling is listening to every word, and eyes like saucers.”

On this both their heads would have gone under one cap.

Two women plotting against one boy? Oh, you great cowardly serpents!

But when these stolen meetings had gone on for about five days Margaret began to feel the injustice of it, and to be irritated as well as unhappy.

And she was crying about it when a cart came to her door, and in it, clean as a new penny, his beard close shaved, his hands white as snow, and a little colour in his pale face, sat the Vicar of Gouda in the grey frock and large felt hat she had sent him.

She ran upstairs directly, and washed away all traces of her tears, and put on a cap, which being just taken out of the drawer was cleaner, theoretically, than the one she had on, and came down to him.

He seized both her hands and kissed them, and a tear fell upon them. She turned her head away at that to hide her own which started.

“My sweet Margaret,” he cried, “why is this? Why hold you aloof from your own good deed? we have been waiting for you every day, and no Margaret.”

“You said things.”

“What! when I was a hermit, and a donkey.”

“Ay! no matter, you said things. And you had no reason.”

“Forget all I said there. Who hearkens the ravings of a maniac? for I see now that in a few months more I should have been a gibbering idiot; yet no mortal could have persuaded me away but you. Oh what an outlay of wit and goodness was yours! But it is not here I can thank and bless you as I ought. No, it is in the home you have given me, among the sheep whose shepherd you have made me; already I love them dearly; there it is I must thank 'the truest friend ever man had.' So now I say to you as erst you said to me, come to Gouda manse.”

“Humph! we will see about that.”

“Why, Margaret, think you I had ever kept the dear child so long, but that I made sure you would be back to him from day to day? Oh he curls round my very heartstrings, but what is my title to him compared to thine? Confess now, thou hast had hard thoughts of me for this.”

“Nay, nay, not I. Ah! thou art thyself again; wast ever thoughtful of others. I have half a mind to go to Gouda manse, for your saying that.”

“Come then, with half thy mind, 'tis worth the whole of other folk's.”

“Well, I dare say I will; but there is no such mighty hurry,” said she coolly (she was literally burning to go). “Tell me first how you agree with your folk.”

“Why, already my poor have taken root in my heart.”

“I thought as much.”

“And there are such good creatures among them; simple and rough, and superstitious, but wonderfully good.”

“Oh I leave you alone for seeing a grain of good among a bushel of ill.”

“Whisht! whisht! And Margaret, two of them have been ill friends for four years, and came to the manse each to get on my blind side. But give the glory to God I got on their bright side, and made them friends, and laugh at themselves for their folly.”

“But are you in very deed their vicar? answer me that.”

“Certes; have I not been to the bishop and taken the oath, and rung the church bell, and touched the altar, the missal, and the holy cup before the church-wardens? And they have handed me the parish seal; see, here it is. Nay, 'tis a real vicar inviting a true friend to Gouda manse.”

“Then my mind is at ease. Tell me oceans more.”

“Well, sweet one, nearest to me of all my parish is a poor cripple that my guardian angel and his (her name thou knowest even by this turning of thy head away) hath placed beneath my roof. Sybrandt and I are that we never were till now, brothers. 'Twould gladden thee, yet sadden thee to hear how we kissed and forgave one another. He is full of thy praises, and wholly in a pious mind; he says he is happier since his trouble than e'er he was in the days of his strength. Oh! out of my house he ne'er shall go to any place but heaven.”

“Tell me somewhat that happened thyself, poor soul! All this is good, but yet no tidings to me. Do I not know thee of old?”

“Well, let me see. At first I was much dazzled by the sun-light, and could not go abroad (owl!), but that is passed; and good Reicht Heynes--humph!”

“What of her?”

“This to thine ear only, for she is a diamond. Her voice goes through me like a knife, and all voices seem loud but thine, which is so mellow sweet. Stay, now I'll fit ye with tidings; I spake yesterday with an old man that conceits he is ill-tempered, and sweats to pass for such with others, but oh! so threadbare, and the best good heart beneath.”

“Why, 'tis a parish of angels,” said Margaret ironically.

“Then why dost thou keep out on't?” retorted Gerard. “Well, he was telling me there was no parish in Holland where the devil hath such power as at Gouda; and among his instances, says he, 'We had a hermit, the holiest in Holland; but being Gouda, the devil came for him this week, and took him, bag and baggage; not a ha'porth of him left but a goodish piece of his skin, just for all the world like a hedgehog's, and a piece o' old iron furbished up.'”

Margaret smiled.

“Ay, but,” continued Gerard, “the strange thing is, the cave has verily fallen in; and had I been so perverse as resist thee, it had assuredly buried me dead there where I had buried myself alive. Therefore in this I see the finger of Providence, condemning my late, approving my present, way of life. What sayest thou?”

“Nay, can I pierce the like mysteries? I am but a woman.”

“Somewhat more, methinks. This very tale proves thee my guardian angel, and all else avouches it, so come to Gouda manse.”

“Well, go you on, I'll follow.”

“Nay, in the cart with me.”

“Not so.”

“Why?”

“Can I tell why and wherefore, being a woman? All I know is I seem--to feel--to wish--to come alone.”

“So be it then. I leave thee the cart, being, as thou sayest, a woman, and I'll go a-foot, being a man again, with the joyful tidings of thy coming.”

When Margaret reached the manse the first thing she saw was the two Gerards together, the son performing his capriccios on the plot, and the father slouching on a chair, in his great hat, with pencil and paper, trying very patiently to sketch him.

After a warm welcome he showed her his attempts. “But in vain I strive to fix him,” said he, “for he is incarnate quick silver, Yet do but note his changes, infinite, but none ungracious; all is supple and easy; and how he melteth from one posture to another,” He added presently, “Woe to illuminators I looking on thee, sir baby, I see what awkward, lopsided, ungainly toads I and my fellows painted missals with, and called them cherubs and seraphs,” Finally he threw the paper away in despair, and Margaret conveyed it secretly into her bosom.

At night when they sat round the peat fire he bade them observe how beautiful the brass candlesticks and other glittering metals were in the glow from the hearth. Catherine's eyes sparkled at this observation, “And oh the sheets I lie in here,” said he, “often my conscience pricketh me, and saith, 'Who art thou to lie in lint like web of snow?' Dives was ne'er so flaxed as I. And to think that there are folk in the world that have all the beautiful things which I have here yet not content. Let them pass six months in a hermit's cell, seeing no face of man, then will they find how lovely and pleasant this wicked world is, and eke that men and women are God's fairest creatures. Margaret was always fair, but never to my eye so bright as now.” Margaret shook her head incredulously, Gerard continued, “My mother was ever good and kind, but I noted not her exceeding comeliness till now.”

“Nor I neither,” said Catherine; “a score years ago I might pass in a crowd, but not now.”

Gerard declared to her that each age had its beauty. “See this mild grey eye,” said he, “that hath looked motherly love upon so many of us, all that love hath left its shadow, and that shadow is a beauty which defieth Time. See this delicate lip, these pure white teeth. See this well-shaped brow, where comliness Just passeth into reverence. Art beautiful in my eyes, mother dear.”

“And that is enough for me, my darling, 'Tis time you were in bed, child. Ye have to preach the morn.”

And Reicht Heynes and Catherine interchanged a look which said, “We two have an amiable maniac to superintend; calls everything beautiful.”

The next day was Sunday, and they heard him preach in his own church. It was crammed with persons, who came curious, but remained devout. Never was his wonderful gift displayed more powerfully; he was himself deeply moved by the first sight of all his people, and his bowels yearned over this flock he had so long neglected. In a single sermon, which lasted two hours and seemed to last but twenty minutes, he declared the whole scripture: he terrified the impenitent and thoughtless, confirmed the wavering, consoled the bereaved and the afflicted, uplifted the heart of the poor, and when he ended, left the multitude standing rapt, and unwilling to believe the divine music of his voice and soul had ceased.

Need I say that two poor women in a corner sat entranced, with streaming eyes.

“Wherever gat he it all?” whispered Catherine, with her apron to her eyes. “By our Lady not from me.”

As soon as they were by themselves Margaret threw her arms round Catherine's neck and kissed her.

“Mother, mother, I am not quite a happy woman, but oh I am a proud one.”

And she vowed on her knees never by word or deed to let her love come between this young saint and Heaven.

Reader, did you ever stand by the seashore after a storm, when the wind happens to have gone down suddenly? The waves cannot cease with their cause; indeed, they seem at first to the ear to lash the sounding shore more fiercely than while the wind blew. Still we are conscious that inevitable calm has begun, and is now but rocking them to sleep. So it was with those true and tempest-tossed lovers from that eventful night when they went hand in hand beneath the stars from Gouda hermitage to Gouda manse.

At times a loud wave would every now and then come roaring, but it was only memory's echo of the tempest that had swept their lives; the storm itself was over, and the boiling waters began from that moment to go down, down, down, gently, but inevitably.

This image is to supply the place of interminable details that would be tedious and tame. What best merits attention at present is the general situation, and the strange complication of feeling that arose from it. History itself, though a far more daring story-teller than romance, presents few things so strange(1) as the footing on which Gerard and Margaret now lived for many years. United by present affection, past familiarity, and a marriage irregular but legal; separated by Holy Church and by their own consciences, which sided unreservedly with Holy Church; separated by the Church, but united by a living pledge of affection, lawful in every sense at its date.

And living but a few miles from one another, and she calling his mother “mother,” For some years she always took her boy to Gouda on Sunday, returning home at dark, Go when she would, it was always fete at Gouda manse, and she was received like a little queen. Catherine in these days was nearly always with her, and Eli very often, Tergou had so little to tempt them compared with Rotterdam; and at last they left it altogether, and set up in the capital.

And thus the years glided; so barren now of striking incidents, so void of great hopes, and free from great fears, and so like one another, that without the help of dates I could scarcely indicate the progress of time.

However, early next year, 1471, the Duchess of Burgundy, with the open dissent, but secret connivance of the Duke, raised forces to enable her dethroned brother, Edward the Fourth of England, to invade that kingdom; our old friend Denys thus enlisted, and passing through Rotterdam to the ships, heard on his way that Gerard was a priest, and Margaret alone. On this he told Margaret that marriage was not a habit of his, but that as his comrade had put it out of his own power to keep troth, he felt bound to offer to keep it for him; “for a comrade's honour is dear to us as our own,” said he.

She stared, then smiled, “I choose rather to be still thy she-comrade,” said she; “closer acquainted, we might not agree so well,” And in her character of she-comrade she equipped him with a new sword of Antwerp make, and a double handful of silver. “I give thee no gold,” said she, “for 'tis thrown away as quick as silver, and harder to win back. Heaven send thee safe out of all thy perils; there be famous fair women yonder to beguile thee, with their faces, as well as men to hash thee with their axes.”

He was hurried on board at La Vere, and never saw Gerard at that time.

In 1473 Sybrandt began to fail. His pitiable existence had been sweetened by his brother's inventive tenderness and his own contented spirit, which, his antecedents considered, was truly remarkable, As for Gerard, the day never passed that he did not devote two hours to him; reading or singing to him, praying with him, and drawing him about in a soft carriage Margaret and he had made between them. When the poor soul found his end near, he begged Margaret might be sent for. She came at once, and almost with his last breath he sought once more that forgiveness she had long ago accorded. She remained by him till the last; and he died, blessing and blessed, in the arms of the two true lovers he had parted for life. Tantum religio scit suadere boni.

1474 there was a wedding in Margaret's house, Luke Peterson and Reicht Heynes.

This may seem less strange if I give the purport of the dialogue interrupted some time back.

Margaret went on to say, “Then in that case you can easily make him fancy you, and for my sake you must, for my conscience it pricketh me, and I must needs fit him with a wife, the best I know.” Margaret then instructed Reicht to be always kind and good-humoured to Luke; and she would be a model of peevishness to him, “But be not thou so simple as run me down,” said she, “Leave that to me. Make thou excuses for me; I will make myself black enow.”

Reicht received these instructions like an order to sweep a room, and obeyed them punctually.

When they had subjected poor Luke to this double artillery for a couple of years, he got to look upon Margaret as his fog and wind, and Reicht as his sunshine; and his affections transferred themselves, he scarce knew how or when.

On the wedding day Reicht embraced Margaret, and thanked her almost with tears. “He was always my fancy,” said she, “from the first hour I clapped eyes on him.”

“Heyday, you never told me that. What, Reicht, are you as sly as the rest?”

“Nay, nay,” said Reicht eagerly; “but I never thought you would really part with him to me. In my country the mistress looks to be served before the maid.”

Margaret settled them in her shop, and gave them half the profits.

1476 and 7 were years of great trouble to Gerard, whose conscience compelled him to oppose the Pope. His Holiness, siding with the Grey Friars in their determination to swamp every palpable distinction between the Virgin Mary and her Son, bribed the Christian world into his crotchet by proffering pardon of all sins to such as would add to the Ave Mary this clause: “and blessed be thy Mother Anna, from whom, without blot of sin, proceeded thy virgin flesh.”

Gerard, in common with many of the northern clergy, held this sentence to be flat heresy. He not only refused to utter it in his church, but warned his parishioners against using it in private; and he refused to celebrate the new feast the Pope invented at the same time, viz., “the feast of the miraculous conception of the Virgin.”

But this drew upon him the bitter enmity of the Franciscans, and they were strong enough to put him into more than one serious difficulty, and inflict many a little mortification on him. In emergencies he consulted Margaret, and she always did one of two things, either she said, “I do not see my way,” and refused to guess; or else she gave him advice that proved wonderfully sagacious. He had genius, but she had marvellous tact.

And where affection came in and annihilated the woman's judgment, he stepped in his turn to her aid. Thus though she knew she was spoiling little Gerard, and Catherine was ruining him for life, she would not part with him, but kept him at home, and his abilities uncultivated. And there was a shrewd boy of nine years, instead of learning to work and obey, playing about and learning selfishness from their infinite unselfishness, and tyrannizing with a rod of iron over two women, both of them sagacious and spirited, but reduced by their fondness for him to the exact level of idiots.

Gerard saw this with pain, and interfered with mild but firm remonstrance; and after a considerable struggle prevailed, and got little Gerard sent to the best school in Europe, kept by one Haaghe at Deventer: this was in 1477. Many tears were shed, but the great progress the boy made at that famous school reconciled Margaret in some degree, and the fidelity of Reicht Heynes, now her partner in business, enabled her to spend weeks at a time hovering over her boy at Deventer.

And so the years glided; and these two persons, subjected to as strong and constant a temptation as can well be conceived, were each other's guardian angels, and not each other's tempters.

To be sure the well-greased morality of the next century, which taught that solemn vows to God are sacred in proportion as they are reasonable, had at that time entered no single mind; and the alternative to these two minds was self-denial or sacrilege.

It was a strange thing to hear them talk with unrestrained tenderness to one another of their boy, and an icy barrier between themselves all the time.

Eight years had now passed thus, and Gerard, fairly compared with men in general, was happy.

But Margaret was not.

The habitual expression of her face was a sweet pensiveness, but sometimes she was irritable and a little petulant. She even snapped Gerard now and then. And when she went to see him, if a monk was with him she would turn her back and go home. She hated the monks for having parted Gerard and her, and she inoculated her boy with a contempt for them which lasted him till his dying day.

Gerard bore with her like an angel. He knew her heart of gold, and hoped this ill gust would blow over.

He himself being now the right man in the right place this many years, loving his parishioners, and beloved by them, and occupied from morn till night in good works, recovered the natural cheerfulness of his disposition. To tell the truth, a part of his jocoseness was a blind; he was the greatest peace-maker, except Mr. Harmony in the play, that ever was born. He reconciled more enemies in ten years than his predecessors had done in three hundred; and one of his manoeuvres in the peacemaking art was to make the quarrellers laugh at the cause of quarrel. So did he undermine the demon of discord. But independently of that, he really loved a harmless joke. He was a wonderful tamer of animals, squirrels, bares, fawns, etc. So half in jest a parishioner who had a mule supposed to be possessed with a devil gave it him and said, “Tame this vagabone, parson, if ye can.” Well, in about six months, Heaven knows how, he not only tamed Jack, but won his affections to such a degree, that Jack would come running to his whistle like a dog.

One day, having taken shelter from a shower on the stone settle outside a certain public-house, he heard a toper inside, a stranger, boasting he could take more at a draught than any man in Gouda. He instantly marched in and said, “What, lads, do none of ye take him up for the honour of Gouda? Shall it be said that there came hither one from another parish a greater sot than any of us? Nay, then, I your parson do take him up. Go to, I'll find thee a parishioner shall drink more at a draught than thou.”

A bet was made; Gerard whistled; in clattered Jack--for he was taught to come into a room with the utmost composure--and put his nose into his backer's hand.

“A pair of buckets!” shouted Gerard, “and let us see which of these two sons of asses can drink most at a draught.”

On another occasion two farmers had a dispute whose hay was the best. Failing to convince each other, they said, “We'll ask parson;” for by this time he was their referee in every mortal thing.

“How lucky you thought of me!” said Gerard, “Why, I have got one staying with me who is the best judge of hay in Holland. Bring me a double handful apiece.”

So when they came, he had them into the parlour, and put each bundle on a chair. Then he whistled, and in walked Jack.

“Lord a mercy!” said one of the farmers.

“Jack,” said the parson, in the tone of conversation, “just tell us which is the best hay of these two.”

Jack sniffed them both, and made his choice directly, proving his sincerity by eating every morsel. The farmers slapped their thighs, and scratched their heads. “To think of we not thinking o' that,” And they each sent Jack a truss.

So Gerard got to be called the merry parson of Gouda. But Margaret, who like most loving women had no more sense of humour than a turtle-dove, took this very ill. “What!” said she to herself, “is there nothing sore at the bottom of his heart that he can go about playing the zany?” She could understand pious resignation and content, but not mirth, in true lovers parted. And whilst her woman's nature was perturbed by this gust (and women seem more subject to gusts than men) came that terrible animal, a busybody, to work upon her. Catherine saw she was not happy, and said to her, “Your boy is gone from you. I would not live alone all my days if I were you.”

“He is more alone than I,” sighed Margaret.

“Oh, a man is a man, but a woman is a woman. You must not think all of him and none of yourself. Near is your kirtle, but nearer is your smock. Besides, he is a priest, and can do no better. But you are not a priest. He has got his parish, and his heart is in that. Bethink thee! Time flies; overstay not thy market. Wouldst not like to have three or four more little darlings about thy knee now they have robbed thee of poor little Gerard, and sent him to yon nasty school?” And so she worked upon a mind already irritated.

Margaret had many suitors ready to marry her at a word or even a look, and among them two merchants of the better class, Van Schelt and Oostwagen. “Take one of those two,” said Catherine.

“Well, I will ask Gerard if I may,” said Margaret one day, with a flood of tears; “for I cannot go on the way I am.”

“Why, you would never be so simple as ask him?”

“Think you I would be so wicked as marry without his leave?”

Accordingly she actually went to Gouda, and after hanging her head, and blushing, and crying, and saying she was miserable, told him his mother wished her to marry one of those two; and if he approved of her marrying at all, would he use his wisdom, and tell her which he thought would be the kindest to the little Gerard of those two; for herself, she did not care what became of her.

Gerard felt as if she had put a soft hand into his body and torn his heart out with it. But the priest with a mighty effort mastered the man. In a voice scarcely audible he declined this responsibility. “I am not a saint or a prophet,” said he; “I might advise thee ill. I shall read the marriage service for thee,” faltered he; “it is my right. No other would pray for thee as I should. But thou must choose for thyself; and oh! let me see thee happy. This four months past thou hast not been happy.”

“A discontented mind is never happy,” said Margaret.

She left him, and he fell on his knees, and prayed for help from above.

Margaret went home pale and agitated. “Mother,” said she, “never mention it to me again, or we shall quarrel.”

“He forbade you? Well, more shame for him, that is all.”

“He forbid me? He did not condescend so far. He was as noble as I was paltry. He would not choose for me for fear of choosing me an ill husband. But he would read the service for my groom and me; that was his right. Oh, mother, what a heartless creature I was!”

“Well, I thought not he had that much sense.”

“Ah, you go by the poor soul's words, but I rate words as air when the face speaketh to mine eye. I saw the priest and the true lover a-fighting in his dear face, and his cheek pale with the strife, and oh! his poor lip trembled as he said the stout-hearted words--Oh! oh! oh! oh! oh! oh! oh!” And Margaret burst into a violent passion of tears.

Catherine groaned. “There, give it up without more ado,” said she. “You two are chained together for life; and if God is merciful, that won't be for long; for what are you neither maid, wife, nor widow.”

“Give it up?” said Margaret; “that was done long ago. All I think of now is comforting him; for now I have been and made him unhappy too, wretch and monster that I am.”

So the next day they both went to Gouda. And Gerard, who had been praying for resignation all this time, received her with peculiar tenderness as a treasure he was to lose; but she was agitated and eager to let him see without words that she would never marry, and she fawned on him like a little dog to be forgiven. And as she was going away she murmured, “Forgive! and forget! I am but a woman.”

He misunderstood her, and said, “All I bargain for is, let me see thee content; for pity's sake, let me not see thee unhappy as I have this while.”

“My darling, you never shall again,” said Margaret, with streaming eyes, and kissed his hand.

He misunderstood this too at first; but when month after month passed, and he heard no more of her marriage, and she came to Gouda comparatively cheerful, and was even civil to Father Ambrose, a mild benevolent monk from the Dominican convent hard by--then he understood her; and one day he invited her to walk alone with him in the sacred paddock; and before I relate what passed between them, I must give its history.

When Gerard had been four or five days at the manse, looking out of window he uttered an exclamation of joy. “Mother, Margaret, here is one of my birds: another, another: four, six, nine. A miracle! a miracle!”

“Why, how can you tell your birds from their fellows?” said Catherine.

“I know every feather in their wings. And see; there is the little darling whose claw I gilt, bless it!”

And presently his rapture took a serious turn, and he saw Heaven's approbation in this conduct of the birds as he did in the fall of the cave. This wonderfully kept alive his friendship for animals; and he enclosed a paddock, and drove all the sons of Cain from it with threats of excommunication, “On this little spot of earth we'll have no murder,” said he. He tamed leverets and partridges, and little birds, and hares, and roe-deer. He found a squirrel with a broken leg; he set it with infinite difficulty and patience; and during the cure showed it repositories of acorns, nuts, chestnuts, etc. And this squirrel got well and went off, but visited him in hard weather, and brought a mate, and next year little squirrels were found to have imbibed their parents' sentiments, and of all these animals each generation was tamer than the last. This set the good parson thinking, and gave him the true clue to the great successes of mediaeval hermits in taming wild animals.

He kept the key of this paddock, and never let any man but himself enter it; nor would he even let little Gerard go there without him or Margaret. “Children are all little Cains,” said he. In this oasis, then, he spoke to Margaret, and said, “Dear Margaret, I have thought more than ever of thee of late, and have asked myself why I am content, and thou unhappy.”

“Because thou art better, wiser, holier than I; that is all,” said Margaret promptly.

“Our lives tell another tale,” said Gerard thoughtfully. “I know thy goodness and thy wisdom too well to reason thus perversely. Also I know that I love thee as dear as thou, I think, lovest me. Yet am I happier than thou. Why is this so?”

“Dear Gerard, I am as happy as a woman can hope to be this side of the grave.”

“Not so happy as I. Now for the reason. First, then, I am a priest, and this, the one great trial and disappointment God giveth me along with so many joys, why, I share it with a multitude. For alas! I am not the only priest by thousands that must never hope for entire earthly happiness. Here, then, thy lot is harder than mine.”

“But Gerard, I have my child to love. Thou canst not fill thy heart with him as his mother can, So you may set this against you.”

“And I have ta'en him from thee; it was cruel; but he would have broken thy heart one day if I had not. Well then, sweet one, I come to where the shoe pincheth, methinks. I have my parish, and it keeps my heart in a glow from morn till night. There is scarce an emotion that my folk stir not up in me many times a day. Often their sorrows make me weep, sometimes their perversity kindles a little wrath, and their absurdity makes me laugh, and sometimes their flashes of unexpected goodness do set me all of a glow, and I could hug 'em. Meantime thou, poor soul, sittest with heart--

“Of lead, Gerard; of very lead.”

“See now how unkind thy lot compared with mine, Now how if thou couldst be persuaded to warm thyself at the fire that warmeth me.”

“Ah, if I could?”

“Hast but to will it. Come among my folk. Take in thine hand the alms I set aside, and give it with kind words; hear their sorrows: they shall show you life is full of troubles, and as thou sayest truly, no man or woman without their thorn this side the grave. Indoors I have a map of Gouda parish. Not to o'erburden thee at first, I will put twenty housen under thee with their folk. What sayest thou? but for thy wisdom I had died a dirty maniac,' and ne'er seen Gouda manse, nor pious peace. Wilt profit in turn by what little wisdom I have to soften her lot to whom I do owe all?”

Margaret assented warmly, and a happy thing it was for the little district assigned to her; it was as if an angel had descended on them. Her fingers were never tired of knitting or cutting for them, her heart of sympathizing with them. And that heart expanded and waved its drooping wings; and the glow of good and gentle deed began to spread over it; and she was rewarded in another way by being brought into more contact with Gerard, and also with his spirit. All this time malicious tongues had not been idle. “If there is nought between them more than meets the eye, why doth she not marry?” etc. And I am sorry to say our old friend Joan Ketel was one of these coarse sceptics. And now one winter evening she got on a hot scent. She saw Margaret and Gerard talking earnestly together on the Boulevard. She whipped behind a tree. “Now I'll hear something,” said she; and so she did. It was winter; there had been one of those tremendous floods followed by a sharp frost, and Gerard in despair as to where he should lodge forty or fifty houseless folk out of the piercing cold. And now it was, “Oh, dear, dear Margaret, what shall I do? The manse is full of them, and a sharp frost coming on this night.”

Margaret reflected, and Joan listened.

“You must lodge them in the church,” said Margaret quietly.

“In the church? Profanation.”

“No; charity profanes nothing, not even a church; soils nought, not even a church. To-day is but Tuesday. Go save their lives, for a bitter night is coming. Take thy stove into the church, and there house them. We will dispose of them here and there ere the lord's day.”

“And I could not think of that; bless thee, sweet Margaret, thy mind is stronger than mine, and readier.”

“Nay, nay, a woman looks but a little way, therefore she sees clear. I'll come over myself to-morrow.”

And on this they parted with mutual blessings.

Joan glided home remorseful.

And after that she used to check all surmises to their discredit. “Beware,” she would say, “lest some angel should blister thy tongue. Gerard and Margaret paramours? I tell ye they are two saints which meet in secret to plot charity to the poor.”

In the summer of 1481 Gerard determined to provide against similar disasters recurring to his poor. Accordingly he made a great hole in his income, and bled his friends (zealous parsons always do that) to build a large Xenodochium to receive the victims of flood or fire. Giles and all his friends were kind, but all was not enough; when lo! the Dominican monks of Gouda to whom his parlour and heart had been open for years, came out nobly, and put down a handsome sum to aid the charitable vicar.

“The dear good souls,” said Margaret; “who would have thought it?”

“Any one who knows them,” said Gerard, “Who more charitable than monks?”

“Go to! They do but give the laity back a pig of their own sow.”

“And what more do I? What more doth the duke?”

Then the ambitious vicar must build almshouses for decayed true men in their old age close to the manse, that he might keep and feed them, as well as lodge them. And his money being gone, he asked Margaret for a few thousand bricks and just took off his coat and turned builder; and as he had a good head, and the strength of a Hercules, with the zeal of an artist, up rose a couple of almshouses parson built.

And at this work Margaret would sometimes bring him his dinner, and add a good bottle of Rhenish. And once seeing him run up a plank with a wheelbarrow full of bricks which really most bricklayers would have gone staggering under, she said, “Times are changed since I had to carry little Gerard for thee.”

“Ay, dear one, thanks to thee.”

When the first home was finished, the question was who they should put into it; and being fastidious over it like a new toy, there was much hesitation. But an old friend arrived in time to settle this question.

As Gerard was passing a public-house in Rotterdam one day, he heard a well-known voice, He looked up, and there was Denys of Burgundy, but sadly changed; his beard stained with grey, and his clothes worn and ragged; he had a cuirass still, and gauntlets, but a staff instead of an arbalest, To the company he appeared to be bragging and boasting, but in reality he was giving a true relation of Edward the Fourth's invasion of an armed kingdom with 2000 men, and his march through the country with armies capable of swallowing him looking on, his battles at Tewkesbury and Barnet, and reoccupation of his capital and kingdom in three months after landing at the Humber with a mixed handful of Dutch, English, and Burgundians.

In this, the greatest feat of arms the century had seen, Denys had shone; and whilst sneering at the warlike pretensions of Charles the Bold, a duke with an itch but no talent for fighting, and proclaiming the English king the first captain of the age, did not forget to exalt himself.

Gerard listened with eyes glittering affection and fun. “And now,” said Denys, “after all these feats, patted on the back by the gallant young Prince of Gloucester, and smiled on by the great captain himself, here I am lamed for life; by what? by the kick of a horse, and this night I know not where I shall lay my tired bones. I had a comrade once in these parts that would not have let me lie far from him; but he turned priest and deserted his sweetheart, so 'tis not likely he would remember his comrade. And ten years play sad havoc with our hearts, and limbs, and all.” Poor Denys sighed, and Gerard's bowels yearned over him.

“What words are these?” he said, with a great gulp in his throat. “Who grudges a brave soldier supper and bed? Come home with me!”

“Much obliged, but I am no lover of priests.”

“Nor I of soldiers; but what is supper and bed between two true men?”

“Not much to you, but something to me. I will come.”

“In one hour,” said Gerard, and went in high spirits to Margaret, and told her the treat in store, and she must come and share it. She must drive his mother in his little carriage up to the manse with all speed, and make ready an excellent supper. Then he himself borrowed a cart, and drove Denys up rather slowly, to give the women time.

On the road Denys found out this priest was a kind soul, so told him his trouble, and confessed his heart was pretty near broken. “The great use our stout hearts, and arms, and lives till we are worn out, and then fling us away like broken tools.” He sighed deeply, and it cost Gerard a great struggle not to hug him then and there, and tell him. But he wanted to do it all like a story book. Who has not had this fancy once in his life? Why Joseph had it; all the better for us.

They landed at the little house. It was as clean as a penny, the hearth blazing, and supper set.

Denys brightened up. “Is this your house, reverend sir?”

“Well, 'tis my work, and with these hands, but 'tis your house.”

“Ah, no such luck,” said Denys, with a sigh.

“But I say ay,” shouted Gerard. “And what is more I--” (gulp) “say--” (gulp) “COURAGE, CAMARADE, LE DIABLE EST MORT!”

Denys started, and almost staggered. “Why, what?” he stammered, “w-wh-who art thou, that bringest me back the merry words and merry days of my youth?” and he was greatly agitated.

“My poor Denys, I am one whose face is changed, but nought else; to my heart, dear, trusty comrade, to my heart,” And he opened his arms, with the tears in his eyes. But Denys came close to him, and peered in his face, and devoured every feature; and when he was sure it was really Gerard, he uttered a cry so vehement it brought the women running from the house, and fell upon Gerard's neck, and kissed him again and again, and sank on his knees, and laughed and sobbed with joy so terribly, that Gerard mourned his folly in doing dramas. But the women with their gentle soothing ways soon composed the brave fellow, and he sat smiling, and holding Margaret's hand and Gerard's, And they all supped together, and went to their beds with hearts warm as a toast; and the broken soldier was at peace, and in his own house, and under his comrade's wing.

His natural gaiety returned, and he resumed his consigne after eight years' disuse, and hobbled about the place enlivening it; but offended the parish mortally by calling the adored vicar comrade, and nothing but comrade.

When they made a fuss about this to Gerard, he just looked in their faces and said, “What does it matter? Break him of swearing, and you shall have my thanks.”

This year Margaret went to a lawyer to make her will, for without this, she was told, her boy might have trouble some day to get his own, not being born in lawful wedlock. The lawyer, however, in conversation, expressed a different opinion.

“This is the babble of churchmen,” said he, “Yours is a perfect marriage, though an irregular one.”

He then informed her that throughout Europe, excepting only the southern part of Britain, there were three irregular marriages, the highest of which was hers, viz., a betrothal before witnesses, “This,” said he, “if not followed by matrimonial intercourse, is a marriage complete in form, but incomplete in substance. A person so betrothed can forbid any other banns to all eternity. It has, however, been set aside where a party so betrothed contrived to get married regularly, and children were born thereafter. But such a decision was for the sake of the offspring, and of doubtful justice. However, in your case the birth of your child closes that door, and your marriage is complete both in form and substance. Your course, therefore, is to sue for your conjugal rights; it will be the prettiest case of the century. The law is all on our side, the Church all on theirs. If you come to that, the old Batavian law, which compelled the clergy to marry, hath fallen into disuse, but was never formally repealed.”

Margaret was quite puzzled. “What are you driving at, sir? Who am I to go to law with?”

“Who is the defendant? Why, the vicar of Gouda.”

“Alas, poor soul! And for what shall I law him?”

“Why, to make him take you into his house, and share bed and board with you, to be sure.”

Margaret turned red as fire, “Gramercy for your rede,” said she, “What, is yon a woman's part? Constrain a man to be hers by force? That is men's way of wooing, not ours. Say I were so ill a woman as ye think me, I should set myself to beguile him, not to law him;” and she departed, crimson with shame and indignation.

“There is an impracticable fool for you,” said the man of art.

Margaret had her will drawn elsewhere, and made her boy safe from poverty, marriage or no marriage.

These are the principal incidents that in ten whole years befell two peaceful lives, which in a much shorter period had been so thronged with adventures and emotions.

Their general tenor was now peace, piety, the mild content that lasts, not the fierce bliss ever on tiptoe to depart, and above all, Christian charity.

On this sacred ground these two true lovers met with an uniformity and a kindness of sentiment which went far to soothe the wound in their own hearts, To pity the same bereaved; to hunt in couples all the ills in Gouda, and contrive and scheme together to remedy all that were remediable; to use the rare insight into troubled hearts which their own troubles had given them, and use it to make others happier than themselves--this was their daily practice. And in this blessed cause their passions for one another cooled a little, but their affection increased.

From this time Margaret entered heart and soul into Gerard's pious charities, that affection purged itself of all mortal dross. And as it had now long out-lived scandal and misapprehension, one would have thought that so bright an example of pure self-denying affection was to remain long before the world, to show men how nearly religious faith, even when not quite reasonable, and religious charity, which is always reasonable, could raise two true lovers' hearts to the loving hearts of the angels of heaven. But the great Disposer of events ordered otherwise.

Little Gerard rejoiced both his parents' hearts by the extraordinary progress he made at Alexander Haaghe's famous school at Deventer.

The last time Margaret returned from visiting him, she came to Gerard flushed with pride. “Oh, Gerard, he will be a great man one day, thanks to thy wisdom in taking him from us silly women. A great scholar, one Zinthius, came to see the school and judge the scholars, and didn't our Gerard stand up, and not a line in Horace or Terence could Zinthius cite but the boy would follow him with the rest. 'Why, 'tis a prodigy,' says that great scholar; and there was his poor mother stood by and heard it. And he took our Gerard in his arms, and kissed him; and what think you he said?”

“Nay, I know not.”

“'Holland will hear of thee one day; and not Holland only, but all the world,' Why what a sad brow!”

“Sweet one, I am as glad as thou, yet am I uneasy to hear the child is wise before his time, I love him dear; but he is thine idol, and Heaven doth often break our idols.”

“Make thy mind easy,” said Margaret. “Heaven will never rob me of my child. What I was to suffer in this world I have suffered, For if any ill happened my child or thee, I should not live a week. The Lord He knows this, and He will leave me my boy.”

A month had elapsed after this; but Margaret's words were yet ringing in his ears, when, going on his daily round of visits to his poor, he was told quite incidentally, and as mere gossip, that the plague was at Deventer, carried thither by two sailors from Hamburgh.

His heart turned cold within him. News did not gallop in those days. The fatal disease must have been there a long time before the tidings would reach Gouda. He sent a line by a messenger to Margaret, telling her that he was gone to fetch little Gerard to stay at the manse a little while, and would she see a bed prepared, for he should be back next day. And so he hoped she would not hear a word of the danger till it was all happily over. He borrowed a good horse, and scarce drew rein till he reached Deventer, quite late in the afternoon. He went at once to the school. The boy had been taken away.

As he left the school he caught sight of Margaret's face at the window of a neighbouring house she always lodged at when she came to Deventer.

He ran hastily to scold her and pack both her and the boy out of the place.

To his surprise the servant told him with some hesitation that Margaret had been there, but was gone.

“Gone, woman?” said Gerard indignantly, “art not ashamed to say so? Why, I saw her but now at the window.”

“Oh, if you saw her--”

A sweet voice above said, “Stay him not, let him enter.” It was Margaret.

Gerard ran up the stairs to her, and went to take her hand, She drew back hastily.

He looked astounded.

“I am displeased,” she said coldly. “What makes you here? Know you not the plague is in the town?”

“Ay, dear Margaret; and came straightway to take our boy away.”

“What, had he no mother?”

“How you speak to me! I hoped you knew not.”

“What, think you I leave my boy unwatched? I pay a trusty woman that notes every change in his cheek when I am not here, and lets me know, I am his mother.”

“Where is he?”

“In Rotterdam, I hope, ere this.”

“Thank Heaven! And why are you not there?”

“I am not fit for the journey; never heed me; go you home on the instant; I'll follow. For shame of you to come here risking your precious life.”

“It is not so precious as thine,” said Gerard. “But let that pass; we will go home together, and on the instant.”

“Nay, I have some matters to do in the town. Go thou at once, and I will follow forthwith.”

“Leave thee alone in a plague-stricken town? To whom speak you, dear Margaret?”

“Nay, then, we shall quarrel, Gerard.”

“Methinks I see Margaret and Gerard quarrelling! Why, it takes two to quarrel, and we are but one.”

With this Gerard smiled on her sweetly. But there was no kind responsive glance. She looked cold, gloomy, and troubled.

He sighed, and sat patiently down opposite her with his face all puzzled and saddened. He said nothing, for he felt sure she would explain her capricious conduct, or it would explain itself.

Presently she rose hastily, and tried to reach her bedroom, but on the way she staggered and put out her hand. He ran to her with a cry of alarm. She swooned in his arms. He laid her gently on the ground, and beat her cold hands, and ran to her bedroom, and fetched water, and sprinkled her pale face. His own was scarce less pale, for in a basin he had seen water stained with blood; it alarmed him, he knew not why. She was a long time ere she revived, and when she did she found Gerard holding her hand, and bending over her with a look of infinite concern and tenderness. She seemed at first as if she responded to it, but the next moment her eyes dilated, and she cried--“Ah, wretch, leave my hand; how dare you touch me?”

“Heaven help her!” said Gerard. “She is not herself.”

“You will not leave me, then, Gerard?” said she faintly. “Alas! why do I ask? Would I leave thee if thou wert--At least touch me not, and then I will let thee bide, and see the last of poor Margaret. She ne'er spoke harsh to thee before, sweetheart, and she never will again.”

“Alas! what mean these dark words, these wild and troubled looks?” said Gerard, clasping his hands.

“My poor Gerard,” said Margaret, “forgive me that I spoke so to thee. I am but a woman, and would have spared thee a sight will make thee weep.” She burst into tears. “Ah, me!” she cried, weeping, “that I cannot keep grief from thee; there is a great sorrow before my darling, and this time I shall not be able to come and dry his eyes.”

“Let it come, Margaret, so it touch not thee,” said Gerard, trembling.

“Dearest,” said Margaret solemnly, “call now religion to thine aid and mine. I must have died before thee one day, or else outlived thee and so died of grief.”

“Died? thou die? I will never let thee die. Where is thy pain? What is thy trouble?”

“The plague,” she said calmly. Gerard uttered a cry of horror, and started to his feet; she read his thought. “Useless,” said she quietly. “My nose hath bled; none ever yet survived to whom that came along with the plague. Bring no fools hither to babble over the body they cannot save. I am but a woman; I love not to be stared at; let none see me die but thee.”

And even with this a convulsion seized her, and she remained sensible but speechless a long time.

And now for the first time Gerard began to realize the frightful truth, and he ran wildly to and fro, and cried to Heaven for help, as drowning men cry to their fellow-creatures. She raised herself on her arm, and set herself to quiet him.

She told him she had known the torture of hopes and fears, and was resolved to spare him that agony. “I let my mind dwell too much on the danger,” said she, “and so opened my brain to it, through which door when this subtle venom enters it makes short work. I shall not be spotted or loathsome, my poor darling; God is good, and spares thee that; but in twelve hours I shall be a dead woman. Ah, look not so, but be a man; be a priest! Waste not one precious minute over my body! it is doomed; but comfort my parting soul.”

Gerard, sick and cold at heart, kneeled down, and prayed for help from Heaven to do his duty.

When he rose from his knees his face was pale and old, but deadly calm and patient. He went softly and brought her bed into the room, and laid her gently down and supported her head with pillows. Then he prayed by her side the prayers for the dying, and she said Amen to each prayer. Then for some hours she wandered, but when the fell disease had quite made sure of its prey, her mind cleared, and she begged Gerard to shrive her. “For oh, my conscience it is laden,” she said sadly.

“Confess thy sins to me, my daughter: let there be no reserve.”

“My father,” said she sadly, “I have one great sin on my breast this many years. E'en now that death is at my heart I can scarce own it. But the Lord is debonair; if thou wilt pray to Him, perchance He may forgive me.”

“Confess it first, my daughter.”

“I--alas!”

“Confess it!”

“I deceived thee. This many years I have deceived thee.”

Here tears interrupted her speech.

“Courage, my daughter, courage,” said Gerard kindly, overpowering the lover in the priest.

She hid her face in her hands, and with many sighs told him it was she who had broken down the hermit's cave with the help of Jorian Ketel, “I, shallow, did it but to hinder thy return thither; but when thou sawest therein the finger of God, I played the traitress, and said, 'While he thinks so, he will ne'er leave Gouda manse;' and I held my tongue. Oh, false heart.”

“Courage, my daughter; thou dost exaggerate a trivial fault.”

“Ah, but 'tis not all, The birds.”

“Well?”

“They followed thee not to Gouda by miracle, but by my treason. I said, he will ne'er be quite happy without his birds that visited him in his cell; and I was jealous of them, and cried, and said, these foul little things, they are my child's rivals. And I bought loaves of bread, and Jorian and me we put crumbs at the cave door, and thence went sprinkling them all the way to the manse, and there a heap. And my wiles succeeded, and they came, and thou wast glad, and I was pleased to see thee glad; and when thou sawest in my guile the finger of Heaven, wicked, deceitful, I did hold my tongue. But die deceiving thee? ah, no, I could not. Forgive me if thou canst; I was but a woman; I knew no better at the time. 'Twas writ in my bosom with a very sunbeam. ''Tis good for him to bide at Gouda manse.'”

“Forgive thee, sweet innocent?” sobbed Gerard; “what have I to forgive? Thou hadst a foolish froward child to guide to his own weal, and didst all this for the best, I thank thee and bless thee. But as thy confessor, all deceit is ill in Heaven's pure eyes. Therefore thou hast done well to confess and report it; and even on thy confession and penitence the Church through me absolves thee. Pass to thy graver faults.”

“My graver faults? Alas! alas! Why, what have I done to compare? I am not an ill woman, not a very ill one. If He can forgive me deceiving thee, He can well forgive me all the rest ever I did.”

Being gently pressed, she said she was to blame not to have done more good in the world. “I have just begun to do a little,” she said, “and now I must go. But I repine not, since 'tis Heaven's will, only I am so afeard thou wilt miss me.” And at this she could not restrain her tears, though she tried hard.

Gerard struggled with his as well as he could; and knowing her life of piety, purity, and charity, and seeing that she could not in her present state realise any sin but her having deceived him, gave her full absolution, Then he put the crucifix in her hand, and while he consecrated the oil, bade her fix her mind neither on her merits nor her demerits, but on Him who died for her on the tree.

She obeyed him with a look of confiding love and submission.

And he touched her eyes with the consecrated oil, and prayed aloud beside her.

Soon after she dosed.

He watched beside her, more dead than alive himself.

When the day broke she awoke, and seemed to acquire some energy. She begged him to look in her box for her marriage lines and for a picture, and bring them both to her. He did so. She then entreated him by all they had suffered for each other, to ease her mind by making a solemn vow to execute her dying requests.

He vowed to obey them to the letter.

“Then, Gerard, let no creature come here to lay me out. I could not bear to be stared at; my very corpse would blush. Also I would not be made a monster of for the worms to sneer at as well as feed on. Also my very clothes are tainted, and shall to earth with me. I am a physician's daughter; and ill becomes me kill folk, being dead, which did so little good to men in the days of health; wherefore lap me in lead, the way I am, and bury me deep! yet not so deep but what one day thou mayst find the way, and lay thy bones by mine.

“Whiles I lived I went to Gouda but once or twice a week. It cost me not to go each day. Let me gain this by dying, to be always at dear Gouda, in the green kirkyard.

“Also they do say the spirit hovers where the body lies; I would have my spirit hover near thee, and the kirkyard is not far from the manse. I am so afeard some ill will happen thee, Margaret being gone.

“And see, with mine own hands I place my marriage lines in my bosom. Let no living hand move them, on pain of thy curse and mine. Then when the angel comes for me at the last day, he shall say, this is an honest woman, she hath her marriage lines (for you know I am your lawful wife, though Holy Church hath come between us), and he will set me where the honest women be. I will not sit among ill women, no, not in heaven for their mind is not my mind, nor their soul my soul. I have stood, unbeknown, at my window, and heard their talk.”

For some time she was unable to say any more, but made signs to him that she had not done.

At last she recovered her breath, and bade him look at the picture.

It was the portrait he had made of her when they were young together, and little thought to part so soon. He held it in his hands and looked at it, but could scarce see it. He had left it in fragments, but now it was whole.

“They cut it to pieces, Gerard; but see, Love mocked at their knives.

“I implore thee with my dying breath, let this picture hang ever in thine eye.

“I have heard that such as die of the plague, unspotted, yet after death spots have been known to come out; and oh, I could not bear thy last memory of me to be so. Therefore, as soon as the breath is out of my body, cover my face with this handkerchief, and look at me no more till we meet again, 'twill not be so very long. O promise.”

“I promise,” said Gerard, sobbing.

“But look on this picture instead. Forgive me; I am but a woman. I could not bear my face to lie a foul thing in thy memory. Nay, I must have thee still think me as fair as I was true. Hast called me an angel once or twice; but be just! did I not still tell thee I was no angel, but only a poor simple woman, that whiles saw clearer than thou because she looked but a little way, and that loves thee dearly, and never loved but thee, and now with her dying breath prays thee indulge her in this, thou that art a man.”

“I will, I will. Each word, each wish, is sacred.”

“Bless thee! Bless thee! So then the eyes that now can scarce see thee, they are so troubled by the pest, and the lips that shall not touch thee to taint thee, will still be before thee as they were when we were young and thou didst love me.”

“When I did love thee, Margaret! Oh, never loved I thee as now.”

“Hast not told me so of late.”

“Alas! hath love no voice but words? I was a priest; I had charge of thy soul; the sweet offices of a pure love were lawful; words of love imprudent at the least. But now the good fight is won, ah me! Oh my love, if thou hast lived doubting of thy Gerard's heart, die not so; for never was woman loved so tenderly as thou this ten years past.”

“Calm thyself, dear one,” said the dying woman, with a heavenly smile. “I know it; only being but a woman, I could not die happy till I had heard thee say so. Ah! I have pined ten years for those sweet words. Hast said them, and this is the happiest hour of my life. I had to die to get them; well, I grudge not the price.”

From this moment a gentle complacency rested on her fading features. But she did not speak.

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 bare outline of the relation. Many bishops and priests, and not a few popes, had wives and children as laymen; and entering orders were parted from the wives and not from the children. But in the case before the reader are the additional features of a strong surviving attachment on both sides, and of neighbourhood, besides that here the man had been led into holy orders by a false statement of the woman's death. On a summary of all the essential features, the situation was, to the best of my belief, unique.

Chapter XCVII

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.

Chapter XCVIII

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!”

Chapter XCIX

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 ymeteras sophias, y eusebeias y ergwn wn kateirgasametha en osioteeti karthias, alla dia tys pistews}. --Epist.ad Corinth, i. 32.

(2) Celibacy of the clergy, an invention truly fiendish.

Chapter C

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.