The Greatest Novels of Charles Reade. Charles Reade Reade

he; “but that is future: to-day is given to joy alone.”

      He then led her round the building to the abbess's postern.

      As they went they heard musical instruments and singing.

      “'Tis a feastday,” said Mary; “and I come to mar it.”

      “Hardly,” said Clement, smiling; “seeing that you are the queen of the fete.”

      “I, father? what mean you?”

      “What, Mary, have you never heard that there is more joy in heaven over one sinner that repenteth, than over ninety-nine just persons which need no repentance? Now this convent is not heaven; nor the nuns angels; yet are there among then, some angelic spirits; and these sing and exult at thy return. But here methinks comes one of them; for I see her hand trembles at the keyhole.”

      The postern was flung open, and in a moment Sister Ursula clung sobbing and kissing round her friend's neck. The abbess followed more sedately, but little less moved.

      Clement bade them farewell. They entreated him to stay; but he told them with much regret he could not. He had already tried his good Brother Jerome's patience, and must hasten to the river; and perhaps sail for England to-morrow.

      So Mary returned to the fold, and Clement strode briskly on towards the Rhine, and England.

      This was the man for whom Margaret's boy lay in wait with her letter.

      THE HEARTH

      And that letter was one of those simple, touching appeals only her sex can write to those who have used them cruelly, and they love them. She began by telling him of the birth of the little boy, and the comfort he had been to her in all the distress of mind his long and strange silence had caused her. She described the little Gerard minutely, not forgetting the mole on his little finger.

      “Know you any one that hath the like on his? If you only saw him you could not choose but be proud of him; all the mothers in the street do envy me; but I the wives; for thou comest not to us. My own Gerard, some say thou art dead. But if thou wert dead, how could I be alive? Others say that thou, whom I love so truly, art false. But this will I believe from no lips but thine. My father loved thee well; and as he lay a-dying he thought he saw thee on a great river, with thy face turned towards thy Margaret, but sore disfigured. Is't so, perchance? Have cruel men scarred thy sweet face? or hast thou lost one of thy precious limbs? Why, then thou hast the more need of me, and I shall love thee not worse, alas! thinkest thou a woman's love is light as a man's? but better, than I did when I shed those few drops from my arm, not worth the tears, thou didst shed for them; mindest thou? 'tis not so very long agone, dear Gerard.”

      The letter continued in this strain, and concluded without a word of reproach or doubt as to his faith and affection. Not that she was free from most distressing doubts; but they were not certainties; and to show them might turn the scale, and frighten him away from her with fear of being scolded. And of this letter she made soft Luke the bearer.

      So she was not an angel after all.

      Luke mingled with the passengers of two boats, and could hear nothing of Gerard Eliassoen. Nor did this surprise him.

      He was more surprised when, at the third attempt, a black friar said to him, somewhat severely, “And what would you with him you call Gerard Eliassoen?”

      “Why, father, if he is alive I have got a letter for him.”

      “Humph!” said Jerome. “I am sorry for it, However, the flesh is weak. Well, my son, he you seek will be here by the next boat, or the next boat after. And if he chooses to answer to that name—After all, I am not the keeper of his conscience.”

      “Good father, one plain word, for Heaven's sake, This Gerard Eliassoen of Tergou—is he alive?”

      “Humph! Why, certes, he that went by that name is alive.”

      “Well, then, that is settled,” said Luke drily. But the next moment he found it necessary to run out of sight and blubber.

      “Oh, why did the Lord make any women?” said he to himself. “I was content with the world till I fell in love. Here his little finger is more to her than my whole body, and he is not dead, And here I have got to give him this.” He looked at the letter and dashed it on the ground. But he picked it up again with a spiteful snatch, and went to the landlord, with tears in his eyes, and begged for work, The landlord declined, said he had his own people.

      “Oh, I seek not your money,” said Luke, “I only want some work to keep me from breaking my heart about another man's lass.”

      “Good lad! good lad!” exploded the landlord; and found him lots of barrels to mend—on these terms, And he coopered with fury in the interval of the boats coming down the Rhine.

      CHAPTER LXXXIII

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      THE HEARTH

      Waiting an earnest letter seldom leaves the mind in statu quo.

      Margaret, in hers, vented her energy and her faith in her dying father's vision, or illusion; and when this was done, and Luke gone, she wondered at her credulity, and her conscience pricked her about Luke; and Catherine came and scolded her, and she paid the price of false hopes, and elevation of spirits, by falling into deeper despondency. She was found in this state by a staunch friend she had lately made, Joan Ketel. This good woman came in radiant with an idea.

      “Margaret, I know the cure for thine ill: the hermit of Gouda a wondrous holy man, Why, he can tell what is coming, when he is in the mood.”

      “Ay, I have heard of him,” said Margaret hopelessly. Joan with some difficulty persuaded her to walk out as far as Gouda, and consult the hermit. They took some butter and eggs in a basket, and went to his cave.

      What had made the pair such fast friends? Jorian some six weeks ago fell ill of a bowel disease; it began with raging pain; and when this went off, leaving him weak, an awkward symptom succeeded; nothing, either liquid or solid, would stay in his stomach a minute. The doctor said: “He must die if this goes on many hours; therefore boil thou now a chicken with a golden angel in the water, and let him sup that!” Alas! Gilt chicken broth shared the fate of the humbler viands, its predecessors. Then the cure steeped the thumb of St. Sergius in beef broth. Same result. Then Joan ran weeping to Margaret to borrow some linen to make his shroud. “Let me see him,” said Margaret. She came in and felt his pulse. “Ah!” said she, “I doubt they have not gone to the root. Open the window! Art stifling him; now change all his linen.

      “Alack, woman, what for? Why foul more linen for a dying man?” objected the mediaeval wife.

      “Do as thou art bid,” said Margaret dully, and left the room.

      Joan somehow found herself doing as she was bid. Margaret returned with her apron full of a flowering herb. She made a decoction, and took it to the bedside; and before giving it to the patient, took a spoonful herself, and smacked her lips hypocritically. “That is fair,” said he, with a feeble attempt at humour. “Why, 'tis sweet, and now 'tis bitter.” She engaged him in conversation as soon as he had taken it. This bitter-sweet stayed by him. Seeing which she built on it as cards are built: mixed a very little schiedam in the third spoonful, and a little beaten yoke of egg in the seventh. And so with the patience of her sex she coaxed his body out of Death's grasp; and finally, Nature, being patted on the back, instead of kicked under the bed, set Jorian Ketel on his legs again. But the doctress made them both swear never to tell a soul her guilty deed. “They would put me in prison, away from my child.”

      The simple that saved Jorian was called sweet feverfew. She gathered it in his own garden. Her eagle eye had seen it growing out of the window.

      Margaret and Joan, then, reached the hermit's cave, and placed their present on the little platform. Margaret then applied her mouth to the aperture, made for that purpose, and said: