The Greatest Novels of Charles Reade. Charles Reade Reade

and best, and truest girl in Holland: all the happier that he had been for some time the sport of hideous dreams, in which he had lost her.

      His constant fasts, coupled with other austerities, and the deep mental anxiety of a man fighting with a supernatural foe, had now reduced him nearly to a skeleton; but still on those aching bones hung flesh unsubdued, and quivering with an earthly passion; so, however, he thought; “or why had ill spirits such power over him?” His opinion was confirmed, when one day he detected himself sinking to sleep actually with a feeling of complacency, because now Margaret would come and he should feel no more pain, and the unreal would be real, and the real unreal, for an hour.

      On this he rose hastily with a cry of dismay, and stripping to the skin climbed up to the brambles above his cave, and flung himself on them, and rolled on them writhing with the pain: then he came into his den a mass of gore, and lay moaning for hours; till, out of sheer exhaustion, he fell into a deep and dreamless sleep.

      He awoke to bodily pain, and mental exultation; he had broken the fatal spell. Yes, it was broken; another and another day passed, and her image molested him no more. But he caught himself sighing at his victory.

      The birds got tamer and tamer, they perched upon his hand. Two of them let him gild their little claws. Eating but once in two days he had more to give them.

      His tranquility was not to last long.

      A woman's voice came in from the outside, told him his own story in a very few words, and asked him to tell her where Gerard was to be found.

      He was so astounded he could only say, with an instinct of self-defence, “Pray for the soul of Gerard the son of Eli!” meaning that he was dead to the world. And he sat wondering.

      When the woman was gone, he determined, after an inward battle, to risk being seen, and he peeped after her to see who it could be; but he took so many precautions, and she ran so quickly back to her friend, that the road was clear.

      “Satan!” said he directly.

      And that night back came his visions of earthly love and happiness so vividly, he could count every auburn hair in Margaret's head, and see the pupils of her eyes.

      Then he began to despair, and said, “I must leave this country; here I am bound fast in memory's chain;” and began to dread his cell. He said, “A breath from hell hath infected it, and robbed even these holy words of their virtue.” And unconsciously imitating St. Jerome, a victim of earthly hallucinations, as overpowering, and coarser, he took his warmest covering out into the wood hard by, and there flung down under a tree that torn and wrinkled leather bag of bones, which a little ago might have served a sculptor for Apollo.

      Whether the fever of his imagination intermitted, as a master mind of our day has shown that all things intermit(9) or that this really broke some subtle link, I know not, but his sleep was dreamless.

      He awoke nearly frozen, but warm with joy within.

      “I shall yet be a true hermit, Dei gratia,” said he.

      The next day some good soul left on his little platform a new lambs-wool pelisse and cape, warm, soft, and ample.

      He had a moment's misgiving on account of its delicious softness and warmth; but that passed. It was the right skin(10), and a mark that Heaven approved his present course.

      It restored warmth to his bones after he came in from his short rest.

      And now, at one moment he saw victory before him if he could but live to it; at another, he said to himself, “'Tis but another lull; be on thy guard, Clement.”

      And this thought agitated his nerves and kept him in continual awe.

      He was like a soldier within the enemy's lines.

      One night, a beautiful clear frosty night, he came back to his cell, after a short rest. The stars were wonderful. Heaven seemed a thousand times larger as well as brighter than earth, and to look with a thousand eyes instead of one.

      “Oh, wonderful,” he cried, “that there should be men who do crimes by night; and others scarce less mad, who live for this little world, and not for that great and glorious one, which nightly, to all eyes not blinded by custom, reveals its glowing glories. Thank God I am a hermit.”

      And in this mood he came to his cell door.

      He paused at it; it was closed.

      “Why, methought I left it open,” said he, “The wind. There is not a breath of wind. What means this?”

      He stood with his hand upon the rugged door. He looked through one of the great chinks, for it was much smaller in places than the aperture it pretended to close, and saw his little oil wick burning just where he had left it.

      “How is it with me,” he sighed, “when I start and tremble at nothing? Either I did shut it, or the fiend hath shut it after me to disturb my happy soul. Retro Sathanas!”

      And he entered his cave rapidly, and began with somewhat nervous expedition to light one of his largest tapers. While he was lighting it, there was a soft sigh in the cave.

      He started and dropped the candle just as it was lighting, and it went out.

      He stooped for it hurriedly and lighted it, listening intently.

      When it was lighted he shaded it with his hand from behind, and threw the faint light all round the cell.

      In the farthest corner the outline of the wall seemed broken.

      He took a step towards the place with his heart beating.

      The candle at the same time getting brighter, he saw it was the figure of a woman.

      Another step with his knees knocking together.

      IT WAS MARGARET BRANDT.

      (1) Beat down Satan under our feet.

      (2) Up, hearts!

      (3) O God our refuge and strength.

      (4) O Lamb of God, that takest away the sins of the world,

      have mercy upon me!

      (5) O Holy Trinity, one God, have mercy upon us.

      (6) From the assaults of demons—from the wrath to come—

      from everlasting damnation, deliver us, O Lord!

      (7) See the English collect, St., Michael and all Angels.

      (8) Of whom may we seek succour but of Thee, O Lord, who for

      our sins art justly displeased (and that torrent of prayer,

      the following verse).

      (9) Dr. Dickson, author of Fallacies of the Faculty, etc.

      (10) It is related of a mediaeval hermit, that being offered

      a garment made of cats' skins, he rejected it, saying, “I

      have heard of a lamb of God but I never heard of a cat of

      God.”

      CHAPTER XCIV

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      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,