The Greatest Novels of Charles Reade. Charles Reade Reade

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

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      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;