One Snowy Night Part 53

"Then what did my father believe that was so wrong?"

"He believed what I have taught you."

"Then were they wicked, and not he?"

"Judge for thyself. There were about thirty of thy father's countrymen, who came over to this country to preach the pure Word of G.o.d: and those who called them heretics took them, and branded them, and turned them out into the snow to die. Would our Lord have done that?"

"Never! Did they die?"

"Every one, except the child I saved."

"And that was I, Mother?"

"That was thou."

"So I am not an Englishman!" said Rudolph, almost regretfully.

"No. Thou seest now why I taught thee German. It is thine own tongue."

"Mother, this story is terrible. I shall feel the world a worse place to my life's end, after hearing it. But suffer me to ask--who are you?

We are so unlike, that sometimes I have fancied we might not be related at all."

"We are not related at all."

"But you are German?"

"No."

"You are English! I always imagined you a foreigner."

"No--I am not English."

"Italian?--Spanish?"

She shook her head, and turned away her face.

"I never cared for the scorn of these other creatures," she said in a low troubled voice. "I could give them back scorn for scorn. But it will be hard to be scorned by the child whom I saved from death."

"Mother! I scorn you? Why, the thing could not be. You are all the world to me."

"It will not be so always, my son. Howbeit, thou shalt hear the truth.

Rudolph, I am a Jewess. My old name is Countess, the daughter of Benefei of Oxford."

"Mother," said Rudolph softly, "you are what our Lady was. If I could scorn you, it would not be honouring her."

"True enough, boy: but thou wilt not find the world say so."

"If the world speak ill of you, Mother, I will have none of it! Now please tell me about others. Who was Mother Isel?"

"A very dear and true friend of thy parents."

"And Ermine?"

"Thy father's sister--one of the best and sweetest maidens that G.o.d ever made."

"Is it my father that I remember, with the grave blue eyes--the man who read in the book?"

"I have no doubt of it. It is odd--" and a smile flitted over Countess's lips--"that all thou canst recollect of thy mother should be her checked ap.r.o.n."

Rudolph laughed. "Then who is the stern man, and who the merry one?"

"I should guess the stern man to be Manning Brown, the husband of Isel.

The merry, pleasant-faced man, I think, must be his nephew Stephen.

'Stephen the Watchdog' they used to call him; he was one of the Castle watchmen."

"At Oxford? Was it Oxford, then, where we used to live?"

"It was Oxford."

"I should like to go there again."

"Take heed thou do not so. Thou are so like both thy father and mother that I should fear for thy safety. No one would know me, I think. But for thee I am not so sure. And if they were to guess who thou art, they would have thee up before the bishops, and question thee, and brand thee with the dreadful name of 'heretic,' as they did to thy parents."

"Mother, why would they do these things?--why did they do them?"

"Because they loved idols, and after them they would go. We worship only the Lord our G.o.d, blessed be He! And thou wilt find always, Rudolph, that not only doth light hate darkness, but the darkness also hateth the light, and tries hard to extinguish it."

"Yet if they worship the same G.o.d that we do--"

"Do they? I cannot tell. Sometimes I think He can hardly reckon it so.

The G.o.d they worship seems to be no jealous G.o.d, but one that hath no law to be broken, no power to be dreaded, no majesty to be revered. 'If I be a Master,' said the Holy One by Malachi the Prophet, 'where is My fear?' And our Lord spake to the Sadducees, saying, 'Do ye not therefore err, because ye know not the Scriptures, neither the power of G.o.d?' They seem to be strangely fearless of breaking His most solemn commands--even the words that He spake to Moses in the sight of all Israel, on the mount that burned with fire. Strangely fearless! when the Master spake expressly against making the commands of G.o.d of no effect through man's tradition. What do they think He meant? Let them spill a drop of consecrated wine--which He never told them to be careful over--and they are terrified of His anger: let them deliberately break His distinct laws, and they are not terrified at all. The world has gone very, very far from G.o.d."

They sat for a little while in silence.

"Mother," said Rudolph at last, "who do you think that man was whom I met, that looked so hard at me, and seemed to think me like my parents?

He spoke of 'Ermine,' too."

"I can only guess, Rudolph. I think it might be a son of Mother Isel-- she had two. The Ermine of whom he spoke, no doubt, is some girl named after thine aunt. Perhaps it may be a child of their sister Flemild. I cannot say."

"You think it could not be my aunt, Mother? I should like to know one of my own kin."

"Not possible, my boy. She must have died with the rest."

"Are you sure they all died, Mother?"

"I cannot say that I saw it, Rudolph: though I did see the dead faces of several, when I was searching for thee. But I do not see how she could possibly have escaped."

"Might she not--if she had escaped--say the same of me?"