One Snowy Night Part 54

Countess seemed scarcely willing to admit even so much as this.

"It is time for sleep, my son," she said; and Rudolph rose, lighted the lantern, and followed her upstairs. The chamber above was divided in two by a curtain drawn across it. As Rudolph was about to pa.s.s beyond it, he stopped to ask another question.

"Mother, if I should meet that man again,--suppose he were to speak to me?"

A disquieted look came into the dark eyes.

"Bring him to me," she said. "Allow nothing--deny nothing. Leave me to deal with him."

Rudolph dropped the curtain behind him, and silence fell upon the little house in Mark Lane.

A few hours earlier, our old friend Stephen, now a middle-aged man, had come home from his daily calling, to his house in Ivy Lane. He was instantly surrounded by his five boys and girls, their ages between six and thirteen, all of whom welcomed him with tumultuous joyfulness.

"Father, I've construed a whole book of Virgil!"

"And, Father, I'm to begin Caesar next week!"

"I've made a gavache for you, Father--done every st.i.tch myself!"

"Father, I've learnt how to make pancakes!"

"Father, I stirred the posset!"

"Well, well! have you, now?" answered the kindly-faced father. "You're all of you mighty clever, I'm very sure. But now, if one or two of you could get out of the way, I might shut the door; no need to let in more snow than's wanted.--Where's Mother?"

"Here's Mother," said another voice; and a fair-haired woman of the age of Countess, but looking younger, appeared in a doorway, drawing back the curtain. "I am glad you have come, Stephen. It is rather a stormy night."

"Oh, just a basinful of snow," said Stephen lightly. "Supper ready?

Gerard--" to his eldest boy--"draw that curtain a bit closer, to keep the wind off Mother. Now let us ask G.o.d's blessing."

It was a very simple supper--cheese, honey, roasted apples, and brown bread; but the children had healthy appet.i.tes, and had not been enervated by luxuries. Conversation during the meal was general. When it was over, the three younger ones were despatched to bed with a benediction, under charge of their eldest sister; young Gerard seated himself on the bench, with a handful of slips of wood, which he was ambitiously trying to carve into striking likenesses of the twelve Apostles; and when the mother's household duties were over, she came and sat by her husband in the chimney-corner. Stephen laid his hand upon her shoulder.

"Ermine," he said, "dear heart, wilt thou reckon me cruel, if I carry thy thoughts back--for a reason I have--to another snowy night, fourteen years ago?"

"Stephen!" she exclaimed, with a sudden start. "Oh no, I could never think _thee_ cruel. But what has happened?"

"Dost thou remember, when I first saw thee in Mother Haldane's house, my telling thee that I could not find Rudolph?"

"Of course I do. O Stephen! have you--do you think--"

Gerard looked up from his carving in amazement, to see the mother whom he knew as the calmest and quietest of women transformed into an eager, excited creature, with glowing cheeks and radiant eyes.

"Let me remind thee of one other point,--that Mother Haldane said G.o.d would either take the child to Himself, or would some day show us what had become of him."

"She did,--much to my surprise."

"And mine. But I think, Ermine--I think it is going to come true."

"Stephen, what have you heard?"

"I believe, Ermine, I have seen him."

"Seen _him_--Rudolph?"

"I feel almost sure it was he. I was standing this morning near Chepe Cross, to let a waggon pa.s.s, when I looked up, and all at once I saw a young man of some twenty years standing likewise till it went by. The likeness struck me dumb for a moment. Gerard's brow--no, lad, not thou!

Thy mother knows--Gerard's brow, and his fair hair, with the very wave it used to have about his temples; his eyes and nose too; but Agnes's mouth, and somewhat of Agnes in the way he held his head. And as I stood there, up came Leuesa and her husband, pa.s.sing the youth; and before I spoke a word about him, 'Saw you ever one so like Gerard?'

saith she. I said, 'Ay, him and Agnes too.' We watched the lad cross the street, and parting somewhat hastily from our friends, I followed him at a little distance. I held him in sight as far as Tower Street, but ere he had quite reached Mark Lane, a company of mummers, going westwards, came in betwixt and parted us. I lost sight of him but for a moment, yet when they had pa.s.sed, I could see no more of him--north, south, east, nor west--than if the earth had swallowed him up. I reckon he went into an house in that vicinage. To-morrow, if the Lord will, I will go thither, and watch. And if I see him again, I will surely speak."

"Stephen! O Stephen, if it should be our lost darling!"

"Ay, love, if it should be! It was always possible, of course, that he might have been taken in somewhere. There are many who would have no compa.s.sion on man or woman, and would yet shrink from turning out a little child to perish. And he was a very attractive child. Still, do not hope too much, Ermine; it may be merely an accidental likeness."

"If I could believe," replied Ermine, "that Countess had been anywhere near, I should think it more than possible that she had saved him."

"Countess? Oh, I remember--that Jewish maiden who petted him so much.

But she went to some distance when she married, if I recollect rightly."

"She went to Reading. But she might not have been there always."

"True. Well, I will try to find out something to-morrow night."

The little jeweller's shop at the corner of Mark Lane had now been established for fourteen years. For ten of those years, David and Christian had lived with Countess; but when Rudolph was old enough and sufficiently trained to manage the business for himself, Countess had thought it desirable to a.s.sist David in establishing a shop of his own at some distance. She had more confidence in David's goodness than in his discretion, and one of her chief wishes was to have as few acquaintances as possible. Happily for her aim, Rudolph's disposition was not inconveniently social. He liked to sit in a cushioned corner and dream the hours away; but he shrank as much as Countess herself from the rough, noisy, rollicking life of the young people by whom they were surrounded. Enough to live on, in a simple and comfortable fashion--a book or two, leisure, and no worry--these were Rudolph's desiderata, and he found them in Mark Lane.

He had no lack of subjects for thought as he sat behind his tiny counter on the evening of the following day. Shop-counters, at that date, were usually the wooden shutter of the window, let down table-wise into the street; but in the case of plate and jewellery the stock was too valuable to be thus exposed, and customers had to apply for admission within. It had been a very dull day for business, two customers only having appeared, and one of these had gone away without purchasing.

There was one wandering about outside who would have been only too glad to become a customer, had he known who sat behind the counter. Stephen had searched in vain for Rudolph in the neighbourhood where he had so mysteriously vanished from sight. He could not recognise him under the alias of "Ralph le Juwelier," by which name alone his neighbours knew him. Evening after evening he watched the corner of Mark Lane, and some fifty yards on either side of it, but only to go back every time to Ermine with no tale to tell. There were no detectives nor inquiry offices in those days; nothing was easier than for a man to lose himself in a great city under a feigned name. For Countess he never inquired; nor would he have taken much by the motion had he done so, since she was known to her acquaintances as Sarah la Juweliere. Her features were not so patently Jewish as those of some daughters of Abraham, and most people imagined her to be of foreign extraction.

"It seems of no use, Ermine," said Stephen mournfully, when a month had pa.s.sed and Rudolph had not been seen again. "Maybe it was the boy's ghost I saw, come to tell us that he is not living."

Stephen was gifted with at least an average amount of common sense, but he would have regarded a man who denied the existence of apparitions as a simpleton.

"We can only wait," said Ermine, looking up from the tunic she was making for her little Derette. "I have asked the Lord to send him to us; we can only wait His time."

"But, Wife, suppose His time should be--never?"

"Then, dear," answered Ermine softly, "it will still be the right time."

The morning after that conversation was waning into afternoon, when Rudolph, pa.s.sing up Paternoster Row, heard hurried steps behind him, and immediately felt a grasp on his shoulder--a grasp which seemed as if it had no intention of letting him go in a hurry. He looked up in some surprise, into the face of the man whose intent gaze and disconnected words had so roused his attention a month earlier.

"Caught you at last!" were the first words of his captor. "Now don't fall to and fight me, but do me so much grace as to tell me your name in a friendly way. You would, if you knew why I ask you."

The kindliness and honest sincerity of the speaker's face were both so apparent, that Rudolph smiled as he said--

"Suppose you tell me yours?"

"I have no cause to be ashamed of it. My name is Stephen, and men call me 'le Bulenger.'"

"Have they always called you so?"