The Cloister and the Hearth Part 77

Here Denys observed somewhat drily, that the female to whom he had addressed himself was mute; and the others, on whose eloquence there was no immediate demand, were fluent: on this the voices stopped, and the eyes turned pivot-like upon Reicht.

She took a sly glance from under her lashes at her military a.s.sailant, and said, "I mean to take a good look at any man ere I leap into his arms."

Denys drew himself up majestically. "Then look your fill, and leap away."

This proposal led to a new and most unexpected result. A long white finger was extended by the Van Eyck in a line with the speaker's eye, and an agitated voice bade him stand, in the name of all the saints.

"You are beautiful, so," cried she. "You are inspired--with folly. What matters that? you are inspired. I must take off your head." And in a moment she was at work with her pencil. "Come out, hussy," she screamed to Reicht; "more in front of him, and keep the fool inspired and beautiful. Oh, why had I not this maniac for my good centurion? They went and brought me a brute with a low forehead and a shapeless beard."

Catherine stood and looked with utter amazement at this pantomime, and secretly resolved that her venerable hostess had been a disguised lunatic all this time, and was now busy throwing off the mask. As for Reicht, she was unhappy and cross. She had left her caldron in a precarious state, and made no scruple to say so, and that duties so grave as hers left her no "time to waste a playing the statee and the fool all at one time." Her mistress in reply reminded her that it was possible to be rude and rebellious to one's poor old, affectionate, desolate mistress, without being utterly heartless, and savage; and a trampler on arts.

On this Reicht stopped, and pouted, and looked like a little basilisk at the inspired model who caused her woe. He retorted with unshaken admiration. The situation was at last dissolved by the artist's wrist becoming cramped from disuse; this was not, however, until she had made a rough but n.o.ble sketch. "I can work no more at present," said she, sorrowfully.

"Then, mistress, I may go and mind my pot?"

"Ay, ay, go to your pot! And get into it, do; you will find your soul in it: so then you will all be together."

"Well, but Reicht," said Catherine, laughing, "she turned you off."

"Boo, boo, boo!" said Reicht, contemptuously. "When she wants to get rid of me, let her turn herself off and die. I am sure she is old enough for't. But take your time, mistress; if you are in no hurry, no more am I. When that day doth come, 'twill take a man to dry my eyes: and if you should be in the same mind then, soldier, you can say so; and if you are not, why, 'twill be all one to Reicht Heynes."

And the plain speaker went her way. But her words did not fall to the ground. Neither of her female hearers could disguise from herself that this blunt girl, solitary herself, had probably read Margaret Brandt aright, and that she had gone away from Sevenbergen broken hearted.

Catherine and Denys bade the Van Eyck adieu, and that same afternoon Denys set out on a wild goose chase. His plan, like all great things, was simple. He should go to a hundred towns and villages, and ask in each after an old physician with a fair daughter, and an old long-bow soldier. He should inquire of the burgomasters about all new-comers, and should go to the fountains and watch the women and girls as they came with their pitchers for water.

And away he went, and was months and months on the tramp and could not find her.

Happily, this chivalrous feat of friendship was in some degree its own reward.

Those, who sit at home blindfolded by self-conceit, and think camel or man out of the depths of their inner consciousness, alas! their ignorance, will tell you that in the intervals of war and danger, peace and tranquil life acquire their true value and satisfy the heroic mind.

But those, who look before they babble or scribble, will see, and say, that men, who risk their lives habitually, thirst for exciting pleasures between the acts of danger, and not for innocent tranquillity.

To this Denys was no exception. His whole military life had been half Sparta, half Capua. And he was too good a soldier, and too good a libertine, to have ever mixed either habit with the other. But now for the first time he found himself mixed; at peace and yet on duty; for he took this latter view of his wild goose chase, luckily. So all these months he was a demi-Spartan; sober, prudent, vigilant, indomitable; and happy, though constantly disappointed, as might have been expected. He flirted gigantically on the road; but wasted no time about it. Nor in these his wanderings did he tell a single female that "marriage was not one of his habits, etc."

And so we leave him on the tramp, "Pilgrim of Friendship," as his poor comrade was of Love.

CHAPTER L

THE good-hearted Catherine was not happy. Not that she reproached herself very deeply for not having gone quickly enough to Sevenbergen, whither she was not bound to go at all--except on the score of having excited false hopes in Margaret. But she was in dismay when she reflected that Gerard must reach home in another month at farthest, more likely in a week. And how should she tell him she had not even kept an eye upon his betrothed? Then there was the uncertainty as to the girl's fate: and this uncertainty sometimes took a sickening form.

"Oh, Kate," she groaned, "if she should have gone and made herself away."

"Mother, she would never be so wicked."

"Ah, my la.s.s, you know not what hasty fools young la.s.ses be, that have no mothers to keep 'em straight. They will fling themselves into the water for a man that the next man they meet would ha' cured 'em of in a week. I have known 'em to jump in like bra.s.s one moment and scream for help in the next. Couldn't know their own minds ye see even such a trifle as yon. And then there's times when their bodies ail like no other living creatures ever I could hear of, and that strings up their feelings so, the patience, that belongs to them at other times beyond all living souls barring an a.s.s, seems all to jump out of 'em at one turn, and into the water they go. Therefore, I say that men are monsters."

"Mother!"

"Monsters, and no less, to go making such heaps o' ca.n.a.ls just to tempt the poor women in. They know we shall not cut our throats, hating the sight of blood, and rating our skins a hantle higher nor our lives; and as for hanging, while she is fixing of the nail and a making of the noose she has time t'alter her mind. But a jump into a ca.n.a.l is no more than into bed; and the water it does all the lave, will ye, nill ye.

Why, look at me, the mother o' nine, wasn't I agog to make a hole in our ca.n.a.l for the nonce?"

"Nay, mother, I'll never believe it of you."

"Ye may, though. 'Twas in the first year of our keeping house together.

Eli hadn't found out my weak st.i.tches then, nor I his; so we made a rent, pulling contrariwise; had a quarrel. So then I ran crying, to tell some gabbling fool like myself what I had no business to tell out o'

doors except to the saints, and there was one of our precious ca.n.a.ls in the way; do they take us for teal? Oh, how tempting it did look! Says I to myself, 'Sith he has let me go out of his door quarrelled, he shall see me drowned next, and then he will change his key. He will blubber a good one, and I shall look down from heaven' (I forgot I should be in t'other part), 'and see him take on, and, oh, but that will be sweet!'

and I was all a tiptoe and going in, only just then I thought I wouldn't. I had got a new gown a-making, for one thing, and hard upon finished. So I went home instead, and what was Eli's first word? 'Let yon flea stick i' the wall, my la.s.s,' says he. 'Not a word of all I said t' anger thee was sooth, but this: 'I love thee.' These were his very words, I minded 'em, being the first quarrel. So I flung my arms about his neck and sobbed a bit, and thought o' the ca.n.a.l; and he was no colder to me than I to him, being a man and a young one: and so then that was better than lying in the water; and spoiling my wedding kirtle and my fine new shoon, old John Bush made 'em, that was uncle to him keeps the shop now. And what was my grief to hers?"

Little Kate hoped that Margaret loved her father too much to think of leaving him so at his age. "He is father and mother and all to her, you know."

"Nay, Kate, they do forget all these things in a moment o' despair, when the very sky seems black above them. I place more faith in him that is unborn, than on him that is ripe for the grave, to keep her out o'

mischief. For certes it do go sore against us to die when there's a little innocent a-pulling at our hearts to let un live, and feeding at our very veins."

"Well, then, keep up a good heart, mother." She added, that very likely all these fears were exaggerated. She ended by solemnly entreating her mother at all events not to persist in naming the s.e.x of Margaret's infant. It was so unlucky, all the gossips told her; "dear heart, as if there were not as many girls born as boys."

This reflection, though not unreasonable, was met with clamour.

"Have you the cruelty to threaten me with a girl!!? I want no more girls, while I have you. What use would a la.s.s be to me? Can I set her on my knee and see my Gerard again as I can a boy? I tell thee 'tis all settled."

"How may that be?"

"In my mind. And if I am to be disappointed i' the end, t'isn't for you to disappoint me beforehand, telling me it is not to be a child, but only a girl."

All these anxieties, and, if I may be permitted, without disrespect to the dead, to add, all this twaddle, that accompanied them, were shortly suspended by an incident that struck nearer home; made Tergou furiously jealous of Catherine, and Catherine weep. And, if my reader is fond of wasting his time, as some novel readers are, he cannot do it more effectually than by guessing what could produce results so incongruous.

Marched up to Eli's door a pageant brave to the eye of sense, and to the vulgar judgment n.o.ble, but, to the philosophic, pitiable more or less.

It looked one animal, a centaur: but on severe a.n.a.lysis proved two. The human half was sadly bedizened with those two metals, to clothe his carca.s.s with which and line his pouch, man has now and then disposed of his soul: still the horse was the vainer brute of the two; he was far worse beflounced, bebonneted, and bemantled, than any fair lady regnante crinolina. For the man, under the colour of a warming-pan, retained Nature's outline. But it was "subaudi equum!" Scarce a pennyweight of honest horseflesh to be seen. Our crinoline spares the n.o.ble parts of woman, and makes but the baser parts gigantic (why this preference?): but this poor animal from stem to stern was swamped in finery. His ears were hid in great sheaths of white linen tipped with silver and blue.

His body swaddled in stiff gorgeous cloths descending to the ground, except just in front, where they left him room to mince. His tail, though dear to memory, no doubt, was lost to sight, being tucked in heaven knows how. Only his eyes shone out like goggles, through two holes pierced in the wall of haberdashery, and his little front hoofs peeped in and out like rats.

Yet did this compound, gorgeous and irrational, represent power; absolute power: it came straight from a tournament at the duke's court, which being on a progress, lay last night at a neighboring town--to execute the behests of royalty.

"What ho!" cried the upper half, and on Eli emerging, with his wife behind him, saluted them. "Peace be with you, good people. Rejoice! I am come for your dwarf."

Eli looked amazed, and said nothing. But Catherine screamed over his shoulder, "You have mistook your road, good man; here abides no dwarf."

"Nay, wife, he means our Giles, who is somewhat small of stature: why gainsay what gainsayed may not be?"

"Ay!" cried the pageant, "that is he, and discourseth like the big tabor."

"His breast is sound for that matter," said Catherine, sharply.

"And prompt with his fists though at long odds."