The Cloister and the Hearth Part 79

"Alas, no, father: I am a poor foolish girl, that would fain do well, but have done ill, most ill, most unwisely: and now must bear the shame.

But, father, I love you, with all my faults, and will not you forgive my folly, and still love your motherless girl?"

"That ye may count on," said Peter, cheerfully.

"Oh, well, smile not. For then how can I speak and make you sad?"

"Why, what is the matter?"

"Father, disgrace is coming on this house: it is at the door. And I the culprit. Oh, father, turn your head away. I--I--father, I have let Gerard take away my marriage lines."

"Is that all? 'Twas an oversight."

"'Twas the deed of a mad woman. But woe is me! that is not the worst."

Peter interrupted her. "The youth is honest, and loves you dear. You are young. What is a year or two to you? Gerard will a.s.suredly come back and keep troth."

"And meantime, know you what is coming?"

"Not I, except that I shall be gone first for one."

"Worse than that. There is worse pain than death. Nay, for pity's sake, turn away your head, father."

"Foolish wench!" muttered Peter, but turned his head.

She trembled violently, and with her cheeks on fire began to falter out, "I did look on Gerard as my husband--we being betrothed--and he was in so sore danger, and I thought I had killed him, and I-- Oh, if you were but my mother I might find courage: you would question me. But you say not a word."

"Why, Margaret, what is all this coil about? and why are thy cheeks crimson, speaking to no stranger but to thy old father?"

"Why are my cheeks on fire? Because--because--Father, kill me! send me to heaven! bid Martin shoot me with his arrow! And then the gossips will come and tell you why I blush so this day. And then, when I am dead, I hope you will love your girl again for her mother's sake."

"Give me thy hand, mistress," said Peter, a little sternly.

She put it out to him trembling. He took it gently, and began with some anxiety in his face to feel her pulse.

"Alas, nay!" said she. "'Tis my soul that burns, not my body with fever.

I cannot, will not, bide in Sevenbergen." And she wrung her hands impatiently.

"Be calm now," said the old man, soothingly, "nor torment thyself for nought. Not bide in Sevenbergen? What need to bide a day, as it vexes thee, and puts thee in a fever: for fevered thou art, deny it not."

"What!" cried Margaret, "would you yield to go hence, and--and ask no reason but my longing to be gone?" and, suddenly throwing herself on her knees beside him, in a fervour of supplication she clutched his sleeve, and then his arm, and then his shoulder, while imploring him to quit this place, and not ask her why. "Alas! what needs it? You will soon see it. And I could never say it. I would liever die."

"Foolish child! Who seeks thy girlish secrets? Is it I, whose life hath been spent in searching Nature's? And, for leaving Sevenbergen, what is there to keep me in it, thee unwilling? Is there respect for me here, or grat.i.tude? Am I not yclept quacksalver by those that come not near me, and wizard by those I heal? And give they not the guerdon and the honour they deny me, to the empirics that slaughter them? Besides, what is't to me where we sojourn? Choose thou that, as did thy mother before thee."

Margaret embraced him tenderly, and wept upon his shoulder.

She was respited.

Yet as she wept, respited, she almost wished she had had the courage to tell him.

After a while nothing would content him but her taking a medicament he went and brought her. She took it submissively, to please him. It was the least she could do. It was a composing draught, and though administered under an error, and a common one, did her more good than harm: she awoke calmed by a long sleep, and that very day began her preparations.

Next week they went to Rotterdam, bag and baggage, and lodged above a tailor's shop in the Brede-Kirk Straet.

Only one person in Tergou knew whither they were gone.

The Burgomaster.

He locked the information in his own breast.

The use he made of it ere long, my reader will not easily divine: for he did not divine it himself.

But time will show.

CHAPTER LII

AMONG strangers Margaret Brandt was comparatively happy. And soon a new and unexpected cause of content arose. A civic dignitary being ill, and fanciful in proportion, went from doctor to doctor; and having arrived at Death's door, sent for Peter. Peter found him bled and purged to nothing. He flung a battalion of bottles out of the window, and left it open; beat up yolks of eggs in neat Schiedam, and administered it in small doses: followed this up by meat stewed in red wine and water, shredding into both mild febrifugal herbs, that did no harm. Finally, his patient got about again, looking something between a man and a pillow-case, and being a voluble dignitary, spread Peter's fame in every street; and that artist, who had long merited a reputation in vain, made one rapidly by luck. Things looked bright. The old man's pride was cheered at last, and his purse began to fill. He spent much of his gain, however, in sovereign herbs and choice drugs, and would have so invested them all, but Margaret white-mailed a part. The victory came too late.

Its happy excitement was fatal.

One evening, in bidding her good-night, his voice seemed rather inarticulate.

The next morning he was found speechless, and only just sensible.

Margaret, who had been for years her father's attentive pupil, saw at once that he had had a paralytic stroke. But not trusting to herself, she ran for a doctor. One of those, who, obstructed by Peter, had not killed the civic dignitary, came, and cheerfully confirmed her views. He was for bleeding the patient. She declined. "He was always against blooding," said she, "especially the old." Peter lived, but was never the same man again. His memory became much affected, and of course he was not to be trusted to prescribe: and several patients had come, and one or two, that were bent on being cured by the new doctor and no other, awaited his convalescence. Misery stared her in the face. She resolved to go for advice and comfort to her cousin William Johnson, from whom she had hitherto kept aloof out of pride and poverty. She found him and his servant sitting in the same room, and neither of them the better for liquor. Mastering all signs of surprise, she gave her greetings, and presently told him she had come to talk on a family matter, and with this glanced quietly at the servant by way of hint. The woman took it, but not as expected.

"Oh, you can speak before me, can she not, my old man?"

At this familiarity Margaret turned very red, and said,--

"I cry your mercy, mistress. I knew not my cousin had fallen into the custom of this town. Well, I must take a fitter opportunity"; and she rose to go.

"I wot not what ye mean by custom o' the town," said the woman, bouncing up. "But this I know: 'tis the part of a faithful servant to keep her master from being preyed on by his beggarly kin."

Margaret retorted: "Ye are too modest, mistress. Ye are no servant. Your speech betrays you. 'Tis not till the ape hath mounted the tree that she shows her tail so plain. Nay, there sits the servant; G.o.d help him! And while so it is, fear not thou his kin will ever be so poor in spirit, as come where the likes of you can flout their dole." And casting one look of mute reproach at her cousin for being so little of a man as to sit pa.s.sive and silent all this time, she turned and went haughtily out; nor would she shed a single tear till she got home and thought of it. And now here were two men to be lodged and fed by one pregnant girl; and another mouth coming into the world.

But this last, though the most helpless of all, was their best friend.

Nature was strong in Margaret Brandt; that same nature which makes the brutes, the birds and the insects, so cunning at providing food and shelter for their progeny yet to come.

Stimulated by nature she sat and brooded, and brooded, and thought, and thought, how to be beforehand with dest.i.tution. Ay, though she had still five gold pieces left, she saw starvation coming with inevitable foot.

Her s.e.x, when, deviating from custom, it thinks with male intensity, thinks just as much to the purpose as we do. She rose, bade Martin move Peter to another room, made her own very neat and clean, polished the gla.s.s globe, and suspended it from the ceiling, dusted the crocodile and nailed him to the outside wall: and, after duly instructing Martin, set him to play the lounging sentinel about the street door, and tell the crocodile-bitten that a great, and aged, and learned alchymist abode there, who in his moments of recreation would sometimes amuse himself by curing mortal diseases.

Patients soon came, and were received by Margaret, and demanded to see the leech. "That might not be. He was deep in his studies, searching for the grand elixir, and not princes could have speech of him. They must tell her their symptoms, and return in two hours." And, oh! mysterious powers! when they did return, the drug or draught was always ready for them. Sometimes, when it was a worshipful patient, she would carefully scan his face, and feeling both pulse and skin, as well as hearing his story, would go softly with it to Peter's room; and there think and ask herself how her father, whose system she had long quietly observed, would have treated the case. Then she would write an illegible scrawl with a cabalistic letter, and bring it down, reverentially, and show it the patient, and "Could he read that?" Then it would be either "I am no reader," or, with admiration, "Nay mistress, nought can I make on't."