The Cloister and the Hearth Part 9

"Now Heaven and the saints forbid! Man, torture not a mother! Speak out, and quickly: speak ere you have time to coin a falsehood: we know thee."

Ghysbrecht turned pale at this affront, and spite mingled with the other motives that brought him here. "Thus it is, then," said he, grinding his teeth, and speaking very fast. "Your son Gerard is more like to be the father of a family than a priest: he is for ever with Margaret, Peter Brandt's red-haired girl, and he loves her like a cow her calf."

Mother and daughter both burst out laughing. Ghysbrecht stared at them.

"What, you knew it?"

"Carry this tale to those who know not my son Gerard. Women are nought to him."

"Other women, mayhap. But this one is the apple of his eye to him or will be, if you part them not, and soon. Come, dame, make me not waste time and friendly counsel: my servant has seen them together a score of times, handed, and reading babies in one another's eyes like--you know, dame--you have been young too."

"Girl, I am ill at ease. Yea I have been young, and know how blind and foolish the young are. My heart! He has turned me sick in a moment.

Kate, if it should be true."

"Nay, nay!" cried Kate, eagerly. "Gerard might love a young woman: all young men do: I can't find what they see in them to love so: but if he did he would let us know; he would not deceive us. You wicked man! No, dear mother look not so! Gerard is too good to love a creature of earth.

His love is for our Lady and the saints. Ah! I will show you the picture--there: if his heart was earthly could he paint the Queen of Heaven like that--look! look!" and she held the picture out triumphantly, and more radiant and beautiful in this moment of enthusiasm than ever dead picture was or will be, overpowered the burgomaster with her eloquence and her feminine proof of Gerard's purity. His eyes and mouth opened, and remained open: in which state they kept turning face and all, as if on a pivot, from the picture to the women, and from the women to the picture.

"Why, it is herself," he gasped.

"Isn't it?" cried Kate, and her hostility was softened. "You admire it?

I forgive you for frightening us."

"Am I in a mad-house?" said Ghysbrecht Van Swieten, thoroughly puzzled.

"You show me a picture of the girl; and you say he painted it; and that is proof he cannot love her. Why they all paint their sweethearts, painters do."

"A picture of the girl?" exclaimed Kate, shocked. "Fie! this is no girl; this is our blessed Lady."

"No; no, it is Margaret Brandt."

"Oh blind! It is the Queen of Heaven."

"No; only of Sevenbergen village."

"Profane man! behold her crown!"

"Silly child! look at her red hair! Would the Virgin be seen in red hair? She who had the pick of all the colours ten thousand years before the world began."

At this moment an anxious face was insinuated round the edge of the open door: it was their neighbour Peter Buyskens.

"What is to do?" said he in a cautious whisper. "We can hear you all across the street. What on earth is to do?"

"O, neighbour! What is to do? Why here is the burgomaster blackening our Gerard."

"Stop!" cried Van Swieten. "Peter Buyskens is come in the nick of time.

He knows father and daughter both. They cast their glamour on him."

"What is she a witch, too?"

"Else the egg takes not after the bird. Why is her father called the magician? I tell you they bewitched this very Peter here; they cast unholy spells on him, and cured him of the colic: now, Peter, look and tell me who is that? and you be silent, women, for a moment, if you can; who is it, Peter?"

"Well to be sure!" said Peter in reply: and his eye seemed fascinated by the picture.

"Who is it?" repeated Ghysbrecht, impetuously.

Peter Buyskens smiled. "Why you know as well as I do; but what have they put a crown on her for, I never saw her in a crown, for my part."

"Man alive! Can't you open your great jaws, and just speak a wench's name plain out to oblige three people?"

"I'd do a great deal more to oblige one of you than that, burgomaster.

If it isn't as natural as life!"

"Curse the man! he won't, he won't--curse him!"

"Why, what have I done, now?"

"Oh, sir!" said little Kate, "for pity's sake tell us; are these the features of a living woman, of--of--Margaret Brandt?"

"A mirror is not truer, my little maid."

"But is it she, sir, for very certain?"

"Why, who else should it be?"

"Now, why couldn't you say so at once?" snarled Ghysbrecht.

"I did say so, as plain as I could speak," snapped Peter; and they growled over this small bone of contention so zealously, that they did not see Catherine and her daughter had thrown their ap.r.o.ns over their heads, and were rocking to and fro in deep distress. The next moment Elias came in from the shop, and stood aghast. Catherine, though her face was covered, knew his footstep.

"That is my poor man," she sobbed. "Tell him, good Peter Buyskens, for I have not the courage."

Elias turned pale. The presence of the burgomaster in his house, after so many years of coolness, coupled with his wife's and daughter's distress, made him fear some heavy misfortune.

"Richart! Jacob!" he gasped.

"No! no!" said the burgomaster; "it is nearer home, and n.o.body is dead or dying, old friend."

"G.o.d bless you, burgomaster! Ah! something is gone off my breast that was like to choke me. Now, what is the matter?"

Ghysbrecht then told him all that he told the women, and showed the picture in evidence.

"Is that all?" said Eli, profoundly relieved. "What are ye roaring and bellowing for? It is vexing, it is angering, but it is not like death nor even sickness. Boys will be boys. He will outgrow that disease: 'tis but skin deep."

But when Ghysbrecht told him that Margaret was a girl of good character; that it was not to be supposed she would be so intimate if marriage had not been spoken of between them, his brow darkened.

"Marriage? that shall never be," said he, sternly. "I'll stay that, ay, by force if need be, as I would his hand lifted to cut his throat. I'd do what old John Koestein did t'other day."

"And what is that, in Heaven's name?" asked the mother, suddenly removing her ap.r.o.n.

It was the burgomaster who replied: