The Cloister and the Hearth

C >> Charles Reade >> The Cloister and the Hearth


She was received graciously by the old lady sitting in a richly
furnished room; and opened her business. The tapestry dropped out of
Margaret Van Eyck's hands. "Gone? Gone from Sevenbergen and not told me;
the thankless girl."

This turn greatly surprised the visitors. "What, you know not? when was
she here last?"

"Maybe ten days agone. I had ta'en out my brushes, after so many years,
to paint her portrait. I did not do it, though; for reasons."

Catherine remarked it was "a most strange thing she should go away bag
and baggage like this, without with your leave or by your leave, why, or
wherefore. Was ever aught so untoward; just when all our hearts are warm
to her; and here is Gerard's mate come from the ends of the earth with
comfort for her from Gerard, and can't find her, and Gerard himself
expected. What to do I know not. But sure she is not parted like this
without a reason. Can ye not give us the clue, my good demoiselle?
Prithee now.

"I have it not to give," said the elder lady, rather peevishly.

"Then I can," said Reicht Heynes, showing herself in the doorway, with
colour somewhat heightened.

"So you have been hearkening all the time, eh?"

"What are my ears for, mistress?"

"True. Well, throw us the light of thy wisdom on this dark matter."

"There is no darkness that I see," said Reicht. "And the clue, why, an
ye call't a two-plye twine, and the ends on't in this room e'en now,
ye'll not be far out. Oh, mistress, I wonder at you sitting there
pretending."

"Marry, come up." and the mistress's cheek was now nearly as red as the
servant's. "So 'twas I drove the foolish girl away."

"You did your share, mistress. What sort of greeting gave you her
last time she came? Think you she could miss to notice it, and she all
friendless? And you said, 'I have altered my mind about painting of
you,' says you, a turning up your nose at her."

"I did not turn up my nose. It is not shaped like yours for looking
heavenward."

"Oh, all our nosen can follow our heartys bent, for that matter. Poor
soul. She did come into the kitchen to me. 'I am not to be painted now,'
said she, and the tears in her eyes. She said no more. But I knew well
what she did mean. I had seen ye."

"Well," said Margaret Van Eyck, "I do confess so much, and I make you
the judge, madam. Know that these young girls can do nothing of their
own heads, but are most apt at mimicking aught their sweethearts do. Now
your Gerard is reasonably handy at many things, and among the rest at
the illuminator's craft. And Margaret she is his pupil, and a patient
one: what marvel? having a woman's eye for colour, and eke a lover to
ape. 'Tis a trick I despise at heart: for by it the great art of colour,
which should be royal, aspiring, and free, becomes a poor slave to the
petty crafts of writing and printing, and is fettered, imprisoned, and
made little, body and soul, to match the littleness of books, and go to
church in a rich fool's pocket. Natheless affection rules us all, and
when the poor wench would bring me her thorn leaves, and lilies, and
ivy, and dewberries, and ladybirds, and butterfly grubs, and all the
scum of Nature-stuck fast in gold-leaf like wasps in a honey-pot, and
withal her diurnal book, showing she had pored an hundred, or an hundred
and fifty, or two hundred hours over each singular page, certes I was
wroth that an immortal soul, and many hours of labour, and much manual
skill, should be flung away on Nature's trash, leaves, insects, grubs,
and on barren letters; but, having bowels, I did perforce restrain, and
as it were, dam my better feelings, and looked kindly at the work to
see how it might be bettered; and said I, 'Sith Heaven for our sins
hath doomed us to spend time, and soul, and colour on great letters and
little beetles, omitting such small fry as saints and heroes, their
acts and passions, why not present the scum naturally?' I told her 'the
grapes I saw, walking abroad, did hang i' the air, not stick in a wall;
and even these insects,' quo' I, 'and Nature her slime in general, pass
not their noxious lives wedged miserably in metal prisons like flies
in honey-pots and glue-pots, but do crawl or hover at large, infesting
air.' 'Ah my dear friend,' says she, 'I see now whither you drive; but
this ground is gold; whereon we may not shade.' 'Who said so?' quoth
I. 'All teachers of this craft,' says she; and (to make an end o' me at
once, I trow) 'Gerard himself!' 'That for Gerard himself,' quoth I, 'and
all the gang; gi'e me a brush!'

"Then chose I, to shade her fruit and reptiles, a colour false in
nature, but true relatively to that monstrous ground of glaring gold;
and in five minutes out came a bunch of raspberries, stalk and all, and
a'most flew in your mouth; likewise a butterfly grub she had so truly
presented as might turn the stoutest stomach. My lady she flings her
arms round my neck, and says she, 'Oh!'"

"Did she now?"

"The little love!" observed Denys, succeeding at last in wedging in a
word.

Margaret Van Eyck stared at him; and then smiled. She went on to tell
them how from step to step she had been led on to promise to resume the
art she had laid aside with a sigh when her brothers died, and to paint
the Madonna once more--with Margaret for model. Incidentally she even
revealed how girls are turned into saints. "Thy hair is adorable," said
I. "Why, 'tis red," quo' she. "Ay," quoth I, "but what a red! how brown!
how glossy! most hair is not worth a straw to us painters; thine the
artist's very hue. But thy violet eyes, which smack of earth, being now
languid for lack of one Gerard, now full of fire in hopes of the same
Gerard, these will I lift to heaven in fixed and holy meditation, and
thy nose, which doth already somewhat aspire that way (though not so
piously as Reicht's), will I debase a trifle, and somewhat enfeeble thy
chin."

"Enfeeble her chin? Alack! what may that mean? Ye go beyond me,
mistress."

"'Tis a resolute chin. Not a jot too resolute for this wicked world; but
when ye come to a Madonna? No thank you."

"Well I never. A resolute chin."

Denys. "The darling!"

"And now comes the rub. When you told me she was--the way she is, it
gave me a shock; I dropped my brushes. Was I going to turn a girl, that
couldn't keep her lover at a distance, into the Virgin Mary, at my time
of life? I love the poor ninny still. But I adore our blessed Lady.
Say you, 'a painter must not be peevish in such matters'? Well, most
painters are men; and men are fine fellows. They can do aught. Their
saints and virgins are neither more nor less than their lemans, saving
your presence. But know that for this very reason half their craft
is lost on me, which find beneath their angels' white wings the very
trollops I have seen flaunting it on the streets, bejewelled like Paynim
idols, and put on like the queens in a pack o' cards. And I am not a
fine fellow, but only a woman, and my painting is but one half craft,
and t'other half devotion. So now you may read me. 'Twas foolish,
maybe, but I could not help it; yet am I sorry." And the old lady ended
despondently a discourse which she had commenced in a'mighty defiant
tone.

"Well, you know, dame," observed Catherine, "you must think it would go
to the poor girl's heart, and she so fond of ye?"

Margaret Van Eyck only sighed.

The Frisian girl, after biting her lips impatiently a little while,
turned upon Catherine. "Why, dame, think you 'twas for that alone
Margaret and Peter hath left Sevenbergen? Nay."

"For what else, then?"

"What else? Why, because Gerard's people slight her so cruel. Who would
bide among hard-hearted folk that ha' driven her lad t' Italy, and now
he is gone, relent not, but face it out, and ne'er come anigh her that
is left?"

"Reicht, I was going."

"Oh, ay, going, and going, and going. Ye should ha' said less or else
done more. But with your words you did uplift her heart and let it down
wi' your deeds. 'They have never been,' said the poor thing to me, with
such a sigh. Ay, here is one can feel for her: for I too am far from my
friends, and often, when first I came to Holland, I did used to take a
hearty cry all to myself. But ten times liever would I be Reicht Heynes
with nought but the leagues atw'een me and all my kith, than be as she
is i' the midst of them that ought to warm to her, and yet to fare as
lonesome as I."

"Alack, Reicht, I did go but yestreen, and had gone before, but one
plaguy thing or t'other did still come and hinder me."

"Mistress, did aught hinder ye to eat your dinner any one of those days?
I trow not. And had your heart been as good towards your own flesh and
blood, as 'twas towards your flesher's meat, nought had prevailed to
keep you from her that sat lonely, a watching the road for you and
comfort, wi' your child's child a beating 'neath her bosom."

Here this rude young woman was interrupted by an incident not uncommon
in a domestic's bright existence. The Van Eyck had been nettled by the
attack on her, but with due tact had gone into ambush. She now sprang
out of it. "Since you disrespect my guests, seek another place!"

"With all my heart," said Reicht stoutly.

"Nay, mistress," put in the good-natured Catherine. "True folk will
still speak out. Her tongue is a stinger." Here the water came into
the speaker's eyes by way of confirmation. "But better she said it than
thought it. So now 't won't rankle in her. And part with her for me,
that shall ye not. Beshrew the wench, she wots she is a good servant,
and takes advantage. We poor wretches which keep house must still pay
'em tax for value. I had a good servant once, when I was a young
woman. Eh dear, how she did grind me down into the dust. In the end,
by Heaven's mercy, she married the baker, and I was my own woman again.
'So,' said I, 'no more good servants shall come hither, a hectoring o'
me.' I just get a fool and learn her; and whenever she knoweth her right
hand from her left, she sauceth me: then out I bundle her neck and
crop, and take another dunce in her place. Dear heart, 'tis wearisome,
teaching a string of fools by ones; but there--I am mistress:" here she
forgot that she was defending Reicht, and turning rather spitefully upon
her, added, "and you be mistress here, I trow."

"No more than that stool," said the Van Eyck loftily. "She is neither
mistress nor servant; but Gone. She is dismissed the house, and there's
an end of her. What, did ye not hear me turn the saucy baggage off?"

"Ay, ay. We all heard ye," said Reicht, with vast indifference.

"Then hear me!" said Denys solemnly.

They all went round like things on wheels, and fastened their eyes on
him.

"Ay, let us hear what the man says," urged the hostess. "Men are fine
fellows, with their great hoarse voices."

"Mistress Reicht," said Denys, with great dignity and ceremony, indeed
so great as to verge on the absurd, "you are turned off. If on a slight
acquaintance I might advise, I'd say, since you are a servant no more,
be a mistress, a queen."

"Easier said than done," replied Reicht bluntly.

"Not a jot. You see here one who is a man, though but half an
arbalestrier, owing to that devilish Englishman's arrow, in whose
carcass I have, however, left a like token, which is a comfort. I have
twenty gold pieces" (he showed them) "and a stout arm. In another
week or so I shall have twain. Marriage is not a habit of mine; but
I capitulate to so many virtues. You are beautiful, good-hearted, and
outspoken, and above all, you take the part of my she-comrade. Be then
an arbalestriesse!"

"And what the dickens is that?" inquired Reicht.

"I mean, be the wife, mistress, and queen of Denys of Burgundy here
present."

A dead silence fell on all.

It did not last long, though; and was followed by a burst of
unreasonable indignation.

Catherine. "Well, did you ever?"

Margaret. "Never in all my born days."

Catherine. "Before our very faces."

Margaret. "Of all the absurdity, and insolence of this ridiculous sex--"

Then Denys observed somewhat drily, that the female to whom he ad
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 assailant,
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 noble sketch. "I can work no more at present," said she
sorrowfully.

"Then, now, 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, alias 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, are not for innocent tranquility.

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 XLVIII

Catherine 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 lass, you know not what hasty fools young lasses 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 brass one moment and scream for
help in the next. Couldn't know their own minds ye see even about 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 ass, 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' canals 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 a fixing of the nail and a making of the
noose she has time t' alter her mind. But a jump into a canal 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
canal 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 stitches 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 canals 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 lass,' 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 canal; 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 sex 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 lass 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, 'tisn't for you
to disappoint me beforehand, telling me it is not to be a child, but
only a girl."



CHAPTER XLIX

MARGARET BRANDT had always held herself apart from Sevenbergen; and her
reserve had passed for pride; this had come to her ears, and she knew
many hearts were swelling with jealousy and malevolence. How would they
triumph over her when her condition could no longer be concealed! This
thought gnawed her night and day. For some time it had made her bury
herself in the house, and shun daylight even on those rare occasions
when she went abroad.

Not that in her secret heart and conscience she mistook her moral
situation, as my unlearned readers have done perhaps. Though not
acquainted with the nice distinctions of the contemporary law, she knew
that betrothal was a marriage contract, and could no more be legally
broken on either side than any other compact written and witnessed; and
that marriage with another party than the betrothed had been formerly
annulled both by Church and State and that betrothed couples often
came together without any further ceremony, and their children were
legitimate.

But what weighed down her simple mediaeval mind was this: that very
contract of betrothal was not forthcoming. Instead of her keeping it,
Gerard had got it, and Gerard was far, far away. She hated and despised
herself for the miserable oversight which had placed her at the mercy of
false opinion.

For though she had never heard Horace's famous couplet, Segnius
irritant, etc., she was Horatian by the plain, hard, positive
intelligence, which, strange to say, characterizes the judgment of her
sex, when feeling happens not to blind it altogether. She gauged the
understanding of the world to a T. Her marriage lines being out
of sight, and in Italy, would never prevail to balance her visible
pregnancy, and the sight of her child when born. What sort of a tale was
this to stop slanderous tongues? "I have got my marriage lines, but I
cannot show them you." What woman would believe her? or even pretend to
believe her? And as she was in reality one of the most modest girls in
Holland, it was women's good opinion she wanted, not men's.

Even barefaced slander attacks her sex at a great advantage; but here
was slander with a face of truth. "The strong-minded woman" had not yet
been invented; and Margaret, though by nature and by having been early
made mistress of a family, she was resolute in some respects, was weak
as water in others, and weakest of all in this. Like all the elite
of her sex, she was a poor little leaf, trembling at each gust of the
world's opinion, true or false. Much misery may be contained in few
words. I doubt if pages of description from any man's pen could make
any human creature, except virtuous women (and these need no such aid),
realize the anguish of a virtuous woman foreseeing herself paraded as a
frail one. Had she been frail at heart, she might have brazened it out.
But she had not that advantage. She was really pure as snow, and saw the
pitch coming nearer her and nearer. The poor girl sat listless hours at
a time, and moaned with inner anguish. And often, when her father was
talking to her, and she giving mechanical replies, suddenly her cheek
would burn like fire, and the old man would wonder what he had said to
discompose her. Nothing. His words were less than air to her. It was the
ever-present dread sent the colour of shame into her burning cheek, no
matter what she seemed to be talking and thinking about. But both shame
and fear rose to a climax when she came back that night from Margaret
Van Eyck's. Her condition was discovered, and by persons of her own
sex. The old artist, secluded like herself, might not betray her;
but Catherine, a gossip in the centre of a family, and a thick
neighbourhood? One spark of hope remained. Catherine had spoken kindly,
even lovingly. The situation admitted no half course. Gerard's mother
thus roused must either be her best friend or worst enemy. She waited
then in racking anxiety to hear more. No word came. She gave up hope.
Catherine was not going to be her friend. Then she would expose her,
since she had no strong and kindly feeling to balance the natural love
of babbling.