The Cloister and the Hearth

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


"Alas! my second mother," said Gerard, "I did not dare to tell you my
folly."

"What folly? Is it folly to love?"

"I am told so every day of my life."

"You need not have been afraid to tell my mistress; she is always kind
to true lovers."

"Madam--Reicht I was afraid because I was told..."

"Well, you were told--?"

"That in your youth you scorned love, preferring art."

"I did, boy; and what is the end of it? Behold me here a barren stock,
while the women of my youth have a troop of children at their side, and
grandchildren at their knee I gave up the sweet joys of wifehood and
motherhood for what? For my dear brothers. They have gone and left me
long ago. For my art. It has all but left me too. I have the knowledge
still, but what avails that when the hand trembles. No, Gerard; I look
on you as my son. You are good, you are handsome, you are a painter,
though not like some I have known. I will not let you throw your youth
away as I did mine: you shall marry this Margaret. I have inquired, and
she is a good daughter. Reicht here is a gossip. She has told me all
about it. But that need not hinder you to tell me."

Poor Gerard was overjoyed to be permitted to praise Margaret aloud, and
to one who could understand what he loved in her.

Soon there were two pair of wet eyes over his story; and when the poor
boy saw that, there ware three.

Women are creatures brimful of courage. Theirs is not exactly the same
quality as manly courage; that would never do, hang it all; we should
have to give up trampling on them. No; it is a vicarious courage. They
never take part in a bull-fight by any chance; but it is remarked that
they sit at one unshaken by those tremors and apprehensions for the
combatants to which the male spectator-feebla-minded wretch!--is
subject. Nothing can exceed the resolution with which they have been
known to send forth men to battle: as some witty dog says,

"Les femmes sont tres braves avec le peur d'autrui."

By this trait Gerard now profited. Margaret and Reicht were agreed that
a man should always take the bull by the horns. Gerard's only course was
to marry Margaret Brandt off-hand; the old people would come to after
a while, the deed once done. Whereas, the longer this misunderstanding
continued on its present footing, the worse for all parties, especially
for Gerard.

"See how pale and thin they have made him amongst them."

"Indeed you are, Master Gerard," said Reicht. "It makes a body sad to
see a young man so wasted and worn. Mistress, when I met him in the
street to-day, I had liked to have burst out crying: he was so changed.

"And I'll be bound the others keep their colour; ah, Reicht? such as it
is."

"Oh, I see no odds in them."

"Of course not. We painters are no match for boors. We are glass, they
are stone. We can't stand the worry, worry, worry of little minds; and
it is not for the good of mankind we should be exposed to it. It is hard
enough, Heaven knows, to design and paint a masterpiece, without having
gnats and flies stinging us to death into the bargain."

Exasperated as Gerard was by his father's threat of violence, he
listened to these friendly voices telling him the prudent course was
rebellion. But though he listened, he was not convinced.

"I do not fear my father's violence," he said, "but I do fear his
anger. When it came to the point he would not imprison me. I would marry
Margaret to-morrow if that was my only fear. No; he would disown me. I
should take Margaret from her father, and give her a poor husband,
who would never thrive, weighed down by his parent's curse. Madam! I
sometimes think if I could marry her secretly, and then take her away
to some country where my craft is better paid than in this; and after
a year or two, when the storm had blown over, you know, could come back
with money in my purse, and say, 'My dear parents, we do not seek your
substance, we but ask you to love us once more as you used, and as we
have never ceased to love you'--but, alas! I shall be told these are the
dreams of an inexperienced young man."

The old lady's eyes sparkled.

"It is no dream, but a piece of wonderful common-sense in a boy;
it remains to be seen whether you have spirit to carry out your own
thought. There is a country, Gerard, where certain fortune awaits you
at this moment. Here the arts freeze, but there they flourish, as they
never yet flourished in any age or land."

"It is Italy!" cried Gerard. "It is Italy!"

"Ay, Italy! where painters are honoured like princes, and scribes are
paid three hundred crowns for copying a single manuscript. Know you not
that his Holiness the Pope has written to every land for skilful scribes
to copy the hundreds of precious manuscripts that are pouring into that
favoured land from Constantinople, whence learning and learned men are
driven by the barbarian Turks?"

"Nay, I know not that; but it has been the dream and hope of my life to
visit Italy, the queen of all the arts; oh, madam! But the journey, and
we are all so poor."

"Find you the heart to go, I'll find the means. I know where to lay my
hand on ten golden angels: they will take you to Rome: and the girl with
you, if she loves you as she ought."

They sat till midnight over this theme. And, after that day, Gerard
recovered his spirits, and seemed to carry a secret talisman against all
the gibes and the harsh words that flew about his ears at home.

Besides the money she procured him for the journey, Margaret Van Eyck
gave him money's worth. Said she, "I will tell you secrets that I
learned from masters that are gone from me, and have left no fellow
behind. Even the Italians know them not; and what I tell you now in
Tergou you shall sell hear in Florence. Note my brother Jan's pictures:
time, which fades all other paintings, leaves his colours bright as the
day they left the easel. The reason is, he did nothing blindly, in
a hurry. He trusted to no hireling to grind his colours; he did it
himself, or saw it done. His panel was prepared and prepared again--I
will show you how--a year before he laid his colour on. Most of them are
quite content to have their work sucked up and lost, sooner than not
be in a hurry. Bad painters are always in a hurry. Above all, Gerard,
I warn you use but little oil, and never boil it: boiling it melts that
vegetable dross into its heart which it is our business to clear away;
for impure oil is death to colour. No; take your oil and pour it into
a bottle with water. In a day or two the water will turn muddy: that is
muck from the oil. Pour the dirty water carefully away and add fresh.
When that is poured away, you will fancy the oil is clear. You mistaken.
Reicht, fetch me that!" Reicht brought a glass trough with a glass lid
fitting tight. "When your oil has been washed in bottle, put it into
this trough with water, and put the trough in the sun all day. You will
soon see the water turbid again. But mark, you must not carry this game
too far, or the sun will turn your oil to varnish. When it is as clear
as crystal, not too luscious, drain carefully, and cork it up tight.
Grind your own prime colours, and lay them on with this oil, and they
shall live. Hubert would put sand or salt in the water to clear the oil
quicker. But Jan used to say, 'Water will do it best; give water time.'
Jan Van Eyck was never in a hurry, and that is why the world will not
forget him in a hurry."

This and several other receipts, quae nunc perscribere longum est,
Margaret gave him with sparkling eyes, and Gerard received them like'
a legacy from Heaven, so interesting are some things that read
uninteresting. Thus provided with money and knowledge, Gerard decided to
marry and fly with his wife to Italy. Nothing remained now but to inform
Margaret Brandt of his resolution, and to publish the banns as quietly
as possible. He went to Sevenbergen earlier than usual on both these
errands. He began with Margaret; told her of the Dame Van Eyck's
goodness, and the resolution he had come to at last, and invited her
co-operation.

She refused it plump.

"No, Gerard; you and I have never spoken of your family, but when you
come to marriage--" She stopped, then began again. "I do think your
father has no ill-will to me more than to another. He told Peter
Buyskens as much, and Peter told me. But so long as he is bent on your
being a priest (you ought have told me this instead of I you), I could
not marry you, Gerard, dearly as I love you."

Gerard strove in vain to shake this resolution. He found it very easy
to make her cry, but impossible to make her yield. Then Gerard was
impatient and unjust.

"Very well!" he cried; "then you are on their side, and you will drive
me to be a priest, for this must end one way or another. My parents hate
me in earnest, but my lover only loves me in jest."

And with this wild, bitter speech, he flung away home again, and left
Margaret weeping.

When a man misbehaves, the effect is curious on a girl who loves him
sincerely. It makes her pity him. This, to some of us males, seems
anything but logical. The fault is in our own eye; the logic is too
swift for us. The girl argues thus:--"How unhappy, how vexed, poor
must be; him to misbehave! Poor thing!"

Margaret was full of this sweet womanly pity, when, to her great
surprise, scarce an hour and a half after he left her, Gerard came
running back to her with the fragments of a picture in his hand, and
panting with anger and grief.

"There, Margaret! see! see! the wretches! Look at their spite! They have
cut your portrait to pieces."

Margaret looked, and, sure enough, some malicious hand had cut her
portrait into five pieces. She was a good girl, but she was not ice; she
turned red to her very forehead.

"Who did it?"

"Nay, I know not. I dared not ask; for I should hate the hand that did
it, ay, till my dying day. My poor Margaret! The butchers, the ruffians!
Six months' work cut out of my life, and nothing to show for it now.
See, they have hacked through your very face; the sweet face that every
one loves who knows it. Oh, heartless, merciless vipers!"

"Never mind, Gerard," said Margaret, panting. "Since this is how they
treat you for my sake--Ye rob him of my portrait, do ye? Well, then, he
shall have the face itself, such as it is."

"Oh, Margaret!"

"Yes, Gerard; since they are so cruel, I will be the kinder: forgive
me for refusing you. I will be your wife: to-morrow, if it is your
pleasure."

Gerard kissed her hands with rapture, and then her lips; and in a tumult
of joy ran for Peter and Martin. They came and witnessed the betrothal;
a solemn ceremony in those days, and indeed for more than a century
later, though now abolished.



CHAPTER X

The banns of marriage had to be read three times, as in our days; with
this difference, that they were commonly read on week-days, and the
young couple easily persuaded the cure to do the three readings in
twenty-four hours: he was new to the place, and their looks spoke
volumes in their favour. They were cried on Monday at matins and at
vespers; and, to their great delight, nobody from Tergou was in the
church. The next morning they were both there, palpitating with anxiety,
when, to their horror, a stranger stood up and forbade the banns, On
the score that the parties were not of age, and their parents not
consenting.

Outside the church door Margaret and Gerard held a trembling, and almost
despairing consultation; but, before they could settle anything, the man
who had done them so ill a turn approached, and gave them to understand
that he was very sorry to interfere: that his inclination was to further
the happiness of the young; but that in point of fact his only means of
getting a living was by forbidding banns: what then? "The young people
give me a crown, and I undo my work handsomely; tell the cure I was
misinformed, and all goes smoothly."

"A crown! I will give you a golden angel to do this," said Gerard
eagerly; the man consented as eagerly, and went with Gerard to the cure,
and told him he had made a ridiculous mistake, which a sight of the
parties had rectified. On this the cure agreed to marry the young couple
next day at ten: and the professional obstructor of bliss went home with
Gerard's angel. Like most of these very clever knaves, he was a fool,
and proceeded to drink his angel at a certain hostelry in Tergou where
was a green devoted to archery and the common sports of the day. There,
being drunk, he bragged of his day's exploit; and who should be
there, imbibing every word, but a great frequenter of the spot, the
ne'er-do-weel Sybrandt. Sybrandt ran home to tell his father; his father
was not at home; he was gone to Rotterdam to buy cloth of the merchants.
Catching his elder brother's eye, he made him a signal to come out, and
told him what he had heard.

There are black sheep in nearly every large family; and these two were
Gerard's black brothers. Idleness is vitiating: waiting for the death of
those we ought to love is vitiating; and these two one-idea'd curs were
ready to tear any one to death that should interfere with that miserable
inheritance which was their thought by day and their dream by night.
Their parents' parsimony was a virtue; it was accompanied by industry,
and its motive was love of their offspring; but in these perverse and
selfish hearts that homely virtue was perverted into avarice, than which
no more fruitful source of crimes is to be found in nature.

They put their heads together, and agreed not to tell their mother,
whose sentiments were so uncertain, but to go first to the burgomaster.
They were cunning enough to see that he was averse to the match, though
they could not divine why.

Ghysbrecht Van Swieten saw through them at once; but he took care not
to let them see through him. He heard their story, and putting on
magisterial dignity and coldness, he said;

"Since the father of the family is not here, his duty falleth on me, who
am the father of the town. I know your father's mind; leave all to me;
and, above all, tell not a woman a word of this, least of all the women
that are in your own house: for chattering tongues mar wisest counsels."

So he dismissed them, a little superciliously: he was ashamed of his
confederates.

On their return home they found their brother Gerard seated on a low
stool at their mother's knee: she was caressing his hair with her hand,
speaking very kindly to him, and promising to take his part with his
father and thwart his love no more. The main cause of this change of
mind was characteristic of the woman. She it was who in a moment of
female irritation had cut Margaret's picture to pieces. She had watched
the effect with some misgivings, and had seen Gerard turn pale as death,
and sit motionless like a bereaved creature, with the pieces in his
hands, and his eyes fixed on them till tears came and blinded them. Then
she was terrified at what she had done; and next her heart smote her
bitterly; and she wept sore apart; but, being what she was, dared not
own it, but said to herself, "I'll not say a word, but I'll make it up
to him." And her bowels yearned over her son, and her feeble violence
died a natural death, and she was transferring her fatal alliance to
Gerard when the two black sheep came in. Gerard knew nothing of the
immediate cause; on the contrary, inexperienced as he was in the ins
and outs of females, her kindness made him ashamed of a suspicion he
had entertained that she was the depredator, and he kissed her again
and again, and went to bed happy as a prince to think his mother was his
mother once more at the very crisis of his fate.

The next morning, at ten o'clock, Gerard and Margaret were in the church
at Sevenbergen, he radiant with joy, she with blushes. Peter was
also there, and Martin Wittenhaagen, but no other friend. Secrecy was
everything. Margaret had declined Italy. She could not leave her father;
he was too learned and too helpless. But it was settled they should
retire into Flanders for a few weeks until the storm should be blown
over at Tergou. The cure did not keep them waiting long, though it
seemed an age. Presently he stood at the altar, and called them to him.
They went hand in hand, the happiest in Holland. The cure opened his
book.

But ere he uttered a single word of the sacred rite, a harsh voice cried
"Forbear!" And the constables of Tergou came up the aisle and seized
Gerard in the name of the law. Martin's long knife flashed out directly.

"Forbear, man!" cried the priest. "What! draw your weapon in a church,
and ye who interrupt this holy sacrament, what means this impiety?"

"There is no impiety, father," said the burgomaster's servant
respectfully. "This young man would marry against his father's will, and
his father has prayed our burgomaster to deal with him according to the
law. Let him deny it if he can."

"Is this so, young man?"

Gerard hung his head.

"We take him to Rotterdam to abide the sentence of the Duke."

At this Margaret uttered a cry of despair, and the young creatures, who
were so happy a moment ago, fell to sobbing in one another's arms so
piteously, that the instruments of oppression drew back a step and were
ashamed; but one of them that was good-natured stepped up under pretence
of separating them, and whispered to Margaret:

"Rotterdam? it is a lie. We but take him to our Stadthouse."

They took him away on horseback, on the road to Rotterdam; and, after a
dozen halts, and by sly detours, to Tergou. Just outside the town they
were met by a rude vehicle covered with canvas. Gerard was put into
this, and about five in the evening was secretly conveyed into the
prison of the Stadthouse. He was taken up several flights of stairs
and thrust into a small room lighted only by a narrow window, with a
vertical iron bar. The whole furniture was a huge oak chest.

Imprisonment in that age was one of the highroads to death. It is
horrible in its mildest form; but in those days it implied cold,
unbroken solitude, torture, starvation, and often poison. Gerard felt he
was in the hands of an enemy.

"Oh, the look that man gave me on the road to Rotterdam. There is more
here than my father's wrath. I doubt I shall see no more the light of
day." And he kneeled down and commended his soul to God.

Presently he rose and sprang at the iron bar of the window, and clutched
it. This enabled him to look out by pressing his knees against the wall.
It was but for a minute; but in that minute he saw a sight such as none
but a captive can appreciate.

Martin Wittenhaagen's back.

Martin was sitting, quietly fishing in the brook near the Stadthouse.

Gerard sprang again at the window, and whistled. Martin instantly showed
that he was watching much harder than fishing. He turned hastily round
and saw Gerard--made him a signal, and taking up his line and bow, went
quickly off.

Gerard saw by this that his friends were not idle: yet had rather Martin
had stayed. The very sight of him was a comfort. He held on, looking
at the soldier's retiring form as long as he could, then falling back
somewhat heavily wrenched the rusty iron bar, held only by rusty nails,
away from the stone-work just as Ghysbrecht Van Swieten opened the door
stealthily behind him. The burgomaster's eye fell instantly on the iron,
and then glanced at the window; but he said nothing. The window was a
hundred feet from the ground; and if Gerard had a fancy for jumping out,
why should he balk it? He brought a brown loaf and a pitcher of water,
and set them on the chest in solemn silence. Gerard's first impulse
was to brain him with the iron bar and fly down the stairs; but the
burgomaster seeing something wicked in his eye, gave a little cough, and
three stout fellows, armed, showed themselves directly at the door.

"My orders are to keep you thus until you shall bind yourself by an oath
to leave Margaret Brandt, and return to the Church, to which you have
belonged from your cradle."

"Death sooner."

"With all my heart." And the burgomaster retired.

Martin went with all speed to Sevenbergen; there he found Margaret pale
and agitated, but full of resolution and energy. She was just finishing
a letter to the Countess Charolois, appealing to her against the
violence and treachery of Ghysbrecht.

"Courage!" cried Martin on entering. "I have found him. He is in the
haunted tower, right at the top of it. Ay, I know the place: many a poor
fellow has gone up there straight, and come down feet foremost."

He then told them how he had looked up and seen Gerard's face at a
window that was like a slit in the wall.

"Oh, Martin! how did he look?"

"What mean you? He looked like Gerard Eliassoen."

"But was he pale?"

"A little."

"Looked he anxious? Looked he like one doomed?"

"Nay, nay; as bright as a pewter pot."

"You mock me. Stay! then that must have been at sight of you. He counts
on us. Oh, what shall we do? Martin, good friend, take this at once to
Rotterdam."

Martin held out his hand for the letter.

Peter had sat silent all this time, but pondering, and yet, contrary to
custom, keenly attentive to what was going on around him.

"Put not your trust in princes," said he.

"Alas! what else have we to trust in?"

"Knowledge."

"Well-a-day, father! your learning will not serve us here."

"How know you that? Wit has been too strong for iron bars ere to-day.

"Ay, father; but nature is stronger than wit, and she is against us.
Think of the height! No ladder in Holland might reach him."

"I need no ladder; what I need is a gold crown."

"Nay, I have money, for that matter. I have nine angels. Gerard gave
them me to keep; but what do they avail? The burgomaster will not be
bribed to let Gerard free."

"What do they avail? Give me but one crown, and the young man shall sup
with us this night."

Peter spoke so eagerly and confidently, that for a moment Margaret
felt hopeful; but she caught Martin's eye dwelling upon him with an
expression of benevolent contempt.

"It passes the powers of man's invention," said she, with a deep sigh.

"Invention!" cried the old man. "A fig for invention. What need we
invention at this time of day? Everything has been said that is to be
said, and done that ever will be done. I shall tell you how a Florentine
knight was shut up in a tower higher than Gerard's; yet did his faithful
squire stand at the tower foot and get him out, with no other engine
than that in your hand, Martin, and certain kickshaws I shall buy for a
crown."

Martin looked at his bow, and turned it round in his hand, and seemed to
interrogate it. But the examination left him as incredulous as before.

Then Peter told them his story, how the faithful squire got the knight
out of a high tower at Brescia. The manoeuvre, like most things that
are really scientific, was so simple, that now their wonder was they had
taken for impossible what was not even difficult.

The letter never went to Rotterdam. They trusted to Peter's learning and
their own dexterity.

It was nine o'clock on a clear moonlight night; Gerard, senior, was
still away; the rest of his little family had been some time abed.

A figure stood by the dwarf's bed. It was white, and the moonlight shone
on it.

With an unearthly noise, between a yell and a snarl, the gymnast rolled
off his bed and under it by a single unbroken movement. A soft voice
followed him in his retreat.

"Why, Giles, are you afeard of me?"

At this, Giles's head peeped cautiously up, and he saw it was only his
sister Kate.

She put her finger to her lips. "Hush! lest the wicked Cornelis or the
wicked Sybrandt hear us." Giles's claws seized the side of the bed, and
he returned to his place by one undivided gymnastic.

Kate then revealed to Giles that she had heard Cornelis and Sybrandt
mention Gerard's name; and being herself in great anxiety at his not
coming home all day, had listened at their door, and had made a fearful
discovery. Gerard was in prison, in the haunted tower of the Stadthouse.
He was there, it seemed, by their father's authority. But here must be
some treachery; for how could their father have ordered this cruel act?
He was at Rotterdam. She ended by entreating Giles to bear her company
to the foot of the haunted tower, to say a word of comfort to poor
Gerard, and let him know their father was absent, and would be sure to
release him on his return.

"Dear Giles, I would go alone, but I am afeard of the spirits that men
say do haunt the tower; but with you I shall not be afeard."

"Nor I with you," said Giles. "I don't believe there are any spirits in
Tergou. I never saw one. This last was the likest one ever I saw; and it
was but you, Kate, after all."

In less than half an hour Giles and Kate opened the housedoor cautiously
and issued forth. She made him carry a lantern, though the night was
bright. "The lantern gives me more courage against the evil spirits,"
said she.

The first day of imprisonment is very trying, especially if to the
horror of captivity is added the horror of utter solitude. I observe
that in our own day a great many persons commit suicide during the first
twenty-four hours of the solitary cell. This is doubtless why our Jairi
abstain so carefully from the impertinence of watching their little
experiment upon the human soul at that particular stage of it.