"Ot"s a "ermit?"
"A holy man that lives in a cave all by himself."
"In de dark?"
"Ay, whiles."
"Oh."
In the morning Reicht was sent to the hermit with the pelisse, and a pound of thick candles.
As she was going out of the door, Margaret said to her, "Said you whose son Gerard was?"
"Nay, not I."
"Think, girl! How could he call him Gerard, son of Eli, if you had not told him?"
Reicht persisted she had never mentioned him but as plain Gerard. But Margaret told her flatly she did not believe her; at which Reicht was affronted, and went out with a little toss of the head. However she determined to question the hermit again, and did not doubt he would be more liberal in his communication, when he saw his nice new pelisse and the candles.
She had not been gone long when Giles came in with ill news. The living of Gouda would be kept vacant no longer.
Margaret was greatly distressed at this. "Oh, Giles," said she, "ask for another month. They will give thee another month, maybe."
He returned in an hour to tell her he could not get a month. "They have given me a week," said he. "And what is a week?"
"Drowning bodies catch at strawen," was her reply. "A week? a little week?"
Reicht came back from her errand out of spirits. Her oracle had declined all further communications. So at least its obstinate silence might fairly be interpreted.
The next day Margaret put Reicht in charge of the shop, and disappeared all day. So the next day; and so the next. Nor would she tell any one where she had been. Perhaps she was ashamed. The fact is she spent all those days on one little spot of ground. When they thought her dreaming she was applying to every word that fell from Joan and Reicht the whole powers of a far acuter mind than either of them possessed.
She went to work on a scale that never occurred to either of them. She was determined to see the hermit, and question him face to face, not through a wall. She found that by making a circuit she could get above the cave and look down without being seen by the solitary. But when she came to do it she found an impenetrable ma.s.s of brambles. After tearing her clothes and her hands and feet, so that she was soon covered with blood, the resolute, patient girl took out her scissors and steadily snipped and cut till she made a narrow path through the enemy. But so slow was the work that she had to leave it half done. The next day she had her scissors fresh ground, and brought a sharp knife as well; and gently, silently cut her way through to the roof of the cave. There she made an ambush of some of the cut brambles, so that the pa.s.sers-by might not see her, and couched with watchful eye till the hermit should come out. She heard him move underneath her. But he never left his cell. She began to think it was true that he only came out at night. The next day she came early, and brought a jerkin she was making for little Gerard, and there she sat all day working and watching with dogged patience.
At four o"clock the birds began to feed; and a great many of the smaller kinds came fluttering round the cave, and one or two went in. But most of them taking a preliminary seat on the bushes suddenly discovered Margaret, and went off with an agitated flirt of their little wings. And although they sailed about in the air they would not enter the cave.
Presently, to encourage them, the hermit all unconscious of the cause of their tremors put out a thin white hand with a few crumbs in it.
Margaret laid down her work softly, and gliding her body forward like a snake, looked down at it from above: it was but a few feet from her. It was as the woman described it, a thin, white hand.
Presently the other hand came out with a piece of bread, and the two hands together broke it and scattered the crumbs.
But that other hand had hardly been out two seconds ere the violet eyes, that were watching above, dilated; and the gentle bosom heaved and the whole frame quivered like a leaf in the wind.
What her swift eye had seen I leave the reader to guess. She suppressed the scream that rose to her lips; but the effort cost her dear. Soon the left hand of the hermit began to swim indistinctly before her gloating eyes: and with a deep sigh her head drooped, and she lay like a broken lily.
She was in a deep swoon, to which perhaps her long fast to-day, and the agitation and sleeplessness of many preceding days contributed.
And there lay beauty, intelligence, and constancy; pale and silent. And little that hermit guessed who was so near him. The little birds hopped on her now; and one nearly entangled his little feet in her rich auburn hair.
She came back to her troubles. The sun was set. She was very cold. She cried a little; but I think it was partly from the remains of physical weakness. And then she went home, praying G.o.d and the saints to enlighten her and teach her what to do for the best.
When she got home she was pale and hysterical, and would say nothing in answer to all their questions but her favourite word, "We are wading in deep waters."
The night seemed to have done wonders for her.
She came to Catherine who was sitting sighing by the fireside, and kissed and said, "Mother, what would you like best in the world?"
"Eh, dear," replied Catherine, despondently. "I know nought that would make me smile now; I have parted from too many that were dear to me.
Gerard lost again as soon as found. Kate in heaven; and Sybrandt down for life."
"Poor mother! Mother dear, Gouda manse is to be furnished, and cleaned, and made ready all in a hurry. See here be ten gold angels. Make them go far, good mother; for I have ta"en over many already from my boy for a set of useless loons that were aye going to find him for me."
Catherine and Reicht stared at her a moment in silence; and then out burst a flood of questions, to none of which would she give a reply.
"Nay," said she, "I have lain on my bed, and thought, and thought, and thought, whiles you were all sleeping; and methinks I have got a clue to all. I love you, dear mother; but I"ll trust no woman"s tongue. If I fail this time, I"ll have none to blame but Margaret Brandt."
A resolute woman is a very resolute thing. And there was a deep dogged determination in Margaret"s voice and brow, that at once convinced Catherine it would be idle to put any more questions at that time. She and Reicht lost themselves in conjectures; and Catherine whispered Reicht, "Bide quiet; then "twill leak out;" a shrewd piece of advice founded on general observation.
Within an hour Catherine was on the road to Gouda in a cart with two stout girls to help her, and quite a siege artillery of mops, and pails, and brushes. She came back with heightened colour and something of the old sparkle in her eye, and kissed Margaret with a silent warmth that spoke volumes; and at five in the morning was off again to Gouda.
That night as Reicht was in her first sleep a hand gently pressed her shoulder, and she awoke, and was going to scream.
"Whisht," said Margaret, and put her finger to her lips.
She then whispered. "Rise softly, don thy habits, and come with me!"
When she came down, Margaret begged her to loose Dragon and bring him along. Now Dragon was a great mastiff, who had guarded Margaret Van Eyck and Reicht, two lone women, for some years, and was devotedly attached to the latter.
Margaret and Reicht went out with Dragon walking majestically behind them. They came back long after midnight and retired to rest.
Catherine never knew.
Margaret read her friends: she saw the st.u.r.dy faithful Frisian could hold her tongue; and Catherine could not. Yet I am not sure she would have trusted even Reicht, had her nerve equalled her spirit: but with all her daring and resolution, she was a tender, timid woman, a little afraid of the dark, very afraid of being alone in it, and desperately afraid of wolves. Now Dragon could kill a wolf in a brace of shakes; but then Dragon would not go with her, but only with Reicht. So altogether she made one confidante.
The next night they made another moonlight reconnaissance; and, as I think, with some result. For not the next night (it rained that night and extinguished their courage), but the next after, they took with them a companion; the last in the world Reicht Heynes would have thought of; yet she gave her warm approval as soon as she was told he was to go with them.
Imagine how these stealthy a.s.sailants trembled and panted, when the moment of action came: imagine, if you can, the tumult in Margaret"s breast, the thrilling hopes, chasing and chased by, sickening fears; the strange, and perhaps unparalleled mixture of tender familiarity and distant awe, with which a lovely, and high spirited, but tender adoring woman, wife in the eye of the Law, and no wife in the eye of the Church, trembling, blushing, paling, glowing, shivering, stole at night, noiseless as the dew, upon the hermit of Gouda.
And the stars above seemed never so bright and calm.
CHAPTER XCIV
YES, the hermit of Gouda was the vicar of Gouda, and knew it not, so absolute was his seclusion.