"Sing thee a story, baby? Well, after all, why not? And wilt thou sit o"
my knee and hear it?"
"Yea."
"Then I must "een doff this breastplate. "Tis too hard for thy soft cheek. So. And now I must doff this bristly cilice; they would p.r.i.c.k thy tender skin, perhaps make it bleed, as they have me, I see. So. And now I put on my best pelisse, in honour of thy worshipful visit. See how soft and warm it is; bless the good soul that sent it; and now I sit me down; so. And I take thee on my left knee, and put my arm under thy little head; so. And then the psaltery, and play a little tune; so, not too loud."
"I ikes dat."
"I am right glad on"t. Now list the story."
He chanted a child"s story in a sort of recitative, singing a little moral refrain now and then. The boy listened with rapture.
"I ikes oo," said he. "Ot is oo? is oo a man?"
"Ay, little heart, and a great sinner to boot."
"I ikes great tingers. Ting one other tory."
Story No. 2 was chanted.
"I ubbs oo," cried the child, impetuously. "Ot caft[K] is oo?"
"I am a hermit, love."
"I ubbs vermins. Ting other one."
But during this final performance, Nature suddenly held out her leaden sceptre over the youthful eyelids. "I is not eepy," whined he very faintly, and succ.u.mbed.
Clement laid down his psaltery softly and began to rock his new treasure in his arms, and to crone over him a little lullaby well known in Tergou, with which his own mother had often set him off.
And the child sank into a profound sleep upon his arm. And he stopped crooning, and gazed on him with infinite tenderness, yet sadness; for, at that moment he could not help thinking what might have been but for a piece of paper with a lie in it.
He sighed deeply.
The next moment the moonlight burst into his cell, and with it, and in it, and almost as swift as it, Margaret Brandt was down at his knee with a timorous hand upon his shoulder.
"GERARD, YOU DO NOT REJECT US. YOU CANNOT."
FOOTNOTES:
[I] More than one hermit had received a present of this kind.
[J] Query? "looking-gla.s.s."
[K] Craft. He means trade or profession.
CHAPTER XCVII
THE startled hermit glared from his nursling to Margaret, and from her to him, in amazement, equalled only by his agitation at her so unexpected return. The child lay asleep on his left arm, and she was at his right knee; no longer the pale, scared, panting girl he had overpowered so easily an hour or two ago, but an imperial beauty, with blushing cheeks and sparkling eyes, and lips sweetly parted in triumph, and her whole face radiant with a look he could not quite read; for he had never yet seen it on her; maternal pride.
He stared and stared from the child to her, in throbbing amazement.
"Us?" he gasped at last. And still his wonder-stricken eyes turned to and fro.
Margaret was surprised in her turn. It was an age of impressions not facts. "What!" she cried, "doth not a father know his own child? and a man of G.o.d, too? Fie, Gerard, to pretend! nay, thou art too wise, too good, not to have--why I watched thee: and e"en now look at you twain!
"Tis thine own flesh and blood thou holdest to thine heart."
Clement trembled. "What words are these," he stammered, "this angel mine?"
"Whose else? since he is mine."
Clement turned on the sleeping child, with a look beyond the power of the pen to describe, and trembled all over, as his eyes seemed to absorb the little love.
Margaret"s eyes followed his. "He is not a bit like me," said she, proudly; "but oh at whiles he is thy very image in little; and see this golden hair. Thine was the very colour at his age; ask mother else. And see this mole on his little finger; now look at thine own; there! "Twas thy mother let me weet thou wast marked so before him; and oh, Gerard, "twas this our child found thee for me; for by that little mark on thy finger I knew thee for his father, when I watched above thy window and saw thee feed the birds;" here she seized the child"s hand and kissed it eagerly, and got half of it into her mouth, heaven knows how. "Ah! bless thee, thou didst find thy poor daddy for her, and now thou hast made us friends again after our little quarrel; the first, the last. Wast very cruel to me but now, my poor Gerard, and I forgive thee; for loving of thy child."
"Ah! ah! ah! ah! ah!" sobbed Clement, choking.
And lowered by fasts, and unnerved by solitude, the once strong man was hysterical, and nearly fainting.
Margaret was alarmed, but, having experience, her pity was greater than her fear. "Nay, take not on so," she murmured soothingly, and put a gentle hand upon his brow. "Be brave! So, so. Dear heart, thou art not the first man, that hath gone abroad, and come back richer by a lovely little self, than he went forth. Being a man of G.o.d take courage, and say He sends thee this to comfort thee for what thou hast lost in me; and that is not so very much, my lamb; for sure the better part of love shall ne"er cool here to thee, though it may in thine, and ought, being a priest, and parson of Gouda."
"I? priest of Gouda? Never!" murmured Clement, in a faint voice, "I am a friar of St. Dominic: yet speak on sweet music, tell me all that has happened thee, before we are parted again."
Now some would on this have exclaimed against parting at all, and raised the true question in dispute. But such women as Margaret do not repeat their mistakes. It is very hard to defeat them _twice_, where their hearts are set on a thing.
She a.s.sented, and turned her back on Gouda manse as a thing not to be recurred to; and she told him her tale, dwelling above all on the kindness to her of his parents; and, while she related her troubles, his hand stole to hers, and often she felt him wince and tremble with ire, and often press her hand, sympathizing with her in every vein.
"Oh, piteous tale of a true heart battling alone against such bitter odds," said he.
"It all seems small, when I see thee here again, and nursing my boy. We have had a warning, Gerard. True friends like you and me are rare, and they are mad to part, ere death divideth them."
"And that is true," said Clement, off his guard.
And then she would have him tell her what he had suffered for her, and he begged her to excuse him, and she consented; but by questions quietly revoked her consent and elicited it all; and many a sigh she heaved for him, and more than once she hid her face in her hands with terror at his perils, though past.
And to console him for all he had gone through, she kneeled down and put her arms under the little boy, and lifted him gently up. "Kiss him softly," she whispered. "Again, again! kiss thy fill if thou canst; he is sound. "Tis all I can do to comfort thee till thou art out of this foul den and in thy sweet manse yonder."
Clement shook his head.
"Well," said she, "let that pa.s.s. Know that I have been sore affronted for want of my lines."
"Who hath dared affront thee?"