Part 154 (1/2)

And she vowed on her knees never by word or deed to let her love come between this young saint and heaven.

Reader, did you ever stand by the sea-sh.o.r.e after a storm, when the wind happens to have gone down suddenly? The waves cannot cease with their cause; indeed, they seem at first to the ear to lash the sounding sh.o.r.e more fiercely than while the wind blew. Still we are conscious that inevitable calm has begun, and is now but rocking them to sleep. So it was with those true and tempest-tossed lovers from that eventful night, when they went hand in hand beneath the stars from Gouda hermitage to Gouda manse.

At times a loud wave would every now and then come roaring; but it was only memory's echo of the tempest that had swept their lives: the storm itself was over; and the boiling waters began from that moment to go down, down, down, gently, but inevitably.

This image is to supply the place of interminable details, that would be tedious and tame. What best merits attention at present, is the general situation, and the strange complication of feeling that arose from it.

History itself, though a far more daring storyteller than romance, presents few things so strange[M] as the footing on which Gerard and Margaret now lived for many years. United by present affection, past familiarity, and a marriage irregular, but legal; separated by holy Church and by their own consciences which sided unreservedly with holy Church: separated by the Church, but united by a living pledge of affection, lawful in every sense at its date.

And living but a few miles from one another, and she calling his mother ”mother.” For some years she always took her boy to Gouda on Sunday, returning home at dark. Go when she would, it was always fete at Gouda manse, and she was received like a little queen. Catherine, in these days, was nearly always with her, and Eli very often. Tergou had so little to tempt them, compared with Rotterdam; and at last they left it altogether, and set up in the capital.

And thus the years glided: so barren now of striking incidents, so void of great hopes, and free from great fears, and so like one another, that without the help of dates I could scarcely indicate the progress of time.

However, early next year, 1471, the d.u.c.h.ess of Burgundy with the open dissent, but secret connivance of the duke, raised forces to enable her dethroned brother, Edward the Fourth of England, to invade that kingdom; our old friend Denys thus enlisted, and pa.s.sing through Rotterdam to the s.h.i.+ps, heard on his way that Gerard was a priest, and Margaret alone. On this he told Margaret that marriage was not a habit of his, but that as his comrade had put it out of his own power to keep troth, he felt bound to offer to keep it for him; ”for a comrade's honour is dear to us as our own,” said he.

She stared, then smiled, ”I choose rather to be still thy she-comrade,”

said she; ”closer acquainted we might not agree so well.” And in her character of she-comrade she equipped him with a new sword of Antwerp make, and a double handful of silver. ”I give thee no gold,” said she; ”for 'tis thrown away as quick as silver, and harder to win back. Heaven send thee safe out of all thy perils; there be famous fair women yonder to beguile thee with their faces, as well as men to hash thee with their axes.”

He was hurried on board at La Vere, and never saw Gerard at that time.

In 1473, Sybrandt began to fail. His pitiable existence had been sweetened by his brother's inventive tenderness, and his own contented spirit, which, his antecedents considered, was truly remarkable. As for Gerard, the day never pa.s.sed that he did not devote two hours to him; reading or singing to him, praying with him, and drawing him about in a soft carriage Margaret and he had made between them. When the poor soul found his end near, he begged Margaret might be sent for; she came at once, and almost with his last breath he sought once more that forgiveness she had long ago accorded. She remained by him till the last; and he died blessing and blessed, in the arms of the two true lovers he had parted for life. Tantum religio scit suadere boni.

1474 there was a wedding in Margaret's house. Luke Peterson and Reicht Heynes.

This may seem less strange if I give the purport of the dialogue interrupted some time back.

Margaret went on to say: ”Then in that case you can easily make him fancy you, and for my sake you must, for my conscience it p.r.i.c.keth me and I must needs fit him with a wife, the best I know.” Margaret then instructed Reicht to be always kind and good humoured to Luke; and she would be a model of peevishness to him. ”But be not thou so simple as run me down,” said she. ”Leave that to me. Make thou excuses for me; I will make myself black enow.”

Reicht received these instructions like an order to sweep a room, and obeyed them punctually.

When they had subjected poor Luke to this double artillery for a couple of years, he got to look upon Margaret as his fog and wind, and Reicht as his suns.h.i.+ne: and his affections transferred themselves, he scarce knew how or when.

On the wedding day Reicht embraced Margaret and thanked her almost with tears. ”He was always my fancy,” said she, ”from the first hour I clapped eyes on him.”

”Heyday, you never told me that. What, Reicht, are you as sly as the rest?”

”Nay, nay,” said Reicht eagerly; ”but I never thought you would really part with him to me. In my country the mistress looks to be served before the maid.”

Margaret settled them in her shop, and gave them half the profits.

1476 and 7, were years of great trouble to Gerard, whose conscience compelled him to oppose the Pope. His Holiness, siding with the Grey Friars in their determination to swamp every palpable distinction between the Virgin Mary and her Son, bribed the Christian world into his crotchet by proffering pardon of all sins to such as would add to the Ave Mary, this clause: ”and blessed be thy Mother Anna, from whom, without blot of original sin, proceeded thy virgin flesh.”

Gerard, in common with many of the northern clergy, held this sentence to be flat heresy; he not only refused to utter it in his church, but warned his paris.h.i.+oners against using it in private; and he refused to celebrate the new feast the Pope invented at the same time, viz., ”the feast of the miraculous conception of the Virgin.”

But this drew upon him the bitter enmity of the Franciscans, and they were strong enough to put him into more than one serious difficulty, and inflict many a little mortification on him.

In emergencies he consulted Margaret, and she always did one of two things, either she said, ”I do not see my way”; and refused to guess; or else she gave him advice that proved wonderfully sagacious. He had genius; but she had marvellous tact.

And where affection came in and annihilated the woman's judgment, he stepped in his turn to her aid. Thus, though she knew she was spoiling little Gerard, and Catherine was ruining him for life, she would not part with him, but kept him at home, and his abilities uncultivated. And there was a shrewd boy of nine years, instead of learning to work and obey, playing about and learning selfishness from their infinite unselfishness, and tyrannizing with a rod of iron over two women, both of them sagacious and spirited, but reduced by their fondness for him to the exact level of idiots.

Gerard saw this with pain, and interfered with mild but firm remonstrance; and after a considerable struggle prevailed, and got little Gerard sent to the best school in Europe, kept by one Haaghe at Deventer: this was in 1477. Many tears were shed, but the great progress the boy made at that famous school reconciled Margaret in some degree, and the fidelity of Reicht Heynes, now her partner in business, enabled her to spend weeks at a time hovering over her boy at Deventer.