The World's Greatest Books [Volumes 1-15, 17-20]

That same night a Dominican friar, livid with rage, burst into the room when Eli and Catherine were collected with their family round the table at supper.

Standing in front of Cornelius and Sybrandt he cursed them by name, soul and body, in this world and the next. Then he tore a letter out of his bosom, and flung it down before his father.

"Read that, thou hard old man, that didst imprison thy son, read, and see what monsters thou has brought into the world! The memory of my wrongs, and hers dwell with you all for ever! I will meet you again at the judgement day; on earth ye will never see me more!"

And in a moment, as he had come, so he was gone, leaving them stiff and cold, and white as statues, round the smoking board.

Eli drove Cornelis and Sybrandt out of doors at the point of a sword when he understood their infamy, and heavy silence reigned in his house that night.

And where was Clement?

Lying at full length upon the floor of the convent church, with his lips upon the lowest step of the altar, in an indescribable state of terror, misery, penitence, and self-abasement; through all of which struggled gleams of joy that Margaret was alive.

Then he suddenly remembered that he had committed another sin besides intemperate rage. He had neglected a dying man. He rose instantly, and set out to repair the omission.

The house he was called to was none other than the Stadthouse, and the dying man was his old enemy Ghysbrecht, the burgomaster.

Clement trembled a little as he entered, and said in a low voice "Pax vobiscum." Ghysbrecht did not recognise Gerard in the Dominican friar, and promised in his sickness to make full restitution to Margaret Brandt for the withholding of her property from her.

As soon as he was quite sure Margaret had her own, and was a rich woman, Friar Clement disappeared.

The hermit of Gouda had recently died, and Clement found his cell amidst the rocks, and appropriated it. The news that he had been made vicar of Gouda never reached his ears to disturb him.

It was Margaret who discovered Clement's hiding-place and sought him out, and begged him to leave the dismal hole he inhabited, and come to the vacant vicarage.

"My beloved," said he, with a strange mixture of tenderness and dogged resolution, "I bless thee for giving me one more sight of thy sweet face, and may God forgive thee, and bless thee, for destroying in a minute the holy place it hath taken six months of solitude to build. I am a priest, a monk, and though my heart break I must be firm. My poor Margaret, I seem cruel; yet I am kind; 'tis best we part; ay, this moment."

But Margaret went away, and, determined to drive Clement from his hermitage, returned again with their child, which she left in the cell in its owner's absence. Now, Clement was fond of children, and, thinking the infant had been deserted by some unfortunate mother, he at once set to work to comfort it.

"Now bless thee, bless thee sweet innocent! I would not change thee for e'en a cherub in heaven," said Clement. Soon the child was nestling in the hermit's arms.

"I ikes oo," said the little boy. "Ot is oo? Is oo a man?"

"Ay, little heart, and a great sinner to boot"

"I ikes great tingers. Ting one a tory."

Clement chanted a child's story in a sort of recitative. The boy listened with rapture, and presently succumbed to sleep.

Clement began to rock his new treasure in his arms, and to crone over him a little lullaby well known in Tergon, with which his own mother had often set him off.

He sighed deeply, and could not help thinking what might have been but for a piece of paper with a lie in it.

The next moment the moonlight burst into his cell, and with it, and in it, Margaret Brandt was down at his knee with a timorous hand upon his shoulder.

"Gerald, you do not reject us. You cannot."

The hermit stared from the child to her in throbbing amazement.

"Us?" he gasped at last.

Margaret was surprised in her turn.

"What!" she cried. "Doth not a father know his own child? Fie, Gerard, to pretend! 'Tis thine own flesh and blood thou holdest to thine heart."

Long they sat and talked that night, and the end of it was Clement promised to leave his cave for the manse at Gouda. But once the new vicar was installed Margaret kept away from the parsonage. She left little Gerard there to complete the conquest her maternal heart ascribed to him, and contented herself with stolen meetings with her child.

Then the new vicar of Gouda, his beard close shaved, and in a grey frock and large felt hat, came to bring her to the vicarage.

"My sweet Margaret!" he cried. "Why is this? Why hold you aloof from your own good deed? We have been waiting and waiting for you every day, and no Margaret."

And Margaret went to the manse, and found Catherine, Clement's mother, there; and next day being Sunday the two women heard the Vicar of Gouda preach in his own church. It was crammed with persons, who came curious, but remained. Never was Clement's gift as a preacher displayed more powerfully. In a single sermon, which lasted two hours, and seemed to last but twenty minutes, he declared the whole scripture.

The two women in a corner sat entranced, with streaming eyes.

As soon as they were by themselves, Margaret threw her arms round Catherine's neck and kissed her.