“with mercy and with judgment
my web of time he wove,
and ay the dews of sorrow
were lustred with his love:
i’ll bless the hand that guided,
i’ll bless the heart that planned,
when throned where glory dwelleth,
in immanuel’s land.”
mrs cousins.
it was a very tiny house in tower street, at the corner of mark lane. there were but two rooms—above and below, as in isel’s house, but these were smaller than hers, and the lower chamber was made smaller still by a panel screen dividing it in two unequal parts.
the front division, which was a very little one, was a jeweller’s shop; the back was larger, and was the family living-room. in it to-night the family were sitting, for business hours were over, and the shop was closed.
the family had a singular appearance. it consisted of four persons, and these were derived from three orders of the animate creation. two were human. the third was an aged starling, for whose convenience a wicker cage hung in one corner; but the owner was hopping in perfect freedom about the hearth, and occasionally varying that exercise by pausing to give a mischievous peck to the tail of the fourth, a very large white and tan dog. the dog appeared so familiarised with this treatment as scarcely to notice it, unless the starling gave a harder peck than usual, when he merely moved his tail out of its way, accompanying the action in specially severe cases by the most subdued of growls, an action which seemed to afford great amusement to that impertinent and irrepressible fowl.
the relationship of the human inhabitants of the little chamber would not have been easy to guess. the elder, seated on a cushioned bench by the fire, was one whose apparent age was forty or perhaps rather more. she was a woman of extremely dark complexion, her hair jet-black, her eyes scarcely lighter—a woman who had once been very handsome, and whose lost youth and beauty now and then seemed to flash back into her face, when eagerness, anger, or any other strong feeling lent animation to her features. the other was a young man about half her years, and as unlike her as he well could be. his long flaxen hair waved over a brow as white as hers was dark, and his eyes were a light clear blue. he sat on a stool in front of the fire, gazing into the charred wooden embers with intent fixed eyes. the woman had glanced at him several times, but neither had spoken for above half an hour. now she broke the silence.
“well, ralph?”
“well, mother?” echoed the youth with a smile. both spoke in german—a language then as unfamiliar in england as persian.
“what are you thinking about so intently?”
“life,” was the ready but unexpected answer.
“past, present, future?”
“past and future—hardly present. the past chiefly—the long ago.”
the woman moved uneasily, but did not answer.
“mother, if i am of age to-day, i think i have the right to ask you a few questions. do you accord it?”
“ah!” she said, with a deep intonation. “i knew it would come some time. well! what is to be must be. speak, my son.”
the young man laid his hand affectionately on hers.
“had it not better come?” he said. “you would not prefer that i asked my questions of others than yourself, nor that i shut them in my own soul, and fretted my heart out, trying to find the answer.”
“i should prefer any suffering rather than the loss of thy love and confidence, my ralph,” she answered tenderly. “to the young, it is easy to look back, for they have only just left the flowery garden. to the old, it may be so, when there is only a little way to go, and they will then be gathered to their fathers. but half-way through the long journey—with all the graves behind, and the dreary stretch of trackless heath before—speak thy will, ralph.”
“forgive me if i pain you, mother. i feel as if i must speak, and something has happened to-day which bids me do it now.”
it was evident that these words startled and discomposed the mother. she had been leaning back rather wearily in the corner of the bench, as one resting from bodily strain. now she sat up, the rich crimson mantling her dark cheek.
“what! hast thou seen—hast thou heard something?”
“i have seen,” answered ralph slowly, as if almost unwilling to say it, “a face from the long ago. at any rate, a face which carried my memory thither.”
“whose?” she said, almost in tones of alarm.
“i cannot tell you. let me make it as plain as i can. you may be able to piece the disjointed strands together, when i cannot.”
“go on,” she said, settling herself to listen.
“you know, mother,” he began, “that i have always known and remembered one thing from my past. i know you are not my real mother. kindest and truest and dearest of mothers and friends you have been to me; my true mother, whoever and wherever she may be, could have loved and tended me no better than you. that much i know: but as to other matters my recollection is far more uncertain. some persons and things i recall clearly; others are mixed together, and here and there, as if in a dream, some person, or more frequently some action of such a person, stands out vividly, like a picture, from the general haze. now, for instance, i can remember that there was somebody called ‘mother isel’: but whether she were my mother, or yours, or who she was, that i do not know. again, i recollect a man, who must have been rather stern to my childish freaks, i suppose, for he brings with him a sense of fear. this man does not come into my life till i was some few years old; there is another whom i remember better, an older friend, a man with light hair and grave, kindly blue eyes. there are some girls, too, but i cannot clearly recall them—they seem mixed together in my memory, though the house in which i and they lived i recollect perfectly. but i do not know how it is—i never see you there. i clearly recall a big book, which the man with the blue eyes seems to be constantly reading: and when he reads, a woman sits by him with a blue check apron, and i sit on her lap. perhaps such a thing happened only once, but it appears to me as if i can remember it often and often. there is another man whose face i recall—i doubt if he lived in the house; i think he came in now and then: a man with brown hair and a pleasant, lively face, who often laughed and had many a merry saying. i cannot certainly remember any one else connected with that house, except one other—a woman: a woman with a horrible chattering tongue, who often left people in tears or very cross: a woman whom i don’t like at all.”
“and after, ralph?” suggested the mother in a low voice, when the young man paused.
“after? ah, mother, that is harder to remember still. a great tumult, cross voices, a sea of faces which all looked angry and terrified me, and then it suddenly changes like a dream to a great lonely expanse of shivering snow: and i and some others—whom, i know not—wander about in it—for centuries, as it appears to me. then comes a blank, and then—you.”
“you remember better than i should have expected as to some things: others worse. can you recollect no name save ‘mother isel’?”
“i can, but i don’t know whose they are. i can hear somebody call from the upper chamber—‘gerard, is that you?’ and the pleasant-faced man says, ‘tell ermine’ something. that is what made me ask you, mother. i met a man to-day in cheapside who looked hard at me, and who made me think both of that pleasant-faced man, and also of the stern man; and as i had to wait for a cart to pass, another man and woman came and spoke to him, and he said to the woman, ‘well, when are you coming to see ermine?’ the face, and his curious, puzzled look at me, and the name, carried me back all at once to that house and the people there. he looked as if he thought he ought to know me, and could not tell exactly who i was. and just as i came away, i fancied i heard another word or two, spoken low as if not for me or somebody to hear—something about—‘like him and agnes too.’ i wonder if i ever knew any one called agnes? i have a faint impression that i did. can you tell me, mother?”
“i will tell thee, ralph. but answer me first. wert thou always called ralph?”
“i cannot tell, mother,” replied the youth, with an interested look. “i fancy, somehow, that i once used to be called something not that exactly, and yet very like it. i have tried to recover it, and cannot. was it some pet name used by somebody?”
“no. it was your own name—which ralph is not.”
“o mother! what was it?”
“wait a moment. did you ever hear of any one called—countess?”
she brought out the second name with hesitation, as if she spoke it unwillingly. the youth shook his head.
“let that pass.”
“but who was it, mother?”
“never mind who it was. no relative of yours—rudolph.”
“rudolph!” the young man sprang to his feet. “that was my name! i know it was, but i never could get hold of it. i shall not forget it again.”
“do not forget it again. but let it be for ourselves only. to the world outside you are still ‘ralph.’ it is wiser.”
“very well, mother.”
this youth had been well trained, and was far more obedient to his adopted mother than most sons at that time were to their real parents. with the saxons a mother had always been under the control of an adult son; and the normans who had won possession of england had by no means abolished either the social customs or modes of thought of the vanquished people. in fact, the moral ascendancy soon rested with the subject race. the norman noble who dried his washed hands in the air, sneered at the saxon thrall who wiped his on a towel; but the towel was none the less an article of necessary furniture in the house of the norman’s grandson. it has often been the case in the history of the world, that the real victory has rested with the vanquished: but it has always been brought about by the one race mixing with and absorbing the other. where that does not take place, the conquerors remain dominant.
“now, my son, listen and think. i have some questions to ask. what faith have i taught thee?”
“you have taught me,” said rudolph slowly, “to believe in god almighty, and in his son, our lord jesus christ, who suffered on the cross to expiate the sins of his chosen.”
“is that the creed of those around us?”
“mother, i cannot tell. one half of my brain answers, ay, it is; but the other half says, no, there is a difference. yet i cannot quite see what the difference is, and you have always so strictly forbidden me to speak to any one except yourself on religious subjects, that i have had no opportunity to learn what it is. others, when i hear them talking to you, speak of god, of our lord, and of our lady, as we ourselves do: and they speak of the holy apostles and others of whom we always read in the big book. mother, is that the same big book out of which the grave-eyed man used to read? but they mention a great many people who are not in the book,—martin, and benedict, and margaret, and plenty more—and they call them all ‘saint,’ but i do not know who they were. you never told me about those people.”
there was silence for a moment, till she said—“thou hast learnt well, and hast been an obedient boy. in the years that lie before thee, thou mayest have cause to thank god for it. my questions are done: thou mayest ask thine.”
“then, mother, who am i?” was the eager inquiry. “thou art rudolph, son of gerhardt of mainz, and of agnes his wife, who both gave their lives for the lord christ’s sake, fourteen years ago.”
“mother!—were my real parents martyrs?”
“that is the word which is written after their names in the lamb’s book of life. but in the books written by men the word is different.”
“what is that word, then, mother?”
“rudolph, canst thou bear to hear it? the word is—‘heretic’.”
“but those are wicked people, who are called heretics!”
“i think it depends on who uses the word.”
rudolph sat an instant in blank silence.
“then what did my father believe that was so wrong?”
“he believed what i have taught you.”
“then were they wicked, and not he?”
“judge for thyself. there were about thirty of thy father’s countrymen, who came over to this country to preach the pure word of god: and those who called them heretics took them, and branded them, and turned them out into the snow to die. would our lord have done that?”
“never! did they die?”
“every one, except the child i saved.”
“and that was i, mother?”
“that was thou.”
“so i am not an englishman!” said rudolph, almost regretfully.
“no. thou seest now why i taught thee german. it is thine own tongue.”
“mother, this story is terrible. i shall feel the world a worse place to my life’s end, after hearing it. but suffer me to ask—who are you? we are so unlike, that sometimes i have fancied we might not be related at all.”
“we are not related at all.”
“but you are german?”
“no.”
“you are english! i always imagined you a foreigner.”
“no—i am not english.”
“italian?—spanish?”
she shook her head, and turned away her face.
“i never cared for the scorn of these other creatures,” she said in a low troubled voice. “i could give them back scorn for scorn. but it will be hard to be scorned by the child whom i saved from death.”
“mother! i scorn you? why, the thing could not be. you are all the world to me.”
“it will not be so always, my son. howbeit, thou shalt hear the truth. rudolph, i am a jewess. my old name is countess, the daughter of benefei of oxford.”
“mother,” said rudolph softly, “you are what our lady was. if i could scorn you, it would not be honouring her.”
“true enough, boy: but thou wilt not find the world say so.”
“if the world speak ill of you, mother, i will have none of it! now please tell me about others. who was mother isel?”
“a very dear and true friend of thy parents.”
“and ermine?”
“thy father’s sister—one of the best and sweetest maidens that god ever made.”
“is it my father that i remember, with the grave blue eyes—the man who read in the book?”
“i have no doubt of it. it is odd—” and a smile flitted over countess’s lips—“that all thou canst recollect of thy mother should be her checked apron.”
rudolph laughed. “then who is the stern man, and who the merry one?”
“i should guess the stern man to be manning brown, the husband of isel. the merry, pleasant-faced man, i think, must be his nephew stephen. ‘stephen the watchdog’ they used to call him; he was one of the castle watchmen.”
“at oxford? was it oxford, then, where we used to live?”
“it was oxford.”
“i should like to go there again.”
“take heed thou do not so. thou are so like both thy father and mother that i should fear for thy safety. no one would know me, i think. but for thee i am not so sure. and if they were to guess who thou art, they would have thee up before the bishops, and question thee, and brand thee with the dreadful name of ‘heretic,’ as they did to thy parents.”
“mother, why would they do these things?—why did they do them?”
“because they loved idols, and after them they would go. we worship only the lord our god, blessed be he! and thou wilt find always, rudolph, that not only doth light hate darkness, but the darkness also hateth the light, and tries hard to extinguish it.”
“yet if they worship the same god that we do—”
“do they? i cannot tell. sometimes i think he can hardly reckon it so. the god they worship seems to be no jealous god, but one that hath no law to be broken, no power to be dreaded, no majesty to be revered. ‘if i be a master,’ said the holy one by malachi the prophet, ‘where is my fear?’ and our lord spake to the sadducees, saying, ‘do ye not therefore err, because ye know not the scriptures, neither the power of god?’ they seem to be strangely fearless of breaking his most solemn commands—even the words that he spake to moses in the sight of all israel, on the mount that burned with fire. strangely fearless! when the master spake expressly against making the commands of god of no effect through man’s tradition. what do they think he meant? let them spill a drop of consecrated wine—which he never told them to be careful over—and they are terrified of his anger: let them deliberately break his distinct laws, and they are not terrified at all. the world has gone very, very far from god.”
they sat for a little while in silence.
“mother,” said rudolph at last, “who do you think that man was whom i met, that looked so hard at me, and seemed to think me like my parents? he spoke of ‘ermine,’ too.”
“i can only guess, rudolph. i think it might be a son of mother isel—she had two. the ermine of whom he spoke, no doubt, is some girl named after thine aunt. perhaps it may be a child of their sister flemild. i cannot say.”
“you think it could not be my aunt, mother? i should like to know one of my own kin.”
“not possible, my boy. she must have died with the rest.”
“are you sure they all died, mother?”
“i cannot say that i saw it, rudolph: though i did see the dead faces of several, when i was searching for thee. but i do not see how she could possibly have escaped.”
“might she not—if she had escaped—say the same of me?”
countess seemed scarcely willing to admit even so much as this.
“it is time for sleep, my son,” she said; and rudolph rose, lighted the lantern, and followed her upstairs. the chamber above was divided in two by a curtain drawn across it. as rudolph was about to pass beyond it, he stopped to ask another question.
“mother, if i should meet that man again,—suppose he were to speak to me?”
a disquieted look came into the dark eyes.
“bring him to me,” she said. “allow nothing—deny nothing. leave me to deal with him.”
rudolph dropped the curtain behind him, and silence fell upon the little house in mark lane.
a few hours earlier, our old friend stephen, now a middle-aged man, had come home from his daily calling, to his house in ivy lane. he was instantly surrounded by his five boys and girls, their ages between six and thirteen, all of whom welcomed him with tumultuous joyfulness.
“father, i’ve construed a whole book of virgil!”
“and, father, i’m to begin caesar next week!”
“i’ve made a gavache for you, father—done every stitch myself!”
“father, i’ve learnt how to make pancakes!”
“father, i stirred the posset!”
“well, well! have you, now?” answered the kindly-faced father. “you’re all of you mighty clever, i’m very sure. but now, if one or two of you could get out of the way, i might shut the door; no need to let in more snow than’s wanted.—where’s mother?”
“here’s mother,” said another voice; and a fair-haired woman of the age of countess, but looking younger, appeared in a doorway, drawing back the curtain. “i am glad you have come, stephen. it is rather a stormy night.”
“oh, just a basinful of snow,” said stephen lightly. “supper ready? gerard—” to his eldest boy—“draw that curtain a bit closer, to keep the wind off mother. now let us ask god’s blessing.”
it was a very simple supper—cheese, honey, roasted apples, and brown bread; but the children had healthy appetites, and had not been enervated by luxuries. conversation during the meal was general. when it was over, the three younger ones were despatched to bed with a benediction, under charge of their eldest sister; young gerard seated himself on the bench, with a handful of slips of wood, which he was ambitiously trying to carve into striking likenesses of the twelve apostles; and when the mother’s household duties were over, she came and sat by her husband in the chimney-corner. stephen laid his hand upon her shoulder.
“ermine,” he said, “dear heart, wilt thou reckon me cruel, if i carry thy thoughts back—for a reason i have—to another snowy night, fourteen years ago?”
“stephen!” she exclaimed, with a sudden start. “oh no, i could never think thee cruel. but what has happened?”
“dost thou remember, when i first saw thee in mother haldane’s house, my telling thee that i could not find rudolph?”
“of course i do. o stephen! have you—do you think—”
gerard looked up from his carving in amazement, to see the mother whom he knew as the calmest and quietest of women transformed into an eager, excited creature, with glowing cheeks and radiant eyes.
“let me remind thee of one other point,—that mother haldane said god would either take the child to himself, or would some day show us what had become of him.”
“she did,—much to my surprise.”
“and mine. but i think, ermine—i think it is going to come true.”
“stephen, what have you heard?”
“i believe, ermine, i have seen him.”
“seen him—rudolph?”
“i feel almost sure it was he. i was standing this morning near chepe cross, to let a waggon pass, when i looked up, and all at once i saw a young man of some twenty years standing likewise till it went by. the likeness struck me dumb for a moment. gerard’s brow—no, lad, not thou! thy mother knows—gerard’s brow, and his fair hair, with the very wave it used to have about his temples; his eyes and nose too; but agnes’s mouth, and somewhat of agnes in the way he held his head. and as i stood there, up came leuesa and her husband, passing the youth; and before i spoke a word about him, ‘saw you ever one so like gerard?’ saith she. i said, ‘ay, him and agnes too.’ we watched the lad cross the street, and parting somewhat hastily from our friends, i followed him at a little distance. i held him in sight as far as tower street, but ere he had quite reached mark lane, a company of mummers, going westwards, came in betwixt and parted us. i lost sight of him but for a moment, yet when they had passed, i could see no more of him—north, south, east, nor west—than if the earth had swallowed him up. i reckon he went into an house in that vicinage. to-morrow, if the lord will, i will go thither, and watch. and if i see him again, i will surely speak.”
“stephen! o stephen, if it should be our lost darling!”
“ay, love, if it should be! it was always possible, of course, that he might have been taken in somewhere. there are many who would have no compassion on man or woman, and would yet shrink from turning out a little child to perish. and he was a very attractive child. still, do not hope too much, ermine; it may be merely an accidental likeness.”
“if i could believe,” replied ermine, “that countess had been anywhere near, i should think it more than possible that she had saved him.”
“countess? oh, i remember—that jewish maiden who petted him so much. but she went to some distance when she married, if i recollect rightly.”
“she went to reading. but she might not have been there always.”
“true. well, i will try to find out something to-morrow night.”
the little jeweller’s shop at the corner of mark lane had now been established for fourteen years. for ten of those years, david and christian had lived with countess; but when rudolph was old enough and sufficiently trained to manage the business for himself, countess had thought it desirable to assist david in establishing a shop of his own at some distance. she had more confidence in david’s goodness than in his discretion, and one of her chief wishes was to have as few acquaintances as possible. happily for her aim, rudolph’s disposition was not inconveniently social. he liked to sit in a cushioned corner and dream the hours away; but he shrank as much as countess herself from the rough, noisy, rollicking life of the young people by whom they were surrounded. enough to live on, in a simple and comfortable fashion—a book or two, leisure, and no worry—these were rudolph’s desiderata, and he found them in mark lane.
he had no lack of subjects for thought as he sat behind his tiny counter on the evening of the following day. shop-counters, at that date, were usually the wooden shutter of the window, let down table-wise into the street; but in the case of plate and jewellery the stock was too valuable to be thus exposed, and customers had to apply for admission within. it had been a very dull day for business, two customers only having appeared, and one of these had gone away without purchasing. there was one wandering about outside who would have been only too glad to become a customer, had he known who sat behind the counter. stephen had searched in vain for rudolph in the neighbourhood where he had so mysteriously vanished from sight. he could not recognise him under the alias of “ralph le juwelier,” by which name alone his neighbours knew him. evening after evening he watched the corner of mark lane, and some fifty yards on either side of it, but only to go back every time to ermine with no tale to tell. there were no detectives nor inquiry offices in those days; nothing was easier than for a man to lose himself in a great city under a feigned name. for countess he never inquired; nor would he have taken much by the motion had he done so, since she was known to her acquaintances as sarah la juwelière. her features were not so patently jewish as those of some daughters of abraham, and most people imagined her to be of foreign extraction.
“it seems of no use, ermine,” said stephen mournfully, when a month had passed and rudolph had not been seen again. “maybe it was the boy’s ghost i saw, come to tell us that he is not living.”
stephen was gifted with at least an average amount of common sense, but he would have regarded a man who denied the existence of apparitions as a simpleton.
“we can only wait,” said ermine, looking up from the tunic she was making for her little derette. “i have asked the lord to send him to us; we can only wait his time.”
“but, wife, suppose his time should be—never?”
“then, dear,” answered ermine softly, “it will still be the right time.”
the morning after that conversation was waning into afternoon, when rudolph, passing up paternoster row, heard hurried steps behind him, and immediately felt a grasp on his shoulder—a grasp which seemed as if it had no intention of letting him go in a hurry. he looked up in some surprise, into the face of the man whose intent gaze and disconnected words had so roused his attention a month earlier.
“caught you at last!” were the first words of his captor. “now don’t fall to and fight me, but do me so much grace as to tell me your name in a friendly way. you would, if you knew why i ask you.”
the kindliness and honest sincerity of the speaker’s face were both so apparent, that rudolph smiled as he said—
“suppose you tell me yours?”
“i have no cause to be ashamed of it. my name is stephen, and men call me ‘le bulenger.’”
“have they always called you so?”
“are you going to catechise me?” laughed stephen. “no—you are right there. fifteen years ago they called me ‘esueillechien.’ now, have you heard my name before?”
“i cannot say either ‘yes’ or ‘no,’ unless you choose to come home with me to see my mother. she may know you better than i can.”
“i’ll come home with you fast enough,” stephen was beginning, when the end of the sentence dashed his hopes down. “‘to see your—mother!’ that won’t do, young man. i have looked myself on her dead face—or else you are not the man for whom i took you.”
“i can answer you no questions till you do so,” replied rudolph firmly.
“come, then, have with you,” returned stephen, linking his arm in that of the younger man. “best to make sure. i shall get to know something, if it be only that you are not the right fellow.”
“now?” asked rudolph, rather disconcertedly. he was not in the habit of acting in this ready style about everything that happened, but required a little while to make up his mind to a fresh course.
“have you not found out yet,” said stephen, marching him into saint paul’s churchyard, “that now is the only time a man ever has for anything?”
“well, you don’t let the grass grow under your feet,” observed rudolph, laughing.
being naturally of a rather dreamy and indolent temperament, he was not accustomed to getting over the ground with the rapidity at which stephen led him.
“there’s never time to waste time,” was the sententious reply.
in a shorter period than rudolph would have thought possible, they arrived at the corner of mark lane.
“you live somewhere about here,” said stephen coolly, “but i don’t know where exactly. you’ll have to show me your door.”
“you seem to know a great deal about me,” answered rudolph in an amused tone. “this is my door. come in.”
stephen followed him into the jeweller’s shop, where countess sat waiting for customers, with the big white dog lying at her feet.
“i’m thankful to see, young man, that your ‘mother’ is no mother of yours. your flaxen locks were never cut from those jet tresses. but i don’t know who you are—” he turned to her—“unless ermine be right that countess the jewess took the boy. is that it?”
“that is it,” she replied, flushing at the sound of her old name. “you are stephen the watchdog, if i mistake not? yes, i am countess—or rather, i was countess, till i was baptised into the christian faith. so ermine is yet alive? i should like to see her. i would fain have her to come forward as my witness, when i deliver the boy unhurt to his father at the last day.”
“but how on earth did you do it?” broke out stephen in amazement. “why, you could scarcely have heard at reading of what had happened,—i should have thought you could not possibly have heard, until long after all was over.”
“i was not at reading,” she said in a constrained tone. “i was living in dorchester. and i heard of the arrest from regina.”
“do, for pity’s sake, tell me all about it!”
“i will tell you every thing: but let me tell ermine with you. and,—stephen—you will not try to take him from me? he is all i have.”
“no, countess,” said stephen gravely. “you have a right to the life that you have saved. will you come with me now? but perhaps you cannot leave together? will the house be rifled when you return?”
“not at all,” calmly replied countess. “we will both go with you.”
she rose, disappeared for a moment, and came back clad in a fur-lined cloak and hood. turning the key in the press which held the stock, she stooped down and attached the key to the dog’s collar.
“on guard, olaf! keep it!” was all she said to the dog. “now, stephen, we are ready to go with you.”
olaf got up somewhat sleepily, shook himself, and then lay down close to the screen, his head between his paws, so that he could command a view of both divisions of the chamber. he evidently realised his responsibility.
stephen had no cause to complain that countess wasted any time. she walked even faster than he had done, only pausing to let him take the lead at the street corner. but when he had once told her that his home was in ivy lane, she paused no more, but pressed on steadily and quickly until they reached the little street. stephen opened his door, and she went straight in to where ermine stood.
“ermine!” she said, with a pleading cadence in her voice, “i have brought back the child unhurt.”
“countess!” was ermine’s cry.
she took ermine’s hands in hers.
“i may touch you now,” she said. “you will not shrink from me, for i am a christian. but i have kept my vow. i have never permitted the boy to worship idols. i have kept him, so far as lay in my power, from all contact with those men and things which his father held evil. god bear me witness to you, and god and you to him, that the poor scorned jewess has fulfilled her oath, and that the boy is unharmed in body and soul!—rudolph! this is thine aunt ermine. come and show thyself to her.”
“did i ever shrink from you?” replied ermine with a sob, as she clasped countess to her heart. “my friend, my sister! as thou hast dealt with us outcasts, may god reward thee! and as thou has mothered our rudolph, may he comfort thee!—o my darling, my gerhardt’s boy!—nay, i could think that gerhardt himself stood before me. wilt thou love me a little, my rudolph?—for i have loved thee long, and have never failed, for one day, to pray god’s blessing on thee if thou wert yet alive.”
“i think i shall not find it hard, aunt ermine,” said rudolph, as he kissed without knowing it that spot on ermine’s brow where the terrible brand had once been. “i have often longed to find one of my own kindred, for i knew that mother was not my real mother, good and true as she has been to me.”
countess brought out from under her cloak a large square parcel, wrapped in a silken kerchief.
“this is rudolph’s fortune,” she said.
stephen looked on with some curiosity, fully expecting to see a box of golden ornaments, or perhaps of uncut gems. but when the handkerchief was carefully unfolded, there lay before them an old, worn book, in a carved wooden case.
stephen—who could not read—was a little disappointed, though the market value of any book was very high. but ermine recognised the familiar volume with a cry of delight, and took it into her hands, reading half-sentences here and there as she turned over the leaves.
“oh, how have i wished for this! how i have wondered what became of it! gerhardt’s dear old gospel-book! countess, how couldst thou get it? it was taken from him when we were arrested.”
“i know it,” answered countess with a low laugh.
“but you were at reading!” exclaimed ermine.
“i was at oxford, though you knew it not. i had arrived on a visit to my father, the morning of that very day. i was in the crowd around when you went down to the prison, though i saw none of you save gerhardt. but i saw the sumner call his lad, and deliver the book to him, bidding him bear it to the castle, there to be laid up for the examination of the bishops. finding that i could not get the child, i followed the book. rubi was about, and i begged him to challenge the lad to a trial of strength, which he was ready enough to accept. he laid down the book on the window-ledge of a house, and—i do not think he picked it up again.”
“you stole it, sinner!” laughed stephen.
“why not?” inquired countess with a smile. “i took it for its lawful owner, from one that had no right to it. you do not call that theft?”
“could you read it?”
“i could learn to do anything for rudolph.”
“but how did you ever find him?”
“we were living at dorchester. regina came to stay with me in the winter, and she told me that you were to be examined before the king and the bishops, and on what day. all that day i watched to see you pass through the town, and having prepared myself to save the child if i possibly could, when i caught a glimpse of guelph, who was among the foremost, i followed in the rabble, with a bottle of broth, which i kept warm in my bosom, to revive such as i might be able to reach. ermine, i looked in vain for you, for gerhardt or agnes. but i saw rudolph, whom adelheid was leading. the crowd kept pressing before me, and i could not keep him in sight; but as they went out of dorchester, i ran forward, and came up with them again a little further, when i missed rudolph. then i turned back, searching all the way—until i found him.”
“and your husband let you keep him?” asked ermine in a slightly surprised tone.
“my oath let me keep him,” said countess in a peculiar voice.
“are you a widow?” responded ermine pityingly.
“very likely,” was the short, dry answer.
ermine asked no more. “poor countess!” was all she said.
“don’t pity me for that,” replied the jewess. “you had better know. we quarrelled, ermine, over the boy, and at my own request he divorced me, and let me go. it was an easy choice to make—gold and down cushions on the one hand, love and the oath of god upon the other. i never missed the down cushions; and i think the child found my breast as soft as they would have been. i sold my jewels, and set up a little shop. we have had the blessing of the holy one, to whom be praise!”
“that is a jewish way of talking, is it not?” said stephen, smiling. “i thought you were a catholic now.”
“i am a christian. i know nothing about ‘catholic’—unless the idols in the churches are catholic, and with them i will have nought to do. gerhardt never taught me to worship them, and gerhardt’s book has never taught it either. i believe in the lord my god, and his son jesus christ, the messiah of israel: but these gilded vanities are abominations to me. oh, why have ye christian folk added your folly to god’s wisdom, and have held off the sons and daughters of israel from faith in messiah the king?”
“ah, why, indeed!” echoed ermine softly.
“can you tell me anything of our old friends at oxford?” asked countess suddenly, after a moment’s pause.
“yes, we heard of them from leuesa, who married and came to live in london about six years ago,” said stephen. “your people were all well, countess; your sister regina has married samuel, the nephew of your uncle jurnet’s wife, and has a little family about her—one very pretty little maid, leuesa told us, with eyes like yours.”
“thank you,” said countess in a tone of some emotion. “they would not own me now.”
“dear,” whispered ermine lovingly, “whosoever shall confess christ before men,—not the creed, nor the church, but him whom the father sent, and the truth to which he bore witness—him will he also confess before our father which is in heaven. and i think there are a very few of those whom he will present before the presence of his glory, who shall hear him say of them those words of highest praise that he ever spoke on earth,—‘she hath done what she could.’”
