One Snowy Night Part 18

Gerhardt suddenly stopped the reply which Ermine was about to make.

"No," he said, "leave it alone to-night, dear. Lay it before the Lord, and ask of Him whether that is the road He hath prepared for thee to walk in. It might be for the best, Ermine."

There was a rather sorrowful intonation in his voice.

"I will wait till the morning, and do as you desire," was Ermine's reply. "But I could give the answer to-night, for I know what it will be. The best way, and the prepared way, is that which leads the straightest Home."

It was very evident, when the morning arrived, that Gerhardt would much have liked Ermine to accept the lowly but safe and sheltered position of companion to Derette in the anchorhold. While the hermit lived alone, but wandered about at will, the anchorite, who was never allowed to leave his cell, always had with him a companion of his own s.e.x, through whom he communicated with the outer world. Visitors of the same s.e.x, or children, could enter the cell freely, or the anchorite might speak through his window to any person. Derette, therefore, would really be less cut off from the society of her friends in the anchorhold, than she would have been as a cloistered sister at G.o.dstowe, where they would only have been permitted to see her, at most, once in a year. But outside the threshold of her cell she might never step, save for imminent peril of life, as in the case of fire. She must live there, and die there, her sole occupation found in devotional exercises, her sole pleasure in her friends' visits, the few sights she could see from her window, and through a tiny slit into the chancel of the Church of Saint John the Baptist, which we know as the chapel of Merton College.

Every anchorhold was built close to a church, so as to allow its occupant the privilege of seeing the performance of ma.s.s, and of receiving the consecrated wafer, by the protrusion of his tongue through the narrow slit.

In those early days, and before the corruptions of Rome reached their full development, this cloistered life was not without some advantages for the securing of which it is not required now. In rough, wild times, when insult or cruelty to a woman was among the commonest events, it was something for a woman to know that by wearing a certain uniform, her person would be regarded as so sacred that he who dared to molest her would be a man of rare and exceptional wickedness. It was something, also, to be sure, even moderately sure, of provision for her bodily needs during life: something to know that if any sudden accident should deprive her of the services of her only companion, the world deemed it so good a deed to serve her, that any woman whom she might summon through her little window would consider herself honoured and benefited by being allowed to minister to her even in the meanest manner. The loss of liberty was much a.s.suaged and compensated, by being set against such advantages as these. The recluse was considered the holiest of nuns, not to say of women, and the Countess of Oxford herself would have held it no degradation to serve her in her need.

Derette would dearly have liked to secure the companions.h.i.+p of Ermine, but she saw plainly that it was not to be. When the morning came, therefore, she was much less surprised than sorry that Ermine declined the offer. Gerhardt pressed it on her in vain.

"If you command me, my brother," said Ermine, "I will obey, for you have a right to dispose of me; but if the matter is left to my own choice, I stay with you, and your lot shall be mine."

"But if our lot be hards.h.i.+p and persecution, my Ermine--cold and hunger, nakedness, and peril and sword! This might be a somewhat dull and dreary life for thee, but were it not a safe one?"

"Had the Master a safe and easy life, Brother, that His servants should seek it? Is the world so safe, and the way to Paradise so hard? Is it not written, 'Blessed are ye, when they shall persecute you'? Methinks I see arising, even now, that little cloud which shall ere long cover all the sky with darkness. Shall I choose my place with the 'fearful'

that are left without the Holy City, rather than with them that shall follow the Lamb whithersoever He goeth?"

"It is written again, 'When they persecute you in one city, flee ye into another,'" replied Gerhardt.

"'_When_ they persecute you,'" repeated Ermine. "It has not come yet."

"It may be too late, when it has come."

"Then the way will be plain before me."

"Well, dear, I will urge you no further," said Gerhardt at last, drawing a heavy sigh. "I had hoped that for thee at least--The will of the Lord be done."

"If it were His will to preserve my life, even the persecutors themselves might be made the occasion of doing so."

"True, my Ermine. It may be thou hast more faith than I. Be it as thou wilt."

So Derette had to seek another maid.

"I'm sure I don't know who you'll get," said Isel. "There's Franna's Hawise, but she's a bit of a temper,"--which her hearers knew to be a very mild representation of facts: "and there's Turguia's grand-daughter, Canda, but you'll have to throw a bucket of water over her of a morrow, or she'll never be out of bed before sunrise on the shortest day of the year. Then there's Henry's niece, Joan--" then p.r.o.nounced as a dissyllable, Joan--"but I wouldn't have such a sloven about me. I never see her but her shoes are down at heel, and if her gown isn't rent for a couple of hand-breadths, it's as much as you can look for. Deary me, these girls! they're a sorry lot, the whole heap of 'em! _I_ don't know where you're going to find one, Derette."

"Put it in the Lord's hands, and He will find you one."

"I'll tell you what, Gerard, I never heard the like of you," answered Isel, setting her pan swinging by its chain on the hook over the fire.

"You begin and end every mortal thing with our Lord, and you're saying your prayers pretty nigh all day long. Are you certain sure you've never been a monk?"

"Very certain, friend," said Gerhardt, smiling. "Is not the existence of Agnes answer enough to that?"

"Oh, but you might have run away," said Isel, whose convictions on most subjects were of rather a hazy order. "There are monks that do, and priests too: or if they don't forsake their Order, they don't behave like it. Why, just look at Reinbald the Chaplain--who'd ever take him for a priest, with his long curls and his silken robes, and ruffling up his hair to hide the tonsure?"

"Ay, there are men who are ashamed of nothing so much as of the cross which their Master bore for them," admitted Gerhardt sorrowfully. "And at times it looks as if the lighter the cross be, the less ready they are to carry it. There be who would face a drawn sword more willingly than a scornful laugh."

"Well, we none of us like to be laughed at."

"True. But he who denies his faith through the mockery of Herod's soldiers, how shall he bear the scourging in Pilate's hall?"

"Well, I'm none so fond of neither of 'em," said Isel, taking down a ham.

"It is only women who can't stand being touched," commented Haimet rather disdainfully. "But you are out there, Gerard: it is a disgrace to be laughed at, and disgrace is ever worse to a true man than pain."

"Why should it be disgrace, if I am in the right?" answered Gerhardt.

"If I do evil, and refuse to own it, that is disgrace, if you will; but if I do well, or speak truth, and stand by it, what cause have I to be ashamed?"

"But if men believe that you have done ill, is that no disgrace?"

"If they believe it on false witness, the disgrace is equally false.

'Blessed are ye, when men shall persecute you, and shall say all evil against you, lying, for My sake.' Those are His words who bore all shame for us."

"They sha'n't say it of me, unless they smart for it!" cried Haimet hotly.

"Then wilt thou not be a true follower of the Lamb of G.o.d, who, when He was reviled, reviled not again, but committed Himself unto Him that judgeth righteously."

"Saints be with you!" said Anania, lifting the latch, and intercepting a response from Haimet which might have been somewhat incisive. "I declare, I'm just killed with the heat!"

"I should have guessed you were alive, from the look of you," returned Derette calmly.

"So you're going into the anchorhold, I hear?" said Anania, fanning herself with her handkerchief.

"If Romund can obtain it for me."

"Oh, he has; it's all settled. Didn't you know? I met Mabel in Saint Frideswide's Street [which ran close to the north of the Cathedral], and she told me so.--Aunt Isel, I do wonder you don't look better after that young woman! She'll bring Romund to his last penny before she's done.

That chape [a cape or mantle] she had on must have cost as pretty a sum as would have bought a flock of sheep. I never saw such extravagance."

"The money's her own," responded Isel shortly.

"It's his too. And you're his mother. You never ought to let her go on as she does."

"Deary me, Anania, as if I hadn't enough to do!"

"Other folks can slice ham and boil cabbage. You've got no call to neglect your duty. I can tell you, Franna's that shocked you don't speak to the girl; and Turguia was saying only the other day, she didn't believe in folks that pretended to care so much for their children, and let other folks run 'em into all sorts of troubles for want of looking after a bit. I'll tell you, Aunt Isel--"

"Anania, I'll tell _you_," cried Isel, thoroughly put out, for she was hot and tired and not feeling strong, "I'll tell you this once, you're a regular plague and a mischief-maker. You'd make me quarrel with all the friends I have in the world, if I listened to you. Sit you down and rest, if you like to be peaceable; and if you don't, just go home and give other folks a bit of rest for once in your life. I'm just worn out with you, and that's the honest truth."

"Well, to be sure!" gasped the porter's wife, in high dudgeon and much amazement. "I never did--! Dear, dear, to think of it--how ungrateful folks can be! You give them the best advice, and try to help them all you can, and they turn on you like a dog for it! Very well, Aunt Isel; I'll let you alone!--and if you don't rue it one of these days, when your fine lady daughter-in-law has brought you down to beggary for want of a proper word, my name isn't Anania--that's all!"

"Oh, deary weary me!" moaned poor Isel, dropping herself on the form as if she could not stand for another minute. "If this ain't a queer world, I just _don't_ know! Folks never let you have a shred of peace, and come and worrit you that bad till you scarce can tell whether you're on your head or your heels, and you could almost find in your heart to wish 'em safe in Heaven, and then if they don't set to work and abuse you like Noah's wife [Note 1] if you don't thank 'em for it! That girl Anania 'll be the death of me one of these days, if she doesn't mend her ways. Woe worth the day that Osbert brought her here to plague us!"

"I fancy he'd say Amen to that," remarked Haimet.

"I heard him getting it pretty hot last night. But he takes it easier than you, Mother; however she goes on at him, he only whistles a tune.

He has three tunes for her, and I always know how she's getting on by the one I hear. So long as it's only the _Agnus_, I dare lift the latch; but when it come to _Salve Regina_, things are going awkward."