One Snowy Night Part 21

"Father Jacob! You must be a new sort of a Gentile. Never came across a reptile of your pattern before. Is that why Countess took to you?"

"I cannot say. It was the child, I think, that attracted her. Well, friend, I am thankful for your warning. But how come you to know?"

A smothered laugh, as hoa.r.s.e as the voice, replied--

"Folks have ways and means, sometimes, that other folks can't always guess."

"If you know more than others," said Gerhardt boldly, "suffer me to question you a moment."

"Question away. I don't promise to answer."

"Are we all to be taken and examined?"

"All."

"Before the King?"

"And the creeping creatures called Bishops."

"Will any thing be done to the women and children?"

"Does the lion discriminate between a kid and a goat? 'Let your little ones also go with you.' Even Pharaoh could say that--when he could not help allowing it."

"I think I understand you, Friend Rubi, and I thank you."

"You are not so badly off for brains," said Rubi approvingly.

"But how far to act upon your warning I know not, until I lay it before the Lord, and receive His guidance."

"You--a Gentile--receive guidance from the Holy One (blessed be He)!"

Rubi's tone was not precisely scornful; it seemed rather a mixture of surprise, curiosity, and perplexity.

"Ay, friend, I a.s.sure you, however strange it may seem to you, the good Lord deigns to guide even us Gentiles. And why not? Is it not written, 'Even them will I bring to My holy mountain, and make them joyful in My house of prayer'? and, 'O Thou that hearest prayer, unto Thee shall all flesh come'?"

"Those promises belong to the reign of the Messiah. He is not come yet.

Do you new sort of Gentiles believe He is?"

It was a most difficult question to answer. "Yes" would probably drive Rubi away in anger--perhaps with a torrent of blasphemy on his lips.

"No" would be false and cowardly.

"I believe," said Gerhardt softly, "that He shall yet come to Zion, and turn away iniquity from Jacob. May thou and I, Rubi, be ready to welcome Him when He cometh!"

"You are better than yonder lot," answered Rubi, with a scornful wave of his hand towards Carfax behind them. "Ay, I suppose the Blessed One has some mercies even for Gentiles--decent ones such as you. Well, remember you've been warned. Good night!"

"Good night, Rubi, and G.o.d go with thee!"

As Gerhardt stepped into the Walnut Tree, Isel's voice greeted him from the top of the ladder leading to the upper chamber.

"Who is that--Gerard or Haimet?"

"It is I, Isel," said the German pastor.

"Well, now, don't put out your lantern, but do, like a good man, take this girl back to the Castle. I've been on thorns how to get her back, for I've kept her talking a bit too long, and there hasn't a creature come near that I could ask. It's Leuesa, that Aliz de Norton spoke about, and we've settled she's to be Derette's maid. It's a mercy you've come just in time!"

"The next step!" said Gerhardt to himself with a smile. "Well, this at least is no hard one."

The girl who came down the ladder and entrusted herself to Gerhardt's escort, was very young-looking for an anchorhold: slim, fair, and frail in appearance, with some timidity of manner. They set out for the Castle.

"You know the girl who is to be my mistress?" asked Leuesa. "Will she be easy or hard to serve?"

"Very easy, I think, so long as you obey her. She has a will of her own, as you will find, if you do not."

"Oh dear, I don't want to disobey her! But I don't like to be scolded at from morning to night, whether I do right or wrong."

"Derette will not treat you in that fas.h.i.+on. She has a good temper, and is bright and cheerful."

"I am so glad to hear it! I get so tired--"

Leuesa suddenly broke off her sentence.

"You look young for the work," said Gerhardt.

"I am older than I look. At least, people say so. I am twenty-one."

"Dear! I should not have thought you eighteen."

"Oh yes, I am twenty-one," replied Leuesa, with a bright little laugh; adding with sudden gravity, "I think I am much older than that in some ways."

"Hast thou found life hard, poor child?" asked Gerhardt sympathisingly.

"Well, one gets tired, you know," replied the girl vaguely. "I suppose it has to be, if one's sins are to be expiated. So many sins, so many sufferings. That's what Mother says. It will be counted up some time, maybe. Only, sometimes, it does seem as if there were more sufferings than sins."

"Is that thy religion, Maiden?" responded Gerhardt with a pitying smile.

"It's about all I know. Why?--isn't it good?"

"Friend, if thou wert to suffer for ten thousand years, without a moment's intermission, thy sins could never be balanced by thy sufferings. Suffering is finite; sin is infinite. It is not only what thou hast done, or hast left undone. The sin of thy whole nature requires atonement. _Thou_ art sin! The love of sin which is in thee is worse than any act of sin thou couldst commit. What then is to be done with thy sins?"

Leuesa looked up with an expression of wistful simplicity in her blue eyes.

She might be older than her years in some respects, thought Gerhardt, but there were some others in which she was a very child.

"I don't know!" she said blankly, with a frightened accent. "Can't you tell me?"

"Thank G.o.d, I can tell thee. Thou must get rid of this load of sin, by laying it on Him who came down from Heaven that He might bear it for thee. Tell me whom I mean."

The flaxen head was shaken. "I can't--not certainly. Perhaps it's a saint I don't know."

"Dost thou not know Jesu Christ?"