The Cloister and the Hearth

  CHAPTER XXX

  Here Gerard made acquaintance with a monk, who had constructed thegreat dial in the prior's garden, and a wheel for drawing water, anda winnowing machine for the grain, etc., and had ever some ingeniousmechanism on hand. He had made several psalteries and two dulcimers, andwas now attempting a set of regalles, or little organ for the choir.

  Now Gerard played the humble psaltery a little; but the monk touchedthat instrument divinely, and showed him most agreeably what a novicehe was in music. He also illuminated finely, but could not write sobeautifully as Gerard. Comparing their acquirements with the earnestnessand simplicity of an age in which accomplishments implied a true naturalbent, Youth and Age soon became like brothers, and Gerard was pressedhard to stay that night. He consulted Denys, who assented with a ruefulshrug.

  Gerard told his old new friend whither he was going, and described theirlate adventures, softening down the bolster.

  "Alack!" said the good old man, "I have been a great traveller in myday, but none molested me." He then told him to avoid inns; they werealways haunted by rogues and roysterers, whence his soul might take harmeven did his body escape, and to manage each day's journey so as to lieat some peaceful monastery; then suddenly breaking off and looking assharp as a needle at Gerard, he asked him how long since he had beenshriven? Gerard coloured up and replied feebly--

  "Better than a fortnight."

  "And thou an exorcist! No wonder perils have overtaken thee. Come, thoumust be assoiled out of hand."

  "Yes, father," said Gerard, "and with all mine heart;" and was sinkingdown to his knees, with his hands joined, but the monk stopped him halffretfully--

  "Not to me! not to me! not to me! I am as full of the world as thou orany be that lives in't. My whole soul it is in these wooden pipes, andsorry leathern stops, which shall perish--with them whose minds arefixed on such like vanities."

  "Dear father," said Gerard, "they are for the use of the Church, andsurely that sanctifies the pains and labour spent on them?"

  "That is just what the devil has been whispering in mine ear thiswhile," said the monk, putting one hand behind his back and shaking hisfinger half threateningly, half playfully, at Gerard. "He was even sokind and thoughtful as to mind me that Solomon built the Lord a housewith rare hangings, and that this in him was counted gracious and nosin. Oh! he can quote Scripture rarely. But I am not so simple a monkas you think, my lad," cried the good father, with sudden defiance,addressing not Gerard but--Vacancy. "This one toy finished, vigils,fasts, and prayers for me; prayers standing, prayers lying on the chapelfloor, and prayers in a right good tub of cold water." He nudged Gerardand winked his eye knowingly. "Nothing he hates and dreads like seeingus monks at our orisons up to our chins in cold water. For corpus domataqua. So now go confess thy little trumpery sins, pardonable in youthand secularity, and leave me to mine, sweet to me as honey, and to beexpiated in proportion."

  Gerard bowed his head, but could not help saying, "Where shall I find aconfessor more holy and clement?"

  "In each of these cells," replied the monk simply (they were now in thecorridor) "there, go to Brother Anselm, yonder."

  Gerard followed the monk's direction, and made for a cell; but the doorswere pretty close to one another, and it seems he mistook; for justas he was about to tap, he heard his old friend crying to him in anagitated whisper, "Nay! nay! nay!" He turned, and there was the monkat his cell-door, in a strange state of anxiety, going up and downand beating the air double-handed, like a bottom sawyer. Gerard reallythought the cell he was at must be inhabited by some dangerous wildbeast, if not by that personage whose presence in the convent had beenso distinctly proclaimed. He looked back inquiringly and went on to thenext door. Then his old friend nodded his head rapidly, bursting in amoment into a comparatively blissful expression of face, and shot backinto his den. He took his hour-glass, turned it, and went to work on hisregalles; and often he looked up, and said to himself, "Well-a-day, thesands how swift they run when the man is bent over earthly toys."

  Father Anselm was a venerable monk, with an ample head, and a face alldignity and love. Therefore Gerard in confessing to him, and replying tohis gentle though searching questions, could not help thinking, "Here isa head!--Oh dear! oh dear! I wonder whether you will let me draw it whenI have done confessing." And so his own head got confused, and he forgota crime or two. However, he did not lower the bolstering this time,nor was he so uncandid as to detract from the pagan character of thebolstered.

  The penance inflicted was this: he was to enter the convent church, andprostrating himself, kiss the lowest step of the altar three times;then kneeling on the floor, to say three paternosters and a credo: "thisdone, come back to me on the instant."

  Accordingly, his short mortification performed, Gerard returned, andfound Father Anselm spreading plaster.

  "After the soul the body," said he; "know that I am the chirurgeon here,for want of a better. This is going on thy leg; to cool it, not to burnit; the saints forbid."

  During the operation the monastic leech, who had naturally beeninterested by the Dusseldorf branch of Gerard's confession, rather sidedwith Denys upon "bleeding." "We Dominicans seldom let blood nowadays;the lay leeches say 'tis from timidity and want of skill; but, in sooth,we have long found that simples will cure most of the ills that canbe cured at all. Besides, they never kill in capable hands; and otherremedies slay like thunderbolts. As for the blood, the Vulgate saithexpressly it is the life of a man.' And in medicine or law, as indivinity, to be wiser than the All-wise is to be a fool. Moreover,simples are mighty. The little four-footed creature that kills thepoisonous snake, if bitten herself, finds an herb powerful enough toquell that poison, though stronger and of swifter operation than anymortal malady; and we, taught by her wisdom, and our own traditions,still search and try the virtues of those plants the good God hathstrewed this earth with, some to feed men's bodies, some to heal them.Only in desperate ills we mix heavenly with earthly virtue. We steepthe hair or the bones of some dead saint in the medicine, and thus workmarvellous cures."

  "Think you, father, it is along of the reliques? for Peter a Floris, alearned leech and no pagan, denies it stoutly."

  "What knows Peter a Floris? And what know I? I take not on me to saywe can command the saints, and will they nill they, can draw corporalvirtue from their blest remains. But I see that the patient drinkingthus in faith is often bettered as by a charm. Doubtless faith in therecipient is for much in all these cures. But so 'twas ever. A sickwoman, that all the Jewish leeches failed to cure, did but touchChrist's garment and was healed in a moment. Had she not touched thatsacred piece of cloth she had never been healed. Had she without faithnot touched it only, but worn it to her grave, I trow she had been nonethe better for't. But we do ill to search these things too curiously.All we see around us calls for faith. Have then a little patience.We shall soon know all. Meantime, I, thy confessor for the nonce, dostrictly forbid thee, on thy soul's health, to hearken learned lay folkon things religious. Arrogance is their bane; with it they shut heaven'sopen door in their own faces. Mind, I say, learned laics. Unlearned oneshave often been my masters in humility, and may be thine. Thy wound iscared for; in three days 'twill be but a scar. And now God speed thee,and the saints make thee as good and as happy as thou art thoughtfuland gracious." Gerard hoped there was no need to part yet, for he wasto dine in the refectory. But Father Anselm told him, with a shade ofregret just perceptible and no more, that he did not leave his cell thisweek, being himself in penitence; and with this he took Gerard's headdelicately in both hands, and kissed him on the brow, and almost beforethe cell door had closed on him, was back to his pious offices. Gerardwent away chilled to the heart by the isolation of the monastic life,and saddened too. "Alas!" he thought, "here is a kind face I must neverlook to see again on earth; a kind voice gone from mine ear and my heartfor ever. There is nothing but meeting and parting in this sorrowfulworld. Well-a-day! well-a-day!" This pensive mood was interrupted bya young
monk who came for him and took him to the refectory; there hefound several monks seated at a table, and Denys standing like a poker,being examined as to the towns he should pass through: the friarsthen clubbed their knowledge, and marked out the route, noting all thereligious houses on or near that road; and this they gave Gerard. Thensupper, and after it the old monk carried Gerard to his cell, and theyhad an eager chat, and the friar incidentally revealed the cause ofhis pantomime in the corridor. "Ye had well-nigh fallen into BrotherJerome's clutches. Yon was his cell."

  "Is Father Jerome an ill man, then?"

  "An ill man!" and the friar crossed himself; "a saint, an anchorite, thevery pillar of this house! He had sent ye barefoot to Loretto. Nay, Iforgot, y'are bound for Italy; the spiteful old saint upon earth, hadsent ye to Canterbury or Compostella. But Jerome was born old and witha cowl; Anselm and I were boys once, and wicked beyond anything youcan imagine" (Gerard wore a somewhat incredulous look): "this keeps ushumble more or less, and makes us reasonably lenient to youth and hotblood."

  Then, at Gerard's earnest request, one more heavenly strain upon thepsalterion, and so to bed, the troubled spirit calmed, and the soreheart soothed.

  I have described in full this day, marked only by contrast, a day thatcame like oil on waves after so many passions and perils--because itmust stand in this narrative as the representative of many such dayswhich now succeeded to it. For our travellers on their weary wayexperienced that which most of my readers will find in the longerjourney of life, viz., that stirring events are not evenly distributedover the whole road, but come by fits and starts, and as it were, inclusters. To some extent this may be because they draw one another bylinks more or less subtle. But there is more in it than that. It happensso. Life is an intermittent fever. Now all narrators, whether of historyor fiction, are compelled to slur these barren portions of time or elseline trunks. The practice, however, tends to give the unguarded readera wrong arithmetical impression, which there is a particular reasonfor avoiding in these pages as far as possible. I invite therefore yourintelligence to my aid, and ask you to try and realize that, althoughthere were no more vivid adventures for a long while, one day's marchsucceeded another; one monastery after another fed and lodged themgratis with a welcome always charitable, sometimes genial; and thoughthey met no enemy but winter and rough weather, antagonists not alwayscontemptible, yet they trudged over a much larger tract of territorythan that, their passage through which I have described so minutely. Andso the pair, Gerard bronzed in the face and travel-stained from head tofoot, and Denys with his shoes in tatters, stiff and footsore both ofthem, drew near the Burgundian frontier.