THE HEARTH
Waiting an earnest letter seldom leaves the mind in statu quo.
Margaret, in hers, vented her energy and her faith in her dying father's vision, or illusion; and when this was done, and Luke gone, she wondered at her credulity, and her conscience pricked her about Luke; and Catherine came and scolded her, and she paid the price of false hopes, and elevation of spirits, by falling into deeper despondency.She was found in this state by a staunch friend she had lately made, Joan Ketel.This good woman came in radiant with an idea.
"Margaret, I know the cure for thine ill: the hermit of Gouda a wondrous holy man, Why, he can tell what is coming, when he is in the mood.""Ay, I have heard of him," said Margaret hopelessly.Joan with some difficulty persuaded her to walk out as far as Gouda, and consult the hermit.They took some butter and eggs in a basket, and went to his cave.
What had made the pair such fast friends? Jorian some six weeks ago fell ill of a bowel disease; it began with raging pain; and when this went off, leaving him weak, an awkward symptom succeeded; nothing, either liquid or solid, would stay in his stomach a minute.The doctor said: "He must die if this goes on many hours; therefore boil thou now a chicken with a golden angel in the water, and let him sup that!" Alas! Gilt chicken broth shared the fate of the humbler viands, its predecessors.Then the cure steeped the thumb of St.Sergius in beef broth.Same result.
Then Joan ran weeping to Margaret to borrow some linen to make his shroud."Let me see him," said Margaret.She came in and felt his pulse."Ah!" said she, "I doubt they have not gone to the root.
Open the window! Art stifling him; now change all his linen.
"Alack, woman, what for? Why foul more linen for a dying man?"objected the mediaeval wife.
"Do as thou art bid," said Margaret dully, and left the room.
Joan somehow found herself doing as she was bid.Margaret returned with her apron full of a flowering herb.She made a decoction, and took it to the bedside; and before giving it to the patient, took a spoonful herself, and smacked her lips hypocritically."That is fair," said he, with a feeble attempt at humour."Why, 'tis sweet, and now 'tis bitter." She engaged him in conversation as soon as he had taken it.This bitter-sweet stayed by him.Seeing which she built on it as cards are built: mixed a very little schiedam in the third spoonful, and a little beaten yoke of egg in the seventh.And so with the patience of her sex she coaxed his body out of Death's grasp; and finally, Nature, being patted on the back, instead of kicked under the bed, set Jorian Ketel on his legs again.But the doctress made them both swear never to tell a soul her guilty deed."They would put me in prison, away from my child."The simple that saved Jorian was called sweet feverfew.She gathered it in his own garden.Her eagle eye had seen it growing out of the window.
Margaret and Joan, then, reached the hermit's cave, and placed their present on the little platform.Margaret then applied her mouth to the aperture, made for that purpose, and said: "Holy hermit, we bring thee butter and eggs of the best; and I, a poor deserted girl, wife, yet no wife, and mother of the sweetest babe, come to pray thee tell me whether he is quick or dead, true to his vows or false."A faint voice issued from the cave: "Trouble me not with the things of earth, but send me a holy friar, I am dying.""Alas!" cried Margaret."Is it e'en so, poor soul? Then let us in to help thee,""Saints forbid! Thine is a woman's voice.Send me a holy friar."They went back as they came.Joan could not help saying, "Are women imps o' darkness then, that they must not come anigh a dying bed?"But Margaret was too deeply dejected to say anything.Joan applied rough consolation.But she was not listened to till she said: "And Jorian will speak out ere long; he is just on the boil, He is very grateful to thee, believe it.""Seeing is believing," replied Margaret, with quiet bitterness.
"Not but what he thinks you might have saved him with something more out o' the common than yon.'A man of my inches to be cured wi' feverfew,' says he.'Why, if there is a sorry herb,' says he.
'Why, I was thinking o' pulling all mine up, says he.I up and told him remedies were none the better for being far-fetched; you and feverfew cured him, when the grand medicines came up faster than they went down.So says I, 'You may go down on your four bones to feverfew.' But indeed, he is grateful at bottom; you are all his thought and all his chat.But he sees Gerard's folk coming around ye, and good friends, and he said only last night - ""Well?"
"He made me vow not to tell ye."
"Prithee, tell me."