Chapter 3

characters or suspicious facts. He was no ardent heretic-hunter, but a quiet, peaceable man, as inoffensive as a priest could be.

"Decent and well-behaved?" he asked.

"As quiet and sensible as any living creature in this street," Isel assured him. "The women are good workers, and none of them's a talker, and that's no small blessing!"

"Truly, thou art right there, my daughter," said the priest, who, knowing nothing about women, was under the impression that they rarely did any thing but talk, and perform a little desultory housework in the intervals between the paragraphs. "So far, good. I trust they will continue equally well-behaved, and will give no scandal to their neighbours."

"I'll go surety for that," answered Isel rather warmly; "more than I will for their neighbours giving them none. Father, I'd give a silver penny you'd take my niece Anania in hand; she'll be the death of me if she goes on. Do give her a good talking-to, and I'll thank you all the days of my life!"

"With what does she go on?" asked the priest, resting both hands on his silver-headed staff.

"Words!" groaned poor Isel. "And they bain't pretty words, Father--not by no manner of means. She's for ever and the day after interfering with every mortal thing one does. And her own house is just right-down slatternly, and her children are coming up any how. If she'd just spend the time a-scouring as she spends a-chattering, her house 'd be the cleanest place in Oxfordshire. But as for the poor children, I'm that sorry! Whatever they do, or don't do, they get a slap for it; and then she turns round on me because I don't treat mine the same. Why, there's nothing spoils children's tempers like everlasting scolding and slapping of 'em. I declare I don't know which to be sorriest for, them that never gets no bringing up at all, or them that's slapped from morning to night."

"Does her husband allow all that?"

"Bless you, Father, he's that easy a man, if she slapped _him_, he'd only laugh and give it back. It's true, when he's right put out he'll take the whip to her; but he'll stand a deal first that he'd better not. Biggest worry I have, she is!"

"Be thankful, my daughter, if thy biggest worry be outside thine own door."

"That I would, Father, if I could keep her outside, but she's always a-coming in."

The priest laughed.

"I will speak to my brother Vincent about her," he said. "You know the Castle is not in my parish."

"Well, I pray you, Father, do tell Father Vincent to give it her strong. She's one o' them that won't do with it weak. It'll just run off her like water on a duck's back. Father, do you think my poor man 'll ever come back?"

The priest grew grave when asked that question.

"I cannot tell, my daughter. Bethink thee, that if he fall in that holy conflict, he is assured of Heaven. How long is it since his departing?"

"It's two years good, Father--going in three: and I'm glad enough he should be sure of Heaven, but saving your presence, I want him here on earth. It's hard work for a lone woman to bring up four children, never name boys, that's as rampageous as young colts, and about as easy to catch. And the younger and sillier they are, the surer they are to think they know better than their own mother."

"That is a standing grievance, daughter," said the priest with a smile, as he rose to take leave. "Well, I am glad to hear so good a report of these strangers. So long as they conduct themselves well, and come to church, and give no offence to any, there can be no harm in your giving them hospitality. But remember that if they give any occasion of scandal, your duty will be to let me know, that I may deal with them. The saints keep you!"

No occasion of scandal required that duty from Isel. Every now and then Gerhardt absented himself--for what purpose she did not know; but he left Agnes and Ermine behind, and they never told the object of his journeys. At home he lived quietly enough, generally following his trade of weaving, but always ready to do any thing required by his hostess. Isel came to congratulate herself highly on the presence of her quiet, kindly, helpful guests. In a house where the whole upper floor formed a single bedchamber, divided only by curtains stretched across, and the whole ground-floor was parlour and kitchen in one, a few inmates more or less, so long as they were pleasant and peaceable, were of small moment. Outwardly, the Germans conducted themselves in no way pointedly different from their English hosts. They indulged in rather longer prayers, but this only increased the respect in which they were held. They went to church like other people; and if they omitted the usual reverences paid to the images, they did it so unobtrusively that it struck and shocked no one.

The Roman Church, in 1160, was yet far from filling the measure of her iniquity. The mass was in Latin, but transubstantiation was only a "pious opinion;" there were invocation of saints and worship of images, prayers for the dead, and holy water; but dispensations and indulgences were uninvented, the Inquisition was unknown, numbers of the clergy were married men, and that organ of tyranny and sin, termed auricular confession, had not yet been set up to grind the consciences and torment the hearts of those who sought to please God according to the light they enjoyed. Without that, it was far harder to persecute; for how could a man be indicted for the belief in his heart, if he chose to keep the door of his lips?

The winter passed quietly away, and Isel was--for her--well pleased with her new departure. The priest, having once satisfied himself that the foreign visitors were nominal Christians, and gave no scandal to their neighbours, ceased to trouble himself about them. Anania continued to make disagreeable remarks at times, but gradually even she became more callous on the question, and nobody else ever said any thing.

"I do wonder if Father Vincent have given her a word or two," said Isel. "She hasn't took much of it, if he have. If she isn't at me for one thing, she's at me for another. If it were to please the saints to make Osbert the Lord King's door-keeper, so as he'd go and live at London or Windsor, I shouldn't wonder if I could get over it!"

"Ah, `the tongue can no man tame,'" observed Gerhardt with a smile.

"I don't so much object to tongues when they've been in salt," said Isel. "It's fresh I don't like 'em, and with a live temper behind of 'em. They don't agree with me then."

"It is the live temper behind, or rather the evil heart, which is the thing to blame. `Out of the heart proceed evil thoughts,' which grow into evil words and deeds. Set the heart right, and the tongue will soon follow."

"I reckon that's a bit above either you or me," replied Isel with a sigh.

"A man's thoughts are his own," interposed Haimet rather warmly. "Nobody has a right to curb them."

"No man can curb them," said Gerhardt, "unless the thinker put a curb on himself. He that can rule his own thoughts is king of himself: he that never attempts it is `a reed driven with the wind and tossed.'"

"Oh, there you fly too high for me," said Haimet. "If my acts and words are inoffensive, I have a right to my thoughts."

"Has any man a right to evil thoughts?" asked Gerhardt.

"What, you are one of those precise folks who make conscience of their thoughts? I call that all stuff and nonsense," replied Haimet, throwing down the hammer he was using.

"If I make no conscience of my thoughts, of what am I to make conscience?" was the answer. "Thought is the seed, act the flower. If you do not wish for the flower, the surest way is not to sow the seed. Sow it, and the flower will blossom, whether you will or no."

"That sort of thing may suit you," said Haimet rather in an irritated tone. "I could never get along, if I had to be always measuring my thoughts with an ell-wand in that fashion."

"Do you prefer the consequences?" asked Gerhardt.

"Consequences!--what consequences?"

"Rather awkward ones, sometimes. Thoughts of hatred, for instance, may issue in murder, and that may lead to your own death. If the thoughts had been curbed in the first instance, the miserable results would have been spared to all the sufferers. And `no man liveth to himself': it is very seldom that you can bring suffering on one person only. It is almost sure to run over to two or three more. And as the troubles of every one of them will run over to another two or three, like circles in the water, the sorrow keeps ever widening, so that the consequences of one small act or word for evil are incalculable. It takes God to reckon them."

"Eh, don't you, now!" said Isel with a shudder. "Makes me go all creepy like, that does. I shouldn't dare to do a thing all the days of my life, if I looked at every thing that way."

"Friend," said Gerhardt gravely, "these things _are_. It does not destroy them to look away from them. It is not given to us to choose whether we will act, but only how we will act. In some manner, for good or for ill, act we must."

"I declare I won't listen to you, Gerard. I'm going creepy-crawly this minute. Oh deary me! you do make things look just awful."

"Rubbish!" said Haimet, driving a nail into the wall with unnecessary vehemence.

"It is the saying of a wise man, friends," remarked Gerhardt, "that `he that contemneth small things shall fall by little and little.' And with equal wisdom he saith again, `Be not confident in a plain way.'" [Note 5.]

"But it is all nonsense to say `we must act,'" resumed Haimet. "We need not act in any way unless we choose. How am I acting if I sit here and do nothing?"

"Unless you are resting after work is done, you are setting an example of idleness or indecision. Not to do, is sometimes to do in a most effectual way. Not to hinder the doing of evil, when it lies in your power, is equivalent to doing it."

Haimet stared at Gerhardt for a moment.

"What a wicked lot of folks you would make us out to be!"

"So we are," said Gerhardt with a quiet smile.

"Oh, I see!--that's how you come by your queer notions of every man's heart being bad. Well, you are consistent, I must admit."

"I come by that notion, because I have seen into my own. I think I have most thoroughly realised my own folly by noting in how many cases, if I were endued with the power of God, I should not do what He does: and in like manner, I most realise my own wickedness by seeing the frequent instances wherein my will raises itself up in opposition to the will of God."

"But how is it, then, that I never see such things in myself?"

"Your eyes are shut, for one thing. Moreover, you set up your own will as the standard to be followed, without seeking to ascertain the will of God. Therefore you do not see the opposition between them."

"Oh, I don't consider myself a saint or an angel. I have done foolish things, of course, and I dare say, some things that were not exactly right. We are all sinners, I suppose, and I am much like other people. But taking one thing with another, I think I am a very decent fellow. I can't worry over my `depravity,' as you do. I am not depraved. I know several men much worse than I am in every way."

"Is that the ell-wand by which God will measure you? He will not hold you up against those men, but against the burning snow-white light of His own holiness. What will you look like then?"

"Is that the way you are going to be measured, too?"

"I thank God, no. Christ our Lord will be measured for me, and He has fulfilled the whole Law."

"And why not for me?" said Haimet fiercely. "Am I not a baptised Christian, just as much as you?"

"Friend, you will not be asked in that day whether you were a baptised Christian, but whether you were a believing Christian. Sins that are laid on Christ are gone--they exist no longer. But sins that are not so destroyed have to be borne by the sinner himself."

"Well, I call that cowardice," said Haimet, drawing a red herring across the track, "to want to burden somebody else with your sins. Why not have the manliness to bear them yourself?"

"If you are so manly," answered Gerhardt with another of his quiet smiles, "will you oblige me, Haimet, by taking up the Castle, and setting it down on Presthey?"

"What are you talking about now? How could I?"

"Much more easily than you could atone for one sin. What do you call a man who proposes to do the impossible?"

"A fool."

"And what would you call the bondman whose master had generously paid his debt, and who refused to accept that generosity, but insisted on working it out himself, though the debt was more than he could discharge by the work of a thousand years?"

"Call him what you like," said Haimet, not wishing to go too deeply into the question.

"I will leave you to choose the correct epithet," said Gerhardt, and went on with his carving in silence.

The carving was beginning to bring in what Isel called "a pretty penny." Gerhardt's skill soon became known, and the Countess of Oxford employed him to make coffers, and once sent for him to the Castle to carve wreaths on a set of oak panels. He took the work as it came, and in the intervals, or on the summer evenings, he preached on the village greens in the neighbourhood. His audiences were often small, but his doctrines spread quietly and beneath the surface. Not one came forward to join him openly, but many went away with thoughts that they had never had before. Looked on from the outside, Gerhardt's work seemed of no value, and blessed with no success. Yet it is possible that its inward progress was not little. There may have been silent souls that lived saintly lives in that long past century, who owed their first awakening or their gradual edification to some word of his; it may be that the sturdy resistance of England to Papal aggression in the subsequent century had received its impetus from his unseen hand. Who shall say that he achieved nothing? The world wrote "unsuccessful" upon his work: did God write "blessed"? One thing at least I think he must have written--"Thou hast been faithful in a few things." And while the measure of faithfulness is not that of success, it is that of the ultimate reward, in that Land where many that were first shall be last, and the last first. "They that are with" the Conqueror in the last great battle, are not the successful upon earth, but the "called and chosen and faithful."

"If any man serve Me, let him follow Me,"--and what work ever had less the appearance of success than that which seemed to close on Calvary?

Note 1. "William, son of the fat priest," occurs on the Pipe Roll for 1176, Unless "Grossus" is to be taken as a Christian name.

Note 2. Servant or slave of Michael. The Scottish _gillie_ comes from the same root.

Note 3. These are the tenets of the ancient Waldensian Church, with which, so far as they are known, those of the German mission agreed. (They are exactly those of the Church of England, set forth in her Sixth, Ninth, Tenth, Eleventh, Seventeenth, Nineteenth, Twentieth, Twenty-Second, Twenty-Fifth, and Thirty-First Articles of Religion.) She accepted two of our three Creeds, excluding the Nicene.

Note 4. Ecclesiasticus nineteen 1, and thirty-two 21. The Waldensian Church regarded the Apocrypha as the Church of England does--not as inspired Scripture, but as a good book to be read "for example of life and instruction of manners."