Page:Once a Week Jul - Dec 1859.pdf/23

 12 countenances; for in their humble opinion dinner and supper came by nature like sun-rise and sunset, and, so long as that luminary should travel round the earth, so long must the brown loaf go round their family circle, and set in their stomachs only to rise again in the family oven. But the remark awakened the national thoughtfulness of the elder boys, and being often repeated set several of the family thinking, some of them good thoughts, some ill thoughts, according to the nature of the thinkers.

“Kate, the children grow so, this table will soon be too small.”

“We cannot afford it, Gerard,” replied Catherine, answering not his words, but his thought, after the manner of women.

Their anxiety for the future took at times a less dismal but more mortifying turn. The free burghers had their pride as well as the nobles; and these two could not bear that any of their blood should go down in the burgh after their decease.

So by prudence and self-denial they managed to clothe all the little bodies, and feed all the great mouths, and yet put by a small hoard to meet the future; and, as it grew, and grew, they felt a pleasure the miser hoarding for himself knows not.

One day the eldest boy but one, aged nineteen, came to his mother, and, with that outward composure which has so misled some persons as to the real nature of this people, begged her to intercede with his father to send him to Amsterdam, and place him with a merchant. “It is the way of life that likes me: merchants are wealthy; I am good at numbers; prithee, good mother, take my part in this, and I shall ever be, as I am now, your debtor.”

Catherine threw up her hands with dismay and incredulity. “What, leave Tergou!”

“What is one street to me more than another? If I can leave the folk of Tergou, I can surely leave the stones.”

“What! abandon your poor father now he is no longer young?”

“Mother, if I can leave you, I can leave him.”

“What, leave your poor brothers and sisters, that love you so dear?”

“There are enough in the house without me.”

“What mean you, Richart? Who is more thought of than you? Stay, have I spoken sharp to you? Have I been unkind to you?”

“Never that I know of; and if you had, you should never hear of it from me. Mother," said Richart gravely, but the tear was in his eye, “it all lies in a word. And nothing can change my mind. There will be one month less for you to feed.”

“There now, see what my tongue has done,” said Catherine, and the next moment she began to cry. For she saw her first young bird on the edge of the nest trying his wings, to fly into the world. Richart had a calm, strong will, and she knew he never wasted a word.

It ended as nature has willed all such discourse shall end: young Richart went to Amsterdam with a face so long and sad as it had never been seen before, and a heart like granite.

That afternoon at supper there was one mouth less. Catherine looked at Richart’s chair and wept bitterly. On this Gerard shouted roughly and angrily to the children, “sit wider! can’t ye: sit wider!” and turned his head away over the back of his seat awhile, and was silent.

Richart was launched; and never cost them another penny: but to fit him out and place him in the house of Vander Stegen the merchant took all the little hoard but one gold crown. They began again. Two years passed. Richart found a niche in commerce for his brother Jacob, and Jacob left Tergou directly after dinner, which was at eleven in the forenoon. At supper that day Gerard remembered what had happened the last time; so he said in a low whisper, “sit wider, dears!” Now until that moment, Catherine would not see the gap at table, for her daughter Catherine had besought her not to grieve to-night and she had said, “No sweetheart, I promise I will not, since it vexes my children." But when Gerard whispered “sit wider!” says she “Ay! the table will soon be too big for the children: and you thought it would be too small:” and having delivered this with forced calmness, she put up her apron the next moment, and wept sore.

’Tis the best that leave us," sobbed she, “that is the cruel part.”

“Nay! nay!” said Gerard, “our children are good children, and all are dear to us alike. Heed her not! “That God takes from us still seems better than what he spares to us: that is to say, men are by nature unthankful—and women silly.”

“And I say Richart and Jacob were the flower of the flock,” sobbed Catherine.

The little coffer was empty again, and to fill it they gathered like ants. In those days speculation was pretty much confined to the card-and-dice business. Gerard knew no way to wealth but the slow and sure one. “A penny saved is a penny gained,” was his humble creed. All that was not required for the business, and the necessaries of life, went into the little coder with steel bands and florid key. They denied themselves in turn the humblest luxuries, and then, catching one another’s looks, smiled; perhaps with a greater joy than self-indulgence has to bestow. And so in three years more they had gleaned enough to set up their fourth son as a master tailor, and their eldest daughter as a robe-maker, in Tergou. Here were two more provided for: their own trade would enable them to throw work into the hands of this pair. But the coffer was drained to the dregs, and this time the shop too bled a little in goods if not in coin.

Alas! there remained on hand two that were unable to get their bread, and two that were unwilling. The unable ones were, 1, Giles, a dwarf, of the wrong sort, half stupidity half malice, all head and claws and voice, run from by dogs and unprejudiced females, and sided with through thick and thin by his mother; 2, Little Catherine, a poor girl that could only move on crutches. She lived in pain, but smiled through it, with her marble face and violet eyes and long silky lashes: and fretful or repining word never came from her lips. The unwilling ones were Sybrandt,