"What are you thinking about so intently?"

"Life," was the ready but unexpected answer.

"Past, present, future?"

"Past and future--hardly present. The past chiefly--the long ago."

The woman moved uneasily, but did not answer.

"Mother, if I am of age to-day, I think I have the right to ask you a few questions. Do you accord it?"

"Ah!" she said, with a deep intonation. "I knew it would come some time. Well! what is to be must be. Speak, my son."

The young man laid his hand affectionately on hers.

"Had it not better come?" he said. "You would not prefer that I asked my questions of others than yourself, nor that I shut them in my own soul, and fretted my heart out, trying to find the answer."

"I should prefer any suffering rather than the loss of thy love and confidence, my Ralph," she answered tenderly. "To the young, it is easy to look back, for they have only just left the flowery garden. To the old, it may be so, when there is only a little way to go, and they will then be gathered to their fathers. But half-way through the long journey--with all the graves behind, and the dreary stretch of trackless heath before--Speak thy will, Ralph."

"Forgive me if I pain you, Mother. I feel as if I must speak, and something has happened to-day which bids me do it now."

It was evident that these words startled and discomposed the mother.

She had been leaning back rather wearily in the corner of the bench, as one resting from bodily strain. Now she sat up, the rich crimson mantling her dark cheek.

"What! Hast thou seen--hast thou heard something?"

"I have seen," answered Ralph slowly, as if almost unwilling to say it, "a face from the long ago. At any rate, a face which carried my memory thither."

"Whose?" she said, almost in tones of alarm.

"I cannot tell you. Let me make it as plain as I can. You may be able to piece the disjointed strands together, when I cannot."

"Go on," she said, settling herself to listen.

"You know, Mother," he began, "that I have always known and remembered one thing from my past. I know you are not my real mother. Kindest and truest and dearest of mothers and friends you have been to me; my true mother, whoever and wherever she may be, could have loved and tended me no better than you. That much I know: but as to other matters my recollection is far more uncertain. Some persons and things I recall clearly; others are mixed together, and here and there, as if in a dream, some person, or more frequently some action of such a person, stands out vividly, like a picture, from the general haze. Now, for instance, I can remember that there was somebody called 'Mother Isel': but whether she were my mother, or yours, or who she was, that I do not know. Again, I recollect a man, who must have been rather stern to my childish freaks, I suppose, for he brings with him a sense of fear.

This man does not come into my life till I was some few years old; there is another whom I remember better, an older friend, a man with light hair and grave, kindly blue eyes. There are some girls, too, but I cannot clearly recall them--they seem mixed together in my memory, though the house in which I and they lived I recollect perfectly. But I do not know how it is--I never see you there. I clearly recall a big book, which the man with the blue eyes seems to be constantly reading: and when he reads, a woman sits by him with a blue check ap.r.o.n, and I sit on her lap. Perhaps such a thing happened only once, but it appears to me as if I can remember it often and often. There is another man whose face I recall--I doubt if he lived in the house; I think he came in now and then: a man with brown hair and a pleasant, lively face, who often laughed and had many a merry saying. I cannot certainly remember any one else connected with that house, except one other--a woman: a woman with a horrible chattering tongue, who often left people in tears or very cross: a woman whom I don't like at all."

"And after, Ralph?" suggested the mother in a low voice, when the young man paused.

"After? Ah, Mother, that is harder to remember still. A great tumult, cross voices, a sea of faces which all looked angry and terrified me, and then it suddenly changes like a dream to a great lonely expanse of shivering snow: and I and some others--whom, I know not--wander about in it--for centuries, as it appears to me. Then comes a blank, and then-- you."

"You remember better than I should have expected as to some things: others worse. Can you recollect no name save 'Mother Isel'?"

"I can, but I don't know whose they are. I can hear somebody call from the upper chamber--'Gerard, is that you?' and the pleasant-faced man says, 'Tell Ermine' something. That is what made me ask you, Mother. I met a man to-day in Cheapside who looked hard at me, and who made me think both of that pleasant-faced man, and also of the stern man; and as I had to wait for a cart to pa.s.s, another man and woman came and spoke to him, and he said to the woman, 'Well, when are you coming to see Ermine?' The face, and his curious, puzzled look at me, and the name, carried me back all at once to that house and the people there. He looked as if he thought he ought to know me, and could not tell exactly who I was. And just as I came away, I fancied I heard another word or two, spoken low as if not for me or somebody to hear--something about--'like him and Agnes too.' I wonder if I ever knew any one called Agnes? I have a faint impression that I did. Can you tell me, Mother?"

"I will tell thee, Ralph. But answer me first. Wert thou always called Ralph?"

"I cannot tell, Mother," replied the youth, with an interested look. "I fancy, somehow, that I once used to be called something not that exactly, and yet very like it. I have tried to recover it, and cannot.

Was it some pet name used by somebody?"

"No. It was your own name--which Ralph is not."

"O Mother! what was it?"

"Wait a moment. Did you ever hear of any one called--Countess?"

She brought out the second name with hesitation, as if she spoke it unwillingly. The youth shook his head.

"Let that pa.s.s."

"But who was it, Mother?"

"Never mind who it was. No relative of yours--Rudolph."

"Rudolph!" The young man sprang to his feet. "That was my name! I know it was, but I never could get hold of it. I shall not forget it again."

"Do not forget it again. But let it be for ourselves only. To the world outside you are still 'Ralph.' It is wiser."

"Very well, Mother."

This youth had been well trained, and was far more obedient to his adopted mother than most sons at that time were to their real parents.

With the Saxons a mother had always been under the control of an adult son; and the Normans who had won possession of England had by no means abolished either the social customs or modes of thought of the vanquished people. In fact, the moral ascendancy soon rested with the subject race. The Norman n.o.ble who dried his washed hands in the air, sneered at the Saxon thrall who wiped his on a towel; but the towel was none the less an article of necessary furniture in the house of the Norman's grandson. It has often been the case in the history of the world, that the real victory has rested with the vanquished: but it has always been brought about by the one race mixing with and absorbing the other. Where that does not take place, the conquerors remain dominant.

"Now, my son, listen and think. I have some questions to ask. What faith have I taught thee?"

"You have taught me," said Rudolph slowly, "to believe in G.o.d Almighty, and in His Son, our Lord Jesus Christ, who suffered on the cross to expiate the sins of His chosen."

"Is that the creed of those around us?"

"Mother, I cannot tell. One half of my brain answers, Ay, it is; but the other half says, No, there is a difference. Yet I cannot quite see what the difference is, and you have always so strictly forbidden me to speak to any one except yourself on religious subjects, that I have had no opportunity to learn what it is. Others, when I hear them talking to you, speak of G.o.d, of our Lord, and of our Lady, as we ourselves do: and they speak of the holy Apostles and others of whom we always read in the big book. Mother, is that the same big book out of which the grave-eyed man used to read? But they mention a great many people who are not in the book,--Martin, and Benedict, and Margaret, and plenty more--and they call them all 'Saint,' but I do not know who they were. You never told me about those people."

There was silence for a moment, till she said--"Thou hast learnt well, and hast been an obedient boy. In the years that lie before thee, thou mayest have cause to thank G.o.d for it. My questions are done: thou mayest ask thine."

"Then, Mother, who am I?" was the eager inquiry. "Thou art Rudolph, son of Gerhardt of Mainz, and of Agnes his wife, who both gave their lives for the Lord Christ's sake, fourteen years ago."

"Mother!--were my real parents martyrs?"

"That is the word which is written after their names in the Lamb's Book of Life. But in the books written by men the word is different."

"What is that word, then, Mother?"

"Rudolph, canst thou bear to hear it? The word is--'heretic'."

"But those are wicked people, who are called heretics!"

"I think it depends on who uses the word."

Rudolph sat an instant in blank silence.