Katheline

“ At last, one evening, he went to find Katheline, thinking to inquire of her some way of remedy or revenge.
She was alone with Nele, sewing by the light of the lamp. At the sound which Ulenspiegel made as he came in, Katheline raised her head slowly like one that is awakened from a heavy sleep.
He said: “The ashes of Claes beat upon my breast, and I am fain to do somewhat to save this land of Flanders. But what can I do? I have entreated the great God of earth and heaven, but he has answered me nothing.”
Katheline said: “The great God cannot hear you. ”

“ And Katheline answered him, saying:
“Cold arms, warm heart, Hans, my beloved! I am thirsty, my head is burning!”
The clerk of the court wrote down what she said, and the bailiff asked her:
“Woman, have you nothing to say in your own defence?”
But Katheline only gazed at Joos Damman, and said very amorously:
“It is the hour of the sea-eagle, Hans, my pet. They say that you will give me back the seven hundred caroluses. Put out the fire! Put out the fire!” Then she began to cry out most horribly: “Water! Water! My head is burning! God and His angels are eating apples in heaven!” ”

“ If now thy heart bleeds, murderer, there are fifteen years through which ours have been bleeding; fifteen years that Katheline suffers; fifteen years she had her brain in her head burned by thee; fifteen years that Soetkin is dead by consequence of the torture; fifteen years that we are needy, ragged, and live in abject want, but proudly. Read the paper, read the paper! The judges are God upon earth, for they are Justice; read the paper!”
“Read the paper!” cried the men and women, weeping. “Nele is a brave lass! read the paper! Katheline is no witch!” ”

“ Katheline kept repeating:
“Nele is bad. Why hast thou gone so quickly, Hanske, my darling?”
“Where wast thou, ill mother,” said Soetkin, “while they would have taken away thy child’s honour?”
“Nele is bad,” said Katheline. “I was with my black lord, when the gray devil came to us, his face all bloody, and said: ‘Come away, lad: the house is a bad house; the men in it would beat us to the death, and the women have knives at their fingertips.’ Then they ran to their horses and disappeared in the mist. Nele is bad!” ”

“ In the works of love coolness doth not endure. But Katheline would fain believe what she desired, and take me for a devil notwithstanding that I am a man of flesh and bone, in everything as yourselves that look at me. ”

“ Then Katheline made the girl sit upon a bench, and by her words and passes, acting like a spell, Nele sank down all deep in slumber.
Katheline said to her:
“Go into the little house in the Park, which is the favourite abode of the Emperor Charles the Fifth.”
“I am,” said Nele, speaking low and as though she was being stifled, “I am in a little chamber painted green with oil colours. There there is a man bordering upon four and fifty years, bald and gray, with a fair beard on a jutting chin, with an evil look in his gray eyes, full of cunning, of cruelty, and feigned good nature. ”

“ My husband is a handsome man. A hairy man is he, hot with love. But his knees and his arms, they are cold!” And Soetkin looked at her sadly, wondering what new kind of madness this might be. But Katheline continued:
“Three times three are nine, the sacred number. He whose eyes glitter in the night like the eyes of a cat—he only it is that sees the mystery.”
One evening when Katheline was talking in this way, Soetkin made a gesture of misgiving. ”

“ All women are fools and ninnies for the man that can light the fire of love that God set beneath their girdles. Katheline and Nele will be more so than others, and believing us to be devils, will obey us in all things: thou, do thou keep thy forename, but never give the name of thy father, Ryvish. ”

“ Before long we will go together to one Katheline, a handsome woman I know. And she has a daughter—a child [276] of mine forsooth, if indeed Katheline has proved faithful to me. And she is a right comely lass, and I give her to you, for these bastards are nothing to me. And you must know that I have already had from the mother a sum of three and twenty caroluses. This money all belonged to her. But somewhere, unless I am a dunce, she keeps secreted the fortune of Claes, that heretic, you remember, who was burned alive at Damme—seven hundred caroluses in all, and liable to confiscation. ”

“ Soetkin did not like to say anything more, for she was not mistress of the house. So she told her son to go and do as Katheline had bidden him. Ulenspiegel ran to the tavern and brought back with him the four quarts of dobbel kuyt. And soon the kitchen reeked with the good smell of pancakes, and every one felt hungry, even the poor afflicted Katheline. ”

“ At their command, Katheline went into it; the executioner was seen, standing in it, and at the signal of the provost lifting his wand of justice, he cast Katheline into the canal: she struggled, but not for long, and went to the bottom, having cried out: “Hans! Hans! help!”
And the people said: “This woman is no witch.”
Men plunged into the canal and pulled Katheline out from it, unconscious and rigid as a corpse. Then she was brought into a tavern and placed before a great fire; Nele took off her clothes and her wet linen, to give [240] her others ”

“ Towards the end of her third year of banishment Katheline came back to her own house at Damme. And she never ceased to say in witless fashion: “Fire [139] on my head, the soul is knocking, make a hole, it would fain come out.” And she still fled away at the sight of oxen and of sheep. And she sat on the bench under the lime trees, behind her cottage, wagging her head and looking, without knowing them, at the folk of Damme, who said as they passed by in front of her, “There is the madwife.” ”

“ In front was the Dean of Notre Dame, chanting the prayers for the dead, and with him were his vicars, and the beadle carrying the cross. Behind came the bailiff of Damme, the aldermen, the clerks, the sergeants of the commune, the provost, the executioner and his two assistants. On the edge of the procession there followed a great crowd of women crying, and men mourning, in pity for Katheline, who herself walked like a lamb that allows itself to be led whither it knows not. And all the time she kept on crying:
Katheline led to the Trial by Water
“Put out the fire! ”

“ A ghostly moon in a steel cold sky,
A dance of leaves by the wind swept by,
Like the mirthless rushing of phantom feet.
But the Lady Kathleen murmured: “Sweet!
Love keeps a woman's summer young.”
She sped without fear in the awe of night,
Though the shuddering shadows would stay her flight
With the thought of a horror unknown,
Or a streamlet would laugh 'neath the hedge unshown
But the Lady Kathleen wept no more :
“Oh, joy is mine, for my trial's o'er!” ”

“ She was clad only in her own loveliness, though the moonshine was about her as a garment.
“Like a green leaf, like a green leaf,” Cathal muttered over and over below his breath.
“Are you a dream?” he asked simply, having no words for his wonder.
“No, Cathal, I am no dream. I am a woman.”
“A woman? But ... but ... you have no body as other women have: and I see the moonbeam that is on your breast shining upon the moss behind you!”
[Pg 220] “Is it thinking you are, poor Cathal, that there are no women and no men in the world except those who are in thick flesh, and move about in the suntide.” ”

“ The now completely vanquished Katharine quickly adopted her husband's opinion, and made her speech in like sort to the old gentleman, saying to him, "Young budding virgin, you are fair, and fresh, and sweet: whither are you going, and where is your dwelling? Happy are the parents of so fair a child."—"Why, how now, Kate," said Petruchio; "I hope you are not mad. This is a man, old and wrinkled, faded and withered, and not a maiden, as you say he is." On this Katharine said, "Pardon me, old gentleman; the sun has so dazzled my eyes, that everything I look on seemeth green. ”

“ Brave Kathleen, noble Kathleen, you are not one-half a second too soon! The swift revolutions of the saw are drawing your doomed lover closer to the encroaching steel! Throw out in an agony those fair white arms, gifted with such momentary, wondrous strength, grasp your loved one wildly, eagerly, and draw him madly from his couch of deadly peril! Saved! And watching angels weep joyful tears at the victory of love over hate and revenge. ”

“ She had a graceful little figure, and a clear, fresh young voice; and she had a heart, too, which was in the right place, though she herself was almost a stranger to it. She loved beauty dearly, whether in books, or nature, or human faces, or blue silk gowns, and it was just as natural to her to be a picture, whatever way she looked or moved, as it was to be Kathie. ”

“ But you must call me Kathleen; you know we are not strangers to each other. I know all about you. I have lived at your home, slept in your pretty room, and—can you ever forgive me, dear?—I read your sweet diary! I was so lonely and so curious over the girl whose identity had become mixed with mine."
"It was very silly, was it not?—that is all I regret about it," Daisy Lynn answered, blushing crimson. Then she looked fearlessly into Kathleen's eyes as she added: "But I am cured now. I despise him. I could not love him now if he begged me on his knees!" ”

“ BE JUST BEFORE YOU ARE GENEROUS.
"Come, Kathie! It is time to go home!"
It was Mother who called: she had been sitting for the last hour under the shade of the old pier, whilst little Kathie ran hither and thither on the beach, sometimes paddling a little, sometimes building sand castles.
"Come, Kathie!" Mother called again; "it is late; come here and I will put on your shoes and socks." ”

“ She had come to New England an unformed girl whose nature was one of endless possibilities, only waiting for the word which should make them actual and turn her in one way or the other. The word was spoken and, thanks to her aunt's influence and to her association with the simple, natural girls about her, the impulse given was in the right direction. It was as if Katharine had suddenly been born into a new life. No drifting, idle maturity could satisfy her now; her womanhood must be one of purpose and of action. ”

“ Kathie has come home for her Thanksgiving vacation, and I never saw a creature so transformed. She is so interested in her school, her studies, her companions, that she seems to have forgotten that anybody ever frightened her about her soul; and she is just a merry, happy girl, bright-eyed and rather high-strung, but not in the least morbid. ”

“ But when he looked up from his writing as the Angelus was ringing, two faces at once rose in the shadows outside the yellow circle of his lamp: the handsome face of his older daughter, surrounded by violet-dappled fur, with a cruel upper lip and scornful half-closed eyes, as she had approached her car that afternoon before she saw him; and Kathleen, her square little chin set so fiercely, her white cheeks actually becoming green under her swollen eyes. ”

“ It was Katharine: smiling and blushing, she stopped for a moment in agitation, and said:—“Have you succeeded, mother? was it yes, dear mother?” Then, bounding into the room, she fell on her mother’s neck for an answer.
“Ah Kate, be not too confident when thou should’st be prepared for the worst: thy father is a good man, as good as ever stepped, but he has his fancies; and he is resolved to give thee to none but a hunter: he has set his heart upon it; and he’ll not go from his word; I know him too well.” ”

“ He looked at beautiful Kathleen, with the fire of her dark eyes dim with tears, and her cheeks burning with resentment, feeling himself hardly able to refrain from taking her in his arms and kissing away the tempestuous tears.
Suddenly his repressed passion burst forth:
"Kathleen, my darling, do marry me! Can't you learn to love me just a little? I would be so fond of you, so devoted, that you could not help but learn to love me. And I am rich, you know. I would help you queen it over those insolent women." ”

“ He saw her again as he had seen her before on the top of the hill on that memorable night in Virginia. What had she said?—
"If I stood in the pathway of liberty for one single instant, I should despise the man who would not sweep me aside without a moment's hesitation."
Oh, Katharine, Katharine, he groaned in spirit, pressing his hands upon his face in agony, while every breaking wave flung the words, "duty and honor," into his face, and every throb of his beating heart whispered "love—love." ”

“ Katty, a complacent, kind-looking woman, somewhat past the middle period of life, then made her appearance. “Well, your reverence?”
“Get hot water and tumblers—Father Pettier is starved after his long ride such a night, and must have a tumbler of punch to warm him, poor fellow, and I am going to keep him in countenance; and see, Katty, bring the poteen that's in Ould Broadbottom, at the right-hand side o' the cubbard. Stir the fire a little, Pettier, and throw on a sod or two—it's getting dull.” ”

“ And then the poor little woman began to cry, just for pure joy; and she sobbed till Mamma Mason felt her eyes growing misty, and Kathie ran away out of the room.
Be sure that Miss Atkinson made up Kathie's muslin lovingly. It would not be her fault if it were not prettier than any silk. And truly, when Christmas Eve came and Kathie was dressed for Aunt Jane's party, there could hardly have been a more radiant vision than this white-robed shape with the sunny, soft hair, the gleaming brown eyes, and the wild-rose cheeks, where the color came and went. ”