The Cloister and the Hearth by Charles Reade (most interesting books to read .TXT) 📕

lad,” cried she of the nuts. “'Tis a man; or a boy. A woman still parteth her knees to catch the nuts the surer in her apron; but a man closeth his for fear they should all between his hose. Confess, now, didst never wear fardingale ere to-day?”

“Give me another handful, sweetheart, and I'll tell thee.”

“There! I said he was too handsome for a woman.”

“Ser Gerard, they have found me out,” observed the Epicaene, calmly cracking an almond.

The libertines vowed it was impossible, and all glared at the goddess like a battery. But Vanucci struck in, and reminded the gaping gazers of a recent controversy, in which they had, with a unanimity not often found among dunces, laughed Gerard and him to scorn, for saying that men were as beautiful as women in a true artist's eye.

“Where are ye now? This is my boy Andrea. And you have all been down on your knees to him. Ha! ha! But oh, my little ladies, when he lectured you and flung your stibium, your cerussa, and your purpurissum back in your faces, 'tis then I was like to burst; a grinds my colours. Ha! ha! he! he! he! ho!”

“The little impostor! Duck him!”

“What for, signors?” cried Andrea, in dismay, and lost his rich carnation.

But the females collected round him, and vowed nobody should harm a hair of his head.

“The dear child! How well his pretty little saucy ways become him.”

“Oh, what eyes and teeth!”

“And what eyebrows and hair!”

“And what lashes!”

“And what a nose!”

“The sweetest little ear in the world!”

“And what health! Touch but his cheek with a pin the blood should squirt.”

“Who would be so cruel?”

“He is a rosebud washed in dew.”

And they revenged themselves for their beaux' admiration of her by lavishing all their tenderness on him.

But one there was who was still among these butterflies, but no longer of them. The sight of the Princess Claelia had torn open his wound.

Scarce three months ago he had declined the love of that peerless creature; a love illicit and insane; but at least refined.

How much lower had he fallen now.

How happy he must have been, when the blandishments of Claelia, that might have melted an anchorite, could not tempt him from the path of loyalty!

Now what was he? He had blushed at her seeing him in such company. Yet it was his daily company.

He hung over the boat in moody silence.

And from that hour another phase of his misery began; and grew upon him.

Some wretched fools try to drown care in drink.

The fumes of intoxication vanish; the inevitable care remains, and must be faced at last—with an aching head, disordered stomach, and spirits artificially depressed.

Gerard's conduct had been of a piece with these maniacs'. To survive his terrible blow he needed all his forces; his virtue, his health, his habits of labour, and the calm sleep that is labour's satellite; above all, his piety.

Yet all these balms to wounded hearts he flung away and trusted to moral intoxication.

Its brief fumes fled; the bereaved heart lay still heavy as lead within his bosom; but now the dark vulture Remorse sat upon it rending it.

Broken health; means wasted; innocence fled; Margaret parted from him by another gulf wider than the grave! The hot fit of despair passed away.

The cold fit of despair came on.

Then this miserable young man spurned his gay companions, and all the world.

He wandered alone. He drank wine alone to stupefy himself; and paralyze a moment the dark foes to man that preyed upon his soul. He wandered alone amidst the temples of old Rome, and lay stony eyed, woebegone, among their ruins, worse wrecked than they.

Last of all came the climax, to which solitude, that gloomy yet fascinating foe of minds diseased, pushes the hopeless.

He wandered alone at night by dark streams, and eyed them, and eyed them, with decreasing repugnance. There glided peace; perhaps annihilation.

What else was left him?

These dark spells have been broken by kind words, by loving and cheerful voices.

The humblest friend the afflicted one possesses may speak, or look, or smile, a sunbeam between him and that worst madness Gerard now brooded.

Where was Teresa? Where his hearty, kind old landlady?

They would see with their homely but swift intelligence; they would see and save.

No; they knew not where he was, or whither he was gliding.

And is there no mortal eye upon the poor wretch, and the dark road he is going?

Yes; one eye there is upon him; watching his every movement; following him abroad; tracking him home.

And that eye is the eye of an enemy.

An enemy to the death.