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

was the man for whom Margaret's boy lay in wait with her letter.

THE HEARTH

And that letter was one of those simple, touching appeals only her sex can write to those who have used them cruelly, and they love them. She began by telling him of the birth of the little boy, and the comfort he had been to her in all the distress of mind his long and strange silence had caused her. She described the little Gerard minutely, not forgetting the mole on his little finger.

“Know you any one that hath the like on his? If you only saw him you could not choose but be proud of him; all the mothers in the street do envy me; but I the wives; for thou comest not to us. My own Gerard, some say thou art dead. But if thou wert dead, how could I be alive? Others say that thou, whom I love so truly, art false. But this will I believe from no lips but thine. My father loved thee well; and as he lay a-dying he thought he saw thee on a great river, with thy face turned towards thy Margaret, but sore disfigured. Is't so, perchance? Have cruel men scarred thy sweet face? or hast thou lost one of thy precious limbs? Why, then thou hast the more need of me, and I shall love thee not worse, alas! thinkest thou a woman's love is light as a man's? but better, than I did when I shed those few drops from my arm, not worth the tears, thou didst shed for them; mindest thou? 'tis not so very long agone, dear Gerard.”

The letter continued in this strain, and concluded without a word of reproach or doubt as to his faith and affection. Not that she was free from most distressing doubts; but they were not certainties; and to show them might turn the scale, and frighten him away from her with fear of being scolded. And of this letter she made soft Luke the bearer.

So she was not an angel after all.

Luke mingled with the passengers of two boats, and could hear nothing of Gerard Eliassoen. Nor did this surprise him.

He was more surprised when, at the third attempt, a black friar said to him, somewhat severely, “And what would you with him you call Gerard Eliassoen?”

“Why, father, if he is alive I have got a letter for him.”

“Humph!” said Jerome. “I am sorry for it, However, the flesh is weak. Well, my son, he you seek will be here by the next boat, or the next boat after. And if he chooses to answer to that name—After all, I am not the keeper of his conscience.”

“Good father, one plain word, for Heaven's sake, This Gerard Eliassoen of Tergou—is he alive?”

“Humph! Why, certes, he that went by that name is alive.”

“Well, then, that is settled,” said Luke drily. But the next moment he found it necessary to run out of sight and blubber.

“Oh, why did the Lord make any women?” said he to himself. “I was content with the world till I fell in love. Here his little finger is more to her than my whole body, and he is not dead, And here I have got to give him this.” He looked at the letter and dashed it on the ground. But he picked it up again with a spiteful snatch, and went to the landlord, with tears in his eyes, and begged for work, The landlord declined, said he had his own people.

“Oh, I seek not your money,” said Luke, “I only want some work to keep me from breaking my heart about another man's lass.”

“Good lad! good lad!” exploded the landlord; and found him lots of barrels to mend—on these terms, And he coopered with fury in the interval of the boats coming down the Rhine.