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

take courage, and say He sends thee this to comfort thee for what thou hast lost in me; and that is not so very much, my lamb; for sure the better part of love shall ne'er cool here to thee; though it may in thine, and ought, being a priest, and parson of Gouda.”

“I? priest of Gouda? Never!” murmured Clement in a faint voice; “I am a friar of St. Dominic: yet speak on, sweet music, tell me all that has happened thee, before we are parted again.”

Now some would on this have exclaimed against parting at all, and raised the true question in dispute. But such women as Margaret do not repeat their mistakes. It is very hard to defeat them twice, where their hearts are set on a thing.

She assented, and turned her back on Gouda manse as a thing not to be recurred to; and she told him her tale, dwelling above all on the kindness to her of his parents; and while she related her troubles, his hand stole to hers, and often she felt him wince and tremble with ire, and often press her hand, sympathizing with her in every vein.

“Oh, piteous tale of a true heart battling alone against such bitter odds,” said he.

“It all seems small, when I see thee here again, and nursing my boy. We have had a warning, Gerard. True friends like you and me are rare, and they are mad to part, ere death divideth them.”

“And that is true,” said Clement, off his guard.

And then she would have him tell her what he had suffered for her, and he begged her to excuse him, and she consented; but by questions quietly revoked her consent and elicited it all; and many a sigh she heaved for him, and more than once she hid her face in her hands with terror at his perils, though past. And to console him for all he had gone through, she kneeled down and put her arms under the little boy, and lifted him gently up. “Kiss him softly,” she whispered. “Again, again kiss thy fill if thou canst; he is sound. 'Tis all I can do to comfort thee till thou art out of this foul den and in thy sweet manse yonder.”

Clement shook his head.

“Well,” said she, “let that pass. Know that I have been sore affronted for want of my lines.”

“Who hath dared affront thee?”

“No matter, those that will do it again if thou hast lost them, which the saints forbid.”

“I lose them? nay, there they lie, close to thy hand.”

“Where, where, oh, where?”

Clement hung his head. “Look in the Vulgate. Heaven forgive me: I thought thou wert dead, and a saint in heaven.”

She looked, and on the blank leaves of the poor soul's Vulgate she found her marriage lines.

“Thank God!” she cried, “thank God! Oh, bless thee, Gerard, bless thee! Why, what is here, Gerard?”

On the other leaves were pinned every scrap of paper she had ever sent him, and their two names she had once written together in sport, and the lock of her hair she had given him, and half a silver coin she had broken with him, and a straw she had sucked her soup with the first day he ever saw her.

When Margaret saw these proofs of love and signs of a gentle heart bereaved, even her exultation at getting back her marriage lines was overpowered by gushing tenderness. She almost staggered, and her hand went to her bosom, and she leaned her brow against the stone cell and wept so silently that he did not see she was weeping; indeed she would not let him, for she felt that to befriend him now she must be the stronger; and emotion weakens.

“Gerard,” said she, “I know you are wise and good. You must have a reason for what you are doing, let it seem ever so unreasonable. Talk we like old friends. Why are you buried alive?”

“Margaret, to escape temptation. My impious ire against those two had its root in the heart; that heart then I must deaden, and, Dei gratia, I shall. Shall I, a servant of Christ and of the Church, court temptation? Shall I pray daily to be led out on't, and walk into it with open eyes?”

“That is good sense anyway,” said Margaret, with a consummate affectation of candour.

“'Tis unanswerable,” said Clement, with a sigh.

“We shall see. Tell me, have you escaped temptation here? Why I ask is, when I am alone, my thoughts are far more wild and foolish than in company. Nay, speak sooth; come!”

“I must needs own I have been worse tempted here with evil imaginations than in the world.”

“There now.”

“Ay, but so were Anthony and Jerome, Macarius and Hilarion, Benedict, Bernard, and all the saints. 'Twill wear off.”

“How do you know?”

“I feel sure it will.”

“Guessing against knowledge. Here 'tis men folk are sillier than us that be but women. Wise in their own conceits, they will not let themselves see; their stomachs are too high to be taught by their eyes. A woman, if she went into a hole in a bank to escape temptation, and there found it, would just lift her farthingale and out on't, and not e'en know how wise she was, till she watched a man in like plight.”

“Nay, I grant humility and a teachable spirit are the roads to wisdom; but when all is said, here I wrestle but with imagination. At Gouda she I love as no priest or monk must love any but the angels, she will tempt a weak soul, unwilling, yet not loth to be tempted.”

“Ay, that is another matter; I should tempt thee then? to what, i' God's name?”

“Who knows? The flesh is weak.”

“Speak for yourself, my lad. Why, you are thinking of some other Margaret, not Margaret a Peter. Was ever my mind turned to folly and frailty? Stay, is it because you were my husband once, as these lines avouch? Think you the road to folly is beaten for you more than another? Oh! how shallow are the wise, and how little able are you to read me, who can read you so well from top to toe, Come, learn thine A B C. Were a stranger to proffer me unchaste love, I should shrink a bit, no doubt, and feel sore, but I should defend myself without making a coil; for men, I know, are so, the best of them sometimes. But if you, that have been my husband, and are my child's father, were to offer to humble me so in mine own eyes, and thine, and his, either I should spit in thy face, Gerard, or, as I am not a downright vulgar woman, I should snatch the first weapon at hand and strike thee dead.”

And Margaret's eyes flashed fire, and her nostrils expanded, that it was glorious to