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

So when they came, he had them into the parlour, and put each bundle on a chair. Then he whistled, and in walked Jack.

“Lord a mercy!” said one of the farmers.

“Jack,” said the parson, in the tone of conversation, “just tell us which is the best hay of these two.”

Jack sniffed them both, and made his choice directly, proving his sincerity by eating every morsel. The farmers slapped their thighs, and scratched their heads. “To think of we not thinking o' that,” And they each sent Jack a truss.

So Gerard got to be called the merry parson of Gouda. But Margaret, who like most loving women had no more sense of humour than a turtle-dove, took this very ill. “What!” said she to herself, “is there nothing sore at the bottom of his heart that he can go about playing the zany?” She could understand pious resignation and content, but not mirth, in true lovers parted. And whilst her woman's nature was perturbed by this gust (and women seem more subject to gusts than men) came that terrible animal, a busybody, to work upon her. Catherine saw she was not happy, and said to her, “Your boy is gone from you. I would not live alone all my days if I were you.”

“He is more alone than I,” sighed Margaret.

“Oh, a man is a man, but a woman is a woman. You must not think all of him and none of yourself. Near is your kirtle, but nearer is your smock. Besides, he is a priest, and can do no better. But you are not a priest. He has got his parish, and his heart is in that. Bethink thee! Time flies; overstay not thy market. Wouldst not like to have three or four more little darlings about thy knee now they have robbed thee of poor little Gerard, and sent him to yon nasty school?” And so she worked upon a mind already irritated.

Margaret had many suitors ready to marry her at a word or even a look, and among them two merchants of the better class, Van Schelt and Oostwagen. “Take one of those two,” said Catherine.

“Well, I will ask Gerard if I may,” said Margaret one day, with a flood of tears; “for I cannot go on the way I am.”

“Why, you would never be so simple as ask him?”

“Think you I would be so wicked as marry without his leave?”

Accordingly she actually went to Gouda, and after hanging her head, and blushing, and crying, and saying she was miserable, told him his mother wished her to marry one of those two; and if he approved of her marrying at all, would he use his wisdom, and tell her which he thought would be the kindest to the little Gerard of those two; for herself, she did not care what became of her.

Gerard felt as if she had put a soft hand into his body and torn his heart out with it. But the priest with a mighty effort mastered the man. In a voice scarcely audible he declined this responsibility. “I am not a saint or a prophet,” said he; “I might advise thee ill. I shall read the marriage service for thee,” faltered he; “it is my right. No other would pray for thee as I should. But thou must choose for thyself; and oh! let me see thee happy. This four months past thou hast not been happy.”

“A discontented mind is never happy,” said Margaret.

She left him, and he fell on his knees, and prayed for help from above.

Margaret went home pale and agitated. “Mother,” said she, “never mention it to me again, or we shall quarrel.”

“He forbade you? Well, more shame for him, that is all.”

“He forbid me? He did not condescend so far. He was as noble as I was paltry. He would not choose for me for fear of choosing me an ill husband. But he would read the service for my groom and me; that was his right. Oh, mother, what a heartless creature I was!”

“Well, I thought not he had that much sense.”

“Ah, you go by the poor soul's words, but I rate words as air when the face speaketh to mine eye. I saw the priest and the true lover a-fighting in his dear face, and his cheek pale with the strife, and oh! his poor lip trembled as he said the stout-hearted words—Oh! oh! oh! oh! oh! oh! oh!” And Margaret burst into a violent passion of tears.

Catherine groaned. “There, give it up without more ado,” said she. “You two are chained together for life; and if God is merciful, that won't be for long; for what are you neither maid, wife, nor widow.”

“Give it up?” said Margaret; “that was done long ago. All I think of now is comforting him; for now I have been and made him unhappy too, wretch and monster that I am.”

So the next day they both went to Gouda. And Gerard, who had been praying for resignation all this time, received her with peculiar tenderness as a treasure he was to lose; but she was agitated and eager to let him see without words that she would never marry, and she fawned on him like a little dog to be forgiven. And as she was going away she murmured, “Forgive! and forget! I am but a woman.”

He misunderstood her, and said, “All I bargain for is, let me see thee content; for pity's sake, let me not see thee unhappy as I have this while.”

“My darling, you never shall again,” said Margaret, with streaming eyes, and kissed his hand.

He misunderstood this too at first; but when month after month passed, and he heard no more of her marriage, and she came to Gouda comparatively cheerful, and was even civil to Father Ambrose, a mild benevolent monk from the Dominican convent hard by—then he understood her; and one day he invited her to walk alone with him in the sacred paddock; and before I relate what passed between them, I must give its history.

When Gerard had been four or five days at the manse, looking out of window he uttered an exclamation of joy. “Mother, Margaret, here is one of my birds: another, another: four, six, nine. A miracle! a miracle!”

“Why, how can you tell your birds from their fellows?” said Catherine.

“I know every feather in their wings. And see; there is the little darling whose claw I gilt, bless it!”

And presently his rapture took a serious turn, and he saw Heaven's approbation in this conduct of the birds as he did in the fall of the cave. This wonderfully kept alive his friendship for animals; and he enclosed a paddock, and drove all the sons of Cain from it with threats of excommunication, “On this little spot of earth we'll have no murder,” said he. He tamed leverets and partridges, and little birds, and hares, and roe-deer. He found a squirrel with a broken leg; he set it with infinite difficulty and patience; and during the cure showed it repositories of acorns, nuts, chestnuts, etc. And this squirrel got well and went off, but visited him in hard weather,