The Cloister and the Hearth Part 155

"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 he 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 n.o.ble 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 pa.s.sion of tears.

Catherine groaned. "There, give it up without more ado," said she. "You two are chained together for life; and, if G.o.d 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; for 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 pa.s.sed, 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 pa.s.sed 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 beak 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, &c. And this squirrel got well and went off, but visited him in hard weather, and brought a mate, and next year little squirrels were found to have imbibed their parents'

sentiments: and of all these animals each generation was tamer than the last. This set the good parson thinking, and gave him the true clue to the great successes of mediaeval hermits in taming wild animals.

He kept the key of this paddock, and never let any man but himself enter it: nor would he even let little Gerard go there without him or Margaret. "Children are all little Cains," said he.

In this oasis then he spoke to Margaret, and said, "Dear Margaret, I have thought more than ever of thee of late, and have asked myself why I am content, and thou unhappy."

"Because thou art better, wiser, holier, than I; that is all," said Margaret, promptly.

"Our lives tell another tale," said Gerard, thoughtfully. "I know thy goodness and thy wisdom too well to reason thus perversely. Also I know that I love thee as dear as thou, I think, lovest me. Yet am I happier than thou. Why is this so?"

"Dear Gerard, I am as happy as a woman can hope to be this side the grave."

"Not so happy as I. Now for the reason. First then I am a priest, and this, the one great trial and disappointment G.o.d giveth me along with so many joys, why I share it with a mult.i.tude. For alas! I am not the only priest by thousands that must never hope for entire earthly happiness.

Here then thy lot is harder than mine."

"But Gerard, I have my child to love. Thou canst not fill thy heart with him as his mother can. So you may set this against yon."

"And I have ta'en him from thee; it was cruel; but he would have broken thy heart one day if I had not. Well then, sweet one, I come to where the shoe pincheth, methinks. I have my parish, and it keeps my heart in a glow from morn till night. There is scarce an emotion that my folk stir not up in me many times a day. Often their sorrows make me weep, sometimes their perversity kindles a little wrath, and their absurdity makes me laugh, and sometimes their flashes of unexpected goodness do set me all of a glow: and I could hug 'em. Meantime thou, poor soul, sittest with heart--"

"Of lead, Gerard, of very lead."

"See now, how unkind thy lot compared with mine. Now how if thou couldst be persuaded to warm thyself at the fire that warmeth me."

"Ah, if I could?"

"Hast but to will it. Come among my folk. Take in thine hand the alms I set aside, and give it with kind words; hear their sorrows: they shall show you life is full of troubles, and, as thou sayest truly, no man or woman without their thorn this side the grave. In-doors I have a map of Gouda parish. Not to o'erburden thee at first, I will put twenty housen under thee with their folk. What sayest thou? but for thy wisdom I had died a dirty maniac, and ne'er seen Gouda manse, nor pious peace. Wilt profit in turn by what little wisdom _I_ have to soften her lot to whom I do owe all?"

Margaret a.s.sented warmly: and a happy thing it was for the little district a.s.signed to her: it was as if an angel had descended on them.

Her fingers were never tired of knitting, or cutting for them, her heart of sympathizing with them. And that heart expanded and waved its drooping wings; and the glow of good and gentle deeds began to spread over it: and she was rewarded in another way, by being brought into more contact with Gerard, and also with his spirit. All this time malicious tongues had not been idle. "If there is nought between them more than meets the eye, why doth she not marry?" &c. And I am sorry to say our old friend, Joan Ketel, was one of these coa.r.s.e sceptics. And now, one winter evening she got on a hot scent. She saw Margaret and Gerard talking earnestly together on the Boulevard. She whipped behind a tree.

"Now I'll hear something," said she: and so she did. It was winter; there had been one of those tremendous floods followed by a sharp frost, and Gerard in despair as to where he should lodge forty or fifty houseless folk out of the piercing cold. And now it was, "Oh dear, dear Margaret, what shall I do? The manse is full of them, and a sharp frost coming on this night."

Margaret reflected, and Joan listened.

"You must lodge them in the church," said Margaret, quietly.

"In the church? Profanation."

"No: charity profanes nothing; not even a church: soils nought, not even a church. To-day is but Tuesday. Go save their lives; for a bitter night is coming. Take thy stove into the church: and there house them. We will dispose of them here and there ere the Lord's day."

"And I could not think of that: bless thee, sweet Margaret; thy mind is stronger than mine, and readier."

"Nay, nay, a woman looks but a little way; therefore she sees clear.

I'll come over myself to-morrow."

And on this they parted with mutual blessings.

Joan glided home remorseful.

And after that she used to check all surmises to their discredit.

"Beware," she would say, "lest some angel should blister thy tongue.

Gerard and Margaret paramours? I tell ye they are two saints which meet in secret to plot charity to the poor."

In the summer of 1481 Gerard determined to provide against similar disasters recurring to his poor. Accordingly he made a great hole in his income, and bled his friends (zealous parsons always do that) to build a large Xenodochium to receive the victims of flood or fire. Giles, and all his friends were kind, but all was not enough; when lo! the Dominican monks of Gouda, to whom his parlour and heart had been open for years, came out n.o.bly and put down a handsome sum to aid the charitable vicar.

"The dear good souls," said Margaret, "who would have thought it!"

"Any one who knows them," said Gerard. "Who more charitable than monks?"