Part 155 (1/2)

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

Accordingly she actually went to Gouda, and after hanging her head, and blus.h.i.+ng, 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 friends.h.i.+p 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?”