or sure hadst never fled from us so. Alas! what is to do? What have I ignorantly said, to be regarded thus?”
For he had drawn himself all up into a heap, and was looking at her with a strange gaze of fear and suspicion blended.
“Unhappy girl,” said he solemnly, yet deeply agitated, “would you have me risk my soul and yours for a miserable vicarage and the flowers that grow on it? But this is not thy doing: the bowelless fiend sends thee, poor simple girl, to me with this bait. But oh, cunning fiend, I will unmask thee even to this thine instrument, and she shall see thee, and abhor thee as I do, Margaret, my lost love, why am I here? Because I love thee.”
“Oh! no, Gerard, you love me not or you would not have hidden from me; there was no need.”
“Let there be no deceit between us twain, that have loved so true; and after this night, shall meet no more on earth.”
“Now God forbid!” said she.
“I love thee, and thou hast not forgotten me, or thou hadst married ere this, and hadst not been the one to find me, buried here from sight of man. I am a priest, a monk: what but folly or sin can come of you and me living neighbours, and feeding a passion innocent once, but now (so Heaven wills it) impious and unholy? No, though my heart break I must be firm. 'Tis I that am the man, 'tis I that am the priest. You and I must meet no more, till I am schooled by solitude, and thou art wedded to another.”
“I consent to my doom but not to thine. I would ten times liever die; yet I will marry, ay, wed misery itself sooner than let thee lie in this foul dismal place, with yon sweet manse awaiting for thee.” Clement groaned; at each word she spoke out stood clearer and clearer two things—his duty, and the agony it must cost.
“My beloved,” said he, with a strange mixture of tenderness and dogged resolution, “I bless thee for giving me one more sight of thy sweet face, and may God forgive thee, and bless thee, for destroying in a minute the holy peace it hath taken six months of solitude to build. No matter. A year of penance will, Dei gratia, restore me to my calm. My poor Margaret, I seem cruel: yet I am kind: 'tis best we part; ay, this moment.”
“Part, Gerard? Never: we have seen what comes of parting. Part? Why, you have not heard half my story; no, nor the tithe, 'Tis not for thy mere comfort I take thee to Gouda manse. Hear me!”
“I may not. Thy very voice is a temptation with its music, memory's delight.”
“But I say you shall hear me, Gerard, for forth this place I go not unheard.”
“Then must we part by other means,” said Clement sadly.
“Alack! what other means? Wouldst put me to thine own door, being the stronger?”
“Nay, Margaret, well thou knowest I would suffer many deaths rather than put force on thee; thy sweet body is dearer to me than my own; but a million times dearer to me are our immortal souls, both thine and mine. I have withstood this direst temptation of all long enow. Now I must fly it: farewell! farewell!”
He made to the door, and had actually opened it and got half out, when she darted after and caught him by the arm.
“Nay, then another must speak for me. I thought to reward thee for yielding to me; but unkind that thou art, I need his help I find; turn then this way one moment.”
“Nay, nay.”
“But I say ay! And then turn thy back on us an thou canst.” She somewhat relaxed her grasp, thinking he would never deny her so small a favour. But at this he saw his opportunity and seized it.
“Fly, Clement, fly!” he almost shrieked; and his religious enthusiasm giving him for a moment his old strength, he burst wildly away from her, and after a few steps bounded over the little stream and ran beside it, but finding he was not followed stopped, and looked back.
She was lying on her face, with her hands spread out.
Yes, without meaning it, he had thrown her down and hurt her.
When he saw that, he groaned and turned back a step; but suddenly, by another impulse flung himself into the icy water instead.
“There, kill my body!” he cried, “but save my soul!”
Whilst he stood there, up to his throat in liquid ice, so to speak, Margaret uttered one long, piteous moan, and rose to her knees.
He saw her as plain almost as in midday. Saw her pale face and her eyes glistening; and then in the still night he heard these words:
“Oh, God! Thou that knowest all, Thou seest how I am used. Forgive me then! For I will not live another day.” With this she suddenly started to her feet, and flew like some wild creature, wounded to death, close by his miserable hiding-place, shrieking:
“CRUEL!—CRUEL!—CRUEL!—CRUEL!”
What manifold anguish may burst from a human heart in a single syllable. There were wounded love, and wounded pride, and despair, and coming madness all in that piteous cry. Clement heard, and it froze his heart with terror and remorse, worse than the icy water chilled the marrow of his bones.
He felt he had driven her from him for ever, and in the midst of his dismal triumph, the greatest he had won, there came an almost incontrollable impulse to curse the Church, to curse religion itself, for exacting such savage cruelty from mortal man. At last he crawled half dead out of the water, and staggered to his den. “I am safe here,” he groaned; “she will never come near me again; unmanly, ungrateful wretch that I am.” And he flung his emaciated, frozen body down on the floor, not without a secret hope that it might never rise thence alive.
But presently he saw by the hour-glass that it was past midnight.
On this, he rose slowly and took off his wet things, and moaning all the time at the pain he had caused her he loved, put on the old hermit's cilice of bristles, and over that his breastplate. He had never worn either of these before, doubting himself worthy to don the arms of that tried soldier. But now he must give himself every aid; the bristles might distract his earthly remorse by bodily pain, and there might be holy virtue in the breastplate. Then he kneeled down and prayed God humbly to release him that very night from the burden of the flesh. Then he lighted all his candles, and recited his psalter doggedly; each word seemed to come like a lump of lead from a leaden heart, and to fall leaden to the ground; and in this mechanical office every now and then he moaned with all his soul. In the midst of which he suddenly observed a little bundle in the corner he had not seen before in the feebler light, and at one end of it something like gold spun into silk.
He went to see what it could be; and he had no sooner viewed it closer, than he threw up his hands with rapture. “It is a seraph,” he whispered, “a lovely seraph. Heaven hath witnessed my bitter trial, and approves my cruelty; and this flower of the skies is sent to cheer me, fainting under my burden.”
He fell on his knees, and gazed with ecstasy on its golden hair, and its tender skin, and cheeks like a peach.
“Let me feast my sad eyes on thee ere thou leavest me for thine ever-blessed abode, and my cell darkens again at thy parting, as it did at hers.”
With all this, the hermit disturbed the lovely visitor. He opened wide two eyes, the colour of heaven; and seeing a strange figure kneeling over him, he cried piteously, “MUMMA! MUM-MA!” And the tears began to run down his little cheeks.
