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74
ONCE A WEEK.
[Jul 23, 1859.
and indifferent than she would if she had not betrayed this agitation.
“What! is it you, Master Gerard What on earth brings you here, I wonder.”
“I was passing by and saw you; so I thought I would give you good day, and ask after your father.”
“My father is well. He will be here anon.”
“Then I may as well stay till he comes.”
“As you will. Good Martin, step into the village and tell my father here is a friend of his.”
“And not of yours?”
“My father’s friends are mine.”
“That is doubtful. It was not like a friend to promise to wait for me, and then make off the moment my back was turned. Cruel Margaret! you little know how I searched the town for you — how for want of you nothing was pleasant to me.”
“These are idle words; if you had desired my father’s company, or mine, you would have come back. There I had a bed laid for you, sir, at my cousin’s, and he would have made much of you, and, who knows, I might have made much of you too. I was in the humour that day. You will not catch me in the same mind again, neither you nor any young man, I warrant me.”
“Margaret, I came back the moment the countess let me go; but you were not there.”
“Nay, you did not, or you had seen Hans Cloterman at our table; we left him to bring you on.”
“I saw no one there, but only a drunken man that had just tumbled down.”
“At our table? How was he clad?”
“Nay, I took little heed: in sad coloured garb.”
At this Margaret’s face gradually lighted with a mixture of archness and happiness; then assuming incredulity and severity, she put many shrewd questions, all of which Gerard answered most loyally. Finally, the clouds cleared, and they guessed how the misunderstanding had come about. Then came a revulsion of tenderness, all the more powerful that they had done each other wrong; and then, more dangerous still, came mutual confessions. Neither had been happy since; neither ever would have been happy but for this fortunate meeting.
And Gerard found a MS. Vulgate lying open on the table, and pounced upon it like a hawk. MSS. were his delight; but before he could get to it two white hands quickly came flat upon the page, and a red face confronted him.
“Nay, take away your hands, Margaret, that I may see where you are reading, and I will read there too at home; so shall my soul meet yours in the sacred page. You will not? Nay, then, I must kiss them away.” And he kissed them so often, that for very shame they were fain to withdraw, and, lo! the sacred book proved to be open at
An apple of gold in a net-work of silver.
“There, now,” said she, “I had been hunting for it ever so long, and found it but even now — and to be caught!” and with a touch of inconsistency she pointed it out to Gerard with her white finger.
“Ay,” said he, “but to-day it is all hidden in that great cap.”
“It is a comely cap, I’m told by some.”
“May be: but what it hides is beautiful.”
“It is not: it is hideous.”
“Well, it was beautiful at Rotterdam.”
“Ay, everything was beautiful that day.”
And now Peter came in, and welcomed Gerard cordially, and would have him to stay supper. And Margaret disappeared; and Gerard had a nice learned chat with Peter; and Margaret reappeared with her hair in her silver net, and shot a glance half arch half coy, and she glided about them, and spread supper, and beamed bright with gaiety and happiness. And in the cool evening Gerard coaxed her out, and coaxed her on to the road to Tergou, and there they strolled up and down, hand in hand; and when he must go they pledged each other never to quarrel or misunderstand one another again; and they sealed the promise with a long loving kiss, and Gerard went home on wings.
From that day Gerard spent most of his evenings with Margaret, and the attachment deepened and deepened on both sides till the hours they spent together were the hours they lived; the rest they counted and underwent. And at the outset of this deep attachment all went smoothly; obstacles there were, but they seemed distant and small to the eyes of hope, youth, and love. The feelings and passions of so many persons, that this attachment would thwart, gave no warning smoke to show their volcanic nature and power. The course of true love ran smoothly, placidly, until it had drawn these two young hearts into its current for ever, and then
(To be continued.)
AN OLD CHURCH LIBRARY.
“Langley Marsh! not a very inviting locality I should judge. What could attract you to a marsh, in your longing for country air?”
“It is no marsh. The soil is gravel. Believe Lady Hertford, the invoked by Thomson, the Countess who wrote thus to the Countess of Pomfret, about Richings, not a mile distant from my calumniated village: 'One great addition to the pleasure of living here is the gravelly soil, which after a day of rain, if it holds up for two or three hours, one may walk over without being wet through one’s shoes.’ ”
“Well. Hume says, all Britain was marshy once; and I suppose this marsh has been drained in some rude agricultural fashion of the days before tiles, and instead of quagmires you have only standing pools.”
“Hume misquotes his authority when he says all Britain was marshy once; and I have little doubt some blundering topographer has misquoted an ancient title-deed, and made libellous English out of the obscure Latin which distinguished this Langley from others of the same family name.”
I was piqued at my friend’s scepticism about
