The Cloister and the Hearth by Charles Reade (old books to read .TXT) 📖

to you, so as not to seem blind nor yet ungrateful. But this I know, I were both naught and ungrateful, and the worst foe e'er you had, did I take advantage of this mad fancy. Sure some ill spirit hath had leave to afflict you withal. For 'tis all unnatural that a princess adorned with every grace should abase her affections on a churl.”

The princess withdrew her hand slowly from Gerard's wrist.

Yet as it passed lightly over his arm it seemed to linger a moment at parting.

“You fear the daggers of my kinsmen,” said she, half sadly, half contemptuously.

“No more than I fear the bodkins of your women,” said Gerard haughtily. “But I fear God and the saints, and my own conscience.”

“The truth, Gerardo, the truth! Hypocrisy sits awkwardly on thee. Princesses, while they are young, are not despised for love of God, but of some other woman. Tell me whom thou lovest; and if she is worthy thee I will forgive thee.”

“No she in Italy, upon my soul.”

“Ah! there is one somewhere then. Where? where?”

“In Holland, my native country.”

“Ah! Marie de Bourgoyne is fair, they say. Yet she is but a child.”

“Princess, she I love is not noble. She is as I am. Nor is she so fair as thou. Yet is she fair; and linked to my heart for ever by her virtues, and by all the dangers and griefs we have borne together, and for one another. Forgive me; but I would not wrong my Margaret for all the highest dames in Italy.”

The slighted beauty started to her feet, and stood opposite him, as beautiful, but far more terrible than when she slapped Floretta, for then her cheeks were red, but now they were pale, and her eyes full of concentrated fury.

“This to my face, unmannered wretch,” she cried. “Was I born to be insulted, as well as scorned, by such as thou? Beware! We nobles brook no rivals. Bethink thee whether is better, the love of a Cesarini, or her hate: for after all I have said and done to thee, it must be love or hate between us, and to the death. Choose now!”

He looked up at her with wonder and awe, as she stood towering over him in her Roman toga, offering this strange alternative.

He seemed to have affronted a goddess of antiquity; he a poor puny mortal.

He sighed deeply, but spoke not.

Perhaps something in his deep and patient sigh touched a tender chord in that ungoverned creature; or perhaps the time had come for one passion to ebb and another to flow. The princess sank languidly into a seat, and the tears began to steal rapidly down her cheeks.

“Alas! alas!” said Gerard. “Weep not, sweet lady; your tears they do accuse me, and I am like to weep for company. My kind patron, be yourself; you will live to see how much better a friend I was to you than I seemed.”

“I see it now, Gerardo,” said the princess. “Friend is the word! the only word can ever pass between us twain. I was mad. Any other man had ta'en advantage of my folly. You must teach me to be your friend and nothing more.”

Gerard hailed this proposition with joy; and told her out of Cicero how godlike a thing was friendship, and how much better and rarer and more lasting than love: to prove to her he was capable of it, he even told her about Denys and himself.

She listened with her eyes half shut, watching his words to fathom his character, and learn his weak point.

At last, she addressed him calmly thus: “Leave me now, Gerardo, and come as usual to-morrow. You will find your lesson well bestowed.”

She held out her hand to him: he kissed it; and went away pondering deeply this strange interview, and wondering whether he had done prudently or not.

The next day he was received with marked distance, and the princess stood before him literally like a statue, and after a very short sitting, excused herself and dismissed him. Gerard felt the chilling difference; but said to himself, “She is wise.” So she was in her way.

The next day he found the princess waiting for him surrounded by young nobles flattering her to the skies. She and they treated him like a dog that could do one little trick they could not. The cavaliers in particular criticised his work with a mass of ignorance and insolence combined that made his cheeks burn.

The princess watched his face demurely with half-closed eyes at each sting the insects gave him; and when they had fled, had her doors closed against every one of them for their pains.

The next day Gerard found her alone: cold and silent. After standing to him so some time, she said, “You treated my company with less respect than became you.”

“Did I, Signora?”

“Did you? you fired up at the comments they did you the honour to make on your work.”

“Nay, I said nought,” observed Gerard.

“Oh, high looks speak as plain as high words. Your cheeks were red as blood.”

“I was nettled a moment at seeing so much ignorance and ill-nature together.”

“Now it is me, their hostess, you affront.”

“Forgive me, Signora, and acquit me of design. It would ill become me to affront the kindest patron and friend I have in Rome but one.”

“How humble we are all of a sudden. In sooth, Ser Gerardo, you are a capital feigner. You can insult or truckle at will.”

“Truckle? to whom?”

“To me, for one; to one, whom you affronted for a base-born girl like yourself; but whose patronage you claim all the same.”

Gerard rose, and put his hand to his heart. “These are biting words, signora. Have I really deserved them?”

“Oh, what are words to an adventurer like you? cold steel is all you fear?”

“I am no swashbuckler, yet I have met steel with steel and methinks I had rather face your kinsmen's swords than your cruel tongue, lady. Why do you use me so?”

“Gerar-do, for no good reason, but because I am wayward, and shrewish, and curst, and because everybody admires me but you.”

“I admire you too, Signora. Your friends may flatter you more; but believe me they have not the eye to see half your charms. Their babble yesterday showed me that. None admire you more truly, or wish you better, than the poor artist, who might not be your lover, but hoped to be your friend; but no, I see that may not be between one so