The Greatest Novels of Charles Reade. Charles Reade Reade

than a handicraft!”

      Martin, carrying the dry clothes-basket, got treated, and drunk. This time he babbled her whole story. The girls got hold of it and gibed her at the fountain.

      All she had gone through was light to her, compared with the pins and bodkins her own sex drove into her heart, whenever she came near the merry crew with her pitcher, and that was every day. Each sex has its form of cruelty; man's is more brutal and terrible; but shallow women, that have neither read nor suffered, have an unmuscular barbarity of their own (where no feeling of sex steps in to overpower it). This defect, intellectual perhaps rather than moral, has been mitigated in our day by books, especially by able works of fiction; for there are two roads to the highest effort of intelligence, Pity; Experience of sorrows, and Imagination, by which alone we realize the grief we never felt. In the fifteenth century girls with pitchers had but one; Experience; and at sixteen years of age or so, that road had scarce been trodden. These girls persisted that Margaret was deserted by her lover. And to be deserted was a crime (They had not been deserted yet.) Not a word against the Gerard they had created out of their own heads. For the imaginary crime they fell foul of the supposed victim. Sometimes they affronted her to her face. Oftener they talked at her backwards and forwards with a subtle skill, and a perseverance which, “oh, that they had bestowed on the arts,” as poor Aguecheek says.

      Now Margaret was brave, and a coward; brave to battle difficulties and ill fortune; brave to shed her own blood for those she loved. Fortitude she had. But she had no true fighting courage. She was a powerful young woman, rather tall, full, and symmetrical; yet had one of those slips of girls slapped her face, the poor fool's hands would have dropped powerless, or gone to her own eyes instead of her adversary's. Nor was she even a match for so many tongues; and besides, what could she say? She knew nothing of these girls, except that somehow they had found out her sorrows, and hated her; only she thought to herself they must be very happy, or they would not be so hard on her.

      So she took their taunts in silence; and all her struggle was not to let them see their power to make her writhe within.

      Here came in her fortitude; and she received their blows with well-feigned, icy hauteur. They slapped a statue.

      But one day, when her spirits were weak, as happens at times to females in her condition, a dozen assailants followed suit so admirably, that her whole sex seemed to the dispirited one to be against her, and she lost heart, and the tears began to run silently at each fresh stab.

      On this their triumph knew no bounds, and they followed her half way home casting barbed speeches.

      After that exposure of weakness the statue could be assumed no more. So then she would stand timidly aloof out of tongue-shot, till her young tyrants' pitchers were all filled, and they gone; and then creep up with hers. And one day she waited so long that the fount had ceased to flow. So the next day she was obliged to face the phalanx, or her house go dry. She drew near slowly, but with the less tremor, that she saw a man at the well talking to them. He would distract their attention, and besides, they would keep their foul tongues quiet if only to blind the male to their real character. This conjecture, though shrewd, was erroneous. They could not all flirt with that one man; so the outsiders indemnified themselves by talking at her the very moment she came up.

      “Any news from foreign parts, Jacqueline?”

      “None for me, Martha. My lad goes no farther from me than the town wall.”

      “I can't say as much,” says a third.

      “But if he goes t' Italy I have got another ready to take the fool's place.”

      “He'll not go thither, lass. They go not so far till they are sick of us that bide in Holland.”

      Surprise and indignation, and the presence of a man, gave Margaret a moment's fighting courage.

      “Oh, flout me not, and show your ill nature before the very soldier. In Heaven's name, what ill did I ever to ye? what harsh word cast back, for all you have flung on me, a desolate stranger in your cruel town, that ye flout me for my bereavement and my poor lad's most unwilling banishment? Hearts of flesh would surely pity us both, for that ye cast in my teeth these many days, ye brows of brass, ye bosoms of stone.”

      They stared at this novelty, resistance; and ere they could recover and make mincement of her, she put her pitcher quietly down, and threw her coarse apron over her head, and stood there grieving, her short-lived spirit oozing fast. “Hallo!” cried the soldier, “why, what is your ill?” She made no reply. But a little girl, who had long secretly hated the big ones, squeaked out, “They did flout her, they are aye flouting her; she may not come nigh the fountain for fear o' them, and 'tis a black shame.”

      “Who spoke to her! Not I for one.”

      “Nor I. I would not bemean myself so far.”

      The man laughed heartily at this display of dignity. “Come, wife,” said he, “never lower thy flag to such light skirmishers as these. Hast a tongue i' thy head as well as they.”

      “Alack, good soldier, I was not bred to bandy foul terms.”

      “Well, but hast a better arm than these. Why not take 'em by twos across thy knee, and skelp 'em till they cry Meculpee?”

      “Nay, I would not hurt their bodies for all their cruel hearts.”

      “Then ye must e'en laugh at them, wife. What! a woman grown, and not see why mesdames give tongue? You are a buxom wife; they are a bundle of thread-papers. You are fair and fresh; they have all the Dutch rim under their bright eyes, that comes of dwelling in eternal swamps. There lies your crime. Come, gie me thy pitcher, and if they flout me, shalt see me scrub 'em all wi' my beard till they squeak holy mother.” The pitcher was soon filled, and the soldier put it in Margaret's hand. She murmured, “Thank you kindly, brave soldier.”

      He patted her on the shoulder. “Come, courage, brave wife; the divell is dead!” She let the heavy pitcher fall on his foot directly. He cursed horribly, and hopped in a circle, saying, “No, the Thief's alive and has broken my great toe.”

      The apron came down, and there was a lovely face all flushed with' emotion, and two beaming eyes in front of him, and two hands held out clasped.

      “Nay, nay, 'tis nought,” said he good-humouredly, mistaking.

      “Denys?”

      “Well?—But—Hallo! How know you my name is—”

      “Denys of Burgundy!”

      “Why, ods bodikins! I know you not, and you know me.”

      “By Gerard's letter. Crossbow! beard! handsome! The divell is dead.”

      “Sword of Goliah! this must be she. Red hair, violet eyes, lovely face. But I took ye for a married wife, seeing ye—-”

      “Tell me my name,” said she quickly.

      “Margaret Brandt.”

      “Gerard? Where is he? Is he in life? Is he well? Is he coming? Is he come? Why is he not here? Where have ye left him? Oh tell me! prithee, prithee, prithee, tell me!”

      “Ay, ay, but not here. Oh, ye are all curiosity now, mesdames, eh? Lass, I have been three months a-foot travelling all Holland to find ye, and here you are. Oh, be joyful!” and he flung his cap in the air, and seizing both her hands kissed them ardently. “Ah, my pretty she-comrade, I have found thee at last. I knew I should. Shall be flouted no more. I'll twist your necks at the first word, ye little trollops. And I have got fifteen gold angels left for thee, and our Gerard will soon be here. Shalt wet thy purple eyes no more.”

      But the fair eyes were wet even now, looking kindly and gratefully at the friend that had dropped among her foes as if from heaven; Gerard's comrade. “Prithee come home with me good, kind Denys. I cannot speak of him before these.” They went off together, followed by a chorus. “She has gotten a man. She has gotten a man at last. Boo! boo! boo!”

      Margaret quickened her steps; but Denys took down his crossbow and pretended to shoot them