MARGARET BRANDT had always held herself apart from Sevenbergen;and her reserve had passed for pride; this had come to her ears, and she knew many hearts were swelling with jealousy and malevolence.How would they triumph over her when her condition could no longer be concealed! This thought gnawed her night and day.For some time it had made her bury herself in the house, and shun daylight even on those rare occasions when she went abroad.
Not that in her secret heart and conscience she mistook her moral situation, as my unlearned readers have done perhaps.Though not acquainted with the nice distinctions of the contemporary law, she knew that betrothal was a marriage contract, and could no more be legally broken on either side than any other compact written and witnessed; and that marriage with another party than the betrothed had been formerly annulled both by Church and State and that betrothed couples often came together without any further ceremony, and their children were legitimate.
But what weighed down her simple mediaeval mind was this: that very contract of betrothal was not forthcoming.Instead of her keeping it, Gerard had got it, and Gerard was far, far away.She hated and despised herself for the miserable oversight which had placed her at the mercy of false opinion.
For though she had never heard Horace's famous couplet, Segnius irritant, etc., she was Horatian by the plain, hard, positive intelligence, which, strange to say, characterizes the judgment of her sex, when feeling happens not to blind it altogether.She gauged the understanding of the world to a T.Her marriage lines being out of sight, and in Italy, would never prevail to balance her visible pregnancy, and the sight of her child when born.What sort of a tale was this to stop slanderous tongues? "I have got my marriage lines, but I cannot show them you." What woman would believe her? or even pretend to believe her? And as she was in reality one of the most modest girls in Holland, it was women's good opinion she wanted, not men's.
Even barefaced slander attacks her sex at a great advantage; but here was slander with a face of truth."The strong-minded woman"had not yet been invented; and Margaret, though by nature and by having been early made mistress of a family, she was resolute in some respects, was weak as water in others, and weakest of all in this.Like all the elite of her sex, she was a poor little leaf, trembling at each gust of the world's opinion, true or false.Much misery may be contained in few words.I doubt if pages of description from any man's pen could make any human creature, except virtuous women (and these need no such aid), realize the anguish of a virtuous woman foreseeing herself paraded as a frail one.Had she been frail at heart, she might have brazened it out.
But she had not that advantage.She was really pure as snow, and saw the pitch coming nearer her and nearer.The poor girl sat listless hours at a time, and moaned with inner anguish.And often, when her father was talking to her, and she giving mechanical replies, suddenly her cheek would burn like fire, and the old man would wonder what he had said to discompose her.
Nothing.His words were less than air to her.It was the ever-present dread sent the colour of shame into her burning cheek, no matter what she seemed to be talking and thinking about.
But both shame and fear rose to a climax when she came back that night from Margaret Van Eyck's.Her condition was discovered, and by persons of her own sex.The old artist, secluded like herself, might not betray her; but Catherine, a gossip in the centre of a family, and a thick neighbourhood? One spark of hope remained.
Catherine had spoken kindly, even lovingly.The situation admitted no half course.Gerard's mother thus roused must either be her best friend or worst enemy.She waited then in racking anxiety to hear more.No word came.She gave up hope.Catherine was not going to be her friend.Then she would expose her, since she had no strong and kindly feeling to balance the natural love of babbling.
Then it was the wish to fly from this neighbourhood began to grow and gnaw upon her, till it became a wild and passionate desire.
But how persuade her father to this? Old people cling to places.
He was very old and infirm to change his abode.There was no course but to make him her confidant; better so than to run away from him; and she felt that would be the alternative.And now between her uncontrollable desire to fly and hide, and her invincible aversion to speak out to a man, even to her father, she vibrated in a suspense full of lively torture.And presently betwixt these two came in one day the fatal thought, "end all!"Things foolishly worded are not always foolish; one of poor Catherine's bugbears, these numerous canals, did sorely tempt this poor fluctuating girl.She stood on the bank one afternoon, and eyed the calm deep water.It seemed an image of repose, and she was so harassed.No more trouble.No more fear of shame.If Gerard had not loved her, I doubt she had ended there.