Father Leonard, visited, soothed, and petted by his idol, recovered his
spirits, and, if he pined during her absence, he was always so joyful
in her presence that she thought of course he was permanently happy;
so then, being by nature magnanimous and placable, she began to smile
on her husband again, and a tacit reconciliation came about by natural
degrees.
But this produced a startling result.
Leonard, as her confessor, had only to follow precedents, and ask
questions his Church has printed for the use of confessors, and he soon
learned enough to infer that their disunion had given way.
The consequence was that one day, being off his guard, or literally
unable to contain his bursting heart any longer, he uttered a cry
of jealous agony, and then in a torrent of burning, melting words,
appealed to her pity. He painted her husband's happiness, and his own
misery, and barren desolation, with a fervid passionate eloquence that
paralysed his hearer, and left her pale and trembling, and the tears of
pity trickling down her cheek.
Those silent tears calmed him a little; and he begged her forgiveness,
and awaited his doom.
"I pity you," said she, angelically. "What? you jealous of my husband!
Oh, pray to Christ and our Lady to cure you of this folly."
She rose, fluttering inwardly, but calm as a statue on the outside,
gave him her hand, and went home very slowly; and the moment she was
out of his sight she drooped her head like a crushed flower.
She was sad, ashamed, alarmed.
Her mind was in a whirl; and, were I to imitate those writers who
undertake to dissect and analyse the heart at such moments, and put the
exact result on paper, I should be apt to sacrifice truth to precision;
I must stick to my old plan, and tell you what she did: that will
surely be some index to her mind, especially with my female readers.
She went home straight to her husband; he was smoking his pipe after
dinner. She drew her chair close to him, and laid her hand tenderly on
his shoulder. "Griffith," she said, "will you grant your wife a favour?
You once promised to take me abroad: I desire to go now: I long to see
foreign countries: I am tired of this place. I want a change. Prithee,
prithee take me hence this very day."
Griffith looked aghast. "Why, sweetheart, it takes a deal of money to
go abroad; we must get in our rents first."
"Nay, I have a hundred pounds laid by."
"Well, but what a fancy to take all of a sudden!"
"Oh, Griffith, don't deny me what I ask you, with my arm round your
neck, dearest. It is no fancy. I want to be alone with you, far from
this place where coolness has come between us." And with this she fell
to crying and sobbing, and straining him tight to her bosom, as if she
feared to lose him, or be taken from him.
Griffith kissed her, and told her to cheer up, he was not the man to
deny her anything. "Just let me get my hay in," said he, "and I'll take
you to Rome, if you like."
"No, no: to-day, or to-morrow at furthest, or you don't love me as I
deserve to be loved by you this day."
"Now Kate, my darling, be reasonable. I must get my hay in; and then I
am your man."
Mrs. Gaunt had gradually sunk almost to her knees. She now started up
with nostrils expanding and her blue eyes glittering. "Your hay!" she
cried, with bitter contempt; "your hay before your wife? That is how
you love me."
And, the next moment, she seemed to turn from a fiery woman to a
glacier.
Griffith smiled at all this with that lordly superiority the male of
our species sometimes wears when he is behaving like a dull ass; and
smoked his pipe, and resolved to indulge her whim as soon as ever he
had got his hay in.