Argosy, Vol. 1 (1882) — page 302: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

BROTHER DUNSTAN AND THE CRABS. about to say “ just out of the water,” but could he say so conscientiously ? He hastened to set the basket down within the cottage, as he had done at Giles Aubrey’s, but the old woman . checked him. On her bright face a shadow came. “Crabs, your reverence, crabs?” she faltered. “ It is good and kind of you, but I cannot take them, or any- thing else that comes out of the sea! I am a foolish old woman, I-know, but my boy was drowned, perhaps I have told you, and lies at the bottom; and since then anything from the sea has given me that creepy feeling! I could not eat them, asking pardon, your rev- erence; but there are many others, poor souls, who would be glad.” “ Your feeling is, as you say,.a fool- ish one,” said Brother Dunstan, with a touch of severity, “ but since sea food offends you I will not press my offer- ing. Good day and God be with you.” “Will you not step into my little house, and let me give you a draft of milk, or a bunch of grapes?” said the good woman, anxiously, being pain- fully embarrassed by the situation. The brothers from the monastery were not folk with whom one could feel on easy terms, and she could not possibly imagine any reason why this young saint, known to be the nearest perfection of them all, should have stopped at her door with this strange offering. The basket, however, was once more lifted to the brother’s arm, and he courteously but firmly refused her hospitality. She watched him pass out of sight, bewilderment on her face. “TI would have taken a bottle of wine,” she-said to herself, pensively, “or a basket of the monastery fruit, but crabs—nay, I could never have tasted them.” * * * * A little house a bow shot away from Dame Jessamy’s, with hollyhocks 293 about the door, and mossy shingles on the roof, was all too small to contain the happiness of Reuben and Isabel, -who had been wedded a fortnight. On this day, a half hour after sun- rise, they sat at breakfast. There was upon the table a brown loaf, and a dish of wild strawberries, and an earthen pitcher of milk ; and they had a tangled bunch of wild flowers in an old jug; but they had nothing else, save perfect happiness and content, and a complete absorption in each other. They talked gaily and laughed much; and it was a rare pity that no poet chanced to pass that way to see them, and write an idyll on love and springtime and sweet country joy. The parting which lay before them, when Reuben should go out to his work in the fields, leaving the young wife to play at tidying the house, until in an hour she should fling on her pink bonnet and follow him, seemed a grievous thing, and they put it from them as long as-possible. . | Presently Isabel looked up, and saw in the window, framed in a tangle of honeysuckle, the wistful, unworldly face of Brother Dunstan. He had stood there for many minutes, lost ina dream, his fresh young manhood, which the frock could only conceal, not kill, all astir. | There was a curious pain and jeal- ousy in his heart as he watched them. Had he been conscious, he who had never even touched a girl’s slight fin- gers, that he was envious of these won- derful possibilities in the lives of other men of his years, he would have wrest- led with the feeling and cast it out; but he hardly knew what he was think- ing’. As Isabel saw his face, with its sad young eyes, she sprang up, light as a fawn, and throwing open the door bade him enter. Brother Dunstan hesitated on the threshold. It seemed scarcely right for him to come into this house where the honeymoon was new) oO SS CO