And where affection came in and annihilated the woman's judgment, he stepped in his turn to her aid. Thus, though she knew she was spoiling little Gerard, and Catherine was ruining him for life, she would not part with him, but kept him at home, and his abilities uncultivated. And there was a shrewd boy of nine years, instead of learning to work and obey, playing about and learning selfishness from their infinite unselfishness, and tyrannizing with a rod of iron over two women, both of them sagacious and spirited, but reduced by their fondness for him to the exact level of idiots.
Gerard saw this with pain, and interfered with mild but firm remonstrance; and after a considerable struggle prevailed, and got little Gerard sent to the best school in Europe, kept by one Haaghe at Deventer: this was in 1477. Many tears were shed, but the great progress the boy made at that famous school reconciled Margaret in some degree, and the fidelity of Reicht Heynes, now her partner in business, enabled her to spend weeks at a time hovering over her boy at Deventer.
And so the years glided; and these two persons subjected to as strong and constant temptation as can well be conceived, were each other's guardian angels; and not each other's tempters.
To be sure the well greased morality of the next century, which taught that solemn vows to God are sacred in proportion as they are reasonable, had at that time entered no single mind; and the alternative to these two minds was self-denial, or sacrilege.
It was a strange thing to hear them talk with unrestrained tenderness to one another of their boy; and an icy barrier between themselves all the time.
Eight years had now passed thus, and Gerard, fairly compared with men in general, was happy.
But Margaret was not.
The habitual expression of her face was a sweet pensiveness; but sometimes she was irritable and a little petulant. She even snapped Gerard now and then. And, when she went to see him, if a monk was with him, she would turn her back and go home.
She hated the monks for having parted Gerard and her, and she inoculated her boy with a contempt for them which lasted him till his dying day.
Gerard bore with her like an angel. He knew her heart of gold, and hoped this ill gust would blow over.