"It means that I am a ruined man, my poor girl!"
"Ruined! O father, how can that be? Methought you were a man of
much substance. Mother always said so."
Gertrude looked anxiously into the careworn face of her father,
which had greatly changed during the past weeks. He paid her
occasional visits in her self-chosen home, being one of those who
had ceased to fear contagion, and went about almost without
precaution, from sheer indifference to the long-continued peril. He
had been a changed man ever since the melancholy deaths of his son
and his wife; but today a darker cloud than any she had seen there
before rested upon his brow, and the daughter was anxious to learn
the reason of it. This it was which had wrung from the Master
Builder the foregoing confession.
"Your poor mother was partly right, and partly wrong. I might have
been a rich man, I might be a rich man even now--terrible as is the
state of trade in this stricken city--had it not been that she
would have me adventure beyond my means in her haste to see me
wealthy before my fellows. And the end of it is that I stand here
today a ruined man!"
Gertrude held in her arms a little child, over whom she bent from
time to time to assure herself that it slept. Her face had grown
pale and thin during her long confinement between the walls of this
house; yet it was a happier and more contented face than it had
been wont to be in the days when she lived in luxurious idleness at
her mother's side. She looked many years older than she had done
then, but there was a beauty and sweet serenity about her
appearance now which had not been visible in the days of old.
"What has happened during this sad time to ruin you, dear father?"
asked Gertrude gently, guessing that it would ease his heart to
talk of his troubles. "Is it the sudden stoppage of all trade?"
"That has been serious enough. It would have done much harm had
that been the only thing, but there be many, many other causes.
Thou art too young and unversed in the ways of business to
understand all; but I was not content to grow rich in the course of
business alone. I had ventures of all sorts afloat--on sea and on
land; and through the death of patrons, through the sudden stoppage
of all trade, numbers and numbers of these have come to no good. My
money is lost; my loans cannot be recovered. Men are dead or fled
to whom I looked for payment. Half-finished houses are thrown back
on my hands, since half London is empty. And poor Frederick's debts
are like the sands upon the seashore. I cannot meet them, but I
cannot let others suffer for his imprudence and folly. The old
house on the bridge will have to go. I must needs sell it so soon
as a purchaser can be found. It may be I shall have to hand it over
to one of Frederick's creditors bodily. I had thought to end my
days there in peace, with my children's children round me. But the
Almighty is dealing very bitterly with me. Wife and son are taken
away, and now the old home must follow!"
Gertrude, who knew his great love for the house in which he had
been born, well understood what a fearful wrench this would be, and
her heart overflowed with compassion.
"O father! must it be so? Is there no way else? Methought you had
stores of costly goods laid by in your warehouses. Surely the sale
of those things would save you from this last step!"
The Master Builder smiled a little bitterly.
"Truly is it said that wealth takes to itself wings in days of
adversity. I myself thought as you do, child--at least in part; and
today I visited my warehouses, to look over my goods and see what
there were to fetch when men will dare to buy things which have
lain within the walls of this doomed city all these months. I had
the keys of the place. I myself locked them up when the plague
forced me to close my warehouse and dismiss my men. I saw all made
sure, as I thought, with my own eyes. But what think you I found
there today?"
"O father! what?" asked Gertrude, and yet she divined the answer
all too well; for she had heard stories of robbery and daring
wickedness even during this season of judgment and punishment which
prepared her for the worst.
"That the whole place had been plundered; that there was nothing
left of any price whatever. Thieves have broken in during this time
of panic, and have despoiled me of the value of thousands of
pounds. Whilst my mind has been full of other matters, my worldly
wealth has been swept away. I stand here before you a ruined man.
And like enough the very miscreants who have used this time of
public calamity for plunder and lawlessness may be lying by this
time in the common grave. But that will not give my property back
to me."
"Alas, father, these are indeed evil days! But has no watch been
kept upon the streets that such acts can be done by the evil
disposed? Is all property in the city at the mercy of the violent
and wicked?"
"Only too much has vanished that same way, as I have heard from
many. Some owners are themselves gone where they will need their
valuables no more, and others were careful to remove all they had
to their own houses, or they themselves lived over their goods and
could guard them by their presence. That is where my error lay. I
gave your mother her will in this. She liked not the shop beneath,
and I stored my goods elsewhere. Poor woman, she is dead and gone;
we will speak no hard things of her weaknesses and follies. But had
she lived to see this day, she had grievously lamented her resolve
to have naught about her to remind her of buying and selling."
"Ah, poor mother! I often think it was the happiest thing for her
to be taken ere these fearful things came to pass. The terror would
well nigh have driven her distracted. Methinks she would have died
of sheer fright. But, father, is all lost past recovery? Can none
of the watch or of the constables tell you aught, or help you to
recover aught?"
"Ah, child, in these days of death, who is to know so much as where
to carry one's questions? Watchmen and constables have died and
changed a score of times in the past two months. The magistrates do
their best to keep order in the city, but who can fight against the
odds of such a time as this? The very men employed as watchmen may
be the thieves themselves. They have to take the services of almost
any who offer. It is no time to pick and choose. I carried my story
to the Lord Mayor himself, and he gave me sympathy and pity; but to
look for the robbers is a hopeless task. It is most like that the
plague pits have received them ere now. The mortality in the lower
parts of the city is more fearful than it has ever been, and it
seems as though the summer heats would never end. Belike I shall be
taken next, and then it will matter little that my fortune has
taken unto itself wings."
Gertrude came and bent over him with a soft caress.
"Say not so, dear father. God has preserved us all this while. Let
us not distrust His love and goodness now."
"It might be the greater mercy," answered the Master Builder in a
depressed voice. "I am too old to start life again with nothing but
my broken credit for capital. As for you, child, your future is
assured. I could leave you happy in that thought. You would want
for nothing."
Gertrude raised her eyes wonderingly to her father's face. She had
laid the sleeping child in its cot, and had taken a place at her
father's feet.
"What mean you, father?" she asked. "I have only you in the wide
world now. If you were to die, I should be both orphaned and
destitute. What mean you by speaking of my future thus? Whom have I
in the wide world besides yourself?"
The father passed his hand over her curly hair, and answered with a
sigh and a smile:
"Surely, child, thou dost know by this time that the heart of
Reuben Harmer is all thine own. He worships the very ground on
which thou dost tread. His father and I have spoken of it. Fortune
has dealt more kindly with our neighbours than with me. Good James
Harmer has laid by money, while I have adventured it rashly in the
hope of large returns. This calamity has but checked his work for
these months; when the scourge is past, he will reopen business
once more, and will find himself but little the poorer. He is a
wiser man than I have been; and his wife and sons have all been
helpful to him. The love of Reuben Harmer is my assurance for thy
future welfare. Thou wilt never want so long as they have a roof
over their heads.
"Nay, now what ails thee, child? Why dost thou spring up and look
at me like that?"
For Gertrude's usually tranquil face was ablaze now with all manner
of conflicting emotions. She seemed for a moment almost too
agitated to speak, and when she could command herself there were
traces of great emotion in her voice.
"Father, father!" she cried, "how can you thus shame me? You must
know with what unmerited scorn and contumely Reuben was treated by
poor mother when it was we who were rich and they who were (in her
belief, at least) poor. She would scarce let him cross the
threshold of our house. I have tingled with shame at the way in
which she spoke of and to him. Frederick openly insulted him at
pleasure. Every slight was heaped upon him; and he was once told to
his very face that he might look elsewhere for a wife, for that my
fortune was to win me the hand of some needy Court gallant. Yes,
father, I heard with my own ears those very words spoken--save that
the term 'needy' was added in mine own heart. Oh, I could have
shrunk into the earth with shame. And after all this, after all
these insults and aspersions heaped upon him in the day of our
prosperity--am I to be made over to him penniless and needy,
without a shilling of dowry? Am I to be thrown upon his generosity
in my hour of poverty, when I was denied to him in my day of
supposed wealth?
"Father, father! I cannot, I will not permit it. I can work for my
own bread if needs must be. But I will not owe it to the generosity
of Reuben Harmer, after all that has passed. I should be humbled to
the very dust!"
The Master Builder looked at his daughter in amaze. He had never
seen Gertrude quite so moved before.
"Why, child," he exclaimed in astonishment. "I always thought that
thou hadst a liking for the youth!"
Then at that word Gertrude burst suddenly into tears and cried:
"I love him as mine own soul, and I am not ashamed to own it. But
that is the very reason why I will have none of him now. I will not
be thrown upon his generosity like a bundle of damaged goods. Let
him seek a wife who can bring him a modest fortune with her, and
who has never been scornfully denied to him before. O father! can
you not see that I can never consent to be his now?
"O mother, mother! why did you do me this ill?"
The father felt that the situation had got beyond him. Never much
versed in the ways of women, he was fairly puzzled by his
daughter's strange method of taking his confidence. He knew, of
course, of the tactics of his wife, which he had deplored at the
time, though he had been unable to bring her to a better frame of
mind; but since the young people liked each other, and since madam
was in her grave, it seemed absurd to let a shadow stand between
them and their happiness. Perhaps if left to herself Gertrude would
reach that conclusion of her own accord, and the Master Builder
rose to go without pressing the matter further.
Gertrude, left alone, was weeping silently and bitterly beside the
child's cot, when she was aware of a little short laugh almost at
her elbow, and a familiar voice said in sharp accents:
"Good child! I like a woman with a spirit of her own. Go on as you
have begun, and don't let him think he is to have it all his own
way. Lovers are all very well, but husbands soon show their wives
how cheap they hold them when they have won them all too cheap.
Throw him aside in scorn! Let him not think or see that you care a
snap of the fingers for him. That will rivet the fetters all the
faster; and when you have got him like a tame bear at the end of a
chain--why then you can make up your mind at leisure what you will
end by doing."
Gertrude sprang up suddenly, and faced Lady Scrope with flushed
cheeks and glowing eyes.
The little witch-like woman with her black-handled stick and her
mobcap was no unfrequent visitor to this shut-up house. There was a
communication between the two dwellings by means of a door in the
cellars, and all this while curiosity, or some better motive, had
prompted the eccentric old woman to come to and fro between her own
luxurious house and this, paying visits to the devoted girls, and
by turns terrifying and charming the children. Gertrude had been
interested from the first by the piquant individuality of the old
aristocrat, and was a decided favourite with her. It was plain now
that she had been listening to the conversation between father and
daughter, a thing so characteristic of her curiosity and even of
her benevolence that Gertrude hardly so much as resented it.
Nevertheless, having a spirit of her own, and being by no means
prepared to be dictated to in these matters, some hot words escaped
her lips almost before she knew, and were answered by Lady Scrope
by an amused peal of her witch-like laughter.
"Tut! tut! tut! Hoity toity! but she is in a temper, is she, my
lady? Well a good thing too. Your saints are insipid unless they
can call up a spice of the devil on occasion! Oh, don't you be
afraid of me, child. I've known all about you and young Harmer this
long time. I agree with your late mother, that you could do better;
but with all the world topsy turvy as it is now, we must take what
we can get; and that young man is estimable without doubt, and a
bit of a hero in his way. I don't blame you for loving him. It's
the way with maids, and will be to the end of time, I take it. All
I say is, don't throw yourself away too fast. Show a proper pride.
Keep him dangling and fearing, rather than hoping too much. Show
him that he can't have you just for the asking. Why, child, I have
kept a dozen fools hanging round me for a twelvemonth together
sometimes; but I only married when I was tired of the game, and
when I knew I had made sure of a captive who would not rebel. I
swore in church to obey poor Scrope; but, bless you, he obeyed me
like a lamb to the last day of his life--and was all the better for
it."
Lady Scrope's reminiscences and bits of worldly wisdom were not
much more to Gertrude's taste than her father's had been. It was
not pride, but a sense of humiliation and shame, which kept her
from facing the thought of marriage with Reuben now that she was
poor, when she had been scornfully denied to him when she was
thought to be a well-dowered maiden. The idea of keeping him
dangling after her in suspense was about the last that would ever
have entered her head. Her feeling was one of profound humiliation
and unworthiness. Her mother's bitter words could never be
forgotten by her; and after what her father had told her of his
ruined state, it appeared to her simply impossible that she should
let Reuben take possession of her and her future when she could
bring nothing in return.
But she could not speak of these things to Lady Scrope; and finding
her favourite irresponsive and reserved, the dame shrugged her
shoulders and passed on to another room, where the children were
soon heard to utter shrieks and gasps of mingled delight and terror
at the stories she told them, which stories invariably fascinated
them to an extraordinary degree, yet left them with a sense of
undefined horror that was half delightful, half terrible.
They all thought that she was a witch, and that she could spirit
any of them away to fairy land. But since she brought sweetmeats in
her capacious pockets, and had an endless fund of stories at her
disposal, her visits were always welcomed, and she had certainly
shown herself capable of a most unsuspected benevolence at this
crisis, in presenting this house to the authorities for such a
purpose, and in contributing considerably to the maintenance of the
desolate little inmates.
She liked to hear their dismal stories almost as well as they liked
to hear hers. She made a point of visiting every fresh batch of
children, after they had been duly fumigated and disinfected, and
she seemed to take a horrible and unnatural delight in the ghastly
details of desolation and death which were revealed in the artless
narratives of the children.
She was one of those who, knowing much of the fearful corruption of
the times, were fond of prognosticating this judgment as a sweeping
away of the dregs of the earth; although she still maintained that
had the water supply been purer and differently arranged, the
judgment of Heaven would have had to seek another medium.
For three or four days Gertrude lived in a state of feverish
expectancy and subdued excitement. She had fancied from her
father's tone in speaking that there had been some talk of a
betrothal between him and his neighbour, and that Reuben might take
her consent for granted. The idea made her restless and unhappy.
She wished the ordeal of refusing him over. She believed she was
right in taking this step; but it was a hard one, and she was
sometimes afraid of her own courage. The more she thought of the
matter the more she convinced herself that Reuben's love was one of
compassion rather than true affection. He had almost ceased his
attentions in her mother's lifetime, and had been very reserved in
his intercourse of late. Doubtless if he heard of her father's
ruin, generosity would make him strive to do all that he could for
her in her changed circumstances. It would be like him then to step
forward and avow himself ready to marry her. But it was out of the
question for her to consent. She wished the matter settled and done
with; she wished the irrevocable words spoken.
And yet when at dusk one evening Reuben suddenly stood before her,
she felt her heart beating to suffocation, and wished that she had
any reasonable excuse for fleeing from him.
His visits to the house were not frequent; he was too busy to make
them so. But from time to time he brought orphaned children to the
home of shelter, or took away from it some of those for whom other
homes had been found with their kinsfolk in other places. Tonight
he had brought in three little destitute orphans; but having given
them over into the care of his sisters, he went in search of
Gertrude, who was with the youngest of the children in a separate
room, and, having sung them all to sleep, was sitting in the window
thinking her own thoughts.
She knew what was coming when she saw Reuben's face, and braced
herself to meet it. Reuben was very quiet and self-restrained--so
self-restrained that she thought she read in his manner an
indication that her suspicion was correct, and that it was pity
rather than love which prompted his proposal of marriage.
As a matter of fact Reuben was more in love with Gertrude now than
he had ever been in his life before; but he had come to look upon
her as a being so far above him in every respect that he sometimes
marvelled at himself for ever hoping to win her. The fact that her
father was just now a ruined man seemed to him as nothing. At a
time like this the presence or absence of this world's goods
appeared absolutely trivial. Reuben believed that the Master
Builder would retrieve his fortune in better times without
difficulty, and regarded this temporary reverse as absolutely
insignificant. Therefore he had no clue to Gertrude's motive in her
rejection of him, and accepted it almost in silence, feeling that
it was what he always ought to have looked for, and marvelling at
his temerity in seeking the hand of one who was to him more angel
than woman.
He said very little; he took it very quietly. It seemed to him as
though all the life went out of him, and as though hope died within
him for ever. But he scarcely showed any outward emotion as he rose
and said farewell; and little did he guess how, when he had gone,
Gertrude flung herself on the floor in a passion of tears and
sobbed till the fountain of her weeping was exhausted.
"I was right! I was right! It was not love; it was only pity! But
ah, how terrible it is to put aside all the happiness of one's
life! Oh I wonder if I have done wrong! I wonder if I could better
have borne it if I had humbled myself to take what he had to offer,
without thinking of anything but myself!"
Would he come again? Would he try to see her any more? Would this
be the end of everything between them? Gertrude asked herself these
questions a thousand times a day; but a week flew by and he had not
come. She had not seen a sign of him, nor had any word concerning
him reached her from without. There was nothing very unusual in this,
certainly; and yet as day after day passed by without bringing him,
the girl felt her heart sinking within her, and would have given
worlds for the chance of reconsidering her well-considered judgment.
How the days went by she scarcely knew, but the next event in her
dream-like life was the sudden bursting into the room of Dorcas,
her face flushed, and her eyelids swollen and red with weeping.
Dorcas was a member of Lady Scrope's household, but paid visits
from time to time to the other house. Also, as Lady Scrope's house
was not shut up, she could go thence to pay a visit home at any
time, and she had just come from one such visit now.
Gertrude sprang up at sight of her, asking anxiously:
"Dorcas! Dorcas! what is wrong?"
"Reuben!" cried Dorcas, with a great catch in her breath, and then
she fell sobbing again as though her heart would break.
Gertrude stood like one turned to stone, her face growing as white
as her kerchief.
"What of Reuben?" she asked, in a voice that she hardly knew for
her own. "He is not--dead?"
"Pray Heaven he be not," cried Dorcas through her sobs; and then,
with a great effort controlling herself, she told her brief tale.
"I went home at noon today and found them all in sore trouble.
Reuben has not been seen or heard of for three days. Mother says
she had a fear for several days before that that something was
amiss; he looked so wan, and ate so little, and seemed like one out
of whom all heart is gone. He would go forth daily to his work, but
he came home harassed and tired, and on the last morning she
thought him sick; but he said he was well, and promised to come
home early. Then she let him go, and no one has seen him since.
"Oh, what can have befallen him? There seems but one thing to
believe. They say the sickness is worse now than ever it was.
People drop down dead in street and market, and soon there will be
none left to bury them. That must have been Reuben's fate. He has
dropped down with the infection upon him, and if he be not lying in
some pest house--which they say it is death now to enter--he must
be lying in one of those awful graves.
"O Reuben! Reuben! we shall never see you again!"