Part 13 (2/2)
”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 pa.s.s. 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. G.o.d 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 a.s.sured. 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 dest.i.tute. What mean you by speaking of my future thus? Whom have I in the wide world besides yourself?”
The father pa.s.sed 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 wors.h.i.+ps 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 a.s.surance 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 s.h.i.+lling 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 pa.s.sed. 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.”
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