Part 14 (1/2)
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 pa.s.sed 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 compa.s.sion 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 circ.u.mstances. 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 dest.i.tute 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 pa.s.sion 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 pa.s.sed 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.