The Sign of the Red Cross: A Tale of Old London Read online

  CHAPTER XI. LOVE IN DIFFICULTIES.

  "It means that I am a ruined man, my poor girl!"

  "Ruined! O father, how can that be? Methought you were a man ofmuch 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 heroccasional visits in her self-chosen home, being one of those whohad ceased to fear contagion, and went about almost withoutprecaution, from sheer indifference to the long-continued peril. Hehad been a changed man ever since the melancholy deaths of his sonand his wife; but today a darker cloud than any she had seen therebefore rested upon his brow, and the daughter was anxious to learnthe reason of it. This it was which had wrung from the MasterBuilder the foregoing confession.

  "Your poor mother was partly right, and partly wrong. I might havebeen a rich man, I might be a rich man even now--terrible as is thestate of trade in this stricken city--had it not been that shewould have me adventure beyond my means in her haste to see mewealthy before my fellows. And the end of it is that I stand heretoday a ruined man!"

  Gertrude held in her arms a little child, over whom she bent fromtime to time to assure herself that it slept. Her face had grownpale and thin during her long confinement between the walls of thishouse; yet it was a happier and more contented face than it hadbeen wont to be in the days when she lived in luxurious idleness ather mother's side. She looked many years older than she had donethen, but there was a beauty and sweet serenity about herappearance 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 totalk of his troubles. "Is it the sudden stoppage of all trade?"

  "That has been serious enough. It would have done much harm hadthat been the only thing, but there be many, many other causes.Thou art too young and unversed in the ways of business tounderstand all; but I was not content to grow rich in the course ofbusiness alone. I had ventures of all sorts afloat--on sea and onland; and through the death of patrons, through the sudden stoppageof all trade, numbers and numbers of these have come to no good. Mymoney is lost; my loans cannot be recovered. Men are dead or fledto whom I looked for payment. Half-finished houses are thrown backon my hands, since half London is empty. And poor Frederick's debtsare like the sands upon the seashore. I cannot meet them, but Icannot let others suffer for his imprudence and folly. The oldhouse on the bridge will have to go. I must needs sell it so soonas a purchaser can be found. It may be I shall have to hand it overto one of Frederick's creditors bodily. I had thought to end mydays there in peace, with my children's children round me. But theAlmighty is dealing very bitterly with me. Wife and son are takenaway, and now the old home must follow!"

  Gertrude, who knew his great love for the house in which he hadbeen born, well understood what a fearful wrench this would be, andher heart overflowed with compassion.

  "O father! must it be so? Is there no way else? Methought you hadstores of costly goods laid by in your warehouses. Surely the saleof 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 ofadversity. I myself thought as you do, child--at least in part; andtoday I visited my warehouses, to look over my goods and see whatthere were to fetch when men will dare to buy things which havelain within the walls of this doomed city all these months. I hadthe keys of the place. I myself locked them up when the plagueforced me to close my warehouse and dismiss my men. I saw all madesure, as I thought, with my own eyes. But what think you I foundthere today?"

  "O father! what?" asked Gertrude, and yet she divined the answerall too well; for she had heard stories of robbery and daringwickedness even during this season of judgment and punishment whichprepared her for the worst.

  "That the whole place had been plundered; that there was nothingleft of any price whatever. Thieves have broken in during this timeof panic, and have despoiled me of the value of thousands ofpounds. Whilst my mind has been full of other matters, my worldlywealth has been swept away. I stand here before you a ruined man.And like enough the very miscreants who have used this time ofpublic calamity for plunder and lawlessness may be lying by thistime in the common grave. But that will not give my property backto me."

  "Alas, father, these are indeed evil days! But has no watch beenkept upon the streets that such acts can be done by the evildisposed? Is all property in the city at the mercy of the violentand wicked?"

  "Only too much has vanished that same way, as I have heard frommany. Some owners are themselves gone where they will need theirvaluables no more, and others were careful to remove all they hadto their own houses, or they themselves lived over their goods andcould guard them by their presence. That is where my error lay. Igave 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 hadshe lived to see this day, she had grievously lamented her resolveto have naught about her to remind her of buying and selling."

  "Ah, poor mother! I often think it was the happiest thing for herto be taken ere these fearful things came to pass. The terror wouldwell nigh have driven her distracted. Methinks she would have diedof sheer fright. But, father, is all lost past recovery? Can noneof the watch or of the constables tell you aught, or help you torecover aught?"

  "Ah, child, in these days of death, who is to know so much as whereto carry one's questions? Watchmen and constables have died andchanged a score of times in the past two months. The magistrates dotheir best to keep order in the city, but who can fight against theodds of such a time as this? The very men employed as watchmen maybe the thieves themselves. They have to take the services of almostany who offer. It is no time to pick and choose. I carried my storyto the Lord Mayor himself, and he gave me sympathy and pity; but tolook for the robbers is a hopeless task. It is most like that theplague pits have received them ere now. The mortality in the lowerparts of the city is more fearful than it has ever been, and itseems as though the summer heats would never end. Belike I shall betaken next, and then it will matter little that my fortune hastaken 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. Letus not distrust His love and goodness now."

  "It might be the greater mercy," answered the Master Builder in adepressed voice. "I am too old to start life again with nothing butmy broken credit for capital. As for you, child, your future isassured. I could leave you happy in that thought. You would wantfor nothing."

  Gertrude raised her eyes wonderingly to her father's face. She hadlaid the sleeping child in its cot, and had taken a place at herfather's feet.

  "What mean you, father?" she asked. "I have only you in the wideworld now. If you were to die, I should be both orphaned anddestitute. What mean you by speaking of my future thus? Whom have Iin the wide world besides yourself?"

  The father passed his hand over her curly hair, and answered with asigh and a smile:

  "Surely, child, thou dost know by this time that the heart ofReuben Harmer is all thine own. He worships the very ground onwhich thou dost tread. His father and I have spoken of it. Fortunehas dealt more kindly with our neighbours than with me. Good JamesHarmer has laid by money, while I have adventured it rashly in thehope of large returns. This calamity has but checked his work forthese months; when the scourge is past, he will reopen businessonce more, and will find himself but little the poorer. He is awiser man than I have been; and his wife and sons have all beenhelpful to him. The love of Reuben Harmer is my assurance for thyfuture welfare. Thou wilt never want so long as they have a roofover their heads.

  "Nay, now what ails thee, child? Why dost thou spring up and lookat me like that?"

  For Gertrude's usually tranquil face was ablaze now with all mannerof
conflicting emotions. She seemed for a moment almost tooagitated to speak, and when she could command herself there weretraces of great emotion in her voice.

  "Father, father!" she cried, "how can you thus shame me? You mustknow with what unmerited scorn and contumely Reuben was treated bypoor mother when it was we who were rich and they who were (in herbelief, at least) poor. She would scarce let him cross thethreshold of our house. I have tingled with shame at the way inwhich she spoke of and to him. Frederick openly insulted him atpleasure. Every slight was heaped upon him; and he was once told tohis very face that he might look elsewhere for a wife, for that myfortune was to win me the hand of some needy Court gallant. Yes,father, I heard with my own ears those very words spoken--save thatthe term 'needy' was added in mine own heart. Oh, I could haveshrunk into the earth with shame. And after all this, after allthese insults and aspersions heaped upon him in the day of ourprosperity--am I to be made over to him penniless and needy,without a shilling of dowry? Am I to be thrown upon his generosityin my hour of poverty, when I was denied to him in my day ofsupposed wealth?

  "Father, father! I cannot, I will not permit it. I can work for myown bread if needs must be. But I will not owe it to the generosityof Reuben Harmer, after all that has passed. I should be humbled tothe very dust!"

  The Master Builder looked at his daughter in amaze. He had neverseen Gertrude quite so moved before.

  "Why, child," he exclaimed in astonishment. "I always thought thatthou 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. Butthat is the very reason why I will have none of him now. I will notbe thrown upon his generosity like a bundle of damaged goods. Lethim seek a wife who can bring him a modest fortune with her, andwho has never been scornfully denied to him before. O father! canyou 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 muchversed in the ways of women, he was fairly puzzled by hisdaughter's strange method of taking his confidence. He knew, ofcourse, of the tactics of his wife, which he had deplored at thetime, though he had been unable to bring her to a better frame ofmind; but since the young people liked each other, and since madamwas in her grave, it seemed absurd to let a shadow stand betweenthem and their happiness. Perhaps if left to herself Gertrude wouldreach that conclusion of her own accord, and the Master Builderrose to go without pressing the matter further.

  Gertrude, left alone, was weeping silently and bitterly beside thechild's cot, when she was aware of a little short laugh almost ather elbow, and a familiar voice said in sharp accents:

  "Good child! I like a woman with a spirit of her own. Go on as youhave begun, and don't let him think he is to have it all his ownway. Lovers are all very well, but husbands soon show their wiveshow 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 asnap of the fingers for him. That will rivet the fetters all thefaster; and when you have got him like a tame bear at the end of achain--why then you can make up your mind at leisure what you willend by doing."

  Gertrude sprang up suddenly, and faced Lady Scrope with flushedcheeks and glowing eyes.

  The little witch-like woman with her black-handled stick and hermobcap was no unfrequent visitor to this shut-up house. There was acommunication between the two dwellings by means of a door in thecellars, and all this while curiosity, or some better motive, hadprompted the eccentric old woman to come to and fro between her ownluxurious house and this, paying visits to the devoted girls, andby turns terrifying and charming the children. Gertrude had beeninterested from the first by the piquant individuality of the oldaristocrat, and was a decided favourite with her. It was plain nowthat she had been listening to the conversation between father anddaughter, a thing so characteristic of her curiosity and even ofher benevolence that Gertrude hardly so much as resented it.Nevertheless, having a spirit of her own, and being by no meansprepared to be dictated to in these matters, some hot words escapedher lips almost before she knew, and were answered by Lady Scropeby an amused peal of her witch-like laughter.

  "Tut! tut! tut! Hoity toity! but she is in a temper, is she, mylady? Well a good thing too. Your saints are insipid unless theycan call up a spice of the devil on occasion! Oh, don't you beafraid of me, child. I've known all about you and young Harmer thislong 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 whatwe can get; and that young man is estimable without doubt, and abit of a hero in his way. I don't blame you for loving him. It'sthe way with maids, and will be to the end of time, I take it. AllI say is, don't throw yourself away too fast. Show a proper pride.Keep him dangling and fearing, rather than hoping too much. Showhim that he can't have you just for the asking. Why, child, I havekept a dozen fools hanging round me for a twelvemonth togethersometimes; but I only married when I was tired of the game, andwhen I knew I had made sure of a captive who would not rebel. Iswore in church to obey poor Scrope; but, bless you, he obeyed melike a lamb to the last day of his life--and was all the better forit."

  Lady Scrope's reminiscences and bits of worldly wisdom were notmuch more to Gertrude's taste than her father's had been. It wasnot pride, but a sense of humiliation and shame, which kept herfrom facing the thought of marriage with Reuben now that she waspoor, when she had been scornfully denied to him when she wasthought to be a well-dowered maiden. The idea of keeping himdangling after her in suspense was about the last that would everhave entered her head. Her feeling was one of profound humiliationand unworthiness. Her mother's bitter words could never beforgotten by her; and after what her father had told her of hisruined state, it appeared to her simply impossible that she shouldlet Reuben take possession of her and her future when she couldbring nothing in return.

  But she could not speak of these things to Lady Scrope; and findingher favourite irresponsive and reserved, the dame shrugged hershoulders and passed on to another room, where the children weresoon heard to utter shrieks and gasps of mingled delight and terrorat the stories she told them, which stories invariably fascinatedthem to an extraordinary degree, yet left them with a sense ofundefined horror that was half delightful, half terrible.

  They all thought that she was a witch, and that she could spiritany of them away to fairy land. But since she brought sweetmeats inher capacious pockets, and had an endless fund of stories at herdisposal, her visits were always welcomed, and she had certainlyshown herself capable of a most unsuspected benevolence at thiscrisis, in presenting this house to the authorities for such apurpose, and in contributing considerably to the maintenance of thedesolate little inmates.

  She liked to hear their dismal stories almost as well as they likedto hear hers. She made a point of visiting every fresh batch ofchildren, after they had been duly fumigated and disinfected, andshe seemed to take a horrible and unnatural delight in the ghastlydetails of desolation and death which were revealed in the artlessnarratives of the children.

  She was one of those who, knowing much of the fearful corruption ofthe times, were fond of prognosticating this judgment as a sweepingaway of the dregs of the earth; although she still maintained thathad the water supply been purer and differently arranged, thejudgment of Heaven would have had to seek another medium.

  For three or four days Gertrude lived in a state of feverishexpectancy and subdued excitement. She had fancied from herfather's tone in speaking that there had been some talk of abetrothal between him and his neighbour, and that Reuben might takeher consent for granted. The idea made her restless and unhappy.She wished the ordeal of refusing him over. She believed she wasright in taking this step; but it was a hard one, and she wassometimes afraid of her own courage. The more she thought of thematter the more she convinced herself that Reuben's love was one ofcompassion rather than true affection. H
e had almost ceased hisattentions in her mother's lifetime, and had been very reserved inhis intercourse of late. Doubtless if he heard of her father'sruin, generosity would make him strive to do all that he could forher in her changed circumstances. It would be like him then to stepforward and avow himself ready to marry her. But it was out of thequestion for her to consent. She wished the matter settled and donewith; 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 hadany reasonable excuse for fleeing from him.

  His visits to the house were not frequent; he was too busy to makethem so. But from time to time he brought orphaned children to thehome of shelter, or took away from it some of those for whom otherhomes had been found with their kinsfolk in other places. Tonighthe had brought in three little destitute orphans; but having giventhem over into the care of his sisters, he went in search ofGertrude, who was with the youngest of the children in a separateroom, and, having sung them all to sleep, was sitting in the windowthinking her own thoughts.

  She knew what was coming when she saw Reuben's face, and bracedherself to meet it. Reuben was very quiet and self-restrained--soself-restrained that she thought she read in his manner anindication that her suspicion was correct, and that it was pityrather than love which prompted his proposal of marriage.

  As a matter of fact Reuben was more in love with Gertrude now thanhe had ever been in his life before; but he had come to look uponher as a being so far above him in every respect that he sometimesmarvelled at himself for ever hoping to win her. The fact that herfather was just now a ruined man seemed to him as nothing. At atime like this the presence or absence of this world's goodsappeared absolutely trivial. Reuben believed that the MasterBuilder would retrieve his fortune in better times withoutdifficulty, and regarded this temporary reverse as absolutelyinsignificant. Therefore he had no clue to Gertrude's motive in herrejection of him, and accepted it almost in silence, feeling thatit was what he always ought to have looked for, and marvelling athis temerity in seeking the hand of one who was to him more angelthan woman.

  He said very little; he took it very quietly. It seemed to him asthough all the life went out of him, and as though hope died withinhim for ever. But he scarcely showed any outward emotion as he roseand said farewell; and little did he guess how, when he had gone,Gertrude flung herself on the floor in a passion of tears andsobbed till the fountain of her weeping was exhausted.

  "I was right! I was right! It was not love; it was only pity! Butah, how terrible it is to put aside all the happiness of one'slife! Oh I wonder if I have done wrong! I wonder if I could betterhave 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 thisbe the end of everything between them? Gertrude asked herself thesequestions a thousand times a day; but a week flew by and he had notcome. She had not seen a sign of him, nor had any word concerninghim 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 givenworlds for the chance of reconsidering her well-considered judgment.

  How the days went by she scarcely knew, but the next event in herdream-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 visitsfrom time to time to the other house. Also, as Lady Scrope's housewas not shut up, she could go thence to pay a visit home at anytime, 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 thenshe fell sobbing again as though her heart would break.

  Gertrude stood like one turned to stone, her face growing as whiteas her kerchief.

  "What of Reuben?" she asked, in a voice that she hardly knew forher 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 saysshe had a fear for several days before that that something wasamiss; he looked so wan, and ate so little, and seemed like one outof whom all heart is gone. He would go forth daily to his work, buthe came home harassed and tired, and on the last morning shethought him sick; but he said he was well, and promised to comehome early. Then she let him go, and no one has seen him since.

  "Oh, what can have befallen him? There seems but one thing tobelieve. They say the sickness is worse now than ever it was.People drop down dead in street and market, and soon there will benone left to bury them. That must have been Reuben's fate. He hasdropped down with the infection upon him, and if he be not lying insome pest house--which they say it is death now to enter--he mustbe lying in one of those awful graves.

  "O Reuben! Reuben! we shall never see you again!"