CHAPTER LXXVIII
Some blackguard or other, I think it was Sybrandt, said, “A lie is not like a blow with a curtal axe.”
True: for we can predict in some degree the consequences of a stroke with any material weapon. But a lie has no bounds at all. The nature of the thing is to ramify beyond human calculation.
Often in the everyday world a lie has cost a life, or laid waste two or three.
And so, in this story, what tremendous consequences of that one heartless falsehood!
Yet the tellers reaped little from it.
The brothers, who invented it merely to have one claimant the less for their father's property, saw little Gerard take their brother's place in their mother's heart. Nay, more, one day Eli openly proclaimed that, Gerard being lost, and probably dead, he had provided by will for little Gerard, and also for Margaret, his poor son's widow.
At this the look that passed between the black sheep was a caution to traitors. Cornelis had it on his lips to say. Gerard was most likely alive, But he saw his mother looking at him, and checked himself in time.
Ghysbrecht Van Swieten, the other partner in that lie, was now a failing man. He saw the period fast approaching when all his wealth would drop from his body, and his misdeeds cling to his soul.
Too intelligent to deceive himself entirely, he had never been free from gusts of remorse. In taking Gerard's letter to Margaret he had compounded. “I cannot give up land and money,” said his giant Avarice. “I will cause her no unnecessary pain,” said his dwarf Conscience.