And about every two months a small sum in silver found its way into the house. Sometimes it lay on the table. Once it was flung in through the bedroom window in a purse. Once it was at the bottom of Luke's basket. He had stopped at the public-house to talk to a friend. The giver or his agent was never detected. Catherine disowned it. Margaret Van Eyck swore she had no hand in it. So did Eli. And Margaret, whenever it came, used to say to little Gerard, “Oh, my poor deserted child, you and I are wading in deep waters.”
She applied at least half this modest, but useful supply, to dressing the little Gerard beyond his station in life. “If it does come from Gerard, he shall see his boy neat.” All the mothers in the street began to sneer, especially such as had brats out at elbows.
The months rolled on, and dead sickness of heart succeeded to these keener torments. She returned to her first thought: “Gerard must be dead. She should never see her boy's father again, nor her marriage lines.” This last grief, which had been somewhat allayed by Eli and Catherine recognizing her betrothal, now revived in full force; others would not look so favourably on her story. And often she moaned over her boy's illegitimacy.
“Is it not enough for us to be bereaved? Must we be dishonoured too? Oh, that we had ne'er been born.”
A change took place in Peter Brandt. His mind, clouded for nearly two years, seemed now to be clearing; he had intervals of intelligence; and then he and Margaret used to talk of Gerard, till he wandered again. But one day, returning after an absence of some hours, Margaret found him conversing with Catherine, in a way he had never done since his paralytic stroke. “Eh, girl, why must you be out?” said she. “But indeed I have told him all; and we have been a-crying together over thy troubles.”
Margaret stood silent, looking joyfully from one to the other.
Peter smiled on her, and said, “Come, let me bless thee.”
She kneeled at his feet, and he blessed her most eloquently.
He told her she had been all her life the lovingest, truest, and most obedient daughter Heaven ever sent to a poor old widowed man. “May thy son be to thee what thou hast been to me!”
After this he dozed. Then the females whispered together; and Catherine said—“All our talk e'en now was of Gerard. It lies heavy on his mind. His poor head must often have listened to us when it seemed quite dark. Margaret, he is a very understanding man; he thought of many things: 'He may be in prison, says he, 'or forced to go fighting for some king, or sent to Constantinople to copy books there, or gone into the Church after all.' He had a bent that way.”