"But it frightened Sally away, poor child, just as if it had been the sickness; and I have since heard that she was taken with it a month ago in her own home, and that every one there died within three days. These be terrible times! But we know they are sent by God, and that He will help us through them; and surely, I think, it cannot be His will that we turn a deaf ear to the plaints of the afflicted, and think of naught but our own safety. I have work and enough to do, and will find you enough to fill your hands, boys. It was a happy thought indeed which sent you two hither to me."
[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 of much 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 her occasional visits in her self-chosen home, being one of those who had ceased to fear contagion, and went about almost without precaution, from sheer indifference to the long-continued peril. He had been a changed man ever since the melancholy deaths of his son and his wife; but today a darker cloud than any she had seen there before rested upon his brow, and the daughter was anxious to learn the reason of it. This it was which had wrung from the Master Builder the foregoing confession.
"Your poor mother was partly right, and partly wrong. I might have been a rich man, I might be a rich man even now--terrible as is the state of trade in this stricken city--had it not been that she would have me adventure beyond my means in her haste to see me wealthy before my fellows. And the end of it is that I stand here today a ruined man!"
Gertrude held in her arms a little child, over whom she bent from time to time to assure herself that it slept. Her face had grown pale and thin during her long confinement between the walls of this house; yet it was a happier and more contented face than it had been wont to be in the days when she lived in luxurious idleness at her mother's side. She looked many years older than she had done then, but there was a beauty and sweet serenity about her appearance 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 to talk of his troubles. "Is it the sudden stoppage of all trade?"
"That has been serious enough. It would have done much harm had that been the only thing, but there be many, many other causes. Thou art too young and unversed in the ways of business to understand all; but I was not content to grow rich in the course of business alone. I had ventures of all sorts afloat--on sea and on land; and through the death of patrons, through the sudden stoppage of all trade, numbers and numbers of these have come to no good. My money is lost; my loans cannot be recovered. Men are dead or fled to whom I looked for payment. Half-finished houses are thrown back on my hands, since half London is empty. And poor Frederick's debts are like the sands upon the seashore. I cannot meet them, but I cannot let others suffer for his imprudence and folly. The old house on the bridge will have to go. I must needs sell it so soon as a purchaser can be found. It may be I shall have to hand it over to one of Frederick's creditors bodily. I had thought to end my days there in peace, with my children's children round me. But the Almighty is dealing very bitterly with me. Wife and son are taken away, and now the old home must follow!"