Aderhold sighed, then dropped the veil, and raising his head, spoke eye to eye. “I would that I could make you believe, Master Clement, that there is in this old man who is coming to die more good than ill. In these years that you speak of, I have seen that good grow, of its own motion, upon the ill. Why may it not continue, throughout oceans yet of experience, to suffuse and gain upon and dissolve and reconcile unto itself the ill?”
Master Clement drew a sharp “Ha!” of triumph. Here was heterodoxy raising its head, and the man had always looked to him heterodox! “Ha! ‘Of its own motion!’ Beware—beware, Master Aderhold! I have marked you—I am marking you still! Beware lest one day you be cited for a creeping, insidious doubter and insinuator of false doctrine!”
He went away, striding by the fairy oak in his wide cloak and steeple hat, with a pale, wrathful, intense face. Aderhold returned to the room and his patient. Master Hardwick lay upon his pillows, with a countenance much as it had been. Aderhold, saying nothing, sat beside him, and presently he fell asleep. Outside it was high summer, but cool, with a moving air and a rustling of every leaf. Hours passed, the day waned, the dusk set in. Aderhold, moving softly, made a fire in the cavernous fireplace, where, even in winter, Master Hardwick rarely wasted firewood.
When he came back the old man was awake.
“Gilbert!”
“Yes, cousin.”
“I have a feeling that I am going to-night—”
“It is possible.”
“Gilbert ... you’ve been comfortable to me these four years. You’ve been a kind of warmth and stay, asking nothing, not wasting or spending, but giving.... They think I am rich, but I am not. I was never very rich.... I ventured in the Indies’ voyage and gained, and then I was a fool and ventured again and lost. Since then I have been a poor man. It is the truth.... Give me something to keep me up—”
Aderhold gave him wine. After a moment he spoke again. “There are creditors in the town that you’ll hear from. They’ll take the land—all but the bit about the house. That and the house I’ve willed you—kin to me, and kind as well.... The gold they say I’ve buried—I’ve buried none. There are twenty pieces that you’ll find in an opening of the wall behind the panel there—” He pointed with a shaking hand that sank at once. “It’s all that’s left—and you’ll have to bury me from it.... A miser.... Maybe, but what I saved only lasted me through with spare living. If I had told them of that heavy loss—my gold gone down at sea, and that, even so, it was not so much I had had to venture ... would they have believed me? No! I was a miser—I lied and hid my gold.... Well, I did not tell them.... Do not tell all that you know and empty yourself like a wine skin—” His voice sank, he slept again.