L. T. Meade

“ Esther, what is the matter? You are a good girl. It is a mistake for you to waste your pity on me."
"You must forgive me, sir. Pity comes to one unbidden. Pity—and—and sympathy. If you get worse, I shall leave my situation and come home and nurse you."
"Then you will indeed kill me. You will take away my last hope. My one goblet of new wine will be denied me. Then I shall truly die. Esther, what is your budget of news? How is my wife? Begin—go on—tell me everything."
"Mrs. Wyndham is well, sir." ”

“ Oh, she's a good bit altered; there's something in her now."
"I suppose there was always something in her," said Lilias. "For Gerald"—her lips trembled—"gave up so much for her."
"No more than any man gives up for any woman," said Marjory. "A man shall leave his father and mother. Oh, yes, poor old Lil, I know how you felt it. You always made an idol of Gerald. I suppose you'll marry some day; you are so pretty—and h'm—h'm—there's somebody waiting for somebody—there, I don't want to tease, only when you do marry, my pretty sister, I wonder if he'll come inside Gerald in your heart." ”

“ Lilias laid her hand on her sister's shoulder.
"I am older than you," she continued, "and perhaps quieter. Life has made me quieter. We won't say anything about what you saw, Augusta. Perhaps none of us have such a burden to bear as Valentine."
"Now, Lilias, what stuff you talk. Oh, she's a humbug, and I hate her. There, I will say it, just for once. She took Gerald away, and now she wants to take Adrian from you. Oh, I know you're an angel—you'd bear anything, but I'm not quite a fool."
"They are coming; you must hush," said Lilias, putting her hand across her young sister's lips. ”

“ It was very sweet in melody, and had some minor notes of such pathos that when Valentine first heard him play it on the violin she burst into tears. He told her quite simply then that it was his story about her, that all the sweetness was her share, all the graceful melody, the sparkling joyous notes which coming from Gerald's violin seemed to speak like a gay and happy voice, represented his ideal of her. The deeper notes and the pain belonged to him; pain must ever come with love when it is strongest, she would understand this presently. ”

“ Once more Valentine's untroubled girlish innocent eyes looked out of Richmond's beautiful picture of her.
Wyndham hated this room, he almost hated that picture; it had surrounded itself with terrible memories. He turned his head away from it now as he obeyed Mr. Paget's summons.
"It's this, Gerald," said his father-in-law. "When a thing has to be done the sooner the better. I mean nobody cares to make a long operation of the drawing of a tooth for instance!"
"An insufficient metaphor," interrupted Wyndham roughly. "Say, rather, the plucking out of a right eye, or the cutting off a right hand. ”

“ Wyndham, I am the veriest coward that ever breathed. If I win, I win for ever. I mean that I am made, body, soul, and spirit. If I lose, I think morally I shall go under. A main spring will be broken which has kept me right, kept my eyes looking upwards ever since I knew your sister Lilias."
"But even if she refuses you, you will live on," said Valentine, in a dreamy voice. "We often have to live on when the main spring is broken. We creep instead of running, that is all." ”

“ Work of all kinds, work of the most unexpected and unlooked for nature [116] seemed to descend to-day with the force of a sledge hammer on his devoted head.
Gerald saw that he was dying to speak to him, and at the first opportunity he took him aside, and asked him if there was anything he could do for him.
"Oh, yes, Mr. Wyndham, you can, you can. Oh, thank the good Lord for bringing you over to speak to me when no one was looking. You can save Esther for me—that's what you can do, Mr. Wyndham. No one can save her but you. So you will, sir; oh, you will. She's my only child, Mr. Wyndham." ”

“ Why, look here, Carr, we all tried to spoil the boy amongst us—he was the only one—and his mother taken away when he so young—and he the image of her. Yes, all the girls resemble me, but Gerald is the image of his mother. We all tried to teach him selfishness, but we couldn't. Now. Carr, you will be surprised at what I am going to say, but if a man can be unselfish to a fault, to a fault mind you—to the verge of a crime—it's my son Gerald. I know this. I have always seen it in him. Now my boy's father-in-law. Mortimer Paget, is as selfish as my lad is the reverse. ”

“ Wyndham before his engagement was one of the most boyish of men. All the sunshine, the petting, the warmth, the love, which encircled him as the prime favorite of many sisters and an adoring father at Jewsbury-on-the-Wold, seemed to have grown into his face. His deep grey-blue changeful eyes were always laughing—he was witty, and he said witty and laughable things by the score. The young man had plenty of talent, and a public school and university education had developed these abilities to a fine point of culture. ”

“ Oh, yes, Gerald, I know what you feel for me, and yet I can't make either of them happy. My father is not happy. Oh, yes, I can see—love isn't blind. I never remembered my father quite, quite happy, and he is certainly less so than ever now. He tries to look all right when people are by; even succeeds, for he is so unselfish, and brave, and noble. ”

“ Isn't he a handsome man, Lilly? I don't think I ever saw anyone with such a beaming sort of benevolent expression."
"He is certainly very fond of Valentine, and she of him," answered Lilias. "No, I did not particularly notice his expression. The fact is I did not look at anyone much except our Gerald. Marjory, I think it is an awful thing for girls like us to have an only brother—he becomes almost too precious. Marjory, I cannot sympathize with Mr. Paget. I wish we were at home. I know our dear old dad will want us, and there is no saying what mess Augusta will put things into." ”

“ Valentine was silent for half a minute.
"I should like to know her," she said then. "I wonder how much she cares for old Helps."
"Look here, Valentine, Esther Helps is not the least like you. I don't know that she has any romantic attachment for that old man. She is a very ordinary girl—a most commonplace person with just a beautiful face."
"How queerly you speak, Gerald. As if it were something strange for an only daughter to be attached to her father."
"The amount of attachment you feel, darling, is uncommon." ”

“ I know all about you, Wyndham; I know that you have not a penny to bless yourself with; I know that you are about to embrace a beggarly profession. Oh, yes, we'll leave out the religious aspect of the question. A curacy in the Church of England is a beggarly profession in these days. I know too that you are your father's only son, and that you have seven sisters, who will one day look to you to protect them. I know all that; nevertheless I believe you to be the kind of man who will dare all for love. If you win Valentine, you have got to pay a price for her. ”

“ Are these Valentine's violets? I will help myself to a few. Let me say good-morning, sir."
He bowed courteously—no one could be more courteous than Gerald Wyndham—and left the room.
His astonished father in-law almost gasped when he found himself alone.
"Upon my word," he said to himself, "there's something about that fellow that's positively uncanny. I only trust I'll be preserved from being haunted by his ghost. My God! what a retribution that would be. Wyndham would be awful as a ghost. I suppose I shall have retribution some day. I know I'm a wicked man. Hypocritical, cunning, devilish. ”

“ I came to London, to the safest place for a man who must hide. Willing hands are always needed to help to lighten some of the load of misery in this great city. I called myself Brother Jerome, and presently I found my niche. I worked, and I could have been happy. Yes, starving in body, with nowhere to lay my head, I could have been happy following The Blessed example, but for the hunger which always drove me mad, which was gnawing at my heart, which gnaws there still—which—Esther—Esther Helps—is—killing me!"
Wyndham dropped his head on his hands. ”

“ What is she like?"
"Tall and pale, with an expressive face," replied Wyndham, lightly. "She is lady-like, and even striking-looking until she opens her lips—then——" he made an expressive grimace.
"Poor girl, as if she could help that," replied Val. "She has never been educated, you know. Her father is poor, and he can't give her advantages. Does old Helps love his daughter very much, dad?"
"I suppose so, Val. Yes, I think I may say I am sure he does."
"I am so interested in only girls with fathers," continued Mrs. Wyndham. "I wish I had seen Esther Helps. I hope you were kind to her, Gerald." ”

“ Carr knows more of my capacities after six months' study than Gerry found out after fifteen years?"
"But Mr. Carr doesn't study you, Gus. It's Lilias he's always looking at," interrupted little Rosie.
"You're not pretty, are you, Gus?" asked Betty. "Your cheeks are too red, aren't they? And nurse says your eyes are as round as an owl's!"
"Pretty!" answered Augusta, in a lofty voice. "Who cares for being pretty? Who cares for being simply pink and white? I'm for intellect. I'm for the march of mind. Gerry believes in me. Hurrah for Gerry! ”

“ Valentine did not regard it as a joke at all. She honestly tried, honestly studied, and honestly made a success as housekeeper and household manager.
She was a most undeveloped creature, undeveloped both in mind and heart; but she not only possessed intense latent affections, but latent capacities of all sorts. She scarcely knew the name of poverty, she had no experience with regard to the value of money, but nature had given her an instinct which taught her to spend it wisely and well. She found a thousand a year a larger income than she and Gerald with their modest wants needed. ”

“ Oh, do hark to those children's voices; what rampageous, excitable creatures they are. Lilly, did we ever shout in such shrill tones? That must be Augusta: no one else has a voice which sounds like the scraping of a coal-scoop in an empty coal-hod. Oh, of course that high laugh belongs to Joey. Aren't they feeding, and wrangling, and fighting? I am quite sure, Lil, that Betty is right, and they won't turn in for hours; we had better go and do our packing now."
"No, I see Gerald," exclaimed Lilias. ”

“ More and more squalid grew the streets, more and more ruffianly grew the people. There never was a little man less likely to attract attention than this clerk with his humble unpretentious dress and mien. But in these streets he felt himself remarkable. A whole coat, unpatched trousers, were things to wonder at here. The men and the women, too, took to jostling him as he passed. One bold-faced girl tilted his hat well forward over his eyes, and ran away with a loud laugh.
Helps felt that even for Esther's sake he could not proceed any further. ”

“ Forgive me for being cross this morning, dear old darling. Father has made me see everything in quite a new light, and has shown me that I acted quite like a little fiend, and that you are very nearly the best of men. And do you know, Gerry, he wishes us so much to live alone, and thinks it the only right and proper thing to do, that I have given in, and I quite agree with him, quite. And we have almost taken the sweetest, darlingest little bijou residence in Park-lane that you can imagine. It is like a doll's house compared to this, but so exquisite, and furnished with such taste. ”

“ He was the old Wyndham; his eyes were full of pity, which made his whole face radiant.
"Hush," he said. "Get up. Don't say any more. Not another word—not a syllable. You forget yourself. Esther. I saved you once—I must save you again. Sit there, yes, there; I am quite strong. I must tell you the truth. Esther, I said just now that you were the noblest woman I know. You must go on being noble. I will stay here on that condition."
"Oh, sir, will you?" Poor Esther would have liked to shrink through the very boards. "Will you forgive me, sir?" ”

“ Lilias ceased to watch him anxiously, a sense of jubilation filled the breast of every worshipping sister, and no one thought of parting or sorrow.
Perhaps even Gerald himself forgot the bitterness which lay before him just then; perhaps his efforts were not all efforts, and that he really felt some of the old home peace and rest with its sustaining power.
You can know a thing and yet not always realize it. Gerald knew that he should never spend another Saturday in the old rectory of Jewsbury-on-the-Wold. ”

“ Lilias alone stood out against the storm of woe which greeted the receipt of Wyndham's last letter.
"It is a real trouble," she said, her voice shaking a good deal; "but we have got to make the best of it. It is for Gerald's happiness. It is selfish for us just to fret because we cannot always have him by our side."
"There'll be no millennium," said Augusta in a savage voice. "I might have guessed it. That horrid selfish, selfish girl has got the whole of our Gerald. I suppose he'll make her happy, nasty, spiteful thing; but she has wrecked the happiness of seven other girls—horrid creature! ”

“ I have not got a halfpenny in the world. This money in my pocket is my father's—I have to come to him for every sixpence! I am no better off than my little sister Joan. When I am ordained, and have secured the curacy of Jewsbury-on-the-Wold, I shall have exactly £160 a year. A large sum truly. And yet I want to marry Valentine Paget—the youngest heiress of the season—the most beautiful—the most wealthy! Oh, of course I must be mad—quite mad. I ought to shun her like the plague. She does not in the least care for me—not in the least. I often wonder if she has got a heart anywhere. ”

“ Wyndham took up his violin and left the house.
"Mad, poor fellow!" he muttered to himself. "Who'd have thought it? Even from a worldly point of view what fools people are to sin! What luck does it ever bring them? He made me his accomplice, his victim, in order to keep his daughter's love, in order to escape dishonor and penal servitude. He told me the whole story of that trust money—to be his if there was no child—to be kept for a child if there was. He was a good fellow before he got the trust money I have no doubt. ”