Endure My Heart Read Free Page A

payment of a gambling debt and had nowhere else to put it. Inasmuch as there is not a single person in the parish who can play it, and as a gift it was particularly inappropriate, one is inclined to believe this story.
    Andrew amused himself with this expensive toy while I set to the chore of bringing our house to order. It had stood vacant for more than ten years, which will give you some idea of the gargantuan task before me. My hands, white as a lily, became red and roughened from the strong soaps required to clean the place up. When Dame Aldridge noticed this, she sent me over a couple of girls to help. I scrimped on household finances to buy a few bits of bright curtain material, while I regretted we had not had the foresight to bring some of our own furnishings from Fern Bank to make us look respectable.
    We settled into our new home, becoming familiar with all its nooks and crannies, its drafty windows and creaking doors. We discovered there was an old crypt beneath the church, a thing I had never known before. While investigating the grounds behind for the possibility of growing a vegetable garden, I espied an old slanted door. Curious to see where it led, I tried all the keys till I found the one that fit it. Later I also discovered a door to it from the vestry, hidden under the parish chest.
    We had taken the giant step of getting a roof over our heads, but there was very little money to live on, only the pittance paid to Andrew as overseer of the poor. It was my turn to pitch in and raise a wage. There was an old piano in the place. I gave lessons to some of the local girls, but it provided only a mite. Many’s the night we went with only bread and cheese for dinner, too proud to beg and too accustomed to better fare to be satisfied. Folks visited us, trying to be sociable, but giving them even tea and cake was a strain on our budget. It got so that I dreaded to hear the door knocker sound. Five times out of ten it would be Mrs. Everett too, complaining about some new fault she had unearthed at Fern Bank, and never offering us a basket of vegetables or fruit or a thing, though she knew very well we were needy.
    I asked her quite pointedly on one visit what she was doing with all the fruit from the succession houses. “When my father was alive, we used to distribute many baskets to the poor,” I told her.
    “Succession houses? I don’t know how your poor father ever contrived to grow a thing. Jerome says they will have to be rebuilt before they can be used. He has an architect coming in to see what can be done with them. We have let those puny orange trees and pineapples wilt away and will set up a proper orangery one of these days.”
    As summer turned to fall, I began taking in a little embroidery, claiming I did it for amusement. It paid for fuel, but still it was clearly not enough to live on. I needed a regular job.
    The squire never came next or nigh us. On Friday Andrew took the gig up to Holy Hell to deliver the squire sermons he could scarcely pronounce, and on Sunday they both remained after church juggling the books and discussing church business—i.e., Andrew told him what parishioners stood in want of christening, marrying or burying.
    I said “How do you do?” in arctic accent when I met him in the town. He lifted his hat and nodded, without smiling. His pride had been dealt a blow, and I had some misgivings the situation between us would not remain forever so peaceful. In short, he was plotting a revenge, but what form it might take was impossible to tell.
     

Chapter Two
     
    When my aunt, Mrs. Harvey, finally perceived an inkling of our circumstances, she was at pains to help us. We declined an offer to go to her, only to receive within a month another offer too interesting to disregard. There was a parish living opening in her neighborhood paying three hundred per annum, along with a very nice cottage and a kitchen garden. She would finance the matter of Andrew’s taking holy orders. It