Endure My Heart Read Online Free PDF Page A

it. He is one of those unsociable persons who is never so happy as when guests leave, and he can stop feeling guilty at not having paid the least attention to them while they were there. It turned out I had forgotten something that had apparently been on my brother’s mind since the moment he left. It was the organ, sitting new, shiny and unplayed in the gallery of the church.
    “Well, as you have Miss Halka to bear you company, Mab, I think I shall just run up to the loft and see how the organ is liking the nasty cold weather.”
    I don’t know how the organ liked it, but it did not deter Andrew from spending his every spare second in the loft. Eerie squeals and squeaks resounded from the walls of the church, sounding at times like an infant howling, at other times like caterwauling. Another time the tones were lower, like a foghorn or an angry boar. Then he decided he needed lessons, and for three consecutive evenings he sat beside me at the piano in our living room, learning the most basic rudiments of reading music. The nature of his organ work changed after that, the trick now being for Edna and myself to try to figure out what “tune” he was playing. But it was all well worthwhile, for it was a perfect excuse for Edna to go on living with us. Andrew suggested it himself after a couple of hints.
    Two weeks later, Millie Hessler, a sweet little six-year-old sister of Jemmie and Mark, toddled up to me before leaving school. Dame Aldridge was back, so that there was little privacy. “Jemmie says to tell you it’s going to be a hot night, and you should leave the window open,” she said, with a smile of pure innocence that sent a shiver down my spine. They needed the school again!
    “What’s that you say, Millie?” Dame Aldridge asked, coming up behind us.
    Before the child should utter her senseless-sounding message again, I patted her head and said, “Very well, dear. I understand.”
    “He said to be sure you don’t forget,” she added, then mercifully walked away.
    “What’s all this about?” my employer asked.
    “Mrs. Hessler wants me to stop off on the way home. Mark wants to study more arithmetic on his own, and I offered to give him a book.”
    “Hmph,” she said. “He’ll be wanting to figure out how much profit he’s made on his smuggling, the bounder. We should encourage the ex-students, to be sure, but you don’t want to have much to do with that lot, Mabel. They are not our sort.”
    Miss Aldridge had her own gig. I remained behind a little in case she should take the idea of going to the Hesslers’ with me. I required privacy with Jem. He was at home, and looked astonished to see me. “You shouldn’t have come, miss!” he exclaimed.
    “Jemmie, this won’t do. Dame Aldridge is back at school now. If she notices the fire on Monday morning and sees the money...”
    “We’ll slip back at six Monday morning and close the window, and not light the fire. The place will he aired out by then, and as to the money, you can take it now.”
    “No, I don’t want any money.”
    “Don’t be daft, miss. Why should you not? Lord Aiken takes his share.”
    I could not have been more surprised had he said Lord Liverpool, the Prime Minister. Lord Aiken was an earl, an extremely wealthy and influential gentleman who associated with ministers and bishops. “Very well, I will,” I said, and was handed my golden guineas.
    I suppose rationalization is the proper word for the thinking I did on my way home. Talking myself into doing what was not right. But where was the harm in it? Do unto others as you would have them do unto you—that was the golden rule, and I could not see that I was bending it. Still, I decided to talk it over with Andrew, who is an incurably honest man. It would be done by indirection, of course, not revealing why I had developed this sudden and unlikely interest in theology.
    “Andrew, what do you think of the gentlemen?” I asked over dinner, as we gnawed our way through a