Chapter 10 The Girls of St. Wode's by L. T. Meade
LLEWELLYN’S GIFT
Late that evening there came a knock at Llewellyn’s door. He called out, “Come in!” and his sister Leslie entered. She shut the door softly behind her.
“Mother is asleep,” she said; “and I think she has been crying – she sighs so heavily in her sleep; it is not like her. I would not wake her for the world; but I knew you would be up, Lew, and I felt that I must have a talk with you.”
“All right – that is, if you really wish it,” said Llewellyn, slightly stretching himself, and a frown coming between his brows. He had been bending over a volume of Plato’s “Republic,” and some sheets of manuscript, scribbled over as if in frantic haste, were scattered about the table. When Leslie approached he pushed the manuscript helter-skelter into a waste-paper basket and shut up the book.
“Why did you do that?” said Leslie; “why do you hide your real thoughts from me, Lew? Don’t you want me to know? We have always been more than ordinary brother and sister to each other. What is the matter with you?”
Still Llewellyn did not reply. He stood up and looked at his sister with as expressionless a face as he could possibly manage to assume.
“It is no use,” said Leslie. She went up to him now, raised herself on tiptoe, and kissed him on his cheek. “You have done it, and it is noble of you, it is splendid of you; but why – why?”
“How can you ask me why?” he answered. “Can’t you guess?”
“I guess partly,” replied the girl; “you want to help mother. But surely you could help her much more effectually in the long run by doing what Mr. Parker wishes. It is such a chance, and it was put in your way, Lew; you didn’t go out of your way to seek it. Perhaps God meant you to accept it.”
“No, don’t,” cried Llewellyn – “don’t say that.” A spasm of pain flitted across the boy’s face, then vanished.
“I want to help mother, and I will,” he said stoutly. “I don’t intend her to do all the toiling and money-making any longer. I am almost a man, Leslie; I shall be seventeen my next birthday. Oh, in one sense it is young! but it is not young with me, for I think I am older than my years. I won’t see her grinding without putting my own shoulder to the wheel. It’s just intolerable!”
“I wish you would listen to me, Llewellyn,” said Leslie; “it is not too late yet. The chance has been offered to you and the chance has been offered to me. It seems to me, on thinking things over, that only one of us can take it, for mother can’t do without both of us.”
“That’s just what I said,” interrupted Llewellyn; “you are to go and I am to stay. It is all arranged. Don’t, like a dear girl, worry over the thing any longer. It’s done, and that’s an end of it.”
“But you must let me speak,” said Leslie. “I can never go to St. Wode’s unless I make a clean breast of all that is in my mind. If one of us is to grind for the present, ought not I to be the one? I am older than you, I have had a more thorough education, I can easily get a position as junior teacher in Miss Harkaway’s school. There is a vacancy, and she has half promised it to me. That will bring me in thirty pounds a year and my food, and, after a bit, I might do even better. Thus I should be altogether off mother’s hands, and could even help her a trifle. Then, Lew, you will be really helping her at Oxford. As you are acquiring learning, and as those magnificent brains of yours are being cultivated to their full worth, you will be preparing for a learned profession, or a professorship, or something of that kind. Surely, surely, that would be a more substantial help to the sweetest mother in the world than your earning a pound a week now at Lee & Forrest’s.”
“There is something in what you say, Leslie; but there is not enough in it,” said Llewellyn quietly. “Believe me, I have thought of all this from every point of view. In the first place, professorships do not mean wealth, and, for mother’s sake, I mean to be a wealthy man some day. You must go into trade to be wealthy now. Oh, it is not that I care for money, not a bit! But I want to save the mother, to keep her from toiling when she is old, to help the younger children. I can’t stand Parker doing all the help, Leslie; the mere thought drives me half wild. Then I shall not always work at a pound a week. In a couple of years I may be earning a salary of two hundred a year, for I don’t mind telling you that young Forrest has taken no end of a fancy to me, and he and I had a long talk to-day. He took me up to see his father, and his father would do anything for a boy Jim liked. Jim goes to Oxford in the autumn. He hates the shop, and he won’t go into business, for he can’t stand it, and so his father has to start him in a profession. But he hinted very broadly – and so did the old man, too, for that matter – that if I could take his place it would put matters a bit right and smooth down the pride of old Forrest; so I shall have my chance, Leslie – a small partnership by and by; and I mean to take it, little girl, so you can go to Wingfield with a heart and a half, and win the academic honors of the family. It is a splendid chance for you, Leslie, and I’m not the fellow to stand in your way.”
“But I just wish you would!” she cried.
Llewellyn put one of his arms round her and drew her close to him.
“One can take an interest in anything one sets one’s mind to,” he continued. “I shall begin double entry and bookkeeping and all that sort of thing to-morrow, and the classics may go to Hong Kong for the present. Poor old Plato! I loved him, and I had dreams about him; but he and I must be strangers for the present. You think me silly now, dear, but you won’t when I have succeeded. By the time I have a great big shop of my own you will think me the wise one of the family. Leslie, my dear, what is wrong?”
For Leslie had squeezed his arm so tightly that the lad winced.
“I can’t bear to think of you with a shop,” she cried, “with that brain and those eyes. And oh, Lew! don’t you remember how you translated Thucydides for us? And – oh, Lew, it can’t be borne.”
“It must be borne,” he replied stoutly. “I can have lessons in the classics if I have time enough presently. Oh, a university man is not the only man in the world, Leslie. But now we will talk no more of this. Once for all, my mind is made up.”
“What would our father have said,” she cried; “our father, who was a great scholar?”
“If he were to come back, and if he could speak to me, I am quite certain he would say that I was more worthy to be his son if I helped the mother quickly than if I did anything else,” replied the boy.
“Perhaps you are right,” said Leslie, in a thoughtful voice.
Llewellyn rubbed his hand over his eyes.
“I don’t pretend, all the same, that it’s not been no end of a tussle,” he said; “but now my mind is made up.”
“Quite?”
“Yes, quite.”
“Have you given an answer yet to Mr. Forrest?”
“Practically I have; but the mother must come round with me to see him to-morrow. The dear little mother won’t much like it; but she must do it. You don’t know how he respects her, Leslie.”
“I should think so,” said Leslie; “that goes without saying. She is quite the dearest, bravest little mother in the wide world.”
“Well, dry your tears, old girl; I’ll look after her while you are away. Be cheerful, Leslie, and get all the good you can out of this magnificent thing, for I don’t pretend that it’s not a great bit of fortune for you. It is quite possible and right for you to take help from Mr. Parker; but I could not do it. It’s not in me to take favors from anyone. Such a thing would lower me in my own eyes. Oh, it does not lower you, Leslie; but it would me, for I am differently made. We must each walk according to our own lights. And now go to bed, old girl, for I am half dead with sleep.”
“Kiss me, first,” she said. “Llewellyn, I think you are the bravest boy in all the world.”
“You would not say so if you had seen me two hours back. I was so miserable I felt fit to kill myself; but there,” he added, clenching one of his strong hands, “I did not mean to let it out to you, and I am quite right now and I don’t feel a bit miserable.”
Leslie left the room, and Llewellyn was alone.
“But, all the same, it’s a hard tug,” he muttered as he glanced round him. He dropped into a chair and buried his face in his hands. He thought of the dreams which must never be realized, of the school-fellows who would more or less despise him, of the different position he must occupy in future.
“Good-by literature,” he said to himself; “good-by the laurels which would have been so sweet to gather. Good-by dreams.”
But, by and by, as Llewellyn thought, he raised his face, and, gazing straight before him, he saw another vision, and that vision comforted and strengthened him a good bit. It was that of a home, with a woman in it who wore the sweetest face in the world, and who was not tired with overwork, who, in fact, need not work at all. He saw himself as the one who was keeping that home. With his toil, with the energy of his strong young arms, with the youth and talents which God had given him, he was supporting his mother and his younger brothers and sisters; and they all looked up to him and loved him, and his heart was happy. The thought of the picture made his heart happy even now.
He smiled, dropped on his knees, muttered a hasty prayer, and, tumbling into bed, was soon fast asleep.
Leslie in her own room also slept, and bright dreams came to her. The thought of the future was delightful, and she looked upon it as Llewellyn’s gift.
“For if Llewellyn had been selfish and had accepted Mr. Parker’s offer, I could not have gone,” thought the girl. “I could not have left mother if Llewellyn were not with her; but, as it is, and as he is sacrificing himself, oh! I will work just double time in order to make it up to him. For some day he must have time to pursue his beloved classics, and his literature, and all those things which he cares for. No girl who has a noble brother like Llewellyn ought to shrink at anything. I believe I am the happiest, and I know I am the proudest, girl in the world.”