The Temptation of Torilla Read Online Free Page A

Vicar looked uncomfortable.
    “To tell you the truth, Abby, I had not thought of Miss Torilla as being grown up.”
    “Well, she is, sir, and it’s a crying shame – it is really – that she should be buried alive – because that’s what it is – in this dreadful place.”
    “I am needed here,” the Vicar said in a low voice, almost as if he was pleading his case in the dock.
    “That’s as may be,” Abby replied, “and I’m not saying sir, as you’re not doing the work of God, and doing it well. It’s your chosen profession, so to speak. But Miss Torilla’s not a Parson nor a Preacher, she’s a young woman, and a very beautiful one at that!”
    There was no time to say more because Torilla came back into the room with a small suet pudding in the centre of a rather large dish.
    She set it down in front of her father and for a moment he did not seem to see it, as deep in his thoughts he appeared to be quite oblivious of her presence.
    Torilla looked rather anxiously at Abby.
    Then, as the maid changed the plates and placed a tablespoon in the Vicar’s hand, he said,
    “You are right, Abby. Miss Torilla must go to Lady Beryl’s wedding. We will find the money somehow.”
    It was after he had rushed out of the house, almost before he had finished the last mouthful of the suet pudding, that Torilla said to Abby,
    “You made Papa agree! Oh, Abby, I feel so guilty. You could see he was upset at having to spend so much on me. He wanted the money for the Coxwolds.”
    “Those Coxwolds have had more than their share of your father’s money already,” Abby said crossly. “That woman’s a whiner and the Vicar, poor man, believes every word she tells him.”
    “Yes, I know, Abby, but he does suffer so greatly and this place is terrible. I cannot bear to look at the children.”
    There was a little sob in Torilla’s voice, as she added,
    “Perhaps it is – selfish of me. If I stay and Papa gives the money to the Coxwolds it might make all the – difference to them.”
    “If there are a hundred Coxwolds dying on their feet,” Abby said firmly, “they’ll not stop you from going to stay with Lady Beryl.”
    “Perhaps it is wrong of me to leave Papa,” Torilla murmured.
    “If you refuse the invitation it’ll be over my dead body!” Abby said. “Now sit down, Miss Torilla, and write and tell her Ladyship you’ll leave here next Monday.”
    “But, Abby, that is the day after tomorrow!”
    “The sooner the better,” Abby snapped, “and you needn’t worry about your father either. I’ll look after him, you know that.”
    “He pays far more attention to you than to me,” Torilla said. “I could never have persuaded him to eat those extra pieces of mutton – and I think he enjoyed them, although he did not say so.”
    “That leg of mutton’s going to last us till the end of the week,” Abby said. “What your father needs is more good square meals inside him then he’d not worry so acutely over the poor and the sick.”
    Torilla knew that was true, but at the same time her father was not the only one who suffered.
    She could not bear to see the small children who worked in the mine and were whipped if they cried or fell asleep. She felt sick when she saw women who by the age of thirty were old and infirm cripples bent double with racking coughs and malnutrition.
    She could understand why the men in this dirty soul-destroying existence hurried to the public house every Friday night to forget for an hour or so the dangers of their work in the darkness of the pit.
    Whenever there was an accident, her father would come home white-faced and almost in tears, and she would take the broth that Abby made to the women who were ill and to the children who never had enough to eat.
    But they had little enough to spare.
    If Abby had not bullied her father from time to time into giving her a few shillings to buy some cheap material Torilla knew that she would have gone as threadbare as some of the wives of