Chapter Text
Before we begin, I would like to offer my most sincere appreciation to you, dearest reader. Thank you for indulging me and mine tale of death and pain. This tale I shall tell to you now is a miserable one, with happiness found only in bittersweet recollections of brighter days. Despite this, love is at the very heart, if you'll forgive my joke, of the tale you will hear. You will, most likely, have heard of a tale which bears striking similarity to this, with the aforementioned death occurring in a far more merciful span of time, and with the mothers of children different to what shall be detailed in my version of events. This is all a rather understandable thing, of which I am sure you, dearest reader, will forgive.
It is a simple matter of fact, that when you put forth a material designed to bring entertainment to those who know it, that those same people will then, in any hope, have their imaginations captured by your materials, leading their imaginings to bring forth any number of derivatives, of which you have no control over, and that, by the putting forth of your materials, you are accepting that which springs forth from the imaginings of your audience.
It is through this natural occurrence, that the tale you shall soon be acquainted with has come to be. It is, truth be told, in the semblance of two works, rather than just the one, as I had originally claimed. The first work is concerned with a gentleman who aspires to better the life and standings of himself and his family, and chronicles the exploits of this gentleman as he raises his family up to heights even he had, to some degree, not envisioned as possible. The second is of a gentleman who marries a lady whom he finds intriguing, but does not love, and the calamities born from his refusal to accept her superior intelligence and to love her as a husband ought to love his wife, culminating in tragedy aimed at the daughter born as her mother died.
This tale concerns a groom, by the name of Tommy, who has, in recent years, managed to increase his wealth and social standing through ill means, and his bride, Grace, who had, in spite of her love for him, while he was still in the process of building his wealth, betrayed him and his trust. Our heroes had, in the time immediately preceding our tale, managed to reconcile and wed.
The tale begins when the recent joy at our heroes marriage is ruined by an attack upon the bride, which leaves her in deteriorating health, and the toll this takes on them as the wife makes peace with her imminent passing, while the husband refuses to accept such a prognosis, and is left unbalanced when that which he refused to accept comes to pass.
The heroes of this tale suffer from the love they bear for one another, but this is not a story that hopes to moralise to you, dearest reader, the dangers of love in hopes that you would disavow it, but one that warns we shall love, at some point or another, in some way or another, in the very broadest sense of the word, and that, due to the nature of humans and our fleetingness, will lose those that which we hold dear, and therefore, must, for our own benefit, learn to navigate the pains occasioned by such inevitable tragedy.
Please, dearest reader, take note of the missteps taken by our heroes of the hour, for they were made out of love, and grief over said love. But more importantly, dearest reader, at great risk of preaching to the choir, I warn you to not repeat the folly of allowing your pain and grief to rob you of the joy you might have had lived to see, for joy is possible in most any circumstances, even following the loss of love.
Again, dearest reader, I thank you for your indulgence of me, and without further ado, thus begins my tale.