Page 31 of The Lady's Companion
“You’ve proven to be a useful body to our bailiff,” Mrs. Skerlong said, amusement in her eyes.
Susan nodded, reading no more into the statement than she hoped the housekeeper intended. “Now if only Lady Bushnell would undergo a metamorphosis and discover how useful I could be to her.”
There was no metamorphosis. After a morning of more silver polish in the kitchen, spiced with Mrs. Skerlong’s pungent comments about the locals, Susan took her book to Lady Bushnell’s private sitting room for an afternoon ofEmma. And each day during the bailiff’s absence, Lady Bushnell listened politely, and even went so far once or twice to smile in those places where Susan laughed out loud.
There seemed to be no unbending, no softening of Lady Bushnell’s resolve to see this lady’s companion gone like the others. Perhaps she likes me, but knows that her bailiff will only dismiss me after a suitable probation, Susan considered, after one interminable afternoon. Liking someone can be so complicated, especially if that someone will be gone with the crocuses. She told herself not to hope too much, even if the bailiff had taken her into his confidence. He could just as easily see that she left.
Despite the uncertainty, Susan did not write to Joel Steinman. She told herself each morning that she would answer his letter, but she did not. Instead, she plagued Mrs. Skerlong for housework to keep her occupied in the morning, spent a frosty afternoon reading to a silent woman, and in the evening weeded plants in the succession house. Tim the cow man—he must have a last name, but Susan could never get him to own to one—saw that the room was kept warm and well lit. His chief topic each evening before he retreated to his quarters attached to the cattle byre was to admonish her to put out the lamps when shefinished. And each evening Susan patiently promised until he was satisfied. He would hand her a pail with a little milk for the cat, remind her again of the lamps, as though she had the attention span of a tulip, then stalk off, muttering to himself.
“This holding employs its share of eccentrics,” Susan told the cat as she pushed up her sleeves and weeded the Waterloo strain. The little animal, rounder each day with kittens in the making, followed her down one row and up the other, rubbing against her ankles if she happened to pause long enough for that much feline fellowship.
When she finished the wheat, she turned to the other plants, humming as she weeded, content to do as the bailiff asked. She wondered what Aunt Louisa would think if she could see her with dirt under her fingernails and strawberry stains around her mouth, but she didn’t let it occupy too much of her mind. She breathed in the wonderful fragrance of loam, fortified earth, and green things growing, and understood why the bailiff spent so much of his time where she was now. When she finished, she hitched herself onto David’s tall stool, leaned on the drafting table, rested her chin on her arms, and looked over her green domain. She dreamed that she could watch the wheat grow.
At the end of each evening, she reminded herself to write to Joel Steinman, but the intention never got much beyond the first floor landing when she returned, pleasantly tired, from the succession house. She would sit in her armchair before the fire, her stockinged feet on the fender, her dress pulled up around her knees, totally satisfied with herself and grateful to David Wiggins for the homely task he had assigned to her.
Lady Bushnell was another matter. I am determined that some afternoon you will unbend and offer me tea, she resolved every time she smiled at the old woman, opened the book, and began to read. It never happened. She would read five or six chapters— they were in volume II now—ask if there was anything elseshe could do, and grit her teeth at Lady Bushnell’s peremptory dismissal. She would smile her brightest smile, the one that Mama always said could coax eggs out of roosters, and leave the room.
“I have never been so determined to drink tea,” she told the housekeeper the next morning. She made a face. “You would think I had a controlling interest in the East India Company!”
“Well then, we will continue to put that extra cup and saucer on the tray for ballast,” Mrs. Skerlong assured her. “And there is this: David Wiggins returned late last night.”
“Oh, excellent!” Susan declared as she picked up her polishing cloth and yet another candlestick. “Was he sober?” she asked, her eyes merry. She began to rub the candlestick, then put down the cloth with a shake of her head. “Mrs. Skerlong, I cannot face another morning of silver paste. Could you commission me with something else to do?”
“I think the books in the library needs dusting,” Mrs. Skerlong said with a smile of understanding. “And here is some furniture polish...”
“Oh, don’t say that word,’ Susan interrupted with a sigh.
“... for the pianoforte,” Mrs. Skerlong continued. “Lady Bushnell and David are in the bookroom.”
I will polish first, and get it over with, Susan decided as she closed the door to the library and opened the draperies. She coughed from the dust off the curtains, wiped her eyes with her apron, and looked around her with some pleasure.
The mullioned windows let in only a moderate amount of sunlight, but it was enough to put a golden glow on the oak wainscoting. Again she was struck with the permanence of the manor and its graceful endurance through one more winter in several centuries of changing seasons. I love this house, she decided, as she set the polish carefully on the window ledge and raised the piano lid. She played a tentative chord, pleased withthe resonance of the instrument. A person could curl up quite comfortably on that sofa over there, she thought, while someone more proficient than I played this piano.
She considered Joel Steinman’s letter, and the possible governess position, and played another chord. If I can get that job, I had better be able to verify my claim to teach piano to children, she told herself as she ruffled through a stack of music and appropriated a Bach invention that looked promising, if played at a glacier’s speed.
“I disremember this many notes,” she muttered, her eyes on the music as she poised her fingers over the keys. “Forward and easy does it, Susan. How bad can one person be?”
I could have been worse, but I’m not sure how, she admitted to herself, when she concluded with a chord that while not triumphant, was at least three parts right. Thank goodness I do not have an audience. I’m sure they would be throwing things or making rude noises. She turned the page and poised her hands over the keys again.
“Don’t even think it, Miss Hampton!”
Susan gasped and put her hands behind her back as Lady Bushnell uttered each word with emphatic precision. The bailiff laughed from the doorway as the widow, moving slowly but deliberately with the aid of a cane, bore down upon her. After one terrified look around, Susan closed her eyes and sat very still. To her horror, Lady Bushnell ordered the bailiff to pull up a chair. Susan just barely stifled a gasp when the widow thumped down her cane on a spot by the piano stool and the bailiff positioned the chair. He helped her sit down, then stood behind the chair. Susan knew that she did not have the courage to look at either of them, so she kept her eyes resolutely trained upon Bach.
Her courage fled when Lady Bushnell thumped the music with her cane. “Begin again, Miss Hampton. From the top.”
Susan turned back to the previous page, where the notes appeared to have multiplied at an alarming rate. She stared at the page, opened her mouth to beg off, then closed it. I would only babble, she told herself. I wonder if Lady Bushnell can smell fear.
Susan took a deep breath and began to play, wincing at the notes and grateful, at the same time, that Bach would never know what atrocities she was committing on his music.
She struggled to the end, and held her breath after the final chord. Out of the comer of her eye she saw the bailiff go to the window, where he stood, shoulders shaking, and stared out at the snow. She was too afraid to glance at Lady Bushnell. The widow cleared her throat and Susan winced again.
“Miss Hampton, if my pianoforte were a living thing, we would have to shoot it to put it out of its misery.”
David Wiggins exploded into laughter, which he quickly stifled when the dowager glared at him. “You, sir, are less than useful at moments like these,” Lady Bushnell pronounced. “Surely you can find something to do!”
“Without question, ma’am,” he replied promptly, his voice a trifle unsteady. “Do be kind to Miss Hampton, my lady. After all, she did weed the Waterloo strain to perfection while I was gone.”
“I suspected as much,” rejoined the widow, clearing her throat in a decisive manner that must have terrified a generation of her husband’s lieutenants. “I can still see dirt under her nails! Really, Miss Hampton!”
