Page 40 of The Lady's Companion
“Aye, and he’ll be spending more and more time there, until the lambing is done. And soon they’ll be letting the rams and yearlings out to more distant meadows. A busy time of year is spring, Susan.”
“And then the bailiff will plant his Waterloo wheat?” she asked, taking the plates and cups from the housekeeper and arranging them on the table.
Mrs. Skerlong nodded, then directed her attention to the Rumford again. “He’s been planning that crop of wheat for five years now, I’m thinking.” She shrugged. “What the good of it is, I don’t know. Everyone else just saves wheat back from the harvest and plants that the next year. Why this is better, I couldn’t say.” She removed a pot from the stove and dipped soup into their bowls.
“He thinks this strain will produce better wheat,” Susan said, thinking of the wheat in the succession house, force-grown and lovely as it swayed in the artificial breeze of the furnaces.
The housekeeper cut off several slices of roast beef from thepan warming on the hob and put them on a platter. She called Cora from the laundry room and the three of them sat down to dinner. “I wondered why he did all that,” commented the housekeeper as she swabbed at the meat juice with a chunk of bread. “Then one day I was redding up his funny stand-up desk in the succession house, and there was a piece of paper with ‘Quilling Seed Farm, David Wiggins, Proprietor,’ written as fancy as you please on a scrap of paper!” The Skerlongs looked at each other and laughed, as though it was an old joke.
“You think he can’t do that?” Susan asked, ready to spring to the bailiff’s defense.
“It seems a broad dream for a poacher on the run from Wales who knew more about the end of a gun than a stalk of wheat when he came here,” she said, chewing placidly, her words a mild reproof of Susan’s quick statement.
Susan nodded for form’s sake, and addressed herself to the roast in front of her. People change, she thought. I have changed since the wind and snow blew me into Mr. Steinman’s agency. Others can change, too. She thought of Lady Bushnell and her fierce desire to maintain her independence, and sighed. Sometimes we have to change, even when we don’t want to.
Mrs. Skerlong looked at her with a smile in her eyes. “That sigh came from your toes, I’m thinking.” She leaned forward across the table. “Don’t worry; David Wiggins always finds his way home.”
Susan regarded the housekeeper with amusement. A month ago, I would have taken such affront at your presumption, she thought, but no longer. “Actually, Mrs. Skerlong, I was thinking of Lady Bushnell,” she replied, leaning forward, grateful that it was the truth. “What happens if Lady B becomes ill and her daughter-in-law really does step in?”
There was a long pause. “None of us like to think of it.”
“But she’s sixty-five.”
“And she’s spent years and years marching with regiments, following the drum from India to Spain,” Cora chimed in softly. “I think it would kill her to be forced to leave her independence behind and go to her daughter-in-law.”
Susan nodded again. “And all in the name of kindness. How sad.”
The three of them sat quietly for long minutes, with only the sound of soup bubbling on the stove to compete with the silence. Finally the housekeeper heaved herself up from the table. “Well, we are glum gussies,” she said, “and why borrow trouble from tomorrow?” She looked at Cora, then Susan. “Cora, did we forget to mention to Susan about tonight?”
“It’s the third Wednesday,” Cora said, as if that explained it all. She must have observed Susan’s blank look. “Mum and I go to Quilling to listen to the bell ringers.” She blushed and looked at her mother. ‘Timothy Rudge plays the bells,” she said, as if that explained everything.
It did. “And he also sings tenor?” Susan asked.
Cora nodded, quite rosy now. “We stays overnight with Mum’s sister and comes back by early morning.”
“But how do you get there?”
Mrs. Skerlong rose and gathered the dishes toward her. “We take the gig. David rode the saddle horse to the sheepfold. And now if you won’t mind helping with the dishes, I can get Lady B’s dinner ready and in front of her and still be on time.”
She saw them off from the back steps, two women well bundled against the night air clamping down cold and hard, with warming boxes at their feet and bell ringers on Cora’s mind, at least. Susan stayed where she was for a long moment, hugging her arms close to her body, admiring the brittle sunset. How beautiful this will be in summer, she thought as the cold defeated her and she stepped inside. I wonder where he will plant the wheat? She remembered the perfection of summernights on Papa’s estate when they still owned it, and the pleasure of rustling her way through the rye and the barley before it was too tall.
She stood by the window in the kitchen, trying to imagine the sight of wheat in June fields on a long, sloping hillside in Belgium, just before it all turned into mud and blood. “I think it would be a sight not soon forgotten,” she said, writing “David Wiggins, Sergeant” on the frosty pane this time. “It must have been the last good memory for many.”
With the cat in her lap, she dozed in front of the stove until she heard Lady Bushnell’s bell. She hurried to the breakfast room to retrieve the remains of dinner, arranging cup and plate on the tray in the empty room. Lady Bushnell had already left; Susan heard the sitting room door close quietly as she picked up the tray and started for the kitchen.
She stopped in the hall. Setting the tray on a side table, she went quietly to the sitting room door and knocked. “Lady Bushnell?” she asked. “May I come in?”
“Yes.”
She entered the room, cheery now with the light of several lamps and a fire which Mrs. Skerlong must have nurtured before she left Susan drew the curtains closed and hesitated at the window. Lady Bushnell sat in her usual chair, the yellowing letters on her lap and beside her on a small table. Several had fallen to the floor.
“Let me help you.” Susan knelt and gathered up the pages, the ink pale with age now. She placed them on the table, wishing she had an excuse to stay. “Is there anything I can do for you?” she asked, knowing those were hated words to her employer, but unsure of what else to say.
“I have already told you that I can manage,” Lady Bushnell said, her voice firm, as though she spoke to a slow child. She indicated the letters in her lap. “I like to read these in theevenings.”
How can you manage? Susan wanted to ask. I can hardly read them, with the ink so faded. “Very well,” she replied, when the widow said nothing more. “But if you need me… ”
“I won’t.”
