Once, not so long ago, I had seen other eyes with that same age-old look of suffering.
Those eyes too had held reserve and pride, coupled with the same abasement, the same agony of supplication.
It must be, I thought, as I came to my room, Ambrose’s room, and examined the well-remembered walking stick, it must be because the eyes are the same color and they belong to the same race.
Otherwise they could have nothing in common, the beggar woman beside the Arno and my cousin Rachel.
9
I was down early the following morning, and immediately after breakfast walked across to the stables and summoned Wellington, and we went together to the harness room.
Yes, there were some half-dozen sidesaddles among the rest.
I suppose the fact was that I had never noticed them.
“Mrs. Ashley cannot ride,” I told him.
“All she wants is something to sit upon and to cling onto.”
“We’d better put her up on Solomon,” said the old coachman.
“He may never have carried a lady but he won’t let her down, that’s certain.
I couldn’t be sure, sir, of any of the other horses.”
Solomon had been hunted years back, by Ambrose, but now took his ease chiefly in the meadow, unless exercised on the high road by Wellington.
The sidesaddles were high up on the wall of the harness room, and he had to send for the groom, and a short ladder, to bring them down.
It caused quite a pother and excitement, the choice of the saddle; this one was too worn, the next too narrow for Solomon’s broad back, and the lad was scolded because the third had a cobweb across it.
I laughed inwardly, guessing that neither Wellington nor anybody else had thought about those saddles for a quarter of a century, and told Wellington that a good polish with a leather would set it to rights, and Mrs. Ashley would think the saddle had come down from London yesterday.
“What time does the mistress wish to start?” he asked, and I stared at him a moment, taken aback by his choice of words.
“Some time after noon,” I said shortly.
“You can bring Solomon round to the front door, and I shall be leading Mrs. Ashley myself.”
Then I turned back to the estate room, in the house, to reckon up the weekly books and check the accounts before the men came for their wages.
The mistress indeed.
Was that how they looked upon her, Wellington and Seecombe and the rest?
I supposed in a sense it was natural of them, yet I thought how swiftly men, especially menservants, became fools when in the presence of a woman.
That look of reverence in Seecombe’s eye when he had brought in the tea last night, and his respectful manner as he placed the tray before her, and this morning at breakfast it was young John, if you please, who waited by the sideboard and lifted the covers from my bacon, because “Mr. Seecombe,” he said,” has gone upstairs with the tray for the boudoir.”
And now here was Wellington, in a state of excitement, polishing and rubbing at the old sidesaddle, and shouting over his shoulder to the boy to see to Solomon.
I worked away at my accounts, glad to be so unmoved by the fact that a woman had slept under the roof for the first time since Ambrose had sent my nurse packing; and now I came to think of it her treatment of me as I nearly fell asleep, her words,
“Philip, go to bed,” were what my nurse might have said to me, over twenty years ago.
At noon the servants came, and the men who worked outside in the stables, woods, and gardens, and I gave them their money; then I noticed that Tamlyn, the head gardener, was not among them. I inquired the reason, and was told that he was somewhere about the grounds with “the mistress.”
I made no observation as to this, but paid the rest their wages and dismissed them.
Some instinct told me where I should find Tamlyn and my cousin Rachel.
I was right.
They were in the forcing ground, where we had brought on the camellias, and the oleanders, and the other young trees that Ambrose had carried back from his travels.
I had never been an expert—I had left that to Tamlyn—and now as I rounded the corner and came upon them I could hear her talking about cuttings, and layers, and a north aspect, and the feeding of the soil, and Tamlyn listening to it all with his hat in his hand and the same look of reverence in the eye that Seecombe had, and Wellington.
She smiled at the sight of me and rose to her feet. She had been kneeling on a piece of sacking, examining the shoots of a young tree.
“I’ve been out since half-past ten,” she said.
“I looked for you to ask permission but could not find you, so I did a bold thing and went down myself to Tamlyn’s cottage to make myself known to him, didn’t I, Tamlyn?”
“You did, ma’am,” said Tamlyn, with a sheep’s look in his eye.
“You see, Philip,” she continued, “I brought with me to Plymouth—I could not get them in the carriage, they will follow on by carrier—all the plants and shrubs that we had collected, Ambrose and I, during the past two years.
I have the lists here with me, and where he wished them to go, and I thought it would save time if I talked over the list with Tamlyn, and explained what everything was.
I may be gone when the carrier brings the load.”
“That’s all right,” I said. “You both of you understand these things better than I do.
Please continue.”
“We’ve finished, haven’t we, Tamlyn?” she said.
“And will you please thank Mrs. Tamlyn for that cup of tea she gave me, and tell her that I do so hope her sore throat will be better by this evening?
Oil of eucalyptus is the remedy, I will send some down to her.”
“Thank you, ma’am,” said Tamlyn (it was the first I had heard of his wife’s sore throat), and looking at me he added, with a little awkward air of diffidence,
“I’ve learned some things this morning, Mr. Philip, sir, that I never thought to learn from a lady.
I always believed I knew my work, but Mrs. Ashley knows more about gardening than I do, or ever will for that matter.
Proper ignorant she’s made me feel.”