When the men brought the new lead piping to be placed against the walls, to serve as guttering from the roof to the ground, and the bucket heads were in position, I had a strange feeling of pride as I looked up at the little plaque beneath them stamped with my initials P. A and the date beneath, and lower down the lion that was my mother’s crest.
It was as though I gave something of myself into the future.
And Rachel, standing beside me, took my arm and said,
“I never thought you proud, Philip, until now.
I love you the better for it.”
Yes, I was proud… but emptiness went with it all the same.
So the work proceeded, in the house and in the grounds; and the first days of spring came, being in themselves a blend of torment and delight.
Blackbird and chaffinch sang beneath our windows on first waking, rousing both Rachel and myself from sleep.
We talked of it at midday when we met.
The sun came to her first, on the eastern side of the house, and with her windows wide drove a slant of light onto her pillow.
I had it later, as I dressed.
Leaning out, looking over the meadows to the sea, I would see the horses and the plow climb the further hill, with the gulls wheeling about them, and in the pasture lands closer to the house were the ewes and the young lambs, back to back for comfort.
Lapwings, on passage bent, came in a little cloud, with fluttering wings.
Soon they would pair, and the male soar and tumble in his flight of rapture.
Down on the shore the curlews whistled, and the oyster-catchers, black and white like parsons, poked in the seaweed solemnly, for breakfast. The air had a zest to it, salt-tasting, under the sun.
It was on a morning such as this that Seecombe came to me and told me that Sam Bate, up at the East Lodge, who was in bed, poorly, wished very much that I would go and see him, as he had something of importance to give me.
He inferred that whatever it was he had was too precious to deliver to his son or to his daughter.
I thought little of it.
It is always a pleasure among country folk to make much mystery over small matters.
Nevertheless, in the afternoon, I walked up the avenue to the gates there where the four roads meet, and turned in at the lodge to have a word with him.
Sam was sitting up in bed, and lying on the blanket before him was one of the coats that had belonged to Ambrose, which had been given to him on Christmas Day.
I recognized it as the light-colored one I had not known, which Ambrose must have bought for the hot weather on the continent.
“Well, Sam,” I said, “I am sorry to find you in bed.
What is the matter?”
“The same old cough, Mr. Philip, sir, that catches me aback every spring,” replied the man.
“My father had it before me, and one spring t’will carry me to the grave, the same as it did him.”
“Nonsense, Sam,” I told him, “those are old tales they spread, that what a man’s father had will kill the son.”
Sam Bate shook his head.
“There’s truth in it, sir,” he said, “and you know it, too.
How about Mr. Ambrose and his father, the old gentleman your uncle?
Brain sickness did for the pair of them.
There’s no going agin the ways of nature.
I’ve seen the same in cattle.”
I said nothing, wondering, at the same time, how Sam should know what illness it was of which Ambrose had died.
I had told no one.
It was incredible how rumor spread about our countryside.
“You must send your daughter to ask Mrs. Ashley for some cordial to cure your cough,” I said to him.
“She has great knowledge of such things.
Oil of eucalyptus is one of her remedies.”
“I will, Mr. Philip, I will,” he answered me, “but first I felt it right to ask you to come yourself, concerning the matter of the letter.”
He lowered his voice, and looked suitably concerned and solemn.
“What letter, Sam?” I asked.
“Mr. Philip,” he replied, “on Christmas Day, you and Mrs. Ambrose kindly gave some of us clothes and the like belonging to the late master.
And very proud we are, all of us, to have the same.
Now this coat that you see here, on the bed, was given to me.”
He paused, and touched the coat, with some of the same awe about him still with which he had received it on Christmas Day.
“Now I brought the coat up here, sir, that same night,” Sam continued, “and I said to my daughter if we had a glass case to put it in we’d do so, but she told me to get along with such nonsense, the coat was meant to wear, but wear it I would not, Mr. Philip.
T’would have seemed presuming on my part, if you follow me, sir.
So I put the coat away in the press, yonder, and took him out now and agin and had a look at it.
Then, when this cough seized me, and I lay up here abed, I don’t know how it was, but the fancy came upon me to wear the coat.