A Lady Awakened (9 page)

“Come in, then,” said Mrs. Weaver. “Pleased to meet you, sir,” she added, without any perceptible effort to convince.

Well, he was not particularly pleased to meet her, either. Her or her squalling baby or, for that matter, any one of the numerous children now to be perceived in the cottage’s dingy interior. They were probably worthy enough folk, after their fashion, but what had he to say to them? No more than he had to say to the pig, who now voiced its grievances from the other side of the closed door.

Mr. Granville and Mrs. Weaver spoke of the weather and the recent harvest, leaving him to look about. It was a cottage of only one story, a large room in front and two doors on the back wall leading to whatever constituted the rest of the house. Sleeping-quarters, probably, for those Weavers who merited better than a pallet on the front-room floor, and then some sort of pantry or larder. The place could use a good cleaning, beginning with the kitchen table, on which sat the apparent remains of dinner along with a healthy visitation of houseflies. One would think some of the numerous children might trouble to clear the dishes.

The children appeared to number ten altogether. A few girls, a few boys, and a few young ones of indeterminate gender in smocked dresses and unshorn curls, they disposed themselves listlessly about the pallets and other poor furnishings. One or two spared him a sullen glance. Largely he was ignored.

Who could approve such children, with no visible capacity either for industry or for childish dissipation? Granted they lacked many of the advantages he’d enjoyed as a child, but a tidy house could boost their spirits prodigiously, and
that
, at least, was in their power. Someone ought to tell them so.

A small one roused itself to cough several times, and sank back into lassitude on its pallet. Probably it was ill with something pestilent. Probably this whole room was rank with contagion. If he had been their parent, he should have insisted they go outdoors and breathe better air.

Some movement in the corner caught his eye: one of the children was not quite idle. A round-faced girl, fifteen or so, sat in a chair with her head bent, her attention all absorbed by something in her lap. Needlework, perhaps? A diminutive pet? But no—she had a piece of gold paper and was folding it with great care and concentration. A favorite pastime of young girls, if his own sisters were anything to go by. So many hours they’d spent in this occupation, turning out the most marvelous things: swans, castles, ingenious little men with jointed limbs. They’d grown out of it, though, by the time of reaching this girl’s years.

As he watched, she folded the paper in half, lining up the corners. Then in half again. Then two times more, to make a small square with a thickness of sixteen sheets. She looked at it, turned it over, and unfolded it: to eighths, then quarters, then halves, then all the way out. The creases, he could see, were nearly worn through. She smoothed the paper in her lap and began to fold again, in just the same pattern, with the same force of attention.

Some need of the baby’s drawing Mrs. Weaver away, he leaned near to Granville and spoke in an undertone. “The eldest girl is simple?”

“Indeed,” his agent answered with a curt nod, managing to suggest quite plainly that the question would better have waited until they were gone from the house.

So he said nothing more on the subject. The cottage looked different, though, now he knew it contained this sadness. By such an age his sisters had progressed to more intricate crafts—somewhere he had a box Mary had made for him, all pasted over with strips of paper rolled into pretty spirals—and progressed, too, to an interest in gowns, and the balls they should wear them to, and the eligible young men they should meet there. Of course no girl in this cottage was likely to attend balls, but the simpleminded daughter might have to remain here always, watching her younger sisters grow past her to contrive their own establishments.

Those sisters who survived to adulthood, that was. He was obliged to make that emendation as the small smocked one fell into another coughing fit. What an arrogant fool he’d been to judge them. Probably half these children would never see sixteen.

He’d worked himself into ridiculously low spirits by the time they left the house, and nearly tripped over the pig, who had taken care to put itself in his path. “What do we pay Mr. Weaver?” he asked as they passed out of the yard.

“Eight shillings a week, same as all the laborers.” Granville had to close the gate twice before it latched.

Eight shillings sounded like a pitiful wage. One couldn’t be sure, though, not knowing the price of a loaf of bread, or, for that matter, anything practical at all. “Is that all they have to live upon?”

“Mrs. Weaver and the older children work at the harvest, and earn some then. And the children might make a few pennies picking rocks for a neighbor, or keeping off the birds from a crop. Nothing much to speak of. They do receive some supplement out of the poor rates.”

So it
was
a miserable wage. “Why do we not simply pay them more, and not depend upon the parish to keep them out of poverty?”

“It’s a difficult thing.” Granville looked older out of doors. He must be forty or so, but the sunlight gave him a worn appearance. Perhaps this topic did too. “Wheat is fetching only sixty-six shillings a quarter this year, sharply down from what it was a few years back. No telling where the price will go.”

“Is this not a profitable piece of land?” The concept was an outright novelty. Why keep property that didn’t bring in a good income?

“Barely, now. It’s not large enough to ever be truly lucrative. Not on the scale of your Lincolnshire estate.”

“I see.” He fell into silence.
Not large enough to be lucrative
. Could enclosure of adjacent land cure that? He might raise the question, later, when he’d studied a bit on the subject and had a look at Granville’s map. More hours in the library. Splendid. He should be a soft, bookish-looking fellow indeed by the time he was judged responsible enough to be admitted back to London.

He met other families: the Knights, the Tinkers, the Rowlandsons, and the Quigleys, all more modest in size than the Weaver clan, and with better-mannered pigs. The last cottage they passed over as it belonged to a bachelor, who was then out in the wheat field with the other men.

Could there be anything less fitted for engaging a man’s interest than wheat and its cultivation? Perhaps he should have felt differently if he’d seen the field before harvest, rippling rows of gold in the middle of Sussex green, but today, as he and the agent approached it over a rise, he saw the wheat bound in shocks, waiting for whatever happened next to wheat, stark on the stubbled-over ground. So much of the stuff, and still not enough to make a good income.

Mr. Granville presented him to the men there, the husbands and nearly-grown sons of the families he’d visited. They were suitably sturdy, outdoor-looking specimens, most of them, save for one elderly, slow-moving man who proved to be the bachelor Mr. Barrow. Their hands, when he shook them, were coarse and callused, and Mr. Barrow’s seemed furthermore a bit crabbed. Surely his working years could not be many more.

Several minutes of agricultural discussion transpired. Something about prospective tariffs, and how these could give an advantage in market to the domestic crop. More remarks upon the weather. Nothing of note. Theo stood with his hands behind his back and his head up, a bit removed from the conversation as was fitting for a landlord, until the time came for everyone to bow and restore his respective hat. “The smaller families with older sons are fortunate,” he said as he and Granville moved along. “Two or more wages, and fewer people to divide them among.”

“The shape of your family makes a great difference, doesn’t it? I’m sorry the Weavers have no grown-up sons.” They were walking a path that followed a rail fence now, and from time to time the man rapped at some part of it, presumably to test the soundness of its joints.

“Mr. Barrow has no family at all? Not even nieces or nephews, I mean?”

“No.” This brought an extra gravity, he could see, to Granville’s weathered features. “He had sisters, I know, but they married long ago and settled somewhere far north.”

“No one to take an interest in caring for him, then.”

“It’s not as uncommon a case as one might like it to be. Reminds a man of the importance of marrying. Not a man of independent means, of course—you may look after yourself and then pay others to do so, if you choose.”

This sounded a dismal prospect. He must remember to think seriously of marriage, in five or ten years, and in the meantime, to ingratiate himself with his sisters’ children. “But Mr. Barrow,” he said. “There will come a time—soon, perhaps—when he can no longer earn a wage.”

“Aye, and after that, a time when he cannot keep house, and a time when he cannot care for himself.” Granville stopped, having found a place in the fence that did not make the proper reply to his knock. He rapped at it again, and then took out a pencil and a folded bit of paper to make some note.

Theo waited. “What happens to such a man at that time?” he said when the agent had finished.

He shook his head without looking up. “If a man does live to that age, and has no connections, like as not he ends in the workhouse infirmary.”

“Workhouse.” The one word was all he could manage.

“There’s one in Cuckfield, a bit to the north and west of here.” A small silence followed, then Granville spoke again. “It’s as difficult an end as you may imagine, for a man who’s supported himself and stayed out of debt all his life.” He put away his pencil and walked on.

What more could be said on the subject? Nothing at all. The sun shone hot already through the still summer air, and by the time they returned to the house he felt as though he had walked a dozen miles with something heavy—the Weaver pig, perhaps—strapped to his shoulders. Thank the fates he had his amusements in the widow’s bed still before him today. A man with responsibilities needed some place to escape them.

H
E ARRIVED
promptly at half past the hour, letting himself in without a knock as though the place were his own. “You found the room,” said Martha, watching him from her armchair.

“With a woman waiting for me there? Of course I found it.” He pulled the door shut with a little smile in appreciation of his witticism. “It’s convenient as can be. There’s a woods straddling our properties with a path through it that lets me out just feet from your side door. Altogether discreet.” While sharing this information he surveyed the room, blinking in its relative dim. Discretion had dictated just a sliver of space between the drapes.

Whether he would approve of the furnishings had not come into her mind when she’d chosen this set of rooms, but they did rather suit him, now one thought of it. The sitting room was larger than her own, with a grand marble fireplace and everything done up in blues and grays. Blue-and-gray carpet, blue-paneled walls, sapphire-and-silver striped damask on the massive chairs and sofa. In better light, his eyes would probably appear to advantage against these colors.

“This is decidedly more opulent than your rooms,” he said, coming over to where she sat and dropping into the facing armchair. He looked proportionate there. Not overlarge and ill contained, as he’d done in her own spindly-legged furniture.

“My rooms suit me. And to many, many people, I’m sure they would represent opulence beyond imagining.”

“Quite.” He propped his elbows on the chair’s arms, steepled his fingers, and studied them. If anything was in his mind, he made no move to share it.

She sat straighter. “I see you’ve changed to top boots today.”

“To be sure. Trousers as well.” Immediately he brightened at the new topic, and stuck out one leg before him, twisting the boot back and forth. “What they lack in elegance, they make up in a certain virility, wouldn’t you say?”

“I really don’t know. I hope you did not wear them for my benefit.”

“No, dear.” He swung his foot back down beside the other, and untwined his fingers to stretch out his arms. “I was busy about my land this morning, and wore them for that purpose.”

Here was a promising change of subject. “Were you doing some work on the land, you mean?”

He shook his head. “Walking about with my agent, merely, and getting acquainted with things.” His gaze went somewhere past her, perhaps to the stripe of light between the drapes. “We grow wheat, it would appear,” he added after a moment. One hand moved restlessly on the arm of his chair.

“Some of my tenants do, too. And of course they raise sheep.”

“You have tenants, then? Not hired laborers?” A thoughtful frown was working itself into his brow, which certainly gave his countenance a novel aspect. “I find only the latter on my land. Not the former. And none of them have sheep.”

Was he expecting a reply? One couldn’t quite be sure. “I don’t suppose you’ve much room for farms, besides your own. Your property is of modest size, as I recall.”

“At present, yes.” The frown turned itself to her, as though he were considering her anew. “Would you happen to know very much about enclosure?”

“I’m afraid not.” She leaned forward. “But I could look through Mr. Russell’s library. He may have had books on the subject, or even records of enclosure here.”

“No, thank you. I have books of my own.” His attention subsided from her, and settled on the arm of the chair where his fingers still worked, tracing the silver stripes between the blue. What was occupying him? She should have expected him to invoke the purpose of his visit by now. He’d certainly been eager enough the first two times.

Abruptly his hand dropped to spread over the chair’s arm, his fingers no longer fidgeting. “I find some of my people are partly dependent on the parish relief,” he said, and looked up, angling his head to face her indirectly. “Are any of yours?”

Was he … embarrassed? The thought woke a strange clumsy tenderness in her. Perhaps he was embarrassed, and troubled, by the conditions in which people lived on his land.