Dear Loretta,
I received a kind letter Saturday from your parents, asking after my stepfather. I have just answered that he is recovering. Five days from surgery, he is still confined to bed. This morning I allowed him a slice of bread soaked in milk instead of the usual broth. He savored it slowly, as if it were ambrosia.
I am leaving him in Mother’s care this morning, to watch over Doctor Rhodes’ practice so that he may drive his wife to Shrewsbury, as she has dropped and broken her eyeglasses. He has asked again if I would take over his practice. I have asked for some time to consider this. I should like to know your wishes.
Since our marriage I have made excuses for your coldness to my family, believing the root lay in your fear that I might wish to move us to Gresham; something I would never do without your consent. I have come to understand that I am the only barrier to your happiness, even in your beloved city. How do you think that makes me feel, as a husband?
And so I must ask . . . Shall I accept Doctor Rhodes’ offer? Should I write a letter of resignation to your father? Will my absence bring you the happiness my presence obviously does not?
Please let me know your wishes.
Philip signed and sealed the letter. Even though his heart ached terribly, a burden lifted from his soul. He scratched his fledgling beard. At least there would be a decision.
He dropped the envelope into the letter box and carried his black bag across the green to Walnut Tree Lane, the farthest north-south road to the west of Gresham. The Rhodes’ cottage was a snugly thatched mixture of stone and cob. His knock was answered by housekeeper Mrs. Grimly, whose name was at odds with her jolly round face.
“Aye, they’ve already left,” she said, allowing him entrance into a parlor filled with a comfortable but eclectic mixture of old furniture and scattered medical books. “And you’ve got Willet Sanders waiting.”
Philip had forgotten how early dairy farmers rose. Mr. Sanders would have already done the morning milking. The odor of pipe tobacco wafted down the hall from the surgery, which had its own outdoor entrance beneath a fading green canopy. Sure enough, Mr. Sanders rose slowly from a chair in the waiting area, peered at him through thick-lidded eyes, and pulled his pipe from scowling lips. “Where’s Doctor Rhodes?”
“I’m taking his place this morning, Mr. Sanders.”
“Took you long enough to get here.”
He’s family, Philip reminded himself. His daughter, Mercy Langford, was adoptive mother to Grace’s husband, Thomas. Still . . .
“You may not smoke in here, Mr. Sanders. There is an ash barrel in the corner.”
The old man’s leathery brow furrowed, as if he were considering returning later to more amiable doctoring. And it seemed he would do so, for he went to the door. “I just put in a new wad of tobacco. I’ll leave it on the step. You ain’t gonter be too long, are you?”
Not a moment longer than I have to, Philip thought.
“My knees,” the old man said in the examining room. “Can’t hardly sit on the milking stool. Worse in the mornings.”
Philip had him remove his trousers and boots and stockings. Mr. Sanders cried out as he probed a swollen knee.
“Sorry,” Philip said, and moved down to his feet. Gingerly he moved the right big toe. Mr. Sanders let out an oath. Philip ignored it. Pain could sometimes thrash self-control, especially when the latter was weak from underuse.
“You have gout, Mr. Sanders,” he said after helping the man dress himself.
“Gout? But thet’s for rich folk.”
“Not at all, Mr. Sanders. It affects mostly older men whose diets contain purine-heavy foods.”
Another scowl. “You wanter say thet in English?”
Philip nodded, apologized again. Most of his surgery patients were unconscious. He would have to work on his bedside manner. “Do you eat a lot of organ meats? Brains, liver, kidneys?”
“Well, yes. All the time.”
Philip went over to Doctor Rhodes’ medicine cabinet. “I’m going to give you some colchicine, which will help. But you must change your diet or this will not go away. I’ll write you a list of foods to avoid, and those you may have in moderation. And, by the way, no beer.”
Mr. Sanders looked as if he’d been punched. “None at all?”
“Is it worth the pain?”
He expected more argument, but the old man shook his head, even squeezed out a tear. “Nothing’s worth this pain. I don’t wanter spend my last days like this.”
Philip patted his shoulder. “I think you have many years left in you. Let’s just make them good years.”
Later, he flipped through one of Doctor Rhodes’ medical texts, between treating Mrs. Winters’ sty on the eye with a warm compress and citron ointment, and setting twelve-year-old Alger Sway’s left index finger, broken while trying to catch a rounders ball.
The best call of the morning came when young Boswell Jefferies carried his near-hysterical wife, Sally, in because the infant she had carried in her womb for eight months had not moved in over a day. Philip picked up a faint but healthy heartbeat with his stethoscope, and allowed the parents to listen. The tears in both sets of eyes caused his own eyes to blur and sting. He certainly never got that from a surgery patient.
Mr. Nicholls of Whitchurch was an earnest-faced young curate whose barely audible sermon on Elijah and the widow put some of the elderly people to sleep, but at least none had the indecency to snore. There were a couple of snorts, which ended abruptly on up notes brought on by neighborly elbows.
When a marble rolled down the aisle, Mr. Nicholls took the hint and began the closing prayer. Some child—probably a boy—would get a paddling later. Aleda would have given him a shilling for his sacrifice.
“You can only strain to listen for so long before your ears give up trying,” Elizabeth said in a hushed tone as the family strolled toward the vicarage. Jonathan was absent, having volunteered to sit with Father.
“He said Elisha twice,” John said.
“Are you quite sure?” Philip said.
“I am, Uncle Philip.”
“Young people have sharp ears,” Aleda said. “He could have said Father Christmas for all I could hear.”
“Father Christmas,” Claire twittered sociably, for she and Samuel had been chattering on and paying no attention.
“Father Christmas,” Samuel chortled.
“That’s enough,” Mother said firmly. “It’s not fair to make comparisons. He was nervous. And your father has been a minister for thirty years.”
She was right. All grumblings gave way to guilty silence.
In the parlor, Father was sitting up against his bed pillows with the expression of one who had counted the minutes. “Well, how was it?”
Mother went behind his chair, leaned to kiss the top of his head. “Fine. You may want to give Mr. Nicholls some fatherly advice when he visits.”
He was staying at the Larkspur. One of the lodgers had left Thursday to visit family in Yorkshire, and offered her room. Aleda and Elizabeth exchanged knowing looks. By sunrise tomorrow, the poor man would have had his fill of preaching advice from the lodgers.
“We begin chapter eleven,” Jewel said to the squire.
Becky looked up from the tower of blocks she was building upon the rug. “Mummy, do you think Mr. Fogg and Aouda will marry?”
Jewel stared at her. The child had not even been inside the bedchamber for every reading, for the women servants still sought her company. She glanced at the squire, and her surprise was even greater.
His eyes were smiling!
Jewel smiled, as well. “It’s too early to tell, mite.”
She cleared her throat and began reading.
“ ‘The train had started punctually. Among the passengers were a number of officers, government officials, and opium and indigo merchants, whose business called them to the eastern coast.’ ”
“Mummy? What’s opium and indigo?”
“Opium is something bad that you must never, ever take. I don’t know what indigo is, but if these merchants are selling it with opium, then it’s bad, too. Now, you must be quiet and allow me to read.”
She looked at the squire again. If his eyes were smiling before, they positively laughed now!
“No cheques,” Mr. Maxwell of Maxwell and Son Livery Service said between puffs on a pipe, beneath a nose spidery with red veins.
“But it’s drawn on the Bank of England.”
“Don’t mean there’s money in it.”
There was not indeed, but still Donald took umbrage. “I resent your implication that I’m not a gentleman, sir.”
The man waved a spotted hand. “No implication, just policy from having been burned by too many ‘gentlemen’ in the past.”
Were the man not at least twenty years his senior, Donald would have called him out. But even so, how would that get him up to Gresham? He did not fancy the idea of walking twelve miles.
He tried another tactic. “Have you heard of Squire Thurmond Bartley?”
Mr. Maxwell cocked his head. “Of the cheeses?”
“Indeed. He’s my uncle, and very ill.”
“I’m very sorry.”
“And so you can see I must get to him straightaway.”
The man nodded, pointed his pipe. “Then, nip a half block over to the warehouse, and you can catch a wagon on its return. They sometimes take on passengers to and from Gresham. I’ll wager they won’t even charge you the shilling.”
“Pleasant day, ain’t it?” said the driver as the wagon rumbled along the macadamized roadway.
“Lovely,” Donald muttered. The money gleaned from the watch was gone. He would have been in deeper hot water had he not had the foresight to purchase a return railway ticket, and to pay the July mortgage before heading over to his Kensington house. Reese went through the rest like a sow through corn, even insisting on another velvet jacket, simply because the sleeves of the one purchased in February creased excessively at the elbows.
Why the need to dress so smartly, just for hanging about the house? Donald hated to guess.
“Was you away Friday?” The driver’s voice cut into his thoughts again.
“Yes.”
“Rained like the dickens. We couldn’t even take out the wagons.”
“How utterly devastating for you,” Donald muttered.
This time the driver caught the sarcasm in his voice and made no more effort at conversation.
“The manor house, if you please,” Donald said as cottages began popping up on either side.
The man did not argue that it was not on his route. By now he had surely figured out that Donald would own his livelihood very soon.
Mrs. Cooper met him in the foyer, looking startled to see him. “I thought I heard horses, sir. Everyone’s to lunch. Will you be wanting something to eat?”
“I’ll ring for a tray in a couple of hours. I mean to rest a bit, after I look in on Uncle.”
The housekeeper smiled. “You’ll be pleased. He seems more alert now.”
Donald stretched his lips into a smile. “Outstanding. You may return to your meal.”
He did not even take the time to stash his portmanteau, but propped it against the wall beside his uncle’s door. The old man lay facing the doorway. The eye not pressed against his pillow was closed.
Upon the bedside table lay a copy of Around the World in Eighty Days, he supposed from the library downstairs. He had not forbidden Jewel to read to his uncle, simply because it had not crossed his mind. Mary was illiterate, and he’d assumed anyone so desperate for a menial position as Jewel Libby was probably so, as well.
Uncle Thurmond lay so still. Did he even breathe? Donald leaned close.
The eye opened!
Donald gasped.
“Whoa! Uncle!” he muttered with a backwards step. He was just about to turn and leave when he realized the gray eye was focused upon him. Not just upon him, but piercing him, reading him like the novel upon the table. And sending forth beams of dislike, if not hatred.
Mrs. Cooper was right. Jewel was good for the squire, whether because of the reading, or presence of a child, or constant attention, or all three.
What if his mind became so sharp that his power of speech returned? It was too late to play the part of the attentive nephew. His uncle was not stupid. What would stop him from demanding to see Mr. Baker?
She has to go, he thought back in the hallway. The only fly in the ointment was that she would run to Miss Hollis. She would take her side, of course. He must choose the lesser of two evils.
A mental picture of Uncle Thurmond, dictating a new will to Mr. Baker, nudged him into action.