The stove in the stillroom was cracked; she ordered a new one with a proper grate. The hothouse glass had been patched with amix of good intention and poor math; she sent for a glazier. The pianoforte in the small drawing room was tuned a quarter-step off in the top octave; she sent to town for a tuner and a music master “for staff who wish it”. The butler’s eyebrows rose at that, but Mrs. Walsh said briskly, “If they’re playing, they’ll have no hands for breaking”, and the butler nodded as if this had always been the plan.
On the third morning, she walked through the dairy, asked questions the dairyman had not expected a lady to ask, and then told him to stop stepping in the same place every time he lifted the cream. “You are making a ditch you cannot see,” she said, and the dairyman, a man who considered himself married to both churn and habit, stared, then looked down and blushed and muttered, “Aye.”
She sent for a mason for the yard. She increased the milkmaids’ hours by sixpence and gave them half-days by rotation. She told the cook to bother the fishmonger twice a week and wrote a note to a grocer in town who had lately sent inferior lemons. She purchased not one coal scuttle but six, placed exactly where a footman would be saved ten steps and four muttered curses.
By afternoon, invoices arrived at Stephen’s desk. The butler placed them on the left corner. Stephen reached for them when the ink in his pen began to dry, not before. Maria noticed.
On the fourth morning, she walked the outer boundary with the head gardener, Mr. Pike, a man who spoke only when the weather, the calendar, and a lifetime of being right all agreed. “There is no winter garden,” she said, after they had looked atbrown earth and brave, exhausted rosemary and the carcasses of summer. “There should be. It does not have to be grand, but it must be alive.”
Mr. Pike lifted his cap to scratch his head. “Hellebores. Box to hold the lines. Heath will take, if we mind the wind. The frost will do for half of it.”
“Then we plant double,” she said. “And learn something.”
Mr. Pike’s mouth went into a line that men use when they approve and do not yet feel safe admitting it. “Aye, Your Grace.”
She ordered shrubs. She signed for the box herself. She told the gardeners to keep the better soil in a separate heap, because planting into mud is a kind of prayer no one answers. When the cart arrived, she stood with them as they unloaded, sleeves rolled, cloak off, breath clouding into the cold.
Stephen saw none of it. Or rather, he allowed himself to see it only on paper.Invoice, Nurseryman R. Dilling, fifty shrubs, twenty boxes, ten heath.He signed it and then turned the page.
He read a note from his agent about a boundary dispute that had offended the world for twenty years. And in response, he wrote a reply that would offend no one for the next twenty years. He turned the next page and stood to ride.
It was a rather mechanical way of going about things, but it was a safe way to exist. If one busied himself with routines and habits, then one simply did not have the time to think about things that are of no use.
And practicality was an important consideration in Stephen’s life.Everythingmust be practical.
From the lane, he could see the south beds, and the sight made a mark he ignored, the way a man will ignore a stone in his boot if the road is too long to stop every time. The stone became a pain; the pain became a rhythm. He kept going.
That night, in the library, he saw a smear of soil on the window latch where someone had opened it with hands that had been in the earth. He told himself it was the under-gardener and that the staff were under instruction to change nothing without asking. He told himself many exculpatory things and did not wipe the latch.
On the fifth morning, the wind turned from bad to mean. Mr. Pike told his lads to keep their caps down and their opinions to themselves.
He was just getting himself adjusted to things. Routine, habits, and not letting himself feel anything if it came at the cost of the loss of practicality.
Maria opened her window. The cold hit her cheeks like wakefulness.
Ah. Another morning.
She tied her shawl and then untied it.
“Your Grace,” Mrs. Walsh said, appearing with a basket of practicality: muffler, another pair of gloves, a flask. “The bed will be there after tea.”
“The frost will have gone deeper after tea,” Maria said. “We’ll be setting ice, not shrubs.”
“It will still be there tomorrow,” Mrs. Walsh said.
“So will my temper,” Maria said, and left with a smile that told the housekeeper this was not rebellion, only stubbornness.
Outside, the cold was clean. It cut lines around everything and made even bad ideas look sharp. The shrubs waited like good soldiers. Mr. Pike had set out boards, bless him, but the soil between was hard as old bread.
“We’ll lay a box to hold the edge,” Maria said, crouching. “Heath’s in the drift. The hellebores in pockets where the wind is less officious.”
“The wind is very officious,” Mr. Pike said, grave.
“I outrank it,” she said.
She pushed her hand into the soil with the trowel’s help. It was not so much earth as intention. The first hole took more effort than pride likes to admit. The second was worse, but the third was easier. The glove went in her pocket and stayed there. Her fingers burned, then didn’t, but she went on.
“Your Grace,” said the under-gardener after a while, “you’ll chill.”