‘It’s Mrs Proom! My goodness, that takes me back! We ought to go and see her, Muriel, she’ll be so pleased.’
‘Mrs Proom? You mean your butler’s wife?’
Rupert shook his head. ‘His mother. She must be well over ninety. She was a very active woman once and now she’s bedridden. It makes her a little fractious sometimes and then she throws things.’
Muriel frowned. Mad old women who threw things were no part of her plans for Mersham. But Rupert was already leading the way into the trim little cottage and she had perforce to follow him.
Mrs Proom was sitting up in bed, her lace cap askew, her little shrunken chest heaving angrily.
‘I’m bored,’ she said. ‘Where’s the Russian girl? Cyril said she was coming.’ The words were hardly decipherable because Mrs Proom, in deference to the weather Which was warm and sunny, had removed her teeth.
Rupert had walked over to the bed and taken her little brown-spotted hand in his. ‘Mrs Proom! How good to see you. Do you remember me?’
The change in the shrunken face was touching. ‘Master Rupert,’ she mumbled. ‘His lordship, I should say, and me without my teeth.’
‘I’ve brought my fiancee to see you,’ said Rupert, smiling warmly down at her. This is Miss Hardwicke.’
Muriel came forward, ready to be gracious.
‘My, what a beauty!’ said the old lady. ‘Cyril said as how you was good-looking, but you’re lovelier than a queen.’
‘Thank you,’ said Muriel, smiling charmingly at the old lady.
But as they were leaving, Mrs Proom turned querulous again. ‘I want the tweeny,’ she said. ‘Anna, she was called. She’s telh’ng me about the Bolshies. I like fine to hear about the Bolshies.’
‘I’ll pass on the message,’ promised Rupert. ‘I’m sure she’ll be here soon.’
‘I don’t want her soon,’ said Mrs Proom. ‘I want her now.’
----*
It was as they were strolling along the lake that Rupert was reminded of a practical matter he’d meant to mention to his betrothed. ‘Muriel, after we’re married, I wonder if you’d look into the business of bathrooms for the top floor. The servants’ attics. There don’t seem to be any at all.’
‘Don’t they have ewers and basins?’ asked Muriel, surprised.
‘Well, yes. But some of them seem to feel they’d like something more. Housework is a pretty dirty business after all.’
‘Rupert, none of your servants are socialists, I hope?’
‘Good heavens no, I shouldn’t think so. I mean, I haven’t asked. Surely you don’t have to be a socialist to want to have a bath?’
‘It often goes together,’ said Muriel sagely.
Rupert did not pursue the matter. Three o’clock had just struck and it was time to go and meet his groom.
‘Muriel,’ he said, his face alight, ‘we have to turn back now. I’ve got something to show you… a surprise.’
----*
An hour later, Anna, passing the stables on her way to visit Mrs Proom, came upon the Earl of Westerholme standing alone by Saturn’s loose box, stroking his old hunter’s neck. She would have gone past, but something about his expression, a look of weariness, made her hesitate.
‘Don’t,’ he said as she halted. ‘I forbid it.’
‘Don’t what,’ said Anna, startled.
‘Don’t curtsy. I’ve had a hard afternoon and I can’t stand it.’
Anna was indignant. ‘But I am a maid, my lord! And in Selina Strickland—’
‘And don’t speak to me about Selina Strickland either. I have developed a profound dislike of Selina Strickland. Come here, I want to show you something.’
Anna came. The earl walked down the long line of loose boxes, most of them empty now, and drew back the bolt of a door at the end.
‘Oh! said Anna. ‘She has come!’
‘Potter told you I was buying a mare for Miss Hardwicke?’
‘Yes.’ Anna could not take her eyes off the mare as she pranced and cavorted, shy yet trusting, white as snow with the narrow head and marvellously held neck of the true Arab. ‘She’s like Mr Cameron’s new rose.’
‘And, like Mr Cameron’s new rose, she needs a name.’
Anna was stroking the velvet muzzle now, apologizing tenderly for her sugarless state … modulating, as the mare grew more affectionate, into her own language. That damnable language, thought Rupert, that turns everything into poetry - and catching one word, he said: ‘Doushaf That means “soul” doesn’t it?’
‘Yes. But it is also what you call people you love. We say “my soul” like you say “my darling” or “my dearest”.’ She looked up to give him one of her sudden, life-enhancing grins. ‘We are very interested in souls in Russia.’
‘So I understand.’ Rupert let his long fingers run through the mare’s silken mane. ‘Shall I call you Dousha?’ he asked her. Then. ‘But after all, I shall not call her anything. I’m going to sell her again,’ he added, trying to keep his voice light.
‘Oh no!’ Anna’s face was puckered in despair. ‘Why?’
‘Miss Hardwicke doesn’t ride. I knew that. But I thought she would want to learn. That’s why I chose the mare, for her gentleness. The bridegroom’s present for the bride. Silly of me. Muriel wants sapphires.’
The bleakness in his eyes, contrasting with the light voice, was too much for Anna, who buried her face in the horse’s neck.
‘Do you ride?’ Rupert asked suddenly, and watched -his depression lifting - the expressions chase across her face as she decided whether or not to lie.
‘Everyone rides in Russia,’ she compromised at last.
‘Of course,’ he agreed gravely. ‘Particularly the housemaids. Oh, God, I wish I could . . , but really I can’t. It wouldn’t do.’
Anna was wise enough to ignore this. Instead, seemingly at random, she said: ‘Have you heard of the Heavenly Horses of Ferghana?’
Rupert caught his breath.
‘Yes,’ he said, ‘I have heard of them. And of the Emperor Wu-Ti who sought them all his life because he believed they would carry his soul to heaven.’
It had grown very quiet in the stable. Only the mare’s gentle whickering broke the silence.
‘She is one of them, I think,’ said the girl softly. ‘One of the brave ones who gallop till they sweat blood.’
‘Perhaps I could send her home,’ mused Rupert, ‘to browse on fields of alfalfa in an emerald valley watered by crystal streams from the Pamirs …’
‘Until the servants of the emperor come to harness her to the Chariot of Immortality—’
‘And she gallops off into the sky bound for the Land of Perpetual Peace.’
For a while neither of them spoke. Then he said: ‘It was my dream once, to go out there. To Afghanistan or further and bring back some of those horses. There’s a strain there still…’
‘It was a good dream,’ said Anna quietly.
‘No. Not now, not any more.’
‘But yes\ One must hold on to dreams. My cousin Sergei was like you - all through the fighting, while he could still get letters, he wrote of the splendid horses he would breed when there was peace again.’
Rupert turned to her, his own troubles set aside. ‘Ah, yes, Uncle Sebastien told me how happy you were that he was safe. Do you have any news of him?’
Anna nodded. ‘I had a letter yesterday from my mother. He has become chauffeur to a very rich and important duchess!’
‘That sounds promising.’
Anna gave a theatrical sigh. ‘I’m afraid it will end badly,’ she said. ‘You see, the duchess has five daughters and Sergei is very beautiful!’
‘Lucky Sergei!’ said Rupert, smiling down at her.
And, relieved to have paddled back into the shallows, he led his housemaid from the stables.