The Domino Effect, Chapter Nine

That evening, Phyl strolled through the gardens, attempting to mentally compose a letter to her mother but unsure as to which was more distracting, the bursts of laughter coming from the lively card game between Mrs. Hartshorne and Mary Catherine on the terrace, or the piano duets played by Mary Alice and Mary Ellen. The true source of her distraction she failed to regard as a distraction, for a distraction, to Phyl, carried unpleasant connotations, and the true cause of her distraction could hardly signify as unpleasant. Does he love me? she repeatedly asked herself, remembering Wallis on the way to the village.

She felt light, like swan’s down lifted by a gentle breeze, letting the invisible current take her where it willed. She no longer had cares or worries, yet she was the same person she had been the day before. She ate, taught, and communed with the Hartshorne family, and she had serious matters to consider. Her mother had reported that her brothers had been traveling back and forth to Oxford, petitioning their mentors for help in finding suitable professions.

“I think you should ask your employer to find something for them to do,” Mama implored in her customary illegible hand, on cheap paper liberally smeared and dotted with ink. Phyl replied, in a far neater hand and on more elegant paper, that the Earl of Blystone and his brother would never consent to work so near to the old home, nor would she encourage them to do so. “The temptation to take back the estate would be too great,” she wrote, again forbidding herself to reveal that she herself worked there. “I know my brothers. They would think of nothing else, and do nothing else except plot against the current owner in a conspiracy that must resolve badly.” She nearly wrote “tragically,” but decided that the hint of death and destruction would tip dear Mama into hysterics. Poor Mama, always expecting the worst, Phyl reflected. Whatever would she say about Mrs. Hartshorne’s affections towards me?

Phyl had wandered to that part of the garden that her father had determined should mimic a meadow in the wild. Tall grass and lavender reached for her knees. Sere brown leaves, forgotten remnants of summers past, crunched beneath her feet. The path ended, smothered by a brightly colored tangle of shrubs and wildflowers that extended towards one of the park’s many copses. This was once her favorite spot in the estate. How often had she come out here, marveling at delicate spring blossoms or drinking in the lovely weight of autumn, when the air was still and everything was bathed in vague, pink-orange twilight.

Certain that nobody could see her she sat, arms around her legs, her chin on her knees, as she had been wont to do. It was astonishing, really, that the garden could look the same but not feel the same. There was no longer any comfort here. The knowledge that her home had been wrested from her unsettled her with the constancy of an ache from a splinter too fine to be removed. She reflected that she should have known her life would be unhappy, for not every moment of her childhood on the estate had been a source of delight. Surely, she hadn’t dreamt the scene of her mother confiding how she would have left her father (for whatever reason, Phyl had long forgotten), and the memory of her father declaring (for another reason that Phyl had long forgotten) how her mother “could be so vicious.” As big and sumptuous as Blystone was, despite the number of out buildings and pleasant pockets among the grounds and gardens, the only sanctuary from the parental tempests that Phyl and her brothers could find was at the home of Mama’s ever-so-clever modiste. “Ma’am,” as everyone called her, would ply them with tea and let them play her pianoforte. Though her son, Philip, treated Ronald and Russell with an awe that prevented him from being at ease in their company, despite their friendly nature and desire to please, her daughter, Penelope, at once took to Phyl. The girls had no doubt they would be friends for life and often plotted how “Pen” could snare Ronald as a husband.

The notion of Ronald as somebody's husband made Phyl wonder what sort of husband Wallis Hartshorne would be. She imagined Wallis as she so frequently saw him in his current, seemingly unattached state: the icon of the perfect son, brother, uncle, friend, playing with the children, joking (albeit it in writing) with siblings and gallantly strolling the grounds with his mother on his arm. She never saw him with a woman not related to him, and she never heard his family speak or speculate about his affairs of the heart. That Wallis was unattached, Phyl was certain. She considered that he never had been married, for women wanted to hear their husbands’ declarations of love, just as men wanted their wives to have money. No, he cannot have serious intentions about me, she concluded. He knows no woman really wants him, as I know no man really wants me.

Twilight drooped lower, snuffing the shards of pink and golden light that moments before had danced low between the trees. Phyl no longer felt like swan’s down dancing on the breeze, unburdened by memories, suspicions, uncertainties. She thought of the horribly round-shouldered woman who sold carrots in the market. Her spirits felt the way the woman looked.

“Psst!”

Was that a hiss or was it really a “Psst!”?

“Miss Phylidda?” the whisper belonged to Elspeth, the freckled girl from the kitchen.

Phyl looked up at her from where she sat.

Bending low, Elspeth whispered further, about someone she and Martin, the valet, had met in town. “Would you remember the other day, when Cook said a man had stopped her in the market, inquiring about the people who live here?”

Phyl often was amused by how the locals called the village town, while town, to her and her family, was London. She spoke without thinking, annoyed at the intrusion to her solitude. “I’m afraid I wasn’t aware of that. What happened?”

“Just as I said, Miss Phylidda. A man chatted up Cook about Mr. Hartshorne and the family. He said he wrote for a newspaper in London and wanted to know if it was true that an American lived at Blystone.”

Ah yes, Phyl thought; she knew the type: Anything for news that would make the paper stand out among the rest. “I doubt there was anything behind it, Elspeth. The gentleman was probably looking for a good story, that’s all. The ton is fascinated by foreigners who live in England.”

“But today it was me and Martin who was stopped. It sounds like the same man.”

“If it was indeed the same man, most likely he’s searching for somebody to give him an introduction. He knows he can’t very well come charging down here like a runaway steeplechaser. The form would be so bad as to be unforgivable.”

“I don’t know, Miss. The things he was asking! It didn’t sound like he wanted an introduction, or that he wanted to write a society story, you know?”

“Why? What was he asking you?”

“Impertinent things, like what kind of an income we thought Mr. Hartshorne had and how he made his money. We sid it weren’t any of his business, but he said we were fools to work for a foreigner and not know anything about him. He said it wasn’t right for so many people to live all together like that and not have a title or a profession to let them live so high.”

”Did he, now! What did he look like?”

“It was nobody I’ve ever seen, Miss. Mind you, I’m not from here. Mr. Hartshorne hired me in London.”

“In town?”

“No, ma’am, in London. I worked for the hotel where he stayed. I heard he needed staff for here, and I didn’t want to live in the city any more.” The girl’s brow crinkled. She leaned forward and asked Phyl, in a tone of dread, “The staff and me, we heard that Mr. H didn’t come by this house rightly. You don’t think he’s been doing something untoward, do you?”

“Untoward?”

Elspeth shrugged. “Thievery. Forgery. Opium. Light skirts. Speculation. Who can tell?”

Phyl laughed, confident in her knowledge and in the knowledge that her knowledge would calm the ingenuous girl! “I do not for an instant believe it’s any of those things. I myself happened to hear that he won Blystone in a bet with the old earl.”

“A bet…” The girl’s voice brightened with enlightenment then slid back into suspicion.“But how can he afford to live here, Miss?”

“The rents, Elspeth! Blystone has tenants. Surely, you could see that.” Phyl gestured broadly, as if to embrace the manor and its park.

Elspeth's eyes followed the gesture. "Of course, Miss Phylidda. How stupid of me!"

Phyl interrupted. “That stranger who accosted you. What did he look like? You never told me.”

“Oh! He—“ Elspeth stopped, mouth agape. Phyl followed the girl’s terrified stare. A young man on horseback, taking advantage of the twilight, had had the gall to ride up to the house and now awaited recognition not by Elspeth or by any other member of the household, but by Phylidda, who recognized the form despite the hat, which she had never before seen him wear. Indeed, Phyl had had no reason to see him in a hat, for she had never seen him outside his home or the print shop.

“Not to worry,” she assured the girl, who succumbed to her fright and folded upon on the turf in an inelegant heap.

“How very convenient,” said Philip, who dismounted and pushed a letter into Phyl’s hand.

“It’s imperative that we speak, my lady. The particulars are on the page. Until tomorrow,” he murmured, and walked the horse back toward the road, vanishing into the darkness.

Phyl hastened to the house, where she recruited a footman to help Elspeth, who was playfully chided for letting herself be overcome by the shadow of a tree in the night.

The Domino Effect, Chapter Eight

As the weeks passed, Phylidda sent her mother and brothers letters about her life as a governess for a rich American family in the country. She hadn’t nerve enough to state all the facts about Wallis Hartshorne and his curious relationship with their cherished estate. She posted all that to Ma’am. The first narrative she directed to that lady's attention became the first in a series of columns about the Hartshornes, whom she refrained from identifying. The stories, which Phyl chose to write in the guise of “Lady M. Dash,” were a hit. Sales of Lady Athol-Hight’s Society Paper soared.

The Hartshornes apparently knew nothing about their notoriety. Nor did Phyl betray her deep-seated desire to embarrass them as the usurpers of her legacy. They showed Phyl nothing but kindness and consideration, which led her to believe that, to them, she was little more than a blameless, lonely soul in need of protection from the evils of the world. Her schedule was a reasonable arrangement that one would expect to see in a reputable school and assured that neither she nor any of her charges was overworked. If anything, they all were overfed, for meals were unabashed family feasts that required portions fit for persons accustomed to frequent, massive doses of hearty, lethargy-inducing food. Phyl's dresses, too, reflected the Hartshornes’ generosity. She had one for every day of the week. Though each was a thing of practicality--modestly cut of dark fabric, with long sleeves, as befit a woman who spent most of her time with children--each also featured a high, expensive muslin frill at the neck. A scarlet fob at the bodice secured a small, self-winding watch by the Swiss house of Breguet.

As for personal comfort, Phyl's underpinnings were fashioned from the softest cottons and linen, and embellished with dainty lacework. She had a high-ceilinged, well-ventilated room to herself. However, the room was on an upper floor, away from the children. She was surprised to learn that her responsibilities for the children ended along with the school day. “You’re their teacher, not their parent,” Mrs. Hartshorne advised. The information struck Phyl as odd, for she knew few parents who were only too glad to relinquish their round-the-clock duties to nursemaids and governesses.

But perhaps the greatest oddity of Phyl’s new life was her mute employer. From what she could see, perpetually silent Wallis Hartshorne had no wife or children. He had chosen to dwell in a lordly manor with more than two dozen relations who had left the comfort of their homes and accompanied him thousands of miles across the sea not merely to a new life, but to a new country. Their fidelity was rewarded, or perhaps fueled, by the never-ending supply of the most basic requirements of life, provided with no apparent effort by a man who spared no expense for their ease.

Despite his wealth, Wallis Hartshorne was astonishingly thoughtful of his servants and tenants, as well. Often Phyl would spy him in the distant fields, chatting with all manner of staff: shepherds, cattlemen, haymakers, gardeners. Though he rode out on horseback, he dismounted for the meetings. “How very democratic,” Phyl would muse at the sight. “Whatever would young Earl Blystone think?” For Ronald would never deign to present himself before the common folk in so common a position. He always said that to present oneself on horseback was not so much to reinforce the lower class’s lowborn position, but to encourage the lower class to look up, and by physically looking up, to aspire to rise above their squalor and to better themselves.

And what, Phyl wondered, did Wallis Hartshorne himself aspire to? Was it enough for him to live like a lord, benefiting from the years of improvements and cultivation produced by generations of Phyl’s titled forbears? What kind of a man would live off the rightful belongings of another? Every day, Phyl awoke with the determination to ask him what his business was with the place, but every day lapsed not with an opportunity missed, with the preference not to venture upon the subject. Though she had ample opportunity to challenge him--he often met with her to discuss the children’s progress--she refused to trample his benevolence (not to mention her privileged life at the house) with questions that could betray her as an ingrate and have her thrown off the premises. She resolved to rely upon her columns to inspire her readers to question the appearance of the impudent foreigners and restore the Earl to his lands.

As Phyl walked to the village one sunny morning to post her latest column about life with the Americans, a burst of traffic revealed a horseman who turned his mount around as soon as he had passed her and rode back towards her. Dismounting, Wallis tipped his hat to her in what she perceived as a vaguely American pose, and mouthed a greeting. He walked beside her, leading the horse, a strapping bay gelding, by the reins.

Phyl felt as though she had been caught doing something wrong. “I’m posting a letter to a friend I left behind in London,” she lied as Wallis produced the ubiquitous notebook and pencil.

“I’m so sorry!” he wrote. “Had I known you had mail, I’d have brought it myself.”

“Thank you, but it’s a fine day for a walk, don’t you think?”

“Yes! Which is why I chose to ride, ha ha.”

How difficult to convey humor in writing, thought Phyl, smiling more from courtesy than delight.

Wallis failed to notice the smile's lack of spontaneity, for he continued to write. “Is there anything that you need or want, for yourself or for the children?”

”I want for nothing,” said Phyl, hoping she sounded truthful.

“Nothing? Are you certain?”

“I have everything I need, Mr. Hartshorne.”

“I know of no one on this earth who has everything he needs. Surely, there must be something?”

“Notatall. I’m quite happy, thank you. I should like to know something, though--” Phyl held the thought as Wallis respectfully helped her step around a bunny hole. “Pray tell me: Have you always been like this?”

“Like what?” he wrote as soon as he was assured that Phyl could walk without further assistance.

“Unable to speak.”

Wallis crushed a smile. “I’m quite able to speak. I just don’t make the sounds necessary for audible speech.”

Phyl recalled their confrontation on her first night at the house. “Excuse me. I should have asked if you have never been able to speak aloud.”

“It’s a long story, I’m afraid.”

“Ah, but it’s a long walk to the village.”

“Well, it’s not a glorious tale, either. Rather ordinary. Dull. Based on stupidity.”

“Were you a singer? Did you misuse your voice?”

Wallis’s face erupted in a great, nearly noiseless gasp of a laugh. Phyl could not resist laughing along with him. How different he looked when he laughed!

“No, no, no, no, no!” he protested in pencil. “And it wasn’t drink, either, if that’s what you’re thinking!”

The ground being uneven, Phyl leaned close, her hand ever so lightly on Wallis's arm, to see what he wrote. “What was it, then?” she prompted, eagerly looking into his eyes, which she only just realized were shaded by lashes that resembled the fringe on her mother’s black velvet wrap. “Why must men have the best eyelashes?” she mutely agonized.

Grinning with mischievous self-satisfaction, Wallis wrote: “As I said: stupidity. An attack of quinsy when I was a boy. The doctor lanced my vocal chords along with the abcess in my throat. See? Ordinary and dull, as promised.”

Phyl gulped, unable to understand why she now felt so miserable for prying. “I’m so sorry! How awful for you. How awful for your parents!”

“Awful? Never! Once they were a few days removed from the shock of the damage, they were relieved that they’d never again hear me screaming in order to coerce them into giving me whatever I wanted.”

“Your mother! That adorable, little old lady? She was that wretchedly cold-hearted—“

The hectic scribbling smothered Phyl’s disbelief, for she was compelled to rationally follow every syllable formed by the pencil: “Of course, they were horrified! Horrified, incensed, despondent. But not so horrified, incensed and despondent that they forgot to prepare me for a life without a voice. My father was a lawyer. He did what any lawyer would have done: he at once began to groom me for the law, bringing me into his office to work as a clerk. Simultaneously, he sued the doctor. The timing indicated to me that both actions were of equal importance.”

Now here was a revelation. At last, Phyl would know what he did for a living! Deep inside, she fluttered with the excitement that accompanies the joy of unexpected triumph. “You practice law, Mr. Hartshorne?” She struggled to make it sound like a question, not an exclamation of discovery.

He nodded.

“As a solicitor?” She could not imagine him attempting to try a case in court, as a barrister.

“We don’t have the distinctions you have here. Either one tries cases, or not. No matter which, one is still called a lawyer. Or an attorney. Or a counselor.”

“I take it you don’t try cases.”

He dropped his jaw in feigned gasp of horror.

“What?” Phyl giggled nervously, uncertain if she had committed a grievous error.

“I most certainly DO try cases!”

“How?”

He tapped the paper.

“Goodness, I should find all that writing tedious!”

“Sometimes my worthy colleague on the opposing side finds it tedious and settles—rather wisely, I must say--before the first recess.”

And Phyl wisely waited until they had progressed several more paces, so as not to appear too eager and indiscriminate, before asking what had been on her mind for weeks. “Pray, tell me one thing, Mr. Hartshorne. Forgive my frankness, but I feel I’ve been with you long enough to ask: How does an American lawyer come to live in an English manor?”

The reply was quick. “There are many similarities between English and American law. There must be, as the latter is founded upon the former. I believe that one of the likenesses extends to confidentiality. Forgive me if I cannot say more, but please trust that my business here is lawful and appropriate.”

“So the manor really isn’t yours? As people say it is,” Phyl hastened to add, fearing she had overstepped the bounds of good manners.

“Miss Athol-Hight, if the State of New Jersey ever allows women to appear before the Bar, yours would be the first name on the list for the privilege.”

“That’s a lovely way of telling me to mind my own business, is it not?”

“It is, rather, a compliment.”

Wallis’s lack of rancor at her questioning bolstered her courage to press on. “So please tell me this: You brought your entire family to England with you for what amounts to a business trip. Your client must be fabulously wealthy, indeed!”

“You don’t give up, do you?” Wallis wrote, shaking with silent laughter.

“Sadly, no, I’m afraid I don’t.”

“Have you read Shakespeare?”

“I have.”

“Are you familiar with The Merchant of Venice? You may recall that one of the characters is a wise woman named Portia who practices law disguised as a man.”

“Of course...” Phyl wondered where this discussion would lead them.

Wallis squinted towards the slightly distant village, his eyes smudged by deep preoccupation. Some moments later, he wrote: “How fortunate that your first name begins with a P, for I can call you Portia, and write to you as P, and nobody will be the wiser. If you will allow me the pleasure, that is.”

Wallis was several steps away before he realized that Phyl had stopped and was now hidden behind the horse’s hindquarters. Her face, though shadowed by the bonnet’s straw bill, had turned deep claret. Her eyes were downcast. Her perplexity embraced a question: Why did he say that? Was it not enough that he was her employer? Did he mean to be a suitor too? Did he want to take her the way he had taken the estate?

There were only sorrow and concern, not lechery, thievery, nor any other element of criminal intent in Wallis’s face as he bent and turned his eyes to hers, so close their foreheads almost touched. Phylidda saw at once that she had been wrong to suspect the man of such abject villainy. He was no libertine. Nor was he the palest shade of a rake, despite his not being married. Shame spoiled her suspicion and stoked her misery. She willed herself not to cry. Tears leaked, all the same.

“No no, no, no, no,” Wallis mouthed. Briefly, he squeezed her shoulders, then reached for the notebook. Guessing he was about to apologize for the remark—which had been made rather shyly, Phyl noted—she placed her own hands over his, signaling there was no need to write. “I’m sorry,” she mewed. “I’m not accustomed to such attention.”

“No?” Wallis mouthed, eyes wide with soft disbelief.

Phyl remembered Philip in the print shop, with his pompous declarations of admiration, but, really, there was nobody else. There would never be anybody else. Not now, not after what her father and Wallis Hartshorne had done to her family. Phyl cast her answer in a teary whisper. “Never.”

“Why?”

Because I became poor, and no man in his right mind will marry a poor girl, Phyl thought, catching the shape of the word. “I am poor,” she said, then begged, as Wallis formed another “no,” “Please, Mr. Hartshorne, I’m alone, dependent on your charity. You mustn’t take advantage of my position.”

“Never!” he mouthed, with an earnest shake of the head. “Never!” Assured of his sincerity, Phyl released his hands and he wrote:

“Take this notebook. Please! Whatever you think of me at this moment--whatever wrong you imagine me capable of doing now or in the future--remember this: If ever I become cross with you, or speak boorishly to you, or do anything to signify any feeling contrary to the esteem that I have for you, show me these pages, and I will make amends with speed and before anyone who may have witnessed my transgression.”

He held out the booklet to her. At first she refused to take it. “I can’t take that from you! What will you use to communicate?”

“Oh," Wallis said, then thought, then wrote. “Pragmatically, I believe the stationer’s is nearby, so please have no fear of my going without the means to express myself. And there are more of these books at the house. However, so long as you are with me, I feel no need to resort to writing in order to convey my thoughts to someone who does not know me.”

“That’s unspeakably kind of you, Mr. Hartshorne, but may I remind you that you may need to convey some thoughts to me first. How, then—“

“You will know. As surely as I know that you were going to ask, ‘How, then, will I know what you mean to say?’ You will know.”

Once Phyl read the last note, Wallis closed her hands around the booklet with a tenderness that signaled both the end of the discussion and the beginning of something that Phyl could not have foreseen moments before: an understanding between them that transcended the transcription of consonants and vowels, and had, at its source, messages that are best understood in the heart.

The Domino Effect, Chapter Seven

To the boisterous family that flowed over the grounds with the shameless intrusion of the tide, Wallis Harthsorne was off managing the poor excuse of a farm that signified the former estate of the late Earl of Blystone. But safely out of sight in his study, Wallis studied the charcoal drawing of a young woman.

The medium suggested that the upswept hair and fringe of thready curls about the face were a deep brown, so distantly unlike the lighter, ethereal wisps that flashed red-gold in the sunlight. The girl was paler, too, and more delicate in form and features than the artist had recalled. But no, there was no mistake. On paper and in person, the girl was indeed the old earl’s daughter.

Wallis thought she dressed simply for an earl’s daughter. He had expected someone of her position to attend the ball in silk or satin, perhaps overlaid with a fine, too-translucent tulle, and wickedly low-cut. But the gown she had worn beneath the domino--the same gown she had by necessity donned for breakfast--was a disarmingly modest affair made of soft, white lace over a pink linen underdress. It had a gathered bodice and straight, nearly elbow-length sleeves. A moss-green velvet ribbon defined the high waist. Shoes and gloves of York-tan kid completed the outfit, which was more suited for day than night.

What is she up to?, Wallis wondered, revisiting the way she had hastened from room to room, and how she had jumped away when they collided. Was she thrilled to be home, or was she gathering evidence, made bold by something he had failed to put away?

There was also the matter of her name. Athol-Hight, she said it was, not Fitzmaier, her family name. A Lady Athol-Hight was the publisher of a society paper. Surely, Lady Phylidda had better sense than to masquerade as a scandalmonger! If not, what, then would compel an eighteen-year-old girl to pretend to be something she wasn't? Or was it possible that he was wrong, he really had brought home the wrong girl, after all?

Flushed with the notion that he had invented the major folly of his life, Wallis folded the drawing and, without a word to any of his kin or household help, headed towards the stables with a speed which he hoped would not attract attention. Within minutes he was cantering towards the hills beyond the park and two smocked figures who lounged in the shade of a twisted, outstretched tree, surrounded by round, wooly bodies, their limp, slouch-brimmed hats flopping low against the noontime brightness.

The figures were two rather young men who had their own reasons for escaping attention. Moments earlier, they had observed the adult members of their new employer’s family rolling hoops alongside the children. Gleeful shouts and squeals traveled through the clear spring air sounding more like barks than human sounds.

Bolger, the elder of the two, had rolled his eyes with disgust. “Look at them, carrying on like that! A desecration, if you ask me. What would the old earl say?”

Bolger’s ruddy cheeked associate spoke even as he bit off a chunk of bread. “Never mind the old earl. What would the young earl thay?”

Bolger’s glower deepened till it seemed his entire face were folded in. “I think I know what people would say about the young earl. He’s spineless. He can’t stand up to the usurper.”

“That’s arrogance,” Bolger’s colleague pronounced. ”Besides, do the people around here really care about the young earl? Nobody’s offering to help him get back the estate.”

Bolger shuddered and swiped at his associate’s head as the fellow shoved in more bread without first having swallowed the previous load. “Don’t do that!”

Completely unswayed, his friend simply ducked out of the way and jutted his chin towards the faraway scene. “They thpend an inordinate amount of time with their children, the Americanth.”

“Well, we’re spending an inordinate amount of time playing with what amounts to somebody else’s sheep.”

A whimper of an incipient laugh escaped the colleague’s slender person. “What’s that for?” inquired Bolger, caught between amusement and suspicion.

“You make that thound thooooo loaththome.”

“I make it sound loathsome? You know what people say about shepherds and their sheep.”

Blankness overcame the younger man’s face. Exasperation heightened Bolger’s voice. “Come now, you can’t be that thick! It ain’t humanly possible!”

Chewing, the younger shepherd squinted philosophically towards the treetop. “Actually, it ith humanly pothible. Morally reprehenthible, perhapth, but—“

Bolger restrained himself, an effort that gave him a mild tremor. “I was speaking about the human capacity for intellectual density, of which you seem to be the prime mover!”

Happily, the discussion about man’s moral conduct with animals was lidded by the appearance of the new squire, who, the shepherds grudgingly admitted, cut a fine figure on horseback. Bolger’s friend attempted to stand at Wallis’s approach. Bolger pulled him back down.

Wallis dismounted and approached the shepherds on foot, the reins swaying loosely over his arms. “Mr. Bolger!” he mouthed, giving a small, friendly bow. He looked from Bolger to the second shepherd, arching an eyebrow in the deliberate implication of “And who is this?”

“Master Allen Ham,” Bolger said without missing a beat. His associate coughed, spraying crumbs, but managed to raise his hand in a wordless greeting.

Wallis, the authentic voiceless one among the three, wrote quickly, not at all irked by Bolger’s remaining seated. He presented the note, which he carefully tore from the booklet, with the same easy manner that he had displayed upon approaching the shepherds.

”I believe I’ve found the lady whose likeness matches the portrait you drew for me. I would appreciate it if you could come by the house to confirm my find.”

“Oh, I couldn’t do that, sir,” Bolger replied, shooing Master Ham away from peering over his shoulder. “You Americans may feel at liberty to go where you please, regardless of your station in life, but here? Men like us? We don’t belong in that house. It ain’t our place, you see?”

Wallis's pencil flew. “It’s your place if you have business with your employer.”

“Beggin’ your pardon, squire, we’d rather not. It wouldn’t look right. To the other servants.”

After brief and silent consideration, Wallis placed several coins in Bolger's hand, mouthed, "I understand,” and began to walk his horse back towards the house.

Bolger regarded the guineas with a face so tightly screwed with disdain that he looked like another person. He waited until Wallis was well out of earshot before admitting, “I feel filthy. As if I’ve sold her into... slavery.”

“I thought you were going to say ‘prostitution,’” said Master Ham, who had noticed Bolger’s pause between “into” and “slavery.”

“What shall we do with it?”

“The money? Give it to the vicar, I suppose. Perhaps he could direct it to something worthy.”

Bolger snorted. “Yes, the communion wine.” He allowed a moment of befuddled silence to pass before spitting.

Master Ham, who until that instant had exhibited himself as the master of crudity, gasped at the prodigious stream. “What a disgusting emission!”

Bolger shrugged. “Perhaps. Do you know, I’ve always heard of men spitting at something or somebody they disdained. I never understood why. Until now. I confess, it was a marvelous release.”

Master Ham regarded his associate with an expression that wavered between awe and distaste. Nevertheless, he took a deep breath, sat stiffly straight, worked the muscles about his jaw and ejected a volley of moisture that could go no farther than his chin. He grumbled, wiped his mouth on his sleeve. “Humph! It did nothing for me.”

“Give it a few days,” replied Bolger in a tone of somber sagacity. “Then you’ll know what I’m talking about.”