Free The Luminist by David Rocklin Page A

else in mind for the boy.” She gestured to the flood water.
    â€œMother, he is only one boy.”
    â€œAnd I am but one woman, in a man’s world to boot. Yet look
what I have done. Mary, help me get this across to the boy. Does he see Holland House?”
    The name sparked him. He opened his tunic and gave over the letters, with Sir John Holland’s on top. Mary took them quickly and kept them beneath her umbrella.
    Catherine eyed the top letter without comment. “ Does he see the need afflicting the cottage?”
    â€œThe servant’s house,” Mary told him. “ Near the eastern fence line.”
    Across the floodwater, there stood a separate structure. Though it was built from sturdier elements, it was in no better shape than the battered huts lining his street.
    â€œ Tell him he is to clear a way to Holland House in plenty of time for our esteemed guest’s arrival,” Catherine said.
    Eligius waited for Mary ’s guttural translation before reacting. “Am I to fix it?” he asked Mary. “All of it?”
    Catherine smiled at him. “ I can see it on his face, he understands. This is his land. These are his rains. I ’m sure he’ll see a way clear, eh?”
    Mary led him to the middle of the plank path. He stepped away from her parasol, letting the softening rain feather his skin. From there the hut the memsa’ab called Holland House could be seen more clearly. The rains had separated wall from wall, roof from gutter. They ’d brought the yard’s mud to the bowing door in a curl some three feet high, and now the yard had become so saturated that the water ebbed like a captive sea.
    â€œ What is so important about this hut?” he asked Mary.
    â€œ Your memsahib gets many letters. From many great and important men.” Disapproval dripped from her lips. “ Now it seems we’re dedicating part of the house to her pursuits. Or pur - suers. Have it as you will.”
    So her allegiance was to the sa’ab of the house, he thought.
    The youngest Colebrook ran giddily down the planks to latch onto Mary ’s leg. She wrapped a protective arm about the boy’s shoulders.

    Ewen stared up at the dark boy surveying his home.
    â€œ You’re angry,” Mary said. “ Maybe this isn’t a place you’re meant to be. Maybe a field’s the right spot for you. Ewen’s afraid of you.”
    â€œ It’s easy enough to see how this happened,” Eligius said. “And I can see as well what’s to be done.”
    â€œ You don’t rise to bait, do you, little fish?”
    â€œ May I see the memsa’ab?”
    Mary smiled. “ You’re a smart one, I ’ll say that. See that you keep your wits about you. Dimbola will tax your senses.”
    â€œ Dimbola?”
    â€œTheir name for this house and the land, to the sea.”
    He followed her back to the house. “ He wished to see you,” Mary told Catherine.
    Catherine stood from her chair on the porch, where she’d been sitting with Julia, examining the contents of Sir John Holland’s envelope.
    â€œ Does he understand his task?”
    â€œ He said so, mum.”
    â€œ My pay,” Eligius interrupted. “ It is to be ten rupees. I want to be sure of this.”
    Reluctantly, Mary translated. Catherine’s face grew taut.
    â€œ It doesn’t bode well, does it?” she said.
    Â 
    BEFORE HE BEGAN working in earnest, he asked Mary what Holland House held that couldn’t wait for Ceylon’s winter rains to pass.
    â€œ Her pride,” Mary told him, “and the attentions of a far off man.”
    Seated on the plank walkway, he plotted where to begin. Dimbola lay like a valley, right to the door of Holland House. It would be necessary to level it, to coax the grounds in a different direction.
    Julia watched him from a gazebo at the western fence, on a modest bluff above the rainwater. Already