Free The Country Gentleman by Fiona Hill Page B

great uncle brought me into this house thirty-four years ago. I have prepared tea for him some twelve thousand four hundred times. Under my supervision, twenty-four thousand eight hundred breakfasts and dinners have been cooked for him. I have filled thirty-three ledgers before this one”—she smacked the open album demonstratively with a good deal more vigour than Anne would have thought was in her—“and sat across thirty-three Christmas geese from him. If you imagine he intended—”
    “Miss Veal.” Exasperated, Anne stood too. “For heaven’s sake calm yourself. I have no intention of turning you off, if that is what you are building to, or of turning anyone in the house off who does not wish to leave.” She wondered as she spoke, however, just how she could retain such a superfluity of servants—for at the wages her great uncle had fixed, surely none of the present ones would go. Still, she was not about to unhouse andimpoverish an aging, obviously devoted (for all she knew, very tenderly devoted to the bachelor Mr. Guilfoyle) retainer. “I merely wish to discuss with you some means by which my own housekeeper, Mrs. Dolphim, can profitably employ herself—if there is not some means of sharing out your tasks,” she extemporised, realizing that it would sow a fatal discord to suggest the sensitive Miss Veal merely assist Mrs. Dolphim, yet knowing from long acquaintance that Mrs. Dolphim (whose greatest, and justifiable, pride was the faithful service she’d given to the Guilfoyles) would equally contemn a demotion to the position of helper to Miss Veal. “This we must consider and resolve.”
    She sat, and suggested the other lady sit as well. It was clear to her now that the slight forwardness she already thought to detect in Miss Veal, and in Susannah as well, was no illusion. Her great uncle’s servants were accustomed to be treated in a wise quite different from the ordinary. Remembering his eccentricities, she was not surprised. Reluctantly, but with a sense of having little choice, she engaged the housekeeper in an earnest colloquy whose end was to discover some equitable means of sharing the responsibilities and privileges of Housekeeper at Linfield. The discussion, which must needs touch upon such details as who was to precede whom to the servants’ dining-table, who to keep the books, who to reprimand the lesser staff, who to order from the dairy, and so on, continued some hour and a half and left both participants exhausted. Miss Veal went immediately to her room to lie down. Miss Guilfoyle was not so fortunate: Quitting the housekeeper’s little office she came directly upon Mr. Rand—just on his way, he declared imperiously, to find her.
    Mr. Rand, she found, was a brisk, dark, sturdy man of no great stature, well muscled, brown from the sun, and with a very noticeable pugnacity in his bearing. Whether this last was habitual with him, or on the contrary was assumed for her benefit, Anne could not yet tell. That he was suspicious of her, and (looking her over) thought her a paltry replacement for his late master, she guessed at once. “I shall be very much obliged,” he said, after a curt, rough bow, “if you will come with me.” She could hear the country in his accent, but also that he had had some education. “There is a deal of going-over to be done in the office, and then you’ll be wanting to ride out with me and see the place,” he informed her.
    “Perhaps you will allow me to make that decision, Mr. Rand,” Anne replied sharply. “I can meet with you in an hour and a half, after I have had some nuncheon.”
    But Mr. Rand shook his head. “In an hour and a half they’ll be gone,” he said. “You can’t expect them to wait.”
    Anne counted to ten. “Who will be gone?” she inquired.
    “The people to cut the hay. They want one shilling two pence and beer—six pence and beer for the women. Does that sound fair?” he asked, then folded his arms and stood back a little.