She Brought a Doctor’s Bag to the Duke’s Estate — By Winter, the Village Was Grateful
Chapter 15
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"Mr. Harcourt was in the old muniment room this afternoon," she said. "He has no business there any longer. He took the estate plans of the third duke's time and burned them in the steward's grate—all but this one." She held it out. "I took this one out of the box myself last month, after what you found at the head. I didn't like to think why anyone would want it gone. But I think you had better look at it now, miss. The snow is going. And when that much snow goes all at once on Hartside, it has to go somewhere."The plan was drawn in brown ink on thick paper, with the third duke's arms in one corner and the date 1741. It showed the moor above Harrow Head, the spring, the conduit house, and the line of the buried pipe down to the village. And it showed something Elspeth had never seen on the ground: a broad channel marked in a dotted line, running from the slope above the spring eastward across the moor into a stream called the Black Syke. Beside it, someone had written in a fine old hand:Flood-cut to carry the hill-water clear of the head and the town.She laid it on the table beside her own drawing of the hillside made on the Sunday she had walked up with Polly. Then she put her finger on the place where the two did not agree.The head of the old flood-cut lay exactly where the company's earth bank now stood. They had built their slime pond in it. And the only way that pond could empty once all the snow on Hartside came down into it was over the top of the bank, and down the Harrow Burn into Kestleford.Outside, the warm wind was rising, and it had begun to rain.Two months before, Elspeth would have taken her bag and her lantern and gone up the hill alone. She stood in the doorway of the surgery for a moment with the rain driving in. Then she sent Nathaniel running to the smithy, and she went up to the Hall herself through the slush as fast as she could go.The Duke of Harrowmere was in his library at 1:00 in the morning, writing letters to his lawyers by a single candle. She put the plan in front of him and told him in four sentences what it meant.He did not ask her whether she was sure. Within ten minutes, the stable bell was ringing. Within half an hour, Lord Sebastian was gone into the rain on the gray, riding for Hartside to rouse the miners because they had picks and they knew the hill. Lady Philippa came down the great staircase in her nightcap and a shawl, heard the news, and began at once to give orders for the Hall to be opened to every woman, child, and old person in Kestleford who could be brought up the back road. Mrs. Sayer was lighting fires in rooms that had not seen one in ten years.Dr. Strand, who had stayed on at the Hall over Christmas in hopes of an appointment, appeared in the hall passage in his shirtsleeves. "If there are to be injuries," he said stiffly, "I suppose I had better be of use."