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The Duke Sent Her His 3 Old Aunts for Winter — By Easter His Duchess Begged a Seat at Their Table

The Duke Sent Her His 3 Old Aunts for Winter — By Easter His Duchess Begged a Seat at Their Table

Chapter 2

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Maud had not got the old lady's bonnet off when the cart came back. It was the steward, Mr. Sneath, a thick, neat man of about fifty in a caped coat, and he did not get down. He leaned from the seat and put out his hand."The key of the trunk," he said. "The trunk is the Duke's property. The ladies may keep what is in it. His Grace wants the key."Maud stood in the doorway with the rain running off the thatch in front of her. "The trunk is in my house," she said, "and the key is in the lady's pocket, and the lady has fainted in my chair for want of food. Good evening, Mr. Sneath."He looked at her for a long moment, and then at the smoking chimney, and he laughed—not loudly—and slapped the reins, and the cart went off down the lane into the dark.Maud looked round her own kitchen as if she had never seen it: one bed in the alcove behind the curtain, a chimney that smoked whenever the wind sat in the west—and it sat there now, so that a gray smoke curled out along the beam and stung their eyes—and on the board, under a cloth, half a loaf. She cut the half-loaf into pieces, and soaked the first in warm milk, and she fed the old lady with a spoon, the way you feed someone who has forgotten how.That night, the aunts slept in Maud's one bed, all in a row like spoons, still in their stays because nobody had the strength to unlace them. Maud sat by the fire.On the peg by the door hung her husband's brown coat, where he had hung it himself on the last evening he came in from the fields, and she had not been able to move it. Now she got up, took it down, and put it on. It smelled of him still—of hay and pipe smoke and rain—and the sleeves came down over her hands. She sat with her face in the collar and wept for the first time since the funeral, quietly, so as not to wake the ladies.When it was done, she wiped her face on his sleeve, emptied the tin from the mantle onto her knee, and counted. The rent was due at Lady Day, and she could not pay it. The farm had been failing under him, and it had failed faster since; without the rent, she would be walking to the parish with her box. But four shillings three times over every week was the rent and a little more. It was the difference between Cold Harbor and the parish.She looked at the curtain across the alcove and listened to them breathing, one of them snoring a little like a kettle, and she knew what the Duke thought he had done. He thought he had put three old women out of his house where he would not have to watch them grow older.
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The Duke Sent Her His 3 Old Aunts for Winter — By Easter His Duchess Begged a Seat at Their Table

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