Chapter Six
After dinner, Will carried Cynthia’s armchair into the accounts office and she settled herself down next to the invalid, who was still sleeping, though restlessly.
She brought in her needlework basket and continued with her endless sewing and mending.
Teacup, who had remained curled up on the man’s chest while they ate, stood up.
Usually, the smell of rabbit stew would have brought her into the kitchen before, but today she had seemed to see herself as substitute guard.
“There’s rabbit stew in the kitchen,” Cynthia told her. “You’ve earned it.”
With her tail in the air, as if to say I know I have, Teacup stalked out of the room and into the kitchen, where Ruby’s voice could soon be heard admonishing her to get out from under her feet, and she’d put the dish down soon enough.
Whether it was Teacup’s leaving or Cynthia’s arriving that disturbed him, the man’s eyes fluttered open and he turned his head towards her.
“Th…thought y…you angel,” he gasped. “B…but s…sewing. N…never s…seen.”
Cynthia laughed. “No. Angels are never shown sewing, or doing anything useful, now I come to think of it. Nor are they usually old ladies.”
“Y…you n…not ol…old,” he said, and then had a paroxysm of coughing that brought her to her feet.
She put her hand on his forehead. It didn’t feel feverish, so she waited until his coughing had calmed, then lifted his head and brought the cup of water to it.
“You must drink, Mr. Fielding,” she said. “And you must eat. Could you swallow a little broth?”
He shook his head slightly and closed his eyes.
She lay his head down on the pillow and stood, looking at him.
Under his bushy beard and straggling hair, she realized, he was quite young.
And his limbs were strong. That was lucky.
An inflammation of the lungs could easily carry off someone older and weaker.
But he had to eat. He couldn’t live on water.
Nor could he continue to wear that good shirt as a bed shirt. It needed a wash and iron.
She examined his knapsack, which was now propped against the sofa, but found it contained no clothing at all.
It was full of artist’s materials. It held three or four brushes of different sizes wrapped in a waxed cloth, small jars of paint in primary colors and one with a clear brownish liquid.
A palette, also wrapped in waxed cloth, showed traces of the colors mixed into a variety of hues.
There were three rolled-up pieces of new canvas as well as a sketchbook and two pencils.
The sketchbook was almost full of images that must have been practices pieces as well as a few finished sketches, mostly of animals: dogs, cats and horses.
To Cynthia’s untrained eye, they were very good.
The character of the animals shone from every one.
The legs that had been sticking up from the top belonged to an easel and a small folding stool.
These items, and what he wore on his back, appeared to be the sum total of Mr. Fielding’s worldly possessions.
The patient suddenly began mumbling and moving his head from side to side, and his forehead was now distinctly hot to the touch.
She wrung out a towel and wound it around the back of his neck and over his brow.
Then she began again dropping the feverfew liquid into his mouth, but his condition seemed to worsen.
He began moaning, which brought on another bout of coughing.
She called to Ruby to come and help to replace the towels on his legs, but she must have been taking her afternoon rest with her door closed, as she did not reply.
There was nothing for it but to do it herself.
Cynthia wrung the towels out, folded back the sheet and blanket that covered his lower half and struggled to get them around his legs.
His movements and her efforts caused his shirt to ride up, but Cynthia was too worried to care for his modesty.
She did the best she could with the damp towels, then pulled his shirt down.
Teacup came flying in from wherever she had been, and tried to leap up onto the man.
Her claws caught in the blankets, and she scrambled onto his chest. It heaved as he coughed again, but Teacup hung on.
He calmed down, and after a few minutes, Cynthia began again with the feverfew tea.
She reached the end of it, and wondered if there were any more leaves in the kitchen.
“Look after him, Teacup,” she said to the cat, and went to look.
She found the jar containing the feverfew and made more tea, using the kettle of hot water that always hung by a chain to the side of the fire in the hearth.
She carried it back into the sickroom and was gratified to see Mr. Fielding sleeping peacefully again with Teacup curled up on his chest. She put the tea to one side to cool down, removed the damp towels from his legs and covered the patient with the sheet and blankets.
Then she took up his coat and breeches to see what needed mending.
The coat, which was of a fine tweed, had a London maker’s label.
There was a pocket-book in the inside breast pocket, but she did not touch it.
His finances were none of her business. The lining of one of the side pockets was split.
This happened often, she knew, from men thrusting all sorts of things in there.
Feeling inside the lining at the bottom of the coat, she withdrew four sovereigns, several shillings and seven pence, a penknife, a folding measure, a handkerchief and a gold locket with the initials CWF engraved on the front.
She opened the locket and beheld miniature paintings of a man and a woman dressed very finely in the fashion of the previous century.
The lady’s hair was dressed in a bouffant style, topped with a lavish lace cap.
Her striped gown had a deep décolleté over which a transparent silk scarf was draped.
Cynthia remembered her mother talking about wearing a fichu over her bosom in her younger days.
The gentleman wore a white wig, curled around the bottom, an embroidered waistcoat, and a sumptuous gold-trimmed coat, with a jabot-style neckcloth.
If these were Mr. Fielding’s mama and papa, he was descended from people of consequence.
She quickly sewed up the rip in the pocket lining, and put the pocket contents into one of the drawers in her papa’s desk.
She would have Ruby give the coat and breeches a good brushing.
Will would polish the boots. She wondered how a man who obviously came from well-to-do people had ended up here, on an old sofa in what amounted to little more than a storeroom, with a spinster lady and her cat to watch over him.