Chapter Ten
The following morning, Cynthia gave Will a pair of breeches, a shirt and a coat that had belonged to her father, altered by measuring his own clothes, to fit Mr. Fielding’s slimmer shape.
He was taller than her father had been, but she had been able to add length to the breeches by taking material from the width, and she had lengthened the coat sleeves by cutting down the wide skirts that had been popular for men’s coats at the end of the previous century.
She was not entirely happy with the result, but they would do, she thought, for sitting in the garden.
When he emerged from his room later, fully clothed, carrying his knapsack and leaning on Will’s arm, she had another shock.
She remembered her father wearing that very coat, and for a moment she was taken back to the semi-fearful, semi-joyous moments when he would swing her around in the air, calling her his darling girl.
His heavy breath would smell of tobacco and what she now knew was alcohol, and though it was not really pleasant, it would intoxicate her.
Then he would put her down and stride from the room and she knew that in the time it took for the door to close behind him, he had forgotten all about her.
“Will tells me I have you to thank for these new clothes, as, indeed, for everything else,” said Mr. Fielding. “I feel a new man.”
“I’m glad you can wear them,” replied Cynthia, with a slight blush, for the invalid did indeed look like a new, very handsome, man. “They aren’t as fine as your own, but for sitting in the garden with the cat on your lap, they will do.”
For Teacup had come trotting out after her patient, and as soon as he was settled in an old wooden chair, she leaped up to take possession of him.
Mr. Fielding laughed and stroked her little head. “She certainly is determined,” he said. “I keep telling her it’s enough for the household to have one creature around not earning his keep, and that she should be out catching mice, but I’m afraid she is as lazy as I am.”
“Oh, no,” said Cynthia, “there’s a row of dead mice on the back door mat to greet us most mornings. Some of them are almost as big as she is. She does her hunting at night when we’re all asleep. She earns her rest.”
“Then I must apologize to her. I alone am the useless one here. Ruby was right to call me a stray.”
“Where did you hear that?” Cynthia couldn’t believe it.
“Oh, weeks ago, I overheard her talking with Will about how she thought it was just like you to bring in another stray.”
“But that was just at the beginning! She loves you now as much as I…,” she stopped herself. “As much as we all do. She’d do anything for you, you know that.”
“You’ve all been so kind. I don’t know what I ever did to deserve it.”
“Well, today, I shall put you to work. I picked a basketful of peas this morning, and if I am to read, you will have to shell them.”
“Gladly. But I warn you, I may eat as many as I put in the bowl. I am very fond of fresh peas!”
“I wish you would eat as many as you please! Your illness has left you too thin. You were obviously unwell and not eating properly for some time before you sought help. You nearly left it too late, you know.”
“But I sought help in exactly the right place because I found you, my dear Miss Rowley,” said Mr. Fielding. “And Ruby and Will, and Teacup, too, of course,” he added, tickling the cat. “I could feel her warmth on my chest when I didn’t know where it was coming from, only that it was a comfort.”
“I don’t know how you’re going to manage with both her and the bowl for the peas in your lap,” laughed Cynthia. “But I do know it will be hopeless trying to put her down when she’s decided she wants to be there.”
Teacup had to thoroughly examine the peas before she was content to let her idol keep them, but then, somehow, they managed.
Man and cat sat quietly shelling peas while Cynthia read to them.
When the peas were done, Mr. Fielding quietly bent down to take his sketch pad and a pencil from his knapsack.
With a few deft strokes, he made a likeness of Cynthia as she sat, her head bent over the book, the wayward curl escaping from her cap and falling forward onto her cheek.
He looked at his subject and his work for a minute, then, his eyes softening, he shook his head and turned the page.
“I can’t do her justice,” he murmured to Teacup.
“I’ll see what I can do with you, my friend. ”
At the sound of his voice, Cynthia looked up and saw him sketching the cat. She smiled at him. He smiled back, and they both sat immobile for a second, as if they had suddenly made a discovery.
Then, coming to her senses, Cynthia said, “I guessed you were an itinerant artist. Have you been doing that long?”
“Since the beginning of the year,” he replied.
“I…” Then he seemed to change his mind about what he was going to say.
He continued, “I…I like to be outside and I like drawing, so I combine the two by wandering around asking if people in the big houses want portraits of household members, or their horses, or dogs, or even cows. You’d be amazed how many do.
I really enjoy working in oils, and I do that occasionally, but it’s expensive, so I do far more work in pencil.
“Last winter I stayed several weeks at Lord Someone or Other’s. I did a portrait of his prize heifer in oils, then sketched any number of dogs, from her ladyship’s pugs to his lordship’s favorite retriever — a nice animal called Juno. She’d just had pups, so it gave me plenty to do.”
Cynthia laughed. “I notice you don’t remember the name of the Lord but you do remember the dog’s,” she said.
“Lords are two a penny with nothing to choose between them,” replied Mr. Fielding, “but Juno was a fine animal. Apparently an excellent retriever and also a good mother. She was worth remembering. The same goes for Teacup,” he added.
“She deserves a portrait, if only she’d stop trying to eat the end of my pencil. ”
They both laughed at the cat’s antics as he waved his pencil around, until Cynthia said, “I’d better take in those peas before they end up on the ground.”
She collected the bowl and went inside, wondering what it was Mr. Fielding had been going to say.
She really knew no more about him than she had before.
Where had he come from before he began life as a traveling artist?
Why were his clothes of such fine quality if all he did was draw horses and dogs?
She couldn’t ask him, of course. It was none of her business. But oh, how she would like to know!