The Quality of Mercy - By Barry Unsworth Page 0,109

it is, sir, indeed it is. Lady Spenton is still enjoying her afternoon repose, and so it falls to me to show you to your apartment. It was thought that you might like to take your ease for a while, after the journey.”

The room was on the first floor, reached from the main hall by a broad flight of steps that ascended directly, with no hint of the curve now thought fashionable, attesting to the age of the house, at least in this main part of it—well over a century, Kemp thought, noting as he mounted the stairs the heavy Jacobean oak rails of the banister. The Spenton family was not newly arrived at wealth and large estates, so much was obvious.

It was clear to him, however, that money had been spent on the house, and perhaps fairly recently. His room was more spacious than it would once have been; walls had been demolished to make space for the canopied bed, the broad writing desk, the marble bust of an unknown worthy, the easy chairs, the smooth extent of Turkey carpet.

There was a lingering warmth of sunshine here, and he noted the two large windows that had replaced the narrow casements of a former age. He approached these now and looked out over extensive views of the grounds. The long approach to the house, with the tree-lined drive rising gradually, had brought him to an eminence he had not fully realized until now. He could see the whole shape of the lake from here, a perfect oval, its shores clustered with willows, a small boat with a Chinese-style pagoda moored to the landing stage. Beyond this was what looked like a ruined abbey, with Gothic towers and ivied columns.

By approaching the edge of one window and widening as much as possible his angle of vision, he was able to look eastward and see, at the furthest limit of sight, a pale suffusion in the sky that he thought must indicate the line of the coast. Before this, rising toward it, there was a thickening of the light, a low mist, pale sulfurous in color, and he guessed this to mark the distant presence of the mine. He noticed a narrow seam of green, two or three miles in length, running directly toward the sea. Some wooded cleft in the land …

He was left to his thoughts and plans for an hour or so, and he was beginning to grow sleepy, as he half reclined in the high-backed chair with its deep cushions and footstool, when an elderly retainer came tapping at his door to tell him that Lord and Lady Spenton were below and looking forward to the pleasure of his company for tea in the drawing room.

He was struck by the difference they showed in the style of their greetings. Lady Spenton bade him welcome with none of her husband’s languidness of manner. She was a tall woman, angular in figure and brisk of speech. She had made little effort to dress for the occasion; her hair was combed loose to her shoulders, without ornament, and she wore a day gown with a long apron of the sort she would wear when going about her usual duties. Spenton himself had come in straight from the hunt, still in riding habit and top boots.

There had been a fall during the chase. A neighboring farmer had been thrown and had suffered a twisted wrist and two cracked ribs. “It is all in the way you take the fence,” Spenton said. “The horse must be sure of its rider, or it will balk. Personally, I think the beast was taking revenge. Davis is a heavy-handed fellow, I have seen myself how he wrenches his mount. A horse has a memory, sir, and sooner or later it will square accounts.” He paused here to take some tea, then turned to his wife. “And how has your day been, my dear?”

This would be the first moment of the day they had set eyes on each other, Kemp thought, as Lady Spenton began speaking of some wrangle with a tenant over delayed rents. And it would probably be more or less the same every day while Spenton was up here, a situation which he suspected might well accord with the wishes of both. She would see to the running of the house, the management of the servants, the day-to-day dealings with the local tenant farmers. Helped in all this, and perhaps in more than this,