It was not for Tessa to speak to Miss Ludgate on the subject. Indeed, she knew that – in the phraseology of the servants’ hall – it was as much as her place was worth. But she did mention it to Mrs Finch, whose duty was to provide food and drink, or, failing those, money.
Mrs Finch, taciturn through her environment but still with an undercurrent of warmth, replied at first with the one pregnant word, ‘Orders!’ After a moment she added: ‘The mistress has her own good reasons for doing it – or thinks she has.’
It was late summer when Tessa first took up her abode at Billingdon Abbots, and sweet lavender, that first herald of the approach of autumn, was already blooming in the gardens. September came and the first warning gleams of yellow showed among the trees. Spiked chestnut husks opened and dropped their polished brown fruit. At evenings the ponds and the trout stream exhaled pale, low-hanging mists. There was a cold snap in the air.
By looking from her window every morning Tessa marked on the trees the inexorable progress of the year. Day by day the green tints lessened as the yellow increased. Then yellow began to give place to gold and brown and red. Only the hollies and the laurels stood fast against the advancing tide.
There came an evening when Miss Ludgate appeared for the first time in her winter shawl. She seemed depressed and said little during dinner, and afterwards in the drawing-room, when she had taken out and arranged a pack of patience cards preparatory to beginning her evening game, she suddenly leaned her elbows on the table and rested her face between her hands.
‘Aren’t you well, Miss Ludgate?’ Tessa asked anxiously.
She removed her hands and showed her withered old face. Her eyes were piteous, fear-haunted, and full of shadows.
‘I am very much as usual, my dear,’ she said. ‘You must bear with me. My bad time of the year is just approaching. If I can live until the end of November I shall last another year. But I don’t know yet – I don’t know.’
‘Of course you’re not going to die this year,’ said Tessa, with a robust note of optimism which she had found useful in soothing frightened children.
‘If I don’t die this autumn it will be the next, or some other autumn,’ quavered the old voice. ‘It will be in the autumn that I shall die. I know that. I know that.’
‘But how can you know?’ Tessa asked, with just the right note of gentle incredulity.
‘I know it. What does it matter how I know? … Have many leaves fallen yet?’
‘Hardly any as yet,’ said Tessa. ‘There has been very little wind.’
‘They will fall presently,’ said Miss Ludgate. ‘Very soon now …’
Her voice trailed away, but presently she rallied, picked up the miniature playing cards, and began her game.
Two days later it rained heavily all the morning and throughout the earlier part of the afternoon. Just as the light was beginning to wane, half a gale of wind sprang up, and showers of yellow leaves, circling and eddying at the wind’s will, began to find their way to earth through the level slant of the rain. Miss Ludgate sat watching them, her eyes dull with the suffering of despair, until the lights were turned on and the blinds were drawn.
During dinner the wind dropped again and the rain ceased. Tessa afterwards peeped between the blinds to see still silhouettes of trees against the sky, and a few stars sparkling palely. It promised after all to be a fine night.
As before, Miss Ludgate got out her patience cards, and Tessa picked up a book and waited to be bidden to go to the piano. There was silence in the room save for intermittent sounds of cards being laid with a snap upon the polished surface of the table, and occasional dry rustlings as Tessa turned the pages of her book.
… When she first heard it Tessa could not truthfully have said. It seemed to her that she had gradually become conscious of the sounds in the garden outside, and when at last they had so forced themselves upon her attention as to set her wondering what caused them it was impossible for her to guess how long they had actually been going on.
Tessa closed the book over her fingers and listened. The sounds were crisp, dry, long-drawn-out, and rhythmic. There was an equal pause after each one. It was rather like listening to the leisurely brushing of a woman’s long hair. What was it? An uneven surface being scratched by something crisp and pliant? Then Tessa knew. On the long path behind the house which travelled the whole length of the building somebody was sweeping up the fallen leaves with a stable broom. But what a time to sweep up leaves!
She continued to listen. Now that she had identified the sounds they were quite unmistakable. She would not have had to guess twice had it not been dark outside, and the thought of a gardener showing such devotion to duty as to work at that hour had at first been rejected by her subconscious mind. She looked up, with the intention of making some remark to Miss Ludgate – and she said nothing.
Miss Ludgate sat listening intently, her face half turned towards the windows and slightly raised, her eyes upturned. Her whole attitude was one of strained rigidity, expressive of a tension rather dreadful to see in one so old. Tessa not only listened, she now watched.
There was a movement in the unnaturally silent room. Miss Ludgate had turned her head, and now showed her companion a white face of woe and doom-ridden eyes. Then, in a flash, her expression changed. Tessa knew that Miss Ludgate had caught her listening to the sounds from the path outside, and
