The Wild Dark Flowers by Elizabeth Cooke Read Free Book Online Page B

not? The poor beasts. Do you know what happens to them, out there?”
    Bradfield shook his head.
    “I have a distant cousin who writes to me,” he said. “He is with the signalers. The horses are used for everything. They take them down to the front. In this last winter, both men and horses drowned. In the roads. In the transports. Horses and mules and men. It is mud, you see, just there. Those areas are crisscrossed by canals and marshes. And the ground is . . . well, mud. . . .”
    He lapsed into silence. Above them, the horse chestnut trees lazily danced in the wind. Bradfield looked away from the horses, and down at his hands. He was quite certain in his own mind that there must be some exaggeration about the mud or the horses coming from China. It was this kind of slack, inaccurate talk of which he deeply disapproved.
    Whittaker sat forward on the bench. “But I’m keeping you.”
    “Not at all.”
    The younger man held out his hand. Bradfield took it, dismayed at the bony grasp. He saw that Whittaker was not only young and frail, but also fired by a determination that was probably beyond his capabilities. But he also saw that the man’s conscience was gnawing away at him. “I can’t stay, you see,” Whittaker murmured. “I feel I can’t.”
    Bradfield stood up with him. “It is very good of you. Honorable.”
    “Is it?” Whittaker said. He leaned forward as if he was anxious to hear the answer.
    “Of course.”
    The younger man smiled. “Thank you, Mr. Bradfield,” he replied, nodding. “I should like to think there is honor in it. And I shall do my best, you know. That’s what we all need to do, don’t you think? For king and country? Our very best.”
    Bradfield watched him go—a scarecrow figure in an ill-fitting set of clothes. Then, sighing deeply, and abandoning his idea of tea on the green, he turned again in the direction of Rutherford.
    *   *   *
    O ctavia Cavendish was in rather less peaceful surroundings.
    She was sitting in the glass-walled office of the overseer, looking down on the huge floor of the largest of the Blessington mills. It was one of many rooms, and the glass failed to shut out the noise of the looms. Inside here, it was necessary to raise her voice to make herself heard; but down on the floor, Octavia could see workers using sign language to make themselves understood.
    With her was the mill manager, Ferrow, and the overseer himself, Capthwaite. But this visit was quite different from others in one respect: today, Harry was with her.
    As they had got out of the car—Harry’s sporty little Metz that he had been longing to drive again—Harry had stopped, and stared up at the huge black building.
    “When was I last here?” he had asked her.
    “Probably eight or nine years ago.”
    He had companionably taken her arm. “And now you think I should take an interest?”
    “It will all be yours,” she replied. “Rutherford comes from one grandfather . . . Blessington from another. So . . . yes, dear. You should take an interest.”
    “Doesn’t Father come with you?”
    “No,” she said. “Not always.”
    Her son had raised an eyebrow; she could tell that he thought William’s absence was unusual.
    “And at any rate, he has gone to see someone today. Something urgent, apparently. But we shall all be back for luncheon.”
    She did not tell Harry that the running of the mills and the well-being of the workers had been an issue with her husband the previous autumn. John Gould had offered her freedom, and, although she had not gone to America with him, he had inspired her to be more than a pretty picture sitting aimlessly at Rutherford. There, William still wanted her as his gilded rose; but she had to have something to do outside the house. And the Blessington mills had been her property entirely before her marriage. She went back to them as much for her own sanity, for a sense of purpose, as for an interest in their industry.
    Now Harry sat forward