A Walk
Song 7:11
Come, my beloved, let us go forth into the field; let us lodge in the villages.
Nara was busy with her laundry, some fine linen that she insisted on washing herself, so Lady Ambrose had piled cushions on the floor next to her window and stretched out with a book. It was a fascinating book by a man named Jonathon Swift entitled ‘Gulliver’s Travels’ and was about a man who had been shipwrecked among the most fascinating people.
“Reading, my Dear?”
She started… had been in the middle of an exciting passage and hadn’t heard the communication door open nor her husband’s footsteps.
“Oh, yes, Dear,” she said, struggling to rise. Her left leg seemed to have fallen asleep.
After her husband had helped her up she showed him the book. “A most fascinating book,” she said.
“I had thought that perhaps you were reading sermons.”
She flushed. She had taken several books of sermons from the library and had them on her shelf and dutifully read them in the morning for her daily worship, but otherwise, she found most of them deadly boring. If only Esther were here to explain them to her. She felt much like that Eunuch who was met by… was it Philip? Esther’s journals were inspiring… was that the word she was looking for… but they weren’t explanations of the text…
Her husband smiled at her, leaving her even more flustered. “Shall we go on a walk?” he asked, eventually.
“Oh, yes,” she said and ran over to her desk and put the book down. “Should I put on shoes?” she asked doubtfully.
Her husband looked down at her feet, an amused look on his face. “I suppose not… if you don’t wish to…” he said.
“Oh, no,” she said, taking his hand. “It takes forever to put them on, and I should no doubt have to call Nara.
“Let us, by all means, not call Nara,” he said, leading her out of the room.
“Don’t you like Nara ?”
“She pleases you, and that is all that matters. However, right now, I wish you to myself and whatever her other good qualities, Nara is always a presence.”
Lady Ambrose giggled. That was undoubtedly true. The girl seemed bursting with energy. “I wonder how she will deal with a husband,” she said.
He gave her a sideways glance. “You didn’t know? She is married. She married at about the same time that you did—one of our under-gardeners. And, to answer your question, she deals very well from what I have heard. The boy is practically silent, so she makes up the deficit.”
“Nara is married? She never said anything.”
“Surely the private lives of the servants is nothing for them to natter on about,” he said.
Lady Ambrose thought back to Esther. All of those years, they had been together, and she had never known that she had been married. And she had considered her a friend. Indeed, her best friend. But she had never shared such a basic fact.
She glanced at her husband. Here she was, his wife, and she knew hardly anything about him. She had heard he had mistresses in London, but certainly, he would say nothing about that. She knew that he gambled, but, again, he had never said a word about cards, or dice, or horses, or whatever it was.
One time, during their trip to Paris, he had paused for a moment to watch two men playing chess in a park. Perhaps that was his game? Did men gamble on chess? And how much money did he lose? She knew he had all of these estates that brought in income, but… were they all mortgaged? Was he followed around by creditors?
They had reached the creek and as she wasn’t encumbered by boots as she had been last time, she pulled her husband over and stood in the creek, feeling the wonderfully cold water flowing over her feet. “Oh, this is wonderful,” she said.
Her husband said nothing but, after she had finally come out of the stream, pulled her into a kiss. She blushed, knowing that they were visible from at least some of the windows. How the servants must be staring. How indiscreet!
“Now, this next clearing, a few yards down, is very memorable to me,” he said as he pulled her along. “My cousins and I cornered a badger here. We were all well armed with sticks, but we were up against a foe beyond our ken. We were lucky to escape with but a few scratches.’
“Oh, my! Whyever did you do that?”
“We were boys, my dear. A boy with a stick is a boy who is looking for something to conquer. Several boys with sticks… the possibilities are endless. We had been wandering the woods with our sticks for a while and were just about ready to go swimming when one of us spotted the badger, and we were off. They aren’t particularly fast, so we were able to soon surround it.”
“Oh, my. No scars from that incident?”
He stiffened slightly, and she cursed herself. Why did she have to bring that up?
“No. My hand was scratched, and my cousin’s stomach was very nicely scratched, but no scars on any of us. From that, anyway.”
“But, did you catch the badger?”
“We eventually realized that we could not kill it, and as we had no cage or box to hold it, we let it go. And tried to follow it to its den, but it was too wise for us and escaped in some underbrush.”
Thank you for coming round Arthur’s Substack. I hope and pray it will be a blessing to you.
Arthur publishes with Wise Path Books and include the children’s/YA books:
The Bobtails meet the Preacher’s Kid: A Christian historical fiction chapter book about four orphans who go to live with their aunt on a dairy farm.
The Bobtails and the Cousins: The sequel to Preacher’s Kid. The aunt has married, and the cousins come to visit. Meaning town kids dealing with chores and manure and…
The Bobtails go to France: The sequel to cousins. The Bobtails, and Preacher’s Kid, get to take a trip to New York, London, Paris, and a small town in France. To get some cheese.
and
No Ordinary School: A brilliant but socially clueless boy gets recruited for a special school. Where he makes a lot of money, gets a girl, and solves a mystery.
As well as GK Chesterton’s wonderful book, “What’s Wrong with the World”, for which ‘Arthur’ wrote most of the annotations. The book is a series of essays on how modern politics has gotten the wrong prescription for the wrong diagnosis.
Quite a few chapters of the Bobtails and No Ordinary School are here on this substack as audio.
I also write as Von, and I encourage you to check out that substack. There is a lot of theology and politics there, as well as quotes, poems, other articles, and links to other Science Fiction. But ‘Von’ also is publishing some serial books and stories. Much more adult and serious books than here, for the most part. Some of them.