„Life isn’t like we want to be. Life has its own plans”

„It’s cold outside, Moon. It’s so cold,” Beth murmured while standing in front of the window and watching the rebellious drops of rain that were paddling in the windowpane as if they were the fingers of an invisible or mystical person. „And there’s so cold in my soul too,” the girl sadly said while her hand was calmly caressing the warm and silken fur of the cat, who was stuck to her chest, looking not only for bodily warmth but also for a spiritual one.

A crack inside of the stove, enough strong actually, of an oak tree, well dried over the summer, made both of them wince and they right away turned their head toward the stove, at whose door, hungry tongues of fire were surrounding that oak log that was too stubborn to allow to be burnt. But… as happens with the water: nothing can’t also stand in front of the fire and, so soon, the log started to burn, filling the room with a pleasant scent of burnt wood and warmth.

„Put some more wood on the fire, Beth,” Mrs. Alice told the young girl when she appeared in the living room, supporting her body on the cane, made from beechwood and colored in black. „Let it vividly burn… because it’s quite cold during the night already, even if it’s only late October. Let it be at least warm in the room if it isn’t in the soul. One or two more logs on the fire will bring some happiness around. Especially for those numb with cold travelers that might appear all of sudden,” the old lady at random murmured. After this, she sat down on the armchair that was right in front of the stove and she wrapped her tender and tired body with the thick shawl off her shoulders.

Beth said nothing: she only bent and let Moon on the floor. Then she took a few steps toward the stove, but she didn’t hurry to put more wood on the fire, even if she had heard Mrs. Huntington’s order because it was too soon to put more and an „I just fed that fire, Mrs. Alice. I’ll put more wood when those logs, that are on the stove now, will be already burnt,” has been whispered in a half a voice.

As if she just spotted that the stove was full to overflowing, Mrs. Huntington sketched a bitter smile: „eh, you’re right. How I didn’t notice it?! It seems that I grow old,” and again her lips, with visible, deep wrinkles drawn at the corners, moved a little bit, melancholically smiling - a smile that once subdued a lot of hearts because Alice Huntington had been once a rare beauty, but life and humans kneeled her down worse than the sickness.

But she right away turned back to reality from her sudden daydream when Moon jumped on her lap, looking for comfort because the old lady’s gnarled hands, which were slowly moving through her black fur, made her often purr a real ball of cattish pleasures while her eyes, of abyssal darkness like her fur, were sparkling in the night, more vividly when the room was washed in semi-shade and then, when the fire became more alive in the stove, dancing their strange dance of flames, the black and small eyes of the cat seemed real burning embers.

„Mrs. Huntington, do you think Eva will be back soon?” Beth dared eventually to ask, after fighting with her inner demons for minutes in a row, feeling a suffocating pressure in her chest due to doubts if to ask it or not. „It's more than a month since she left London and she’s still not back. It had to be only days, but…”

„Life is not like we want to be, Beth. Life has its own plans.”

„Plans? What are you referring to?”

„To everything and at nothing concrete. I just think that life is unforeseeable and problematic sometimes, and make us be its slaves from the moment we're born. But even so, we love it even more than our own soul,” the old lady said with a lost glance while staring at those playful flames from inside the stove, looking in fact there for a past that will never turn back. „And yet, Beth, she’ll be back. The question is if she turns back with gladness or with sadness in her soul.”

„Why do you say so, Mrs. Huntington? Do you think that Eva and mister Beneath won’t clinch a deal eventually and will break up forever?!” the girl murmured, sitting down at the old lady’s feet, on the floor, and watching her with innocent eyes, a glance that had actually never known the harshness of time.

Only then, when she felt Beth by her side, Mrs. Alice looked at the girl that was sitting at her feet, with her arms supported on the old lady’s knees while supporting her chin with one hand and caressing with the second one the black like ink fur of Moon and, for the first time since she met Beth, Mrs. Alice felt sorrow for her. But Mrs. Huntington didn’t feel sorrow because the girl was working as a servant or because she was alone in that big world, but because she was beautiful and beautiful women always suffer in life.

Then, there was something more the old lady was repented for: that such an innocent child, whose pure soul never had to face the harshness of life, was an orphan since a little child, that she never knew her parents’faces, and that she never called them mother and father.

„I don’t know, Beth,” the old Alice murmured and her hand caressed, for the first time, the girl’s head.

It seemed weird for Beth at first, that caress, and, unwillingly, she moved a little bit back, but when the old lady’s hand froze in the air as if waiting for the continuation of that caress, Beth turned in her previous position, allowing that caress to be real again while the old lady’s hand was so softly touching her reddish hair.

I don’t know,” the old lady said again, „but we’ll find out, as soon as they’ll be back.”

„But… what if we go to visit them?” Beth suddenly said in a cheerful voice because that idea made her heart wince in her chest. „Thus, we won’t only see them, but we’ll also find out the answer to all the questions that fester us inside.”

„No, my child. It is not good to poke and pry with the lovers'businesses. They must solve their own problems if they have it, and when it comes the time, they’ll tell us about this, if they want to do that.”

„But… I still don’t understand why can’t we at least go to Image to see what are they doing?! Like a social visit!” Beth murmured upset, understanding that her idea wasn’t something well seen by the old lady as she has expected it to be. „As if being in love is so big deal.”

Listening to the girl’s words, Mrs. Alice laughed with all her heart. „Of course, it is! There’s nothing more beautiful, more inspiring, and more fairy-like than the love is, just as there’s nothing else that can provoke a bigger pain than love does.”

„Why so?” Beth asked in amazement and her eyes suddenly blinked, filled with innocent curiosity.

„Because only love changes someone and it makes him be closer to other people, just as love can make us strangers with the same person that we loved once till madness. And… love can’t be described in words, Beth. Love can only be felt. So, who never felt that beautiful feeling called love, can’t understand the meaning of the words told him by the one who suffered for love, just as the in-love person if she suffered a lot, can’t understand anymore why he’s been once so fulfilled in the love’s arms.”

„And you, Mrs. Alice, did you love someone? Has it been a man who made your heart madly beat in your chest, so madly than you felt that you can’t breathe?”

The girl’s question amazed the old lady because even if she saw Beth growing up in front of her eyes in those few months since she was living in her house, she never wondered if that child loved someone. „Beth, did you love someone? Or… do you love someone now?”

„I? Huh…,” Beth stuttered, not knowing what to say because even if that feeling of suffocation that she was feeling sometimes in her chest was something known for her, especially after Eva and Stan’s departure, she couldn’t call it love because… not living something similar before, she hadn’t with what to compare it. „To be honest, I don’t know if it’s love what I feel, but I still feel that I can’t breathe, from time to time.”

Mrs. Alice smiled again: it means that this child knows what love is and she had also felt the sweet whipping of love on her skin. „And… your heart, for whom it beats?”

„For Eva, for you, for Moon, and … for Stan.”

„And we finally found the worm of love,” the old lady murmured. „Beth’s heart beats for Stan.” How didn’t she think about this before?! Two children, who lived for months together and who unconditionally helped each other in that period of time… it was impossible that they didn’t feel anything, it was something incomprehensible that their hearts did not start beating for the other.

„Why do you ask, Mrs. Alice? Do you think that this isn’t love?” Beth asked in amazement.

„It’s not about this, Beth. I’m sure that this is love, but… you know, there are too many types of love in this world.”

„Types of love? What do you mean?”

„I mean that … there’s the love for a friend - like you feel for Eva; then, there’s the love for a person you care so much as you feel for Moon; also, it can be the love and the respect for a person who’s a stranger and someone dear at the same time - like me because even if we live in the same house and we eat the same bread, we are still strangers. And … there’s one more type of love and personally, I think that’s the most important: the love for the opposite sex.”

„For the opposite sex? How can it be possible?” the girl asked confused because even if she has seen before people joining in marriage or becoming a pair, she thought that it was only a simple habit, a business as she heard once, a business that for many people became a profitable one, in the end.

„Exactly. Like the feeling, that your heart keeps inside it, for Stan. What you feel for that child, Beth can be called love - the first love which is, in fact, the most beautiful, unforgettable, and which in most cases provokes so much pain as it’s Eva’s love for her Brian Beneath.”

Eventually, Alice Huntington looked over Beth’s shoulder, at those flames that were hungrily eating the wood and she compared them with a destructive love, like the one felt by her, so many years ago, in her past youth.

***

„That’s for sure that someone mentions my name, and not on good terms,” Stan growled unsatisfied because for some time past he felt a strange sensation in his ears as if they were buzzing as if someone had done nothing else to do or had no other purpose in life than to speak ill of him. „Or… maybe is because of the weather?!” he murmured again, and, after shaking well his ears by sticking the pinky inside them, the boy finally made that buzz vanish. Then, the boy grabbed again the mane brush in his hand and he started to caress with it the black like pitch skin of Sunshine, an Arabian horse of rare beauty, but who had also grown so old lately.

„Eh, I would have liked to make a run to the Capital and to see what my Moon is doing, old chap Sunshine, but … it seems to me that we won’t leave this place so soon,” the boy murmured upset because when he asked Bardain, a few days ago, if they turn back soon to London or not, the old teamster just shrugged and murmured a barely heard: „as the masters will want.”

But that „as the masters will want” wasn’t something Stan liked because a soul that has been so free once, it’s like a wild horse: hard to wrangle at times, and if and if you lay your hands on him and you force him to wear that harness, then you should take care to also break him because if he escapes to freedom again, then you won’t make him turn back ever.

And the boy felt himself the same: like a savage horse who had been lured with a cube of sugar and then forced to use a harness. But… to be honest, Stan hadn’t been lured with a cube of sugar only, but with dreams: related to a beautiful life next to someone, a life lived not in the street or in dilapidated attics where’s colder than hell out and where the hunger erodes you inside worse than the wormholes can erode the wood or the mice can nibble everything they meet in their way because they don’t do anything else than to eat and to live. Then, there was also the pleasure of being appreciated, of being called by his name and not „hey, beggar,” of being considered a person as it had happened in Mrs. Huntington’s house when he had lived there because even if Mrs. Alice seemed to be a tough person, sometimes toothy, she treated him like someone dear, like part of her family, maybe like her child too. And now, when he started to work for a man like Brian Beneath, so appreciated and so influential in the society, Stan had understood that it’s how a man should act: a real man and he has decided to learn to be like this, in the future.

„Careful with that comb, boy,” Bardain told him in a shout, entering the stable and seeing Stan immersed in thoughts while his hand kept combing the same part of the horse’s skin, over and over again, and this made even the poor Sunshine leer at the boy while wondering if that stupid innocent won’t comb him till blood, eventually.

But… there was something else comic at that Arabian horse: each time he disliked something, Sunshine was showing his teeth as if trying to make his „enemy” understand that if he doesn’t act normally or if he throws out a feeler, just as to see how a horse will react eventually, then he’ll leave deep marks on his skin, after hardly squeezing that part with his teeth. And… Sunshine was doing exactly the same at the moment Stan was combing his shiny skin with that harsh comb: showing his teeth, ready to stub them in the back part of the boy, the soft one actually, as soon as he’ll have the possibility and to teach him manners this way for being a dreamer and not taking care of him as it should have been.

„Give me that comb!” the old teamster told Stan, and when the boy stretched his hand toward him, not understanding what he did wrong actually, Bardain took the comb right away and started to softly comb the horse’s skin.

Only then did Stan spot Sunshine’s squint and he finally remembered that he had combed the same part of his back for so long. „Aaa, it’s because of this he stares at me like this,” Stan mumbled and grinned, looking into the horse’s eyes. „No offense, old chap! I just lent myself to my thoughts!” After this, to make peace with the … horse, Stan took two cubes of sugar out of his pocket and Sunshine chewed them right away, whinnying with pleasure: a hint that the apology had been accepted and they could be again thick as thieves.

„You will spoil him for me if you keep feeding him with sugar,” Bardain mumbled, but in the old teamster’s voice, Stan felt no trace of anger or remorse. It was rather the old man’s way of joking, even if he hadn't the slightest idea how to say a good joke.

But Bardain was doing a great job with being faithful and with taking care of horses, who were often purebred because Baron Beneath adored purebred horses, especially the Arabian ones, and Brian inherited that passion for horses from his father. And, as it is known, the Arabian horses, or the purebred ones need special care, and limitless love, and Bardain had more than enough in his soul to share it with them.

„Listen, mister Bardain,” Stan muttered, at last, muffled. „Have you been in the service of Mr. Beneath for a long time?"

„Yes, for about 50 years.”

„Ogo. And… how did you manage to stay in one place only for so long? If I had been in your place, I would have run slick away, and since long ago, actually,” Stan mumbled, scratching the back of his head as if listening that a man like Bardain lived a whole life serving one single person only was something extremely unusual for those times.

„Eh, my boy, when you had really got to appreciate someone, you don’t care about time or money. You only pay attention to be next to that person as long as possible, to be faithful, and to serve him well.”

„Why so? Me, for example, I can appreciate a person, but … from far away because … I don’t really like to stick in his craw.”

„And… who told you that serving well a person or being next to him all the time means to stick in his craw?” the old man asked, sketching a barely noticed smile while combing Sunshine’s mane, whose skin was slowly shaking, with pleasure.

„As if someone has to tell you about such things?! If you are really smart, you can understand it easily because … just think about it, practically being 24/7 next to someone, you can feel that you are suffocating and that you want to see other snoots too, apart of those seen every day.”

This made Bardain laugh with all his heart, but Stan instead just stared in amazement at that old man because it was the first time when he saw him laughing because before this, when they only came to Image and they start to live together, the boy had thought that Bardain has been made from one single stone, and when he’s been sculpted, the carver, a little bit scatterbrain, had forgotten to also sketch a smile on that face. But … it seemed that he’s been wrong.

„So… should I take it as a wrong thought?!” Stan mumbled.

„This is so, boy, because … just tell me, from what I know, you lived with that girl, it seems that her name is Beth, for about a year. But … you don’t look as if you would have been tired of seeing her. More than that, I don’t know why I have the feeling that your desire of running to London is not because you miss Moon, but because you want to see a different kind of … cat,” Bardain joked.

Stan instead just grimaced: the old man had found out his secret eventually because he really started to miss Beth lately and… he also couldn’t say that he didn’t miss Moon too.

Actually, what Stan started to miss was their small family, which they managed to form in the short time they had lived together since they met each other a few months ago.

But … there was still time till to form a real family and, being a man, he had understood that he must be able to protect the woman who stays by his side, and he needed money for this. And Stan found out this after spending some time with Brian and Bardain when he heard them talking about this so many times, about how a man should act if he has a family, which he has to take care of.

„I was right, isn’t it?!” Bardain teased him.

Stan instead didn’t rush to answer, and the old man also didn’t insist on this: it was pretty obvious the young man’s behavior, who he got on to know in that short time of living with him, and Bardain finally understood that not all the beggars are mean people - there are also those with a big heart as Stan.

„It’s true,” Stan mumbled eventually. „But… it’s also true that I don’t have enough courage to admit this in front of her,” and the boy looked at the ground.

Bardain instead just smiled and turned back to his work, which he abandoned for a short period of time. „The true feelings are felt with the chest and not with the brain, my boy, and if yours are sincere, then that girl will also understand them because women aren’t stupid at all, as others try to make them think. They are only naive or pretend that they don’t understand what men feel for them. But… eventually, if she feels the same as you, then there won’t be necessary words to accept that you two feel the same because if there are mutual feelings, a single glance is enough to ignite the fire that will burn you both inside, will make you a family, and not a word will do that.”

The old man suddenly kept silent and a barely heard sigh was heard coming out of his chest.

Stan instead didn’t spot that mood of the old man because his words made him really immerse in his thoughts while trying to figure out their real meaning, to make a real plan of how a man should act to have the wished success.