The Devil in Clevely (Afternoon of an Autocrat)

Afternoon of an Autocrat

On the third Saturday afternoon of October, in the year 1795, Sir Charles Augustus Shelmadine set out on what--though he naturally had no notion of it--was to be his last ride.

Stubbornly old-fashioned, he still ate his dinner at midday and made of the meal, as of everything else he undertook, a thoroughly good job. The first pig-killing of the season had just taken place and the walnuts were at their best, though the crop was poor this year; he had dined well, and as he proposed, this evening, to entertain some friends for cards and supper, that meal, usually a frugal affair of two or three courses, would be supplemented by as many again, so if he were to do justice to his own table some exercise was desirable.

As recently as eighteen months ago he would have made his round of the village on foot, but he had lately come to the conclusion that walking provoked his gout. Moreover, today he intended to make a visit to the cobbler's which was across the Stone Bridge on the other side of the Waste; his new boots, ordered three weeks ago, had not yet been delivered and it was clear that Amos Green-way needed a prod. So at half-past two his stout grey horse was brought to the door, and with some assistance from the mounting-block, and some from the groom, he heaved himself into the saddle and set off along the avenue. It was a fine autumn day, golden and mellow with sunshine and with just that hint of chill in the air which was conducive to appetite. The chestnut leaves were sharp yellow and bright amber, the hawthorns crimson and bronze; the old man took, in the weather and the scene, a pleasure undiminished by the repetition of more than seventy years.

As he neared the gate Bessie Jarvey, the lodgekeeper's wife, broke off her work in the potato patch and hurried clumsily to throw open the gate for him. In the family way again, he noticed, he'd thought so last time he saw her, now he was sure. That would be seven youngsters, all under working age; how they fitted into the Lodge, which consisted of two octagonal rooms, one on each side of the gateway, was a puzzle; a puzzle to which there was no solution, for it was obviously impossible to add to either room without spoiling the perfect symmetry of the entrance. And in any case, he remembered, Jarvey's father had reared ten children there--all fine healthy brats too.

'Potatoes done well this year, Bessie; better-looking than mine,' he said, looking down at her as she bobbed, holding the gate wide.

She received the compliment with a smile, closed the gate and went back to her digging. Sir Charles, on the patch of smoothly raked, weedless gravel which divided his gates from the highway, halted for a moment and looked out over the scene which never failed to give him pleasure. The Manor gate stood at the lowest point of the village, just where the main road and what was known as the Lower Road, and the river, all ran together. From this point the land sloped gently upwards, so that looking straight ahead of him he could see the green of the common pasture, the vast expanse of the two common fields and beyond them the blazing autumn glory of the trees of Layer Wood which stretched on all the way to Nettleton. When he turned his head to the left he could see all along the main road which ran straight up the slope, past the church and the Rectory and the inn and the main part of the village, until it turned at the Stone Bridge and disappeared over the Waste. It was all beautiful, all pleasing.

He was--he thought--no sentimentalist, and he would have repudiated the word 'love' as a description of the emotion he felt for Clevely village; yet the passionate interest, the possessiveness, the complacent approval with which he regarded it came near to justifying the term. Here and there, of course, there were things--and people --that went wrong from time to time, but that was what he was here for--to put things right; and, above all, to see that nothing changed for the worse. He knew villages whose squires failed in their duty and went running off to London, or Bath, or even, until lately, to the Continent, and naturally in such villages most scandalous things happened, most pernicious ideas took root. And he knew other villages where squires on the spot encouraged and even initiated most revolutionary changes--they dared to call them progress. There'd be no such changes in Clevely, not as long as...

'Come up, Bob,' he said to the horse. They bore left and trotted briskly through the village, past the flat-faced Rectory where the reddened creeper glowed in the sun, past the ancient church with its round Saxon tower, in whose shade so many Shelmadines took their last rest among so many Cloptons, and Greenways and Jarveys and Fullers under their unmarked mounds.

As he neared the inn he slackened pace. He was no Puritan and would have been the last to deny that any man who had done a sound day's work had the right to as much sound liquor as he could pay for, but no one--that is no villager--who wasn't a loafer and a rogue should be drinking at this time of day. Almost as though expecting this visit of inspection, the little inn stood with both doors open, so that at a glance Sir Charles could see into the taproom with its sanded floor and barrels and the room which had, until an occasional coach started coming through, been Mrs Sam Jarvey's parlour; they called it the coffee-room now, though what they drank there he wondered--not coffee, he hoped, for Mrs Sam had never made a decent cup of coffee in all her ten years' service at the Manor. Both rooms were empty; no labourer, no superior person was drinking this afternoon. Sir Charles nodded to himself; that was as it should be. In the orchard at the side of the inn Sam Jarvey was gathering...what? Damsons, by God! Late--much, much too late.

The forge was next, just at the corner where Berry Lane led off to Flocky Hall Farm. Strong Un, the smith, the third of his line whom Sir Charles had known by that name, was busy, fixing a new rim to the wheel of Matt Ashpole's cart--and not before it was needed. As usual Sir Charles paused to have a word with the smith, who remarked that what was needed was not a new rim but a new wheel. The remark made Sir Charles smile, not because it was witty but because it was in tradition; all workmen always, when called upon to make a repair, said that what was needed was a replacement--too simple to see that if replacements could be made at will they'd be hard put to it to find a job.

He turned left into Berry Lane, so named because it was lined with bramble bushes on which blackberries grew in profusion. Despite the picking which had gone on lately there were multitudes left and the air was heavy with their warm black scent. Nobody was picking today, and that too was as it should be; blackberry-picking ended on the thirtieth of September. Sir Charles did not precisely believe, as many villagers did, that on that date the Devil flew over, claiming what berries were left as his own and cursing any who dared to take one, but he liked every traditional date to be recognised and honoured.

His mood darkened a little as he went along the lane. He would have liked to ride along, straight past Fuller's and up to Flocky Hall, as he had been used to do in old Abram's day. He had been very fond of Abram Clopton, a yeoman farmer of the real old breed whose family had been at Flocky Hall as long as Shelmadines had been at the Manor. Three tall Cloptons, bearing their bows, had gone with Shelmadine to Crecy--that was no legend but sober truth, for all four of them had died and had been brought home at Shelmadine expense and buried together in the church. Most of the dead brought back from that campaign had been buried at Dunwich and been taken out to sea again when half that town was washed away. From that time on, until fifteen years ago, when old Abram died, the tie between the two families had been sound and close; but things were different now. Young Fred Clopton was progressive--a thing Sir Charles could in no way abide. He admitted--being nothing if not fair-minded --that Fred had a perfect right to do as he choose on his own land. Let him grow his turnips and his clover; let him marl his land and winter-feed his cattle and sell fresh beef all through the winter, and talk about the 'Clopton Herd' and market off his squealing little calves one by one at fabulous price as though they were some kind of jewel. All well and good. But to flaunt his success and his money, to buy his wife a pianoforte, to send his two red-faced little wenches to Baildon Female Academy and to go smashing off to market in a high gig with yellow wheels-- that was a different thing altogether, because it made other men envious and discontented, made them mutter about enclosures. Flocky Hall was enclosed, three hundred and five acres, all fenced, but it had been like that ever since the monks at Baildon Abbey had started sheep farming, centuries ago; and it wasn't being enclosed that made Fred Clopton successful, it was his luck, and his industry and the steady accumulation of wealth from centuries of thrifty, hard-working forebears. Damn it, Sir Charles could prove that that was true, for there were two other enclosed farms at Clevely: Bridge Farm, two hundred and ten acres, which had been part of the estate but which had been sold off in 1721, when things went wrong, and now belonged to a damned Dissenter named Shipton, who certainly wasn't making a fortune; and Wood Farm, three hundred and twenty acres, still a Shelmadine property which Sir Charles had let, in a weak foolish moment, to a retired army officer named Rout who'd lost an arm at the battle of Bunker's Hill and had a desire to live in the country and farm. He wasn't making a fortune either; always behind with his rent. Discontented fellows who grumbled about the open fields and longed for enclosure never looked at Shipton, or Rout, they only saw Clopton. He had now arrived at Fuller's farmhouse, a pretty, half-timbered building with a small orchard between it and the lane and a small yard behind it. Fuller was, after Rout, the largest of his tenant farmers; he leased one hundred and ten acres--fifty-five in each of the great fields--and his tenancy gave him rights to the common pasture as well. He was a good farmer, hard working and punctual with his rent, but once or twice lately he had made a remark derogatory to the open-field system; and if he made one such today, Sir Charles had decided, he would give him notice, his lease being renewable next Lady Day.

As it happened there was no need for a remark; the first thing that met the Squire's eye as he turned into the yard was a cart loaded with turnips, standing with upended shafts by the pigsty; and the second was the fantastic, crazy incomprehensible thing which Fuller had done to the kitchen. Sir Charles had always admired Mrs Fuller's kitchen with its floor of buff and pink and primrose-coloured pamments, its wide hearth with the spits and the brick oven at the side, and the big black dresser set with bits of brass-ware and pewter plates and mugs. In earlier days, when he walked, or could dismount and mount again without a thought, he had often accepted Mrs Fuller's invitation to step inside and drink a glass of her home-brewed ale, or cowslip wine, and eat a piece of her best plum cake; more recently she had brought these offerings to him on a tray and he had accepted them, graciously, out of custom.