The Devil in Clevely (Afternoon of an Autocrat) (17 page)

'Oh, of course not,' Julie agreed hurriedly. 'I shan't say a word. We must put a good face on it. Even that time when I told you I went across to ask I did it casual like, and I said "I congratulate you, I'm sure" as natural as natural, though I did feel as though I'd been...'

'Didn't I say not to talk about it?'

'But, my dear, that ain't natural! Believe me, I know. Living with your father all these years, having to keep everything bottled up. Things turn sour in you. I know. I often think loose tongues and easy tears was what God gave women to help them bear their burdens...'

'I'd like another cup of tea,' Damask said. When she had drunk it she went, despite all Julie's protests, and tidied the workroom.

The rest of the afternoon and evening--except for the fact that Julie did no sewing--passed as usual. At dusk-- and now, in August's third week, the days were beginning to draw in--Amos came home from his foundation-digging and resumed his monologue about the chapel-building. The pudding was dished up and eaten. It was just like an ordinary day, yet Julie's anxiety and feeling of disaster persisted. When it was time for Damask to go she went with her to the door and, holding her by the arm, said timidly :

'You will be all right, won't you?'

'I'm all right,' Damask said.

'You're a right brave girl and I'm sure it'll all turn out for the best.' She gave Damask one of her rare kisses.

Back in the kitchen, knowing well what reception the remark would receive, she could not refrain from saying: 'She bore up well, but it was a cruel shock to her.'

'What was?' She told him.

'Oh, that. I told you it was nowt to her. All that fuss!'

'Well, I don't know.' Some control, long strained, gave way; Julie's voice became sharp and shrill. 'I don't like it,' she said. 'I didn't like the way she went into a faint that lasted an hour and then got up looking and acting like we think her heart's broke.'

Outside the house, in the dark just before moonrise, she stood still and listened to all the voices that were making confusion in her mind. Julie's voice saying with the steady monotony of a pulse, 'He's going to marry Sally Ashpole; marry Sally Ashpole--Ashpole--Ashpole; he's going to marry ...'; Amos's voice, so certain, so unaware, so righteous, 'See you in chapel Sunday week; see you in chapel--chapel ...'; and that other voice, effortlessly bearing down the others, saying, 'There you are, that's the reward of virtue! You've got the reward of virtue, Damask Greenway. Sally Ashpole has the wages of sin.' There the voice went off into peals of satirical laughter, in which, at last, now that she was alone in the dark, she could join. She stood by the bed where the marigolds were dying and let the laughter shake her like the wind, and all the time the tears poured from her eyes, unnoticed. When the hysteria had exhausted itself she could think again, and the thought was like yet another voice within her head--'I've really known all along,' it said with great calm. 'Look at Jesus, He never did a sin at all; and how was He treated? God deserted Him at the end too.'

She had always had a peculiar awareness of the bitterness of that last cry from the cross. Her ardent imagination, with little to nourish it save what fragments of folklore were allowed to cross Amos's guarded threshold, had seized avidly upon all the Bible stories. Jericho, with Rahab the harlot's marked house, was quite as real to her as Baildon, a few miles away, but never visited; and Jerusalem and Bethlehem and Nazareth and Bethesda, where the waters were troubled and miraculous cures effected, were all far more part of her mental landscape than the six parishes familiar to her ear and eye. She knew Golgotha, the Place of the Skull; in Nettleton Chapel she had sat and watched the drama there, seen the nails and the blood and the darkening sky, the torn veil of the temple, and heard that last despairing cry. And always she had been sorry for Jesus...

And she had been right. Blind and ignorant, but right. God always failed you----

Without surprise, as without intention, she found herself walking not in the direction of Muchanger but towards the Stone Bridge. Some time had passed, the moon was now rising, a wide bronze disc in the blue-black sky. Time no longer mattered. She was not going back to Muchanger; never again was she going to be industrious, punctual, patient, virtuous. What she would be instead and where she would be it she had, as yet, no notion. She walked towards the Stone Bridge like a sleep-walker and presently stood in one of its embrasures, staring down at the water upon whose late-summer, smoothly running surface the moon presently cast a lacquering of gold. At some such immense distance that it only just made contact with her consciousness was the certainty that presently something would happen. But even that seemed unimportant. Nothing mattered any more, nothing would ever matter again.

She was not startled when a voice from behind her, a voice unmistakably human and real, said, 'Poor child, are you from the Poor Farm?'

She turned slowly, almost unwillingly, and faced the questioner. A strange figure in the moonlight, an old woman, very tall, of skeletal thinness, with a wild mass of white hair framing a face like a death's-head, a bone-white jutting nose, eyes that seemed only dark hollows and a mouth which was a changing shape of blackness as it asked again, 'Are you from the Poor Farm?' 'No,' Damask said.

'If you are,' the old woman said, quite briskly, 'there's no need to be ashamed. Not with me. A good strong girl who had run away from the Poor Farm would be more welcome to my sight than Solomon in all his glory. That is a Poor Farm dress, surely. And the way they do their hair. It always made me so sorry. Charity suffereth long and is kind, according to the Bible, so why the girls should be made to look so very ugly...Oh no, no, you're not ugly, I don't mean that; just the dress----' She advanced another soundless step and laid a hand on Damask's sleeve.

'Umm ...' She made a little satisfied sound. 'You are from the Poor Farm. Just what I wanted. For months and months I've said to myself...I mean anyone who could come to full growth in such circumstances would be strong and resilient and used to standing up for herself, and that is just what I need. I do need help so very badly because, you see ...' She broke off, edged into the embrasure beside Damask and said 'Shush' in a whisper. Damask listened, sorting out the sounds which made up the silence of the late summer night, the small muted sound of the water under the bridge, a bird's cry, a dog barking at the other end of the village, and nearer at hand the sound of a creaking gate.

'I've run away myself, you see,' the old woman whispered. 'I will not be treated as though I were mad. I am not mad. Occasionally--very occasionally--I forget things. Sometimes I even forget what I have come out for; but tonight I remember quite clearly. I came out to find somebody to help me. And I have found you. You will come home with me and help me to turn those people out, won't you?'

'What people?'

'Saunders and his wife. All the rest have gone. Mr Turnbull insists that I should count myself fortunate to have them. He little knows! On several occasions the woman has struck me. Imagine that! But if you will come home with me and support me everything will be all right. The thing to be careful about is not to take her shilling; that commits you quite as deeply as taking the King's shilling. Time and again somebody has come back with me and she says 'Thank you very much' and gives them a shilling and then I am all undone again. You don't need her shilling; if you stay with me I will give you all you wish. I'm no longer well-to-do, but I'm not so poor as they would have me believe. I know where my money goes. Mr Turnbull, of course, is scrupulously honest himself; but, as I tell him, to connive at other people's dishonesty is to assume a share of their guilt.'

She had forgotten whatever it was that had made her whisper and her voice had regained its brisk and vibrant tone. Damask listened to the flood of garrulity and gave it some part of her attention while another part of her mind considered her earlier feeling that she had come to this place for some purpose which was now becoming plain.

'...so you will come back with me, won't you? And refuse her shilling and stay by me. I swear you shall never regret it.'

'I'll come back with you,' Damask said, thinking of Muchanger and the dinner-party for twelve that was planned for the next day and the extra work her absence would throw on the cook who had so often sneered at her for being 'Methody'. 'Where do you live?' There was a sudden, ominous silence. Perhaps the old woman was mad after all and the whole story a fandango of nonsense.

Then, on a note of profound triumph, came the answer.

'I live at the Dower House. There! Just for a moment I thought I had forgotten again. But, you see, you waited; you had patience and didn't begin to shout at me, and so I remembered. I'm quite sure that if you would only stay with me and be my friend and get rid of those awful people everything would be all right. Of course it was very ill-advised of me to tell you that she had struck me-- I did tell you that, didn't I? Does that intimidate you? I hoped that being from the Poor Farm ...'

'I am not from the Poor Farm and I am not scared by anything you have said. Shall we go to your house?'

'I can't walk very quickly, I'm afraid. You see, I have to watch my opportunity and came out wearing my slippers, which are inclined to fall off.' She laid her thin hand on Damask's arm. 'Oh, horrible material,' she said as they began to walk. 'You shall have such pretty dresses, my dear. I have dozens of such pretty dresses which would fit you with a little alteration. She's so stout, you see; cloaks and muffs and tippets she has made very free with, but the dresses were useless to her. You shall have them all...'

The gate creaked as they pushed it open--this was the gate whose creaking had made the old woman say 'Shush' and drop her voice to a whisper. The drive between the overgrown trees and shrubs was a dark tunnel, and the moss underfoot deadened any sound of their feet; at the end of the tunnel the big, unlighted house stood in the moonlight, immensely sinister. Only yesterday, Damask thought, this would all have seemed frightening----

The front door opened upon a high wide hall lighted by a solitary candle upon a side table and what light emerged from a half-open doorway at the back, beyond the curving stairs. As soon as they entered a voice called, 'Is that you, Jem? Did you find the old ...' and the figure of a stout, square-shouldered female was outlined against the oblong of light.

'Now don't be frightened; you stick by me and I'll stick by you,' said Miss Parsons as she released her hold on Damask's arm; but in the second before her hand fell away Damask felt the tremor which ran through it.

The woman advanced, saying in a changed voice, 'Oh, ma'am, you had us that worried; going off like that in your slippers and all! There's Saunders out hunting for you, and me nigh distracted. And you fell in with somebody good-hearted again, thank God.' As she reached the table where the candle stood she paused and fumbled and within a few seconds three or four other candles were alight. Now she could see who had brought home the wanderer; a female, young, harmless. Her manner changed

again, became affable and condescending.

'I'm very much obliged to you, young woman. Poor lady, she isn't quite...you understand; and now and again she gets a wandering fit and we're so afraid that something might...Still, there we are, all safe and sound. I hope bringing her back hasn't taken you far out of your way, my dear. Thank you again.' She put her hand into the pocket which hung from her waist and brought out a shilling. 'Please accept this for your pains.'

Making no move to take the coin, Damask glanced at Miss Parsons, who had drawn a little apart and now stood watching with the interested yet impersonal expression of someone watching an incident in the street.

'It's all right,' the woman said soothingly; 'she'd wish you to have it, I'm sure. When she realises she'll be as grateful to you as I am. I'll get her to bed now, after all this excitement. You take this, and be getting along.' She thrust out the shilling again. Deliberately Damask waited in silence until the posture of offering an unaccepted tip had made its small contribution to the woman's discomfiture; then she spoke.

'I've come to stay,' she said.

Mrs Saunders recovered herself quickly and laughed a little.

'Oh dear me, has she been at that game again? That's part of her trouble, poor lady. She used to keep six or seven servants, you see, and now she can't really afford any, if the truth was told. But over and over again she'll go out and come back with some poor innocent girl like you----I'm sorry, my dear, there's no job here. It's a shame she should have raised your hopes; but there, you can't really blame her, can you? You take your shilling and get along. You're a nice tidy girl, you'll soon find a place.'

'Miss Parsons asked me to come and stay here with her, and that I am going to do.'

'Now that is daft talk. I've told you how it is. She ain't responsible. You get along now and don't stand there wasting my time.' Damask stood still and silent; Miss Parsons watched. When the woman spoke again her voice was shriller. "What are you waiting for? Ain't a shilling enough? You insolent little baggage. Be off, I tell you. If you got enough sense to understand her telling you there is a job here you got enough sense to understand me telling you there ain't! Get along with you. Or do you want me to put you out?'

'Do you want to try?'

The woman made a sound of complete exasperation and came forward, two hasty steps and one hesitant. The belligerent expression in her eyes gave way under Damask's calm stare. Suddenly she looked baffled.

'My husband'll be back in a minute. He'll deal with you,' she muttered.

Miss Parsons broke into a delighted cackle of laughter. 'Now let us go upstairs and get rid of that unbecoming dress," she said. She snatched up a candlestick, and holding it so that drops of grease fell upon each step she led the way upstairs. Damask followed. Mrs Saunders stood watching, incredulous. It could not be true...just a little scrap of a thing like that; why hadn't she taken her by the scruff of the neck and thrown her out?