The Devil in Clevely (Afternoon of an Autocrat) (45 page)

Quite apart from any consideration of civility for old times' sake, curiosity alone would have issued the invitation. Damask Greenway's clothes and demeanour had been the talk of the parish when she was just the old lady's companion, a sort of servant; heaven knew how she'd look and behave now that she was an heiress, all that big house and the land and the money left to her outright.

Save that the dress she wore was dead black, with a rough frieze cape of the same colour, the Damask who stepped into the Fullers' kitchen was much the same as the one who had once visited the house to be inspected and who had won Mrs Fuller's approval. The cleanly washed, undecked face was the same, though a little thinner; the hair dragged back smoothly and dressed in hard looking plaits was the same; and so was the manner, a little prim, a little nervous.

Sally said 'Hullo, Damask' in her usual careless friendly manner, and Damask returned the greeting just as she had always done in the past, but stiffly.

Danny kicked the door shut and went back to his place at the table.

'You'll excuse us if we get on--supper's getting cold.' He nodded to Sally to proceed with her meal.

'I don't wish to interrupt you,' Damask said. 'I can talk as you eat. It won't take long.'

'Sit down, my dear, do, and have a bite,' Mrs Fuller said, throwing one curious glance at Damask and another, even more curious, at Danny. Never, never in all her days had she known Danny behave so rudely--even to a girl he had jilted. Surely if there was a grievance it was Damask's!

'No, thank you, Mrs Fuller. I've had supper.'

'Well, leastways sit down.'

Damask did so, her feet in their heavy plain shoes placed side by side, the skimpy folds of the ugly black dress falling primly, her hands folded in her lap, just the way Danny remembered. She turned her eyes on him, and that brought to mind the way she had looked at him on the night he'd gone to ask about hiring some land--but this was the old look, grave and friendly, with something innocent about it; the look she had turned on him when she had said she couldn't walk out with anyone who swore or went in the Black Horse. All at once he remembered the smell of her too-clean, soap-and-the-ghost-of-lavender smell. Through the piece of dumpling in his mouth he said gruffly: 'Well? What you you want?'

'I came to ask whether you had all the land you wanted.'

'Ha! Ha! Wouldn't you like to know?'

'Danny! What's got into you tonight? That's what I should like to know!' said Mrs Fuller. 'You'll have to excuse him, Damask. He's tired; and we've just had another disappointment. No, we ain't got any more; there don't seem to be no land in Clevely, more's the pity.'

'There's mine,' Damask said simply. 'What isn't let, I mean. I thought if you still wanted some...I don't want it any more. Abel Shipton is buying back Bridge Farm and the other tenants are keeping theirs, of course; but what Miss Parsons got out of the enclosure--you could have that, if you liked.'

Danny choked on a piece of dumpling.

'Why, Damask, that'd be wonderful,' said Mrs Fuller, her face suddenly red and eyes full of tears. 'That's the best news. Of course we'd hev it and be thankful. Why, I never reckoned...I don't know how...Why, that'd be wonderful.'

Damask kept her eyes on Danny. The piece of dumpling slid down at last, but the effort had reddened his face still more and brought water to his eyes. When he spoke his voice was defiant.

'Hire or buy?' he asked.

'Which you like, Danny. If you have any money...'

'I've got the whole of twenty-five pounds which I went to offer Martha Bowyer tonight. And I've got my bullocks. What are you asking?'

'Twenty-five pounds would do very well.'

'Not for all that! Why, Cobbler's Corner, poor damp place that it is, cost me a pound an acre...'

'Twenty-five pounds will do very well. I'd rather sell than let it. I'm going away, you see. I don't want to be bothered with rent-collecting. What land is still let Father will see to and use the money for the chapel.'

They stared at her in wonder and nobody spoke until the silence was embarrassing; then everyone spoke at once.

Danny said, 'Well, I take it very kindly, Damask. If you're sure you know what you're doing.'

Mrs Fuller said, 'I can't get over the wonder of it. Now all we hev to do is ask Lady Shelmadine about the house.'

Sally said, 'Where are you going, Damask?'

There was no need to reply to anyone. She stood up and said, 'That's settled then. Mr Turnbull will see to the papers, Danny. Good night. Good night, Mrs Fuller. Good night, Sally.'

She had gone before they had fully recovered from their astonishment. It was some moments before Danny broke the jubilant exclamations to say, 'Maybe I should've walked her home.'

'If you did I'd of come too.' said Sally, laughing.

'You know,' said Mrs Fuller, 'I verily believe she've gone right back to be Methody again.'

And that was true. As the other-world experience faded she found herself left with little that she had not known before; there was nothing, really, that the stark, simple teaching of the Methodist faith did not cover. She had never heard of the Jesuit who said, 'Give me a child until he is seven and after that you may do what you like with him,' but she was a living proof of his theory's validity. She had tried to be good and had disliked the wages of virtue; she had tried to be bad and turned away in disgust from what was, after all, the thing to which badness led; she'd had experiences of an unusual kind, seen and heard and known things that there were no words for, and she'd come back, in the end, to the things that there were words for...she was the lamb which had strayed from the fold, she was the brand plucked from the burning, she was the one from whom the seven devils had been cast out----It was all in the Bible.

Now she had set her house in order. Danny had the land to make amends for the wrong she had done him and his family; Amos would have his chapel; she had even arranged that Julie should have her tea and her medicine and the creature comforts which she--being a weak member--craved. The Dower House was sold. (Fred Clopton had bought it as a wedding present for his daughter Ella, who was marrying young Thurlow Lamb at Easter. 'After all, Fred,' Mrs Clopton had said, 'we must do our part, and it's cheap and it'll make an impressive present. And if Danny Fuller can ride in and out every day surely Bertie could manage it in a gig. And I could keep my eye on Ella.')

Damask was free now. And she knew where she was going. To Georgia, where Wesley himself had once worked among the slaves and the convicts. That was logical; Captain Parsons had made his money in the slave trade. Damask had read 'Papa's Journal' while she sat by Miss Parsons' death-bed. And if half of what he wrote were true, no people on all the face of the earth were more in need of the one thing she could give them: the absolute assurance that this world was just a passing shadow show, a sort of dark tunnel through which the spirit must pass, blinded by its physical eyes, deafened by its physical ears, made stupid by its bone-caged, limited mind. Slaves, whose physical life was a misery, would welcome the truth...the one thing which all her experiences had taught her. She thought of her mission as she crossed the Stone Bridge. The snow which Danny had predicted was falling, large crisp flakes slanting down the wind's current. The ground was whitening, but the river ran dark. She thought, What I knew then, both those times, is like the snow on the water, swallowed up and gone; but it was real and it is still part of me. And it was not of the slightest importance that she had forgotten so the broken voice in which she said it and the real tears that came into her eyes showed her sincerity.

'And I was right, wasn't I, to say no cheering,' said Matt later, glaring at those who had suggested it. "Twouldn't hev been seemly. And mark you, I never said "Happy Christmas". "Compliments of the season" I said, as being more suitable in the circumstances. I trust you marked that.'

'One thing you did wrong, Matt,' said Bert Sadler boldly. 'You said bitch. You never ought to hev said that, not in front of Lady Shelmadine pore-lady!'

Matt was not, at this stage, going to admit that the word had slipped out.

'Why, you iggerunt lump, you, don't you reckon I thought that all out aforehand. Couldn't very well say "lady dog", could I, when I was talking to a lady!'

'Anyway,' said Mrs Palfrey, 'that don't matter. She was pleased, and the dog and a houseful of young 'uns'll cheer her up, poor lady.'

Mrs Palfrey walked heavily towards the Gardiners' cottage where she had left her two youngest. She was herself very happy. There was a great lump of beef on her food shelf, they'd all have a good Christmas dinner. And they'd got back their potato patch. By Good Friday this latest young 'un would be born--and if it was a girl it would be named Linda--and Mrs Palfrey would be free to get on with her digging. How she would dig!

The big white dog sat in the gig between Hadstock and Linda. Her arm lay around his neck and every now and then he turned his head, shot out his tongue and licked her face or ear with an ecstatic shiver.

'Well,' Hadstock said, breaking silence, 'that's over. I admit to moments of grave anxiety, but it seemed the only way.'

'How did you manage it?' Her voice was still inclined to shake and her eyes kept brimming and spilling tears.

'As Ashpole said. He said he reckoned you'd been main fond of your dog and missed it and he wished he had one to give you. He's pretty shrewd, he said he reckoned it might be some time before you felt like getting one for yourself. So then I said I knew where there was a dog for sale, cheap; a real French poodle, grown a bit too big. You must remember that his name is Beau, and if he shows any signs of resuming old habits he must be checked at once. I'm sorry he had to be made such a figure of fun. But it seemed to me that any big white dog might be open to suspicion. I'd been racking my brains for some way of getting him back for you.'

She sat very still with that last sentence ringing in her ears. And Hadstock was silent too, regarding with some dismay the gap which this one short outing had made in the protective fence of formality which had reared itself between them since the night of Richard's death. On that night, when he broke the news to her, she had clung to him weeping and he had held her and comforted her, even kissed her, as though she were a frightened, overwrought child; they had truly been alone then. But almost immediately she had spoken about her old love for Richard, about the necessity for concealment; the world had asserted itself, and there they were concocting the story with which to deceive it. Since the morning when he had ridden off to fetch Sir Edward they had hardly been alone at all; Linda had been ill, Lady Fennel and other well-meaning females had been in attendance, and the few times when he had been in her presence had been devoted to talk of affairs. She had been apathetic and he businesslike. Something had fallen over their relationship, as a thin, tinkling, transparent sheath of ice will form over a tree when a night frost follows a day of rain.

There were times when Hadstock caught himself wishing that he had arrived in the subterranean temple before the blow was struck. Then, at least, he had something to offer--a refuge, however humble, from horror and disgust; but whenever his thoughts tended that way he remembered that moment when he had tried to plan a future for them both, and how unsatisfactory his plans had been. He was realist enough to see that the situation had been an impossible one from the very first.

He was staring that sombre realisation in the face once more when Linda moved her hand from the dog's neck and laid it on his arm.

'I do love you, you know,' she said. 'This probably isn't the time or the place, and perhaps I shouldn't speak first; but I do love you, and I don't see why I should go on pretending--not when we're by ourselves.'

He shot her a startled glance and then looked away; but he moved his hand so that hers lay in it, curved like a shell. He gave it a swift crunching pressure and then laid it back on the dog's neck.

'That's the trouble. People never are by themselves. There's always the world to be reckoned with. I love you. You know that. But being in love isn't an end in itself, however much the poets may pretend that it is.'

'It's something to begin with. Enough to make me feel that nothing else matters so long as we are together.'

'Being together means marriage,' said Hadstock bluntly, 'and that involves several other things. Mild scandal for one. "Imagine Lady Shelmadine marrying her bailiff!" Social ostracism as a result. I'm used to that, but I should hate it for you. Also--we might as well face it-- I don't think I should fit into the role of kept man with much grace.'

The bitterness of his voice shocked her, but she said lightly, 'I can't imagine anyone who would do it worse. You're much too masterful and set in your ways.'

He did not answer, nor turn his head. He sat slightly hunched, the reins slack in his fingers, his craggy profile blocked in against the gathering dusk.

She thought about the little she knew of his history, and realised that his whole life had been one long affront to his pride, blow after blow falling on the same sensitive spot, and this last was the heaviest of all. A vast aching pity like a physical pain set in her flesh. She could have assuaged it by putting her arms about him and dragging that proud, humbled head down to her breast. But that, she knew was not the way. A line from a poem read long ago began to chant in her mind. 'Eyeless in Gaza, at the mill with slaves.' Arrogant Samson brought low could not be comforted by pity...

'That night,' she said, 'if it hadn't ended as it did, I was going to ask you to take me away, to let me cook and mend for you. Would you have taken me?'

'I think you know the answer to that. But the cases aren't comparable.'

She saw suddenly that pity was misplaced. He had taken his blows and survived; had preserved his integrity and his pride and was, even now, master of the situation.

It was she who was reduced to pleading.

With the skill of long practice she began to put forward her pleas.