The Devil in Clevely (Afternoon of an Autocrat) (18 page)

Twenty minutes later when Saunders had returned, heard the news and gone storming upstairs and come down again looking stupid and scared, she asked him the same question.

'I meant Co,' he said. 'I went up to her and said, "Come on, out of this!" and made to get hold of her. Then I just couldn't. You know how I am about cats--that same sort of feeling came over me.'

'But I don't mind cats, and that same feeling come over me too,' Mrs Saunders said. They stared at one another in silent dismay for a moment, then she said, 'But we must do something. What are we going to do?'

'We'll leave it till morning,' Saunders said. He had a distinct feeling that daylight would bring courage.

High Noon of a Changeling

Even those neighbours who had been affectionately disposed towards the old Squire and were thus inclined to lay the blame for the breach on his son admitted at last that possibly there had been fault on both sides; or else the years and the long exile had improved Richard. Some of them remembered that the last quarrel had taken place at the time of Richard's marriage, and these had been prepared to find the new Lady Shelmadine a quite impossible person; pretty perhaps--or why should he have married her?--but pretty in a blowsy way, vulgar, ignorant, and, now that she was newly rich, extravagant and ostentatious. To them Linda was a pleasant surprise. The ladies especially were strong in their approval. The gentlemen remained a little puzzled; she seemed the last kind of female for a man of Richard's reputation to have married. Was it perhaps possible that-his wildness had been exaggerated? After all, even those who were fond of Sir Charles were bound to admit that some of his views had been very hidebound.

All through the late summer and autumn of that year there was much coming and going between Clevely and the big houses in the neighbourhood; Ockley and Mortiboys and Merravay, Greston Park and Muchanger and Nettleton New House. Richard took pains to be charming, and in the privacy of the connubial bedchamber made no secret of his purpose.

'My father had a great reputation for honesty; and since he always represented me as a devil, I can see them all waiting for the cloven hoof to peep out. As no doubt it will, but not before I have cast some doubt upon his honesty or judgment--I don't care which.'

To behave in accordance with the unexacting standards demanded by a group of Suffolk squires was not difficult, and it was made more easy for him by the fact that he was, at the moment, delighted with his heritage and had not had time to be bored. He rode round the estate, being extremely affable to everyone; he instituted no unpopular changes and missed no opportunity of showing generosity. This year, in addition to the Harvest Horkey, the villagers of Clevely enjoyed a Cricket Supper.

It was taken for granted that he would enclose, and the matter came under discussion at the first dinner-party which the Shelmadines attended at Ockley. Sir Evelyn Fennel then said: 'When you do, let Monty here by your model. My father enclosed in '74; when he began he owned fifteen hundred acres and when he'd finished he had fourteen hundred and ten. Monty, when he tacked up his notice, had two thousand three hundred, and when he put up his last fence had four thousand of them.'

'And that, Sir Wichard, is not the pawadox that it sounds. The first figure, of course, was just the awable and pasture; the second included my share of the common waste.'

Richard, who upon being introduced to Mr Montague Ryde Montague had dismissed him as a lisping young fool, now turned to him with attention.

'Greston? Where forty decent poor men...eh?' He spoke the last words in a tolerable imitation of his father's voice. Everybody laughed.

'All the same,' Sir Evelyn said, 'they do fall on the rates, damn them; never having worked in their lives, they expect to be kept in idleness. The thing to do, I understand, is to demolish the damned hovels. Once they're homeless they move off and find work.'

'But that is stwictly illegal.'

'So are lots of other things.' Sir Evelyn's voice was dry.

'Well, it's pwobably sentimental of me, but I would dwaw the line at destwoying their homes.'

'Having enclosed to such advantage you can afford to pay your rates.'

'That is twue. The thing is, Shelmadine, if you wish to get your enclosure bill thwough this year you must look sharp. The last Act demands that you tack up your notice for thwee Sundays in August or September.'

'So there's a close season for enclosing, is there?' Richard said. 'I didn't know, there are a good many points on which I am ignorant. I should be grateful for your advice.'

'I adore giving advice,' said Mr Montague.

Two days later he rode over to Clevely and he and Richard shut themselves in the library with a map of the village and all the papers relevant to tenancies and sales and purchases of land which Richard had managed to sort out from the fantastic jumble in which his father had kept such things.

Lisping, elegant, effete-looking as he was, Mr Montague showed himself a good man of business, shrewd and orderly of mind.

'I cannot, of course, guawantee that you will do as well out of your enclosure as I did at Gweston,' he warned. 'I was deucedly lucky in my commissioners and in the number of fellows who either had no claim to show or couldn't pay their share of the expenses. Now there is a hint! Don't twy to keep down expenses. As the largest pwopwietor you will naturally have to bear the greater share of them; but if, in the end, you have only two small pwopwietors who can't meet their costs, then their land falls into the common pool, of which you get the gweatest share and in the long wun you are better off. I twust I make myself clear.'

He brooded over the map and the papers, the fine lace of his shirt cuff casting a little shimmering pattern as he traced the boundaries of this man's holding and that, his eye all the while as keen, as calculating as a butcher's studying a carcass. 'I think you may do very well, Wichard. Even if half your Waste fellows have a legal claim--and that would be most extwaordinary bad luck--you'd still do well because there are so few landowners for it to be divided among. Miss Parsons, Fred Clopton, Abel Shipton-- they're the only ones worth considering; the rest own so little that when the Waste is shared out pwoportionally they'll only get an acre or two extwa, and that pwobwably wubbish if you draw weasonable commissioners and make yourself civil to them. There's another hint--the commissioners allot the land and some is good and some is bad----Enough said?'

'I will take pains with the commissioners,' Richard said.

'But tactfully, my fwiend, tactfully,' said Mr Montague, lifting an elegant finger. 'Once every hundwed years an absolutely incowuptible fellow gets an appointment and will scweam "Bwibewy" at the top of his voice at the first opportunity. So tact is needed there.' He looked down at the table again. 'This Cawoline Amelia Parsons --not old Captain Parsons' daughter? She must be a hundwed!'

'She's eighty. The rector says she is dotty.'

'Ah...there now. There might be something for you there, Wichard. She might be just sane enough to sign in favour of enclosure but not sane enough to look out for her wights. Enclosure is like wevolution, you know; full of opportunities for the wide-awake. Well now, that completes our pweliminary reconnaissance, I think. Now you must dwaw up your notice and get the signatures of all the other people who own land. I pwesume that everybody is agweed.'

'How could anybody not be? Fellows like Clopton and Shipton who are enclosed already stand to get a bit of the Waste; old what's-his-name, Bowyer, and Wellman and Crabtree and Fuller surely will see that to have their land altogether, plus their small share of the Waste, is better than going on in this old-fashioned way.'

'You can never be too sure,' said Mr Montague sagely.

'At Gweston I had just one old man who owned twelve acres--six in one field, six in the other--and make his mark he would not. I twied every persuasion, even offered him twice the market pwice for his land, to buy him out, you know. He wouldn't budge.'

'So what did you do?'

'Just went ahead without his signature. It was a wisk. He could have gone popping off to the authorities and made a fuss, but he didn't. They don't know their own power. I should say the only one who could make difficulty for you if she wished is the old dame...but then, if she's dotty...Now, shall we begin to make a list of those whose signatures you wequire?'

'I think not,' Richard said. The first signs of boredom were making themselves felt within him. The idea of becoming richer, of extending his land and increasing its value was attractive and had borne him along so far, but to ask him to sit down and copy out a list of names was too much.

'I have a new bailiff fellow arriving tomorrow,' he said; 'he can do all that. Do him good to get familiar with their names and acreages and so on.'

'Then let us take a wide awound and look at the land itself. I was never welcome here in your father's time,' said Mr Montague.

So they set off on the ride which warned Clevely of the Squire's intentions and made Matt Ashpole get out his gun. Matt knew that he had no claim, save right of usage, to his cottage, his garden, his pasture on the Waste, and he was foresighted enough to visualise a time when his old horse would be homeless; but the Fullers, he reasoned, would always have a farm and Danny could never refuse house room to his father-in-law's old horse.

By the first week in September Hadstock, the new bailiff, had written out in a clear firm hand the notice which was to be fixed to the church door; and he had also made a list of all the landowners in Clevely, large and small, who should sign the paper. The notice read: 'We the undersigned, being the Lord of the Manor, the tithe-holder, proprietors and freeholders of the Manor and Parish of Clevely in the County of Suffolk, do hereby give notice to whomsoever it may concern that we propose to approach His Majesty's House of Commons through the good offices of Sir Thomas Blyborough M.P. for an order for the enclosing of the arable land, pasture and waste land of the aforesaid parish.'

Richard, with the deadly depression of boredom rising in him, set out to collect the necessary signatures. He would gladly have deputed this task to Hadstock, but Mr Montague--and one must always remember that his enclosure had been superbly successful--had said, 'It, is infinitely better, Wichard, to pweserve the personal touch in such affairs. Fellows who might easily be disposed to say 'No' to a mere bailiff will sign at a nod fwom you. We're losing gwound every day, as everybody knows, but it still takes a bwave man to defy us to our faces.'

Richard started his round with a call at Flocky Hall, where Fred Clopton, though not defiant, showed himself to be dubious and reluctant. 'I've no wish to stand in your way, sir,' he said, 'but I've got to think of myself.'

Restraining his impatience and forcing himself to speak amiably, Richard said, 'In what way, Clopton?'

'I'm benefiting now by being enclosed,' Clopton said slowly. 'Sounds selfish maybe, but we're all selfish when you get to the root of us. I can grow turnips, I can grow clover, I can winter-feed my beasts, just because I am enclosed and free to do as I like. When everybody is the same I shan't get the price I do now for the things I have to sell and everybody don't.'

'With more land, which would cost you nothing except the fencing, and with your experience in the new methods you'd still be well ahead of the others,' Richard said. 'More land?'

'As a landowner you would get a share of the Waste; it might be quite considerable.'

'Are you sure of that? I don't mean,' he added quickly in answer to Richard's swift scowl, 'I don't mean to doubt what you say, but it sounds peculiar. You see, my freehold never carried any rights to the Waste. Not that I minded --I wouldn't want my beasts to run with all those poor ill-conditioned creatures.'

'Naturally not. But if you sign this petition, as a landowner you will get a proportional share, enclosed; and not necessarily Waste, if you understand that. An increase of your acreage, in proportion. It would be for the commissioners to decide where it was.'

'Well, in that case, of course, I'll sign gladly, sir.'

The next three farmers on the list were all small proprietors, owning strips in the open fields. Bert Crabtree signed with alacrity. 'I allust wanted it, but I never reckoned it'd come in my lifetime,' he said. 'If you'll be so kind as to write my name, sir, I'll put my mark to it. I bain't no scholar.'

Clem Bowyer listened to Richard's explanation and then said, 'I'd be for it, sir, tooth and nail, if I was twenty years younger; but I be old and I don't fancy no changes and upheavals at my time of life.' The third man, Ricky Wellman, was more forthright; he was, in fact, Mr Montague's 'bwave man'.

'I'm agin it, same as the old Squire allust was; and when I'm agin a thing I'm agin it,' he said. To Richard's casual eye, Bowyer and Wellman looked stupid, bovine creatures, only very slightly the intellectual superiors of the beasts they reared; and remembering Monty's story of his obstinate old man, he decided that their opposition was not worth bothering about, so he wasted no eloquence on them but rode on to Bridge Farm to interview Abel Shipton.

'But that don't-er concern me-er, sir,' Shipton said. 'I am-er enclosed. This farm-er was fenced-er around-er at the same time as Flocky.'

'I know, I know. The point is ..." And he repeated, in a voice of poisonous patience, the argument he had laid before Fred Clopton. Shipton listened, looking more and more uncomfortable and glancing now and then in the direction of the kitchen door. Finally he said: 'Only owners sign-er? Then it wouldn't be right-er for me to. To tell you the truth-er, I ain't owned this land-er this last four years-er.'

'Oh. Who does then?'

Shipton shot another uneasy glance at the kitchen door and then told his tale. He'd been in what he called a muddle and at his wits' end for ready money four years previously, and he couldn't sell the farm because Mrs Shipton had put the whole of her dowry into it when they married; he hadn't even dared to tell her what a muddle he was in. Then one day 'somebody' had offered to buy his farm and let him stay on at a ridiculously small rent on condition that the change of ownership remained a secret. 'And that-er,' Shipton ended, 'seemed like a miracle to me-er; an answer to prayer if ever there was one-er.'