The Devil in Clevely (Afternoon of an Autocrat) (3 page)

The cobbler's cottage stood at the far end of the strung-out line, and it was one of the more solidly built ones. In time past it had been cared for, with flowers beside the door, a step white with hearthstone, and a neat potato patch at the side. Even now recent neglect had not quite reduced it to the general level. Julie Greenway, when she married Amos, had been a very superior sort of woman, daughter of a small yeoman farmer at Notley, and herself apprenticed to the dressmaking. An old unmarried aunt of Sir Charles had lived at the Manor until her death and Julie Greenway had made all her dresses, and once she had come to do a fitting and had heard that a dairymaid was ill and had offered to make the butter, saying that it would be a treat to get her hands on a churn once more. Damned good butter it was too. If Julie had married a farmer she'd have been another Mrs Fuller, or another Mrs Clopton--Mrs Abram, of course, not Mrs Fred with all that pianoforte nonsense! But it had been easy-- twenty-three years ago--to see why she married a cobbler. A good-looking, merry, devil-may-care young scamp he'd been before the Methodists got hold of him.

At that time, had Amos been one of his tenants Sir Charles would have given him notice; for next to, if not equally with, progressive farming the Squire abhorred Dissent. But the cobbler was a freeholder, so Sir Charles had shown his complete disapproval in the one way open to him: he took away his custom. Whether Amos noticed was doubtful; Sir Charles did, for it seemed that no cobbler in any nearby village could make a decent pair of boots, and even when he transferred his custom to Bail-don be never attained a really easy fit. And then, one evening, Amos Greenway, trudging home through Layer Wood from one of his Methodist meetings, had seen a light, a flickering blaze, and gone towards it to find a lonely keeper's cottage all aflame. The keeper was out doing his duty, and his wife, with a child in her arms, was at the foot-square bedroom window screaming into the lonely night. Amos had yelled, 'Push him through. I'll catch him,' and had done so. Then, laying the child aside, he had fought his way in and dragged out the woman.

Next day, when the news reached him, Sir Charles had walked straight to the cobbler's cottage and said, 'I hate Dissent, as you know; but I honour a brave man, Green-way. My custom is yours in future.'

Amos, all blistered and hairless and plastered with old Widow Hayward's herb poultices, had said simply, 'It will be welcome, sir.' Then he added something about having often preached about brands snatched from the burning and now knowing what they felt like.

Since then Sir Charles's boots had fitted better, but there was no denying that Greenway became more and more dilatory as time went on and Methodism encroached upon his time. Once he had left his work, which included stitching a stirrup leather for his Squire, and gone sixty miles to hear John Wesley preach, walking every step of the way. Now he was late with this last job, and Sir Charles intended to take no excuses.

Between the road and the cottage wall was a little bed of marigolds, almost past flowering. The door to the room which Amos used for his work was half open, and just inside a large cat, almost the colour of the marigolds, lay basking in the last of the sun's warmth. Sir Charles leaned sideways and rapped smartly on the door with the handle of his crop. The cat sprang up in an offended manner and backed into the flowerbed, where it stood glaring at him with its yellow eyes, moving its tail from side to side.

The door opened wide, revealing, not the angular figure and dreamy countenance of the cobbler, but the small neat figure of a girl, who made her bob, and then looked up at him with a timid, wavering smile. He prided himself upon knowing the name, as well as the history, of every living soul in Clevely, and liked to prove it by using the names freely, surprising young people, particularly when he caught them up to mischief, by saying, 'You're Samuel Thomas Jarvey, ain't you? Samuel John is the one with bow legs.' It irked him this afternoon that he had to wait a perceptible moment before bringing this girl's name to mind. It was out of the Bible, he remembered that much, but not a girl's name at all. Something ridiculous like Jordan or Galilee I Ah, he had it.

'Good day, Damascus. Y'father about?'

'No, sir; I'm sorry. He's over to Nettleton.'

'Well, I hope he finished off my boots before he went galloping about the countryside. Methodist business again, I'll be bound.'

He spoke sternly and was not surprised or displeased to see an expression of acute distress come into the girl's face. He was, however, surprised when, after a second during which it looked as though her eyes might jump out of her head, she said quietly: 'Oh yes, sir, he finished them and he was going to deliver them either on his way there or back.'

'Ah, that's all right then,' said Sir Charles, softening immediately. 'You're busy,' he added, looking at the broom in her hand.

'I try to clear up a bit when I get home, sir. Mother can't do much nowadays.'

'Rheumatics bad again? Pity, great pity!' He was always downcast by any evidence of age or infirmity, but in this case he felt an almost personal concern. He had been very partial to the busy, capable little dressmaker, and had been sorry to see how, soon after Amos took up with the Methodists and began to neglect his trade, her looks and her spirits had seemed to decline; and later, when she had grown stooped and lame and twisted, he had been sorry again.

'Have you tried nettle tea?' he asked kindly. 'I swallowed gallons of it when my gout was bad, and to my mind it did more good than all the doctor's brew! You put a good bunch of young nettles into a crock, pour boiling water over, let it stand and then strain it off.' He remembered that in its natural state nettle tea had a flat, nauseating flavour which he had disguised by the addition of lemon juice; he remembered too that lemons were not easy to come by and pretty expensive. 'Then you add the juice of a lemon, just to make it tasty. I'll send you one or two along. You make a good jorum of that and tell her I hope it'll do the trick.' 'Thank you, sir. That would be very kind.' All the time he had been speaking, looking down at the girl who stood looking up at him, he had been aware of a small, nagging feeling of annoyance. He had a very weak spot for young female creatures, particularly when they were neat, fairly comely and respectful, and was not averse from pulling a stray curl, chucking a wench under the chin, or administering a little pat on the rump; at Christmas and the Harvest Horkey he was free with his kisses--an old man's privilege. Now, having been stern and then kindly to this young female who was neat, not uncomely and very civil, he felt that the little encounter should be rounded off with some fatherly gesture, yet he could not bring himself to make it. There was an irritating primness about her, that was it. The way all that pretty would-be-curly hair was dragged back from the centre parting and clamped into those hard-looking plaits on the nape of her neck, leaving her brow so naked and so much too big for the small face; the ugly high neck of the print dress; prim, repellent. A pity. But there was something more, something more seriously wrong; and suddenly he knew what it was. Those eyes--they weren't the colour any human eyes should be; damn it, they were nearly yellow--were in fact almost the colour of the cat's, not quite yellow but a cloudy, greenish amber. Most unusual and most disturbing.

As he stared the cat made a delicate, graceful bound through the air and landed on the girl's shoulder, thrusting its soft head under her chin and curving its sinuous body so that its plumy tail went behind her head. Now, with the ugly collar, the unbecoming slaty colour of the print dress hidden and with the prim expression melting into affection, she was almost beautiful. Sir Charles was happily able to give her a little pat on the shoulder not occupied by the cat and to say with his full geniality: 'Good day, m'dear.'

'Good afternoon, sir,' she said.

The Greenways' bit of garden lay to the side of the house; a potato patch, some gooseberry and currant bushes and a fruit tree or two. The potato patch was thick with weeds and Sir Charles remembered that it was always Julie who in the past had been seen at work there; if this year she had been too much disabled to raise a crop they'd feel the pinch during the winter. And a little hunger might do Amos no harm; bring him to his senses a bit.

Where the garden ended he turned right to follow the foot-and-bridle path which ran between the Waste and Layer Wood and then on between Layer Field and the wood.

Damascus Greenway, whose name had been shortened to Damask so long ago that the full name on Sir Charles's lips had sounded unfamiliar, set the cat down on the step, went in and closed the door, propped the broom in a corner and stood still, spasmodically clasping and unclasping her hands. She had just told a deliberate lie, and told it for worldly profit--the very worst kind of lie I There they stood on the work-bench; a pair of top boots finished save for the fixing of the yellowy-brown cuffs which would complete them. The tops lay near, awaiting the thirty minutes or so of steady stitching needed to round off a good job. And why hadn't she been honest and said that they weren't quite ready, but that they would be finished and delivered by nightfall. That was all she had to say; that was what Father would have said. And instead she'd gone and told a lie. And it wasn't as though she didn't know better. She knew exactly what every lie did; it knocked another nail in the cross upon which Jesus had died; it added another spike to the crown of thorns. She'd done that, Damask Greenway, who loved Him...and she'd done it simply to prevent Sir Charles saying that Father neglected his work for his Methodism.

Now she stood, and the voices began. The grave, grieved voice of God saying man shall not live by bread alone; saying betrayal, thirty pieces of silver; saying he who denies me I will deny; saying a lie, Damask Green-way, a tribute to Satan who is called the Father of Lies; saying another nail, another thorn.

And the voice of the Devil, who could, if he wished, make himself so clearly heard, so plausible, saying how sensible not to offend Sir Charles, how clever to hide Father's lapse, with winter coming on and all the potatoes to buy this year and Mother not able to take in any sewing.

Often she wondered whether other people, other Methodists, members of Nettleton chapel, heard these conflicting voices saying, so clearly, such contradictory things. She thought not. Everybody else seemed so sure. Father, for instance, if he had been home, would have said, 'I'm sorry, sir, they're not done; but if you're in a hurry I'll sit down and finish them off. It'll take half an hour.'

(And you'd have said that, said the Devil, if you could have done the job; you couldn't, so you did the next best thing.)

She felt dizzy and a little sick; so many voices! She knew the remedy. 'Take it to the Lord in prayer,' as they said in the prayer meetings.

She knelt down by the bench and dropped her head on her folded hands, within two inches of the shining toes of the boots which had caused all the trouble.

(Not the boots, said the Devil; your Father leaving the boots unfinished was the cause of the trouble. Be honest with me, at least!)

She began to pray, addressing God as though He were Sir Charles Shelmadine, only infinitely more touchy when offended, infinitely more kind when pleased, and infinitely more powerful at all times.

She was really very much muddled about God and Jesus----It was Jesus who had called her to come to Him in that barn on the June night when she was fourteen, it was Jesus who loved her and whom she loved and who was hurt by her sins; but loving Jesus had somehow committed her to the task of pleasing God, who was quite different, who could never be hurt, only angered or pleased. There were even moments when she didn't think God had been fair to Jesus, sending Him down here to earth to suffer and be crucified, just because men, whom God had made 'in His own image', or so they said, hadn't turned out the way God wanted them. Once she had tried to talk to Amos about this matter and he had said, 'But, child, they're all one; the Trinity--Father, Son and Holy Ghost.' And any further question on her part had been silenced by the realisation that she had no idea of the Holy Ghost at all. Jesus, patient, loving, suffering, she knew; and God, strict, jealous but capable, properly approached, of being benevolent; that was all.

So now she knelt and asked, from the depths of her heart, forgiveness for the lie that she had told; she begged for forgiveness so urgently that sweat broke out on her forehead and between her shoulder-blades, and her hands were slippery with it. O God, don't let that extra nail, that extra thorn hurt Him who never did a sin at all! Forgive me, punish me; I told a lie.

(A plaintive, real human voice from the kitchen called, 'Damask, ain't you about finished in there?" and she called back, 'In just a minute, Mother.')

And she waited. Presently God spoke. With the utmost clarity. He told her that she could work out her own salvation and punishment. She was to wait until Amos came home and finished off the boots. Then she was to deliver them to the Manor. By that time she would be late and must take the Lower Road to Muchanger--the haunted road. So she would show, in one act, the sincerity of her repentance and her faith in God who would protect her. It was all as clear and simple as any order she had ever received in her place of servitude. She got up from her knees, immensely relieved and determined to ignore something which' had begun to move, coldly and creepily, somewhere just behind her apron band. Hastily she finished the tidying of the workroom and went back into the kitchen, where her mother, with a shawl over her shoulders, huddled by the fire, clumsily and slowly peeling the potatoes for the evening meal. Every fourth Saturday was for the Greenways a feast day. Damask was free on that day from twelve o'clock, and by missing the servants' midday dinner at Muchanger she could be home by one o'clock or soon after, buying sixpenny-worth of pudding beef on the way. The pudding could be on the boil by two o'clock at latest and ready to eat by six. She could then share the feast, wash the plates and be back at Muchanger by eight. And there was enough pudding left to be heated up and eaten on Monday and Tuesday of the following week.