The Devil in Clevely (Afternoon of an Autocrat) (40 page)

'Nothing very much. At least...Oh, Hadstock, I'm sorry to arrive like this and disturb you. But you did say that if ever...Do you think you could keep Simon for me?'

'Of course I can. Here, sit down.' He pulled forward a high-backed chair, black with age, uncushioned. 'Let me have your cloak, it's quite damp.'

'I musn't stay. It doesn't matter. But he took the cloak, shook it, and hung it on the peg on the door where his own jacket hung. The big white dog, close by Linda's chair, watched him. Another disappointing walk! Simon hated Linda to visit cottages; he liked to walk all the time and have her full attention. But he knew how to behave; he stood by her side until the cottage's occupant had admired him, and the children, if any, had mauled him a little, then he lay down with his nose on his paws. This cottage belonged to someone familiar and there were, apparently, no children, so he could lie down now. He did so with a patient sigh, and stayed immobile, only cocking an eye when he heard his own name.

Hadstock turned back and looked at Linda. Some sort of shock, he thought; and nasty, despite the way in which she had said, 'Nothing very much.' He moved to the hearth, and taking up a handful of the dried twigs which lay there broke them small and fed them to the flames which lapped about the kettle.

'I was just about to make some tea.' he said untruthfully. He had fallen into the habit of shaving overnight; it saved time in the mornings and during Richard's absence enabled him to present himself to Linda freshly shaven. The kettle had been put on to heat the shaving water. 'It'll be ready in a minute. Will you drink a cup while you tell me what has happened?'

She was already calmer. To a degree she had succeeded in her plan. Simon, at least, was safe. Pointing to the dog, she said: 'He bit Mr Mundford this afternoon.'

'Splendid dog!' said Hadstock, so impulsively that Linda began to laugh; and then checked herself, knowing where laughter would lead.

'It wasn't funny,' she said.

'I know,' Hadstock agreed instantly. 'Like many most reasonable actions, it led to deplorable results. Sentence of death?'

'Yes.' He was making it easy for her. Busying himself taking the tea-making things from a little cupboard beside the fireplace, not looking at her, and making the horrible things sound almost ordinary.

The kettle boiled with a spurt and a hiss. Hadstock put tea in the pot, his big hands moving with a care and delicacy that held a hint of pathos.

'He'll be quite safe with me,' he said, as he passed her a cup of tea. He pulled a stool out from under the table and sat down on it. He had seen how unsteady her hand was; his longing to comfort her was like a physical pain. 'Now tell me all about it. When, and where, and how, and how much bitten is Mr Mundford?'

'When was just after we had returned from our walk this afternoon; and where was in my little sitting-room. I've kept him--Simon--out of the way as much as possible, you know; kept him to my bedroom and that one room downstairs. We were there and Mr Mundford came in, and that smell, the incense, came with him; he reeked of it. Simon bristled and flattened himself on the floor and went behind my chair. Mr Mundford said something about thinking Richard might be with me and he also said something about...what had happened earlier in the afternoon. Then he came close to me and mentioned this lace on my sleeve. A little while ago he remarked the lace on another dress; asked me was it Venetian, and just touched it. I happen to remember that, because when he did so his fingers were all bunched together as though he had rheumatism. He said that the lace on this dress wasn't nearly so beautiful, and he just touched it too; not with his fingers all together this time, but more as though he were plucking something that hung from my wrist. Perhaps Simon thought he was taking something from me. He sprang at him, straight out from behind my chair, without warning. Fortunately Mr Mundford wears a very voluminous cravat, stiffly starched, otherwise his throat would have been bitten. As it is, only his cheek is lacerated. Here.' She put her hand to the place on her own clear jaw-line. 'I must say, in his favour, that he was very magnanimous about it. He said dogs always disliked him. But Richard was very angry and said Simon was vicious and must be destroyed. I just couldn't bear that.'

'You don't have to,' Hadstock said. 'I'll take him out for a bit each morning and evening, as I did when he lived with me before; and leave him locked up. I'll put the key in the hole in the thatch just over that window, so you can come and see him any time you want to.'

'Thank you. It may not be for long. Richard generally takes notice of what Mr Mundford says, and he spoke in the dog's favour. Also--they've already stayed here five weeks.'

'I know,' said Hadstock with some feeling. The time had seemed interminable to him, missing his evening visits to Linda, brief and formal as they often were, and subjected daily to Richard's nagging, veiled insults and interference. He shifted a little on his stool, linking his long brown fingers and letting his hands dangle between his knees. 'And that is all that happened this afternoon?'

She looked at him, surprised. Did he know about the other happening? It was possible, the order might have been relayed through him.

'Not quite all. But I didn't mean to bother you...that. Did you have anything to do with the pheasant Did you know?'

'What pheasants?'

'The two Chinese pheasants that lived in Layer Wood. They were...they belonged to me; I brought them back from India where they were given to me in circumstances that made me value them very much. At first they stayed in the garden, then they moved into Layer, but I used to catch glimpses of them now and then. I hoped they'd breed this year, but I don't think they did. This afternoon Simon and I were just leaving the house by the side door --it isn't much used now that the front is completed, but we use it so as to go in and out unnoticed; today Mr Mundford and Richard were there and so were my pheasants, in a crate! Mr Mundford was saying something about everything falling into place. They both looked startled, rather confused, when they saw me, and more so when I asked what the pheasants were doing there. Richard said he intended to give them away. I asked to whom and he asked was that any of my business, and I...I answered him sharply and said yes, it was, because they were my pheasants----'

'A not unnatural remark,' Hadstock said dryly. 

'And then?'

'That is all. He was very angry, of course; and I feel that is partly why he was so obdurate about poor Simon.'

'And where are the pheasants now?'

'I don't know. They had gone when I returned. I admit I was curious. I asked one or two of the servants--quite casually; but they none of them knew anything about them. Mr Mundford knows; I think he had a hand in it, somehow. Ordinarily he is so very ready to put in a tactful word, but all the time we were talking about them he stood and stared at the birds and never even looked round. And then...then, later on, when he came to my room he asked might he replace them by a more domesticated pet, and asked if I would like a parrot or a monkey. I was aware then that I had behaved childishly; but those pheasants, though I saw them so little, were dear to

me, in a way.'

Hadstock was surprised to find himself instantly jealous of the donor of the pheasants; jealous in a different, deeper way than he was of Richard Shelmadine. 'Sentimental associations?'

'Yes...and no. They were given to me by an old man, a cripple, who gave them to me for a keepsake because they were all he had to give.'

'Ah,' said Hadstock. He visualised a beggar, making a precarious living perhaps by showing off the birds.'

'He was so immensely rich, you see, he wouldn't have missed' anything else; the pheasants were valuable to him because he had only had them two days.'

She remembered how that truth had had to be concealed from Richard. And now here she was offering it so simply to Hadstock, knowing he would understand. Suddenly, in the light of that comparison, she saw the whole tragedy of her marriage. It wasn't only that by marrying the wrong man you brought misery to yourself and to him; you lost all chance of the happiness that you and some other man might have known.

'I think I should go now,' she said. 'If I am missed there may be another fuss, and I don't think I could bear any more today. Thank you for taking the dog and for listening to all my troubles.'

Hot, hasty words beat their way to the surface of his mind. Don't go back...stay here with me...I love you...But with the taste of them on his tongue he knew that he could never speak them. He was too old, much too experienced. He knew what it meant to be poor, having been rich, and what a descent in the social scale meant; he could visualise the search for work, the search for a home, the scandal, the friendlessness, the placelessness. He would, at that moment, gladly had lain down and died if his death could have benefited her even a little; but such drama, he thought, satirically, was denied him, like so many other things. So he rose and took her cloak from the peg and laid it on her shoulders, and said in an ordinary voice, 'You will allow me to walk back with you. I have my rounds to make. Have you thought of how you will explain the dog's disappearance?'

'Not yet. My one concern was to get him away.' 

'We'll think of something as we walk,' Hadstock said. He shrugged himself into his coat and reached down his lantern and carried it over to the fire, where he lighted it with a twig. The dog had gone with Linda towards the door and she had first bent over him and then gone down on her knees, hugging his white head to her breast.

'No. No. You must stay here, Simon. Just for a little while. Sit! Sit! Simon stay here.' 

By the light of the lantern Hadstock could see the tears in her eyes. He opened the door a little way and said brusquely, 'You slip through. I'll keep him back.' She did so, and as the dog lunged to follow her Hadstock caught him by the collar and heaved him into the middle of the kitchen. 'For God's sake,' he said, addressing the dog as though it were human, 'don't make it harder for her.'

'He'll be all right,' he said, locking the door and putting the key in his pocket.

A loud, unearthly howl from the kitchen denied that Simon would be all right.

'It's quite plain to me,' said Hadstock, 'that his presence, like murder, cannot be hid. I shall say that I let him out of wherever he was confined and took him home with me. Sir Richard can make what he likes of that.'

Linda's words of thanks were lost in the clatter of hoofs and rattle of wheels as Mr Rout's gig and Mr Thurlow Lamb's carriage followed one another along Berry Lane.

'Late traffic this evening,' Hadstock commented, reaching forward to open the little gate.

'I expect the Cloptons have a party,' Linda said. 'It is All-Hallows' E'en, you know.'

'All-Hallows?' repeated Hadstock in a curious voice. 'Why, so it is!'

Up on the Waste only two windows were lighted; people retired early, saving light and fuel. Candles had never been much used there; rushes which cost nothing, dipped into animal fat, which was plentiful in due season, and allowed to harden, had been the usual form of illumination. This year there had been a shortage of animal fat and a consequent dearth of rush-dips. Matt Ashpole was working by firelight; he missed his fuel-rights from the Waste less than the others, for being able to get about in his cart he was free of the countryside and always kept a sharp look-out for fallen branches or dead trees. Amos Greenway was burning a precious candle, which was justified, for he was finishing off a pair of top boots for Fred Clopton. They were exactly of the pattern and quality that Sir Charles had been wont to order--which just showed how Fred was prospering.

Matt was working on a still. He'd tried various kinds of brews in the last few months and had been satisfied with none of them. Then he'd had the good fortune to fall in with an Irish cattleman at one of the markets and had listened attentively to an account of how what sounded like real good liquor was made in illicit stills in Ireland. By all accounts it wasn't only drinkable, it was saleable. Matt had straightway invested a few pence in a quantity of slightly damaged barley which he said he needed for chicken food, and had made his 'mash'. If the strength of the resultant liquor should bear any relationship to the potency of the odour of the 'mash' it would be liquor of no mean order. Tonight, with a large copper kettle, a bit of brass piping, some clay for sealing the joints and a wash-tub for cooling, he was busy with his first experiment in distilling. The Irishman had warned him that homemade 'potheen' should not be drunk straight from the still; but all Irishmen were notorious liars, and Matt promised himself that if the still did not blow up in his face and if it produced anything resembling liquor he would have a drink before he went to bed.

When Amos had put the last stitch into Fred Clopton's boots there was still a good inch and a half of candle left. So he turned gladly to a task more to his taste. He had reluctantly postponed--not abandoned, but postponed-- the chapel-building. Until the Spirit of the Lord moved more vigorously among the members of existent chapels at Nettleton, Baildon and Summerfield, and more funds and more labour were forthcoming so that the site could be properly drained and the foundations properly laid, he knew himself defeated. But only temporarily. And the rickety, lurching building could be put to good use. Three of its walls were visible from various points in the road, and Amos was preparing three large boards.

He did not overestimate the literacy of the Clevely inhabitants, nor underestimate their curiosity. The boards would attract attention, and those who could spell out a word or two would be invited to read them out to the others. That was one way of spreading 'The Word'. The passer-by, halting with his back to Berry Lane, would face the front of the chapel, where the entrance should have been; and there he would see in red and black letters on a plain board: 'When God So Wills A Chapel Shall Stand Here.' Coming up from the inn or the smithy, anyone on the road could hardly avoid the sight of the sagging south wall, where these words would meet his eyes: 'The Wages Of Sin Is Death.' Those two boards were already completed, standing face to face to the wall behind the work-bench. Amos now set Clopton's boots aside, laid a plain board on the bench and thoughtfully stirred his paintbrush around in the paint. This was the notice which would show from Stone Bridge. It must be brief, because the paint was low in the tin. With part of his mind selecting, testing and discarding various texts, Amos found himself entertaining an undercurrent of thoughts. He remembered how, on the morning after Damask's terrible attack on his integrity, he had gone to call upon Mr Hadstock to ask if the bailiff knew any reason why he should have been given the grant of twenty acres. Hadstock had been very reassuring: 'I know of no reason; but you may be sure there was one, and a good one, otherwise you'd have been left like the rest.'