The Devil in Clevely (Afternoon of an Autocrat) (9 page)

'Who's going to pay for it?' Julie asked. She was trying, in her turn, to take interest and it was not her fault that the question had just a tinge of sharp practicality.

'All Of us,' said Amos eagerly. The and one or two more'll do the work and every one of us at the meeting today made a solemn promise to give all we could towards the cost of the stuff. We reckoned we'd get the timber cheap, anyway, Judson being a member of the chapel at Baildon and being in that line of business.' He broke off and then added, in a different, dreamier voice, ' "A light to lighten the Gentiles", thass what that chapel'll be.'

Julie looked about the sparsely furnished, comfortless kitchen and wondered a little drearily how Amos expected to pay his contribution towards the chapel-building; they lived near enough to the bone already. What further sacrifice could be demanded?

'Father,' Damask broke in on Amos's dream, 'Squire came by this afternoon and was put out at not finding his boots ready. I promised to ...' Oh dear, that was another lie almost. 'If you'd work on them now I'd take them on my way home. The pudding won't be ready for another half-hour.'

'The Manor ain't on your way home, child,' Julie said. 

'It is if I go by the Lower Road.'

And there, Julie thought, quite humbly, lay the difference between the really religious people like Amos and Damask and those who only paid lip-service, like herself. She would not dare to walk that road after dark, and she did not much relish the thought of Damask doing so.

'All right, I'll get on,' Amos said. He would much have preferred to stay in the kitchen and go on talking about the new chapel; but he now had the best of reasons for working hard and keeping his customers. In the workroom, donning his leather apron, he realised that since the job was merely simple stitching he could carry it into the kitchen and talk as he worked; and this he did, oblivious to the waning of Julie's interest and the agonised glance which Damask cast him every time he halted his needle to give full value to a remark or ceased work to stare into space.

'Father, do get on,' she said at last. 'The pudding is ready to dish.'

The later she was the less chance of any other person being abroad on that road and calling a human, heartening 'Good night'. The later she was the deeper would be the darkness, the greater the risk of something not friendly, not human...

She rattled the plates as she took them from the shelf, ostentatiously and noisily grated some salt from the block, lifted the lid of the saucepan so that the good scent of the pudding might titillate Amos's nostrils, but it was not in him to scamp a job even when pressed for time. When at last he placed the last firm stitch, cut off the waxed thread and tucked the end under, it was well past the ordinary supper hour. Damask almost snatched at the boots and began to bundle them into one of the canvas squares used for the delivery of such important orders. That done she dished the pudding hurriedly and put on her cloak.

'But you ain't had your supper,' Julie said plaintively. 'You can't go off like that, missing your dinner as you do these Saturdays. You'll turn faint or something.'

'I rather wanted you to do a bit of figuring out for me,' Amos said, 'about this here timber. I don't reckon so easy as you do, Damask; started too late.'

He had been quite illiterate up to the time of his conversion; then he had learned to read in order to study the

Bible, and had proceeded to learn how to write in order to make notes for his sermons when he became a preacher. He wrote, curiously enough, a very good scholarly hand. Damask had acquired her smattering of education early in life through the Nettleton Sunday School, which she had attended every Sunday afternoon until she went out to work. The Sunday School had been the hobby of an old schoolmaster who believed that Methodism was the remedy for all the spiritual ills of the world and universal literacy the remedy of every other kind. It was useless, he held, to tell children the bible stories of which, if they remembered anything at all, only garbled versions would remain in mind; they must learn to read for themselves. So on Sunday afternoons, after a brisk prayer and a loud hymn to work off what surplus energy remained after a long walk and an attendance at morning service, the young Methodists of the six villages settled down to learn their letters. Most of them made little progress, some fell asleep; the old man devoted his attention to the few who wanted to learn. Of these one or two even reached the stage of learning grammar.

'Our Lord,' the old man would say, 'spent His earthly life as a poor humble man, but He didn't say "I ain't" and "I worn't", and nor need you!'

The grammar was a high fence at which most of even the eager learners fell; those few who reached the other side were taught the rudiments of arithmetic. Damask was one of the few. The old man, delighting in her teachability, often regretted that she was not a boy, capable of becoming a proper scholar.

'I'll help you with that next time I'm home,' she said to Amos now.

'You sure you can't stop for just a mouthful?' Julie asked, beginning to cut into the crust of the pudding. Hunger watered in Damask's mouth as the brown gravy oozed and the rich scent escaped. Then she thought of the Lower Road and shook her head.

'Oh dear. And I was counting on us heving a cup of tea together after.'

'Ah!' Amos exclaimed, as though a question had been answered. 'I been figuring out where we could make spare a bit. Tea! No more tea in this house till that chapel stand four-square in the Lord's sight!'

'But that 'ont save much,' Julie said in a small voice. 'We use so little. What I got in the tin now was bought back in August.' She loved her cup of tea, made an event, a treat, of each rare brewing and used the leaves three times over.

'Then we'll save on cheese too,' Amos said. 'Not a bite of cheese will I touch from this day on.'

Both Julie and Damask knew that his main meal on six days of the week was a hunk of bread and cheese; they stared at him, Julie's faded blue eyes wide with awed dismay, Damask's amber ones with awed respect. A truly good man--and his daughter was a liar! That brought her back to a consciousness of her circumstances. She went over and kissed Julie.

'Goodbye, Mother. I'll see you next month.' By her father she paused but did not kiss him, 'Good night, Father. I'll see you tomorrow week at chapel.'

'Goodbye, Damask; thank you for all you've done for me today,' Julie said, and sadly put some pudding on a plate.

'Good night, Damask,' said Amos, drawing his chair to the table. 'I'll see you unless Stevens is still ill; if he is I might hev to take his pulpit over at Summerfield.'

Summerfield, she thought, opening the door on the dark, windy night. Summerfield...magic word, her talisman against fear. For it was at Summerfield, on a June night, that Jesus had called Damask Greenway and she had answered the call.

She was fourteen and at the end of the month was going to start work, and that was one reason why Amos had insisted on her going to the week-night meeting that was to be held at Summerfield by a famous preacher named Whitwell. Damask nearly missed it because during the week, cleaning the work-room, she had dropped a heavy last on her foot and the nail on one toe had turned black and was coming off. She couldn't walk to Summerfield; and Mrs Greenway had half hoped that they could stay home together and make gooseberry jam, and have a cup of tea and gossip more freely than they could do in Amos's presence. Mother and daughter were very close to one another at that time.

'But once she get to work she'll never be free for a midweek meeting; and this Mr Whitwell is famous. On the Norwich circuit last month he brought over three hundred sinners to repentance.'

'Well, Damask ain't much of a sinner,' Mrs Greenway said.

'We're all sinners,' said Amos sternly, 'and I should like to see her cast her burden at the mercy seat afore she go out to face the world. I know what I'll do. I'll borrow Shad's donkey.'

'That'll mean starting a full hour sooner than we need,' said Mrs Greenway. The remarkable state of preservation of Shad's ancient animal was due to its lifelong refusal to be hurried.

'Ah well, your father's a good man,' said Mrs Green-way, seeing her cosy evening doomed and seeking comfort

where she could, 'when I look around at some----Mrs Juby hev a terrible black eye again today. We can't complain, I s'pose.'

Damask had gone sulkily. Apart from Sunday School, where sheer boredom had brightened her wits until every lesson was fascinating, she found everything in connection with chapel tedious in the extreme. Yet Amos had been right; the meeting was the turning-point of her life.

The barn was crowded; not only had the faithful rallied from all quarters, there was a good number of people who had come in search of entertainment. Revivalist meetings offered much amusement, with women falling down in hysterics and screaming and tearing their hair and men rushing to the front and blurting out that they were great sinners and often giving most intimate details of their misdoings. The commonest sin was wenching, then sharp dealing, then drunkenness.

Amos had prudently brought a stool which he placed near the door of the barn, so that as Damask sat there the scent of cut hay, of honeysuckle and wild roses drifted in and touched her before it became sullied by the odour of human breath, human sweat and the ale-reek which hung about some of the unregenerate. She was still sulky, and until John Whitwell climbed up into the improvised pulpit and began to talk she would rather have been at home, making gooseberry jam, with a cup of tea to look forward to.

Whitwell spoke very simply and said nothing that was new to such a regular chapel-goer as Damask; what was new was his burning belief and his power to convey it. He believed in God who loved the world and offered even to the worst of men a chance to repent and enjoy eternal life in Heaven; he believed that the Devil tempted men to sin, to resist God, and waited gloatingly for the chance to torture them in Hell throughout all eternity.

He was fluent and passionately sincere, and he possessed good looks above the average and some rudimentary hypnotic power. When at the end of his discourse he threw his arms wide and, with the last level rays of sunshine falling on his smooth yellow hair, earnest face and beautiful eyes, cried, 'My brothers, my sisters, make the choice tonight, for tonight your soul might be required of you. Eternal joy or eternal pain--that is the choice. And here is Jesus, opening His crucified arms to you, calling you to come and cast yourselves upon His infinite mercy. Come, while there is time,' fifty-five people moved forward, and quite a few of them were those who had come to see the fun.

Damask went too, of course. She was fourteen, and it was June and she was under a spell. So confused that to the end of her days Jesus of Nazareth would wear John Whitwell's face, speak with his voice. Dust moved in the barn as the penitents shuffled forward, and the sun shimmered in the dust and there was a halo about that yellow head. She went forward and offered her heart, to Amos's supreme joy.

The next four years, save for an occasional lapse into sin and a consequent troubling of conscience, were happy ones. Her heart was in safe keeping. She was happier than Juliet, who at the same age gave her heart to Romeo; happier than Sally Ashpole, who at the same age gave what she thought was her heart and what was certainly her virginity to one of Widow Hayward's soldier sons; happier than all the uncounted girls who at the same age gave their hearts to governesses and fellow schoolgirls and other fallible human creatures. Jesus never repudiated her love, never exploited it, never changed. He was always there, always loving, even when, or perhaps especially when, she hurt Him by sinning. And she had no doubt, on this evening, as she stepped out into the windy dark, that He would be with her on the Lower Road.

She cherished a half-hope that at the Lodge Jarvey would open the gate for her and say that he had an errand up to the house and would carry the boots with him. Or would that be cheating? Now and then it was difficult to decide whether a chance accident was a sign of God's favour or a particularly cunning wile of the Devil. Tonight no such decision was called for; the eldest of the Jarvey boys admitted her and scuttled back into shelter like a rabbit. The wind was full in her face as she trudged up the avenue, and by the time she reached the back door of the Manor she was completely out of breath. The yard between the house and the stables lay deserted, unusually quiet, and it was a long time before anyone answered the door to her. She was obliged to ring the bell three times; and when someone came it was not one of the maids, it was the stout, regal housekeeper, Mrs Hart, who did not ordinarily answer doors. She looked as though she had been crying and just stood there without speaking.

'Good evening,' Damask said. 'I've brought the boots. I promised Sir Charles this afternoon...'

To her astonishment Mrs Hart made no move to take the parcel; she lifted her black silk apron and held it to her face, beginning to cry again, wildly.

'His boots!' she sobbed. 'He'll not need them. Poor dear man, he'll never wear boots again!'

'Why...is he ill ?' Damask faltered.

'He's dead I Brought home not ten minutes since, on a gate, his neck broke.'

And who then would pay for the boots? All that leather of the best quality, all those hours of Amos's labour. Oh what a pity that they hadn't been finished earlier, finished and paid for! That was her first thought and she was immediately ashamed of it. 'Oh dear,'she said.'What happened?' Like most mourners, Mrs Hart, though she would have been impervious to comfort, found the invitation to tell a dramatic tale a palliative to her grief.

'What happened? Ah, that nobody can say.' She lowered her apron. 'His horse came back, about six o'clock, all in a muck sweat and the saddle empty. So then Sir Edward he rid the highway with a coupla men and Parson took Bobby, just as he was, all of a tremble, and went with a couple more along Lower Road, and Mr Hatton went off to Berry Lane--you never saw such a to-do. And then, like I told you, they found him, poor dear, dead, with his neck broke, and brought him home on a gate. The best master that ever breathed, he was, for all he was so particular.'