The Devil in Clevely (Afternoon of an Autocrat) (22 page)

Recovering himself, he turned back to Miss Parsons and said, 'Excuse me, ma'am. It was just that seeing her here, and thinking her mum didn't know yet, put me off what we come about.' Then, since the old lady was looking at him with no sign of dottiness at all, he proceeded to tell her exactly what he had come about, with Dicky, as support, now and then saying 'Ah' or 'Thass so'.

In the interval since Richard's visit Miss Parsons had made still further improvement. Now when her memory lapsed a little or she contradicted herself there was nobody to shout at her or mock her or say she was mad. Little Damask had a wonderful way of saying, very gently, 'Now wait a minute ...' and then telling her just what she had been saying when her memory failed, or what she had said yesterday which conflicted with what she was saying today. As a result she was no longer frightened or worried; she was well fed, well served and much happier than she had been at any time since her father's death. This evening she was quite capable of listening intelligently to what Matt had to say, and when he had done she said in a clear firm voice: 'I quite agree with you. I'm very much against enclosure.'

'Then, if I may make so bold as to ask, ma'am, why did you sign the paper in favour of it?'

'But I did not. That is just what I would not do. Sir Richard came here and he ...' Part of her affliction was not that she forgot but that she remembered too many things too vividly, so that the past, instead of being in perspective, decently remote, was always encroaching upon the present. Now, in her memory, she relived, without the buffering of the past tense, the moment when Richard had started to shake her, 'He tried to murder me,' she said.

Matt did not believe that, and fearing lest his disbelief and astonishment should show in his eyes he removed his gaze from her, looked at Damask, who bent her head over the needlework, and then at Dicky, who--parade-ground trained--could express a great deal without moving any feature much. His face now said, 'There y'are; I told you the old gal was dotty.'

For a moment Matt was at a loss, then once again experience came to his aid. He remembered his grandmother, who had lived with the family when he was small; she too was a bit dotty and inclined to accuse people of acts of unbelievable malevolence. The thing to do was to take no notice. So now he ignored the accusation against Sir Richard and said bluntly: 'Well, ma'am, if you didn't sign, how do you reckon your name got on to that there paper?'

'It cannot be on it,' Miss Parsons said. But her voice was losing its assurance; something in her head, just behind her eyes, was beginning to pull tight and knot itself. Her - expression clouded.

'But ma'am, there it is, writ plain for all to see. On the church door,' Matt insisted.

'But I...There was...The church door, you say? The church door ...' She had a sudden, immensely clear, mental vision of the church door. On the Sunday morning when Charles had brought his wife out of the church on his arm for the first time. Out of the shadow, into the sunshine; so fair, so radiant, so very beautiful.

'I don't think I can bear it,' said Miss Parsons, speaking aloud, after all these years, the words she had so resolutely repressed then. To stand there, surrounded by the gaping, admiring villagers, and to look down the long dark tunnel of the years, alone, alone. 'I don't think I can bear it,' she said again, and pressing her hands to her face she began to cry desolately.

Damask rose, without haste, to her feet and went over to where Miss Parsons sat and touched her on the shoulder.

'Now there's no need to upset yourself, no need at all,' she said. 'I'm here and everything is all right. I'll send them away. Don't cry. Everything is all right.' Miss Parsons ceased crying and Damask, turning her head, signed to Matt and Dicky to go away. Dicky actually set himself in motion, but Matt stood his ground.

'To my manner of thinking, thass just what it ain't. All right, I mean,' he said, allowing a trace of truculence to creep into his voice now that he was talking to Damask. 'That look to me like there's been some jiggery-pokery somewhere. The lady say she never signed, yet there it is, her name, writ plain. You stand aside, Damask, my girl, and let me get this kinda straight.'

'I am not going to allow you to upset Miss Parsons with any more of your nonsense,' Damask said. She straightened herself and turned towards him, looking him full in the face. 'Go home, Matt Ashpole,' she said.

'I don't take orders from ...' He blinked and swallowed and started again. 'I come here to talk to Miss Parsons ...' His voice trailed off inconclusively on the last word and his mouth stayed a little open. Then, abruptly, he turned and followed Dicky, who was already on his way out of the room.

Damask picked up the book and the magnifying-glass which helped Miss Parsons to read and placed them in the old lady's hands.

'Oh yes,' Miss Parsons said, an expression of simple pleasure lighting her face, 'we were reading, were we not? And just coming to the exciting part, dear child!'

Holding the book well away from her and manipulating the glass with skill, she read on and reached the moment when Crusoe found the footprint in the sand.

Damask had taken up her work and resumed her stitching, her head bent. She was conscious of Miss Parsons' voice and polite enough to make, now and then, a small appreciative sound; but her mind was far away, in the strange place into which she had fallen when the news of Danny's betrothal had felled her to the floor--the place of the Voice and the Promise, the things for which there were no human words. From that place she had emerged with a power of whose nature and magnitude she had no conception; she had handled it tentatively at first, as a man might try an unfamiliar tool. Now confidence was growing, and skill, and ambition----

'There I' said Miss Parsons with satisfaction. 'Was not that exciting?'

'Immensely exciting,' Damask said.

Outside the Dower House Dicky Hayward straightened his shoulders and drew a deep breath.

'Pore owd gal, mad as a March hare!' he said. Matt made no answer, and Dicky imagined that he was depressed by the failure of the interview.

'I tell you what, Matt; I don't reckon they'll none of them take no notice of our plight. Not so as to be a help. I reckon thass every man for himself now.'

Matt grunted. They reached the gate and Dicky made as though to turn to the right, cross the Stone Bridge and go to the village, but Matt turned left, towards home.

'Hi, come on,' Dicky said. 'Less go down to the old Horse and wet our whistles. I can do with a drink arter all that shindy.'

'I'm going home,' Matt said. 'I don't feel like seeing the chaps tonight,' he added, explaining to himself, as much as to Dicky, the reason for his unusual choice. There was certainly no connection, in his mind, between Damask's words, 'Go home, Matt Ashpole', and his sudden feeling that home was the one place where he wished to be, and if anyone had pointed it out he would have called them mad.

'They'll know you done your best, Matt,' Dicky said. 'There's nowt you can do when you're up agin them in power. Cheer up and come along. I'll treat you.'

'Thass kind of you, boy, but not tonight. I feel like getting home and getting my boots off.' That was it; he wanted to take his boots off.

He turned towards the Waste, and Dicky, after a moment's wavering, turned that way too and fell into step beside him. They walked in silence for a while, and then, just as they reached the edge of the Waste, Matt said: 'Rum how the old gal shut off the blaring, worn't it. Once I seen something like that afore. A gyppo, it was, that had a way with horses. Nappiest horse there ever was he'd go up to it, be it kicking and carrying on ever so, and just lay a hand on and speak a word and there it'd stand, quiet as a lamb.'

'She hev a rare masterful way of giving orders,' Dicky said. 'Made a good sergeant, she would. And I call to mind the time when she was mim as a mouse. Got right nice-looking too, ain't she?'

Matt ignored that and there was silence again until they reached Widow Hayward's door. There Matt paused.

'I dunno,' he said. 'That kinda stick in my mind--the old gal being so sure she never signed that paper. I reckon that could bear looking into, Dicky.'

'You can't pay any heed to what she say. She's off her head. Said Squire tried to murder her.'

'Well, s'pose he wanted her to and she wouldn't and started to blare and carry on; maybe he did. 'S'nuff to make any man feel like murder, talking sense one minnit and rubbish the next. Just like my old granny--and many a clout she had from my dad, and my mum, come to that! I fare to recollect that Mr Turnbull look after Miss Parsons affairs; I reckon 'twould do no harm to hev a word with him, if I can get near him.'

'I done running up and down on this job, Matt. They got all the guns and all the powder, you might as well face it. If they mean to grab the Waste they'll grab it. All we can do is retreat in good order.'

'But we got nowhere to retreat to, you fool,' said Matt angrily. 'I know what a loony say ain't much to go on, but thass something, and maybe we could make more of it. Damn it all, boy, I kept alive and brung up a family just by making a little something into a bit more.'

Next morning Miss Parsons woke and found herself very clear in her mind. She lay and watched the strengthening light and thought over Matt Ashpole's visit and everything he had said; she remembered it all. When, at eight o'clock, Damask appeared, as was her habit, with the breakfast tray, Miss Parsons said: 'My dear, I have been thinking. I must go along to the church and see for myself whether he told me the truth. You were there when Sir Richard tried to force me to sign, weren't you. And you know I didn't, don't you? So what the man was talking about I really do not know, but I must find out.'

'There isn't the slightest need for you to bother yourself about anything he said.' As she spoke Damask leaned forward; with rather less than the width of the tray between them their eyes met. 'I won't have you exciting yourself about every bit of nonsense stupid people come and tell you. Forget it. Just remember that everything is all right.'

And of course it was. So long as Damask was there everything must be all right. The old lady ate her breakfast placidly and with enjoyment. Damask removed the tray and went out into the garden to cut, from the weed-smothered beds and borders, enough of the hardy survivors of the flowers as would decorate the house. She left Miss Parsons to dress herself as usual.

Halfway through her dressing Miss Parsons went to the window and looked out into the garden. A brisk breeze was stirring and the first leaves were loosening their hold. Far away, across the stretches of roughly scythed lawn, Damask was moving about, a wide basket on her arm.

I shall need some outdoor clothes, Miss Parsons said to herself and went to the cupboard. There she asked herself why. And gave herself the answer. Because she was going to the church to see if what that man had said was true. And she must slip away without Damask knowing, because the dear child didn't want her to be worried.

It was all perfectly plain. She was not even deterred to find that the outdoor clothes which she thought were hanging in the cupboard were no longer there. That was nothing to get excited about; she knew where they had gone. Mrs Saunders had taken them. And that she remembered the fact proved, did it not, how very clear she was in her mind. Damask, dear child, of course didn't realise how much better she was; she had first encountered her when, what with one thing and another, she had been in a very bad state, so naturally she now tried to protect her, to shield her from all worry. But really there was no need----

She found an old black cloak which Mrs Saunders had despised and a tricorne hat with a broken feather. Having put them on, she took another crafty peep through the window and saw Damask busy gathering sprays of rose-trees which had almost reverted to the wild stage and were, at this season, laden with bright red berries similar to those found in the hedges, but more plump and rounded.

Miss Parsons went downstairs and let herself out of the house.

She encountered nobody and nothing happened to distract her during her walk, and she arrived at the church gate with her purpose intact; and although on the previous evening a memory, with the church as a background, had caused a disturbance in her mind, this morning she faced the church itself without a tremor. Her swift gliding steps carried her along the path where the shadows of the ancient yews lay blackly, and up to the porch.

And there it was, indisputable: Amelia Caroline Parsons, just in the space where Richard Shelmadine had asked her to write it, and in her own fine Italianate hand --the only decently written signature on the paper.

She stood motionless and stared at it for a long time. Then, as the deadly significance of it was borne in upon her shrinking mind, she began to cry--not the loud protesting sobs which were her usual form of expressing distress, but a low, desperate moaning, broken now and then by muttered words: 'I am mad. I must be mad. I am mad.' Hitherto, however glaring her lapses of memory, she had always held firmly to her belief in her sanity; even when she had run away from the Saunders and then, in emotional stress, forgotten her very name or where she lived, as soon as she was capable of thought again her first thought had been that she was not mad, she merely forgot things. But now she knew. Never, save in a fit of stark, staring madness, would she have written her name on that paper and thus given her consent to the very thing she had planned to prevent.

She sank down, trembling, on the church steps and put her head in her hands and went on moaning and muttering. There very shortly--since it was easy to guess her whereabouts--Damask found her. Distraught as she was, she recognised 'the dear child', and taking her hands from her head laid hold of Damask's, clinging to them with the frenzied clutch of the drowning, admitting over and over again that she was mad, begging Damask to stay with her and look after her and not let her be locked up.

When she had abased herself sufficiently Damask spoke. She said, 'Of course I shall look after you. That is what I am here for. Listen...everything is all right. I am here and everything is all right. Look at me---- There's nothing at all for you to worry about. Come home now and be happy----' And happiness and comfort and assurance and a sense of well-being flowed in from the touch of her hand, the sound of her voice, the steady, calm gaze of her eyes.