The Devil in Clevely (Afternoon of an Autocrat) (32 page)

'No use asking me that. I took me oath not to say. I dus-sent say, and if I did you wouldn't believe me. I don't want to talk about it. I just want to get out. If you can't lend me the money I'll chance me luck and just go. I've gotta foot it into this place--Baildon, ain't it--to get the coach anyway.'

'On some days the coach runs through Nettleton, which is much nearer.'

'Let's hope this is one of them days. I can get into the park without goin' back to the 'ouse, can't I? Then I'm off. Goodbye, your ladyship.'

She jumped to her feet, gathered up a handful of her skirts in either hand, displayed slim ankles and the promise of well-turned calves and set off along the path, running lightly, with something of a swallow's swoop in her gait. Linda looked after her for a moment and then dropped her head into her hands.

It was possible to ignore or discount everything the girl had said except one thing. 'You must of seen through us...you know what we are.' She had seen on the first evening; she had known all along. And she had done nothing, said nothing, had accepted the situation with a meekness which she now saw was shameful, despicable. 'You must of seen through us ...' That had been said to her by a pretty little London prostitute--and four others were there, under what was technically her roof, and they were doubtless thinking the same thing...and so were Mundford and Montague and old Dunhill and young Saxstead. She saw suddenly the depths of the abyss into which Richard had thrust her, one small push following another all through these years----

Suddenly she stood up and began to walk towards the house.

Richard and Alec Mundford were in the breakfast-room. The older man had before him a plate well filled with bacon and grilled kidneys and was making a hearty breakfast, though his pallor was almost phosphorescent; Richard was sipping coffee. His hands were unsteady and so was his head; she had seen that convulsive, only just perceptible tremor shake it on many mornings, in many places.

She greeted neither of them; from the doorway she said: 'Richard, I want to speak to you--alone.'

'Oh, do you? Well, I don't want to be spoken to in that tone of voice,' Richard said, instantly turning nasty. 'If you can be civil, you may say anything you wish to say in Alec's presence.'

'Come, come,' said Mr Mundford, balancing food on his fork and speaking good-humouredly, 'why involve me? If every other room in the house is occupied, I shall be finished in about five minutes and will go into the garden.'

What was the power behind those words, strong enough to make Richard, furious as he was, set down his coffee-cup and get up and open the door which led into the little sitting-room which she used when she was alone, saying as he did so, 'No, no, finish your breakfast in comfort'?

Inside the room he faced her, 'Well, what is it?', and she found that the words which had been ready in her mouth only two minutes ago were now not easily spoken; she could have said them when she walked into the breakfast-room, now they sounded melodramatic. But that was the kind of hampering, undermining thought which had allowed her to be brought to this pass. This time she would speak, no matter how the words sounded, no matter how much Richard was enraged.

'It's this. Either those women must leave this house or I do!'

Richard began to laugh, and even at that moment she observed that there was nothing false or forced about his mirth; he laughed as heartily, as almost painfully, as a normal man would laugh at some remark of exquisite humour. He sat down, laughing, in a chair, and, laughing, put up a hand to steady his tremulous head...It was quite a moment before he could speak.

'What an alternative,' he said. 'Then they must go, must they not? They can go back to Angelina's; but you, where would you go?' When she did not immediately answer, he went on, 'It is difficult to choose, is it not? You have so many friends! And of course there is always the rectory at Didsborough--what difference would one more mouth make among so many? I'm sure your holy brother would welcome you heartily, if only to help wipe the nine little noses--it is nine, or have I lost count?'

'Where I go,' she said, with some wonder that her voice should sound so clear and steady, 'is not important. What I am telling you is that it is impossible for me to remain here with those young women. Their presence puts me in a hideous false position; if you have a glimmer of reason left you must see that.'

'Could it be that at this late hour you are becoming jealous, Lady Shelmadine?'

'I have no reason, you should know that! Where you are concerned, Richard, nobody could take anything from me because I have nothing. But that only you and I know. In the eyes of the world, in the eyes of the young women themselves, I look like a compliant, conniving wife--nothing more nor less than a procuress. And that I cannot, will not bear.'

'It is a pity that there are no footlights,' Richard said. 'Mistress Shelmadine in her celebrated part, "The Wronged Wife"! I have invited into my own house some gentlemen of my acquaintance and a few young women to keep them company. I have not, you may have noticed, attempted to thrust them into the society of the fat Suffolk squires and their wives whom you regard so highly, nor have I demanded that you show them more than the merest civility. So what all the to-do is about I completely fail to see.'

And so, by that time, alas, did a considerable part of Linda's own mind. The impulse which had brought her in from the garden, which had seemed so strong and right and valid, had dwindled now--seemed, in the light of Richard's words, quite ridiculous. Mentally she fingered Rose's words again, 'You must of seen through us...you know what we are, but they had lost their accusation; all she could think of was that she had not Rose's courage. Rose had run off, penniless...but then she had her looks, and her lack of standards, and a destination.

'In any case it is only until Monday,' Richard said, with a return to his smooth, affable manner. 'After that the sanctity of the roof-tree will be restored...though we shall be back,' he added.

Better perhaps to wait. In the interval lay by some money; find a post...housekeeper, governess. 'Your name? You have references?' Dear God, where could one turn?

'And now, if that little bout of hysteria has cleared the air,' said Richard, rising, 'I should be very glad if you would ask Mrs Hart to tell the cook that the kidneys she serves are fit only for cannibals. How Alec could stomach them I do not know; it made me feel sick to watch. In fact,' --his voice took on a note of mock approval--'on the whole, my dear, your interruption was not untimely.' He strolled back to the breakfast-room, leaving her to the bitterness of one more defeat. Afterwards, in the calm of emotional exhaustion, there was plenty of time to remember the other things which Rose had said, and to wonder.

On the morning after the party had left--even the liveliest of the young women now quiet and jaded--Linda saw that the door of Mr Mundford's room had been left open. The black trunk had gone from the place where it had stood so long. Yet it had not been among the luggage which the travellers had taken with them, she was sure of that. She added this new mystery to the things which she wished to talk over with Hadstock. He did not come to the house on the day of the departure, so presumably Richard had given enough instructions to last out that day; but on the evening of Tuesday he presented himself as usual, and as usual began his mechanical report.

'Oh, leave that,' Linda said; 'we both know that it means nothing. There are so many things I want to consult you about. I know you'll think I'm silly again--like with the incense--but they are things that worry me, and I have no one else to tell. So please sit down and listen, and then tell me I'm silly--even that will be some relief.' Hadstock sat down and regarded her gravely. 'I don't think your fears--they are fears, aren't they?-- are silly at all, my lady.'

'Fears? That sounds so very definite. Yet one of those girls ran away. She said she was scared. And Simon was scared--the trunk has gone, by the way. And where? Not to London. I know, because there was such confusion, so many people shouting and giving contradictory orders and the young women seemed half asleep, that I went and overlooked the loading.'

'Oh yes,' Hadstock said. His voice was carefully noncommittal but her conscience--sensitive at this point-- thought that it detected astonishment and disapproval. No doubt Hadstock had 'seen through" the female guests and wondered that she tolerated them. And beyond Hadstock there was the village, and beyond that the dinner-tables of the neighbourhood--gossip, speculation, condemnation. She looked down at her hands for a moment while the hot blush rose and subsided, then she raised her eyes and looked at Hadstock almost defiantly.

'It's a mystery, isn't it--the disappearance of the trunk, I mean.'

He looked at her steadily, assessing before he spoke.

'If I told you what I think, what I suspect, you would hardly believe me. And I might frighten you, which I wouldn't do for anything in the world. Yet if I leave it unsaid and this goes on...and on, I leave you in an intolerable situation. I'm in an intolerable situation myself--'

'I think I should believe almost anything you said, Hadstock...And just to know that somebody else suspected...well, incredible things, would be a comfort in a way. There was that girl who ran away. She asked me to lend her the coach fare; I had no money at the time, so she just went off, on foot...Nobody mentioned her, asked about her, commented on her absence. That sounds unbelievable, does it not? You see ...' She hesitated; in all these years she had never confided in anyone, never voiced a complaint about Richard, and on the surface of her mind floated the thought that it was strange to begin now, to Richard's own bailiff. But below the surface there were depths. She knew that Hadstock was knowledgeable, trustworthy and on her side. And below that again, other depths; the little lighted window over the stable...his own remark, still audible, that he would not frighten her for anything in the world.

'You see, I did make a protest; and he said he had simply invited his friends to stay and had provided the young women for company. It sounded...well, somehow, so plausible when be said it; and yet when Rose--that was her name--just disappeared nobody took any notice. And for me, that put another face on the matter...that and the trunk's disappearance. If I told you what was in my mind, Hadstock, you'd hardly believe me.'

'And what have you in mind?'

'I think," she said slowly, 'that in some peculiar way it is all--Mr Mundford, the girls, the trunks and everything --somehow connected with that place...the temple of Mithras. I think Mr Mundford, absurd as it sounds, here in the eighteenth century, worships Mithras, and I think the girls were brought here to act as...priestesses or something. The one who ran away said to me, "I do wrong, I know that, but a natural sort of wrong; this is different." Those were her very words, I've thought and thought about them, and a few other things, and that is the only conclusion I can come to.'

She ended on an apologetic note, half expecting Hadstock to laugh, half hoping he would produce some rational explanation of it all, as he had done when consulted about Simon's behaviour over the trunk. When at last he spoke his words fell heavily upon her hopes of comfort.

'I think you're still a bit short of the mark,' he said. 'My lady, does the name Medmenham mean anything to you?'

'Medmenham? I don't think...no, nothing. Why?'

'It is a place in Buckinghamshire,' Hadstock said. 'And there, only forty years ago, in this enlightened eighteenth century, a little group of gentlemen used to worship the Devil. That is known fact. The moving spirit of the group was a Sir Francis Dashwood, and they used to call themselves "The Franciscans" and dress up as monks of that order, the more perversely to indulge in every kind of vice and debauch. It sounds like nonsense, doesn't it; childish, nasty nonsense...but there was more in it. After all, a belief in God presupposes a belief in the Devil, doesn't it? There is Biblical evidence; if you believe that Christ said "Love your enemies" you should also believe that He said, "Get thee hence, Satan." Anyway, one of these Franciscans --they also called themselves the Hell Fire Club--a man called Baker, went mad and died, raving, in the same lodging-house where a man who had some talent at verse-making lived. Baker's ravings, just as they emerged, but shaped into rhyme, went into a broadsheet which had a tremendous sale in London in 1762. There was a great scandal and the Hell Fire Club broke up the next year. Most of the members died violently, or untimely. But Alec Mundford lived on...just as Baker said was promised him. I should remind you, my lady.' said Hadstock with a slight smile, 'that the broadsheet was sheer doggerel. In its own words, the promise to Mr Mundford was--

  Thou shall live on and wondrous luck shall know, 

  Until of life and luck thou has now!

  When thou art weary thou shalt make thy plea,

  In the right hour and I will come for thee!

And I know it sounds crazy and far-fetched to the point of fantasy; but, like you, I've thought and thought about it, and I have come to believe...'

'What, Mr Hadstock?'

'That Mr Mundford is attempting to re-form, here, the Hell Fire Club. I think that trunk contained clothes...vestments--probably those same monks costumes from Medmenham--and the set of church plate. And I think you were right about the place. They must have stumbled upon the other entrance.'

'From the cellars,' Linda said. 'You remember Farrow said it would be somewhere under the house I Oh, and I remember now...Woods--do you remember the butler named Woods? On Mr Mundford's very first visit, in the middle of the night, Woods roused the house saying there was someone in the cellar. He'd been out very late and came in and heard voices or saw a light or something. They --Mr Mundford and my husband--couldn't be found for a moment, then they appeared, and my husband was very angry. He said he had taken Mr Mundford down to choose a bottle of wine and that Woods was drunk to be making such a fuss. Woods left soon after. It's funny, isn't it, how everything seems to fit in, and yet all adds up to something so ridiculous!'