On the next Sunday evening, as he slipped into place, he knew, before ever looking round, that Damask was there; and so she was, sitting beside Amos, who had not been called to preach at Summerfield after all. Danny edged along the seat, awkwardly because his legs were too long for the space allowed, until he could see her without obviously straining his neck; and there he sat, feasting his eyes on the knot of plaits he had once thought so regrettable, and on the straight narrow shoulders and slim waist in the ugly slate-coloured dress. A dispassionate observer might have considered him very lucky to have something to distract his attention from the sermon, for it was Abel Shipton’s turn to preach, and his sermons were a trial even to the most earnest and well-disciplined members. Not only were they painfully dull; they were delivered slowly, over-emphatically and in a voice which was afflicted with a peculiar disability.
‘Now-er we will take for our text-er this evening-er the words-er of the Apostle-er …’ Abel began, and Danny, who never even heard the text, was the only person present who could truly have said that he enjoyed the next
forty-five minutes.
This evening Amos had no difficulty in getting hold of the newcomer; Danny was waiting outside, just where the thick candle in the hanging lantern made a little island of light in the murky black of the autumn night. While Amos gripped him by the hand and spoke the words of welcome which he had not been able to deliver last Sunday and asked Danny to wait so that they could walk home together Damask stood silent. She knew why Danny was there; but she acted as though she had never spoken a word to him in all her life, nor ever would. Her silence passed unnoticed; everybody was shaking hands with everybody else and saying ‘Good night, God bless you’, and a good many people were busy lighting their lanterns for their long trudges along lonely roads and over the field paths. Abel Shipton came and joined them and they all four set out together, lighted by Abel’s lantern: but as soon as they had fallen into step Abel said:
‘Oh-er, I saw Judson-er yesterday-er in Baildon-er and he said-er he’d worked out-er the timber costs-er.’
Amos’s attention was immediately riveted, and as soon as a bigger puddle than ordinary shone up in the lanternlight Danny seized Damask by the arm and said, ‘Mind the mud’, and drew her aside; and after that they walked two and two.
‘Well,’ he said. ‘Surprised to see me?’ To say ‘Yes’ would be a lie; to say ‘No’ would imply that she had expected him and had been thinking about
him; so she said:
‘I think it’s wrong to go to chapel and make everybody think … well, things that aren’t true. Father might have been preaching at Summerfield tonight, and then how should we have looked?’
‘You think a lot about how things look, don’t you?’ Danny said, not critically, just pursuing a line of interest. ‘Well—it says in the Bible to avoid sin and the appearance of sin: I can’t remember the exact words, but I understand the meaning.’
‘And is walking along with me a sin?’
‘You know what I mean and you know how it looks. I felt awful when Father was welcoming you in as though you’d turned from … well, all your old ways.’
‘Maybe I have. I said you should give me a chance, didn’t I, Damask?’
She made no answer. He cast about in his mind for something impersonal and inoffensive to say and hit upon the topic which had eclipsed all others during the past week—Sir Charles’s death and the changes expected as a result.
‘When I got home the other night …’ he began, and told her about the kitchen-turned-byre and the Squire’s reaction to it and the notice which now could be ignored. ‘Down in the Black Horse,’ he ended, ‘they were saying that the new Squire was as different from his father as chalk from cheese, just as the old man was different from his father. And Jim Jarvey from the Lodge said last time he opened the gate for Lawyer Turnbull he told him the new Squire was in India and he’d sent a letter off with the news. People make fortunes in India; maybe he has and’ll come back and build us all new byres.’
‘It’ll be nice for your mother to have her kitchen back,’ said Damask primly.
They came to the cross-roads where the three roads met; one running on to Clevely, one to Muchanger, and one to Strawless. In the little green triangle where they forked there was a hump, said to be the grave of a boy who had hanged himself because he was suspected of sheep-stealing, away back in ancient times. Nobody tended the grave —if grave it was, for nobody was even sure of that—but everybody knew that the little mound always produced the wild flower that was in season—wild violets, primroses, cowslips, marguerite daisies, scabious, knapweed. One old story said that there was some connection between this grave and the Witch, Lady Alice of Merravay; it said that she had planted the roots of the flowers.
Here Amos always turned off on to the road to Clevely, while Damask went straight along to Muchanger. And here, as usual, Amos halted and said:
‘Well, good night, Damask. Be a good girl. God bless
you.’
Shipton halted too, holding his lantern a little higher as though in salute; as though they expected, Danny thought, that he was going to join them and leave Damask
to go on alone.
She seemed to think so too, for she walked straight ahead into the darkness, with just a ‘Good night, Father; good night, Mr Shipton.’ None of them, fortunately, could hear how her heart, so long uneasy, had suddenly started
to knock in her ears. ‘Mr Greenway, d’you mind if I walk along with
Damask?’
‘Why, no. But thass the long way round for you, ain’t
it?’
‘I don’t mind that. Good night, Mr Greenway; good
night, Mr Shipton.’
‘So that-er is why-er he came to chapel-er,” said Shipton,
a little sourly.
‘Why he came,’ said Amos, vaguely. ‘Well, maybe, maybe. God moves in a mysterious way His wonders to perform.’
‘Danny Fuller don’t-er. He move in a brash, sinful way-er, wenching and drinking. I shoulder be very sorry-er to see him go off-er with my daughter.’
‘Ah, but you ain’t got one. If you had you’d know that no harm could come to a properly brought up Christian girl same as Damask.’ He was absorbed in the problem in mental arithmetic just presented to him by Shipton’s account of his meeting with Judson; he was also distracted by the very terrible nervous affliction which always came upon him after ten minutes of Shipton’s company—he had to struggle against imitating him; and between the two bothers he had no time or interest to spare for his daughter.
Danny caught up with Damask and took her by the I elbow. I
‘There,’ he said, ‘now we can talk properly.’
Fire ran all over her at his touch, but she jerked her arm free and stopped walking.
‘I’ve said all I have to say to you, Danny Fuller,’ she said. ‘You go along with Father and Mr Shipton and leave me be. I don’t want you coming to chapel and making me look ridiculous. Nor I don’t want you walking me home.’
‘Now why not? Just tell me why not.’
‘I did tell you. And just now you said about being in the Black Horse; I don’t want … I mean it wouldn’t be suitable for me… with you going there.’
‘Well, I don’t see much harm in that; but if you do, Damask, then I won’t go in the Black Horse. Would that please you?’
A great warm, weakening tide seemed to lift her, hold her helpless, threaten to sweep her away. She strove against it valiantly.
‘It isn’t just the inn. It’s … it’s everything. You know as well as I do; you’re just pretending not to see, just to tease me.’
‘What else don’t you like about me?’
‘Well… swearing.’
‘I don’t swear,’ he said indignantly.
‘You do. I heard you say “Hell” myself.’
‘Bless you,’ he said. ‘D’you call that swearing’? You should hear..,’ He broke off. ‘All right then, no swearing. You know I’d do anything to please you.’
And that, at the moment, was true. He was schooled in the practice of pleasing in order to be pleased. He had had his first lesson long ago, during his year at the King Edward Grammar School in Baildon. There, every Saturday morning, an old woman was allowed to enter the courtyard and sell her toffee and meat pies and saffron cakes to such boys as were blessed with spending money. Mrs Fuller, who had insisted upon Danny having a year’s schooling when he was thirteen, was paying his fees with her ‘quilt money’ and allowed him fourpence a week. Accustomed to good farm food, he found the school