meals meagre and for some weeks counted the hours between Saturday and Sunday. Then one morning the old woman came accompanied by a little girl, a waifish little creature with great dark eyes in a thin, sad face. She helped to carry the basket and then stood watching the money and the foodstuff change hands. When it was Danny’s turn to be served something made him say, ‘Do you like toffee?’
‘She don’t know,’ said the old woman gruffly. ‘We can’t afford to eat it, we make it to sell. We ain’t lucky like you young gentlemen.’
He took his purchases and dropped back, waiting, whistling nonchalantly until the last customer had scampered away and the old woman drew over the basket the cloth which kept the dust and flies from her goods. Then he reached out and pushed all his fourpennyworth into the little girl’s thin, dirty hand.
He knew, even then, that he was not being charitable, or generous or kind—there were plenty of boys all about who would gladly have accepted even one mouthful; he did it to make the great dark eyes smile at him. And they did. After that, so long as he was at school, he spent his fourpence on the little girl. (The old woman always took the stuff away from her as soon as they were out of the school yard; but Danny had had his smile. And on the whole the child benefited, for the old woman was suddenly granted a glimpse of the future, the hope that one day there might be some reward for bringing up an unwanted orphan grandchild—if she appealed to the gentlemen.)
‘You know I’d do anything to please you.’ he said again, as Damask did not reply to his first protestation. ‘No, hell; no damn. I think that’s all I know, Damask. Come on, you tell me the other words I mustn’t say.’
‘Now you’re teasing me,’ she said, and tried to sound prim, but suddenly broke into laughter.
‘That’s better,’ Danny said, and laughed too and took her by the arm again. All in a moment something was established. The preliminaries were over.
CHAPTER FOUR
Damask’s fear of ‘talk’ had been well founded. Before Christmas everyone knew that Danny Fuller was walking out with her, and spice was added to the gossip by the rumour that he was a reformed character. At the Christmas-week market this rumour was abundantly confirmed: one of his former cronies had betted another five shillings that he would have Danny inside the King’s Head before the day was out, and with such a sum at stake exerted all his cajolery to gain his point. When he failed he turned nasty and said, ‘Well, I hope it’s worth it! I’m told that if you can get a Methody girl in the …’ and went on to say something very gross and offensive. Blows were struck, out there in the open street, to the great delight of the whole market.
In February Mrs Fuller felt it safe to say, looking up from the patchwork quilt:
‘I got a feeling that this one ‘on’t hev to .go very far afield, Father. I allust said, didn’t I, that the boy’d settle down and pick a decent girl in the end.’
Fuller, with the consciousness of Lady Day being within reckoning distance now, was little disposed to rejoice about anything.
‘Time enough to crow,’ he said, ‘when they’re married. And whether that’ll be much to crow over I ain’t so sure, Funny he couldn’t pick up a decent girl reared to farm work and with a bit in her stocking, same as we give Susan when she married. And there’s another thing—if he do wed Amos Greenway’s wench and they live along of us, she needn’t think she’s gonna bring her Methody ways
here. Cold Sunday dinner for the glory of God and a black look if you use a bad word! Not.’ he added gloomily, ‘that there’ll be much dinner, hot or cold, by the look of things.’
‘Oh, you wirrit too much,’ said Mrs Fuller, ‘Lawyer Turnbull and Sir Edward Follesmark said, didn’t they, that everything was going to jog along unchanged till Sir Richard arrived. And nobody but us knew about the notice, did they? You’ll see it’ll all be forgot, and most like when the changes do come they’ll be the ones you been hankering for all this time.’ ‘I wish I could believe it.’
‘You might as well. Never trouble trouble till trouble troubles you; thass what I allust say.’
Amos Greenway, who never heeded gossip at any time, was particularly immune just then; his whole mind devoted to the plans for the new chapel. The timber dealer, Judson, had fallen far short of expectations and quoted an extortionate price for the needed material, and Amos, depressed by this evidence of ‘lukewarmness in the cause’, was still seeking another source of supply. He had no time or interest to fritter away on trivialities.
One day Matt Ashpole came into the workshop with a bit of harness to be mended and said:
‘I hear young Fuller hev took up with your girl, serious like.’ ,
‘Oh,’ Amos said, vague and unconcerned as though Ashpole had mentioned a stranger. ‘This end’s clean perished, Matt. Wouldn’t hold the stitches more’n a week afore it’d break away agin.’
‘Well, tack it together. I might be lucky and pick up a new bit while it was holding, like. Done very well for herself, ain’t she? I only wish my Sally could do as good.’ ‘You didn’t bring her up right. No man can gather figs from thistles. ‘Tain’t in the nature of things. All right, I’ll do what I can, but don’t blame me if it don’t last.’
Julie’s attempts to talk about the affair met with no more success. She had only to ask whether Danny had been in chapel again, and off Amos would go, speculating
on the possibility of persuading the young man to take an interest in the Sunday School. ‘Its early days yet, of course, but once I’m sure it ain’t just a flash in the pan I shall ask him. He had a bit of schooling, you know; he’d be very useful.’
That kind of remark exasperated Julie, but she was accustomed, by this time, to thinking her own thoughts and holding her own counsel; and one morning in March when Amos was out she unlocked and opened the bottom drawer of the chest which stood by her bed. The musty, melancholy scent of ancient lavender came to meet her as she stooped stiffly over her treasures. First of all, taking up most of the space, was the blue silk dress in which she had been married, and a saucy little flat hat, ribboned with the same blue. Both showed signs of wear, for during her early married life, before Amos turned Methodist, she had worn them every Sunday and on many other festive occasions. She could still remember the day when Amos had said that they were ‘too worldly’ for chapel wear. ‘I ain’t suggesting you should chuck ‘em away, Julie; the dress’d dye some sober colour and you could spare a bit out of the skirt to fill in the neck like, couldn’t you? And pull the hat about a bit, more like a bonnet.’
She had saved for months to buy the material for that dress and stitched it herself after long hours of toiling over other women’s clothes. It was the only completely charming and satisfactory outfit she had ever owned and it was too precious to sacrifice upon the altar of Amos’s Puritanism; she had folded it carefully, sprinkled it with lavender and locked it away. It had lain there for twenty-one years.
Now she stroked the folds of the overfull skirt, the silk rasping under her work-roughened fingers, and wondered whether Amos would allow Damask to wear it for her wedding. Most likely not; but afterwards … surely Danny would not be so strict. Julie was sure in her heart that it was Damask who drew Danny to chapel….
What beautiful small stitches she could make in those days; now her fingers were clumsy. And what a lovely
shade of blue. Not so good a colour for Damask, with her yellow-brown eyes, as it had been for her; but the lace on the bodice had yellowed with age and would make a kind of match. It would look well enough.
She took out the small heavy parcel which had lain below the dress, unfolded the bit of linen in which it was wrapped and looked fondly at the handsome gold watch thus displayed. It had belonged to her grandfather and had been given to her by her grandmother. Neither Mrs Greenway nor any other member of the family could understand why she should be chosen to be the recipient; sometimes she thought the old woman had done it to spite her three sons and seven grandsons who all coveted it. However, hers it was, and when she was married Amos had made a neat little leather case for it and it had hung on the wall and kept time for the household. Then during the great gale in December 1789 the roof of Nettleton Chapel was blown off and funds were urgently needed for its repair. Amos had suggested selling the watch. Then Mrs Greenway had told a lie—and one which cost her never a pang of conscience.