again, became affable and condescending.
‘I’m very much obliged to you, young woman. Poor lady, she isn’t quite … you understand; and now and again she gets a wandering fit and we’re so afraid that something might… Still, there we are, all safe and sound. I hope bringing her back hasn’t taken you far out of your way, my dear. Thank you again.’ She put her hand into the pocket which hung from her waist and brought out a shilling. ‘Please accept this for your pains.’
Making no move to take the coin, Damask glanced at Miss Parsons, who had drawn a little apart and now stood watching with the interested yet impersonal expression of someone watching an incident in the street.
‘It’s all right,’ the woman said soothingly; ‘she’d wish you to have it, I’m sure. When she realises she’ll be as grateful to you as I am. I’ll get her to bed now, after all this excitement. You take this, and be getting along.’ She thrust out the shilling again. Deliberately Damask waited in silence until the posture of offering an unaccepted tip had made its small contribution to the woman’s discomfiture; then she spoke.
‘I’ve come to stay,’ she said.
Mrs Saunders recovered herself quickly and laughed a little.
‘Oh dear me, has she been at that game again? That’s part of her trouble, poor lady. She used to keep six or seven servants, you see, and now she can’t really afford any, if the truth was told. But over and over again she’ll go out and come back with some poor innocent girl like
you–-I’m sorry, my dear, there’s no job here. It’s a shame
she should have raised your hopes; but there, you can’t really blame her, can you? You take your shilling and get along. You’re a nice tidy girl, you’ll soon find a place.’
‘Miss Parsons asked me to come and stay here with her, and that I am going to do.’
‘Now that is daft talk. I’ve told you how it is. She ain’t responsible. You get along now and don’t stand there wasting my time.’ Damask stood still and silent; Miss Parsons watched. When the woman spoke again her voice
was shriller. “What are you waiting for? Ain’t a shilling enough? You insolent little baggage. Be off, I tell you. If you got enough sense to understand her telling you there is a job here you got enough sense to understand me telling you there ain’t! Get along with you. Or do you want me to put you out?’ ‘Do you want to try?’
The woman made a sound of complete exasperation and came forward, two hasty steps and one hesitant. The belligerent expression in her eyes gave way under Damask’s calm stare. Suddenly she looked baffled.
‘My husband’ll be back in a minute. He’ll deal with you,’ she muttered.
Miss Parsons broke into a delighted cackle of laughter. ‘Now let us go upstairs and get rid of that unbecoming dress,” she said. She snatched up a candlestick, and holding it so that drops of grease fell upon each step she led the way upstairs. Damask followed. Mrs Saunders stood watching, incredulous. It could not be true … just a little scrap of a thing like that; why hadn’t she taken her by the scruff of the neck and thrown her out?
Twenty minutes later when Saunders had returned, heard the news and gone storming upstairs and come down again looking stupid and scared, she asked him the
same question.
‘I meant Co,’ he said. ‘I went up to her and said, “Come on, out of this!” and made to get hold of her. Then I just couldn’t. You know how I am about cats—that same sort of feeling came over me.’
‘But I don’t mind cats, and that same feeling come over me too,’ Mrs Saunders said. They stared at one another in silent dismay for a moment, then she said, ‘But we must do something. What are we going to do?’
‘We’ll leave it till morning,’ Saunders said. He had a distinct feeling that daylight would bring courage.
PART THREE
High Noon
of a Changeling
CHAPTER SEVEN
Even those neighbours who had been affectionately disposed towards the old Squire and were thus inclined to lay the blame for the breach on his son admitted at last that possibly there had been fault on both sides; or else the years and the long exile had improved Richard. Some of them remembered that the last quarrel had taken place at the time of Richard’s marriage, and these had been prepared to find the new Lady Shelmadine a quite impossible person; pretty perhaps—or why should he have married her?—but pretty in a blowsy way, vulgar, ignorant, and, now that she was newly rich, extravagant and ostentatious. To them Linda was a pleasant surprise. The ladies especially were strong in their approval. The gentlemen remained a little puzzled; she seemed the last kind of female for a man of Richard’s reputation to have married. Was it perhaps possible that-his wildness had been exaggerated? After all, even those who were fond of Sir Charles were bound to admit that some of his views had been very hidebound.
All through the late summer and autumn of that year there was much coming and going between Clevely and the big houses in the neighbourhood; Ockley and Mortiboys and Merravay, Greston Park and Muchanger and Nettleton New House. Richard took pains to be charming, and in the privacy of the connubial bedchamber made no secret of his purpose.
‘My father had a great reputation for honesty; and since he always represented me as a devil, I can see them all waiting for the cloven hoof to peep out. As no doubt it
will, but not before I have cast some doubt upon his honesty or judgment—I don’t care which.”
To behave in accordance with the unexacting standards demanded by a group of Suffolk squires was not difficult, and it was made more easy for him by the fact that he was, at the moment, delighted with his heritage and had not had time to be bored. He rode round the estate, being extremely affable to everyone; he instituted no unpopular changes and missed no opportunity of showing generosity. This year, in addition to the Harvest Horkey, the villagers of Clevely enjoyed a Cricket Supper.
It was taken for granted that he would enclose, and the matter came under discussion at the first dinner-party which the Shelmadines attended at Ockley. Sir Evelyn Fennel then said:
‘When you do, let Monty here by your model. My father enclosed in ‘74; when he began he owned fifteen hundred acres and when he’d finished he had fourteen hundred and ten. Monty, when he tacked up his notice, had two thousand three hundred, and when he put up his last fence had four thousand of them.’
‘And that, Sir Wichard, is not the pawadox that it sounds. The first figure, of course, was just the awable and pasture; the second included my share of the common
waste.’
Richard, who upon being introduced to Mr Montague Ryde Montague had dismissed him as a lisping young fool, now turned to him with attention.
‘Greston? Where forty decent poor men … eh?’ He spoke the last words in a tolerable imitation of his father’s voice. Everybody laughed.
‘All the same,’ Sir Evelyn said, ‘they do fall on the rates, damn them; never having worked in their lives, they expect to be kept in idleness. The thing to do, I understand, is to demolish the damned hovels. Once they’re homeless they move off and find work.’
‘But that is stwictly illegal.’
‘So are lots of other things.’ Sir Evelyn’s voice was dry.
‘Well, it’s pwobably sentimental of me, but I would
dwaw the line at destwoying their homes.’
‘Having enclosed to such advantage you can afford to pay your rates.’
‘That is twue. The thing is, Shelmadine, if you wish to get your enclosure bill thwough this year you must look sharp. The last Act demands that you tack up your notice for thwee Sundays in August or September.’
‘So there’s a close season for enclosing, is there?’ Richard said. ‘I didn’t know, there are a good many points on which I am ignorant. I should be grateful for your advice.’
‘I adore giving advice,’ said Mr Montague.
Two days later he rode over to Clevely and he and Richard shut themselves in the library with a map of the village and all the papers relevant to tenancies and sales and purchases of land which Richard had managed to sort out from the fantastic jumble in which his father had kept such things.
Lisping, elegant, effete-looking as he was, Mr Montague showed himself a good man of business, shrewd and orderly of mind.
‘I cannot, of course, guawantee that you will do as well out of your enclosure as I did at Gweston,’ he warned. ‘I was deucedly lucky in my commissioners and in the number of fellows who either had no claim to show or couldn’t pay their share of the expenses. Now there is a hint! Don’t twy to keep down expenses. As the largest pwopwietor you will naturally have to bear the greater share of them; but if, in the end, you have only two small pwopwietors who can’t meet their costs, then their land falls into the common pool, of which you get the gweatest share and in the long wun you are better off. I twust I make myself clear.’