‘Well, thank God for that,’ Julie said, almost crying again from relief.
‘Thass right enough to thank God,’ said Amos in his pulpit manner, ‘but you should trust Him too. “Trust in the Lord and wait patiently for Him”, as the Good Book says. If you’d hev done that, Julie, the chapel’d be the better off by a shilling I’
‘I’ll put my wits to work and try to think out some way to make that shilling right with you, Amos,’ Julie said meekly. ‘Did Damask look well? Did she seem like herself?’
‘Now I come to think of it, she didn’t. Well enough; but her hair was all over the place and her dress worn’t suitable. I remarked about it, but she said it was Miss Parsons’ wish she should wear it.’
Tunny she should be there,’ said Julie meditatively. ‘Her time at Muchanger wasn’t up till Michaelmas.’
‘Seems Miss Parsons wrote to Mrs Cobbold and asked for her. There, I’ve told you all I know, and she said she’d be running over again very soon. Now I gotta get back to work; I’ve wasted enough time as it is.’
The death of the donkey and the collection of contributions for a new one remained a focus of interest among the Waste dwellers for just a few days and then dropped
into limbo suddenly. For on the next Sunday morning there was the preliminary notice about the intention to enclose tacked on to the church door.
Those Waste dwellers who through piety or policy attended Morning Service brought back the shocking news.
‘Well, now,’ said Matt, when he heard it, ‘I reckoned he’d do it, but I never reckoned he’d move so fast. You’d think he’d wait till he’d settled his bum in the old chap’s saddle afore turning everything topsy-turvy. Well, boys, this is serious. We gotta move fast too; and we gotta move all together if what happened at Greston ain’t to happen here.’
Amos, who was preaching at Summerfield that Sunday morning and attending chapel at Nettleton in the evening, first heard the news at about six o’clock on the Monday evening. He had been hard at work all day and Was just about to set off for Bridge Farm to squeeze in an hour’s work on the new chapel before darkness fell. Never in his life before had he so deplored the shortening of the daylight hours which came with summer’s end. Very soon, he decided, he would change the programme of his days. He would work on the chapel in the morning and do his ordinary work at home by candlelight; but that change must be postponed as long as possible because then he would work alone and his progress would be very slow. It took two to handle the timbers properly.
As he opened his door he was confronted with a group of his male neighbours, headed by Matt Ashpole.
‘You off somewhere, Amos? We was just coming to see you. We want a bit of help?’
That was an appeal which Amos could not ignore, pressed for time as he was, so with an inward sigh he asked what it was they wanted of him; and Matt, who had taken on the role of spokesman, explained that everybody on the Waste must join in the endeavour to resist the enclosure, and that his neighbours were counting on Amos for help, ‘You being handy with your pen, Amos, and glib with your tongue, as we all know.’
More concerned with the waning of the light than with the future of the Waste, Amos said hurriedly that he’d think it over; it was a thing which needed thinking over anyway, and just now he had a job to do. They could come and talk to him about it again, towards the end of the week.
‘But we’ve gotta look lively, Amos,’ Matt protested. ‘This is a serious business.’
‘So is my chapel.’ Already he thought of it as his. The idea to build had been his; he had persuaded Shipton to give the plot of land; he had thought up the way of getting round the timber problem by buying the old ship’s timber’s; and he had done by far the greater part of the work. His chapel seemed near and urgent, this enclosure business something distant and concerned with the future. So, having said he would think it over, he pushed his way through the group and hurried away, but he did not go fast enough to be out of earshot when Matt said disgustedly, ‘Him and his blasted chapel! Can’t the silly sod see this is his tater patch in danger as well as ours?’
That speech may have helped Amos, when he came to think the matter over, to decide to dissociate himself from the resistance effort. He certainly thought over the question of time. If he were to ply his trade diligently enough to feed himself and Julie and keep up his contributions to the building fund and also go on with the building he would have no time to run hither and thither trying to prevent something the Squire had set his mind on and which would thus happen in any case. So when next approached about the matter he said that he had thought it over and had come to the conclusion that this was one of those situations covered by the text, ‘Render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar’s; and unto God the things which are God’s.’
‘Seizer,’ said Matt. ‘Who the devil …? Oh, I see. Ha, ha. Thass a good ‘un, Amos! Squire, he means, boys. Ah, he’s a seizer, all right. And naturally I’m all for letting Seizer hev what is Seizer’s: what I ain’t in favour of is letting him hev what is ours and was our father’s afore
us, even if we don’t hev no bloody papers to prove it.’ There was a murmur of assent, then somebody said:
‘Ah, boy, but how’re you going to stop him?’
‘Thass what we’ve got to think out. But I can remember back when they cut up Greston Common and so many folks was in misery, heving lost their all. Something was said then about they left it too late to put their case. One chap’d even got his paper—little old black scrap of stuff that was too, and nobody could read it; but he went and dug up the damn thing too late—fences was up then. I’ve hunted my place like a dog hunting fleas, and I ain’t found no paper; but I shan’t let that daunt me.’
Talk turned for several minutes upon papers; how diligently they had been hunted, the unlikely places that had been searched. Only Matt Juby had found anything that looked as though it might have value in this connection.
‘Well then, all the rest of our grand-daddies were damned careless old fellows. And maybe as well they were—don’t, we shouldn’t be here to tell the tale!’ At this point Amos turned away and went on with the stitching upon which he had been engaged when they entered his workroom to ask whether he’d thought things over.
‘So we ain’t got no paper,’ Matt went on, ‘but we still can try. And to start with we should tackle Squire and state our case. If Amos here ‘on’t go, I will.’ He ran his bright little eyes over the gathering and halted them on Widow Hayward’s son, lately come back from his soldiering and lacking an arm. ‘You shall come with me, Dicky. You got a case. There you are, fought for your king and country, give your arm for England—where’ll you be without that bit of Waste to grub in and grow taters and keep a pig? I don’t say Seizer’ll listen, I don’t say he’ll take no notice; what I do say, we’ll hev tried.’
Richard received the deputation civilly enough, listened to what Matt had to say, promised to bear it all in mind and sent them away to drink beer in the kitchen. Dicky Hayward was satisfied and reassured; but then he was a simple soldier and had not Matt’s lifelong experience of
horse-dealers and other tricksters to draw upon.
‘He was all right, very smooth-talking,’ Matt said. ‘But I noticed something I didn’t like. He says, “Hev any of you got anything to show in the way of papers?”; and I says, “Only Matt Juby”, and a sort of glitter showed in his eye, like it will in a chap’s that hev just sold you a broken-winded nag smartly doctored. Arter that I couldn’t stomach his talk about not wanting to ruin anybody and most like we could all count on allotments. If he didn’t want to ruin anybody, why should he be glad we hadn’t got no papers? Still, there we are; we ain’t done yet. I’m going to talk to the next on the list, and thass Miss Parsons.’
‘Fat lot of good that’ll do. She’s dotty.’