‘She ain’t too dotty to write her name. She’d hev the next loudest voice to Squire’s when the time come, and maybe she’s dotty enough to speak up for us.’
So it was from Matt Ashpole’s tongue that Miss Parsons learned that her signature was on the paper after all.
The September evening had turned chilly and Miss Parsons and Damask were sitting by the fire in the library. Damask was shortening another dress to her own length —a velvet one this time—and Miss Parsons was reading aloud from Robinson Crusoe to entertain her as she sewed. Upon this quiet domestic scene Bennett came to say that two men were at the back door, asking to speak to Miss Parsons, and that one gave his name as Matt Ashpole.
‘Oh yes, I know him. He often does odd jobs for me. Let him come in.’
Matt, to whom shyness was unknown, stepped in boldly, followed, more diffidently, by Dicky. Miss Parsons said, ‘Good evening, Ashpole’; and Matt said, ‘Good evening, ma’am.’ And then he saw Damask, and, as he later said, he could have been knocked down with a feather. He did almost for a moment lose sight of his errand. Mindful of his manners, he said, ‘Excuse me, ma’am’, and then turned to Damask accusingly. ‘So thass
where you got to! Why’n’t you let your pore old mum know? There was she rushing over to Muchanger, killing Shad’s old donkey and crying her pore eyes out; and you only just acrost the road all the time.’
(‘And then,’ he said, reporting the incident later on, ‘she ups and give me a look and says, “I went across and told my father where I was at the first opportunity”. Now them’s ordinary words enough, ain’t they, and she said them quite pleasant, but the look she gave me went clean through me like a cold knife.’)
Recovering himself, he turned back to Miss Parsons and said, ‘Excuse me, ma’am. It was just that seeing her here, and thinking her mum didn’t know yet, put me off what we come about.’ Then, since the old lady was looking at him with no sign of dottiness at all, he proceeded to tell her exactly what he had come about, with Dicky, as support, now and then saying ‘Ah’ or ‘Thass so’.
In the interval since Richard’s visit Miss Parsons had made still further improvement. Now when her memory lapsed a little or she contradicted herself there was nobody to shout at her or mock her or say she was mad. Little Damask had a wonderful way of saying, very gently, ‘Now wait a minute …’ and then telling her just what she had been saying when her memory failed, or what she had said yesterday which conflicted with what she was saying today. As a result she was no longer frightened or worried; she was well fed, well served and much happier than she had been at any time since her father’s death. This evening she was quite capable of listening intelligently to what Matt had to say, and when he had done she said in a clear firm voice:
‘I quite agree with you. I’m very much against enclosure.’
‘Then, if I may make so bold as to ask, ma’am, why did you sign the paper in favour of it?’
‘But I did not. That is just what I would not do. Sir Richard came here and he …’ Part of her affliction was not that she forgot but that she remembered too many things too vividly, so that the past, instead of being in
perspective, decently remote, was always encroaching upon the present. Now, in her memory, she relived, without the buffering of the past tense, the moment when Richard had started to shake her, ‘He tried to murder me,’ she said.
Matt did not believe that, and fearing lest his disbelief and astonishment should show in his eyes he removed his gaze from her, looked at Damask, who bent her head over the needlework, and then at Dicky, who—parade-ground trained—could express a great deal without moving any feature much. His face now said, ‘There y’are; I told you the old gal was dotty.’
For a moment Matt was at a loss, then once again experience came to his aid. He remembered his grandmother, who had lived with the family when he was small; she too was a bit dotty and inclined to accuse people of acts of unbelievable malevolence. The thing to do was to take no notice. So now he ignored the accusation against Sir Richard and said bluntly:
‘Well, ma’am, if you didn’t sign, how do you reckon your name got on to that there paper?’
‘It cannot be on it,’ Miss Parsons said. But her voice was losing its assurance; something in her head, just behind her eyes, was beginning to pull tight and knot itself. Her – expression clouded.
‘But ma’am, there it is, writ plain for all to see. On the church door,’ Matt insisted.
‘But I … There was … The church door, you say? The church door …’ She had a sudden, immensely clear, mental vision of the church door. On the Sunday morning when Charles had brought his wife out of the church on his arm for the first time. Out of the shadow, into the sunshine; so fair, so radiant, so very beautiful.
‘I don’t think I can bear it,’ said Miss Parsons, speaking aloud, after all these years, the words she had so resolutely repressed then. To stand there, surrounded by the gaping, admiring villagers, and to look down the long dark tunnel of the years, alone, alone. ‘I don’t think I can bear it,’ she said again, and pressing her hands to her face she
began to cry desolately.
Damask rose, without haste, to her feet and went over to where Miss Parsons sat and touched her on the shoulder.
‘Now there’s no need to upset yourself, no need at all,’ she said. ‘I’m here and everything is all right. I’ll send them away. Don’t cry. Everything is all right.’ Miss Parsons ceased crying and Damask, turning her head, signed to Matt and Dicky to go away. Dicky actually set himself in motion, but Matt stood his ground.
‘To my manner of thinking, thass just what it ain’t. All right, I mean,’ he said, allowing a trace of truculence to creep into his voice now that he was talking to Damask. ‘That look to me like there’s been some jiggery-pokery somewhere. The lady say she never signed, yet there it is, her name, writ plain. You stand aside, Damask, my girl, and let me get this kinda straight.’
‘I am not going to allow you to upset Miss Parsons with any more of your nonsense,’ Damask said. She straightened herself and turned towards him, looking him full in the face. ‘Go home, Matt Ashpole,’ she said.
‘I don’t take orders from …’ He blinked and swallowed and started again. ‘I come here to talk to Miss Parsons …’ His voice trailed off inconclusively on the last word and his mouth stayed a little open. Then, abruptly, he turned and followed Dicky, who was already on his way out of the room.
Damask picked up the book and the magnifying-glass which helped Miss Parsons to read and placed them in the old lady’s hands.
‘Oh yes,’ Miss Parsons said, an expression of simple pleasure lighting her face, ‘we were reading, were we not? And just coming to the exciting part, dear child!’
Holding the book well away from her and manipulating the glass with skill, she read on and reached the moment when Crusoe found the footprint in the sand.
Damask had taken up her work and resumed her stitching, her head bent. She was conscious of Miss Parsons’ voice and polite enough to make, now and then, a
small appreciative sound; but her mind was far away, in the strange place into which she had fallen when the news of Danny’s betrothal had felled her to the floor—the place of the Voice and the Promise, the things for which there were no human words. From that place she had emerged with a power of whose nature and magnitude she had no conception; she had handled it tentatively at first, as a man might try an unfamiliar tool. Now confidence was growing, and skill, and ambition–-
‘There I’ said Miss Parsons with satisfaction. ‘Was not that exciting?’
‘Immensely exciting,’ Damask said.
Outside the Dower House Dicky Hayward straightened his shoulders and drew a deep breath.
‘Pore owd gal, mad as a March hare!’ he said. Matt made no answer, and Dicky imagined that he was depressed by the failure of the interview.
‘I tell you what, Matt; I don’t reckon they’ll none of them take no notice of our plight. Not so as to be a help. I reckon thass every man for himself now.’
Matt grunted. They reached the gate and Dicky made as though to turn to the right, cross the Stone Bridge and go to the village, but Matt turned left, towards home.