of her eyes.
Quite happily Miss Parsons allowed herself to be led
home.
That Mr Turnbull—Mr Lawyer Turnbull, as many people called him—was a kindly man was evident in the way in which he received his roughly dressed, roughly spoken visitor and allowed him to sit down and tell his story without interruption. But when Matt had finished the lawyer allowed his amusement to show plainly.
‘Really,’ he said. ‘One of the most ingenious ideas I have ever encountered.’ He leaned back in his chair and gave Matt an appreciative look. ‘Whose idea was it?’
Matt was not quite sure of the meaning of the word ‘ingenious’ or of ‘encountered’ so he hesitated for a moment before committing himself, and then said cautiously:
‘It was me that had the idea something might be a bit odd-like, sir.’
‘And I suspect that you hoped that if the signature were questioned at this last moment everything might be held up for another year.’
‘Well, if it did that it’d be all to the good. Arter all, a year’s a year when you look like losing everything.’
‘Indeed yes. Leaving the matter of Miss Parsons’ signature aside for the moment, tell me—how many of the Clevely Waste-holders have anything to show in the way of a claim?’
The Squire had asked the very same question. Watching the lawyer very closely, Matt said:
‘Matt Juby dug up a paper, and Amos Greenway— though he ain’t with us in this thing—did come down to tacks and spell it out for him; and that told how way back his careful old great-great-grandad did get leave from the Squire to build a cottage and graze his beasts. And only yesterday Bert Sadler’s wife hunted out one that looked just the same to my eye, but we ain’t had time to get Amos’s word for it yet. Thass about all, I reckon.’
No glint of pleasure shone in Mr Turnbull’s eye; he looked serious and concerned and Matt was encouraged to say:
‘Maybe we all had papers in the past; but you know how it is, sir—folks that can’t read or write don’t set such store by papers as them that can. And there ain’t much space for hoarding such things–-‘
‘No, unfortunately. Well, I’m afraid that in that case
the most the rest of you can hope for will be a charitable allotment. And that rather depends…’
He broke off, thinking how much better the small people of Clevely would have fared if the old Squire could have been persuaded to enclose, or by some means forced to enclose. Sir Charles’s very horror of the results of enclosure would have led him to mitigate its evils as far as possible. Mr Turnbull’s dealings with Richard had led him to conclude that the new Squire was pleasant, but not at all inclined to be sentimental.
‘That depend,’ Matt said, ‘on what the owners say, you mean? And that was what I had in mind when I went to see Squire. Then I reckoned I’d put it to Miss Parsons too; and, as I just told you, she said she was against the whole thing and never had signed no paper. Yet there her name is, plain as print. So I thought I’d ask you what you made
out of it.’
‘I think that it was genuine forgetfulness on her part. She is very forgetful. Or it might be that your request embarrassed her and she didn’t want to promise you anything and at the same time didn’t like to refuse point-blank, and so took refuge in … well, an untruth. I’ve known women tell far worse lies than that merely to avoid a moment’s unpleasantness; haven’t you?’
‘There is such a thing as forgery, as you should know,
sir,’ Matt persisted.
‘Indeed there is. But to forge a signature and then expose it in a public place under the very nose of the person whose signature it was supposed to be would be unusual, to say the least. And to whose profit would it be to commit forgery in this case? Nobody would gain anything…’
‘Except somebody as wanted to enclose and knew the old lady was dead against it,’ Matt said shrewdly.
‘Now, now,’ said the lawyer warningly, ‘you mustn’t start making such suggestions.’
‘And mark you,’ Matt pressed on, ‘anybody that thought of it could count on the old … lady never seeing it. She don’t go about. The chance is she never would of known the paper was there, not ‘less I went and told her. And I don’t reckon there’s many folks in Clevely know how Miss Parsons write. But that you do, sir, and so I reckoned I’d come to you.’
‘Well, if it would ease your mind at all, I’m willing to look at it; but I’m sure my opinion will only confirm it. I visit Miss Parsons once a quarter. I’ll come next week, on Tuesday.’
‘Thass very good of you, sir; and I’m sorry to hev took up your time.’
But the getting together, the waiting to see whether Amos would speak for them, the visit to the Squire, the visit to Miss Parsons, the framing of the intention to visit the lawyer and fitting in that visit, had all taken time; Matt, like everybody else, had to devote some attention to making a living. So there was a Sunday between Matt’s visit to Mr Turnbull and Mr Turnbull’s visit to Clevely, and that Sunday was the third of the three demanded by the Act for the public display of the notice. There it had hung for the required time, no formal objection had been brought forward by anyone important enough to be considered, and by the day of the lawyer’s visit the notice, with certain other relevant papers, was well on its way to London, where, upon receipt of it, Sir Thomas Blyborough, M.P., was ready to set the machine in motion.
CHAPTER NINE
As soon as he had done his part towards promoting the enclosure of Clevely Richard was free to turn his attention to the next item of his programme of reversing his father’s policy—the alteration of the Manor House itself.
Had she had the power, to oppose him Linda would have done so; as it was, at the first mention of his schemes she allowed herself to say, most indiscreetly, ‘Oh, but it is so lovely as it is.’ He made the predictable retort:
‘Doubtless to you, my dear; but then your experience has been unfortunate.’ He then spent a happy ten minutes pointing out the practical inconveniences and the aesthetic faults of the building she thought ‘so lovely’.
Compared with Flocky Hall, Bridge Farm, the house where the Fullers lived and many other buildings in the parish, the greater portion of the Manor was in its infancy. Richard’s grandfather had been in the middle of a building spree when the financial disaster of 1730 overtook him. He had added a Queen Anne facade, done away with many leaded casement windows, removed or concealed many heavy Tudor beams. Sir Charles, with his love of antique things, had often said, with truth, that he preferred Flocky Hall and had had a perennial joke with Mrs Abram Clopton—one day, when they both had time for such an upheaval, they would change houses.
Richard only compared his home with Greston Park, which Mr Montague, vastly enriched by his enclosure, had been able to demolish and rebuild in the Palladian style; he craved the wreaths and swags and medallions of the new plasterworrk made fashionable by the brothers Adam, the closed hearths with basket grates, the pillared entrance.
His own mother, during her brief reign, had succeeded in persuading her husband to have the dark panelling painted—the drawing-room white and gold, the dining-room a pale blue-green; and Linda, arriving forty years later, thought both rooms very beautiful, even though the unrenewed surface of the paint had faded and developed a myriad of cracks, fine as a cobweb. Richard said that the panelling must go, and both rooms be lengthened by fifteen feet. Fluted and carved marble fireplaces were ordered.
The prospect of steady work all through the winter for local labourers did a good deal to compensate for the loss of popularity among the poorer people which the move to enclose had cost the new Squire. It became evident, for instance, that Mrs Sam Jarvey at the inn no longer welcomed the discussions and grumbles about the proposed enclosure in which Matt Ashpole and the other Waste-dwellers spent their time. The work at the Manor brought a good deal of custom to her house, carpenters and bricklayers and plasterers earned good money and spent it recklessly. One day she spoke out, as she had told Sam she would if Matt and his lot kept on bellyaching about the Squire; she leaned over the bar and said clearly, ‘Now that’ll do, Matt Ashpole. This is a decent house, I would hev you to know, and I don’t like your language.’