She conveyed to Farrow Hadstock’s warning about another entrance, and after that digging was done in a gingerly manner since Job Ramsden’s experience might at any moment be repeated. Farrow went down and gave the place a more thorough inspection and did find, at the
end farthest from the stairway, a great stone slab. ‘But do that mark t’other doorway,’ he said, ‘thass nowt to do with us; that lay right under the house. I only wish this ‘un did too.’ The delay—for nothing could be done until Squire had had his letter and replied to it—irked Farrow sadly; the days were so short, and getting shorter.
Amos also was worrying about the shortening of the daylight hours. Every day now he set off for Bridge Farm in the morning twilight and laboured away till dinnertime; but the work was slow, and growing slower, because each successive layer of timber had to be lifted higher and was more difficult to hold in place singlehanded while the nails were driven in. He had ingeniously dug a ladder into the ground at one corner so that its staves held the far end of the planks steady while he nailed his end, and that helped; but the staves and the planks were not of equal measure, and sometimes the planks slipped and sometimes the ladder shifted. Several times Amos had been obliged to call upon Shipton to come to his aid, and that had resulted in a really nasty scene with Mrs Shipton.
Mrs Shipton, who never had any time or desire to gossip with anybody and who went to chapel, not to church, had remained ignorant of the notice on the church door until long after it had been taken down. But at the back of the house at Bridge Farm there stood three fine walnut trees and in years when the crop was heavy there were more nuts than Shipton could spare time to collect and market. Shipton, for some reason which no one could name, was always muddled and behind with his ordinary farm work. But collecting walnuts—helped by a few of the youngsters from the Waste—and marketing them in the small quantities which made most profit was just Matt Ashpole’s job. So when the nuts were ripe he went along, paid so much a tree into Mrs Shipton’s hand, and while his small minions toiled had time to talk about enclosure. And there came that awful moment when Mrs Shipton said:
‘Abel, something’s going on that ain’t right. Why
worn’t your name on that there paper? You’re an owner; why should you be overlooked? Matt Ashpole say you o’n’t get your rights when the Waste’s cut up I’
She had the whole story out of him in no time, and she was just as furious as he feared she would be.
Next time Amos loped along to the kitchen door and asked could she tell him where Abel was because he wanted him just to come and lend a hand Mrs Shipton made short work of him.
“Chapel I am, allust hev been and allust shall be,’ she said fiercely; ‘but there’s chapel and chapel, I’d hev you to know. Thass one thing to live righteous and another to live daft I You’re daft, Amos Greenway, and you’ve made Abel daft. That there little bit of meadow was where I allust had my duck pen; that you must hev. Now you must hev Shipton wasting his time. The chapel at Nettleton allust hev been good enough—them that grudge walking a few miles to their worship ain’t worth anything to the Lord, nor to me, nor to you. You get along with your rubbish and leave Abel be. If I catch him wasting another minute on that wooden hutch of yours I’ll burn it down. I mean that, Amos Greenway.’
Amos believed her. He’d suspected all along that every evidence of Shipton’s lukewarmness could be traced to his wife. Nevertheless he started to read her a sermon about putting God and God’s business first. Mrs Shipton cut that short.
‘We ain’t in chapel now,’ she said truthfully, and went in and slammed the kitchen door.
So Amos toiled on alone except on Saturdays, when a few earnest souls came along to help him; and as the walls of the little chapel grew, so did the labour of adding to them.
CHAPTER TEN
Linda’s letter arrived at Richard’s London apartments less than an hour after he had left for Angelina’s on what his servant guessed would be an all-night session, so he dutifully ran along to Soho Square with it and it was handed to Richard at the card table. He glanced at it, recognised Linda’s hand and laid it aside. Some hours later, when play ended and he was about to rise from the table—in a bad mood, for he had lost heavily—he would have left it lying on the consol table on to which he had tossed it but for the intervention of a man against whom he had been playing.
‘Sir, you are forgetting your letter.’
Richard glared at him. He was the man whose luck had been as consistently good as his own had been bad. He was also—which obscurely added to his crime—a stranger to Angelina’s. Now that he came to think of it, Richard remembered that as they sat down one of the other players had made an introduction, but lack of interest had prevented him from noticing the name sufficiently to retain it. A dim-looking fellow with something vaguely clerical about him, either in his face or his clothing; and the face looked as though it had been carved from suet, with two bits of coal stuck in for eyes … but his luck had been quite phenomenal.
Richard reached for the letter, remarking as he did so:
‘You had devilish good luck this evening.’
‘I am usually lucky at cards,’ the man admitted. ‘That is why I play so seldom. One becomes unpopular; also— and this may surprise you—consistently good luck
eventually becomes as tedious as the other kind. But I am preventing you from reading your letter.’
He turned away from Richard and stood sipping the brandy which he had ordered when play ended.
Richard—though he was careful not to become too much intoxicated when at the tables—was no longer clear-headed enough to absorb much of the meaning of Linda’s letter. What it conveyed to him was succinctly expressed when a man, on his way out, paused and said casually, ‘You’ll be here tomorrow, Shelmadine?’
‘No. I shall have to go to Suffolk. It’s an infernal nuisance. I’ve some work being done and they’ve blundered on to something that puts out the plans.’
The other man said, with interest, ‘A priest-hole? We came across one when we made our alterations. Cunningly hidden too–-‘
‘Underground, my wife says. Something to do with Mithras, whoever he may be.’
‘Never heard of him. Well, get back as soon as you can. Suffolk in November! Ugh!’
‘Ugh, indeed,’ Richard said. He folded the letter and looked round for the waiter. The stranger had swung round and now said:
‘Did I hear you make mention of Mithras?’ ‘Possibly,’ said Richard, watching the waiter’s passage across the room.
‘If you don’t mind my asking—in what connection?’ ‘Perhaps you would like to read the letter!’ Impervious to sarcasm, the man said eagerly: ‘Indeed I should. Thank you.’
Richard tossed it to him and then turned his back and strolled over to another table, where play had ceased and last drinks were being ordered. Dropping into a chair, he said to his neighbour:
‘Do you know that fellow?’ He indicated the man who stood reading the letter.
‘Good God, yes! That’s Mundford.’ He reached out and touched another man on the elbow. ‘I say, Errington, Mundford’s turned up again. Over there, look.’
‘So it is. Funny I hadn’t noticed him.’
‘He was probably invisible last time you looked!’ There was a spurt of laughter, hearty enough, but with just a hint of uneasiness in it, like the laughter with which schoolboys greet a joke from a master of whom they are intimidated.
‘Don’t draw his attention,’ Mr Errington said. ‘I owe
the brute seventy pounds!’
‘His luck tonight was unbelievable,’ Richard said.
‘Oh. Have you been playing with him? Stripped you, eh? He invariably wins. They say the Devil engaged to stand by his elbow and see that the cards fell right for
him.’
‘Not to mention endowing him with perpetual youth.’
There was another spurt of the same laughter.
‘Well, he was one of Francis Dashwood’s merry Medmenham boys,’ said Errington. ‘And the Hell Fire Club closed down in … let me think …61 or ‘62; and he wasn’t young then.’
‘He certainly wasn’t,’ said a youngish man on the other side of the table. ‘I know,’ he explained, ‘because my Uncle Borthwick fagged for him at Eton and Uncle B. is seventy-four. Had his birthday last week and, like the damned ass I am, I forgot to offer my felicitations.’