‘Now that,’ said Amos, ‘is no way to speak to your
father. That look to me as though you’re forgetting the fourth commandment as well as a whole heap of other things. “Honour thy father and thy mother”, I must remind you. Honouring ain’t calling your father by his first name, nor honouring your mother ain’t smuggling things out of one door into another just to pander her. What else is in that basket?’
‘No concern of yours. Put that basket down; put it down.’
‘Bottles,’ said Amos. ‘Now what do they contain?” ‘Medicine. Stuff she should have had to ease her years
ago if you’d been half a man.’ She was breathless with
anger. Twice he’d defied her. ‘Who paid for it?’
Insultingly she told him the truth, heedless of the result for Julie.
‘It went on the bill with the doctor’s fees for tending Bennett and the stuff Miss Parsons had for her cough. Pay for it yourself if you feel badly about taking it.’
‘You know I can’t do that. Doctor’s medicine ain’t for poor people. But you earn money seemingly. You pay for what you bring your mother—tea and sugar and all; and until I know you do don’t you let me see anything else brung into this house.’
Once more she mustered all her forces and tried to beat down his eyes, but he outfaced her and she knew that this battle must be fought out on the level with ordinary human weapons. She had one ready, bright and sharp.
‘You weren’t so particular, were you, about making twenty acres of land you’d no claim to. Everybody was asking how you came by that, but I didn’t notice you concerning yourself. You can grab as greedily as anybody else when it’s something you want. Maybe that’s why the chapel went lopsided, built on ill-come-by ground!’
Now he was shaken; his face went grey and seemed to shrivel in on itself. He reached out his big work-scarred hands and set them on the back of a chair as though for support. Julie knew another pang of that same pity and let out a sound,-half moan, half protest. Damask watched
him with an almost visible amusement, gloatingly. He had defied her; let him suffer.
He spoke at last. ‘I never thought of it,’ he said. ‘Matt Ashpole and the rest come here asking me to account for it and I said I couldn’t, Thass true I never asked a question, never made a move to find out. Maybe I stand condemned for that. Maybe in your rage agin me, Damask, you said a true word.’ He swallowed audibly. ‘There it was, it seemed all legal and above-board, and I took it and reckoned it a gift from God.’
He had never, in any pulpit, spoken more movingly or with more dignity.
‘I’ll go straight to Mr Hadstock tomorrow … and ask,’ he said his voice faltering as he realised that the land was sold, the money spent. If something had been wrong about his allotment it was late now to set it right. He couldn’t, but God could___
‘This,’ he said, more firmly, ‘is a matter for the Lord. And I ask you, my family, to come with me now to the mercy seat and ask forgiveness for past sins and errors and guidance in the future.’
He looked from one face to another as he spoke; and then, as though to set an example, went down on his knees.
‘I must go now,’ Damask said. She laid her hand on Julie’s shoulder and whispered, ‘I’ll come soon and bring you a teapot.’ Then she went hurriedly.
Almost as soon as she had gone Julie moved stiffly from her chair and stiffly went down on her knees beside Amos, close enough to let him know that he was not alone in his misery and his bewilderment and his search.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
All-Hallows’ E’en dawned murkily. Mrs Fred Clopton, leaving the bed of unrest upon which she had worried the night away, peeped out at first light and burst into angry nervous tears. It was going to be foggy and the party— the most ambitious one she had ever planned—would be ruined. Maternal love had made her bold, and this year she had cast her net wide; except for Mr Avery and the Routs from Wood Farm, all her choicest guests had some distance to travel, and if it stayed foggy … She wept hysterically as she thought of the waste; the floor polished to glassy perfection for the dancing; Miss Trent, the music teacher from Baildon, already in the house; old Lantern and the boy whom he had taught and of whom he spoke so highly, Jacky Fenn, bespoken to bring their fiddles; the elegant cold buffet supper to be served in the dining-room; new dresses for herself and the girls. All to be wasted because the November weather had arrived a little too soon. Crazily she accepted it as a sign. Her plans would fail, Ella and Phyllis would never have another chance; they would marry local yokels, comfortably off, perhaps, but unrefined. It would all be wasted.
‘Cheer up, lass,’ Fred said, ‘Fog afore seven, clear afore eleven.’
‘Before,’ said Mrs Clopton with a gulp and a sob. ‘How can we ever hope to get on with you talking like a workman and then this fog?’
Mr Mundford, looking out only a moment or two later, regarded the change in the weather with pleasure.
He gave no outward sign, he did not smile or rub his hands or make a sound of satisfaction, but something stirred, deep and cold and certain within him. With the discovery of Damask Greenway he had known that all his material needs were met, and his next act had been to work out, by a study of the moon’s phases and certain astrological charts, the best possible date for what he still spoke of—modestly—as ‘the experiment’. When, after the first casting, that date appeared to fall on All-Hallows’ E’en it had so astounded and amazed him that he had worked out all his calculations again, without changing the result. He knew then that success was certain. He had the right place—a place of worship; mellow with the memory of many men’s yearning towards the unknown, the superhuman, yet free of the taint of the Nazarene. In that place, so long sealed away, the dark symbolic blood had drenched the altar in a ceremony that reached backwards to the beginning of time. Mithras, old god as he was, in Mr Mundford’s sight, a newcomer, but his rites were the old ones. The legendary Abel, second generation of mankind, had sacrificed his animals, and so the blood sacrifice was a close link with that.lost time when Lucifer was recognised for what he was, a rebellious angel, strong enough to do battle with those on the other side, Michael and his angels. Mr Mundford, set upon disinterring the thing which had been overlaid and lost so long ago—lost, one might almost say, in the very Garden of Eden—was able to put the right value upon this tenuous link with that lost time. Yes, the place was
perfect.
And he had—again by what seemed an accident—instead of an ignorant stupid female child, half unwilling, half frightened, bullied or bribed into collaboration, Damask Greenway. A mere novice, of course; but the sign was on her, some sort of vision had been vouchsafed her—oh, the naivety of her attempted description! ‘In a place … and light was something you could touch and handle; and colour … colour was something you could taste … and time was … you could see it.’ She’d had one
glimpse, that was all, but she had come back with something: the power to impose her will and the daring to use that power, even on Richard Shelmadine.
And he had, instead of a batch of rowdy, reckless fellows who approached the whole thing as a game, mud as they would have done a cockfight or a horse-race, Richard Shelmadine, that gnawed-out shell of a man, so emotionally void that he was neither credulous nor sceptical. He was curious, but his curiosity was merely the result of boredom; he’d tried everything and been, eventually, bored by everything; and he was greedy … he hoped to gain something. That his greed and his boredom actually cancelled one another out Mr Mundford had proved by lending him his luck. Greed had been satisfied, dwindled and died, killed by boredom; yes, they cancelled one another out and left nothing. Richard Shelmadine
was nothing, just the two necessary hands–-And then, as
a kind of decoration, the final finishing touch, there was the fact that, by the moon and the stars, this particular day, commonly known as All-Hallows’ E’en, was the chosen date.
Mr Mundford saw the significance of that. Like Christmas and Easter and Lammastide and Whitsun and various days, All-Hallows had roots in the past; the crafty organisers of the new Christian faith had seized on all the old landmarks of the year, given them new names, new reasons for being, and incorporated them into the Christian calendar. The horned masks and the licence of Saturnalia lurked behind the Christmas festival; the old rebirth of the year, symbolised by the egg-ceremonies, behind the Easter celebrations; and behind the lesser, only-just-recognised anniversary known as All-Hallows’ E’en there was the dark and sinister history of the November Eve covens. No date in the year would so much have suited his purpose; no kind of weather been so promising.