face and if it produced anything resembling liquor he would have a drink before he went to bed.
When Amos had put the last stitch into Fred Clopton’s boots there was still a good inch and a half of candle left. So he turned gladly to a task more to his taste. He had reluctantly postponed—not abandoned, but postponed— the chapel-building. Until the Spirit of the Lord moved more vigorously among the members of existent chapels at Nettleton, Baildon and Summerfield, and more funds and more labour were forthcoming so that the site could be properly drained and the foundations properly laid, he knew himself defeated. But only temporarily. And the rickety, lurching building could be put to good use. Three of its walls were visible from various points in the road, and Amos was preparing three large boards.
He did not overestimate the literacy of the Clevely inhabitants, nor underestimate their curiosity. The boards would attract attention, and those who could spell out a word or two would be invited to read them out to the others. That was one way of spreading ‘The Word’. The passer-by, halting with his back to Berry Lane, would face the front of the chapel, where the entrance should have been; and there he would see in red and black letters on a plain board: ‘When God So Wills A Chapel Shall Stand Here.’ Coming up from the inn or the smithy, anyone on the road could hardly avoid the sight of the sagging south wall, where these words would meet his eyes: ‘The Wages Of Sin Is Death.’ Those two boards were already completed, standing face to face to the wall behind the work-bench. Amos now set Clopton’s boots aside, laid a plain board on the bench and thoughtfully stirred his paintbrush around in the paint. This was the notice which would show from Stone Bridge. It must be brief, because the paint was low in the tin. With part of his mind selecting, testing and discarding various texts, Amos found himself entertaining an undercurrent of thoughts. He remembered how, on the morning after Damask’s terrible attack on his integrity, he had gone to
call upon Mr Hadstock to ask if the bailiff knew any reason why he should have been given the grant of twenty acres. Hadstock had been very reassuring: ‘I know of no reason; but you may be sure there was one, and a good one, otherwise you’d have been left like the rest.’
‘Well, I’d be grateful, sir, if you could find out for me.’
Hadstock had asked Richard—‘The man seemed genuinely concerned.’
‘Somewhat late in the day,’ Richard had said. ‘The allotment was made in February.’ He was half inclined to add ‘Tell him it was because he has a pretty daughter,’ but caution prevailed.
‘Oh, tell him anything. What has he done with the land?’
‘Sold some and started to build a chapel on the rest, sir.’
‘Then tell him I made that special allotment hoping he would use it for that purpose. Don’t look so sceptical, Hadstock. Do you doubt my altruism?’
So Amos, in taking the land as a gift from God, had been right and Damask wrong. The chapel’s collapse was not a rebuke, it was just one more test of faith. And by using the site as a place for displaying notices Amos was showing that he was still full of faith and devotion and loyalty. What should the third wall announce to the world? Suddenly he knew; the message was brief, profoundly true, and voiced a fact of which many people in Clevely seemed to have lost sight and of which they might well be reminded.
‘The Earth Is The Lord’s,’ Amos wrote.
(Soon after the three boards were in place some anonymous wit, profiting by the lessons he had received in Sunday School, scrawled along the lower edge of that one: ‘But Skwire grabbed it.’)
The carriage, its lights dimmed and yet magnified in size by the fog, was waiting at the gate of the Dower House. The driver, heavily muffled, sat aloft and neither stirred nor spoke as she approached. Mr Mundford himself opened the door, alighted and helped her in. Immediately
the carriage set off. Inside the closed vehicle it was quite dark. Mr Mundford had to fumble about in order to find her hand.
‘You’re cold,’ he said kindly. ‘Not nervous, are you? I assure you again that there is nothing to be nervous about, nothing in the least. But it has turned cold and we have quite a long drive. So …” His hand left hers, and she heard him moving about; then his hand found hers again and pressed a small flat bottle into her fingers.
‘Take a good drink of that,’ he said, ‘it will warm you.’
The liquid was itself cold, almost without flavour, and quite unrecognisable. Since the Saunders’ depredations had ceased and Miss Parsons’ financial situation had improved, such luxuries as wine and brandy had returned to the Dower House; Mr Mundford’s draught was something quite unfamiliar, however, and rather disappointing, neither pleasing the palate nor warming the stomach. Soon, however, she felt its effect, a warm lassitude wove itself about her; it was as though she had crept into bed on a chilly night, felt the light weight of the blankets, the softness of the pillows and begun to drift towards sleep. But she must not sleep now, that would never do. She had to help Mr Mundford and in return he would give her her heart’s desire. She struggled against the torpor; and then, all at once, was free of it, free of everything, free of her body. The ‘I’ which was Damask Greenway rose and floated, hovered somewhere in the space enclosed by the hood of the carriage and looked down upon the body which it had inhabited. There it sat with its hair prettily curled, its yellow skirts demurely spread, its little white hands folded together … just like a doll waiting for somebody to pick it up and involve it in a game of make-believe. The real Damask, airy and free, watched with interested approval.
The carriage jolted and swayed, turned several corners; it was, as Mr Mundford had said, quite a long drive, and slow, of course, because of the fog. But it stopped at last and Mr Mundford alighted and held out his hand to the doll which rose with easy grace and stood beside him; the
real Damask left the carriage at the same time and hovered, watchful, above the doll’s head. The carriage drove away immediately. Mr Mundford took the doll by the arm and led it through a doorway, along a passage, through another doorway and down some stairs into what looked like a cellar, then through another doorway and down a long sloping passage where it was very cold. The doll shivered. They came to a place where a great stone slab had been removed from a wall, leaving a wide gap through which they passed and entered a vast place lined with tall pillars and lighted by candles, and decorated by large white figures which stood at intervals along the walls beyond the pillars. A strange place.
Almost immediately Sir Richard Shelmadine joined them. Mr Mundford said, in an ordinary voice, ‘All well?’ and Sir Richard nodded and went close to the doll in the yellow dress, regarding it with interest but no favour.
Mr Mundford moved away a little and came back carrying two glasses and gave one each to the doll and Sir Richard; then he fetched a little plate upon which lay three tiny biscuits. They each took one. Mr Mundford turned away again, and when he joined the group he too held a glass and a little biscuit. The real Damask was rather afraid that the doll’s porcelain fingers would break the biscuit, and that would be a bad thing because this was a ceremony. Before they ate or drank Mr Mundford said something which reminded Damask of Amos’s ‘Grace before meat’, but this was in a language she did not know. The doll managed beautifully: drank its wine, which was heavy and sweet, and ate the biscuit, which was so frail that it seemed to melt in the mouth. Then Mr Mundford lighted some other candles which immediately gave off a horrible, stifling odour; the reals ones he extinguished, saying some more of the unknown words as each one went out. In the subdued light one noticed the ‘ fire for the first time; a red, glaring fire like a sunset on a stormy evening. In its glow the doll began to take off its clothes, and there was no more embarrassment or any
other feeling attached to that disrobing than there would have been to the undressing of a doll. After one glance the real Damask, hovering high under the groined roof, paid no more heed but turned her attention to what Mr Mundford was doing to some birds which looked like pheasants, but more brightly feathered, more beautiful than any pheasants could ever be.