‘Why?’ Her interest was without a tinge of disappointment, Clevely or anywhere else in the world all one to her as long as Danny was there.
‘I’ll tell you inside. I can’t go through it twice.’
They busied themselves with the horse, closed the
stable door and crossed the yard.
‘Did she ask too much? Mrs Fuller asked in a flat voice, barely looking up from dishing the dumplings. ‘No. She’s going to be married.’
‘What! Martha Bowyer? She must be fifty and more like a carthorse than a woman,’ cried Mrs Fuller.
‘Maybe. Nevertheless she’s going to be married. And why do you think she’s back in Clevely?’ ‘To sell her place, of course.’
‘No. This man she went to keep house for asked her to marry him on Sunday night. She said yes, and left on Monday morning because it wouldn’t be right for an engaged couple to be under the one roof. She said that, solemn as a judge; she did, truly.’
Danny leaned back in his chair and laughed. Sally joined in the laughter, and so, after a moment’s hesitation, did Mrs Fuller.
‘That beats all,’ she said. ‘But what about her place, Danny?’
‘They’re going to live there. The man has a bit of money—enough to stock the place anyway.
The last glint of amusement faded from Mrs Fuller’s eyes, leaving them cold and curiously empty.
‘I see,’ she said. ‘Then there’s only one glimmer of hope left. We’ll hev to ask Lady Shelmadine to let us stay on.’
Danny’s spirits rushed downwards at this new proof of tenacity to a place; he said, a trifle sharply:
‘You can’t count on that I She’d be bound to stick to what he said—him dying so lately and the way he did!’
‘I don’t see it,’ said Mrs Fuller, setting her mouth stubbornly. ‘I been through all that. Your dad died sudden; but if he’d done something mean and cruel just afore he died—which he never would, as we all know— I’d of been only too glad to put it right. And if you’re too backward to go and ask, then I will.’
‘I don’t see the point of stopping on at Clevely where I can’t get my hands on any arable,’ Danny said. ‘How can I get on, buying all my winter feed at millers’ prices
and with nowhere to put my good muck? This way I’ll be stuck in that old office till I die!’ He looked sulky and attacked his dumplings as though they had done him an injury. Sally waited in vain for a word of praise.
It was then that a knock fell on the door. They all jumped at the sound. It was late for callers.
Danny rose and went to the door and opened it cautiously, gave an exclamation of surprise and widened the aperture, the wind-whipped colour in his thin face deepening a little as he said:
‘Hullo.’
‘Hullo, Danny,’ Damask said. ‘I wanted to ask you something.’
‘Oh, did you?’ said Danny in a rough voice. ‘Well, I once asked you something. Remember? Whatever you want with me, the answer is the same as I got.’
‘Danny Fuller!’ said his mother. ‘Step in, Damask. Come to the fire.’
Quite apart from any consideration of civility for old times’ sake, curiosity alone would have issued the invitation. Damask Greenway’s clothes and demeanour had been the talk of the parish when she was just the old lady’s companion, a sort of servant; heaven knew how she’d look and behave now that she was an heiress, all that big house and the land and the money left to her outright.
Save that the dress she wore was dead black, with a rough frieze cape of the same colour, the Damask who stepped into the Fullers’ kitchen was much the same as the one who had once visited the house to be inspected and who had won Mrs Fuller’s approval. The cleanly washed, undecked face was the same, though a little thinner; the hair dragged back smoothly and dressed in hard looking plaits was the same; and so was the manner, a little prim, a little nervous.
Sally said ‘Hullo, Damask’ in her usual careless friendly manner, and Damask returned the greeting just as she had always done in the past, but stiffly.
Danny kicked the door shut and went back to his place at the table.
‘You’ll excuse us if we get on—supper’s getting cold.’ He nodded to Sally to proceed with her meal.
‘I don’t wish to interrupt you,’ Damask said. ‘I can talk as you eat. It won’t take long.’
‘Sit down, my dear, do, and have a bite,’ Mrs Fuller said, throwing one curious glance at Damask and another, even more curious, at Danny. Never, never in all her days had she known Danny behave so rudely—even to a girl he had jilted. Surely if there was a grievance it was Damask’s!
‘No, thank you, Mrs Fuller. I’ve had supper.’
‘Well, leastways sit down.’
Damask did so, her feet in their heavy plain shoes placed side by side, the skimpy folds of the ugly black dress falling primly, her hands folded in her lap, just the way Danny remembered. She turned her eyes on him, and that brought to mind the way she had looked at him on the night he’d gone to ask about hiring some land—but this was the old look, grave and friendly, with something innocent about it; the look she had turned on him when she had said she couldn’t walk out with anyone who swore or went in the Black Horse. All at once he remembered the smell of her too-clean, soap-and-the-ghost-of-lavender smell. Through the piece of dumpling in his mouth he said gruffly:
‘Well? What you you want?’
‘I came to ask whether you had all the land you wanted.’
‘Ha! Ha! Wouldn’t you like to know?’
‘Danny! What’s got into you tonight? That’s what I should like to know!’ said Mrs Fuller. ‘You’ll have to excuse him, Damask. He’s tired; and we’ve just had another disappointment. No, we ain’t got any more; there don’t seem to be no land in Clevely, more’s the pity.’
‘There’s mine,’ Damask said simply. ‘What isn’t let, I mean. I thought if you still wanted some … I don’t want it any more. Abel Shipton is buying back Bridge Farm and the other tenants are keeping theirs, of course; but what Miss Parsons got out of the enclosure—you could
have that, if you liked.’
Danny choked on a piece of dumpling.
‘Why, Damask, that’d be wonderful,’ said Mrs Fuller, her face suddenly red and eyes full of tears. ‘That’s the best news. Of course we’d hev it and be thankful. Why, I never reckoned … I don’t know how … Why, that’d be wonderful.’
Damask kept her eyes on Danny. The piece of dumpling slid down at last, but the effort had reddened his face still more and brought water to his eyes. When he spoke his voice was defiant.
‘Hire or buy?’ he asked.
‘Which you like, Danny. If you have any money…’
‘I’ve got the whole of twenty-five pounds which I went to offer Martha Bowyer tonight. And I’ve got my bullocks. What are you asking?’
‘Twenty-five pounds would do very well.’
‘Not for all that! Why, Cobbler’s Corner, poor damp place that it is, cost me a pound an acre…’
‘Twenty-five pounds will do very well. I’d rather sell than let it. I’m going away, you see. I don’t want to be bothered with rent-collecting. What land is still let Father will see to and use the money for the chapel.’
They stared at her in wonder and nobody spoke until the silence was embarrassing; then everyone spoke at once.
Danny said, ‘Well, I take it very kindly, Damask. If you’re sure you know what you’re doing.’
Mrs Fuller said, ‘I can’t get over the wonder of it. Now all we hev to do is ask Lady Shelmadine about the house.’
Sally said, ‘Where are you going, Damask?”
There was no need to reply to anyone. She stood up and said, ‘That’s settled then. Mr Turnbull will see to the papers, Danny. Good night. Good night, Mrs Fuller. Good night, Sally.’
She had gone before they had fully recovered from their astonishment. It was some moments before Danny broke the jubilant exclamations to say, ‘Maybe I should’ve walked her home.’
‘If you did I’d of come too.’ said Sally, laughing.
‘You know,’ said Mrs Fuller, ‘I verily believe she’ve gone right back to be Methody again.’
And that was true. As the otherworld experience faded she found herself left with little that she had not known before; there was nothing, really, that the stark, simple teaching of the Methodist faith did not cover. She had never heard of the Jesuit who said, ‘Give me a child until he is seven and after that you may do what you like with him,’ but she was a living proof of his theory’s validity. She had tried to be good and had disliked the wages of virtue; she had tried to be bad and turned away in disgust from what was, after all, the thing to which badness led; she’d had experiences of an unusual kind, seen and heard and known things that there were no words for, and she’d come back, in the end, to the things that there were words for … she was the lamb which had strayed from the fold, she was the brand plucked from the burning, she was the one from whom the seven devils had been cast out–-It was all in the Bible.