The Devil in Clevely (Afternoon of an Autocrat) Read Online Free PDF Page A

were slippery with it. O God, don't let that extra nail, that extra thorn hurt Him who never did a sin at all! Forgive me, punish me; I told a lie.
    (A plaintive, real human voice from the kitchen called, 'Damask, ain't you about finished in there?" and she called back, 'In just a minute, Mother.')
    And she waited. Presently God spoke. With the utmost clarity. He told her that she could work out her own salvation and punishment. She was to wait until Amos came home and finished off the boots. Then she was to deliver them to the Manor. By that time she would be late and must take the Lower Road to Muchanger--the haunted road. So she would show, in one act, the sincerity of her repentance and her faith in God who would protect her. It was all as clear and simple as any order she had ever received in her place of servitude. She got up from her knees, immensely relieved and determined to ignore something which' had begun to move, coldly and creepily, somewhere just behind her apron band. Hastily she finished the tidying of the workroom and went back into the kitchen, where her mother, with a shawl over her shoulders, huddled by the fire, clumsily and slowly peeling the potatoes for the evening meal. Every fourth Saturday was for the Greenways a feast day. Damask was free on that day from twelve o'clock, and by missing the servants' midday dinner at Muchanger she could be home by one o'clock or soon after, buying sixpenny-worth of pudding beef on the way. The pudding could be on the boil by two o'clock at latest and ready to eat by six. She could then share the feast, wash the plates and be back at Muchanger by eight. And there was enough pudding left to be heated up and eaten on Monday and Tuesday of the following week.
    'You do look muddled,' Mrs Greenway said. 'Come now and hev a sit-down and a bit of chat. Did I hear a knock on the door?'
    'Sir Charles, come for his boots. I promised he should have them tonight. Father'll just have to finish them off before he has his supper and I'll take them up.'
    Mrs Greenway did not comment upon this. There had been a time--nearly four years ago it had ended--when she and her daughter had been on one side, Amos on the other. They'd never gone against him, or defied him...but there it was, they'd been together and he'd been alone. Then there'd been that revivalist meeting at Summerfield with a Mr Whitwell preaching, and all of a sudden Damask had gone over to the other side. Mrs Greenway had been very lonely ever since. Religious fervour, she thought, was very much like some sort of disease; some people caught it, some didn't, no matter how much they were exposed to it. She never had. Loyalty to Amos had carried her to hundreds of meetings, she had sat through innumerable sermons, knelt through innumerable prayers and never experienced any change. She had conformed to pattern, never did any work on Sunday, wore plain clothes, attended chapel as long as she could walk to Nettleton, never said a bad word, but her heart was not in it. She would look round at her neighbours, Matt Juby and Matt Ashpole, and naturally be glad that Amos was not as they Were, drunken ne'er-do-wells; but wasn't there, she wondered, a middle way, the way of her family, where a girl could wear a pretty dress and curl her hair...and a man tend his business and make a good living and be proud of it?
    And wouldn't it have been better if Amos had made enough money--as he was well able lo do--to let Damask go and be apprenticed, as she herself had been, to the dressmaking instead of going to work in the kitchen at Muchanger? She had once ventured to say as much to Amos, just at the time when Damask was of an age to begin work, and he had looked at her with astonishment. 'What can it matter?' he asked. 'So long as she leads a good life, what do it matter where?'
    'Well, service is a hard life, and Damask ain't very big. And she's dainty-handed, she'd do well at Miss Jackson's.'
    'She'd hev more temptations, living in the