The Devil in Clevely (Afternoon of an Autocrat) Read Free

enclosed; Mr Montague, the parson, and half a dozen farmers did very well out of it, and forty decent poor men were thrown on the parish. That is not going to happen here!'
    The enclosure of the neighbouring village of Greston-- which had been mismanaged--was his stock argument against the innovation which he detested; and he used it so much, always quoting the forty poor decent men who had become paupers, that unwittingly and unintentionally he was building himself a posthumous reputation as the poor man's friend.
    'Forty idle fellows at Greston what had just kept going grubbing half a crop out of gardens and keeping a few half-starved beasts on the common lost their rights and now go out to work by the day for wages,' retorted Fuller hotly. 'And whether that be bad or a good thing is a matter of opinion.'
    'Then here's something that ain't. Your notice. Fuller. I shall not renew with you next Lady Day!'
    The farmer's thin face took on a grey dirty look as it whitened under the lingering summer tan, but his eyes did not meeken or waver.
    'All right then,' he said. 'Sack me! Sack all but the lazy and the lickspittles! It'll come, just the same. You can't hold back the tide!'
    Good-humoured again now that he had shot his bolt, Sir Charles said, 'I never thought of trying. But I can keep fellows like you from putting pigs in bed-chambers! I shall be by on Tuesday. Good day, Fuller. Come up, Bobby.'
    He rode briskly out of the yard and turned back towards the main road. The interview had ruffled him a little, but only a little. He'd half known that there was going to be trouble with Fuller; now it had come, and the way he had dealt with it would put a stop to all that nonsense. It was a relief to have it over and done with; and, besides, he had got his way.
    Fuller, who had not got his way--had got, in fact, notice instead--stood for a moment breathing as though he had been running, and then turned, stumbled back through the straw and leaned against the manger while sobs racked his stringy body and a few difficult tears brimmed his eyes and lost themselves in the harsh lines of his face. He wouldn't easily find another farm to hire-- the French war and the corn prices which offered such opportunities to men who could go ahead had at the same time put a premium on any sort of land. In the far north and west, they said, the ploughs were out on heaths and moorlands that had never felt the touch of the share before. Sod and blast the stubborn old devil, Fuller thought. He gave himself a shake, brushed his horny hand over his eyes and jumped back into the manger. Ignoring the threat of Tuesday's inspection, he went on hammering at the rack as though nothing had happened. The turnips had to be stored somewhere...Tuesday's row couldn't be worse than this; you couldn't be sacked twice.
    Sir Charles clattered over the Stone Bridge, an ancient structure only just wide enough to take wheeled traffic, but built with nooks in its walls to allow foot passengers to step back into safety. Immediately upon its other side he was riding alongside a high wall built of the same pleasant red brick as his own house and lodge cottage. The wall and the house which it encircled had been built at the same time as the Manor, and by the same hands, for the house had been, until fifty years ago, the Dower House of the family. Sir Charles's father, like many of his neighbours, had come a cropper at the time of the South Sea Bubble and in 1721 had been obliged to sell the Dower House, Bridge Farm and several hundred acres of land. The experience had taught him nothing, he had remained a gambler, both in investments and at cards, until the end of his life; but it had its effect upon Charles, who had never invested a penny in any stock or share and had made it an inflexible rule to rise from table the moment he had lost two guineas. This habit, once the subject of disgusted comment among his 'deep-playing' neighbours, had, as he grew to be old, come to be