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

regarded as one more endearing eccentricity, and when anyone in the six parishes said that something had cost or was worth 'a Shelmadine' everyone knew that it meant two guineas.
    The high wall was broken at one point by a pair of wrought-iron gates, similar in pattern to, though of less impressive size than, those of the Manor, and when he reached them Sir Charles slowed down and sat for a moment staring through at the neglected, moss-grown drive which cut through the tangled, overgrown laurels and lilacs of the shrubbery and past the ill-shaven lawn to the house whose canopied door and window-sills and shutters were all in sad need of paint. He was saddened by what he saw. Still, it was no business of his. The Dower House had been sold to a seafaring man, a Captain Parsons, who was reputed to have made a fortune in the slave trade. He had one daughter, and a good many young men from families like the Shelmadines, recently impoverished, had made a bid for her hand. Charles Shelmadine himself had 'taken a shot at her', was in fact dancing with her at a ball in the Assembly Rooms at Baildon, with old Captain Parsons beaming his approval, when he fell in love, at first sight, across the width of the ballroom, with the beautiful, crazy creature whom he had married and with whom he had spent three enchanting, terrible years. The shames, the shocks, the anxieties, the delights and ecstasies of that brief married life, and its appalling end, would have left a mark on many men to the end of their days, but Charles Shelmadine had possessed then the rudiments of the art which in later years he perfected, of shutting out of his mind anything unpleasant about which he could not take positive action. In quite a short time he was able to think that it was a blessing that Felicity had died before his attempts to indulge her whims and demands had ruined the estate all over again. As it was, she had, in bearing the son in whom he had so much delighted, sown the seed for a bitter harvest.
    Now, halted by the gate of the Dower House, all these memories merely brushed the fringe of his mind, which was focused upon the question of whether or not to call upon Miss Amelia this afternoon. It had until recently been his habit to call once, at least, in a month; often he paid an extra visit. She had never married, despite her many chances; like others with her advantages, she had been very choosy and hard to please. With the passing of time she had grown domineering and sharp of tongue, but Sir Charles had derived considerable pleasure from his visits to her. She listened intelligently and sympathetically, and he had once or twice found himself telling her things which he had never told anyone else; and she understood the value of money as few women did. Lately she seemed to have grown miserly; for the last three years the house and grounds had deteriorated, and when, on a recent visit, he had exercised the privilege of an old friend and tried to bring the talk round to her personal financial problems she had been very evasive--so much so that she sounded vague and rambling. And she had offered him, instead of the Madeira which he expected in that house and considered his due, some very inferior Marsala-- without a word of apology.
    No, he would not visit her this afternoon. The rumpus with Fuller was quite enough. When he had administered the well-merited prod to Greenway he'd ride on and visit the little hunchback, Jacky Fenn, and hear how he was getting on with his fiddle-playing. That would put him in perfect good humour again.
    'Come up, Bobby,' he said, and they jogged along to the end of the red wall.
    At this point the highway made a boundary between Clevely and the neighbouring parish of Minsham All Saints. The latter had been enclosed farther back than even Sir Charles could remember, and now, on his left hand as he rode, the hawthorn hedges were high enough to shut out the view; but on the right hand there was view enough, for on that side