The old shepherd walked with him to the beeches, and Brat stayed there and watched man and dog grow small in the distance. Long after they were indistinguishable he stayed there, soothed by the loneliness and the great «hush» of the wind in the beech trees. Then he followed them down into the green plain until he came to the path, and let it lead him back over the hill to Clare.
As he came down the north slope to the road, a familiar «clink-clink» came up to him on the wind. For a moment he was back on the Wilson ranch, with the forge glowing in the thin mountain air and-what was her name? — Cora waiting for him beyond the barn when he was tidied up after supper. Then he remembered where the forge was: in that cottage at the foot of the hill. It was early yet. He would go and see what an English smithy looked like.
It looked very like the Wilson one, when at last he stood in the doorway, except that the roof was a good deal lower. The smith was alone, his mate being no doubt an employee and subject to a rationing of labour, and he was fashioning horse-shoes. He looked up as Brat darkened the doorway, and gave him a greeting without pausing in his work. Brat watched him for a little in a companionable quiet, and then moved over to work the bellows for him. The man looked up and smiled. He finished what he was doing at the moment and then said: "I didn't know you against the light. I'm unaccountable glad to see you in my place again, Mr. Patrick."
"Thanks, Mr. Pilbeam."
"You're a deal handier with that thing than you used to be."
"I've earned my living at it since I saw you last."
"You have? Well, I'll be — !" He took a half-made shoe red-hot from the furnace and was about to resume work when he changed his mind and held it out with a grin to Brat. Brat accepted the challenge and made a good job of it, Mr. Pilbeam acting as mate with critical approval.
"Funny," he said, as Brat plunged the shoe into the water, "if any Ashby was to earn his living at this job it ought to have been your brother."
"Why?"
"You never showed much interest."
"And did Simon?"
"There was a time when I couldn't keep him out of this place. There wasn't anything he wasn't going to make, from a candlestick to gates for the avenue at Latchetts. Far as I remember, all he ever made was a sheep-crook, and that not over-well. But he was always round the place. It was a craze of his for the whole of a summer."
"Which summer was that?"
"Summer you left us, it was. I'd misremember about it, only he was here seeing us put an iron on a cartwheel the day you ran away. I had to shoo him home for his supper."
Brat considered the shoe he had made, while Mr. Pilbeam made ready to call it a day.
"I ought to hang that up," Mr. Pilbeam said, nodding at Brat's handiwork, "and label it: Made by Patrick Ashby of Latchetts. And I couldn't make a better one myself," he added handsomely.
"Give it to old Abel to nail on his door."
"Bless you, old Abel wouldn't have cold iron on his threshold. Keep his visitors away."
"Oh. Friendly with 'them, is he?"
"Do all his washing up and keep his house clean, if you'd believe all you hear."
"I wouldn't put it past him," Brat said. And set out for Latchetts.
So Simon had an alibi. Simon had been nowhere near the cliffs that afternoon. He had never been out of the Clare valley.
And so that was that.
On his way home up the ride between the paddocks he met Jane. Jane had every appearance of "hanging around," and he wondered if it was to intercept him that she lingered there. She was talking to Honey and her foal, and made no effort to efface herself as she had done hitherto at his approach.
"Hullo, Jane," he said, and joined in the intercourse with Honey to give her time. Her small pale face had flushed, and she was evidently struggling with a quite unusual emotion.
"It's about time we were going home to wash up," he suggested at last, as she seemed no nearer speech.
She dropped her hand from Honey's head and turned to face him, braced for effort.
"I wanted to say something to you. Do you mind?"
"Something you want me to do for you?"
"Oh, no. Nothing like that. It's just that I wasn't very nice to you when you came home from America, and I want to apologise."
"Oh, Jane," he said, wanting to take the small brave figure in his arms.
"It wasn't because I wanted to be horrid to you," she said, anxious that he should understand. "It was because-it was because — "
"I know why it was."
"Do you?"
"Yes, of course. It was a very natural thing to feel."
"Was it?"
"In fact, all things considered, it does you credit."
"Then you'll accept my apology?"
"I accept your apology," Brat said gravely, and they shook hands.
She did not immediately put her arm through his as Ruth would have done. She walked beside him in a grown-up fashion, talking politely about the chances of Honey's foal in the market, and what it should be called. The matter of the name was such an absorbing and exciting one that presently she forgot her self-consciousness, so that by the time they reached the house she was chattering unreservedly.
As they crossed the wide gravel sweep, Bee came to the door and stood there watching them come.
"You are going to be late for dinner, you two," she said.
22
So Brat took possession of Latchetts and of everyone in it, with the exception of Simon.
He went to church on Sunday and submitted to being stared at for an hour and a half with time off for prayers. The only people not in Clare Church that morning were the Nonconformists and three children who had measles. Indeed, there were, as Bee pointed out, several members of the congregation whose normal place of Sunday worship was the blue brick barn at the other end of the village, and who had decided to put up with ritual and prelacy this once in order to share in the sensation of his appearance. As for the orthodox flock, there were individuals there, Bee said, who had not entered a church since their last child was christened. There was even Lana Adams who, as far as anyone knew, had not been in any church since her own baptism in the blue brick barn some twenty years ago.
Brat sat between Bee and Eleanor, and Simon on the other side of Bee. The twins were beyond Eleanor; Ruth wallowing in the drama and singing hymns loudly with a rapt expression, and Jane looking at the congregation with stony disapproval. Brat read the Ashby tablets over and over again, and listened to the Rector's unemphatic voice providing the inhabitants of Clare with their weekly ration of the abstract. The Rector did not preach, in the accepted meaning of the term. He sounded as if he were arguing the matter out for himself; so that, if you shut your eyes, you could be in a chair at the other side of the Rectory fireplace listening to him talk. Brat thought of the fine variety of preachers who had come to take Sunday service at the orphanage: the shouters, the between-you-and-me-ers, the drama merchants who varied their tones and dropped their voices like amateur reciters, the hearties, the mincing aesthetes; and he thought that George Peck came very well out of the comparison. George Peck really did look as if he were not thinking about himself at all; as if he might conceivably have become a clergyman even if there had been no such inducement as public appearances in a pulpit.
After service Brat went to Sunday lunch at the Rectory, but not until he had run the gamut of village good wishes. Bee had come out of church at his side ready to pilot him through the ordeal, but she was accosted by Mrs. Gloom, and he was left defenceless. He looked in panic at the first of these unknowns bearing down on him: a big apple-cheeked woman with pink roses in a crinoline hat. How was he going to pretend to remember her? Or all the others who were obviously lingering?