Charles Palliser (101 page)

We walked out of time into a world grown suddenly quiet, for the snow muffled the foot-falls of the infrequent passers-by and dulled even the hooves and wheels of the few vehicles still abroad. As we walked there seemed to be nothing in the world but the motion of my legs and the gentle falling of the snow.

After some time the boy released his grip and I walked behind him, though he kept glancing back every few yards to make sure I was keeping up. I took no reckoning of the streets we were passing along, beyond noticing that we were heading directly away from the river into a district to the north of the metropolis that was strange to me.

The boy had got ahead and now waited for me to come up with him.

“It’s a long way still.” he said. “Can you make it?”

I tried to nod.

“You need something inside you. I wish I had some more wittles but that was the last what I gived you. Look, we’ll stop at a house as we go along.”

I shook my head for I knew of the danger of being given into the custody of the watch if we struck upon an unfriendly householder.

“Oh, don’t worry,” he said, seeing my expression, “we won’t get into trouble. I can always tell a house where they’re likely to sarve me. I ain’t nivver been wrong.”

I had no strength to argue and so we walked on, my companion now scrutinizing the houses we were passing and rejecting all of them. We were in the newly-built district of elegant streets and squares to the west and south of Islington. In many of the windows a tall white candle stood burning, wreathed in green-stuff. On the doors there were bunches of holly and laurel and several times we passed men unloading guinea-hampers from spring-vans.

As I found myself trailing after my new friend something about the situation — the snow, the cold, the hunger, the weariness, and an insistent boy urging someone on with the prospect of a welcome at a stranger’s house — seemed to remind me of a distant incident that had happened to me or that I had read of or been told about. But I was in no state to tell reality from dream, or dream from memory. At last it came to me that I must be recalling Sukey’s story of the “fetch”: this boy was my other self and had come to lead me to my death. I felt no alarm or dismay at this reflection.

At last the boy paused before a house in a prosperous street that looked to me exactly like all the others. But when I came up to him I saw that he was looking across the area railings into the windows of a room on the ground-floor which were only slightly above us. The curtains were not drawn although it

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was by now late in the evening, and since the chamber was brightly lit the scene lay before me with the clarity — though the similarity did not occur to me at the time for I had never been to the theatre — of a stage-setting. This was the more so since in my state of consciousness everything was heightened and sharpened. What I saw was evidently a cheerful and loving family sitting at their dinner: the father and mother, well-dressed and genial, beaming from the opposite ends of the table at two young people between them who were obviously their children — a young woman and a boy two or three years younger than I who were smiling across the table at each other.

Good things to eat covered the table in careless profusion. I saw in the centre the remains of a roast goose, and waiting on the sideboard at the back of the room were fruit-tarts, custards, jellies, oranges, chestnuts and hot-house fruits. Even as I watched a door opened and a pleasant-faced middle-aged woman in a clean white gown carried in a blazing plum-pudding which she elevated in state as she approached the table. Behind her walked a young maid-servant bearing upon a silver tray a steaming bowl of punch.

The family clapped in delight and smiled at each other. I was transfixed by the mysterious blue flame that flickered from the pudding. And now I noticed the holly and mistletoe hanging up around the frieze. Of course! It was Christmas! Memories of Christmases long ago came flooding into my mind and whether it was that or simply the effect of hunger, I began to feel dizzy and had to clutch the railings for support.

As the pudding was ceremoniously placed at the head of the table the father rose, went down to the opposite end and kissed his wife. And then each of the parents kissed each of the children, and the brother and sister paid each other the same compliment.

Then the father returned to his place and began to serve the plum-pudding.

Outside in the cold and darkness my companion and I stared at each other. Then he went up the steps and, to my surprise, instead of ringing the area-bell, pulled the handle beside the street-door. My dizziness was increasing as, still standing on the pavement and staring at the window, I saw the family look at one another in surprise as if wondering who of their friends would call at such an hour at Christmas-tide. But it was getting difficult to sec now for there seemed to be dark shadows at the edges of the lighted frame through which I was observing the room.

I turned and saw the older servant open the street-door. I heard her speaking to the boy, though their words were a meaningless buzzing. I saw them both glance towards me. But after that I knew no more for the blaze of light from the windows suddenly darkened and a great black wave seemed to rush over me.

Some minutes must have passed, but I can say nothing about them for the next time I was aware of anything I found myself lying on the snow surrounded by the anxious faces of strangers. And yet they were not all quite strangers, for amongst them there were the faces of the family I had been watching: the mother and father, and the two young people, as well as their servants. The mother and the daughter had thrown shawls over their shoulders, but apart from that all of them were dressed as they had been in the room, and the snow was falling heavily upon them. Behind them I saw the face of the boy who had accompanied me there.

“Poor boy, he seems half-famished,” the kindly mother said.

“Yes,” said the young lady. “And starved with cold, poor creature. Just look at those thin clothes.”

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“We must do something for him,” the mother said. “Why, he’s hardly any older than Nicholas. What can we do?”

“We’ll bring him in,” said the father. “We can’t leave him to starve. Especially not on this day of all days.”

It was too much of an effort to keep my eyes open and so I let them close. I felt myself being gently lifted and borne up the steps. I opened my eyes and saw that I was being carried by the father and the older servant. As we reached the street-door I looked back and saw that the boy who had accompanied me there was standing at the bottom of the steps looking up at me with a strange expression. Was it wistful, or envious at seeing me about to be borne into that region of warmth and plenty while he was left unnoticed outside? No, it did not seem to be expressing either of those feelings.

“Thank you,” I said. “Thank you.” Then I looked at the father: “But please give that boy something, too. He brought me here. He has nothing either.”

“Oh never mind about that,” the father said. “He’ll have his reward.”

“Thank you for bringing me here,” I said to him.

He was still looking at me with a countenance that I could not fathom. Suddenly he said quickly: “I’ll come back to see how you are. That is, if I may.”

Before I could answer I was lifted across the threshold, then carried through the hall into the chamber I had seen through the window, and laid on a sopha. My strength failed again and I was conscious only of many hands helping me, of faces that wore expressions of concern and solicitude. A glass of hot wine was put to my lips and I sipped a little of it, rugs were laid over me, a cool hand was laid on my forehead, and a bowl of something hot and thick was held before me. But I could not take any of it for the rapid change, the sudden warmth and light, the noise of voices — all these were too much for me. Again I fell away, this time as if tumbling into a well that seemed to have no bottom.

There followed a period of confusion and strangeness when I could not separate waking phantasy from dream or either of those from reality. I was in a carriage travelling late at night, or I was on the heaving deck of a ship in a storm, or I was labouring through the snow with someone who seemed at first to be my mother but then wasn’t and yet was somebody’s mother, or I was back in the foetid, over-crowded room in which my mother had died ; but always I was oppressed by fear that something terrible was going to happen, or had happened, or was happening. At other times I seemed to be in bed in a small chamber with a fire, but then the fire came leaping out of the grate at me and turned into a vast conflagration and I found myself fleeing through the smoke-filled streets of a burning city pursued by long shoots of flame.

Whenever I awoke it seemed that faces peered down at me, and hands reached towards me to stroke my face or rearrange my bed-clothes. Many of the faces I knew. My mother’s countenance smiled at me often, but then the smile turned into a grimace of pain. At other times the faces of Mrs Fortisquince, of Mr Barbellion, of Miss Quilliam, of Sir Perceval, and of many others, appeared before me out of the darkness — as in a theatre when

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the lime-light is ignited in fieree flashes — changed from one into another, and vanished again.

Frequently the faces were those of the family who had so kindly taken me in, and yet there was a strange and persistent feature: that when they looked at me their faces were transformed before my eyes into bestial shapes: the father’s nose grew outwards and thickened, the nostrils flattened and became the naked level holes of a pig’s snout. The young woman’s eyes narrowed into thin slits that were overshadowed by huge black eyebrows, and the paleness of her face became the pallor of a piece of marble.

A surgeon came many times. I knew he was a surgeon by the way he looked at me while he held my wrist. lie had a cold, cruel face that frightened me, and I was most frightened when I saw him smiling thinly in my direction while he spoke to the mother and father.

And often there seemed to be other people in the room. Lizzie from the rookery came in carrying a tray and then turned into the middle-aged servant. Mr Quigg stood over my bed until I saw that he had taken on the appearance of the father. And once I was convinced that Mr Steplight (whom I knew to be Mr Sancious) came in with the father and his daughter, and looked down at me and nodded and then that all three smiled at each other. On another occasion the chamber seemed to be full of people dancing round my bed: I saw Lady Mompesson waltzing with Mr Beaglehole, the bailiff, while Barney led Mrs Purviance through a square dance, and Mr Isbister scraped wildly at a fiddle.

There were more people dancing round the room than I could distinguish and the noise was getting louder and louder until it seemed that my bed floated off the floor and up into the middle of the chamber and then I remembered no more.

The most real-seeming visiter of all those whom I afterwards decided I had imagined, was a hideous little old man who came in with the young lady and grinned down at me and hugged himself with delight. With his waving arms and skinny, bent legs encased in tight pantaloons beneath a bulging paunch, he horribly made me think of a great blotchy white spider as he strode round the room in a kind of ecstasy of malevolent triumph.

Then at last I woke up one day and knew I was recovered. I found myself lying amongst the lavender-sweetened sheets of a bed with a bag of camphor hanging near my head in a cozy little chamber with a fire crackling cheerfully in the grate, where vinegar was being burned on a shovel. It was the room I had seen in lurid glimpses during my delirium.

And on a chair beside the fire sat the young lady reading a book.

After some minutes she looked round and seeing me gazing at her with eyes no longer clouded by fever she exclaimed: “Oh thank heavens, you are restored!”

She was very beautiful, I thought, with her pale face, blue eyes, and glossy black hair in ringlets hanging down over the collar of her muslin morning-gown.

“Yes,” I said. “I believe I shall be all right now.”

We have been so concerned about you,” she said, leaving the chair and coming to sit on the end of my bed.

You are very kind. But why have you been so good to me, a stranger?”

She smiled and said: “Must one have a reason for acting charitably?” Seeing that I was about to speak she went on: “But hush now, do not over-tax your 466 THE

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strength. There will be time for questions later. Only tell me now, what is your name?”

“John,” I answered. Then I added: “Or Johnnie.”

“Only that?” she asked with a smile.

I was not strong enough to face the question of what I was going to tell these kind people about myself and my history: to decide which name to reveal was to choose whether or not I was going to deceive them.

“May that do for now?” I asked. “I am so tired.”

“Of course,” she said.

“And what is your name?”

“Emma.”

“That’s a beautiful name,” I murmured as my tongue grew suddenly too heavy to speak. “And what is your second name?” I managed to ask.

“My father is Mr Porteous.”

“Miss Emma Porteous,” I said.

“Please call me Emma,” she said.

“Emma,” I murmured.

“Sleep now, Johnnie,” Emma said gently, but her injunction was unnecessary and I remembered no more.

During the next few days Emma was always at my bed-side when I awoke, and it was from her hands that I took the nourishment — at first, bread soaked in milk and honey

— that slowly restored my strength. Occasionally she was replaced by her mother, but one or other of them was always in the room so that if I wakened in the night I was sure to see her sitting by the fire and reading or doing embroidery by its bright glow. I was very affected by the fact that they took it upon themselves to attend upon me rather than leaving it to their maids. The older servant-woman, Ellen, fetched and carried, but apart from her I did not even see any of the other domestics.