Charles Palliser (102 page)

As I regained my strength and was able to stay awake longer and converse at greater length, the different members of the family came to sit with me. Emma’s father was grave and reserved and sat staring through his rather small eyes and pressing his thick fingers together nervously as if in search of topics, but I felt that he was trying to convey his goodwill and kind intentions even through his rather stiff formalities. (Later Emma told me that he was very worried about something involving his work.) His wife was very solicitous and talkative, and, to confess the truth, rather tiring. The boy, whose name was Nicholas, was very friendly but he was several years too young for us to be companions, and he quickly grew tired of my company. It was Emma whom I liked best, and it was she who visited me most often and stayed longest.

A couple of days after our first conversation, she said, as she handed me a glass of hot lemonade and barley-water: “I still don’t know your second name, Johnnie.”

I had had time to consider how I would answer this question. I had tried to overcome my distaste at the idea of deceiving people who had been so kind to a complete stranger, by telling myself that it could not matter to them what they called me, since they knew nothing of me. For I had argued to myself that a name could not be a lie under those circumstances for it made no statement which was contrary to the truth. My name was what I chose to be called by, so why could I not choose a new name from now on? And vet reason it as I

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could, I could not avoid the feeling that it would be a poor return for their kindness.

Yet I also knew that it might be dangerous for me to admit that my name was Clothier, for I knew from my mother’s account that it was well-known not to say notorious — in London’s commercial world. Therefore, if by confessing to it I revealed my connexion with the Clothiers, I would have to ask these good people to keep my identity secret, and in order to explain the necessity of that I would have to tell them a great deal of my story.

Partly because I did not wish to think about it and partly because I was not sure what effect it would have on its hearers, I was reluctant to do this.

All this time Emma was looking at me curiously.

“I have had so many different names in my life,” I said, “that I hardly know which is my real one.”

“How very mysterious,” she said. “What are they?”

I hesitated: “Will you accept one of them — Cavander?”

I had used this name once or twice, having remembered it from the time of my escape from Quigg’s farm.

“Do you mean,” she said gravely, “that that is not your father’s name?”

Seeing me frown involuntarily, and, as I thought, misunderstanding why, she said quickly: “Or at least, not the name you were given at your baptism?”

I nodded.

“Do you not trust me?”

“Pray don’t think that,” I cried in dismay. “Not when you’ve been so kind to me —

who have no claim upon your generosity. It is simply that if I told you my real name I would have to explain to you a great deal besides.”

“Then why not do so? Are you afraid it would bore me? How foolish you are,” she said, smiling. “I would like to hear your story, however long it takes.”

“You are very kind,” I said, feeling myself on the verge of tears. “But it’s not only that.”

“Ah, I see,” she said sympathetically. “I have been very obtuse and selfish. It would distress you to narrate it.” Then very gently she asked: “You have been betrayed by people you trusted, have you not?”

“Yes,” I said. “But why do you say that?”

“Because I believe you like me, and yet I can see that you are unsure whether to trust me.”

“I do like you,” I cried. “And I trust you. I would trust you with my life. You and your parents have taken me in and tended me though I am a complete stranger to you.”

She pressed my hand with a smile and said: “I am glad you like me. But let me reassure you since you are so mistrustful. A few days ago you asked me if there was a reason why my parents had taken you in. I will tell you now.” She paused and her face grew grave: “Between my birth and Nicholas’s, my parents had another child. A boy.

They called him David. He was a sickly baby and … ” She broke off for a moment. “He would have been about your age and I know they think of him often. I believe it was partly for his sake that they acted as they did the other night.”

I saw that tears were glistening in her beautiful eyes. But suddenly she glanced up and said with a smile: “Is that a selfish enough motive to satisfy your cynicism and misanthropism?”

I reached out to lay my hand on hers and said: “I have made a poor return 468

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for your generosity and trust. I will tell you my real name, though I hate it so much it pains me to speak it. It is Clothier.”

It seemed to me that she registered a tremor of recognition.

“Do you know it?” I asked.

“I believe I have heard the name,” she said. “But no more than that.”

“Please mention it to no-one apart from your mother and father,” I said. “I will tell you why I ask this when I feel strong enough.”

“I promise. But will you tell me now, if even that will not cause you too much pain, where are your friends? Your father and mother, above all?”

“My father … I do not know. My mother is dead.”

“Oh Johnnie,” she said. “I am very sorry. Was this recently?”

“Yes,” I said, “very recently.”

“Do you mean, in the last few weeks?”

“Almost,” I replied. “The 12th. of November last.”

“I am sorry. I am afraid I have caused you pain. But tell me, if it would not distress you, where did this happen?”

“Here in London.”

“I mean,” she said, “in which parish? Where is she buried?”

The question was gently spoken but it brought back with overpowering vividness the dark room in the stifling court and the dank little square with its stinking graveyard.

“I cannot say,” I said and began to weep.

“Never mind, never mind,” Emma said, stroking my hand. “It was foolish and thoughtless of me to ask. There will be plenty of time for explanations when you are stronger.”

I squeezed her hand. My tears had tired me and I was soon asleep, my hand still clasped in hers.

During the next fortnight or so I grew much stronger, until at the end of that period Dr Alabaster, the surgeon who had attended upon me every few days, declared that I would soon be ready to leave my bed. The family visited me as before, and Emma spent much of the day with me, either reading aloud, working while I dozed, or talking to me. A few days after our last conversation, I told her that I felt able to narrate the story of my life, and when I said that although I would find it easier to confide in her alone, I saw no reason to withhold my story from her parents, we agreed that she would recount it to them.

So during the week or so that followed I told her everything — except that I had decided to omit certain passages in my mother’s life — and found her to be a good listener as well as a very acute one. I described my early years with my mother in Melthorpe and the onset of our money problems which arose, I explained, from my mother’s trust in her attorney, Mr Sancious, who had conspired to cheat her.

I told her of the codicil which my mother had inherited from her father, and I explained its importance to the Mompesson family. I described my mother and Mr Fortisquince’s attempts to get from them the money they owed her in the form of an annuity on their estate; and when I gave her an account of the way Sir Perceval and his wife had received my mother on the occasion when we had gone to their house, Emma was very indignant against them.

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Fortisquince, and the betrayal of our secret address to the bailiffs by Bissett, I did not go into much detail about our period with Mr and Mrs Isbister, obscuring entirely the nature of his nocturnal activities. Then I narrated our attempts to earn our living with Miss Quilliam, our descent into the bitterest poverty, our attempt to sell the codicil to the Mompcssons, the misunderstanding about Miss Quilliam and Mr Barbellion, and the way we were then deceived by-Mrs Fortisquincc into conveying it into the hands of the false Mr Steplight and through him into the possession of our enemies. Emma seemed quite upset when I explained that these last were my father’s family, the Clothiers, and particularly so when I elaborated upon their reasons for wanting me dead: that now that the codicil was, presumably, before the court, if I were to die while Mr Silas Clothier was alive, he would immediately become the owner of the Hougham estate. In order to make all this clear, I summarized what I had learned from my mother’s account: my grandfather’s obtaining of the codicil in collaboration with Mr Clothier, the events leading up to my parents’ marriage and the murder of my grandfather, and my father’s incarceration as a criminal lunatic.

Emma was very disturbed by this and now professed that she understood perfectly my reluctance to reveal my name. When I went on with my narrative she became very distressed as I described the school that Mr Steplight had taken me to, although I mitigated its horrors and omitted any reference to Stephen Maliphant and the treatment that had led to his death. Another omission I made was of all references to the situation in which I had found my mother on my return to London, merely saying that I had found her ill and in great poverty after being treated cruelly by Mrs Fortisquince and Mr Sancious and imprisoned in the fleet. I was touched by how closely Emma followed my account for when I mentioned that my mother had been refused help by Sir Perceval, she expressed herself as much puzzled by this last circumstance as I was, since she had grasped the fact that it was — ostensibly, anyway — in the Mompessons’ interest to maintain my mother’s life as the Huffam heir. I found I was only able to give a very brief account of my mother’s death, and my evident emotion affected my confidante very deeply.

“And where was this?” she asked.

I told her the name of the festering little court.

“And did you have to go to the parish for the burial?” she asked sympathetically.

“Yes, I did,” I said, trying not to remember the circumstances.

“And under which name did you have her death registered?”

As I looked at her now she gazed steadily into my eyes and said: “I ask you that because of an idea that my father has had about how your safety might be assured which I will let him explain to you himself.”

Feeling ashamed of myself, I said: “You are all very much better to me than I deserve.

The answer to your question is that I gave the parish-clerk the name of Mellamphy’.”

I went on with my story, describing how I had made my way to the “carcase” and lived with Barney and his gang until my gradual realization of what they were involved in led to my discovery that they did not stop even at murder. Emma was horrified by this, and also as baffled as I was by the discovery that barney was the housebreaker from Melthorpe all those years ago.

finally, I described how I had made my escape from the “carcase”, gone to 470 THE

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my grandfather’s house and been refused entrance by old Mr Escreet, and had been found there by the boy who had brought me to Emma’s house.

I should make it clear that I did not tell my story as coherently as I have summarized it here, for often one part of it required an explanation which carried me forward or backward out of chronological sequence. The part of it which interested her most —

apart from my mother’s death and burial — was my mother’s account of the night of my grandfather’s murder. We went over these events a number of times and she supported my suspicion that the will mentioned by my grandfather might have been the motive for his murder.

“What a pity you no longer have that letter of his,” she said, and I was moved by the way she entered so passionately into my situation.

The day I finished narrating my story, she said to me: “My father would like to talk to you tomorrow about your future. Do you feel well enough?”

I said I did and when she had gone I reflected on how much lighter my burden of knowledge and responsibility felt now that I had shared it with a sympathetic listener.

When Emma came into my room the next day, she was accompanied by her father.

While he pulled chairs up to my bed for himself and his daughter and solemnly seated himself, I reflected that he was the only member of the family I could not quite like.

Throughout the interview that followed he spoke coldly and pompously, while Emma kept smiling at me on the other side of him, as if to represent the warmth and kindness that he felt but could not outwardly manifest.

“My daughter,” he began, kneading his podgy fingers together, “has advised me of everything you have told her, and I have been considering by what means you may best be protected from those who might wish you harm. It is evident to me that much depends on the various suits being pursued in the Court of Chancery. Though,” he said with a sneering smile, “as a humble attorney I am not qualified to penetrate the mysteries of Chancery. For that reason I have taken the liberty of consulting a solicitor, Mr Gildersleeve, who is a trusted friend of mine, and of laying before him the circumstances of your situation — of course, in the utmost confidence.”

“You are very kind, Mr Porteous.”

“Not at all, not at all,” he said, seeming truly embarrassed by my gratitude. “Mr Gildersleeve’s opinion is that now that you are — in the legal sense, at least — an orphan, the most effective way for you to be protected from the machinations of other parties is by going before the Court of Chancery itself and seeking its guardianship.”

Go before Chancery! I felt a thrill of excitement at the prospect of penetrating to the very centre of the mysteries which had surrounded me all my life.

“What must I do?” I asked.

“The procedure, I understand, is very simple. You merely affirm your identity by an affidavit — in this case a verbal one — which must be supported by the evidence of witnesses. And they should be easy to find.”