Charles Palliser (121 page)

But Joey ran out without answering.

As I watched and listened, I was thinking how wrong I had been in my suspicions of these good people. And when I remembered how, thinking they were profiting from me, I had bargained so hard for the largest share of the toshers’ spoils I could win, I burned with shame. And now it seemed to me that I was the cause of the trouble that had come upon this family.

“You mustn’t move simply on my account,” I said. “You stay here and I’ll go away.”

“No,” Mrs Digweed said. “It ain’t entirely on your account, Master John. I don’t want Joey meeting her and mebbe Barney again. So it’ll have to be another part of Town altogether.”

“From what Sally has just said, I begin to understand more of the connexions between us,” I began. “But I still don’t really understand why you went to such lengths to rescue me?”

“Well,” said Mrs Digweed glancing nervously, as it seemed to me, towards her husband, “for one thing, it was shame at what Barney had done to you and your mam.”

“You mean that time he burgled our house?”

She nodded and said: “And more than that. And we was grateful for how your mam sarved us that time she give me and Joey our coach-fare back to Town.”

How wrong I had been about them! Far from their being rewarded for guarding me, I had been costing them all that money — for medicine, for my food, for my clothes, and for lost working-time! Well, they had certainly paid back my mother’s kindness in full and with interest. And yet I still didn’t understand how it was that first Barney and then Mrs Digweed had come to our house in Melthorpe.

“Please tell me about that time Barney burgled us,” I asked. “I know he had to leave Town just then, but why did he go to that particular village?”

“Well,” said Mr Digweed, “it’s like this. Our dad — that’s his and mine — come from your part of the country. You might have noticed as I don’t speak quite like a Lunnon man. He come up to Town from a village not far from Melthorpe when he was a boy.”

“I see. And you have connexions still down there?”

“Aye, a few, but they’re mainly cousings as I don’t know no more. Now my dad’s heart was allus set from a tiny boy on being a j’iner and comin’ up here. His old feller was a day-labourer so it wasn’t easy, but his uncle Feverfew was a stone-mason — and a mighty

’cute ’un — and respected by the fambly he was in sarvice with at the big house nearby.

So he got my dad a place there, and

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fust he worked for the estate carpenter and he was so keen and willing that he got gave inside work — cabinet-making and that — for the fambly. They had a land-agent that took notice of what a steady worker he was and give him the chance to better hisself. So at last he come to Town one year when the whole household come up for the Season —

for they only lived down in the country for part o’ the year. Well, arter a few years he left the sarvice of the fambly and with the help of the genel’man what I mentioned, he got hisself ’prenticed and when his time was sarved he set up in trade for hisself. And at fust he done well for the agent give him work at the fambly’s house in Mayfair and that give him his West-end connexion. But then the drink became too much for my old feller for he had always liked his glass. And by the time me and Barney had sarved our time, he didn’t have much of his connexion left, though we still done a little work for that fambly ourselves now and again. But we had to fall back on jobbing work and Barney quickly tired of that. The hours was too long and the money too short.”

“And then he took to breaking into houses?” I prompted.

“Aye, he did, I fear. That and many other things. But it was a long time a-fore I guessed it.”

“So he had relatives in Melthorpe he could visit?” I asked.

“He was up there doing some work for the fambly what my dad fust worked for.”

“And it was while he was coming back from there on his way to Lunnon,” Mrs Digweed went on, “when he broke into your mam’s house. It was jist chance that he chose that one, as he told Joey, for he was angry because he had been turned away with ill words when he asked for money.”

“That was my nurse’s doing,” I said. “And mine, too, as I remember.”

“Well, all he stole was a silver letter-case,” Mrs Digweed said. “There was a letter inside it and he thought it might do him some good. But not being able to read hisself and not trusting nobody that wasn’t fambly (not to say that he trusts us, neither) he had to wait to get it read and that wasn’t until Sal j’ined him quite a long time later.

Something she read there led him to a lawyer called Mr Sancious who, it seemed from the letter, was desperated to lam where your mam was living.”

“I see!” I cried. “That is how he discovered our whereabouts. I had never understood that!”

So another piece of the pattern fell into place.

“And that led to all the harm that befell you, didn’t it?” Mrs Digweed asked, fixing her troubled gaze upon me.

“I fear that it did,” I replied. “For Mr Sancious found his way by that means to our enemies and it was at their prompting that he cheated my mother of her little fortune.”

I was beginning to understand at last. But there was much that was still puzzling.

“Then if Barney came to my mother’s house by chance, surely you and Joey did not come by coincidence all that time later?” I said to Mrs Digweed.

“I told you when George fust brung you to this house,” she said, meeting my gaze without flinching; “that it was not by design that I come to you and your mam that time, and that’s the solemn truth. But Joey must tell you about that.”

I blushed at the implied reproach. I could not doubt her, though I was very puzzled as to how such an apparent coincidence could not have been premeditated. Then something else became clear and I cried: “And it wasn’t GRANDFATHERS

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simply because of old Sam’el making a mistake that I was directed to Barney!”

“No, you arst about a Digweed and he sent you to one,” Mrs Digweed admitted. “But we weren’t lying when we told you that, for it was true that we knowed Isbister. What we didn’t tell you was that we knowed him on account of how Barney worked mates with him and Pulvertaft. That was when he got Joey mixed up in their lay.”

She shuddered.

So that was why he was so knowledgeable about burial-grounds that time we had argued in Melthorpe!

“We was very green, Master Johnnie,” Mr Digweed said. “We thought they were running an ornery carrier’s consarn. It was a long time a-fore we lamed what they was up to.”

Though I now believed that Mr and Mrs Digweed had done me nothing but good, I was still puzzled by the fact that she and Joey had come to my mother’s house. And, moreover, how was it that Joey had led me to the house of Daniel Porteous? And what of my suspicion that Barney had been involved in the murder of my grandfather?

Seeing that Mr and Mrs Digweed were preoccupied in discussing their children, I took a candle upstairs and, making myself comfortable on my straw bed in the corner, examined the letter. The design of the quatre-foil rose on the seal was very familiar to me, and I knew now what the dark stains were. But this time I saw ambiguities in the superscription that I had not perceived before: “My beloved son — and my heir: John Huffam”. Not merely could it be addressed to Peter Clothier as my grandfather’s son-in-law and heir, or to my mother as his heir-at-law, but also to anyone who became his heir-at-law as I myself now was. Feeling that it was therefore in a sense addressed to myself, I unfolded the sheet and began for the second time to read my grandfather’s words :

“Charing-cross,

“The 5th. of May, 1811.

“Claim to Title of Hougham Estate:

“Title in fee absolute held by Jeoffrey Huffam. Allegedly conveyed by James and possession now Sir P. Mompesson. Subject of suit in Chancery.

“Codicil to Jeoffrey’s will of ’68 criminally removed by unknown party after his death.

Recently restored through honesty and perseverance of Mr Jeo. Escreet. Creates entail vested in my father and heirs male and female. Legality of sale of H. estate? P. M. not dispossessed but now only dependant right of base fee, while fee absolute to self and heirs?”

This was the point at which I had stopped reading on the earlier occasion. Now I read on:

“Very recently informed by unimpeachable informant: Jeoffrey H. made second hitherto unknown will also criminally suppressed after death. Disinherited James in favour of self. So sale invalid, no title to convey. Assuming will regained and rights restored, self and heirs owner of fee simple. Informant avers: will concealed for thirty years by Sir A., now by Sir P. Promises to obtain.

“John Huffam.

“Lay before Chancery. Heir to take name of Huffam.”

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The last words — “Lay before Chancery. Heir to take name of Huffam.” — appeared to have been added in a different hand from the one that had written and signed the rest.

And this was the crucial clew for now as I puzzled over it, the solution seemed to come to me. Surely this was a kind of aide-memoire — the summary of a conversation between my grandfather and his new son-in-law about the claim to the estate. It must have taken place after they had resolved on the charade and the flight from the house of the newly-wedded pair. My grandfather was telling Peter Clothier about the legal implications of the codicil and also of the purloined will. (He knew he was in danger and this suggested that he feared he might be killed.) He was telling him what action to take and I assumed that it was Peter Clothier who had added the last words undertaking, in case my grandfather was unable to do so, to pursue the claim and to adopt, either on his own behalf or that of any son who might be born, the name of his wife’s family. Now I saw another meaning in the superscription: the letter was addressed in a sense to the son of Mary and Peter Clothier who was to take the name of “Huffam”. But the important thing was that the aide-memoire was further proof of the existence of the will that Mr Nolloth had told me of and which was to have been given by Martin Fortisquince to my grandfather on the evening of the marriage and smuggled into the possession of Peter Clothier later that night. Or at least, it proved that my grandfather had believed that it existed. Yet I was still puzzled, for if he had been right, then what had happened to it?

Why was it not found when the bridal pair opened the package in the chamber of the inn at Hertford?

As I lay on the straw mattress in that dark shabby room, it now became apparent to me that if it existed and could be found again then I would have an unassailable claim to the Hougham estate. I recalled the wish I had made that Christmas many years ago when I had heard from Mrs B elf lower the story of how the Huffam family lost their land to the Mompessons. Was it to come true?

Darkness fell without my noticing. Mr and Mrs Digweed called up that they were going to the tavern and did I wish to accompany them? I answered in the negative and heard the door close behind them.

The crucial question therefore was, Had the will existed? And assuming it had, then who had stolen it from my great-great-grandfather as he lay dead or dying? And was it the same individual who had misappropriated the codicil? Where had both documents disappeared to for all those many years? Who was my grandfather’s “unimpeachable informant” and what had happened to the will on that fateful night when he had died?

Had this individual failed to secure it and pass it to Mr Fortisquince? Or had he secured it but failed to pass it on? I realized that the only person who might have the power to answer these questions was Mr Escreet, and so I resolved to go back and make another attempt to speak to him.

I heard the elder Digweeds returning from the Pig and Whistle and found that it was very late and that Joey had still not come back. Now I wondered how much of the situation I should explain to them. They had risked so much on my behalf that it seemed a kind of meanness not to confide in them. Yet it was a poor return for their generosity to impose upon them the burden of worry about my affairs. And though I believed I trusted the parents, yet I hesitated to put anything into the hands of Joey that he might convey to

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Barney. And that made me reflect that it would be wrong to bother them with these matters while they were worried about whether their son would return.

Towards dawn I resolved on one other thing : as a token of my determination to succeed in the task begun by my grandfather, I would henceforth call myself “John Huffam” whenever it was appropriate to do so. (One’s “real” name was surely the name one chose for oneself.) Never, I vowed, would I use again the name that was so hateful to me.

So early the next morning, as we made our breakfast, I explained to the Digweeds that as a consequence of things I had learned from the papers that Sally had brought, I intended to go to my grandfather’s house; but I said nothing of my purpose. Protesting that now that Barney might know where I was, I could be in danger if I left the house unaccompanied, they insisted that Mr Digweed should go with me.

I agreed and so when, after the morning’s work, we had returned above ground, washed, and dined, we set off together towards midday.

It was a bright but chilly mid-May afternoon when I arrived back in the gloomy, malodorous court. I asked my companion to wait nearby but out of sight of the house in order not to alarm the old man. Then I knocked, remembering how I had beaten my fists against that door on that earlier occasion. And now I reflected that it was no wonder that Mr Escreet had refused to open it since I had announced myself under the name in the world he most hated and feared: Clothier.

So this time, when once again it seemed to me that the judas-hole slid slowly back, I said: “I am John Huffam. Please let me in.”

I heard bolts being slowly withdrawn and the sound of a great rusty key being turned, then the door swung open. A huge old man with rounded, stooping shoulders stood looking down at me. He had a long, drooping face whose flesh hung in flabby folds beneath the cheeks and that ended in a jutting jaw; and he had a bulbous reddish nose between ancient, bleary eyes with heavy lids. He appeared not to have shaved for several days and the skin of his face, where it was visible through the white stubble, was mottled. He was dressed in the costume of the last century which was threadbare and ragged in places : ancient drab breeches with stockings below the knee, a faded green coat of old-fashioned cut with an embroidered waistcoat yellowed with age, and buckled shoes. There was a strong smell of spirits.