Charles Palliser (48 page)

220

THE MOMPESSONS

“Impulsive creature,” my rescuer cried. “You’ll endanger your life which —

remember! — it is the first duty of the rational man to preserve.”

“Humbug! The first duty of the Rational Man is to defend his principles!” the little man shouted. “And the principle of Retributive Justice is sacred. He must be punished!”

The little gentleman, however, gave up the attempt to pursue my attacker and I now had the chance to express my feelings.

“It was very kind of you,” I began.

To my surprise, while the little man beamed at this, the elder gentleman started back as if I had struck him.

“Kind! fiddlesticks!” he exclaimed almost irritably. He turned to his companion: “Do you think so, Silverlight? Was it kind?”

“Indeed it was,” he said in what seemed to me an oddly malicious tone.

“It’s cruel of you to say so!”

“Well,” I said trying to make peace, but sadly puzzled, “It was at the least a fortunate chance for me.”

This remark, however, fared no better: “A tautology,” the elder gentleman exclaimed.

“Chance rules all things.”

“On the contrary,” the other insisted, “there is a pattern in all that exists if only we have the wit to perceive it.” He turned to me: “I believe some Principle of Design may have been at work on this very occasion, for I know you. You’re the young gentleman who lodges with Miss Quilliam, are you not?”

As I nodded I remembered that I had seen them on the stair once or twice.

“We are neighbours of yours, for we lodge for the moment with a simple family of the name of Peachment,” he continued. “An entirely temporary arrangement until our circumstances improve.”

Now I recalled that I had once or twice seen the two gentlemen assisting each other up the stairs late in the evening.

“Of course!” I exclaimed. “You live in the portion of their room that is … ”

“Quite, quite,” Mr Silverlight said quickly. “I have seen you in the company of the lady I take to be your mother?”

I nodded.

He held out his hand: “My name is Silverlight and my friend is Pentecost.”

Mr Pentecost also shook my hand. “Come,” he said, “there will be nothing to be gained by working the rest of the day. Let us accompany you home in case that misguided creature takes the dictates of self-interest to excess.”

“It will be a pleasure,” Mr Silverlight said, “to restore you to the loving arms of your charming mother.”

They turned to pick up the objects lying beside them on the pavement and as they did so I realized who they were: “You’re the Merry Andrews!” I cried.

“Indeed we are,” the elder said somewhat bashfully. “Have you seen our work?”

“Only a little,” I replied, in fear that they would ask me for my opinion.

“Don’t you think there’s too much political economy?” Mr Silverlight asked me as we began to make our way homewards.

“Well, perhaps just a little,” I said tactfully.

“You see, Pentecost?” said Mr Silverlight. “I’ve told you a thousand times, Punch and Joan can only bear so much. The children don’t like it.”

“Fiddlesticks! It’s your infernal ideas they don’t like. Even a child can see SECRET BENEFACTORS

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through them. And if it comes to that, Silverlight, there’s a deal too much good society in your patter.”

“But for satirical purposes, my dear sir, surely it is justified! Or do you mean that I’m too harsh?”

“No, Silverlight,” Mr Pentecost said quickly, “I’ll do you the justice to say I think you show great restraint in your treatment of the
beau monde.”

When we got back I took them to meet my mother and Miss Quilliam, both of whom were alarmed to see my bruised and blood-stained appearance. While they fussed and worried over me, my two rescuers stood in the door-way.

“Here are the gentlemen who saved me,” I kept saying but it was some time before it was established that I had received no serious injury and until then nothing else could be thought of. I made the introductions and my mother warmly expressed her gratitude.

“I am delighted, utterly enraptured,” Mr Silverlight said, bowing first to my mother and then to Miss Quilliam, “to have been of service. But dear ladies, I did nothing, nothing at all. What was it to show five or six ruffians that I was not afraid of them?

They soon ran away when they saw what mettle they had to deal with.”

My mother and Miss Quilliam, insisting that they enter and be seated, moved their work out of the way and lighted another candle.

While they were doing this, Mr Silverlight squeezed himself into a corner of the window, moved a piece of paper covering a broken pane and then stretched on tip-toe to look over an intervening roof to where the sun was setting: “Why, how I envy you. You have a western aspect! I think a western aspect best. Pentecost’s chambers and mine face east. So dreary in the evening, one finds.”

“Yes,” said my mother. “It is often very dreary.”

“Gentlemen,” Miss Quilliam said, “will you do us the honour of taking a glass of best nine-penny?” With a smile she added: “It is the finest we have to offer.”

“It is we who should be honoured,” Mr Silverlight answered with a bow. When he caught sight of the gin-bottle he exclaimed: “Ah, the Out-and-Outer! Pentecost favours the Regular flare-Up which I confess I find a trifle rough. But this has a delightful smoothness.” He turned towards Miss Quilliam and said with another little bow: “I perceive you are accustomed to the fine things of life.”

“I certainly became so,” she answered, “at one period of my life.”

“Indeed?” said Mr Silverlight inquisitively.

“I refer,” Miss Quilliam continued with a slight blush, “to the time when I resided in the house of Sir Perceval and Lady Mompesson.” She added with a smile: “Though to the best of my recollection the Out-and-Outer was not served in their drawing-room.”

Seeing an expression of astonishment on Mr Silverlight’s features she explained: “I was governess to their ward.”

“A private governess!” Mr Silverlight breathed. “And with one of the most …

prominent families in the land.”

“They are known to you?” Miss Quilliam asked.

“By name and reputation,” Mr Silverlight said, and added haughtily: “Though I have not had the pleasure of being received by them. Many members of the aristocracy are, however, personally known to me. You see, I chummed — I should rather say, shared a lodging — with the nephew of Sir Wycherley Fiennes Wycherley, that is to say, Mr Fiennes Wycherley Fiennes. In fact, we

222 THE

MOMPESSONS

were on terms of the utmost intimacy. His is a sad tale. Perhaps you know it? Wycherley Fiennes spent four thousand pounds in five years and ended badly. Squandered it all on cards and at Hazard.”

“While you lived in chambers with him?” Miss Quilliam exclaimed. “You quite alarm me, sir. I hope you were not involved.”

Mr Silver light coloured and stammered: “It was afterwards that I knew him, as it happened. Pentecost knew him too.”

Mr Pentecost nodded without looking at his friend.

“It gave me,” Mr Silverlight went on, “innumerable opportunities to witness at first hand the corruption of the ruling classes.”

Miss Quilliam and my mother stared at him in amazement.

“Ladies,” Mr Pentecost said sternly, “I warn you, my friend Silverlight is a Radical of the most scarlet dye. Indeed, he is a very violent Democrat and positively all but an incendiarist.”

Though I had little idea what these terms meant, from the way Mr Pentecost spoke them — his eyebrows standing up and his left hand extended accusatorily as if denouncing his companion, while his right hand plied his nose with snuff — I took them for terms of opprobrium. And this made it all the more puzzling that Mr Silverlight appeared to take them as compliments, for at these words he blushed and smiled in embarrassment as we all directed our gaze towards him.

“My friend does me no injustice,” he said. “I am a mortal foe to Old Corruption which at times has trembled to hear my very name.”

“Gracious Heavens!” my mother exclaimed.

“Do not be alarmed, ladies,” Mr Pentecost said; “for if he roars it is, I assure you, as gently as any sucking dove.”

“Are you an enemy of the superior classes, even though you know them so well?”

asked Miss Quilliam, who appeared quite unperturbed.

“It is
because
I have lived amongst the aristocracy and know their profound corruption that I am their enemy,” Mr Silverlight said. “Yet I have known men of altruism and generosity amongst them. And I believe that it is from them that the leaders of the poor must come.”

“Humbugs and frauds every man-Jack of them!” Mr Pentecost snorted. “You’re the only man I ever knew to possess true altruism, Silverlight.” At these words his companion indulged himself in a smile which disappeared as his friend went on: “And that’s only because you’re such a confounded fool.”

My mother turned away from Mr Pentecost in evident distaste and said to his companion: “Whom do you mean, Mr Silverlight? My father was a friend of Sir Francis Burdett, though he did not share all his opinions.”

Why had my mother not told me this about my grandfather when she was ready to confide it to a first-met stranger? I wondered indignantly.

“Why,” Mr Silverlight cried in delight, “I had the honour of knowing Sir Francis well.

You know he stood for this seat?”

Here my mother nodded, to my surprise for I had never known her express any interest in politics.

“For we are in the constituency of Westminster and St. Giles,” he went on. “The most radical of all seats.”

“Aye,” said Mr Pentecost, “for everyone has the franchise, however poor and rascally.”

“How absurd,” said Miss Quilliam.

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Mr Silverlight turned his large head and melancholy eyes upon her: “I am distressed to find you an opponent of the universal suffrage ! “

“I do not believe that government of the nation can be entrusted to a rabble who cannot govern even themselves,” she answered.

Mr Silverlight shook his head sorrowfully at these sentiments, but Mr Pentecost said:

“It matters not who has the suffrage since power will always lie with those who possess the wealth. And their interests must of necessity be opposed to those of the mass.”

“Whether that is true now, which I deny most emphatically, it was not true ten or a dozen years ago,” Mr Silverlight insisted. “When Burdett and I fought this seat the poets and aristocrats, Shelley and Byron, and many others fought beside us. Those were fine times! The best of the superior classes were united with the best of the poor in pursuit of Justice!” As he spoke he brushed back the thin hair on his high dome which glistened in the candle-light. Looking at his noble profile and hearing such elevated sentiments I felt moved and inspired. I could see that my mother was also impressed by our guest.

Suddenly he broke off and said: “But I must not make speeches or I will bring down one of Pentecost’s around my ears.”

“Oh how I wish I had known poor Shelley,” my mother murmured.

“I regard the gentlemen Radicals you speak of as misguided,” Miss Quilliam said to Mr Silverlight. “Indeed, as a dangerous symptom of disease in their otherwise honourable clacs.”

“Honourable!” I exclaimed. “After the way the Mompessons treated you?”

Everyone directed their gaze at me and while my mother shook her head at me in silent reproof, our guests then turned in surprise towards Miss Quilliam who looked extremely conscious.

“As a class I respect them,” she said; “though the Mompessons as individuals treated me badly. For as members of that class they have obligations that in my case they failed to observe.” At this both gentlemen shook their heads and Miss Quilliam went on:

“Those who possess great wealth at the same time incur weighty obligations to their dependants. The Mompessons do not live upon their estates in order to return the wealth to those who have helped to create it, but spend the rents of their tenants profligately in the capital.”

As she spoke I thought of the delapidated farmlands and tumbledown cottages that lay around Melthorpe and its neighbouring villages. Surely Miss Quilliam was right. I looked at my mother who was nodding at these words, but the two gentlemen looked away as if embarrassed.

Seeing this Miss Quilliam raised her voice slightly: “A nation is surely a family and like any family has weaker and stronger members who must serve or rule over each other according to their weaknesses and strengths, and thereby procure the advantage of all.”

“Oh yes!” I cried and she smiled at me.

And though my mother reached out to quiet me she murmured, “Oh surely that is so!”

Mr Pentecost, however, snorted while Mr Silverlight gently shook his head.

“My dear young lady,” the former began, “your opinions reflect the largeness of your heart rather than the extent of your experience. The Mompessons are only too typical of their rank, for like every class and every individual they are animated solely by self-interest.”

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THE MOMPESSONS

At this Mr Silverlight smiled at the rest of us and gently shook his head as if in comic warning.

“Self-interest is all that drives us,” Mr Pentecost went on. “But we are infinitely resourceful in finding ways to disguise this bleak truth from ourselves and others, and hence arises the prevalence of hypocrisy and self-deception. For this reason you must ignore what men say and consider only what they do.”

Mr Silverlight, who had been evincing signs of impatience, now cried passionately: “I can keep silent no longer! Motives are what matter. Give me a man breathing the fine full fire of altruistic nobility, and I will value him above all else.”

“You’re a child, Silverlight,” Mr Pentecost said, shaking his head. “Only actions speak and they say but one thing: serve yourself. And it is right that it should be so, for it is the complex interplay of innumerable self-interested actions in a free market that constitutes what we call society and so gives us what freedom of choice we have.”

“You are wrong,” Miss Quilliam said. “For otherwise there would be no such thing as charity.”