Charles Palliser (57 page)

Nearly swooning with relief, I found myself, without resistance, enfolded in Mr Mompesson’s arms. Now, however, I discovered a new peril for my rescuer began to shower kisses upon me, and I realized that I had substituted one danger for another, and a much worse one. He told me he had fallen passionately in love with me and said that he could not know a moment’s rest until I was his, and much more in that vein. When I protested, he accused me of coquetry, saying that I had set out to drive him mad with passion and had now succeeded and must bear the consequences. In brief, he made a proposal of a nature which I was wholly unprepared to listen to, imploring me to appoint a rendez-vous. When I refused to countenance such a suggestion, he accused me of mere prevarication and eventually grossly insulted me with a proposition which put a monetary value upon my chastity.

The more I opposed his desires the more inflamed he became, and when I reflected that I was alone in a locked room with a rich and unscrupulous voluptuary in a house in which a woman’s cries for help would not be answered, I realized that I had to act decisively to defend myself.

I hardly know whether to be proud or ashamed of what followed. Reaching behind my persecutor I snatched up a fruit-knife from the table and threatened him with it. He laughed at me and reached out to take it. I am not sure how it happened or what my intention was, but as he seized my hand the point of the knife bore down against his face and cut a wound from above his eye to the cheek-bone. Instantly he was blinded by the flow of blood and forced to release me. In a moment I had unlocked the door and was fleeing along the passage, down the stairs and out into the street.

The insults I endured as I made my way through that infamous quarter I will not recount. A scene that had appeared so magnificent from the window of a carriage now presented itself in a very different light to a young woman unescorted and immodestly dressed for the streets. For, having had to abandon dear Henrietta’s shawl in my precipitate flight, I was bare-shouldered. Under these circumstances it was impossible to ask my way without exposing myself to insult, and for more than an hour I wandered in circles, constantly finding myself drawn back into that whirlpool of vice that swirls about Leicester-square. How could I have seen that place as anything but the resort of wickedness and misery! Now it flashed before my eyes like a hideous dream: the desperate or reckless faces of the women in their tawdry dresses, the coaches crawling along the kerb, the cigar-divans and coffee-houses open all night with flambeaux burning outside them to draw in the vicious or the lost.

At last, however, I reached the house in Brook-street, conscious of the irony that I had had to seek refuge in the abode of my enemy, and terrified that if I had wounded him seriously I might find the authorities waiting to take me up. But now I became aware of an unanticipated difficulty for the house was in darkness and my timid knocks — I dared not hammer harder for fear of waking the whole household — failed to summon the nightwatchman. By now the carriage must have returned, whether or not it had brought Mr Mompesson

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home, and Jakeman, having locked up, would be in a drunken slumber — according to his unvarying practice — at the back of the house. After fifteen minutes I gave up the attempt and walked round to the mews where I found all dark in the coachman’s house and no light showing in the grooms’ quarters above the coach-house. Though I felt a deep repugnance at the idea of raising these servants and exposing myself to the gossip of the whole establishment, I reflected that the head-coachman, Mr Phumphred, was a kindly man whose discretion might be relied upon.

I therefore knocked at his door until he came down in his night-shirt and admitted me. He was amazed to see me and explained that Mr Mompesson had told him, when the rest of the party had left the supper-house, that I had made my own way home in a hackney-coach. And yet, he told me, his suspicions had been aroused, especially by the fact that Mr Mompesson’s face was cut — though, he assured me, only very superficially.

He had taken Mrs Purviance to her house and then left the two young gentlemen in the neighbourhood of Covent-garden where he believed Mr Mompesson intended to find lodging at the Hummums Hotel, and had then brought the carriage home, assuring the nightwatchman, before going to bed, that all of the party who intended to return that night were safely back.

Without telling him what had happened I gave him to understand that I had been illused and begged him to say nothing of my arrival under these circumstances. He implied that he knew enough of his young master to understand what I meant, and gave me the undertaking I sought. (I might add that so far as I know he was as good as his word.) He let me out through the back-door of his quarters into the yard by the laundry, from which I was able to enter the house by the kitchen-door — which, fortunately and quite improperly, is left unlocked at night to enable the laundry-maids to start their work in the morning without rousing Jakeman.

As you may conceive, I spent a second sleepless night — for now that I reviewed the evening it came to me that I had been the victim of what I can only call a charade. Of Mr Mompesson’s wicked design there could be no doubt; his brother, vicious and brutal though he was, might be as much a dupe as I; but about the role that the other two members of the party had played I could only speculate.

Although I felt that my position in the house was now unendurable, yet I dreaded to be forced to desert Henrietta whom I had come to love like a sister. I took my decision, and very early in the morning I wrote a note to my employers begging the favour of being permitted to wait upon them as soon as possible.

By the time my breakfast-tray had been removed, I had received no reply. All during morning-school with Henrietta I found myself constantly on the verge of weeping, and though I longed to tell her the whole story and hated having to dissemble, I knew that it would not be right to obtrude such a tale upon her innocence and thereby implicate a man who was, after all, her cousin — though I knew how little affection or respect she had for him.

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At last, at about noon, a footman summoned me to the breakfast-room where I was received by my employers who were sitting at the table. Sir Perceval rose as briefly as possible and indicated that I should take a chair some distance from where they were sitting.

I began impulsively: “Your sons have grossly insulted me. Without an apology, I can stay no longer under this roof.”

“Bigad, young woman,” Sir Perceval exclaimed. “What in the name of damnation are you talking about?”

“Mr Mompesson has organised a base conspiracy against my person and my honour in which Mr Thomas Mompesson has played a shameful part. Both gentlemen must apologise in your presence and undertake never to speak to me again.”

“Hoity toity, missy!” Sir Perceval began. “You take a deuced high tone … ”

His wife, however, interrupted him: “I cannot accept that my elder son would dishonour himself in the way you say.”

“Nor Tom neither,” the baronet exclaimed. “He’s a rough and ready sort of boy but a true-hearted Briton.”

As if her husband had not spoken, Lady Mompesson continued coldly: “Will you therefore describe, Miss Quilliam, precisely what you allege has occurred?”

Her manner of uttering these words stung me as much as their matter, but I collected my thoughts and described how Mr Mompesson had asked me to accompany him to the Gardens. I laid stress on the scrupulousness of my demand that Sir Perceval and herself should explicitly approve my joining the party, and my self-possession returned as I became conscious of the blamelessness of my own conduct. But when I came to a description of the exchange of letters, Lady Mompesson curtly bade me stop and explain myself.

“I know,” she said, “of no such communication.”

At this I felt a first intimation of alarm, but I remembered that I still had Sir Perceval’s reply to my note and handed it to him.

He glanced at it briefly: “A counterfeit,” he pronounced. “Clever, I grant you, but nevertheless a fraud.”

He crumpled it up and threw it in the fire.

Now my self-possession began to dissipate.

“What can this mean!” I exclaimed. “This is the reply that the man-servant carried back from you.”

Clearly fraud had been practised upon me, but I was uncertain who had collaborated in it. The fact that Sir Perceval had so swiftly destroyed my one piece of evidence was, to say no more, unfortunate.

“Even if this story were true,” Lady Mompesson said, “I am amazed that you could be so … naif, let us say, as to imagine that we could countenance your visiting a pleasure-gardens at night in the company of our son. At the very best your discretion is at fault; at worst … ” She broke off.

I saw that if I did not keep calm I was lost. “I am not so naif, Lady Mompesson,” I replied. I turned to her husband. “That letter referred to a Mrs Purviance, did it not?”

“It did,” he confirmed.

“Your son assured me that this lady, who was to be a member of the party, was an old friend of yours, Lady Mompesson.”

“Stuff!” she cried. “I never heard the name until this moment.”

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At this I cried: “Send for your son! Let me, in common justice, challenge him to deny that I am telling the truth.”

“What!” she exclaimed. “Our son to be arraigned by a governess! You are impertinent, Miss Quilliam.”

“Then at least send for the man-servant, Edward,” I begged.

They looked at each other and Lady Mompesson nodded. Sir Perceval pulled the bell-rope that hung behind his chair.

“Leaving aside this question of the note,” Lady Mompesson went on, “what is the rest of your allegation?”

Mastering my anger with difficulty, I described the incident at the supper-house while they listened in silence, occasionally glancing at each other with what seemed to me to be expressions of disbelief and contempt. Just as I had finished describing my escape, the footman entered.

“Edward,” said Sir Perceval, “did you, the day before yesterday, carry a letter from Miss Quilliam to myself and Lady Mompesson, and convey my reply back to her?”

He looked at all of us as if in surprise: “No, sir,” he said. “I ain’t never carried no message from Miss Quilliam. I don’t attend upon the governess and nivver have. That’s the third footman’s charge.”

“That will be all,” Sir Perceval said.

As the man went out he glanced at me and I knew from his look that Mr Mompesson had bribed him. I had had occasion once or twice to rebuke him for his slackness in attending upon me and I guessed that he resented me. Now I understood that my employers were as much victims of the deception practised by their son as I. For a moment I reflected on its ingenuity and realized that I had proof of nothing. Even if I were given the chance to challenge Mr Mompesson I would gain nothing, for he would assert that I had readily accepted his invitation and that the story of the exchange of notes was a fabrication designed to protect myself in retrospect. He would also deny having assured me that Mrs Purviance was a friend of his mother. In short, I had proof of nothing — the very note had been destroyed — and all the evidence was against me. The significance of my position was quickly spelt out to me.

“I am prepared to credit,” said Lady Mompesson, “at least this much of your story: that my son invited you to the Gardens and that you accepted his invitation; and that you afterwards accompanied him to what was clearly a night-house in an infamous district of the metropolis of whose character I cannot believe even the greenest girl from the country could really be in ignorance. Your conduct displayed extreme indiscretion

— to say the least — for one in your position and that, I take it, is why you have concocted that story of the letter from Sir Perceval and the forgery in support of it. In making you that invitation my son cannot be blamed for anything more than the predisposition towards gallantry natural in a young man. Whether or not he offered you the insult you allege seems to me to be entirely by the way, for once you had consented to go with him and two utter strangers to such a place as that at such an hour, you had clearly forfeited the claim upon a gentleman’s respect to which every honourable woman of superior rank has a right.”

I listened with the strangest feeling of detachment. There was nothing I could say in my defence for I had been completely outwitted and I only wondered whether Lady Mompesson really believed me guilty of what she charged, or whether she knew very well what her son was capable of.

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At that moment she said: “All that puzzles me about the incident is the question of what your motive is in making this allegation. Do you want money for refraining from making a scandal? If so, I assure you, we are not to be so easily intimidated.”

“Aye,” put in Sir Perceval, “try the worst that you can do, young woman. I should like to see you.”

My eyes were clouded with tears and I was afraid to trust my voice: “Lady Mompesson, Sir Perceval, I beg you not to disbelieve me. If you do, you are collaborating with your son in the ruin of a defenceless creature whose good name is her only fortune.”

“Sir Perceval,” Lady Mompesson said, “will you be good enough to ring the bell again?” He did so and then his wife said to me: “If you think you can prevent me from circulating to all the registry-offices at this end of Town a statement that I am unwilling to provide you with a character, then you are mistaken. That should show you how little I am afraid of your threats.”

At that moment the footman entered in response to the summons.

“Robert, ask Mr Assinder to attend immediately,” Lady Mompesson said.

When the servant had gone I said: “I have made no demands for money and no threats, Lady Mompesson. And your action would make it impossible for me ever again to earn my living in the only way open to me that is compatible with my upbringing and station.”

To this she merely answered: “An individual in my position has a responsibility to Society to protect others against the entry into their family of a brazen adventuress.”