Charles Palliser (74 page)

He walked out and I took the copy from Mr Advowson who was looking at me thoughtfully. I paid him and then I asked him if he would undertake to pass on to Sukey some money which I would try to send soon, and he consented.

“Mr Advowson,” I said. “I believe I can do you a favour in return. I think I should tell you that when Mr Pimlott worked for my mother some years ago there was a burglary and there is good reason to believe that he was involved in it.”

“Indeed, indeed?” the clerk said in dismay. “Thank you very much, Master Mellamphy. I will remember you said that.”

I took my leave of him and made my way into the burying-ground where Mr Pimlott was now not to be seen. Of course I went straight to the ancient vault-grave and pulled off much more of the ivy and then cleared some of the moss with a piece of flint I found in the grass. Sure enough, incised on the surface of the central flat stone was the familiar design, though it must have been hidden by the vegetation for some years. But there was not just one quatre-foil rose but five of them in the design found on the face of a die.

When I got back to the cottage I gave the copy of the entry to Sukey, and she carefully wrapped it up in the piece of soft leather that had held her savings and concealed it in the thatch. I almost told her about my encounter with Mr Pimlott and what he had implied about the burglary, but remembering that the episode involved Job I hesitated to awaken painful memories.

In the evening as Sukey and I — her aunt was out watching with a sick neighbour —

were sitting before the fire with the children and quietly eating our bed-bit, Harry came in.

“You mind Master Johnnie, don’t you Harry?” Sukey said nervously.

He gave me a surly look: “Oh, aye. I mind him all right.”

He seated himself before the fire and began to eat angrily, spooning the hasty-pudding into his mouth.

Nobody spoke until Harry announced defiantly: “I shall be out tonight.”

“Oh Harry I wish you wouldn’t.”

“When can I come with you, Harry?” asked Jem, licking the back of his wooden spoon.

Sukey shuddered.

“When you’re bigger and ’ll be some use,” Harry said shortly. Then he stood up: “I’m going out now, for I’m meeting the others at the Bull and Mouth. I’ll take a six-pence or two, Sukey.”

At this she looked so guilty that he sprang up and rushed to the place in the thatch where the money was hidden. When he found the piece of parchment in place of the coins, he demanded an explanation and when she told him that she had lent the money to me and why, he exclaimed: “You had no right. It’s mine as much as yourn.”

“That ain’t so,” she said mildly.

“All that blunt just for a bit of paper!” he said, scowling at me.

“But Harry, ’twas no more nor a bit of paper as took the common land from us, as I’ve often and often heerd you say yourself.”

“Aye, that’s true enough,” he cried, seeming angrier with her than ever. “AU the more reason not to meddle with such things.” He glared at me as if I were THE COMING OF AGE

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the culprit: “Did she tell you how the Mumpseys paid for a private bill that let ’em ’p’int their own Commissioners to settle it all fairly. Fairly! All we got in exchange for our rights was a little piece of scrag land a good mile off that weren’t no use to us and that we had to sell back to the Mumpseys for nigh on nought.”

He jumped up and began to dance a jig, keeping his face directed upon mine while he chanted:

“The law locks up the man or woman

Who steals the geese from off the common,

But leaves the greater villain loose

Who steals the common from the goose.”

The children sprang up and began to dance round him shouting out phrases from the rhyme and varying them with the rhythm of their clapping hands, while Sukey tried vainly to hush them.

Panting heavily, Harry stood over me: “But the worst of it is that they aren’t working the land they’ve stole but grazing it, and that’s throwed most of the men hereabouts upon the paritch and brung down the price o’ labour all round. I lost my place as a farm-servant over towards Mere Bassett, for Farmer Trcadgold could buy a roundsman of the paritch for a mort less nor he paid me. And now I’m a roundsman myself. I’m auctioned off by the day for what the overseer can get as if I were no more nor a black Negro slave.

And all for my ’lowance of four or five shillin’ a week.”

“That’s terrible,” I said. “The farmers shouldn’t be so greedy.”

He laughed angrily: “Why shouldn’t they get the other rate-payers to make up their wages if they can?
I
should if I was them. Take what you can for yourself and devil take the hindmost, say I!” He paused and then smiled recklessly as he went on: “And do it, too. Only that’s more hazardous now, for snaring a rabbit on the old common can yarn you transportation for life.”

“Surely not!” I exclaimed.

Harry’s smile vanished and he demanded angrily: “Don’t you know about our dad?”

“No,” I said.

“He was caught by a man-trap on the Mumpseys’ land. He lay there a night and most of the next day with his leg half-chawed through. Like a fox or a mole. He lost the leg and to top that, he was lagged and transported to Norfolk-island where he died of the gaol-fever.”

A number of mysteries were resolved and I turned in dismay to Sukey: “Of course! So that’s why that letter took so long to reach you.”

She nodded.

“This is all wrong!” I cried.

“Master John was saying earlier,” Sukey explained, “how everything could be ordered for the good of all.”

Harry snorted: “Gammon! Why, the rich take what they can and so do the poor. The Mumpseys steal what they can of me and I steal what I can of them. They can buy the law to help ’em, but that’s the only difference.”

“Master John says everyone can help everyone else and then all would be the better of it.”

“He wouldn’t say that if he was rich.”

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MOMPESSONS

“Why,” Sukey exclaimed before I could prevent her, “for the matter of that, Master John might own the Mumpseys’ land one day. That’s why he wanted that dockyment copied.”

“What?” said Harry, swinging round to scrutinise my face. “How can that be?”

I hesitated and then said at last: “I believe my mother’s father had a claim on the estate which he was defrauded of.”

Harry stared at me and whistled softly: “Well, well. Then if this here dockyment,” and he picked it up, “should turn out to be worth the whole estate, I reckon you owe Sukey and me a share of it.”

“And I promise to repay you a hundredfold the money you have lent me for it,” I said.

“A hundredfold!” he exclaimed. “You should give us a share of the estate. Say a quarter.”

“But that ain’t fair, Harry,” Sukey protested.

“Yes it is. For we’ve gived him more nor a quarter of all the money we have in the world, so it’s only fair that he should give us a quarter back.” He turned to me with a shrewd smile: “It’s a speculation and speculators get their money back in proportion, don’t they?”

“But you are imposing conditions after the event!” I objected.

“But you would have took it even if I’d been here and said the same then,” he insisted and would not yield this point.

At last, therefore, and reflecting that, if nothing else, it would give Harry a reason for preserving the parchment which he might otherwise be tempted to destroy, I consented to his terms.

“Write it on the back of the dockyment,” Harry insisted.

When I objected that I had neither pen nor ink, he mixed up some lamp-black, which he had scraped from the wall, with a little water and found me a pointed twig. With this I wrote below Mr Advowson’s careful calligraphy: “I John Mellamphy promise to give Harry Podger and Sukey Podger one quarter of the Huffam estate if ever I come into it, as God is my witness.” And then I signed it. Sukey replaced the package and shortly after this Harry went out.

The next morning Harry had not come back by the time I took my leave of Sukey. I travelled as before, but faster now that I was refreshed after my rest and impelled by a new sense of urgency.

I learned something — or believed I did —- as I walked through Hertford a few days later, for late one evening, just as I passed the Blue Dragon inn where the coach had baited on the journey from Melthorpe that my mother and I made two years before, I noticed the name on a shop-board opposite: “Henry Mellamphy, Provisioner”. I recalled my mother telling me how she had chosen the name at random from such a source and while I walked on in search of a quiet outhouse to spend the night, there came back to me the memory of how upset she seemed to be on that occasion at the knowledge that we had reached Hertford. Could this be the origin of the name?

When I arose at dawn the next day I could see a darkness over the sky to the South.

The weather was fine and as I slowly advanced all that day I kept my eyes on the far horizon where the smoke rose like a great dusty-coloured mountain, dark below and at the centre, but growing greyer and bluer as it melted at the periphery into the infinite clear sky. And then as the dusk came on, the edge of the distant hills was lit by an unearthly glow as the gas-lit shimmer of the great Babylon stretched from side to side of the vast horizon. I slept that night

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in another outhouse and as I wearily advanced the next day, the weather grew worse and worse. Late that afternoon I reached the top of Highgate-hill and looked down towards the dark ocean of mist through which glimmering lights shone. Somewhere in that vastness was my mother. But how would I find her in the midst of that huge and crowded waste?

I passed under the Archway and an hour later went through the turnpike-gate on the New Road with eleven-pence ha’penny in my pocket at a little before noon on the nth. of November.

In the hope that my mother was still there, I had decided to go first to Mrs Fortisquince but without making myself known to her, for that would risk losing the advantage that she and Mr Steplight (Sancious, as I guessed) did not know my whereabouts, nor even that I was in London. I went into a stationer’s and parted with a penny in exchange for a sheet of paper, a quill and ink. I had had time to compose my letter in my mind so I now quickly wrote :

“To Mrs Mellamphy :

“I am in London. If you can, come as soon as possible or send someone to the church-yard where we rested after leaving Orchard-street. Sukey sends her best regards.”

I left it unsigned, folded it, then made my way to Mrs Fortisquince’s house in Golden-square and pushed it under the street-door. Then I went to the little church-yard to wait in the cold rain. I stayed there all that evening and all night and all the next day, when I was sure that my mother could not have received my letter. Then — very cautiously for fear that someone would be waiting for me there — I revisited the lodgings that we had lived in when we first arrived in London. Mrs Marrables and the rest of the household had heard nothing of her, and the same was true of Mrs Philliber at our old lodgings in Maddox-street. Now, feeling a growing sense of dread, I went back to Westminster and found a strange family who knew nothing of us living in the room we had shared with Miss Quilliam in Orchard-street. In desperation, I crossed the centre of the metropolis almost at a run, and when I had tapped at the kitchen-door of Mrs Malatratt’s house, the little maid opened it and started back as she recognised me. But when I asked for Miss Quilliam she told me she had not been back since the occasion when she had given her the letter for me.

“No,” she added, “I haven’t seed nothin’ on her since she got her dresses back.”

“Is that what was in the trunks?” I asked.

“Yes,” she sighed. “Such lovely silk ones as you nivver seed.”

How did she come by such things? I asked myself as I walked away.

By now I had exhausted all the possibilities I could think of except one, and that one I was very loath to pursue. However, I made my way to No. 5 Gough-square — for fortunately I had remembered the address.

When I knocked on the area-door it was opened by a young maid-servant.

“I am looking for a lady,” I began.

“What do you want of her?” she asked.

“She’s my mother,” I said. “I’ve come back to London from the country unexpectedly and she doesn’t know that I’m here.”

The girl looked at me curiously: “And is she one of the dress-lodgers?”

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THE MOMPESSONS

I didn’t know what she meant so I answered: “I believe she may be lodging in this house. Her name is Mrs Mellamphy.”

“Names don’t mean much,” she said. “And they’re all ‘Miss’ here. But there’s no-one of that name in the house. You’d best describe her.”

I did so and the girl shook her head: “That don’t fit none of the ladies that’s old enough to be your mam. It sounds a little like Miss Quilliam, but she’s much too young.”

“Miss Quilliam!” I exclaimed. “Is she here.”

The girl looked at me doubtfully: “Do you really know her? For I would be in terrible trouble if you was lying.”

“Yes,” I said. “And she may know where my mother is. Please let me see her.”

“How do I know you really know her?”

“Her name is Helen, isn’t it?”

The girl nodded: “I don’t know. But I believe you anyway. I can’t let you go up, though.”

“Then please ask her to come down. I’m sure she will if you tell her that John Mellamphy desperately needs to speak to her.”

“Mrs Purviance don’t like ’em to come down here,” the girl said. “I should lose my place if she ever knew. But I’ll risk it. Promise you won’t take nothin’ while I’m gone?”

I gave my word and with a last glance over her shoulder the girl went up the stairs.

She was braver and more generous than many a soldier.

After a long wait she came down, followed by Miss Quilliam who paused at the foot of the stairs when she saw me and spoke to the girl without taking her eyes off me: “Betsy, you’ve been very good. Would you be kind enough to leave us?”

Betsy went into the scullery and was heard for the next few minutes moving pots and pans about.

Even in the gloom of the kitchen I could see that Miss Quilliam’s circumstances were very different from the occasion of our last encounter. She was dressed in a beautiful silk gown trimmed with lace, and as soon as I saw this I was shaken by a terrible understanding as everything fell into place. In fact, I already knew the truth, but now I could not hide from myself that I knew it.