Charles Palliser (82 page)

It might have been an hour later that, the force of my sorrow having spent itself, I found that 1 was still clutching the pocket-book and noticed the letter INHERITANCES

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sticking out from it. I removed it and inspected the big red seal representing the quatre-foil rose with which it was fastened and the rusty patch of faded discoloration that I had long ago childishly taken for blood.

The superscription read “My beloved son — and my heir: John Huffam”. That was my grandfather’s name, but was the letter addressed to his son-in-law (“My beloved son”) and my mother (“my heir”), or to the former alone?
Addressed, in fact, to my
father!
Who was my grandfather’s heir? But now as I looked at the seal, it came to me that my mother could never have broken it! Then why had she not opened the letter if it was addressed to her? Did that imply that she took it to mean that her husband rather than herself was the heir referred to? And did that suggest that she believed he was still alive? I hesitated. Had I the right to break the seal if he was still alive? Surely I had some right to open it now. So I broke it and began to read the folio sheet I found inside:

“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?”

I broke off here in bewilderment. What kind of letter was this? It was a jumble of fragments! And as for what it was saying, it seemed that it merely confirmed what I already knew: namely, that the codicil to Jeoffrey Huffam’s will did not confer upon my grandfather’s heirs any right to the title to the Huffam property since that title had been alienated — however dubiously — by his father, James, in the process of selling the estate to the Mompessons. All of this I had learned by copying out the codicil itself, and Mr Sancious (alias Steplight) — if he could be trusted — had expounded: my mother, and now, as her heir, I myself, held nominal title to the Hougham estate, but this conferred neither title nor right to possession.

My head aching and my stomach in pain from hunger, lying on the bare and dirty floor and straining my eyes in the near-darkness, I felt little interest in these obscure words. There was more of it but the light was fading fast and since I could only read with difficulty my grandfather’s hand, I could see no purpose in continuing. I saw the words “will” and “rights” and stopped reading. Bitterly disappointed, I folded the letter and put it back inside the pocket-book. I do not know what I had hoped for from the voice of my deceased grandfather, but what I seemed to have found was an obsessive mind brooding over hair-splitting legal niceties in the hope of vindicating imagined rights. It grieved me to think that my mother had cherished this letter for so many years, for it seemed just another example of how misguided 378 THE

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and pointless so much of her life had been and how many misjudgements she had made.

I attempted to make myself comfortable on the floor but it was long before I fell asleep, and then my dreams were haunted by leering faces coming at me from the darkness muttering insanely about codicils and title.

Honour Among Gentlemen

It seems that they had arranged to meet in the Piazza Coffee-house just around the corner (speaking topographically) from the Office of the Six-clerks, though in a different world in every other sense. So here are two of them — both dressed in the height of fashion — awaiting the third. Though one of them is even now barely familiar, the other two were well-known to you. Mr David Mompesson wore a rifle-green frock-coat, a white top-hat, a sky-blue coat with yellow buttons and trowsers and a gold watch-guard, and the gentleman who arrived with him was clad in a dress-coat and tight trowsers with white silk stockings and long-quartered pumps. When the third gentleman joined them a few minutes later, wearing a shabby great-coat and a somewhat worn beaver-hat, Mr Mompesson introduced him to his companion:

“Harry, you’ve heard me speak of Sir Thomas.”

“I have,” he says with a brief bow as he takes the proffered hand which is be-ringed and manicured.

The two smile formally at each other.

“I sent to meet you here, Harry,” Mr Mompesson goes on, “because I want to avail myself of some of your legal advice.”

“Well, you’ve come to the right shop.”

“Shop? Why, I hope you ain’t going to make me fee you for it?”

“Not yet, but one day I shall. But if we’re going to talk law we’d best not do it here.”

“Why should we not go on to the finish?” suggests Mr Mompesson.

As you probably know, he was alluding to a
tonish
but extremely disreputable coffee-shop in another part of Covent-garden.

“I have a better notion than that!” cries the young baronet. “Let us go to a Hell!”

“Thomas is a notorious black-leg,” Mr Mompesson explains to his legal companion.

“I sometimes wonder if his ruling passions aren’t really the turf and the baize.”

“The injury is at least only to one’s pocket,” Sir Thomas answers with a laugh.

Whereas a moment with Venus may condemn you to a lifetime with Mercury.”

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The other gentlemen smile (the shabbily-dressed one rather uneasily) and Sir Thomas says to Mr Mompesson: “I see you still bear the sears of an encounter with the fair sex.”

Mr Mompesson flushes then, raising a hand to his forehead, protests irritably: “It’s healed now. It was more than two years ago, dammit. Can’t you let it drop?”

You and I, of course, know what member of the gentle sex inflicted this wound upon the future baronet and under what circumstances. Little wonder that he had no taste to be reminded of it!

“Come,” says Sir Thomas rising from his seat, “we’re getting dull and we shall quarrel. Let us go to Wetherby’s.”

So they make their way to Henrietta-street, and ring at a dark little door which is secured with knobs of iron. After a moment a small wicket with iron bars across it opens and a voice demands: “Who is there?”

“Friends,” Sir Thomas replies. “We are sent by Stanhope Mountgarret.”

He winks at his companions.

“Come in one at a time,” the unseen voice returns and, as the sound of a bolt being drawn and a heavy chain falling is heard, the door swings back. From behind it the Cerberus who guards the entrance to this Hell holds a lanthorn briefly in each gentleman’s face as he passes and then secures the door behind them.

They find themselves in a dark hall but from there they enter a large and magnificent apartment ablaze with candles and high looking-glasses whose existence could hardly be guessed at from the decrepit appearance of the house.

From the cashier seated at a desk in one corner, Mr Mompesson and Sir Thomas each purchase thirty guineas’ worth of ivory fishes.

“You won’t play?” Sir Thomas asks their companion.

He flushes while Mr Mompesson smiles.

“Never,” he answers. “On principle.”

And so, while Harry looks on disdainfully, the other two proceed to lose their money at Hazard. When they are quite cleaned out they lounge with Harry on the chairs and sophas in one of the other apartments, drinking the iced champagne that the establishment generously makes available.

“Why the aversion to play?” Sir Thomas languidly asks.

“The question doesn’t arise,” Harry answers stiffly. “My circumstances do not permit it.”

The baronet looks him up and down with a bored smile as if to imply that from his appearance that is only too obvious.

“But I have another reason,” Harry goes on, as if stung by this insolent appraisal. “My own family lost a great deal of money through play. My greatgrandfather once had considerable wealth but he dissipated it all in gaming.”

“Your great-grandfather,” the baronet drawls. “That’s going confoundedly far back, ain’t it?”

“Not so far,” Harry retorts. “He is still alive.”

“Must be deuced old,” Sir Thomas comments.

“Of course,” Harry replies impatiently. Then he hesitates and, looking at Mr Mompesson, adds: “And yet he has neither forgotten nor forgiven the wrongs done to him, for he has been the victim of terrible injustice.”

“Yes, yes,” Mr Mompesson says quickly. “But don’t for heaven’s sake start on that now.”

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“It’s very well for you,” Harry says angrily. “Your family has profited by it.”

He breaks off and both he and Mr Mompesson glance at the baronet as if afraid they have said too much.

“You intrigue me,” Sir Thomas says. “Won’t you tell me the story?”

“Well, if you must,” Mr Mompesson says off-handedly. “It goes back to the absurd tale that my great-grandfather won his property down at Hougham in a game of Hazard, but there is no foundation in it. The truth is more mundane: he bought it from James Huffam.”

“Yet such things happen,” Sir Thomas protests.

“To win or lose everything on the fall of the dice,” Harry says with a shudder. “I play no games of chance but I will take you on at chess where luck plays no part and my fate hangs or falls by my own cunning.”

“If it’s a question of cunning, you should play at cards,” Mr Mompesson says. “But why do you jib at games of chance when life itself is a dice-game? If I win, very well. If I lose, why then, I shall have to accept my fate.”

“No, you can make your fate,” Harry replies. “You don’t have to accept it.”

“Gammon!” exclaims the baronet. “Life is a game of Hazard.”

“That is a facile view,” Harry says venomously. “There are patterns and they can be understood and mastered. That is the appeal of Equity to me.”

“If it comes to that,” returns Sir Thomas, “Hazard can be mastered if you play with a pair of cogged dice.”

“As your great-grandfather knew,” Harry says to Mr Mompesson.

“I wish the old fellow had known about this damned codicil!” that gentleman exclaims, doubtless intending to divert his companion from this dangerous topic.

(And I might presume to add that Harry would undoubtedly have had the best of the argument had the three young men continued it, for Equity is indeed an imitation of divine Justice, and the nearest image we have of the hidden Design that rules all things.)

“What’s this?” Sir Thomas asks.

“It’s a codicil to the will of James Huffam’s father that has been laid before Chancery,”

Mr Mompesson answers gratefully. “And its conditions may be set up in place of those in the original will that old Huffam made. The codicil entails the estate upon James instead of bequeathing it outright, and so if the Court accepts it, that would mean that he had no clear title to the estate to sell to my great-grandfather.”

“So do you lose the property?”

“No, it ain’t so simple as that. You’d better explain it, Harry.”

So Harry begins: “The codicil would mean that Mompesson’s family acquired only a base-fee in the title while the fee-simple passed to the entailed heirs of James. So long as there is a Huffam heir, there is no difficulty. But if that line dies out (or is disproved), then the fee-simple in the property passes to the next entailed heir and in
that
event, Mompesson’s family are dispossessed.”

Sir Thomas whistles softly then asks: “And is there still a Huffam heir?”

Mr Mompesson and Harry glance at each other.

“We don’t know,” Mr Mompesson says. “There were two but they’ve gone missing.

You see, they have nothing to gain from holding the fee-simple. But now that the story of the codicil is abroad, nobody will take my paper or my father’s except at the highest discount. Even now when the money-market has gone so crazy that it seems that any paper with a signature to it is tradable.”

“You’re in deep?” Sir Thomas asks.

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“Frankly, we’re all to pieces. The governor’s steward down at Hougham is lining his pockets at our expense, but my old fellow refuses to see it even though my mother and Barbellion have shewn him clear evidence. As for myself, why, I’ve borrowed so much on post-obits that even if the governor died tomorrow, it might be too late to save me from a complete smash.”

“How deep are you?” the baronet asks.

Mr Mompesson leans forward and says softly: “fifteen thousand.”

The baronet whistles slowly.

“If the governor finds out, there’ll be the devil of a blow-up. The only thing that can rescue me,” Mr Mompesson goes on, “is to find myself an heiress.”

“Why,” says Sir Thomas, “I know of a likely filly and I believe I could help you to her.”

“What is she like?”

“Well, she ain’t one of your whey-faced demure misses who are only too tediously biddable. She’s a woman of spirit. And I can promise you, you will never suffer a moment’s anxiety for her reputation.”