Charles Palliser (136 page)

Thus attired, I went up the stairs and passed into the front-hall where, to my delight, I found Henrietta patiently waiting. We played our part to perfection, under the watching gaze of Ned who was sitting in his box by the door.

“Please Miss Henrietta,” I said, “Edward has sent me to escort you to the Park.”

I heard Ned’s sharp intake of breath at these words.

“Why could he not come himself ?” she answered, speaking so coldly that for a moment I believed I was mistaken in thinking she had recognised me.

“I’m afraid he is indisposed,” I replied.

“Very well,” she said and without even glancing at me she walked towards the door with an imperious glance at Ned who sprang up to open it.

I followed her out, taking the umbrella that Ned put into my hand as I 624 THE

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passed him, and we went down the steps. I had seen footmen in the streets escorting their employers often enough to know that it was my duty to stay three paces behind her.

We walked a few yards along the pavement and then, without turning her head, she said: “We must not attempt to speak until we are in the Park.”

So I had not imagined her recognition of me! It was agony to have to walk so near to her in silence when there were so many things I wanted to say.

When we had passed inside the gate she chose the emptiest avenue. Luckily, since it was Christmas-day and the weather was cold and threatening rain, the Park was deserted and Rotten-row empty of the fashionable parade of horses and carriages that was usually to be seen at this hour. A light but icy wind rustled the leafless branches that waved lazily against the grey sky.

Henrietta began to walk slower and I moved up until I was a little closer to her. Now she turned her head for a moment allowing me to glimpse her pale face with its dark, intense eyes, and directed towards me a melancholy gaze before turning her head away again.

“You have become very handsome,” she announced.

“How did you know me?” I asked.

“I knew you would come one day. After all, we pledged our troth, didn’t we?”

We walked on for some yards in silence for I could not think how to begin.

“I have always remembered you,” she said. “You were the only stranger, apart from Miss Quilliam, who was kind to me.” She turned back to me again : “Amn’t I beautiful?

You’re supposed to say I am.”

“You are beautiful,” I had to say. “Though I don’t believe I should say that to a young lady — I, the humblest and wretchedest creature below stairs.”

“You may say it to me — the humblest and wretchedest creature above stairs. But tell me your story. How do you come to be in that hateful house?”

We were in the middle of the Park by now and there was nobody in sight, so I came abreast of her.

“First tell me what has been happening to you,” I insisted.

“Oh that is soon told. I was sent to Brussels where I was most unhappy. Since I returned I have had Miss fillery as my governess. I hate her. And yet she is no worse nor better than any of the others. The only one I ever cared for was Miss Quilliam. I sometimes wonder if that is why she was dismissed, for I could never learn the reason.”

Then she urged me to give an account of myself, saying: “It may surprise you to learn that I know something of your story already, for you have been much discussed by Sir Perceval and Lady Mompesson. Do you know that they are desperately looking for you?”

I nodded and began my tale. I had decided I would tell her nothing of the burglary or my intention to regain the will for after my experience with Emma, I could not be sure that she would not betray me. More important, I felt that she might not understand how my actions were justified unless I explained everything. And even then, she might make objections.

So as we walked together along the deserted, gravelled avenue of elms, I went over the events of the five or six years since we had last met. I described how my mother and I had been cheated of everything by Mr Barbellion and Mr Sancious and betrayed by Bissett; how we had fled to London, lost everything to bailiffs set on by Mr Barbellion, and had fallen into deepest poverty. I said nothing of either the Isbisters or Miss Quilliam, and softened the details of

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much of my narrative. I explained thai my mother had possessed a document which certain enemies of ours were anxious to obtain. Somehow we had been traced by agents of these people and had been attacked in an attempt to seize it. Though we had escaped on that occasion, we had then been led, by a complicated series of misunderstandings and betrayals, into surrendering it into the hands of our enemies. I told her very briefly how I had been sent to Quigg’s farm and something of what I had suffered there, and described how I had escaped and returned to London.

“I found my mother in even more wretched circumstances than I had feared,” I went on. “She was also weakened by consumption and … In short, she died a few hours after I found her.”

Henrietta seemed to be deeply moved by these last passages in my narrative and turned her head away as if to prevent me from seeing her tears.

We were now by the bank of the Serpentine-river which at that time was a stinking cess-pool. It was a bleak spot, and especially so now that the mist was gathering and obscuring the trees around the perimeter and the sky was merging with the thickening fog to form an oppressive canopy overhanging us.

“I like it here,” she said. “Miss fillery hates it.”

“It’s not a proper river, you know. It’s a sewer that follows the course of the old Westbourne-river.”

“How do you know so much about it?”

I blushed: “I will tell you, but we should turn back now.”

Amid the gathering darkness lights were appearing through the bare branches of the furthest trees, reminding me that we had to return to the house soon or risk drawing attention to ourselves. Henrietta consented and as we made our way back, I told her briefly the later part of my story: my encounter with Barney Digweed and his gang in the half-built house, the reading of my mother’s account of her life and my realization of the nature of the crime that had always over-shadowed my life, and the way I had been lured into the custody of my Clothier relatives and taken before the Court of Chancery by them, and then consigned to the madhouse. I told her whom I had met there and how I had learned more about the night on which my grandfather had been murdered. Then I recounted how I had been rescued by the Digweeds and explained that I had lived with them since then and earned my living below ground.

“Have you come to my guardians’ house to rescue me?” Henrietta asked.

I was wondering how to answer when I saw her bite her lip as she stared ahead with an expression of alarm. I looked in the direction of her gaze and saw to my dismay that a gentlemanly figure was approaching us from a few yards ahead. The mist had allowed him to approach so closely without being noticed. Already he was raising his hat to greet her, and as he did so he was looking curiously at both of us. I instantly fell a few paces behind her, but it seemed impossible to me that he should not have noticed that she had been engaged in earnest conversation with her page.

“Why, Miss Henrietta!” he exclaimed as he came up. “Fancy meeting you out walking on Christmas-day. Alone and in weather like this!”

He stood smiling quizzically, a handsome figure in his early forties, wearing a magnificent merino great-coat and Hessian top-boots. His gaze passed briefly over my face as I touched my forehead.

“Good day, Sir Thomas,” Henrietta replied with a blush. “I wanted some air.”

“On such an afternoon? It is spitting rain and the fog is thickening!”

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“Indeed, and therefore I was just turning back.”

“So I should hope, for your governess will be becoming alarmed, even though she is not as solicitous — nor in any way so charming — as the admirable Miss Quilliam. Let me accompany you back to Brook-street. Your servant can go on ahead.” He added: “If that would be agreeable to you.”

Henrietta consented and I gave him the umbrella and, with a couple of quick bows, hurried off towards the house.

I had much to occupy me and when I reached Park-lane, decided to take a long way back to give myself time to reflect. Could I trust her? Did I dare tell her that I was planning an action that would destroy her guardians’ wealth and position? For the first time it came to me that my design might appear a shameful thing to one who did not know what I knew. And with a part of my attention I wondered who the gentleman was who had accosted us and whether he had overheard us.

I made my way into the house through the mews and the back-yard and returned to the scullery. As I came in Bessie turned from one of the pans she was scraping and jerked her head: “Mr Will.”

Assuming he wanted the coat back, I went to the servants’-hall. As I entered I saw that Bob was lying fast asleep on one of the forms, and I also noticed that my fellow-servants were looking at me curiously.

Will scrutinised me and said: “Well, Dick, I don’t know what you’ve been up to, but the old tabby wants you. You’re to go to her right now.”

My first thought was that Sir Thomas had told her that he had seen Henrietta talking to me, but then I decided that in that case it would surely be the governess who would have been concerned rather than Miss Lydia. I made my way up the back-stairs and along the second-floor landing and knocked at the door.

When I entered I found the old lady sitting in her elbow-chair facing me and staring at me with a strange expression: a kind of suppressed excitement mingled with fear.

We looked at each other while I might have counted to ten and then she said :

“John Huffam.”

Before I could stop myself I uttered the fatal words: “How did you know?” Instantly I could have bitten my tongue. “I have told you my name,” I said.

At my words she looked surprised herself: “So you are another John Huffam?”

I could make no sense of this remark but I felt that having revealed so much I had to trust her.

“My name is not John Huffam,” I said. “Though it is one that has associations for me.”

“Yet you answered to that name as if to your own,” she said sharply. “Though I only said it to you at a venture to see if you knew it.”

“Why should you think I might know it?”

“Because I knew your face as soon as I saw you. At first you put me in mind of Martin Fortisquince and I believed you must be his son.”

I waited in astonishment for her to say more. The resemblance between myself and my progenitors had been referred to more than once before, and I recalled how Mrs Fortisquince had commented upon it.

“But then I remembered,” the old lady continued, “how much he and your father resembled each other when they were boys.”

I was so amazed that I blurted out: “My father? Do you not mean my grandfather?”

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“Of course,” she said and smiled. “How could John have been your father? What a foolish old creature I am. He was a generation too old. And besides, I know he had no son. And yet, only think, I last saw him when he was about the age that you are now. And I was already past my youth then. You see how very ancient I am? I expect you think I’m out of my mind. Perhaps I am.”

As she looked at me with her glittering blue eyes I felt that I had never seen a face that expressed more acutely sharpness of intelligence.

“I set eyes on your grandfather only once,” she went on. “It was just after he came to London, when he paid a call for the first and last time on his Mompesson cousins. The resemblance between you is striking.”

“So I have been given to understand,” I said, remembering how Mr Escreet had received me.

“He came to ask about things he had been told by an old retainer of his grandfather.

He had requested him to tell him about his parents and old Jeoffrey Huffam.”

So I had asked Mr Escreet exactly the question that my grandfather had put to him more than forty years ago! No wonder the old man had been confused.

“So you see,” the old lady went on, “I have guessed who you must be: you are the Huffam heir that everyone is in such a pother about.”

I nodded for it seemed pointless to try to hide the truth from such sharp eyes.

Suddenly she cried: “Then your mother was that poor child that I tried to save!”

I was about to ask her to explain this remark when she went on: “But I knew you even before you came to my room. I recognised you the night the house was broken into.”

I must have looked alarmed for she smiled and, patting a chair beside her, said: “Pray be seated. I mean you no harm.”

I obeyed.

“Now tell me, what did you mean to steal?” Seeing me hesitate she said: “I believe I know it already.”

I was beyond being surprised.

We gazed at each other, our eyes undeviating, unblinking and hardly daring to breathe:

“An old piece of parchment,” I said.

“A legal instrument?” she suggested.

I nodded: “A will.”

“Of one,” she continued, “who died many years ago leaving a will he had drawn up earlier and that was substituted for this one?”

“While the real one was concealed in this house for many years,” I said.

“The will of Jeoffrey Huffam,” she murmured.

“Dated the eighteenth day of June, 1770,” I added.

I saw that there were tears in her eyes.

“Perhaps there is Equity after all,” she mused. “And yet, how strangely events seem to conspire to thwart Justice. I have longed for many years to see that will restored to the heir of Jeoffrey Huffam, and yet it was I who raised the alarm that night.”

“You?” I asked in bewilderment as other questions prompted by her words crowded into my mind.

“Yes,” she said. “And when I reflect that as a consequence you might have 628 THE

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been shot, or hanged or at the very least transported …” She broke off with a shudder.

“But mercifully, no harm seems to have befallen you.”

“No, I was lucky,” I said.

“I must tell you what happened. I sleep very little now. At my age one needs less, and, besides, so little time is left. I see you smile, but I am very old, you know. No, not old. I am ancient. I am a relic of another age. Anyway, on that night I was reading in here when I heard a noise. Oh, not from downstairs. You were very quiet and I did not hear a thing.