Charles Palliser (25 page)

“This is the boy I told you about, Miss Quilliam,” Henrietta said.

“How do you do, Master Mellamphy,” she said, holding out her hand. “I have heard a great deal about you.”

I looked at Henrietta in surprise. What could she have said? Before I could speak she began to talk about our hopes of meeting again. Miss Quilliam listened gravely and asked me some courteous but searching questions which I believed I could answer without betraying any of my mother’s confidences.

“Then we may, mayn’t we?” Henrietta asked.

At that moment the door was flung violently open hitting the young lady’s back and hiding her behind the door. A burly youth sprang into the room with an exultant shout at Henrietta: “You sly creature! I guessed you had tried to hide in here! But I’m too clever for you, ain’t I?”

The youth was about seventeen, quite tall and sturdily grown. He had a coarsely-featured red face and short, carrotty hair. He was wearing dark-blue mixture pantaloons, Wellington boots and a black waistcoat. He did not look anything like the boy I had seen in the carriage all those years ago. (In fact it was not he but his brother whom I had seen, as I later understood.) He had just seized Henrietta by one arm and raised his hand as if to strike her, when he caught sight of me: “Hello! What have we here?”

He lowered his hand but tightened his grip on the little girl.

At that moment the young lady, pushing the door out of the way, stepped forward and said: “Mr Tom! That is not the way to enter a room.”

“What, are you here too, missy?” he exclaimed.

“Release Miss Henrietta. I have told you before: a young gentleman does not play with boys and girls still in the school-room.”

“Ride your own mare, missy,” Tom said. “I ain’t your scholar.”

“Please, Tom!” Henrietta protested.

“Who are you, boy?” the youth said, with an insolent emphasis on the last word.

“Let go of her,” I demanded.

“How dare you speak to me in that way,” he retorted. “What is your business here?

Why did they let you in?”

“I have as much right to be here as you,” I said angrily. “More right, if justice were done.”

At this the youth sketched a coarse laugh rather than laughed, as if indicating that amusement was called for rather than that I had said anything funny. In the face of such stupidity combined with such arrogance I felt a hatred I had never experienced before.

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“Mr Thomas, if you do not release Miss Henrietta I shall have to report your conduct to your tutor,” the young lady said.

“I don’t care a fig for him!” the young gentleman replied.

I stepped up to him and said: “Let go of her or I will hit you.”

Suddenly he released Henrietta and swung his fist at me striking me in the chest so that I stumbled backwards, lost my balance, and fell to the floor. Henrietta cried out and, lying on the floor, I saw the youth hit her in the face quite hard with the flat of his hand.

The young lady ran forward and laid a hand on his arm but he shook her off and advanced towards me, drawing back one booted foot as if to drive it into my face.

I rolled aside and seized one of his shins but he gripped me by the head and began to bang it — though not as hard as he might have — against the wall. Henrietta began to hit him on the shoulder and he elbowed her aside.

At that moment a commanding voice said: “What in the name of goodness is going on here?”

Tom coloured and moved sheepishly away from me. As I scrambled to my feet I saw a tall lady standing in the door-way into the adjoining room. Although she was some years older than my mother, I could see that she was far from old but was in that puzzling region between the two states. There was something in her face that made me think it handsome rather than beautiful — and certainly not pretty — and as she looked at us now, anger and disdain were manifest upon it.

“Will nobody answer me? Miss Quilliam, what is the explanation for this extraordinary scene?”

“I hardly know, Lady Mompesson, for my own scarcely preceded your arrival.”

“Indeed?” she said with a horribly deliberate kind of icy surprise. Her gaze swung round: “You screamed I think, Henrietta. Why?”

Henrietta glanced at the youth and he made a growling gesture with his mouth: “I only cried out when John fell over, Aunt Isabella.”

The lady’s lips pursed slightly: “And what have you to say, Tom?”

“I was only kicking up a bit of a lark, Mamma.”

She shuddered: “Must we be subjected to the language of the stables?”

“Henrietta’s right,” I said. “It was nothing. I only tripped.”

Lady Mompesson’s gaze was turned upon me but so expressionlessly that I almost wondered if I had spoken. Then she addressed herself to Henrietta: “You have no business to be in here. Go to the school-room immediately with Miss Quilliam where you will be punished for your disobedience.”

Henrietta, accompanied by the young governess, quickly left the room without looking at me.

“As for you, Tom.” She paused and looked at him reflectively. “Go to your governor and tell him to give you something to do. And ask him to wait upon me after dinner. It is time we had another of our little talks.”

“It wasn’t my fault, Mamma,” Tom whined. “She came in here and I came to find her because I knew she had no business in this room. Then this boy attacked me.”

“You’re a liar and a bully,” I exclaimed. “She only hid in here because you were chasing her.”

“Mamma, how dare this boy insult me?” cried the carrot-haired youth. “Why, he is not even a gentleman’s son.”

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“Then,” I said angrily, “neither are you, for I don’t believe a gentleman would treat his cousin as you have just done.” (Of course, I meant Henrietta.)

“Master Mellamphy is, as he reminds us, doubly entitled to our courtesy, for he is also a guest in this house,” Lady Mompesson said to her son. “Be on your way now, Tom.

This young man and I have business to attend to.”

With a glare at me the youth slouched out of the room while Lady Mompesson with a muttered “Follow me” passed through the door-way into the next room, and I obeyed her, my heart pounding in excitement at the implications of what she had just said.

The room was vast and seemed even vaster by virtue of its being in half-darkness with the curtains pulled across the tall windows at the opposite end. A few lighted candles stood on side-tables around the walls. In the centre was a high-backed chair on which my mother sat with her back to the door by which I had just entered. Facing her was an old man reclining on a chaise-longue under a richly-embroidered covering, with his feet resting upon a gout-stool.

As we approached my mother looked round and gave me a timid smile. Looking at the old man’s face I remembered the long sunken cheeks, the bleary eyes with their folds of skin beneath them, the protruding jaw and the stained skin, for he had changed not at all: it was the old gentleman in the carriage who had alarmed my mother the day after the burglary so long ago.

“This is the boy,” said Lady Mompesson pushing me into the centre of the room so that I stood between the chaise-longue and my mother’s chair.

“Bring him closer,” said the old man.

Lady Mompesson pushed a bony fist into the small of my back and I was shoved forward.

Sir Perceval raised a spy-glass to one blood-shot eye and stared at me for a minute.

“He seems rather small,” he pronounced eventually, speaking in a slurring drawl. “Is he not very robust?”

“He is well and strong, Sir Perceval, thank Heavens,” said my mother.

“Excellent,” he said without enthusiasm. “I am glad to have been reassured on that point.”

Lady Mompesson seated herself on an elegant sopha beside her husband and uttered a request in the tone of a command : “Now will you show Sir Perceval and myself the item we have spoken of.”

“Go back to the other room and wait for me, Johnnie,” my mother said.

Surprised and disappointed, I protested: “Mayn’t I stay?”

“Why not let him?” the old gentleman asked. “It consarns him, don’t it?”

“If you wish it, Sir Perceval,” my mother said timidly and looked at me reproachfully.

“But you must promise to be silent.”

I felt a little guilty at this victory and yet triumphant too. I nodded and moved towards her so that I stood beside her in her chair and we faced the other two.

My mother took one of the keys that hung from the chain around her waist and undid the lock that secured the slender document case which she always carried. Sir Perceval leaned forward eagerly as she found another key and unlocked the case itself. From it she took out a small paper that was rolled up into a cylinder secured by two brass rings at either end. None of us seemed even to breathe as she slid the rings free and carefully unrolled the paper. Standing behind her chair I could see that it was a single sheet of thick parchment covered with

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writing. Partly because I was too far away, but also because of the nature of the character which was beautifully regular but very strangely formed, I was unable to make out any of the words. A large red seal was affixed to the bottom of the paper, and there appeared to be three signatures just above it, for their irregularity contrasted with the rest of the writing.

“Let me look at it,” said Sir Perceval, reaching out a bony, be-ringed claw towards it although he was much too far away to reach it.

My mother drew back and pressed the paper close to herself: “No, Sir Perceval,” she exclaimed. “Please forgive me, but I must not allow you to touch it.” He muttered something and sat back. She held it up so that they could see it and said: “I hope you will accept this as proof that my claim to the annuity is valid.”

“Without prejudice to that question, Mrs Mellamphy,” said Lady Mompesson, “we will go so far as this : assuming that that is the codicil of which you sent us a copy some seven years ago, we are prepared to purchase it from you.”

My mother gasped: “Purchase it!” she exclaimed.

“In consideration,” Lady Mompesson went on, “of the sum of fifteen hundred pounds.”

“But it is not for sale!”

“That is our final offer,” said Lady Mompesson, “and I assure you that you are wasting your time if you believe it will be increased.”

“No,” my mother insisted. “I cannot sell it.”

“But, Mamma,” I broke in, “only think: fifteen hundred pounds would save us from having to sell all our things.”

I saw Lady Mompesson glance at Sir Perceval with a look of triumph at my words.

“Oh Johnnie, you shouldn’t have said that.” She addressed the Mompessons: “It is true that because of some ill fortune I have suffered, my son and I are penniless and I have no means of supporting us. And certainly no prospect of educating him to take his place in the world in the way that his birth …”

“Madam,” drawled Sir Perceval, “be so good as to come to the point.”

My mother flushed and began to speak more hurriedly: “That is all I have come to ask for today: the annuity that I am entitled to.”

“But you see, Mrs Mellamphy,” Lady Mompesson replied languidly, “my husband and I do not admit that you are entitled to it, and that for reasons that our legal representatives have in the past seven or eight years on frequent occasions communicated to yours, and that we ourselves rehearsed at length not five minutes ago.”

She paused and then turned her gaze briefly on myself before saying dispassionately:

“Do you wish me to repeat them now?”

“No,” said my mother quickly, “please do not.”

“But what we are prepared to offer you is a single payment for the codicil.”

“But it is not mine to sell, Lady Mompesson.” As she spoke my mother restored the document to its case and locked it up.

“I beg your pardon,” Lady Mompesson said icily, “I do not understand you, Mrs Mellamphy.”

“I tell you frankly I believe this to be a device,” Sir Perceval said.

“No!” my mother cried. Then she went on in a lower tone but as if struggling to master her feelings: “I promised my father I would keep it. This document cost him …

cost him …” Here she faltered and broke off.

“I said it was a question of price,” the baronet exclaimed.

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“I don’t mean that!” my mother exclaimed. Then she reflected for a moment, glanced at me and said: “I promised my father that I would pass it on to my heir. And, moreover, I know you would destroy it if I sold it to you.”

“And why the deuce should we not do so? Once we’d paid for it … ”

“A moment, Sir Perceval,” his wife interrupted him.
“If
we did so,” Lady Mompesson began frigidly; “and mark that I say ‘If ’ since to do so would be to put ourselves in peril of an action for contempt of court since the document might be material evidence in a suit still before the courts;
if
we did so, it would be because we believed it to be a forgery.”

“If it is a forgery then why are you so eager to have it?” I cried.

“Your son is very insolent, Mrs Mellamphy,” said Lady Mompesson in a matter-of-fact tone. “Nevertheless, I will answer that highly impertinent question. Even a forgery could damage our interests by prolonging that infernal suit.”

“It is not a forgery,” my mother exclaimed. “My father was convinced of that.”

Lady Mompesson smiled coldly: “But you see, my dear Mrs Mellamphy, your father might well not have been the most reliable authority in this matter. Consider how much he believed he stood to gain by it.”

My mother looked at her and bit her lip. “I hardly know how to take your meaning, Lady Mompesson. I can’t believe that you can be so cruel as to … ” She paused and then said impulsively: “But I can assure you that the other party to the suit believes it is genuine.”

They both glanced quickly at each other.

“What the deuce do you mean?” Sir Perceval demanded.

“Somehow that party has learned that I have it and now knows where I am.”

“What evidence do you have for this?” Lady Mompesson asked.

“My house was broken into one night some time ago in an attempt to steal this document.”