Charles Palliser (50 page)

Sometimes I was present when they rehearsed a new piece of business for Punch and Joan, and it was rather terrifying to me to see how, while Mr Pentecost (as Punch) lurked in waiting for his victims, his kindly features became quite savage. And then, like nothing so much as a sinister spider, he made the puppet shoot out to pounce upon them and afterwards jump around the stage hugging himself with glee. And similarly Mr Silverlight, who played with such convincing innocence each successive victim — the Turncock, the Foreigner, the Beadle — then became quite malevolent when, in the character of Ketch, it fell to him to hang his friend. (Mr Pentecost once admitted to me that the character of Punch seemed quite to take him over while he was manipulating him.) I might add that, of course, the two gentlemen’s disputatiousness was not SECRET BENEFACTORS

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suspended during these occasions, and the rehearsals were punctuated by cries of “Not like that, you fool!” and “Quicker, dolt, quicker!”

One evening I met them as I was returning home, and as we walked along Mr Silverlight declaimed loquaciously against the civil list and the whole apparatus of jobbery that kept honest merit unrewarded.

“I agree,” said Mr Pentecost. “It is only if the system is left to operate freely that the political economy is self-regulating. But I fear that it is being interfered with by Privilege.

But even more so by state-charity.”

Mr Silverlight disagreed with this, of course, and launched into a eulogy of social Justice. Then suddenly he broke off in mid-flight as if in alarm. When I turned my gaze towards what he was looking at, I could understand why he had been so disconcerted.

Before us was an old man whose face was horribly scarred and pitted and whose red eyes seemed to stare ahead so that the countenance seemed hardly human. He was in rags and had a grizzly white beard, and beside him and attached to him by a length of rope tied to its collar was a large mangy brute of a dog.

“Who is there?” he said, turning his head towards us and holding it at a slight angle.

“Why, my old friend,” Mr Pentecost exclaimed. Then he coloured slightly.

I looked at the three of them: Mr Silverlight silent with dismay, Mr Pentecost embarrassed, and the old beggar turning his head from one to the other in bewilderment.

“Why, is it you, Mr Pentecost?” he said. “I thought it was, it was … Well, never mind what I thought. I wouldn’t have spoken to you if I had known it was you, sir.”

“I … I … Well, I am very glad that you did,” Mr Pentecost stammered. “Let me present you. This is a very old friend of mine, Mr Tertius Silverlight.”

The beggar put out a hand and that gentleman reached out his own with manifest reluctance and shook it slightly.

“I’m pleased to make your acquaintance,” the old man said.

He raised his face towards Mr Silverlight with eager inquisitiveness, but that gentleman merely nodded without speaking, and after a moment the old man lowered his head as if disappointed.

Mr Pentecost pushed me forward: “And this is a very young friend, Master John Mellamphy.”

I held out my hand and the beggar stretched forth his towards me but missed my own by a considerable distance. Mr Pentecost nudged me to take it and now I realized that the man was blind. I shook it.

“Master Mellamphy, this is Justice,” said Mr Pentecost.

“And Wolf,” said the old beggar and the dog bared its teeth and growled.

There was an uneasy silence which was broken by Mr Pentecost: “My good fellow, Silverlight and I were just agreeing on the iniquity of the system of sinecures and pensions.”

“Aye,” said the beggar warmly. “You know that I’m a sworn enemy to that, too. But unlike you, Mr Pentecost, I oppose it as contrary to social justice.”

“There, Silverlight, you have an ally,” Mr Pentecost said. But his friend merely coloured and avoided his eye. Could it be that he was embarrassed to be supported by so humble an ally? I wondered.

The conversation came to an uneasy halt.

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“I’m sorry to have bothered you, Mr Pentecost,” said the old man.

“Not at all, not at all, my dear friend,” Mr Pentecost said. “But we should be on our way.”

The beggar saluted us and we walked on for the length of the street in silence.

“Now there,” said Mr Pentecost, “is a man who has given his sight for his principles

— misguided though they are.”

I was about to ask him what he meant when at that minute Miss Quilliam came up behind us: “I saw that poor old man accost you,” she said. “Did you give anything to him?”

“Certainly not,” Mr Pentecost cried indignantly. “I will have no truck with charity!”

“Indeed, and why not?”

“Nothing, young lady, is so precisely calculated to bring about the collapse of society.”

“How can that be?” Miss Quilliam asked with a tired smile just as we reached the street-door to our house.

“Why, Miss Quilliam, pauperism is necessary to our society. You shake your head, but you see, it is needed in order to preserve the self-regulating mechanism of the free-market in labour.”

At this moment Mr Peachment came down the stairs towards us and Mr Pentecost appealed to him: “Why, Mr Peachment, if you could get twelve shillings a week for doing nothing, would you work for thirteen?”

It took some time to convey this notion to him. Then a smile appeared on his tired face: “Why, I reckon not, Mr Pentecost.”

“Of course not!” he cried triumphantly. “The price of labour must be settled by the lowest price that a man will accept. If this is unnaturally raised by charitable subventions to twelve shillings, then everything will collapse.”

“Why,” said Mr Peachment, “I only wish the paritch would behave thus by us, for I fear that unless things pick up, me and mine will have to return to Dorset and go into the

’House, for we cannot scratch a living here.”

“I am distressed to learn it, Mr Peachment, but you must have seen for yourself how the parish provision is demoralizing the English peasantry. Can you deny that they marry without being independent, they save nothing when they could, and they spend money on drink when they have it? Alas, they need the fear of starvation to make them work.”

“Aye, but the paritch harries ’em cruel, Mr Pentecost.”

“My very point!” he cried. “The persecution by the parish of those likely to become chargeable is making Old England into a tyranny. Only by abolishing charity and therefore the right of the parish to evict people, will this be ameliorated.”

“If the parish is such a tyrant, Mr Peachment, why are you going back?” Miss Quilliam asked.

“Why, I have no settlement in Lunnon and therefore cannot claim relief.”

“You see?” cried Mr Pentecost. “A free market in labour is the only solution.”

“That may be so,” Mr Peachment said. “But if you’ll excuse me, I must be on my way.”

He passed on and we walked on up to our landing as we talked.

“I have to tell you frankly, Mr Pentecost, the abolition of relief is a repugnant idea,”

said Miss Quilliam smiling as if at a clever but misguided pupil. “We need more charity, not less. And if you are correct — as I concede that SECRET BENEFACTORS

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you are — to say that society is breaking down, the reason is the failure of the propertied classes to fulfil their obligations and take those measures which would forestall pauperism.” She hesitated and then went on: “In the case of my own family, for example, a certain patron failed to keep his promise of a living to my father and thus precipitated him into acute poverty.”

“You are both in error,” cried Mr Silverlight, who seemed now to have recovered his composure. “Only in a society founded upon the Law of Reason can Justice for all be won.”

“Faugh!” exclaimed his friend. “The Law of Reason is a Chimaera. The Law of Necessity is what governs men and that is why only the prospect of starvation will teach them what their real interests are.”

“But if men act from rational self-interest as you have often said, Mr Pentecost,” I asked, “why do they need to be starved into knowing what is good for them?”

“A hit! A palpable hit!” cried Mr Silverlight.

“Deluded imp!” exclaimed Mr Pentecost but he softened it with a smile. “Men do not know what their true interest is, for their narrow view needs to be modified by the objective reality of society.”

“The boy is clever,” said my patron. “That you cannot deny, Pentecost.”

“You are right, Mr Silverlight, and it grieves me that his education is being neglected,”

said Miss Quilliam. “I wish I could teach him as I did at first, but I fear I have not the strength.”

“Why, of course not,” Mr Silverlight said. “But I have an idea: I could do it!”

“Certainly not!” his companion cried. “I would not permit you to fill his head full of nonsense. I will take it upon myself to teach him.”

“Then you have three tutors now, Master John,” said Miss Quilliam, smiling at me.

“What do you want to learn?”

“I want to learn the Law,” I said.

“You do not mean the Law but Equity,” said Mr Silverlight.

“What is the difference?” I asked. “Is there any?”

Mr Silverlight shuddered: “There is indeed.”

Mr Pentecost vigorously shook his head at me behind his friend’s back.

At that moment the door to our room opened and my mother appeared, looking drawn and pale. “Whatever kept you?” she said dully to Miss Quilliam, seeming not to notice the rest of us. “Have you got it?”

Miss Quilliam glanced at me.

Mr Pentecost said: “John, come and share our dinner.”

“Yes,” said Mr Silverlight. “And I will try to put you right.”

So while Miss Quilliam went into our chamber, I followed the two gentlemen into theirs. Once we were snugly ensconced and the water for their brandy was heating in a chafing-dish hung on a trivet over the Peachments’ fire, they began to explain the point to me — interrupting one another at each sentence and quarrelling over the meaning of almost every term.

The Common Law, Mr Silverlight asserted, was a low, mechanick, ungen-tlemanly business which was concerned only with the strict application of precedent and statute regardless of the merits of the case concerned. And to go to Law was to play at Hazard, for procedure was all-important and was bedevilled by complex and arbitrary rules, for example, governing entry

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upon process. This meant that a case might be thrown out on a technicality which had nothing to do with the justice or injustice of the cause.

“But Equity, my young friend,” Mr Silverlight said, “is very different. It is practised in the High Court of Chancery which is a court of conscience. That means that it is concerned with Principle, with what ought to be, regardless of what actually is. The Law surrenders before the randomness of life and the power of mere accident, while Equity attempts to achieve something perfectly just and based upon Reason.”

There was a derisive snort from his friend.

“That is poppycock,” he said. “Why, you’re just making patterns! These ideas don’t depict reality any more than the set of perfect squares that Wren conceived for rebuilding London after the Great fire, could ever have represented the reality of a great metropolis. My dear young friend,” he said turning to me, “pray don’t let Silverlight’s enthusiasm mislead you. Chancery is the most notoriously unjust court in the kingdom!”

“But only think,” his companion cried, “of the noble principles embodied in it!

Whereas in the Common Law there are writs not rights, in Chancery rights are of supreme importance. And whereas legal rights in realty can be lost over time if not defended, equitable rights are imperishable!”

“Realty?” I asked in bewilderment.

“Land and houses and so on,” Mr Pentecost whispered to me since his friend was in full flight, “rather than personalty — money, investments, and that sort of thing.”

“Equitable rights are immortal,” Mr Silverlight exclaimed, “showing us an image of the Justice of the Supreme Being!”

“What does that mean?” I asked in excitement.

“It means,” Mr Pentecost explained for his friend had fallen into a rapt day-dream,

“that if a will comes to light no matter how late, then the property will be restored to the rightful owner, and if he is dead, then to his heirs however remote. You see, Equity abides by the principle
ubi remedium, ibi jus.
That is to say, rights arise from remedies.

In other words, if you can prove title to land then you own it. If someone else can prove a better title, then he owns it. There is no absolute title to realty.”

“And does the same hold true for a codicil?” I asked, remembering how my mother’s father had hoped that the codicil might lead him to wealth.

He assured me that it did, and this gave me much to think about.

This was the first of what I came to think of as my law tutorials, for during the next few weeks my two friends generously instructed me in the fundamentals of both Law and Equity. And a very strange education it was for almost whenever Mr Silverlight taught me something in impassioned terms, Mr Pentecost contradicted him, but was at least as knowledgeable and could cite precedents from memory with remarkable ease.

And so I came to understand those almost theological distinctions on which Equity is founded: between tenure and estate, between seisin and possession, between seisin in law and seisin in deed, between barring and breaking an entail, between vested and contingent interests, between interests which are vested in interest and those vested in possession, between conveyance by fine and by common recovery, and many others.

Although Miss Quilliam knew and approved, I had to keep my visits secret from my mother who was, anyway, increasingly distant and silent in the evenings.

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One evening late in the summer I was with my two legal tutors in their tent when we heard a knock and then Mrs Peachment’s voice raised in welcome. A moment later, Miss Quilliam appeared at the flap.

“Your mother,” she said to me, “is writing mysteriously in that pocket-book of hers, so I thought I would come and find you.”