Charles Palliser (159 page)

Those left behind were a young gentleman and a young lady. The latter was, from her description, Miss Pickavance, who was still asleep and whom he refused to let us awaken. As for the young gentleman, the landlord said, well, he was still pretty much in the condition he was in when he was helped from the coach. I asked to be taken to him and very grudgingly he led us upstairs.

As we were crossing the landing I looked out through the window over-looking the stable-yard on my right and saw the arch into the street. It had begun to grow a little lighter than it had been when we arrived and I could just catch part of a shop signboard in the street across the way:
amphy.

“Landlord,” I asked. “What is the name of this inn?”

“The Blue Dragon, sir,” he answered, panting from the stairs.

I stopped and looked up and down the passage.

“Did any of the party use this room?” I asked, indicating a door on my right on which was painted a faded crescent on its back with its cusps rising like the horns of a bull.

“The Half-Moon? Why, the young lady slept there,” the landlord said.

I opened the door and saw a large sitting-room looking into the yard and with a view through the arch. The furniture was battered and the walls were hung with shabby papers. There was a door into a small bed-chamber which I looked into. It contained a chair and a big old hanger-bed. The room was damp and oppressive. I gazed into it for a few minutes, my heart filled with forebodings for the past and the future. I was there for so long that Joey came to find me and jogged my arm, looking at me curiously. Then I closed the door and went back to the landing.

We continued up another flight and along a passage to a private sitting-room. There we found (as I expected) Tom Mompesson sprawled on the sopha, reeking of brandy, and profoundly insensible;

Taking some refreshment with us, we hastily resumed our journey. It was clear that since those we were pursuing were now travelling in a vehicle that was at least as rapid as our own, we could not hope to overtake them, but we should be able to remain no more than two or three hours behind.

At intervals I slept but my injured head was throbbing painfully, the more so as it bounced against the seat as the vehicle lurched and swayed in the eddying gusts.

Lashed by the rising winds, we travelled all that day and the next night, calculating that we would arrive towards noon. We would go straight to Mompesson-park, for we assumed that that would be the destination of the party ahead of us. The wedding would presumably take place as soon as possible — perhaps within an hour or two of their arrival, in which case we would come too late. Most probably it would be celebrated in Thorpe Woolston church which was the nearest, or perhaps Melthorpe which was hardly any further, but it was unfortunate that Joey had not been able to learn which of these

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the special licence specified. Assuming we were not too late, how would we go about rescuing Henrietta? We decided that Joey — since he was unknown to anyone there —

would boldly enter the house pretending to be an express courier with a letter to put into her hands. He would tell her that I was still alive and give her a note from me. The next time we stopped to change horses I wrote a few lines pledging myself to rescue her from Bellringer and telling her to trust the bearer.

I speculated on the likely effect on her of discovering that I was still alive. Was it only because she believed I was dead that she had consented to this marriage? Presumably Bellringer had put it to her that marriage to him was the only alternative to marriage to Tom. And he might have deceived her into believing that he admired her for her own sake, for she obviously had no conception that he had the will. My letter explained all of this and when she had read it, Joey would lead her from the house and I would be waiting with the chaise to drive her to safety.

The wind had dropped slightly but the dark clouds were lowering threateningly when, at about noon, we reached the village of Hougham. A few minutes later we reached Mompesson-park and, having passed through the high gates where I had first met Henrietta, drove round to the front and halted at the foot of the pincer-like flight of steps up to the portico.

I waited out of sight inside the vehicle while Joey ran up and hammered at the door.

I heard it opened and then Joey said:

“I must see Miss Henrietta right away. I’ve rode express from Town with a urgent message from Lady Mumpsey.”

“Why, don’t you know no better than to come to the front door, old feller?” the footman (whom I recognised as Dan) answered. “Anyways, she ain’t here. The fambly’s all up in Town, as you oughter know.”

The voice of a woman whom I took to be the housekeeper down here said: “Is there anything amiss, Robert?”

I descended from the carriage and mounted the steps, saying as commandingly as I could: “Come, I know that Miss Palphramond is here.”

Both servants stared at me in surprise. Did Dan recognise me?

“I am privy to the secret,” I said to the housekeeper. “I am charged by Lady Mompesson with a letter for Miss Palphramond which I am to put into no other hands than her own.”

She stared at me as if I had taken leave of my senses: “I have not the slightest conception of your meaning, young gentleman.”

Her demeanour was so convincing that I was at a non-plus.

“Then we have over-ridden them on the road and they have not yet arrived,” I said. I turned to Joey: “We will retrace our steps and meet them on the way.” Then I said to the housekeeper: “But if they arrive without having met us, be sure to tell Miss Palphramond that Mr John Umphraville has business with her and that she must do nothing before seeing him.”

I had hit upon that name as a way of conveying to Henrietta the gravity of my message

— and perhaps even my identity, though (as far as I knew) she believed me dead —

without being understood by her companions. The housekeeper consented to deliver this communication and while I returned to the post-chaise and ordered the driver to halt just out of sight of the house, Joey went round to the stables.

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He rejoined me a few minutes later: “The groom’s-boy said there ain’t been no carriage come and I believe he’s telling the truth. There ain’t no cattle in the byres nor no ruts in the mud.”

“Can
we have over-ridden them?”

His face indicated how unlikely he thought this and I agreed.

“Then,” I said in despair, “Bellringer must have changed their destination from Hougham.”

“But you told me as how Sir David said the old coachee had his orders from Lady Mumpsey! And I larned from the stable-men as how the orders was for Hougham.”

“That’s so! Then they must have come here. But perhaps they have gone straight to the church!” I stared at him in horror: “But to which one? Melthorpe or Thorpe Woolston?”

“We must try ’em both. Which is nearer?”

“Thorpe Woolston.”

“Then I’ll run there and you take the chaise to Melthorpe.” He looked at me anxiously: “Are you well enough?”

“You don’t know the way!” I objected.

“Set me on the road and I’ll enquire it out.”

Joey’s suggestion was a good one, so we took the chaise back to the lodge-gates and then parted : he set off in the direction I showed him while I told the driver the way to Melthorpe along the turnpike.

It was already dusk when we drove up the High-street where nothing appeared to have changed. Yet how different were my circumstances from when I had last seen these familiar sights! When we reached the church I could see no lights inside. I got down, crossed the road and hammered at Mr Advowson’s door.

After what seemed a long wait he opened it a few inches and peered out.

“Do you know anything of a wedding here?” I cried.

“A wedding, sir?” he answered, clearly not recognising me. “There’s no wedding due, for there’s no banns been called.”

“This is by special licence.”

He shook his head: “Even so, sir, I’ve heard of nothing of that nature.”

Then unless Joey had more success, I had lost all chance of thwarting the marriage!

I was about to turn away when the old parish-clerk said: “Ain’t it Master Mellamphy?

‘Mr’, I suppose I should say.”

I nodded.

“Why, I’m very glad to see you, sir. Will you have the goodness to step across to the vestry with me, for there’s something I wish to show you?”

In some surprise, I agreed for there was no reason for haste now. He fetched and lighted a lanthorn, and then we crossed the road and went up the path between the graves. All the while he maintained an unbroken flow of gossip about the changes that had been taking place in the village, but my attention was elsewhere. He unlocked the great door and ushered me through the dark and empty church into the vestry.

And now he explained : “About three or four years ago — not long after you were last here yourself, Mr Mellamphy — a stranger came to my house and asked to see the baptism-books for the last twenty years. Well, it appeared that he needed to copy a number of entries, so I left him alone here for an hour or so. He thanked me and departed, but as I was putting the books

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away I recalled that business about the record of your baptism and noticed that the last of the registers he had been looking at was the very one that it was in. Well, something made me look at it again.” He turned to me and said impressively: “Why, it had been torn clean out.”

So that was what Lady Mompesson had meant when she said that even my existence had not been proven! She and her advisers must have learned that someone had removed this record — for it was in their interest that my claim should be upheld. It must have been the Clothiers who had done it when they laid the codicil before the court. I hoped that the copy Mr Advowson had made that time I had passed through the village on my way from Quigg’s farm was still safely concealed in Sukey’s thatch.

Now Mr Advowson was groping in the darkness amongst a pile of huge old registers.

“But here’s the strangest thing,” he went on, panting as he lifted one of them onto the table. “The stranger who must have done it, I knew him. I didn’t recollect then, but it came to me afterwards. I could not be mistaken, for he was the tallest man I have ever seen.” A cold chill ran down my back as he turned to me and said: “That man that came all those years ago with the young lady, sir.”

“Hinxman,” I muttered. The man who had helped Emma when she had tried to abduct me! Alabaster’s agent! It made sense, for I was sure he had been employed by Silas Clothier to destroy the evidence on which my claim to be the Huffam heir rested in order that the provisions of the codicil could be put into effect. And then I remembered that I had overheard him saying to another of the turn-keys that he was going to the North while I was a prisoner of Alabaster’s at exactly that time.

“Is this the register?” I asked, looking at the book he had retrieved.

“This? Oh no, sir. This is something quite unconnected with that, though I believe it has a connexion with yourself. I hope you won’t think it impertinent of me, but after you had gone that last time, I fell to thinking about how Mr Barbellion had examined the marriage-records going back fifty years but had not found what he sought. And then I remembered how you had asked me about the Huffam family as if you had an interest in them. And then I recalled the quatre-foil that Pimlott noticed on one of the chests. (I sent him about his business after what you said, sir, by the way.) Do you recall, Mr Mellamphy, he said he had seen the same figure on one of your mother’s possessions?

Well, I put all this together afterwards and looked through the chest. And I found this.”

He indicated the mouldering volume. “It’s from the time when the chapel in the Old Hall was used by the family for christenings and suchlike. (According to what they say round these parts it was de-consecrated after a murder there, but that’s an old wives’

tale.) So I wondered if it was what Mr Barbellion was looking for.”

“Of course it was!” I cried, remembering Miss Lydia’s story of the elopement of my great-grandparents and the wedding at the chapel.

I leafed through it and found the right date, 1769. And there at last was the piece of evidence that had been sought by so many for so many years: the record of the marriage of James Huffam and Eliza Umphraville. Miss Lydia was indeed recorded as a witness just below the signature of John Umphraville.

Mr Advowson confirmed that the entry was formally correct and duly WEDDINGS AND WIDOWS

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witnessed. Thanking him for his efforts, I begged him to keep the book safely and then left him and climbed back into the chaise.

“Where to, sir?” asked the postilion.

“Back to Hougham,” I said. Then a thought came to me: “No, go down the High-street and bear sharp right at the Green.”

Remembering the copy of my baptism-record that I had left with my old nurse-maid and reflecting that it was now crucial, I had decided to call on Sukey. The postilion was disgusted when he saw Silver-street for after the thaw and several days of rain, it was like the bed of a muddy stream.

To my astonishment, however, there were no cottages here and no sign among the flourishing grass that there had ever been any. My first thought was that the copy had been destroyed and my claim to the property therefore fell. Then it occurred to me to wonder where my old friend and her family might have removed to. I ordered the postilion to circle the Green and then return to the High-street in the hope of finding informants. Nobody was abroad in the heavy rain so at last I stopped and knocked at a cottage door. I was directed by an old woman there to another part of the village and hastened thither.

By the time I reached the cottage to which I had been referred it was the middle of the afternoon. At the place I had been directed to I found a sad little group of wattle-and-daub cottages scattered higgledy-piggledy on a bare patch of waste land, as randomly as if they had fallen off a waggon.