Charles Palliser (160 page)

I chose one of them at hazard and, since there was no door to hammer on but only a leathery curtain to keep the rain out, I called into its dark interior: “Hello there! Sukey?”

Immediately Sukey — older, more careworn, thinner — came forth blinking in the weak light. She took a moment to recognise me but then with an exclamation moved forward and flung her arms around me.

Then she drew back red-faced: “I didn’t ought to have took the liberty. You’re a growed man now a’most, Master Johnnie, and quite the genel’man agin.”

For answer I seized her and hugged her.

“Dear, good Sukey!” I cried.

“Why, this
has
been a day for seeing old faces,” she said, standing back to survey me.

“But yours is the fust that I cared to set eye upon.” Before I could ask her what she meant, she cried: “What’s wrong with your head?”

“A slight accident,” I said. “It’s of no importance.”

She looked at me disbelievingly. Then, noticing the chaise a few yards away, she exclaimed: “You’ve come into your inheritance!”

I shook my head: “I fear I’m no richer now than when I last saw you.”

“But the grand carriage and sarvint?”

“Hired with the last of my money.” Then I blushed and said: “Sukey, I never sent you the money I borrowed the last time I was here.”

She nodded gravely and I wished that I had done so with Miss Lydia’s money as soon as I had escaped from old Clothier and moved into lodgings with Mrs Quaintance.

“So much has happened,” I went on. Falteringly I began: “My mother …”

“Come in and seat yourself,” she said. “You look pale.”

I followed her and found myself inside a small windowless hovel with a low roof of furze branches and a floor of bare mud. There was no fire and it was 740 THE

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illuminated only by a tallow rush. There were two battered chairs and I sat on one of them.

In a few words I told her of my mother’s death, by which she was deeply moved, and a little of what had happened to me since I had last seen her. But I quickly turned the conversation:

“Why have you moved house?” I asked.

“Why, they’ve destroyed them cotts in Silver-street and elsewhere. It was done to bring down the poor-rates, for this is outside the paritch now, and so we get nothing from the Guardians.”

“That’s terrible,” I said, my indignation against the Mompessons rising.

“Oh, there’s many and many in the same case now. Like poor old Mr Pimlott. That puts me in mind of something, Master Johnnie. That time that man broke into your mam’s house, ’twas Mr Pimlott as helped him.”

“So I believe, but how can you be so sure?”

“He died a few months back. While he was on his deathbed my aunt tended him.

(Bless her soul, for she passed on herself not a week arterwards.) He told her there was something he wanted to say to me a-fore he died. I went to him and he told me he was sorry that what he had done that time had injured me and Job. He on’y done it to wound your mam on account of she was gentry, for he was dreadful bitter agin ’em. See, he had worked for the Mumpseys all his life, but then he got to be bad with the rheumatiz from labouring in the wet fields, and so the steward — not the old steward who was a decent man, but his nevy — turned him off. And he ’victed him and his good-wife from their cottage on the estate, and all they could find was that damp little cott nigh to your mam’s house. He reckoned the old woman died on account of it being so cold and wet.”

“Well, but his part in the burglary?” I prompted.

“That day when the tramping man was turned away from your garden-gate, Mr Pimlott seen it and called out to him and offered him meat and a night’s shelter. Then they got to talking and the long and the short of it was they planned it together and Mr Pimlott helped him to carry it out. He told me how arterwards he seen some drawing or something on a letter-case that the man took and he knowed as how that meant that your mam was connected with the Mumpseys, so he reckoned he’d had his revenge. But when he seen you agin that time you come here from up north it begun to prey on his mind for you looked so ill and miserable, he said. And when Mr Advowson suddenly told him the next day that he hadn’t no more work for him, he believed it was a judgement upon him for what he done to you and your mam. And then his own cott was pulled down not long arterwards, like I was saying, and he tried to make himself one like this that Harry built for us, but it blowed down in a high wind and he fell ill and lay for days with no shelter over his head, a’most, and all the time it was gnawing upon his mind what he’d done.”

I was silent for some time thinking back over the past and how things had turned out.

Then I asked: “How is Harry? And the other children?”

She looked down: “It would be better if they didn’t see you.”

Mention of Harry reminded me of the agreement he had extorted from me in connexion with the copy of my baptismal entry.

“Sukey,” I asked, “have you still got that piece of parchment?” Before she could answer, however, I remembered something she had just said and a WEDDINGS AND WIDOWS

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sudden and terrifying thought occurred to me: Mr Advowson had said that it was Hinxman who had removed the entry from the vestry and I tried now to recall if Sukey had seen him on that distant day when he and Emma tried to abduct me. Could it be that he had somehow followed me and was here now?

Hastily I demanded: “Sukey, what did you mean by saying I wasn’t the first face from the past that you had seen today?”

“Why, I was walking back from Nether-Leigh when I noticed lights in amongst the trees. You mind as how the wall along the park is broke down there? Well, I went a little way up the old carriage-drive and seen as how the lights was in the Old Hall. So I went closer and who do you think … ?”

“Lights in the Old Hall!” I exclaimed. “But it’s a ruin. It’s deserted.”

Suddenly I thought of the old chapel there in which James and Eliza’s marriage had taken place. Surely any building that had been once consecrated could be the venue for a marriage by special licence!

I jumped up: “I must go there!” I cried.

“Where?”

“To the Old Hall.”

“Not in this clashy weather,” she cried for the wind was now roaring above us; “and you looking so wan!”

She made a feeble effort to seize me, but I dodged her exactly as I had when I was a mischievous child trying to postpone my bed-time, and ran out and boarded the chaise, shouting to the driver: “Back the way we came. And then turn off where I tell you.”

As the chaise set off Sukey ran alongside for a few yards in the pouring rain shouting something I couldn’t hear above the clattering hooves and driving wind, but we soon left her behind.

The postilion urged the horses into a fast trot, and as I retraced in the swaying chaise the course of walks I had so often made as a child, the long-threatened storm broke. As we breasted Gallow-tree-hill, it grew quite dark and rain came slashing against the windows with impassioned vindictiveness. Then I remembered: there was something I had wanted Sukey to tell me! Of course! The record of my baptism! What had become of it?

I cursed my forgetfulness in neglecting to ask her.

It was early evening as we passed between the stone pillars that marked the rear-entrance to the old Huffam estate and followed the over-grown carriageway as it wound through the decaying timber down towards the lake, taking the route that my mother and I had walked all those years ago when she made her fruitless appeal to the honour and generosity of Sir Perceval and his lady. So strong was the wind now that the elms were waving like willow-trees, and black towers of cloud were piling up against the face of the pale moon. As I peered forth I thought of what Sukey had told me of the actions of the Mompessons’ steward, Assinder. They had no right to this land: they had obtained and held it by fraud and had failed in their obligations towards it. If Bellringer could be made to give up the will the estate would be mine.

As we crossed the bridge at the head of the lake, I leaned my head out to 742 THE

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search for the old house to the left. We were still a quarter of a mile short of it, but the drive swept past it towards the new house leaving nothing but the water-logged meadow-land that lay between the lake and the hill where Jeoffrey Huffam’s mausoleum was, at the foot of which the Old Hall stood. There was no alternative, and so I ordered the reluctant driver to venture cautiously across the ill-drained ground.

The old house was visible now about a mile away as a blacker shape against the gloom, and whatever Sukey had seen, it appeared to be in complete darkness. Or was it?

Was that a gleam from within or merely the dim light of the sky reflected off one of the window-panes? Now it was lit up by a flash of lightning and, with the gaping roof of the wing that was directly ahead of us suddenly exposed, it looked a complete ruin. I peered around in the hope of spying the chaise Bellringer had hired, but unless it was that dark shape beneath the trees in the distance, I could not see it. As we advanced, our progress grew slower and slower as our vehicle’s wheels sank in the soft grass.

At last I called out to the driver to stop and, ordering him to wait, jumped down and hastened towards the crouched hump of the old house. Exhausted by long hours of travel and with my head still painful, I soon out-ran my strength and, gasping for breath and my ears ringing, was forced to pause to recover. I went on more cautiously, finding myself crossing what must once have been a terrace of gravelled walks between balustraded walls, where there were still ancient fish-ponds dark and thick with weed.

Now I saw the mullioned windows gleaming faintly where the leaded glass panes still remained. I headed for the arched entrance at the side where I discovered that the great wooden door was unbarred, and I passed in.

There was a warm, earthy smell I could not identify and my feet seemed to be standing on broken tiles. At first I was in pitch darkness and cursed myself for not having brought a light, but as I grew accustomed to the gloom, I found that the roof was high above me and realized that I was in a great hall. I had never forgotten Mrs Belf lower’s story of the elopement and duel which had been so surprisingly confirmed by Miss Lydia. So it was here that it had happened sixty years ago!

As I gazed upwards there was a flash of lightning and my eyes, though dazzled by the brightness, glimpsed the great timbers of the vaulted roof bearing illuminated armorial insignia on the corbeilles, the ogival hoods above the lofty windows, and ancient portraits hanging below them still with shreds of the yellowed muslin clinging to them with which they must once have been wrapped for protection. Beneath my feet I noticed the pattern of tiles making black and white lozenges like endlessly proliferating and ramifying quincunxes, it occurred to me, whose centre changed as I advanced.

Though there was no sign that the house was anything but deserted as it had been for so many years, above the occasional roll of the thunder and the continuous moaning of the wind and pattering of the rain I thought I heard voices. Yet they might merely have been the sounds of the eddying gusts and for anything I knew to the contrary I was alone in the great building.

Suddenly a huge shape loomed up before me and I heard a harsh breathing. Then it was followed by a deep trumpeting note and I realized it was a cow. So that was the smell! The ancient hall of my ancestors was now a cow-byre!

I ventured further, recalling that the chapel figured in the stories of both Miss Lydia and Mrs Belflower and trying to remember if either of them had WEDDINGS AND WIDOWS

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suggested where it might be. As I groped my way towards the back of the hall, there was another flash of lightning and I started as I saw a shape ahead of me and to the left. At the realization that it was my own shadow I laughed aloud, and the noise sounded so hollowly that I was frightened again. I passed through an ancient screen hung with painted leather which was now cracked and hanging in strips, and found that I was in a smaller chamber where there was a strong smell of damp. At the next flash I saw that the walls were still hung with glazed linen and tapestries that were billowing in the draught, except where they had come down and lay in a rotting pile leaving the bare frames exposed. I passed a lofty old tester-bed — perhaps that in which Jeoffrey Huffam had been born, it occurred to me — still with its damasked wall-hangings in faded scarlet and gold.

In a corner there was the entrance to a spiral staircase and I began to ascend, finding the old stone treads badly worn but still in place. As I groped my way upwards in the dark, I suddenly thought I heard voices. Remembering Miss Lydia’s account of how her aunt, Anna, had dwelt there in her madness, I felt a profound unease.

Suddenly someone spoke from the darkness very clearly and very close to me. But what made me start and caused the hairs to rise on the nape of my neck, was that I knew the voice before I understood the words:

“Master Will-Not must perforce give way to his better, Mr Thou-Shalt.”

My wits must have turned! I had imagined it. This was Bissett’s voice. Yet how could that be? I must be mad or dreaming. I rounded the last twist of the spiral and found myself at the back of the old chapel behind an ancient wooden screen. The roof was derelict and rain-water was running down the walls and across the floor and splashing through the broken windows where only remnants of coloured glass remained. What light there was came from two coach-lamps and a pair of lanthorns which were hanging from poles at the altar end. Standing side by side with their backs to me were Bellringer and Henrietta, with Mr Pamplin facing them. Mr Phumphred was standing beside Bellringer. On the other side of Henrietta stood — yes, it was indeed Bissett!

“I ain’t your sarvint to command, Mrs Bissett,” Mr Phumphred was saying. “It’s my dooty as giver-away to make sure that the young lady truly does wish it.”

“Thank you, Mr Phumphred,” Henrietta said in a low voice that I could hardly catch.

“I know you mean well, but I assure you that I am not being forced into this in any way.”