Charles Palliser (168 page)

“It would cost a great deal,” I said.

“You could find a way,” he answered with a mysterious smile.

“You mean borrow it?” I asked. “A man came to me several months ago to offer to lend against my expectations.”

“I know,” he said. “His name was Ashburner.”

I started. How did he know this?

“There is much that I have to tell you, my young friend,” he went on, seeing my astonishment. “You say that Ashburner offered to lend against your expectations, but he was not referring to the annuity — much less to any claim on the Hougham estate itself.

The man was sent by an individual of the name of Vulliamy.”

This was becoming stranger and stranger.

“I see you recognise the name,” Mr Barbellion said. “You may know, in that case, that he was your late grandfather’s managing-clerk.”

I had recognised more than Vulliamy’s name, for I now recalled that I had heard the name “Ashburner” before: the woman who had been kind to my mother and me when we had left Mrs Malatratt’s, Mrs Sackbutt, had mentioned him as the landlord’s deputy.

Did that mean that those wretched dwellings she had inhabited were owned by the Clothiers? And then it came to me that the rent-taker at Mitre-court had uttered his name as well.

Mr Barbellion went on: “I have spoken to Vulliamy in the course of my enquiries into your claim upon your grandfather’s estate.”

“I did not give you leave to do so!” I cried.

“With the greatest respect, Mr Huffam, at our last interview that is precisely what you did. Don’t you remember that I undertook to take no action in the matter without instructions from yourself ?”

He was correct and I had to apologise, while still insisting that I wanted nothing to do with the Clothier estate.

“At least hear me out,” he went on, “while I tell you what has been happening since the death of your grandfather nearly eighteen months ago. As you presumably know, his heir was Daniel Porteous, your uncle. Now it appears that Vulliamy possessed evidence of various wrong-doings on the part of your grandfather.” Here Mr Barbellion looked down and shuffled his papers in embarrassment. “It seems that the resourceful old gentleman, doubtless in his eagerness to oblige his borrowers despite the poor security offered, lent money at rates above the legal limit of twenty per cent. And some of the pawn-shops he owned were — surely without his knowledge — acting as ‘fences’ for the receipt of stolen goods.”

None of this was new to me for I had heard it from the lips of Peter Clothier.

“There were other matters, too,” the lawyer went on. “But the main point is that Vulliamy had evidence of Porteous’ involvement in these undertakings. And most seriously, he possessed copies of papers — goodness knows how your grandfather allowed him to obtain them! — showing that Porteous perpetrated THE KEY

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a fraud in colleague with your grandfather in which he improperly used the name of his employer, the banking house of Quintard and Mimpriss, and thereby incurred considerable losses on its behalf. (It seems that it was a building-speculation and that your uncle exposed his bank very gravely by advising it to take up a mortgage on a lease where the freeholder was a nominee concealing his father and himself. The lease became worthless when the mortgagor defaulted and the freeholder re-possessed. Combined with the banking crisis of a few years ago, this embarrassed the house to a degree that at one point threatened its solvency.)”

Again, I knew about this for I had overheard Vulliamy blackmailing Clothier about it the night the old man died.

Mr Barbellion went on: “Vulliamy bargained with your uncle for a share of your grandfather’s estate as the price of his silence — conduct which is inexcusable, I need hardly say — but he became frightened when an attempt was made by a pair of ruffians to kill him one night.”

I thought I could venture to put a name to at least one of the pair, but I listened in silence.

“In order to obviate the danger to himself, therefore, Vulliamy had to lay his evidence before the board of Quintard and Mimpriss. As a consequence Porteous fled abroad with his family to escape prosecution by his employer, and so his attempt to intimidate Vulliamy — for I assume it was he who was responsible — precipitated the very result he was trying to avert.”

I felt I knew where his words were tending.

“Your uncle having fled and been indicted for a felony by a grand jury, you are consequently the sole heir to your grandfather’s estate,” he continued. “It was because he knew of this turn of events that Vulliamy sent Ashburner to you.”

Here was an astonishing reversal of expectations! Instead of coming into the Hougham estate, I found that the Clothier inheritance was mine virtually for the asking.

But what kind of inheritance was it? And in what sense was it mine?
I could not bear to
think that the father of my child had killed my Papa!

Mr Barbellion had been watching me closely and now said: “I understand that in addition to a large sum of money in securities and government bills, the estate is principally comprised of extensive properties in the metropolis, most of them in the poorer districts — though I believe them to be fairly remunerative. (There is also, incidentally, a large mortgage on the security of this very property which your grandfather had bought up through a nominee. You may know that he was very anxious that his descendants should possess this estate, for I understand that his mother was a Huffam by birth. And so — I hope — you will achieve his ambition.) Vulliamy is ready and willing to continue to manage the properties and other interests in Town on your behalf. If you accept the suggestion I have just made, then you will be a wealthy man, and on that assumption I will proceed with your suit to set up the purloined will.”

His words had stunned me. My ears rang and I felt dizzy at these successive revelations. My one idea was that I must do nothing in haste.

“I must think about what you have told me, Mr Barbellion,” I said.

He nodded, keeping his gaze closely upon me.

Wondering if my legs would support me, I rose and left the room. Without paying attention to where I was going I descended a flight of back-stairs and then, in search of the way out, traversed a series of long, gloomy passages with never a sight or a sound of another human being, constantly finding myself

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brought up by a dead-end or a locked door or a flight of stairs leading only upwards.

One of the passages, wider than the others and hung with many chandeliers, was a picture-gallery and as I laboured down its length I wondered which of the portraits on the wall (all of them muffled in yellow muslin as if in mourning) represented Jeoffrey.

When I came to this gallery a second time and realized I had been right round the great square of the central block, I admitted to myself at last that I was hopelessly lost in the huge house. And huge it was, even though it had not been completed according to the original design that Mrs Belflower had told me of so long ago. This, I mused, was the house whose building had cost Jeoffrey Huffam so much that he had fallen into debt to Nicholas Clothier and married his daughter to him, thereby inciting him and his son to the ambition to own the property that had brought such harm upon his (Jeoffrey’s) descendants.

It came to me now that a kind of justice was being offered to me. Could I not claim my Clothier inheritance — whether or not I felt entitled to it and despite my revulsion from it — and use it to restore the Hougham property? But could I convince myself that Vulliamy’s management of the loans and properties could be conducted in accordance with the principles of justice and fair dealing?

Then by good luck I ran across a service-door and at last left the house, finding myself in the stable-yard at its rear.

Someone suddenly spoke to me from behind:

“Master Johnnie!”

I looked round and found Sukey standing before me clad in a scarlet cloak and carrying a basket.

“Why, I couldn’t hardly credit my eyes!” she exclaimed.

I greeted her and she asked eagerly: “Are you here for Miss Henny?”

Preoccupied with what I had just learned I shook my head. I did not want to discuss Henrietta with her.

“I thank you for the money you sent by Clerk Advowson,” she said. “It was more nor I lent you.”

“Sukey,” I asked, “do you recall that piece of parchment that Harry made me sign when I borrowed that money from you?”

She nodded.

I began walking and Sukey accompanied me. I didn’t know where I was going so I allowed her to guide our steps.

“You know, when you brought it to me at the Old Hall the last time I was here, the parchment was so faded that it was almost illegible. And Harry forced me to sign it, really. So it would have no standing in a law-court.”

She nodded again, looking at me curiously. We were walking across the park now towards the head of the lake and the old house beyond it.

“Anyway, the property is worthless,” I concluded. “It’s weighted down by debts.”

She looked at me blankly.

“Do you understand what I’m saying to you? All of this,” and I waved my arm at the great house behind us and the park stretching before us, “is worth nothing.”

“Harry wouldn’t hold you to it, sir,” she said.

“Wouldn’t he?” I said. Then I added: “I don’t believe he could.”

“Besides, he’s at Chatham now,” she said sadly.

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“The Hulks?”

She nodded and almost whispered: “Poaching. He’s to be transported, most like.”

“I’ll see you all right, Sukey,” I said. “You and your brothers and sisters.”

She thanked me and we walked on in silence. We reached the square of four ancient oaks at the foot of the hill on which the mausoleum stood, and she halted and looked around. I remembered how Miss Lydia had described this place and recalled that she had insisted that there were five trees when I had known that there were only four.

Ahead of me now, however, I saw in the exact centre of the quincunx planted by Jeoffrey Huffam the decaying stump of a fifth. So we had both, in a sense, been right.

At that moment a figure glided from the direction of the ancient building to our right and came towards us. Then, too far away for me to make it out, it paused.

“She’s shy of you, sir,” Sukey whispered.

I turned to her in amazement and seeing this she said in surprise :

“Didn’t you know, sir? I believed you were come a purpose to see her.”

I shook my head.

“She has been living in the Old Hall ever since … since that time I last seen you.” She indicated the basket. “I’ve brung her food and so has some of the sarvints from the big house — at least, until they shut it up and turned ’most all on ’em away. The housekeeper will have nothing to do with her.”

“She spent the winter in that draughty old ruin?”

Sukey nodded. “She couldn’t be made to leave it.”

Was she so devoted, then, to the memory of Bellringer that she would not desert the place of his death? In that case, how would she regard me? Did she blame me for playing a part in bringing it about?

The distant figure slowly came on again and then halted about thirty feet away. Now that I saw her more clearly a new shock struck me. I looked at Sukey who met my gaze briefly and then lowered her eyes.

“Dear God!” I whispered.

“I don’t know that she’ll come no nearer with you here, sir,” Sukey said. “I’ll go to her.

Shall I say you wish to speak to her?”

“She can’t stay there alone!” I protested. “Not like that.”

“Do you wish to have a word of her?” Sukey asked again.

Unable to answer, I shook my head in bewilderment.

Sukey moved forward and handed her the basket. They exchanged a few words and then Sukey came back to me.

“She knows who you are. I b’lieve she’ll speak to you if you wish, sir.”

I reached into my pocket and took out all the money I had. Reserving a few shillings for necessities on the journey back, I pressed into her hand the remainder — nearly twenty shillings — saying: “Do what you can for her.”

Taking it without protest, she nodded and then set off in the direction from which we had come.

I walked slowly forward. As I had seen from a distance, her hair was down so that it hung upon her shoulders, she wore no bonnet, and her dress (the one she had been wearing the last time I had seen her) was patched where it had 780 THE

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been let out. Her face was even paler and thinner than on that occasion so that it occurred to me that she looked once again — in respect of the countenance at least —

like the little girl I had first met a few hundred yards from here more than ten years ago.

As I approached she was staring at me unsmilingly. I halted and for a moment did not know how to start.

Then I said: “No reproaches, Henrietta?”

“You have nothing to reproach me for,” she answered sullenly.

“That’s not what I meant,” I said, distressed that she should have interpreted my words amiss. I said gently: “You can’t stay here.”

“Have you come to take me away?” she asked calmly.

Where could I take her? She must have read my expression for she said: “I believe you wanted to marry me once.”

“Go to the big house,” I said. “Let the housekeeper there write to your guardian.”

Then I added, though I doubted what I was saying even as I spoke: “I am sure Lady Mompesson would take you to live with her.”

She looked down.

How could I marry her, almost penniless as I was and with my prospects so uncertain? And my origins. The circumstances of my mother’s end. My paternity. For (to express myself with brutal clarity), if I was not the son of a man who had committed murder and then lived in a hell of near-madness until a hideous death for which I myself was to some extent responsible, then I was at least the grandson of such a one. Besides, I felt pity not love. Although she had hurt me, I would do for her what little lay in my power. I had so many difficulties facing me on my own behalf that I could not think of taking on responsibility for others. I would help her with what money I had, but by one means or another I had my own way to make in the world. As for marrying … It came to me that, all other considerations aside, I could not face the possibility that if I were to regain the Huffam estate, it should be inherited by anyone tainted with Mompesson blood.