Charles Palliser (122 page)

He stood for a moment blinking at me as if he had just awakened from a profound sleep and then, to my astonishment, he said: “I was expecting you, Master John.”

Standing aside he gestured to me to enter. I stepped from the sunlight into the gloom of the vestibule and then through the glass door and thence into the hall where I looked around in the dim light. There was a smell of damp and decay like a cold steady breeze blowing up from the cellars, and many of the black and white marble squares were cracked and there were weeds growing between them. Before me was the wide staircase, and on a wall at one side of it and to my left I could just make out a crossed halberd and curving sword. I shuddered.

Mr Escreet was watching me with an expression I could not interpret. I turned to look at him feeling that this ancient man held the secrets of so many of the mysteries of my family, and wondering how I could induce him to divulge 562 THE

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them. It had looked to me at first as if he was in the last stages of senile decay but now, apparently having awakened from his dream, his eyes were focused on me with keen penetration. Yet his wits must have gone. How could he possibly be expecting me?

Unless he had recognised and remembered me from my earlier attempt to gain admittance? But surely that was not possible!

“Come this way,” he said, and, turning, led me through the hall, past the staircase, and into a small and dark room at the side of the house.

He sat down in an old elbow-chair and gestured towards a similar one opposite him:

“Seat yourself, pray. Treat this house as your own, for it was your grandfather’s once, though it is mine now for he willed it to me.”

I was puzzled by this, for I remembered my mother having written that Mr Escreet had inherited it from her great-grandfather.

“This was his cabinet,” Mr Escreet continued. “God rest his soul. I served him faithfully for many years and was with him when he died.”

I was amazed by what I took to be such a calm allusion to my grandfather’s murder.

“It was in this very chamber,” he added.

Feeling a cold chill run up my spine I said: “Will you tell me about that, Mr Escreet?

My grandfather’s death and … ”I hesitated and then said: “My parents.”

“About your parents’ death I know little,” he answered, misunderstanding me.

I was astonished that he had heard of these events. He had given my mother to understand that he had heard nothing of her for many years on the occasion when she came to this house, so who had informed him of her death? And how did he know anything of Peter Clothier’s circumstances?

“In truth, I hardly knew your mother,” he went on. “I knew your father much better.”

But surely this was the precise opposite of what I knew to be the case? Was the old man quite wandering in his wits? Yet it seemed not for as if my words had accidentally touched some hidden spring, he began to speak with great readiness and fluency, recalling details, names, and dates without effort. As I listened, however, it became apparent that though his recollection of the events of long ago was vivid and clear, he was confused by their relation to the present — or, perhaps it would be truer to say, by his own relation to the past.

I hardly knew your mother. I knew your father much better, for I was little more than a boy when I first came to this house to work for old Mr Jeoffrey Huffam — indeed, I was about the age that you are now, begging your pardon, Master John, and no disrespect intended.

I don’t suppose it would interest you if I were to tell you much about myself, so I won’t burden you with my own life’s-story, beyond saying that I was the child of poor folks, or so I always believed. However, as I grew older I discovered that they weren’t my natural parents, though I could never persuade them to tell me who those might be. It’s very well for you, Master John, coming of an old family with a deal of family pride, so you cannot fancy what it’s like to have no knowledge of who your father is, nor yet your mother.

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Though even in your case, there is a difficulty in proving your legitimacy, as I shall tell you.

I was taken from school at fifteen years of age and put to be bred attorney in the office of Mr Paternoster, who did a great deal of law-work for Mr Huffam. Now it happened at the time I am speaking of that the old gentleman wanted a kind of secretary — a factotum or scrivener, you might say — to help him with his correspondence and legal affairs, for he was always going to law over one thing or another. So he asked Mr Paternoster to find a promising youngster, and he brought me here and the old gentleman — and very old I thought him for he was then over sixty, though that doesn’t seem so old now —

appeared to take a liking to me. I remember it to this day, though it was a long time ago.

It meant giving up the chance of articles and a good chance, too, for though I knew that with no fortune of my own and no friends it would take me a great many years, Mr Paternoster had been good to me and I believed I had reason to hope for assistance from him. However, he urged me in the strongest terms to accept Mr Huffam’s offer, so I reckoned I would have a fairer chance of bettering myself if I did so.

As it turned out I believe I chose wrong. But for the first years of my time here everything went well. Of course at that time the Huffams were still a powerful, wealthy family and Mr Jeoffrey had a large amount of business to transact, so it was very exciting for a young man. What kind of work was it? Humble enough to start with. I was a kind of under-steward to him. Of course, he had his land-steward then, Mr Fortisquince, to manage his property in the country and receive his rents, and Mr Paternoster was his town-agent. All he wanted was someone to write his letters and make copies of his papers and deal with all his business here, for this house was always full of people coming and going. Ah, it’s sad to see it so deserted and delapidated now.

Because Mr Jeoffrey wasn’t in good enough health to travel down to Hougham very often, I used to have to go down there now and then to do business with his steward and the tenants. The big new house was not finished, of course, and work had come to a stop a few years before when Mr Jeoffrey had got into severe money-difficulties. I hear, Master John, that the new proprietors have gone on building there, though I don’t know if they’ve followed the design that your grandfather had set his heart upon, for he was bent upon having the finest and biggest house in the county and he intended that it should take the form of an “H” — though one squashed flat, as it were — to celebrate his own name: a central block to represent the cross-bar of the “H”, with wings at either end. (He loved such designs and the first thing he did when he came into his estate as a youth was to plant a quincunx of trees before the Old Hall with a statue before each one.) Alas, the house was not completed in his own lifetime, though the main block had been up for some years by the time I knew the place, and that is where the rest of his family lived when they were down in the country. When I last saw the estate the village that stood near the Old Hall had not been taken down nor the park landscaped as I believe has been done since. It must be beautiful now, though I don’t suppose I shall ever see it.

It was there that I first met your father for he was often down for the game. He was at the ’Varsity then and used to come with friends of his. He was of an age with myself, though with his horses and dogs and fine friends he took very little notice of me. But how strangely things turn out! For there he lies now in his grave and has lain for — what is it? — a good fifteen year. And all

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the wealth and the lands that he expected to inherit — what has become of it all? For here you are, his son, almost as poor as I was when I first came to this house about the age you are now. And now this house is mine and you have almost nothing. It’s almost enough to make a body believe there is a pattern to events.

Well, I didn’t stay in the Great House on my visits, of course, for I was only a paid retainer and not a member of the family, and so at first I put up with Mr Fortisquince who at that date lived in part of the Old Hall with his wife. She was a beautiful young woman, and her husband was many years her senior. How she hated that dark, gloomy old place. But you know what it’s like, for that’s where you’ve been living yourself until now, isn’t it? It must be even more of a ruin by this date, for this is many years ago that I am speaking of and it had been closed up twenty years before that when your grandfather and his wife and daughters moved into the main block of the new erection.

Mr and Mrs Fortisquince didn’t have all of it for there was one wing that was kept shut off. And there was someone kept there. Someone they didn’t want known about, but whom I met without their knowledge. Well, on account of that — and other things, too

— it came about after a time that Mr Fortisquince wouldn’t let me stay there any more.

Well, these things happen and I wasn’t such a bad-looking young fellow as you might suppose from seeing me now.

Well, so things jogged along for a few years and your grandfather and I agreed very well. He was not an easy gentleman for he had his crotchets, and he possessed a fierce temper and lost it very readily, so he had to be humoured. He kept me on a low salary and very short commons here in the house for he was not generous, not in many ways.

But he used to say to me that if I worked hard and served him honestly he would do well by me. I would take the opportunity to remind him now and then of what I had given up by accepting the post with him, and I used to hope that he would make me land-agent in succession to Mr Fortisquince when he grew too old for it.

I trusted him when he said he would see me right for I believed he had taken a fancy to me. And I needed money for I was betrothed about this time, and I could hardly think of marriage and an establishment on the salary that your grandfather was paying me. He used to say sometimes that he wished I was his son instead of the son he had.

Oh, I mean no disrespect, but you must know that he and your father did not agree well together.

To speak frankly, Master John, your father was a sore trial to my employer. When he came down from the ’Varsity he lived in this house and I soon came to understand how things lay between them. Mr Jeoffrey had become somewhat near, but Master James was what his father had been at his age. He belonged to a Lodge — a drinking club, and a wild set of young fellows they were who called themselves Mohawks. He lost heavily playing Hazard at Almacks in Pall-Mail where the lowest rouleau was for fifty pounds.

fifty pounds! (Why I’ve never staked more than twenty-five!) Sheer madness! He and his father quarrelled often and had come to hate each other. The arguments were about money for his father kept him on very short allowance and Master James chafed under this. And so he started borrowing money against his expectations. The worst of it was that he got into debt to a parcel of rogues that your family have long had reason to fear.

That’s the Clothiers and that old devil Nicholas — may God have mercy on his soul, though what God he might worship I hardly know. A

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turtle-eating Cit from the wrong side of Temple-Bar, Mr Jeoffrey called him. And much worse.

Once your father was of age he began signing post obits in favour of old Clothier and your grandfather feared what would happen when he died, for he knew that Clothier’s heart was set upon acquiring the Hougham property and that that was why he had got his claws into your father. He feared this for he knew Clothier of old and saw events repeating themselves in his son’s recklessness and indebtedness to the old man. Of course, you won’t understand that unless I explain, as I shall do if you’ll bear with me so far.

Well, the year after your father came of age your grandfather was so alarmed by this state of affairs that he decided to make a new will. (For truth to tell, Mr Jeoffrey went in for will-shaking, and had done this before.) I remember the occasion well, Master John, and I shall describe it, for it was to have important consequences for you. But first, I should say something of the connexions between your family and the Mompessons, and make clear who the Clothiers were — and are, for there is one of them still left to plague us — and how they came to be involved with your grandfather. And in order to do all that, I have to go back a long way and explain some things that you might not know, for I doubt that Mr Fortisquince would speak to you of such matters, and yet I believe it is right that you should understand them, and I have a particular reason, as I shall make clear to you.

The Huffams — or Houghams as they originally spelled the name — are a family of auncient and honourable lineage. The original founder of the family was given a grant of the manor of Hougham by the Conqueror himself, and in later centuries some of their wives came of royal stock. The blood of the Plantagenets flows through your veins, Master John. They held the estate quietly for the next few hundred years, gradually extending and improving it. They built the Old Hall while Henry IV was on the throne and very cannily managed to avoid the consequences of the civil wars between the factions of the white and red roses that did so much harm during the rest of that century.

At the Dissolution they acquired considerable new lands from the old Carthusian monastery that had owned much of the property around there, and thus they became one of the greatest families in the county. But they adhered to the Church party — some say they were secret Papists — and so it was that during the Civil Wars in the following century they backed the King and thereby forfeited part of their estates when the Royalist cause was lost and many estates were sequestrated. Much of their land went to a family who had been small squires in the neighbourhood for many years and who had been shrewd enough to have backed Cromwell — I speak of the Mompessons. They claimed equal antiquity with the Huffams, insisting that they had given the name to the nearby village of Mompesson St. Lucy. But your own family always looked down upon them as upstarts and said that they had been yeomen-tenants of theirs and that they had taken their name from the village and not the other way round.