Charles Palliser (54 page)

“Anything but that!” she exclaimed extravagantly. Then she said more collectedly:

“My circumstances are different. I am responsible only for myself.” She hesitated, and then said: “Besides, I was there once.”

She raised her glass to her lips and drank as if to wash away the memory.

“You were a pauper!” my mother gasped. Her friend nodded. “Tell me about it.”

Miss Quilliam glanced towards me, then drank off her glass, poured another and said:

“No, Mary, I think not.”

We spent the next hour or two in sorting out our few possessions. Miss Quilliam was to take almost everything my mother and I possessed — though that was little enough, Heaven knows! — to recompense her for our unpaid debts and because all our goods would be taken from us when we entered the ’House.

I went to my bed and fell quickly into a light slumber, from which I was suddenly awakened by Miss Quilliam saying: “Is he asleep?”

I lay still and kept my eyes closed.

“Yes,” my mother answered.

“Mary,” she said rather recklessly, “now that the time is approaching for us to part, tell me frankly whether you heard any slander against me from Mrs Malatratt or that odious man at the registry-office?”

“No, certainly I did not.”

There was a silence and then Miss Quilliam said: “I would like you to know more of my story.”

She began and, unable to sleep, I lay and listened to the clear, musical voice that came out of the darkness. Outside our room I heard the sounds of Orchard-Street preparing itself for the night: in the building the rushing of feet upon the stairs and hammering upon doors with raucous oaths, and in the street sudden bursts of shouting and wild laughter. But the story that I was not supposed to know held me so that I heard nothing of these distractions.

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My misfortunes began before I was born for my parents’ marriage was a love-match which was struck in defiance of both their families and without the blessing of either.

Neither possessing an independence, every ill consequence followed from this imprudence. My mother’s father died when she was a little child, and left to the support of his widow no greater fortune than could be looked for from a naval lieutenant who had passed much of his life on half-pay and had earned no prize-money, since this was long before the late wars. At his death, therefore, my grandmother was left almost destitute to bring up two young children in a mean dwelling near the dock-yard in Portsmouth. Every sacrifice was made — including my mother’s education — to prepare her elder brother for entry to the Navy in the hope of his restoring the little family’s fortunes. Alas, he died of the yellow-fever in his sixteenth year while serving as a midshipman in the West-indies. My grandmother now had no recourse but to take in lodgers. One of them was a young curate just down from the University and, of course, he and my mother fell in love — poor innocents! He had but fifty pounds a year for his curacy. He did, however, have the prospect of preferment to a comfortable living in due course, as I shall explain.

Because his own father had opposed his wish to take orders, he had been able to do so only with the aid of a benefactor, Sir William Delamater. It was this wealthy baronet who not merely paid for my father’s studies at Cambridge, but subsequently procured for him the curacy at Portsmouth.

Virtually disowned by his parent, my father could not think of marrying. But now Sir William once again revealed his generosity — though with disastrous consequences in the event — by promising my father the reversion of a benefice to which he had the advowson. This was nothing less than the rectorship of the parish in which lay his principal seat, Delamater-hall, and which, in tithes, emoluments, and compositions, was worth not less than i2oo£ a year besides having attached to it a fine house. The present incumbent being a gentleman much advanced in years, though in good health, my father’s entry into the living could not be long delayed.

Although my parents postponed their marriage for two years, by the expiry of this period neither of the two old gentlemen concerned had done what was hoped of them: my grandfather had not changed in his opposition and the elderly rector had made no move towards claiming his heavenly reward. Then it was that my father made a fateful decision. Unwilling either to delay his marriage any longer or to make further claims on Sir William’s generosity, he sought out a money-lender in the City from whom he borrowed 300^ against an annuity of IOOJ£ to start at five years from that date and run for twelve. By the time the annuity was to fall due, he expected — reasonably enough —

to have entered upon the benefice and therefore to be able to pay it without difficulty.

And with the 300^, little as it was, my parents married and set up home in a cottage in Portsmouth. I was born within a year and mercifully remained the only child to survive infancy.

The rest is simply told and I think I see that you have anticipated the outcome. The elderly incumbent did not die but instead defeated expectations by outliving his patron, for when I was four, Sir William, a hale and hearty man still in the prime of life, died on the hunting-field. This melancholy event occurred only a few months before the repayment of the loan was due to commence. The heir 248

THE MOMPESSONS

to his estate and property — as to his title — was Sir Thomas Delamater, his nephew, and a gentleman of whom my father knew little — and that little boded ill. He wrote to him immediately, condoling with him on his loss and explaining his uncle’s promise and the hopes he had built upon it. The new baronet answered in the coldest and most formal tones: Sir Thomas had no knowledge of any promise made by his uncle since it had never been expressed to him while he lived and no record was found of it after his death either in his testament or any other papers. My father would, as an ordained member of the church, understand that under the circumstances Sir Thomas, while not doubting that such an undertaking had been made, could not be bound by it on a matter upon which he had a duty to exercise his conscience. (This from a man who had given proof upon proof in the infamous irregularities of his private life of how little he held in respect the tenets of the Christian religion!) Moreover, Sir Thomas had himself already promised the reversion of the benefice to a collegiate companion of whose worthiness for the position he had direct knowledge. finally, Sir Thomas deeply regretted that my father had been so precipitate as to enter upon a commitment involving others which was founded upon so insecure a prospect, but my father would understand that Sir Thomas could not allow his feelings to deflect him from his duty.

My father’s situation was now desperate. The money-lender who had advanced him the loan soon learned of his misfortune — you appear surprised, but it seems that these people have a web of agents and intelligencers in all the legal, financial and ecclesiastical offices — and began to threaten an action for debt which would assuredly lead to my father’s incarceration.

My father made a last appeal to his father which went unanswered. Knowing that he faced arrest and indefinite confinement if he stayed in England and consumed with anxiety for the prospects of my mother and myself, my father determined upon a desperate step. It was possible at that date — and for all I know this may still be the case, for the period I speak of is barely fifteen years ago — for a young clergyman to obtain without undue difficulty the post of Junior Chaplain to one of the East India Company’s stations. The comparative ease with which such posts could be secured was not due merely to their poor remuneration — 7o£ was the best one could expect — but principally to the extreme insalubriousness of the area and the high rate of mortality among Europeans who went out there. Obtaining such a post in the cantonment of Cawnpoor in the province of Allahabad, my father employed the larger part of his first quarter’s salary, which was paid in advance, in insuring his life for 500^. He assigned the policy in trust to myself, with my mother and grandmother as trustees, and it is my belief that as far as was reconcilable with the ethical teachings of his church, he intended that his imminent death should at once cancel his debt and secure the prospects of his widow and his child. His intention had been to sail for India alone, but my mother insisted on accompanying him and when he saw that to continue to refuse was to offer a surer threat to her health than to allow her to have her way, he consented.

So they sailed for Calcutta, leaving me in the charge of my grandmother. Of course the climate did all that was hoped and within a few months of landing my father’s design was fulfilled with respect to himself. The same, alas! was true for my mother. The remainder of his purpose, however, was not achieved for he had been badly advised.

Indeed, will you believe me if I say that I suspect that the attorney he consulted might have been in colleague with the money-lender

SECRET BENEFACTORS

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and that he deliberately misled my father? For far from his death freeing his estate from all obligation to the money-lender, that individual was able to go to court and secure the 500^ before the insurance company even paid it to my grandmother. And he could surely only have known of its existence from the attorney.

I was therefore left, now in my seventh year, completely dependent upon my grandmother whose only income was derived from the lodgers to whom she rented two upper floors of the small house that she leased and who, besides being old, her temper frayed by her own worries, and in poor health, was ill-fitted to the sole care of a young child. She discharged her obligations and sent me to a day-school where I benefited as far as was possible from the education available, and did so well that I was at last entrusted with some teaching as a pupil-monitor.

My grandmother died when I was fourteen and since her lease on the little house expired with her, I was at a stroke deprived of protector, income and home. When her estate was settled and her debts paid I, as heir-at-law, was left with only a few shillings.

Now it was that I had no alternative but to take the course I have already hinted at and to seek the aid of the parish authorities. I will not describe the humiliations and insults I was forced to endure. Let it suffice to say merely that the Master and Matron of the

’House were brutal and ignorant people who took delight in the opportunity to lord it over one of genteel birth.

Desperate by some means to get away, I now wrote to my only relation. My letter to my grandfather was answered by an attorney representing his estate who informed me that he had died and left everything to found an alms-house in his memory. He sent me io£ and made it clear that that was all I could expect.

Far from ending my trials, this initiative on my part made them worse. For now the Board of Guardians of the Poor, as the most efficacious way of ensuring that I would not be a burden upon the parish, was disposed to add ten pounds to my ten in order to make up the premium required to apprentice me to a dress-maker in Southampton to whom they had sent girls in the past. I, however, had aspirations above this: I wished to be apprenticed to the school where I had done well and whose proprietors were anxious to take me as an apprentice-teacher at a reduced premium. Their intentions were not in the least charitable: they knew how much work they would be able to extract from me, in return for board and lodging that they would have hesitated to offer to a scullery-maid. But even the reduced premium was 40^ and the Board refused to make up the short-fall. I was heart-broken at the prospect that lay before me. However, I wrote to …

that is to say, aid came from an unexpected quarter. And so I was able to be apprenticed as I had wished.

During the two years that followed I worked diligently in order to profit from every advantage that the school could offer me. These were not unhappy times even though, except among the girls, I had no friends, for I discovered in myself an aptitude for teaching and a pleasure in it which, since my highest ambition could only be to secure a good place as a school-teacher or governess, confirmed my belief that I had taken the right course.

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When my apprenticeship was out, the proprietors offered me a permanent post but refused me the remuneration that I knew my talents and industry entitled me to. And so we agreed to part — I with no great reluctance for the two sisters who owned and directed the establishment were hard and narrow women with whom I had little sympathy.

Now it was that I came to London and shortly afterwards was so fortunate — as I then believed — as to procure an appointment in the Mompessons’ household, I was at first, briefly, in Town and then my charge and I removed alone to their place down in the country. I soon came to love that strange, unhappy child, Henrietta, and to love her all the more as I came to see how she was treated by the rest of the family, including even the servants. It would not be right for me to express myself with complete frankness on the subject of my employers — especially since you have told me they are connexions of yours — so I will content myself with saying that the less I had to do with Sir Perceval and Lady Mompesson the happier I was. No such constraint deters me from saying that in their sons, David and Tom, comparable examples of devious selfishness and cruel stupidity, respectively, would be very hard of discovery. But I over-run myself, for while Henrietta and I were at Hougham for the first months that summer — only two years ago, but how remote it seems! — I was very happy. She and I were alone except for the housekeeper, Mrs Peppercorn, and some other servants. She was a melancholy child but would not be drawn on the source of her unhappiness — which I attributed to her having been orphaned at an early age — and she never once uttered a complaint about her treatment by her relatives. Dismayed by the fact that she was forced to wear a back-board, I remonstrated with her guardians by letter, though to no avail. I was also disturbed to discover the deep welts she bore on her hands, about whose origin she would say nothing. At that happy time I did not suspect the truth.