Charles Palliser (70 page)

“Or mortgages,” Mr Sancious suggests.

“Pshaw! One or two per cent more. I have a better suggestion. Why should we not use it to buy up discounted bills? That way we could double our capital in six months if the present speculative mania continues. For with prices of stocks rising so swiftly now, where will things be by Christmas?”

“Perhaps they will have crashed. I’ve never known such wild speculation. They say more than six hundred new companies have been promoted in the past twelvemonth.”

“Nonsense! But even if the market falls and some of the acceptors break, the banks will have to pay up. We’ll only buy paper endorsed by them.”

“But if there’s a general fall, will they be able to?”

“Upon my soul,” the old gentleman exclaims, “don’t you want to make your fortune?

Of course, any commercial transaction involves risk because it’s based on credit. You yourself have just gambled by accepting that paper of Pomeroy’s from me. Even if the very worst happens and one or two of the banks close their THE COMING OF AGE

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doors, don’t forget that all bills accepted by them are backed by the Bank of England.”

“But that is only a
de facto
and not a
de jure
arrangement. Has it ever struck you that the money-market is like a gaming-hell where the players all agree to accept the ivory fishes as if they were worth a hundred pounds? What would happen if enough of the players declined to do so? They would become just pieces of ivory again.”

“Nothing like that will happen. Why, I’m almost twice as old as you and I remember that the Bank suspended payments in gold only once. And that was in ’97 at the height of the War and the blockade, when they issued paper instead. But bear in mind that if anything were to go amiss, neither you nor I are in jeopardy. Remember who the nominal owner of the Pimlico and Westminster Land Company is.”

He jerks his head towards the outer office and at this Mr Sancious smiles and the two gentlemen raise their glasses.

Before the dawn was fully accomplished the waggon had, to my relief, rumbled up to another cross-roads and borne left. Though even now I dared not assume I was safe, I laid my head against a bale and managed to slumber fitfully, tossed between waking and sleeping as the great vehicle jolted its way across the bleak uplands through the chilly dawn. Perhaps two or three hours later the waggon halted and I awoke to hear the driver and the out-rider applying the drag to each of its wheels. As it moved slowly off again and began to descend a steep hill, I peeked out from the sacking and saw a whitewashed public-house and then a row of low stone cottages. The surface of the road became cobbled and, realizing we were approaching a town, I waited for my opportunity. As the waggon slowed to less than walking-pace to take a bend, I jumped off (taking the weight on my uninjured leg) without being seen.

I found myself in the main street that ran steeply downhill towards a bridge. There were few people about at that hour, but following the smell of fresh bread I found a bakery and purchased a roll and a ha’penn’orth of milk with the half-sovereign. Seeing that there was a big inn down by the bridge and feeling that I needed to put as much ground as possible between myself and the Quiggs, I now conceived a daring design. I waited in the yard until an ostler came out of the stable and asked him if there were a public coach to the next town to the South.

He stared at me for a moment and then said: “Aye, for them as has t’ bloont.”

I said: “I have to get to York today. I’ve heard that my father is very ill.”

“Seven shillin’ outside,” he replied.

I showed him the change from the half-sovereign, and he stared at me curiously: “T’

coach leaves in an hour. Book ticket over yonder.”

I purchased it from a sleepy clerk and the ostler allowed me to wash at the pump in the yard. Not wanting to make myself any more conspicuous than I had done already, I did not go into the travellers’-room but lingered in the yard and watched the coach being made ready. One of the maids saw me walking up and down swinging my arms against my sides, and smuggled out a cup of hot coffee.

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When the time came to board the coach the other travellers emerged from the inn grumbling at the earlyness of the hour — which seemed dangerously late to me. To my dismay, for it would make me more prominent, I found that I was the only outside passenger, but when we pulled out of the yard, rumbled across the bridge and began to ascend the opposite hill my spirits lifted. Once we were up on the moors again, I found myself shivering with cold. Noticing this the guard invited me under the shelter of his own great-coat and I was the more grateful since this would conceal me from anyone we might meet on the road. In fact we met nothing except a few carts, then a string of pack-horses in a long line laden with fleeces for the wool-stapling towns, and finally the up-coach to whose driver our own coachman signalled with a laconic lift of his elbow.

The road remained deserted even as we began, after an hour or more, to descend from the lip of the high moors, and this caused me concern for I felt that my best hope of evading detection lay in the safety of crowds. However, leaning against the guard, I fell asleep and remember no more until a little after midday I was awakened by his fumbling for his horn upon which he then blew a prolonged blast.

Under any other circumstances I would have derived great enjoyment from our rattling entry into York, but as it was, I would have preferred to have got down on the outskirts. However, I had to allow myself to be borne into the yard of the city’s principal coaching-inn and here my worst fears were realized for just as an ostler was seizing the lead-horse by the bridle, I noticed two men standing a few yards away by the door to the coffee-room: to my horror one of them was Quigg.

He was deep in conversation with a stranger — dressed in the gaiters, velveteen breeches, felt hat and heavy coat of a waggoner — and only glanced idly at the coach as it drew up beside them. Not knowing that I had any money, it would not have occurred to him that I could be travelling by that means.

The guard jumped down and began to speak to the ostler, thereby exposing me to Quigg’s sight had it not been for the ample figure of the driver which was still between me and my enemy.

I had to freeze where I was — so close that I could hear the conversation :

“I’m chasing a yoong thief,” he said. “He made off last night and me and my twa lads tracked him down t’ high road this forenoon till he must have gotten hisself a cast, for t’

dogs lost t’ scent. So I sent my elder boy back with t’ hounds and rode on with t’

younger lad. He went round by Holmby and I cwome through Spentbridge for we didna ken which gate t’ boy’d have tak’d. I’m meeting my lad here and if he doesna have t’

young rascal wi’ him then we’ll most likely look for him here this forenoon and go on to Selby cwome t’ afternoon.” He had named the next town on the great road to the South.

“For he’ll mun pass through there if he’s heading Sooth, as I believe he is.”

The waggoner spoke but so marked was his speech that I could not understand a syllable.

In answer, however, Quigg described my appearance and concluded : “So keep yowr eyes open for t’ rascal, will yow, and tell t’other lads and t’ gate-keepers to do t’ same?

And if yow find him, ketch a hold on him and send word to me.”

The waggoner appeared to consent to this and then asked another question.

“Why, a great-coat,” Quigg answered. “But more nor yon, he’s a runaway ’prentice so above all, hisself. It’s robbing his friends as has paid t’ premium, THE COMING OF AGE

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but worse nor that it’s robbing me that’s spent months larnin’ t’ lad his trade.”

I admired the cunning of Quigg’s pretending I was an absconded apprentice, for this denied me the protection of the law and enabled him to call on the help of the authorities.

To my dismay Quigg now hailed the guard of my coach and I realized that I was only seconds away from discovery. At that moment, however, the coachman, who had finished gathering up his belongings, stood up to descend. Concealed behind his broad figure I dropped down on the other side of the vehicle from Quigg as quietly as I could and, resisting the temptation either to look back or to run, walked out through the arched entrance of the yard.

Once out on the street I quickened my pace and then, breaking into a run, dived down a bye-street and then another and then another. In view of what I had overheard I realized that I could attempt to leave the town only after dark and that I would have to travel by night, and find a means of avoiding the turnpike-gates. Meanwhile, it would be dangerous to wander about the streets. Hunger, however, could not be resisted and so once I had bought a small loaf — leaving me two shillings and nine-pence of Stephen’s half-sovereign — I found my way into the poorest part of the town down by the river.

Eventually I discovered what I was looking for: a deserted yard off a quiet bye-street where there was a range of abandoned outhouses which belonged to a former livery-stable. Although they were padlocked, the old door of one of them was so worm-eaten that I was able to remove it and then replace it behind me. In the dim light I could see that I was in a three-stall stable with a loft above, reached by a ladder which looked strong enough to bear my weight. I sat on an ancient manger and ate half of my bread, rejoicing that I was dry, relatively warm and for the first time fairly safe. The very smell of the stable — compounded of hemp because of the old sacks strewn about, of malt, of rotted wood and ancient straw — was oddly reassuring for it suggested that the place had been long abandoned. I cautiously climbed the ladder — to which surely no grown man would entrust himself — crawled into the musty straw in the darkness further back, pulled it around me and slept.

When I awoke it was nearly dark. I descended, ate some more of the bread, waited until night had fallen, and then ventured into the unlit back-lanes. By means of them I picked my way out of the town towards the North in case the roads to the South were being watched. After a mile or two I left the highway and, keeping the lights of the town always at a distance, made a wide sweep to the South, being careful to rejoin the road beyond the toll-house in case the keeper had been alerted. This manoeuvre cost me several hours, but at least my injured leg had so much benefited from the rest that I was able to keep up a brisk pace. This time I did not leave the carriageway to hide from other travellers except when I saw riders coming towards me, in case Quigg and Roger should be returning from Selby already. I reached the outskirts of that town before dawn and found a lonely barn to sleep in and there, with nothing more to eat than the last of my bread, I spent the day.

When darkness fell I skirted the town and pressed on South. As I walked, the harvest moon sailed above the horizon and the latticed windows of the darkened cottages I passed glinted in its light. When dawn was approaching I bought bread from a baker, who was overcome by floury surprise to have a customer so early. I found an isolated barn and slept for a few hours but

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then, feeling that I had eluded capture and could henceforward travel by day and sleep by night, I walked on in the bright mid-morning.

In this manner I made my way South. Occasionally a passing carter gave me a cast, but most of the time I walked, sleeping in barns by night. Often as I was sleeping under some straw in a musty byre or on a rattling cart, I started up from my sleep in the belief that my mother had called me, and it seemed to me that her voice sounded not frightened or anxious but strangely calm. As my money ran out I learned to beg —

always on the watch for the constable — and when that failed, lived on raw turnips stolen from the fields, pea-shucks, and the dwindling produce of the autumnal hedgerows — sorrel leaves, berries, sloes, and crabs.

I have not leisure now to record the many adventures and the many strange meetings I had with the folk I met on the high-road : the packmen and wandering beggars, each with a wallet over his shoulder, and honest workmen upon the tramp and disembodied soldiers and crippled sea-men and cheap-jacks on their way to one or other of the statute-fairs and the man leading a dancing-bear with whom I walked for half a day. I met tinkers crying: “Any razors or scissars to grind? / Or anything else in the tinker’s line? /

Any old pots or kettles to mend?” When I went by the drove-roads and green-lanes I fell in with drovers leading cattle South from Scotland to be fed in Norfolk; and I often saw from a distance the dark-eyed, silent gypsies passing in their brightly-painted waggons.

Ill-use I received from some, but charity from more. Yet even so, once my money had run out I had difficulty in obtaining food. At least once I walked a whole day on nothing more than a piece of bread and it was then — on the sixth day after leaving the Quiggs’

farm — that I had an experience whose memory has haunted me all my life.

I had come to a district where the hamlets and farms gave way to a landscape of manufactories and canals and high hillocks of slag among which little lines of mean brick cottages started and broke off seemingly at hazard. Most of them were of recent construction but even so many were already in ruins, and often the carriageway sank several feet as if the land beneath it had caved in. The road and the buildings, the hedgerows and trees, and even the faces of the people I met, were covered with a fine layer of black ash and there was an oppressive smell like camphor. From behind high walls that ran alongside the road on one side there came the monotonous thump of a steam-engine and other sounds like the distant roar of malevolent seas. I drew my ragged coat about me to keep out the chill wind, but could do nothing against the dust and ashes that were blown into my mouth and eyes with every gust.

The faces of the country-people I had passed had been for the most part suspicious and closed and I had been better treated by my fellow way-farers, but the features of the people I met here were wild in either their misery or their exultation. And it seemed to be at these two extremes that the denizens of this place lived, for I saw many in the deepest poverty while others swaggered along in fine clothes. From either group my attempts to beg were unavailing, and since there were no hedgerows or fields to batten on, I became hungrier and hungrier. As evening approached I found myself surrounded by wide pits that belched flames and smoke from underground fires, lighting the ground up all around with a lurid flickering glow that made the shadows of the tall chimneys bend and waver alarmingly on either side of me. Now I remembered the fires that I had seen and the noises I had heard as I travelled north with Mr Steplight.