Quincunx

  “Look,” my mother said. “Beyond the lake there are chimneys above the far slope. I believe that must be the Old Hall.”

  I could just make out the tall twisting chimneys in the distance. As I stared I asked: “Who lives there now?”

  “It’s a ruin. Nobody has lived there for many years.”

  “But tell me, who was bringing the suit?”

  My mother’s face darkened: “Our enemy.”

  “Who is that?”

  “I’ve told you that I won’t tell you.”

  “You must.”

  She refused and we walked on in silence.

  We reached the end of the lake where it narrowed to form a long stretch of water curving around the front of the mansion for here, on the other side of an elegant bridge and on top of a slight rise, stood the house itself.

  Suddenly my mother said: “One day you’ll know everything. I’m writing a relation of my life so that you will understand … understand everything, but only when you are old enough.”

  “When can I read it?” I demanded.

  “When you come of age. And there is also a letter from my father that you may read then.”

  The letter I had seen in the japanned box with the tiger-hunt which held the locket that my mother had shewn me! The letter was for me!

  “Must I wait so long?” I protested.

  “Yes,” she said quietly. “Unless something happens to me.”

  Puzzled by her meaning, I walked on in silence.

  We were near the house now and, viewed straight on rather than from the side as I had seen it on my visit to Hougham with Sukey, it was an imposing building. Its central block was lofty and surmounted by a pediment with Corinthian columns forming a high portico whose entrance one reached by means of a pair of semi-circular steps thrusting forward like the claws of a crab. This portion was flanked by two wings, linked to it by a curving section.

  In a few minutes we had begun to ascend those steps and my heart began to pound with excitement. When we arrived at the tall, glazed doors at the top a servant in the livery of scarlet and chocolate that I had seen the day before, strode forward with a slight bow. As he straightened it seemed to me that on his otherwise impassive features was a hostile stare of enquiry, as if demanding to know who dared to ascend these steps after making so undistinguished an arrival on foot.

  To this august being and his powdered wig my mother replied: “Will you please tell Sir Perceval and Lady Mompesson that Mrs Mellamphy and her son are here. I believe they are expecting us.”

  The footman eyed us coldly. “Very good, ma’am,” he answered. “Will you please to enter and wait here?”

  Although he deferentially indicated the open door behind him and stepped back to allow us to pass, the tone in which he spoke made this less an invitation than an instruction. Obediently, we stepped across the threshold and found ourselves in a large entrance-hall, high-ceilinged and marble-floored, with magnificent doors in every wall. Great fires of hewn logs were burning in the two fireplaces, and a number of high-backed chairs were set against the walls, but it was quite deserted. Standing in the very centre was a huge urn decorated with stone garlands and rams’ sculls. High up at intervals on the tops of the friezes were busts of bony white heads which were quite bald and bore little circlets of flowers like crazy wigs.

  The footman had followed us in and now disappeared through one of the doors. We stood hesitating in the centre of the vast room.

  I indicated two unoccupied chairs and said in an undertone: “Shall we sit down?”

  “Do you think we ought?” she whispered back.

  I was annoyed that she was so cowed and seeing this, she chose a seat and sat down. I stood beside her.

  We waited for what seemed a very long time. At last the footman reappeared and advanced upon us. Towering over us, he bellowed:

  “Sir Perceval and Lady Mompesson will receive you in the justice-room. Kindly be good enough to follow me, madam.”

  The justice-room, I repeated silently. This venue seemed to augur well.

  “Should he come?” my mother asked, glancing anxiously at me.

  “Sir Perceval and Lady Mompesson was most particular, madam, that the young genel’man should be brung to the ante-chamber adj’ining of the room what they will receive you in.”

  And so we set off, following that broad back as the footman strode ahead at such a pace that we had almost to run to keep up with him. How many passages we walked along, how many stairs we climbed, how many huge rooms we traversed, I have no idea. Yet, dazed as I was at being inside that house at last, I could not help noticing that the livery on the back turned to us was patched and worn, the epaulettes tarnished and the stocks in which the magnificent calves were encased were yellowed and much-repaired. Similarly, the carpets were threadbare and everywhere there was an air of delapidation and neglect.

  At last, from the landing of a magnificent staircase we passed into a small room where it was made clear to me that I was to wait. The footman advanced to the other end of the room and, flinging open the lofty double doors that led into the next chamber, bellowed: “Mrs Mellamphy!”

  With a timid glance back at me, my mother went through the doors. The servant drew them shut behind her and, with a stern look at myself as if defying me to misbehave, went out through the door to the landing. I was left in absolute silence. I pressed my ear against the door through which my mother had vanished, but could hear nothing. I looked around me. The room had no windows, and the walls, except where pictures hung, were lined with book-shelves containing severely uniform leather-bound volumes which seemed never to have been touched.

  Suddenly I heard the sound of footsteps running lightly past the door by which we had entered. The runner was panting heavily and seemed to be in distress. After a moment I heard the sound of another, equally quick but much heavier person running as if in pursuit. Just outside the door the pursuer seemed to overtake the pursued, and I heard the sounds of a scuffle. A girl’s voice cried out: “No, don’t, don’t!” Then there was a sharp cry of pain, and the sound of the pursuit resumed as the two ran out of hearing.

  I seized the heavy handle of one of the great doors and turned it, then cautiously pushed. The door moved. Bringing my eye to the crack I had thus opened up, I looked along the passage that led from the landing. It was empty, but after a moment I heard the sound of running feet and a figure appeared coming towards me. It was a girl of about my own age, but there was something strange about the way she was running. Then I recognised her as the pale-faced child I had met at the gate of this house all that time ago.

  She was almost upon me now, and I pushed open the door and called out: “Henrietta!”

  She looked at me in amazement but slowed her run.

  “Come in here!” I whispered and I think at that moment she remembered me. She ran in, squeezing herself through the gap with surprising difficulty, and I quickly pushed the door shut. A moment later the heavier footsteps came running down the passage, passed the door, and faded out of hearing.

  Henrietta stood panting and gazing at me. She was wearing a plain dark dress with a blue sash and her long black hair fell in ringlets around her face that seemed, for her black eyes, so pale.

  “Do you remember who I am?” I asked in an undertone.

  She nodded as if too out of breath to speak and as she did so I noticed that her arms and head appeared to be oddly constrained, so that as her head moved so the rest of her upper body seemed to follow. She leaned back against the door and there was a clattering sound of two hard objects colliding and I was disconcerted by this for it made her seem something strange — like a creature made of wood.

  “You’re the boy I met whose name is the same as one of mine,” she gasped.

  “Who was chasing you?” I asked.

  “Tom.”

  “Does he hurt you?”

  She pulled up one sleeve a little way and showed me her forearm: it was covered in bruises and had several long sc
ars.

  I shuddered: “I’ll fight him for you!”

  “If it wasn’t for this thing I could scratch his eyes out!” she said, indicating the wooden contraption strapped to her shoulders.

  “What is it for?”

  “It’s a back-board. It is to rectify my posture.”

  Suddenly she broke off and listened intently. In a moment I heard the footsteps that had just run past the door. They were coming back, but this time at a walking pace. We froze until they had gone past, then Henrietta said: “Even he will soon guess that I am here.” She moved back towards the door.

  “Are you ever allowed out alone?”

  She looked at me in surprise: “Why do you ask?”

  “Because I should like to meet you. Should you like to have me as your friend?”

  She seemed to reflect before she replied: “Yes, I think I should like to have a friend. I’m never allowed out alone or permitted to go outside the park. But on Sunday afternoons, if it’s fine, my governess and I walk to the Pantheon. I must go now.”

  “Then I’ll try to meet you one day. Where is it?” (I was determined not to ask what it was.) “And won’t your governess stop you from speaking to me?”

  “It’s in the little wood above the lake. You can find it easily because of the cascade that runs down from it. And as for …”

  At that moment the door opened softly and a young lady, whose footsteps we had not heard, came in. She wore a plain dark dress and was tall and, I thought, very beautiful: her clear grey eyes and well-shaped mouth conveyed an impression of gravity nicely balanced with playfulness and wit.

  “Are you hiding from your cousin again?” she asked with concern. Then she noticed me and smiled.

  I recalled Mrs Digweed saying that the young governess here had pleaded her cause with the housekeeper and smiled back at her.

  “This is the boy I told you about, Miss Quilliam,” Henrietta said.

  “How do you do, Master Mellamphy,” she said, holding out her hand. “I have heard a great deal about you.”

  I looked at Henrietta in surprise. What could she have said? Before I could speak she began to talk about our hopes of meeting again. Miss Quilliam listened gravely and asked me some courteous but searching questions which I believed I could answer without betraying any of my mother’s confidences.

  “Then we may, mayn’t we?” Henrietta asked.

  At that moment the door was flung violently open hitting the young lady’s back and hiding her behind the door. A burly youth sprang into the room with an exultant shout at Henrietta: “You sly creature! I guessed you had tried to hide in here! But I’m too clever for you, ain’t I?”

  The youth was about seventeen, quite tall and sturdily grown. He had a coarsely-featured red face and short, carrotty hair. He was wearing dark-blue mixture pantaloons, Wellington boots and a black waistcoat. He did not look anything like the boy I had seen in the carriage all those years ago. (In fact it was not he but his brother whom I had seen, as I later understood.) He had just seized Henrietta by one arm and raised his hand as if to strike her, when he caught sight of me: “Hello! What have we here?”

  He lowered his hand but tightened his grip on the little girl.

  At that moment the young lady, pushing the door out of the way, stepped forward and said: “Mr Tom! That is not the way to enter a room.”

  “What, are you here too, missy?” he exclaimed.

  “Release Miss Henrietta. I have told you before: a young gentleman does not play with boys and girls still in the school-room.”

  “Ride your own mare, missy,” Tom said. “I ain’t your scholar.”

  “Please, Tom!” Henrietta protested.

  “Who are you, boy?” the youth said, with an insolent emphasis on the last word.

  “Let go of her,” I demanded.

  “How dare you speak to me in that way,” he retorted. “What is your business here? Why did they let you in?”

  “I have as much right to be here as you,” I said angrily. “More right, if justice were done.”

  At this the youth sketched a coarse laugh rather than laughed, as if indicating that amusement was called for rather than that I had said anything funny. In the face of such stupidity combined with such arrogance I felt a hatred I had never experienced before.

  “Mr Thomas, if you do not release Miss Henrietta I shall have to report your conduct to your tutor,” the young lady said.

  “I don’t care a fig for him!” the young gentleman replied.

  I stepped up to him and said: “Let go of her or I will hit you.”

  Suddenly he released Henrietta and swung his fist at me striking me in the chest so that I stumbled backwards, lost my balance, and fell to the floor. Henrietta cried out and, lying on the floor, I saw the youth hit her in the face quite hard with the flat of his hand. The young lady ran forward and laid a hand on his arm but he shook her off and advanced towards me, drawing back one booted foot as if to drive it into my face.

  I rolled aside and seized one of his shins but he gripped me by the head and began to bang it — though not as hard as he might have — against the wall. Henrietta began to hit him on the shoulder and he elbowed her aside.

  At that moment a commanding voice said: “What in the name of goodness is going on here?”

  Tom coloured and moved sheepishly away from me. As I scrambled to my feet I saw a tall lady standing in the door-way into the adjoining room. Although she was some years older than my mother, I could see that she was far from old but was in that puzzling region between the two states. There was something in her face that made me think it handsome rather than beautiful — and certainly not pretty — and as she looked at us now, anger and disdain were manifest upon it.

  “Will nobody answer me? Miss Quilliam, what is the explanation for this extraordinary scene?”

  “I hardly know, Lady Mompesson, for my own scarcely preceded your arrival.”

  “Indeed?” she said with a horribly deliberate kind of icy surprise. Her gaze swung round: “You screamed I think, Henrietta. Why?”

  Henrietta glanced at the youth and he made a growling gesture with his mouth: “I only cried out when John fell over, Aunt Isabella.”

  The lady’s lips pursed slightly: “And what have you to say, Tom?”

  “I was only kicking up a bit of a lark, Mamma.”

  She shuddered: “Must we be subjected to the language of the stables?”

  “Henrietta’s right,” I said. “It was nothing. I only tripped.”

  Lady Mompesson’s gaze was turned upon me but so expressionlessly that I almost wondered if I had spoken. Then she addressed herself to Henrietta: “You have no business to be in here. Go to the school-room immediately with Miss Quilliam where you will be punished for your disobedience.”

  Henrietta, accompanied by the young governess, quickly left the room without looking at me.

  “As for you, Tom.” She paused and looked at him reflectively. “Go to your governor and tell him to give you something to do. And ask him to wait upon me after dinner. It is time we had another of our little talks.”

  “It wasn’t my fault, Mamma,” Tom whined. “She came in here and I came to find her because I knew she had no business in this room. Then this boy attacked me.”

  “You’re a liar and a bully,” I exclaimed. “She only hid in here because you were chasing her.”

  “Mamma, how dare this boy insult me?” cried the carrot-haired youth. “Why, he is not even a gentleman’s son.”

  “Then,” I said angrily, “neither are you, for I don’t believe a gentleman would treat his cousin as you have just done.” (Of course, I meant Henrietta.)

  “Master Mellamphy is, as he reminds us, doubly entitled to our courtesy, for he is also a guest in this house,” Lady Mompesson said to her son. “Be on your way now, Tom. This young man and I have business to attend to.”

  With a glare at me the youth slouched out of the room while Lady Mompesson with a muttered “Follow me
” passed through the door-way into the next room, and I obeyed her, my heart pounding in excitement at the implications of what she had just said.

  The room was vast and seemed even vaster by virtue of its being in half-darkness with the curtains pulled across the tall windows at the opposite end. A few lighted candles stood on side-tables around the walls. In the centre was a high-backed chair on which my mother sat with her back to the door by which I had just entered. Facing her was an old man reclining on a chaise-longue under a richly-embroidered covering, with his feet resting upon a gout-stool.

  As we approached my mother looked round and gave me a timid smile. Looking at the old man’s face I remembered the long sunken cheeks, the bleary eyes with their folds of skin beneath them, the protruding jaw and the stained skin, for he had changed not at all: it was the old gentleman in the carriage who had alarmed my mother the day after the burglary so long ago.

  “This is the boy,” said Lady Mompesson pushing me into the centre of the room so that I stood between the chaise-longue and my mother’s chair.

  “Bring him closer,” said the old man.

  Lady Mompesson pushed a bony fist into the small of my back and I was shoved forward.

  Sir Perceval raised a spy-glass to one blood-shot eye and stared at me for a minute.

  “He seems rather small,” he pronounced eventually, speaking in a slurring drawl. “Is he not very robust?”

  “He is well and strong, Sir Perceval, thank Heavens,” said my mother.

  “Excellent,” he said without enthusiasm. “I am glad to have been reassured on that point.”

  Lady Mompesson seated herself on an elegant sopha beside her husband and uttered a request in the tone of a command: “Now will you show Sir Perceval and myself the item we have spoken of.”