“Why you wicked boy!” Bissett cried. “You’ve affrighted your poor mother nigh to death!”
“There, madam, and I think you owe me an apology,” said Mr Barbellion.
“Go away, go!” my mother cried.
I burned with shame at her conduct and the more so at the haughty courtesy with which he responded: “Madam, I will bid you good-day.”
With slightly absurd dignity in view of the rain that was running down his cheeks, Mr Barbellion raised his hat and set off down the steps towards his carriage.
“Come inside, Mamma,” I said.
I led her in and shut the door. Bissett brought out the sal volatil and eventually my mother was calm. Anxious as I was to know what had happened, I was determined to say nothing until Bissett was out of the room. When at last she had withdrawn I asked my mother for her story. And so I learned that Mr Barbellion had presented himself not long before my return. My mother had instantly sent Bissett to find me and while she was doing so had reluctantly consented to an interview with the lawyer. He had talked again of taking custody of me, and my mother had understood him to be threatening to have me declared a ward of Chancery, though she refused to explain to me how this could be done. And then he had offered eighteen hundred pounds for the codicil. At that juncture Bissett had returned to say that I could not be found. My mother had instantly leapt to the conclusion that he had abducted me and was demanding the codicil in exchange for my return, and this is what had brought on the scene that I had interrupted.
“Even if I was wrong to accuse him this time,” she said, “I’m sure it was he who was responsible for the attempt last month. He is working for our enemy.”
“We don’t know who he is working for, Mamma,” I insisted.
“But Johnnie, eighteen hundred pounds! It was as if he knew that Sir Perceval offered us seventeen hundred! He has intelligencers everywhere!”
“Who does?”
“Our enemy!”
“Who is that? Please tell me.”
She would not, and I saw that it would be dangerous to press her any further. She kept repeating that he would do anything to get hold of the document.
“But Mr Barbellion didn’t take it even when you offered it to him and Bissett tried to make him,” I pointed out.
However, she was convinced that she was right. “And it’s all your fault, Johnnie,” she went on. “It was very wrong of you to disobey my orders and leave the garden like that.”
“It wasn’t my fault that Mr Barbellion chose to come just then,” I protested. “If he hadn’t, you would probably not have known I had gone and no harm would have been done.”
Bissett made up one of her strong sleeping-draughts and my mother retired early. For the rest of that long summer evening I thought over the events of the last few weeks. It seemed to me that my mother’s account of Mr Barbellion’s motives — or rather, his actions, for that was all we knew for sure — did not really make sense. Was she confused or was she hiding something from me?
A week or two after this I asked my mother about the sculpture in the garden. She explained to me that Uncle Martin’s father — who had originally bought the house — used to be the land-agent at Hougham and had inhabited part of the old hall. (So that accounted for the old map I had found with the name “Fortisquince” on it.) When Uncle Martin’s mother came to live here in retirement she had brought the sculpture with her from the old hall as a keep-sake. So it had come from there! Perhaps even from the vacant place in the centre of the four trees!
A few days later came the following letter so strangely addressed that it was testimony to the intelligence of the Post-office that they had sent it even to the right county:
“Wrote from numbr 6 Cocks sqare spittlefeelds in londun on The 8 of Oggust
“dear Miss melermfy wich J am writen this for miss Digwid on acount of not been nor mistr D pertikler scullards for to say. thank yu very much for yowre goodnes to myself and joiy wich we had a bad truble com upon her when she com back to lundon for she fond our too yungers chilren poly and bily was took. and also the eldest gorn now mstr d heven gorn bac to the shoors in opes to beable to sen th rest of the munny toords crismuss an with bess opps and rspeks miss maggy diggwid her mark X”
Folded inside was a bank-note for two pounds. We discussed this for some time in the attempt to decypher its meaning, but remained unclear on several points. The next day my mother told me she had sent the money back and had told Mrs Digweed to regard the loan as a gift. She had also expressed her condolences if she had understood the letter correctly. She remarked rather mysteriously that she had told Mrs Digweed something that would make it impossible for her to repay the balance of the loan.
CHAPTER 25
I understood the meaning of my mother’s words when, a little under three weeks later, I awoke from a deep slumber in what seemed the depths of the night to find her standing over my bed with a candle. She was looking down at me with an expression of suppressed excitement.
“What is the matter, Mamma?” I asked sleepily.
“You must get up and dress quickly, my dearest,” she said. “We must be ready to leave in half-an-hour.”
“To leave!” I exclaimed, sleep falling away from me. “Why, where are we going?”
“Come down now. Mrs Bissett is warming some milk for you.”
“But where are we going?”
“Do hurry, Johnnie,” she said, pulling back the bedclothes. I jumped out of bed and began to dress.
“Put on some warm clothes. It will be chilly when it gets late.”
“Is it not late already?” I asked.
“It is only a little after midnight. Make haste.”
“Are we going somewhere?”
“Yes.”
I was by now almost dressed.
“Where?” I demanded.
“I will not answer any questions.”
“Why not?”
“Well, you haven’t always been very good at keeping secrets.”
I flushed at this reminder of my indiscretions to Mr Barbellion in the church-yard and before Sir Perceval and Lady Mompesson, and I reflected that there were others that she did not know of. Strangely, that made me even angrier: “It’s not fair. You must tell me.”
“I dare not take the risk, Johnnie. You might say something quite accidentally.”
“But who is there to tell? I won’t tell Bissett.” Then a suspicion occurred to me: “Or have you told her?”
“No. Mrs Bissett knew nothing until two hours ago when I asked her to stay up and help me pack. And she is very hurt that I haven’t told her any more.”
I was slightly mollified by this. When we went down and I found in the hall two trunks which I had only ever seen before in the attic I began to get very excited. One of them was already locked and secured by heavy leather straps; the other was open and almost full. We went to the kitchen where we found Bissett preparing a kind of cross between a late supper and an early breakfast. She was in a very sour mood indeed.
“Besides anythin’ else, if you had told me a-fore now I could have got things ready.”
“I’m sorry,” my mother cried. “Oh, Mrs Bissett, I hate to part with you like this, after all you’ve done. I do so hope you will find another place.”
“Too late to mind that now, Mrs Mellamphy,” Bissett replied, vigorously scraping the butter as thinly as possible on a slice of bread.
My mother sighed. “Hurry up, Johnnie. The chaise will be here soon.”
“A chaise! Where is it from?”
“I wrote to the Lion and the Unicorn in Sutton Valancy. It should arrive at half-past midnight.”
“And where will it take us?”
“Wait and see.”
“It don’t seem like regular Christen conduck, gallivanting off in the middle of the night like folk that haven’t paid their score.”
“But I’ve explained all of that, Mrs Bissett,” my mother protested mildly; “and you agreed to it. And you know
, six pounds in lieu of notice is three months’ wages.”
I gasped at my mother’s generosity.
“Aye, but how much work is there going to be to sell the furniture and settle with the chandler’s and them others in the village, that’s what I been arstin’ meself?”
“It shouldn’t take more than two weeks.”
Bissett sniffed. “And where am I to send the money left over from the sale when I’ve paid off the tradespeople?”
“I do not know yet. I have no lodgings arranged in … where we are going.”
Bissett slowly shook her head: “You don’t trust me, do you, Mrs Mellamphy?”
My mother looked at her for a moment and then turned to me as I was finishing my bowl of hot milk and fingers of bread and butter: “We can take very little with us now, Johnnie, so if there are any of your books or play-things that you really can’t bear to leave behind, go and find them now.”
I jumped up.
“Not so quick, young man,” Bissett said. “That boy’s so journey-proud he’ll do hisself or us some mischief.”
Seizing a candle, I hurried out. And now the significance of what was about to happen overtook me. I would be leaving, in a very few minutes, the house in which I had, as far as I was aware, spent all my life, and going I knew not whither. Suddenly I thought of my map of London, and though I had no idea what our destination was, I decided I could not bear to set off without the reassurance that it offered. Quickly I found it, rolled it up, and placed it in one of the boxes waiting in the hall.
Now I wanted to bid farewell to the house and I went from room to room in a peculiar state of sorrowful excitement, lingering the most time in my own little chamber. My reverie was interrupted by the sound of a carriage drawing up outside and then by a knocking at the door which seemed — especially at that unhallowed hour — to thunder through the house. I went down to watch and in a few minutes our two trunks and our boxes had been loaded by the driver and post-boy.
When I went back to the kitchen I found (somewhat to my surprise and, I admit, my chagrin) that my mother and Bissett were now on much more amicable terms.
My mother was carefully wrapping something up: “I will take my embroidery and work-basket in the coach. I dare not lose it for if the worst happens, this is what will be keeping us, Johnnie.”
And so now my mother and I, warmly clad in top-coats and comforters, assembled in the hall for the final leave-taking. My mother put out her hand to our old servant and it was rather stiffly held and shaken.
“I hope we may meet again, Mrs Bissett,” my mother said, and I could see that she was about to weep.
“If not here below in this Vale of Tears, then in a better place, I trust, Mrs Mellamphy,” Bissett replied.
Suddenly my mother flung her arms around Bissett and embraced her. Bissett neither resisted nor returned her gesture but when my mother disengaged herself and stumbled through the door and down the steps I could see that the old servant was moved almost in spite of herself.
As she turned to me her expression was troubled: “You take care on her, Master Johnnie. She don’t always know what’s best to do. You’ll soon be old enough for it to be you as looks arter her.” She seemed to hesitate for a moment, before she said: “That Mr Barbellion, now. Your mother is mistook to be so a-feared on him. Trust him, for your own sake.”
“I’ll remember you said that, Bissett,” I answered.
We exchanged a long look.
She glanced away first and I held out my hand: “Goodbye,” I said.
She looked at my hand with surprise: “You seem so growed-up, Master Johnnie, I hardly know how to take leave of you.”
“Then let it be like this,” I replied and she took my outstretched hand.
“And yet,” she said wonderingly; “this is the same child as I’ve nussed on my knee when you was in petticoats.”
We shook hands and a moment later I clambered into the chaise. The driver closed the door and raised the steps and the vehicle moved off. As it pulled away we looked back and waved to the figure standing in the open door lit only by the candle she carried, and who held her arm up in a gesture of farewell.
It was the first time I had been out so late at night and my first proper ride (apart from the brief moment in July) in a carriage. As we rumbled through the sleeping village where hardly a light was showing — except where we passed labourers working their own plots by the light of lanthorns — I wondered whether the eyes of any secret watcher were upon us. In the blackness that surrounded us, it seemed unlikely.
There were occasional little flashes of light from glow-worms but only the faint moonlight shed any illumination when it peeked from behind a cloud. In its light my mother smiled at me reassuringly from her seat opposite, and I wondered if she were also thinking back over the years we had passed in Melthorpe and speculating on whether we would ever see the village again, or was she too much preoccupied with the difficulties that lay ahead of us? What, I wondered, was presaged by this disruption of the pattern of my life — the pattern, rather, that I had assumed?
Once the carriage was on the turnpike-road it gathered speed, and its regular, swaying motion was in danger of lulling me back to the sleep from which I had been snatched little more than an hour before. Although I was determined to savour every moment of the great adventure, in fact I slumbered and only awoke as we rumbled into the courtyard of the inn at Sutton Valancy.
“What hour is it?” I muttered sleepily.
“It is half after two,” my mother answered. “The night-coach departs from here at three-quarters past the hour.”
The heavy-coach called the Farmer, which rumbled along the high road from here to the far North, was waiting in the yard and almost ready to go forward. Since we were the last to board I was able to fancy that it was being kept back for us. There were people travelling overnight on top of the coach huddled under travelling-capes, and all manner of portmanteaus and bandboxes and carpet-bags and traps and boxes were strapped onto the roof and bulging from the hind-boot. There were even hampers of game and hares hanging their long ears about the coachman’s box which detracted considerably, it seemed to me, from his coachmanly dignity. We climbed into the cavernous, ill-smelling interior where the other dozen “insides” were already ensconced and had staked out their territorial claims. The guard blew a blast on his horn and the great vehicle lumbered out of the yard and turned into the silent High-street. We maintained a sedate rather than an exciting pace and I had to admit to myself that when we went up a steep hill we were travelling only at foot-pace.
After a little I asked: “Why are we going to the North? Whom do you know there?”
“Be silent, please, Johnnie,” she whispered. “I will explain later.”
However, I kept on insisting until she agreed to say more once the other passengers had fallen asleep.
Then she began to whisper: “We are not really going to the North. If anybody attempts to follow us I hope they will pursue us almost to the Borders. But in fact when we reach Gainsborough we will board the Regulator from York which leaves there at twenty minutes past five, on which I have reserved places for us.”
“The Regulator! A mail-coach!” I breathed. “Then we are going to London?”
She nodded. “We are no longer safe now that our hiding-place is known. But in London we can hide easily.”
For some minutes I considered what she had told me. Then I said: “But it’s a very silly design, Mamma, to have come this way. For the Regulator goes through Sutton Valancy on the way to London.”
“You must not speak to me like that,” she hissed.
“Don’t you see? If someone tries to follow us but doesn’t know we have gone north, he will most likely search for us at Sutton Valancy and probably catch up with us there.”
She was hurt by my words and we sulked until I fell asleep for the rest of the stage. However, when we arrived at Gainsborough I was so excited that I forgot I was annoyed with her. We waited i
n the travellers’-room but I soon found my way out to the yard.
“When is the Regulator due?” I asked a man in the royal livery of scarlet and gold.
He drew from its pocket an enormous watch: “Four and twenty minutes and forty-five seconds after five o’clock,” he announced, as if the dial had so informed him.
“I’m travelling by her,” I said, modestly.
“Are you, so? Well, she’s a tip-top goer and no mistake. Two leagues an hour she’ll keep up all the way to Lunnon. And the stoppage here for the change will only take forty-five seconds or Tom Sweetapple, her guard, will want to know why.”
At a few minutes before the time he had mentioned we heard distant blasts on the horn. Immediately the man flung open the door of the travellers’-room and bellowed: “All out for the Regulator!”
Precisely to the second the coach, painted bright scarlet and with the royal arms blazoned on its sides, swung in through the entrance to the court-yard and like the chorus of a well-rehearsed opera the men who appeared to have been standing idly round went into action.
The coach halted in the centre of the yard and I saw the guard, holding his timepiece in his hand, stand up to shout instructions to the ostlers. Led by one of them we quickly boarded the coach, finding that the other seats were empty. I lowered the window to watch as the two “outsides” were almost thrown onto the box by the ostlers. With extraordinary speed the horses were changed, buckets of water were thrown against each of the wheels, and the letter-bags were tossed up to the guard and stowed by him in the hind-boot. Meanwhile a waiter hurried out carrying a glass which he handed up to the coachman who was buried in coats like a human cauliflower and wore a brightly-striped waistcoat and jockey boots. A hand reached out and seized it, his head was thrown back, and the glass thrust back at the waiter who stretched up on tip-toe to take it.
The coachman signalled to the guard that he was ready to go forward and the latter blew a blast on his horn. At this the ostlers threw the horse-cloths off and then scattered. The coachman shook the reins and touched up the horses, and the vehicle seemed to surge forward like a coiled spring.