Quincunx

  The man in front, who appeared to be directing the others, was of very striking appearance, as I saw in the pale moonlight that fell directly upon him. Though he was small he had a strangely large head for so diminutive a figure, and it jutted out like a tortoise’s. As I watched he lifted a hand to halt his followers, and raised his head to listen. His face was sallow and his mouth was a mere slit, but he had a huge beaked nose and very deep eye-cavities, and as I watched him seeming to sniff the air, I sensed an animal-like eagerness that frightened me.

  Immediately behind him was a tall, good-looking young man with frank, manly features that contrasted strangely with those of his dwarfish leader. At another signal from the latter, the men pulled kerchiefs from their pockets and wrapped them about the lower part of their faces so that they resembled a party of sufferers in search of a dentist. Then after a few muttered words they passed through the gate by which the others must have entered.

  From the faint sounds I heard a minute afterwards, I realized that the newcomers had attacked Mr Isbister’s gang and that a fight was taking place. But it was a very strange kind of conflict, for those involved were taking pains to make as little noise as possible, and though I heard the muffled thud of club and spade against person several times, I heard no voices except once when there came a cry of pain which was quickly bitten off.

  I knew I should get away while I was still undetected, and so at last I tore myself from the railings and retraced my steps. When I reached the lane where the horse and cart were I began to creep cautiously past, though nobody seemed to be in attendance. As I did so I saw something lying in the ditch at the side of the carriageway and when I went closer I found to my horror that it was a man. He was motionless and when I went right up to him I saw that it was Jem and that he was bleeding from a wound to the head. Of all of Mr Isbister’s gang he was the one whom I least disliked.

  I hurried on my way and in the next street came across a couple of horse-drawn carts guarded by two men carrying dark-lanthorns and cudgels. I worked my way round them by back-lanes and then ran as fast as I could and did not stop until I reached the toll-gate on the bridge. From there I alternately walked and ran, exhausted as I was, for I had formed a resolution which I needed to act on very quickly.

  I met nobody now except the occasional milkman and a few market-carts and then some children on their way to the early morning market at Bethnal-green where they presented themselves to be hired out for the day. When I reached home I found the street was quiet, though the dawn was already beginning. I hastily climbed back over the wall and in through the window, reassured to find that the house was perfectly silent. Now the smell from the parlour made me gasp for breath — for I understood why I had so often been forbidden to enter it — and I longed to be out of there. As I passed Mrs Isbister’s door I heard her still snoring as before and when I gained our room I saw a shape in the bed and assumed that my mother was sleeping as I had left her.

  When I had lit a tallow-candle, I called softly: “Mamma, wake up.”

  I leant over her and now saw with horror that she was doubled up as if in pain. Her face was turned away from me and she was moaning, and fearing that she was ill I touched her shoulder. She muttered something and moved restlessly, her eyes flickering open and shut until I shook her gently and, with a start, she woke up. She turned her face to me still in the grip of sleep and I felt a shock of dismay for she looked strangely old. With her lips drawn down her mouth seemed toothless like an old woman’s and her eyes stared blankly at me without recognition.

  Then she seemed to know me, and yet she looked at me strangely as if afraid of me.

  “Is it you?” she asked timidly.

  “Yes, it is I: Johnnie.”

  “Who is Johnnie?” she said and frowned. Then her face cleared and she smiled and was herself again, and yet not entirely for now I saw how much the last few months had aged her, and I felt an obscure sense of foreboding for the future.

  “Oh Johnnie,” she said. “I was having such a horrible dream!” She bit her lower lip and seemed about to speak. “But no matter,” she went on, after a pause. “Is it time to get up already?”

  “It’s about four o’clock.”

  “So early!” She looked at me in surprise. “But why are you dressed?”

  “Hush!” I said. “We must not wake Mrs Isbister.”

  She looked bewildered and I knelt beside the bed and took her hand in mine: “Mother,” I said, “will you believe me if I tell you that we must go from this house immediately?”

  “Why, what can you mean?”

  “I have been out tonight. I have learned something about Mr Isbister. I don’t want to tell you what it is. Just believe me.”

  She looked at me strangely: “How like my father you are. I was dreaming of him just now. You don’t trust me, either, do you?”

  “Will you believe me, Mamma?”

  “But where would we go?”

  I pulled out Miss Quilliam’s letter and explained my visit to Coleman-street.

  She read the letter, then looked at me uncertainly: “But Johnnie, it seems as if she is no better circumstanced than we.”

  “But at least she offers us somewhere to go.”

  “But I have work here, and we have food and drink and shelter. And I have all my possessions,” she said, looking round the room. “I cannot leave them.”

  “What possessions?” I said angrily. “Nothing at all compared to what you left in Melthorpe. And we can take them with us if you wish.”

  “But things are going so well here.”

  “How can you say that? You know how unkind Mrs Isbister is to you! You know you hate her.”

  “She is often kind. When we have finished the day’s work.”

  “Kind!” I exclaimed. “That is not kindness. She wants to have you in her power.”

  She flushed then looked down and her hands played restlessly on the edge of the sheet: “I won’t go. I’m frightened.”

  “If you won’t come I will go alone.” Saying it gave me a strange sense of exultation, but as I looked at her horror I felt a stab of pain.

  “No, Johnnie!”

  “I mean it!”

  “How could you manage? What would become of you? You would starve.” She shuddered. “Don’t say such a thing.”

  I stood up and began to put my things together, as best I could through my incipient tears: “I am going. Come with me or stay here.”

  “Then I must go with you. But this is very wicked of you.”

  “Then we leave now.”

  “Do you mean today?”

  “I mean within the hour or less. Mrs Isbister is fast asleep but may wake soon, and he may return at any moment.”

  It did not take us long to prepare for we had very little: a bare change of clothes each, some sheets and blankets, and a few plates, cups, knives and forks. While my mother dressed I made these up into two bundles, the crockery carefully padded with the clothes to prevent them from making a noise as we left the house. When all was ready, and the little chamber as empty as when we had first come there, my mother looked wistfully at some of the clothes she had been working upon.

  “Johnnie, do you think it would be awfully wrong to take some of this work?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “She has not yet paid me for them. If I took some of the garments it would cover what I am owed for the last few days. And perhaps a little over for I believe she hasn’t been paying me a fair price.”

  “Mamma,” I exclaimed. “That would be theft!”

  She looked as if I had struck her.

  “Yes,” she said. “You are right.” Then she began to sob: “What has happened to me? How can I be thinking of such a thing?”

  “Hush,” I whispered.

  She looked at me wildly and, no longer keeping her voice down, said: “You know, sometimes I think of such terrible things. I dare not tell you.”

  “You will wake Mrs Isbister,” I said desperately.
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  This seemed to recall her to herself and she grew calmer.

  “Quickly,” I said. “It is getting late.”

  The light was coming in through the barred shutters (we had to draw them at night for the window had no curtains) and there were the sounds of foot-passengers in the street. We picked up our bundles and began to creep down the stairs.

  Mrs Isbister was still snoring like a hedgehog (as Sukey used to say) and we retraced without difficulty the course I had taken a few hours earlier through the malodorous house. I opened the kitchen-window and helped my mother to climb through, then passed the bundles to her.

  We found ourselves out in the raw morning air of the street without mishap and had begun to make our way towards Bethnal-green-road when, in the next street but one, I heard a cart approaching. I drew my mother into a door-way in case it should be Mr Isbister and my precaution was justified for as the vehicle passed I saw him hunched malevolently over the reins. His coat was covered in mud and so was his face. One eye was swollen and half-shut, and there was a great purple bruise on his left temple. As the cart clattered past I felt a profound sense of relief that we were no longer at his mercy.

  I glanced at my mother to parry her questions about his appearance but she said nothing, and once the vehicle had turned the corner we hurried on our way.

  We now had to cross the metropolis almost from its eastern to its western extremity, and we had only eight-pence to sustain us. It was a laborious walk carrying our bundles, but at least it was a warm summer’s night and we did not need to hurry.

  As we slowly covered the weary miles the dawn began to suffuse the sky behind us with a gleaming pinky-orange light that presaged a fine day. We stopped to rest often and once to buy a small loaf for our breakfast, keeping half of it for our midday meal. That left us with four-pence which I calculated to be enough to reach Miss Quilliam’s lodging, but I hated to think that we would arrive as abject beggars.

  “I know this place,” my mother said as we approached the Temple Bar at midday. “My father used to bring me here when I was a child when he came to visit his lawyer.” After a moment she added bitterly: “How strange it is to walk down this street as a beggar when I last saw it from inside a fine carriage. I knew nothing of these back-streets then.” She turned to me: “Oh Johnnie, I was having such a nightmare when you woke me. My father was holding out his arms to me and I thought he was welcoming me for he seemed to be smiling, but when I got closer I saw that he was covered in blood and his mouth was twisted as if he were in fearful pain.”

  She shivered and I said: “Are you cold, Mamma? It’s going to be a beautiful day.”

  “How my father would grieve to see us like this,” she sighed. “He had such great hopes for his heirs.”

  “What hopes?” I demanded. “Why?”

  She refused to say any more, but I was convinced that it was something to do with the codicil.

  Then as we passed Northumberland-house at the western extremity of the Strand, she began to talk of her father again, mentioning that his house was near here and that was why she knew the district. Despite my entreaties, however, she would not show me which street the house was in.

  “Did my grandfather know me?” I asked.

  “No, you were not born when he … when he died.”

  “When did he die?”

  “Nine or ten months before that,” she replied.

  “And what did he die of?”

  She gripped my arm and said passionately: “Don’t ask me that. You’ll know one day, I promise.”

  To distract her, I stopped a respectably-dressed young clerk who was passing and enquired the way.

  He looked at us with manifest curiosity: “Orchard-street?” he said. “Yes I know of it. It’s in the Devil’s Acre.”

  My mother looked at me with dismay at these words but I avoided her gaze.

  “Will you tell us how to reach it?” I asked.

  “Keep straight along here, then turn right and follow your noses. You could smell your way to it blindfolded.”

  I thanked him and we walked on with heavy hearts.

  “I wonder why he called it that,” my mother said bleakly.

  I made no reply for I felt that I knew and that the answer would become all too clear. And I was right, for the streets grew poorer and shabbier and a profound and insidious stench became increasingly unignorable.

  CHAPTER 35

  The Devil’s Acre stood on what was then the western extremity of the metropolis, for beyond it stretched the empty, marshy, clayey district which was known as the Neat-houses and beyond that the wilderness of the Four-fields. To its east lay the Palace of Westminster and the ancient Abbey, by whose Dean and Chapter the Devil’s Acre had been owned from the beginning of historical records and by whose right of sanctuary it had been created.

  Orchard-street, in which we soon found ourselves, was one of the principal thoroughfares of that unhappy district, and although its houses had been very fine when they were built, for many years they had been the dwellings of the most poverty-stricken. Windows were broken and covered by paper or stuffed with straw, street-doors had disappeared, gutters and waste-pipes hung crazily down the sides of the buildings, tufts of grass and weeds sprouted under the eaves, and on the rooves whole areas of slates were missing. Although it was now afternoon the street had a sullen, ill-tempered air as if it had been up too late the night before and had drunk more than was good for it.

  No. 47 was a little less delapidated than its neighbours. Its street-door stood open and now, wiser than before in the customs of the poor, we went into the dark hall and knocked at the first door on the left.

  After some delay a poorly-dressed man appeared and held the door open only enough to look out: “What do you want?”

  “We are looking for a young lady called Miss Quilliam,” I said.

  The door slammed and we heard the man speaking to someone in the room. Then it opened again just enough for him to say hastily: “Back two-pair.”

  Ascending the ancient staircase, many of whose treads were wanting and whose banister rocked as we held it, we knocked on the door indicated to us, and to my delight a voice that I knew called out: “Pray enter.”

  I pushed open the door and we found ourselves inside a large high-ceilinged room. Although the weather was sunny and there were two lofty windows, it was dimly-lit and I saw that this was because one of the windows had several missing panes covered by rags and the other had its shutters drawn. The great chamber bore many traces of its former state: the walls were pannelled in dark wood and there were elaborate mouldings around the windows and the door-frames and on the corners of the ceiling. But its present condition revealed the poverty of its occupant — the floor had only bare boards and there was very little furniture — though everything was clean and neat.

  A woman wearing a plain grey gown sat at the unshuttered window and had clearly been sewing when we had knocked for she laid down her work now as she looked towards us. When I came closer and saw her face I would hardly have recognised her as the fine-looking young woman I had encountered only a little less than a twelvemonth previously. Her features were drawn and pale, and her eyes seemed larger. We looked at each other for a moment and it was as if she knew my face as little as I knew hers. She stayed where she was and we advanced into the room.

  “John!” she cried, “and John’s mother!”

  Her voice was the same and at its sound that summer day at Hougham came flooding back into my memory.

  “Come closer,” she said. I went up to her and she put her work aside and took both my hands between hers, then leant forward and kissed me.

  “You’re not too old to be kissed, I hope,” she said. “And yet you look so much older that I did not know you at first. But tell me quickly, have you any news of poor Henrietta?”

  I told her of our last meeting and that she had said she was being sent to Brussels.

  Miss Quilliam sighed: “A convent-school! But at least
she will be getting away.” Then she exclaimed: “What am I thinking of! I must be forgetting my manners.”

  She turned to my mother and held out her hand. My mother took it, hesitated for a moment while she looked into her face, then flung her arms around her and started sobbing.

  “My dear, you are safe now, you are quite safe,” Miss Quilliam said, quite as if she were the elder, looking at me with concern over my mother’s shoulder. I was divided between pride in having such an acquaintance and shame on my mother’s behalf.

  “At last we have found a friend,” my mother cried.

  “Yes you have,” Miss Quilliam declared, making my mother comfortable beside her. “And how clever of Johnnie to have found me! I can’t tell you how surprised I was to receive your letter.” She looked at me: “However did you find me?”

  I said proudly: “Through the clerk at the London General registry-office.”

  She looked at me oddly as if about to say more. Then she exclaimed: “But you have come a long way and must be hungry! Let me give you something.”

  “Miss Quilliam,” I said, looking round and unsure how to express myself on this delicate point, “I see you are not in prosperous circumstances and as for us, why, we are beggars. We have but four-pence in the world.”

  “Then I am much richer than you.” She smiled and added: “By nearly two hundred and forty times, for I have three sovereigns and some shillings. So I have wealth enough for all of us.”

  I looked at my mother, weary and hungry after the day’s exertions but now animated by an impulse of hope in our newly-rediscovered friend, and I ceased to protest.

  Leaving my mother on the window-seat Miss Quilliam rose and began to cross the room, and I now saw how thin, how very thin, she was. Then to my alarm, after she had taken just a few steps, she staggered slightly and only just managed to return to her seat.

  She winced, but seeing our expressions of dismay, forced a smile and said: “I have been ill, but I am so much stronger now that I forget my weakness.”