This made it difficult for me to continue to resist, and I found myself in a state of confusion from which Mrs Purviance herself rescued me by saying: “It is unkind of us to seek to persuade Miss Quilliam to act in disregard of her scruples.”
The kindness with which she spoke had the effect of allaying my suspicions, and without reflecting any further I exclaimed: “I will not abridge the evening’s pleasure for merely selfish reasons. Mr Mompesson, I accept your invitation with gratitude.”
I was wrong and readily acknowledge it now. But consider my situation: I had never had an evening of such excitement in all my life; I had drunk a glass or two of wine to which I was wholly unaccustomed; and, foolishly, I was afraid to seem provincial and ignorant of good society. How often do we make decisions — or let them be made by default — because we weigh insignificant factors like these in the scale against much weightier ones!
The carriage took us to a street near Leicester-square where, at past midnight, I was amazed to find the pavements thronged with people of both sexes who appeared to be among the most fashionable members of Society. Everything dizzied and overwhelmed me: the flaring gas-jets, the plate-glass windows, the magnificent carriages and liveries, and the profusion of lights, rich perfumes, and the odours of exotic foods. Yet even as I admired, I was not so dazzled that I failed to see the expressions of cunning, selfishness, despair, and other emotions on the countenances of the glittering denizens of those streets.
On alighting from the carriage we entered a fashionable supper-house in Panton-street where Mr Mompesson was obviously known for he was greeted respectfully by name. We were led upstairs and shewn to a private dining-room in a manner which seemed to imply — though how could I be judge of such things? — that it had been reserved for us. There a repast of richness and delicacy beyond my experience was quickly laid before us. I was very careful to drink nothing but soda-water, for I was on my guard; not a word, however, was uttered during the meal that gave me the slightest cause for suspicion.
Suddenly, as we were sitting over our ices and hot-house fruits, the door opened and to my dismay Tom Mompesson entered. He was in regimentals for he had very recently been gazetted to a cornetcy. It was equally apparent that he had passed the evening in soldierly conviviality.
As we stared at him he cried: “I am’t too late for grubbing, am I?”
“There are ladies present, Tom,” his brother said warningly.
“Why, what a surprise!” Harry said, looking at the newcomer with ill-concealed distaste.
“Ladies?” the younger Mr Mompesson said, blinking and squinting at myself and Mrs Purviance. “Why, dammit, so they are! I declare, well done, old fellow.” Then he turned to Harry: “What the deuce do you mean by saying it’s a surprise?”
“Tom,” his brother commanded. “Don’t stand there by yourself like a noun substantive for want of a chair.” He smiled at me as if to reassure me in the face of this new situation: “Have I remembered my grammar, Miss Quilliam?”
As Tom Mompesson advanced, blundering into the table as he seated himself, Harry said: “More grace, Tom. Try to follow the advice of Chesterfield and do everything in minuet time.”
“Minuets be damned. The only time we military fellows know is double-time.”
“My congratulations on your commission, Mr Thomas,” Mrs Purviance said.
“My dear fellow,” said Harry with a glance around the table; “is there any hope of your being sent out to clear up this trouble with Constantinople?”
“Cons … Consent … Be deuced! Is that in Burma?” the new arrival asked, downing a glass of champagne.
The other gentlemen laughed and Mr Mompesson said to me: “I think you could teach my brother the use of the globe, Miss Quilliam, with profit to himself and, perhaps, to our nation’s foreign policy. Though rectifying the deficiences of his education would be a large task. His last tutor, though an excellent shot, was, I believe, wholly illiterate.”
“Pay no attention to them, Mr Thomas,” Mrs Purviance said. “They are envious of the magnificent costume.”
“It is certainly very fine,” Harry said, and added wickedly: “Could we not send that out to frighten the Ottoman?”
“A capital idea!” Mr Mompesson exclaimed. “A whole army of ’em. Stuffed with straw and with a headpiece of wood under the helmets. I’ll be sworn no Turk of them could tell the difference.”
“When I think of England defended by an army of Toms,” Harry began with mock-solemnity, “I say to myself: thank God for the Royal Navy.”
“What are you saying?” Mr Thomas Mompesson said angrily, pouring himself another beaker. “Deuce take your cleverness! I’m glad I am’t as clever as you.”
“I assure you, I whole-heartedly reciprocate that sentiment.”
“And yet,” said the hapless cornet’s brother, “deuce take me if I don’t feel myself growing dull from mere good-natured sympathy with you, Tom.”
“Why, if it’s jokes you want,” Mr Thomas Mompesson said, smiling in my direction, “I’ll tell you a good story I heard in the mess last night from Masterson.” He began to laugh: “It’s about a private soldier of Ours. That’s the 25th. Hussars,” he explained to me.
“I hope this is fitted to the present company,” Harry said.
“Aye, for it’s a story about a lady, don’t you see? Well he was a good-looking fellow, it seems. In Saunderson’s battalion. (Did I say that already?) They saw service at Barakpoor in that mutiny, don’t you know? What was I saying? Oh yes, your friend Pamplin would care to meet him, I dare say, Harry. Anyway, it seems … Hah, hah, hah.”
He became speechless with laughter and his brother said: “Well, what of it, you poltroon?”
“It seems he caught the fancy of a lady, a rich widow in the town.”
“I warned you, Tom,” his brother said angrily. “Now hold your tongue.”
“And she invited him to an assignation,” the cornet continued.
I looked at Mrs Purviance and saw to my distress that she was smiling good-naturedly. Mr Mompesson, however, attempted to shout his brother down but the cornet persevered:
“And Masterson asked him what he’d brought back and be damned if the fellow didn’t show him a bank-note of twenty pounds!”
At this he laughed immoderately until he suddenly broke off. I was looking down but I heard him say angrily: “Dammit if I ain’t forgot something. It was deuced funny when Masterson told it.”
“Bring your man next time, Tom, to stand behind your chair and laugh at your jokes,” said Harry, standing up and opening the door. “It’s too hard for you to have to cut them and laugh at them in the bargain.”
“Out you go, Tom,” said his brother, lifting him to his feet. “You’re not fit for decent society.”
Protesting and cursing, he was bundled into the passage and the door shut behind him.
All I could think of now was getting away from there, and I hardly noticed when, just at this moment, a waiter brought in a note for Mr Mompesson. He read it and told us that a party of friends of his, who were also known to Harry and to Mrs Purviance, were dining elsewhere in the establishment and had recognised the Mompesson crest on the carriage at the door. Before I understood what was happening, the two gentlemen were leaving the room in order, they explained, to speak to their friends. A moment later, Mrs Purviance also made her excuses and left me.
I was relieved to find myself alone. An instant later, however, the door opened and Mr Thomas Mompesson came blundering back into the room saying: “Deuce take it if I ain’t remembered the point of Masterson’s story. You see, he told the fellow the honour of the regiment was at stake and he should bring back proof of …”
At this point he broke off and stared round the room. “I say, missy, have they all gone and left you? Why, then we shall be cozy together, shan’t we? Come, give me a buss.”
As he advanced towards me I rose to my feet to try to escape, but since he stood between me and the door I was unable
to flee.
“Come a step nearer, Mr Mompesson, and I will scream,” I declared.
He stood blinking at me and swaying slightly: “Why, you minx. This ain’t what Davy told me you’d say.”
“How dare you!” I cried.
“Why, dammit,” he cried and stepped forward.
At that moment the door opened and you may imagine my relief when Mr Mompesson entered. He appeared to take in the situation at a glance for he seized his brother by the scruff of his collar and swiftly ejected him, turning the lock behind him.
Nearly swooning with relief, I found myself, without resistance, enfolded in Mr Mompesson’s arms. Now, however, I discovered a new peril for my rescuer began to shower kisses upon me, and I realized that I had substituted one danger for another, and a much worse one. He told me he had fallen passionately in love with me and said that he could not know a moment’s rest until I was his, and much more in that vein. When I protested, he accused me of coquetry, saying that I had set out to drive him mad with passion and had now succeeded and must bear the consequences. In brief, he made a proposal of a nature which I was wholly unprepared to listen to, imploring me to appoint a rendez-vous. When I refused to countenance such a suggestion, he accused me of mere prevarication and eventually grossly insulted me with a proposition which put a monetary value upon my chastity.
The more I opposed his desires the more inflamed he became, and when I reflected that I was alone in a locked room with a rich and unscrupulous voluptuary in a house in which a woman’s cries for help would not be answered, I realized that I had to act decisively to defend myself.
I hardly know whether to be proud or ashamed of what followed. Reaching behind my persecutor I snatched up a fruit-knife from the table and threatened him with it. He laughed at me and reached out to take it. I am not sure how it happened or what my intention was, but as he seized my hand the point of the knife bore down against his face and cut a wound from above his eye to the cheek-bone. Instantly he was blinded by the flow of blood and forced to release me. In a moment I had unlocked the door and was fleeing along the passage, down the stairs and out into the street.
The insults I endured as I made my way through that infamous quarter I will not recount. A scene that had appeared so magnificent from the window of a carriage now presented itself in a very different light to a young woman unescorted and immodestly dressed for the streets. For, having had to abandon dear Henrietta’s shawl in my precipitate flight, I was bare-shouldered. Under these circumstances it was impossible to ask my way without exposing myself to insult, and for more than an hour I wandered in circles, constantly finding myself drawn back into that whirlpool of vice that swirls about Leicester-square. How could I have seen that place as anything but the resort of wickedness and misery! Now it flashed before my eyes like a hideous dream: the desperate or reckless faces of the women in their tawdry dresses, the coaches crawling along the kerb, the cigar-divans and coffee-houses open all night with flambeaux burning outside them to draw in the vicious or the lost.
At last, however, I reached the house in Brook-street, conscious of the irony that I had had to seek refuge in the abode of my enemy, and terrified that if I had wounded him seriously I might find the authorities waiting to take me up. But now I became aware of an unanticipated difficulty for the house was in darkness and my timid knocks — I dared not hammer harder for fear of waking the whole household — failed to summon the nightwatchman. By now the carriage must have returned, whether or not it had brought Mr Mompesson home, and Jakeman, having locked up, would be in a drunken slumber — according to his unvarying practice — at the back of the house. After fifteen minutes I gave up the attempt and walked round to the mews where I found all dark in the coachman’s house and no light showing in the grooms’ quarters above the coach-house. Though I felt a deep repugnance at the idea of raising these servants and exposing myself to the gossip of the whole establishment, I reflected that the head-coachman, Mr Phumphred, was a kindly man whose discretion might be relied upon.
I therefore knocked at his door until he came down in his night-shirt and admitted me. He was amazed to see me and explained that Mr Mompesson had told him, when the rest of the party had left the supper-house, that I had made my own way home in a hackney-coach. And yet, he told me, his suspicions had been aroused, especially by the fact that Mr Mompesson’s face was cut — though, he assured me, only very superficially. He had taken Mrs Purviance to her house and then left the two young gentlemen in the neighbourhood of Covent-garden where he believed Mr Mompesson intended to find lodging at the Hummums Hotel, and had then brought the carriage home, assuring the nightwatchman, before going to bed, that all of the party who intended to return that night were safely back.
Without telling him what had happened I gave him to understand that I had been ill-used and begged him to say nothing of my arrival under these circumstances. He implied that he knew enough of his young master to understand what I meant, and gave me the undertaking I sought. (I might add that so far as I know he was as good as his word.) He let me out through the back-door of his quarters into the yard by the laundry, from which I was able to enter the house by the kitchen-door — which, fortunately and quite improperly, is left unlocked at night to enable the laundry-maids to start their work in the morning without rousing Jakeman.
As you may conceive, I spent a second sleepless night — for now that I reviewed the evening it came to me that I had been the victim of what I can only call a charade. Of Mr Mompesson’s wicked design there could be no doubt; his brother, vicious and brutal though he was, might be as much a dupe as I; but about the role that the other two members of the party had played I could only speculate.
CHAPTER 40
Although I felt that my position in the house was now unendurable, yet I dreaded to be forced to desert Henrietta whom I had come to love like a sister. I took my decision, and very early in the morning I wrote a note to my employers begging the favour of being permitted to wait upon them as soon as possible.
By the time my breakfast-tray had been removed, I had received no reply. All during morning-school with Henrietta I found myself constantly on the verge of weeping, and though I longed to tell her the whole story and hated having to dissemble, I knew that it would not be right to obtrude such a tale upon her innocence and thereby implicate a man who was, after all, her cousin — though I knew how little affection or respect she had for him.
At last, at about noon, a footman summoned me to the breakfast-room where I was received by my employers who were sitting at the table. Sir Perceval rose as briefly as possible and indicated that I should take a chair some distance from where they were sitting.
I began impulsively: “Your sons have grossly insulted me. Without an apology, I can stay no longer under this roof.”
“Bigad, young woman,” Sir Perceval exclaimed. “What in the name of damnation are you talking about?”
“Mr Mompesson has organised a base conspiracy against my person and my honour in which Mr Thomas Mompesson has played a shameful part. Both gentlemen must apologise in your presence and undertake never to speak to me again.”
“Hoity toity, missy!” Sir Perceval began. “You take a deuced high tone …”
His wife, however, interrupted him: “I cannot accept that my elder son would dishonour himself in the way you say.”
“Nor Tom neither,” the baronet exclaimed. “He’s a rough and ready sort of boy but a true-hearted Briton.”
As if her husband had not spoken, Lady Mompesson continued coldly: “Will you therefore describe, Miss Quilliam, precisely what you allege has occurred?”
Her manner of uttering these words stung me as much as their matter, but I collected my thoughts and described how Mr Mompesson had asked me to accompany him to the Gardens. I laid stress on the scrupulousness of my demand that Sir Perceval and herself should explicitly approve my joining the party, and my self-possession returned as I became conscious of the blamelessness of my own condu
ct. But when I came to a description of the exchange of letters, Lady Mompesson curtly bade me stop and explain myself.
“I know,” she said, “of no such communication.”
At this I felt a first intimation of alarm, but I remembered that I still had Sir Perceval’s reply to my note and handed it to him.
He glanced at it briefly: “A counterfeit,” he pronounced. “Clever, I grant you, but nevertheless a fraud.”
He crumpled it up and threw it in the fire.
Now my self-possession began to dissipate.
“What can this mean!” I exclaimed. “This is the reply that the man-servant carried back from you.”
Clearly fraud had been practised upon me, but I was uncertain who had collaborated in it. The fact that Sir Perceval had so swiftly destroyed my one piece of evidence was, to say no more, unfortunate.
“Even if this story were true,” Lady Mompesson said, “I am amazed that you could be so … naif, let us say, as to imagine that we could countenance your visiting a pleasure-gardens at night in the company of our son. At the very best your discretion is at fault; at worst …” She broke off.
I saw that if I did not keep calm I was lost. “I am not so naif, Lady Mompesson,” I replied. I turned to her husband. “That letter referred to a Mrs Purviance, did it not?”
“It did,” he confirmed.
“Your son assured me that this lady, who was to be a member of the party, was an old friend of yours, Lady Mompesson.”
“Stuff!” she cried. “I never heard the name until this moment.”
At this I cried: “Send for your son! Let me, in common justice, challenge him to deny that I am telling the truth.”
“What!” she exclaimed. “Our son to be arraigned by a governess! You are impertinent, Miss Quilliam.”
“Then at least send for the man-servant, Edward,” I begged.
They looked at each other and Lady Mompesson nodded. Sir Perceval pulled the bell-rope that hung behind his chair.
“Leaving aside this question of the note,” Lady Mompesson went on, “what is the rest of your allegation?”