Quincunx

  “Harry, you’ve heard me speak of Sir Thomas.”

  “I have,” he says with a brief bow as he takes the proffered hand which is be-ringed and manicured.

  The two smile formally at each other.

  “I sent to meet you here, Harry,” Mr Mompesson goes on, “because I want to avail myself of some of your legal advice.”

  “Well, you’ve come to the right shop.”

  “Shop? Why, I hope you ain’t going to make me fee you for it?”

  “Not yet, but one day I shall. But if we’re going to talk law we’d best not do it here.”

  “Why should we not go on to the Finish?” suggests Mr Mompesson.

  As you probably know, he was alluding to a tonish but extremely disreputable coffee-shop in another part of Covent-garden.

  “I have a better notion than that!” cries the young baronet. “Let us go to a Hell!”

  “Thomas is a notorious black-leg,” Mr Mompesson explains to his legal companion. “I sometimes wonder if his ruling passions aren’t really the turf and the baize.”

  “The injury is at least only to one’s pocket,” Sir Thomas answers with a laugh. “Whereas a moment with Venus may condemn you to a lifetime with Mercury.”

  The other gentlemen smile (the shabbily-dressed one rather uneasily) and Sir Thomas says to Mr Mompesson: “I see you still bear the scars of an encounter with the fair sex.”

  Mr Mompesson flushes then, raising a hand to his forehead, protests irritably: “It’s healed now. It was more than two years ago, dammit. Can’t you let it drop?”

  You and I, of course, know what member of the gentle sex inflicted this wound upon the future baronet and under what circumstances. Little wonder that he had no taste to be reminded of it!

  “Come,” says Sir Thomas rising from his seat, “we’re getting dull and we shall quarrel. Let us go to Wetherby’s.”

  So they make their way to Henrietta-street, and ring at a dark little door which is secured with knobs of iron. After a moment a small wicket with iron bars across it opens and a voice demands: “Who is there?”

  “Friends,” Sir Thomas replies. “We are sent by Stanhope Mountgarret.”

  He winks at his companions.

  “Come in one at a time,” the unseen voice returns and, as the sound of a bolt being drawn and a heavy chain falling is heard, the door swings back. From behind it the Cerberus who guards the entrance to this Hell holds a lanthorn briefly in each gentleman’s face as he passes and then secures the door behind them.

  They find themselves in a dark hall but from there they enter a large and magnificent apartment ablaze with candles and high looking-glasses whose existence could hardly be guessed at from the decrepit appearance of the house.

  From the cashier seated at a desk in one corner, Mr Mompesson and Sir Thomas each purchase thirty guineas’ worth of ivory fishes.

  “You won’t play?” Sir Thomas asks their companion.

  He flushes while Mr Mompesson smiles.

  “Never,” he answers. “On principle.”

  And so, while Harry looks on disdainfully, the other two proceed to lose their money at Hazard. When they are quite cleaned out they lounge with Harry on the chairs and sophas in one of the other apartments, drinking the iced champagne that the establishment generously makes available.

  “Why the aversion to play?” Sir Thomas languidly asks.

  “The question doesn’t arise,” Harry answers stiffly. “My circumstances do not permit it.”

  The baronet looks him up and down with a bored smile as if to imply that from his appearance that is only too obvious.

  “But I have another reason,” Harry goes on, as if stung by this insolent appraisal. “My own family lost a great deal of money through play. My great-grandfather once had considerable wealth but he dissipated it all in gaming.”

  “Your great-grandfather,” the baronet drawls. “That’s going confoundedly far back, ain’t it?”

  “Not so far,” Harry retorts. “He is still alive.”

  “Must be deuced old,” Sir Thomas comments.

  “Of course,” Harry replies impatiently. Then he hesitates and, looking at Mr Mompesson, adds: “And yet he has neither forgotten nor forgiven the wrongs done to him, for he has been the victim of terrible injustice.”

  “Yes, yes,” Mr Mompesson says quickly. “But don’t for heaven’s sake start on that now.”

  “It’s very well for you,” Harry says angrily. “Your family has profited by it.”

  He breaks off and both he and Mr Mompesson glance at the baronet as if afraid they have said too much.

  “You intrigue me,” Sir Thomas says. “Won’t you tell me the story?”

  “Well, if you must,” Mr Mompesson says off-handedly. “It goes back to the absurd tale that my great-grandfather won his property down at Hougham in a game of Hazard, but there is no foundation in it. The truth is more mundane: he bought it from James Huffam.”

  “Yet such things happen,” Sir Thomas protests.

  “To win or lose everything on the fall of the dice,” Harry says with a shudder. “I play no games of chance but I will take you on at chess where luck plays no part and my fate hangs or falls by my own cunning.”

  “If it’s a question of cunning, you should play at cards,” Mr Mompesson says. “But why do you jib at games of chance when life itself is a dice-game? If I win, very well. If I lose, why then, I shall have to accept my fate.”

  “No, you can make your fate,” Harry replies. “You don’t have to accept it.”

  “Gammon!” exclaims the baronet. “Life is a game of Hazard.”

  “That is a facile view,” Harry says venomously. “There are patterns and they can be understood and mastered. That is the appeal of Equity to me.”

  “If it comes to that,” returns Sir Thomas, “Hazard can be mastered if you play with a pair of cogged dice.”

  “As your great-grandfather knew,” Harry says to Mr Mompesson.

  “I wish the old fellow had known about this damned codicil!” that gentleman exclaims, doubtless intending to divert his companion from this dangerous topic.

  (And I might presume to add that Harry would undoubtedly have had the best of the argument had the three young men continued it, for Equity is indeed an imitation of divine Justice, and the nearest image we have of the hidden Design that rules all things.)

  “What’s this?” Sir Thomas asks.

  “It’s a codicil to the will of James Huffam’s father that has been laid before Chancery,” Mr Mompesson answers gratefully. “And its conditions may be set up in place of those in the original will that old Huffam made. The codicil entails the estate upon James instead of bequeathing it outright, and so if the Court accepts it, that would mean that he had no clear title to the estate to sell to my great-grandfather.”

  “So do you lose the property?”

  “No, it ain’t so simple as that. You’d better explain it, Harry.”

  So Harry begins: “The codicil would mean that Mompesson’s family acquired only a base-fee in the title while the fee-simple passed to the entailed heirs of James. So long as there is a Huffam heir, there is no difficulty. But if that line dies out (or is disproved), then the fee-simple in the property passes to the next entailed heir and in that event, Mompesson’s family are dispossessed.”

  Sir Thomas whistles softly then asks: “And is there still a Huffam heir?”

  Mr Mompesson and Harry glance at each other.

  “We don’t know,” Mr Mompesson says. “There were two but they’ve gone missing. You see, they have nothing to gain from holding the fee-simple. But now that the story of the codicil is abroad, nobody will take my paper or my father’s except at the highest discount. Even now when the money-market has gone so crazy that it seems that any paper with a signature to it is tradable.”

  “You’re in deep?” Sir Thomas asks.

  “Frankly, we’re all to pieces. The governor’s steward down at Hougham is lining his pockets at o
ur expense, but my old fellow refuses to see it even though my mother and Barbellion have shewn him clear evidence. As for myself, why, I’ve borrowed so much on post-obits that even if the governor died tomorrow, it might be too late to save me from a complete smash.”

  “How deep are you?” the baronet asks.

  Mr Mompesson leans forward and says softly: “Fifteen thousand.” The baronet whistles slowly.

  “If the governor finds out, there’ll be the devil of a blow-up. The only thing that can rescue me,” Mr Mompesson goes on, “is to find myself an heiress.”

  “Why,” says Sir Thomas, “I know of a likely filly and I believe I could help you to her.”

  “What is she like?”

  “Well, she ain’t one of your whey-faced demure misses who are only too tediously biddable. She’s a woman of spirit. And I can promise you, you will never suffer a moment’s anxiety for her reputation.”

  “In short, she’s an ugly old virago,” Mr Mompesson says, laughing.

  “Well, the truth is, she has somewhat overstood her market by keeping her price too high. But I promise you, she’s a Smithfield bargain: she’ll bring you property with a rent-charge of ten thousand. You’ll be famously rich. And to show gratitude, you can buy me a place in the Patent-office.”

  “Well, at least she’d keep me out of the hands of the Jews.”

  Sir Thomas laughs and says: “I didn’t promise you that. Wait until I’ve found out if she’s really on the market and if you’re interested I’ll tell you more about her.”

  “You’re making me anxious, Tommy. Perhaps she’d do for that cankered blossom of our house — as our motto has it — my brother Tom. They sound as if they’d make a fine couple.”

  “But that wouldn’t do any good for you,” Sir Thomas objects.

  “Yes it might,” Mr Mompesson replies. “For Harry has an idea and that’s what I wanted to speak to him about.” He turns to him: “Tell him what we were talking about the other day.”

  “Tom could be married,” Harry begins, “and then a Chancery commission convened which could be relied upon to declare him a lunatic. (These things can be arranged in most cases.) Mompesson here would become his committee with complete discretion to handle his affairs.”

  “Most ingenious,” says the baronet. “But it would take time so it won’t help you in the short term.”

  “As far as that goes,” Harry says, “I could put you onto a broker who would take your acceptances.”

  “Why,” exclaims Mr Mompesson, “that’s excessively generous of you, Harry. Positively altruistic, I declare.”

  “You’re a lucky devil, Mompesson,” Sir Thomas exclaims. “You’ve found a marriage-broker and a bill-broker on the same day!”

  “Yes,” the future baronet answers, smiling at his friends. “And I wonder which intends to take the larger commission?”

  CHAPTER 57

  When I awoke the next morning my first thought was that I had no money and no prospect of acquiring any. I knew how difficult — nay, impossible — it would be to find work without skills or physical strength, and my only other recourse, begging, was not only uncertain but also dangerous, for I knew that I could be taken up for this offence and sent to the treadmill.

  Deciding that if I were now forced to seek charity I should at least do so from those on whom I had some claim — however slight it was — I resolved to make one last attempt to find the Digweed family. I still remembered Pulvertaft’s address that old Sam’el had given me two years ago, and although it occurred to me to wonder if he would still be living there now, my faith in the Digweeds and what they could do for me was so irrationally strong — perhaps because of my state of hunger and exhaustion — that I was convinced that if I could only find Pulvertaft, all would be well. And so I set out to walk into the Borough, repeating the name “Digweed” to myself over and over again as if it were a magic talisman which had the power to lead me to safety like something from my beloved Arabian Tales, and quite forgetting not only the circumstances under which my mother and I had met Mrs Digweed and her son, but also our experiences with the Isbisters whom we had encountered in our pursuit of them.

  I had a long and exhausting walk before I found myself in the notorious district called the Old Mint, and it was getting dark as I began to enquire for the Old Manor-house which Sam’el had told me was the nethersken (low lodging-house) where Pulvertaft dwelt. I found it at last in Blue-Ball-court. Though it was old, it was like no manor-house that I had ever seen or read about. It was a low, two-storied tumbledown house lying up a dark back-alley and surrounded by a heaving sea of broken cobbles rising and falling like frozen waves. Only a few faint gleams of light came from the barred shutters and a little smoke rose secretively from its crumbling chimney-stack. There was a wooden staircase at one end leading to the upper floor so that one could come and go without reference to the main room or “kitchen” on the ground floor, which was reached by a door at the bottom of the stairs. I now knocked on this. There was a long pause and then a dirty-faced woman wearing a woollen shawl over a tattered gown and with her unkempt hair straggling to her shoulders, opened the door a few inches and I made my enquiry.

  “He might live here,” she said. “Then agin, he might not. Leastways, he ain’t within doors now.”

  “May I stay for him?”

  “I can’t stop you,” she replied and the door was shut in my face.

  So I settled down to wait a little way up the stairs. People slipped in and out of the door beneath me at frequent intervals, and others passed up and down beside me. As the night approached, ragged men and boys came and laid themselves down to sleep on the landing above me and on the stairs, getting kicked and trodden on by those who passed, some of whom were not in a condition to be very considerate towards others. Exhausted as I was I quickly fell asleep, though I was woken a number of times when someone blundered into me and then showered abuse on me by way of apology. Once, waking in the near-darkness to feel something gently tugging at me, I realized that someone was trying to steal my pocket-book. I seized it, there was movement amongst the sleeping forms beside me, and in the little light there was, I saw a small figure escaping down the stairs. I tried to stay awake after that.

  At last a man came out of the door carrying a stub of candle and, regardless of the sleepers around him, shouted up the stairs: “Where’s the younker what’s waiting?”

  “Here,” I said, coming down to him. “And who might you be, my fine cull?”

  When he lowered the candle to look at me and I saw his face, I realized with a shudder of horror that I knew him: he had been the small man with the tortoise-like head and great beaked nose whom I had seen when I had watched the Borough gang attack Isbister’s men in the graveyard.

  I must have stared at him in amazement for he reached out and shook me: “I say, what d’you want of me?”

  And yet it did not surprise me that it should be this man. To the contrary, it seemed inevitable that through all the vastness of London the stranger I had come to find should turn out to be someone I had encountered before. There was clearly a design lying behind the apparently meaningless events I was experiencing.

  “The old man, Sam’el at Cox’s-square, directed me here,” I said. “Are you Mr Pulvertaft?”

  “I might be. What do you want?”

  “I am looking for a family called Digweed. Do you know them?”

  It seemed to me that a look of interest quickened in his face at this: “I might. What business do you have with them?” But before I could answer he seized my arm: “Come in here.”

  He pulled me through the door and I found myself in a long, low room in near-darkness but filled with the noise of fifty or sixty people laughing, shouting, singing, crying and swearing. The only light came from a few guttering dips stuck in brackets in the walls, and from a blazing fire at the other end before which a number of people were sitting drinking from tankards, while one man was sprawled intoxicated on the floor. Another in a
similar condition was sitting at a table nearby with his head and arms lying on its surface, completely oblivious to his surroundings. The walls were of naked stone and the floor was of bare boards sprinkled with foul saw-dust.

  I did not take all this in at first, for my assailant, having slammed the door after us, blown out his candle and thrown it on the floor, then pushed me back against the wall holding my head up with one hand: “Now what’s your business with Digweed? Tell me the truth or I’ll make cat’s-meat of you.”

  In all that noise and drunkenness, no-one paid us any notice or could have heard us if they had.

  “I want to ask his wife for help. Once — some years ago — my mother and I gave some assistance to Mrs Digweed. Now I am in need of help myself.”

  He looked at me closely. “His wife?” he said. “There ain’t no Mrs Digweed so far as I know, or rather, there’s a deal on ’em.” He laughed. “You say the old man sent you here?”

  I nodded as far as I was able.

  “How do I know you’re telling the truth?”

  He scrutinised me while he smiled mirthlessly. Then he reached into my coat pocket. “Is there anything in this?” he asked, pulling out the pocket-book. “Only writing,” I said. He shook it and my grandfather’s letter and my map fell out. He picked them up, looked at the letter holding it upside-down, then at the map — clearly making as little sense of it, — and then shoved them back into the book and returned it to me.

  There was a silence during which he frowned as if he was calculating.

  At last he said: “The only Digweed what I know is Black Barney. The last I heard on him he was living in a carcase beyond Westminster.”