I was picked up and carried through the house and flung into a carriage where I found myself pinned helplessly between two strong men. As the vehicle moved off, I struggled and tried to scream but the bandage over my mouth prevented me.
I was struck across the head and a voice that I recognised as Dr Alabaster’s said: “Hold your noise, Clothier, and it will go the better for you.”
I sat quietly after this. As the carriage turned into a broad, well-lighted street that must have been the New-road, I saw the face of Dr Alabaster gazing stonily through the window. I turned to look at the man on the other side of me and to my horror I recognised him: it was the tall man who had jumped into the carriage on that far-off occasion when Emma had attempted to abduct me, and who had later taken part in the attack on my mother and myself on the way back from the pawn-shop!
CHAPTER 75
It came to me then that I was indeed insane. To find coincidences and connexions everywhere was proof of it. At this realization, all power of resistance was gone and I reflected that it was as well that I was being taken where I was. Indeed, there seemed to me to be an irresistible inevitability in my being delivered over to this place: it was my destiny towards which my whole life had been moving and I felt a kind of relief that it had at last been attained.
After some time the man whom I had recognised broke the silence with an unpleasant chuckle: “This is in the way of being a regular branch of the family trade, ain’t it, sir?”
“Aye,” said Dr Alabaster. “And this one has inherited a kind of reversionary interest.”
They both laughed and no more was said until after a long time the coach turned in through the gates that led to a gravelled carriage-drive. Already the night-sky was faintly suffused with light and against this I caught a glimpse of the outline of a large house. It had a strange appearance: like a wall-eyed dog I remembered seeing once, for the windows on the upper floors were whitewashed so that it was impossible to see in or out.
The vehicle stopped and I was bundled onto the gravel, picked up and dragged rather than led through the vestibule and into the entrance-hall, still with my arms secured behind my back.
Dr Alabaster went off without ceremony and his assistant was joined by a burly, ugly man who stared at me with a sneering smile as if I should know him. And now as I looked at his small squinting eyes, his eyebrows that seemed to be permanently raised as if in scorn of everything he saw, and his square flat face that was exactly like a red brick, it came to me that indeed I did know him: he had been the companion of the tall man in that attack! To judge from the keys that hung from a chain round his waist, he fulfilled the function of turn-key in this place.
I was now gripped by the shoulder and pushed before these two along a dark, stone-flagged passage at the end of which we entered a large room. It was the men’s night-ward and at this early hour the patients were being awakened and dressed. I saw around me faces indicating all varieties of degeneracy, idiocy and mania: faces hardened by ill-usage and suffering, or broken by it, or borne up against it by a passionate sense of justification, or merely staring vacantly. Several were, like myself, wearing strait-waistcoats. I searched for a single face in which I could discern signs of intelligence and humanity and saw not one, until just at the end of the long room I caught the gaze of an old, white-haired man sitting on his low bed who seemed to be regarding me with an expression of interest and pity.
Then we were out of the room again and after walking down another corridor and descending some worn steps into a kind of cellar, we stopped before an iron door. The turn-key brought put a huge key from his chain. A moment later the great barred door swung creakingly open and I was pushed in.
I could make out nothing at first — except that there was deep straw on the floor for I felt it under my feet — since I was in absolute darkness, save that there was a tiny grating high up on one wall through which a little pale light crept. In a moment the door was swung to and locked behind me, but the two men remained for a moment watching me through the narrow grille on top of the door.
“Don’t get too near,” the turn-key said. “Mind how long the chain is.”
“What an affecting scene,” said Dr Alabaster’s assistant. “Like the last act of a play.”
They moved off still laughing and joking together. As silence succeeded their departure I realized that there was something in the darkness at the opposite end of the cell for I heard a faint rustling of the straw. I strained my ears and thought I detected the sound of regular breaths being drawn. I felt very afraid. I could not tell if it were an animal or if so, of what kind, and since my arms were still pinned behind my back I was helpless.
Now that my eyes were becoming adjusted to the gloom, I made out a shape against the far wall. Something was squatting on the floor. Now I saw that it resembled a human being. I heard the clinking of metal and saw that it was secured to the wall by a chain around its neck.
Slightly reassured, I took a step closer and the creature turned its face towards me and pressed itself back against the wall with its mouth hanging open and its tongue lolling out. I saw the thickly-matted hair and beard that ran together and almost covered the face, the wild staring eyes that seemed not to know which part of my visage to look at. And to my horror I recognised the face, recognised it despite the hair and the fierce grimace, recognised it from an image that had been engraved upon my inward eye from earliest childhood. Yes, the soft brown eyes and delicate features that I had stared at so long and so often as if searching in them for the meaning of my own life, were apparent in the face that now gibbered at me in the gloom of the cell: this wretched mad creature squatting in its filth amidst the straw, bore the countenance that I knew from the miniature on my mother’s locket.
Characters who never appear directly in the narrative are in italics. Those who might possess the estate if Jeoffrey Huffam’s suppressed codicil were in force appear in bold typeface.
PART FOUR
THE PALPHRAMONDS
CHARING CROSS AND COVENT GARDEN (Scale: 1″=100 yards)
The top of the page is North
The Best of Intentions
CHAPTER 76
I invite you to enter in imagination the Great Parlour of the house in Brook-street and conceive how it must have been.
The elderly baronet is reclining upon an ottoman in the Drawing-room and addressing his heir, while his wife looks on from a sopha by the window:
“Outrageous! Absolutely outrageous! Almost as bad as that other rascal.”
“Your father means that your conduct is only a little less deplorable than that of your brother,” Lady Mompesson says calmly. “And less excusable, for your father and I hold him barely responsible for his actions.”
“I give him up entirely,” the baronet exclaims. “Entirely. He is being dismissed his regiment in disgrace. Never has a Mompesson …”
He breaks off and after a moment his wife continues:
“Something will have to be done with him. And whatever it is will cost money. You appear to have no conception of the gravity of the situation. We are getting more and more deeply into debt.”
“Going entirely to pieces! Damned Jews!”
“Nobody will take your father’s acceptances,” Lady Mompesson translates; “for our credit is destroyed now that the codicil has been laid before the court and we are threatened with the loss of the estate.”
“Damnable bad news from Assinder, too.”
“Ah, Assinder,” David begins and his mother glances warningly at him.
But it is too late.
“I won’t hear any more of that!” the elderly baronet cries. “He’s the nevy of a man who served me and my father for forty years! And he’s done damn’ well by me, too!”
“He has succeeded admirably in bringing down the poor-rates,” his wife says conciliatingly; “for he has largely excluded the settled poor. And the enclosure of the common land has been successful.”
“That may be so, Father, but
Barbellion …”
“I know what Barbellion thinks,” Sir Perceval shouts. “And your mother.” He glares at her. “But it’s nonsense. I’d trust him with my life.”
He pauses and regains his breath.
After a moment, Lady Mompesson says equably: “Leaving that question aside, the fact is that he has estranged the chief tenants and in many cases their rents are gravely in arrears.” Before her husband can protest, she turns to her son and goes on: “That is why your father’s affairs are in so sad a state.”
“And you’re making ’em worse!” the baronet cries. “Spending your time and my money in the lowest gambling-hells. (Like that one that was robbed the other day. And serve its patrons right! Damn’ fool pastime.) Hate to think how much you’ve squandered there. Now, tell me frankly, how much are your debts?”
Mr Mompesson looks at his mother and she purses her lips.
“A little over two thousand pounds,” he answers.
The baronet looks somewhat mollified on hearing this figure: “Well, that’s bad but it ain’t impossible. There is only one thing for it: you must marry.”
“The very course I have been thinking of myself, sir.”
“Very well. But you know whom I am referring to.”
“But Father, as I said the last time we spoke of it: I need a bride with ready cash. And I believe I have found one.”
“I have told you before, the first priority must be to retain the estate.”
“But not if we can’t afford to keep it, Father. What would it matter if we lost the land as the price of remaining afloat?”
“Dammit, sir!” the baronet cries. “Have you no pride of family? Mompessons have owned land down there for hundreds of years.”
“Oh come, Father. You speak of pride, but you know the truth. We acquired the estate by very dubious means. Your grandfather got that miserable creature, James Huffam, into his power and helped him to cheat his own son of his inheritance.”
The baronet turns purple with rage and while his wife angrily signals to her son to leave the room, this is perhaps a good moment for us, too, to withdraw from this domestic scene.
CHAPTER 77
Through the long hours of darkness that followed I watched the wretched creature across the cell from me as I tried to make sense of what was happening. So this was the Refuge mentioned in my mother’s narrative!
I thought of the procession of years — more than my lifetime — that he had passed here. It was a long time before it occurred to me that I was locked up with the murderer of my grandfather — since any hope I had nurtured that he might be innocent had been dispelled by the sight of that wild countenance — for this creature, now whimpering and huddling itself against the opposite wall, appeared to present no danger to anyone except perhaps itself.
For the first hour or so my cell-mate shook his chains as if trying to escape, but he was so firmly secured that he could hardly move. Then he set to moaning and rubbing his head against his upper arms which was all he could reach, constrained as he was by the links, and after some time the terrible idea came to me that he was weeping. It occurred to me to attempt to speak to him, but here a difficulty arose: I did not know how to address him.
Eventually I said simply: “Do you understand me?”
At my words he pressed himself back against the wall, staring at me in terror and trying to shield his face. And it was long before he was quiet again.
The long night dragged by. There were noises from elsewhere in the house for I heard a thin wailing sound that was so unrelenting that it might have been the wind — except that I believed it was a calm night.
So little light reached the cell that it was difficult to know when the dawn had arrived, but at what I took to be an early hour, Dr Alabaster came to the grille accompanied by the turn-key who had brought me there the night before.
My poor fellow-inmate cowered back at the sound of the mad-doctor’s voice: “Good morning, Master Clothier.”
I crossed to the grille and peered through it at the sallow features of Dr Alabaster.
“Don’t call me that!”
“I trust you passed a pleasant night,” he went on; “reunited, after so long a separation, with your esteemed parent.” He held a lanthorn up to the grille so that it illuminated my face: “But I see that you appear tired. My fear is that he may have kept you awake with his eloquence. You must have had a great deal to talk over together. Has he told you of your distinguished grandfather — who I believe died before you could have the pleasure of making his acquaintance — and of his own affection for the gentleman and of its practical expression?”
He motioned to the turn-key to unlock the door and as it swung open he made a mock rush towards the chained creature who started back in terror. Without thinking I hurled myself at our tormentor, butting with my head since my arms were secured. The other man, however, pulled me away and hit me in the face so that I fell stunned onto the stone-flagged floor whose thin covering of straw gave little protection.
“Be careful not to mark the body, Rookyard!” exclaimed the doctor, brushing down his coat with a glance of deep resentment towards me. “I was warned that he was violent. We may have to use the Tranquillizer or the crib.”
Rookyard smiled reflectively.
“Put him in one of the low grates,” said Dr Alabaster. Then he said to me with a thin smile: “Now take leave of your father properly, as a dutiful and affectionate son.”
When I did not move Rookyard propelled me violently forward so that the poor wretched creature cowered back against the wall.
“What an affecting scene,” said Dr Alabaster.
He began to walk away up the passage but then turned and said: “Show yourself to be your father’s son, Master Clothier, and don’t disappoint your family’s hopes in you.”
There was a coarse guffaw of laughter from Rookyard and from the tall man, whom I now saw to be waiting in the passage. Then they pushed me before them in the other direction.
At the end of the passage we ascended some stone stairs — the turn-keys kicking and tripping me as I climbed — and then passed along another passage, then down some more steps into what seemed to be the cellar level of the building. Here we stopped and when the giant had unlocked another iron-grilled door, Rookyard pushed me through it so hard that I fell sprawling on the ground. As I picked myself up I found I was in a cell that seemed to me to be identical to the first, except that it was uninhabited: there was straw on the floor and a tiny barred window high up. There were no articles of furniture or, indeed, any contents except a narrow palliasse of straw, a jug and a wooden platter containing some cold porage.
Rookyard released me from the strait-waistcoat and then the door clanged shut behind me. Looking at the food and the water in the jug, it came to me that they were poisoned and so, despite my hunger and thirst, I determined neither to eat nor to drink, let the consequences be what they would.
My only hope lay in escaping, and with this in mind I examined my cell. The window was not only too high up to reach but also, with its iron bars, impossible to squeeze through. From the feeble quality of the light that came through it, I seemed to be below ground level and on a quiet side of the building. Peering through the small grille that surmounted the iron-bound door, I could see a little way along the passage in either direction by the faint lume of a distant gas-mantle. Holding the bars of the grille, I pulled myself up the door until I was just able to peer out of the bottom of the window on the opposite wall. I could make out a patch of waste ground with a scrubby grass-plat beyond it on which a broken wheel-barrow was lying on its side, and further off some untended shrubs and a large pond surrounded by a muddy swamp. There was no prospect of escaping that I could imagine.
The long hours dragged by and the cell was as cold as the other had been, and I was still in only my night-shirt. (I discovered that at least I still had the sovereign that I had hidden in its hem.) I was so hungry and thirsty that, towards noon, I nearly succu
mbed very suddenly to the temptation offered by the bason of congealed porage and the jug of cloudy water. But this would be to abandon the quest both to bring the Clothiers to justice for what they had done to me and my family, and to unravel the mysteries that surrounded me.
I was dozing on the palliasse when I suddenly heard something and looked up just in time to see an object being pushed through the grille and falling onto the straw on the floor. I rushed to the door but because of my limited angle of view was only in time to glimpse a figure passing swiftly and almost noiselessly along the passage away from me.
I picked up the object and found that it was half of a loaf of bread wrapped in a piece of muslin cloth that I found to be soaking wet. Here were the food and drink that I desperately needed! Then a suspicion came to me. This might be a ruse to lure me into consuming poisoned food when I would not eat what had been given to me. But then I wondered what I had to lose by taking this risk since otherwise I would die anyway?
So I made a lingering feast of the soggy bread and then tilted my head and wrung out the cloth into my mouth. No drink before or since ever tasted as sweet as that water, savouring though it did of the grubby cloth.
This must have been the early afternoon for it was only an hour or two later that it began to grow dark, or, rather, even darker, and so I found a dry corner of the cell and settled down to try to sleep.
CHAPTER 78
Dozing restlessly, I fancied I was dreaming that someone was calling me. But since I did not recognise the voice and since it was calling “John Clothier, John Clothier!” and I did not want to acknowledge that this name was mine, I refused to answer the summons. Yet it came again and again and more and more insistently so that at last I woke up and lay with beating heart in the near-darkness and the bitter cold, having no recollection of where I was. Then I realized that someone was in reality calling to me by this hated name for I heard a loud insistent whisper repeating the syllables, and at that instant the memory of my situation came flooding back.