Rustication

by Charles Palliser

  He shouted: You’re a damned liar. My governor’s a tightfisted old skinflint but he’s straight as a die. I laughed in his stupid face. He said: Why do you think he bought your mother’s ridiculous claim?

  Just what I’d guessed! He was the secret purchaser! The lying cheat!

  I said: Why? In order to defraud her and get it at a knockdown price, that’s why. That’s why he did it in a sneaking underhand manner and you’ve let the cat out of the bag now.

  He stuck his ugly phiz in front of me and laughed, spitting in my face and reeking of wine, and then he shouted: You dunce. He paid well over the odds for it. He did it to stop your damned mother beggaring herself.

  Must have raised my voice a little myself and I think I may have seized him by the lapels because some of the stewards came over and told us to take our argument outside. I said that it wasn’t an argument worth pursuing and turned my back on the drink-sozzled jackanapes. Went to find Effie but couldn’t see her. Had to ply my elbows to force my way through the press of damned idiots getting in my way.

  I didn’t notice Mother until she suddenly seized me by the arm and, saying she was worried about where Euphemia was, hurried me into the hall—a huge lofty vault with a cupola and a grandiose flight of stairs. Mother looked upwards and there was Effie standing at the top and at that moment she began to run down the stairs.

  She was in tears, her dress and hair disarranged, holding her hands over her face. Everyone was looking at her as she descended. I rushed towards her and we met halfway up with everyone watching and I seized her by the arms and asked what had happened but she wouldn’t answer me and just shook her head and broke from my grasp saying she was going to Mother.

  I ran up the rest of the stairs and went into the main room. The billiard room. Only men were present. And there he was, the low cur. Willoughby Gerald Davenant Burgoyne himself. Lounging by the fireplace with a gang of his cronies: arrogant young bucks by the look of them who hunt and shoot and lounge around spending their fathers’ money.

  I went straight up to him and said: You’ve insulted my sister.

  He smiled insolently and said, looking round at his friends as if he were about to deliver a witty riposte: I have no idea who your sister is.

  I spoke her name.

  He peered at me and asked languidly: Have you and I met?

  Yes and you conducted yourself like a boor on that occasion as well.

  Some of his henchmen muttered threateningly but he raised a hand to calm them and drawled: I remember now. He turned to his companions: This strange fellow accosted me out in the wilds and seemed to think we were relatives. He claimed kinship with me on some tenuous grounds.

  I said: My grandfather was the last of the name of Herriard. You and I are related though I wish it were otherwise. You may be the nephew of an earl, but you are no gentleman.

  One or two of his chums shouted at me when I said that.

  Well, Master Last-of-a-Family-of-Bastards, the boor said. Remind me, will you? When did I insult the young woman?

  Just now, I said.

  My good fellow, there has been no lady—he lingered meaningfully over the word—in this room in the last half an hour. He grinned round at his toadying friends.

  You have insulted my sister and you have insulted me, I said. I demand that you fight me.

  He said: Fight? He turned to his cronies and exclaimed: I’ve been challenged to a duel by a young whippersnapper in a patched up coat that my valet would refuse to wear! He addressed me again: But perhaps that’s not what you mean by “fight”? Do you intend to jump out at me in the dark again?

  That took me unawares. I said: I don’t know what you mean.

  You tried it at Smithfield a few weeks ago. And then again at my lodgings on Monday night. Do you deny being hired by that blackguard Lidiard?

  I’ve never heard that name in my life, I said.

  He looked round at his companions with a theatrical grimace of disbelief and said: I don’t think we can take his word for it. After all, he’s the boy whose father was shown to be an embezzler even before he was disgraced and sacked because he was drummed out of the Church for . . .

  I can’t write it.

  I saw a red curtain descend and I must have tried to throw myself at him because I found myself caught by two of his friends. They dragged me to the door and there was Euphemia! She must have come back and heard what had passed between us.

  I was propelled down the steps with as little dignity as if I had been a drunk being thrown out of a beer-shop.

  Mother was at the foot of the stairs in a crowd of people drawn by the noise and Euphemia came hurrying down after me. I saw Mother frowning at me. She’s never looked at me like that. As if I weren’t her son. As if she didn’t know me.

  I was dragged to the door and then flung out into the street.

  As we walked back to the inn I started to explain what had happened but Euphemia interrupted and said I had behaved disgracefully. She insisted she would not share the carriage with me. I was drunk and she feared that I might do something outrageous. She said I could walk home and I might be sober by the time I got back. I pointed out that it would take me five hours on foot and appealed to Mother. To my surprise she was adamant that I could not ride back with them. I had conducted myself in a scandalous manner and shamed the family in public.

  I said I had seen Euphemia running down the stairs in tears and I believed Davenant Burgoyne had insulted her. Euphemia said I was talking nonsense. She had come down the stairs quickly and cheerfully and if her eyes were glistening it was with excitement at the prospect of the dancing, nothing else. I had destroyed her reputation by making such a public accusation. She had not been in the billiard-room but in the adjoining card-room and had not even seen him.

  When I tried to explain what had occurred between that man and myself, Euphemia almost shouted: I can’t endure to be in your company. She suddenly broke into what was almost a run and took off down the dark street.

  I began to go after her but Mother clutched my arm and said: Let her go, Richard. We’ll find her at the inn. And in view of how she feels, there’s no question about it: You’ll have to walk home.

  We returned to The George and Dragon and went to the rooms we had hired and waited. About fifteen minutes later Euphemia arrived. She ignored me entirely.

  It was a relief when the night-porter knocked on the door and told us the carriage was ready. I saw them into it and watched it trundle out of the inn-yard but instead of following on foot, I came back to the room and started writing this on sheets of paper that I will paste into the Journal when I get home.

  · · ·

  He’s a low scrub for all his dandyish airs and his aristocratic blood and his enviable expectations. He has insulted an honest and upright man who’s worth a dozen of the likes of him and I’ll be revenged on him if it’s the last thing I do. I’ll make him sorry he ever met a Shenstone. I’ll make him grovel for forgiveness at my feet.

  [A page is left blank here in the Journal. Note by CP.]

  Sunday 10th of January, 4 o’clock in the afternoon.

  I’ve just pasted those last ten pages into this book though I almost threw them away since they now seem to me wild and almost frantic. How little I understood just eight or twelve hours ago. Everything has been turned on its head since then so that I hardly know where to begin.

  After Mother and Euphemia went off in the carriage I continued writing for an hour or two and left the inn at about half-past seven and set out to walk home. I was going along Market Street when a carriage that was approaching from behind me stopped. The window was lowered and I was hailed by old Mr Boddington. He very civilly asked me where I was headed at that hour and offered me a lift, but instead of answering him I said: Why did you buy my mother’s claim? Don’t try to deny it. Tobias told me.

  He looked astonished and said we couldn’t discuss it in the street and, opening the door, invited me to get into the vehicle.

  Wh
en I was seated beside him I said (and I blush at the memory): Did you cheat my mother?

  He shook his head and said: The claim was baseless. Nobody else would have bought it.

  Then in a few eloquent sentences he justified that remark. The world seemed to spin about me as everything I had been led to believe about my mother and her inheritance was turned on its head. Oh Mother, Mother. Poor foolish self-deceiving Mother.

  When I could speak, I said: You’ve bought out Mother’s claim to prevent her wasting any more money?

  Mr Boddington nodded and said: I tried from the beginning to dissuade your mother from embarking on the suit. I knew that she had no case.

  I sat with my head in my hands, too ashamed to look at him. At last I was able to say: Mr Boddington, I have done you an injustice and I apologise.

  He said briskly: We’ll say no more about it.

  He explained that he was on his way to the Assembly Rooms to fetch Tobias since the man-servant who had accompanied him had reported that he was the worse for drink.

  Then he fixed his gaze on me and said: I’d hoped my boy would do well, but in the last few years he has fallen in with a bad set. He’s only a year or two your elder, isn’t he? Do you think I expect too much of him? He never was much of a scholar. Was it unfair of me to hope for more?

  I said I didn’t know. He looked so kind and so unhappy that I wished I could have said something to help him.

  Then he said: I fear he might have started to indulge a taste worse than wine or brandy. He looked at me sharply and I blushed. I know it has become fashionable now among young men.

  Mother must have told him enough for him to have guessed. I vowed to free myself once and forever from that vile habit.

  He began talking about how Tobias had befriended some of the “young bloods” in Davenant Burgoyne’s set—all of them high-spending and loose-living men from wealthy families who indulged every appetite without restraint.

  That reminded me of what I had just heard. I asked if he could reveal anything about an assault on the earl’s nephew in London a few weeks ago. He looked surprised but told me what I wanted to know: One night Davenant Burgoyne was in the disreputable district of Smithfield—for what purpose heaven alone knew!—when he was attacked by an assailant who seemed to have no interest in robbing him but had simply fired at him from close quarters with a handgun.

  I interrupted to ask: You mean, it was an attempt to kill him?

  He nodded and said: Assuredly. The intended victim had hit the man’s arm with his walking-stick as he pulled the trigger and so the bullet struck him in the leg. The attacker smashed him in the arm with the butt of the gun and then ran off.

  Is it known who was behind the assault?

  He drew down the edges of his mouth to indicate an affirmative and I asked if it was a man called “Lyddiard”—however you spell it—and he looked surprised that I knew so much. I asked him to spell the name and he did so.

  I said I understood that this man was the illegitimate half-brother of Davenant Burgoyne. I had primed the pump with this and now the waters gushed forth. The old fellow told me the man was a rogue and reprobate who has always been on bad terms with his uncle and his half-brother because of his demands for money and his debts and disgraceful scrapes. His uncle sent him to Cambridge but he behaved so badly that he was rusticated before the end of his first year. The earl then purchased a commission for him in the Guards, but he was cashiered following the disappearance of mess funds. Since that shameful episode he has been shunned by all his relatives except an eccentric old creature called Lady Terrewest who had long nursed a grievance against the earl over some long-forgotten squabble.

  I asked Mr Boddington if he had ever met Lyddiard and he said he had merely seen him at a distance. He was a loutish individual—exceptionally tall and with a swaggering ruffianly manner. Yet he felt some sympathy for the man. He had been abandoned by his father and left an orphan by his mother’s early death. He had grown up shunned by his own relatives in the knowledge that his younger half-brother would inherit both the title and the fortune of which his own illegitimacy had deprived him.

  So he had nothing to hope for from his father’s family? I asked.

  Nothing, except that under the provisions of the trust his father created, he will inherit the fortune if his half-brother dies before reaching the age of twenty-five.

  And he would have done so if that attack in Smithfield had succeeded, I commented.

  The old lawyer’s features remained as enigmatic as a painting. I knew he was anxious to find his son so I thanked him and we parted. I descended and the coach rumbled on ahead of me.

  I walked on and as I passed into a damp, low-lying district on the edge of the town I saw a sign telling me this was Trafalgar Place. I remembered my mother’s reference to it and I found the Row of the same name easily enough. It’s a squalid terrace of ill-constructed cottages running along a ditch that feeds into the river and is exactly where a drunken wastrel might keep his mistress and her unwanted child.

  I had gained the outskirts of the town when I saw a figure in the barely-lit road ahead of me lurching drunkenly along. I recognised him and hurried to overtake him. It was Tobias. He greeted me affably, clearly having forgotten that we had had an argument a few hours earlier. He revealed that he was executing the insane idea of walking to his father’s house at Upton Dene. When I told him Mr Boddington had come to find him and was at the Assembly Rooms, he turned uncertainly and started stumbling back towards the town. I wanted to find out something and so I walked with him. I reminded him of the story he had told me about being cheated over a dog-fight and he started muttering imprecations. I asked him if the man who had defrauded him was called “Tom the Swell”. He shook his head and said he did not recognise the name but knew him as “Lyddiard”.

  I said: Yes, I thought so. Davenant Burgoyne’s bastard half-brother.

  That’s the fellow, Tobias mumbled. Willoughby Lyddiard, damn his eyes.

  I was so astonished I stopped dead while he staggered on ahead so that I had to run to catch up with him.

  I grabbed his arm and demanded: Do he and his half-brother both have the name “Willoughby”?

  Yes, he threw over his shoulder and blundered into the darkness.

  I stood there for a minute or two in the middle of the carriageway. What he had blurted out is extraordinary. It changes everything. It was not Davenant Burgoyne who came to the house on my first evening home. Whatever had occurred between him and my sister was over by then. Her visitor was Lyddiard—her new admirer, lover, or whatever word is appropriate. And worst of all: My mother knew that! In the next few days I had confused two tall men seen at a distance and Euphemia had allowed—indeed, encouraged—me to persist in that mistake. But what I could not understand was why Mother—so bent on Euphemia making a “good marriage”—wished her daughter to marry an impecunious and illegitimate good-for-nothing. Or had she wanted that? Had that been the subject of the arguments I had overheard?

  The lawyer’s allusion to Lady Terrewest set me thinking. Euphemia’s insistence on going to the old lady so often had puzzled me and now I thought I had guessed her motive. I decided to make a diversion as I walked home.

  I reached Thrubwell while it was still dark and the house was shut up. But there was a light burning on the ground-floor. I climbed over the wall that separated the house from the road and approached it. I peered through the window where the light came from. I saw a fat old lady seated in a high-backed armchair in a sitting-room. I remembered Euphemia saying that Lady Terrewest spends all her time downstairs because of her incapacity. She was talking to someone whom I could not see. Tears were running down the old creature’s cheeks and her face was convulsed. I thought she must be in great pain. Then the other figure passed into view and I saw that it was a second obese woman dressed in the plain gown and apron of a housekeeper or a cook. She put her head back and shook with unheard laughter. I recognised her as the woman I had seen t
alking to Mrs Darnton in the shop—the one I’d called “Blubber”. I looked again at Lady Terrewest and saw that what I had taken for a grimace of agony was amusement. Her tears were being shed in delight at some joke or story the two old parties were sharing.

  This was not a house of grief and pain as I had imagined. This was no ailing invalid living in quiet retirement as I had been led to believe. I had thought of Euphemia as sitting in sombre silence or playing mournful threnodies on the pianoforte. Now I realised that every time she went there she was taking part in a vast joyous feast of scandal-mongering. The house is a veritable laundry of gossip in which every scrap of information is beaten until it yields its dirt.

  The servant disappeared for a minute or two and then returned with a tray which she laid before the old lady. At the sight of her devouring the most copious and delicious breakfast, I felt a pang of hunger. I had taken nothing since the night before.

  A dog’s paws suddenly appeared on the old lady’s lap. A mastiff. It tried to shove its nose into a plate of buttered muffins she was eating. She pushed it away saying something to the servant who seized its collar. She disappeared. After a moment I heard an outside door open at the back of the house and, guessing that the dog was being released, I began to make my retreat but I wasn’t quite fast enough and as I was scrambling up the wall the brute came up to me and started barking and growling. I landed on the road and hid behind the tree I had used to conceal myself on an earlier occasion. I waited to see if the dog had alerted the occupants of the house to the presence of an intruder. It fell silent and nobody came out.

  I stayed hidden, hoping that I might be able to return if the dog went back inside. After about twenty minutes something happened that I had not anticipated: a man approached from the direction of Stratton Peverel. He was walking swiftly and yet furtively. When he reached the opening in the wall surrounding the house, he produced a huge key from his pocket and unlocked the outer gate and the dog ran up to him barking loudly. The man reached towards his belt to which I saw there was secured a short whip and the dog stopped barking and growled, stretching out its paws ingratiatingly.