Rustication

by Charles Palliser

  I had recognised him. He was the stranger I had seen sitting in a wagon with the chained dog. Because he had been lying down, I had not realised on that occasion something that was evident now: He was extremely tall. I knew exactly who he was. He was the man referred to as “Tom the Swell”—the very tall man I saw with Euphemia and took for Davenant Burgoyne. Now I was pretty certain I knew his real name: Willoughby Lyddiard. I could imagine his mother giving him that absurd aristocratic name to try to buttress his claim on the Burgoynes.

  He walked past the door from which the dog had been ejected and used another key to let himself into a different part of the old house.

  There was nothing more to be gained from staying there. I continued on my way. On the road between Stratton Peverel and Stratton Herriard, I encountered the carriage which had conveyed Mother and Euphemia home—or at least, to the end of our muddy lane—and it rattled past me without the driver noticing my salute.

  I reached the house at about one o’clock and entered as silently as I could, squeezing the front-door shut behind me. I stole through the hall to the door of the parlour and peered through the gap between it and the doorframe. My mother was sitting on the sopha and looking up at Euphemia who had her back to me and was saying something in a voice that was too low for me to catch.

  I entered the room. My mother started and looked up at me guiltily. Euphemia turned and presented me with a defiant face.

  As soon as I saw her I felt a wave of hatred. I could hardly bring myself to meet her gaze. She stared back at me boldly.

  My mother asked me why I had taken so long and said they had been expecting me for an hour and a half.

  I said: Have you been worried about me? I do apologise.

  Then I walked out and came up here.

  I need to understand. Not what my sister and her minion have done, for that is clear enough. It is they who have been writing those wicked letters. (How close Mrs Quance came when she suggested they were concocted by a woman in collaboration with a man.) They used gossip that Euphemia had gleaned from Lady Terrewest and her housekeeper. Then he took the letters into Thurchester and posted them there. And it was he who crept out at night from his lair at Lady Terrewest’s house and practised his savage knife-work on farm-animals. All that is apparent to me now but what still eludes me is the point of it all. Why, after my mistaking one tall man for another, did they set out to make me think that my sister was still meeting Davenant Burgoyne and to inflame my jealousy against him? What were they hoping to gain? Why send those letters making savage threats against him as if coming from me? And why was it so important that I attend the ball? Above all, how much did Mother know?

  Having had no sleep since yesterday morning, I must stop now and rest.

  7 o’clock.

  I had lain down on my bed fully dressed and had been sleeping for several hours when I was awakened by a distant banging. I hurried along the passage and watched as Betsy opened the door. On the step loomed a magnificent man-servant in livery who announced in a booming voice that he came from Mr and Mrs Tomkinson. Betsy stood in paralysed dismay in front of this impressive figure and I hurried down. The man handed me a sealed envelope addressed to my mother.

  I took it into the parlour. My mother was alone there. The name meant nothing to either of us but the note explained in the most courteous terms that they were the brother-in-law and sister of Mrs Paytress. They had come to Stratton Peverel at her request to close the house, retrieve her possessions, and pay off the servants. (So much for the cruel slander about bailiffs!) Mrs Paytress had asked them to convey a certain object to us as a gift and if it were convenient, they would like to bring it within the next couple of hours and have the pleasure of meeting us—if only very briefly.

  My mother sent Betsy to fetch Euphemia down, and after discussing it with her, she scrawled a reply pressing the Tomkinsons to join us for tea and the footman hurried away with it.

  Of course all Mother and Euphemia could talk about was the strangeness of it and then they threw themselves into frantic efforts to make the house look less dilapidated and the rooms less threadbare. Betsy was soon running around mopping and polishing.

  I had cleansing of my own to carry out. I came up here and broke the pipe and put everything connected with it into a little wooden box. I went out and walked along the path to the beach and opened the box and scattered its contents in the sea. It had brought about the worst thing that I had ever done and had helped to put me in the power of those who wished me ill.

  On my way back in I passed Euphemia in the hall and, allowing myself a sarcastic sneer, said to her: Not going to Lady Terrewest today?

  She walked on without replying. I believe the attraction that took her to Thrubwell is no longer present. Moreover, I don’t think there will be any more threatening letters. Whatever purpose they served has either been achieved or has failed.

  I called out to her: Can you delay your departure for a few minutes? I have something I want to say to our mother and you.

  She halted and turned and slowly followed me into the parlour.

  Mother was sitting at her embroidery and looked startled as we came in. I asked Euphemia to sit down and then I said: I’m going to tell you what happened at Cambridge. I don’t want to hide anything from you any longer. Things are too far gone for that. Here’s the truth. I became a friend of Edmund Webster before I understood how dangerous to me he was. I had never known anyone I liked so much. But what I only gradually discovered was that because of his wealth, he had been recruited into a dissolute circle. He and his rich friends drank and gambled and did worse things. But there was one other thing that Edmund introduced me to and it led to all the bad consequences. It was opium.

  There. I had said it and I knew that Euphemia had no power over me now. She and Mother exchanged a look.

  I went on: We didn’t realise how dangerous it was. Edmund’s uncle had made his fortune as a China merchant and taught him to smoke the drug as they do in the East. It’s even harder to break the habit if you’ve been doing that. But I have wonderful news to tell you. I’ve given it up. I’ve just thrown away all my opium and the pipe.

  Neither of them seemed impressed or pleased by my news.

  Euphemia asked: Was it because of opium that your friend took his own life?

  I just shook my head as if puzzled rather than denying it. Euphemia knows more than I had realised. I suppose I will have to tell Mother the rest of it.

  · · ·

  After what Mr Boddington said, it is clear that when the lease on this house runs out at the end of this year, Cousin Sybille will demand rent and when Mother is unable to pay it, will evict her and Euphemia.

  ½ past 8 o’clock.

  I stayed in my room until I heard the Tomkinsons arrive. (They had had to leave their carriage some way up the lane and walk from there.) I joined them but I spoke not a word the whole time we were in the parlour together. They were very charming and seated themselves on the dirty old sopha as if they were in the most elegant drawing-room in Marylebone.

  The man-servant who had brought the letter followed them into the house carrying a large square object wrapped in a thick hessian cloth. Mr Tomkinson told him to prop it against the wall.

  When the usual civilities had been gone through, my mother asked about the closure of the house and dismissal of the staff. Mr Tomkinson said all had gone well except that he had had to deal with a very abusive servant who had become involved in some criminal enterprise in the district.

  Mrs Tomkinson opened proceedings by saying that her sister had wanted us to hear the truth because we were the only people who were kind to her during her brief residence in the district. I looked at my mother to see how she took that.

  They confirmed what Miss Bittlestone had told us about the child. His condition had been deteriorating for several weeks and on Sunday night his mother had rushed into Thurchester with him, but he had died in her arms in the carriage.

  The proper thin
gs were said in the proper tone. Then Mr Tomkinson unwrapped the picture with some help from me. Of course it turned out to be the painting of Salisbury Cathedral that Euphemia had admired.

  Mrs Tomkinson began to talk of how her sister had been ostracised in the district because of an incident shortly after her arrival. She was dining with the earl to whom she had a recommendation through a shared acquaintance: Unfortunately she unintentionally offended the wife of the local Rector. The company were talking of Mr Dickens and his travels in Europe when Mrs Quance said: “He is most assuredly in the Parthenon.” Nobody understood what she meant. The earl asked: “Do you mean at this very moment?” Mrs Quance said: “Certainly. Now and for all time. He is in the Parthenon with Byron and Shakespeare.” People looked at each other in puzzlement and my sister, just to retrieve the situation, most unfortunately exclaimed: “Oh, you mean the pantheon! The pantheon of great writers.”

  I could imagine how Mrs Quance must have brooded about this slight—all the more offensive for being unintended.

  Our guests rose to leave and then Mrs Tomkinson exclaimed that they had almost forgotten that her sister had expressly asked her to invite Euphemia to come and choose for herself as much of her music as she wished. I could see how pleased my sister was at this. So it was settled that she would go back with them now in their carriage.

  Euphemia went to put on her bonnet and I walked with the old couple a little way up the lane to their coach. I took the opportunity to ask if the servant they had mentioned had been the one who looked like a jockey. It was indeed he and Mr Tomkinson explained that he had been keeping a fighting-dog in an abandoned outbuilding. He had been cheated in some fraud involving the animal and had killed the dog in a paroxysm of rage. To restore his losses he had stolen and sold one of his employer’s saddles.

  So that explained what he had been doing that night when I followed him across the fields in the snow. And I’m sure he was a victim of the fraud that Tobias told me about in which Tom the Swell alias Lyddiard had deceitfully improved the odds against his winning dog by disguising it.

  Euphemia came hurrying up and got into the carriage without looking at me. As soon as it began to move I turned and ran back to the house.

  Now was my chance to talk to my mother alone. I rushed into the parlour and she looked up in astonishment. I wasted no time on preliminaries: The evening I arrived you addressed me as “Willoughby” and I know now that the man you took me for was Willoughby Lyddiard—the earl’s illegitimate nephew—and that he used to come regularly to the house before I came home. You were expecting him when I arrived. That was why Euphemia went out into the rain: To warn him not to come into the house. Later I saw Euphemia out walking with him. Because both men are very tall, I assumed he was Davenant Burgoyne. Euphemia realised that I had made this mistake and she took advantage of it. She saw that she could make me hate Davenant Burgoyne by making me believe he was compromising her character in the most flagrant manner. Mother, you must have understood all of that. Why did you allow her to deceive me?

  Her hands moved restlessly and she avoided my gaze as she answered: I have no idea what you’re talking about. You’ve been behaving more and more strangely, Richard. I don’t think you always know what is true and what is invented.

  She must be lying. She used that name to me. She must have known about Lyddiard and Euphemia meeting on the Battlefield and at Lady Terrewest’s house. In that case, why is she denying it?

  Mother, I said. I know what has been going on and I want you to explain to me what the point of it is. Why were you and Euphemia so anxious to get me to go away? That revelation you threatened me with, it was about my father and what he and Bartlemew had been doing, wasn’t it? I now know about all that.

  She simply shook her head from side to side in bafflement.

  What were my sister and her lover hoping to gain by misleading me? I asked. And why was the ball so important? Mother kept her eyes cast down. I said: Are you really saying that you know nothing about this?

  Nothing, she said.

  I said: I met Mr Boddington last night and he told me everything about the Chancery suit.

  She turned to me a wavering look: Is he hopeful?

  Hopeful! On the contrary. He explained why it is without foundation. The court set your father’s will aside because he was not mentally competent when he wrote it.

  Mother flinched and said: That was Sybille’s lie! My father was not insane. He became confused in his later years but he always knew what he was doing. But even if that had been so, I am his only child and therefore his heir.

  I said: I’m afraid not, Mother. Mr Boddington explained to me that the distribution of the estate follows the rules of intestacy. Cousin Sybille is your father’s heir.

  I just need more time and I know I will be able to find the proof I need.

  I said: Mr Boddington says it’s a waste of money to continue.

  She twisted her hands together and said: My mother always told me she had married my father and I don’t believe she would lie to me.

  Of course she would lie to you, I said more brusquely than I had intended. She wanted to hide the unpalatable truth from you just as you wished to conceal it from me. And while we’re talking of lies, Mr Boddington told me the facts about your marriage to my father. You weren’t lowering yourself. It was the other way around. The reality is that my father risked his career. He was a rising clergyman who was marrying the illegitimate daughter of a wastrel and a drunk.

  Not that, she protested. Not illegitimate. My father always treated my mother like his wife.

  I said: You mean he beat her when he was drunk and then abandoned her to poverty and shame.

  9 o’clock.

  I can understand why Mother turned the circumstances of her early life into a fairy-tale. Growing up in a shabby little cottage in a row of ill-built houses, visiting her raging-mad father once a year, enduring the patronising contempt and miserable charity of his starched brothers and sisters. To be so close to wealth and rank and yet to be on the wrong side of an invisible barrier. What a wound it must have been for my mother to feel shut out of that big house. To walk past it with her scandalous mother—an illiterate servant seduced by her addle-pated master. Her drooling, pitiful, worthless father—she had to transform him into a parent worthy of her, of her illusions at least. A generous, admirable figure—the cynosure of the town, the county. A Trimalchio of legendary hospitality. Not a lunatic scattering his inheritance on gaudy trifles. A madman spending his last years in a barred room at the top of his siblings’ house. And I’ve done something as stupid and self-destructive as she. I’ve taken upon myself guilt for my father’s offences. What a fool I’ve been. Why should I feel any shame on behalf of another? My father did those things, not I. All my life I felt an obligation to please him even though my truest nature caused him displeasure: my refusal to take seriously the things he believed to be important. Above all, a religion which seemed to scorn the idea of earthly happiness and yet over-value social status. When he died I felt relief and then I felt overwhelming guilt for that. I look back now at what I wrote and see it so differently. Now I realise that I didn’t just fail to love him. I feared him. I knew he threatened my deepest being. He wanted in effect to kill me in the sense that he struggled to force me to become the cleric he wanted me to be.

  Our father made us love him because he was weak—not because he was strong. We all collaborated in the pretence that he was a good parent and a worthy cleric because none of us could face the truth: that he was a bully and a lazy drunken incompetent dishonest man driven by bestial desires who neglected the modest talents he possessed. He condemned others for small moral lapses in order to divert suspicion from himself. A man who judges others so harshly must be judged as harshly himself. I always hated him and I felt guilty about that. Well, I feel guilty no longer.

  · · ·

  The pains have begun. I have no means of alleviating them and no desire to do so if I were able.
The worse the agonies—the sleeplessness, the headaches, the stomach cramps—that I suffer now, the less likely I am to relapse, knowing that I would have to go through this again.

  Monday 11th of January, 11 o’clock.

  Icame down late for breakfast to avoid the others and just went to the kitchen to beg some bread and coffee. Betsy was curt and simply thrust the loaf and a knife into my hands. I tried to find out how she feels about me, but she said: I’ve to go to the village to buy provisions. I don’t have time to waste.

  I thought I was avoiding her but it seems she has been avoiding me.

  3 o’clock.

  Everything is now clear!

  I was upstairs at about noon when I heard someone running up the path and then the slamming of the front-door and I hurried down just in time to see Betsy come into the hall with a flushed face and an air of excitement. She glanced at me and then rushed into the parlour without knocking. I entered right behind her. My mother was sitting at her embroidery and Euphemia was playing the pianoforte.

  Betsy cried: He’s dead. The earl’s nevy is dead.

  Euphemia rose to her feet in horror and then staggered and nearly fainted, sinking back into her chair pale and shaking. The performance was so accomplished that I almost clapped.

  Mother’s response was hard to interpret. She seemed shocked rather than surprised.

  Betsy poured it all out. She had heard the news in the shop and according to Mrs Darnton, Davenant Burgoyne’s body had been found in a ditch beside the road to the earl’s country-house late yesterday.

  In an unsteady voice Mother asked if he had fallen from his horse and Betsy said she didn’t know. Nobody had seen him since he left his uncle’s house in town a few hours after the ball to ride to Handleton Castle.