Charles Palliser Read Online Free PDF Page A

their Ottoman Empire.
    “Why, who give her leave to go, Mrs Belflower?”
    “I done, Mrs Bissett.”
    “Then I don’t believe it were your place.”
    “Nor no more it ain’t yourn to tell me mine.”
    My mother turned suddenly and stamped her foot, exclaiming: “Hold your tongues!
    Both of you!”
    “Well I nivver,” said Bissett and we all three looked at her in surprise.
    “Bring the tea-things, Mrs Belflower, and come with me, Johnnie,” she said and walked quickly out of the room. I obeyed, leaving Bissett and the cook in a sudden, outraged alliance.
    We went from the older half into the spacious hall, in the newer part of the house, from which led the sitting-room and breakfast-room where we took our meals (except, oddly, breakfast which we had in the little parlour). As we entered the breakfast-room I asked: “Tell me about London.”
    “Is everyone conspiring to drive me mad?” she cried. Then she turned and hugged me and said: “I’m sorry, Johnnie. It’s not your fault.”
    We seated ourselves at the table and she went on: “I used to live there. That’s all there is to know.”
    “When? I thought we had always lived here?”
    “Oh, it was before you were born.”
    “Tell me about before I was born.”
    At this moment Mrs Belflower came in and began to set out the tea-things.
    “We won’t talk about it now,” my mother said.
    “And what did the man mean about my father? I never had a father, did I?”
    I noticed Mrs Belflower’s back stiffen over the side-table where she had put the urn.
    My mother looked at me reproachfully and I felt a stab of pain mingled with a strange pleasure at the realization that my questions were causing her grief.
    “I heard someone say once that I was a ‘poor fatherless boy’,” I went on. “So that must be right, mustn’t it?”
    “Thank you, Mrs Belflower,” my mother said. “I can do the rest myself.” When she had left the room my mother said to me: “Who said that to you, Johnnie?”
    “Oh, someone in the chandler’s shop said it to Bissett. So tell me!”
    My mother clasped and unclasped her hands: “When you’re older,” she said at last.
    “When? At Christmas?”
    “Not this Christmas.”
    “Then the one after next?”
    “No, darling. Perhaps the one after that.”
    Thirty months! It might have been as many years.
    Although I tried to persuade her, she would neither bring the date nearer nor answer any more of my questions.

    16 THE

    HUFFAMS

    When Mrs Belflower had returned and finished clearing the table, my mother asked her to bring her writing-stand and letter-case from the parlour and we went into the sitting-room — a beautifully light room with a good view of the High-street. Then she unlocked her escritoire and took out the large pocket-book in which she wrote her letters, as was customary in that time before the Penny Post. While she was writing I got out my soldiers and marshalled them on the carpet, but since my mother wouldn’t look at what was going on when I asked her to, it wasn’t as much fun as usual. Usually I dreaded the moment when Bissett would knock on the door and I would be condemned to bed and sleep, but tonight I was, if not looking forward to it, at least resigned. And there was still the prospect of teazing Bissett.
    However, this evening at about the time that my arrest was due, there was a sudden hammering at the street-door. We both started and my mother looked up from the letter she was writing and exclaimed:
    “Who can that be at this time?”
    We heard Bissett answer the door and a moment later she came into the room, the flow of her indignation in full spate: “ ’Tis really shameful, ma’am. Those men have left that ladder out there in the airey right under the winder of the parlour as if this was their own yard.”
    “Oh yes. They told Mrs Belflower that they had had such difficulty getting it over the railings that they hadn’t time to do it tonight and they would come back for it