The Man of Gold (4 page)

And to this sentiment Richard Partington apparently agreed. So, if he wanted friendship as he claimed he did, it would be a friendship free of any question of anything more. She should not hesitate in agreeing to it. Yet she did. She hardly knew why.

But in the matter of Richard Partington’s daughters needing a governess, Miss Unwin had very soon found this to be decidedly the case. The fact was that since their mother had died in giving them birth they had been brought up entirely by the ancient Mrs Meggs, and Mrs Meggs was less fitted to bring up children than she was to be a housekeeper, a task in which her chief efforts seemed to be directed to achieving as little expenditure as she possibly could.

So Louisa and Maria had learnt almost nothing. They could barely read, Miss Unwin discovered on the first shivering morning that she had tried to teach them in an unheated room at the top of the house that had been set aside as a schoolroom. They had learnt few manners, and few habits of cleanliness. Miss Fulcher had indeed been correct about the latter, though it had been a very easy matter to put right.

Their father, in the little his duties at the pin works had allowed him to see of them, had attempted to do what he could. Their grandfather had never regarded them, it seemed, as other than an extra expense. And Mrs Meggs, bent and malevolent, had no manners or cleanliness of her own to impart.

Bit by bit in her first weeks in the house Miss Unwin had begun to improve the situation. At least, she found, both girls were usually willing.

‘Oh, Miss Unwin, read us a story, you are so clever,’ Louisa might cry out.

‘But you should read a story for yourselves. Louisa, you read the first page, and Maria the next.’

‘We will try, Miss Unwin,’ Maria sagely answered. ‘But it is so difficult.’

Here she was speaking the truth.

But one of Miss Unwin’s earliest discoveries had been that her pupils both very readily told lies. She hardly blamed them. Almost no effort had been made with them to inculcate the virtues of truth, and she knew from her
own workhouse childhood that lies come readily to lips that need them to escape punishment or rebuke, just or unjust.

Sometimes, too, it was difficult to tell whether the girls were lying or not.

‘Miss Unwin, you know Grandpapa is very, very rich.’

Miss Unwin, still hungry after a meagre lunch of dry bread and a little hard cheese, promptly suspected Louisa of starting some tarradiddle with an as yet unexplained object.

‘I know no such thing, Louisa.’

‘Oh, but Miss Unwin, that is true,’ Maria said, as much as to imply that many other things her sister might announce were not so true.

‘Yes, yes, Miss Unwin,’ Louisa broke in in her own defence. ‘Grandpapa has heaps of gold. We’ve seen it.’

‘Then I’m sure you should not have done.’

‘No, we know we shouldn’t, Miss Unwin,’ said Louisa quite cheerfully.

‘Yes,’ said Maria. ‘He hides it all so carefully, but before you came and we started to have lessons there was never anything to do, so we used to go exploring.’

‘And that,’ Louisa triumphantly finished, ‘is when we found out. Do you want to know where he hides it all, Miss?’

‘I most certainly do not. And nor do I think you can be right.’

‘But we are, we are.’

This was a chorus of two.

‘No, I suppose you must have seen something that you thought was gold, or seen some gold your grandfather had in the house one day to buy materials that were needed at the works. So what you two must do is to forget all about it. Yes?’

‘Yes, Miss.’

It had not taken Miss Unwin more than a few days to
make the girls see that when she said a thing was to be done it was to be done.

But it was to take a good deal longer before she had instilled into the pair of them, and particularly into Louisa, the notion that they had to behave well even when she was not present, that they had to obey commands that had not been directly given.

As before long she was to discover, with consequences more than she had reckoned on.

But in the meanwhile the pattern of her life, the common task, the daily round, went on. It was enlivened only by the visits of Cousin Cornelia and her brother, and often these were little enough enlivening.

Once, however, Captain Fulcher’s presence did bring a spurt of activity out of the common, something Miss Unwin was to find disagreeable rather than otherwise.

‘Good evening, sir, good evening,’ Captain Fulcher had boomily greeted Mr Partington in the dining room, to which as usual he and his sister had been ushered by the ancient, hair-sprouting Mrs Meggs. There was never a fire lit in any other room of the house in the evenings and in consequence nowhere else to entertain guests. If Cousin Cornelia and Captain Fulcher arrived even as much as an hour before dinner was ready, in the dining room they stood or sat.

‘Allow me to present you with a small gift.’

The Captain then produced, as he always did, a pair of bottles of sherry. Miss Unwin suspected he brought the gift to ensure that he himself had something to drink, a suspicion reinforced by the speed with which the Captain went to the sideboard, found the corkscrew and began removing the corks from the bottles.

Miss Unwin saw the old man’s eyes glisten. Though he resolutely refused ever to have even ale in the house and constantly praised ‘good clean water’ she knew that in fact he relished a glass of wine.

Captain Fulcher knew it too.

‘Come, sir, let’s drink. I’ve had a day that beggars belief. Damn near beggared me, come to that.’

The Captain never heeded the presence of his sister, let alone that of Miss Unwin, in the matter of guarding his language.

Mr Partington gave him a sharply contemptuous look.

‘You have been to some racecourse then?’ he asked.

‘Where else is there to go?’ Captain Fulcher answered. ‘Damn it, there’s no one at the club for play till late in the evening, and a fellow can’t just sit and read the damned newspaper all day.’

‘No, sir, he cannot. Richard will tell you that. We have no newspaper in this house. I’ll not have him linger at the breakfast table when he could be earning his bread next door.’

Captain Fulcher sighed.

‘I suppose some fellows must work,’ he said. ‘But I was brought up to believe that the Army and the Church were the only professions fit for gentlemen. And you can’t see me a clergyman, I should hope.’

‘No, Cousin,’ Richard Partington broke in then, his face redder by the minute. ‘I cannot see you in such an honourable occupation.’

But Captain Fulcher, busy pouring the sherry, failed to note the anger his cousin had showed.

Miss Unwin noted it and sympathised with the feelings it betrayed.

She saw, too, that Miss Fulcher, though she could not but have heard her brother’s loud remark and Richard Partington’s sharp reply, seemingly failed to understand the careless insult that had been offered and the offence it had caused.

But there was nothing Miss Unwin could do to indicate to her employer, as she felt the twins’ father to be, that he had at least one hearer who felt for him. Dully she watched Captain Fulcher pull out the second bottle’s cork
with a great flourish and pour from it wine for himself and Richard.

But her discomfort had not long to be endured. Out in the hall there came the sudden sound of a man’s raised voice.

Miss Unwin realised then that she had, in fact, heard the door bell, and it was only because of Captain Fulcher’s behaviour that she had not asked herself who could be calling at the house at such an hour.

Her query was not long in finding an answer.

Mrs Meggs opened the dining-room door by a few inches and thrust in her deep-brown face.

There’s a man wants to see the Captain,’ she said.

To see me? Who the devil

But Mrs Meggs was at that moment thrust aside, almost bodily, and a dark stranger came walking into the room, a man heavy with plumpness like an overripe fruit.

‘Mr Davis,’ the Captain exclaimed.

‘Yes, Captain,’ the newcomer answered, smiling without humour. ‘We had an appointment at my office, but I believe you must have let it slip your mind.’

Captain Fulcher seemed, for once, thoroughly disconcerted.

‘I – I would have come,’ he spluttered. ‘You know there’s no question of my not – That is, damn it, man, this is hardly the time to conduct business. Or the place. No, damn it, not the place at all.’

‘Well, Captain, the place is not of my choosing,’ the heavily plump Mr Davis responded. ‘The place I chose was my own office, and the time was an hour since.’

‘Well, I dare say, I dare say,’ Captain Fulcher answered, beginning to recover his sangfroid. ‘And it did escape my mind. But why the devil you could not have waited I cannot tell.’

‘I have waited, Captain. The bills are overdue by a week and more.’

Then Miss Unwin finally understood. Mr Davis was a moneylender, and no doubt Captain Fulcher had avoided paying his debts to him out of more than mere forgetfulness. So the newcomer had tracked him down and was intending to shame him in front of friends.

But old Mr Partington was not a person to be embarrassed when any matter of money was in question.

He came forward now, a small but by no means unimpressive figure, his over-large head projecting in front of his body and the two great ears on either side of his fleshless skull seemingly poised to detect the slightest trick of meaning in anything the intruder might have to say.

‘So you are a usurer,’ the old man spat out.

‘It is an occupation, a necessary occupation,’ Mr Davis answered, already on the defensive.

‘An occupation fit for none but the vilest wretches in society,’ Mr Partington snapped back. ‘Leave my house this instant, sir, or I’ll have you thrown out on your neck.’

Miss Unwin thought, with a sudden spurt of inner amusement, of old Mrs Meggs attempting to throw out the plump moneylender. But Mr Davis was unaware that the ancient housekeeper was the only servant under their roof and was evidently prepared to treat Mr Partington’s threat with respect.

‘There is no need for violence,’ he said. ‘No need whatsoever. I am a peaceable man. I want only to attend to my business and let others attend to theirs.’

‘Then attend to your business in your own premises,’ Captain Fulcher, emboldened by old Mr Partington’s contemptuous treatment of the moneylender, broke in.

‘I’m going, I’m going. But you’ll come tomorrow, Captain? The bills are seven days overdue.’

‘I’ll come if I’ve time,’ Captain Fulcher replied with a great show of languid uninterest.

And with that unlikely reassurance Mr Davis found his own way out.

‘Deuced awkward,’ said the Captain when he heard the front door close with a heavy thud.

He turned to his host.

‘I suppose you wouldn’t …’he began.

Then he saw the cold look in the little old man’s eyes and his voice faltered to a stop.

No, thought Miss Unwin, if you had hoped for money to pay off those bills from that source you were more hopeful than any foolish man has a right to be. And she wondered why Captain Fulcher should have even thought that the owner of this dismal, cold, inhospitable house would possess wealth which he could borrow to pay off those racing debts of his.

That was a mystery to which she was to begin to have the key that very night, and in a most unexpected way.

As soon as the meal was over, as was her custom she took the twins up to bed and then retired to her own room. She felt it her duty not to burden her employers with her presence, although she little relished the never-relieved cold of her chamber.

As usual she undressed rapidly, felt grateful that she had at least a thick flannel nightgown and slipped between the cold harsh sheets.

She lay and shivered. Within a few minutes, she knew, she would be a little warmer and then she would venture to put her arms out from beneath the covers and by the wavering light of her tallow candle – something which Mrs Meggs doled out only with many a comment on how quickly they were used – she would read for as long as she could bear to. The studies which she was undertaking to better her position in life were slipping, she knew, far behind in the course she had set for herself. But endurance went only so far. The attainment of the high standard she hoped to reach, a standard that might one day enable her to open a small school of her own, would be delayed by some months. It would be delayed even
longer, however, were she to catch a chill or perhaps the rheumatic fever.

So, still shivering, she poked her arms out of bed and took up Mrs Mackintosh’s
Principles of Domestic Science
.

But she had hardly read a page of the book’s uncompromising prose when a faint noise disturbed her. She stopped reading and listened.

The noise was repeated. A scuffle and bump.

What was it? There should be no such sounds at the top of the house. Mrs Meggs had her bed somewhere in the kitchen where she was doubtless a good deal warmer for the presence of the stove, its scanty coals still glowing. Was it then some intruder?

Miss Unwin lay, still listening.

An intruder was surely altogether unlikely in this barred and barred again house. Had the sound perhaps been the twins? They had always slept soundly up till now, and when she had left them had both certainly seemed to be already asleep.

But perhaps one had woken for some reason.

Miss Unwin slipped out of bed, pushed her feet into her felt slippers, pulled her wrap round her shoulders and cautiously opened her door. She saw no one. But by the flickering light of her candle she noticed that the door of the girls’ room was an inch or so ajar.

She crossed over and peered in. Two empty beds. What could the pair of them be doing?

Swiftly she went down the stairs, her feet making no sound in their soft slippers.

No sign of the children on the floor below. She went down the next flight.

What if Captain Fulcher and his sister were suddenly to emerge from the dining room? She was by no means fit to be seen, with only her wrap to hide her nightdress. But the twins were plainly doing something they should not be and they must be stopped.