Charles Palliser Read Online Free

and when I gained the upper terrace I found her turned to her right and I followed her gaze.
    My mother was standing at the gate with an individual whom I had never seen before.
    He stood in the lane talking to her with passionate intensity, his eyes fixed on her face and his hands (one holding a stick) gesticulating, while she listened with her eyes cast down, nodding her head occasionally. My first thought was that he might be a pedlar, for they were the only strangers who came to the house and he seemed to be trying to sell my mother something. But then I saw that he was not dressed like one and carried no pack.
    In age the stranger was between my mother and Bissett, and although not tall, he had the head of a much larger man. A mass of curly, reddish hair tumbled about his ears from his high-domed head. His animated face on which every passing emotion seemed to register, was dominated by a large beak-like nose. His mouth was wide and thin and his eyes, deep beneath the jutting eye-ridges, were large and very blue. He was wearing trowsers which had once had a pattern of checks and squares but were faded so that the design was barely discernible; a coarse round frock-coat whose green cloth was worn bare in places; and a white stock that, although of fine wool, was now of a yellowish hue.
    I might not have taken all this in if Bissett had not been watching them so closely, but seeing my mother like that it suddenly came to me that she had a life 12 THE

    HUFFAMS

    of which I knew nothing, and in that moment she seemed herself a stranger to me.
    The man broke off when he saw Bissett and me looking at him, and touched his hat ceremoniously to each of us.
    “And a very good evenin’ to you, too, mistress, and to the little genel’man. I was jist explainin’ to this young lady,” he addressed himself to Bissett but with a friendly eye included me in his speech, “how it is that I find meself, a stranger passin’ through this country to seek work, havin’ to seek charity of strangers, which is a thing I haven’t never done a-fore.”
    He spoke rapidly, and in a manner that was unfamiliar to me, so that I had to strain to catch his meaning. As he talked he glanced backwards and forwards between my mother and my nurse as if trying to judge which of the two it was the more important to win over.
    “So will you help a poor honest workin’-man down on his luck,” he said to my mother, “to find a night’s lodgin’ and wittles arter a hard day’s tramp?”
    “Be off with you,” Bissett suddenly cried.
    In an instant the man’s face darkened and his brows drew together as he turned towards Bissett.
    “Get off now,” Bissett called out again, perhaps alarmed by his expression. “Or I’ll go for Mr Pimlott.”
    The stranger’s features lightened instantly and he said: “Why, I’d be happy to speak to the genel’man of the house.”
    At this Bissett glanced towards my mother who blushed and looked down. Puzzled, the man turned to me: “Where is your father, young genel’man?”
    “I don’t have one.”
    “Come, young master,” he said, smiling at my mother, “everyone has one.”
    “Oh no, I never have had one.”
    “Take yourself away, and your impertinence,” Bissett cried.
    As if she had not spoken the stranger addressed my mother: “What do you say, Mrs Pimlott? Will you not spare a few pennies?”
    “Mr Pimlott’s the gardener, you silly man,” I cried. “Our name’s Mellamphy.”
    “Why then, Mrs Mellamphy,” he said. “Will you sarve me?”
    “I … I don’t believe I have any money with me.”
    As my mother spoke she nervously touched the cylindrical silver box which always hung from the chain around her waist on which she kept the household keys, and I noticed the man’s large eyes rest inquisitively on it.
    “What,” he said, pointing to it, “not even in there?”
    She looked up at him for the first time with an expression of alarm and shook her head vehemently.
    “No siller in