Midnight is a Place Read online

  However the house of Mrs. Tetley, Gabriel's sister, seemed in good enough repair and commendably clean, with two scrubbed steps and even a knocker on the door. Lucas tied the pony to a fence while Gabriel knocked.

  The door was abruptly pulled open by a hard-faced, gray-haired woman, wearing a sacking apron over a print gown. She held a broom in one hand, a rag in the other.

  "Eh, Gabriel, is it thee?" she said shortly "What ill wind brings thee here?—Well, doan't stand loitering there in t'street, man, coom in if ye're cooming. I've all my grates and my stairs to do, yet."

  "Nay, hadn't ye heard, Kezia? T'Court's been burned down, and I'm bahn to find another lodging."

  "Well, ye needn't think ye can coom here for nowt, I can't afford to house ye free. If ye coom, ye moost pay like any other body," she said sourly. "I have got a coople o' rooms, as it falls, for the Queen of Scots joost sailed. So ye can coom for a week or two, till ye're suited....So t'Court burned down, did it? Not before it was time, I daresay, if deserts are owt to go by. I've got no kind feelings toward Sir Randolph as ye know."

  Lucas wondered if she had them toward anybody. He and Anna-Marie, not knowing what else to do, had followed Gabriel into the house. They found themselves in a small bleak front parlor with oilcloth on the floor and texts on the walls and a general smell of chill and damp.

  "Who are they?" Mrs. Tetley asked Gabriel in an undertone.

  "They're t'bairns from t'Court, Kezia. Sir Randolph was killed in't'fire, and they're needing a place to lodge too, sithee."

  "Have ye no kin to look out for ye, then?" she asked, and when they shook their heads, "Well, I say t'same to ye as to Gabriel; ye can bide if ye pay. I take no folk as can't pay."

  Lucas said they had every intention of paying and asked how much.

  "One-an'-six a week each, ten shillings more if ye want breakfast or dinner. Ye can use the back kitchen to cook in afore seven or after nine. And use t'back door to go in and out. And keep out of t'house between eight and six; I cannot have lodgers sculling around oonderfoot all day long. No tobacco or alcoholic liquors are allowed on the premises." She gave Gabriel a sharp look. "Not even if it's my own kin! And no lodgers in this room, which is private. You pay on Saturdays, in advance."

  Rather dispirited, Lucas agreed to these terms, and then said that he would go and call on the lawyer, Mr. Throgmorton, who would probably have arrived at his office by now, for it wanted but an hour to noon.

  He asked Mrs. Tetlley if Anna-Marie might break the rules for once and go to bed, for she was pale with fatigue, and heavy-eyed. Permission was grudgingly given. Anna-Marie did not much want to be left, but since old Gabriel would be downstairs in the kitchen she at last consented. Lucas promised that he would return as soon as he had seen Mr. Throgmorton and found a place to stable the pony.

  "But don't get anxious if it takes quite a long time," he added.

  Mr. Throgmorton's office when he found it, after asking his way a good many times, was not calculated to raise confidence. It consisted of three small dusty rooms up six flights of steep stairs; it was plain that Sir Randolph had not wasted money on having his business handled by an expensive lawyer.

  "Have you an appointment?" asked an elderly clerk in the outer office, who was endeavoring to disguise the extremely frayed condition of his sleeves with ink, presumably for want of any other occupation.

  "No, but I hope Mr. Throgmorton will see me," Lucas said.

  "Name?" inquired the clerk as if he personally considered this an unlikely outcome.

  "Lucas Bell. Sir Randolph, who died last night, was my guardian."

  The clerk nodded skeptically at that, and shrugged his shoulders; however, he put his head through the door to the inner office, which was screened off by a glass partition, held a low-voiced conversation, and came back presently to say, "He'll see you. You can go in," as if he were conferring a great and undeserved treat.

  Lucas walked through the door. The small gray Mr. Throgmorton sat behind his desk, buffing his fingernails with a bit of chamois leather and peering at Lucas over his pince-nez.

  "Now then, what's this, what's this, what's this?" he rattled out very quickly, giving a glance as he did so at his fob watch. "Sir Randolph, the late Sir Randolph Grimsby—you are asserting that he was your guardian?"

  "Yes, sir. He was." Mr. Throgmorton had not invited Lucas to sit, so he stood.

  "You have proof of this?"

  "Why—why, no, sir," said Lucas, somewhat startled. "I—I suppose—that is—when my father died, he appointed Sir Randolph as my guardian in his will—so I was sent to live with him at Midnight Court—"

  "You say your name is?"

  "Bell, sir. Lucas Bell. My father was Edwin Bell, Sir Randolph's partner."

  "Humph. Have you a copy of the will?"

  "No, sir. Have you not one?"

  Throgmorton's eye flashed briefly with a curious light; it recalled to Lucas the lawyer's muttered aside on the day when Sir Randolph had attacked Mr. Gobthorpe the tax officer. What had he said then? Something about taking his ease in Monte Carlo? But he made no reply now; merely shook his head and set the tips of his fingers together. Lucas wondered rather hopelessly where the will might have got to? Would it be in India? How did one look for a will?

  "Have you any proof that you are Lucas Bell?"

  "No, sir," said Lucas, beginning to feel as if he were walking about in a fog. What proof could he produce? The purse his mother had made him? "But I have been living at Midnight Court for a year—you have seen me there yourself, sir."

  "Tush," said the lawyer, peering at Lucas through his glasses and then away again. "One boy is much the same as another. Why did you come to see me?"

  "Why—" said Lucas, somewhat startled. "We have no money—nowhere to live—"

  "We?"

  "I and the little girl—Anna-Marie Murgatroyd—we hoped that Sir Randolph might have made some provision in his will—as my father was Sir Randolph's partner—he had told me that when I came of age I should have a half-share in Murgatroyd's Mill—"

  "Now look here, boy," said Mr. Throgmorton, setting his thin lips together so tightly that they almost disappeared in his sallow face, "if this is an impudent imposture, you have come to the wrong shop! I daresay a dozen boys may turn up, claiming to be Sir Randolph's heir. We have already had six this morning—is it six, Swainby?" he called through the open door.

  "Seven, sir."

  "But you will not find it easy to pull the wool over my eyes. I can smell out an imposter, I assure you!"

  "But, sir, I am no imposter. Anyone will tell you that I have been living at Midnight Court."

  "In any case," said Mr. Throgmorton, suddenly switching to another tack, "it is quite useless expecting any money under Sir Randolph's will—perfectly useless—I can tell you here and now. Firstly, he never gave the least intimation of wishing to leave money to any Bells, Murgatroyds, or whatever else the pack of you choose to call yourselves. Never made any such suggestion to me. Secondly, Sir Randolph made no will of any kind, so there is in any case no question of your inheriting. Thirdly, if he had made a will, there was no money to leave—by the time he died he had not a penny in the world, in fact he owed some tens of thousands. Even if the house had not been burned, the sale of it still would not have covered his debts."

  "But the Mill[[[mdash.gif]]]"

  "The Mill has already been sold, in order to pay the arrears of tax."

  "Who to?" asked Lucas, with a vague notion that he might go and plead for his rights with the new owner.

  "To a company—" Mr. Throgmorton slid the pince-nez down his nose and rummaged among the papers on his desk—"a company called the British Rug, Mat, and Carpet Manufacturing Corporation in Threadneedle Street, London."

  "Oh," said Lucas. His heart sank. How could he possibly go to London, let alone soften the heart of something called the British Rug, Mat, and Carpet Manufacturing Corporation? "So—so what should I do, sir, do you think?"

 
"Do? Do?" snapped Mr. Throgmorton peevishly. "Why, stop bothering me, go away, and let me get on with my business. I do not know why I have taken such pains to give you all this information, after all! There is work to be had in the town—you look like an able-bodied boy—do not let me catch you begging here again, or I shall have you taken up for vagrancy!"

  "I had not the least intention of begging, sir," said Lucas, suddenly angry. "I merely wished to know what I was entitled to." He drew himself up. "I am sorry to have troubled you." And he walked quickly away through the outer office and down the dusty stairs.

  He was heavy hearted as he regained the street. His hopes of Mr. Throgmorton had not been particularly high, but this reception was even worse than he had feared.

  He walked slowly and gloomily along the shabby street, with his hands in his pockets, looking vaguely about him, wondering if Mr. Throgmorton had been speaking the truth, and how he was going to break this bad news to Anna-Marie.

  But then his gloom was somewhat dispersed—he did not quite know why—by the sight of a thin girl who was walking ahead of him, pushing along an untidy pair of infants in a baby carriage. They were not a particularly prepossessing pair, but the girl was talking to them and laughing, as if she enjoyed their company, and their grubby little faces wore broad smiles.

  Anna-Marie would not be too discouraged, he suddenly felt sure. What a good thing it was that she turned out to have such a practical disposition: if she had been the whining, helpless kind, they would have been properly in the suds. Indeed, Lucas acknowledged to himself, he owed it to her calm discussion of their prospects on the drive home from the hospital that Mr. Throgmorton's unhelpfulness had not been more of a shock.

  With some difficulty he found his way back to Haddock Street, where Mrs. Tetley's house was situated. The first thing that met his eyes was the sight of Anna-Marie, with her skirts pinned up, scrubbing the front steps and shoveling snow off the cobbled pavement.

  "Eh—te voilà!" she said, pushing the hair off her face with the back of a dirty hand.

  "Anna-Marie! You shouldn't be doing that!" said Lucas, rather upset.

  "Pourquoi pad? Meeses Tetley ask for our money in advance. I say I have no money, me; so she say, well then, she will take it this week in work. So I have cook the dinner and done much cleaning. But now I think it is time we go back to see Monsieur Ookapool, no?"

  "Yes, it is."

  "Then I wash, " she said, and swiftly disappeared down a path at the side of the house to the backyard, where there was a pump.

  Lucas fetched the pony, which he had arranged to leave in a nearby shed at an extra cost of sixpence a week.

  Anna-Marie reappeared almost at once with pink-scrubbed face and hands.

  "I am thinking, Luc-asse," she began in a low voice when they were well away from the house, "that we had better stop at a bijouterie and sell my beads, for we have no money to pay for Monsieur Ookapool." She fingered the necklace of tiny pearls that she always wore clasped round her neck.

  "It's all right. I thought of that. Don't sell your pearls," he said.

  "You have some money?"

  "I sold my watch."

  "Then how will you know what time it is?" she said, frowning.

  "Well, we are living in the town—there is always a clock somewhere. You hang on to your pearls. But I think you should hide them—it's a rough district that we are living in."

  "There is nowhere safe," Anna-Marie said. "When I am cooking the dinner I have need of a mouchoir from my coat pocket so I go to our room. There is Madame Tetley, prying through our things—what there is to pry through. I think she is méchante; she looks like a scrubbing brush, and she smells like a bar of soap. I do not think we shall like living in her house."

  "Nor do I," said Lucas glumly. "But perhaps presently we can find something better when I have found some work."

  Rather reluctantly, he then told Anna-Marie about his disappointing interview with Mr. Throgmorton. But she only shrugged.

  "Quoi donc? Sir Randolph has no more money, and his house is burned. To me it does not seem to make much difference if this Trog—

  "Throgmorton—"

  "Trog-morton knows you or not."

  Lucas decided to keep his suspicions of the lawyer to himself. What was the point in loading Anna-Marie with yet another worry?

  They left the pony cart in the hospital courtyard and went to the desk, where Lucas paid over the money for Mr. Oakapple's keep, and was told that one of them only might visit him for ten minutes, no more. Anna-Marie's face fell when she heard this, but she said, "You go see him, Luc; you know him best. Me, I wait here."

  The visit proved a disappointment. The tutor was still not fully conscious, due to the laudanum he had been given, but even so he was plainly in a good deal of pain; he tossed and turned restlessly, cried out about someone called Grenvile, and then fell to incomprehensible muttering, plucking at his sheet with heavily-bandaged hands. His face, too, was all swathed in bandages.

  One of the gray-robed sisters came and fed him some cooling drink through a straw.

  When Lucas asked anxiously if Mr. Oakapple were going on all right, she told him that it was too early to say yet. He went back down the many flights of stone stairs in a very low and apprehensive state of mind. He had hoped that the tutor might be sensible enough to talk to—for all they knew, Mr. Oakapple might have a family who would be anxious to know about his plight and to help him—but at present getting any information from him was plainly out of the question.

  Back in the downstairs lobby, he found Anna-Marie looking pale and scared. She clutched hold of Lucas's arm.

  "What's the matter?" he asked.

  A burly, shock-headed youth pushed by; Lucas caught a glimpse of his face and wondered where he had seen it before.

  "Come away!" whispered Anna-Marie. "We talk outside." She pulled his hand, and he followed her out. The short afternoon had already darkened; the wind was rising and more snow had begun to fall.

  "That type—" she began, when they were in the cart and moving. "You remember him, we meet him the other day in the street when we are lost—"

  "Oh, yes, of course; now I remember. I knew I'd seen him somewhere," said Lucas, frowning. "Did he bother you just now? Tease you?"

  "No, no, worse than that! He ask if I have a friend in the hospital, sick. I say to him, 'What is that to you?' He say, 'Bien, if you do not pay me, I see your friend get no food, no medicine; he soon die!'"

  "But how can he say so?" said Lucas, frowning. "He certainly isn't a doctor—"

  "No, he is a brigand! It is a gang, who make menaces—they are assassins! The porter at the desk have told me it. is best to pay them. Last week they pull a poor old man out of his bed and leave him in the yard in the rain because his sons will not pay."

  "How much do they want?" asked Lucas, his heart sinking.

  "Also another twenty-five shillings."

  "But that's wicked—it's wicked to get money from people by such threats—"

  The day began to be more than Lucas could take. Too many things were piling up against them.

  "Of course it is wicked," said Anna-Marie. "But what can you do? Il faut payer ces voleurs, ces cochons! We do not want poor M. Ookapool put out in the snow. He is the one friend we have left, I think."

  Next day Lucas began doggedly looking for work. Questing back and forth, back and forth, he soon acquired a wretched familiarity with the unpleasing streets of Blastburn. Factories, shops, mills, collieries—he tried them all, and the answer was always the same: "We want no new hands, we are turning off those we have. Times are hard."

  Nobody wanted an inexperienced boy. And more particularly, Lucas thought, no one wanted a boy who had any connection at all with Sir Randolph Grimsby.

  The only place he had not tried—out of pride, out of a strong disinclination to show his face there, and a strong feeling that there he would be most unpopular of all—was Murgatroyd's Mill.

  At the end of ten hours'
hunting he was footsore, chilled to the bone, hungry, disheartened, and no nearer finding any employment.

  Turning wearily from the gates of Thrupp's Furniture Manufactury—where they wanted only experienced master carpenters, inlayers, mortice men, or turners—he perceived by the great clock on the town hall that it was nearly six; and he started glumly trudging in the direction of Haddock Street. How could he face Anna-Marie with such unrelieved news of failure?

  The moment of facing her came sooner than he expected. A littie figure ran down the steps of the market building and came hurrying to meet him across the snowy, gaslit square.

  "Hé, is that you, Luc-asse? I thought I recognized your walk. Listen, affairs are not too bad. Only figure to yourself, I seem to be the only person who has thought of picking up cigar ends in this foolish town, and I have collected such a quantity! Even in the snow and slush I find them, and I think it will not be too hard to dry them out. All the rich manufacturers must smoke them all the time. I have already collected three basketsful—first, I put them in my handkerchief, but it became too wet, so then I found me an old basket on the riverside—and I have sold some ends already to a man in a tobacco shop for twelve-some shillings to buy food for supper. Tomorrow I buy papers to make my own cigars; one can make more profit that way—"

  She interrupted her chatter to say, "You look very tired, Luc-asse, and not at all cheerful. Come in here out of the snow and tell me what has happened to you."

  At the top of the main square was a big, arcaded market building, open at each end. Inside were dozens of stalls, still doing brisk business even at this late hour, for the shift workers from the factories wanted food at all hours of the day.

  There were stalls with fish and meat, stalls with big loaves of bread and shiny doughcakes, stalls where rabbits and hares dangled in their fur, stalls piled with apples and potatoes and cabbages. Clothes were sold here, too—racks of cheap cotton trousers and jackets and print dresses occupied one corner; a table was covered with wooden clogs; in another corner were blankets and household utensils, all of the simplest, coarsest kind. Another corner held second-hand goods—furniture, pots, pans, books, children's clothes, tools, farm implements. Elsewhere could be found plants in pots, birds in cages, vividly colored medicines in bottles, bales of thin gaudy cotton. Everything that humans could wish to buy—humans who did not have much money—seemed to be on sale here.