The Meaning of Night

by Michael Cox

  A summons from his Lordship, therefore, was always something to heed, and perhaps to be anxious about. Whether Dr Daunt was definitely anxious when he approached his patron, I cannot say; but he would certainly have been curious to know why he had been called up to the house so urgently on a Thursday afternoon.

  On becoming aware of his visitor, Lord Tansor rose, stiffly proffered his hand, and gestured to his visitor to sit beside him. I have obtained a résumé of their conversation (from a most reliable source. John Hooper, one of his Lordship’s footmen, whom I later befriended), which forms the basis of the following elaboration.

  ‘Dr Daunt, I’m obliged to you.’

  ‘Good evening, Lord Tansor. I came as soon as I could. There is nothing wrong, I hope?’

  ‘Wrong?’ barked his Lordship. ‘By no means.’ Then he stood up, dropping the butt of his still-smoking cigar into a nearby urn as he did so. ‘Dr Daunt, I was lately in Cambridge, dining with my friend Passingham.’

  ‘Dr Passingham? Of Trinity?’

  Disdaining the question, his Lordship continued:

  ‘You are well remembered there, sir, very well remembered. Cambridge is not a place that I have ever cared much for, though of course it may have changed since my time. But Passingham is a sound fellow, and he spoke highly of your abilities.’

  ‘I am flattered to hear you say so.’

  ‘I do not say it to flatter you, Dr Daunt. I will be frank. I deliberately sought Passingham’s opinion of your competence as a scholar. I believe, from his testimony, that you once stood pretty high in the estimate of the best men there?’

  ‘I had some small reputation, certainly,’ replied Dr Daunt, with increasing wonderment at the course that his interrogation was taking.

  ‘And you have, as I understand, kept up your learning – reading, writing articles, and what not.’

  ‘Certainly I have endeavoured to do so.’

  ‘Well, then, the case is this. I am satisfied from my enquiries that your talents recommend you for a commission of the highest importance to me. I hope I can rely on your acceptance.’

  ‘By all means, if it is within my power …’ Dr Daunt felt rather acutely that this qualification was redundant. He knew that he had no choice in the matter. The realization was irksome to his still doughty self-esteem; but he had learned discretion. His education in humility since coming to Evenwood from Millhead had been swift, spurred on by necessity and by the exhortations of his wife, who was ever eager to oblige the Duports whenever an opportunity presented itself.

  Lord Tansor turned and, followed by his dog, walked towards a pair of imposing French-windows, leaving Dr Daunt to make the assumption that he intended him to follow.

  On the other side of the windows lay the Library, a magnificent apartment of noble proportions, decorated in white and gold, with a sumptuous painted ceiling by Verrio.* Lord Tansor’s grandfather, the 23rd Baron, had been a gentleman of various, though somewhat contradictory, talents. Like his father and grandfather before him, this gentleman had possessed a cool head for business and had shrewdly extended the family’s interests, before retiring at an early age to Evenwood. There he sat to Gainsborough with his plump wife and two rosy-cheeked boys, planted a great number of trees, bred pigs, and – to the complete indifference of his wife – entertained numerous lady admirers (his Lordship being both handsome and famously virile) in a secluded tower situated in the far reaches of the Park.

  From these activities he would turn, in a moment, to his other great passion: his books. His Lordship was one of the great collectors of his day, paying frequent trips each year to Paris, Cologne, Utrecht, and other Continental cities, where he purchased liberally, and with discernment, amongst the booksellers and collectors of those places. The consequence, at his death, was a collection of over forty thousand books and manuscripts, for the housing of which he had caused the former ballroom on the West Front of Evenwood to be transformed into the Library in which his grandson and Dr Daunt now stood.

  The present Lord Tansor had not, in the slightest degree, inherited his grandsire’s bibliographical enthusiasms. His reading matter was confined, on the whole, to the Morning Post, The Times, his accounts, and an occasional foray into the novels (never the poetry) of Sir Walter Scott; but he was aware—no one could be more so—that the volumes in his custody represented a considerable material asset, if it were ever to be realized, as well as a visible demonstration of the family’s talent for augmenting its physical possessions generation by generation. For the intangible significance of the collection, he cared not a jot. He wished instead to establish exactly what he owned and its approximate value in pounds, shillings, and pence, though it was not in these mercenary terms that he presented Dr Daunt with the task of preparing a catalogue raisonnée of the entire collection.

  As they entered the Library, a man, small of stature and wearing a pair of round spectacles, looked up from an escritoire at the far end of the room, where he had been busily engaged with a pile of documents.

  ‘Do not mind us, Mr Carteret,’ said Lord Tansor to his secretary. The man returned quietly to his work, though Dr Daunt noticed that he would now and again look surreptitiously across to where they stood, returning to the perusal of the documents that lay upon the desk with an exaggerated expression of concentration.

  ‘It would be a service to me to know what I have here,’ continued Lord Tansor to Dr Daunt, looking about him coldly at the ranks of volumes packed tightly behind their gilded metal grilles.

  ‘A service also to learning,’ said the Rector, lost for a moment in delighted consideration of the task that had been laid before him.

  ‘Quite so.’

  Here was an undertaking of great usefulness and, for Dr Daunt, of surpassing interest. He could not imagine a more congenial assignment, or one more suited to his talents and inclinations. The scale of the project did not dismay him in the least; indeed he welcomed it as making its accomplishment all the more worthy of applause. He also saw how he might revive his lapsed reputation as a scholar, for in preparing a catalogue of the collection, he had already determined to produce extensive commentaries and annotations to the most important volumes, which in themselves would be of lasting value to generations of scholars and collectors to come. It is unlikely that Lord Tansor guessed the Rector’s unspoken aims. His own design, as a man of business, was simply to have an accurate inventory of his stock, and this Dr Daunt appeared to be both willing and capable of supplying.

  It was speedily agreed that the preliminary work would start the very next day. Dr Daunt would come up to the house every morning, excepting of course Sundays, to work in the Library. Everything needful would be placed at his disposal – Carteret would see to it all; and, said Lord Tansor magnanimously, Dr Daunt might have the temporary use of one of his own grey cobs for the daily journey across the Park.

  They retraced their steps to the terrace. There was a slight sunset wind moving through the avenue of limes that led away from the formal gardens to the lake. The rustle of its passing only served to deepen the sense of descending silence. Lord Tansor and Dr Daunt stood for a moment looking out across the flower-beds and the crisscross of clipped grass paths.

  ‘There is another matter I wished to put before you, Dr Daunt,’ said Lord Tansor. ‘It would please me to see your boy do well in life. I have often had occasion to observe him of late, and I discern in him qualities that a father could be proud of. Do you intend that he should take Orders?’

  Dr Daunt hesitated slightly. ‘That has always been … understood.’ He did not say that he had already sensed a distinct animosity in his only son towards the prospect of ordination.

  ‘It is gratifying, of course,’ continued Lord Tansor, ‘that the young man’s inclinations concur with your own wishes. Perhaps you may live to see him made a Bishop.’

  To his surprise, Dr Daunt saw that Lord Tansor’s expression had formed into something approaching a stiff smile.

  ‘As you know,’ he res
umed, ‘your wife has been kind enough to bring your son to visit us here often, and I have become fond of the boy.’ Gravity had resettled his Lordship’s features. ‘I think I may even say that I envy you. Our children are a sort of immortality, are they not?’

  The Rector had never before heard his patron speak with such frankness, and did not well know what to say in reply. He was aware, naturally, that Lord Tansor’s son, Henry Hereward Duport, had died only a few months before he and his family had been led out of Millhead through the exertions of his second wife. On first coming into the great vestibule, the visitor to Evenwood was confronted with a large family group by Sir Thomas Lawrence – his Lordship and his first wife, holding their baby son in her arms – illuminated in daylight-hours by a glazed Gothic lantern high above, and at night by six large candles set in a semi-circle of ornate sconces.

  The premature death of his son, at the age of seven years, had left Lord Tansor cruelly exposed to the thing that he dreaded most. Though he was generally accounted to be a proud man, his pride was of a peculiar character. Having inherited enough – and more than enough – to satisfy the most acquisitive and prodigal nature, he nevertheless continued to accumulate wealth and influence, not simply for his own aggrandizement, but in order to bequeath an augmented, inviolable inheritance to his children, as his immediate forebears had done. But when his longed-for son had been taken from him, compounding the loss of his first wife, he had been confronted by the terrible prospect of having to forfeit all that he held most dear; for, without a direct heir, there was every likelihood that the title, along with Evenwood and the other entailed property, would fall into the hands of his collateral relatives – to which Lord Tansor was violently, though perhaps irrationally, opposed.

  ‘Returning to the matter of your boy,’ he said after a moment or two. ‘Is it still the case that you intend to prepare him for the University yourself?’

  Dr Daunt replied that he saw no particular advantage in sending his son to school. ‘It would be unwise,’ he continued, ‘to expose him to circumstances which might well be injurious to him. He is able in many ways, but weak and easily led. It is better for him that he should remain here, under my care, until such time as he attains more discretion and application than he presently possesses.’

  ‘You are, perhaps, a little hard on him, sir,’ said Lord Tansor, stiffening slightly. ‘And you will permit me to say that I do not altogether concur with your plan. It is a bad thing for a boy to be shut up at home. A boy needs early exposure to the world, or it will go badly for him when he has to make his way in it – as your boy certainly must. It is my view, Dr Daunt, my decided view,’ he added, with slow emphasis, ‘that he should be sent to school as soon as possible.’

  ‘Of course I respect your Lordship’s opinion on this matter,’ said the Rector, insinuating as much assertion as he dared into his smiling response, ‘but you will allow, perhaps, that a father’s wishes on such a point must count for a great deal.’

  He felt uneasy at even so hesitant a display of defiance towards his patron, and reflected to himself that the years had wrought much change in him, dulling his once fiery temper, and rendering him diplomatic where once he would have relished confrontation.

  Lord Tansor allowed one of his threatening silences to descend on the conversation, and turned his eyes towards the dark outline of trees, now standing out blackly against the afterlight of the setting sun. With his hands clasped behind his back, and continuing to stare into the gathering darkness, he waited for a second or two before resuming.

  ‘Naturally, I could not insist upon usurping your wishes in respect of your son. You have the advantage of me as far as that goes.’ He meant Dr Daunt to take the point that he had no son of his own, and the rebuke that it implied. ‘Permit me to observe, however, that your new duties here will leave you little time to devote to the instruction of your son. Mr Tidy is able to do much of your work about the parish; but Sundays remain’ – it was his Lordship’s strict requirement that the Rector took all the Sunday services, and delivered the morning sermon —‘and I am surprised that you are able to contemplate no reduction in your other occupations to accommodate the task – the not inconsiderable task – that you have so kindly agreed to undertake.’

  Dr Daunt realized where he was being led and, remembering that a patron can take away as well as bestow, conceded that some rearrangement of his responsibilities would be necessary.

  ‘I am glad we are in agreement,’ returned Lord Tansor, looking now straight into the Rector’s eye. ‘That being so, and having the interests of your son equally in mind, which I have recently had the pleasure of discussing with your wife, I venture to suggest that you might do worse than to put the boy up for Eton.’

  It needed no elaboration from Lord Tansor for Dr Daunt to recognize that a decree had been pronounced. He made no further attempt to argue his case and, after some further discussion on the practical arrangements, finally assented to the proposal, with as much good grace as he could muster. Young Master Phoebus, then, would go to Eton, with which the Duport family had a long connexion.

  The matter being settled, Lord Tansor wished Dr Daunt goodnight, and a safe journey home.

  *[The idealized pastoral world evoked by Virgil’s Eclogues. Ed.]

  *[Antonio Verrio (c. 1639–1707), Italian decorative painter who settled in England in the early 1670s. He enjoyed much royal patronage, being employed at Windsor Castle, Whitehall Palace, and Hampton Court. He also worked at a number of great houses, including, besides Evenwood, Chatsworth and Burghley. Ed.]

  A D REAM OF THE I RON M ASTER

  D ECEMBER, MDCCCXLVIII*

  LINKS, ALWAYS LINKS; forged slowly in the mould, accumulating, entwining more subtly and stronger still under the Iron Master’s hand; growing ever longer and heavier until the chain of Fate – strong enough to hold even Great Leviathan down – becomes unbreakable. A casual act, a fortuitous occurrence, an unlooked-for consequence: they come together in a random dance, and then conjoin into adamantine permanence.DOWN comes the great unstoppable hammer. Clang! Clang! The links are forged; the chain runs out a little further. Closer, ever closer, until we are fast bound together.

  We are born within months of each other, like millions of others. We take our first breath and open our eyes for the first time on the world, like millions of others. In our separate ways, and under our separate influences of instruction and example, we grow and are nourished, we learn and think, like millions of others. We should have remained immured in our separateness and disconnexion. But we two have been singled out by the Iron Master. We will be engineered and stamped with his mark that we may know each other, and the links will be coiled tight around us.

  Out of a hard, dark northern place he came, with his papa and step-mamma, to settle – without the right of blood – into the paradise that should be mine; from the south, honey-warm in memory, I was brought back to England; and now we are to meet for the first time.

  *[These paragraphs, written in darker ink than the rest, have been pasted into the text at this point. Ed.]

  11

  Floreat*

  The days of Dr Daunt’s dependence on surplice fees to pay for occasional luxuries might now be over; but since Lord Tansor had not felt it necessary to offer any degree of financial assistance in the furtherance of his desire that young Phoebus should be sent to Eton – merely furnishing a recommendation, not easily refused, to the Provost and Fellows that the boy should be found a place – it was impossible that the Rector’s son could be supported there as an Oppidan.† He must therefore be entered for a scholarship, despite the lowly standing of those who lived on the foundation. But the young man acquitted himself well, as was to be expected of one who had been so ably and constantly tutored, and in the year 1832 – when all was reformed‡ – became Daunt, KS, the most junior of the band of scholars provided for by the bounty of King Henry VI.

  Thus the Iron Master threw us together, with fatal consequences for us
both. On the very same day that Phoebus Daunt made his way south to Eton from Evenwood to begin his schooling, Edward Glyver travelled north from Sandchurch to commence his. Here, perhaps, I may give my faculties rest and quote directly from the recollections compiled by Daunt for the Saturday Review. They are typically maundering and self-regarding in character, but I flatter myself that their introduction into this narrative will not be uninteresting to those readers who have persevered so far.*Memories of Eton

  by

  P. RAINSFORD DAUNTI went to Eton, as a Scholar, in the year 1832, at the behest of my father’s patron, Lord T—. My first few days were, I confess, miserable enough, for I was homesick and knew no one at the School. We Collegers also had to endure the venerable hardships of Long Chamber – now swept away – and I have the dubious distinction of being amongst the last witnesses of its ancient brutalities.My closest friend and companion during my time at the School was a boy of my own Election,† whom I shall call G—.I see him now, striding across School Yard on the day of my arrival, like some messenger of Fate. I had made the journey to Eton alone – my father having important diocesan business, and my step-mother being indisposed – and was standing beneath the Founder’s statue, admiring the noble proportions of the Chapel, when I noticed a tall figure detach itself from a knot of boys at the entrance to Long Chamber. He approached with purpose in his dark eyes, clasped my hands warmly, and introduced himself as my new neighbour. Within a moment, the formalities were concluded, and I found myself caught up in a dazzling stream of talk.His long pale face, and the refinement of his features, gave him a rather delicate, almost girlish look; but the effect was countered by the broadness of his shoulders, and by massive square hands that seemed somehow to have made their way to the ends of his arms from some other and coarser body. He appeared, from the first, to possess the experience and wisdom of a more senior boy, and it was he who tutored me in the customs of College life, and elucidated its mysterious patois.And so my thraldom began. I never thought to reflect on why G— had taken such complete charge of me, with whom he had enjoyed no previous acquaintance. But I was a docile young fellow then and, all unthinking of my dignity, was content enough to trot behind in G—’s shadow. Because he seemed indubitably marked out for greatness in some sphere or other, it was by no means disadvantageous for me to be known as his friend, and I was spared from the worst of the torments reserved for new tugs as a consequence of the association.He possessed a formidable precocity of intellect and understanding, which elevated him far above the common herd. He was our Varro,* having a vast store – almost a superfluity – of obscure knowledge, though it lay tangled and unsorted in his mind, and would spill out constantly in rambling effusions. This made him a kind of magus in our eyes, and bestowed upon him an aura of brilliance and genius. I had been coached by my father, and knew by his example how to recognize the lineaments of the true scholar. G— was no such thing. He hoarded knowledge greedily, but indiscriminately; yet there was something marvellous about it all. His memory was so prodigious, and the exercising of it so expressive and captivating, that he overwhelmed the pedant in me.My education under my father had been thorough but conventional and, like others, I was dazzled by G—’s displays of learning, and struggled hard to keep up with him in the schoolroom. He would even compose Latin Alcaics and Greek Iambics aloud on our Sunday walks, whilst I would labour long over my verses and drive myself nearly mad.We had our differences, naturally. But, particularly when we reached the Fifth Form, there were golden times, of which I still like to think. Summer afternoons on the river, when we would swing down to Skindle’s, past the murmuring woods of Cliveden, then back for a plunge in the cool waters of Boveney Weir; and then I like to recall slow autumn saunters back and forth along the Slough Road, kicking through carpets of elm leaves, whilst G— discoursed torrentially – on what Avicenna had to say about the sophic mercury, or the manner of St Livinus’ martyrdom – before returning to Long Chamber for tea and Genoa cake round the fire.Of his home and family G— never spoke, except to discourage further enquiry. Consequently, no invitations to visit him during the holidays were ever issued; and when I once blushingly suggested that he might care to pass part of the summer with me, I was coldly rebuffed. I remember the incident well, for it coincided with the beginning of a change in our relations. Over the course of a few weeks, he became ever more solitary and aloof, and at times seemed clearly disdainful of my company.I saw him for the last time one perfect autumn evening. We were returning from Windsor, after attending Evensong in St George’s Chapel – whither we and a group of like-minded companions would often resort to feed G—’s passion for the old Church music. G— was in high spirits, and it began to seem as if our progress towards estrangement had been halted. Just as we crossed Barnes Pool Bridge we were met by his fag. G— had been urgently summoned to see the Head Master.As I watched his departing figure, I heard the distant chimes from Lupton’s Tower. Carried on the still evening air, the sound spoke to me with such dolesome import as I stood there – beneath shadowy gables in the empty street – that I felt suddenly bewildered and helpless. It soon became clear that he had left Eton. He never returned.I do not wish to dwell on the reason for the sudden nature of his premature departure from the School. It is as painful for me, his closest friend, to recall the circumstances, as it must be for him.After his departure, G— soon passed into legend. In time, new tugs were regaled with stories of his prowess at the Wall* or on the river, and of how he confounded his masters with his learning. But I thought only of the flesh-and-blood G—: of the little tricks of speech and gesture; and of the warm-hearted patronage so freely bestowed on his undeserving companion. Life had become a poor dull thing indeed without his enlivening presence.