The Meaning of Night

by Michael Cox

  †[The accounts of tours undertaken in 1836 and 1838 and written for the Royal Geographical Society by Henry Creswicke Rawlinson (1810–95). Ed.]

  *[William Fox Talbot (1800–77), British pioneer of photography. He had been working on producing ‘photogenic drawings’ since 1835. A paper on his ‘photogenic’ techniques was read to the Royal Society on 31 January 1839. He patented his improved ‘calotype’ or ‘talbotype’ process for making negatives in 1841. Ed.]

  * [Travels in Assyria, Media and Persia (1830) by James Silk Buckingham (1786–1855). Ed.]

  *[In Thessaly, northern Greece, at which Julius Caesar defeated the Senatorial forces of Pompey in 48 BC. Ed.]

  16

  Labor vincit*

  Later that morning, I heard Tom’s knock on the front door. When I opened it to him, I did not have to feign exhaustion.

  ‘My dear fellow,’ he said stepping in and helping me back to my chair by the fireplace, where I had fallen asleep, fully clothed, only an hour before. ‘What is the matter? Shall I call for Dr Penny?’

  ‘No, Tom,’ I replied, ‘no need for that. I shall be right as rain soon, I’m sure. A temporary indisposition only.’

  He sat with me for a while as I took a little breakfast. Then, noticing the copy of Buckingham’s book lying on the window-seat, he asked whether I had thought more about the expedition to Mesopotamia. He could see from the evasiveness of my reply that my interest in the project had lessened, but was friend enough to say that he expected I would see things differently when the indisposition had passed. But I could not let him think so, and told him straight out that I had definitely fixed against joining Professor S—in Nimrud.

  ‘I’m sorry to hear it, Ned,’ he said, ‘for I think it was a promising opening, with much to gain in all respects. Perhaps you have other possibilities in view for earning a living?’

  I had not often seen Tom angry with me, but I could not blame him for feeling somewhat put out. The prospect of adventure and advancement in the field of archaeology had only been a temporary passion, and I should have squashed it firmly underfoot at the start, in fairness to Tom. I tried to mend the mood by saying that I was also considering an opening at the British Museum, but then spoiled it by adding that this, too, might not be quite suitable for me at the present time.

  ‘Well, then,’ said Tom, standing up to go, ‘I shall write to the Professor. Good morning, Ned. I hope to see you improved soon.’

  I took the unspoken reprimand in his parting words without reply, and stood at the window gloomily watching him make his way back down the path to the village.

  I should never now see Mesopotamia, and Great Russell-street would have to get on without me. For I was being drawn irresistibly back to the little black books that now lay scattered across my mother’s work-table. The urge to discover the meaning of what my mother had written was to grow ever stronger, and soon became all-consuming, leading inexorably to ends of which I could not then have conceived.

  The decipherment of my mother’s journals and papers – for that, in effect, is what it became – began in earnest the next day, and continued in its first phase almost unabated for two or three months. Tom had departed to spend some time with a cousin in Norwich, feeling no doubt that it was best, for both of us, to leave any further discussions concerning my future to some later date. And so I remained indoors, alone and undisturbed, except for brief daily visits from Beth, and devoted myself night and day to my task, only occasionally leaving the house for a day or so to hunt out information that I needed to explain, or to confirm some reference or other.

  Besides assiduously committing her private thoughts to her journals, it had been my mother’s habit, in all her practical dealings, never to throw anything away; accordingly, there were innumerable items – bills, receipts, tickets, odd scribbled notes, lists, correspondence, drafts, memoranda – all bound together in bundles on that battlefield of paper. Through these I now also began to pick, piece by piece, day by day, night by night. I sifted, collated, sorted, categorized, deploying all the skills of scholarship, and all the gifts of intellectual application and assimilation at my disposal, to reduce the mass to order, to bring the light of understanding and fixity to bear on the fleeting, fluid shadows in which the full truth still lay hidden.

  Gradually, a story began to emerge from the shadows; or, rather, the fragmentary and incomplete elements of a story. As if extracting broken shards from the imprisoning earth, I painstakingly gathered the fragments together, and laid them out, piece by piece, seeking the linking pattern, the design that would bring the whole into view.

  One word gave me the vital clue. One word. The name of a place that echoed faintly in my memory at first, but which began to ring out more clearly, bringing with it two seemingly unconnected images: one of a lady in grey silk; the other of a bag, an ordinary valise, carrying a label with the owner’s name and address written on it.

  Evenwood. In a journal entry of July 1820, my mother – inadvertently, I supposed – had written out the name in full. Prior to this entry, and subsequently, it appeared simply as ‘E—’ and, in this form, I had stupidly failed to identify it. But once I had this name, links began to form: Miss Lamb had lived at Evenwood; Phoebus Daunt had come from a place with the same name. But was there perhaps more than one Evenwood? My mother had amassed a large working library, to assist her in her work, and Bell’s Gazetteer and Cobbett’s Dictionary* quickly supplied the answer. No, there was only one: Northamptonshire; Easton, four miles; Peterborough, twelve miles; Evenwood Park – the seat of Julius Verney Duport, 25th Baron Tansor.

  That first night at Eton, in Long Chamber, I had asked Daunt whether he knew Miss Lamb, and, later, he had enquired whether I had ever been to Evenwood. We had both answered in the negative, and I had thought no more about the coincidence. But, as I recalled it for the first time in fifteen years, his question seemed odd; or, rather, the guarded, almost suspicious tone in which it had been posed now struck me as being significant in some way. Yet what could Daunt have to do with all this?

  I next considered the identity of ‘L’, the character at the centre of the mystery. Could it be Miss Lamb? For days I searched through piles of letters and other documents, in an attempt to establish that her Christian name, like her surname, began with the letter ‘L’; but, to my amazement, I could find not a single piece of correspondence from this person, nor, indeed, any mention of her. Yet this lady had visited us as my mother’s friend, and, as I thought, had showed extraordinary generosity towards me.

  Frustrated and perplexed, I had retreated to the one certainty that I had: the place that connected Miss Lamb, Phoebus Daunt, and my mother. Taking down the 1830 edition of Burke’s Heraldic Dictionary,* I turned to the epitome of the Tansor Barony:The Baron Tansor (Julius Verney Duport), of Evenwood Park, co. Northampton in England, b. 15 Oct., 1790, s. his father Frederic James Duport 1814 as 25th holder of the title; educ. Eton Coll., Trinity Coll., Cambridge; m. 1stly, 5 Dec., 1817, Laura Rose Fairmile (who d. 8 Feb., 1824), only dau. of Sir Robert Fairmile, of Langton Court, Taunton, Somerset, and had issue,Henry Hereward, b. 17 Nov., 1822, and d. 21 Nov., 1829. He m. 2ndly, 16 May, 1827, Hester Mary Trevalyn, 2nd dau. of John David Trevalyn, of Ford Hill, Ardingly, Sussex …

  I read the paragraph over again, dwelling particularly on Lord Tansor’s first wife, the daughter of Sir Robert Fairmile, of Langton Court. Now, this latter was a name I knew well: he had been the employer of Mr Byam More, my mother’s uncle and my former trustee. My heart began to beat a little faster as I wrote down the date of the first Lady Tansor’s death. Then, opening one of the little black volumes, I turned to the entry dated the 11th of February 1824, which I now read for the first time:A letter from Miss E telling me that the end came on Friday evening. A light has passed from the world, and from my life, and I must now walk on through the twilight of my days until I too am called. In her letters L had seemed distracted and wildered of late, and I had begun to fear for her mind. But Miss E
says the end was peaceful, with no preceding agonies, for which comfort I thank God. I had not seen her since she came here with the box for little E and to tell me what arrangements she had prepared for the time he should go to school. She was much changed, and I almost wept to see her thin face and hands. I remember E was playing at her feet all the time she was here, and oh! the pitiful look in her sweet eyes! He is such a fine, spirited young fellow, any mother would be proud of him. But she knew he would never know her, or that she had given him life, and it was a deadly pain to her. I marvelled at the persistence of her will, and told her so; for even at that moment, if she had been resolved at last to undo all that had been done, I would have surrendered him, though I love him like my own. But L was as fixed in her determination, though by now dreadfully oppressed by it, as she had been when she first recruited me to her cause, and I saw that nothing would ever move her. ‘He is yours now,’ she said softly before she left, and I wept to hear it. If she had been unfaithful to her marriage vows, then the case would perhaps be a little less dreadful. But he was lawfully conceived, and his father must now live out his days in ignorance of his son’s existence. She came to feel most keenly the wrong that she has done him; but nothing would persuade her to undo that wrong. Such is the curse of a passionate nature.We embraced and I walked with her up the path to where her carriage was waiting, with Miss E inside, beneath the chestnut-tree by the gate. I watched them descend the hill from the cliff-top to the village. Almost at the bottom, just as the carriage was turning through the bend in the road, a limp black-gloved hand appeared out of the window and waved a forlorn farewell. I shall never see that hand again. I go now to pray for her soul, that she may find, in eternity, the peace that her restless and impetuous heart was denied on this earth.

  ‘Miss E’ had been mentioned before, but I gave no thought to her; for it had quickly become apparent that references to ‘L’ began to decrease in succeeding entries until, in April 1824, they ceased altogether. There could be no doubt: Laura Duport, Lady Tansor, was ‘L’.

  Yet solving this little puzzle had revealed an altogether greater mystery, the core of which seemed to be alluded to in this extraordinary passage, which fairly floored me when I first read it. I will not weary you further with how I came, by dint of much labour, to understand the implications of what my mother had written, and the identity of the person referred to as ‘little E’. When I did, finally, fit the last fragment of the truth into place, what did I feel? A hideous sense of desolation. An agony too deep for tears. I sat – for how long? An hour? Two hours? – staring out of the window towards the chestnut-tree by the gate, and beyond towards the restless sea. At last, with darkness falling, I rose and made my way down to the beach, where I stood at the water’s edge, and wept until I could weep no more.

  Miss Lamb had never existed, other than as a name assumed by Lady Tansor when she visited us – my mother, and I. Now I knew why the lady in grey had looked upon me with such sadness as I had sat and played at her feet; why she had stroked my cheek so tenderly; why she had given me the box of sovereigns on my twelfth birthday; and why I had been sent to Eton at her behest. She had done these things because she was the woman who had given me life. Lady Tansor was my mother.

  ‘He is yours now.’ Disbelief quickly changed to angry incomprehension. Riddle me this: the mother I had loved was not my mother; my real mother had abandoned me; and yet it seemed that both had loved me. Whose child, then, was I? How my head ached in trying to disentangle it all!

  The bare bones of the plot, at least, were now clear to me: my mother and her friend, Laura Tansor, who was in the early stages of pregnancy, had gone to France together; I had been born there, and had been brought back to England as the son of Simona Glyver, not of Lady Tansor. But the motives and passions that lay behind this simple sequence of events were still hidden from me, in an unknown number of secret places. How could they now be brought into the light?

  Towards her who had sat on my bed every night as a child, who had walked with me on the cliff-top to watch the sun setting, and who had been the axis on which my little world had revolved, I felt both bitterness and pity: bitterness for keeping the truth from me; pity for what she must have suffered to maintain her friend’s secret. Her actions had been a kind of betrayal, for which I must censure her; and yet what better mother could I have had?

  There was still so much to discover, but, slowly, I came to an acceptance: I was not the son of Captain and Mrs Edward Glyver. My blood was not theirs. It connected me instead to other places and times, and to another name – an ancient and distinguished name. I had nothing of the man I had thought was my father in me, nothing of the woman I had called my mother. The eyes that were reflected in my mirror on rising every day were not her eyes, as I had always liked to think. But whose were they? Whom did I resemble – my real father, my real mother, or my dead brother? Who was I?

  The questions went round and round in my head, day and night. I would wake from fitful sleep in a state of extreme agitation, as if the ground had been cut away from under my feet and I was falling through infinite space. I would then get up and wander the silent house, sometimes for hours on end, trying to repudiate this dreadful feeling of abandonment. But I could not. I did not belong here, in this place I had previously called home, where the past no longer seemed to hold any meaning.

  Little by little, I began to examine my situation with a clearer and cooler eye. I did not know yet why this thing had been done – that knowledge would only come later, and gradually; but if what I had deduced from my mother’s journals were true, then a simple fact, of extraordinary consequence, would follow: I was the heir, lawfully conceived, to one of the most ancient and powerful families in England.

  It seemed absurd. Surely there must be some other explanation? But, after returning again and again to the journals, I could reach no other conclusion. Yet what use was the knowledge that I was convinced I now possessed? Who else would believe that what my mother – I still could not call her by any other name – had written was the honest truth, and not some fantastic fiction? Even if believed, how could it be proved? Unsubstantiated imputations, uncorroborated possibilities – nothing more. Such, surely, would be the immediate verdict if I went to law. But where was the substantiation? Where the corroboration? The questions began to multiply once more, hammering insistently in my brain until I thought I would go quite mad.

  I looked again at the synoptic account of the Tansor peerage in Burke’s Dictionary. Four densely packed columns contained the names and pedigrees of people of whom I had never before heard, but who I must now call my ancestors. Maldwin Duport, the 1st Baron Tansor, summoned to Parliament in 1264; Edmund Duport, the 7th Baron, made an Earl under Henry IV, but who died without issue; Humfrey Duport, the 10th Baron, attainted and executed for treason in 1461; Charles Duport, the 20th Baron, who turned Papist and went into exile with James II;* and then my nearer relatives – William Duport, the 23rd Baron and founder of the great Library at Evenwood; and at last my father, Julius Duport, the 25th Baron, who had succeeded to the title because of the death of his older brother; and my own deceased brother, Henry Hereward. I began to fill a note-book with their names, the dates of their births and deaths, and with every fact concerning their lives that I could glean from Burke, or from other authorities to which I then had access.

  How strange it was, how infinitely strange, to consider myself as a member of this ancient line! But would I ever be given a place in some future epitome? Would a curious heraldic scholar, a hundred years hence, look into Burke and read of Edward Charles Duport, born on the 9th of March 1820, in Rennes, Ille-et-Vilaine, France? Only if I could find some source of unequivocal and incontrovertible proof to supplement the indirect and oblique testimony of my mother’s journals. Only then.Concluding the entry in Burke were the following notes on the Tansor peerage:Creation—By writ of summons, 49 HEN. III, 14 Dec., 1264. Arms—Quarterly, 1st and 4th Or three piles enarched throughout issuant from the
dexter base gules; 2nd, Per pale indented ermine and ermines on a chevron per pale indented or and argent five roses gules barbed and seeded proper; 3rd, Argent gutty d’huile a lion’s rear gamb erased azure and transfixed through the thigh by a sword in bend sinister proper hilted pommelled and quilloned or. Crest—A demi man crowned royally proper crined and bearded argent vested in a robe gules lined ermine holding in his dexter hand a sceptre and in his sinister an orb gold. Supporters—Two lion-sagittarii each drawing a bow and arrow proper and banded about the temples with a fillet azure. Motto—FORTITUDINE VINCIMUS.

  The Tansor arms were illustrated at the head of the entry. Contemplating the unusual device of the lion-sagittarii,* I knew, with redoubled certainty, that what I had inferred from my mother’s journals was the truth. On the wooden box that had once contained my two hundred sovereigns were displayed the same arms.

  Fortitudine Vincimus† was the Tansor motto. It would now be mine.

  From time to time, Tom would call and we would talk desultorily for half and hour or so. But I could see his dismay as he surveyed the sea of paper spreading across the work-table and spilling over onto the floor; and I also saw that he had observed the darting look of wild absorption in my eyes, which all too obviously signalled an eagerness to return to my work – to which I never attached any specific character—as quickly as possible. He had not entirely forgiven me for passing over the opportunity to go to Mesopotamia with Professor S—, and was concerned, I could see, that I was making no attempt to secure any other form of employment. My capital had diminished more quickly than I had anticipated, largely as a result of my years abroad; debts left by my mother, which she had been keeping at bay with her writing, had also been paid out of it, and it was now becoming imperative for me to find a source of regular income.

  ‘What’s happening to you, Ned?’ Tom asked one March morning, as I was walking him to the door. ‘It pains me to see you like this, shut up here day after day, with no firm prospect in view.’