The Meaning of Night

by Michael Cox

  He lowered his voice, and leaned towards me.

  ‘Mr Carteret Senior’s mother died insane, though there is not the slightest indication that his son has inherited the malady. Indeed, Mr Carteret Junior is one of the sanest men I know; and his daughter, too, is decidedly free of any imputation of mental feebleness, being a fiercely intelligent and capable young woman – and a beautiful one, too. Lord Tansor, however, is prey to an acute sensitivity on this subject, deriving, I believe, from the fact that his Lordship’s elder brother, Vortigern Duport, died of an epileptic seizure. More tea?’

  We sipped silently, Mr Tredgold appearing to take keen interest in an area of the ceiling just above my head.

  ‘Do you wish me to say something about Mr Phoebus Daunt?’ he suddenly asked.

  ‘Mr Daunt?’

  ‘Yes. To better understand the circumstances that have led to the present situation.’

  ‘By all means.’

  Whereupon Mr Tredgold began to give me a full and detailed account of how Dr Daunt and his family had come to Evenwood, as a result of his second wife’s connexion with Lord Tansor, and of how the Rector’s son had been taken into his Lordship’s favour through his step-mother’s influence. Much of what he told me has been incorporated into an earlier section of this narrative.

  ‘It cannot be denied,’ Mr Tredgold was saying, ‘that the young man is highly gifted. His literary genius is well known, and Lord Tansor takes pleasure in it as far as it goes. But he has also displayed a rather extraordinary talent for business, which is much more to his Lordship’s taste. I think it is certain that this has played no little part in Lord Tansor’s wish to see him succeed to his property, in preference to Mr Carteret and his successors.’

  Now, this was a completely new, and unexpected, view of my enemy, of which I was eager to hear more. According to Mr Tredgold, Daunt had been given two hundred pounds by Lord Tansor on his twenty-first birthday. Not six months later, the young man had requested an interview with his patron, at which he confessed, with a solemn face, that he had committed the whole sum to a railway speculation recommended to him by an old College acquaintance.

  Lord Tansor was not pleased. He had expected better. A foolhardy railway speculation! Why, better that the boy had lost it all on the tables at Crockford’s* – after all, a few salutary sacrifices to the goddess of chance were to be expected of gilded youth (not that he had ever been so irresponsible). But this straight-faced confession was merely in the nature of a calculated lever de rideau;† for, seeing Lord Tansor’s face darken with disapproval, Daunt, no doubt grinning in self-satisfaction, then proudly announced that the speculation had been sound, and that it had paid out a handsome profit, which he had now realized; his original investment, it seemed, had all but doubled.

  Lord Tansor, though gratified to hear this, was nonetheless inclined to think that the lad had been prodigiously lucky. Imagine his surprise, therefore, when, at a further interview some months later, he learned that the profit from the first venture had been invested in a second, with similar satisfactory results. He began to think that the boy might have a nose for these things – he had known such people; and, in the course of time, after further demonstrations of Daunt’s financial instincts, he decided to place some of his own money into the young man’s hands. No doubt he awaited the outcome with not a little anxiety.

  But he was not disappointed. His investment was returned to him within three months, together with a substantial profit. There was, as Mr Tredgold had suggested, no better way for Daunt to have recommended himself to Lord Tansor. Reading the many laudatory reviews of his work was one thing; but this new talent was of a different order altogether. It impressed Lord Tansor, the consummate man of affairs, as no number of blank-verse epics could have done. Gradually, and with due diligence, his Lordship began to delegate little matters of business to Daunt, until, by the time of which I now write, his protégé had his fingers in a number of exceedingly large Duport pies.

  I made the observation that Mr Phoebus Daunt must now be a man of some means.

  ‘It would appear so,’ Mr Tredgold replied guardedly. ‘However, he has received nothing from Lord Tansor, as far as I know, other than the two hundred pounds that I have mentioned; nor, I think, has Dr Daunt contributed to his son’s upkeep. Whatever he has made of that principal sum, by way of speculation and investment, must have supported him in the life that he presently leads.’

  I thought to myself that he must be a genius indeed, to make such a sum go so far.

  ‘Mr Phoebus Daunt is away from Evenwood at present,’ said Mr Tredgold, brushing a speck from his lapel. ‘He is in the West Country, inspecting a property recently acquired by Lord Tansor. But there will be other opportunities, I am sure, for you to make his acquaintance. And so, Edward, I think I have said all I intended to say, and now I wish you bon voyage. I shall await your report, whether written or in person, with the greatest interest.’

  We shook hands, and I turned to go; but as I did so, I felt Mr Tredgold’s hand on my shoulder.

  ‘Take care, Edward,’ he said quietly.

  I had expected to see his usual beaming smile. But it was not there. That evening I went to Blithe Lodge. Bella was in captivating mood, and I was utterly charmed by her, as we sat by the fire in Kitty Daley’s private sitting-room, talking of this and that, and laughing at tid-bits of Academy gossip.

  ‘You are such a dear,’ I said, feeling a sudden uprush of affection for her as she sat in the firelight, gazing dreamily into the flames.

  ‘Am I?’ she asked, smiling. Then she leaned forward, cupping my face between her long fingers so that I felt the gentle impress of her rings on my skin, and kissing me tenderly.

  ‘An absolute, utter, and complete dear.’

  ‘You are quite sentimental tonight,’ she said, stroking my hair. ‘It is very pleasant. I hope you don’t have a guilty conscience.’ ‘Why should I have a guilty conscience?’

  ‘You ask me that!’ she laughed. ‘Every man who comes here has one, whether they admit it or not. Why shouldn’t you?’

  ‘That is rather hard, when all I wished to do was to pay you a compliment.’

  ‘Men are such martyrs,’ she said, giving my nose a mischievous little tweak. Then she sat down at my feet, placed her head on my lap, and gazed into the fire once again. Outside, the rain began to lash against the front windows of the house.

  ‘Isn’t it delicious,’ she said, looking up, ‘to hear the rain and the wind, while we are so snug and safe?’ Then, resting her head on my lap once again, she whispered: ‘Will I always be dear to you, Mr Edward Glapthorn?’

  I bent down and kissed her perfumed hair.

  ‘Always.’

  The following afternoon, the 24th of October 1853, a year to the very day before my chance meeting with Lucas Trendle, I took an express train northwards to Stamford, arriving at the George Hotel just before dark.

  I awoke the next morning to find that the day had broken grey, wet, and cold. As it was market day, the town was full of local farmers and labourers; and by noon, the hotel was overflowing with a noisy bustling herd of muddy-booted, red-cheeked gentlemen, all eager to partake of the establishment’s amenities.

  In the tap-room, thick clouds of pungent pipe smoke mingled with the appetizing aromas of roast meats and strong ale. The press of burly country bodies, and waiters rushing hither and thither, made it impossible at first to make out whether anyone there appeared to be waiting for me. After a few moments, however, a space in the mêlée cleared temporarily and I saw a man, seated on a settle in front of the window that looked out onto the long cobbled yard round which the hotel was built. He was occupied in reading a news-paper, from the perusal of which he occasionally looked about him with a slightly anxious air. I knew immediately that it was Mr Paul Carteret.

  In appearance, he was a series of rounds. A round face, from which sprouted a closely clipped black-and-silver beard, like a well-kept lawn; large round eyes behind round spe
ctacles; round ears, a perfectly round button nose above a cherubic round mouth, all set upon a small round body – not corpulent, simply round. You instantly saw a natural disposition towards goodness, his roundness seeming appropriately indicative of a corresponding completeness of character: that enviable, unaffected integration of feeling and temperament in which there is excess neither of preening self-regard nor impatience with the failings of others.

  ‘Have I the honour of addressing Mr Paul Carteret?’

  He looked up from his paper and smiled.

  ‘Mr Edward Glapthorn, I think. Yes. Mr Glapthorn it is, I am sure. I am very pleased to meet you, sir.’

  He rose from his seat, though his lack of height still caused him to look up at me as he did so, and held out his hand, with which he gripped mine with remarkable firmness. He then called over a waiter, and we commenced on some pleasant preliminaries before, at last, he looked hard at me and said:

  ‘It is rather close in here, Mr Glapthorn. Shall we walk?’

  We left the din and smoke of the tap-room and proceeded over the Town Bridge and up towards the soaring spire of St Mary’s Church, which looked back from atop its little hill towards the River Welland. Mr Carteret set a brisk pace, turning round every now and again as if he expected to see someone following close behind. We had not gone far when it began to rain hard again. He clapped me on the shoulder, and hurried me up the remaining part of the hill.

  ‘Here,’ he said.

  Quickly ascending a short but steep flight of steps, we ran through a cramped little graveyard into the porch of the church, to take shelter from the rapidly intensifying downpour.

  Seating himself on one of the rough stone benches hewn out of the inside walls on either side, he signalled to me to take my place opposite. The floor of the porch was still muddied over following a recent interment – the newly filled grave was just within my view beyond the porch opening – and our shelter was lit by two Gothic windows; but they were unglazed and the rain, blown in by strong gusts of wind, soon began to pound against the back of my coat. Mr Carteret, however, seemed not to notice the discomfort, and sat smiling at me, his round hands gripping his parted knees, and looking as settled and comfortable as if he had been sitting before a blazing fire.

  ‘May I ask, Mr Glapthorn,’ he began, leaning forward a little across the wet and muddy flagstones, ‘how my letter was received in Paternoster-row?’

  ‘Mr Tredgold was, of course, concerned by its implications.’

  He did not reply immediately, and I noticed for the first time a look of weariness in his large round eyes, which regarded me intently from behind his thick round spectacles.

  ‘You come here, Mr Glapthorn, as I understand, with the full authority and confidence of Mr Christopher Tredgold, whom I have had the pleasure of knowing these many years past. I am perfectly happy, as a consequence, to put my complete trust in Mr Tredgold’s choice of a surrogate.’

  I said that I appreciated his sentiments, and assured him that I had been charged with no other task than to listen, note, and report back to my principal. He nodded approvingly, but said nothing; and so we sat in silence for some moments.

  ‘Your letter mentioned a discovery,’ I ventured at last.

  ‘A discovery? Yes, certainly.’

  ‘I am at your service, sir, should you wish to inform me further concerning its nature.’ I took out my note-book and a pencil, and regarded him expectantly.

  ‘Very well,’ he said; whereupon he leaned back a little and began to tell me something of his history.

  ‘I was first employed,’ he said, ‘by my cousin, Lord Tansor, as his confidential private secretary over thirty years ago. My dear and much-lamented mother was alive then, but my father had recently died. A good man, but I fear an irresponsible one, like his father before him. He left us with debt and discredit, the consequences of foolish and reckless investments in concerns about which he knew nothing.

  ‘After my father’s death, Lord Tansor was kind enough to allow my late wife and me, together with my mother, to take up residence with his step-mother in the Dower House at Evenwood, which he refurbished at his own expense. He also offered me employment as his secretary.

  ‘For my cousin’s treatment of me, when my brother and I were left almost destitute, I shall always feel the deepest gratitude. While I live as his employee, I intend to serve him as well as I can, with no other end in view than to earn my salary to the best of my ability.

  ‘Mr Tredgold will, I’m sure, have told you that Lord Tansor has no heir. His only son, Henry Hereward, died when still quite a boy, not long after his seventh birthday. The shock to my cousin was beyond words, for he loved the child to excess. The loss of his son was terrible enough; the loss of his only direct heir compounded his grief dreadfully.

  ‘The continuation of his line has been the dominant – I may say the animating – principle of my cousin’s life. Nothing else matters to him. He had received much from his father, who had received much from his father before him; and Lord Tansor intended that his son should receive much from him, in a cycle of giving and receiving, the maintenance of which he held to be a trust and duty of the highest order.

  ‘But when that cycle was broken – when the golden chain was snapped, so to speak – the effect on him was almost catastrophic, and for several weeks after the death of Henry Hereward he locked himself away, refusing to see anyone, hardly eating, and coming out only at night to wander the rooms and corridors of Evenwood like some tormented spirit.

  ‘Gradually, he recovered himself. His dear son was gone, but time, he realized, was still on his side and could yet furnish him with an heir, for he was only then in his thirty-ninth year.

  ‘This, I’m sure, will all be familiar to you, Mr Glapthorn, but you must hear it all again from me for this reason. I do not look upon his Lordship as most people do, who see him as cold and aloof, concerned only with his own affairs. I know he has a heart, a feeling heart, a generous heart even, though it has only been revealed in extremis. It is there, nonetheless.’

  I let him talk on, and still the rain came down.

  By and by he said: ‘It does not improve, and we are getting a little wet here. Let us walk in.’ So we stood up and moved towards the great black studded door of the church, only to find it was shut fast.

  ‘Oh well,’ he sighed, ‘we must stay where we are.’

  ‘A metaphor of Fate, perhaps,’ said I.

  He smiled as he took his seat again, this time tucking himself tightly into the corner of the porch away from the window, beneath an already blackening memorial tablet erected to Thomas Stevenson and his wife Margaret, deceased three months apart (also their daughter Margaret, ob. 1827, aet. 17).

  ‘I knew Tom Stevenson,’ he said, observing me looking up at the memorial. ‘His poor daughter drowned, down by the bridge there.’

  He was silent for a moment.

  ‘I shared Lord Tansor’s sorrow, you see, for our first-born child had been taken from us the year before poor Henry Hereward. Drowned, if you will believe it, like Tom Stevenson’s girl, but in the Evenbrook, which runs through Evenwood Park. She was walking along the top of the carriage-road bridge, in the way that children love to do. Her nursemaid had turned back to retrieve something she had dropped. All over in a moment. Six years old. Just six.’ He sighed, and leaned his round head back against the cold stone. ‘The ever-flowing stream that took her has gone to its own unknown ends. But the heart’s lacerations, Mr Glapthorn: they remain.’

  He gave another deep sigh, and then continued.

  ‘The death of a child, Mr Glapthorn, is the saddest thing. Tom Stevenson was mercifully spared knowledge of his poor daughter’s fate – he predeceased her, as you see from the dates. But it was not given to Lord Tansor to be so spared, nor to me. We both suffered the keenest pangs of grief and loss. Prince or pauper, all of us must endure such trials alone. In this, Lord Tansor was – is – no different to you or I, or to any other human soul. He occupie
s a privileged station in life, but there are burdens, too, mighty ones. But I expect you are not persuaded. Perhaps you perceive the servility of the old retainer in me?’

  I said that I was very far from possessing the natural temperament of the sans culotte,* and that I was quite happy for Lord Tansor to enjoy what had been given to him by a kind Fate.

  ‘Well, we can agree on that,’ said Mr Carteret, smiling. ‘These are democratic and progressive times, I know – my daughter constantly tells me so.’ He sighed. ‘Lord Tansor does not see it – I mean the inevitability of it all, that it will all end one day, which is perhaps not too far distant. He believes in a perpetual, self-sustaining order. It is not hubris, you know, but a kind of tragic innocence.’

  And then he apologized for inflicting what he called his usual homily on me, and went on to speak of the present Lady Tansor, and of his Lordship’s increasing desperation, over the years following his marriage to her, that no heir had been forthcoming.

  After a while, he fell silent and sat, hands on knees, regarding me as if in anticipation of my making some remark.

  ‘Mr Carteret, forgive me.’

  ‘Yes, Mr Glapthorn?’

  ‘I am here to listen, not to question you. But will you allow me to ask this one thing, concerning Mr Phoebus Daunt? He has been mentioned to me, by Mr Tredgold, as a person who enjoys Lord Tansor’s particular favour. Are you at liberty to say now, or when we next meet, whether this gentleman’s position, in respect to his Lordship, is in any way germane to the concerns that you voiced in your letter?’

  ‘Well, that is a very lawyerly way of putting it, Mr Glapthorn. If you mean, has Mr Phoebus Daunt become the object of Lord Tansor’s ambitions to secure an heir, then I can of course answer immediately in the affirmative. I am sure, in fact, that Mr Tredgold must have told you as much. Do I blame my cousin for the action he wishes to take with respect to Mr Daunt? No. Do I feel slighted by it? No. Lord Tansor’s possessions are his to dispose of as he wishes. Even if I should succeed to the title, it would be an empty dignity, a name only; and I truly do not desire it – full or empty. However, the matter that I wished to place before Mr Tredgold, and which I am now to place before you, does not concern Mr Daunt directly, though indirectly it certainly bears – rather critically – on his future prospects. But if I am to say more, then I think perhaps it will be best to do so at our next meeting. I see the rain eases a little. Shall we go back?’