The Meaning of Night

by Michael Cox

  I waited in the doorway of the tap-room while Mr Carteret retrieved a battered leather bag from the hall-porter and spent some few minutes in conversation with him. Out of the corner of my eye, I observed him hand over a small package, and then speak a few more words to the man. He rejoined me, and we walked out together into the stable-yard, where he girded his little round body in a capacious riding-coat, slapped a battered old hat on his head, and secured the bag tightly across his chest. ‘Will you reach home before dark?’ I asked.

  ‘If I press on now. And I have the comfortable prospect of tea, and the welcome of my dear daughter, to light my way.’

  We shook hands, and I waited in the yard while he mounted a stocky black horse.

  ‘Come to tea tomorrow,’ he said. ‘About four o’clock. Dower House, Evenwood. Just by the Park gates. South side.’

  He was about to pass through the archway at the far end of the cobbled yard when he turned, and shouted back: ‘Bring your bags and stay the night.’

  After dinner, I retired to my room to write a brief account for Mr Tredgold of my first meeting with Mr Carteret, which I sent down to the desk to be despatched by the early post the next morning. Then, overcome with tiredness, and feeling no need of my usual opiate cordial, I went to bed, and quickly fell into a deep and dreamless sleep.

  After some time, I was conscious of being gradually drawn back into wakefulness by an insistent tapping against my window. I rose from my bed to investigate, just as the nearby bell of St Martin’s Church chimed one o’clock.

  It was nothing more than a loose tendril of ivy moving in the wind; but then I happened to glance down into the stable-yard.

  Under the archway at the far end was what appeared to be a single red eye. Slowly, the darkness around it began to coalesce into a darker shape, enabling me to discern the figure of a man, half lit by the light of the street lamp on the other side of the archway. He was smoking – I could now make out the glow of his cigar expanding and contracting as he drew in and released the smoke. He remained motionless for some minutes; then he suddenly turned, and disappeared into the shadows of the archway.

  I thought nothing of this at the time. A late dinner guest on his way home, perhaps, or one of the hotel staff. I shuffled back to bed, and fell fast asleep once more.

  Early the next afternoon, I set off on one of the hotel’s horses to Evenwood, reaching the village just before three o’clock.

  In the main street of the village, I pulled up my horse to look about me. There was St Michael and All Angels, with its soaring spire, a little beyond which stood the creeper-covered Rectory, home of the Reverend Achilles Daunt and his family. A great stillness had descended, broken only by the faint sound of a breeze passing through the trees that lined both sides of the lane that led down to the church. I moved off, following the line of the Park wall until I reached the towered gate-house – put up in the gloomy Scottish style by Lord Tansor in 1817, in a temporary fit of enthusiasm after reading Scott’s Waverley. Once in the Park, the main carriage-drive began its gradual ascent, for the great house is hidden from here, a pleasure cunningly deferred by ‘Capability’ Brown when he remodelled the Park; but a building could be glimpsed to the left, through an area of thickly planted trees.

  A spur from the main driveway passed through the Plantation and brought me to a gravelled space. From here, it bisected an area of well-tended lawn, and led up to the main entrance of the Dower House – a fine three-storeyed building of creamy Barnack stone, built in the second year of King William and Queen Mary,* as proclaimed by the incised numbers on the semi-circular pediment above the shallow portico. It struck me as looking like a beautiful doll’s house for some giant’s child, perfect both in its simple proportions and in the well-mannered taste of its construction. A flight of half a dozen or so steps led up to the pillared portico. I dismounted, ascended the steps, and knocked at the tall unglazed double doors; but no one came to my knock. Then I heard the sound of a woman crying, somewhere at the back of the house.

  I tethered my mount, and followed the sound through a gate and down a short flight of steps into a walled garden, lying now in the shadows of late afternoon, then towards an open door in the rear of the residence.

  A young serving girl was sitting on a chair by the door being comforted by an older lady in cap and apron.

  ‘There, there, Mary,’ the older lady was saying, stroking the girl’s hair and attempting to brush away her tears with the hem of her apron. ‘Try to be strong, my dear, for Missie’s sake.’

  She looked up and saw me.

  ‘Forgive me,’ I said. ‘I have been knocking at the front door.’

  ‘Oh, sir, there is no one here – Samuel and John are up at the great house with his Lordship. We are all at sixes and sevens, you see. Oh sir, such a terrible thing …’

  She continued in this, to me, incomprehensible way for some moments until I interrupted her.

  ‘Madam, perhaps there is some misunderstanding. I am here by appointment to see Mr Paul Carteret.’

  ‘No, no, sir,’ she said, as Mary began to wail with renewed force, ‘Mr Carteret is dead. Killed on his road back here from Stamford last evening, and we are all at sixes and sevens.’

  *[‘Trust, but be careful in whom’. Ed.]

  *[The celebrated gambling house in St James’s. Ed.]

  †[A curtain-raiser. Ed.]

  *[A member of the working classes during the French Revolution, who wore trousers as opposed to the knee-breeches of the aristocracy. Ed.]

  *[i.e. 1690. Ed.]

  20

  Vae victis!*

  I pride myself on my coolness under duress – a necessary quality for my work at Tredgolds. But I simply could not disguise my shock, my complete shock, at this news.

  ‘Dead?’ I cried, almost frantically. ‘Dead? What are you saying? It cannot be.’

  ‘But it is true, sir,’ said the lady, ‘only too true. And what will Miss Emily do now?’

  Leaving Mary to her tears, the lady, who introduced herself as Mrs Rowthorn, the Carterets’ housekeeper, escorted me through the kitchen and up a short flight of stairs, from which we emerged at the rear of the vestibule.

  As was my custom, I quickly sought to fix the details of my new surroundings in my mind. A floor of black-and-white tiles; two windows flanking the front door, which was secured by two bolts, top and bottom, and a sturdy central mortice. Pale-green walls with fine stucco work, equally fine plasterwork on the ceiling, and a plain white marble fireplace. A stair-case with an elegant wrought-iron handrail leading to the first floor. Four doors leading off, two at the front, two at the rear; a further door leading back into the garden.

  Out of one of the front rooms, a young woman now emerged.

  She was tall, unusually so for her sex, nearly indeed my own height, and was dressed in a black gown with a matching cap that was almost indistinguishable from her jet hair.

  As I looked upon her extraordinary face, I thought that I had not known what human beauty was until that moment. The beauty that I thought I had known, even Bella’s, now seemed delusive and figmental, a half-realized dream of beauty, moulded by invention and desire. But now beauty stood in plain sight, real and unmediated, like starlight, or sunrise over a snow-covered land.

  She stood, in the diminishing afternoon light, with her hands folded in front of her, regarding me calmly. I had expected a homely, round person, like Mr Carteret; a welcoming domestic angel. She wore spectacles, like her father, but the resemblance went no further; and, far from detracting from the uncommon loveliness of her face, they seemed only to heighten it – a phenomenon that I have often observed.

  She possessed the exaggerated prettiness of a doll, but somehow elevated and made noble. Her heavy-lidded eyes – almond-shaped, and coal-black, like her hair – were exceptionally large, and dominated her face, which was as pale as a November moon. Her nose was perhaps a little long, her upper lip perhaps a little short; and the mole on her left cheek might have
been considered by some to be a blemish. But hers was not a perfection of individual features; her beauty seemed greater by far than the sum of its parts, as music played transcends the written notes.

  I desired Miss Emily Carteret from that very first moment, as I had desired no other woman. Her soul seemed to beckon to mine, and I had no choice but to follow where she led. Yet, if my true identity could be proved, we were cousins, with Duport blood in common. The thought was thrilling, and seemed to make my desire for her all the keener.

  My reveries were interrupted by Mrs Rowthorn.

  ‘Oh, Miss,’ she said, with evident agitation, ‘here’s a gentleman been knocking to see your poor father.’

  ‘Thank you, Susan,’ replied Miss Carteret calmly. ‘Please bring some tea into the drawing-room – and tell Mary that she may go home if she wishes.’

  Mrs Rowthorn dropped a slight curtsey and hurried back down the stairs to the kitchen.

  ‘Mr Glapthorn, I think. Won’t you come in?’

  Her voice was warm and low, laced with a caressing but distant musical quality that somehow put me in mind of a viola played in an empty room.

  I followed her into the apartment from which she had just emerged. The blinds had been drawn, and lamps had been lit. She stood with her back to the window, while motioning me with a slow wave of her hand to take a seat on a small upholstered chair in front of her.

  ‘Miss Carteret,’ I began, looking up at her, ‘I hardly know what to say. This is the most appalling news. If I can—’

  She interrupted the little speech of condolence that I had planned to give. ‘Thank you, Mr Glapthorn, but I neither desire nor need your support at this time – for that, I think, is what you were about to offer me. My uncle, Lord Tansor, has put everything necessary in hand.’

  ‘Miss Carteret,’ I said, ‘you know my name, and I infer that you also know that I had arranged to see your father here today on a confidential matter.’

  I paused, but she said nothing in response, and so I continued.

  ‘I came here with the authority of Mr Christopher Tredgold, of Tredgold, Tredgold & Orr, whose name, I also infer, is not unfamiliar to you.’

  Still she stood, silently attentive.

  ‘I undertook to keep Mr Tredgold fully informed of my time here, and that undertaking I must of course honour. May I ask – are you able to tell me – how this dreadful thing happened?’

  She did not answer for a moment but instead turned away, looking at the blank surface of the window-blind. Then, with her back still towards me, she began to recount, in a level, matter-of-fact tone, how her father’s horse – the little black horse that I had seen him mount in the yard of the George – had been found trotting riderless through the Park at about six o’clock the previous evening, on the track that led down from Molesey Woods. A search party had been sent out. They soon found him, just inside the line of trees, close to where the road entered the Park from the Odstock Road. He was alive but unconscious, fearfully beaten about the face and head, and had been taken on a cart back to the great house, where his body still lay. Lord Tansor had immediately been informed, and had sent to Peterborough for his own local physician; but before the medical gentleman arrived, Mr Carteret had died.

  ‘They believe he had been followed from Stamford,’ she said, now turning away from the window, and fixing her gaze on me.

  It appeared that there had been a number of such attacks over the past few months, carried out by a gang of four or five ruffians, whose ploy was to follow farmers and others who appeared likely to be returning home from market with money in their bags. A farmer from Bulwick had been badly assaulted only the week before, though until now there had been no fatalities. The attacks had caused outrage in the vicinity, and had been the subject of furious calls for action to be taken in the pages of the Stamford Mercury.

  She stood looking down at me, as I sat awkwardly, like some scolded schoolboy, in my little chair.

  She had the most extraordinary, unblinking stare that I have ever seen. Her dark, fathomless eyes revealed nothing of herself, seeming instead like perfect mechanical devices. They immediately put me in mind of the lenses of my cameras: hard, penetrative, all-seeing; impassively absorbing, capturing and registering every detail and nuance of any object that came into view, but giving nothing back. The discomfort of that gaze, its disconcerting combination of impenetrability and knowingness, affected me intensely, producing a kind of paralysis of will. I felt that she knew me instantly for what I was, and for who I was, in all my disguises. It appeared to me that those eyes had taken in all the degradations of my life, and recorded all my doings committed beneath the light of heaven, or the cloak of night; that they saw, too, what I was capable of, and what, with time and opportunity, I would do. I suddenly felt unaccountably afraid of her; for I knew then that I would have no choice but to love her, with nothing given back.

  At that moment we were interrupted by Mrs Rowthorn, bringing in a tray of tea. For the first time since our interview began, Miss Carteret moved away from the window, and took a seat opposite me. She poured out the beverage, which we drank in silence.

  ‘Miss Carteret,’ I said at length, ‘this is difficult for me to ask, but it will, as I say, be necessary for me to give Mr Tredgold as full a report as possible of the recent terrible events. I shall therefore need to inform myself, as far as I can, of the precise circumstances of your father’s death. It is possible, indeed probable, that I was the last person to see him alive, other than his attackers, and that likelihood in itself involves me in the tragedy. But I would also beg you to think of me as your friend – and your father’s also – for though I only met him for the first time yesterday, I had already grown to like and respect him.’

  She put down her cup.

  ‘You are a stranger to me, Mr Glapthorn,’ she replied. ‘All I know of you is that you are Mr Tredgold’s representative, that my father left here yesterday to meet you in Stamford, and that you were likely to be returning here today to continue your discussions. My father instructed that a room should be prepared for you, and you are of course welcome to stay for as long as you require, in order to compose your report to Mr Tredgold. I am sure, once that is done, that you will wish to return to London as soon as possible. Mrs Rowthorn will show you to your room.’ At which she rose and rang for the housekeeper.

  ‘Good-bye, Mr Glapthorn. You must ask Mrs Rowthorn if there is anything you require.’

  ‘Miss Carteret, I cannot express my sorrow—’

  ‘It is not for you to be sorry at what has happened,’ she interrupted. ‘You are kind, but I do not need your sympathy. It does not help me. Nothing can help me.’

  Mrs Rowthorn soon appeared at the door (I knew enough of housekeepers to suppose that the speed of her arrival signified that she had been eavesdropping on our conversation). I made a slight bow to Miss Carteret, and followed the housekeeper back out into the vestibule.

  Minutes later, I was being shown into a small but welcoming room on the second storey of the house. Raising the blind of one of the two windows, I saw that the room looked out across the front lawn and its screen of trees towards the South Gates. I then lay on the bed, closed my eyes, and tried to think.

  But my head was full of Miss Carteret, and whenever I attempted to direct my thoughts towards the business of her father’s letter to Mr Tredgold, I could see only her great black eyes under their hooded lids. I tried to think of Bella instead, but found that I could not. At last, I took out paper, pen, and ink, lit a cigar, and began to compose a report to my employer on the circumstances of Mr Carteret’s death, as they had been told to me.

  Dusk had fallen by the time I had completed my task and taken some supper, which Mrs Rowthorn brought up on a tray. I had just opened the window, feeling the need to take a draught of the cold evening air, when the silence was broken by the sound of a piano-forte.

  The delicate melody and its ravishing harmonies, the affecting shifts from the major to the minor mo
de, and from pianissimo to forte, took hold of my heart, and wrung it dry. Such pathos, such grief-laden beauty, I had never experienced in my life. I did not immediately recognize the piece – though I know now that it was by the late Monsieur Chopin – but I guessed the player. How could it be anyone else but her? It seemed clear that she was playing for her father, articulating through her instrument, and the composer’s perfect arrangement of tones and rhythm, the agony she could not, or would not, reveal to a stranger.

  I listened, spellbound, imagining her long fingers moving over the keys, her eyes washed with tears, her head bowed in the desolation of her grief. But as suddenly as it had begun, the playing stopped, and there came the sound of the lid of the instrument being banged shut. I returned to the window, and looked down into the garden to see her walking quickly across the lawn. Just before reaching the Plantation, she stopped, looked back towards the house, and then moved a little closer towards the trees. Then I saw him, a darker form, emerge from the shadows, and enfold her in his arms.

  They remained in a silent embrace for some minutes before she suddenly drew back, and began to speak to him in evident animation, shaking her head violently, and twisting around from time to time to look back at the house. Gone was the reserve and cold restraint that I had witnessed earlier; instead I saw a woman gripped by irresistible emotion. She made to leave, but the man caught her by the arm and pulled her back towards him. They continued to converse, their heads close together, for some minutes; then she broke away once more and appeared to remonstrate with him, pointing from time to time into the shadows behind him. At last she turned and ran back to the house, leaving the man standing with empty outstretched arms for a moment or two. I watched her disappear under the portico, and heard the sound of the front door closing. When I looked back towards the Plantation, the man had gone.