by Michael Cox
‘I might wonder the same about you, Miss Carteret,’ I replied.
‘Oh, but I often come to the Temple. It was a favourite resort of my father’s. He would sometimes bring his writing-case and work here. And it was here that I last saw him alive. So, you see, I have reason enough. But what are your reasons, I wonder?’
She continued to look at me, standing stock-still in her mourning clothes; but then she smiled – a sad, child-like half-smile – and once again she uncovered, for the merest instant, a touching vulnerability.
‘Would you believe me if I said that I had no reason at all for coming here; that I had no other object in view but to take the air, and that I found myself here quite by chance?’
‘Why should I not believe you? Really, Mr Glapthorn, your conscience seems rather too eager to protest the innocence of your motives. I merely wondered what brought you here. I’m sure I did not mean to suggest that you were not perfectly entitled to prowl around this damp place in the dark if you wished to do so. You have no need to answer to me – or to anyone, I dare say.’
All this was spoken in a sweet, low, confiding tone, quite at odds with her teasing words. I said nothing in reply as she turned and walked back to the door, but picked up my hat and stick, and followed her.
She was standing on the steps leading down to a narrow terrace, below which the ground fell away steeply towards the main carriage-road. Where the track from the Temple joined the road, I could see two lights twinkling in the darkness.
‘You have not come alone, then,’ I said.
‘No, John Brine brought me up in the landau.’
She seemed suddenly disinclined to talk, and took a few more steps down towards the terrace. Then, holding her lamp up close to her face, and with a troubled expression, she turned and said: ‘My father believed that everything we do in this life will be judged in the next. Do you believe that, Mr Glapthorn? Please tell me whether you do.’
I said that I feared Mr Carteret and I would have disagreed on this point, and that I favoured a rather more fatalistic theology.
At this, her face assumed a strange look of concentration.
‘So you do not believe in the parable of the sheep and the goats? That those who do good will see Heaven, and those who do evil will burn in the eternal fire?’
‘That was what I was brought up to believe,’ I replied, ‘but as I have been deficient in perfection from an early age, it has never seemed to me a comfortable philosophy. It is so ridiculously easy, don’t you think, to fall into sin? I prefer to believe that I was predestined for grace. It accords far more closely to my own estimation of myself, and of course it relieves one of the tedious necessity of always having to do good.’
I was smiling as I said the words, for I had meant them – partly – as an attempt at levity. But she had become strangely agitated, and began to walk quickly hither and thither about the terrace, apparently talking to herself in a mumbled undertone, her little lamp swinging by her side, until at last she stopped at the top of the steps that led down to the path, and stood staring out into the darkness.
The sudden change in her manner was dramatic and alarming, and I could see no immediate reason for it. But then I concluded that the grief that she had been holding back had begun at last to assert its natural ascendancy over her spirits, through being in a place that had such strong associations with her recently deceased father. I was about to tell her, as tenderly as I could, that there was no shame in mourning her poor papa; but I had hardly stepped down to the terrace when she looked up at me and, in an anxious voice, said she must return to the Dower House, whereat she began running down the path towards where John Brine was waiting with the landau.
I was determined not to run after her, like some panting Touchstone after his Audrey,* but instead set off as coolly as I could, though with long urgent strides, following the bobbing lamp down the path. By the time I caught up with her, she was sitting back in the landau, pulling a rug across her lap.
And then, to my astonishment, she held out her hand and bestowed upon me the most delicious smile.
‘If you have quite finished taking the air, Mr Glapthorn, perhaps you would accompany me back to the Dower House. I’m sure you have walked quite far enough tonight. John, will you take us back, please.’
As we drove along, she began to speak reminiscently about her father – how he had taken her to the coronation of the present Queen,* on the day after her fourteenth birthday, and how, at Lord Tansor’s instigation, Lady Adelaide Paget, one of the train-bearers, had introduced her to the new monarch, then of course not much more than a girl herself. From this recollection she turned to Mr Carteret’s inordinate fondness for anchovies (which she could not abide), his passion for Delftware (numerous fine examples of which I had noted on display in various parts of the Dower House), and the close relationship that he had enjoyed with his mother. How or why these things were connected in her mind, I cannot say; but she continued in this frantic recollective vein, running from one hurried memory of her father’s tastes and character to another in quick succession.
I looked out to see the looming mass of the many-towered house, rearing up against the paler backdrop of the early night sky, and studded here and there with little points of light. My attention was arrested by a fleeting glimpse of the Chapel windows, a subdued flickering glow of ruby-red and azure, illuminated from within by the candles set around Mr Carteret’s coffin. In that moment, the bells of Evenwood began to toll the hour of nine, and I became aware that my companion had fallen silent. When she spoke again, her manner and tone showed clearly that her thoughts had been brought back to the contemplation of her poor father’s fate, and to the trials of the coming days.
‘May I ask, Mr Glapthorn, whether your parents are still living?’
‘My mother is dead,’ I replied. ‘I never knew my father.’
I said the words without thinking, then instantly reflected on the singularity of my situation. For whom did I speak? For the orphaned Edward Glyver, with a dead mother and a father who had died before he was born? Or Edward Glapthorn, whom I had conjured into existence on learning the truth about my birth, and who was the possessor of two fathers and two mothers? Or the future Edward Duport, whose mother was indeed dead, but whose father still lived and breathed, here, in this great house, not a quarter of a mile from where we now were?
‘I am sorry for you, truly,’ she said. ‘Every child needs a father’s guiding presence.’
‘Not every father, perhaps,’ I observed, thinking of the execrable Captain Glyver, ‘can be considered fit for such a task. But I believe, Miss Carteret, from my brief acquaintance with him, that you may count yourself fortunate that yours was exceptional in that regard.’
‘But then some children, perhaps, are unworthy of their parents.’
She had turned her face away, and I saw her raise her hand to her face.
‘Miss Carteret, forgive me, is anything the matter?’
‘Nothing is the matter, I assure you.’ But she continued to look out into the darkness with unseeing eyes, her hand resting against her cheek. I saw that she was suffering, and so I thought I would make another attempt at encouraging her to give expression to her anguish.
‘Will you allow me to observe, Miss Carteret, as someone who has your interests most sincerely at heart, that grief should not be denied. It is—’
But I was unable to finish my clumsy peroration, for she instantly turned an affronted face upon me.
‘Do not presume, sir, to lecture me on grief. I will take no lessons on that subject from any person, least of all from someone who is little more than a stranger to me and mine!’
I attempted to apologize for my forwardness; but she silenced me with another terrible look, followed by some further strong words, which together induced me to sit back, somewhat nonplussed, and to hold my tongue for the remainder of our journey.
In this awkward state, we turned in through the Plantation and drew up at last before the Dower House
. As the landau came to a halt, I observed that her face had once again reverted to its accustomed look of passionless abstraction. Without saying a word, or even bestowing the slightest glance in my direction, she slowly removed the rug from her lap and, assisted by John Brine, descended from the vehicle.
‘Thank you, John,’ she said. ‘That will be all for tonight.’ Then she turned her head and looked at me, with infinite sadness in her eyes.
‘I believe that my father was right,’ she said, almost in a whisper. She seemed to be looking straight through me, as if talking to some unseen distant presence. ‘We shall be judged for what we do. And so, there is no hope for me.’
I watched her walk the short distance to the house. She stood for a moment beneath the portico lamp, and I longed for her to turn and retrace her steps; but then I saw Mrs Rowthorn open the front door, and say a few words to her that I could not catch, whereupon she instantly picked up her skirts and ran inside.
*[‘On the threshold’. Ed.]
*[The bells of the church opposite Newgate Prison, which tolled to announce impending executions. Ed.]
†[Jean-Eugène Robert-Houdin (1805–71), a former watchmaker from Blois who became one of the greatest stage magicians of the nineteenth century. Ed.]
‡[William Calcraft (1800–79), the most prolific of all English executioners, who carried out over four hundred hangings between 1829 and 1874. Ed.]
§ [Slang term for hangman. Ed.]
*[The Temple was finally demolished in 1919, by which time it was virtually a ruin. Ed.]
*[A friction match. Ed.]
*[A hired hand. Ed.]
*[Audrey was the country wench wooed by Touchstone in Shakespeare’s As You Like It. Ed.]
*[On 28 June 1838. Ed.]
26
Gradatim vincimus*
I accosted John Brine in the stable-yard, as he was unhitching the horses from the landau.
‘Brine, I have found something.’
He said nothing in reply, but looked at me in that dour, threatening way of his.
Reaching into my pocket, I held out the little square of leather that I had discovered in the Temple. He took it from me, and began to examine it by the light over the tack-room door.
‘James Earl,’ he said. ‘Gamekeeper here some years past. May I ask, sir, where you found this?’
‘In the Temple,’ I answered, eyeing him closely. ‘Not a much-frequented place, I think.’
‘Not since the youngster died.’
‘Youngster?’
‘His Lordship’s only boy, Master Henry. He went up there on his pony. He would not be told, that boy, and his Lordship could do nothing but indulge him. It was his birthday, you see, and the pony had been his father’s gift.’
‘And can you tell me what happened?’
He thought for a moment, and then nodded me towards the open door of the tack-room.
‘Perhaps you’d like to wait in there, sir,’ he said as he led the horses away to their stalls. A few minutes later he returned. There was still a distrusting look about him, but he appeared inclined to resume his story.
‘There’d been a hard frost. We’d ridden all over the Park …’
‘Excuse me,’ I interjected, ‘do you mean that you accompanied the boy?’
‘I was only a lad myself, and my old father, who was his Lordship’s groom, was ill that day and said I should go with them instead – the boy and his Lordship – to make sure all was well. But after we came down through the woods, the boy took off on his own. Headstrong, you see, like his mother.
‘Well, we set off after him, of course, but my horse picked up a stone and I couldn’t keep up. He’d taken the path that goes up to the Temple – you’ve seen it yourself, sir: steep, uneven, dangerous, even for an experienced horseman. And, as I say, there’d been a hard frost. His Lordship dismounted, and called the boy back. But that was a mistake, for as he tried to turn the pony round, the beast slipped, and threw the boy off. I never thought to see that man cry, and I ain’t seen it since. But cry he did, most dreadful to behold, and I don’t ever want to hear such a sound again. It fair tore your heart out, with the poor little chap lying there at his feet so pale and still.
‘And so they buried him, Lord Tansor’s only boy, and since that day his Lordship has never set foot in the Temple, and few others go up there.’
‘But someone has been there,’ I said, ‘and recently. Someone who knows a good deal more about the attack on Mr Carteret than we do.’
I did not know how far I could trust the man; but then I thought how he had taken it upon himself to go to London, on Mary Baker’s behalf, to search for news concerning her sister, the doomed Mrs Agnes Pluckrose. That action spoke of a generous and courageous spirit, and, with Mr Carteret dead, there might be a question as to how he would earn his daily bread; and so, having already recognized the need to find a means of informing myself on the doings of Evenwood and its residents, I decided to risk taking Brine into my confidence a little.
‘Brine, I believe you to be an honest man, and a faithful servant to your former master. But you have no master now, and Miss Carteret’s future, I venture to say, is far from certain. My acquaintance with your late master was short, but I know him to have been an excellent gentleman who did not deserve his fate. More than this, his death has thrown the outcome of our business together into jeopardy, and that must be rectified. I cannot say more on this point. But will you now trust me and help me, as you are able, to seek out those responsible for this dreadful act, and in so doing assist me to conclude the matter that brought me here?’
Brine said nothing in reply, but I could see a glint of interest in his eyes at the question.
‘Our arrangement must be on a strictly confidential basis,’ I continued. ‘I’m sure you understand me. And it would involve no risk to yourself. I simply wish to be informed on what happens here, who comes, who goes, what is said amongst the servants concerning the late Mr Carteret, that sort of thing. I shall pay you well for your loyalty and discretion, and shall ensure that it will never be a matter of regret to you that you assisted me in this matter. And so here’s my hand, John Brine. Will you take it?’
He hesitated, as I expected he would, and looked me square in the eye, without speaking, for some seconds. But whatever he saw therein appeared to decide him. He gripped my hand, like the sturdy fellow he was, and shook it hard.
But then he appeared to hold back a little, and I thought at first that he had repented of his decision.
‘What is it, Brine?’
‘Well, sir, I was thinking …’
‘Yes?’
‘My sister Lizzie, sir, who is maid to Miss Carteret. She’s a canny girl, my sister, and a deal smarter than me in knowing what’s what, if you take my meaning. And so I was thinking, sir, if I can put this to you straight, whether you might feel your interests would be even better served if you was to extend the arrangement you have so kindly offered me to her as well. You won’t find better than her for the work. She’s with her mistress privily every day, and comes and goes as she pleases to Miss’s room. Yes, sir, she knows what’s what round here, and she’ll keep it all as tight as you’d ever want. If you’d like to meet her for yourself, sir, she’s but a step or two down the road.’
I considered the proposition for a moment. Through my employment at Tredgolds, I had acquired long experience of recruiting such as Brine to serve my purposes; but it was often the case that a certain sort of woman proved more adept, and more subtle, at the work than the men.
‘I will see your sister,’ I said at last. ‘Lead on.’
We walked a little way into the village, to a cottage on the corner of the lane that led down to the church.
‘I’ll go in first, sir,’ said Brine at the door, ‘if you don’t mind.’
I nodded and he entered through the low doorway, leaving me in the roadway to walk up and down. At length, the door opened again, and he ushered me inside.
His sister w
as standing by the blazing hearth, a book in her hand, which she placed on a table as I walked in. I saw that it was a volume of poems by Mrs Hemans,* and, on looking round the simply furnished room, I noted a set of Miss Austen’s works, a recent novel by Mr Kingsley, and a volume or two by Miss Martineau,† together with a number of other modern works, which indicated that Miss Brine possessed literary tastes far superior to those of most people of her class and occupation.
She appeared to be in her late twenties, and had her brother’s sandy hair and pale freckly skin, but was shorter and slighter, with darting green eyes, and having – as her brother had accurately described her – the unmistakable look of someone who knew what was what. Yes, she was a sharp one all right. I thought she might do very well.
‘Your brother has explained to you the nature of the proposed arrangement, Miss Brine?’
‘He has, sir.’
‘And what do you say to it?’
‘I’m very happy to oblige you, sir.’
‘And do neither of you feel disquiet at what I am asking you to do?’
They looked at each other. Then the sister spoke.
‘If I may speak for my brother, sir, I will say that no such arrangement would have been possible, or considered by us, if our dear master was alive. But now he is gone, God bless his soul, we are somewhat anxious concerning our future prospects here. Who knows but that my mistress will not take it in her head to flit back to France, where she always says she was so happy. If she does, she won’t take me, that’s for sure. She’s told me as much in the past. And maybe she’d stay there, and then what would we do?’
‘Perhaps she might marry and still live here, though,’ I said.
‘She might,’ she replied. ‘But it would suit us, sir, to prepare for the former eventuality. To put a little money by against the day, if it should come, would be a great comfort to us. And we would give good service.’
‘I’m sure you would.’
I plainly saw that Lizzie would be the more useful member of the partnership, and that she would also keep her brother in line.