by Michael Cox
‘Dead?’ Jukes sneered, with a contemptuous click of his fingers. ‘Dead? Why of course he’s not dead, woman. Can’t you see he’s breathing? Is there food here? No? Well, run and get some. And strong ale. Be quick now, or we’ll all have died before you get back.’
‘Should I bring a doctor, sir?’
‘Doctor?’ Jukes appeared to consider the question at some length. ‘No,’ he said at last. ‘No need for a doctor. No need at all. Come along, come along!’
Though I could see and hear quite clearly, I found that I was unable to speak or to move either my head or my limbs, and I remained in this curious suspended state for some time. It seemed that Jukes had left my bedside, for I could hear the familiar creaking of the floorboards in the sitting-room. Then, some time later, though whether it was hours or minutes I cannot say, I began to find strength returning, and moved my head slightly to look about me.
On the table beside my bed stood an empty plate, with the remains of a chop and a half-eaten potato; beside it was a tankard of ale, partially consumed. Of either Mrs Grainger or Jukes there was no sign.
I concluded that food had been obtained for me, and partially consumed, and that I had then fallen asleep, though I had no memory of doing either. Slowly, I pulled myself out of bed and, on unsteady feet, dragged myself to the door that led to my sitting-room.
‘Mr Glapthorn, sir, so pleased to see you feeling better! Let me assist you.’
Jukes, who had been sitting in my chair reading a copy of The Times, sprang to his feet and ushered me over to where he had been sitting.
‘That’s it, take my arm, sir, take my arm. There we are. Goodness me, what a scrape you got yourself in, Mr Glapthorn! I’ll tell you what, sir: you appear to have stepped up to death’s very front door, sir. But all’s well now. Food and rest were what you needed, and what you must take great care to provide yourself with in the future – if I may be so bold. I’ve been sitting with you since yesterday. Oh no, sir—.’ He held up his hand and shook his head from side to side in grinning admonishment as I attempted to speak. ‘Pray don’t say a word. It would be like your good self to thank me for my trouble, but I beg to insist that you will do nothing of the sort. Trouble? Why, what possible trouble have I been put to? None whatsoever, I assure you. A fellow toiler in the Tredgold vineyard, and neighbour to boot, taken ill? Why, only one course of action possible. Pleasure, and the satisfaction of a duty done, are ample, though undeserved, reward for the little I have been able to do. And so, Mr Glapthorn, if you are feeling better, I shall leave you to your recuperation, but on the strict understanding – strict, mind! – that you will take better care of yourself hereafter, and that you will allow me to call again tomorrow morning to see how you are.’
And then, having set a cushion at my back, placed a rug over my legs, and thrown a log on the fire, he made a low bow and sidled away, leaving me aghast at the situation in which I had awoken to find myself.
I immediately threw off the rug, and stumbled over to my work-table. Everything seemed to be exactly as I remembered it; nothing had been moved, I was sure of that. The pen still lay across an unfinished letter – to Dr Shakeshaft on the merits of various English translations of Paracelsus* – precisely where I had left it; the papers tied up in their labelled stacks appeared undisturbed; and the spines of my mother’s journals, each one a familiar old friend, were still ranged in the strictly undeviating line in which I always took care to leave them. I went to the cabinet next, containing all my notes and indexed abstracts; nothing was out of place, and each drawer shut tightly. I let out a small sigh of relief.
And yet the thought of Jukes having the liberty of my room continued to rankle, and I began to examine everything again with redoubled care, looking for any sign that he had been through my papers or other possessions. But then I checked myself. Odious as Jukes was, I knew that Mr Tredgold trusted him, so why should I not do the same? These sudden baseless suspicions to which I was prey only served to cloud my judgment, and divert me from my true goal. Thus did I argue myself out of unreason, though I determined that Fordyce Jukes should never again be given an opportunity to enter my rooms. To this end, when he knocked on my door the next morning, as promised, I did not open it to him, but simply told him through the key-hole that I was much improved (which I was), and that I did not require his assistance.
I ventured out the next day for the first time in more than a week, to take a restorative dinner at the Albion Tavern. The following morning I thought that I would look in at Tredgolds, and so, at a little after half past eight, I locked my door, and walked through the rain to Paternoster-row.
As I entered the clerks’ room, young Birtles, the office boy, came running across, and thrust a letter into my hand. ‘This came in the last post yesterday, sir.’ I did not recognize the handwriting; and so, having nothing better to do, I went upstairs to my room to read it.
To my complete surprise it was from Miss Rowena Tredgold, expressing the hope, in somewhat drawn-out terms, that circumstances would allow me to pay another visit to Canterbury at my earliest convenience. It concluded by saying that this invitation had been sent at the express request of her brother, Mr Christopher Tredgold. Deducing from this that my employer’s condition had improved significantly, I joyously sent off an immediate acceptance.
A few days later I was admitted once again to Marden House, and shown into the room where I had first met Dr Jonathan Tredgold.
Miss Rowena Tredgold sat, unsmiling, in an uncomfortable-looking, high-backed chair, set near an ugly black-marble fireplace, the cavernous opening of which yawned darkly cold. On a low table, drawn up close to her knees, was a tumbler of barley-water, beside which lay a sealed envelope. The heavy curtains in the window behind her were partially drawn, and what remained of the soft declining light of late afternoon struggled into the room through a slash of grimy glass.
I began, naturally, by asking how her brother fared.
‘I am grateful to you for your concern, Mr Glapthorn. It has been a terrible time, but I am glad to say that he is much better than he was, thank you. He knows us, and has been sitting up. And we are thankful that he can speak a few words now.’ She spoke in a lingering, staccato manner, carefully voicing every syllable, which produced the odd impression that she was mentally examining each word for impropriety before it was spoken.
‘There is hope, then, that there will be further improvements?’
‘There is hope, Mr Glapthorn,’ she said, after a short expectant pause. ‘Would you say that my brother, Mr Christopher Tredgold, was a good man?’
Though taken back a little by the question, I replied immediately: ‘That would certainly be my opinion. I do not think there can be any other.’
‘You are right. He is a good man. And would you say that he was an honourable man?’
‘Unhesitatingly.’
‘You are right again. He is an honourable man. Goodness and honour are two words that perfectly describe my brother.’
She said this in a way that seemed to suggest that I had in fact taken precisely the opposite view.
‘But there are many people in this world who are neither good nor honourable, and who take advantage of those who regard these virtues as the unalterable foundation of their moral character.’
I said that I could only agree with her.
‘Well, then, I am glad that we are of one view. I wish you to remain steady in that view, Mr Glapthorn, and remember always what kind of man my brother is. If he has erred, it is because he has been placed in an intolerable position by those who do not aspire, and who never will aspire, to the high ideals of conduct and character that have distinguished all my brother’s dealings, both personal and professional.’
I confess that I had no idea what the woman was talking about, but I smiled in a conciliatory way, which I hoped would convey my complete comprehension of the matter.
‘Mr Glapthorn, I have here a letter’ – she gestured towards the sealed envelope – �
�written by my brother the night before he was taken ill. It is addressed to you. However, before I give it to you, my brother has asked me to preface his words with some of my own. Do I have your permission?’
‘By all means. May I ask first, Miss Tredgold, if you have read your brother’s letter?’
‘I have not.’
‘But I may presume, I suppose, that it contains matters of a confidential nature?’
‘I think you may presume so.’
‘And are you yourself a party to any of those confidences?’
‘I am merely my brother’s agent, Mr Glapthorn. If he were well, then you may take it that he would be communicating these matters to you himself. However, there is one subject on which I have been honoured with his confidence. It is on this subject that he has asked me to speak to you prior to your reading his letter. Before I do so, I hope I may depend on your absolute discretion, as you may depend on mine?’
I gave her my word that I would never divulge what was imparted to me, and begged her to proceed.
‘You may wish to know first,’ she began, ‘that the firm of which my brother is now the Senior Partner was established by my great-grandfather, Mr Jonas Tredgold, and a junior associate, Mr James Orr, in the year 1767. In due course, my late father, Mr Anson Tredgold, joined the firm, which then became known as Tredgold, Tredgold & Orr, a name which it has since retained, along with a reputation second to none amongst London solicitors.
‘It was my grandfather who first established an association between the firm and a certain noble family – of whom, I believe, you have some knowledge. I speak, of course, of the Duport family of Evenwood, holders of the Tansor Barony. Later, the management of the family’s legal affairs duly fell to my father; and then to my brother Christopher.
‘At the time that Christopher joined the firm, Father was in his seventy-first year, still sprightly in body and active in mind, though it must be confessed that his powers of concentration and application were perhaps not quite what they had once been. Nevertheless, as the Senior Partner, he continued to enjoy the complete confidence of the firm’s principal client, the present Lord Tansor, until his death.
‘And now my brother is the Senior Partner. Unfortunately, he has no son into whose hands he can place the governance of the firm, in the way that his father and grandfather had done before him. It is the tragedy of my brother’s life, for he would dearly have loved to marry, and so we must now contemplate the prospect of Tredgold, Tredgold & Orr existing without the living presence of a Tredgold.’
‘Could you tell me, Miss Tredgold,’ I broke in, ‘what has prevented Mr Tredgold from following his inclination?’
‘That, Mr Glapthorn, is the particular matter on which my brother has asked me to speak, if you will be so kind as to allow me.’
Her reprimand was delivered with cold courteousness, and I felt obliged to apologize for my interruption.
‘It was passion, Mr Glapthorn, for an object that could never have been his – a passion that he knew to be wrong, but which he could not resist; a passion that rules him now as completely as it ever did, and which has kept him a slave to its original object for these thirty years and more. Indeed, I can give you the exact date when it commenced.
‘I came of age in July 1819, and on the twelfth of that month my father, Mr Anson Tredgold, was visited on a matter of business by Laura, Lady Tansor, the wife of his most distinguished client. Her reputation as a great beauty preceded her, and of course I was agog to see her – I was young and foolish then and knew no better. It was whispered, as you may perhaps know, that she had been the subject of those celebrated lines of Lord Byron’s, which begin “There be none of Beauty’s daughters”,* written (so it was rumoured) by the poet to Miss Fairmile – as she then was, of course – before her marriage to Lord Tansor. Whether that be true or no, she was constantly spoken about as being one of the loveliest and best turned-out women in England; and so, being apprised of her visit, and wishing to snatch a glimpse of this marvel, I made some excuse to be at the office when she arrived, and lingered on the stairs as she was received by the chief clerk and conducted up to my father’s room on the first floor. As she passed, she paused and turned her head slowly towards me. I shall always remember the moment.’
Miss Tredgold looked distantly into the black mouth of the great fireplace.
‘Her face was beautiful, certainly, but had an extraordinary impression of fragility about it, like an exquisite painting made on glass; indeed, her beauty and poise seemed almost too perfect to withstand the shocks that attend all human life. In that moment, as she looked directly into my eyes before honouring me with a brief nod of salutation, I felt a kind of sadness for her – pity even – that I could not explain. All beauty must pass, even hers, I thought; and those who are blessed with unusual physical beauty must, I supposed, feel this constantly. I was plain; I knew it. Yet I did not envy her – no, indeed I did not – for she appeared to me to be suffering from some great affliction of spirit that was already beginning to cast its shadow over that perfect face.
‘Lady Tansor conducted her business with my father, and was escorted by him to the front door, where they encountered my brother Christopher coming in. I had remained in the downstairs office, amongst the clerks, and was well placed to observe the scene.
‘I remember very well that her Ladyship appeared impatient and ill at ease, fingering the ribbons of her bonnet, and tapping the floor with the tip of her parasol. My father asked whether she would allow him to conduct her to her carriage, but she declined and made to go. My brother, however, intervened rather forcefully, and insisted that her Ladyship could not be allowed to descend the steps and cross the pavement unassisted. I had never seen him act the gallant before, and observed his attentions towards her with some amusement. She did no more than thank him, but you would have thought from his face, when he returned to the office from helping her into her carriage, that he had been in the presence of some divinity. Of course I teased him, and he was rather short with me, telling me not to be a silly little girl, which, having just attained my majority, I much resented.
‘But I did wrong to tease him, Mr Glapthorn, for it soon became apparent to me – though fortunately to no one else – that Christopher was smitten by the lady to a degree that was wholly incompatible both with his personal situation and his professional position. This infatuation, for which, as a young man, he could hardly be blamed, was to be the cause of his decision never to marry. It quickly grew, you see, into something fiercer, something all-consuming, that could not be denied, and yet which must be denied. It was a love of which poets sing, but which is scarcely seen in the world. He never confessed it to her, never acted upon it, and behaved at all times with the utmost propriety. There were times when I feared for his sanity, though it was only to me that he revealed the extent of his anguish. Gradually, he learned to master his situation – or seemed to – and took refuge in pursuits of a bibliographical nature, which have remained his solace during his hours of leisure. But when she died, the effect on my brother was terrible – quite terrible. Imagine, then, what he had to endure when his attendance was requested by Lord Tansor at her burial in the Mausoleum at Evenwood. He returned immediately to London and took a solemn vow in the Temple Church: that he would love her unto death, and take no one else into his heart, putting all his hope in being joined with her in eternity, when all care and suffering will be put aside for ever. He has kept that vow, and will go to his grave a bachelor because of his love for Laura Tansor.
‘And so, Mr Glapthorn, I have said what my brother wished me to say, and now I give you this.’
She handed me the sealed envelope.
‘Perhaps you would be more comfortable if I retired to my room for half an hour.’
She rose from her chair and left, closing the door softly behind her.
To learn that my employer had not only known my real mother, but had also loved her, and that he continued to love her, to the exclusion of a
ll others! This extraordinary revelation thrilled and alarmed me in almost equal measure. Of all the men in the world! But when secrets are finally unlocked, there are always consequences; and so it was with shaking hands that I opened the letter and began to read. I do not intend to transcribe it in full; but certain passages must be laid before you. Here is the first.How often, my dear Edward, have I wished to bring you into my confidence! But the difficulty of my position has been, and continues to be, acute. However, recent events – I refer particularly to the death of Mr Carteret – have forced me to take a course of action that I have long contemplated, but which hitherto I have been constrained from adopting by both duty and conscience.When you first came to me, you did so in the capacity of confidential secretary (I believe that was the phrase you used) to Mr Edward Glyver. You were enquiring after the existence of an agreement made between Mr Glyver’s mother and the late Laura, Lady Tansor. I must tell you now, and you must believe how much it pains me to confess it, that I was not completely honest with you concerning the circumstances under which that agreement had been drawn up.In the first place, it was not my father, Mr Anson Tredgold, who drafted it; it was I. His powers were then in decline and, subsequent to her Ladyship’s first brief consultation with him, he asked me to produce the draft. I then met privately with Lady Tansor – on several occasions, away from the office – to ascertain that it met with her approval. Her Ladyship later returned to Paternoster-row with Mrs Glyver to execute the document in the presence of my father.The intention of the agreement that I had drawn up – a copy of which is now in your possession – was to give Mrs Glyver some measure of immunity from any adverse consequences of certain impending actions, which she had undertaken solely at the urgent behest of Lady Tansor. In truth, I do not know whether the document would ever have held in law – my father was too ill to approve the wording and merely, as I say, officiated at the signing. But Mrs Glyver was satisfied by it, and so matters proceeded.I told you that I could find no record of the discussions that preceded the signing of the agreement. That was the strict truth; I destroyed everything, except for a copy of the agreement itself, which makes no mention of the circumstances that lay behind its composition. My motive? A simple but unshakeable desire to protect Lady Tansor, as far as I could, from the results of her action.I loved her, Edward, as I believe few men have loved a woman – I cannot speak of this at length here, except to say that my affection for her has been both the bedrock and the source of all my actions. It has informed and directed everything. Her interests, both when she was living and with respect to her posthumous reputation, have been my only care.My enslavement began in July 1819, when her Ladyship first came to see my father. She had embarked on a most dangerous enterprise. Unknown to her husband, Lady Tansor was with child; she intended to escape to France, in the company of her closest friend, Mrs Simona Glyver, until her time was due; the child would then be placed into the charge of Mrs Glyver, who would bring it up as her own. She did not tell my father the true character of this desperate scheme, speaking to him only in vague generalities, and she had sworn her friend to absolute secrecy. But she herself was weak in this regard and soon confided in me, sensing, I believe, my deep attachment to her – illicit, I acknowledge, but never revealed, or confessed, or acted upon. I was already mesmerized by her – hopelessly infatuated. So I vowed that I would help her, in whatever way I could, and that I would tell no one her secret. ‘My dear sweet St Christopher,’ she said to me at our last meeting. Those were her very words. And then she kissed my cheek – such a brief, chaste kiss! Though I swear that I did not confess my love for her, I told her then that I would die rather than reveal her condition.It was foolish of me – no; worse, much worse, than foolish – to have exposed myself to calumny and professional disgrace; it went against every principle that I had formerly held sacred. I confess that I was greatly concerned by what I had done, and conveyed to her Ladyship as strongly as I could that discovery of her plan was probable, perhaps likely, and urged that the whole thing should be abandoned forthwith; for by this terrible act, Lady Tansor was denying her husband the thing that he desired above all others. Of course my advice was disregarded – sweetly, but firmly.I continued to regret that I had become an accessory to her Ladyship’s conspiracy. But it was done; and I would not undo it for worlds. If it was iniquitous, then I would be steadfast in my iniquity, for the sake of her whom I had sworn to serve unto death.