by Michael Cox
THE RECOLLECTION OF what followed these words of Madames festers perpetually within me, like a wound that will never heal.
As the late afternoon darkened into evening, and rain drummed heavily against the tall windows, the secrets came tumbling out.
Secrets! Would there never be an end to them? Where was honesty and open dealing between those who professed to love each other? So much had been hidden away, so much entombed in dark places. Why did they never tell me? I had placed all my trust in them, and they had deceived me. An arrow pulled from my living flesh could not have produced the exquisite and enduring agony that I suffered as the truth was finally laid before me, by the person I had trusted and esteemed more than anyone in the world.
I shall not cannot attempt a verbatim account of what Madame now told me. Instead, let me have final recourse, as my story draws to its close, to the epitome of that dreadful day that I committed to my Book of Secrets that brimming repository of hidden things, which I had so dutifully maintained on Madames instructions.
MADAMES CONFESSION
MAISON DE LORME, 24TH MAY 1877
These are the Four Secrets I learned from Madame on this day.
1. After the death of my mother, Edwin Gorst who was really Edward Glyver left the Maison de lOrme to embark on his eastern travels. This much was true.
It was then put out that he had died in Constantinople, and that his body had been brought back to Paris. This was a lie.
He never died. The coffin mouldering beneath the granite slab in the Cemetery of St-Vincent contained nothing more than stones and dirt. He never died, at the age of forty-two, in the year 1862, as his gravestone proclaimed. He lives still. My father lives still.
This was the First Secret.
2. A year after the supposed death of Edwin Gorst, Mr Basil Thornhaugh came to live at the Maison de lOrme, to take charge of my education.
Three weeks earlier, Basil Thornhaugh and the widowed Madame de lOrme had been married secretly, in a village church near Fontainebleau. They have lived together, surreptitiously, as man and wife, ever since.
This was the Second Secret.
3. Riddle me this.
The moustachioed Edwin Gorst was thought dead and buried yet he lived. Clean-shaven Basil Thornhaugh lived and breathed yet he never existed.
The answer is simple enough.
Basil Thornhaugh was is my father. Basil Thornhaugh was is Edward Glyver, who murdered Phoebus Daunt.
Duport Glyver Glapthorn Gorst Thornhaugh. Five names. One man. One living man. One living father.
This was the Third Secret.
4. Madame had loved my father, since first meeting him, years earlier, when he was attached to another, her dearest friend in all the world. But this friend, together with the man she truly loved, had sought to destroy him, in order to gain for themselves what was rightfully his.
Does more need to be said?
The friend was the former Miss Emily Carteret.
Her lover was Phoebus Daunt.
Madame de lOrmes maiden name was Marie-Madeleine Buisson.
This was the Fourth Secret.
Here my epitome broke off, although more secrets, of less consequence, were still to be revealed.
At intervals in her confession, Madame had been obliged to pause, in order to cough into a large linen handkerchief that she had by her. She attempted to hide them, but I clearly saw the ominous spots of blood staining the white material, and instantly recognized their fatal significance.
The doctor says that I shall not live to see the leaves fall, she said, looking out at the swaying branches of the chestnut-tree, barely visible now in the deepening darkness.
Although she had deceived me, I loved her still, and the doctors prognosis cut me to the heart.
Well, you must prove him wrong, I said gaily, trying to force a smile. I shall take you away to Italy. To Florence. And then youll come back, recovered and happy, to see the leaves falling until the tree is quite bare, and then youll see the new ones come in the spring, and for many springs to come.
She returned a sad, indulgent smile, but did not reply.
I got up from the sofa and stood looking down into the wind-swept garden, remembering the golden days of my childhood, and little Amélie Verron, guileless to the depths of her sweet soul, my truest and most faithful friend, as it now seemed.
Love, and the secrets it spawned, had betrayed us all Madame, Emily, and me. Madames love for my father had made her his ever-willing slave, ready to do whatever his will demanded. The consequences of Emily Carterets love for Phoebus Daunt, despite the affection she professed for my father, had driven her, at the last, to the commission of murder and to self-destruction. As for me, I had loved and trusted Madame, and the man I knew as Basil Thornhaugh, to the utmost degree, only to be given deception and lies in return.
THE ATTAINMENT, AT last, of my rightful inheritance, as I could now report to Madame, stood fair to succeed; but the prospect gave me no joy. Lord, what a poor deluded fool I had been! I recalled, with a kind of shame, the bitter tears I had shed on reading Mr Lazaruss memories of my father, and the anguish I had suffered at never having known him in life. The inscription on that shadowed slab of granite had told me that he was dead. Another betrayal. Another lie. He had been with me, throughout my childhood, without my knowing, watching over me as a father ought, day after day, in the guise of my tutor, but never revealing himself to me.
Madame assured me that he had loved me. Why, then, had he never thrown off his disguise? Why had he let me believe that I was fatherless? Could a loving parent be capable of such refinement of cruelty?
He had his reasons, Madame had urged, and nothing would move him. He could not escape his fate. It pursues him still, and he will never be free of it, until Death releases him. Nothing else matters to him but the restitution of what was stolen by Emily Carteret and Phoebus Daunt. This imperative implacable and constant has infected everything he does, and all else must bend to that relentless necessity. It is his curse, and we must all suffer for it, as he does.
Following his exile, she went on, he could no longer achieve his ambition himself; and so he has directed all his energies, all his will, to making you, dear child, his surrogate. I say again that he loves you he has always loved you; but there is a power at work here even greater than love.
But where has he gone? I asked her. And why has he left you, when you are ill, and in such distress?
He left yesterday, she replied. I do not know where he has gone, only that he says he will never return.
But why? I repeated.
Because I am no longer of any use to him. Because he believes the Great Task has failed. And because she is dead.
I sat in silent disbelief. How could he have known of Emilys death so soon?
My fathers reach, it appeared, was a long one. He had recruited a paid spy in the Detective Department, from whom he had learned the nature of the evidence against Emily, and had thus discovered the truth concerning Perseuss birth, and the conspiracy between Emily and Lord Tansor.
It was a most grievous blow, said Madame, to learn that the Great Task could not now be accomplished through your marrying Perseus Duport. For several days your father shut himself away, eating little, and seeing no one. He had begun to recover his spirits a little when he received a telegraphic message with the news of Lady Tansors death, and also that the younger Duport brother was already married.
A telegraphic message! I exclaimed in amazement. From whom?
Your father is a most resourceful man it comes from his former time as confidential assistant to the late Mr Christopher Tredgold. He has retained many associations with people, not always of the most elevated character, who are willing, and well able, to help him obtain almost any information he may require. He himself has travelled incognito to
London, and on several occasions to Northamptonshire, when it was necessary for him to do so.
You should also know that he has employed someone at Evenwood, who has been constantly observing events there. It was this person who sent the telegraphic message.
That will be Captain Willoughby, I said, confidently.
No, replied Madame. Not Captain Willoughby, not exactly, although he, too, as you now know, was assigned by your father to keep a daily watch over you. It was Jonah Barrington, the head footman, who served under the captain during the Russian War. It has been through Barrington that we have been regularly assured of your safety and well-being, which you must believe have always been our greatest concern.
As for Captain Willoughby, his real name is Willoughby Le Grice, and he is your fathers oldest and most trusted friend, who stood by him through all his years of exile, and on whom he will always be able to depend.
Barrington! Bleak-faced, ever-silent Barrington, who had brought me my supper on my first night at Evenwood! Every day since then, it now appeared, he had been my unseen and unrecognized guard, for which I supposed I must be in his debt. His familiar presence had never once raised the slightest suspicion in me that he was anything other than he seemed, and as I had described him in my Book of Secrets. Yet I saw now that it was the very fact of his being so unobtrusive and unremarkable that made him a most efficient spy.
To my further astonishment, it also appeared that it was Barrington who, at my fathers instigation, had contrived to have my predecessor, Miss Plumptre, dismissed. Having removed the brooch that the maid had been accused of stealing, and hidden it in her room, he had then solemnly sworn that he had seen her leaving Emilys apartments, on a day when her mistress was absent in London, at the very time that the object was thought to have been taken. A search of her room had then been instigated; the brooch had been discovered; and, despite her continued and most outraged protestations of innocence, the hapless Miss Dorothy Plumptre had instantly been sent away, so providing Madame with the opportunity she had needed to try to place me in Lady Tansors employ.
AFTER A LIGHT supper, Madame and I drew our chairs close to the fire, for the wind and rain had made the evening uncomfortably chill.
I had been willing to postpone further conversation until the morning, but Madame, although exhausted by the effort, insisted on continuing her confession.
She implored me, first, to forgive her for what her love for my father had made her do. I told her that forgiveness might come in time; but not yet, not until every secret, every lie, had been laid bare.
There are no more of any consequence, she replied, wearily. I have told you everything that we have kept from you. But if I have failed to satisfy you on any point, then ask me what you will. I cannot leave this world until I have regained your complete trust and affection.
I assured her, with a kiss, that she would always have the latter. As for trust
She seized my hand with sudden and such surprising vigour that I almost cried out.
Then tell me now, I beg you, how I may earn that trust. What more do you wish to know, dear child?
For now, I replied, two things. Tell me, first, did my father have any hand in the death of Mr Roderick Shillito?
The directness of my question made her hesitate before replying. I had hoped for a categorical denial; but all she would say was that she had not been party to the many private arrangements, as she termed them, that my father had made over the past months.
He never spoke of them to me, or of what may have passed when he himself went to London. He told me of the attack on Mr Shillito, of course I also read an account of it in one of the English newspapers; but that is all I know.
Her eyes, however, spoke what we both thought: that my father had instigated the attack on Mr Shillito to prevent him from delving further into the true identity of the man calling himself Edwin Gorst whom he had met on Madeira.
Clearly wishing to avoid further unpleasant speculation on the matter, Madame then asked me to tell her the second thing I wished to know.
It concerns the death of Lady Tansor, I replied. Why did the news drive my father away? Did you both not insist to me, in the strongest terms, that she was an implacable enemy to my interests, and that we were bent on her destruction? And did you not also tell me that, although my father had loved her once, his former feelings had turned to hatred for what she had done to him?
He never ceased to love her, she answered, in a most pitiful voice, even when he pretended to hate her, and even though it did not alter his great ambition to make her pay for betraying him. But her death was never contemplated by us. We worked only to bring about her public shame and condemnation, and then the restoration of your fathers line, through your marriage to Perseus Duport. I would go so far as to say that I think your father even harboured an absurd and impossible hope that, when all was done, and in some unimaginable way, he might effect a reconciliation with her. A mad fantasy, of course, but I now believe it to be the case.
He did not love me, as I once thought he did, when he and his first wife originally came here, from the Quai de Montebello. He had sought me out, with that diligence and perseverance that have always distinguished him; and I thought, in my poor foolish way, that he had done so because of some long-suppressed attachment towards me, which had begun when Emily and I were friends.
I could not bear what she had done to him could not for one more moment tolerate such base and determined cruelty; and all for the sake of him that conceited, conscienceless upstart, Phoebus Daunt, who was not fit to breathe the same air as your father.
So I persuaded myself that your father had brought his first wife to Paris with the express purpose of finding me again, and of renewing something that had been lost to him. Your mother came to think so, too; but he deceived us both in this, as in everything else. He did not love your mother either although he professed to do so, and although he was always kind and affectionate towards her, except when he was taken by one of his black moods, and then we both suffered. But neither did he did love me.
No. It was always her. It will always be her. And now she is dead.
II
Acceptance
I COULD NOT leave Madame alone, in the state of bodily and mental distress in which I had found her; and so, having no immediate reason to return to England until my affairs demanded, I sat down the next morning to write to Mr Wraxall, saying that I intended to remain in Paris until he should send for me. His reply assured me that he would now devote himself to the advancement of the legal proceedings, which, he was confident, having taken provisional advice from several eminent colleagues, could be brought to a successful conclusion as speedily as the workings of the law allowed.
The succeeding days passed quietly, as Madame and I continued to speak of these formerly hidden things. Something of our former intimacy began to return; but it soon became evident that the doctor had been right.
With alarming rapidity, my guardian entered into a terminal decline. I sat beside her bed, morning and afternoon, and often through the night, reading to her, or watching over her in sleep, as she had done for me as a child. I brushed her hair, bathed her face, plumped her pillows, and stroked her wasted hands when she grew restive, or cried out in her sleep. But with every day that passed, she withdrew into some silent and distant world, beyond the reach of all my loving ministrations.
Only once, a few days before the end, did she briefly emerge from her increasingly comatose state, to ask me to take off the little silver crucifix that she wore about her neck.
I wish you to have this, dear child, she whispered, so quietly that I had to place my ear close to her cracked lips and ask her to repeat the words. Then, just before slipping back into sleep, she asked: Am I forgiven, dear child?
Yes, I whispered back. You are forgiven.
SHE DIED DURING the third week of June, as s
wallows wheeled dizzily in a cloudless sky above the Bois de Boulogne.
I had left her side, just for a moment, having passed the long night watching over her, to open the window and let in the heavenly summer air. When I turned back towards the bed, I knew that she had gone.
An era of my life ended that day. I now stood truly alone in the world for the first time, on the brink of a new and strange existence.
Alone? Yes. Although I was no longer the orphan I had always believed myself to be, having now discovered that I had a father who lived, I felt no change in my condition. He was as dead and insubstantial to me now as the mythical Edwin Gorst had once been. What other family did I have, now that Madame, my second mother, had been taken from me?
Marie-Madeleine de lOrme, née Buisson, was buried in the Pčre Lachaise Cemetery. In her will, she left me the house in the Avenue dUhrich, together with a substantial sum of money, the remainder of her considerable fortune, inherited from her first husband, being apportioned amongst various charitable concerns in which she had taken an interest, and the two ever-loyal servants, Jean Dutout, and Marie Simon, who, it now appeared, had always known of her secret marriage to my father. To him, she bequeathed nothing.
She also left me a photograph a self-portrait of my father, taken by him in the year 1853.
His face, of course, was completely familiar to me, for behind the magnificent beard and moustache, it was Mr Thornhaughs long and lean, with a dark complexion; swept-back black hair worn almost to the shoulders, and thinning slightly at the temples; large dark eyes, just as my mother had described in her journal.
I have it still, and take it out sometimes, when I wish to remind myself that I once had a father.
BEFORE LEAVING THE Avenue dUhrich, I went to the authorities, and in due course the coffin of Edwin Gorst was raised and disposed of. I then had my mothers coffin removed to a new location, open and sunny, away from the constant shadows under which she had lain for so long. I also commissioned a new, upright, headstone to be made, carrying an inscription in English: