The Glass of Time

by Michael Cox

  We are standing, face to face, at the foot of the staircase – in precisely the same spot where we had first met. The portrait of his father as a Turkish Corsair has been removed, on my instructions, to one of the attic rooms. He glances at the space on the wall where it had formerly hung, but says nothing.

  He is as handsome as ever, but in a different way from the Perseus Duport whom I had last seen, on that most dreadful day, when they had brought his mother back from the Evenbrook. His frame is a little heavier; his long hair, of which he had once been so proud, is now worn short and cut closer to his head; whilst the thick black beard, which made him look so like his father, has gone, replaced by a neat wax-ended moustache.

  His demeanour has also undergone a most notable change. Although I had longed to see him again, I had feared, from the tenor of his note to me, to find him still hurt and resentful at what had befallen him, and at my part in it. To my great delight and surprise, however, these fears prove groundless. He seems in no way aggrieved or antagonistic towards me. His manner and voice are calm and conciliatory, his smile warm and unforced. He seems, indeed, to have accepted his changed condition to a quite remarkable and unexpected degree, and to have put behind him for good all the rage and shame that had consumed him following his mother’s death. Most striking of all, his eyes no longer express a nature bound by the constrictions of introspective pride, but shine with sympathetic energy, like those of a man eager to engage with the world at large. They are no longer his mother’s eyes. Their size, shape, and mesmeric quality are as I remember; but now they declare the character of the whole man, the true Perseus Duport, in all his contradictions. For he is no longer obliged to play the role assigned to him from birth by his mother. Like me, he has thrown away the mask that those closest to him made him wear. He now knows the truth about himself, and who he truly is. All this I clearly see in his face, and hear in his voice; and my heart begins to throb with new hope.

  ‘Good-afternoon, your Ladyship.’

  ‘Will you not call me Esperanza, as you used to do?’ I ask.

  ‘Certainly, if your Ladyship will allow it.’

  ’That I shall gladly do – as long as it accords with your own wishes.’

  This little game of shuttlecock and battledore continues good-humouredly, until the ice is well and truly broken. We then collect ourselves and become serious again as we speak of Randolph, whose death, I see plainly, has affected Perseus more deeply than I might once have supposed that it would.

  We continue talking of his poor departed brother as we walk together to the Library, where we stand before one of the soaring windows looking out towards Molesey Woods.

  ‘I misjudged my brother,’ he says. ‘He was a good fellow, through and through – I can acknowledge that now; but I despised him because I thought he did not deserve to bear the noble name that he and I shared. Yet he had more right than me to call himself a Duport.’

  I object that he is being too hard on himself, but he cuts me short.

  ‘No, no. It is the truth. I know now who I am, and what I am, and the name by which I should properly be called.’

  ‘Perhaps you now despise me instead,’ I venture, ‘for taking from you what you always believed was yours by right.’

  He gives me a most tender look.

  ‘Do not say so. How could I ever despise you? I admit that I blamed you once for what has happened to me, but no longer. I know now that you are as blameless as I am, and that you have taken back only what was always rightfully yours. You are a true Duport; I am not. We have both been the unwitting victims of others. All the fault is theirs, not ours.’

  We then speak of his mother, for whom he expresses a most unexpected sympathy. To my inexpressible relief, he also assures me that he holds me in no way responsible for her death, blaming everything on her blind passion for his father, Phoebus Daunt.

  ‘Her will was strong,’ he says, as we walk down the central aisle of the Library towards his grandfather’s former work-room, now Mr Wraxall’s, ‘but my father’s was stronger, even in death. She could never break free from it. She has answered for her sins; but what she did, she did for him. She was his slave to the end.’

  The sun is now beginning to set behind the wooded horizon, filling the great room with its glorious dying rays. I am making some trite observation on the beauty of the prospect when he interrupts me to say that there is a matter that must be settled between us, and settled once and for all.

  His grave look momentarily alarms me, until he gives me another reassuringly tender smile, and explains that it concerns the enmity that existed between our fathers.

  ‘I must forgive your father, as you must forgive mine. Only then can we be free of them. I believe I can do this – indeed, I have done so. Can you do the same?’

  I tell him that I fear we shall never be free of them: their legacy is too great. ‘But I will try to pardon them, if I can, for how can my life ever be my own unless I do? We have both paid a bitter price for their sins.’

  ‘Then let it be so,’ he says. ‘The past shall claim dominion over us no longer. It is time for us both to face the future as ourselves, not as their puppets.’

  The hours pass; darkness falls; and still we go on talking of what has brought us to this point in our lives until there are no more secrets left to tell, and I remark that it is growing late.

  ‘Will you not stay?’ I ask, my heart in my mouth. ‘For tonight at least?’

  HE STAYED FOR a week, then for a second; and so it began. It ended at eleven o’clock on a crisp October morning, in the Church of St Michael and All Angels, Evenwood, when I became the wife of my cousin, Perseus Verney Duport.

  Two months earlier, as we were sitting together one evening on the lamp-lit terrace, in the twilight of a hot August evening, talking of old times in the Palazzo Riccioni, he had reached into his pocket to take out a small box. Inside was the ring that he had given to me on the Ponte Vecchio, and which he had thrown on to the fire when he believed that I had spurned him in favour of his brother.

  ‘I could not leave it there,’ he now admits, taking the ring from its box. ‘It had been yours once, and I wished so very much that it might be yours again. Will you accept it for a second time, as a gift of friendship?’

  I tell him that I will accept it, with all my heart, but only on the same terms as before.

  He shakes his head.

  ‘No, that cannot be. Marriage is impossible. Everyone will think that I want only to regain what I have lost by becoming your husband. You may even think that yourself, and that I could not bear, having no means of proving otherwise.’

  He will not be moved by my objections and assurances, maintaining most stubbornly that we must remain cousins and friends, nothing more. Patiently, persistently, however, I begin to persuade him that the world’s opinion is of no account, and that we alone must now determine the future course of our lives. For my part, I needed no proof of his sincerity; and why should he not share what is now mine, if I so wish it? He continues to resist; but at last, the ring is on my finger again, the question he asked me on the Ponte Vecchio is asked once more, and the same answer is given.

  Thus it was that the son of Phoebus Daunt proposed for a second time to the daughter of his father’s murderer, Edward Glyver, and was accepted by her with a grateful and overflowing heart. To their union, on the 23rd of September 1881, was born a son, Petrus, the precious rock on which all his parents’ hopes for the future of the ancient house of Duport now rest.

  He is on the floor by my feet as I write, contentedly looking at a picture-book – my own childhood copy, in fact, of Straw Peter, with its coloured picture of the Long-legged Scissor Man snipping off the thumbs of the naughty little boy who would not desist from sucking them. He appears to find this as horridly fascinating as I did, and has not taken his eyes off the page for these five minutes past.

  Petrus is three years old now, strong and healthy, already a strikingly handsome child, and very like his father. Sometimes he can be a little wild and wilful, and
then I fear that he may have inherited certain aspects of his character and temperament from one or both of his grandfathers, and that these may prove troublesome in later life without firm correction. Perseus insists that the wildness will pass, and that he will make a fine heir. I hope he may be right.

  MY HUSBAND AND I go on very well, and I am now, I believe, as happy as I shall ever be in this life. He has overcome his former reticence and tells me often that he loves me, and that I am his comfort and joy, as he is assuredly and eternally mine. Indeed, there are not words enough in Mr Walker’s Pronouncing Dictionary, which I still regularly consult, to describe what I feel for Perseus, and what I am certain I shall continue to feel for him, until the day my heart grows tired of beating. Love can corrupt and destroy, distort and betray – this I know from my own bitter experience; but I now also know that, without love, we are nothing.

  We walk and ride, and read together; and I often sit beside him as he plays on the Chapel organ, turning over the pages of the Bach fugues that he performs with such admirable dexterity and feeling. Sometimes, when he is unable to sleep, he will rise and go down to the Chapel to play; and then I will lay listening to the majestic cadences and harmonies rising and falling through the still night air, like God’s own music, until he returns.

  One of my principal pleasures is to help Perseus with his work – reading to him, making fair copies, verifying points of historical fact. His poems, alas, do not sell well, despite his prodigious and relentless industry, and the money paid out to Mr Freeth for their production and promotion; but he looks to posterity to correct the unkind judgments of his contemporaries. It pains me so much to think that he may be disappointed.

  However, he has now discovered a new commercial publishing house – Grendon & Co., Booksellers and Publishers, with premises in the Strand – that is willing to take him on at its own risk. I should rather say that the firm discovered him; for he was approached directly by the principal, Dr Edmund Grendon, who has deeply impressed Perseus with his erudition and taste, and with the informed enthusiasm he has expressed for his work. Although the firm is still a fledgling one, we begin to hope that, with Dr Grendon’s help, the literary success that Perseus so richly deserves, but which has so far eluded him, may be forthcoming at last.

  Dr Grendon has already become greatly valued by Perseus as a friend and adviser, for which I am glad, as he has few other companions. Indeed, this gentleman has begun to exert so marked a fascination on Perseus that I am quite wild to make his acquaintance; but, being somewhat reclusive by nature, as well as being often absent on business, he has so far refused several invitations to visit us at Evenwood, obliging Perseus to make frequent visits to Town, sometimes for a week at a time, to consult with his new friend and mentor.

  Thus we go quietly on, seeing little of the great world of society and its glittering emptiness, devoting ourselves instead to the care of our son and heir, and to preparing him for the day when he will become the head of this great family. Yet a shadow still hangs over us. We can never escape the legacy of what has been, especially here, in this house, where the past saturates the very air we breathe. Try as we may, for the sake of our son, we find that we are unable wholly to break free from the fetters that bind us to our former selves. I do not think we ever will.

  II

  Concerning Sleeping Dogs

  THERE REMAINS ONE final incident to relate, and then I have done.

  A few weeks ago, Charlie Skinner came to me with a message from Mr Wraxall asking whether I would be at liberty to meet him in the Library that afternoon.

  On the table in his work-room lay a handsomely bound folio. It bore the title Historia on the spine, and the Duport arms were blocked on the front.

  ‘What is this?’ I asked.

  ‘Open it,’ said Mr Wraxall, unsmiling for once.

  I did so, and began to leaf through it. It was not a printed book, as I had thought, but a bound manuscript, written on lined paper. It did not take me long to see what it was, and what it contained.

  ‘How did you come by it?’ I asked, closing the book.

  ‘A letter came yesterday. It was signed “A Well-Wisher” – perhaps you may remember that I have previously received a communication from a person using the same nom de plume. Our unknown correspondent revealed where the volume had been concealed for these twenty years and longer. It had been in the Library all the time, under our very noses.’

  I asked him whether he still had the letter.

  He turned to his work-table, opened a drawer, and took out an envelope. Having looked at the direction, I did not have to see the letter’s contents, noting only, with a frisson of alarm, that it had been posted in London.

  ‘It is from him,’ I said, handing back the envelope. ‘I am very familiar with the handwriting of Mr Basil Thornhaugh.’

  ‘Yes, my dear,’ said Mr Wraxall, replacing the letter in the drawer. ‘I believe you are right.’

  He was alive, then, living somewhere in the world, perhaps in England, under some new name, no doubt, beneath the same declining sun that was now throwing shadows over the terrace. I had presumed as much, but my heart lurched at this unequivocal confirmation.

  Mr Wraxall saw my look of apprehension, and placed a reassuring hand on mine.

  ‘Be still, my dear,’ he said. ‘He will not come. His day is done.’

  He stood for a moment or two, his grey eyes bent on me with tender intensity.

  ‘What do you wish me to do with it?’ he then asked, picking up the volume, the contents of which had been brought to England so many years ago by Mr John Lazarus. ‘I spent the whole of last night reading it. It would tell you a great deal that you might wish to know, but perhaps much that you would not.’

  Just then, the sound of the latch on the gate outside the work-room window caused me to look up.

  Perseus, holding little Petrus by the hand, was coming through the archway on to the terrace. They stood together, looking out across the wintry Park. Then Perseus bent down, gathered his son into his arms, and kissed him.

  ‘Put it back,’ I said, in answer to Mr Wraxall’s question. ‘I do not wish to know where, and you must never tell me, or my husband. I shall be ruled by him no longer.’

  Mr Wraxall nodded in agreement. Then he reached into his pocket.

  ‘This was inside,’ he said, passing me a small slip of yellow paper. ‘The gentleman who wrote it would be glad, I’m sure, that you have chosen to take his advice.’

  I took the paper from him and read the few words written on it, in a small, precise hand:

  These papers, delivered to me by Mr John Lazarus, shipping-agent, of Billiter Street, City, and bound together by Mr Riviere, using antique materials, to resemble a folio of the seventeenth century, were covertly placed – on the author’s instructions – in the Library of Evenwood Park, by me, Christopher Martin Tredgold, solicitor, on 30th November 1856, to be found by others, or not, as Fate or chance decided.

  This much I was specifically instructed to say by the author. On my own account, I write only these wise words, to whosoever should read them:

  Quieta non movere. *

  C.M.T.

  ‘Do you remember your Latin?’ asked Mr Wraxall.

  ‘Yes,’ I said. ‘I remember. I shall always remember.’

  FINIS

  Acknowledgements

  This novel was written during a difficult period in my life. I wish specifically to acknowledge the contribution to its completion of the following:

  At A.P. Watt: my agent, Natasha Fairweather; Naomi Leon; Judy-Meg Kennedy; Linda Shaughnessy; and Teresa Nicholls.

  At John Murray: my editor, Roland Philipps; Rowan Yapp; James Spackman; Nikki Barrow; and Caro Westmore.

  At W. W. Norton: my US editor, Jill Bialosky.

  At McClelland & Stewart: my Canadian editor, Ellen Seligman and Lara Hinchberger.

  I acknowledge once again the expert advice of Clive Cheesman – Rouge Dragon Pursuivant – at the College of Arms; and the copy-editing and proof-reading expertise
of Celia Levitt and Nick de Somogyi respectively. Thanks are also due to my assistant Sally Owen for her administrative skills.

  To all the consultants, doctors, and medical staff who have kept me going over the past two years, no words of thanks can ever be adequate. They principally include: Professor Christer Lindquist; Dr Christopher Nutting; Mr Michael Powell; Mr David Roberts; Mr Nigel Davies; Mr Naresh Joshi; Dr Diana Brown; Dr Peter Schofield; Dr Adrian Jones; and Professor John Wass.

  Finally, family and friends. For their love, support, and patience, I mention particularly my wife, Dizzy, on whom I now depend more than ever; our daughter Emily (with apologies again for naming one of my central characters after her) and her partner Kips Davenport; my stepchildren Miranda and Barnaby; our grandchildren – Eleanor, Harry, and Dizzy Junior – and daughter-in-law, Becky; my parents, Gordon and Eileen Cox; my mother-in-law, Joan Crockett; and Jamie, Ruth, Joanna, and Rachel Crockett.

  To all these, and to the many others I have not named who have helped and contributed in their various ways, I am properly and sincerely grateful.

  Michael Cox

  Denford, March 2008

  *Published by Edward Moxon in 1854, the year of Daunt’s death. Like Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s later verse-novel, Aurora Leigh (published 1856), it has a contemporary setting, but its form (as Miss Gorst rightly observes), and its language, are consciously based on the Miltonic epic model. It concerns the heir to a great estate, Sebastian Montclare, who is cheated out of his inheritance by an unscrupulous cousin, Everard Burgoyne. The absurdity of the plot is matched only by the ineptitude of much of the verse, yet the work was popular and well received; even now, some passages retain a certain swaggering grandeur and verve that display a distinct, though wasted, talent.