The Meaning of Night

by Michael Cox

  But the new incumbent of Millhead Vicarage was determined to work hard for his Northern flock; and certainly it could not be denied that in this, his first, ministry he performed his duties with unswerving diligence. He became especially celebrated in the district for his well-prepared sermons, delivered with intellectual passion and dramatic power, which soon began to draw large congregations to St Symphorian’s of a Sunday.

  In appearance, he matched the heroic Christian name that his parents had seen fit to bestow upon him: a tall and confident figure, broad-shouldered, deep-voiced, bearded like a prophet. As he tramped the wet and dirty streets of Millhead, he exuded an intimidating air of conscious merit. To the world at large, he seemed a rock and a rampart, a citadel against which nothing could prevail. Yet, by degrees, he began to find that great things were not easy to accomplish in this place of toil, where kindred spirits were few. His work amongst the working poor of the town began to depress him more than he felt it ought to have done; nor did preferment and removal from Millhead come quickly, as he had hoped it would. In short, Dr Daunt became something of a disappointed man.

  The imminent birth of his first child did a little to lift his spirits; but, alas, the arrival in the world of baby Phoebus brought tragedy in its wake. Within three days of presenting Dr Daunt with his son and heir, his pretty little wife was dead, and he was left alone, save for the perpetually howling infant, in the dreary house on the hill, with no prospect that he could see of ever being able to leave.

  The extremity of his grief brought him to the brink of despair. Great silences descended on the house when, for days on end, the Vicar would shun all human contact. During this black period, solicitous friends from their little circle came to offer succour to him in his bewilderment. Amongst the most attentive was Miss Caroline Petrie, one of those who had sat admiringly before Dr Daunt’s pulpit at St Symphorian’s. Gradually, Miss Petrie became established as the chief agent of the Vicar’s recuperation; she concluded matters most satisfactorily by becoming the second Mrs Daunt in the autumn of 1821.

  Of the transition from a state of spiritual and mental annihilation to another of restituted faith and confidence, Dr Daunt never spoke; one can only guess at the compromises that he had to make with both soul and conscience. But make them he did, with some advantage to himself, and grave disadvantage to me.

  The formidable Miss Caroline Petrie, who brought with her to Millhead Vicarage a small but welcome annuity, was as different from the first Mrs Daunt as could be. Despite her years, she exhibited a well-matured strength of mind at every point. Her bearing was what one would naturally call regal, conveying a dignity of form and expression that immediately commanded attention in both high and low. Partly this was due to her unusual height (she was fully a head taller even than Dr Daunt, and had the advantage of literally looking down upon practically everyone to whom she spoke); partly it arose from her striking physiognomy.

  At this time she was four-and-twenty, and had been living quietly with her uncle, both her parents having died together in an accident some time before. She was no beauty in the conventional sense, as the first Mrs Daunt had been, the impression created by her features being rather of tribulation vanquished. Indeed, she carried the visible signature of suffering overcome in the disfiguring etchings of smallpox.

  Yet any poet worth his laurels, or painter hungry for inspiration, would have flown instantly into a fine frenzy at first sight of that imperious face. It seemed always set in an austere intensity of expression, as though she had at that very moment looked up from the absorbed perusal of some improving work of irresistible interest – though such works were in fact largely unknown to her. But there was a mitigating softness, too, a yielding about the mouth and eyes that, as one became aware of it, transposed the whole effect of her countenance from the minor to the major key. Besides which she had spirit, the most charming manners when she wished, and blunt good sense. Furthermore, she had ambition, as events were soon to show.

  With the money she brought to the marriage, a nurse – Mrs Tackley by name – was employed to watch over the infant Phoebus, which she did most capably until the boy was two years old, when his step-mamma assumed full responsibility for his upbringing and welfare. As a consequence, the boy’s character grew to resemble hers in many points, particularly with regard to her worldly outlook, which stood in distinct contrast to the longing of her husband to take up the life of the cloistered scholar once again. It was extraordinary how close they became, and how often Dr Daunt would encounter them locked closely together in conversation, like two conspirators. Though the Vicar was still, of course, responsible for the boy’s formal education, in all other respects it seemed that his second wife had taken over from him as the dominant influence on his son’s life; and even here, in the study, his authority was frequently undermined. The boy generally applied himself well to his lessons; but if he wished at any time to go and ride his pony, or fish in the stream at the bottom of the garden, instead of getting declensions into his head, then he only had to appeal to his step-mamma and he would be instantly released from his labours. On other occasions, too, the Vicar would find his wishes thwarted, and his orders countermanded. One day, he required the boy to accompany him to one of the worst parts of the town, where utter poverty and hopelessness were starkly manifest on every corner, feeling no doubt that the experience would be useful in awakening in his son some compassion for the plight of those so much less fortunate than himself. But they were intercepted at the front door by his furious wife, who proclaimed that under no circumstances was dear Phoebus to be exposed to such disgusting and dangerous sights. The Vicar protested; but argument was useless. He went down into the town alone, and never again attempted to take his son with him. From these and other instances of the second Mrs Daunt’s ascendancy, it is impossible not to conclude that, gradually, and by means that he was unable to resist, Dr Daunt’s son was being taken away from him.

  By an evil chance, or, as I once believed, as a consequence of that fatality which had shaped my history, the Vicar’s wife was the second cousin of Julius Verney Duport, 25th Baron Tansor, of Evenwood Park in the County of Northamptonshire – whose first wife has already been briefly mentioned in connexion with my mother. Several comfortable livings in Northamptonshire lay in the gift of Mrs Daunt’s noble relative, and that of Evenwood itself fell vacant in the early summer of 1830. On learning of this, with fire in her eyes, Mrs Daunt instantly flew south to press her new husband’s claims with his Lordship.

  Already, however, something more than wifely duty appears to have been animating this redoubtable lady. Accounts concur that she had often expressed a wish to remove herself and her husband – and particularly her dear boy, Phoebus – from Millhead, which she detested; and it was doubtless kind of her to offer to lay Dr Daunt’s abilities before Lord Tansor. Her husband, I am sure, was touched by his wife’s selfless alacrity in this matter. I suspect, however, that selflessness was not her guiding principle, and that in rushing south, with such demonstrable urgency, she was in fact obeying the urgings of her own ambitious heart. For if her suit was successful, she would no longer be a distant and forgotten relation existing in the outer darkness of Millhead; she would instead be counted amongst the Duports of Evenwood – and who knew where that might lead?

  I have no records of the meeting between Mrs Daunt and Lord Tansor; but, from Mrs Daunt’s point of view, it must have been accounted a success. An invitation to join her was speedily sent back to Dr Daunt in the North; the boy Phoebus was packed off to relations in Suffolk; and the outcome was that Dr and Mrs Daunt returned together from Northamptonshire two weeks later in high spirits.

  There followed an anxious wait; but Lord Tansor did not disappoint. Barely another fortnight had passed before a letter – tremendous in its condescension – arrived, confirming Dr Daunt as the new Rector of St Michael and All Angels, Evenwood.

  According to one of my informants, on the day after his return from his Suffolk r
elations, the boy Phoebus was called before his step-mother. Sitting in a small button-backed chair set in front of the drawing-room window – that same chair in which the first Mrs Daunt had often sat, looking forlornly out across the remnant of moor that lay between the Vicarage and the encroaching town – she was heard to impress upon the boy the significance of his father’s translation to Evenwood, and what it would mean for them all. I am told that she addressed him in deep melodious tones as her ‘dear child’, and tenderly stroked his hair.

  Then she told him something of their relations and patrons, Lord and Lady Tansor; how great was their standing in the county, and in the country at large; how they also had a grand house in London, which he might see in due course if he was very good; and how he was to call them Uncle and Aunt Tansor.

  ‘You know, don’t you, that your Uncle Tansor does not have a little boy of his own any more,’ she said, taking his hand and walking him to the window. ‘If you are very good, as I know you will be, I am sure your uncle will be especially kind to you, for he misses having a son dreadfully, you know, and it would be such a considerate thing if you were to pretend sometimes to be his very own boy. Could you do that, Phoebus dear? You will always be your papa’s boy, of course – and mine, too. It is only a sort of game, you know. But think what it would mean to poor Uncle Tansor, who has no son of his own, as your papa does, to have you constantly by him, and to be able to show you things, and perhaps take you to places. You would like that, wouldn’t you? To be taken to nice places?’

  And the boy, of course, said that he would. And then she told him of all the wonders of Evenwood.

  ‘Are there chimneys at Evenwood?’ the boy asked.

  ‘Why, yes, my dear, but they are not like Millhead chimneys, all dirty and horrid.’

  ‘And is my Uncle Tansor a very great man?’

  ‘Yes indeed,’ she said reflectively, looking out across the black valley, ‘a very great man.’

  At the appointed time, the family’s belongings and household goods were despatched south, and the Vicarage at last stood shuttered and empty. As the fly rattled away from the gloomy windswept house, I picture Dr Daunt leaning back against the seat, closing his eyes, and offering up a silent prayer of thanks to his God. His deliverance had come at last.

  *[‘Pray and labour’ (St Benedict). Ed.]

  10

  In Arcadia*

  Thus came the Daunt family to Evenwood, the place on which all my hopes and ambitions once rested.

  His new situation suited Dr Daunt completely. With four hundred pounds a year from his stipend, and another hundred from his glebe lands, he was now able to keep a carriage and a good table, and generally assume a position of some consequence in the neighbourhood. No longer beset by the adversities of his Millhead living, Dr Daunt lay becalmed and contented in the sunlit harbour of Evenwood.

  Light and spacious, the Rectory – a former prebendal manor-house – was set amidst well-tended gardens, beyond which was a sweet prospect of sloping meadows and, across the river, the inviting darkness of close-set woodland. Much of the Rector’s work – such as it was in this small and prosperous country parish – could be easily delegated to his curate, Mr Samuel Tidy, a fidgety young man who stood deeply in awe of Dr Daunt (and even more of his wife). Lord Tansor laid infrequent demands on his Rector, and those few duties required of him were painlessly fulfilled. Soon the Rector found himself with ample time, and more than sufficient income, to pursue at his leisure those intellectual and antiquarian interests to which he had clung so desperately at Millhead, and he saw no reason why he should not do so.

  It was not long before his wife set to work forging as close a bond as possible between the Rectory and the great house. Her kinship with the Duport family undoubtedly gave her a degree of privilege, which she adroitly used to her advantage. To Lord Tansor, she quickly made herself indispensable, much as she had done to her husband after the death of his first wife. Nothing was too much trouble. She would not hear of his Lordship being incommoded in any way whatsoever, no matter how small the circumstance. Naturally, she did not undertake any menial tasks herself, displaying instead a winning ability to get them done by other people. She soon became possessed of a thorough knowledge of the house’s domestic arrangements, and began to exert a degree of control over them that was wonderful to behold. She did all this, moreover, without a word of complaint from the below-stairs population, who – to a man and woman, even including Cranshaw, his Lordship’s long-serving butler – deferred to her commands like old campaigners to the orders of a much-loved general. Indeed, she insinuated herself into all the doings of the household with such tact, combined with effortless charm, that no one appeared in the least affronted by what otherwise might have been seen as rank impudence.

  Lord Tansor was delighted by the active deference and domestic assistance of his relative, whom he had barely known before her marriage to the Rector, but whom he now regarded as a signal adornment to the society of Evenwood. Mrs Daunt’s diplomatic skills were also put to work on mild Lady Tansor, who, far from feeling injured or indignant at the former’s swift assumption of dominance in her house, was touchingly grateful to be relieved of duties which, in truth, she was only too glad to relinquish.

  So it was that Dr Daunt and his wife attained to an enviable measure of prosperity and eminence in the country round about Evenwood. It would surely have been forgivable if Mrs Daunt, surveying her work, privately allowed herself the merest smile of satisfaction. But in accomplishing her ends, she had opened a veritable Pandora’s Box, with consequences that she could not possibly have foreseen.

  I sometimes like to imagine Dr Daunt, for whom I have always had a sincere regard, coming into his study of a morning – say a bright August morning in the year 1830 – and throwing open the windows to a nascent and glittering world, in a conscious gesture of satisfaction at his lot.

  Observe him now, on this imagined morning. It is early, the sun new risen, and not even the servants yet about. The Rector is in high good humour, and hums a merry tune quietly to himself as the sweet cool air flows gently in from the garden. He turns from the window, and looks about him with pleasure and pride.

  As I have seen for myself, his books are arranged methodically from floor to ceiling on every wall; uniform note-books (carefully categorized and labelled) and papers (sorted and docketed) are stacked neatly to hand, together with a plentiful supply of writing materials, upon a large square table, on which also stands a seasonal posy, renewed daily by his wife. All is order, comfort, and convenience – exactly as he likes it.

  He stands by his desk, affectionately surveying his library. In an alcove on the far wall are the works of the Church Fathers – his eye picks out the familiar presence of his Eusebius, St Ambrose (a particularly choice edition: Paris, 1586), Irenaeus, Tertullian, and St John Chrysostom. By the door, in an ornate case, are his biblical commentaries, the writings of the Continental reformers, and a cherished edition of the Antwerp Polyglot, whilst on either side of the fireplace are ranged the Classical authors that are his enduring passion.

  But this is no ordinary morning. It is, in every sense, a new dawn; for a task now lies before him which, God willing, may vindicate at last his decision to quit the University.

  Late the previous afternoon, a message had come from Lord Tansor asking whether the Rector would be good enough to step up to the house as soon as was convenient. It was, as it happened, rather inconvenient just then, for Dr Daunt had earlier ridden into Peterborough on business and, on the way back, had been forced to walk the final four miles when his horse had lost a shoe. He had arrived at the Rectory hot, uncomfortable, and ill tempered, and had barely had time to remove his boots when Lord Tansor’s man knocked at the front door. But no request from the great house could easily be refused – least of all because of sore feet and an unbecoming sweat.

  He was admitted to the house, and conducted through a succession of formal reception rooms, towards the terrace that runs
the length of the West Front. Here he found his Lordship seated in a wicker chair in the purple evening light, his spaniel by his side. He was smoking a cigar, and contemplating the sun setting over Molesey Woods, which marked the boundary of his property on its western side.

  A word or two concerning Dr Daunt’s patron. In person, he was of no more than middling height; but he carried himself like a guardsman, his ramrod back making him seem far taller than he really was. His world was circumscribed by his principal seat, Evenwood, his town-house in Park-lane, the Carlton Club, and the House of Peers. He rarely travelled abroad. His acquaintances were many, his friends few.

  One did not trifle with his Lordship. It took very little for him to suspect presumption. The only thing to do with Lord Tansor was to defer to him. On that simple principle was the world of Evenwood, and all its dominions, maintained. The inheritor of an immense fortune, which he had already significantly augmented, he was a naturally accomplished politician, with influence at the highest levels. When the Duport interest demanded action, his Lordship had only to whisper quietly in the ear of Government, and it was done. By nature he was an implacable opponent of reform in every sphere; but he knew – none better – that publicly articulated principles, of whatever complexion, can gravely incommode the man of affairs; and thus he was careful so to frame his views as to remain always at the pivot of power. His opinion was sought by men from all sides. It was of no consequence who was in, and who was out: his sagacity was valued by all. Lord Tansor, in a word, mattered.