The Meaning of Night

by Michael Cox

  He leaned on me as we walked slowly down a winding gravel path towards the house, still deep in conversation as we went.

  ‘One thing has never been clear to me,’ I said, as we made our way through a tunnel of pale roses. ‘It is the thing on which all else hangs, and yet my foster-mother’s journals, and Mr Carteret’s Deposition, are silent on the matter.’

  ‘You refer, I suspect,’ replied Mr Tredgold, ‘to the reason for Lady Tansor’s embarking on her extraordinary action.’

  ‘Why, yes. That is it exactly. What could possibly have driven a woman of Lady Tansor’s station to abandon her child, born in legitimate wedlock, to the care of another?’

  ‘It was quite simple. She denied her husband the one thing he craved above all others because he had denied her something which, to her, was equally paramount. Quid pro quo. There you have it, in a nutshell.’

  He saw my puzzled expression and proceeded to elaborate.

  ‘It all came from Lord Tansor’s treatment of her father. Miss Fairmile, as she was before her marriage, was exceedingly beautiful, and of an old and decent West Country family. But they were not the Duports, or anything like them, with respect to wealth and position. She met Lord Tansor in London, soon after his Lordship had succeeded to the Barony; it was not in his nature to play the gallant, but something about Laura Fairmile inspired him to pay court to her, despite his rather low opinion of her family. Many men more handsome than Lord Tansor had found themselves in a tangle over Miss Fairmile, though none could pretend to offer her what he could. It appears, strange as it may seem, that he harboured real affection for her; though it is also the case that, ever mindful of his public position, even at that age, he also wished to provide himself with an agreeable wife and companion to accompany him tamely through life, and provide him with the heir that he so desired.

  ‘He proposed; he was accepted. No one blamed her. The inequalities – their temperaments, their respective positions in Society – seemed of slight account compared to the advantages that both secured by the match. Her Ladyship quickly became the perfect adornment to her husband’s person. Oh Edward, if you could have seen her, riding by her husband’s side in Rotten-row, clad in her riding-habit of bright-green silk and violet velvet, topped by a jaunty hat with swaying plumes! She never failed to please him, she supported him in every way; and she was widely liked and admired in Society, which duly reflected back on him.

  ‘However, there was a worm in the bud. Their characters and temperaments soon proved to be fatally at odds. His Lordship was cold and detached, whereas his wife would light up a room with her bustle and laughter; he kept his counsel, she gossiped without compunction; he was respected, sometimes feared, but not widely liked, whilst she was admired by all; he lived for politics and business, and the increasing of his inheritance, whilst she loved quiet pleasures and the company of friends, and valued above all the deep affection that existed between herself and her family – especially her father. In the course of quite a short time, these differences became exaggerated and entrenched, so that when disagreements occurred, truces became impossible. The attachment that had sustained their union in the early months began to wither away, to be replaced by mere civility in company, and frozen silence in private.

  ‘Then matters came to a head. I have said that the Fairmiles were an old and respectable family, but they were almost bankrupt. In marrying Lord Tansor, Miss Fairmile had believed that an end would be made to her father’s desperate financial state, reasoning that, by her union with Lord Tansor, the Fairmiles would be welcomed into the wider dynastic embrace of the Duports. But she was soon disappointed. Instead of paying off Sir Robert’s debts, as she had expected, Lord Tansor simply bought out the mortgages on his father-in-law’s house and grounds at Church Langton, and set the premiums at a lower level than before; but when Sir Robert was unable to honour even these reduced payments, his Lordship took the only course of action a man of business can take, and duly foreclosed on the loan. Lady Tansor was outraged; she cajoled, she pleaded, she threatened to leave, she wheedled – all to no avail. His Lordship could make no exception to the inviolable principles that governed his business dealings. Sir Robert had defaulted. Lord Tansor’s firm principle in such cases was to foreclose. He pointed out that he had already been generous in allowing his father-in-law a year to put his affairs in order, something that he would not ordinarily have contemplated. But an end must be made. The loan must be called in.

  ‘The business finished Sir Robert, who was forced to sell the house in which he had been born, along with the last small holdings of land he had retained, and move to cramped accommodation in Taunton, leaving nothing to pass onto his only son. The old man died not long afterwards, a broken and bitter man.

  ‘Her Ladyship, as I have indicated, adored her father. She had behaved in all things just as her husband had wished; now she had asked him to make this one exception to his rules of business, and he had refused her. She felt powerless, and trapped by the inequality of her position. However, soon afterwards, she discovered that she was with child; and this, in the extremity of her grief and rage, gave her a weapon that she could not resist using against her husband. She therefore resolved, first, to keep Lord Tansor in ignorance of her condition, and then, to compound her revenge in the most terrible fashion: to conspire with her closest friend that the latter should bring the child up as her own.’

  I objected that the punishment still appeared out of all proportion to the crime.

  ‘Well, you may think so,’ Mr Tredgold replied. ‘But when a passionate nature is thwarted in its desires, the consequences can be extreme. Lady Tansor had asked this one thing of her husband. It would have been a small concession to marital harmony, for a man of his wealth, to have written off the debt, for his wife’s sake. But he would not do this for her – he would not even consider it, and he managed only a conventional show of remorse when Sir Robert Fairmile died. That, perhaps, was the final straw.’

  At the foot of a short flight of steps, we stopped for a moment to allow Mr Tredgold to catch his breath.

  ‘So it was simple revenge then?’ I asked.

  ‘Revenge? Yes, but not simple. On her marriage, Lady Tansor had suppressed what might be described as somewhat Jacobinical views, for the sake of her family. She told me this herself, adding that she wished her child to escape what she called the curse of inherited wealth and privilege, which had trampled so implacably on the claims of common human feeling and family connexion. It was a fanciful notion, no doubt, but it was real enough to her, who had seen her adored father hurried to his grave by the holder of one of the most ancient peerages in England, and for no other reason than the maintenance of his public position. She told me that she did not wish her child to become like his father – and who can deny that she succeeded? Yet a beneficial outcome in that respect is no justification for what she did, and what I helped her to do. She knew that she had done wrong, but it was not in her nature to undo it, though she tried to make amends to her husband in the only way she could – by subsequently giving him the heir that he so desired. But, alas, he, too, was to be taken from him, as you know.’

  It seemed curious to me that the more I learned of Lady Tansor, the less I understood her. How unlike her quiet, dutiful friend, Simona Glyver, she had been! I reflected also that she had punished me, as well as her husband, by exiling me – through no fault of mine – from the life to which I had been born. Mr Tredgold had loved her, and was naturally minded to see her actions in a considerate light, judicially weighing them against the provocation that she had received. But though I yearned to be acknowledged as Lady Tansor’s son in name and position, I felt a kind of grim relief that I had been brought up by another, and that I would never now have to discover whether I loved my true mother as I had loved her friend.

  As I was helping Mr Tredgold up the steps into the house, he asked me whether I was still in love with Miss Carteret.

  ‘Yes,’ I smiled, ‘and likely to be
for all eternity.’ And then I told him of our walk in Hyde-park, and how we had each declared our love for one another.

  ‘And have you told her the truth about yourself? Ah, I see by your hesitation that you have not. How, then, can you be sure that she loves you, when she is ignorant even of your real name?’

  ‘She loves me for myself,’ I replied, ‘not for my real name, or for what I may become if I succeed in my task, because she is ignorant of both; and that is why I am now prepared to tell her everything.’

  ‘I do not know the lady well,’ said Mr Tredgold as we entered the house, ‘but that she is beautiful and clever is undeniable. And if she loves you as you love her, then she will be a prize indeed. Yet I would counsel you to take care before placing the truth in another’s hands. Forgive me. I am a lawyer, and cannot help myself from picturing the worst. Caution comes naturally to me.’

  He was smiling broadly, but his eyes were serious.

  ‘I am sensible, sir, that you only have my best interests at heart. But recklessness, as you well know, is not in my nature; I only proceed on a matter when I am completely sure of the outcome.’

  ‘And you are sure of Miss Carteret’s love, and that you trust her absolutely?’

  ‘I am.’

  ‘Well, I have done my lawyer’s duty. You will not be turned from the course you are set upon, that is clear; and I have no arguments powerful enough to persuade a man in love to be prudent – God knows I have committed follies enough myself in love’s name. So there it is. You will write as soon as you can, I’m sure. Go, then, with my blessing, and may you bring back the truth, for it has been hidden for too long.’

  I left him at the foot of the stair-case in the gloomy hall, grasping the banister with one hand as he weakly waved me good-bye with the other. I never saw him again.

  My darling girl had promised to write from Evenwood, once she had settled herself in her new apartments; but a week went by, and then another, and still no word came. At last, I could stand it no longer and sent off a brief note, enquiring whether all was well, and suggesting that I might travel up to Northamptonshire the following week. I was sure that a reply would come by return, but was again disappointed. Finally, almost a week after sending my note, I received a communication.MY LOVE, —Bless you for your sweet note, which has been sent on to me here in Shrewsbury.How horrid you must have thought me! But, dearest, I wrote to you, two weeks since, to tell you that I have been travelling with Lord and Lady Tansor in Wales whilst work is being carried out at Evenwood – his Lordship has taken it into his head to have hot-water pipes installed, with consequences that you may easily imagine to one’s peace and comfort. The dust and noise are not to be spoken of. Where my letter has gone, telling you all this, I cannot imagine, but the ways are wild hereabouts, and so I suppose it was simply lost or dropped somewhere. We shall be away for some time – the work will not be completed for another month at least, and after we leave here we shall be going to some dreary place in Yorkshire, belonging to Lady Tansor’s brother. How I wish I could escape! But I am a captive, and must go where my master bids, seeing that I am now entirely dependent on him for the provision of a roof over my head; and then, you know, he really seems to take pleasure in my company (Lady T is so dreadfully tiresome – never says a word, or smiles), and so I really have no choice, and must do what I can to master my feelings. They are constantly fixed on a certain person, whose identity I’m sure I need not reveal! I yearn to be free of my duties and to feel myself again in the arms of the man I love above all others, and whom I will always love, world without end.I shall send word as soon I know when we are to return to Evenwood.Ever yours,E.

  A month at least! But it could be borne. I kissed the words she had written: ‘I yearn to be free of my duties and to feel myself again in the arms of the man I love above all others, and whom I will always love, world without end.’

  How I passed the interminable weeks, I need not recount in detail. I resumed some of my former studies – reacquainting myself with some of the more abstruse Greek philosophers, continuing my study of hermeticism, and pursuing my bibliographical passions. From Mr Nutt’s shop in the Strand,* I had purchased a copy of Dr Daunt’s catalogue, the Bibliotheca Duportiana, and spent several hours a day lost in enraptured perusal of its contents. What a keen and unfailing pleasure it was to contemplate my eventual possession of each item, as I gorged on the Rector’s meticulous descriptions. Sometimes, at night, I would venture out to quell my always restless demons, but with diminishing returns of satisfaction, until soon I became quite a hermit, content with purely intellectual pleasures, save for an occasional dinner with Le Grice at the Ship and Turtle.

  A letter from my dear girl arrived in the first week of August, and then another a few weeks later from Lincolnshire, whither the Tansors had decamped at the invitation of the Earl of Newark. She was all sweetness, full of anguished regret that circumstances had sundered her from the man she loved above all others; and my heart overflowed to know that she was mine. ‘If I had wings,’ she wrote in her second letter, ‘I would fly with the speed of angels to be with my dearest love, if only for the briefest moment.’

  At last the great house at Evenwood was ready to receive its noble owner once more, and in the second week of September I received a note to say that Miss Carteret would be pleased to see me in Northamptonshire at any time that I might care to propose.

  On my arrival, I was shown up to the first floor and entered a long, low apartment above the Library, the chief feature of which was a series of four ancient arched windows that looked down on the terrace below. I stood for a moment, gripped by the thought that my mother, Lady Tansor, had once occupied these very rooms. At the far end, a door stood ajar, allowing a partial view of an elaborately carved bed – that same bed in which my poor misguided parent had been laid, mad with grief and remorse, by John Brine’s father, and from which she never again rose. Through this door my dearest girl now swept, ran towards me, and threw her arms around me in a passionate embrace. Many tender words were exchanged, after which we sat together on a seat in one of the arched windows, from where we could see the Park stretching out beyond the formal gardens to the Temple of the Winds, the Lake, and the distant woods.

  ‘Three long months! How I have missed you!’ I cried, kissing her hand feverishly.

  ‘To be parted from the one you love is the greatest of torments,’ she said. ‘I never thought I would suffer so. But there is an end to all suffering. My love is here with me once more, and I am the happiest woman alive. Dearest, will you excuse me for a moment?’ Whereupon she returned to the adjoining bedchamber and closed the door. I waited, feeling a little foolish and embarrassed, for several minutes until she returned, her face a little flushed, with a book in her hand.

  ‘I have brought you a present,’ she said, handing me the book.

  It was a copy of Gildon’s edition of Shakespeare’s poems.*

  ‘My thoughts have been ever on love during my exile,’ she said, ‘and this little volume has been my constant solace. Now when we are apart, you may read it and be comforted too, knowing that my tears are on every page. I have underlined those passages that gave me especial comfort. Now tell me what you have been doing since we last met.’

  And so we continued to talk until the light began to fade, and my dear girl said that she must call her maid to begin dressing for dinner.

  ‘I regret that I cannot invite you to join us,’ she said as we walked towards the door, ‘but you understand that I am Lord Tansor’s guest now.’

  ‘Of course,’ I replied. ‘But when may I come again?’

  ‘Tomorrow,’ she said. ‘Come tomorrow.’

  As I was descending the stairs to the vestibule, I came upon Lizzie Brine. As she was with another servant, she made no attempt to speak to me but only gave a little bob, along with her companion, and went on her way. But when I reached the bottom of the stair-case and looked back, I saw her standing at the top, with a curious anxious look on he
r face that I found impossible to interpret.

  I returned to the Duport Arms in Easton, though I remember nothing of the walk back, nor what I ate for dinner, nor how I occupied myself that evening.

  The next afternoon, I returned to Evenwood as arranged, though this time, at my dear girl’s suggestion, I made my own way up to her apartments by a little winding stair-case, which was gained through a door leading off the path that ran from the Library Terrace round the base of Hamnet’s Tower. Once again we sat together in the window-seat, talking and laughing until a servant brought in candles.

  ‘Sir Hyde Teasedale and his simpering daughter are dining tonight,’ she sighed. ‘She is such a ninny, and her new husband is no better. I declare that I have no idea what I shall say to either of them. But, Lady Tansor being so singularly defective as a hostess, I seem to have been given the honour of entertaining her husband’s guests, and so I must away to do my Lord’s bidding. Oh Edward, if only I was not so beholden to Lord Tansor! It makes me so miserable to think that I must spend my life at his beck and call. And then what will happen to me when he dies? I was not born for this, but what can I do? Now that my father has gone, I have no one.’

  She bowed her head as she said the words, and I felt my heart beat a little faster. Now is the time. Now. Tell her now.

  ‘My darling,’ I said, stroking her hair. ‘Put all your concerns aside. This is not your future.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘I am your future, and you are mine.’

  ‘Edward, dearest, you are talking in riddles. Speak plainly, my love.’