The Meaning of Night

by Michael Cox

  ‘It happened purely by chance. My father had asked me to assist him in the translation of some letters in French. It was rare for my father to allow anyone into his work-room, except of course Lord Tansor, but on this occasion he made an exception. When I had finished the task, he requested me to take the papers up to the Muniments Room. As I was about to go back down, my eye was caught by an iron-bound chest. It bore a label identifying the contents as the private papers of Lord Tansor’s first wife. Now, I have always been fascinated by Laura Tansor. The most beautiful woman in England, they used to say. And so of course I could not help peeping into the chest. What do you think I pulled out first? A letter, dated the 16th of June 1820, to Lady Tansor in Paris, from a friend – identified only by the initial letter “S” – in the town of Dinan, in Brittany.’

  Her look told me immediately that Fate had placed into her hands the very letter written by my foster-mother to her friend, and excerpted by Mr Carteret in his Deposition, in which it was clearly intimated that Lady Tansor had given birth to a child.

  ‘I did not have time to read the letter in its entirety,’ she continued, ‘for I heard my father’s step on the stairs; but I had read enough to know that it contained an extraordinary possibility. Naturally, I immediately told Phoebus of my little adventure. He tried, several times, to get up to the Muniments Room, but with little success; and this vexed him greatly. By now, you see, he knew that he was to be made Lord Tansor’s heir. If a child had been born legitimately to Lady Tansor – well, I do not need to tell you what Phoebus thought of that.’

  And then she told me how she had kept watch on her father, by offering to assist him further in his work. In this way, she learned that Mr Carteret was planning to remove certain of Lady Tansor’s letters to the bank in Stamford, which he later retrieved in advance of his meeting with me at the George Hotel. Daunt then conceived the plan of using Pluckrose to waylay Mr Carteret on his return to Evenwood from Stamford and take the papers, under the guise of a robbery. A note was sent to the hotel, purporting to be from Lord Tansor and requesting her father to attend his Lordship at the great house. This ensured that he would take the most direct road into the Park from Easton, through the woods on the western side.

  ‘But’, I objected, ‘I was told, quite categorically that Daunt was away on Lord Tansor’s business when I came to meet your father.’

  ‘He was. But he returned a day early, unknown to his family, in order to be here when you arrived. Pluckrose had been watching you – indeed, he was on the same train from London that you took. We knew you had been sent by Mr Tredgold, you see. Phoebus knows everything.’

  ‘And did you know that I was Edward Glyver before I told you?’

  She shook her head.

  ‘Not for certain, though we suspected as much.’

  ‘How?’

  She stood up, walked over to a cabinet on the far wall, and took out a book.

  ‘This is yours, is it not?’

  It was my copy of Donne’s Devotions, which I had been reading the night before Mr Carteret’s funeral.

  ‘It was given to Mrs Daunt by Luke Groves – the waiter at the Duport Arms in Easton. Groves thought it must be yours – it had fallen down behind the bed in your room – though it had another’s name inscribed in it. Of course, the name – Edward Glyver – was very familiar to Phoebus. Very familiar indeed. There might be a simple explanation – the book might have come to you quite coincidentally in a number of ways. But Phoebus distrusts coincidence. He says that there is a reason for everything. So our guard was up from that moment.’

  ‘Well,’ I said, ‘it seems that I have been very nicely skewered. I congratulate you both.’

  ‘I warned you, when we first met, not to underestimate Phoebus; and then I warned you again. But you would not listen. You thought you could outwit him; but you can’t. He knows all about you – everything. He is the cleverest man I know. No one will ever get the better of him.’ She gave me an arch smile. ‘Don’t you wonder that I’m not afraid of you?’

  ‘I will not harm you.’

  ‘No, I don’t believe you will. Because you love me still, don’t you?’ I did not answer. I had nothing left to say to her. She continued to speak, but I was barely listening. Somewhere, a half-formed thought was beginning to crawl out of the darkness into which my mind had been plunged. It grew stronger and more distinct, until at last it filled my mind to overflowing, and I could think of nothing else.

  ‘Edward! Edward!’

  Slowly I focused my attention on her; but I felt nothing. Yet one question remained.

  ‘Why did you do this? Once my identity had been proved, I could have offered you everything Daunt could give you – and more.’

  ‘Dear Edward! Have you not been listening? I love him! I love him!’

  I had no reply to make; for I, too, knew what it was to love. I would have gone to the flames for her, suffered any torment for her sweet sake. How, then, could I blame her, bitter though her betrayal was, for doing these things, when she did them for love?

  In a daze, I reached for my hat. She said nothing, but watched closely as I picked up my volume of Donne and walked to the door. As I was unlocking it, my eye was caught by an open box of cigars on a nearby table. With cold satisfaction, I noted the maker’s name: Ramón Allones.

  Opening the door, I walked out into the corridor.

  I did not look back.

  I remember little of the journey home, only tumbled impressions of stone towers and stars and waving trees, and the sound of water, and of walking up a long dark hill; and then of a cold journey to Peterborough, followed by lights and noise and interrupted dreams; of emerging at last into the roar and smoke of London, and of finally dragging myself up the stairs to my rooms.

  I passed a fearful night contemplating the ruin of my great project. The gates of Paradise had been closed upon me, and would never be opened again. I had been played with infinite skill, until the hook had pierced my gullet; and now I must live out my life drained of all hope, tormented night and day by the loss of my true self, and of her – so beautiful, so treacherous! – whom I would love to my last breath. I have been betrayed, too, it seems, by the Iron Master. Another place has been prepared for me – not Evenwood, the dream-palace of my childhood fancies, but some modest dwelling amongst other modest dwellings, where I shall live and die, unnoticed and unremembered, in perpetual exile from the life that should have been mine.

  But I shall not die unavenged.

  *[‘The day of wrath’. Ed.]

  44

  Dictum, factum*

  For a week after returning from Evenwood I confined myself to my rooms, eating little, and sleeping less.

  A note came from Le Grice proposing supper, but I pleaded indisposition; another arrived from Bella, asking why I had not called at Blithe Lodge for so long, to which I replied that I had been out of town on urgent business for Mr Tredgold but would call the following week. When Mrs Grainger came to sweep my floor and clean the grate, I told her that I had no need of her, gave her ten shillings, and asked her to go home. I had no desire to see another human face, and no wish to do anything but reflect over and over again on my ruination, and the means by which it had been accomplished. After so much labour, to have lost everything so easily! The deceiver well and truly deceived! And then, whenever I closed my eyes, night or day, I experienced a recurring vision of her room at Evenwood just as it had been on the day of my betrayal, and of her face pressed against the window-pane, and the look she wore as she had traced the letters of his name on the glass. Where was she now? What was she doing? Was he with her – kissing her, whispering into her ear, making her sigh with delight? Were they congratulating themselves once again on their triumph? Thus I added my own exquisite torments to those I was already suffering.

  On the seventh day, as I was sitting in my arm-chair, idly examining the rosewood box in which my mother had hidden the documents that would have undone the wrong she did to me, I looked ab
out me and saw what I had come to.

  Was this my kingdom? Were these my sole possessions? This narrow panelled chamber, with its faded Turkey rug laid over bare boards; this blackened grate, these grimy windows; this great work-table on which my mother wrote her life away, and on which I, too, had laboured so futilely; these little reminders of happier times – the clock from my mother’s bedroom, a watercolour of the house in Church Langton where she was born that used to hang in the hall at Sandchurch, a print of School Yard at Eton? Were these things my inheritance? Poor enough, to be sure, even with the addition of the few pounds that I had left at Coutts & Co., and my modest collection of books. But it did not signify. I had no heir; nor would I ever have one. I smiled to think that Mr Tredgold and I were united in our fates: both chained to the memory of a love lost for ever; both incapable of loving again.

  I walked over and pulled back the piece of patched velvet curtain behind which my photographic equipment lay unused and gathering dust. Propped up on a shelf was a single view of Evenwood, the only exposure that I had not considered good enough to put into the album that I had made up for Lord Tansor back in the summer of 1850.

  It had been taken within the walled area of the grounds enclosing the fish-pond, looking across the black water to the South Front of the house. The building lay in deep shadow, with only patches here and there of pale sunlit stone. I must have knocked the camera, for one of the great cupola-topped towers was out of focus; but though the execution had been flawed, the composition, and the mood it evoked, was striking. I took it down and gazed at it. But the longer I gazed, the more furious I became that I had been shut out for ever from this wonderful place, the home of my ancestors, by a worthless usurper. I was a Duport; he was a nonentity, an atom, a nullity. How could such a nothing presume to take that ancient name as his own? He could not. He would not.

  And then, with my rage, came a determination to hazard one final throw of the dice. I would go to Evenwood once again, though it might be for the last time. I would present myself to Lord Tansor, telling him to his face the truth that had been kept from him for over thirty years. I had nothing to lose, and everything to gain. Eye to eye, man to man, surely he would now recognize me as his own?

  I was seized by this new resolve, desperate though it might be, and instantly leaped to my feet to begin my preparations. Then I ran down the wooden stairs, boots clattering, past Fordyce Jukes’s door, and out into the world for the first time in a week.

  It was a raw, dull day, and a flat and depressing sky hung over the city. I pushed through the morning crowds and was soon at the terminus, where I took my seat once more in the train that had so often carried me north, to Evenwood.

  Once set down in the market-square at Easton by the Peterborough coach, I entered the Duport Arms to take some refreshment before commencing my walk to the great house. As I sat drinking my gin-and-water, served by my old friend, the sullen waiter Groves, who had been the unwitting means by which my identity had been confirmed to Mrs Daunt and her son, the thought struck me that Lord Tansor might not be in residence at Evenwood; that he might be in town, or away somewhere else; and then I grew angry at my impetuosity. To come all this way without establishing this one essential fact only demonstrated to me that I was not myself, and that I must take better care of matters in future. But then I saw that I must take whatever came; and so I drank back my gin, buttoned up my great-coat, and set off down the hill, under a creaking canopy of bare branches, towards Evenwood.

  A thick drizzle began to come on. At first I paid no heed to it; but as I turned along the Odstock Road, towards the West Gates of the Park, I felt my trousers begin to cling to my legs and grow heavy as they soaked up the moisture in the air, and by the time I passed through the woods and into the open space of the Park itself, my hat and coat were dripping wet, my boots were muddied, and I was altogether a sorry sight.

  The Library Terrace came suddenly into view. To my right was Hamnet’s Tower, with the windows of the Muniments Room looking out from the first floor. And there, above the Library, running the length of the terrace, were the windows of my mother’s former apartments, occupied now by my faithless love. Of course I could not help wondering whether she had returned from London and was there, looking out over the misty, soaking gardens towards the woods through which her father had passed on his last journey home. What would she think, if she saw my tall dishevelled figure striding through the murk? That I had come to kill her? Or her lover? But as I drew closer, scrutinizing each of the windows in turn, there was no sign of her beautiful pale face, and so I walked on.

  I decided that there was no alternative but to present myself foursquare at the front door and ask to see Lord Tansor; and this is what I did. Luckily, the door was opened by my sometime informant, John Hooper, whose acquaintance I had made when photographing the house four years earlier.

  ‘Mr Glapthorn,’ he said. ‘Please come in, sir. Are you expected?’

  ‘No, Hooper, I am not. But I wish to speak with his Lordship on a matter of importance. Is he at home?’

  ‘He is in his study, sir, if you will follow me.’

  He conducted me through a series of state rooms until we reached a pair of green-painted double doors. Hooper knocked softly.

  ‘Enter!’

  The footman went in first, bowed, and said: ‘Mr Glapthorn, from Tredgolds, to see you, my Lord.’

  The apartment was small and dark, but richly furnished. Lord Tansor sat behind a desk facing us. Through a wide sash window behind him, I glimpsed the main carriage-road that led out across the river to descend finally past the Dower House to the South Gates, the road that I had trodden so often in past months. A green-shaded lamp illuminated the documents on which his Lordship had been working. He laid down his pen and stared at me.

  ‘Glapthorn? The photographer?’ He glanced down at a sheet of paper. ‘I have no note here of an interview with anyone from Tredgolds today.’

  ‘No, my Lord,’ I replied. ‘I beg your pardon, most sincerely, for calling on you unannounced. But I do so on a matter of the greatest moment.’

  ‘That will be all, Hooper.’

  The footman bowed and left, quietly closing the door behind him.

  ‘A matter of importance, you say? Has Tredgold sent you?’

  ‘No, my Lord. I come on my own account.’ His eyes narrowed.

  ‘What possible business can you and I have?’ His voice was hard, disdainful, and intimidating. But I had expected no less from the 25th Baron Tansor.

  ‘It concerns your late wife, my Lord.’

  At this, Lord Tansor’s face grew dark, and he motioned me to a chair set before his desk.

  ‘You have my attention, Mr Glapthorn,’ he said, leaning back and throwing out a most challenging stare. ‘But be brief.’

  I took in a deep lungful of air and began my story: how I had discovered that Lady Tansor had kept the secret of his son’s birth from him, and how the boy had been brought up by another in ignorance of his true identity. I paused.

  For a moment or two he said nothing. And then, with unmistakable menace: ‘You had better have proof for what you allege, Mr Glapthorn. It will go hard with you if you do not.’

  ‘I shall come to the proof shortly, my Lord. If I may continue?’ He nodded. ‘The boy, as I say, grew up not knowing that he was a Duport – that he was your heir. It was only after the death of the woman who brought him up, your late wife’s closest friend, that he discovered the truth. The boy was by then a man; and that man lives.’

  Lord Tansor’s face had now grown pale and I saw that, beneath his iron self-control, he was in the grip of mounting emotion.

  ‘Lives?’

  ‘Yes, my Lord.’

  ‘And where is he now?’

  ‘He is here before you, my Lord. I am your son. I am your heir, lawfully begotten.’

  His shock at my words was now palpable; but he said nothing. Then he rose slowly from his chair, and turned towards the window behind him. He
stood there, hands held stiffly behind his back, rigid, silent, looking out across the gravelled entrance court. Without turning to look at me, he uttered the single word: ‘Proof!’

  My mouth was dry; my body all a-tremble. For of course I had no proof. The evidence – incontrovertible, incontestable – that I could have placed before him only a week before had been taken from me, and was now beyond recovery. All I had was circumstantial and unsubstantiated assertion. I saw my future hanging by the merest thread.

  ‘Proof!’ he barked, turning now towards me. ‘You claimed you had proof. Show it to me at once!’

  ‘My Lord …’ I hesitated, fatally, and he immediately saw my discomfort.

  ‘Well?’

  ‘Letters,’ I replied, ‘in her Ladyship’s own hand, and a signed affidavit, properly executed and witnessed, confirming my true parentage. These documents corroborated the daily record of events left behind in my foster-mother’s journals.’

  ‘And you have these things with you?’ he asked, though he could see that I had come empty-handed, without a bag or case of any sort. I had no choice now but to make my admission.

  ‘They are gone, my Lord.’

  ‘Gone? You have lost them?’

  ‘No, my Lord. They were stolen. From me, and from Mr Carteret.’

  Anger began to suffuse his face. His mouth tightened.

  ‘What in God’s name has Carteret to do with this?’

  Vainly, I attempted to explain how his secretary had come across the crucial letters hidden in the writing-box left to Miss Eames, and how they had been taken from him when he had been attacked. But even as I spoke, I knew that he would not believe what I was about to tell him.