The Glass of Time

by Michael Cox

  ‘Genlemun? Bless you, no. No genlemun.’

  ‘Not a gentleman? A tradesman, perhaps?’

  ‘Hah! Not ’er.’

  ‘Ah, I see. It’s a lady.’

  I turned to go, but he called me back. Lowering his voice, and leaning his whiskery face towards me, so close that I could smell his beery breath, he said:

  ‘No lady neither. Initials of old ’ooman. Over there.’

  He nodded towards the tap-room door, through the glass of which, in a settle by the fire-place, I could see a woman of about sixty years in the act of draining a glass.

  ‘Gin-an’-water,’ the man informed me, with a rasping chuckle. ‘Third or fourth.’ Still chuckling, he laid the letter face up on the desk, next to the bell, and disappeared back behind the curtain.

  I should have immediately left the Duport Arms to return to Evenwood, as Lady Tansor had instructed; but then, remembering that Madame had encouraged me to use my initiative in the pursuit of my great task, I decided to remain a few moments longer, in order to make some observations concerning the mysterious old woman.

  These were my impressions of her person, jotted down in my note-book, and later transferred verbatim to my Book of Secrets:

  OLD WOMAN (’B.K.’) AT DUPORT ARMS

  Age: sixty, or thereabouts. Grey hair, and a pinched, mean face, much lined about the eyes, and red about the nose. Short. Bent back. Dirty finger-nails. Wearing a dress that might have been in fashion twenty years since, but now faded, and darned in several places. Scuffed and dusty boots, the heel of the left worn almost to nothing. Hole in right stocking just above the ankle.

  I stood, watching the woman call for another glass of gin-and-water, and wondering what had brought her here, to receive a letter, delivered by hand, from Lady Tansor. What could my Lady have to do with such a person?

  Having drained her glass to the very bottom, the old woman was now wiping her mouth with the dirty sleeve of her dress. There was an intimidating look of seasoned cunning about her. Even in her present half-inebriated condition, her eyes were alert, darting here and there, as if on the watch for some danger. Gripping the table for support, she now pulled herself to her feet, and began to walk unsteadily towards the tap-room door.

  I moved away as she approached; but my further progress was prevented by a group of farmers, who were just then coming in from the Square. Being obliged to step back to let them pass, I soon felt the old woman’s presence close behind me.

  When the last of the farmers had gone by, I began to make my way as quickly as I could towards the front door; but then the one-eyed hall-porter appeared from behind his curtain once more and called to the woman.

  ‘Ma’am! Ma’am! Letter for you.’

  Half walking, half stumbling, the old woman went over to the desk and took the letter from the porter.

  ‘Who brought it?’ she snapped.

  ‘Young lady over there,’ replied the one-eyed man, directing her to where I was standing.

  ‘And who might you be, miss?’ she asked, putting on a quickly assumed, but wholly unconvincing, smile as she drew near. ‘I don’t believe as I’ve had the pleasure of your acquaintance, my dear.’

  I had no wish to tell this unpleasant person my name, and so said simply that I was Lady Tansor’s maid. Then, quickly excusing myself, I began to head for the front door again.

  ‘No, no, stay a while, my dear,’ she said, placing a grubby claw-like hand on mine. I felt her fingers tighten, and instantly began to pull away; but there was uncommon strength in that grip, which held me back.

  For a brief moment I was afraid, and angry at myself for not returning to Evenwood when I should have done.

  ‘Lady Tansor’s maid, you say?’ the old woman was saying. ‘And a pretty maid you are, my dear. Won’t you come and talk for a while to a poor old woman with no friends in the world?’

  Before I could reply, and with my hand still held fast, my attention was suddenly caught by the silhouette of a well-built man appearing in the doorway.

  ‘Hullo, who’s here?’ said the man on seeing me. ‘Why, it’s Miss Gorst, ain’t it?’

  5

  A Walk with Mr Randolph

  I

  I Hear Confession

  THE VOICE greeting me is that of Mr Randolph Duport.

  As soon as the old woman sees him enter and walk briskly towards me, her bony hand immediately releases its grip and she scuttles back into the tap-room, where she sits glowering as Mr Randolph comes up to me, beaming broadly.

  ‘And what brings you here, Miss Gorst, on market day?’ he asks. ‘Have you come to buy a cow?’

  I did him the courtesy of giving a little laugh at the joke, although his arrival presented a dilemma.

  I could not tell him why I had been sent to the Duport Arms, for Lady Tansor had wished my errand to remain confidential; yet neither could I bring myself to tell him an outright lie. I resorted instead to a near-truth: that I had been allowed a morning’s liberty by his mother, and that I had gone into the Duport Arms for some refreshment before returning to Evenwood. I disliked the need for even this venial falsehood; but more such subterfuges – and worse – doubtless lay ahead of me in the prosecution of the Great Task, and I must learn to accustom myself to them.

  ‘And have you taken your refreshment?’ he asked. ‘You have? Capital! Now, what about your companion?’

  ‘Companion?’

  ‘The old lady you were with when I came in. An acquaintance met by chance, perhaps?’

  ‘Oh, no,’ I hastily reply. ‘No acquaintance. She mistook me for someone. I’ve never seen her before in my life.’

  ‘Well, then,’ he says, with every sign of satisfaction, ‘if there’s nothing more to keep you here, may I accompany you back to Evenwood? No, no! No trouble at all. Indeed, I insist. Just the morning for a walk. Do say yes.’

  I gladly agreed, whereupon he went off to arrange for his horse to be taken back to Evenwood, whilst I remained in the hall for his return.

  As I waited, I glanced behind me into the tap-room. The mysterious ‘B.K.’ had vanished.

  Mr Randolph soon came back, offered me his arm, and out we stepped into the bustling, sunlit Square, thronged with all manner of country-folk, pens of bellowing livestock, and stalls selling various goods.

  My companion chattered away, in a most merry and easy fashion, as if we were already old friends, pointing out as we went along the various public buildings – the Town Hall, the Corn Exchange, the Assembly Rooms, the imposing Church of St John the Evangelist – and the houses of some of the town’s principal residents, including the stately red-brick dwelling of Dr Pordage, Lady Tansor’s country physician.

  ‘So, Miss Gorst,’ says Mr Randolph, as we leave the town and begin to descend the long, tree-canopied hill leading to the hamlet of Duck End, ‘tell me how you are finding Evenwood.’

  I tell him that, from my early impressions, it seems a place in which I thought it must be very difficult to be unhappy.

  ‘I wouldn’t wish to disagree,’ he says, doubtfully; ‘but unhappiness must come to us all, you know – even to those who live in a place like Evenwood.’

  I venture to observe that that such a beautiful and ordered place might make unhappiness, when it came, easier to bear, just as ugly and unpleasant places have the opposite effect.

  ‘I’d never thought of it like that,’ he replies, brightly. ‘How clever you are, Miss Gorst—’

  He seems about to say something more, but then checks himself.

  ‘Did you mean to add “for a lady’s-maid”?’ I ask; but seeing him colour slightly, and not wishing to embarrass him, I immediately confess that my question has been meant to tease, and that I have taken no offence – indeed that I am wholly conscious of my position at Evenwood.

  ‘And yet you’re quite unlike Miss Plumptre, and the other maids Mother has had,’ he says, adding, in a quieter tone, ‘quite unlike.’

  I affect not to understand him, wishing very much to know the view he has formed of me.

  ‘What I meant was,’ he explains, ‘that it seems to m
e that you weren’t born to be a lady’s-maid – that you had a very different life once. That’s why Mother preferred you to the others. You weren’t at all like them – not ordinary in the least. She saw it straight away, as I did.’

  ‘I’m not at all sure I know what I was born to be,’ I reply, warming now to my adopted character. ‘I only know that circumstances have made it necessary for me to make my own way in the world, with only the few small advantages my upbringing has given me – as I think has also been the case with Mrs Battersby.’

  ‘Mrs B?’

  He appears momentarily non-plussed by my mentioning the housekeeper, until I explain that Lady Tansor had observed how similar our situations appeared to be, both of us apparently coming into domestic service from higher stations in life.

  ‘Ah, yes,’ he says, with a kind of relief, as if he expected a different answer from me, adding that any comparison with Mrs Battersby would be very much in my favour. Of course I demur, but he seems determined to press home his compliment.

  ‘Come, come, Miss Gorst!’ he cries, in mock remonstrance. ‘No false modesty! Mrs B’s father was – or, at least, so I’ve heard – a clergyman of limited means. Financial misfortune deprived him, and his children, of the little he had. Died a bankrupt – as I understand. You, on the other hand—’

  I regard him expectantly.

  ‘Well, there’s a difference of degree between you and Mrs B – that’s what I think. Naturally, I wouldn’t presume to press you, having just made your acquaintance, to see whether my guess is right. All I know, from Mother, is that you’re an orphan. Brought up by some relative, I suppose?’

  ‘By a guardian, named by my father before he died.’

  ‘And did you grow up in the country?’

  ‘No, in Paris.’

  I am suddenly conscious of having let my guard down. I must be more circumspect, even though I have said nothing that is not known to his mother. To prevent any further, perhaps more awkward questions, however, I change the subject, by asking whether he has read his brother’s poem on Merlin and Nimue.

  He throws his head back and laughs.

  ‘Read Perseus’s poem! No, no. Not my line of country at all, I’m afraid. Give me a fishing-rod and a good hunter any day. No, Miss Gorst, I haven’t read it, and don’t suppose I ever will. My loss, I know. I’m sure it’s a great thing, but there it is. I’m generally accounted the dunce of the family, you see, especially by Mother. It’s a case of brawn and brains, and Perseus was given all the brains.

  ‘It all comes from Mother,’ he is now saying. ‘She encouraged Perseus early. He was always scribbling, always had his head in some book of verse, and she used to read to him constantly – mostly from Mr Tennyson or Mr Phoebus Daunt, the man she was once to marry who was killed by some maniac he’d known at school. Terrible business. Mother never recovered from it. You’ve heard of Mr Daunt, I suppose?’

  I tell him that I am familiar with his name, and that I am now becoming acquainted with his work, through reading it to his mother.

  ‘Well,’ he says, smiling drily, ‘I don’t envy you that. Mother, of course, won’t hear a word said against the ever-lamented bard. It’s the great taboo. I suppose that’s why she’s always spurred Perseus on to emulate him, and make him a kind of substitute. As for Mr Daunt, he still haunts Mother’s life – he’s there, day in and day out, constantly in her thoughts, and always will be. And next week is the 11th.’

  ‘The 11th?’

  He lowered his voice.

  ‘The 11th of every month is observed by Mother as a kind of memorial to Mr Daunt, who died on the 11th of December in the year 1854. On the day itself, she’ll go to the Mausoleum, where the poor fellow lies.’

  ‘It must have gone hard for your father,’ I remark, ‘living with the perpetually present ghost of his wife’s former love.’

  ‘No,’ he says, looking into the distance in a sad, abstracted way. ‘Father always accepted it. He knew that nothing would change her. Poor Father! He could never live up to the memory of Mr Daunt – just as I’ll never live up to Perseus. Mother was very fond of Father, in her way; but she lives too much in the past – in the time before she met him. She doesn’t see the harm in it, but there is harm in dwelling overmuch on what can’t be changed, don’t you think?’

  ‘There can be, certainly,’ I agree, thinking now of the parents I had never known. ‘But then don’t we also owe a duty to the past, and to the memory of those we’ve lost, to keep them fresh in our hearts?’

  ‘Oh, yes,’ he says. ‘Absolutely. Especially in a family like mine. You can’t escape the past if you’re a Duport.’

  I could not help feeling flattered by these confidences, freely given to a virtual stranger, and a servant to boot. It was foolish of me, I am sure, but I took them as a compliment, showing that he liked me, and perhaps somewhat more than he appeared to like everyone.

  As for my own feelings, I once again fancied, as I had done on first meeting him, that, under different circumstances, I might have found it hard to prevent myself from falling a little in love with Mr Randolph Duport. Yet here, in this place and time, as I embarked with uncertain steps on the first stage of the Great Task, I found that my heart was able to withstand what should have been – and might yet be – irresistible.

  ‘Your father was a military man, I think?’ I said, after we had walked some way in silence.

  ‘Prussian army. Rose to the rank of colonel. Polish by birth, though.’

  ‘Polish? How interesting.’

  ‘Is it? Haven’t given it much thought, I’m afraid. Never been to Poland, and Father never spoke much about it. He always said he preferred England, and that meeting Mother and coming here had been the making of him. We’ve had little to do with that side of the family. Mother never encouraged it.’

  ‘And were you born in Poland?’

  ‘No, here – at Evenwood. Perseus was born in Bohemia, where Mother and Father met. Wasn’t there a king of the place in Shakespeare?’

  ‘Yes,’ I laughed. ‘In The Winter’s Tale. King Polixenes.’

  ‘That’s the chappie. Well, my brother’s a sort of king-in-waiting, I suppose. But I don’t mind that. Fact is, Miss Gorst, I’m rather grateful to Nature, for putting all the responsibilities on Perseus. I’m afraid I wouldn’t have made a good heir, and am heartily glad it’s him and not me who must one day bear the crown. I find, you see, that I’m pretty happy as I am, and have no wish to be anything other.’

  He appeared to entertain no trace of resentment or envy of his brother’s superior position in the family, both as the heir and as his mother’s favourite, as some younger sons might have done. I then pointed out that his brother’s seniority was a mere accident of birth.

  ‘But could I have carried it off – being the heir to all this, I mean – if I’d been born first? That’s the question. No, I’ll always stand in my brother’s shadow. If I minded, it would be different, but I don’t. It sets me free to—’

  He hesitated for a moment, then gave a good-humoured shrug.

  ‘Well, free to continue looking about me, for some suitable opportunity. I’m by no means idle by nature, and must do something with my life.’

  ‘And do you know what you might wish to do? Have you settled on any particular course?’

  He regarded me for a moment with an uncharacteristically evasive expression.

  ‘No, not exactly,’ he replied at length. ‘I had a mind once to become an engineer, but Mother wouldn’t hear of it. Of course if I’d gone up to the Varsity, like Perseus, I might have a clearer notion of what I’m fitted for; but Mother felt it wouldn’t suit me, and sent me to a private academy instead. So I continue to look about me – in the hope, as I say, of something eventually presenting itself.’

  After a little more probing, he told me that Mr Perseus had received every advantage in his education, whereas his own appeared to have been sadly, almost wilfully, neglected.

  The heir had been sent to Eton–where the Duports had a long connexion–and had then proceeded to the school’s sister foundation at Cambridge, King’s College. Mr Randolph, meanwhile, had been
placed in the hands of a succession of private tutors of doubtful competence, before being packed off to reside with a clerical gentleman in Suffolk – a former Fellow of Brasenose College in Oxford – to complete his studies. Here, with half a dozen other similarly constituted young gentlemen, he had remained for nearly two years.

  ‘Of course it wasn’t the same as going up to the Varsity, but I’ve never been happier than I was at Dr Savage’s,’ he said wistfully, looking away as he spoke, ‘and made some good friends there – one in particular. But then I was taken away and had to come back home, and here I’ve stayed – looking about me.’

  WE HAD NOW passed through Upper Thornbrook, a small group of thatched cottages ranged on either side of the main road from Easton, and were coming into Evenwood village. On our left was a broad area of common land stretching down to the river. Here we stopped, at the top of a lane that divided the Common from the church-yard and adjacent Rectory, the former home of Phoebus Daunt when his father was Rector, and now occupied by Mr and Mrs Thripp.

  ‘We can go this way,’ said Mr Randolph, pointing towards the Rectory. ‘It’s quicker than going up to the gates.’

  So down the lane we went, and into the Park. From here, a narrow track wound up gently rising ground to join the main carriage-drive. At the junction, we were presented with a magnificent view of the great house laid out below us, its eight cupola-topped towers set darkly against a sky of the most delicate powder-blue.

  ‘Are you going back to attend Mother?’ he asked, as we began our descent towards the river.

  ‘No,’ I replied. ‘Lady Tansor has gone to London.’

  ‘To London, you say? That’s strange. She said nothing to me, but then I’m usually the last one to be told about these things. Some matter of business, I suppose, although she usually sends Perseus these days.’

  Presently, we halt on the elegant stone bridge that spans the Evenbrook. Mr Randolph is pointing out a spot, a little way upstream, where he likes to take his rod and nets of a morning – fishing being one of his passions – when he suddenly breaks off and turns to me.