The Meaning of Night (57 page)

longer than I should have done over a book of delightful pen-and-ink drawings and pencil

sketches made by my Lady over several years. A series of French scenes – a record, no

doubt, of her Continental escapade – was particularly well done, for my Lady had been a

skilled draughtswoman, with a keen eye for composition. Most were signed and dated

‘LRD, 1819’, and one or two carried descriptions: I particularly recall a most striking and

romantic sketch, bearing the legend ‘Rue du Chapitre, Rennes, evening’, of an ancient

and imposing half-timbered mansion with extravagantly carved beams, and a canopied

entrance half-disclosing an interior courtyard. There were also a number of more finished

views of the same location, all of them executed with remarkable feeling and care.

The striking of twelve noon from the Chapel clock roused me from my reveries,

and I set about placing the separate bundles, which I had loosely tied together with string,

in a small iron-bound chest that lay to hand, to which I affixed an identifying label.

I was on the point of descending to my work-room, in order to begin my day’s

work on his Lordship’s correspondence, when, on putting my portmanteau away, I

noticed a single piece of paper that I had omitted to retrieve.

On examination, it proved to be of little importance, simply a receipt, dated the

fifteenth of September, 1821, for the construction of a small rosewood box by Mr James

Beach, carpenter, Church-hill, Easton. I do not well know why I make mention of it here,

other than an earnest desire to present as full and as accurate a statement of events as I

can, and that it seemed odd to me that her Ladyship should have commissioned such an

apparently valueless object on her own account from a man in the town, when Lord

Tansor employed an excellent estate carpenter who could have made it for her in a

moment. But there it was; I had no justification for spending any more of his Lordship’s

time on idle speculation, and had already dallied far too long on the task he had set me.

And so I assigned the receipt to the proper bundle in the chest, shut the lid, and proceeded

back down to my work-room.

I had no immediate reason of my own to consult Lady Tansor’s private papers

further, and received no request from my employer to do so – all financial and legal

documents of importance, of course, having already passed under his Lordship’s eye and

hand during the course of his marriage, were now in my custodial possession;

consequently, over the course of the next few weeks, the contents of the little iron-bound

chest began gradually to recede from my present view until, in time, they disappeared

entirely.

I did not have cause to remember the existence of my Lady’s private papers for

many years. During the intervening period, life, as it always does, brought us our share of

fair weather and foul. Lord Tansor’s step-mother, Anne Duport, with whom we shared

the Dower House, departed this life in 1826. The previous summer, my cousin had

married the Hon. Hester Trevalyn, and it was expected – his Lordship being then only

thirty-nine years of age, and his new wife ten years his junior – that, in time, their union

would be blessed with offspring that would secure the succession to the next generation.

After his first wife’s death, his Lordship had given himself completely to the care

and instruction of his son. I have no doubt that he mourned the woman he had once

loved; but he did so, if I may so put it, in his own way. People called him unfeeling,

particularly when, within a year or so of Lady Tansor’s death, he began to set his sights

on Miss Trevalyn; but that verdict, I think, arose from the habit of impermeable reticence

that characterized his whole demeanour, and a failure on the part of those who criticized

him to acknowledge the responsibilities of his position.

For with his son, Henry Hereward, he displayed a fine and natural capacity for

spontaneous affection. He adored the child. There is no other word for it. The boy bore a

striking resemblance to his mother, with his large dark eyes and flowing black hair, and

as he grew up he began to reveal also something of her Ladyship’s character. He was

heedless, argumentative, forever pulling at his father’s sleeve asking to be allowed to do

this or that, and then running off in a howling rage when he was denied; and yet I never

saw his father angered by these tantrums, for within a moment the boy would be back,

afire with some other scheme that was allowed by his father, and off he would go

skipping and whooping like a happy savage. He had such an air of abounding,

irreprehensible vigour about him – an abundant and entirely natural charm – that made

him the favourite of everyone, even strangers, who met him.

And more than all these natural amiabilities, he was his father’s heir. It is

impossible to overstate the importance, in the eyes of my cousin, of the boy’s status in

this regard. No father wished more for his son; no father did more for his son. Imagine,

then, the effect on my cousin when, one black day, death came softly knocking and took

away, not only his child, but also his only heir.

It was a catastrophe of the greatest possible magnitude, a gargantuan affront, an

indignity my cousin could neither withstand nor comprehend: it was all these things, and

more. He was a father, and felt like a father; but he was also Baron Tansor, the

twenty-fifth of that name. Who now would be the twenty-sixth? It prostrated him utterly.

He was lost to all comfort, all consolation; and for some weeks we feared – seriously

feared – for his sanity.

It is hard for me to write of these things, for as Lord Tansor’s cousin I had, and

have, a place in the collateral succession to the Barony. I state here, most solemnly, that

this potentiality never overruled the duty I felt I owed to my cousin: his interest was

always my first care. What also makes it difficult for me is that the loss of Henry

Hereward came upon my cousin just months after our own dear girl, Jane, had been so

cruelly taken from us. Indeed the two sweet babes often played together, and had been

doing so on the afternoon our little angel fell from the bridge that carries the road from

the South Gates across the river to the great house. Our lives were darkened irredeemably

from that day.

But it is of my cousin that I write; and I have dwelt on his grief at the death of his

only son for this reason: to demonstrate as clearly as I can the ground upon which the

crime I believe was visited upon him had been raised. In the light of what I have said

concerning my cousin’s monomaniacal desire to secure an heir for his line (I do not say

he was actually mad on this point, but the phrase, I maintain, is metaphorically apt), what

would be the greatest harm, barring physical assault or murder, that could be done to such

a man as this?

I leave the question unanswered pro tempore, and will now proceed with my

deposition. I fear I have rambled somewhat, through trying my best to anticipate the

questions and objections of an imagined interlocutor. Having put pen to paper, it has

surprised me to find how difficult it has been to confine myself to the salient points: so

many things push themselves forward in my mind for attention.

Well, then, to be as brief as I can. The death of his only son and heir might have

been borne by my cousin, as far as such a thing can be borne by a sentient human soul, if

his second marriage had been productive of other heirs; but it had not been, nor perhaps

would ever be. As the years have passed, his Lordship has therefore been obliged to

consider his position afresh; and now, in his sixty-fourth year, he has turned to other

methods for securing his desires in respect of a successor. I shall return to this critical

point in due course.

Sunday, 23rd October, 1853.

IV.

In the summer of 1830, our little circle received a most welcome addition when

the Reverend Achilles Daunt, whom I am now proud to call my friend, was appointed to

the living of Evenwood by my cousin. Dr Daunt, accompanied by his second wife and a

son from his first marriage, came to us from a northern parish with a high, and most

deserved, reputation as a scholar. Evenwood offers many blessings, but I fear that men of

real intellectual accomplishment are not many in number hereabouts, and the addition of

Dr Daunt to our society was a great thing indeed for me, providing, as it did, a man of

discernment and wide knowledge with whom to share and discuss my own historical and

palaeographical interests. I had the honour to assist my friend, in a modest way, in the

preparation of his great catalogue of the Duport Library; and it was at his suggestion that

I later took upon myself the task of collecting material towards a history of the Duport

family, in which enterprise I am grateful to have been encouraged and supported by my

cousin.

My friend’s only son, Mr Phoebus Daunt, soon became a great favourite of my

cousin’s, who was instrumental in sending the boy to Eton. It became greatly concerning

to me to observe how my cousin began to look upon the Rector’s son almost as his own. I

watched this conspicuous liking for the boy grow over time into something other than

mere partiality. It became a kind of covetousness that fed on itself, blinding my cousin to

all other considerations. The boy was strong, healthy, lively, good at his books, and

properly grateful for the attentions he received from his father’s noble patron; perhaps it

was natural for my cousin to see in him a reflection, pale though it was to a less partial

observer, of the lost heir. What did not seem natural to me (I hesitate to express criticism

of my noble employer, but feel under a solemn obligation to state my opinion) was his

Lordship’s patent desire – expressed in countless material benefactions, personally

audited by myself in my professional capacity – to possess the Rector’s son as his own (if

I may so put it). He could not, of course, buy him outright, like a horse of good stock, or

a new carriage; but he could, and did, appropriate him gradually, binding the boy ever

more closely to himself by the strongest of chains: self-interest. What young man, just

down from the Varsity, could fail to feel flattered to the highest degree, and be mightily

emboldened in his self-regard, at being treated with such extraordinary attention by one

of the most powerful peers in the realm? Not this young man, certainly.

The idea of formalizing this relationship, by adopting Phoebus Daunt as his heir,

has been in my cousin’s head since the young man came down from Cambridge. As time

has passed, it has gradually become an idée fixe, and, at the time of writing, nothing, it

seems, can now persuade his Lordship against pursuing this course of action. It is not for

me to question the wisdom or propriety of my cousin’s desire to leave the bulk of his

property to this gentleman, on the single condition of his changing his name to that of his

noble patron; I will only say that the choice of his heir perhaps does not demonstrate that

acuity of judgment his Lordship has usually displayed in his affairs; further, since the

disclosure of his decision to the parties concerned, the effect on my friend’s son has been

pernicious, serving to magnify a number of deficiencies in his character. This little

ceremony took place some three months since, at a private dinner at Evenwood to which

only Dr and Mrs Daunt, and their son, were invited; and I may say that, when the news

was generally known, it was remarked by many in our local society that, while the young

man and his step-mother instantly began to put on airs, and behave in an altogether

insufferable manner (I regret the candour of my remarks, but do not withdraw them), the

Rector maintained a dignified silence on the matter – in fact he appeared positively

disinclined to speak of it.

I might say a good deal more concerning Mr Phoebus Daunt; but I am conscious

that I digress from my immediate purpose.

To return to my history of my cousin’s family (and, of course, of my own). I need

not weary the reader of this statement by rehearsing in detail the progress of the work, the

sources for which are extensive and requiring of careful and patient scrutiny. Year by

year I continued to work, slowly but steadily, through the documents accumulated and

stored by each successive generation, making notes thereon, and composing drafts.

In January of the present year, I was drafting an account of the perilous Civil War

period, during which Randolph Duport, a staunch supporter of the King, was killed at

Naseby? and for a time the family’s fortunes stood in dire jeopardy.

I happened to look up, as I often did, at the unfinished portrait of my cousin’s first

wife that now hung on the wall of my work-room. My secretary’s duties were over for

the day, and for the next hour or so the history of the family during the Restoration of the

Monarchy should have claimed my attention; but I was much wearied by my recent

exertions and, as I contemplated the image of the beautiful face in the picture above me,

suddenly wished very much – I cannot say why – to look again at the remnants of the life

of Laura Tansor, which I had gathered together after her death. It was most unmethodical,