The Meaning of Night Part 36

I instantly resolve that I will surprise her. My Bradshaw lies on the table. The eleven-thirty departs in just under an hour. Plenty of time.

At Evenwood, the leaves are falling. They flutter forlornly across paths and terraces and scuttle about the courtyards, almost like living things, in the suddenly cold wind that scythes up from the river. In the kitchen garden, they acc.u.mulate in sodden heaps amongst tangles of decaying mint and drooping borage, and beneath the plum trees at the north end of the orchard they lie in thick golden-black swathes, soft underfoot, beneath which the gra.s.s is already turning a sickly yellow.

Rain begins to sweep in dark funereal sheets across the formal gardens and pleasure-grounds. When I had last seen them, the rose beds at the end of the Long Walk had been ablaze with colour; now their early summer glories have been cut down; and the bare earth of Lady Hester's former clock garden a pointless conceit which she had planted up with Purslane, Crane's Bill, and other flowers that supposedly opened or closed at successive hours of the day now seems a mute and terrible witness to human folly, and to what time will do to us all.

I push open the little white-painted door and climb up the winding stairs to the first floor, to the apartments above the Library where my mother died, and where I hope to find my dearest girl. Her door is shut, the corridor deserted. I knock twice.

'Enter.'

She is sitting by the fire, beneath the portrait of Master Anthony Duport, reading (as I soon discover) a volume of Mrs Browning's poems.3 A travelling cloak lies on the sofa.

'Emily, my dearest, what is the matter? Why have you not written?'

'Edward!' she exclaims, suddenly looking up with an expression of surprise. 'I was not expecting you.'

Her face had taken on that terrible frozen look which had struck me so forcibly when I had first seen her standing in the vestibule of the Dower House. She did not smile, and made no attempt to rise from her chair. There was no trace now, in either her demeanour or her voice, of the warmth and tender partiality she had formerly shown me. In their place was a nervous coolness that instantly put me on my guard.

'Do you know Mrs Browning's Portuguese sonnets?' she asked. The tone was flat and false, and I asked my question again.

'My love, tell me what is the matter? You have not written, and you said you would.'

She closed the book and gave a short impatient sigh.

'You may as well know. I am leaving Evenwood this afternoon. Phoebus and I are to be married.'

43:.

Dies irae1 __________________________________________________________________________________.

The world seemed to contract and then fall away, leaving me sundered from what had once been, and from what I had known and believed before.

I stood in that dreadful room rooted to the spot in disbelief, feeling hope and happiness drain out of me like blood from an opened vein. I must have closed my eyes momentarily, for I distinctly remember opening them again and finding that Miss Carteret had got up from her chair and was now standing by the sofa putting on her cloak. Perhaps she had been in jest one of those little games that women sometimes like to play with those who adore them. Perhaps . . .

'You cannot stay here, you know. You must leave immediately.'

Cold, cold! Hard and cold! Where was my dear girl, my sweet and loving Emily? Beautiful still so wonderfully beautiful! But it was not her. This furious simulacrum was animated by a wholly different being, unrecognizable and dreadful.

'Edward Mr Glapthorn! Why do you not answer? Did you hear what I said?'

At last I found my tongue.

'I heard, but I did not, and do not, understand.'

'Then I shall tell you again. Begone, sir, or I shall call for a.s.sistance.'

Now her eyes were flas.h.i.+ng fire, and her beautiful lips, those lips I had kissed so often, had pursed to a tight little pout. As she stands there, rigid and menacing, enveloped in her long black hooded cloak, she seems like some sorceress of legend newly risen from the infernal depths; and for a moment I am afraid yes, afraid. The change in her is so great, and so complete, that I cannot conceive how it has come about. Like a photographic negative, what should be light is now dark dark as h.e.l.l. Is she possessed? Has she gone suddenly mad? Perhaps it is I who should call for a.s.sistance?

In a swirl of angry black, she heads for the door; and then it is as if I have woken suddenly from a dream. Sorceress? Humbug! This is plain villainy. I smell it, and know it for what it is.

Her hand is almost on the handle when I seize it and wrench her towards me. We are face to face now, eye to eye, will to will.

'Let me go, sir! You are hurting me!' She struggles, but I have her fast.

'A moment of your time, Miss Carteret.'

She sees the resolve in my eyes, and feels the superior strength of my grip; in a moment she surrenders to the inevitable and her resistance ceases.

'Well, sir?'

'Let us sit in our old place in the window,' I say. 'It is such a pleasant place to talk.'

She throws off her cloak and walks over to the window-seat. Before joining her, I lock the door.

'I see I am a prisoner,' she says. 'Are you going to kill me?'

'You are pretty cool if I am,' I reply, standing over her. She only gives a little shrug by way of reply and looks out of the window at the rain-lashed gardens.

'You mentioned a marriage,' I continue. 'To Mr Daunt. I don't mind admitting that this comes as something of a surprise to me.'

'Then you are a greater fool than we thought.'

'We? As far as I aware, you have not attained to regal status. I must therefore deduce that you are speaking of Mr Daunt and yourself, in partners.h.i.+p?'

I was determined to maintain an air of unconcerned bravado; but the truth was I felt as helpless as a baby. Of course I had the advantage of physical strength; but what use was that? She'd played me for a d.a.m.ned fool, right enough; and, once again, Phoebus Daunt had taken what was rightfully mine. And then I suddenly found myself laughing uncontrollably, laughing so much that I had to wipe the tears away with my sleeve; laughing at my stupidity, my utter stupidity, for trusting her. If only I had taken Mr Tredgold's advice! She watched me for a while as I stumbled about the room, shaking with laughter like some maniac. Then she stood up, anger boiling up once more in her great black eyes.

'You must let me go, sir,' she said, 'or it will be the worse for you. Unlock the door immediately!'

Ignoring her demand, I returned to where she was standing and threw her back into the window-seat. Her eyes began to dart round the room as if she were looking for some means of escape, or perhaps for a weapon with which to attack me. If she would only have smiled then, and confessed it had all been a silly joke! I would have instantly folded her in my arms and forgiven her. But she did not smile. She sat bolt upright, breathing hard, her eyes wide open, larger than I had ever seen them, like an enraged prophetess inspired with the G.o.d's fury.

'And may I enquire if you love Mr Phoebus Daunt?'

'Love him?' She leaned her cheek against the gla.s.s, and a strange calm came over her.

'I simply ask because you gave me the clear impression as did your friend, Miss Buisson that he was repellent to you.'

'There is no word to describe what I feel for Phoebus. He is my sun, my moon, my stars. My life is his to command.' Her breath had misted the pane and she began slowly tracing out a letter, then another, and then a third and a fourth: P-H-O-E . . . Stung now to real anger, I s.n.a.t.c.hed her hand away and rubbed out the letters.

'Why did you lie to me?'

'Because you are nothing to me, and because it was necessary to keep you fed with lies until you delivered up the evidence of your true ident.i.ty to me.'

She glances at the portrait of young Anthony Duport in his juvenile finery, hand on hip, a dark-blue sash across his chest. Her words are like a knife to the heart. In two strides I am standing beneath the portrait. I take hold of it with one hand and attempt to open the cupboard it conceals with the other. It is locked. Relief floods through me.

'Would you like the key?' She takes out her reticule and reaches into it. 'I said I would keep everything safe.' Smiling, she holds out a little black key.

I take it, insert it in the lock of the cupboard, and the door swings open. Then I pick up a candle from a nearby table and peer inside. But I can see nothing. I stand closer and feel all around. The cupboard is empty.

'You see,' I hear her say. 'All safe. No one will find your secrets now. No one.'

And then I know that I have been defeated; that every hope and dream I have cherished has been turned to dust and ashes.

What do you know? Nothing.

What have you achieved? Nothing.

Who are you? n.o.body.

I do not have to ask where the papers are. He has them now. The keys that would have unlocked the gates of Paradise for me are now in my enemy's hands.

I am still standing with my back to her, staring into the empty cavity, when she speaks.

'I have loved him ever since I can remember. Even when I was a little girl, he was my prince, and I was his princess. We knew then that we would marry some day, and dreamed of living together in some great house, just like Evenwood. My father always hated Phoebus; but we quickly learned to feign indifference to each other in public, and became more cunning in our ways as we grew older. No one suspected the truth; only once, at a dinner given in honour of Lord Tansor's birthday, did we forget ourselves. It was such a little thing not much more than a glance but my father saw it. He was angry with me angrier than I had ever seen him; but I persuaded him that he was wrong, and that Phoebus meant nothing to me. He believed me, of course. He always believed me. Everyone did.'

'But Daunt killed your father!' I cried. 'How could you continue to love him?'

She turned her face towards me, and I s.h.i.+vered to see the look in her eyes.

'I hated father, for hating Phoebus. His stupid prejudice kept us apart.'

'But he did not deserve to die!'

'No.' She spoke quietly now. 'He did not, and was not meant to. That oaf Pluckrose went too far, as usual. Phoebus was wrong to have brought him into it he acknowledges it, and we have both suffered grievously for what Pluckrose did. Afterwards, when Pluckrose brought the letters to Phoebus and told him what he'd done, Phoebus was beside himself with rage both at Pluckrose and at himself for entrusting the task to him; but what could he do? I despised my father he was weak, subservient. A secretary! He was a Duport through his mother. How could Lord Tansor treat his cousin so? And how could my father bear the ignominy, the indignity, of his position? And yet he should not have died. He should not have died.'

The repeated phrase trailed off into silence. Was she crying? Really crying? She was not lost, then, to all decent feeling. Some humanity remained.

'You have said enough to show me how utterly I have been deceived.' She did not look at me. Her head was pressed against the window-pane, through which she was gazing out into the gathering dark. 'But this I must know: how did you first discover what Lady Tansor had done?'

'Dear Edward!' Oh, her voice! So soft, so inviting, so beguiling! She held out her hand, long and white. I took it, and sat down beside her.

'I did not mean you to love me, you know. But when it was clear that you did well, it made things so much easier. I know Marie-Madeleine warned you -'

'Miss Buisson! She knew?'

'But of course. Marie-Madeleine and I have no secrets. We are the closest of friends. Sometimes I tell her things that even Phoebus doesn't know about me. But I suppose by the time she wrote to you that things had gone too far, hadn't they? Poor sweet Edward!' She leaned forward and began to brush my hair away from my forehead; but in my mesmeric state I seemed powerless to stop her.

'And, you know, I found your attentions rather pleasant. It made Marie-Madeleine terribly cross.' She gave a sly little laugh. 'On more than one occasion she told me I shouldn't encourage them that it was unnecessarily cruel. But I found I couldn't help myself; and as time went on, well, I began to think I might be falling in love with you just a very little bit. It was bad of me, I know, and it shocked Marie-Madeleine even more when I told her. The little minx! I think she would have liked to have had you for herself! But you were asking me how we came to learn about Lady Tansor's little escapade.

'It happened purely by chance. My father had asked me to a.s.sist him in the translation of some letters in French dating from the time of the infamous twentieth Baron Tansor. He, you may know, turned Papist and went into exile with James II, who made him a Duke.2 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 rather fascinated by Laura Tansor. Such a remarkable person! The most beautiful woman in England, they used to say. Clever, too, by all accounts, though headstrong and pa.s.sionate; but that only made her more admirable in my eyes. And so of course I could not help peeping into the chest. What do you think I pulled out first? A letter, dated the sixteenth of June, 1820, to Lady Tansor in Paris, from a friend identified only by the initial letter 'S.' in the town of Dinan, which I'm sure you will know is in Brittany, not far from the city of Rennes. I did not have time to read the letter in its entirety for I heard my father's step on the stairs; but I had read enough to know that it contained an extraordinary possibility. I just had time to memorize two sentences. I remember them still. Would you like to hear them? I kiss your beautiful son every night and a.s.sure him that his mamma will love him for ever. And I shall love him too. Did they mean what they appeared to mean, I wondered?

'Naturally, I immediately told Phoebus of my little adventure, and we talked long and often of the mystery I had uncovered. 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 was aware that he was to be made Lord Tansor's heir. If a child had been born to Laura Tansor well, I do not need to tell you what Phoebus thought of that. Of course the child might have been the result of some illicit liaison; but, legitimate or not, it was imperative to find out more if he was to feel secure in his prospects.

'It fell to me to keep watch on my father, which I did by offering to a.s.sist him further with his work. It was in this way that I found out that he was planning to remove certain of Lady Tansor's letters to the bank in Stamford. Then, after I learned that he intended to retrieve those same letters in advance of his meeting with you at the George Hotel, Phoebus conceived the plan of using Pluckrose to waylay my father on his return to Evenwood and take the papers, under the guise of a robbery. The rest you know.'

'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, you know. 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 him; 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 do not answer. I have nothing left to say to her. She continues to speak, but I am barely listening. Somewhere a half-formed thought is beginning to crawl out of the darkness into which my mind has been plunged. It grows stronger and more distinct, until at last it fills my mind to overflowing and I can think of nothing else.

'Edward! Edward!'

Slowly I focus my attention on her; but I feel nothing. Yet one question remains.

'Why did you do this? Once my ident.i.ty 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. And as I told you, I will do anything anything for the man I love.'

In a daze I reach for my hat. She says nothing, but watches closely as I pick up my volume of Donne and walk to the door. As I am unlocking it, my eye is caught by an open box of cigars on a nearby table.

'Would you like a cigar?' I hear her ask. 'Please help yourself. They are Phoebus's favourite. Ramon Allones.'

I open the door and walk out into the corridor.

I do not look back.

I pa.s.sed a fearful night contemplating the ruin of my great project. The gates of Paradise have been closed upon me, and will never be opened again. I was heart-sick at my defeat by the woman in whom I had been so foolish so utterly and unforgivably foolish as to place my trust. She had played me 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 unto death. 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.

Friday, 20th October, 1854.

I have seen him. I was heavily disguised, dressed in moleskin trousers, a greasy black coat, a coa.r.s.e unb.u.t.toned s.h.i.+rt, and a cap and dirty m.u.f.fler, all purchased from a Jew-clothesman in Holywell-street. Towards six o'clock, after spending several uncomfortable hours in the vicinity of Mecklenburgh-square, I was rewarded at last by the sight of my quarry leaving his house and making his way westwards towards Gower-street.

Close at last close enough to see his black beard and his handsome dark eyes, and the s.h.i.+mmer on his silk hat as he pa.s.ses under a lamp. He walks with a determinedly confident air, swinging his stick, his long coat trailing out behind him like a king's train. It has been three years and more since I had last seen him, playing croquet with a tall dark-haired lady at Evenwood. Dear G.o.d! For the first time, I realize that it had all been laid out before my very eyes on that hot June afternoon, and I had failed to see it: Phoebus Daunt and his beautiful croquet partner my enemy and my dearest love.

He swings south to Bedford-square, and thence down St Martin's-lane until he comes at last to Berthollini's in St Martin's-street, Leicester-square, which he enters. I take up my position just across the street. The two pocket-pistols made for me by M. Honore of Liege, which have accompanied me on all my midnight rambles about the city, are in readiness. There is no moon tonight, and sufficient fog to make escape certain.

Two hours later he steps out into the street again, with another fellow. They shake hands, and his companion walks off towards Pall Mall while Daunt takes his way northwards. In Broad-street, he turns into a narrow lane, lit by a single gas-lamp at the far end.