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Authors: The Glass of Time (mobi)

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BOOK: Michael Cox
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5

A Walk with Mr Randolph

I
I Hear Confession

T
HE 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 me 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.
‘Miss Gorst,’ he says, removing his hat, and running his fingers nervously through his hair. ‘I don’t want you to think badly of me, so there’s something I must say – a confession.’
I express surprise that he can possibly have anything to confess to me on so brief an acquaintance.
‘That’s just it,’ comes the reply. ‘I don’t want to begin our acquaintance on the wrong foot.’
Permission to proceed is duly given, and I wait – with a good deal of curiosity – for him to speak.
Having become rather red in the face, he now takes off his long riding-coat and lays it on the parapet next to his hat.
‘The thing is, Miss Gorst,’ he begins, ‘our meeting this morning – it wasn’t quite by chance, you know. I was riding through the village when I saw you take the road up to Easton. So I waited for a while, then rode up through one of the back ways to the town, just in time to see you go in to the Duport Arms. I stabled the horse, and waited in the Square for you to come out. When you didn’t, I decided to go in and look for you. There! That’s my confession. Will you forgive me?’
‘For what?’ I ask, amused by his sweetly grave expression, which has somehow brought to mind the earnest face of little Amélie Verron, bending herself to some pretended school-room task that I had set her.
‘I thought you might feel it was, well, rather forward of me, having so recently met you,’ he admits, ‘and I wouldn’t want that.’
I assure him that I did not consider it to have been in the least forward, or in any way improper, although adding that Mrs Battersby might not agree.
‘Oh?’ he says, turning away to pick up his hat and coat from the parapet. ‘Why do you say that?’
I reply that she appears to have a rather severe view of the proprieties that ought to exist between domestic servants and those placed in authority over them.
To this observation he merely nods, whilst once again seeming strangely relieved by my words.
As we draw near to the house, he begins to point out the fine iron-work of the gates and of the tall railings on either side, leaning close in to me in order to direct my eyes to the particular features he wishes me to note. We then continue across the wide gravelled Court, past the splashing, Triton-encrusted fountain in its oval of perfect green turf, to the front-door steps.
He is about to take his leave when I interrupt him with a question that has been fluttering around my head since we left the bridge: why had he followed me to Easton?
‘Oh, merely a whim,’ he says, with a breezy smile. ‘Having nothing else to do at that moment, I simply wondered what would take you to Easton at this time of day, when you ought to be attending Mother. Pure curiosity – that’s all. It’s just that I didn’t want you to think I’d done anything – well, underhand – in going after you like that, and then pretending that I’d met you by accident. Well, here we are. Safe home. Good-morning, Miss Gorst. This has been most pleasant.’
He seems suddenly eager to go, tips his hat, and walks quickly off towards the stables.
It is then that I become aware of someone standing in the doorway at the base of one of the towers. It is Mrs Battersby. She watches Mr Randolph leave the Court and then, turning for a moment towards me, although making no acknowledgement of my presence, goes back inside the house, closing the door behind her.

BOOK: Michael Cox
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