The Meaning of Night (14 page)

both willing and capable of supplying.

It was speedily agreed that the work would start the very next day. Dr Daunt

would come up to the house every morning, excepting of course Sundays, to work in the

Library. Everything needful would be placed at his disposal – Carteret would see to it all;

and, said Lord Tansor magnanimously, Dr Daunt might have the use of one of his own

grey cobs for the daily journey across the Park.

They retraced their steps to the terrace. There was a slight sunset wind moving

through the avenue of limes that led away from the formal gardens to the lake. The rustle

of its passing only served to deepen the sense of descending silence. Lord Tansor and Dr

Daunt stood for a moment looking out across the darkling flower-beds and the criss-cross

of clipped grass paths.

‘There is another matter I wished to put before you, Dr Daunt,’ said Lord Tansor.

‘It would please me to see your boy do well in life. I have often had occasion to observe

him of late, and I discern in him qualities a father could be proud of. Do you intend that

he should take Orders?’

Dr Daunt hesitated slightly. ‘That has always been . . . understood.’ He did not

say that he already sensed a distinct animosity towards the prospect of ordination in his

only son.

‘It is gratifying, of course,’ continued Lord Tansor, ‘that the young man’s

inclinations concur with your own wishes. Perhaps you may live to see him made a

Bishop.’

To his surprise, Dr Daunt saw that Lord Tansor’s expression had formed into

something approaching a smile.

‘As you know,’ he resumed, ‘your wife has been kind enough to bring your son to

visit us here often over the course of the last few weeks, and I have become fond of the

boy,’ his Lordship resumed, gravity resettling his features. ‘I think I may even say that I

envy you. Our children are a sort of immortality, are they not?’

The Rector had never before heard his patron speak with such frankness, and did

not well know what to say in reply. He was aware, naturally, that Lord Tansor’s son,

Henry Hereward Duport, had died only a few months before he and his family had been

led out of Millhead through the exertions of his second wife. On first coming into the

great vestibule, the visitor to Evenwood was confronted with a large family group by Sir

Thomas Lawrence – his Lordship and his first wife, holding their baby son in her arms –

illuminated by a glazed Gothic lantern high above by day, and at night by six large

candles set in a semi-circle of ornate sconces.

The premature death of his son, at the age of seven years, had left Lord Tansor

cruelly exposed to the thing he dreaded most. Though generally accounted to be a proud

man, his pride was of a peculiar character. Having inherited enough – and more than

enough – to satisfy the most acquisitive and prodigal nature, he nevertheless continued to

accumulate wealth and influence, not simply for his own aggrandisement, but in order to

bequeath an augmented, inviolable inheritance to his children, as his immediate

predecessors had done.

But when his longed-for son had been taken from him, compounding the loss of

his first wife, he had been confronted by the possibility of having to forfeit all he held

most dear; for without a direct heir, there was every likelihood that the title, along with

Evenwood and the other entailed property, would fall into the hands of his collateral

relatives – a prospect to which Lord Tansor was viscerally, and perhaps irrationally,

opposed. Considering all that lay to his name in the way of wealth, property, possessions,

and power, I do not suppose that his Lordship’s situation would have excited much pity

or compassion in the breasts of those less fortunately placed; yet it went hard with him,

for he felt that a cruel fate had opposed itself to the animating principle of his life. He

simply wanted an heir.

Lord Tansor, then, was but a man – for all he seemed above mere mortal cares.

Cruelly, his second union had so far produced no children, and, in the dark watches of the

night, he began to feel himself accursed. With every passing year, he became conscious

of an accumulating weight of foreboding that he could not, under any circumstance,

communicate to another person.

As he gazed now, with Dr Daunt, upon the perfect portion of earth that was

Evenwood, the scene before him – as so often recently – seemed to him to have become

transposed to a different and darker pitch. Instead of the former satisfaction of

possession, he now felt only the keen edge of fear. Where once these woods and waters,

and the wondrous beauty of the house itself, had spoken of permanence and stability, now

they served only to remind him that rushing time was carrying all these things away with

every passing second. In the warm twilight of this August evening, Lord Tansor knew

more certainly than ever before that the gates of Eden had been opened, and that death

had entered in.

‘Returning to the matter of your boy,’ he said after a moment or two. ‘Is it still the

case that you intend to prepare him for the University yourself?’

Dr Daunt replied that he saw no particular advantage in sending his son to school.

‘It would be unwise’, he continued, ‘to expose him to circumstances which might well be

injurious to him. He is able in many ways, but weak and easily lead. It is better for him

that he should remain here, under my care, until such time as he attains more discretion

and application than he presently possesses. ’

‘You are, perhaps, a little hard on him, sir,’ said Lord Tansor, stiffening slightly.

‘And you will permit me to say that I do not altogether concur with your plan. It is a bad

thing for a boy to be shut up at home. A boy needs early exposure to the world, or it will

go badly for him when he has to make his way in it – as your boy certainly must. It is my

view, Dr Daunt, my decided view,’ he added, with slow emphasis, ‘that he should be sent

to school as soon as possible.’

‘Of course I respect your opinion on this matter, sir,’ said the Rector, insinuating

as much assertion as he dared into his smiling response, ‘but you will allow, perhaps, that

a father’s wishes on such a point must count for a great deal.’

He felt uneasy at even so hesitant a display of defiance towards his patron, and

reflected to himself that the years had wrought much change in him, dulling his once

fiery temper, and rendering him diplomatic where once he would have relished

confrontation.

Lord Tansor allowed one of his threatening silences to descend on the

conversation, and turned his eyes towards the dark outline of trees, standing out now

blackly against the afterlight of the setting sun. With his hands clasped behind his back,

and continuing to stare into the gathering darkness, he waited for a second or two before

resuming.

‘Naturally, I could not insist upon usurping your wishes in respect of your son.

You have the advantage of me as far as that goes.’ He meant Dr Daunt to take the point

that he had no son of his own, and the rebuke that it implied. ‘Permit me to observe,

however, that your new duties here will leave you little time to devote to the instruction

of your son. Mr Tidy is able to do much of your work about the parish; but Sundays

remain’ – it was his Lordship’s strict requirement that the Rector took all the Sunday

services, and delivered the morning sermon – ‘and I am surprised that you are able to

contemplate no reduction in your other occupations to accommodate the task – the not

inconsiderable task – that you have so kindly agreed to undertake.’

Dr Daunt saw where he was being lead and, remembering that a patron can take

away as well as bestow, conceded that some rearrangement of his responsibilities would

be necessary.

‘I am glad we are in agreement,’ returned Lord Tansor, looking now straight into

the Rector’s eye. ‘That being so, and having the interests of your son equally in mind,

which I have recently had the pleasure of discussing with your wife, I venture to suggest

that you might do worse than to put the boy up for Eton.’

So that was that. It needed no elaboration from Lord Tansor for Dr Daunt to

recognize that a decree had been made. He made no further attempt to argue his case,

and, after some further discussion on the practical arrangements, finally assented to the

proposal, with as much good grace as he could muster. Young Master Phoebus, then,

would go to Eton, with which the Duports had a long connexion.

The matter being settled, Lord Tansor wished Dr Daunt good-night and a safe

journey home.

(

Links, always links; forged slowly in the mould, accumulating, entwining more

subtly and stronger still under the Iron Master’s hand; growing ever longer and heavier

until the chain of Fate – strong enough to hold even Great Leviathan down – becomes

unbreakable. A casual act, a fortuitous occurrence, an unlooked-for consequence: they

come together in a random dance, and then conjoin into adamantine permanence.

We are born within months of each other, like millions of others. We take our first

breath and open our eyes for the first time on the world, like millions of others. In our

separate ways, and under our separate influences of instruction and example, we grow

and are nourished, we learn and think, like millions of others. We should have remained

immured in our separateness and disconnexion. But we two have been singled out by the

Iron Master. We will be engineered and stamped with his mark that we may know each

other, and the links will be coiled tight around us.

Out of a hard, dark northern place he came, with his papa and step-mamma, to

settle –without the right of blood – into the paradise that should be mine; from the south,

honey-warm in memory, I was brought back to England; and now we are to meet for the

first time.?

11:

Floreat?

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The days of Dr Daunt’s dependence on surplice fees to pay for occasional

luxuries might now be over; but since Lord Tansor had not felt it necessary to offer any

degree of financial assistance in the furtherance of his desire that young Phoebus should

be sent to Eton – merely furnishing a recommendation, not easily refused, to the Provost

and Fellows that the boy should be found a place – it was impossible that the Rector’s

son could be supported there as an Oppidan.? He must therefore be entered for a

scholarship, despite the lowly standing of those who lived on the foundation. But the

young man acquitted himself well, as was to be expected of one who had been so ably

and constantly tutored, and in the year 1832 – when all was reformed? – became Daunt,

K.S., the most junior of the band of scholars provided for by the bounty of King Henry

VI.

Thus the Iron Master threw us together, with fatal consequences for us both; and

on the very same day that Phoebus Daunt made his way south to Eton from Evenwood to

begin his schooling, Edward Glyver travelled north from Sandchurch to commence his.

Here, perhaps, I may give my faculties rest and quote directly from the recollections

compiled by Daunt for the Saturday Review. It is typically maundering and

self-regarding in character, but I flatter myself that its introduction into this narrative will

not be uninteresting to those readers who have persevered so far.?

Memories of Eton

by

P. Rainsford Daunt

I went to Eton, as a Scholar, in the year 1832, at the behest of my father’s patron,

Lord T —. My first few days were, I confess, miserable enough, for I was homesick and

knew no one at the School. We Collegers also had to endure the venerable hardships of

Long Chamber – now swept away – and I have the dubious distinction of being amongst

the last witnesses of its ancient brutalities.

My closest friend and companion during my time at the School was a boy of my

own Election, ? whom I shall call G—.

I see him now, striding across School Yard on the day of my arrival, like some

messenger of Fate. I had made the journey to Eton alone – my father having important

diocesan business, and my step-mother being indisposed – and was standing beneath the

Founder’s statue, admiring the noble proportions of the Chapel, when I noticed a tall

figure detach itself from a knot of boys at the entrance to Long Chamber. He approached

with purpose in his dark eyes, clasped my hands warmly, and introduced himself as my

new neighbour. Within a moment, the formalities were concluded, and I found myself

caught up in a dazzling stream of talk.

His long pale face and the refinement of his features gave him a rather delicate,

almost girlish look; but the effect was countered by the broadness of his shoulders, and

by massive square hands that seemed somehow to have made their way to the ends of his

arms from some other and coarser body. He appeared, from the first, to possess the

experience and wisdom of a more senior boy. It was he who tutored me in the customs of

College life, and elucidated its mysterious patois.

And so my thralldom began. I never thought to reflect on why G–– had taken such

complete charge of me, with whom he had enjoyed no previous acquaintance. But I was a