The Meaning of Night (25 page)

respects, appears to have been concluded to the satisfaction of all concerned, and I think I

can report to Mr Edward Glyver that he need have no further disquiet regarding this

matter.’

I rose to go, but Mr Tredgold suddenly sprang up from his chair, with a speed that

surprised me.

‘By no means, Mr Glapthorn,’ he said, taking my arm. ‘I shall not hear of it! You

shall stay to luncheon – it is all ready.’

And with this wholly unanticipated expression of civility towards me, I was

escorted to an adjoining room, where a substantial cold collation had been laid out. We

chatted easily for an hour or more over what was a really excellent repast – prepared and

brought in for Mr Tredgold by a protégé of no less a person than M. Brillat-Savarin?

himself. We spoke about Mr Thackeray’s Pendennis,? which we both admired, and then

discovered that the Senior Partner had spent some time in Heidelberg as a student, thus

precipitating some mutually happy memories of the town and its environs.

‘The receipt you showed me earlier, Mr Glapthorn,’ he said at length. ‘Do you

perhaps share Mr Glyver’s bibliographical interests?’

I replied that I had made some study of the subject.

‘Perhaps, then, you would give me your opinion on something?’

Whereupon he went to a glass-fronted case in the far corner of the room and took

out a volume to show me – Battista Marino’s Epithalami (Paris, 1616 – the first collected

edition, and the only edition printed outside Italy).?

‘Very fine,’ I said admiringly.

Mr Tredgold’s remarks on the character, provenance, and rarity of the volume

were accurate and judicious, and though his knowledge of the field in general was

inferior to my own, he nevertheless impressed me with the extent of his expertise. He

affected to defer immediately to what he said was my obviously superior judgement on

such matters, and ventured to suggest we might arrange another visit, at which he could

show me more of his collection at leisure.

So it was that I charmed Mr Christopher Tredgold.

I left by one of the side entrances, escorted down to the street door by the serving

man who had let me in a few hours before. Just as we reached the bottom, Mr Tredgold

shouted down.

‘Come again, next Sunday.’

And I did; and the next Sunday, and the following. By my fifth visit to

Paternoster-row, I had formed a plan which I hoped would take advantage of my

increasingly friendly connexion with the Senior Partner.

‘I fear, Mr Tredgold,’ I said, as I was about to depart for Camberwell, ‘that this

may have to be the last of our pleasant Sundays.’

He looked up, and for once the beam had vanished,

‘What? Why do you say so?’

‘My employment with Mr Glyver was, as you know, only temporary, and will be

over as soon as he returns from the Continent in the next few days and I can discharge the

final portions of my duty to him in person.’

‘But what will you do then?’ asked Mr Tredgold, with every appearance of

genuine concern.

I shook my head and said that I had no immediate prospect of further

employment.

‘Why, then,’ he beamed, ‘I can give you one.’

It had fallen out even better than I had dared hope. I had envisaged the possibility

of offering my services to the firm in some junior capacity; but instead, Mr Tredgold

offered to employ me as his private assistant – ‘My personal private assistant’, as he was

at some pains to emphasize – charged with various duties arising from the Senior

Partner’s day-to-day business at Tredgolds. In addition, he offered to introduce me to Sir

Ephraim Gadd, Q.C., the recipient of many of Tredgolds’ most lucrative briefs, who was

at that moment seeking someone to act as tutor in the classical languages to those

applying for admission to the Inner Temple who had not taken a degree.

‘But I have no degree either,’ said I.

Mr Tredgold smiled – seraphically – once more.

‘That, I can assure you, will be no bar. Sir Ephraim is always ready to take the

advice of Tredgold, Tredgold & Orr.’

With my new position came a good salary of a hundred and fifty pounds per

annum,? and a set of top-floor rooms in Temple-street, in a building owned by the firm,

for which only a modest rent was requested. It was agreed that I would begin my

employment – the precise nature of which remained almost deliberately vague – on the

first day of December, in just over six weeks’ time, when the rooms I had been given

were vacated by their present temporary occupant. I returned to Camberwell elated by my

triumph, but saddened at having to leave my comfortable lodgings. Signor Gallini, from

whom I had received many kindnesses and attentions in the short time we had been

acquainted, was the first new friend I made in London, and it was a real sadness to leave

his quiet little house, not to mention the charms of the delectable Miss Bella, and move

into the teeming heart of the city. But leave I did, and took possession of my new rooms

just in time to celebrate Christmas, 1849, in the Temple Church.

Amongst the first letters I received in my new home was one from Signor Gallini

and Bella (with whom I had determined I should not lose contact), wishing me the

compliments of the season and sending their very best hopes that I would prosper in my

new career. The next day I picked up two more letters from the accommodation address I

had taken in Upper Thames-street, hard by, in order to receive correspondence directed to

Edward Glyver.

The first was from Mr Gosling, my mother’s legal man in Weymouth, advising

me that the house at Sandchurch had been sold but indicating that, owing to its somewhat

parlous condition, the original asking price had not been achieved. The proceeds had

been disposed according to my instructions: the money owed to Mr More had been

remitted to him, and this, on top of other necessary disbursements, had left a balance of

£107 4s. and 6d. This was far less than I had expected, but at least I now had

employment, and a roof over my head.

The second letter was from Dr Penny, the physician who had attended my mother

in her last illness.

Sandchurch, Dorset

30th December, 1849

My dear Edward —

It is with very great sorrow that I have to inform you that poor Tom Grexby

passed away last evening. The end was swift and painless, I am glad to say, though quite

unexpected.

I had seen him only the day before and he seemed quite well. He was taken ill

during the afternoon. I was called, but he was unconscious when I arrived and I could do

nothing for him. He died, quite peacefully, just after 8 o’clock.

The funeral is today week. I am sorry to be the bearer of such mournful news.

I remain, yours very sincerely,

Matthew Penny

A week later, on a cold January afternoon, I returned to Sandchurch for the last

time in my life to see my dear friend and former schoolmaster laid to rest in the little

church overlooking the grey waters of the Channel. A bitter wind was driving in from the

east, and the ground was flint hard underfoot from several days’ hard frost. I remained

alone in the church-yard after everyone else had departed, watching the last vestiges of

day succumb to the onset of darkness, until it became impossible to distinguish where the

sky ended and the heaving expanse of black water began.

I felt utterly alone, bereft now of Tom’s sympathetic companionship; for he had

been the only person in my life who had truly understood my intellectual passions.

During my time as his pupil, by generously and selflessly putting his own extensive

knowledge at my complete disposal, and by encouraging me in every possible way, he

had given me the means to rise far above the common level of attainment. Eschewing the

dead hand of an inflexible system, he had showed me how to think, how to analyse and

assimilate, how to impose my will on a subject, and make it my own. All these mental

strengths I would need for what lay ahead, and all these I owed to Tom Grexby.

I stood by the grave until I was fairly numb with cold, thinking over the days of

my boyhood spent with Tom in his dusty house of books. Though I could not comfort

myself with the pious certainties of Christianity, for I had already lost whatever

allegiance I might have had to that faith, I remained susceptible to its poetical power, and

could not help saying aloud the glorious words of John Donne, which had also been

spoken at my mother’s funeral:

And into that gate they shall enter, and in that house they shall dwell, where there

shall be no Cloud nor Sun, no darknesse nor dazling, but one equall light, no noyse nor

silence, but one equall musick, no fears nor hopes, but one equal possession, no foes nor

friends, but an equall communion and Identity, no ends nor beginnings; but one equall

eternity.

Desperately cold, and with a heavy heart, I left the church-yard, eager now to seek

the warmth and comfort of the King’s Head. Yet, despite my discomfort, I could not help

first walking up the cliff path, to take one final look at the old house.

It stood in the freezing gloom, dark and shuttered, the garden untended, the little

white fence blown over in the late gales. I do not know what I felt as I regarded the

creeping desolation, whether grief for what had been lost, or guilty sorrow for having

abandoned my childhood home. Above me, the bare branches of the chestnut-tree, in

which I had built my crow’s-nest, creaked and cracked in the bitter wind. I would never

again clamber up to my old vantage point, to look out across the ever-changing sea and

dream of Scheherazade’s eyes, or of walking with Sinbad through the Valley of

Diamonds.? But to the inevitability of change, all things must submit; and so I turned my

back on the past and set my face into the east wind, which quickly dried my tears. I had a

great work to accomplish, but I trusted, at the last, to come into that gate, and into that

house, where all would be well; where, as Donne the preacher said, fear and hope would

be banished forever, in one equal possession.

My first visitor to Temple-street was Le Grice, who arrived unannounced, late one

snowy afternoon, a week or so after I’d returned from Tom’s funeral. His thundering

ascent of the wooden stairs, and the three tremendous raps on the door that followed,

were unmistakable.

‘Hail, Great King!’ he bellowed, pulling me towards him and slapping me on the

back with the flat of his great hand. He stamped the snow from his boots and then,

removing his hat and taking a step back, surveyed my new kingdom.

‘Snug,’ he nodded approvingly, ‘very snug. But who’s that awful little tick on the

ground floor? Poked his horrid nose round the door and asked if I was looking for Mr

Glapthorn. Told him, politely, to mind his own business. And who’s Glapthorn, when

he’s at home?’

‘The tick goes by the name of Fordyce Jukes,’ I said. ‘Mr Glapthorn is yours

truly.’

Naturally, this information produced a look of surprise in my visitor.

‘Glapthorn?’

‘Yes. Does it bother you that I’ve adopted a new name?

‘Not in the least, old boy,’ he replied. ‘Got your reasons, I expect. Creditors

pressing, perhaps? Irate husband, pistol in hand, searching high and low for E. Glyver?’

I could not help giving a little laugh.

‘Either, or both, will do,’ I said.

‘Well, I won’t press you. If a friend wants to change his name, and that same

friend wishes to keep his reasons to himself, then let him change it, I say. Luckily, I can

continue to call you “G.” in either case. But if assistance is required, ask away. Always

ready and eager to oblige.’

I assured him that I needed no assistance, financial or otherwise, requesting only

that any correspondence sent to Temple-street, or to my employer’s, should be directed to

Mr E. Glapthorn.

‘I say,’ he said suddenly, ‘you’re not working for the Government, in some secret

capacity, I suppose?’

‘No,’ I said, ‘nothing like that.’

He seemed disappointed, but was true to his word and did not press me further.

Then he reached into his pocket and drew out a folded copy of the Saturday Review.

‘By the way, I came across this at the Club. It’s a few months’ old now. Did you

see it? Page twenty-two.’

I had not seen it, for it was not a periodical I often read. I looked at the date on the

cover: October the tenth, 1849. On the page in question was an article entitled ‘Memories

of Eton. By P. Rainsford Daunt’.

‘Seems to be a good deal about you in it,’ said Le Grice

So many years had gone by since Daunt had betrayed me; but my desire for

vengeance was as strong as ever. I had already begun to assemble information on him,

which I kept in a tin box under my bed: reviews and critical appreciations of his work,

articles he had written for the literary press, notes on his father from public sources, and

my own descriptive impressions of his first home, Millhead, which I had visited the

previous November. The archives were small as yet, but would grow as I searched for

some aspect of his history and character that I could use against him.

‘I shall read it later,’ I said, throwing the magazine onto my work-table. ‘I’m