The Meaning of Night (67 page)

continue to feel, keenly. But there are higher things than professional duty, and I found

that my conscience easily submitted to the greater dictates of love, allowing me to serve

Lord Tansor to the best of my ability whilst still honouring my sacred vow to his wife. I

withheld the truth from him, but never lied. It is a Jesuitical distinction, I own, and would

have been a poor defence; but it served. Yet if he had asked me to my face, then, God

forgive me, I would have lied, if that had been her wish.

I therefore deceived you further when I said I had no knowledge of the private

arrangement referred to in the agreement between Lady Tansor and Mrs Glyver, and for

that I humbly ask you to forgive me.

But you have also deceived me, Edward. So let us now be honest with each other.

On reading these words, perspiration begins to bead on my forehead. I lay the

letter down and walk over to the window to try and open it, but it is locked tight shut. I

feel entombed in this tenebrous, dusty room, with its hideous brown-painted wainscot, its

dark and elaborate furniture and heavy green-plush curtains; and so I close my eyes for a

moment and dream of air and light – the open sky and sunlit woods, wind and water, sand

and sea, places of peace and freedom.

A door bangs. I open my eyes. Feet scurry down the passage. Then silence. I

return to the letter.

He had known me all this time, from the moment I was shown into his

drawing-room in Paternoster-row by Albert Harrigan on that Sunday morning in

September, 1849: despite my subterfuge, my identity had been written on my face as

clearly as if I had sent up a card bearing the name ‘Edward Duport (formerly Glyver)’.

He had known me! I had stood before him, the son of the woman he continued to adore,

and he had seen her in me, as Mr Carteret had done. But where Mr Carteret had merely

noted a chance resemblance, Mr Tredgold had seen the living truth. Here was the reason

for his immediate and obvious regard for me, his willingness to oblige me, his alacrity in

offering me employment. He had known me! During all our walks in the Temple

Gardens, and our Sundays together, poring over masterpieces of the erotic imagination,

and through the working out of all his ‘little problems’. He had known me! As I’d

laboured – alone and unknown, as I had thought – to reclaim my birthright, he had known

me! But he had vowed to keep my mother’s secret safe – even from me; and so, through

all the years of my employment, he had watched me, the son of the woman he had loved

above all others, knowing who I was and what I had been born to, but powerless to assist

me in the task I had undertaken. He saw that I had come to him in the guise of Edward

Glapthorn for no other purpose than to find some means of regaining my true self. But in

this he was also helpless, for – as he had admitted – he had destroyed every trace of his

dealings with Lady Tansor, and possessed nothing – no letter, no memorandum, no

document of any kind – that could prove conclusively what he and I knew to be the truth

about my birth. He could only watch and wait, bound as he was both by the vow he had

made to my mother, and by the code of his profession.

But then events began to threaten the accommodation Mr Tredgold had made with

his conscience.

The first indication of an impending crisis had come when Lord Tansor had

indicated to Mr Tredgold that he wished to make Phoebus Daunt the heir to his property,

on the single condition that the beneficiary would then take the Duport name. Everything

that should have been mine was to go to Daunt, being the step-son of Lord Tansor’s

second cousin, Mrs Caroline Daunt, who, by this relationship, might one day complete

her triumph and inherit the title itself.

What should Mr Tredgold do? He could not tell Lord Tansor that he had a living

heir, for that would have been to betray my mother’s secret; but the unworthiness of the

prospective heir was to him so apparent (though not to Lord Tansor) that his professional

conscience almost revolted, and more than once he had been close to laying the whole

truth before his noble client in order to prevent this calamitous outcome. The following

passage was of particular interest to me:

Of course I knew of your former acquaintance with Daunt, as school-fellows, and

guessed what estimation you might have of his subsequent endeavours. My own was very

low indeed. I had received disturbing reports of his character from Mr Paul Carteret; and

indeed I had reasons of my own to suspect him of having inclinations of the basest kind.

From an early age he had been pushed forward by his step-mother as a kind of substitute

for Lord Tansor’s son – his younger son, I should say. Mrs Daunt has always exhibited a

tigerish concern for her step-son’s future prosperity (and certainly for her own as well).

With great skill and determination, she constantly deployed her influence with Lord

Tansor to advance the boy in his estimation. In this she succeeded, beyond all

expectation.

I did everything I could, on many occasions, to intimate to my client, as far as my

professional position allowed, that he would be well advised to reconsider his decision.

But I could not persuade his Lordship and he told me, with some force, that the matter

was closed.

But then had come Mr Carteret’s letter, and all was changed. Mr Tredgold had

immediately sensed a startling probability: that his old friend had discovered what he

himself had striven to keep secret for so many years. And so I had been despatched to

Stamford, with consequences that I have already set out. On Mr Tredgold, these had had

a severe effect. To hear, in the report I had sent from Evenwood, of the fatal attack on Mr

Carteret had induced a profound shock, and probably contributed greatly to the paralytic

seizure he subsequently suffered.

Just then the door opened and I turned to see Miss Tredgold framed in the

opening. The sun had dipped behind the houses on the other side of the street, leaving the

room in an even deeper condition of brown-stained gloom. She held a light in her hand.

‘If you wish, I will take you to my brother.’

39:

Quis separabit??

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I followed Miss Tredgold into the hall and up the dark stairs, along a cold dark

landing, and into a darkened room. Mr Tredgold sat hunched in the far corner, by a little

desk on which were placed some sheets of paper and writing implements. He was

wrapped in a woollen shawl; his head had dropped down over his chest, and his once

immaculate feathery hair was disarranged and thin looking.

‘Christopher.’

Miss Tredgold spoke softly, touching her brother gently on the shoulder and

raising the candle so that he might better see her face.

‘I have brought Mr Glapthorn.’

He looked up and nodded.

She motioned to me to take a seat opposite my employer and placed the candle on

the desk.

‘Please ring when you are ready,’ she said, indicating a bell-rope just behind Mr

Tredgold’s chair.

As she closed the door behind her, Mr Tredgold lent forward with surprising

vigour and grasped my hand.

‘Dear . . . Edward . . .’ The words were slurred and came haltingly, but clear

enough for me to hear what he was saying.

‘Mr Tredgold, sir, I am so very glad to see you . . .’

He shook his head. ‘No . . . No . . . No time. You have . . . read the . . . letter?’

‘I have.’

‘My dear fellow . . . so very sorry . . .’

He fell back in his chair, exhausted by the effort of speaking.

I glanced at the paper and writing implements on the table by his chair.

‘Mr Tredgold, perhaps if you were to write down – if you are able – what you

wish to say to me?’

He nodded and turned to take up the pen. There was no sound in the room except

for the scratching of the nib and the occasional crackle from the dying fire in the grate.

The task was slow and laborious, but at length, as the last embers of the fire went out, he

lay down the pen and handed me the sheet of paper. It was somewhat rambling, and

written in a highly abbreviated, unpunctuated manner. The following is my own more

finished version of what I now read.

‘My dear boy – for so I think of you, as if you were my own. It breaks my heart

that I cannot speak to you as I would wish to do, or help you to regain what is rightfully

yours. How you came to the knowledge of your birth is dark to me, but I thank God that

you did and that He led you to me, for there is a purpose in all this. I have kept the truth

hidden, for love of your mother; but the time has come to put matters right. Yet in my

present condition I do not know what I can do, and the death of my poor friend has

robbed us both of an invaluable ally. I am certain that Carteret had come into the

possession of documents that would have materially advanced your case – but now they

are lost to us, perhaps forever, and a good man has died because he learned the truth. I

now fear for you, dear Edward. Your enemy will be seeking high and low for Laura

Tansor’s son, and will stop at nothing to protect his expectations. If he should discover

your true identity, then there can be only one consequence. I beg you therefore to take

every precaution. Be constantly vigilant. Trust no one.’

He looked at me with a most pitifully anxious expression. When I had finished

reading, I took his hand.

‘My dear sir, you must not be anxious for me. I am well able to meet whatever

danger may present itself; and though the documents Mr Carteret was carrying may be

lost to the enemy, we have something nearly as good.’

I then told him of my mother’s journals and the corroboration of them provided

by Mr Carteret’s Deposition, on hearing of which he gripped my hands and uttered a

strange sort of sigh. A fierce light seemed to burn in his poor pale eyes as he reached

again for his pen.

‘All is not lost then (he wrote), as long as these statements remain safe from the

enemy. They are insufficient, as you must know, but they must be safeguarded at all costs

– as must the true identity of Edward Glapthorn. And then you and I must apply

ourselves to overturning Lord Tansor’s folly, and so set things right at last.’

‘The documents are safe,’ I assured him, ‘and so am I. I have made a copy of the

Deposition, which I have brought with with me, to leave in your keeping.’ I placed the

document on the desk. ‘And Daunt can have no reason whatsoever to suspect that

Edward Glapthorn is the person he seeks. And you are wrong, sir, to say that we do not

have an ally. I believe we do.’

He leaned forward, hands shaking, and wrote the words ‘An ally?’

Thus I opened my heart to Mr Tredgold concerning Miss Emily Carteret.

‘I love her to the utmost degree. To you, sir, I need say no more; for you know

what it means to love in this way.’

‘But does she love you, in the same way?’ he wrote.

‘Every instinct tells me that she does,’ I replied, ‘though love is undeclared on

both sides as yet, and must so remain until she returns from France. But already I would

trust her with my life. She has long held Daunt in contempt; only think, sir, how she will

regard him once he is revealed in his true colours as the instigator of the attack on her

father. I have not the slightest doubt that she will support us in all our endeavours to

unmask his villainy, and so expose his true character to Lord Tansor.’ And then I told

him of Daunt’s association with Pluckrose; of his criminal career, as described to me by

Lewis Pettingale, including his involvement in the swindle perpetrated against the firm;

and finally of my conviction that Mr Carteret had been set upon by Pluckrose acting on

Daunt’s orders.

He made no attempt to write a response, though the pen was in his hand. Instead

he leaned back in his chair and closed his eyes, apparently overcome with fatigue.

‘Sir,’ I said gently. ‘There is one more thing I must say to you.’ Mr Tredgold

remained immobile. ‘I believe I know where the final proof of my identity may be

found.’

He opened his eyes slowly and looked at me.

As I had spoken the words, Miss Tredgold had entered the room, preventing me

from speaking further. On seeing her brother’s face, she pronounced him unfit to

continue with the conversation and I had no choice but to withdraw, though it was agreed

that I might come again the following Wednesday, if his condition continued to improve.

But I did not keep the appointment. When I returned to Temple-street I found a

letter waiting for me bearing a Paris postmark. I saw immediately that the envelope had

not been inscribed by Miss Carteret; but I tore it open all the same. It was a short note

from Mademoiselle Buisson.

Dear Mr Dark Horse —

I am bidden by our mutual friend to inform you that she will be returning to

England on Monday next and will be most happy to receive you at the house of Mrs

Manners on Wednesday. She has a slight indisposition at the present which prevents her

from writing to you herself. I may say, entre nous, that she has been a very dull

companion indeed, the blame for which I lay entirely at your door. It has been ‘Mr