Michael Cox (30 page)

HOW RADIANT MY Lady looked that night! Such poise and grace! So assured and serene! The eyes of every gentleman in the room were drawn irresistibly to her whenever she rose, which she did from time to time, like the accomplished hostess that she was, to pass amongst her guests at the far end of the great table – bestowing an enquiring word here, a whispered exchange there, smiling and laughing gaily; and then, having dispensed her regal favour, gliding gracefully back down the length of the room to resume her place.
To me, she continued to show the most flattering attention, as a consequence of which I, too, became the object of keen observation and scrutiny – especially from the ladies. But with every smile she gave me, every soft touch of her hand on mine, every affectionate look, the harder it became for me to believe that she was my enemy, whom I had been sent to destroy. Already I could feel myself falling prey to her subtle charms, which I knew I must resist, or all would be lost.

III
In Which an Expedition is Proposed

AS THE THIRD course was being cleared away, Mr Perseus, who had spoken little since we had taken our places at the table, leaned towards his mother and said something quietly in her ear. Then, making his apologies to his immediate neighbours, he left the room. I watched him go, hoping to catch his eye, and perhaps receive a smile; but he showed no sign of noticing me, and as he disappeared through the double doors, I felt suddenly alone and abandoned.
‘Perseus is feeling unwell,’ explained Lady Tansor, with a sigh. ‘I fear he smokes too much. I am always urging him to give up his cigars, and to eat more regularly, but he will not listen.’
‘What’s your opinion, Miss Gorst?’ Mr Randolph asked. ‘Do you think my brother smokes too much?’
‘I really couldn’t say. I believe it’s a habit in which many young gentlemen indulge.’
‘Young gentlemen must have their pleasures,’ observed Major Hunt-Graham. ‘Smoking is not so very bad a thing, you know. I’ve known worse habits in young gentlemen. And I believe, in the case of my young relative, that it’s a mighty aid to poetic composition.’
The major was a most attractive character. Tall and well built, with smooth silver hair, and a complexion darkened by his many years in India, he possessed a calm and masterful eye, which, augmented by a patrician refinement of feature, gave his long face an imperial cast that put me much in mind of a bust of Julius Caesar that Mr Thornhaugh kept in his study in the Avenue d’Uhrich.
‘My own son is an inveterate smoker of cigars,’ he went on. ‘My late wife could never persuade him to give them up; but then it’s as natural for mothers to fret about such things as it is for sons to abandon themselves to them.’
‘I’m fond of a cigar myself,’ put in Mr Vyse, who was seated next to the major. ‘In my case, I find it aids digestion, rather than poetic composition, and that I sleep all the better for one smoked just before bedtime; but of course one must smoke only the best. My taste was formed by an old friend – he always smoked Ramón Allones, and so, following his example, I’ve never smoked anything else. The boxes are also delightful. Both colourful and useful.’
He beamed benevolently.
‘You’ve been in Wales, I think,’ said the major to Mr Randolph.
‘I have, sir – visiting a friend. I am also exceedingly fond of mountains.’
He gave a hollow, barking laugh and threw back another mouthful of wine, giving me the distinct, and surprising, impression that he was becoming a little intoxicated.
‘A friend? From your time at Dr Savage’s?’ asked the major, a little pointedly, I thought.
‘Indeed. Mr Rhys Paget, of Llanberis. A very fine fellow. The finest in the world,’ replied Mr Randolph, adding more meditatively, ‘Wonderful times.’
At that moment, my Lady suddenly rose from her chair, in a sign that it was time for the ladies to withdraw to the Chinese Salon. She swept forth, silent and stiff-backed, leaving me almost to run after her. As I passed hurriedly under the gallery and into the corridor, Mr Randolph caught up with me.
‘I must apologize, Miss Gorst.’
‘Apologize?’ I exclaimed. ‘Whatever for?’
‘I’m not quite myself this evening. I wouldn’t like you to think – that is, it would pain me if you thought badly of me in any way.’
‘I don’t understand, sir,’ I said. ‘Why should I think badly of you?’
He hesitated, as a chattering group of ladies passed by on their way to the salon.
‘Because I fear I’ve had a little too much to drink this evening, and – I flatter myself that you must know this, Miss Gorst – because I esteem you so highly. I hope you think of me in the same way, and that you feel you have a true friend in me, as I hope I have in you.’
Again I thought that I read another, deeper, meaning in his eyes. This is what he had been trying to tell me when we had walked back from church together. He does not wish simply to be my friend. He loves me – I am sure of it – and believes, mistakenly, that his love might be returned.
He stands dumbly running his hands through his hair, but no further words come. Then he seems to gain resolve.
‘Have you walked over to the Temple of the Winds, Miss Gorst?’ he asks at last. ‘It’s in a rather parlous condition these days, but you get a very fine view of the house from there.’
I tell him that I have not yet explored that part of the Park, and would very much like to see the Temple.
‘Capital!’ he exclaims. ‘Then perhaps we might take a turn together round the Lake, and then walk up to the Temple – if you’d like that?’
So it is agreed that an expedition will be arranged when the Christmas festivities are over, and when my duties allow.
He seems about to return to the Dining-Room when his expression takes on a new intensity – intimate, yet distant, as if he were looking not at me, but through me, at something only he can see.
A slight noise behind me causes me to turn my head.
Mrs Battersby is standing at the bottom of the stairs leading down from the gallery. The three of us stand, silently regarding each other in the suddenly empty corridor with an air of expectation on our faces, as if we have each of us just that moment taken up our positions to begin some strange and soundless dance.
‘Was there something you wanted, Mrs Battersby?’ I ask, bravely conscious of my new power of authority over her, and eager to demonstrate it.
‘No, Miss Gorst,’ she replies, and proceeds on her way, her footsteps echoing on the corridor’s black-and-white tiles.
Mr Randolph stands for a moment, watching the housekeeper as she disappears through a door at the end of the corridor; then, with a few more words, he excuses himself and returns to the Dining-Room, leaving me to hurry off to join my Lady in the Chinese Salon.
‘Where have you been, dear?’ she asks.
‘A call of Nature,’ I whisper.
The card tables have been brought out, and groups of players are now forming. Whist is proposed. I am not fond of whist, but of course I have no choice but to consent to partner my Lady. To my relief, however, just as we are about to sit down, Mrs Bedmore – the former Miss Susan Lorimer, an old friend of my Lady’s – comes up to ask whether she will partner
her
, which enables me to give up my place with an appearance of the most sincere disappointment.
I sit by the fire for ten minutes or so, until I am sure that my Lady is absorbed in her game. Then, at a little before ten o’clock, I slip away.
There is something I must do.

19

A Voice from the Past

I
The Secret Cupboard

T
HE IVORY
jewellery box still lay on my Lady’s dressing-table. Taking out the little key on its black silk ribbon, I surveyed the room.
Every piece of furniture was familiar to me – I had looked into each drawer and cupboard, examined every box and chest. Now, key in hand, I set about investigating them all again, but without success. Having little time before I must return downstairs, I quickly hurried about the other rooms, but could find no locked receptacle of any kind.
It was possible, perhaps, that I held the key, small though it was, to my Lady’s study on the ground floor, a room to which no one but she and her secretary was allowed access; yet I felt sure that I had overlooked some secret hiding-place here, in her private apartments, or why would she keep the key by her in her jewellery box? As I stood debating with myself whether to postpone further searching until some more convenient time, I chanced to look across at the portrait of the beautiful Cavalier boy, little Anthony Duport.
It was hanging slightly askew, as if it had been knocked from its usual position. Through force of habit, having been so lately responsible for keeping the apartments clean and tidy, I walked over to set it right. As I approached the portrait, I chided myself for my stupidity, for I immediately saw what I had been searching for: the outline of a small cupboard set into the panelling, and normally hidden from view by the painting of Master Duport in his blue breeches. The cupboard was, of course, locked.
Taking down the portrait, I inserted the key into the brass escutcheon. It turned easily; the little square door swung open. With beating heart, I gazed inside.
Letters – five or six thick bundles, each secured with the same black silk ribbon as that to which the key had been attached; and, propped up at the back of the cavity, a photographic portrait, in an elaborate gilded frame, surrounded by a funereal mount of black velvet.
The clock above the fire-place struck the quarter hour. I had been gone too long. I would be missed, and could think of no plausible excuse for my absence. The letters must wait, but I could not resist reaching in to take out the photograph.
It showed a gentleman, perhaps thirty or so years of age, of middling height but broad-shouldered, most elegantly and expensively dressed in a silk-lapelled top-coat, light-grey trousers, and brilliantly polished, square-toed boots. He was sitting, in three-quarter profile, in a high-backed chair, against a painted backdrop of a summer garden. Beside him, on a draped pedestal, was a marble bust – the head of a beautiful young man, a god perhaps.
In its physical composition, the subject’s handsome, black-bearded face reminded me a little of Mr Perseus; but the impression of character conveyed by the portrait was altogether different to the proud reserve of my Lady’s eldest son. The sitter’s unwavering and unsettling gaze at once suggested exceptional intellect and physical fearlessness, but also the capacity of will to apply those qualities actively and ruthlessly. A man, in a word, whom it would be unwise to thwart.
I felt as if I knew him already, and for a brief, joyous moment the impossible notion seized me that it might be my father, whom I was now certain had once known my Lady. Then I noticed three initials, ‘P.R.D.’, with the date ‘August 1853’, written on the back of the photograph. The sitter was of course none other than the object of my Lady’s incorruptible passion – Phoebus Rainsford Daunt himself.
Phoebus Daunt, as he had been in life, was an altogether more impressive and memorable figure than the unprepossessing image I had formed of him. Somehow I had imagined a papery, weightless sort of man, preening, ridiculously pompous. Instead, here was every indication of an unquestionable strength of character, body, and mind – palpable and present in both expression and bearing. What a superb and enviable couple they must have made – the beautiful Miss Emily Carteret and her handsome poet-lover!
A minute passed, then another; still I was held, helplessly fascinated, by the brooding, dangerous face of Phoebus Daunt. A bad poet he may have been; but I thought that I now understood why the late Lord Tansor had wished to make him his heir, and how he had enslaved the former Miss Carteret’s heart, to the perpetual exclusion of any other man.
I replaced the photograph and was about to close the cupboard door, but at the last moment I could not resist taking out one of the bundles of letters – all written in the same distinctive hand, which, from various inscriptions in the volumes of his poetry that I had read to my Lady, I immediately recognized as being Daunt’s. All had been written to my Lady.
Satisfied now that I had made an important discovery, I replaced the bundle, locked the cupboard, and set pretty Anthony’s portrait back on its hook.
It was clear that the letters themselves could not be removed from their hiding-place: the risk was too great of my Lady’s going to the secret cupboard, perhaps on one of those nights when the terrors were upon her, to gaze on the face of her dead lover. I would have to contrive to read and transcribe them singly, either
in situ
, when I was sure that I would not be disturbed, or by removing them one at a time to the safety of my own room.
Back in the Chinese Salon, I was relieved to find that my Lady was still engaged in her game of whist with Mrs Bedmore and the others, and that it appeared my absence had gone unremarked.
The remainder of the evening passed without incident, although I had constantly to avoid the scrutinizing eye of Mr Shillito. The bells of the great house were heralding midnight when I at last returned upstairs, to sleep for the last time in my little room under the eaves.

THE MORNING OF Christmas Eve was spent packing up my things. My new accommodation consisted of a charming sitting-room, a bedroom, and an adjoining chamber, empty now, but formerly used as a lumber-room. The sitting-room, which had an exquisite plasterwork ceiling of heraldic design dating from the days of Elizabeth, occupied an angle of the tower that stood at the eastern end of the Library Terrace. Like those in Lady Tansor’s apartments on the floor below, its tall casement windows gave a view across the gravelled walks of the pleasure-garden to the distant woods of Molesey. There were fine thick rugs on the floor, an imposing stone fire-place, and a capacious sofa. Altogether, it proclaimed my new standing in the household most satisfactorily.
Christmas Day dawned – a red-letter day, indeed, for it marked the additional celebration of Perseus’s majority.
In the morning, we took our allotted places in St Michael and All Angels, where we were obliged to endure one of Mr Thripp’s wearisome homilies, but which, under the threatening gaze of Lady Tansor, he wisely restricted to a mere twenty minutes. A grand dinner in the evening, of surpassing magnificence, at which the heir was toasted and lauded to an almost embarrassing degree, concluded the day’s festivities.
The succeeding days were filled with the usual seasonal activities. We consumed far greater quantities of plum pudding and champagne than we ought to have done; theatricals were organized, in which Mr Maurice FitzMaurice – attempting, in the most ludicrous manner, to impress Lady Tansor with his thespian genius – took a prominent role; and a grand entertainment was got up in the State Ballroom, for which a company of musicians and singers had been brought up from London. We danced and sang; billiards and cards were played; and gossip was given free rein.
Whilst the gentlemen went out with their guns, we ladies spent the long, snow-threatening afternoons by the fire reading our novels, staring vacantly through frost-laced windows at the frozen Evenbrook, or yawning away the hours until it was time to dress for dinner once more.
On the morning following Boxing Day, to my great relief, Mr Shillito, whom I had contrived to avoid as far as I could, received a letter summoning him to London on some urgent family matter. I watched him as he waddled across the Entrance Court to his carriage, accompanied by Mr Vyse, with whom he exchanged a few whispered words, interspersed with what I can only describe as significant looks and nodding glances back at the house. Then he was gone, sparing me any further unwelcome questioning concerning my surname and its association with the person he had met on Madeira twenty years earlier.
Mr Perseus kept to his room for much of the day. When at last he came down to join the company, he seemed distant and preoccupied, and spoke little. A brief remark on the weather, an occasional guarded smile, a sideways glance as I left the room, were all I received from him; yet I did not feel ignored or rejected. On the contrary, I had the most curious certainty that he was thinking of me, even when he appeared at his most distracted and self-absorbed.
As I was obliged to stay close to my Lady, and being often in the company of her guests, there had been little occasion for private conversation with Mr Randolph. Nevertheless, his looks continued to convince me that I was not misleading myself about his feelings towards me, and I was sure that he was only waiting for a suitable opportunity for us to take our walk together to the Temple of the Winds and declare himself. What I would do then, I did not quite know, and so put it from my mind for the time being.
My Lady continued considerate, amusing, warmly confiding (on small matters), agreeable in every way. She kept me constantly by her side in public, whilst in the privacy of her apartments she displayed a most winning and natural charm. We discovered many topics of mutual interest; sometimes we giggled like school-girls, gossiped disgracefully about the Christmas guests, and pored over fashion plates. I even found that I was beginning to look forward, with guilty delight, to our times together, away from public observation, when we would laugh and talk on the sofa in her private sitting-room, or on the window-seat, and act in every respect like the true friends that she wished us to be. When I came across her alone, however, sitting deathly still by the fire, or wandering forlornly on the terrace, it was clear that she was still burdened by some terrible and deep-rooted distress of mind, against which our times of pleasant companionship provided only a temporary solace.
I went on dressing her, and generally assisting with her toilet, as I had promised that I would do until the new maid was engaged; the more menial tasks that I had previously undertaken, however, were now deputed – at my recommendation – to Sukie.
Following the suggestion conveyed by Mrs Ridpath, it had been arranged that all communications from the Avenue d’Uhrich, and from Mrs Ridpath herself, were now to be sent care of Miss S. Prout at Willow Cottage, whilst my letters to Madame would be taken by Sukie to Easton for posting. The dear little thing had been so touchingly eager to oblige me, for befriending her and her mother, that she did not for a moment question why such precautions were necessary.
The first test of the arrangement had been a letter to Madame, telling her how well our plans were proceeding, and that I was now set fair, through my new friendship with Lady Tansor, to commence the next stage of our enterprise.
One evening, while my Lady was occupied in her study, I was reading by the fire in my room, awaiting her return, when Sukie came in with a small package.
‘This has come for you, Miss Alice,’ she whispered. ‘From the lady in London.’
She handed me the package, and I saw from the direction that it was indeed from Mrs Ridpath.
‘Thank you, Sukie dear. How is your mother?’
‘She is well, thank you, miss, and sends her very best regards. And Barrington gave me this to give to you,’ she added, handing me another, smaller, package.
I glanced down at the printed label: