Michael Cox (32 page)

BACK IN MY own room, I read over my shorthand notes of the conversation between my Lady and Mr Vyse.
From what I had just heard, I was satisfied that they had colluded in the murder of Mrs Kraus, although I still could not guess why such a dreadful act had been necessary. I saw, too, what my Lady must be suffering in her private moments, from the weight of guilt, the constant fear of discovery, and – confirming Mr Perseus’s suspicions of Mr Vyse – the prospect of ruin if she did not give in to her accomplice’s obvious desire to marry her, in return for services rendered.
Another certainty was also beginning to form in my mind: that the death of my Lady’s father twenty years earlier was in some way linked to the murder of Mrs Kraus. ‘The truth of the matter is known only to our two selves,’ Mr Vyse had assured my Lady. But what was that truth, and what part had she played in it?
The significance of Mr Shillito’s belief that he had once known my father under another name also eluded me. Mr Shillito might be mistaken; but what did it mean if he was not? Although I could not say why, this question caused me great uneasiness, and only served to increase my already intense desire to learn more about my father.

AFTER DINNER THAT evening, I retired early, to ponder these matters further, and to write up my Book of Secrets; I also wrote a letter to Madame, informing her of what I had overheard, which I intended to take over to the Prouts the next afternoon.
It was late by the time I laid down my pen, but I was not yet ready for sleep, being eager to finish reading the transliterations I had made from my mother’s journal.
Return with me again, then, to a former time, and to sunnier climes, exchanging the English winter of 1876 for the sunny island of Madeira twenty years earlier.

II
Scandal in Madeira

A FEW DAYS after first meeting Edwin Gorst at Mr Murchison’s reception, my mother, accompanied by her sister and her uncle, made an excursion to Camacha to visit Mr William Lambton, one of the principal wine growers on Madeira.
They left Funchal early in the morning, arriving at their destination in time for breakfast, after which my mother settled herself with a book in a small wooden garden-house situated in the extensive grounds of Mr Lambton’s
quinta
. She had hardly done so when she heard the sound of a stick tapping on the flinty surface of the adjoining lane, indicating the presence of some passer-by. Then there was silence. Whoever was there had stopped, just beyond the gate.
She waited, expecting to hear that the traveller had continued on his way; but no sound came. Impelled, it seems, by some keen instinct, she stole quietly to the gate, opened it, and looked out.
She was greeted by the smiling face of Mr Edwin Gorst. As she later recorded in her journal:
We exchanged greetings, and I enquired why he had made the long climb to Camacha on such a hot morning.
He walked a good deal, he replied, as the exertion calmed his spirits. Then he spoke these thrilling words: ‘It was, I must now confess, the chance of seeing you, Miss Blantyre, that impelled me to come up here on such a day.’
Those were his very words; and, as I write them now, I experience again the sensation that I felt on first hearing them from his lips; for I saw that he was no longer smiling; the tone of pleasant banter had quite melted away, replaced by one of deep seriousness and unspoken significance.
That moment was, to me, wonderful, both for its utter, intoxicating unexpectedness and – yes! I confess it – because I knew in my heart that it had been most eagerly desired. Yet I was fearful of it also, truly so, for I felt – as I feel again now – a dangerous fascination stirring within me, like a cord of many-skeined silk, beautiful to behold, but deadly, slowly coiling around my heart. For we were still little more than strangers. Whence, then, the cause of this sudden, heart-shaking tumult, which made me so restless and dissatisfied, yet so eager to live over that delicious moment again and again, driving out all thought of duty to what I am, and to what I must be?
My father enquired whether she had been to the Sé Cathedral yet. She said that she had not. He told her that it possessed many points of interest and that, like all such places, it set a necessary distance between ourselves and the world, a reminder of what we truly are. She asked whether he belonged to the Catholic faith. He said that he observed no established religion, yet did not consider himself to be a heathen by disposition. Then, after a little more conversation, he went on his way.
On her return from Camacha, my mother committed the following words to her journal: ‘What am I to make of the day that has just passed? Was it a turning point in my life, or a passing trifle? No! It cannot be – it must not be – what I wish
so much
for it to be. In six months’ time I shall be Mrs Fergus Blantyre; my life will be over, and all this will be but a lost dream.’
But her prediction was wrong. After church the following Sunday, she contrived to take herself off alone to the Cathedral, but there was no sign of my father. The next Sunday brought a similar disappointment. ‘If he had felt but a part of what
I
felt on that hot morning at Camacha,’ she wrote, ‘then he would have been in the Cathedral, as I had thought he had intimated he would be. He was not there. He has not called. And I am a poor fool for thinking otherwise.’
Three weeks passed. Then, on a bright and windy Monday morning, for what she had resolved would be the last time, my mother returned to the Sé Cathedral. If he was not there, then she would know that her destiny lay elsewhere.
She stood just inside the doorway, intently scanning the people entering and leaving and the few kneeling figures at prayer; then a group of English visitors standing a little way down the nave caught her eye.
She recognized him immediately, talking to a gentleman from the aforementioned group, his hat and stick in one hand, and pointing with the other upwards at the dark wooden ceiling, with its swirling ivory decorations.
She continued to watch him for several minutes, until he shook hands with the gentleman, bowed to the group, and began to walk slowly down the central aisle of the nave towards her:
I remained rooted to the spot, my heart beating wildly, as he approached ever closer to where I was standing.
The door just behind me had been left slightly ajar, allowing a broad stream of golden light to spread across the stone floor. Into this, Mr Gorst now stepped, eyes downcast, lost in the same intense concentration of thought that I had witnessed that day at the Mount. Then, of a sudden, he looked up and saw me at last.
He made no attempt to greet me, but I was not dismayed; for I instantly read again everything I had seen before in that glorious book of his smile, and in the way he regarded me – as if he had wished to see no one else on God’s earth but me.
I do not say this to flatter or deceive myself. I say it because I knew it to be so, beyond all doubt, as surely as, in that moment, I knew that – come what may, and at whatever cost – I loved Edwin Gorst.
After a few more words had passed between them, my father asked her whether she was at liberty to walk down to the sea for half an hour, as the day now promised so fair. I here quote her later description of that walk in full:
In a kind of daze, I accompanied him into the street. I remember that we were conversing as we walked, although I can now hardly recall what was said – nothing of importance, I am sure.
At length, we reached the remains of the pier that had been projected some years since, but which was broken in a winter storm, so that it now only reaches to the water’s edge. It is a favourite place of resort for the more active of the island’s invalids, and a few such persons were sitting here and there on some of the huge rocks that had been spared from the storm’s destruction.
Mr Gorst and I found a convenient place to sit, a little away from the others, and with a view of the distant Desertas shimmering palely in the intermittent sunshine.
The breeze blowing inland from the sea was cool, but not unpleasant, although Mr Gorst was concerned that I might catch cold, and asked me several times whether I wished to go back. But I would not have gone back for the world, even though I remained fearful of someone seeing us together, and reporting us to Uncle James and Fergus. But while I sat with Mr Gorst by my side, with the sound of the booming waves in my ears, and the winds of the wide Atlantic on my face, what did I care about the possibility of unpleasant consequences? There was time enough to consider them when and if they presented themselves.
We spoke but little – an observation from Mr Gorst, a reciprocal remark from me, and mutual wordless smiles at the pleasantness of our situation; nothing more. And then the sun broke forth, in full majestic glory, from behind a looming bank of cloud; and in that shining moment, Mr Gorst turned his eyes full on me – those deep and dangerous pools, in which I longed to drown!
‘I wish you to know, Miss Blantyre,’ he said softly, ‘that I’ve admired you from the first second that we were introduced at Mr Murchison’s.’ It was wrong of him, he continued, to speak so, and he had fought against it for the past weeks and days, but now he found that he could no longer keep silent in my presence.
I cannot, and do not wish to, write more, although my heart and head are full to overflowing; for I am unable now to bring back to remembrance every word and phrase those sweet lips spoke, only the sense of overpowering joy that enveloped me, and which envelops me now, as I sit at my little desk by the open window, looking out at the moon shining down on the Convent of Santa Clara.
So it begins, the road that I must now take, away from the duty I owe to my family.
We sat for an hour or more, each of us striving to outrun the other in confessing the secrets that our hearts had been guarding, and which had brought us – so suddenly, so unexpectedly – to this moment.
I felt – I feel – no shame, no remorse; the transgressions that had once seemed so terrible to contemplate, to be shunned at all costs by decency and honour, I now embraced with the alacrity of a martyr. The word – the sacred word of Love – had not been uttered. What need was there? I knew I loved him, and knew that he loved me. He did not have to tell me. He would never have to tell me, for as long as I continued to see what I saw this afternoon in his eyes.
We walked back past the Church of the Colégio, and stood for a moment looking up at the four niches on the façade containing the images of various Jesuit saints. Mr Gorst asked whether he might accompany me to our
quinta
, but I said that I preferred to return alone.
‘Then may I call tomorrow?’ he asked.
He saw my hesitation, and did not press his request. We had not spoken of my engagement to Fergus, but now it rose up between us, like a black cloud, blotting out the promise of bright day. It fell to me, to face what must now be faced.
A few more words, and we parted.
The die was cast. More surreptitious meetings followed, and momentous plans were laid. At the beginning of December 1856, the final fateful step was taken. As an addendum to the narrative of my mother’s final weeks on Madeira, I here set down – without comment – a letter from my father to Mr John Lazarus, printed in the latter’s recollections.

Quinta da Pinheiro
Funchal

21st December 1856
MY DEAR LAZARUS,—
As you read this, you will already have received the news that Miss Blantyre & I have left Madeira. You shd also know – which you may not yet – that we are to be married.
I can only too easily conceive what you must think of me. A man whom you rescued from certain decay and death; to whom you have offered the freedom of yr home & introduced to yr friends, & who consequently owes you an infinite debt of gratitude, has repaid you with the meanest demonstration of contempt.
Believe me, dear sir, when I say that I am sensible – no one could be more so – of deserving every epithet of opprobrium and disgust that you can devise, & – which is almost as bad – I have no excuse to offer you for what I have done, only this – which is, indeed, no excuse at all, but rather a statement of plain fact: you succeeded too well by bringing me to Madeira. In doing so, you not only effected the recuperation of my body; you also revived something more, something that I believed had died for ever.
I am still unable to lay the truth of my situation before you, but I can assure you of this: that I shall always cherish the deepest affection for Miss Blantyre, and will do everything in my power to make her as happy as she deserves; that she comes with me willingly, in true mutual regard, with not the least stain of impropriety on her moral character; and that my intentions towards her have been, are, & will always be of the most honourable character.
Finally, know this, and be glad, dear friend. In giving me back my life, you have been – God, or Fate, willing – the unwitting agent of another restoration – far greater, & infinitely worthier of yr efforts, than you could ever have imagined possible.
Yrs in sorrow, eternal friendship, & gratitude for what you have done for me,
E. GORST

III
Mr Perseus Takes Umbrage

THE NEXT AFTERNOON, dark and raw, with my feet slipping on ragged patches of thin ice that cracked and crackled beneath them, I set off through the Park to Willow Cottage with the letter I had written to Madame, my head still full of my mother’s affecting account of her elopement with my father.
As we sipped our tea by the kitchen range, I asked Mrs Prout whether it was known why Lady Tansor had taken Mr Randolph away from Dr Savage’s academy.
‘That, miss, was a puzzle, to begin with,’ she said, putting down her cup. ‘Mr Pocock called it a conundrum, for the young man was never happier than when he was at Dr Savage’s. Things were said, of course,’ she added, mysteriously.
‘Things?’
‘Why, what else would folk say when a handsome young gentleman of prospects finds himself at liberty for the first time, away from home and the eye of his mamma, and is then suddenly brought back to that home, and to that eye, with hot words spoken when he arrives?’
‘I really couldn’t say.’
‘Why, there was a lady in the case, my dear – that was the general opinion. But nothing seems to have come of it. He moped and sulked for a time, of course, and took himself off to his friend’s house in Wales for several weeks. But all things pass, thank God, which is a great blessing, though we never think it.’
‘And who was the lady – if there
was
a lady?’ I asked, as Sukie refilled the teapot with hot water.
‘We never knew, miss, and now never will, I think. The only certain thing was, that her Ladyship took him away from the school immediately, for though he’s the younger son, Mr Randolph is still obliged to marry well – and his mamma was determined to make sure she had a say in it. Ah me, he’s a dear boy! I hope he can be happy.’