Michael Cox (44 page)

III
Mr Randolph Returns

ON MY WAY upstairs, I come across Mrs Battersby leaving Mr Randolph’s room. It is the first time that we have met for some weeks – no more invitations to take tea with her having been made.
I wish her good-evening and then ask whether Mr Randolph has returned, being surprised to find her in such a place at ten o’clock in the evening. Surely any duties she might have been required to carry out in preparation for Mr Randolph’s return ought to have been completed before now?
‘I believe he is expected tomorrow morning, with Mr Rhys Paget,’ comes the reply. She then makes a little curtsey, gives me one of her most baffling smiles, as if she has got the better of me in some unaccountable way, and departs.
Once in my room, I sit down at my desk to begin writing a letter to Madame, relating the events of the last few days in London, and informing her of what had passed that evening with Mr Perseus; but I soon put down my pen and take myself off to bed.
I am greatly fatigued, but sleep proves impossible. I toss and turn until the Chapel bell strikes six o’clock. With pounding head, I rise, dress, and go downstairs to take a dose of cold early-morning air.
I walk aimlessly for some time up and down the Library Terrace, but my head continues to whirl bewilderingly. A gauzy mist hangs over the Evenbrook; but there is a promise of a fine day to come, and a sense that, although it is still only January, winter is already slowly slackening its grip.
After a while, I make my way to the Entrance Court. From here I have a clear view of the carriage-road, down which a man is walking. I soon recognize the reassuring person of Captain Willoughby on his regular morning patrol. As he draws closer, he stops to remove his hat in salute, which I return with a wave before he continues on his way.
Seeing the captain brings a degree of composure to my over-wrought brain. I then notice two more figures making their way down the Rise to the bridge.
I stand watching them as they draw closer and eventually enter the Court. One is an ascetic-looking, dark-complexioned young man; the other is Mr Randolph.
‘Miss Gorst! What an early bird you are!’ he cries.
He then introduces me, in his usual genial way, to his companion, Mr Rhys Paget, describing me as his mother’s companion; but nothing in his look or manner conveys the slightest intimation that I mean more to him than this; neither does anything in Mr Paget’s demeanour suggest that he is aware of his friend’s amorous feelings for me. I had naturally thought that Mr Randolph would have confided in his closest friend; but it seems that he has not yet done so. I deduce from this that he is waiting to confess his true feelings to me first.
‘We came back late last night,’ Mr Randolph announces, ‘and put up at the Duport Arms. But Paget was all for getting up early and walking over to take our breakfast here.’
‘And do you stay long at Evenwood, Mr Paget?’ I ask.
Instead of answering, he shoots an enquiring glance at his companion.
‘Paget and I leave for Town in the morning,’ the latter interposes. ‘A little excursion. We’ve had our fill, for the time being, of wild Nature. It’s bricks and mortar and smoke for us – for a while, at least. Paget has some business to conduct, and I’m to be his guide to the capital.’
‘You see how it is, Miss Gorst,’ says Mr Paget, in a charming lilting accent. ‘I’m but a poor country mouse. Never been to London in my life – strange, I know; but there it is.’
‘And when do you return to Evenwood?’ I ask.
‘We’ve no definite plans,’ Mr Randolph replies. ‘A few days perhaps – a week if the fancy takes us.’
‘Then you are not aware of Lady Tansor’s intention to go to Madeira?’
The news surprises him but, curiously, he seems rather relieved than otherwise.
We stand for several more minutes, conversing on the subject of Madeira. Mr Randolph appears increasingly ill at ease, and awkward, whilst his friend, towards whom he glances from time to time in a suggestive way, stands mutely regarding the gravel at his feet in an almost shamefaced manner that only adds to my puzzlement.
‘Well, come along, Paget,’ Mr Randolph says at last. ‘That walk has done the trick. I could eat a horse. Will you join us for breakfast, Miss Gorst?’
I demur, saying that I have a letter to finish writing.
We enter the house together.
‘Through there,’ says Mr Randolph to his friend, pointing towards the door that leads to the Breakfast-Room. ‘I just want a word with Miss Gorst.’ Then, as Mr Paget departs, he turns to me.
‘Well, Esperanza,’ he says, ‘it seems that circumstances have overtaken us. I’d hoped to speak to you on, well, you know – on the matter we spoke of on our walk; but I suppose it will now have to wait until your return from Madeira. Today is out of the question, I’m sorry to say. Paget and I have a great deal to do, and we’re to stay the night at the George in Stamford – early train, I’m afraid. But perhaps it’s for the best. I’m sure Mother will be keeping you busy also. I expect she’s already making lists! Madeira, eh? Mr Shillito says it’s a capital place.’
His words trail off, as if he is at a loss to know what to say next. Then he suddenly brightens.
‘Now then,’ he says, ‘it’s a plate of chops for me, if Paget hasn’t eaten them all!’
With a strained smile, he wishes me good-morning, and marches quickly off to the Breakfast-Room, leaving me baffled by his nervous and embarrassed manner, but relieved that the private conversation he wishes to have with me has been postponed until after our return from Madeira.

THE LATTER PART of the morning was spent with Emily in her apartments. Just before luncheon, there was a knock at the door, and in strode Mr Perseus.
‘Miss Gorst,’ he said. ‘Would you excuse us? I wish to speak to my mother on a private matter.’
I was not called again until tea-time. Emily was by the fire in her sitting-room, an atlas open on her lap.
‘Come and sit down, Alice dear,’ she said eagerly. ‘Our plans have changed. We shall not be going to Madeira after all. Perseus has persuaded me that Italy is the place.’
‘Italy?’
‘He has suggested that we go to Florence. Perseus is to come with us – he has conceived a wonderful new poem, on the subject of Dante and Beatrice. Won’t that be splendid?’

28

To the South

I
An Unexpected Visitor

T
HUS IT
was decided. Florence it was to be.
Mr Perseus immediately took over all the arrangements, and we left Evenwood at the end of January 1877, to spend a night in Grosvenor Square, before catching the early boat-train the next morning. It was a great relief to me that the Madeiran plan had been abandoned; and having Mr Perseus accompanying us would, I hoped, present daily opportunities to try what I could to entice him into marriage, as I had been instructed to do.
Mr Randolph and his friend had preceded us to Grosvenor Square. On the morning of our departure, they both came down to the front steps to see us off. Mr Randolph seemed unusually reserved and nervy – Mr Paget also – as he kissed his mother, and coldly shook hands with Mr Perseus. We exchanged a few awkwardly hurried words of farewell, after which the two friends went back into the house.
As we pulled away, I caught a brief glimpse of the pair, huddled just inside the front door, heads together. Mr Randolph had not even favoured me with a departing wave.
We proceeded to the terminus in silence – a most dismal trio. Mr Perseus was in one of his most frostily silent moods; I was musing on the marked change in Mr Randolph; whilst Emily, as I guessed, had another matter on her mind.
Three days earlier, at about ten o’clock in the morning, just as I was descending the stairs from the Picture Gallery, I had heard the crunch of carriage wheels on the gravel of the Entrance Court. Within a few minutes, I learned from Barrington that we had an unexpected visitor.
‘Mr Armitage Vyse, miss. He wishes – most insistently – to see her Ladyship on a pressing matter of business.’
I immediately ran back upstairs to fetch the key to the closet from where I had previously spied upon the two conspirators. Once at my point of vantage, I drew out my note-book and pencil, in order to set down in shorthand what passed between them.
Through one of the little yellow roundels, I could see Emily on the window-seat, her eyes open to their fullest extent, black and impenetrable. Mr Vyse was loping backwards and forwards in front of her, shoulders hunched, a furious look on his wolfish face. His tall, gangling figure, dressed in a bottle-green velvet coat and tight mulberry-coloured trousers strapped over his shining boots, presented a strangely mesmerizing sight. All I could think of as I watched him was the horrible picture of the great, long, red-legged scissor-man in Hoffmann’s picture-book,
*
which Mr Thornhaugh used to read to me as a child.
‘Not going!’ he snarls exasperatedly. ‘Not going! When I told you – I mean, of course,
advised
you – that you must go? How else can we begin to prove who your new friend really is? Depend upon it, she knows that the man Shillito met, who called himself Gorst, was her father, although she denies it. There would undoubtedly have been people still resident on the island who also remembered him – and now you say you won’t go! How many times have I told you that your precious companion is not who she claims to be, and that she’s here to work against us? Yet you continue to trust her! Now we’ve lost a golden chance to begin uncovering the truth about Miss Esperanza Gorst. This is badly done, my Lady,
very
badly done.’
To emphasize his displeasure, he slams the tip of his stick hard down on the floor-boards, in a most intimidating manner.
‘Perseus did not wish me to go to Madeira,’ says Emily, calmly defiant. ‘And there’s an end to it.’
‘Perseus! You prefer to take the advice of your coxcomb son? What does he know of our business, or how it should best be conducted? You might as well have asked his fool of a brother.’
The look of insulted contempt that Emily gives him would have withered the nerve of a lesser man; but Mr Vyse continues to glare menacingly at her.
‘I did not seek my son’s opinion on the matter,’ she says, facing him down with admirable composure. ‘Perseus suspected that going to Madeira, although originally urged by Dr Manley, had been, in large part, dictated by you – and you know his opinion of you, Armitage. That suspicion was enough for him; and so he came to me and urged me – in the strongest terms – to go elsewhere. On reflection, I saw that he was right. I never wished to go to Madeira. A disagreeable sea-journey, and then to be cooped up on an island with such a small society – no, it would not have suited. I need space and liberty, as well as warmth. My son’s recommendation that we should go to Italy instead, and that he should accompany us, perfectly coincided with my own inclinations. And so it’s all settled, and everything is in hand. We are going to Florence.’
Her doggedness enrages Mr Vyse even more. He hovers over her, seeming now like some great predatory insect.
‘You fool!’ he hisses, casting aside all pretence of deference. ‘Why will you not listen to me?
She – is – here – to – harm – you
. Why can you not see it? I have yet to discover why she’s here, or who has sent her; but it’s absurd to believe that she’s not this man Gorst’s daughter – the coincidence is too great. Every instinct tells me that, if we can once find out who
he
was, then we may begin to understand
her
secret purpose.’
‘I ask again,’ says Emily, immovably, ‘as I’ve asked you before: what makes you so certain that Alice is deceiving us? What has she done to make you suspect her?’
With a sigh, Mr Vyse settles himself beside her on the window-seat.
‘Tell me, my Lady,’ he says, in a wheedling tone, taking her hand in his, ‘are you acquainted with a Mr John Lazarus?’
She says that she has never heard of such a person in her life.
‘Mr Lazarus is a former shipping-agent,’ Mr Vyse tells her, ‘of Billiter Street, City. Now then: what reason, do you suppose, would your treasured companion have to visit this gentleman?’
When Emily says nothing, Mr Vyse releases her hand and begins to examine his perfectly manicured finger-nails in a most significant manner.
‘Perhaps I should have mentioned,’ he says, in a horrid knowing way, ‘that Mr John Lazarus passed most of his professional life in the Atlantic wine trade, and that he had a residence on the island of Madeira.’
Emily’s face now registers a faint flush of disquiet, although it is nothing to the shock I experience on hearing Mr Vyse’s words. What a fool I had been! Of course he knew of my visit to Billiter Street – his man Digges had followed me there.
‘Think for a moment,’ urges Mr Vyse. ‘How do you suppose that Miss Gorst came to know of this gentleman, or where to find him? Shillito didn’t tell her, that’s for sure. Someone else put her on to him.’
‘Someone else? But who?’
‘If we knew that,’ he replies, quietly now, ‘then we might know all.’
Emily now quits the window-seat and begins to pace up and down, her hands pressed to her temples.
‘This is too much!’ she exclaims. ‘My head is fit to burst with all your insinuations. I must follow my heart, and my heart tells me that Alice has nothing to hide, and that there’s a perfectly innocent explanation for these things. You must give me proof, Armitage – solid proof – if I’m to believe otherwise. Do you have it? No – I see you don’t. This is all Mr Shillito’s fault. What does he have to say on the matter? Does he still believe that he’d formerly known the man he met on Madeira under another name?’
‘Alas!’ sighs Mr Vyse. ‘There now seems little likelihood that Shillito will ever be able to confirm the truth of his belief.’
‘I knew it!’ cries Emily, triumphantly.
‘What do you know, my Lady?’
He rises slowly to his feet. They stand face to face.
‘Do you know, for instance,’ he resumes, ‘that, last evening, in Finsbury Square, Shillito was attacked by two ruffians and left for dead?’
On receiving this cruel
coup de grâce
, Emily gasps.
‘Mr Shillito attacked! What are you telling me?’
‘I am telling you, my Lady, that my old friend Shillito, having sustained dreadful injuries about the head and face, and being presently deprived of the power of speech and movement, is not expected to live out the week. Any other man would already have succumbed to his injuries, but Shillito’s skull was always notoriously thick.’
‘But this can have nothing to do with Alice,’ Emily insists. ‘I am appalled, naturally; but surely this was a case of common assault. Was he robbed?’
Mr Vyse is obliged to admit that his friend’s pocket-book and gold watch were indeed taken by his assailants.
‘But of course it was cleverly done,’ he quickly adds, ‘to make it appear like an indiscriminate attack. There was a witness, you see, a man with a coffee-stall, who saw the two blackguards speaking beforehand, in what he describes as a familiar manner, to a tall, well-built, well-muffled gentleman – a gentleman, note. I deduce from this that chance played no part in the business, and that robbery was not the principal motive, only payment for the commission.’
This gives Emily some pause; but then, collecting herself somewhat, she asks again what the attack on Mr Shillito could possibly have to do with me.
‘Nothing directly and knowingly, perhaps,’ Mr Vyse grudgingly concedes. ‘But indirectly and unknowingly? Well, then I should say that Miss Gorst is certainly implicated. For here, as in the matter of Mr John Lazarus, I discern the guiding hand of the Shadow.’
‘The Shadow?’
Emily gives a derisive laugh.
‘It’s my name for the intelligence that I believe is directing events,’ Mr Vyse explains. ‘The person, if you will have it in plain words, who stands behind Miss Esperanza Gorst, like a second shadow.’
‘Now you are being ridiculous,’ returns Emily, with another derisive laugh. ‘I’ve heard enough of these wild accusations and empty suppositions. First, we have a man Mr Shillito claims to have met twenty years ago who may, or may not, have been Alice’s father. Now we have this mysterious “Shadow”. They cannot, of course, be the same person, for we know from the enquiries you made in Paris that the Edwin Gorst who was certainly Alice’s father is dead and buried in the St-Vincent Cemetery; and if your “Shadow” is not that Edwin Gorst, then who is he, and why – even supposing that he exists – has he sent Alice here? No, it’s all nonsense, Armitage, and I’ll hear no more of it.’
Mr Vyse, seeing at last that she will not be moved in her defence of my innocence, makes her a little bow of reluctant capitulation.
‘Very well, my Lady,’ he says, with a conciliatory smile, although patently stung by her wilfulness. ‘We’ll say no more on the matter of Miss Gorst, until I can place before you – as I’m confident I shall be able to do – the proof that you require. To demonstrate my generosity of spirit even further, you may go to Florence, if that is your wish. There’s a condition, however, on which I must absolutely insist.’
He reaches out his arm and, in a most impertinent manner, takes and holds her chin in his hand.
‘I think you know what it is.’
Still she stands, rigidly silent.
‘I must have my answer when you return.’
A moment passes.
‘You shall have your answer, never fear,’ she says, pulling away. She then returns to the window-seat and places her cheek against the glass, as I have seen her do so many times before.
‘Then I shall wish you “bon voyage”, my Lady,’ says Mr Vyse, assuming an air of mock affability; and with that, taking up his hat and stick, he leaves the room, humming quietly to himself.