The Meaning of Night (30 page)

We stepped down to a gravel path and Lord Tansor – grasping his stick firmly in his right

hand and holding his left arm straight to his side –positioned himself a foot or two in

front of this pavement, with the door behind his left shoulder. Through the lens of my

camera, each individual detail of his appearance increased in clarity and definition: his

square-toed boots, brightly polished as always; the surmounting gaiters, grey like his

trousers and waistcoat; his black four-button coat and black stock; his gleaming hat. He

stood straight and still, tight-lipped, white side-whiskers trimmed to perfection, small

black eyes gazing out over bright pleasure-grounds and sunlit parkland, and beyond to the

distant prospect of farms and pasture, rivers and lakes, woods and quiet hamlets. Lord of

all he surveyed. The twenty-fifth Baron Tansor.

My hands were shaking as I completed the exposure, but at last it was done. In a

moment he had thanked me brusquely for my time, and was gone.

Mr Tredgold and I passed the night in Peterborough, returning to London the next

morning. We left Evenwood without catching further sight of Phoebus Daunt; but I could

not rid myself of the fixed image I now had of him: standing in the sun, laughing, gay and

self-assured, as if he were lord of the world.

We had both been too tired the previous evening to discuss the events of the day,

and during the homeward journey, on the following morning, my employer seemed no

more inclined to talk. He’d settled himself into his seat immediately on boarding the train

and taken out the latest number of David Copperfield,? with the deliberate air of someone

who does not wish to be disturbed. But as we were approaching the London terminus, he

looked up from his reading and regarded me inquisitively.

‘Did you form a favourable impression of Evenwood, Edward?’

‘Yes, extremely favourable. It is, as you said, a most ravishing place.’

‘Ravishing. Yes. It is the word I always use to describe it. It transports one, does it

not, almost forcibly, carrying one rapturously away, to another and better world. What it

would be to live there. One would never wish to leave.’

‘I suppose you have been there frequently,’ I said, ‘in the course of business.’

‘Yes, on many occasions, though not so often now as formerly, when the first

Lady Tansor was alive.’

‘You knew Lady Tansor?’ I heard myself asking the question somewhat eagerly.

‘Oh yes,’ said Mr Tredgold, looking out of the carriage window as we entered

under the canopy of the terminus. ‘I knew her well. And now, here we are. Home again.’

IV

The Pursuit of Truth

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I did not see Mr Tredgold again for several weeks. He left London to visit his

brother in Canterbury, and I was just then investigating a case of fraud, which obliged me

to be out of the office a good deal. It was not until a month after we returned from

Evenwood that I received an invitation to spend a Sunday with the Senior Partner.

We quickly fell into our old bibliological ways; but it appeared to me that there

was not that unalloyed surrender to our shared enthusiasm for book-lore as before. He

beamed; he polished his eye-glass; he brushed his feathery hair away from his face; and

his hospitality was as warm as ever. But there was a change in him, detectable and

troubling.

The negatives exposed at Evenwood had been developed, fixed, and printed, and

all the views, with the exception of the portrait of Lord Tansor, had been mounted, at my

own expense, in an elegant album, embossed with the Duport arms. The portrait, which I

had placed in a morocco case, would have been a fine piece of work, had it not been

spoiled by the face of an inquisitive servant, whom I had failed to notice, peeping through

the glazed door just behind where Lord Tansor had been standing. But Mr Tredgold

complemented me on the work, and said he would arrange for the album and the portrait

to be sent to Evenwood.

‘His Lordship will be happy to remunerate you,’ he said, ‘if you would care to let

him have a note of your charges.’

‘No, no,’ I replied, ‘I shall not hear of it. If his Lordship is satisfied with the

results, then I am well rewarded.’

‘You have a generous nature, Edward,’ said Mr Tredgold, closing the album. ‘To

have worked so hard, and then to refuse reward.’

‘I did not expect to be rewarded.’

‘No, I’m sure you did not. It is my belief, however, that good deeds will always

be rewarded, in this life or the next. This accords with another belief of mine, that what

has been taken from us will one day be restored by a loving providence.’

‘Those are comforting convictions.’

‘I find them so. To believe otherwise, that goodness will receive no recompense

in some better place, and that loss – real loss – is irreversible, would be the death of all

hope for me.’

I had never before heard Mr Tredgold speak in so serious and reflective a manner.

Nothing more was said for a moment or two, as he sat contemplating the portrait of Lord

Tansor.

‘You know, Edward,’ he said at last, ‘it seems to me that there is a kind of

correspondence between these convictions of mine and the photographic process. Here

you have captured and fixed a living person, permanently imprisoning light and form and

all the outward individualities of that person. Perhaps the lineaments of our souls, and of

our moral characters, are similarly imprinted on the mind of God, for His eternal

contemplation.’

‘Then woe to all sinners,’ I said, smiling.

‘But none of us are wholly bad, Edward.’

‘Nor wholly good, either.’

‘No,’ he said slowly, still looking down at Lord Tansor’s portrait, ‘nor wholly

good.’ Then, more brightly: ‘But what an age we live in – to have the power to seize the

evanescent moment and fix it on paper for all to see! It is quite extraordinary. Where will

it all lead? And yet how one wishes that some earlier age had made these wonderful

discoveries. Imagine looking upon the face of Cleopatra, or gazing into the eyes – the

very eyes – of Shakespeare! To see things as they were, long ago, which we can now

only dream of – that would be wonderful indeed, would it not? And not only to look upon

the dead of ages past, but also upon those we have recently lost, whom we yearn to see in

their living forms again, as those who come after us will now be able to see Lord Tansor

when he is no more. Our friends who died before this great miracle was discovered can

never now be rendered permanently visible to our eyes, in the full flower of their lives, as

his Lordship has been rendered, here in this photographic portrait. They must live only in

our imperfect and inconstant memories. Do you not find that affecting?’

He looked up and, for a moment, I thought his eyes were moist with tears. But

then he jumped up and went over to his cabinet to retrive some item he wished to show

me. We talked for another half hour, but then Mr Tredgold said he had a slight headache

and begged me to excuse him.

As I was leaving, he asked me if I had many friends in London.

‘I can claim one good friend,’ I replied, ‘which I find sufficient for my needs. And

then of course I have you, Mr Tredgold.’

‘Do you think of me as a friend, then?’

‘Most certainly.’

‘Then, speaking as a friend, I hope you will always come to me, if you are in any

difficulty. My door is always open to you, Edward. Always. You will not forget that, will

you?’

Touched by his tone of genuine solicitation, I said I would remember his words,

and thanked him for his kindness.

‘No need to thank me, Edward,’ he said, beaming broadly. ‘You are an

extraordinary young man. I consider it a duty – a most pleasant duty – to offer you every

assistance, whenever you may feel it needful. And, besides, as I told you when we first

met, the ordinary I can leave to others; the extraordinary I like to keep for myself.’

This, then, was the pattern of my life over the next two years. On Mondays and

Tuesdays I would be engaged on my work as Mr Tredgold’s confidential assistant –

sometimes in the office, but more frequently following some investigatory trail that might

take me to every corner of London, and occasionally beyond. On Wednesdays, I took the

pupils sent to me for instruction by Sir Ephraim Gadd, whilst on Thursdays and Fridays I

resumed my duties at Tredgolds. I took my lunch at Dolly’s, and my dinner at the London

Restaurant, day in, day out.?

My free time, except for occasional Sunday visits to the Senior Partner’s private

residence, was devoted to a renewed study of my mother’s papers. To facilitate the work,

I had begun to acquaint myself with shorthand, using Mr Pitman’s system,? which I used

to make notes on each item or document. These were then indexed and arranged in a

specially constructed set of small compartmentalized drawers, somewhat like an

apothecary’s chest. But in all the mass of paper through which I’d wandered, like some

primeval discoverer on an unknown ocean, I had found nothing to supplement or advance

my original discovery. Time and Death had also done their work: Laura Tansor was no

more and could not now be cross-examined; and her companion, whom I had called

mother, had followed her into eternal silence. My work at Tredgolds, however, had made

me wiser in the art of detection, and I now commenced on several new lines of enquiry.

Gradually, through surviving receipts and other documents, I began to trace my

mother’s movements during the summer of 1819, visiting several inns and hotels where

she had stayed, and seeking out anyone in those places who might have remembered her.

I met with no success until I was directed to an elderly man in Folkestone, who had been

the Captain of the packet that had taken my mother and her friend to Boulogne, in

August, 1819. He distinctly remembered the two ladies –one, small of stature and of

rather nervous appearance; the other, tall and dark, who ‘bore herself like a queen’, as he

said, and who had paid him a substantial consideration so that she and her companion

could spend the crossing undisturbed in his cabin. I then travelled to the West Country, to

make enquiries concerning Lady Tansor’s family, the Fairmiles, of Langton Court, a

handsome house of Elizabeth’s reign situated few miles from where my mother was born.

In due course, I discovered a voluble old lady, Miss Sykes by name, who was able to tell

me something concerning the former Laura Fairmile. Of particular interest to me was

what she had to say about Miss Fairmile’s aunt on her mother’s side. This lady, Miss

Harriet Gilman, had married the ci-devant Marquis de Québriac, who had resided in

England, visibly impecunious, since the days of the Terrror. After the Amiens Peace had

been struck,? the couple (neither of whom were in the first flush of youth) returned to the

Marquis’ ancestral chateau, which stood a few miles outside the city of Rennes. But the

gentleman died soon after, and the chateau was placed in the hands of his debtors, leaving

his widow to decamp to a small house in the city, in the Rue du Chapitre, belonging to

her late husband’s family. It was to this house that Lady Tansor and her companion later

came.

The references in my mother’s journals to ‘Mme de Q’ were now satisfactorily

explained, and so in September, 1850, on the basis of this new intelligence, I travelled to

France, having obtained permission from Mr Tredgold to take a short holiday.

The house in the Rue du Chapitre was boarded up, but I found an old priest at the

Church of St-Sauveur who was able to tell me that Madame de Québriac had died some

twenty years since. He also recalled the time when Madame’s niece, accompanied by a

friend, had resided with her for several months, and that a baby had been born, though he

could not recall to which lady, or whether it had been a boy or a girl. The priest directed

me to a Dr Pascal, who also lived in the Rue du Chapitre; but he, too, proved to be an old

man, with few useful memories, and these added little to what the priest had already told

me. The doctor did, however, mention an English servant, who had travelled to France

with Madame. She had married a Frenchman, but had left Rennes after her husband’s

death. He could not remember the woman’s married name, or tell me where she had

gone. But then he informed me of an ancient retainer of Madame de Québriac’s who was

still living, he thought, just outside the city. I arrived at the place in high hopes, only to

learn that the old man had died a few weeks’ earlier.

Interesting though they were, however, such little discoveries as I was able to

make whilst in France served only to show me how far I was from my goal. All my

efforts had increased my store of plausible inferences, hypotheses, and suggestive

possibilities; but I was no closer to uncovering the independent proof I required, which

would confirm, beyond disputation, that I was Lord Tansor’s lost heir, the son for whom

he longed.

As for Phoebus Daunt, my endeavours to gather information on him, with the aim

of conceiving some effective means of revenge, had been somewhat more successful, and