The Meaning of Night Part 11

To gaze upon my mother's private journal seemed a gross intrusion; but I found I could not bring myself to secure the little silk ribbon again and confine the contents to obscurity. For, being a journal or personal chronicle of some kind, then it must contain something of truth about her, something hidden but authentic about the little hunched and distracted figure, constantly writing, of my childhood memory. I felt impelled to uncover what lay behind the words I had just read, even if it lead to the postponement of my own plans to begin making my way in the world.

But what truth informed this enigmatic pa.s.sage eluded me completely. For this was not simply a record of events, as earlier entries had been, but of some impending crisis, speaking of deep inward searching, the roots of which, it seemed, were as yet impossible to conjecture. A subsequent pa.s.sage, dated a week later, whilst clearer in its detail, appeared equally impenetrable to immediate interpretation: L's appearance today, so wild & unexpected, at the door, was a great disturbance, made worse by Beth coming down the stairs just as she arrived, to hear her knocking furiously like the Devil himself. Beth asked if the lady was ill but I sent her off to fetch a drink as soon as I got L. into the parlour & when she return'd L was as composed & gracious as you like. He had come back but had refus'd her again & this time something more and terrible had happened that she wd not say but which had open'd up a new chasm between them. I saw the rage begin again and urged her with much tender anxiety to quieten herself which she did in a little while. She had come all this way to tell me trusting nothing but her own whispered words as she always does that Mme de Q was to be in Town next Mon. & Tues. & that I shd expect to hear something more quite soon thereafter.

Who was 'L'? Who was the man so clearly referred to the Captain, or someone else? And what of 'Mme de Q'? I was now wide awake, held in an iron grip by what I had read. I tried to connect the memory of my mother's quiet and industrious life to these clear intimations of some looming climacteric, in which she had become involved; but I quickly gave up, and began to read on, urgently scanning the little yellow pages, to see if some light could be shed on this mystery.

And so it began. I opened another little black book, then another, in a kind of dazed concentration, alive to the strangeness of what I was reading but transfixed, until my eyes were wearied. At last, looking up as the second or third candle I had lit began to gutter, I saw that a pink arc of light was creeping above the horizon beyond the parlour window. A new day had broken, for the world beyond, and for me.

16:.

Labor vincit1 *

Later that morning, I heard Tom's knock on the front door. When I opened it to him, I did not have to feign exhaustion.

'My dear fellow,' he said stepping in and helping me back to my chair by the fireplace, where I had fallen asleep, fully clothed, only an hour before. 'You look terrible. Shall I call for Dr Penny?'

'No, Tom,' I replied, 'no need for that. I shall be right as rain soon, I'm sure. A temporary indisposition only.'

He sat with me for a while as I took a little breakfast. Then, noticing the copy of Buckingham's book lying on the window-seat, he asked whether I had thought more about the expedition to Mesopotamia. He could see from the evasiveness of my reply that my interest in the project had lessened, but was friend enough to say that he expected I'd see things differently when the indisposition had pa.s.sed. But I could not let him think so, and told him straight out that I had definitely fixed against joining Professor S in Nimrud.

'I'm sorry to hear it, Ed,' he said, 'for I think it was a promising opening, with much to gain in all respects. Perhaps you have other possibilities in view for earning a living?'

I had not often seen Tom angry with me, but I could not blame him for feeling a little put out. The prospect of adventure and advancement in the field of archaeology had only been a temporary pa.s.sion, and I should have squashed it firmly underfoot at the start, in fairness to Tom. I tried to mend the mood by saying that I was also considering an opening at the British Museum, but then spoilt it by adding that this, too, might not be quite suitable for me at the present time.

'Well, then,' said Tom, standing up to go, 'I shall write to the Professor. Good morning, Ed. I hope to see you improved soon.'

I took the unspoken reprimand in his parting words without reply, and stood at the window gloomily watching him make his way back down the path to the village.

I should never now see Mesopotamia, and Great Russell-street would have to get on without me. For I was being drawn irresistibly back to the little black books that now lay scattered across my mother's work-table. The urge to discover the meaning of what my mother had written was to grow even stronger, and soon became all-consuming, leading inexorably to ends of which I could not then have conceived.

The decipherment of my mother's journals and papers for that, in effect, is what it became began in earnest the next day, and continued in its first phase almost unabated for two or three months. Tom had departed to spend some time with a cousin in Norwich, feeling no doubt that it was best, for both of us, to leave any further discussions concerning my future to some later date. And so I remained in the house, alone and undisturbed, except for brief daily visits from Beth, and devoted myself night and day to my task, only occasionally leaving the house for a day or so to hunt out information that I needed to explain or confirm some reference or other.

Besides a.s.siduously committing her private thoughts to her journals, it had been my mother's habit, in all her practical dealings, never to throw anything away; accordingly, there were innumerable items bills, receipts, tickets, odd scribbled notes, lists, correspondence, drafts, memorandum all bound together in bundles on that battlefield of paper. Through these I now also began to pick, piece by piece, day by day, night by night. I sifted, collated, sorted, categorized, deploying all the skills of scholarship, and all the gifts of intellectual application and a.s.similation at my disposal, to reduce the ma.s.s to order, to bring the light of understanding and fixity to bear on the fleeting, fluid shadows in which the full truth still lay hidden.

Gradually, a story began to emerge from the shadows; or, rather, the fragmentary and incomplete elements of a story. Like extracting broken shards from the imprisoning earth, I had painstakingly gathered the fragments together and laid them out, piece by piece, seeking the linking pattern, the design that would bring the whole into view.

One word had given me the vital clue. One word. The name of a place that echoed faintly in my memory at first, but which began to ring out more clearly, bringing with it two seemingly unconnected images: one of a lady in grey silk; the other of a bag, an ordinary canvas bag, carrying a label with the owner's name and address written on it.

Evenwood. In a journal entry of July, 1820, my mother inadvertently, I supposed had written out the name in full. Prior to this entry, and subsequently, it appeared simply as 'E-' and, in this form, had defeated all my attempts to identify it. But once I had this name, links began to form: Miss Lamb had lived at Evenwood; Phoebus Daunt had come from a place with the same name. But was there perhaps more than one Evenwood? My mother had ama.s.sed a large working library, to a.s.sist her in her work, and Bell's Gazetteer and Cobbett's Dictionary2 quickly supplied the answer. No, there was only one: Northamptonshire; Easton, four miles; Peterborough, twelve miles; Evenwood Park the seat of Julius Verney Duport, twenty-fifth Baron Tansor.

P. R.. Daunt Evenwood Rectory Evenwood, Nthants That first night at Eton, in Long Chamber, I'd asked Daunt if he knew Miss Lamb, and, later, he'd enquired if I'd ever been to Evenwood. We had both answered in the negative, and I had thought no more about the coincidence. But, recalling it for the first time in fifteen years, his question seemed odd; or, rather, the guarded, almost suspicious tone in which it had been posed now struck me as being significant in some way.

I next considered the ident.i.ty of the mysterious 'L', the character at the centre of the mystery. Could it be Miss Lamb? For days I searched through piles of letters and other doc.u.ments, in an attempt to establish that her Christian name began with the letter 'L'; but, to my amazement, I could find not a single piece of correspondence from this person, or indeed any mention of her. Yet this lady had visited us as my mother's friend, and, as I thought, had showed extraordinary generosity towards me.

Frustrated and perplexed, I'd retreated to the one certainty I had the place that connected Miss Lamb, Phoebus Daunt, and my mother. Taking down the 1830 edition of Burke's Heraldic Dictionary,3 I turned to the epitome of the Tansor Barony: The Baron Tansor (Julius Verney Duport), of Evenwood Park, co. Northampton in England, b. 15th October 1793, s. his father Frederic James Duport 1814 as 25th holder of the t.i.tle; educ. Eton Coll., Trinity Coll., Cambridge; m. 1stly, 5 June, 1816, Laura Rose Fairmile (who d. 14 Mar., 1824), only dau. of Sir Robert Fairmile, of Langton Court, Taunton, Somerset, and had issue, Henry Hereward, b. 17 Nov., 1822, and d. 10 Sep. 1829.

He m. 2ndly, 5 July, 1827, Hester Mary Trevalyn, 2nd dau. of Patrick David Trevalyn, of Ford Hill, Ardingly, Suss.e.x . . .

I read the paragraph over again, dwelling particularly on Lord Tansor's first wife, the daughter of Sir Robert Fairmile, of Langton Court. Now this latter was a name I knew well: he had been the employer of Mr Byam More, my mother's uncle and my former trustee. My heart began to beat a little faster as I wrote down the date of the first Lady Tansor's death. Then, opening one of the little black volumes, I turned to the entry dated the sixteenth of March, 1824, which I now read for the first time: A letter from Miss E telling me that the end came on Friday evening. A light has pa.s.sed from the world, and from my life, and I must now walk on through the twilight of my days until I too am called. In her letters L had seemed distracted and wildered of late, and I had begun to fear for her mind. But Miss E says the end was peaceful, with no preceding agonies, for which comfort I thank G.o.d. I had not seen her for near a twelvemonth, since she came here with the box for little E and to tell me what arrangements she had prepared for the time he should go to school. She was much changed, and I almost wept to see her thin face and hands. I remember E was playing at her feet all the time she was here, and oh! the pitiful look in her sweet eyes! He is such a fine, spirited young fellow, any mother would be proud of him. But she knew he would never know her, or that she had given him life, and it was a deadly pain to her. I marvelled at the persistence of her will, and told her so; for even at that moment, if she had been resolved at last to undo all that had been done, I would have surrendered him, though I love him like my own. But L was as fixed in her determination, though by now dreadfully oppressed by it, as she had been when she first recruited me to her cause, and I saw that nothing would ever move her. 'He is yours now,' she said softly before she left, and I wept to hear it. We embraced and I walked with her up the path to where her carriage was waiting, with Miss E inside, beneath the chestnut-tree by the gate. I watched them descend the hill from the cliff-top to the village. Almost at the bottom, just as the carriage was turning through the bend in the road, a limp black-gloved hand appeared out of the window and waved a forlorn farewell. I shall never see that hand again. I go now to pray for her soul, that she may find, in eternity, the peace her restless and impetuous heart was denied on this earth.

'Miss E' had been mentioned before, but I gave no thought to her; for it had quickly become apparent that references to 'L' began to decrease in succeeding entries until, in April, 1824, they ceased altogether. There could be no doubt: Laura Duport was 'L'.

Yet solving this little puzzle had revealed an altogether greater mystery, the core of which seemed to be alluded to in this extraordinary pa.s.sage, which fairly floored me when I first read it. I will not weary you further with how I came, by dint of much labour, to understand the implications of what my mother had written, and the ident.i.ty of the person referred to as 'little E'. When I did, at last, fit the last fragment of the truth into place, what did I feel? A hideous sense of desolation. An agony too deep for tears. I sat for how long? An hour? Two hours? staring out of the window towards the chestnut-tree by the gate, and out towards the restless sea. At last, with darkness falling, I rose and made my way down to the beach, where I stood at the water's edge, and wept until I could weep no more.

Miss Lamb had never existed, other than as a name a.s.sumed by Lady Tansor when she visited us my mother, and I. Now I knew why the lady in grey had looked upon me with such sadness as I'd sat and played at her feet; why she had stroked my cheek so tenderly; and why she had given me the box of sovereigns on my twelfth birthday, and why I had been sent to Eton at her behest. She had done these things because she was the woman who had given me life. Lady Tansor was my mother.

'He is yours now.' Disbelief quickly changed to angry incomprehension. Riddle me this: the mother I had loved was not my mother; my real mother had abandoned me; and yet it seemed that both had loved me. Whose child, then, was I? How my head ached in trying to disentangle it all! The bare bones of the plot, at least, were now clear to me: my mother and her friend, Laura Tansor, who was in the early stages of pregnancy, had gone to France together; I had been born there, and had been brought back to England as the son of Simona Glyver, not of Lady Tansor. But the motives and pa.s.sions that lay behind this simple sequence of events were still hidden from me, in an unknown number of secret places, and how could they now be brought into the light?

Towards her who had sat on my bed every night as a child, who had walked with me on the cliff-top to watch the sun setting, and who had been the axis on which my little world had revolved, I felt both bitterness and pity: bitterness for keeping the truth from me; pity for what she must have suffered to maintain her friend's secret. Her actions had been a kind of betrayal, for which I must censure her; and yet what better mother could I have had?

There was still so much to discover, but, slowly, I came to an acceptance: I was not the son of Captain and Mrs Edward Glyver. My blood was not theirs. It connected me instead to other places and times, and to another name an ancient and distinguished name. I had nothing of the man I'd thought was my father in me, nothing of the woman I had called my mother. The eyes that were reflected in my mirror on rising every day were not her eyes, as I had always liked to think. But whose were they? Did I resemble my real father, Lord Tansor; or his first wife; or my dead brother? Who was I?

The questions went round and round in my head, day and night. I would wake from fitful sleep in a state of extreme agitation, as if the ground had been cut away from under my feet and I was falling through infinite s.p.a.ce. I would then get up and wander the silent house, sometimes for hours on end, trying to repudiate this dreadful feeling of abandonment. But I could not. I did not belong here, in this place I had previously called home, where the past no longer seemed to hold any meaning.

Little by little, I began to examine my situation with a clearer and cooler eye. I did not know yet why this thing had been done that knowledge would only come later, and gradually; but if what I had deduced from my mother's journals was true, then a simple fact, of extraordinary consequence, would follow: I was the heir to one of the most ancient and powerful families in England.

It seemed extraordinary, completely absurd; surely there must be some other explanation? But, after returning again and again to the journals, I could reach no other conclusion. Yet what use was the knowledge I was convinced I now possessed? Who else would believe that what my mother I still could not call her by any other name had written was the plain truth, and not some fantastic fiction? Even if believed, how could it be proved? Unsubstantiated imputations, uncorroborated possibilities nothing more. Such, surely, would be the immediate verdict if I went to law. But where was the substantiation? Where the corroboration? The questions began to multiply once more, hammering insistently in my brain until I thought I would go quite mad.

One day, at the end of October, 1848, I looked again at the synoptic history of the Tansor peerage in Burke's Dictionary. Four densely packed columns contained the names and pedigrees of people of whom I had never before heard, but who I must now call my ancestors. Maldwin Duport, the first Baron Tansor, summoned to Parliament in 1264; Edmund Duport, the seventh Baron, made an Earl under Henry IV, but who died without issue; Humfrey Duport, the tenth Baron, attainted and executed for treason in 1461; Jasper Duport, the eighteenth Baron, who turned Papist and went into exile with James II; and then my nearer relatives William Duport, the twenty-third Baron and founder of the great Library at Evenwood; and at last my father, Julius Duport, the twenty-fifth Baron, who had succeeded to the t.i.tle because of the death of his older brother; and my own brother, Henry Hereward. I began to fill a note-book with their names, the dates of their births and deaths, and with every fact concerning their lives that I could glean from Burke, or from other authorities to which I then had access.

How strange it was, how infinitely strange, to consider myself as a member of this ancient line! But would I ever be given a place in some future epitome? Would a curious heraldic scholar, a hundred years hence, look into Burke and read of Edward Charles Duport, b. 23rd April, 1820, in Rennes, Ille-et-Vilaine, France? Only if I could find some source of unequivocal and incontrovertible proof to supplement the indirect and oblique testimony of my mother's journals. Only then.

Concluding the entry in Burke were the following notes: Creation-By writ of summons, 49 HEN. III, 14 Dec. 1264.

Arms-Quarterly, 1st and 4th Or three piles enarched throughout issuant from the dexter base gules; 2nd, Per pale indented ermine and ermines on a chevron per pale indented or and argent five roses gules barbed and seeded proper; 3rd, Argent gutty d'huile a lion's rear gamb erased azure and transfixed through the thigh by a sword in bend sinister proper hilted pomelled and quilloned or. Crest-A demi man crowned royally proper crined and bearded argent vested in a robe gules lined ermine holding in his dexter hand a sceptre and in his sinister an orb gold. Supporters-Two lion-sagittarii each drawing a bow and arrow and banded about the temples with a fillet azure. Motto-FORt.i.tUDINE VINCIMUS.

The Tansor arms were ill.u.s.trated at the head of the entry. Contemplating the unusual device of the lion-sagittarii,4 I knew, with redoubled certainty, that what I had inferred from my mother's journals was the truth. On the wooden box that had once contained my two hundred sovereigns were displayed the same arms.

Fort.i.tudine Vincimus 5 was the Tansor motto. It would now be mine.

From time to time, Tom would call and we would talk desultorily for half and hour or so. But I could see his dismay as he surveyed the sea of paper spreading across the work-table and spilling over onto the floor; and I also saw that he had observed the darting look of wild absorption in my eyes, which all too obviously signalled an eagerness to return to my work as quickly as possible. He had not entirely forgiven me for pa.s.sing over the opportunity to go to Mesopotamia with Professor S, and was concerned, I could see, that I was making no attempt to secure any other form of employment. My capital had diminished quicker than I had antic.i.p.ated, largely as a result of my years abroad; debts left by my mother, which she had been keeping at bay and it was becoming imperative to find a source of regular income.

'What's happening to you, Ed?' he asked one spring morning, as I was walking him to the door. 'It pains me to see you like this, shut up here day after day, with no firm prospect in view.'

I could not tell him that I had in fact formed the clearest possible ambition. Instead I prevaricated by saying that I planned to go to London to find some suitable temporary position until a permanent course of action presented itself.

He looked at me doubtfully. 'That is not a plan, Ed,' he said, 'but you must do what you think best. London, certainly, will offer many more opportunities than Sandchurch, and I would urge you to make your move soon. The longer you stay cooped up here, the harder it will be for you to break away.'

The following week, he called again and insisted that I leave the house and take some air, for in truth I had not stepped outside for several days.

We walked along the undercliff, and then down to the smooth area of sand washed by the wave line. The sky was a perfect blue the blue of my Heidelberg memories and the sun shone in brilliant majesty, throwing down glancing points of light onto the ever-swelling wave-tops, as if G.o.d himself were casting a myriad new-born stars across the face of the waters.

We walked some distance in silence.

'Are you happy, Ed?' Tom suddenly asked.

We stopped, and I looked out across the dancing waves to where the vault of heaven met the shimmering horizon.

'No, Tom,' I replied, 'I am not happy, and indeed cannot say where happiness can be found in my life. But I am resolved.' I turned to him and smiled. 'This has done me good, Tom, as you knew very well that it would. You are right. I have immured myself here for too long. I have another life to lead.'

'I'm glad to hear you say so,' he said grasping my hand. 'I shall miss you, G.o.d knows. The best pupil I ever had and the best friend. But it would grieve me more if you were to waste away here, and make no mark upon the world.'

'Oh, I intend to make a mark on the world, Tom, have no fear. From this moment I am reborn.'

It was true. I had felt a surge of energy as I gazed out at the mighty rolling ocean, alive with sunlight a new consciousness that my life now had purpose and definition. I had made my decision. I would go to London, and from there I would begin my great enterprise.

My restoration.

17:.

Alea iacta est1 ______________________________________________________________________.

The only person I knew in London was my old school friend and travelling companion, Willoughby Le Grice, to whom I immediately wrote to ask if he could recommend suitable lodgings. He replied by return to say that a fellow at his club had suggested I should write to a Signor Prospero Gallini, a former fencing master, who, by all accounts, kept a good house in Camberwell.

I had taken the decision to abandon my given name of Glyver, except of course with respect to those few, like Le Grice and Tom Grexby, who already knew me. It was not mine by birth but was a kind of alias, imposed on me, without my knowledge or consent, by others. What loyalty did I owe the name of Glyver? None. Captain Glyver was not my father. Why, then, should I bear his name? I was who I was, whatever I chose to call myself; and so, until I could redeem my rightful name and t.i.tle, I would put on whatever pseudonym suited my present purposes. My whole life would be a disguise, a daily change of dress and character. I would inhabit a costumed world, entering now as one character, now as another, as circ.u.mstance demanded. I would be Incognitus. Unknown. There were, besides, practical considerations. In making enquiries concerning my true self, carrying the name of Glyver might be disadvantageous to my cause. There were many aspects of the plot hatched by Lady Tansor of which I was as yet unaware; and to use my mother's married name would immediately reveal my interest and connexion to the protagonists. No: for the time being, it was better to work in the shadows.

I therefore wrote to Signor Gallini as Edward Glapthorn the name by which I now became generally known in my new life. The following week, after receiving a satisfactory reply, I took coach from Southampton to make arrangements with my new landlord, whom I found to be exactly as Le Grice's friend had described him: tall, courteous, and quietly spoken, but with a melancholy patrician bearing, like an exiled Roman emperor.

The village of Camberwell for such it still was, despite the growing proximity of the metropolis was charming, with open fields and market gardens all around, and pleasant walks through woods and lanes to nearby Dulwich and its picture gallery. Signor Gallini's house stood in a quiet street close to the Green not far, as I later discovered, from the birthplace of Mr Browning, the poet.2 I was offered two rooms on the first floor a good-sized sitting-room with a small bedchamber adjoining at a most reasonable rent, which I instantly agreed to take.

Just as I was leaving, our business having been concluded satisfactorily with a gla.s.s of wine and a cigar, both of excellent quality, the front door opened and in walked the most beautiful girl I thought I had ever seen. Already, I liked to fancy myself as a pretty hard-nosed young dog when it came to the female s.e.x; but I confess I felt like a callow schoolboy when I saw those l.u.s.trous black eyes, and the voluptuous figure that her light-blue morning dress and short lace-collared cape did little to conceal.

'May I introduce my daughter, Isabella?' said Signor Gallini. 'This, my dear, is the gentleman who has been recommended to us. I am glad to say that he has consented to take the rooms.'

His English was perfect, though spoken with the still detectable accent of his native country. Miss Gallini smiled, held out a gloved hand, and said she hoped I would like Camberwell, to which I could only reply that I believed I would like it very well indeed. So began my connexion with Isabella Gallini, my beautiful Bella.

The time had now come to leave Sandchurch behind me. I set about packing my mother's journals and papers into three st.u.r.dy trunks, and instructing Mr Pringle, her former lawyer, to sell the house. It was hard to let Beth go, for she had been part of the household for as long as I could remember, and had continued to cook and clean for me since my return from the Continent; but it had been agreed that she would perform the same domestic duties for Tom, which eased my conscience a little. Billick took the news of my departure in his usual taciturn fashion: he pursed his lips, nodded his head slowly, as if in silent recognition of the inevitable, and shook me by the hand, most vigorously. 'Thankee, sir,' he said, receiving the small bag of coins that I had held out; whereupon he spat out a piece of tobacco, and walked off down the path to the village, whistling as he went. That was the last I ever saw of him.

I was not embarking on my new life entirely without some plan as to what I should do with myself. Ever since the moment I had gazed upon the photogenic drawing of the great stone king in Professor S-'s rooms in Oxford, the idea had been growing in me that the production of such images might perhaps furnish a means of making a living, or at least of supplementing my income. I had not mentioned this to Tom, fearing it would produce another disagreement between us, but I had quietly taken steps to acquaint myself more fully with the possibilities and techniques of this wonderful new medium. I flatter myself that I was amongst its pioneers, and but for the subsequent course of my life, I think I may have made my name in the field and been remembered by posterity for it, along with Mr Talbot and Monsieur Daguerre.3 I had always been fascinated by the camera obscura, its ability to throw fleeting images onto paper, the creations of an instant, which then, just as rapidly, faded away when the camera was removed. Tom to my utter delight possessed one, and as a boy I would often harangue him, once our lessons were done on a fine summer evening, to go out into his little garden and let me look into 'the magic mirror'. Those memories had been instantly revived by the photogenic drawing displayed in the Professor's rooms, and I now determined to learn for myself how to catch and hold light and shadow in perpetuity. To this end, a few weeks earlier, I had written to Mr Talbot, and he had kindly agreed to receive me at his house at Lac.o.c.k,4 where I was inducted into the wonderful art of producing photogenic drawings of the kind I had seen in the Professor's rooms, and into all the mysteries of sciagraphs,5 developers, and exposure. I was even given one of Mr Talbot's own cameras, dozens of which had lay all about the house and grounds. They were perfect little miracles: nothing more than small wooden boxes some of them no more than two or three inches square (Mrs Talbot called them 'mousetraps') made to Mr Talbot's design by a local carpenter, with a bra.s.s lens affixed to the front; and yet what wonders they produced! I returned home to Sandchurch, afire with enthusiasm for my new hobby, and eager to begin taking my own photographs as soon as possible.

Then came the day when I closed the front door of the house on the cliff-top behind me for what I thought would be the last time. I paused for a moment, beneath the chestnut-tree by the gate, to look back at the place I had formerly called home. The memories could not be held back. I saw myself playing in the front garden, eagerly climbing the tree above me to look out from my crow's-nest across the ever-changing waters of the Channel, and trudging up and down the path, in every season and all weathers, to and from Tom's school. I recalled how I would stand watching my mother through the parlour window, doubled over her work for hour after hour, never looking up. And I remembered the sound of wind off the sea, the cry of sea birds as I woke every morning, the ever-present descant of waves breaking on the sh.o.r.e below the cliff, thundering in rough weather like the sound of distant cannon. But they were Edward Glyver's memories, not mine. I had merely borrowed them, and now he could have them back. It was time for my new self to begin making memories of its own.

I was unpacking the last of my mother's papers, a week or so after arriving at my Camberwell lodgings, when I made a great discovery.

Temporarily interrupting my exertions to take a gla.s.s of brandy and smoke a cigar, I idly opened one of the journal volumes, which I had just taken out of the trunk. My eye happened to fall on an entry dated '20.vii.19': 'To Mr AT yesterday: L not present, but he kindly put me at my ease & explained what was required.' 'L' was, of course, Laura Tansor; but the ident.i.ty of 'Mr AT' was still unknown to me. On an impulse, I searched out a tied bundle of miscellaneous doc.u.ments, all of which dated from 1819. It did not take long to extract a receipt for a night's stay, on the nineteenth of July of that year, at Fendalls Hotel, Palace Yard. Adhering to the back was a card: 'Mr AT', I thought, could now be identified, tentatively, as Mr Anson Tredgold, solicitor. This now explained an earlier entry: 'L has agreed to my request & will speak to her legal man. She understands that I fear discovery & require an instrument that will absolve me of blame, if such a thing can be contrived.' It seemed clear from this that some form of legal doc.u.ment or agreement had been drawn up, to which both had been signatories. Of such an agreement I had found no trace amongst my mother's papers; but, seeing its likely importance to my case, I began there and then to devise a way of getting my hands on a copy of it. My great enterprise had begun.

Anson Tredgold, Esq.

Senior Partner Tredgold, Tredgold & Orr 17, Paternoster-row, City The next day I wrote to the firm of Tredgolds, using the name Edward Glapthorn. I described myself as secretary and amanuensis to Mr Edward Charles Glyver, son of the late Mrs Simona Glyver, of Sandchurch, Dorset, and requested the pleasure of an interview with Mr Anson Tredgold, on a confidential matter concerning the aforementioned lady. I waited anxiously for a reply, but none came. The weeks went by, during which I made a number of enquiries concerning employment, none of which bore fruit. Then, in the first week of September, a short note arrived informing me that Mr Christopher Tredgold would be pleased to receive me privately (the word was underlined) on the following Sunday.

The distinguished firm of Tredgold, Tredgold & Orr has already been mentioned in this narrative, in connexion with my neighbour Fordyce Jukes, and as the legal advisers of Lord Tansor. The firm's offices were in Paternoster-row,6 in the shadow of St Paul's: a little island of the legal world set in a sea of publishers and booksellers, whose activities have made the street proverbial amongst those of a literary inclination. The firm occupied a handsome detached house, part of which, unlike many such buildings in the City, was still used by the Senior Partner, Mr Christopher Tredgold, as his private residence. The ground floor formed the clerks' offices, above which, on the first floor, were the chambers of the Senior Partner and his junior colleagues; above these, occupying the third and fourth floors, were Mr Tredgold's private rooms. One peculiarity of the building's arrangement was that the residential floors could also be reached from the street via two side staircases, each with its own entrance that gave onto two little paved alleys running down either side of the house.

It was a fine morning, bright and dry, though with a distinct feeling of impending autumn in the air, when I first saw the premises of Tredgold, Tredgold & Orr, which were soon to become so familiar to me. The street was quiet but for the dying chimes of a nearby church clock and the rustle of a few newly fallen leaves drifting along the pavement and gathering beside me in a little twirling heap.

A manservant showed me up to the third floor, where Mr Christopher Tredgold received me in his drawing-room, a well-proportioned apartment with two tall windows looking down on the street and swathed and swagged in plush curtains of the most exquisite pale yellow, to which the sunlight streaming in from outside added its own soft l.u.s.tre.

All, indeed, was shine and softness. The carpet, in a delicate pattern of pink and pale blue, had a deep springy pile, reminding me of the turf against which I had lain in my little nook above the Philosophenweg. The furniture spa.r.s.e but of the finest quality, and much against the present ponderous taste gleamed; light danced off brilliantly polished silver, bra.s.s fittings, and shimmering gla.s.s. The matching blue-and-gold upholstery of the long sofa and tete-a-tete chair7 that were set around the elegant Adam fireplace each item also enclosing an abundance of perfectly plumped cushions of Berlin work was deep and inviting. In the s.p.a.ce between the two windows, beneath a fine cla.s.sical medallion, stood a violincello on an ornate wrought-bra.s.s stand, whilst on a little Chippendale table beside it was laid open the score of one of the divine Bach's Suites for that peerless instrument.

Mr Christopher Tredgold was a gentleman of around forty years, of middling height, clean shaven, with a full head of feathery grey hair, a fine square jaw, and eyes of the most piercing blue, set widely on his broad tanned face. He was dressed immaculately in dove-grey trousers and shining pumps, and held in his left hand an eye-gla.s.s on a dark-blue silk ribbon attached to his waistcoat, the lens of which, during the course of our interview, he would polish incessantly with a red silk handkerchief kept constantly by him for this purpose. In all the time of our subsequent acquaintance, however, I never once saw him raise the gla.s.s to his eye.

Dulcis was the word that impressed itself on my mind when I met Mr Christopher Tredgold for the first time. Pleasant, soft, charming, mellifluous, refined: all these intangible impressions of character seemed to mix with the atmosphere of the room, its elegance and fragrance, to produce a sensation of sweet and dreamy ease.

Mr Tredgold rose from the seat he was occupying by the window, shook my hand, and invited me to make myself comfortable on the tete-a-tete chair, whilst he (somewhat to my relief) took a seat on the sofa. He smiled seraphically, and continued to beam as he spoke.

'When your letter was pa.s.sed to me Mr . . . Glapthorn . . . ' he hesitated for a moment as he glanced down at a little sheaf of notes he was holding 'I thought it would be more convenient for us both if we conducted this interview in a private capacity.'

'I am grateful to you, Mr Tredgold,' I replied, 'for giving up your time in this way.'

'Not at all. Not at all. You see, Mr Glapthorn, your letter intrigued me. Yes, I may say that I was intrigued.'

He beamed again.

'And when I am intrigued,' he continued, 'I can be sure that the matter in hand is out of the ordinary. It is a remarkable instinct I have. It has happened time and again. I am intrigued; I investigate the matter in a private capacity, carefully, quietly, and at my leisure; and then it always happens I find something extraordinary at the bottom of it all. The ordinary I can leave to others. The extraordinary I like to keep for myself.'

This statement was delivered in the smoothest of tenor tones, and with slow precision of enunciation, which gave it a chant-like quality. Before I could reply, he had consulted his notes again, polished his eye-gla.s.s, and had proceeded with what was evidently some sort of prepared introduction to our meeting.

'In your letter, Mr Glapthorn, I find mention of Mr Edward Glyver and his late mother, Mrs Simona Glyver. May I ask what your relationship is to either of these two persons?'

'As I stated in my letter, I have been engaged by Mr Edward Glyver as a confidential secretary, to a.s.sist him in the ordering and final disposal of his late mother's papers.'

'Ah,' beamed Mr Tredgold, 'the auth.o.r.ess.'

'You know her work?'

'By reputation.'

It did not strike me as odd then, though it did later, that Mr Tredgold was aware of the ident.i.ty that lay behind the anonymous and pseudonymous works of my mother. He beamed at me to continue.

'Mr Glyver is presently residing on the Continent and wishes to conclude his mother's affairs as quickly as possible. As it is impossible for him to take on the whole task himself, he has delegated the business side of things to me.'

'Ah,' said Mr Tredgold, 'the business side. Indeed.' Another polish of the eye-gla.s.s. 'May I ask, Mr Glapthorn, you will excuse me, if you have some authority on which we may proceed?'

I had come prepared for this, and reached into my coat.

'A letter from Mr Edward Glyver,' I said, 'granting me temporary power of agency over his affairs.'

'I see,' he replied, taking the doc.u.ment and looking over it. 'A little irregular perhaps, but this all looks to be in order, although of course I have not had the pleasure of meeting Mr Glyver, and I do not think we hold any correspondence from him.'

Again I was prepared.

'A corroborating signature, perhaps?' I asked.

'Certainly that might suffice,' said Mr Tredgold, and I handed him a receipt, signed of course by myself, for the supplying of a handsome pocket translation of Plato by Ficino (Lyon, 1550, in a pretty French binding) by Field & Co., Regent's Quadrangle. This appeared to satisfy the Senior Partner, who, having polished his gla.s.s once more, leaned back and beamed a further question.

'You spoke of a confidential matter in respect of the late distinguished auth.o.r.ess, Mr Glyver's mother. May I know what it concerns?'

His cerulean eyes widened a little as he tilted his head to one side and stroked back a delicate feather of hair from his forehead.

'I have found mention in Mrs Glyver's papers of an agreement between herself and a certain lady, whom I have inferred must be a client of your firm's. The late Laura, Lady Tansor?'