Michael Cox (20 page)

SUNDAY DULY CAME. Mr Thripp’s sermon (on the text ‘He taketh the wise in their own craftiness’) lasted nearly an hour – much to my Lady’s ill-disguised annoyance, for she had frequently requested her Rector to limit his expositions to a moderate twenty minutes. Afterwards, by the lych-gate, I saw him turn sickly pale as his patroness, with a face like thunder, spoke a few words to him, before she was helped into her carriage by Mr Perseus.
That afternoon, as arranged, Sukie was waiting for me at the bottom of School Lane. Her mother had been ordered by Dr Pordage to remain in bed; but when we arrived at the cottage, we found her sitting in a rocking-chair by the kitchen range, a large tabby cat on her lap, humming contentedly, and apparently in the most flourishing condition. I saw immediately what Sukie had meant concerning the resilience of the clan Garland. Far from being debilitated by her recent illness, Mrs Prout – a stocky little woman, with a bright and lively eye – appeared to exhibit a nonchalant defiance of the body’s ailments.
‘Don’t fuss so, Suke,’ she said, when gently admonished by her daughter for leaving her bed. ‘That fool Pordage knows nothing about it. Bed-rest, indeed, when there’s tatties to be peeled!’
Sukie looked across to the dresser, on which stood a bowl of freshly peeled potatoes, and shook her head in exasperation.
‘Now then, Suke,’ continued Mrs Prout, ignoring the further strictures directed at her by her daughter, ‘introduce me to our guest, and I’ll allow you to make us some tea, for I’m sure you think it’ll kill me if
I
do it.’
‘This is Miss Gorst, Mother,’ said Sukie, before placing the kettle on the range. ‘Her Ladyship’s new maid.’
Mrs Prout expressed herself pleased to make my acquaintance, and we were soon chatting away, sipping our tea betimes, in a most pleasant and companionable way.
As soon as I was able, I turned the conversation towards Lady Tansor and her late husband.
‘Oh yes, miss,’ said Mrs Prout. ‘I knew the colonel. I worked as under-housekeeper then, at the great house, where my late husband was a coachman. We all liked the colonel – a most agreeable gentleman – though of course it was a great surprise to us all when Miss Carteret, as was, came back with him.’
Once she was engaged with her subject, it took little prompting on my part to encourage Mrs Prout to enlarge, at some length, and in considerable detail, on my Lady’s marriage to Colonel Zaluski. This – in summary, and in my own words, drawing on the shorthand notes I made at the time – is what I learned.

IN JANUARY OF the year 1855, hardly more than a month after the murder of Phoebus Daunt by Edward Glyver, Miss Carteret (as we must call her for the moment), still of course in mourning, left England for the Continent, destination unknown. She appeared to do so with the full blessing of her relative, Lord Tansor, with whom, following the death of his nominated heir, she had quickly established a new, and apparently close, relationship.
The suddenness of the change in their relations was remarkable – occasioned and cemented, it was generally assumed, by their mutual grief. On Lord Tansor’s side, where there had formerly been an observable frostiness towards his second cousin, there was now constantly expressed concern for her well-being. Mrs Prout well remembered hearing him, on several occasions, entreat Miss Carteret, in a most anxious tone, to move away from an open window for fear of catching a draught, or to sit a little further from the fire to avoid over-heating her blood. ‘Moderation, my dear,’ she remembered him saying, ‘is the thing. Nothing too extreme. That’s the way.’
From Mrs Prout’s account, it seems that Miss Carteret, on her part, demonstrated a reciprocal, almost daughterly concern for her noble relative, making it her constant duty to keep his Lordship untroubled by domestic annoyances, however trivial.
Then, to general surprise, Miss Carteret had suddenly quit Evenwood to cross the English Channel, and did not return to Evenwood until the spring of 1856 – fifteen months later.
‘When she did,’ said Mrs Prout, ‘she had a fine ring on her finger, the colonel by her side, and a babbie – Mr Perseus – wrapped up in a great shawl.’
On the day of their arrival in Northamptonshire, the little universe of Evenwood had turned out
en masse
to greet them – tenants, house-maids, cook-maids, dairy-maids, gardeners, gamekeepers, footmen, stable-boys, and every other species and sub-species of menial necessary to maintain Lord Tansor’s comfort, all drawn up in eagerly curious, Sunday-best ranks in the Entrance Court.
Lord Tansor himself, Mrs Prout recalled, cooed and beamed – like the proud parent that he almost was – as the fruit of the union between his cousin and Colonel Zaluski was paraded along the clapping and cheering lines to receive the salutations of those who were about to serve him.
It was a warm afternoon, but the future heir was kept close wrapped in a voluminous white shawl, leaving only his eyes and button nose visible – to the vocal disappointment of the many females who strained eagerly, as we females are naturally inclined to do on such occasions, to catch a glimpse of the juvenile wonder.
The colonel and his wife were given a handsome suite of rooms, newly decorated and furnished, on the south side of the house, overlooking the fish-pond; and a nurse was engaged to attend the young prince.
‘We all longed to see the little one,’ Mrs Prout had recalled, ‘but Mrs Zaluski had picked up a strange notion, from some foreign doctor who’d attended her, that the babbie must be kept away from people, and as warm as possible, even in summer, until he was at least eight months old. The little thing was that precious to her, and her trust in the doctor’s system so great, that nothing could persuade her to take any contrary advice.
‘But then one day, a week or two after they came back, I was passing the open door of the nursery when, happening to glance in, I saw the nurse, Mrs Barbraham, carrying Master Perseus in his night-dress through to his mamma. It was the first time I’d been able to see him properly, and my! What a bonny babe he was, to be sure! The bonniest three-month child, indeed, I ever did see, with his mother’s great eyes, and a thick cap of black hair. Why she was molly-coddling him so, I couldn’t see, but of course no one dared say anything to her.
‘Anyway, a day or two later, I was speaking to dear old Professor Slake, and he’d also caught a glimpse of the child. I remember his words to this day: “They’ve misnamed him, Mrs Prout,” he said to me. “He should have been called Nimrod, for it’s certain that he’ll soon be about the Park, slaying lions and pards by the score, to lay before Lord Tansor’s feet.” Then he explained to me who Nimrod was, and that a pard was an old name for a leopard, and I saw then what he meant. I’ve never forgotten his words, for they seemed so true and apt.’

COLONEL AND MRS Zaluski conveyed to the world at large the strongest impression of contentment. Mrs Prout confirmed that the colonel had been an extremely agreeable gentleman, although his health was poor, and he had a constantly careworn look about him. He spoke excellent English, with hardly a trace of his native accent, and treated everyone with a natural courteousness. Altogether, it could not be argued that he did not possess a great many qualities to attract a wife – but a wife such as the former Miss Emily Carteret, and so soon after the death of her beloved fiancé? This was a question much debated below stairs at Evenwood, and beyond.
Yet the colonel’s wife seemed happy enough with her choice, even though her husband was so different, in every point, to the man she should have married. Mrs Prout remembered her smiling contentedly at him, and pressing her hand gently on his, as they sat together of an evening, reading and talking, or when Master Perseus was brought down to them by Mrs Barbraham, to be dandled on Mamma and Papa’s knees, before he was taken back to his nursery.
Throughout that summer of 1856, Mrs Zaluski – supported in her determination by Lord Tansor – continued to follow the strict medical advice she had received from her foreign doctor to the letter, keeping her adored and pampered son wrapped up in great shawls, and refusing to allow him to be taken up by anyone except Mrs Barbraham, for fear of contracting some infection. Gradually, however, as the autumn approached, the child was brought out more and more; and what a fine fellow he was pronounced to be!
‘Oh, Miss Gorst!’ said Mrs Prout. ‘You’ve never seen such a handsome little boy as Master Perseus – so tall for his age, and so strong, and lively. Everyone remarked it. And so like his mother, too, with hardly a trace of the colonel in him. This, of course, made Lord Tansor dote on the child even more; for, though his Lordship liked the colonel well enough – as who could not? – he always treated him like a guest in the house, and not at all like one of his family. But Mrs Zaluski had become like a daughter to his Lordship, and this pushed the poor colonel out of things even more.
‘As for his Lordship, no man could have been more proud or happy. I won’t say it changed him, for he was a stern old stick – always was, always would be. But it smoothed him out a little, is what I’d say, for the death of his own poor son, Master Henry, and then of Mr Daunt, had made him terrible bitter. And now here comes Master Perseus to replace them both!’
In due course, Lord Tansor’s satisfaction was increased even more, with the birth of Mr Randolph the following year, although from the very first the child was over-shadowed by his elder brother, on whom was lavished every possible attention by his mother, and by the man who, in all respects except name, came to be considered as his grandfather. Lord Tansor’s former aversion to the collateral line of his family, represented by the Carterets, was no more. The Duport succession, it seemed, had been secured by the birth of Perseus Zaluski-Duport, as he was known before his mother shed her husband’s name. The great ambition of his life – that perpetually keen, but formerly unsatiated, hunger to pass on what he had received, which had ruled him for so long – had been achieved. His Lordship was content at last.

III
A Remembered Death

AFTER LEAVING MRS Prout and Sukie, I took the road through the village and entered the Park by the South Gates.
I could not help taking another peep at the Dower House, which had so enchanted me on first seeing it; and so I stood for several minutes, just beyond the plantation of trees between the lawn and the carriage-road, to look again at where my Lady had spent her childhood.
I had not been there long when a gate in a wall at the side of the house opened, and through it stepped Mr Montagu Wraxall carrying a valise. On seeing me, he waved, and began walking towards me across the lawn.
‘Miss Gorst, how pleasant!’ he said, making me a low bow. ‘A large number of letters from my late uncle to Mr Paul Carteret – who, as I’m sure you know, once lived here – have recently come to light, and I’ve just been to collect them, although I hardly lack for papers to read at present. My dear uncle has left quite an ocean of them behind. But what brings you here?’
I told him how the Dower House reminded me of the doll’s-house that Mr Thornhaugh had given to me as a child, and how much I would like one day to live in such a place.
‘Would you now?’ he said, turning back to look at the building, its red brick glowing warmly in the afternoon sun.
‘Yes, it’s charming, certainly, if now touched by tragedy.’
‘Mr Carteret was an old and dear friend of my late uncle’s,’ he went on. ‘A gentler, kinder man never drew breath. And he was killed for nothing. Nothing.’
‘Excuse me, Mr Wraxall,’ I said, ‘but I’d understood that Mr Carteret was robbed after coming home from the bank.’
‘No, no,’ Mr Wraxall replied, shaking his head, ‘I don’t say that he was attacked for no reason; but he was not robbed for money, if that’s what you mean. He was carrying very little.’
I ventured to put the opinion of Mr Maggs that his assailants may have thought differently.
‘They may have done,’ said Mr Wraxall doubtfully, ‘though I don’t believe so. My conviction is that they – if, indeed, there was more than one attacker, which again I doubt – knew exactly what Mr Carteret was carrying with him, and it wasn’t money. Shall we walk?’
We set off through the plantation of trees, emerging again on the carriage-road by the South Gates. Soon we were ascending the long incline known as the Rise, the summit of which presented a wonderful prospect of the great house standing in splendour on the other side of the Evenbrook.
Mr Wraxall seemed somewhat preoccupied, saying little as we walked down towards the bridge.
‘May I ask, sir,’ I said at length, finding the silences a little uncomfortable, ‘what you think Mr Carteret was carrying, if it was not money?’
‘Well, that’s the great unanswered question,’ he replied, with a suggestive smile.
‘Something of value, surely?’
‘Something of value? Yes, most certainly. But I think you are playing the
ingénue
, Miss Gorst. I am sure that you already know something of this matter, and if you wish me to take you into my confidence, then you have only to say.’
He rested his clear grey eyes on me as he spoke, but there was no rebuke in them, only twinkling sincerity.
‘I should like that, sir,’ I returned.
‘And so should I, Miss Gorst, so should I. But perhaps this is neither the time, nor the place for such confidences. I’m obliged to return to London tomorrow evening, and then I must travel to Scotland on family business. Are you always at liberty on a Sunday afternoon? You are? Then perhaps you might like to come to tea at North Lodge when I return. Would you consider that to be at all improper?’
‘Not in the least,’ I said.
‘Neither would I. Then that’s settled. I shall send word when I am back in Northamptonshire.’
We parted at the bridge that takes the carriage-road over the Evenbrook: Mr Wraxall to make his way across the Park to North Lodge, where he said he had several more hours’ work to do on his uncle’s papers, I to my room, and to Mr Wilkie Collins.
That night, looking out from my window as I was about to blow out my candle before retiring, I could just make out a faint gleam of light far across the Park, in the direction of North Lodge. It was now past midnight, but evidently Mr Wraxall was still at work.
As sometimes happened, I rose early the next morning, well before daybreak, wishing to finish reading my novel before commencing the day’s duties.
Darkness still lay across the Park, although fragmented in places by a narrow arc of silver-grey light rising slowly over the eastern horizon, and the Home Farm cockerel had yet to rouse himself. I opened the window to let in a draught of that delicious air one experiences at this time, when night has not quite fled, and the fullness of day has still to break.
The light I had seen when I went to bed burned on in North Lodge. There had been no rest that night, it seemed, for Mr Montagu Wraxall.