Michael Cox (35 page)

AS I ENTER the vestibule, I find Mr Perseus, riding-whip in hand, pacing up and down in front of the portrait of the Turkish Corsair. He appears to have been waiting for me.
‘You have been out walking again, I see, Miss Gorst,’ he remarks, in a most disapproving tone, tapping his whip irritably on the side of his leg as he speaks.
Knowing that I have committed no impropriety, I merely confirm the fact and politely excuse myself.
‘You’ll allow me to observe,’ he then says, as I am about to make my way up the stairs, ‘that you appear to entertain a very marked partiality towards my brother. I am not sure that it is quite appropriate for my mother’s companion to behave so, but perhaps her Ladyship considers the matter in a different light. She is, I’m sure, aware of your…’
He pauses, as if searching for the right word.
‘Attachment,’ he resumes, with the air of a man throwing down a verbal gauntlet.
‘I beg your pardon, sir,’ I answer, piqued by his insinuation, ‘but you are mistaken. There is no “attachment”, in the sense you appear to intend, between Mr Randolph Duport and myself, and therefore nothing for my Lady to consider.’
‘Your walks with my brother have not gone unnoticed, you know.’
I have no mind to engage in a debate on the matter, being still agitated after the encounter with Billy Yapp and wishing very much to return to my room. I therefore excuse myself again; but as I am turning away, he suddenly takes hold of my wrist to stop me. Seeing the shock on my face, he immediately releases his grip, but makes no apology for his action.
‘Your position here is changing, Miss Gorst,’ are his next words, spoken quietly but intently, ‘and it will, I predict, undergo further change. I am glad of it, believe me. Her Ladyship is fond of you, and it is altogether a good thing, in my opinion, that you are now occupying a situation in the household that is far more suited to your natural condition. I feel it is my duty, however, to point out something that I am sure you must already know concerning my brother.’
I try to assure him once again that he is mistaken in thinking that any regard I may have for Mr Randolph is anything more than our respective stations permitted, or that I cherish any improper designs on him, but he cuts me short.
‘Hear me out, Miss Gorst. I wish only to spare you from disappointment and distress. My brother has an inescapable duty to this great family, and to those who have made it so. Perhaps you are unaware that it has always been the Duport way to expect that even junior sons should marry well. My brother is no exception. It is therefore incumbent upon him to find a wife who will augment and extend the family’s interests, and it is Lady Tansor’s fixed resolve that he should do so. You understand me?’
He is now at his insufferable worst – pompous, arrogant, the overbearing Duport heir in all his pride. The look I receive enrages me, for of course I understand him only too well. Although I enjoy an unusually favourable position in the household, that imperious stare is intended to remind me that I must be careful not to over-reach myself. I came to Evenwood as a mere servant. I am poor. I am an orphan, with little knowledge of my parents. What advantage could I bring to the mighty Duports? These things, and more, I read in his arctic eyes.
I cannot, of course, reveal my conviction that his brother loves me, that I believe he intends to make me a proposal of marriage; but, goaded to a response at last, and with due deference, I put the hypothetical case that even were I fortunate enough to enjoy the affectionate regard of Mr Randolph Duport, and were I to return that regard, then some might consider it to be a purely private matter.
‘There you are mistaken, Miss Gorst,’ he returns. ‘As I have just been at some pains to suggest, it most certainly
is
a matter on which other persons will, and should, form an opinion – her Ladyship in particular – and the consequences, you may be sure, will not be to your advantage. If I may say so, you appear rather quickly to have convinced yourself that your new position gives you the privilege of acting as you please. Step back, Miss Gorst, step back, for your own sake. You say nothing.’
We stand for several moments in silence as I consider what I should say to him. At length, I tell him that I have some duty to perform for my Lady, and assure him for a third time that any feelings I might have for his brother are of a wholly unexceptional character.
‘I am glad to hear you say so, Miss Gorst. You will forgive me, I hope, for speaking so frankly. My only wish is to avoid any unpleasantness.’
He gives me a stiff bow, and I turn to make my way up the staircase, feeling his eyes upon me with every step I take.
I have nothing to conceal from my Lady regarding my feelings for her younger son, and I continue to feel secure in her favour. Why, then, should I care what Mr Perseus Duport thinks of me?
Yet although I pretend otherwise, I
do
care what Mr Perseus Duport thinks of me, and that he might still believe I am in love with his brother. I can deny it no longer. I care very much indeed.

II
Madame de l’Orme to Miss Esperanza Gorst

LETTER 3
I HAVE SCARCELY closed the door to my room, my mind in turmoil, when Sukie knocks and gives me a letter. I know immediately who it is from, and what it contains.
The day had finally come on which I would learn at last who I really was, and why I had been sent to Evenwood; for here, in my trembling hands, was Madame’s long-awaited third Letter of Instruction.
It was to be a day like no other I had ever known, and will – I hope – never know again. Madame’s words were like flaming arrows to my soul. The fires they ignited are burning still, and will continue to smoulder until I am laid in earth.
Here, then, is what I read, sitting at my desk in the Tower Room at Evenwood, on that ever-memorable day, as the year 1876 drew to its close.

Avenue d’Uhrich
Paris

DEAREST CHILD,—
The time has come, at last, for me to place the Great Task before you in a clear & unequivocal light, & I shall do so as succinctly as I can.
What I first have to tell you – by way of preparation for what follows – will, I fear, cause you great, & perhaps abiding, pain, as it pains me so very much to write the words; and so you must be brave, my angel, & face the final truth about yr history with that same courage that you have displayed so admirably in the role you are playing at Evenwood.
You have looked upon your father’s name many times as a child, on his grave in the Cemetery of St-Vincent. As you well know, the stone bears the name of Edwin Gorst, departed this life in the year 1862.
This, however, was not yr father’s real name, but the one he adopted after suffering the most terrible calamity, the consequences of which made it imperative that he flee his native country for ever.
Know, then, that your father was born Edward Charles Duport, the legitimate son of Julius Verney Duport, 25th Baron Tansor, & his first wife, the former Laura Fairmile. No doubt you have seen the portrait of Ld & Lady Tansor, with their second son, Henry Hereward, in the vestibule at Evenwood. They were yr grandparents, & the little boy is yr poor dead uncle.
Yet although yr father had been born the true and undisputed heir to the Tansor Barony, both he & his own father, the late Ld Tansor, were denied knowledge of the fact by his mother. He thus grew up in complete ignorance of his true identity, & of his rightful inheritance. He, not yr mistress, should have succeeded the 25th Baron.
The story is a long and distressing one, & must wait to be told to you in full. But, in brief, yr grandmother – without her husband even knowing of his son’s existence – gave yr father to be brought up by another, in order to punish Ld Tansor for bankrupting her own father, which, she absolutely believed, sent her adored parent to an early grave. By this act, she set in train the sequence of events that, over fifty years later, have brought you to Evenwood.
By depriving her husband of all knowledge of his son, Lady Tansor did him the greatest possible hurt – although he remained unaware of his loss; & it is true that she repented of her great sin, & suffered grievously, at the last, from remorse for what she had done; but by then it was too late to mend, & the consequences were to prove more momentous & far-reaching than she could ever have conceived.
As you now know, with no heir from his second marriage to succeed him, Ld Tansor elected to leave all his extensive property to his Rector’s son, Phoebus Daunt, on the single condition that he assume the name of Duport, which he was more than willing to do. Nor need I rehearse what you have read in Mr Vyse’s memorial to Daunt, concerning his murder by Edward Glyver, his erstwhile school-fellow and friend. And now I beg you to be strong, dear child, for what must be told.
The woman to whom Laura Tansor had given her first-born son, Edward Duport, to be brought up as her own child, was her oldest and dearest companion. Naturally, the boy grew up bearing his foster-mother’s married name. That name was Glyver. Do you now understand?
Edward Glyver – the man who killed Phoebus Daunt – was yr father.
Oh my darling child! I can all too readily conceive the shock that these words will produce in you. How can the blow be softened, being the simple, terrible truth? Let me attempt to do so.
Never,
never
believe, dear girl, that yr father was a common murderer, or that he acted out of either vulgar envy or blind vengeance. True, Daunt was the sole agent of his being sent away from Eton, after he was falsely accused of stealing a most valuable book from the Library there; it is true also that this charge, false though it was, prevented him from following the path he desired above all others – of obtaining a University Fellowship, and leading the life of a scholar. The memory of this wholly malicious injustice remained with yr father for many years, during which he harboured an unquenchable desire for Daunt to suffer the bitterness of dashed ambition, as he had done. But he did not wish him to die for it; he began to contemplate such an extremity only when faced with a betrayal and loss so great that no other course seemed open to him.
By the time the deed was finally done, yr father had been temporarily deprived of reason, stripped of every moral sense, driven to the very brink of despair. His former self-possession, & all those higher qualities of which Mr Heatherington wrote, in his reply to the prejudiced eulogy of Mr Vyse, had been shocked into temporary abeyance. All that remained was his formidable will.
Thus he descended into a brief madness, in which nothing mattered but the destruction of his enemy – not for being the cause of his expulsion from school; nor because he had been named as Ld Tansor’s heir, for that, yr father was confident, could have been successfully challenged in Law, by means of evidence he had gathered that proved his real identity.
Phoebus Daunt died because he was the instigator, with the woman yr father loved above all others, of a most wicked conspiracy against him. Through the cruellest of deceptions, Daunt & this woman obtained the documents that yr father had laboured so long to discover, proving him to be Ld Tansor’s legitimate heir. They then destroyed them, so depriving yr father for ever of the means to reclaim his birthright.
And the name of this deceiving, conscienceless woman, who encouraged him to believe that his love was returned; who then shattered every precious hope he had of future happiness and prosperity, by telling him to his face that she had never loved anyone but Phoebus Daunt, that she intended to marry him, and that the proofs of yr father’s true identity, which he had delivered, in the innocence of devoted love, into her very hands for safe-keeping, had been passed to his enemy for certain destruction?
Who else could this perfidious creature be, but the present Lady Tansor – the former Miss Emily Carteret, the woman whose hair you have dressed, whose gowns you have brushed and mended, whose companion you have become, and who now calls herself your friend.
Now do you see, dear child, why Lady Tansor is yr enemy, as she was yr father’s, & why she will always be so? She has stolen
your
birthright, and your children’s, as she conspired to steal
his.
Yet honesty compels me to admit that yr father loved her, & that he continued to do so, even after she had betrayed him. This you must also understand: somewhere – in the deep places of her black heart – I believe that she felt some affection for him also, weak and ineffectual though it was compared to her consuming passion for Phoebus Daunt.
For a time, yr father refused to blame Miss Carteret for the catastrophe that she had helped bring upon him, finding that he could not condemn her for what she had done in the name of Love, when he, too, would have done anything, committed any crime, for her sake.
Gradually, however, in his lonely Atlantic exile, living on Lanzarote under the name of Edwin Gorst, sundered from everything that had made life sweet for him, and from the country and the city he loved, he began to see things in a different light, viewing his own misfortune against a greater wrong. For in denying yr father what was his by right of birth and blood (and so compounding the actions of his own mother), Miss Carteret and Phoebus Daunt had also denied his descendants what was rightfully theirs. Yr father now resolved that this crime against future generations must be remedied. But what could be done?
At last Fate – as he believed – placed the means in his hands. He was delivered from his exile, as you are now aware, through the agency of Mr John Lazarus. Recuperated & revivified, he began to conceive a plan – desperate, reckless, and with slender chance of success, but which might, perhaps, bring about a restitution, not of his own position, for that had been irrevocably forfeited by the crime that he had committed, but of the right of his lawfully begotten heirs to succeed, in his place, to the Tansor Barony.
His design was simple, although fraught with uncertainty, & perhaps danger; but the responsibility that he felt towards his ancient bloodline negated all practical objections.
Soon after his arrival in Madeira, as you will recall from Mr Lazarus’s recollections, yr father had learned – by sheer chance – that Miss Carteret had married Colonel Zaluski, and that a son had been born to their union. This, combined with the further intelligence that Miss Carteret was now Ld Tansor’s legal heir, & that consequently her son would succeed to both the title & property after her death, compelled him to action. The first pre-requisite was to marry, as soon as a suitable wife, whom he could cherish with genuine affection, could be found. Once again, he believed that Fate intervened when, having been on Madeira for only a short while, he was introduced to yr mother, the former Miss Marguerite Blantyre.
As you now know, yr father & Miss Blantyre eloped, were duly married, &, in the course of time, a child was born. That child – you, my angel – became the instrument by which what had been lost could – if Fate allowed – be regained.
For you, too, were born a Duport, legitimately conceived, as he was. Both you and he were thereby subject to a higher duty: to the long, unbroken line of yr ancestors, & to yr future descendants. He had been prevented, by treachery & malice, from fulfilling this duty; but through you, his adored daughter, this great wrong could be set right at last.
Here, then, I come to what yr father wished to accomplish through you.
Before he left for the East, after yr mother’s death, I made a solemn vow to him: to bring you up as my own child, and, in the course of time, to set in motion the scheme he had devised: to place you close to the woman who had dispossessed both him & you.
In order to reclaim what had been lost, and so bring the Tansor succession back to the blood of the direct line, yr father laid this great and, to him, binding obligation upon you, his only and dearest child: to secure the lasting affection – the love, if possible – of the present Duport heir.
This, then, is what he calls upon you to do, by all you hold most sacred, from beyond the Portals of Death.
You must marry Perseus Duport.