Michael Cox (52 page)

OUTSIDE RANDOLPH’S ROOM, I lay the tray down, and knock gently on the door.
‘Who’s that?’
Placing my face close to the door, I softly say my name.
‘Esperanza! What? Just a moment.’
A little time passes before the door eventually opens, and he stands before me – not, as I had expected, in night-attire and dressing-robe, but fully costumed in jacket, buckskin trousers, and top-boots, apparently ready for the day.
‘I do hope I am not disturbing you,’ I say. ‘May I come in – if you are not feeling unwell?’
‘Unwell?’
‘Charlie Skinner says that you’d asked to take breakfast in your room, because of a headache – look, I’ve brought your tray.’
‘Headache? Oh yes, of course’ he replies, looking unaccountably flustered. ‘Quite beastly when I woke up, but much better now, thank you. And you’ve brought up my tray, have you? You shouldn’t have done that, you know. Not your place at all. That should have been Skinner’s job.’
‘Oh, I don’t mind about that,’ I return. ‘I happened to meet Charlie on the way up, that’s all. Shall I bring it in?’
‘No, no!’ he cries. ‘I won’t hear of it. Leave it there, won’t you? Do you know, I find I’m suddenly not at all hungry. I think I’ll take something later.’
For some seconds we remain in the doorway, smiling embarrassingly at each other, until he moves aside to usher me in, a little unwillingly, as it seems to me, but saying brightly, ‘Come in, come in!’
I step into a small, sparsely furnished ante-room, the floor of which is littered with fishing tackle and old copies of the
Sporting Times
. Through an open door I catch sight of the equally untidy bed-chamber. Mr Randolph continues to seem distinctly ill at ease, inclined only to engage in the most desultory and inconsequential small talk, whilst I, of course, hope that he will seize the moment and make his proposal so that the business can be concluded as quickly as possible. But having exhausted all the tedious topics of general enquiry, and after throwing a brief look out of the open window, he merely remarks: ‘A fine day at last, I see. I think I might walk out for an hour.’
Well, here is a thing! Where is the light of expectation in his eyes? Where the relief that his long-delayed proposal can now be put to me? Where the ardent hope that it will be accepted? Has he not guessed why I have come?
For a moment I wonder whether I have been mistaken in believing that what he had said to me, on the day of our walk to the Temple of the Winds, admitted of only one interpretation. Surely his meaning had been unequivocal? And then I had read so much more in his look than his inadequate words had been capable of conveying. Assuring myself that all was well, and once more ascribing his hesitancy to nervousness and inexperience, I resolve to lend some assistance, if I can, to show him that he should have no fear of his proposal being rejected.
‘I thought, perhaps,’ I begin, ‘that
you
might wish to say something to
me
, as you’ve told me you wished to do. I can assure you that, whatever it is, I am very willing to hear it.
Very
willing indeed.’
‘Confound it!’ he suddenly bursts out. ‘What a booby I am! All I’ve been wanting to do, these many weeks past, is to find some suitable moment to say something to you – that is, to put something to you, of a, well, personal nature – and now, when
you
give
me
the opportunity I’ve been looking for, I fumble and shilly-shally, like the dim-witted clodhopper I am, putting it all off again, and thinking that I’ll ask you another time. But I shan’t be a coward any longer.’
I give him another warm smile of encouragement, and tell him that I am glad to hear it.
‘And so,’ I proceed, heartened by his admission, ‘you had better ask me your question before you change your mind – and I change mine.’
‘Oh, I shan’t do that,’ replies he. ‘You can’t imagine how much I’ve longed to get everything off my chest and unburden myself to you – and to you alone, dear Esperanza, for there’s no one else here who would – well, never mind that. It’s been such a torment, keeping my secret closed up inside, unable to speak to anyone about it.’
‘Tell me now, then,’ I urge again, a little more emphatically, for though his words are warmly expressed, there is something in his look that I find worryingly difficult to interpret. Perhaps a little more encouragement is required; and so I reach out, take both his hands in mine, and begin to draw him towards me, careless of the impropriety I am committing.
Mr Randolph, however, seems strangely dismayed and embarrassed by my action. Quickly disengaging himself, he takes a step back.
‘No, no!’ he exclaims, colouring up. ‘You mustn’t, really you mustn’t.’
‘But what is the matter?’ I ask, searching his face for some clue to his unexpected reaction. I then attempt once more to give him the courage to open up his heart. I tell him that, if it will help him say what he wishes to say, I am ready to make a little confession, as he had done on our first walk together from Easton.
A puzzled frown is his response.
‘Confession?’
‘Yes. It’s this: I know – I’ve guessed – what you have wanted to ask me.’
A look of horror spreads over his face.
‘You know?’
‘Of course,’ I declare with a rather forced laugh.
‘But how—?’
‘How could I not know?’ I reply, attempting another reassuring laugh, but now feeling its hollow inappropriateness. ‘You made it perfectly clear, when we walked by the Lake.’
He runs his fingers through his hair, and begins pacing distractedly up and down, as if overcome by some sudden and inexplicable shock.
‘What do you think you know?’ The question is put almost angrily. ‘I cannot – will not – say more until you tell me.’
‘Since you make me,’ I reply, overcome now with confusion, ‘then I suppose I must. I believe you wished to put a certain proposal to me – a proposal, as you yourself described it, of a personal nature, and one which I would have accepted. I expected you to ask me a question, to put it as plainly as I can, that I would have answered with the single word, “Yes”. There. Are you satisfied?’
He regards me with a dumbfounded expression for several moments. Then the light of understanding breaks over him.
‘Do you mean a proposal of marriage?’
‘Of course,’ I reply, tiring of his obtuseness. ‘What else could I mean?’
‘But my dear Miss Gorst – Esperanza – you have mistaken me – badly mistaken me. I didn’t mean – I couldn’t have meant – that is—’
At that moment there is a noise in the adjoining dressing-room, and the sound of a door opening.
I turn my head to see Mrs Battersby step into the ante-room. Without a word, Mr Randolph immediately goes over to stand beside her.
‘Oh, Esperanza!’ he says, almost in a whisper, and in a way that makes me wince at the undisguised pity in his voice. ‘I cannot – could never – ask you to marry me; neither could I have suggested such a thing on that walk. I am already married, you see.’
He turns, and takes Mrs Battersby’s hand tenderly in his.
‘To my dearest Jane.’
It is beyond my power to describe what I feel on hearing these words. What am I to do? The Great Task lies in ruins, but that means nothing to me now. When I have lost everything that is most precious to me, what is there left to be gained? I have rejected the love of my dearest Perseus, the one-time heir, only to be cast off by his brother, who will soon take his place. Unless I can prove that I have inherited my father’s stolen birthright, Mr Randolph will succeed his mother, and Mrs Battersby – Mrs Battersby, of all people in the world! – will become the next Lady Tansor, a reversal of fortunes as astounding as it had been entirely unforeseen.
How had this come about? Here is what I now learned, concerning the younger Duport son and the housekeeper, on that terrible morning.

I BEGIN WITH ever-smiling Mrs Jane Battersby.
Like me, she was a fiction, an invention, being none other than the sister of Randolph’s friend and closest companion, Mr Rhys Paget. At the age of seventeen, Randolph had been sent to Dr Lancelot Savage’s academy in Suffolk, where it was intended that he should complete his education under that gentleman’s direction, the establishment being regarded by Lady Tansor as a kind of substitute for the University.
On his first day at Dr Savage’s he met Rhys Paget, the son of a widowed Welsh clergyman. Invited to spend part of the summer holiday at his new friend’s home near Llanberis, he there made the acquaintance of Miss Paget, his friend’s older half-sister – beautiful, accomplished, of a marked refinement of intellect and manners, and yet possessing, to an exceptional degree, those more practical acquirements that made her an able substitute for her departed stepmother in the running of household affairs.
Very soon, a strong bond of affection developed between the young man and the clergyman’s daughter. Despite the variance in their ages, and the disparity of their conditions, their mutual regard soon began to flower into genuine love.
After the death of Mr Herbert Paget, his children had inherited the house at Llanberis but little else, Mr Paget having lost most of a considerable legacy in the infamous failure of the Overend Gurney bank some years earlier.
*
As a consequence, his daughter had been obliged to seek employment in order to maintain the family home, to which she and her brother were both deeply attached.
Assuming her late mother’s maiden name of Battersby, she had first found a governess’s position near Shrewsbury, and then a situation as under-housekeeper in London. After gaining suitable experience, she had subsequently become housekeeper in a baronet’s establishment just a few miles from Bury St Edmunds, and not so very far from where Dr Savage’s school was situated.
When Dr Savage became aware, by means of an anonymous note, of his pupil’s liaison with a servant, although the latter was not named, he felt immediately obliged to inform Lady Tansor. As Mr Randolph, whilst also refusing to name the lady, did not seek to deny the truth of the assertion, his mother – unwaveringly determined, as always, to stamp out any possibility of scandal attaching itself to the illustrious Duport name – straight away requested her relative, Major Hunt-Graham, who lived in the vicinity of Dr Savage’s school, to fetch her errant son away from Suffolk, and bring him back to Evenwood, where he had to face her full wrath for his dangerous and irresponsible folly.
Thus Mr Randolph’s time at Dr Savage’s was abruptly terminated; but not his love for Miss Paget, which had grown even deeper with time, and which was returned to the full.
For a while, the lovers suffered the agonies of separation; but then fortune had smiled on them.
The position of housekeeper at Evenwood falling suddenly vacant after the death of the elderly lady who had held the situation for many years, Mr Randolph persuaded his mother to interview a certain Jane Battersby, whom, he claimed, had been highly recommended by a friend of Mr Rhys Paget’s. The other candidates for the position had luckily proved unsuitable in various ways; and so, as ‘Mrs Battersby’ had immediately impressed Lady Tansor by demonstrating a highly superior disposition and no common order of capability, and as she had brought with her several excellent references, she was quickly engaged, and ‘Mrs Battersby’ soon assumed a dominant place in the domestic hierarchy of Evenwood.
I then learn that it had been during the Christmas festivities just past that the two lovers had first begun to lay plans for their marriage. Becoming increasingly anxious that their secret might be discovered, they determined to take this final, irreversible step before Randolph attained his majority, rather than afterwards, which had been their original intention. The ceremony eventually took place in London, soon after Emily, Perseus, and I left for Italy. This of course accounted for the housekeeper’s absence from Evenwood, ostensibly to attend a sick relative, and for the changes I had observed in Mr Randolph’s behaviour.
All this enlightened many previously obscure and puzzling matters; but how had I so misread Mr Randolph’s intentions towards me?
It was simple enough. He had merely wished to recruit me as a sympathetic partaker in his own great secret, hoping thereby to use the intimacy that I had come to enjoy with his mother as a means of bringing her round to an acceptance of their union. The proposal he had wished to make had not been one of marriage, simply of confidential friendship. When I hear this, and recall his former words, I see, with painful clarity, how I had invested them with a meaning that he had never intended.
‘I wished so very much to have you as our friend,’ says Mr Randolph, ‘our true friend, in whom we could confide, and put our absolute trust. You can’t know how terrible it’s been, keeping our secret to ourselves – except of course for dear old Paget.’
‘If that’s the truth,’ I reply, with some asperity, ‘then why has Mrs – your wife, I should say – demonstrated such a dislike of me from the very first?’
‘Perhaps, my love,’ says Mr Randolph to her whom I shall continue, for the time being, to call Mrs Battersby, ‘you should leave us now.’
She has said nothing during the whole time that Randolph has taken to tell the story I have just related, but continues to stand quietly by his side, occasionally squeezing his hand encouragingly.
‘Very well,’ she agrees. Then, turning her irritating smile full on me: ‘This must be difficult for you, Miss Gorst. I feel for you, believe me. I hope, however, that Randolph and I can rely on your discretion? It would be best – for all of us – if this matter remained confidential, for the time being, and did not come to the knowledge of Lady Tansor. I’m sure you’ll agree that we should avoid any unnecessary unpleasantness?’
Oh, that two-edged smile! See how we trust you, it seems to say, to keep our secret safe; but if you do not, then there would be consequences for you, as well as for us. I see, and understand, the threat in that smile: that, if necessary, she will have no hesitation in falsely implicating me in their subterfuge.
Without waiting for a reply from me, the housekeeper, bestowing another condescending smile that makes my blood boil, quits the room.
‘I thought it best,’ says Mr Randolph, when she has gone, ‘to answer your question in my wife’s absence. The matter is a somewhat delicate one, you see.’
‘Delicate?’ say I, scornfully. ‘Why, then, choose your words carefully, sir. I would not care to be offended, you know.’
‘You are angry,’ he replies, ‘of course you are. It has been a shock, and I am heartily sorry that, in my stupidity, I made you think something you should never have thought. There, you see? I’m doing it again. You know I don’t have my dear brother’s powers of poetic expression – I wish to God I did, then all this might never have happened. But it has, and now I—’
‘Enough!’ I angrily interject. ‘I have had rather too many explanations for one day, with the exception of why your wife appeared to hate me when you say that you wished me to be a friend to you both and to share your secret. So tell me quickly.’
‘Ah,’ he says, ‘I fear it was all a matter of simple jealousy on her part.’
‘Jealousy?’
‘Yes. You see, she got it into her head, from the moment you came, that you cherished – well, designs on me. Don’t ask me how these things come about, but they do, and they did; and it was quickly made worse when we were seen walking back from Easton together. Then there was my birthday, and other times when she saw us together. She couldn’t rid herself of an unfounded suspicion that you – we – might be, well, you know what I’m trying to say. Of course I was able, as I truly believed, to assure Jane that our relationship was entirely innocent, and that you’d shown not the least sign of any improper attachment or intent, nothing more than might be expected to exist between us; but she wouldn’t have it, and went on believing that you had – excuse the phrase – set your cap at me.
‘But she was right, wasn’t she, dear Esperanza? I may continue to call you Esperanza, mayn’t I, for I wish so very much for us to remain friends, if you feel able? It seems that you
had
formed a regard for me that was – well, you know. If only I’d realized how you truly felt! But I’m a dolt in these matters, as in so much else. I said the wrong things to you, in the wrong way, and that’s the long and the short of it.’
I am about to disabuse him, and tell him that he had been right to think that I entertained no amorous sentiments towards him; but I draw back. I feel exhausted and despairing, and have no desire to explain the true state of things.
He stands regarding me with a plaintive look in his eyes, but I can find no more words to say to him – not a single one. So I wish him good-morning, adding that I am glad his headache is better. I then turn, and leave the room, to the sound of breeze-borne birdsong, sweet and clear, drifting in through the open casement window.