The Meaning of Night (31 page)

were spurred on by the recent sight of him at Evenwood. Years had passed sinced my

enforced departure from Eton, but my anger at his perfidy was undiminished. He had

prospered; he had made his mark on the world, as I had once hoped to do; but my

prospects had been blighted because of him. Perhaps I might have been a great figure at

the University by now, with even greater distinctions in view. But all that had gone,

stolen from me by his treachery.

Since making the acquaintance of Dr T—, during my visit to Millhead, I had been

regularly regaled with lengthy epistles from that brazenly indiscreet gentleman on the

history of Dr Daunt and his family during their time in Lancashire. The information thus

obtained was of only slight significance, though it served to show me how much

influence the second Mrs Daunt had wielded, and perhaps wielded still, over her step-son.

Then, one day in Piccadilly, I happened to encounter an old school fellow, who, over an

expensive dinner at Grillon’s,? which I could ill afford, was happy to supply me with

some tittle-tattle concerning our mutual acquaintance. According to my informant, Daunt

had enjoyed a little dalliance with a French ballet-dancer, and was rumoured to have

proposed to Miss Eloise Dinever, the banking heiress, but had supposedly been refused.

He dined at his club (the Athenaeum) of an evening when in London, kept a box at Her

Majesty’s,? and could be seen riding out in Rotten Row? on most Saturdays, between five

and seven, during the Season. He had a good house, in Mecklenburgh-square, and was

generally a figure in fashionable, as well as literary, society.

‘But where does he get his money from?’ I asked in surprise, knowing well the

cost of maintaining such a life in London, and strongly suspecting that the writing of

poetic epics would hardly keep him in dinners, let alone a box at the Opera.

‘Bit of a mystery,’ said my informant, lowering his voice. ‘But there’s plenty of

it.’

Now, a mystery was exactly what I was looking for: it spoke to me of something

concealed from public gaze that Daunt might not wish to be known – a secret which,

once unlocked, could perhaps be used against him. It might prove to be nothing at all;

but, where money is in the case, my experience always inclines me to adopt a sceptical

view of things. Yet even with all the means at my disposal, having by now begun to

accumulate quite a little army of agents and scouts about the capital, I failed to locate the

source of Daunt’s evident wealth

Time went on, but no new information on Daunt came to light, and I had made no

further progress in my search for the evidence that would prove my true identity. Weeks

came and went; months passed, and slowly I began to sink into an enfeebling gloom that

I could not shake off. This was a black time indeed. I was perpetually on edge, eaten up

by frustrated rage. To ease my spirits, I passed long oblivious hours in Bluegate-fields,

under the deft ministrations of Chi Ki, my customary opium-master. And then, night after

night, I would wander the streets, taking my accustomed way from the West-end via

London-bridge, along Thames-street, past the Tower, and so on to St Katherine’s-dock

and the fearful lanes and courts around and about the Ratcliffe-highway, in order to

observe the underside of London in all its horror. It was on such excursions, pushing my

way through dirty crowds of Lascars and Jews, Malays and Swedes, and every form of

our British human scum, that I became truly acquainted with the character of our great

metropolis, and learned to trust my ability to frequent its most deadly quarters with

impunity.

Whilst I languished thus in my dull sublunary life, pulled hither and thither by my

demons, the rise of Daunt’s literary star had been ceaseless. The world, I concluded, had

gone quite mad. I could not open a newspaper or a magazine without coming across some

piece of eulogistic clap-trap extolling the genius of P. Rainsford Daunt. The volumes had

flowed thick and fast from his pen, an unstoppable torrent of drivel in rhyming couplets

and blank verse. In 1846 had come that ever-memorable monstrosity, The Cave of

Merlin, in which the poet out-Southeyed Southey at his most execrable, but which the

British Critic unaccountably considered to be ‘sublime in conception’, averring that ‘Mr

Phoebus Daunt is without equal, a master of the poetic epic, the Virgil of the nineteenth

century’. This production was followed, in tedious succession, by The Pharaoh’s Child,

Montezuma, and, in 1850, The Conquest of Peru. With every publication, more inflated

estimates of the poet’s oeuvre would greet me as I idly perused Blackwood’s or Fraser’s,

whilst paragraphs would rise up before my affronted eyes in The Times informing his

eager and adoring public that Mr Phoebus Daunt, ‘the celebrated poet’, was presently in

town, and then proceeding to enumerate his doings in tedious detail. In this way, I learned

that he had been to Gore House to sit to the pencil of the Count d’Orsay,? who also later

modelled a fetching bust of the young genius in plaster. Naturally, his inclusion with

other notables at the ceremonial opening of the Great Exhibition? excited no little interest

amongst a certain impressionable section of society. I recall opening the Illustrated

London News over breakfast that spring and being greeted by a preposterous engraving

of the poet – dressed in dark paletôt, light trousers strapped under the instep, embroidered

waistcoat, and stove-pipe hat – together with his noble patron, Lord Tansor, standing

proudly with the Queen and the Prince Consort beside the gilded cage containing the

Koh-i-Noor diamond.?

With the rest of the world, I had also attended the Exhibition, drawn there by a

desire to view the latest photographic advances. Accompanying me had been Rebecca

Harrigan, Mr Tredgold’s housekeeper, with whom I had struck up a kind of friendship.

On more than one occasion, I had caught her looking at me in an interested way. She had

a fine little figure, and was pretty enough; but, as I quickly discovered, after engaging her

in a little conversation, she also possessed a sharp mind, and a pleasingly audacious

spirit. I soon began to take quite a fancy to her.

One evening, in St Paul’s Church-yard, I encountered her sheltering under the

portico of the Cathedral from a shower of rain. We chatted inconsequentially until the

rain began to ease, and then I asked her if she might care to take some dinner with me. ‘If

your husband wouldn’t mind,’ I added.

‘Oh, ’e ain’t my ’usband,’ she said, looking at me as cool as you like.

‘Not your husband?’

‘Not ’im.’

‘Then . . .’

‘I’ll tell you what Mr Glapthorn,’ she butted in, giving me a quite delightfully sly

little smile, ‘you take me to dinner, and I’ll come clean.’

She was respectably and soberly dressed in blue taffeta, with a matching stole and

bonnet, an ensemble which, with her delicate little reticule, made her look like a vicar’s

daughter. So, after walking a little way, I hailed a hansom in Fleet-street and took her off

to Limmer’s,? where I asked the waiter to find a table for myself and my sister.

Over the course of the evening, Rebecca recounted something of her history. Her

real name was Dickson. Orphaned at the age of nine, she had been obliged to fend for

herself on the unforgiving streets of Bermondsey. But – like me – she was resourceful

and had quickly found a protector, a noted cracksman, for whom, as she said, she

‘thieved like a good ’un’ in return for food and a roof over her head. In due course, she

graduated to whoring; but then, through the good offices of one of her pick-ups, she

succeeded in gaining a place in service, as a maid in the house of a Director of the East

India Company. It was there she’d met Albert Harrigan, a servant in the same

establishment. She and this Harrigan soon formed an attachment to each, even though her

paramour (whose real name was Albert Parker) had an abandoned wife and child

somewhere in Yorkshire. All went along nicely until their employer lost all his money in

a failed railway speculation and committed suicide. His legal adviser had been none other

than Mr Christopher Tredgold, who happened just then to be in need of a manservant for

his private residence. Harrigan was duly taken on, to be joined after a few weeks by his

supposed wife. But their relationship had quickly soured, and now only convenience kept

them together.

She told me all this – peppering her account with several anecdotes of

questionable propriety – with all the gusto of a tavern raconteur; but as soon as the waiter

arrived with each course, the wily little slut instantly assumed an expression of the most

perfect demureness, smiling sweetly and turning the conversation, without once dropping

her aitches, to some topic of unimpeachable dullness.

In the weeks following, Rebecca and I found occasion to promote our friendship,

in ways which I’m sure I do not need to describe. If Harrigan guessed how things lay

between us, then it did not appear to trouble him. As for Rebecca, her good humour and

healthy natural appetites, together with that optimistic artfulness that comes from having

successfully made the most of a very bad lot, soon began to have a beneficial effect on

me; and, as she had no wish to put a rope round my neck and lead me to the altar, we got

on very well, meeting when the inclination took us, and pursuing our own interests

whenever we wished.

This, then, was my life, from 1850 to 1853. And so things would perhaps have

continued, but for two events.

The first occurred in March, 1853. I found myself in St John’s Wood, on Mr

Tredgold’s business, and had just turned into a pleasant tree-lined street when the name

on the gate-piers of a large white-painted villa, half-hidden behind a screen of shrubs,

brought me up short. Blithe Lodge – where the beauteous Isabella Gallini had lived for

the past three years – stood before me. I have already written of how I renewed my

acquaintance with Bella and how, under the auspices of Mrs Kitty Daley, she became my

mistress. To my surprise, I discovered I was able to remain faithful to her, except for

occasional minor indisretions, which I’m sure she would have forgiven me, had I

confessed them. Rebecca, however, I did give up, for Bella’s sake. She received the news

with little emotion.

‘Well,’ she said, ‘that don’t matter. I’ve still got Albert, such as ’e is. An’ I reckon

we’ll stay friends, you an’ me. You’re a chancer, Mr Edward Glapthorn, for all you’re a

gennlemun, and so am I. An’ that makes us equals in a way, don’t it? Friends an’ equals.

So, gimme a kiss, dearie, and let’s ’ear no more about it.’

The second event was of a very different character, and of far more moment.

It was the morning of the 19th of October, 1853 – a date indelibly impressed on

my memory. I was just leaving my room at Tredgolds, and was on the point of

descending the stairs, when I saw Jukes leap up from his desk at the sound of the front

bell. I could not see who the visitor was, but in a moment Jukes was hurrying up the stairs

towards me.

‘Lord Tansor himself,’ he whispered excitedly as he passed.

I leant back against the wall and gazed down.

He was sitting bolt upright, both hands clasping his cane before him. The office,

before his arrival, had been quietly going about its business, with just the usual rustle of

papers and scraping of pens, and the occasional sound of subdued conversation between

the clerks breaking the silence. But in his presence, the atmosphere seemed suddenly

charged, somehow put on alert, and a blanket of strained silence instantly descended. All

conversation ceased; the clerks moved about the room with concentrated deliberation,

opening their drawers with the utmost care, or silently closing doors behind them. I

watched this phenomenon closely, and observed that several of the clerks would look up

from their work from time to time and direct apprehensive glances over towards the

seated figure, as if, sitting there tapping his foot impatiently as he waited for Jukes to

return, he was about to weigh the feather of truth in the scales of justice against their

sinful hearts.

In a few moments, Jukes hurried past me again, heading back down the stairs to

where the visitor sat. I stepped back into my room as his Lordship followed the clerk to

the door of Mr Tredgold’s private office. As Lord Tansor entered, I heard the Senior

Partner’s effusive welcome.

Jukes closed the office door and began to make his way back to his position.

‘Lord Tansor,’ he said again, seeing me as he came past my door. He stopped, and

leaned his head towards me in a confidential manner.

‘There are firms’, he said, ‘who would give a great deal – a very great deal – to

have such a client. But the SP keeps him tight with us. Oh yes, he’s Tredgolds’ as long as

the SP is with us. A great man. One of the first men in the kingdom, you know, though

who has heard of him? And he’s ours.’

He delivered this little speech in a rapid whisper, looking backwards and forwards

to the door of Mr Tredgold’s office as he did so. Then he nodded quickly and scampered

back down the stairs, scratching his head with one hand, and clicking his fingers with the