I assured her that I could think of no circumstance that would alter my very high opinion of her, for, indeed, I regarded her as a very sensible and dependable soul, in whom resided a great deal – a very great deal – of natural goodness and sympathy; I told her as much, and also that no one could have served her late mistress better, or more faithfully. That alone would always command my admiration, the prosecution of one’s duty to an employer or benefactor being, to my mind, a cardinal virtue.
‘Then I am content,’ she said, giving me a rather wan smile. ‘We are both loyal servants, are we not?’ And with that rather curious interrogative, she retired to ready herself for her journey. That was the last I saw of Miss Julia Eames.
The next morning, after waiting on my cousin as usual, I began searching through my Lady’s apartments for letters and other papers to remove to the Muniments Room, as I had been instructed. I collected a good many items from her green-lacquer desk that stood by the window in her sitting-room, and many more from various table-drawers and cabinets; but of the ebony writing-box that I had seen on several occasions, and which I particularly remembered from the time I had brought my Lady the copy of Felltham’s
It went against my nature simply to leave the papers in a disordered state; and so I thought that I would sort them roughly according to type, and then make a preliminary general inventory before storing them. This was quickly and easily done, and within an hour I had several separate bundles of receipts, bills, letters, sketch-books, notes and memoranda, correspondence, and drafts of letters from her Ladyship, and a number of miscellaneous items, principal amongst which were an autograph album, a commonplace-book with red silk wrappers inserted in a gilt steel cover, a note-book containing what appeared to be original poems and prose fragments, and an address book enclosed within an embossed calf wallet. I could not resist – who could? – looking over a number of the items as I placed them in their allotted pile, though I acknowledge that I did so a little guiltily, having received a specific instruction from my employer to leave the papers in an unclassified state.
The autograph album afforded an interesting record of friends and distinguished visitors, both to Evenwood and to his Lordship’s townhouse in Park-lane; and then I lingered for longer than I should have done over a book of delightful pen-and-ink drawings and pencil sketches made by my Lady over several years. A series of French scenes – a record, no doubt, of her Continental escapade – was particularly well done, for my Lady had been a skilled draughtswoman, with a keen eye for composition. Most were signed and dated ‘LRD, 1819’, and one or two carried descriptions. I particularly recall a most striking and romantic sketch, bearing the legend ‘Rue du Chapitre, Rennes, evening’, of an ancient and imposing half-timbered mansion with elaborately carved beams, and a canopied entrance half disclosing an interior courtyard. There were also a number of more finished views of the same location, all of them executed with remarkable feeling and care.
The striking of twelve noon from the Chapel clock roused me from my reveries, and I set about placing the separate bundles, which I had loosely tied together with string, in a small iron-bound chest that lay to hand, to which I affixed an identifying label. I was on the point of descending to my work-room when, on putting away my portmanteau, I noticed a single piece of paper that I had omitted to retrieve.
On examination, it appeared to be of little importance, simply a receipt, dated the 15th of September 1823, for the construction of a rosewood box by Mr James Beach, carpenter, Church-hill, Easton. I do not well know why I make mention of it here, other than from an earnest desire to present as full and as accurate a statement of events as I can, and because it seemed odd to me that her Ladyship should have commissioned such an apparently valueless object on her own account from a man in the town, when Lord Tansor employed an excellent estate carpenter who could have made it for her in a moment. But there it was; I had no justification for spending any more of his Lordship’s time on idle speculation, and had already dallied far too long on the task he had set me. And so I assigned the receipt to the proper bundle in the chest, shut the lid, and proceeded back down to my work- room.
I had no immediate reason of my own to consult Lady Tansor’s private papers further, and received no request from my employer to do so. All financial and legal documents of importance, of course, had already passed under his Lordship’s eye and hand during the course of his marriage, and were now in my custodial possession; consequently, over the course of the next few weeks, the contents of the little iron-bound chest began gradually to recede from my present view until, in time, they disappeared entirely.
I did not have cause to remember the existence of my Lady’s private papers for many years. During the intervening period, life, as it always does, brought us our share of fair weather and foul. Lord Tansor’s step-mother, Anne Duport, with whom we shared the Dower House, departed this life in 1826. The following spring, my cousin had married the Honourable Hester Trevalyn, and it was expected – his Lordship being then only thirty-six years of age, and his new wife ten years his junior – that, in time, their union would be blessed with offspring that would secure the succession to the next generation.
After his first wife’s death, his Lordship had given himself completely to the care and instruction of his son. I have no doubt that he mourned his first wife; but he did so, if I may so put it, in his own way. People called him unfeeling, particularly when, within a year or so of Lady Tansor’s death, he began to set his sights on Miss Trevalyn; but that verdict, I think, arose from the habit of impermeable reticence that characterized his whole demeanour, and from a failure on the part of those who criticized him to comprehend the responsibilities of his position.
Towards his son, he displayed a fine and natural capacity for spontaneous affection. He adored the child. There is no other word for it. The boy bore a striking resemblance to his mother, with his large dark eyes and flowing black hair, and, as he grew up, he began to reveal also something of her Ladyship’s character. He was heedless, argumentative, forever pulling at his father’s sleeve and asking to be allowed to do this or that, and then running off in a howling rage when he was denied; and yet I never saw his father angered by these tantrums, for within a moment the boy would be back, afire with some other scheme that
And more than all these natural amiabilities, he was his father’s heir. It is impossible to overstate the importance, in the eyes of my cousin, of the boy’s status in this regard. No father wished more for his son; no father did more for his son. Imagine, then, the effect on my cousin when, one black day, Death came softly knocking and took away, not only his child, but also his sole heir.
It was a catastrophe of the greatest possible magnitude, a gargantuan affront, an indignity that my cousin could neither withstand nor comprehend; it was all these things, and more. He was a father, and felt like a father; but he was also Baron Tansor, the 25th of that name. Who now would be the 26th? It prostrated him utterly. He was lost to all comfort, all consolation; and for some weeks we feared – seriously feared – for his sanity.
It is hard for me to write of these things, for as Lord Tansor’s cousin I had, and have, a place in the collateral succession to the Barony. I state here, most solemnly, that this potentiality never overruled the duty I felt I owed to my cousin; his interest was always my first care. What also makes it difficult for me is that the loss of Henry Hereward came upon my cousin just fifteen months after our own dear girl, Jane, had been so cruelly taken from us.
