The Meaning of Night

you are determined to proceed. I have heard separately from Miss E, who says that you will not be persuaded, and therefore must be helped – to ensure that what is done is done well, and as privily as we may. For we cannot let you do this alone.[Saturday, 17th July 1819, Sandchurch] In haste. I have made my arrangements. Miss E will have told you the name of the hotel – and I have the address of yr man in London. It will be some comfort to me – though a selfish one – to have this safeguard, if such it be, for the future. God forgive us for what we are about to do – but never believe, my dearest L, that I shall fail you. That I shall never do – though I may be called to account – in this world or the next. Sister I have called you, & sister you are, & will always be. There is no one more precious to me. I am with you now unto the last.[Friday, 30th July 1819, Red Lion, Fareham]I arrived here safely this afternoon and send this on ahead to assure you that all is well. The Captain raised no objections to my leaving – he neither knows nor cares what I do, as long as I put nothing in the way of his pleasures. Indeed, he was charming enough to tell me I may go to the Devil as long as I leave him in peace. He was glad to hear that my accompanying you would not prove a drain on his purse! That was his main concern. I am to visit my aunt in Portsmouth tomorrow, as you know. She strongly suspects that the reason for my ‘condition’ may not be whispered, which of course is not quite what I intended, but I shall not disabuse her – in order that the waters shall remain conveniently muddied. As she cannot abide the Captain, she will say nothing to him, and does not condemn me in the least – in fact applauds what, if it were true, would have been an act of the most unmitigated scandal. And so I go there as a kind of heroine – my aunt being a great admirer of Miss Wollstonecraft’s disregard of social propriety and seeing me as in some sort – like Miss W – striking a blow for the rights of our sex through my transgression.^* What the Captain will say when I come back with a baby in my arms, I do not know. But the calendar will now be a witness-I made sure of that (though he may not remember).^† I shall be with you as planned on Tues. morning. And so the die is cast, and two husbands will go to bed tonight wifeless. I wish there was some other way – but the time for all that is past. No more words. Please to destroy this on receipt, as you have done, I hope, with the others – I have been as careful as I can &have left nothing behind.

From a receipt dated the 3rd of August 1819, I surmise that the two friends, perhaps with Miss Eames in attendance, met together in Folkestone. They then departed for Boulogne, on or about the 5th of that month. A letter received by her Ladyship some weeks later, from an address in Torquay, confirms (what I did not know for certain before) that Miss Eames did not accompany them to the Continent. After the letter quoted above, parts of which I did not fully understand at first, there seem to have been no further communications from Mrs Glyver to her Ladyship until the 16th of June 1820, which, to my mind, strongly suggested that they remained together in France – as, indeed, proved to be the case. However, there are letters to her Ladyship from a Mr James Martin, an aide to Sir Charles Stuart, the Ambassador in Paris,^* written in February and March of the following year – on seeing them in the writing-box, I remembered that this gentleman had been a guest at Evenwood on more than one occasion. The purpose of the exchange was to secure accommodation for her Ladyship in the French capital over the summer. I could not help but smile, despite the growing fear I felt within me, when I saw to where Mr Martin’s replies had been directed: Hotel de Quebriac, Rue du Chapitre, Rennes.

The letter from Mrs Glyver of the 16th of June 1820, alluded to above, was written from Dinan to her friend in Paris, to a house in the Rue du Faubourg St Honore.^† The friends seem to have left Rennes together around the second week of June, taking lodgings in Dinan before her Ladyship departed alone for Paris. In her letter, Mrs Glyver begins by speaking of her imminent return to England. And then comes this extraordinary passage:I took the little one to see the tombs in the Salle des Gisants^‡ yesterday – he seemed much entertained by them, though the chamber was cold & damp & we did not stay long. But as we were leaving he put his little hand out – so sweetly and gently – to touch the face of one of the figures, a thin old lady. Of course, it was just an accident, not deliberate at all, but yet it seemed like a conscious act & I whispered to him that these were once all fine lords and ladies – like his mamma and papa. And he gave me such a look as if he understood every word. We encountered Madame Bertrand at the Porte du Guichet & she walked with us for a time along the Promenade. It was such a beautiful day – cloudless, a delicious soft breeze, with the river sparkling below us, & I so longed for you to be with us once more. Madame B said again how like you he is, & indeed it is so, tho’ he is still a mite. At least when I look into his dear face, with those great eyes gazing back, I feel you are close. I hate to think of you alone when we are here, longing for you to be with us, & I cried for us both last night. You were so brave when you left us. I could hardly bear it, for I knew how you suffered & how you wd suffer more when we were out of sight. Even now I wd bring him to you, if your resolve should falter. But I do not think it will – and I weep for you, dearest sister. I kiss yr beautiful son every night & assure him that his mamma will love him for ever. And I shall love him too. Write soon.

Further letters from Mrs Glyver made the matter clear beyond per-adventure: my Lady had given birth to a son in the city of Rennes. He had been born in the Hotel de Quebriac, Rue du Chapitre, in the month of March of the year 1820.

But there was a deeper matter even than this, of such consequence that I could scarce believe it; and yet the evidence was here in my hands, in these letters written to her Ladyship by her friend, Simona Glyver, and also in others she received in Paris from Miss Eames. Lady Tansor returned to England on the 25th of September 1820 – alone. Where, then, was the child? The thought occurred to me that he might have died; but letters from Mrs Glyver received by her Ladyship after arriving back at Evenwood contained regular reports of the child’s progress – the habits he was developing, the darkening of his hair, the little sounds he made and how they were interpreted, how he loved to be taken down to the shore to watch the waves crashing in, and the gulls soaring above them. It also appears – astonishing as it is to think of – that the child was brought surreptitiously to Evenwood, in the summer before Lady Tansor died, when her husband had been called away on political business, and much discussion ensued concerning the little boy’s fascination with the white doves that fluttered around the spires and towers of the great house, and with the goldfish – many of great size and age – that glided silently through the dark waters of the fish-pond.

I read several of the letters over again, and then a third time, to make sure that I had not deceived myself. But there was no other possible interpretation of the evidence before me. Lady Tansor had brought her husband’s rightful heir secretly into the world, only to give him away to another.

So I come at last to my beginning. This was the crime to which I bear witness: the denial – by a premeditated act of determined duplicity and cruelty (I shall not go so far as to call it malice, though some might) – of paternity to my cousin, who lives only that he might pass on what he has inherited from his forefathers to his lawfully begotten son. This was badly done by my Lady, and I say so as one who loved her dearly. I aver that it was cruel beyond words to so deny my cousin that which would have completed his life; that it was an act of terrible vindictiveness, no one can deny; and to my mind, insofar as it took from Lord Tansor what was rightfully his, though he remained ignorant of his loss, this act of denial was, in its effects, criminal.

And yet, having arraigned her, having presented the evidence against her, can I now condemn her? She paid a terrible price for what she did; she did not act alone – others, one in particular, were guilty by association, though they aided her out of love and loyalty; she – and they – are now for ever beyond the reach of earthly justice, and have been judged by Him who judges all. For, as Miss Eames observed, who of us are without sin? No life is without secrets; and it may often be that the lesser evil is to keep such secrets hidden. Let me, as the accuser of Laura, Lady Tansor, therefore plead for clemency. Let her rest.

But the consequences of the crime remain, and they are not so easily remitted. For what accounts are still to be presented for settlement? Does the boy live? Does he know who he is? How can this be made right?

Since making my discovery, I have wrestled day and night with my conscience: to keep my Lady’s secret, or