Lord Tansor turned and, followed by his dog, walked towards a pair of imposing French-windows, leaving Dr Daunt to make the assumption that he intended him to follow.
On the other side of the windows lay the Library, a magnificent apartment of noble proportions, decorated in white and gold, with a sumptuous painted ceiling by Verrio.* Lord Tansor’s grandfather, the 23rd Baron, had been a gentleman of various, though somewhat contradictory, talents. Like his father and grandfather before him, this gentleman had possessed a cool head for business and had shrewdly extended the family’s interests, before retiring at an early age to Evenwood. There he sat to Gainsborough with his plump wife and two rosy-cheeked boys, planted a great number of trees, bred pigs, and – to the complete indifference of his wife – entertained numerous lady admirers (his Lordship being both handsome and famously virile) in a secluded tower situated in the far reaches of the Park.
From these activities he would turn, in a moment, to his other great passion: his books. His Lordship was one of the great collectors of his day, paying frequent trips each year to Paris, Cologne, Utrecht, and other Continental cities, where he purchased liberally, and with discernment, amongst the booksellers and collectors of those places. The consequence, at his death, was a collection of over forty thousand books and manuscripts, for the housing of which he had caused the former ballroom on the West Front of Evenwood to be transformed into the Library in which his grandson and Dr Daunt now stood.
The present Lord Tansor had not, in the slightest degree, inherited his grandsire’s bibliographical enthusiasms. His reading matter was confined, on the whole, to the
As they entered the Library, a man, small of stature and wearing a pair of round spectacles, looked up from an escritoire at the far end of the room, where he had been busily engaged with a pile of documents.
‘Do not mind us, Mr Carteret,’ said Lord Tansor to his secretary. The man returned quietly to his work, though Dr Daunt noticed that he would now and again look surreptitiously across to where they stood, returning to the perusal of the documents that lay upon the desk with an exaggerated expression of concentration.
‘It would be a service to me to know what I have here,’ continued Lord Tansor to Dr Daunt, looking about him coldly at the ranks of volumes packed tightly behind their gilded metal grilles.
‘A service also to learning,’ said the Rector, lost for a moment in delighted consideration of the task that had been laid before him.
‘Quite so.’
Here was an undertaking of great usefulness and, for Dr Daunt, of surpassing interest. He could not imagine a more congenial assignment, or one more suited to his talents and inclinations. The scale of the project did not dismay him in the least; indeed he welcomed it as making its accomplishment all the more worthy of applause. He also saw how he might revive his lapsed reputation as a scholar, for in preparing a catalogue of the collection, he had already determined to produce extensive commentaries and annotations to the most important volumes, which in themselves would be of lasting value to generations of scholars and collectors to come. It is unlikely that Lord Tansor guessed the Rector’s unspoken aims. His own design, as a man of business, was simply to have an accurate inventory of his stock, and this Dr Daunt appeared to be both willing and capable of supplying.
It was speedily agreed that the preliminary work would start the very next day. Dr Daunt would come up to the house every morning, excepting of course Sundays, to work in the Library. Everything needful would be placed at his disposal – Carteret would see to it all; and, said Lord Tansor magnanimously, Dr Daunt might have the temporary use of one of his own grey cobs for the daily journey across the Park.
They retraced their steps to the terrace. There was a slight sunset wind moving through the avenue of limes that led away from the formal gardens to the lake. The rustle of its passing only served to deepen the sense of descending silence. Lord Tansor and Dr Daunt stood for a moment looking out across the flower-beds and the crisscross of clipped grass paths.
‘There is another matter I wished to put before you, Dr Daunt,’ said Lord Tansor. ‘It would please me to see your boy do well in life. I have often had occasion to observe him of late, and I discern in him qualities that a father could be proud of. Do you intend that he should take Orders?’
Dr Daunt hesitated slightly. ‘That has always been … understood.’ He did not say that he had already sensed a distinct animosity in his only son towards the prospect of ordination.
‘It is gratifying, of course,’ continued Lord Tansor, ‘that the young man’s inclinations concur with your own wishes. Perhaps you may live to see him made a Bishop.’
To his surprise, Dr Daunt saw that Lord Tansor’s expression had formed into something approaching a stiff smile.
‘As you know,’ he resumed, ‘your wife has been kind enough to bring your son to visit us here often, and I have become fond of the boy.’ Gravity had resettled his Lordship’s features. ‘I think I may even say that I envy you. Our children are a sort of immortality, are they not?’
The Rector had never before heard his patron speak with such frankness, and did not well know what to say in reply. He was aware, naturally, that Lord Tansor’s son, Henry Hereward Duport, had died only a few months before he and his family had been led out of Millhead through the exertions of his second wife. On first coming into the great vestibule, the visitor to Evenwood was confronted with a large family group by Sir Thomas Lawrence – his Lordship and his first wife, holding their baby son in her arms – illuminated in daylight-hours by a glazed Gothic lantern high above, and at night by six large candles set in a semi-circle of ornate sconces.
The premature death of his son, at the age of seven years, had left Lord Tansor cruelly exposed to the thing that he dreaded most. Though he was generally accounted to be a proud man, his pride was of a peculiar character. Having inherited enough – and more than enough – to satisfy the most acquisitive and prodigal nature, he nevertheless continued to accumulate wealth and influence, not simply for his own aggrandizement, but in order to bequeath an augmented, inviolable inheritance to his children, as his immediate forebears had done. But when his longed-for son had been taken from him, compounding the loss of his first wife, he had been confronted by the terrible prospect of having to forfeit all that he held most dear; for, without a direct heir, there was every likelihood that the title, along with Evenwood and the other entailed property, would fall into the hands of his collateral relatives – to which Lord Tansor was violently, though perhaps irrationally, opposed.
‘Returning to the matter of your boy,’ he said after a moment or two. ‘Is it still the case that you intend to prepare him for the University yourself?’
