The Meaning of Night

watched these developments with a warm glow of satisfaction; it was most pleasant to observe that her plans for ingratiating her step-son with Lord Tansor were succeeding so well. Her husband, with more discernment, felt a good deal of disquiet at the palpably hollow lionization of his son, when the boy had done nothing, in his view, to deserve the plaudits that he was receiving, other than to have fallen under the capacious wing of his Lordship’s patronage. With the end in sight of his labours on his catalogue, the Rector now felt able to turn his full gaze on the character and future prospects of his son. But his position was weak in respect of Lord Tansor’s growing dominion over his only child. What could be done? Give up his comfortable living in this place of beauty and contentment and risk removal to another Millhead? That was out of the question.

And yet he felt impelled to do his utmost to retrieve his son, and put him back on a path more consonant with his upbringing and antecedents. It might not be possible to bring him to ordination – the Rector’s dearest hope – but it might be possible to dilute the effects of Lord Tansor’s increasingly prodigal attentions.

The Rector thought that he might have a solution to the problem. Removing his son from Evenwood and the influence of Lord Tansor for an extended period might have the effect of somewhat loosening his patron’s grip on his son. He had therefore quietly arranged through a cousin, Archdeacon Septimius Daunt of Dublin, for the boy to spend a further year of study at Trinity College. It now only remained for him to acquaint his son, and Lord Tansor, of his decision.

^*[‘Everything changes’. Ed.]

^†[Proverbs 24: 5. Ed.]

^*[Dr Richard Okes (1797–1888), Provost of King’s. Ed.]

^*[Robert Southey was Poet Laureate from 1813 until his death in 1843. Ed.]

^†[The poets Richard Hengist Horne (1803–84), Robert Montgomery (1807–55), Aubrey Thomas de Vere (1814–1902), John Abraham Heraud (1799–1887). Ed.]

^*[Henry Samborne Drago (1810–72), poet and critic. Ed.]

^†[The publisher Edward Moxon (1801–58), whose authors at this time included Elizabeth Barrett Barrett, her future husband Robert Browning, and Tennyson. Ed.]

14

Post nubila, Phoebus^*

A week after attaining his majority, P. Rainsford Daunt, plainly agitated and with a rather high colour, could have been seen leaving the Rectory at Evenwood, mounting his father’s borrowed grey cob, and making his way up towards the great house, where he was received as a matter of urgency by a concerned Lord Tansor.

The Rector had summoned his son early in order to present him with his decision that he should further his studies in Dublin, after taking his degree. Words were spoken – I do not have an exact transcript – and things were said, perhaps on both sides, which made compromise on the matter impossible. The Rector certainly told the boy, coolly and frankly, that if he did not fall in with the arrangement, he would himself go to Lord Tansor to request that he intervene on his behalf.

Poor man. He had no conception that it was already too late; that he had lost every chance of influence over his son’s future; and that Lord Tansor would do nothing to support his wishes in the case.

‘I do not, of course, say that it is a bad plan,’ Lord Tansor opined when, that afternoon, the Rector stood before him, ‘for the young man to go to Ireland – that, of course, must be a matter for you to settle with him yourself. I only say that travel in general is overrated, and that people – especially young people – would be better advised to stay at home and look to their prospects there. As for Ireland, there can, I think, be few places on earth in which an English gentleman could feel less at home, or where the natural comforts and amenities of a gentleman’s condition are less susceptible of being supplied.’

After more barking pronouncements of this sort, delivered in Lord Tansor’s best baritone manner, Dr Daunt saw how things lay, and was dismayed. His son did not go to Dublin.

Phoebus Daunt took his degree that summer, and so returned again to Evenwood, on a fine warm day, to ponder his future.

A fictional fragment, part of an uncompleted prose romance entitled Marchmont; or, The Last of the FitzArthurs,^* undoubtedly describes that return, though transposed from summer to autumn for dramatic effect. I append part of it here:Fragment from ‘Marchmont’

by

P. RAINSFORD DAUNTBeyond the town the road dips steeply away from the eminence on which the little town of E—is situated, to wind its tree-lined way down towards the river. Gregorius always delighted in this road; but today the sensation of a progressive descent beneath a vault of bare branches, through which sunlight was now slanting, was especially delicious to him after the tedium and discomfort of the journey from Paulborough, sitting with his trunks on the back of the carrier’s cart.At the bottom of the hill, the road divided. Instead of crossing the river at the bridge by the mill, he turned north to take the longer route, along a road that ran through thick woodland, with the aim of entering the Park through its Western Gates. He had in mind to sit a while in the Grecian Temple, which stood on a terraced mound just inside the gates, from where he would be able to see his favourite prospect of the great house across the intervening space of rolling parkland.The woods were chill and damp in this dying part of the year, and he was glad to gain the wicket-gate in the wall that gave onto the Park and pass out into weak sunlight once more. A few yards took him onto a stony path that ran off from the carriage-drive up towards the Temple, built on a steep rise, and surrounded on three sides by a Plantation of good-sized trees. He walked with his eyes deliberately fixed on the gravel path, wishing to give himself the sudden rush of pleasure that he knew he would feel on seeing the house from his intended vantage point.But before he was halfway along the path, he was aware of the sound of a vehicle entering the Park behind him from the western entrance. He was but a little way off the road, and so turned to see who was approaching. A carriage and pair were rattling up the little incline from the gates. Within a moment or two the carriage had drawn level with the spur of the path on which he was standing. As it passed, a face looked out at him. The glimpse had been fleeting, but the image held steady in his mind as he watched the carriage crest the incline and descend towards the house.He remained staring intently after the carriage for several moments after it had disappeared from view, puzzled, in a peculiarly keen way, that he had not immediately resumed his way towards the Temple. That pale and lovely face still hung before his mind’s eye, like a star in a cold dark sky.

Despite the crude attempt to disguise the location (‘Paulborough’ for ‘Peterborough’), and himself (as ‘Gregorius’), wrapped up and prettified though it all is, the place and source of the author’s lyrical remembrance are easily explicated and dated. On the 6th of June 1841, the day Phoebus Daunt came down from Cambridge for the last time, at approximately three o’clock in the afternoon, Miss Emily Carteret, the daughter of Lord Tansor’s secretary, returned to Evenwood after spending two years abroad.

Miss Carteret was at that sweetest of ages – just turned seventeen. She had been residing with her late mother’s younger sister in Paris, and had now come back to Evenwood to settle permanently with her father at the Dower House. Their nearest neighbours were the Daunts, just on the other side of the Park wall, and she and the