The Meaning of Night

‘Edward, there you are. I trust you have had a productive afternoon? Very good. My business with his Lordship is concluded, but there is one more thing you might do before we leave.’

‘Certainly. What is it?’

He gave a little cough.

‘I have persuaded his Lordship that it would be a great thing, for his posterity, to have a photographic likeness of himself made. I urged him to consider what it would mean for his descendants to have an unmediated image of him as he really is, at this very time. I said it would be as if he lived again in their eyes. I hope it will not be too much trouble for you? His Lordship is waiting for us on the Library Terrace.’

The Library Terrace was on the west side of the house; Daunt and his friends were taking tea on the south. I quickly weighed up the risks of our meeting each other, and decided that they were small. Besides, the opportunity to study the man whom I believed to be my father was irresistible; and if Daunt did appear, I was confident that my recently acquired moustachios would prevent discovery.

‘Not in the least,’ I replied, as calmly as I could. ‘I have two negatives left, and will be very glad to oblige his Lordship. If you will allow me a moment to gather up my things …’

When we arrived at the terrace, Lord Tansor was pacing up and down, the silver ferrule of his stick clattering on the stones, the sunlight glinting off his immaculate silk hat.

‘Your Lordship,’ said Mr Tredgold, advancing towards him. ‘This is Mr Glapthorn.’

‘Glapthorn. How d’ye do. You have all your instruments, cameras, and what not, I see. A travelling chest? Everything to hand, what? Very good. That’s the way. Now then, let’s get on.’

I began to set up my tripod as Lord Tansor continued to walk up and down, conversing with Mr Tredgold. But I found that I could not take my eyes off him.

Now in his fifty-ninth year, he was a smaller man than I had expected, but with a straight back and strong shoulders. I became immediately fascinated by his little mannerisms: the left hand placed behind him as he walked; the way he tilted his head back when he spoke; the gruff, staccato phrases, and the barking interrogatives with which his speech was punctuated; the impatient tic in his left eye when Mr Tredgold directed some observation to him, as if his toleration were about to expire at any second.

Above all, my attention was held by the complete absence of either humour or vulnerability in the heavy-lidded, close-set eyes, and especially in the small, almost lipless mouth. I noticed the curious fact that one rarely saw Lord Tansor’s teeth. His mouth appeared to be permanently fixed shut, even when he spoke, which naturally conveyed the impression that here was a man in whom disapproval and suspicion of his fellow human beings was instinctive and irreversible. Everything about him was tight, ordered, contained. There was so much concentrated potency and will in the way that he looked you up and down, and in the stance of purposeful readiness that he habitually adopted – shoulders pulled sharply back, feet slightly apart – that you quickly forgot the shortness of his stature. I have met many impressive men, but few have impressed me with the completeness of their self-possession, born of the long exercise of personal and political authority, as he did. I have strong arms and a strong body, and am a giant compared to him; but as he approached to ask whether all was ready, I could hardly look him in the eye.

Yet I believed he was my father! Could it be true? Or had I been deluding myself? Say that he was my father, standing next to me in the bright June sunshine, and seeing only a stranger busying himself with his camera and tripod. Would the day ever come when I would turn and face him as my true self?

The sun had moved westwards, and was now illuminating the far end of the terrace, beyond which was a raised pavement, with a half-glazed door set in the return. We stepped down to a gravel path, and Lord Tansor – grasping his stick firmly in his right hand, and holding his left arm straight to his side – positioned himself a foot or two in front of this pavement, with the door behind his left shoulder. Through the lens of my camera, each individual detail of his appearance increased in clarity and definition: his square-toed boots, brightly polished as always; the surmounting gaiters, grey like his trousers and waistcoat; his black four-button coat and black stock; his gleaming hat. He stood straight and still, tight-lipped, white side-whiskers trimmed to perfection, small black eyes gazing out over bright pleasure-grounds and sunlit parkland, and beyond to the distant prospect of farms and pasture, rivers and lakes, woods and quiet hamlets. Lord of all he surveyed. The 25th Baron Tansor.

My hands were shaking as I completed the exposure, but at last it was done. I was about to begin preparations to expose the last negative, but his Lordship informed me that he did not wish to detain me any longer. In a moment he had thanked me brusquely for my time, and was gone.

Mr Tredgold and I passed the night in Peterborough, returning to London the next morning. We left Evenwood without catching further sight of Phoebus Daunt; but I could not rid myself of the fixed image that I now had of him: standing in the sun, laughing, gay and self-assured, without a care in the world.

We had both been too tired the previous evening to discuss the events of the day, and during the homeward journey, on the following morning, my employer seemed no more inclined to talk. He had settled himself into his seat immediately on boarding the train, and had taken out the latest number of David Copperfield,^* with the deliberate air of someone who does not wish to be disturbed. But as we were approaching the London terminus, he looked up from his reading and regarded me inquisitively.

‘Did you form a favourable impression of Evenwood,

Edward?’

‘Yes, extremely favourable. It is, as you said, a most ravishing place.’

‘Ravishing. Yes. It is the word I always use to describe it. It transports one, does it not, almost forcibly, carrying one rapturously away, to another and better world. What it would be to live there! One would never wish to leave.’

‘I suppose you have been there frequently,’ I said, ‘in the course of business.’

‘Yes, on many occasions, though not so often now as formerly, when the first Lady Tansor was alive.’

‘You knew Lady Tansor?’ I heard myself asking the question somewhat eagerly.

‘Oh yes,’ said Mr Tredgold, looking out of the carriage window as we entered under the canopy of the terminus. ‘I knew her well. And now, here we are. Home again.’

^*[Opticians, ‘chemical and philosophical instrument makers’, and also a leading supplier of photographic equipment, at 121 and 123 Newgate Street. Ed.]