The Meaning of Night

wall until I reached the towered gate-house – put up in the gloomy Scottish style by Lord Tansor in 1817, in a temporary fit of enthusiasm after reading Scott’s Waverley. Once in the Park, the main carriage-drive began its gradual ascent, for the great house is hidden from here, a pleasure cunningly deferred by ‘Capability’ Brown when he remodelled the Park; but a building could be glimpsed to the left, through an area of thickly planted trees.

A spur from the main driveway passed through the Plantation and brought me to a gravelled space. From here, it bisected an area of well-tended lawn, and led up to the main entrance of the Dower House – a fine three- storeyed building of creamy Barnack stone, built in the second year of King William and Queen Mary,^* as proclaimed by the incised numbers on the semi-circular pediment above the shallow portico. It struck me as looking like a beautiful doll’s house for some giant’s child, perfect both in its simple proportions and in the well- mannered taste of its construction. A flight of half a dozen or so steps led up to the pillared portico. I dismounted, ascended the steps, and knocked at the tall unglazed double doors; but no one came to my knock. Then I heard the sound of a woman crying, somewhere at the back of the house.

I tethered my mount, and followed the sound through a gate and down a short flight of steps into a walled garden, lying now in the shadows of late afternoon, then towards an open door in the rear of the residence.

A young serving girl was sitting on a chair by the door being comforted by an older lady in cap and apron.

‘There, there, Mary,’ the older lady was saying, stroking the girl’s hair and attempting to brush away her tears with the hem of her apron. ‘Try to be strong, my dear, for Missie’s sake.’

She looked up and saw me.

‘Forgive me,’ I said. ‘I have been knocking at the front door.’

‘Oh, sir, there is no one here – Samuel and John are up at the great house with his Lordship. We are all at sixes and sevens, you see. Oh sir, such a terrible thing …’

She continued in this, to me, incomprehensible way for some moments until I interrupted her.

‘Madam, perhaps there is some misunderstanding. I am here by appointment to see Mr Paul Carteret.’

‘No, no, sir,’ she said, as Mary began to wail with renewed force, ‘Mr Carteret is dead. Killed on his road back here from Stamford last evening, and we are all at sixes and sevens.’

^*[‘Trust, but be careful in whom’. Ed.]

^*[The celebrated gambling house in St James’s. Ed.]

^†[A curtain-raiser. Ed.]

^*[A member of the working classes during the French Revolution, who wore trousers as opposed to the knee-breeches of the aristocracy. Ed.]

^*[i.e. 1690. Ed.]

20

Vae victis!^*

I pride myself on my coolness under duress – a necessary quality for my work at Tredgolds. But I simply could not disguise my shock, my complete shock, at this news.

‘Dead?’ I cried, almost frantically. ‘Dead? What are you saying? It cannot be.’

‘But it is true, sir,’ said the lady, ‘only too true. And what will Miss Emily do now?’

Leaving Mary to her tears, the lady, who introduced herself as Mrs Rowthorn, the Carterets’ housekeeper, escorted me through the kitchen and up a short flight of stairs, from which we emerged at the rear of the vestibule.

As was my custom, I quickly sought to fix the details of my new surroundings in my mind. A floor of black- and-white tiles; two windows flanking the front door, which was secured by two bolts, top and bottom, and a sturdy central mortice. Pale-green walls with fine stucco work, equally fine plasterwork on the ceiling, and a plain white marble fireplace. A stair-case with an elegant wrought-iron handrail leading to the first floor. Four doors leading off, two at the front, two at the rear; a further door leading back into the garden.

Out of one of the front rooms, a young woman now emerged.

She was tall, unusually so for her sex, nearly indeed my own height, and was dressed in a black gown with a matching cap that was almost indistinguishable from her jet hair.

As I looked upon her extraordinary face, I thought that I had not known what human beauty was until that moment. The beauty that I thought I had known, even Bella’s, now seemed delusive and figmental, a half-realized dream of beauty, moulded by invention and desire. But now beauty stood in plain sight, real and unmediated, like starlight, or sunrise over a snow-covered land.

She stood, in the diminishing afternoon light, with her hands folded in front of her, regarding me calmly. I had expected a homely, round person, like Mr Carteret; a welcoming domestic angel. She wore spectacles, like her father, but the resemblance went no further; and, far from detracting from the uncommon loveliness of her face, they seemed only to heighten it – a phenomenon that I have often observed.

She possessed the exaggerated prettiness of a doll, but somehow elevated and made noble. Her heavy-lidded eyes – almond-shaped, and coal-black, like her hair – were exceptionally large, and dominated her face, which was as pale as a November moon. Her nose was perhaps a little long, her upper lip perhaps a little short; and the mole on her left cheek might have been considered by some to be a blemish. But hers was not a perfection of individual features; her beauty seemed greater by far than the sum of its parts, as music played transcends the written notes.

I desired Miss Emily Carteret from that very first moment, as I had desired no other woman. Her soul seemed to beckon to mine, and I had no choice but to follow where she led. Yet, if my true identity could be proved, we were cousins, with Duport blood in common. The thought was thrilling, and seemed to make my desire for her all the keener.

My reveries were interrupted by Mrs Rowthorn.

‘Oh, Miss,’ she said, with evident agitation, ‘here’s a gentleman been knocking to see your poor father.’

‘Thank you, Susan,’ replied Miss Carteret calmly. ‘Please bring some tea into the drawing-room – and tell Mary