Michael Cox - The Meaning of Night

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’

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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 Rector’s son had each grown up with a decided view of the other’s character and temperament.

Little Miss Carteret had been a serious young lady from an early age, with a serious mind and serious expectations of others. Her young neighbour, though capable of seriousness when he pleased, found her meditative disposition galling, when all he wanted to do was tumble down a slope with her, or climb a tree, or chase the chickens; for she would think about everything, and for so long at a time, that he would give up coaxing her in exasperation and leave her alone, still thinking, while he attended to his pleasures. For her part, the young lady sometimes thought him uncouth and frightful in his antics, though she knew that he could be kind to her, and that he was by no means a stupid boy.

It would have been strange indeed had not the boy found that her reticence towards him only increased her fascination. Though his junior by four years, Miss Carteret appeared to rule him with the wisdom of ages; and as they grew older, her sovereignty over him became complete. In time, of course, he asked for a kiss. She demurred. He asked again, and she considered a little longer. But at length she capitulated. On his eleventh birthday she knocked at the Rectory door with a present in her hand. ‘You may kiss me now,’ she said. And so he did. He began to call her his Princess.

To him, she was Dulcinea and Guinevere, every aloof and unattainable heroine of legend, every Rosalind and Celia, and every fairy-tale princess of whom he had ever read or dreamed; for she had a serious and haunting beauty, as well as a serious mind. Her father, Mr Paul Carteret, had observed only too plainly which way the wind blew in the mind of Phoebus Daunt with regard to his daughter, even before she had left for the Continent. Now two years of travel and education, as well as some exposure to the best Parisian society, had rendered her allure irresistible.

The fact was that Mr Carteret, in the face of received opinion at Evenwood, unaccountably failed to regard Phoebus Rainsford Daunt as a precocious specimen of British manhood. He had always found the Rector’s son ingratiating, plausible, slippery, cleverly insinuating himself into favour where he could, and ingeniously spiteful in revenge where he could not. It may therefore be supposed that he did not relish the prospect of his daughter’s return to Evenwood, and to the attentions of P. R. Daunt, at a time when that young gentleman’s star was on its seemingly irresistible rise. To put the matter frankly, Mr Carteret disliked and distrusted Lord Tansor’s protégé . On more than one occasion he had come across him in the Muniments Room, where he had no obvious business, rummaging through the documents and deeds that were stored there; and he was sure that he had surreptitiously perused his Lordship’s correspondence as it lay on the secretary’s desk.