Michael Cox - The Meaning of Night

III

Saturday, 22nd October 1853

Immediately after the interment of his wife, Lord Tansor called for Miss Eames, her Ladyship’s former companion, and requested her to leave Evenwood at her earliest convenience. To what she was owed by way of remuneration, he added a generous additional payment, thanking her coldly for the services that she had rendered to his late wife. He hoped that she would have no cause to complain that she had been treated badly by him, to which she replied that he need have no fear on that score, and that she was properly grateful for the consideration she had received in his house.

He did not stop to ask, either Miss Eames or himself, whether she had a home to go to. As it happens, she did not; her father, a widower, had died soon after her Ladyship had absconded to France, and her other sisters were all married. One of these, however, lived in London, and to her, by means of a telegraphic message sent from Easton, Miss Eames now applied for temporary sanctuary.

Leaving Miss Eames to arrange her few possessions for departure, his Lordship then came to my work-room and instructed me to gather up all Lady Tansor’s private papers, and place them in the Muniments Room. Did he wish to peruse them himself after they had been collected? He did not. Did he wish me to examine or order them in any way? He did not. Were there any further instructions concerning her Ladyship’s papers? There were not. Only one more thing was required: the unfinished painting of her Ladyship was to be removed from the Yellow Parlour and placed ‘in a less conspicuous position’. Did his Lordship have a specific location in mind? He did not. Would there be any objection to my hanging it here, in my workroom? None whatsoever.

An hour or so later, there was another knock at my door. It was Miss Eames, come to bid me farewell. She spoke most kindly of the little services that I had been happy to provide for her during the time I had been employed at Evenwood, and said that she would always think of me as a friend. Then she said something that struck me as very odd:

‘You will always think well of me, won’t you, Mr Carteret? I would not like it – I could not bear it – if you did not.’

I assured her that I could think of no circumstance that would alter my very high opinion of her, for, indeed, I regarded her as a very sensible and dependable soul, in whom resided a great deal – a very great deal – of natural goodness and sympathy; I told her as much, and also that no one could have served her late mistress better, or more faithfully. That alone would always command my admiration, the prosecution of one’s duty to an employer or benefactor being, to my mind, a cardinal virtue.

‘Then I am content,’ she said, giving me a rather wan smile. ‘We are both loyal servants, are we not?’ And with that rather curious interrogative, she retired to ready herself for her journey. That was the last I saw of Miss Julia Eames.

The next morning, after waiting on my cousin as usual, I began searching through my Lady’s apartments for letters and other papers to remove to the Muniments Room, as I had been instructed. I collected a good many items from her green-lacquer desk that stood by the window in her sitting-room, and many more from various table-drawers and cabinets; but of the ebony writing-box that I had seen on several occasions, and which I particularly remembered from the time I had brought my Lady the copy of Felltham’s Resolves , there was no sign. I searched most diligently, going through the contents of every cupboard and drawer two or three times over, and even getting down on my hands and knees to look underneath the great curtained bed; but without success. Somewhat puzzled as to the box’s whereabouts, I placed my haul of documents in the portmanteau that I had brought with me, returned downstairs to my work-room, and ascended from thence to the Muniments Room.

It went against my nature simply to leave the papers in a disordered state; and so I thought that I would sort them roughly according to type, and then make a preliminary general inventory before storing them. This was quickly and easily done, and within an hour I had several separate bundles of receipts, bills, letters, sketch-books, notes and memoranda, correspondence, and drafts of letters from her Ladyship, and a number of miscellaneous items, principal amongst which were an autograph album, a commonplace-book with red silk wrappers inserted in a gilt steel cover, a note-book containing what appeared to be original poems and prose fragments, and an address book enclosed within an embossed calf wallet. I could not resist – who could? – looking over a number of the items as I placed them in their allotted pile, though I acknowledge that I did so a little guiltily, having received a specific instruction from my employer to leave the papers in an unclassified state.

The autograph album afforded an interesting record of friends and distinguished visitors, both to Evenwood and to his Lordship’s townhouse in Park-lane; and then I lingered for longer than I should have done over a book of delightful pen-and-ink drawings and pencil sketches made by my Lady over several years. A series of French scenes – a record, no doubt, of her Continental escapade – was particularly well done, for my Lady had been a skilled draughtswoman, with a keen eye for composition. Most were signed and dated ‘LRD, 1819’, and one or two carried descriptions. I particularly recall a most striking and romantic sketch, bearing the legend ‘Rue du Chapitre, Rennes, evening’, of an ancient and imposing half-timbered mansion with elaborately carved beams, and a canopied entrance half disclosing an interior courtyard. There were also a number of more finished views of the same location, all of them executed with remarkable feeling and care.

The striking of twelve noon from the Chapel clock roused me from my reveries, and I set about placing the separate bundles, which I had loosely tied together with string, in a small iron-bound chest that lay to hand, to which I affixed an identifying label. I was on the point of descending to my work-room when, on putting away my portmanteau, I noticed a single piece of paper that I had omitted to retrieve.

On examination, it appeared to be of little importance, simply a receipt, dated the 15th of September 1823, for the construction of a rosewood box by Mr James Beach, carpenter, Church-hill, Easton. I do not well know why I make mention of it here, other than from an earnest desire to present as full and as accurate a statement of events as I can, and because it seemed odd to me that her Ladyship should have commissioned such an apparently valueless object on her own account from a man in the town, when Lord Tansor employed an excellent estate carpenter who could have made it for her in a moment. But there it was; I had no justification for spending any more of his Lordship’s time on idle speculation, and had already dallied far too long on the task he had set me. And so I assigned the receipt to the proper bundle in the chest, shut the lid, and proceeded back down to my work-room.

I had no immediate reason of my own to consult Lady Tansor’s private papers further, and received no request from my employer to do so. All financial and legal documents of importance, of course, had already passed under his Lordship’s eye and hand during the course of his marriage, and were now in my custodial possession; consequently, over the course of the next few weeks, the contents of the little iron-bound chest began gradually to recede from my present view until, in time, they disappeared entirely.

I did not have cause to remember the existence of my Lady’s private papers for many years. During the intervening period, life, as it always does, brought us our share of fair weather and foul. Lord Tansor’s step-mother, Anne Duport, with whom we shared the Dower House, departed this life in 1826. The following spring, my cousin had married the Honourable Hester Trevalyn, and it was expected – his Lordship being then only thirty-six years of age, and his new wife ten years his junior – that, in time, their union would be blessed with offspring that would secure the succession to the next generation.