I ventured out the next day for the first time in more than a week, to take a restorative dinner at the Albion Tavern. The following morning I thought I would look in at Tredgolds, and so, at a little after half-past eight, I locked my door and walked through the rain to Paternoster-row.

As I entered the clerks' room, young Birtles, the office boy, came running across and thrust a letter into my hand. 'This came in the last post yesterday, sir.' I did not recognize the handwriting; and so, having nothing better to do, I went upstairs to my room to read it.

To my complete surprise it was from Miss Rowena Tredgold, expressing the hope, in somewhat drawn-out terms, that circ.u.mstances would allow me to pay another visit to Canterbury at my earliest convenience. It concluded by saying that this invitation had been sent at the express request of her brother, Mr Christopher Tredgold. Deducing from this that my employer's condition had improved significantly, I joyously sent off an immediate acceptance.

A few days later I was admitted once again to Marden House and shown into the room where I had first met Dr Jonathan Tredgold.

Miss Rowena Tredgold sat, unsmiling, in an uncomfortable looking high-backed chair set near an ugly black-marble fireplace, the cavernous opening of which yawned darkly cold. On a low table, drawn up close to her knees, was a tumbler of barley-water. Beside it lay a sealed envelope. The heavy curtains in the window behind her were partially drawn, and what remained of the soft declining light of late afternoon struggled into the room through a slash of grimy gla.s.s.

I began, naturally, by asking how her brother fared.

'I am grateful to you for your concern, Mr Glapthorn. It has been a terrible time, but I am glad to say that he is much better than he was, thank you. He knows us, and has been sitting up. And we are thankful that he can speak a few words now.' She spoke in a lingering, staccato manner, carefully enunciating every syllable, which produced the odd impression that she was mentally examining each word for impropriety before it was spoken.

'There is hope, then, that there will be further improvements?'

'There is hope.'

'Mr Glapthorn,' she said, after a short expectant pause. 'Would you say that my brother, Mr Christopher Tredgold, was a good man?'

Though taken back a little by the question, I replied immediately: 'That would certainly be my opinion. I do not think there can be any other.'

'You are right. He is a good man. And would you say that he was an honourable man?'

'Unhesitatingly.'

'You are right again. He is an honourable man. Goodness and honour are two words that perfectly describe my brother.'

She said this in a way that seemed to suggest that I had in fact taken precisely the opposite view.

'But there are many people in this world who are neither good nor honourable, and who take advantage of those who regard these virtues as the unalterable foundation of their moral character.'

I could only agree with her.

'Well, then, I am glad we are of one view. I wish you to remain steady in that view, Mr Glapthorn, and remember always what kind of man my brother is. If he has erred, it is because he has been placed in an intolerable position by those who do not aspire, and who never will aspire, to the high ideals of conduct and character that have distinguished all my brother's dealings, both personal and professional.'

I confess that I had no idea what the woman was talking about, but I smiled in a conciliatory way that I hoped would convey my complete comprehension of the matter.

'Mr Glapthorn, I have here a letter' she gestured towards the sealed envelope 'written by my brother the night before he was taken ill. It is addressed to you. However, before I give it to you, my brother has asked me to preface his words with some of my own. Do I have your permission?'

'By all means. May I ask first, Miss Tredgold, if you have read your brother's letter?'

'I have not.'

'But I may presume, I suppose, that it contains matters of a confidential nature?'

'I think you may presume so.'

'And are you yourself a party to any of those confidences?'

'I am merely my brother's agent, Mr Glapthorn. If he were well, then you may take it that he would be communicating these matters to you himself. However, there is one subject on which I have been honoured with his confidence. It is on this subject that he has asked me to speak to you prior to your reading his letter. Before I do so, I hope I may depend on your absolute discretion, as you may depend on mine?'

I gave her my word that I would never divulge what was imparted to me, and begged her to proceed.

'You may wish to know first,' she began, 'that the firm of which my brother is now the Senior Partner was established by my great-grandfather, Mr Jonas Tredgold, and a junior a.s.sociate, Mr Meredith Orr, in the year 1767. In due course, my late father, Mr Anson Tredgold, joined the firm, which then became known as Tredgold, Tredgold & Orr, a name which it has since retained, along with a reputation second to none amongst London solicitors.

'It was my grandfather who first established an a.s.sociation between the firm and a certain n.o.ble family of whom, I believe, you have some knowledge. I speak, of course, of the Duport family of Evenwood, holders of the Tansor barony. My grandfather represented the then Lord Tansor,3 in a case of libel (which unfortunately did not succeed) that had been brought against the Editor of the Northampton Mercury. Despite the failure of his suit, in the course of time his Lordship was gracious enough to entrust all his legal work to the firm, and the arrangement continued when Lord Tansor's son William, the founder of the famous Duport Library, duly succeeded. After the death of our grandfather, the management of the family's legal affairs duly fell to my father; and thus, from father to son, the a.s.sociation between the firm and the Duport family has continued.

'At the time my brother Christopher joined the firm, father was in his seventy-first year, still sprightly in body and active in mind, though it must be confessed that his powers of concentration and application were perhaps not quite what they had once been. Nevertheless, as the Senior Partner, he continued to enjoy the complete confidence of the firm's princ.i.p.al client, the present Lord Tansor, until his death.

'And now my brother is the Senior Partner. Unfortunately, he has no son into whose hands he can place the governance of the firm, in the way his father and grandfather had done before him. It is the tragedy of my brother's life, for he would dearly have loved to marry, and so we must now contemplate the prospect of Tredgold, Tredgold & Orr existing without the living presence of a Tredgold.'

'Could you tell me, Miss Tredgold,' I broke in, 'what has prevented Mr Tredgold from following his inclination?'

'That, Mr Glapthorn, is the particular matter on which my brother has asked me to speak, if you will be so kind as to allow me.'

Her rebuke was delivered with cold courteousness and I felt obliged to apologize for interrupting her.

'It was pa.s.sion, Mr Glapthorn, for an object that could never have been his a pa.s.sion that he knew to be wrong, but which he could not resist; a pa.s.sion that rules him now as completely as it ever did, and which has kept him a slave to its original object for these thirty years and more. Indeed I can give you the exact date when it commenced.

'I came of age in July 1819, and on the twelfth of that month my father, Mr Anson Tredgold, was visited on a matter of business by Laura, Lady Tansor, the wife of his most distinguished client. Her reputation as a great beauty preceded her, and of course I was agog to see her I was young and foolish then and knew no better. It was whispered, as you may perhaps know, that she had been the subject of those celebrated stanzas of Lord Byron's which begin 'There be none of Beauty's daughters',4 written (so it was rumoured) by the poet to Miss Fairmile as she then was of course just before her marriage to Lord Tansor. Whether that be true or no, she was constantly spoken about as being one of the loveliest and best turned-out women in England; and so, being apprised of her visit, and wishing to s.n.a.t.c.h a glimpse of this marvel, I made some excuse to be at the office when she arrived, and lingered on the stairs as she was received by the chief clerk and conducted up to my father's room on the first floor. As she pa.s.sed, she paused and turned her head slowly towards me. I shall always remember the moment.'

Miss Tredgold looked distantly into the cold mouth of the great fireplace.

'Her face was beautiful, certainly, but it had an extraordinary impression of fragility about it, like an exquisite painting made on gla.s.s: indeed her beauty and poise seemed almost too perfect to withstand the shocks that attend all human life. In that moment, as she looked directly into my eyes before honouring me with a brief nod of salutation, I felt a kind of sadness for her pity even that I could not explain. All beauty must pa.s.s, even hers, I thought; and those who are blessed with unusual physical beauty must, I supposed, feel this constantly. I was plain: I knew it. Yet I did not envy her no, indeed I did not for she appeared to me to be suffering from some great affliction of spirit that was already beginning to cast its shadow over that perfect face.

'Lady Tansor conducted her business with my father and was escorted by him to the front door, where they encountered my brother Christopher coming in. I had remained in the downstairs office, amongst the clerks, and was well placed to observe the scene.

'I remember very well that her Ladyship appeared impatient and ill at ease, fingering the ribbons of her bonnet, and tapping the floor with the tip of her parasol. My father asked if she would allow him to conduct her to her carriage, but she declined and made to go. My brother, however, intervened rather forcefully, and insisted that her Ladyship could not be allowed to descend the steps and cross the pavement una.s.sisted. I had never seen him act the gallant before, and observed his attentions towards her with some amus.e.m.e.nt. She did no more than thank him, but you would have thought from his face, when he returned to the office from helping her into her carriage, that he had been in the presence of some divinity. Of course I teased him, and he was rather short with me, telling me not to be a silly little girl, which, having just attained my majority, I much resented.

'But I did wrong to tease him, Mr Glapthorn, for it soon became apparent to me though fortunately to no one else that Christopher was smitten by the lady to a degree that was wholly incompatible both with his personal situation and his professional position. This infatuation, for which, as a young man, he could hardly be blamed, was to be the cause of his decision never to marry. It quickly grew, you see, into something fiercer, something all-consuming, that could not be denied, and yet which must be denied. It was a love of which poets write, but which is scarcely seen in the world. He never confessed it to her, never acted on it, and behaved at all times with the most complete propriety. There were times when I feared for his sanity, though it was only to me he revealed the extent of his anguish. Gradually, he learned to master his situation or seemed to and took refuge in pursuits of a bibliographical nature, which have remained his solace during his hours of leisure. But when she died, the effect on my brother was terrible quite terrible. Imagine, then, what he had to endure when his attendance was requested by Lord Tansor at her burial in the Mausoleum at Evenwood. He returned immediately to London and took a solemn vow in the Temple Church: that he would love her unto death, and take no one else into his heart, putting all his hope in being joined with her in eternity, when all care and suffering will be put aside forever. He has kept that vow, and will go to his grave a bachelor because of his love for Laura Tansor.

'And so, Mr Glapthorn, I have said what my brother wished me to say, and now I give you this.'

'She handed me the sealed envelope.

'Perhaps you would be more comfortable if I retired to my room for half an hour.'

She rose from her chair and left. As the door closed behind her, I began to read Mr Tredgold's letter.

It was dated Friday the twelfth of May, and was several pages long. I do not intend to transcribe it in full; but certain pa.s.sages must be laid before you. Here is the first.

How often, my dear Edward, have I wished to bring you into my confidence! But the difficulty of my position has been, and continues to be, acute. But recent events I refer particularly to the death of Mr Carteret have forced me to take a course of action I have long contemplated, but which hitherto I have been constrained from adopting by both duty and conscience.

When you first came to me, you did so in the capacity of confidential secretary (I believe that was the phrase you used) to Mr Edward Glyver. You were enquiring after the existence of an agreement made between Mr Glyver's mother and the late Laura, Lady Tansor. I must tell you now, and you must believe how much it pains me to confess it, that I was not completely honest with you concerning the circ.u.mstances under which that agreement had been drawn up.

In the first place, it was not my father, Mr Anson Tredgold, who drafted it; it was I. His powers were in decline then and, subsequent to her ladyship's first brief consultation with him, he asked me to produce the draft. I then met privately with Lady Tansor on several occasions, away from the office to ascertain that it met with her approval. Her ladyship later returned to Paternoster-row with Mrs Glyver to execute the doc.u.ment in the presence of my father.

The intention of the agreement I had drawn up a copy of which is now in your possession was to give Mrs Glyver some measure of immunity from any adverse consequences of certain impending actions, which she had undertaken solely at the urgent behest of Lady Tansor. In truth, I do not know whether the doc.u.ment would ever have held in law my father was too ill to approve the wording and merely, as I say, officiated at the signing. But Mrs Glyver was satisfied by it, and so matters proceeded.

I told you that I could find no record of the discussions that preceded the signing of the agreement. That is the strict truth: I destroyed everything, except for a copy of the agreement itself, which makes no mention of the circ.u.mstances that lay behind its composition. My motive? A simple but unshakeable desire to protect Lady Tansor, as far as I could, from the consequences of her action.

I loved her, Edward, as I believe few men have loved a woman I cannot speak of this at length here, except to say that my affection for her has been both the bedrock and the source of all my actions. It has informed and directed everything. Her interests, both when she was living and with respect to her posthumous reputation, have been my only care.

It began in July, 1819, when her Ladyship first came to see my father. She had embarked on a most dangerous enterprise. Unknown to her husband, Lady Tansor was with child; she intended to escape to France in the company of her friend until her time was due; the child would then be placed into the charge of Mrs Glyver, who would bring it up as her own. She did not tell my father the true character of this desperate scheme, speaking to him only in vague generalities, and she had sworn her friend, Mrs Simona Glyver, to absolute secrecy. But she herself was weak in this regard and soon confided in me, sensing, I believe, my deep attachment to her illicit, I acknowledge, but never revealed or confessed, or acted upon. I was already mesmerized by her hopelessly infatuated. So I vowed that I would help her, in whatever way I could, and that I would tell no one her secret. 'My dear sweet Saint Christopher,' she said to me at our last meeting. Those were her very words. And then she kissed my cheek such a brief, chaste kiss; but it sealed my fate. Though I swear I did not reveal my love for her, I told her I would die rather than reveal her condition.

It was foolish of me no: worse, much worse, than foolish to have exposed myself to calumny and professional disgrace: it went against every principle I had formerly held sacred. I confess that I was greatly concerned by what I had done, and conveyed to her Ladyship as strongly as I could that discovery of her plan was probable, perhaps likely, and urged that the whole thing should be abandoned forthwith; for by this terrible act, Lady Tansor was denying her husband the thing he desired above all others. Of course my advice was disregarded sweetly, but firmly.

I continued to regret that I had become an accessory to her Ladyship's conspiracy. But it was done; and I would not undo it for worlds. If it was iniquitous, then I would be steadfast in my iniquity, for the sake of her whom I had sworn to serve unto death.

I thought of Mr Tredgold, suave and beaming. Mr Tredgold, polishing his eye-gla.s.s. 'You shall stay to luncheon it is all ready.' Mr Tredgold, eagerly hospitable. 'Come again next Sunday.'

He went on to speak of the consequences on his own life of his love for Lady Tansor; how it had made it impossible for him to seek the affections of any other woman, and how, in consequence, he had turned to 'other means' by which I understood his secret interest in voluptuous literature to a.s.suage the natural pa.s.sions and inclinations that all men must attempt to master.

And so to the next pa.s.sage.

After my father died, I became Lord Tansor's legal adviser, and was often at Evenwood on his Lordship's business. His wife's remorse at what she had done was plain to see it was remarked with sadness by poor Mr Carteret; but only I was aware of the source of her misery. We spoke sometimes, when we found ourselves alone together; and she would take my hand and call me her true friend, for she knew I would never betray her, despite the dereliction of my professional duty to her husband, which I felt, and continue to feel, keenly. But there are higher things than professional duty, and I found that my conscience easily submitted to the greater dictates of love, allowing me to serve Lord Tansor to the best of my ability whilst still honouring my sacred vow to his wife. I withheld the truth from him, but never lied. It is a Jesuitical distinction, I own, and would have been a poor defence; but it served. Yet if he had asked me to my face, then, G.o.d forgive me, I would have lied, if that had been her wish.

I therefore deceived you further when I said I had no knowledge of the private arrangement referred to in the agreement between Lady Tansor and Mrs Glyver, and for that I humbly ask you to forgive me.

But you have also deceived me, Edward. So let us now be honest with each other.

On reading these words, perspiration begins to bead on my forehead. I lay the letter down and walk over to the window to try and open it, but it is locked tight shut. I feel entombed in this tenebrous, dusty room, with its hideous brown-painted wainscot, its dark and elaborate furniture and heavy green-plush curtains; and so I close my eyes for a moment and dream of air and light the open sky and sunlit woods, wind and water, sand and sea, places of peace and freedom.

A door bangs. I open my eyes. Feet scurry down the pa.s.sage. Then silence. I return to the letter.

He had known me all this time, from the moment I was shown into his drawing-room in Paternoster-row by Albert Harrigan on that Sunday morning in September, 1849: despite my subterfuge, my ident.i.ty had been written on my face as clearly as if I had sent up a card bearing the name 'Edward Duport (formerly Glyver)'. He had known me! I had stood before him, the son of the woman he continued to adore, and he had seen her in me, as Mr Carteret had done. But where Mr Carteret had merely noted a chance resemblance, Mr Tredgold had seen the living truth. Here was the reason for his immediate and obvious regard for me, his willingness to oblige me, his alacrity in offering me employment. He had known me! During all our walks in the Temple Gardens, and our Sundays together, poring over masterpieces of the erotic imagination, and through the working out of all his 'little problems'. He had known me! As I'd laboured alone and unknown, as I had thought to reclaim my birthright, he had known me! But he had vowed to keep my mother's secret safe even from me; and so, through all the years of my employment, he had watched me, the son of the woman he had loved above all others, knowing who I was and what I had been born to, but powerless to a.s.sist me in the task I had undertaken. He saw that I had come to him in the guise of Edward Glapthorn for no other purpose than to find some means of regaining my true self. But in this he was also helpless, for as he had admitted he had destroyed every trace of his dealings with Lady Tansor, and possessed nothing no letter, no memorandum, no doc.u.ment of any kind that could prove conclusively what he and I knew to be the truth about my birth. He could only watch and wait, bound as he was both by the vow he had made to my mother, and by the code of his profession.

But then events began to threaten the accommodation Mr Tredgold had made with his conscience.

The first indication of an impending crisis had come when Lord Tansor had indicated to Mr Tredgold that he wished to make Phoebus Daunt the heir to his property, on the single condition that the beneficiary would then take the Duport name. Everything that should have been mine was to go to Daunt, being the step-son of Lord Tansor's second cousin, Mrs Caroline Daunt, who, by this relationship, might one day complete her triumph and inherit the t.i.tle itself.

What should Mr Tredgold do? He could not tell Lord Tansor that he had a living heir, for that would have been to betray my mother's secret; but the unworthiness of the prospective heir was to him so apparent (though not to Lord Tansor) that his professional conscience almost revolted, and more than once he had been close to laying the whole truth before his n.o.ble client in order to prevent this calamitous outcome. The following pa.s.sage was of particular interest to me: Of course I knew of your former acquaintance with Daunt, as school-fellows, and guessed what estimation you might have of his subsequent endeavours. My own was very low indeed. I had received disturbing reports of his character from Mr Paul Carteret; and indeed I had reasons of my own to suspect him of having inclinations of the basest kind. From an early age he had been pushed forward by his step-mother as a kind of subst.i.tute for Lord Tansor's son his younger son, I should say. Mrs Daunt has always exhibited a tigerish concern for her step-son's future prosperity (and certainly for her own as well). With great skill and determination, she constantly deployed her influence with Lord Tansor to advance the boy in his estimation. In this she succeeded, beyond all expectation.

I did everything I could, on many occasions, to intimate to my client, as far as my professional position allowed, that he would be well advised to reconsider his decision. But I could not persuade his Lordship and he told me, with some force, that the matter was closed.

But then had come Mr Carteret's letter, and all was changed. Mr Tredgold had immediately sensed a startling probability: that his old friend had discovered what he himself had striven to keep secret for so many years. And so I had been despatched to Stamford, with consequences that I have already set out. On Mr Tredgold, these had had a severe effect. To hear, in the report I had sent from Evenwood, of the fatal attack on Mr Carteret had induced a profound shock, and probably contributed greatly to the paralytic seizure he subsequently suffered.

Just then the door opened and I turned to see Miss Tredgold framed in the opening. The sun had dipped behind the houses on the other side of the street, leaving the room in an even deeper condition of brown-stained gloom. She held a light in her hand.

'If you wish, I will take you to my brother.'

39:.

Quis separabit?1 __*

I followed Miss Tredgold into the hall and up the dark stairs, along a cold dark landing, and into a darkened room. Mr Tredgold sat hunched in the far corner, by a little desk on which were placed some sheets of paper and writing implements. He was wrapped in a woollen shawl; his head had dropped down over his chest, and his once immaculate feathery hair was disarranged and thin looking.

'Christopher.'

Miss Tredgold spoke softly, touching her brother gently on the shoulder and raising the candle so that he might better see her face.

'I have brought Mr Glapthorn.'

He looked up and nodded.

She motioned to me to take a seat opposite my employer and placed the candle on the desk.

'Please ring when you are ready,' she said, indicating a bell-rope just behind Mr Tredgold's chair.

As she closed the door behind her, Mr Tredgold lent forward with surprising vigour and grasped my hand.

'Dear . . . Edward . . .' The words were slurred and came haltingly, but clear enough for me to hear what he was saying.

'Mr Tredgold, sir, I am so very glad to see you . . .'

He shook his head. 'No . . . No . . . No time. You have . . . read the . . . letter?'

'I have.'

'My dear fellow . . . so very sorry . . .'

He fell back in his chair, exhausted by the effort of speaking.

I glanced at the paper and writing implements on the table by his chair.

'Mr Tredgold, perhaps if you were to write down if you are able what you wish to say to me?'

He nodded and turned to take up the pen. There was no sound in the room except for the scratching of the nib and the occasional crackle from the dying fire in the grate. The task was slow and laborious, but at length, as the last embers of the fire went out, he lay down the pen and handed me the sheet of paper. It was somewhat rambling, and written in a highly abbreviated, unpunctuated manner. The following is my own more finished version of what I now read.

'My dear boy for so I think of you, as if you were my own. It breaks my heart that I cannot speak to you as I would wish to do, or help you to regain what is rightfully yours. How you came to the knowledge of your birth is dark to me, but I thank G.o.d that you did and that He led you to me, for there is a purpose in all this. I have kept the truth hidden, for love of your mother; but the time has come to put matters right. Yet in my present condition I do not know what I can do, and the death of my poor friend has robbed us both of an invaluable ally. I am certain that Carteret had come into the possession of doc.u.ments that would have materially advanced your case but now they are lost to us, perhaps forever, and a good man has died because he learned the truth. I now fear for you, dear Edward. Your enemy will be seeking high and low for Laura Tansor's son, and will stop at nothing to protect his expectations. If he should discover your true ident.i.ty, then there can be only one consequence. I beg you therefore to take every precaution. Be constantly vigilant. Trust no one.'

He looked at me with a most pitifully anxious expression. When I had finished reading, I took his hand.

'My dear sir, you must not be anxious for me. I am well able to meet whatever danger may present itself; and though the doc.u.ments Mr Carteret was carrying may be lost to the enemy, we have something nearly as good.'

I then told him of my mother's journals and the corroboration of them provided by Mr Carteret's Deposition, on hearing of which he gripped my hands and uttered a strange sort of sigh. A fierce light seemed to burn in his poor pale eyes as he reached again for his pen.

'All is not lost then (he wrote), as long as these statements remain safe from the enemy. They are insufficient, as you must know, but they must be safeguarded at all costs as must the true ident.i.ty of Edward Glapthorn. And then you and I must apply ourselves to overturning Lord Tansor's folly, and so set things right at last.'

'The doc.u.ments are safe,' I a.s.sured him, 'and so am I. I have made a copy of the Deposition, which I have brought with with me, to leave in your keeping.' I placed the doc.u.ment on the desk. 'And Daunt can have no reason whatsoever to suspect that Edward Glapthorn is the person he seeks. And you are wrong, sir, to say that we do not have an ally. I believe we do.'

He leaned forward, hands shaking, and wrote the words 'An ally?'

Thus I opened my heart to Mr Tredgold concerning Miss Emily Carteret.

'I love her to the utmost degree. To you, sir, I need say no more; for you know what it means to love in this way.'

'But does she love you, in the same way?' he wrote.