The Meaning of Night (12 page)

hoped, persisting instead in a desire to accept the living, and its attendant hardships, at all

costs. At last, Dr Passingham had no choice but to shake his head sadly and agree to put

the arrangements in hand with all speed.

And so, on a cold day in March, 1819, the Reverend Achilles Daunt took up

residence, with his new wife, at Millhead Vicarage. The house – which I have personally

visited and inspected closely – stands, squat and dismal, with its back to a desolate tract

of moor and facing a gloomy view of tall black chimneys and ugly, close-packed

dwellings in the valley below. Here, indeed, was a change for Dr Daunt. Gone were the

lawns and groves and mellow stone courts of the ancient University. To his daily

contemplation now lay a very different prospect, peopled by a very different humanity.

But the new incumbent of Millhead Vicarage was determined to work hard for his

northern flock; and certainly it could not be denied that in this, his first, ministry he

performed his duties with unswerving diligence. He became especially celebrated in the

district for his well-prepared sermons, delivered with intellectual passion and dramatic

power, which soon began to draw large congregations to St Symphorian’s of a Sunday.

In appearance, he matched the heroic and manly names his parents had seen fit to

give him: a tall and confident figure, broad-shouldered, deep-voiced, bearded like a

prophet. As he tramped the wet and dirty streets of Millhead, he exuded an intimidating

air of conscious merit. To the world at large, he seemed a rock and a rampart, a citadel

against which nothing could prevail. Yet, by degrees, he began to find that great things

were not easy to accomplish in this place of toil, where kindred spirits were few. His

work amongst the working poor of the town began to depress him more than he felt it

ought to have done; nor did preferment and removal from Millhead come quickly, as he

had hoped it would. In short, Dr Daunt became something of a disappointed man.

The imminent birth of his first child did a little to lift his spirits; but, alas, the

arrival in the world of baby Phoebus brought tragedy in its wake. Within three days of

presenting Dr Daunt with his son and heir, his pretty little wife was dead, and he was left

alone, save for the perpetually howling infant, in the dreary house on the hill, with no

prospect that he could see of ever being able to leave.

The extremity of his grief brought him to the brink of despair. Great silences

descended on the house when, for days on end, the Vicar would shun all human contact.

During this black period, solicitous friends from their little circle came to offer succour to

the Vicar in his bewilderment. Amongst the most attentive was Miss Caroline Petrie, one

of those who had sat admiringly before Dr Daunt's pulpit at St Symphorian’s. Gradually,

Miss Petrie became established as the chief agent of the Vicar’s recuperation; she

concluded matters most satisfactorily by becoming the second Mrs Daunt in the autumn

of 1821.

Of the transition from the one state of spiritual and mental annihilation to the

other of restituted faith and confidence, Dr Daunt never spoke; one can only guess at the

compromises he had to make with both soul and conscience. But make them he did, with

some advantage to himself, and grave disadvantage to me, as will appear.

The formidable Miss Caroline Petrie, who brought with her to Millhead Vicarage

a small but welcome annuity, was as different from the first Mrs Daunt as could be. She

exhibited strength – of mind, as well as body – at every point. Her bearing was what one

would naturally call regal, conveying a dignity of form and expression that immediately

commanded attention in both high and low. Partly this was due to her unusual height (she

was fully a head taller even than Dr Daunt, and had the advantage of literally looking

down upon practically everyone to whom she spoke); partly it arose from her striking

physiognomy.

At this time she was nine-and-twenty, and had been living quietly with her uncle

for several years, both her parents having died some time before. She was no beauty in

the conventional sense, as the first Mrs Daunt had been, the impression created by her

features being rather of tribulation vanquished – indeed she carried the visible signature

of suffering overcome in the disfiguring etchings of small-pox.

Yet any poet worth his laurels, or painter hungry for inspiration, would have

flown instantly into a fine frenzy at first sight of that imperious face. It seemed always set

in an austere intensity of expression, as though she had at that very moment looked up

from the absorbed perusal of some improving work of irresistible interest – though such

works were in fact largely unknown to her. But there was a mitigating softness, too, a

yielding about the mouth and eyes that, as one became aware of it, transposed the whole

effect of her countenance from the minor to the major key. Besides which she had spirit,

the most charming manners when she wished, and blunt good sense. She had ambition,

too, as events were soon to show.

With the money she brought to the marriage, a nurse – Mrs Tackley by name –

was employed to watch over the infant Phoebus, which she did most capably until the

boy was two years old, when his step-mamma assumed full responsibility for his

upbringing and welfare. As a consequence, the boy’s character grew to resemble hers in

many points, particularly with regard to her worldly outlook, which stood in distinct

contrast to the longing of her husband to take up the life of the cloistered scholar once

again. It was extraordinary how close they became, and how often Dr Daunt would

encounter them locked closely together in conversation, like two conspirators. Though he

was still, of course, responsible for the boy’s formal education, in all other respects it

seemed that his wife had taken over from him as the dominant influence on his son’s life;

and even here, in the study, his authority was frequently undermined. The boy generally

applied himself well to his lessons; but if he wished at any time to go and ride his pony,

or fish in the stream at the bottom of the garden, instead of getting declensions into his

head, then he only had to appeal to his step-mamma and he would be instantly released

from his labours. On other occasions, too, the Vicar would find his wishes thwarted, and

his orders countermanded. One day, he required the boy to accompany him to one of the

worst parts of the town, where utter poverty and hopelessness were starkly manifest on

every corner, feeling no doubt that the experience would be useful in awakening in his

son some compassion for the plight of those so much less fortunate than himself. But they

were intercepted at the front door by his furious wife, who proclaimed that under no

circumstances was dear Phoebus to be exposed to such disgusting sights. The Vicar

protested; but argument was useless. He went down into the town alone, and never again

attempted to take his son with him. From these and other instances of the second Mrs

Daunt’s ascendancy, it is impossible not to conclude that, gradually, and by means he

was unable to resist, Dr Daunt’s son was being taken away from him.

By an evil chance, or perhaps as a consequence of that fatality which, I believe,

has shaped my history, the Vicar’s wife was the second cousin of Julius Hereward

Verney Duport, twenty-fifth Baron Tansor, of Evenwood Park in the County of

Northamptonshire – whose first wife has already been briefly mentioned in connection

with my mother. Several comfortable livings in Northamptonshire lay in the gift of Mrs

Daunt’s noble relative, and that of Evenwood itself fell vacant in the summer of 1830. On

learning of this, with fire in her eyes, Mrs Daunt instantly flew south to press her new

husband's claims with his Lordship.

Already, however, something more than wifely duty appears to have been

animating this redoubtable lady. Accounts concur that she had often expressed a wish to

remove herself and her husband – and particularly her dear boy, Phoebus – from

Millhead, which she detested; and it was doubtless kind of her to offer to lay Dr Daunt’s

abilities before Lord Tansor. Her husband, I am sure, was touched by his wife’s selfless

alacrity in this matter. I suspect, however, that selflessness was not her guiding principle,

and that in rushing south, with such demonstrable urgency, she was in fact obeying the

urgings of her own ambitious heart. For if her suit was successful, she would no longer be

a distant and forgotten relation existing in the outer darkness of Millhead: she would now

be counted amongst the Duports of Evenwood – and who knows where that might lead?

I have no records of the meeting between Mrs Daunt and Lord Tansor; but, from

Mrs Daunt’s point of view, it must have been accounted a success. An invitation to join

her was speedily sent back to Dr Daunt in the North; the boy Phoebus was packed off to

relations in Suffolk; and the outcome was, that Mr and Mrs Daunt returned together from

Northamptonshire two weeks later in high spirits.

There followed an anxious wait; but Lord Tansor did not disappoint. Barely a

fortnight had passed before a letter – tremendous in its condescension – arrived,

confirming Dr Daunt as the new Rector of St Michael and All Angels, Evenwood.

According to one of my informants, on the day after his return from his Suffolk

relations, the boy Phoebus was called before his step-mother. Sitting in a small

button-backed chair set in front of the drawing-room window – that same chair in which

the first Mrs Daunt had often sat, looking forlornly out across the remnant of moor that

lay between the vicarage and the encroaching town – she was heard to impress upon the

boy the significance of his father's translation to Evenwood, and what it would mean for

them all. I am told that she addressed him in deep melodious tones as her 'dear child', and

tenderly stroked his hair.

Then she told him something of their relations and patrons, Lord and Lady

Tansor; how great was their standing in the county, and in the country at large; how they

also had a grand house in London, which he might see in due course if he was very good;

and how he was to call them Aunt and Uncle Duport.

‘You know, don’t you, that your Uncle Duport does not have a little boy of his

own any more,’ she said, taking his hand and walking him to the window. ‘If you are

very good, as I know you will be, I am sure your uncle will be especially kind to you, for

he misses having a son dreadfully, you know, and it would be such a considerate thing if

you were to pretend sometimes to be his very own boy. Could you do that, Phoebus dear?

You will always be your Papa’s boy, of course – and mine, too. It is only a sort of game,

you know. But think what it would mean to poor Uncle Duport, who has no son of his

own, as your Papa does, to have you constantly by him, and to be able to show you

things, and perhaps take you to places. You would like that, wouldn’t you? To be taken to

nice places? ’

And the boy, of course, said he would. And then she told him of all the wonders

of Evenwood.

‘Are there chimneys at Evenwood?’ the boy asked.

‘Why, yes, my dear, but they are not like Millhead chimneys, all dirty and horrid.’

‘And is my Uncle Duport a very great man?’

‘Yes indeed,’ she said, looking out across the black valley with a slyly triumphant

smile breaking across her face, ‘a very great man.’

At the appointed time, the family's belongings and household goods were

despatched south, and the Vicarage at last stood shuttered and empty. As the fly rattled

away from the gloomy windswept house, I picture Dr Daunt leaning back against the

seat, closing his eyes, and offering up a silent prayer of thanks to his God. His

deliverance had come at last.

He was about to come into his kingdom.

10:

In Arcadia?

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Thus came the Daunt family to Evenwood, the place on which all my hopes and

ambitions have rested for so long.

His new situation suited Dr Daunt completely. With four hundred pounds a year

from his stipend, and another hundred from his glebe lands, he was now able to keep a

carriage and a good table, and generally assume a position of some consequence in the

neighbourhood. No longer beset by the adversities of his Millhead living, the Dr Daunt

lay becalmed and contented in the sunlit harbour of Evenwood.

Light and spacious, the Rectory – a former prebendal manor-house – was set

amidst well-tended gardens, beyond which was a sweet prospect of sloping meadows

and, across the river, the inviting darkness of close-set woodland. Much of the Rector’s

work – such as it was in this small and prosperous country parish – could be easily

delegated to his curate, Mr Samuel Tidy, a fidgetty young man who stood deeply in awe

of Dr Daunt (and even more of his wife). Lord Tansor laid infrequent demands on his

Rector, and those few duties required of him were easily fulfilled. Soon the Rector found

himself with ample time, and more than sufficient income, to pursue at his leisure those