Evenwood, as you may imagine, has been thrown into turmoil. My wife, for whom Phoebus was everything, though she was his mother only by marriage, is inconsolable; and Lord Tansor also is deeply stricken. We have lost a son; he has lost his heir. And then there is poor Miss Carteret. What grief that young woman has had to bear is beyond comprehension. First her father brutally attacked and killed, & now her intended husband. She is a most pitiful sight. I hardly recognized her when I saw her last.
As for myself, I have the comfort of my faith, and the certain knowledge that the God of Abraham and Isaac has taken Phoebus unto Himself. My son was held in such high esteem by everyone who knew him, & by the many readers of his works who did not know him, that we have been overwhelmed by kind expressions of condolence. These, too, have been a great comfort.
As so often in times of trial, I turn to Sir Thomas Browne. On opening the Religio Medici, soon after the news was brought here of my son’s death, my eyes fell on these words:
‘What is made to be immortal, nature cannot – nor will the voice of God – destroy.’
This is my faith. This is my hope.
I remain, my dear Sir, yours faithfully,
A.B. DAUNT
Marden House
Westgate, Canterbury
Kent
9th January 1855
DEAR CAPTAIN LE GRICE, —
I am in receipt of your enquiry concerning Edward Glyver.
From your letter it appears that you have been the recipient of various confidences concerning Edward’s history. This, I may say, came as something of a surprise to me; I had thought I was the only person in whom he confided. But it seems that none of us can truly claim to know Edward Glyver; to emphasize the point, I am now in correspondence with a Miss Isabella Gallini, with whom, I gather, Edward enjoyed a close relationship for some time past, but which he had never mentioned to me.
And now it has come to this. I cannot say that I did not fear it would; or to another outcome that, perhaps, we would both have regretted even more. We shall never see him again – of that I am certain. You tell me that you urged him to go abroad, and to give up the business we both know about. If only he had taken your advice! But by then it was past all remedy – you must have seen, as I did, that fixed, haunted look in his eyes.
Miss Carteret suffers, I am told; but the business has at least cured Lord Tansor of his irrational aversion to the collateral line, and so she will have the comfort in due course of inheriting both the Tansor title, and all the property associated with it. What Edward will feel if he learns of this, I cannot imagine.
As to the deceased gentleman, the least said the better. You will infer that I did not share the world’s good opinion of him – though I do not say that he deserved to die. He did great wrong – to Edward, certainly; but there are other things concerning Phoebus Daunt that may never now be told – at least until much time has passed and no more hurt or harm can be done. But there has been enough of death and deceit; and for what purpose?
I hope this letter will find you safe and well, and I pray that God will protect you, and all our brave soldiers. We have all been appalled by Mr Russell’s reports.*
Yours most sincerely,
C. TREDGOLD.
Blithe Lodge
St John’s Wood, London
18th January 1855
DEAR MR TREDGOLD, —
Yr letter arrived only this morning, but I hurry to send you a reply.
I have not seen him since that snowy night in December last. There had been a falling-out between us, I’m afraid, which I greatly regretted. He stood on the front step & wd not come into the house, saying only that he was leaving England for a time and that he had come to beg my forgiveness for being unable to love me as he said I deserved. Then he told me his real name & the truth about his birth – replacing the half-truths (I will not say lies) I had formerly been given. I understand that you have been long aware of who he really is – he spoke of you most affectionately, & with gratitude for how you have tried to help him. It is a most extraordinary story, & I confess that, at first, I was inclined to think it was all fancy, if not something worse; but I soon saw in his eyes that he was at last speaking the truth. I know also about Miss C—, & how she deceived him in order to deprive him of the proof that would have delivered everything he had dreamed of into his hands. He told me that he loved her, & that he loves her still. And this is why he can never love me.
We parted, & I asked if he would come again – as a friend – when he returned. But he only shook his head.
‘You have your kingdom now,’ was all he said. ‘And I have mine.’ Then he turned and went. I watched him walk down the path, out into the night. He did not look back.
When my employer, Mrs Daley, brought in the report from The Times, naming Edward as the suspected killer of Mr Daunt, I thought my heart would break. What a burden he must have carried with him! To do such a terrible, terrible thing, even though clear injury had been done to him! I saw then how far I had been from knowing him, still less of understanding him. It may be wrong of me to say so, but I shall always think of him fondly, though of course I cannot now regard him as I once did. I loved him truly – then; but he was cruel to me, though I believe not intentionally. He betrayed me, which I might have forgiven. But he did not love me as I deserved, which I cannot forgive.
Yours very sincerely,
ISABELLA GALLINI
Calle Espiritu Santo*
25th November 1855
MY DEAR MR TREDGOLD, —
I can easily imagine your emotions when you open this letter. Surprise and consternation, I am sure, will be uppermost; but also, I hope, a degree of guilty pleasure, to hear again – though for the last time – from someone who esteems you more highly than any man alive, and to whom you have been a father in all but name.
I have come here, where no one will ever find me, under a name no one knows, to live out my days in a solitude of my own choosing – in a blackened and shattered landscape of extraordinary otherness, carved by a furious god, and fanned by hot African winds. I deserve no sympathy for what I have done; but you, my dear sir, deserve to know how I came here, and why.
After leaving England, on the night of December 11th last, I travelled first to Copenhagen, & then to Fåborg, on the island of Funen, where I remained for nearly a month. From there I went to Germany, to revisit some of my old haunts in and around Heidelberg, before going, first, to S. Bertrand de Comminges in the Pyrenees, where there was a cathedral that I had long wished to see, & then to the island of Mallorca – my last destination until I sailed here.
I intend to say nothing concerning the reason for my exile – to spare you more pain than I have already caused you. I have not escaped punishment, as some may imagine; I am punished every hour I live for the folly of my life, and what it drove me to do. My enemy and I were mined from the same mortal seam; cast into the same furnace of creation, our images impressed on opposite sides of the same coin, separate, but not distinct, conjoined by some fatal alchemy. I killed him; but in doing so, I killed the best part of myself.