I could not see them, but I imagined two frightened faces peering out, and anxiously looking up and down the passage. At length, I heard the door being closed, and a few moments later I ventured my head round the angle of the wall to confirm that the coast was clear.
Back in my room, I immediately sat down and wrote out as much of the conversation between Miss Carteret and her friend as I could remember. Like a scholar working on fragments of some ancient text, I sought to fill in the lacunae to make sense of what I had heard, but without success; my incomplete and disconnected transcriptions – set out above – refused to yield up their secrets. Convinced now that I was seeing mystery and conspiracy where there was none, I walked to the window to look out once again on the moonlit garden.
Miss Carteret, Miss Carteret! I was completely, preposterously, bewitched by my beautiful cousin, though I hated myself for the absurdity of it all. It had happened in two days – only two days! It was mere infatuation, I told myself yet again. Forget her. You have Bella, who is everything you could want or need. Why expend precious time on this cold thing, time that ought to be given to the accomplishment of your great enterprise?
But whoever heeds the voice of reason when love whispers, softly persuasive, in the other ear?
I was awoken early by Mrs Rowthorn knocking at my door with a tray of breakfast, as I had requested.
On descending to the vestibule half an hour later, I looked into the dining-room, and then into the two reception rooms at the front of the house; but there was no sign of either Miss Carteret or her friend, Mademoiselle Buisson. A little French clock on the mantel-piece was chiming half past seven as I opened the front door, and stepped out into a cold, dull morning.
I was drawing deeply on my first cigar of the day, in the hope that strong tobacco would have the required stimulative effect on my sluggish faculties, when Brine brought my horse round from the stable-yard. He wished me a safe journey, and I asked whether he had seen Miss Carteret that morning.
‘No, sir,’ he said. ‘Not this morning. She gave orders to my sister that she would be late coming down, and that she was not to be disturbed.’
‘Please give Miss Carteret my compliments.’
‘I will, sir.’
‘You have the address safe that I gave you?’
‘Yes, sir.’
I mounted up, and was riding off under the dark echoing arch of the Scottish gate-house when I reined in my mount. Turning the horse, I galloped back into the Park.
Pushing on up the long incline, and through the avenue of oaks at its summit, I pulled up and looked down across the misty river to where Evenwood lay.
It was a day of lead-grey louring cloud, with a cold east wind sighing through the leafless trees; yet even on such a day, my heart was captivated by the beauty of the house – this place of desire and delights. When would the day come that I would enter it as Master, and my feet stand secure within its gates at last?
As I passed the Rectory, I saw Dr and Mrs Daunt, arm in arm, walking up the lane from the church. On seeing me, the Rector stopped and raised his hat in salute, which gesture I returned in kind. His wife, however, immediately disengaged her arm, and walked off alone down the lane.
In another moment I had left Evenwood, and Miss Emily Carteret, behind.
After a cold, damp ride, I turned into the High Street in Stamford at a little before nine o’clock. Returning my nag to the ostler at the George, I then arranged with the hall-porter for my bags to be carried across to the Town Station in time for the next train to Peterborough. The ride had cleared my head, lightened my mood, and sharpened my appetite; and so, having an hour in hand, I cheerily ordered up chops, bacon, and eggs, and a pot of strong coffee, and settled myself in a box by the fire in one of the public rooms to read the daily news-papers until it was time to stroll over to the station.
It wanted ten minutes to the time that the train was due to arrive when, as I was walking into the first-class waiting-room, something that Dr Daunt had said on our walk back from the Library returned to me. He had been speaking of an early ambition of his son’s to follow a career in the law, in emulation of his closest friend at Cambridge. I had given no further thought to the Rector’s words; but now, standing in the waiting-room of the Town Station in Stamford, they returned with a strange force.
Now, I am a great believer in the instinctive powers – the ability to reach at truth without the aid of reason or deliberation. Mine are particularly acute; they have served me well, and I have learned to trust them whenever they have manifested their presence. You never know where they may lead you. Here was a case in point. I cannot say why, but I was instantly seized with the notion that I must find out the name of this companion of Daunt’s at the University. Acting on this impulse, therefore, I immediately changed my plans and, after consulting my Bradshaw,* resolved upon a diversion to Cambridge.
By now the train for Yarmouth, which I was to take as far as Ely, had arrived. I was on the point of picking up my bag, when one of the tap-room servants from the George came puffing up to me, and thrust a thick envelope, almost a small package, into my hand.
‘What is this?’
‘Beg pardon, sir, hall-porter says this has been directed to you.’
Ah, I thought. The proofs of Dr Daunt’s translation of Iamblichus. They had been forwarded to me, as arranged, by Professor Slake. I had quite forgotten about them. As it was necessary for me to board the train immediately, I had no time to reprimand the stupid red-faced fellow for the hotel’s failure to give me the package earlier; and so I brushed him aside without a word, stuffed the proofs into my greatcoat pocket, and managed to take my seat just as the station-master was blowing his whistle.
To my consternation, the carriage that I had chosen was crowded almost to capacity, and I spent a most uncomfortable two and a quarter hours wedged between a stout and exceedingly truculent lady, a basket containing a spaniel puppy set precariously on her knees, and a fidgeting boy of about thirteen (much interested in the puppy), with my bag lying between my feet on account of the racks being full.
I disembarked, to my great relief, in Ely, and managed to catch a connecting train to Cambridge with seconds to spare. Arriving at my destination at last, I took a cab into the town, and was set down before the gates of St Catharine’s College.
*[Literally, ‘under the rose’ – i.e. secretly, in secret. Ed.]
†[A case or trunk adapted for the roof of a coach or carriage. Ed.]
*[The Italian jeweller Fortunato Pio Castellani (1793–1865), who specialized in making pieces that emulated the work of the ancient Etruscan goldsmiths. Ed.]
*[‘But he is dead. Dead!’ Ed.]
†[‘Be calm, my angel! No one knows’. Ed.]
*[‘It should not have happened…’
‘What did he say? …’
‘What could I do? … I could not tell him the truth …’
‘But what will he do? …’
‘He says that he will find him …’
‘My God, what was that?’ Ed.]
*[One of the monthly Railway Guides published by George Bradshaw (1801–53), the first volume of which, in what were to become their familiar yellow wrappers, was published in December 1841. Ed.]