The Sleeping Sword (70 page)

‘Oh, Grace—come on,' said Blanche.

‘Good heavens!' said Aunt Caroline.

‘Who is Grace?' Miss Madeley-Brown's fixed smile seemed to enquire.

‘Of course we must have a picture of Grace,' Lady Verity agreed, settling the matter. ‘I was just about to say so.'

‘Grace,' said Gervase, holding out a hand to me, and so we were captured for posterity, Blanche and Noel side by side now, with Venetia's child happily between them, Miss Madeley-Brown with her hand on Gideon's arm, her diamond showing to advantage against his coat-sleeve, Gervase holding me by the elbow, his fine-etched profile quizzical, my face looking puzzled and by no means at its best, only my hat, I thought, doing me credit beside the stupendous Madeley-Brown.

We escaped soon after—Blanche, Noel, Gervase and I— to stroll along the cliffs, enjoying the salt breezes and the bright sunshine, in surprisingly easy harmony, Gervase still holding my arm, Blanche and Noel, with Claire skipping between them, behaving openly now not as a pair of lovers but as the married couple they felt themselves to be. We sat for a while on a shady wooden seat, Blanche, who was careful of her complexion, making full use of her parasol, while the men took Claire to look at the sea, Uncle Noel and Uncle Gervase taking it in turns to carry her shoulder high, stopping every now and then to explain the sand and the shells, the busy population of a rock-pool, a sail hurrying across the horizon, the purposes of the noisy, greedy gulls.

‘I shall never let her go back to Gideon, you know,' Blanche told me, her eyes on the dark, sturdy, serious child who bore so little resemblance to Venetia.

‘I didn't know you were so fond of children, Blanche.'

‘Well, and neither did I—but, oh heavens! I may as well confess it, I cannot stop myself from pretending she is mine and Noel's—can't you see that? The boys belong entirely to Dominic and are as remote from me now as he is. When they come home from school we are no more than polite to each other, and Matthew is already talking of spending his next long vacation in India. So she is the nearest I can ever come to having Noel's child—I take good care of that. Why not, Grace? Nobody else wants her. The Madeley-Brown will set about breeding, one can see that, as soon as he consents to ask her—which will be as soon as he has finished his negotiations for Tarn Edge—and Claire will not be welcome in
her
household then.'

We met Gideon and Miss Madeley-Brown on our way back, Blanche having no need at all to bristle like a mother cat, since no one threatened her kitten, Miss Madeley-Brown merely glancing at the child, perched on Noel's shoulder and saying ‘Was it fun on the beach, little girl?' a remark designed to draw Gideon's attention, Blanche thought, to the sand on Claire's shoes and the hem of her dress, which prompted him, although not without humour, to warn his brother: ‘You'll ruin your coat, Noel.'

‘Oh—we farming men don't pay much heed to things like that,' Gervase murmured wickedly.

‘Luckily he has another,' declared Blanche, in a great huff. ‘But come along, Noel, that child must have her tea and be put to bed. Come along, for nurse is waiting.'

And once again Gideon had not addressed a word to me.

I wore the dress with the crimson velvet bodice and the cream satin skirt that evening, largely because Blanche told me it was elegant and unusual and cut low enough to give Aunt Caroline the vapours.

‘And you have rather a lovely bosom, Grace—which is most unexpected since the rest of you has got so thin. And if you take your hair a little higher and lift it off your forehead just there, your eyes—which are quite big enough anyway—will look simply enormous. Have you nothing better than that gold chain to put around your neck? Oh Grace—you had heaps of jewellery once.'

‘Yes—that was once. I have put it all away. I don't wear it anymore.'

‘Well, I am sorry, but that gold chain will not do. It should be rubies, of course—big ones surrounded by pearls and set in antique gold. Your friend Camille has just the thing. But since Aunt Caroline would be sure to recognize it and draw all the wrong conclusions, you had better borrow from me instead. Luckily I have my black velvet ribbon with me and it has enough pearls stitched on it to make a decent show. It will look well enough.'

It did, or so Gervase told me as he took me in to dinner, it having been found convenient, for the purposes of the seating arrangements, to restore to me for the duration of the evening my position as his wife, an arrangement which, astonishingly enough, appeared to offend no one but my watchful Aunt Caroline. And so I sat beside him, allowed him to unfold my napkin and place it on my knee, to touch my hand as he gave me my menu, to lean over me, breathe on me, to remind me—as several people present wished me to be reminded—how easy it would be, how
restful
, to turn back to him, to restore myself truly and finally to this family which had never really meant to relinquish me.

We had a lengthy, complicated meal, a great many toasts and speeches, both Gideon and Gervase saying a few accomplished words, Mr. Nicholas Barforth making a dignified reply, Sir Blaize Barforth, who had been something of a ladies' man in his day, raising his glass to his female relations with a witty salutation. It was all very pleasant and very civilized, extremely well done, each lady now being invited to open the little trinket box beside her plate amidst squeals of delight, gold lockets of very adequate value being provided for the managers'wives while each Barforth lady received a pendant of heavy gold set with her birth-stone, a diamond for Miss Madeley-Brown, I noticed, a pearl for Blanche, a ruby for me, the very thing my outfit required.

Gervase fastened the clasp for me, adjusted the jewel to a correct central position on its chain, the back of his hand brushing the tops of my breasts as he did so, the precious metal very cold against my skin when he took his hand away.

‘Uncle Nicholas—thank you—how lovely!' trilled Blanche, who knew the market price of pearls and was very pleased with the size of this one.

‘You'd best thank Gideon,' he told her, ‘for it was his idea, and he took the trouble to find out what month you were born.'

‘Thank you, Gideon,' she said and, as everyone was getting up now in preparation for the dancing, she went up to him and, being rather tipsy by then, stood on tiptoe and gave him a reasonably flirtatious kiss.

‘Yes—thank you, Gideon,' smiled Camille, an amethyst sparkling around her throat, kissing him too, without any need for tiptoe. Aunt Faith, his grandmother, my grandmother, followed suit. Miss Madeley-Brown, no doubt would thank him later and privately. Only my thanks remained to be said and there was no doubt at all that I would have to move forward, to attract his attention, to say ‘Thank you, Gideon'; and if he snubbed me or brushed me aside, I would have to carry it off somehow or other and pretend to anyone who had noticed—to Gervase who
would
notice—that it was solely on account of the
Star
.

I walked forward. He did not appear to see me coming, but started to turn away. I put out a hand to touch his sleeve and withdrew it as sharply as if the fabric had scorched me, and for a moment, as he looked down at me with no expression, almost no recognition on his dark face, I did not think my voice could penetrate the sudden, quite total dryness of my throat and my tongue.

‘Thank you, Gideon.'

He nodded sharply, gave me a smile that was a brief parting of the lips, obeying his training as a gentleman far more than his inclination, which would have been—I thought—to order me from his premises, his sight, his hearing, from the quota of air he wished to breathe. And I understood, with horror and a futile quite terrible distress, that his silence was intended neither to punish nor humiliate me, but had come about quite simply because he could not hear to speak.

I went into the ballroom where the Barforth men were dancing with their lovely ladies, Mr. Nicholas Barforth with Camille in her floating amethyst gauze, Noel with Blanche in her sensational and very daring black lace, Uncle Blaize and Aunt Faith, who had chosen her favourite blonde silk, Hortense Madeley-Brown in gold satin and not too much of it at that, going twice round the floor with Gideon and then sitting placidly beside her mother and Aunt Caroline while he did his duty by his managers'wives. I danced with Gervase, my hand going gratefully into his, my body taking shelter in his arms, for I was shaken and disarmed, most unusually defenceless, and no longer cared what speculation our being so much together might arouse, no longer cared what I should or should not do when he was the only person I
could
be with just then, the only person who could accept my silence—and my suffering—without question, the only one who could give me time to gather myself together. Yet when that much was achieved, I had been in his arms for rather a long time, admittedly in full view of most of our relations, but nevertheless in an embrace that was not polite but familiar and affectionate—
companionable
—and which, if allowed to continue, could give rise to a companionable desire.

‘If we were meeting for the first time,' he said, ‘I would be quite thrilled with you by now, do you know that?'

‘Then it is perhaps as well we are not meeting for the first time.'

‘Well—and if we were, I wonder how much you would object to me? I
am
the father of a bastard child, but the enlightened and liberated Grace Barforth of the
Star
should be able to forgive me for that.'

‘Gervase, I do—in fact I never really blamed you.'

‘I am not speaking of the past, Grace. I am telling you of my life
now
, as I would have to tell you if we had just become acquainted. The boy and the estate are an essential part of what I am. They make up the sum total of me. I can present myself to you now as a whole man—which I could not do before. I am not altogether displeased with that man. If we had just met tonight I would be doing my best to make you like him too.'

‘With a very fair chance of success.'

‘Why, thank you, Grace. Had I known, long ago, that you had it in you to like a very ordinary farmer with a quite moderate estate and a delightful but probably—in anybody else's eyes—a very ordinary son, then I wonder—'

‘Don't wonder. Everything would have been just the same.'

‘Unless, of course, I had shown any real aptitude for business, in which case you would have been the hostess here tonight—and far better at it, I must say, than the luscious Madeley-Brown.'

‘It does no good to wonder about that either.'

‘Then I wonder if you would care to drink some more champagne with me? That seems a reasonable occupation for those who
were
married—and
are
not.'

We drank rather more than I had intended, his new occupation having in no way lessened his taste for fine wines, and returning to the ballroom an hour later, seeing Hortense Madeley-Brown seated beside Aunt Caroline, too placid and too pleased with herself to know she was being neglected, I asked him: ‘What do you really think of her, Gervase?'

‘Miss Madeley-Brown? Well—I would very much enjoy a night or two in her bed, for her physique is awe-inspiring, there is no use in denying it. One would begin with the feeling of paying homage, almost, at a shrine of Aphrodite, which would make—if nothing else—a delicious aperitif.'

‘Gervase, that is not the language of a working farmer.'

‘No. But I was a wild young man, if you remember.'

‘I remember.'

‘No longer, Grace—believe me. Not dull, I hope, but quite dependable, if you can credit it.'

‘Perhaps I can. Gervase—what do you think of me?'

He took my hand, companionably, and, not caring who saw us, brushed a closed and friendly mouth against my cheek.

‘I like you, Grace. I think one can build on that.'

And so one could. All day I had been surrounded by the faces and figures and attitudes which had peopled my childhood, formed me and moulded me and had never for one moment lost hope of my return. Warm affection awaited me here on a dozen faces; and one man who hated me. The affection was like the thin vapours of an autumn morning glimpsed in the distance. The hatred was real to me.

I left, some time after midnight, with my Agbrigg grandparents, Gervase escorting us gallantly to their house half a mile away.

‘I do not pretend to understand this,' my grandmother told me when he had strolled off along the cliff-top. ‘I presume he wants you to return to him as his wife, since I can think of nothing else he has a right to want from you.'

‘I think he might want that—yes.'

‘Well then, I have no right to interfere—your father has assured me of that—but it would seem—
suitable
—would it not?'

‘I suppose it would. But it will not break his heart, you know, if I refuse him. I think he would quite like me to say yes, but he will not really mind if I say no.'

‘Good gracious! I have never heard such coolness.'

‘Not coolness, grandmamma, just good sense. He is so remarkably self-sufficient, you see—whoever would have thought it? He likes me but he doesn't need me. Well—at least
that
has turned out all right. Grandmamma, you will not be pleased with me, but I am going back to Cullingford on the early train tomorrow.'

‘Ah—and do you imagine there is somebody in Cullingford who needs you?'

‘I simply think it is where I belong.'

‘Hannah,' my grandfather said sharply, ‘leave the lass alone. She knows what she's doing.'

But I could not share his confidence, for I was not leaving Scarborough for any high-minded principles of self-sufficiency, independence, who needed me or did not need me. I was running away from Gideon.

My grandfather took me to the station the next morning, found me a compartment—in accordance with my grandmother's instructions—in which two elderly ladies were already seated, and asked me no questions. I had left a note in his care for Camille and one for Blanche, explaining that ‘pressure of business' had required my early return, and although neither one of them would believe me I did not really care for that.