The Sleeping Sword (41 page)

And it was Dr. Blackwood who obeyed her command and hurried downstairs. His younger colleague came next, still in shirt-sleeves, and then there were a great many comings and goings, the nurse, Mrs. Winch, both doctors again, Mrs. Barforth herself with a lacy bundle in her arms at which I no longer wished to look, and then the pretty net-draped cradle being taken away to another room by the wet nurse, leaving the room empty since Venetia had gone—when?—could it already be an hour ago?

I wandered to the landing, every joint aching, leaned against the banister rail beneath the great stained-glass window and looked down into the hall where the maids were standing in huddled conclave until Chillingworth appeared and with a flick or two of his agile wrists sent them all away. The drawing-room door was slightly ajar. I knew Mr. Barforth and Gideon, possibly Gervase, were standing within. I knew I should go down to them and could not. My duty was clear. Mrs. Barforth was fully occupied with her grandchild and could not be expected to do the many things which must be done. Somebody must stand firm, must speak to the servants, must offer comfort to those men down there who were surely—and differently—in need of it. And for the first time in my life I shirked utterly,
could
not, for if I should detect the faintest glimmer of relief in Gideon—for the child was a girl, the woman was dead, the money irrevocably his—I would want to kill him, and I had no strength left and little inclination to stand between him and Gervase. But perhaps most of all I could not cope with the grief of a man like Mr. Nicholas Barforth, who was unused to grief, did not wish to see him break, especially now when I was breaking myself.

And so I stayed at the head of the stairs leaning against the banister, my mind fastening upon such trivial details as the high wind and the clock in the hall which told me we had reached late afternoon. The sixteenth of March, I thought. We were twenty-four years old, Venetia and I, and soon I will be twenty-five. What does it matter? What's the good of it. I began to walk slowly downstairs—because what
did
it matter—and I have never known what miracle, at that moment, brought Aunt Faith into the house, what passing servant told her coachman as he waited for her outside the new shops in Millergate, what chain of gossip had carried the news so far, so that she bade him turn his horses and bring her to Tarn Edge.

She had not crossed this threshold for twenty years and for an instant I thought my need of her had transformed itself into an illusion.

‘Grace,' she said. ‘Is it true?'

‘No.' I told her. ‘Oh yes—yes it is,' and flew into her arms. But the sound of the drawing-room door brought me alarm, for there had been a bitter quarrel between the Barforth brothers and even now I could not be sure my father-in-law would permit her to stay.

Nor, perhaps, could she.

‘Nicholas?' she said, the question plain in her voice as he appeared in the doorway, his face looking as if it had been carved out of dusty granite.

‘Faith.' And for an instant he could scarcely believe it.

‘Oh, Christ! Faith—.' And she moved quickly towards him, as if she could sense the approach of his tears and wished to shield him, to throw a screen of concern around this man who had perhaps never wept in his life before. They went into the drawing-room together and shut the door.

I was left alone in the marbled hall with Gideon, and after standing in a frozen silence for a minute or two, I sat down on the chair by the bronze stag, knowing there was nothing in the world I could say to him. Tomorrow and for a long time hereafter he would be told by the well-intentioned and the sentimental, ‘Bear up, old fellow. At least you have your daughter to console you.' But she was not his daughter. She could be no consolation, but no great encumbrance either. He was free now to take another rich wife and have sons of his own to inherit Venetia's money. And because, once again, his destiny had brought him out on the winning side, and because hate was easier, less complex, than grief and even soothed it a little, I sat for quite half an hour and hated him, accusing him and condemning him in my mind for everything. I had feared him, years ago, as a fortune-hunter when he had hesitated briefly between my wealth and Venetia's, and I had been so right—assuredly I had—to keep my distance. He had taken Venetia readily from Charles Heron's soiled hands and then, not content with the money alone—and notably discontented with the woman who came with it—he had tried to change her, as he had changed this entire household, to suit his precise requirements—
his
tastes, his desires, not hers, not ours. Fortune-hunter then, opportunist, seeing nothing but his own advantage; sensualist too, I supposed—yes, certainly that, although not with his wife. Widower now, of impeccable demeanour, looking not grief-stricken but saddened, very much moved beneath his patrician self-control. It was a sham, I was certain, and as I went on glaring at him, quite balefully I suppose, his eyebrows drew together into their black scowl and he came striding the step or two towards me.

‘Well—and what have I done, Grace Barforth?'

‘What do you mean?'

‘You know very well. And you are not usually so squeamish when it comes to calling me a scoundrel. Come on, Grace—out with it—what are you thinking of me?'

‘I am not thinking of you at all.'

‘Oh yes—yes, you are—and if the very worst you are thinking should be true, then tell me this, what have I done that your own father has not done—except that the Delaney woman was older, and faithful, and had stolen the money in the first place?'

But Aunt Faith intervened, appearing suddenly from the shadows, her gift of compassion enabling her to throw both arms around Gideon's unyielding neck and to tell him. ‘No one would think it odd if you went to Listonby to be with your mother.'

‘Am I in the way, Aunt Faith?'

‘No, darling. You are suffering and don't know how to show it, like Nicholas. I am giving you the opportunity to hide.'

Suffering, I thought. Never. She's giving him the chance to go and tell them he's free and that Aunt Caroline can advertise him on the marriage-market again. And my heart felt like a stone.

‘Grace,' Aunt Faith said, ‘please come with me', and slipping her hand into mine she took me upstairs, tears flowing gently down her cheeks. I thought, for a moment, that she wanted to see Venetia and started to tug my hand away from her, knowing I could never enter that room again.

‘No, dear,' she said, and we went up another flight of stairs to the nursery wing, which I suppose she remembered from her own childhood when she had come here to play with Aunt Caroline.

The nursemaid sprang instantly to her feet and dropped a curtsy, beaming her relief that some older woman was here to take the responsibility, for the child was very small, the wet nurse a clumsy fool, and the poor dead lady's mother had been put to bed now, on the doctor's orders, with a dose of laudanum inside her strong enough to knock out a donkey.

‘She'll not wake till morning, ma'am.'

‘Good,' said Aunt Faith. ‘I think we shall manage very well, nurse, until then. Grace, dear, do come here and look at this lovely little elf.'

It took me a long time, a dreadful time, to cross that room; and when I did reach the cradle I could not bring myself to look down but bent my head, at first, with closed eyes.

‘Look, dear,' she said, her voice telling me those tears were still pouring from her eyes, and eventually, her hand on my rigid shoulder stroking me, urging me, I obeyed and saw the tiny dark head, eyelids already long-lashed peacefully closed, the shallow but even breathing, the fingers of a minute hand delicately curled in perfect innocence.

When I left the room my tears were flowing as freely as Aunt Faith's, my head clearing sufficiently to admit the thought of Gervase, a realization that my protective impulses towards him were far from over. If I held out my hand to him now—for he would need a hand—would he take it? Did I want him to need me again? Could I need him now? Was this our final opportunity? I heard his voice in the hall and ran, finding him face to face with Gideon, the precarious balance between them almost visibly tilting in an atrocious direction. And having dreaded this confrontation for years, having held myself for so long in readiness to prevent it, I stood now aghast with some kind of fog in my mind, and watched it happen.

‘What should I offer you, Gideon? Congratulations?'

And although I had had the same thought an hour ago, the terrible mockery in Gervase's voice chilled me.

‘You can go to hell, Gervase.'

‘I shouldn't wonder. And where are
you
going, Gideon? To Listonby to tell them the good news?'

‘Get out of my way.'

‘Oh—I reckon you'll make sure of that.'

‘I reckon I might.'

And with an accompanying obscenity I had not heard before but easily understood, he put the flat of his hand on Gervase's chest and pushed hard.

I shook my head, cleared it, and somehow put myself between them, relying not on strength to keep them apart but on the fact that as boys they had been trained not to hit girls, that gentlemen did not strike ladies. And even then there was some more pushing and shoving, Gideon rock-hard, his eyes completely blank, Gervase like some kind of cold flame, my intervention merely making it harder for them to get at one another.

A scandalous, ridiculous performance in any circumstances, appalling in these. ‘Stop it!' I shrieked, becoming ridiculous too, striking out with my fists in all directions, this feminine violence which ordinarily would have amused them reducing their own to a point where insults began to seem more appropriate than blows.

‘You didn't know what you had in her,' hissed Gervase, shaking now with hatred and hurt. ‘Talk about pearls before swine—and you were the swine all right, Chard.'

‘I don't have to defend myself to an idle parasite—and a bloody alley-cat, like you.'

‘Then try defending yourself to a hanging judge—that's what I'd like to see.'

‘I told you, Gervase—get out of my way and out of my sight—
now
.'

‘And out of
your
house too, I reckon. Is that it, Gideon?'

There was no answer.

‘I see,' said Gervase. ‘Then listen here, Chard, and I'll tell you what you can do with this house, and those mills, and everything else that goes with them.'

He told him, explicitly, obscenely, with a total and damning contempt. And when he had done—when he had entirely slaughtered the Barforth side of himself—I ran after him down the long, stone steps into the garden and caught him on the carriage-drive, walking fast towards the stable block.

‘Gervase—oh Gervase, not like this—just a moment—'

But his nerve had snapped now, he was wild and very close to tears, and shook off my hand with a shudder as if it burned him or soiled him.

‘Leave me alone.'

And when I would not, he stood for a moment in front of me, took my shoulders in hands that hurt and shook me just once but very hard.

‘You heard me, Grace. I told him what to do with the house and the mills and whatever else goes with them. That includes you, Grace. You ought to know that.
Now
will you leave me alone?'

I watched as he disappeared around the corner, and then turned and walked back to the house, each step taken as if through water, my skirt an impossible weight around my legs, the sensation one has in dreams of movement impeded by unseen hands, of running through a barrier of weariness and going nowhere.

Gideon was standing in the open doorway, the light behind him outlining the powerful set of his shoulders, the extent of his self-assurance and his authority; Gideon, controlled and immovable, the natural leader of the herd thriving on his power to drive his rivals away. Fortune-hunter no longer, since the fortune was assured, but the dominant male of the clan, the old man in the house behind him no longer desiring to challenge him, the young man who might have challenged him having proved unwilling and unequal.

‘Let him be,' he told me calmly, in no doubt that I—a woman of the clan—must obey him. ‘Let him go to earth for a while—it can do no harm. And you, Grace, come back inside.'

She had made many mistakes in her life, which had, in the end, proved fatal to her. In her place I would not have been deceived by Charles Heron, and had I consented to a marriage of convenience I would have accepted its limitations far better than she had done. I would not have gone away with Robin Ashby, but had I done so I would have been less easily broken and quicker to mend. Being made of tougher, coarser stuff, I would have survived where finespun Venetia had not. Being less hopeful, I was less prone to disappointment. Being less honest, I was better able to compromise. But I expected no one, when my time came, to mourn me with the intensity so many of us mourned for her, no one to feel, as I now felt, that the world had grown cooler and dimmer, infinitely impoverished, for the sorry waste of her.

I had been unable at first to contemplate her funeral, but the mundane requirements of mourning had occupied my mind and I managed to stand at her graveside on that blustery March day without dwelling too closely on what the coffin contained. I had not looked at her, had refused all blandishments to try from those who assured me she was only ‘sleeping', that she looked ‘so very beautiful'when I knew she was dead and could find nothing beautiful in that.

I stood in stony immobility, irritated by the tears of Miss Mandelbaum and Mrs. Rawnsley, by the stately gesture with which Mrs. Sheldon lifted her veil and dabbed a wisp of cambric to her eyes, by the hushed and overblown condolences of Thomas Sheldon M.P., who always attended the funerals of his richer constituents; irritated most of all by the vicar, a great favourite with Mrs. Agbrigg, who appeared to find it a matter for rejoicing that she had been too good for this world and was now a resident in a ‘better place'.