The Sleeping Sword (7 page)

‘Badly overspent, Gervase?' Mr. Barforth asked, naming in an astoundingly casual manner an offence any other Cullingford father would have dealt with as a major crime. To which his son, still lounging at ease—although he seemed to have turned rather pale—replied in like manner, presenting so complete a picture of an expensive, useless young gentleman that I glanced at him keenly, finding his portrayal too perfect and wondering if he was attempting, as I often did with Mrs. Agbrigg, to see just how far he could go.

‘Much the same as usual.'

‘And is there a chance this month, do you think, of my getting a return on my money?'

‘It rather depends what sort of return you had in mind, sir.'

‘Oh, nothing much—I wouldn't ask much.'

‘That's good of you, sir.'

And now the atmosphere between them, although I could still not have called it anger, chilled me, warning me that, whatever name they gave to it, it was tortuous and hurtful and unpleasant.

‘I want somebody to go down to London and take a man out to dinner. You could manage that, I reckon?'

‘Well, yes, I could,' agreed Gervase, his drawling accent belonging so accurately to the public school he had never attended that once again I glanced at him, recognizing his intention to provoke, to enrage, to demonstrate that his father's opinion of him was if anything not bad enough. And what hurt him and strained him—as I had so often been hurt and strained in my combat with Mrs. Agbrigg—was that his father would not be provoked, had no need to be enraged, being possessed absolutely of the power and the authority that would ensure him, every time, an easy victory.

‘I know where London is, sir—there'd be no trouble about that. But this man you want me to meet—does he understand the wool trade?'

‘No,' Mr. Barforth said, smiling grimly, ‘he does not. He understands horses and guns—the American variety of both—and I reckon you'll find other things in common. You could take him to a tailor and a music-hall—and a few other places of entertainment I expect you'll know about—if you feel up to the responsibility, that is.'

‘One tends to rise to the occasion.'

‘Good. Tomorrow, then. The morning train. I'd planned to send Liam Adair but he's needed.'

‘How very nice for him,' Gervase said sweetly, ‘to be needed.'

And now at last there was anger, just a moment that contained the possibility of a bellow of rage, a box on the ear, the easy, healthy curses which any other father would already have been hurling at any other son. But—since anger implies a degree of caring, or hoping, and is a warm thing in any case—the moment froze, or withered, and with a casual ‘I'll make my arrangements, then', Gervase got up and walked away, brushing a hand lightly against Venetia's shoulder as he passed.

‘Doesn't it occur to you, papa,' she said, staring down at her hands, folded tightly before her on the table, ‘that one day perhaps he won't come back? In his place I don't think I'd come back—not every time.'

But her father chose neither to hear nor to reply, asking me instead for more coffee, which he accepted with a smile of amazing charm, his grim contempt giving way to an altogether unexpected cordiality.

‘I hear you did very well in Switzerland, Grace.'

‘As well as I could, Mr. Barforth.'

‘Aye—which put you so far at the head of your class as to set your father wishing you'd been born a boy. He reckons you could run Fieldhead mill, if you were the right gender, without much trouble.'

‘I am very pleased he should think so.'

And offering me once again that astonishing smile he submitted me to a moment's scrutiny, examining me as carefully as if he had never seen me before, a keen mind assessing not only my appearance, my character, but the uses to which they might be put, as if—like Gideon Chard—I had come to him for employment.

‘Didn't you know,' Venetia said when he had left the room, ‘how charming he can be?'

‘Why, yes—I suppose I did.'

‘I suppose you did not, because he has never taken the trouble to be nice to you before. Lord, he even charms me sometimes! Well, Grace, you had better watch out, because he must want something from you, or from your father. I wonder what it can be? Perhaps he wants to send me abroad, out of harm's way, and thinks you'd be the one to keep an eye on me. Or perhaps he's just picked you out as the right wife for Gervase. Heavens! I didn't mean to say that—'

‘Then please don't say it again.'

‘I won't, for there's no hope of it. Gervase won't get married for ages yet. He's enjoying himself too much. And when he does he'll go to one of the foxhunting set—Diana Flood, I suppose, if she keeps on making eyes at him in that odious fashion.'

‘I gather you don't much care for Diana Flood.'

She shrugged, her mind probing beyond Miss Flood, who was known to me only as the niece of Sir Julian Flood whose family had held the manor of Cullingford as long as there had been Chards at Listonby and Clevedons at Galton Abbey; a gentleman, in fact, who intrigued me rather more than the equestrienne Diana, since it had long been rumoured that if Venetia's mother had ever had a lover, then most assuredly it had been—might still be—the impecunious, unsteady, yet undeniably well-bred Sir Julian. Yet if these rumours had reached Venetia she made light of them now, displaying no more than a mild irritation towards the girl who might well become her sister-in-law, a young lady whose aristocratic notions and athletic habits must surely appeal both to Gervase Barforth and to his Clevedon mother.

‘Oh, there's no harm in her—at least, if she'd leave Gervase alone she'd be as bearable as the rest of them, with their eternal hunting stories.'

‘You go hunting yourself, Venetia.'

‘So I do. But that's not all I do. It's not all I think about. It's not all Gervase thinks about either—except that when he spends too much time with the Floods and the Chards and the rest he becomes so like them that really one can hardly tell the difference.'

‘Do you see much of the Chards?' I asked cautiously, hoping against all the odds that she might blush, turn coy, make some fond reference to Gideon which would reassure me that Charles Heron had not really absorbed the whole of her heart and her mind. But she only shrugged again, her gesture tossing the very substantial Chards quite easily away.

‘From time to time. Dominic and Noel never come to town, but Gideon is here sometimes, talking textiles to father and talking down to Gervase. He doesn't talk to me.'

‘Don't you like him?'

‘Gideon? He's well enough. Clever, of course, and very good-looking, and my word doesn't he just know it! But all the Chards are like that. I believe I envy them. It must be very pleasant to have such a good opinion of oneself.'

‘Ah—I see. You have a poor opinion of Venetia Barforth, do you?'

She laughed and shook her head. ‘I suppose not. It's just that sometimes I'm not too sure who Venetia Barforth really is—or Gervase. It has never been easy, you know, with a father who is so very much a Barforth and a mother so much a Clevedon that all our lives what has been right for her has been wrong for him. And because we could never please them both, we were always in a state somehow of having to choose. Well, I suppose for me those days are over. I'm a female and females don't inherit. No one is going to make me squire of Galton or master of the Barforth mills. Gervase is the one who has to make that decision. I just hope he lives long enough.'

‘Now what on earth does that mean?' She smiled, shook herself a little.

‘Oh, well—the Clevedon males tend to burn themselves out rather soon, you know, or they get themselves killed. The graveyard at Galton is full of them, most of them cut down or shot down in battle, but others not—My mother's father fell an early victim to the brandy bottle and there was her brother, of course, our Uncle Perry, who took one fence too many and broke his neck. The wild red Clevedons—you must have heard the country people call us that? It appeals mightily to Gervase, until he remembers his name is actually Barforth.'

‘And then?'

‘Yes—then he takes a higher fence or a wider ditch. Whatever the Floods or the Chards or the Wintertons can do, he can do it better or more of it. He can, too—so far.'

‘And you, Venetia?'

‘Yes,' she said, her face softening, richly glowing as always at any reminder of Charles Heron. ‘I have my own fences to jump too, do I not? I am not naive, Grace. I know my father will never consent to Charles. It makes no difference at all to the way I feel. I think Gervase could fall in love too—I really think so.'

‘And you wouldn't like it to be with Diana Flood?'

‘No,' she said, frowning, concentrating hard, as if, quite slowly, she was working something out, reaching a long-suspected conclusion. ‘No, I wouldn't. I know mother wouldn't agree with me, because Diana likes all the things mother likes and can do all the things mother can do, and of course she'd make a splendid new mistress for Galton—and that matters tremendously to mother. But Galton is made of stone and he's not. What I'm saying is—oh dear—'

‘That you don't want to lose your brother to the foxhunting set?'

‘Oh, that's part of it—a big part. But there are two sides to him, you know, and whatever he says, and whatever mother says, I'm not sure the Clevedon side is the strongest.

He's a Barforth, after all, and what's wrong with that? Why shouldn't he be a Barforth? Oh Grace, I don't know why I never thought of this before, and of course I shouldn't say it and I know it won't happen—nothing so marvellous
could
happen. But if I could have a wish—just one—since I already have Charles, then I'd—'

‘Venetia, if it's what I think it is, then please—'

‘Then please just let me say it, just once, in case a good fairy should be listening. If I could have that solitary wish, then I'd wish for Gervase to marry you.'

‘Mr. Gervase Barforth,' Mrs. Agbrigg remarked sweetly the following morning across the breakfast table, ‘is a young man of a most unreliable disposition. It is a connection I do not wish to encourage and must ask you to co-operate.'

‘He will be very rich, Mrs. Agbrigg.'

‘And very spendthrift. On the other hand, Mr. Gideon Chard has a most pleasing manner …'

‘And nothing much to be spendthrift with, Mrs. Agbrigg, I imagine, since he is only a third son.'

‘But of such an excellent mother,' she said, still very sweetly smiling, demolishing my insolence by ignoring it.

‘So we are to encourage the Chard connection?'

‘If we have the sense we were born with, dear Grace, we must endeavour to do so.'

‘You have not heard the rumour then, that he is being held in reserve for Venetia?'

‘I have,' she said, stately, imperturbable. ‘But rumour is often at fault. An ambitious man requires a woman of sense to partner him—which Venetia is not. A man who enjoys material possessions rather than philosophical concepts—and I believe Gideon Chard to be that kind of man—needs a wife of a practical rather than a whimsical turn of mind, Venetia may be fascinating and affectionate, but a young man with his way to make in the world might not feel safe with her, no matter what promises were made to him by her father.'

‘Heavens, Mrs. Agbrigg, how dull you make me sound! Am I really so safe and sensible and thrifty?'

‘Sensible enough,' she said quietly, ‘to get yourself creditably married. Tell me, dear, do you see any particular reason for delay?'

I did not expect either Gideon or Gervase to pay me any further attention, for Gideon's best interests were certainly with Venetia, while Gervase, who despised commerce, could hardly wish to ally himself to one of its daughters. But Mrs. Agbrigg's next ‘at home' day brought first one and then the other, Gervase accompanied by his father, who may, for all I knew, have dragged him to that stuffy gathering of teacups and bread and butter by the scruff of his neck. The two young men came separately and did not meet each other, remaining no longer than the correct quarter of an hour, Gervase replying very languidly, almost without opening his lips, to the few remarks which Mrs. Agbrigg, aware of his father's powerful eye upon her, addressed to him.

‘Yes, ma'am.'

‘As you say, ma'am.'

And when her back was turned he gave me an almost imperceptible wink, an exaggerated grimace of dismay which inclined me—for the first time in that hushed and hallowed drawing-room—to giggle.

But Gideon Chard was received with an enthusiasm I found distasteful, an eagerness to display our worldly goods to him and hint at the existence of more which covered me with shame.

‘Pleasant house you have here, Mrs. Agbrigg,' he told her, rather, it seemed to me, as if he owned it and was thinking of increasing her rent.

‘Pleasant enough, Mr. Chard—only a mill-house, of course, although I do my best with it. I have had my little notions of moving into the country, but my husband—as yet—cannot bear to be separated from his mill.'

And there, in those few words, she had placed it all before him, had sown a tempting seed to convince him that the Agbrigg daughter had not only good sense, a safe disposition and a prosperous business to offer her husband, but the possibility of a country estate, which would be regarded as a most enticing bonus by the sporting Mr. Gideon Chard.

‘No, I cannot persuade my husband to leave the view of the mill we have from this window.'

‘Indeed?' he said, striding to the window she indicated and staring keen-eyed down the slope of lawn and flowerbeds and over the hedge to the mill-yard. ‘An excellent view—and a splendid building, if I may say so.'

‘How kind! Should industrial architecture be of interest to you, my husband would be delighted to show you around.'