‘It is for Grace to decide,’ my father told her sadly. ‘I will neither force her nor persuade her in any direction. This is the most important decision of her life—perhaps the only real decision she will be called upon to make. I cannot interfere with her right to make it.’
But although I declared firmly and frequently that I had already decided, that I had refused him once and would do so again, no one appeared to believe me, being too involved with their own desires to notice mine.
I should be sent abroad again, Mrs. Agbrigg decreed. I would be gone soon enough, my father replied, and for the first time since his marriage stepped firmly between us and ordered her to leave me alone. I was not to be rushed, Mr. Barforth agreed. I was young and it was a big step to take. I could take it, thought Mr. Barforth, in my own good time, provided I made haste, saw reason, bowed—as a woman should—to the highly convenient workings of Fate. And quite soon, each time I opened my mouth to say no, there was no step to take, I couldn’t marry him, I had a nightmare sensation that no one heard me, that I was voiceless or that my words were somehow being converted into a foreign tongue.
‘An excellent match,’ wrote my Grandmother Agbrigg from her home in Scarborough, for she had been a Miss Hannah Barforth herself and liked the idea of the Barforth money remaining in the family.
‘I said you would be our next bride,’ Grandmamma Elinor wrote enthusiastically from her winter retreat in Cannes, for she too had been a Barforth, a pretty, dimpled Miss Elinor who had married once for money and once for love, and was still exceedingly romantic.
‘You would be very rich,’ said Blanche, ‘with more pin-money, I daresay, than I have, since Listonby seems to cost a great deal and Westminster—now that Dominic seems set on having a go at politics—will cost even more.’
But Mr. Nicholas Barforth, taking my measure more accurately, sent Venetia to assure me that the position awaiting me at Tarn Edge would not be without its element of authority and freedom.
‘I know you hate the whole idea,’ she told me, dropping down beside me on my bedroom sofa, ‘and will probably end up hating me for talking about it. But my father says—if you come to us—that you should pay no heed to me at all. I am just the daughter-at-home who has nothing to say to anything, and since mamma is never there you would be as much the mistress of Tarn Edge as if it already belonged to Gervase. Father says you could engage servants or discharge them as you wanted and make changes to suit your fancy—the house is so badly run, he says, that any change must be for the better. And Mrs. Agbrigg, you know, would never, absolutely never, be able to get past father. We just wondered if you realized that no one at all would stand in your way—’
I had not wished to realize it, suspecting how much it would tempt me. And now, being tempted, I was forced to consider it, my desire for a free and independent existence stirring me to a considerable discomfort. It would not, of course, be total freedom, for at the end of every road I would have a husband and a father-in-law to answer to. But within the confines of four very splendid walls I would have as much authority, as much liberty, as any woman could expect; more of it, perhaps, than I would ever be likely to find elsewhere. And, my mind leaping from one idea to the next, as Mr. Nicholas Barforth may have known it would, I was quick to see the scope of what he was offering, its potential and its extent; quick to realize that, since marriage was the only career open to me, I would be unlikely to find one more advantageous than this.
Of course I had no intention of marrying Gervase, since there was far more to be considered—far more—than advantage. But just supposing I did marry him, then I saw no reason why the two sides of his nature, his double inheritance, could not be reconciled.
I saw no reason, in fact, why he could not enjoy both the sporting estate of Galton, the Barforth mills, and Fieldhead besides.
Someone, in fact, must take care of Tarn Edge, for Mr. Barforth eventually would grow old and Venetia, I was sure of it, would not marry Gideon Chard nor anyone else of whom her father would be likely to approve. Her choice would be idealistic, soft-spoken, sweet-natured, a dreamer like Charles Heron who would fare no better in the mills than Gervase. When the time came someone would have to be there with a level head and a practical disposition, someone who knew how those mills had risen from the ground and did not want to see them sink back again.
Naturally, it would not be Grace Agbrigg, but Grace Agbrigg could do it if she wanted to, could make a life for herself at Tarn Edge and for some others, could provide herself with that commodity so rarely available to females of her station: some real work to do. And although these pressures, these enticements, would not in themselves have swayed my resolution, they moved me, step by slow-moving step, in their chosen direction to a point where the challenge of Tarn Edge seemed matched by the challenge of Gervase’s complex nature; to a point where I began to ask myself, with a decided loss of composure, why he wanted me.
It was not money, as with many men—perhaps with most men—it would have been; and I was ready now to admit how much the dread of being courted for my fortune, used and subsequently set aside, had haunted me. Perhaps I was even ready—although I am not sure of this—to admit a certain disappointment at the rapidity with which Gideon Chard had withdrawn from me, having made up his mind, I supposed, that if he obstructed Mr. Barforth’s plans on my account he ran the risk of losing his employment and his chance of Venetia with it.
No, Gervase Barforth did not want my money. What then?
‘Darling, you’re beautiful,’ cried Venetia.
‘Nonsense—utter nonsense!’
‘Oh, yes, you are. I’ve always envied you that mass of dark hair and those blue-grey eyes, you know I have—and you have presence, Grace, simply heaps of it. When you come into a room people look at you, and when you talk they listen. And in any case, none of that really matters. You’re beautiful because I love you.’
‘Gervase doesn’t know me well enough to love me.’
‘Now that,’ Venetia declared, ‘really is nonsense. Lord! it took me all of half an hour to fall in love with Charles, and now—only look at me—I love him more and more by the minute. And it’s good for me. I actually think it makes my hair curl and even Princess Blanche, who never notices other women, asked me the other day what I was using to give my skin such a glow. Not a jar she’s likely to dip into, I can tell you, or perhaps I should tell poor Noel. But, Grace—don’t you want to be loved?’
Yes. Yes, of course. For even studious little girls who grow to be sensible, efficient young women have indulged in a little romantic dreaming, especially when, as in my case, childhood had been cool in terms of affection, girlhood sometimes quite barren.
‘My dear,’ murmured Mrs. Rawnsley, who badly wanted to be the first to know, ‘that poor young man is so smitten that, really, one would need a heart of iron not to pity him. And when one remembers how wild he was—my dear, you have scored a triumph.’
‘He loves you,’ Venetia told me again. ‘Don’t ask why, just be glad of it. What else in the world can compare with that?’
And quite soon it came about that, although I still maintained I had no emotion to give him, I was fascinated by his.
He did not give me the easy assurance of ‘I love you, I cannot live without you’, but, pacing Mrs. Agbrigg’s drawing-room with the taut, nervous step of a caged feline, carrying from one corner to another his chagrin that once again I had turned him down, he told me: ‘I’ll wait. I was too hasty before. Don’t say anything now, Grace—please don’t say a word. Just consider—Please.’
‘I have considered. I think you are mistaken in me, Gervase. I believe your mother cannot approve of this—’
‘She will forgive me. She will see that, with you, I will be steadier and easier—because I will be happier. She will see that everything will turn out to her satisfaction just the same. Grace, they are equally my parents. Is there any reason in the world why I shouldn’t please them both?’
‘I think it ca
n be done.’
‘I believe you. I thought it altogether impossible, but now I believe you. I have to have you, Grace.’
And so, due to the highly organized communications system of Mr. Nicholas Barforth, it became known in Cullingford and in Scarborough, in certain areas of London and the South of France, that in fact he did have me; that I had become the exclusive property of the Barforths upon which any other aspiring male would be ill-advised to trespass.
Annoying, of course, when the other young men I knew kept their distance, or when Miss Mandelbaum murmured to me softly: ‘My dear, it seems you are to be congratulated, although I fear Miss Tighe will be disappointed. She was relying on you to organize our petition for woman suffrage and you will have no time now, of course—and no inclination.’ Annoying to feel myself manipulated by the powerful Mr. Barforth, yet exhilarating too, sometimes, to realize that his approval was not easily won and to wonder if I had the skill to retain it.
And increasingly, almost daily, there was Gervase, present in my life, absorbing more and more of my time and my attention, confusing and exasperating me, making me smile, warming me, sometimes touching me, sometimes making me cruel and sometimes kind—but present.
‘What a nuisance you are, Gervase!’
‘So I am.’
So he was, casting me those looks of mute reproach across everybody’s drawing-room; but if, the next day, he did not come to find me, did not appear in some doorway just a little dishevelled, a little pale, that transparent look in his eyes, quite soon I began to wonder why, to watch for him, to expect him, to miss him.
There was an evening of acute misery, an Assembly Rooms Ball, when, in a low-cut dress of white lace draped up over black silk roses, I danced with a flattering variety of young men, aware at every step—when I had been so determined not to notice it—of a silent, suffering Gervase leaning like a spectre in the buffet corner, his face drawn and strained by his inexplicable burden of wanting me. And when we did dance together I could feel no flesh on his hands, simply the bones crushing my fingers, wanting to hurt me.
‘You have no right to be jealous, Gervase—no right to be so miserable.’
‘There is nothing you can do about it, Grace. I am jealous. I am miserable.’
I made up my mind, with great firmness, that I would not be influenced by his misery. I would be pleasant and reasonable but cool, until this strange emotion of his, which had risen, like fretful summer fires, from nowhere, should burn itself out. But when he strode from the ballroom, leaving me, as he said, to my pleasures, I worried, wanted him back again, not because I actually wanted him—of course not that—but because he had looked so pale, so reckless, so very likely to bring down his horse on the cobbles or get into a fight, and already I was beginning to feel responsible.
There was a sparkling December afternoon of hard frost and brilliant sunshine when he escorted Mrs. Agbrigg and myself on a tour of the new mill at Nethercoats, an occasion when every possible attention was paid to us, beginning with glasses of sherry served by Mr. Nicholas Barforth himself and ending with an inspection, not of the whole mill, which since it extended over a full six acres would have been too exhausting, but of the finer points of it, the elaborate Italianate façade, the chimney stack, two hundred and fifty feet high, the suite of offices with their opulent oak-panelling, the extensive warehousing, six floors in all, where Barforth expertise was storing away the silks and velvets and all the other soft, luxurious fabrics which had come into demand since fashion had abandoned the crinoline.
‘You have a stupendous inheritance awaiting you, Mr. Barforth,’ said Mrs. Agbrigg as Gervase assisted us to our carriage. And, almost a stranger in his dark coat and trousers, his plain white linen, he glanced swiftly around the bustling mill-yard, the enormous chimney directly behind him, four other factory chimneys, very nearly as huge, dominating every corner of Cullingford’s horizon, each one forming part of that stupendous, that crushing birthright.
‘So I have, Mrs. Agbrigg,’ he said very quietly. ‘And unfortunately I have no natural aptitude for it. I must simply do the best I can. Grace—may I come and see you tomorrow?’
‘Yes—tomorrow.’
And instinctively, because it seemed the right thing to do—the only thing to do—I held out my hand and ignored Mrs. Agbrigg’s sharply drawn breath when he kissed it.
Lady Caroline Chard became the Duchess of South Erin in the small village church at Listonby, two days before Christmas, in the presence of her mother, Lady Verity Barforth, who had come over specially from the South of France; her brothers, Mr. Nicholas Barforth and Sir Blaize, their wives, Mrs. Georgiana Barforth resplendent in the emerald and diamond finery she kept for these occasions, Aunt Faith her sweet and lovely self in soft shades of amber and aquamarine; and a few other carefully selected guests.
Sir Dominic gave his mother away, Blanche drifting forlornly into the church to take her place between Gideon and Noel, who looked extremely handsome in the full dress uniform of a hussar, while I sat with Mrs. Agbrigg on one side of me, Gervase and Venetia on the other, Gervase taut and silent, Venetia flushed with a triumphant ecstasy since she had somehow procured an invitation for Charles Heron.
She had, I knew, seen a gread deal of him lately, her father, intent on arranging his son’s affairs, having accepted her explanations of afternoons with her mother or with me when in fact she had seized any opportunity, rushed any distance, to spend an hour with Charles.
‘I am in the process,’ she told me gaily, ‘of losing my reputation.’ Yet I knew, quite definitely, that nothing improper had occurred. She may, in the first rapture of meeting, have rushed into his arms—very likely she had—and, indeed, the mere fact of being alone with a young man by assignation was quite enough to condemn her. But Venetia was too deeply and too idealistically in love for impropriety, her embrace offering trust rather than sensuality, conveying to him no tale of urgent passion but a slow and lovely building of her hopes for the future, the strength and devotion of her whole life.
I hardly knew him; a fair, sensitive face, a quiet, hesitant manner of speaking, although his habitual themes of social justice, atheism and republicanism were strident enough. Yet he had abandoned God, I thought, because he had confused him with his own harsh father, while his revolutionary principles, when compared to some I had heard abroad, seemed relatively mild. He believed in one man one vote, with which I heartily agreed, and he had not flinched when I suggested ‘one vote one woman’. He believed in education for both sexes, and although he seemed to know more about knocking things down—like churches and royal palaces—than building things up again, there seemed every likelihood that in time he would settle down to be a responsible and, apart from his blue eyes and enchanting fair curls, quite unremarkable schoolmaster.
Charles Heron’s republicanism—inspired mainly by the refusal of our sad little Queen to show herself in public—would probably go the same way as his disregard for money, his unrealistic, if undoubtedly Christian view, that the world’s bounty should be equally shared. I smiled, knowing word for word how Mr. Nicholas Barforth would reply to that, and then in great confusion turned my head away, for in trying to locate Charles Heron at the back of the church I had found instead the dark, dissolute face of Sir Julian Flood and the tightly controlled misery of his niece Diana.
The new duchess and her merry little duke were not disposed to linger, having a mountain of Christmas engagements awaiting them in London. There was a lavish but by Listonby standards hurried wedding-breakfast, a great deal of champagne, the Duchess looking resolute and triumphant, Blanche rather smug since she had discovered a way of avoiding the social and domestic responsibilities of Listonby and of rather overshadowing her mother-in-law by announcing, the night before, that she was pregnant.
The Duchess put on her sable-trimmed coat and feathered hat, the Duke distributed handshakes and kisses as if they had been medals. There was a sudden scramble for carriages as the bridal party left for the Lon
don train, Blanche melting gracefully into tears, Venetia—glimpsed through a windowpane—holding out her narrow, boyish hand to Charles Heron, her face suffused with a joy that caused me a sharp stab of pain; and then there was Gervase, taking me out into the fine, frosty weather, to a pink winter sky above charcoal trees, a bare, empty sweep of parkland.
He had nothing to say, striding out in the sharp air at a speed somewhat beyond the capacity of my elaborate skirt and dainty shoes, his humour frowning and grim.
‘Gervase, I am quite breathless.’
‘Yes, I see.’
‘Then do you mind—?’
‘Yes,’ he said, ‘yes—I do.’ And coming to a halt by a screening circle of evergreens, he took me by the shoulders with hard, horseman’s hands and kissed me more with his teeth than his lips, a painful embrace from which I quickly broke free.
‘I think that’s quite enough—’
‘I can’t wait any longer, Grace.’
‘Then don’t wait. I told you before—’
But once again he took me in that spiked embrace, except that this time, although he hurt me, I felt pain in him and a response in my own female body which had been conditioned through the generations to offer itself, in love and in healing, on all occasions such as these.
There was an ornate iron bench close to the hedge and we sat down, his shoulders hunched, his head bowed, hiding his face as I had seen him do before, the tension in his lean body so great that it vibrated through the air between us as sharp as needles. And remembering him kneeling in the field at Galton—that treacherous memory of him weak and vulnerable—I put my hand on his shoulder, startled by the tremor that went through him, by the wild, hurt face that looked up at me, the thin mouth spitting out the words: ‘I need you, Grace. God dammit, can’t you see that? Grace—please.’
And still I thought, why me? But I was breathless now, not only from walking, and a little dizzy, feeling that I could just as easily laugh or cry; and I had no resistance when he took both my hands, rather more gently, and kissed me again.
The Sleeping Sword Page 11