The Sleeping Sword

by Brenda Jagger

  I was suffering, perhaps, from a slight concussion, certainly from a sprained ankle and a drop more brandy than I was used to at this hour of the day, and as the train began to ease its way out of the station—Gideon, no doubt, having told the driver to go slow and be damned to anybody who might be in a hurry—I began to wonder why I did not feel more ashamed.

  ‘Heavens, Gideon, what a ridiculous thing!’

  ‘Accidents happen.’

  ‘Oh—my bag—’

  ‘There, in the corner.’

  ‘Yes—oh lord, where is my hat?’ For I had just realized it was not on my head.

  ‘Ruined, I’m afraid. The railway company will buy you another.’

  ‘Oh—damnation!’

  ‘What is it now?’

  ‘I don’t know—I just feel so—’

  ‘Don’t feel anything. Just be glad you were not alone.’

  I drifted then, partly because it was easier to drift placidly, docilely, spinelessly, easier just for a little while to leave everything to him, to let him decide—since he so much enjoyed deciding—than to gather my cloudy wits together and decide for myself. And when I recovered sufficiently not merely to wonder where I was but to care what I was doing there, we were approaching Cullingford.

  ‘Will there be anyone to meet you, Grace?’

  ‘No. I am not expected until tomorrow.’

  ‘Then I will take you—’; and I allowed myself, like a dreaming child, to be ‘taken’in his carriage to a destination he did not name but which I knew, quite soon, must be Tarn Edge.

  The butler, whose extreme elegance had long been the talk of Cullingford, greeted us without the faintest hint of surprise, as if he was accustomed to see his employer arriving home every day of the week with a bareheaded, bedraggled and probably slightly tipsy woman in his arms.

  ‘Sandwiches and coffee in the drawing-room, Sherston, and a bottle of Chablis if you have one chilled.’

  ‘Certainly, sir.’

  ‘And Mrs. Barforth, I imagine, will first wish to attend to her dress.’

  ‘Certainly—at once, sir.’

  Two parlourmaids and a housekeeper with the bearing of a dowager duchess assisted me to a dressing-room, brought me hot water and warm towels, combs and brushes, and then returned me, no longer quite so bemused although still dangerously passive, to the armchair their master indicated. The drawing-room was cool and fragrant, a haven from the heat and dust of the long day, roses and carnations standing in very professional arrangements in silver-rimmed bowls of exquisitely cut crystal I had not seen before. Two nymphs in white biscuit porcelain, a foot high, were poised in graceful flight at each side of the hearth, more nymphs in costly groupings by Sèvres on the mantelshelf above them, the mirror I remembered replaced now by the portrait of a dark-eyed, curly-haired lady clad in the scanty muslin draperies of the Regency, unmistakably a Chard.

  The sandwiches, when they came, were of smoked salmon very daintily garnished, the wine ice cold in its long, fluted glasses, delighting my tongue and rising at once to join the pleasant confusion in my brain.

  ‘Well, I wanted you weak and helpless, Grace,’ he said, raising his glass to me. ‘And now I have you.’

  ‘Yes.’ Not for long, of course, but for the moment I had, not surrendered precisely, but certainly ceased to struggle. My grandfather’s fears for me had all been realized. I had exposed myself to the risks of travelling alone and a man had kidnapped me. Astonishingly, I laughed.

  ‘What is so amusing?’

  I told him, and received a slow, almost unwilling smile.

  ‘Unfortunately it is not so simple.’

  ‘Unfortunately?’

  ‘Yes, Grace. If I took you away and locked you up and made love to you often enough, you would eventually stop trying to escape and then you would stop wanting to—or so the theory goes. I can’t do that.’

  ‘Would you even want to?’

  ‘Oh yes. There was a time when I might just have succeeded. My misfortune has been that I wanted you to come as a willing captive. I have not been able to achieve that.’

  ‘Oh Gideon—Gideon—’

  Never in all the years I had known him had I seen him look so weary. Never in the whole of my life had I felt such a desire to reach out, in body and in spirit, to another person. Never before had I lost sight of my own needs, my own futile, fussy dignity, my own most precious common sense, very nearly my own identity, in my need to give whatever I could give—whatever he would take. And it seemed to me advisable that this impulse of quite overwhelming devotion should not last long either.

  ‘I thought I had made you hate me, Gideon.’

  ‘You did. I understood why and played the same game. I have hated you very well—by fits and starts.’

  ‘Yesterday you couldn’t bring yourself to speak to me.’

  ‘I do not forget it.’

  ‘That is why I took the early train today. I was running away from you.’

  ‘Is there anything new in that? You have been running away from me, have you not, ever since—’

  ‘Ever since I was eighteen and you came to have a look at Fieldhead as if you might buy it and me with it—or so I thought—and made yourself pleasant to my father’s wife instead of arranging to meet me at the bottom of the garden and trying to kiss me, and telling me—telling me—lord, why am I prattling on so?’

  ‘Telling you that I loved you? But I didn’t love you then, Grace. That happened later—would have happened no matter what the circumstances. But before I say another word—since I retain my pride in these matters, or such of it as you have left me—I must know that you have loved me too.’

  ‘Yes. Yes, of course I have.’

  ‘That will not suffice me, Grace. If you came upstairs with me now and gave yourself to me in the most slavish fashion I could devise, it would not suffice me.’

  ‘How, then?’

  ‘You have taken every opportunity you could to hurt me and humiliate me, have you not?’

  ‘Yes—I am afraid so.’

  ‘Now make atonement for it. You are a clever woman. You will find a way.’

  ‘Will it serve a purpose?’

  ‘At this stage I don’t much care for that. You are very accomplished when it comes to wounding me. I think you must now show me your skill as a healer. I need that much from you, Grace.’

  ‘Yes.’

  I had been asked only the night before if there was anyone in Cullingford who needed me and I had not expected it to be Gideon, yet now, although I could never have spoken the words and would be very likely, I believed, to deny them tomorrow, my thought urged him: ‘Yes, need me and go on needing me. Need me so that I am filled to my capacity with it and strained even beyond the limits of my need for you. Ask more of me than I can possibly give and see—just watch—how I shall find the means to give it.’ This was the consuming emotion Venetia had felt for Robin Ashby, the crusade of which I had not believed myself to be capable. I loved him. Naturally, I loved him. I had lived in the shadow of it for years. The only difference now was that I wanted to tell him so.

  ‘It was fear,’ I said slowly. ‘A physical fear to begin with because I desired you—quite acutely—and didn’t understand it. How could I? Young girls of eighteen are not supposed to understand desire. They are not even supposed to feel it. And I am not going to take all the blame, Gideon, for you were older and you were not a virgin. You could have understood and helped me get over it—couldn’t you?’

  ‘No,’ he said, smiling slowly, sadly almost, as if at a very distant memory. ‘I was behaving as I had been told a gentleman ought to behave, you see—with a virgin. I was a little older, and had a little more experience, yes, but not enough—believe me—to know that I’d have done better to drag you off somewhere by the hair. That kind of knowledge came much later. And even then, Grace, when you were eighteen, there was more to your fear of me than that. My dear—I know you didn’t trust me in those days and I know why, but you are going to t
ell me.’

  ‘Yes. I knew you needed a rich wife and I understood that. I had money and I had been told, at an early age, that men would want to marry me for it. I understood that too. My father had educated me to believe that marriages should be made with a cool head. I couldn’t name my feeling for you at that time but it was not cool, and we have all seen the pathetic spectacle a woman makes when she has married for love but has been married only for her money. That was my fear and you did nothing to alleviate it. Your marriage to Venetia suggested to me that I had been right.’

  ‘You had married Gervase by then, Grace. I certainly did not jilt you.’

  ‘And you were not in love with me then either, were you—not really?’

  He shook his head, still sadly, I thought, and slowly, a movement—like every movement he had made since entering this room—which was full of regret.

  ‘I fear not. If I had really fallen in love with you when you were eighteen and ripe for the plucking, then you would have known about it, my darling, for I would have been far less gentlemanly, with far greater success—But even so you were the reason I hesitated as long as I did in marrying Venetia. I didn’t want to share a house with you. I wasn’t sure why. I simply thought it would not be wise. Quite soon—too soon—that house, this house, in fact, would have been unbearable to me without you. Those were not easy days for me, Grace. I had a trade to learn, prejudice and hostility to overcome on both sides, for my own people thought me sadly déclassé, and any one of the managers we had then would have put a knife in my back given half a chance—and it’s a weary business when a man has to guard his back all day and every day. You were the only person who understood the effort I was making, except Nicholas Barforth, for whom no effort could ever be enough, and even he failed to realize just how damned distasteful I found those sheds—this town—any town—to begin with. I didn’t want to be a manufacturer, Grace. I simply wanted to be rich. If I could have made my money in land or on the high seas or in any other clean and clever fashion, then I’d hardly have condemned myself to twelve hours a day shut up in those mills. I think you understood that too. I think, in my place, you would have done the same.’

  ‘I understood. And I admired you enormously for it.’

  ‘Admiration? Is that all you had for me?’

  ‘Possibly not. But it was all I was prepared to admit, and I am very stubborn. You were married, Gideon, and I loved your wife like a sister.’

  ‘I know,’ he said, his smile once again heavy with regret. ‘I know. Oddly enough, so did I. Oh yes, you may look startled and surprised, but it is the plain truth. That is exactly what I felt for her, the exasperated kind of affection I would have given to a sister, and which in her case was sadly inappropriate. When she left me for Robin Ashby I made no attempt to get her back. Well, I was not slow to spot my own advantage, I never am. But the truth is that I wished her well. If it was what she wanted, then I had no mind to spoil it for her. I thought her reckless to the point of madness, but I hoped just the same that she might succeed.’

  ‘Gideon—I am so glad you told me that.’

  ‘Yes, I thought it might please you. What I am about to say now will not suit you so well. Venetia was gone, with my blessing, although she didn’t know it. I knew how Gervase was situated with Diana Flood. I can’t be certain how much Nicholas Barforth suspected but he watched me like a hawk those first few months, and so I had to keep away from you. But you were the woman I wanted and I was going to have you, my dear, as soon as ever I could. We were going to live together in the way we actually had been living together for several years, except that when the dance was over and the dinner guests had gone we were going to walk up those stairs hand in hand and get into the same bed. I was going to take you abroad with me, bully you and rely on you, spoil you and make sure you spoiled me. I was going to have you, Grace—and then suddenly there you were, asking me to take Venetia back. Once again my sense of timing had been at fault.’

  ‘I would have asked you to take her back, Gideon, even if we had already been lovers.’

  ‘My dear, I know. There is nothing I want to say about her death. But, yes, as you guessed, I was appalled when I heard of your intention to divorce Gervase—appalled and furious, and quite determined to put a stop to it. Your assessment of my motives, that night in London was quite correct. The social stigma of divorce was more than I could stomach, especially when I could see no need for it. One way or another I was going to make you abandon it and come back here with me, where I was certain you belonged. No one raises any objection to Noel and Blanche. Why should anyone have objected to us? I would have been faithful to you, you know—far more scrupulous in my behaviour than if you had really been my wife, just like Noel has to be. A man assumes his wife will forgive him. In most cases she has very little choice in the matter. But he is obliged to tread rather more warily with a mistress, who can make up her own mind. I believe Grace Barforth of the Star may have said something like that. Will you admit that I could have made you happy?’

  ‘Yes, perfectly happy—once. The life you planned for me was everything I desired and would have given me complete fulfilment—once. By the time it became possible I had moved on—forwards or backwards I don’t always know—but moved, anyway.’

  He came very swiftly to sit on the edge of my chair and leaned over me, sliding one hand beneath my shoulder-blades, gathering me up in an act of possession into which my body nestled with gratitude and content.

  ‘Grace, listen carefully, for I cannot think I shall ever say this to you again. This is all I know how to give—this house and the luxury inside it, the gracious way of life we could make for each other here. This is what I have worked to achieve and to maintain, and I shall achieve much more—much more. I can afford, by my own efforts, to surround you with ease and beauty. I can offer you protection and security. I can provide for you. These are the things I understand—the things I have always believed women wanted. Will you take them, Grace?’

  I leaned forward, my head against his shoulder, my arms around him, holding him like a woman drowning, for this was our final chance and we both knew that, once again, Time had cheated us, had forced us along parallel but separate roads, at varying rates of progress, so that we could glimpse and hope and strive but never really meet.

  ‘What must I give you in return?’

  ‘Yourself.’

  ‘Which is everything I have. You would not give me everything, Gideon. Would you allow me to continue my association with the Star.’

  ‘Of course not.’ But it was spoken sadly, no rancour, no disgust, no jealousy, just a simple statement of self-knowledge and regret. He could not.

  ‘And would you allow me to continue my work with Anna and Patrick Stone?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Would you receive them here?’

  ‘Grudgingly.’

  ‘Would you expect me to break off with them entirely?’

  ‘Yes, I would expect that. I would try not to enforce it, but if you delayed then I probably would enforce it.’

  ‘Oh, Gideon—’

  ‘Yes, I know,’ he said, his mouth against my hair. ‘You see how very carefully I have thought it over, for I am indeed a calculating man. But in this case I am as much a prisoner of my own nature as you are. I cannot rid myself of the belief that if you loved me you would willingly give up your friends and associates for my sake. I know you will not agree, but I cannot feel I am asking too much, or even anything very much at all. I am asking you to be my wife and I am entitled, surely, to my notions of what a wife should be? I am ready to be your husband, which also entails a measure of sacrifice, for if you take me there is every likelihood that my mother—of whom I am very fond and who is getting no younger—will never speak to me again.’

  I had no wish to move from the shelter of his arms, would have been grateful, I think, if he had forced me to stay there. But I had asked for freedom of choice. He had given it to me. And I knew by now that the liberty for w
hich I had struggled and on which I would not relinquish my hold could be a cruel burden indeed.

  ‘I love you, Gideon.’

  ‘I wonder what good that is going to do me?’

  ‘Very little, I suppose, unless you can accept me just as I am.’

  ‘Yes, I knew you would say that. I am prepared for it. Go on.’

  ‘And what good will it do?’

  ‘None, I suppose, for you cannot accept me as I am either. But say it.’

  ‘Gideon—you once told me I did not earn my living, that I had rejected a woman’s responsibilities and was not fit to take a man’s.’

  ‘I remember.’

  ‘Now I do earn my living, or at least now I can see the way to earn it. I can see where my living is and I have the ability—I know I have—to go out and fetch it in. I have taken the risk. I have done the work and continue to do it, whether I feel inclined for it or not; and I spare myself nothing. I may send home my clerk if he has a bad cough or a bad headache, but I do not go home myself, no matter how unwell I might feel, until the work is done. And I want you to respect me for that, Gideon, not for my dinner-parties and my dances, which are only life’s frills, after all, and come nowhere near its substance. You could not fill your life with menu cards and invitation cards and small talk, you know you could not. Neither can I. I want you to believe in my ability, Gideon, and to value it, instead of trying to dismiss it like a child’s toy. You have told me of your own early days here in the mills and how difficult it was for you to gain acceptance because they thought your accent too refined and your hands too clean—because you were not a Cullingford man. Can you imagine what it has been like for me—a woman—to gain even a hearing? I have to work ten times harder than a man, I can tell you, just to convince some people that I am actually working at all. And even now I waste hours a day sometimes—hours I cannot spare—with men who are too small-minded to take me seriously, and with women whose peace of mind I seem to threaten. I am ambitious—which is considered unwomanly—and I am not ashamed of it. Whatever I promise I perform, and since women have a reputation for light-mindedness and are generally supposed to break their promises rather freely I have to be very certain of keeping mine, not only to the letter but on time. And in any case I prefer to call these promises “commitments” which cannot be casually abandoned. You would not abandon yours. I have employed men who have wives and children to feed, and I am responsible for that. I cannot put those families in jeopardy. Neither could you. Could you?’