The Sleeping Sword

by Brenda Jagger

  ‘Poor lamb,’ she said, her shrewd, hard eyes atwinkle. ‘You are bound hand and foot, I know it. And although the bonds, if you examine them well, are made of nothing but convention, we have been so thoroughly trained, have we not, to obey mamma and papa, that it seems impossible to break free. Yes, dear, a strong-minded mamma can be a great burden. You may find a husband somewhat easier to manage.’

  And I was in no doubt that, day by day, Mrs. Agbrigg was forcing me towards that same conclusion.

  My cousin Blanche returned home at the start of the winter, looking as lovely and—one could not avoid noticing it—as virginal as ever, and immediately Aunt Caroline, who had been living quietly since the wedding, awoke to her accustomed activity, organizing an ambitious programme of winter events which one could only assume to be her swan-song. The house once more was full of guests, foxhunting gentlemen from London availing themselves of the well-stocked Listonby stables, ladies with double-barrelled names and flat, high-bred voices who sat about all day—like Blanche—in the Great Hall, where tea and muffins, hot chocolate and gingerbread, chilled white or hot, spiced wine were in constant supply, served by footmen in Listonby’s blue and gold livery who seemed possessed of the ability to materialize from thin air.

  ‘Wonderful, is it not,’ Blanche asked me, stifling a contented yawn, ‘how it all happens, as if by magic?’

  But the magician—as Blanche well knew—had been up since dawn setting these luxurious wheels in motion and would not retire that night until the last of her guests had been escorted ceremoniously to bed.

  ‘Aunt Caroline must work extremely hard,’ I suggested, but Blanche only smiled.

  ‘She loves it, Grace—simply thrives on it. She wouldn’t be without it for the world. And as for me—well, I haven’t the least notion of depriving her. It would be too unkind.’

  Yet, although Blanche seemed content to remain a pampered guest in her own home for ever, there would be times, surely, when Sir Dominic’s wife must take precedence over his widowed mother? And I wondered, with some amusement and a certain sympathy, how Aunt Caroline would come to terms with that.

  There was a change of guests that first fine November Saturday, one house-party being carefully conveyed to the station to catch the morning train, the next one not due until Monday, making dinner that night a family occasion in the small, early Georgian saloon, an apartment the colour of musk roses where Aunt Caroline—who had ‘improved’ so much else at Listonby—had retained the original century old Baroque mouldings, the elegant, satin-covered Regency chairs, the impression of great age and the gradual, heart-searching decay of great beauty.

  ‘How nice to be en famille,’ she said, smiling very brightly as Blanche sat down at the head of the table opposite her bridegroom, not troubling in the least as to where anyone else should sit; claiming, in fact, the privileges of the lady of the manor while not even appearing to notice the responsibilities. But the Duke of South Erin, very much en famille at Listonby, automatically took the place of honour to the right of Blanche, Aunt Caroline to the right of Dominic, Gideon Chard and Venetia finding themselves side by side, an indication, one supposed, that Aunt Caroline had abandoned her hopes of an earl’s daughter and decided to ‘see reason’; while Noel Chard, not receiving any instructions, hesitated, his eyes on the empty chair beside Blanche, wondering perhaps if he should be paying attention to me until his mother deposited me to the left of Dominic and released him.

  Unlike Tarn Edge, the food was superb, the service miraculous, the conversation dull, I thought, but without strain, Sir Dominic and the weather-beaten little duke confining themselves to hunting and shooting stories of a technicality which rendered them incomprehensible to me, although Gideon and even Venetia from time to time joined in, having all of them in their day jumped a wider ditch in pursuit of a craftier fox, confirming my belief, as the brandied oranges and champagne syllabubs were brought in, that a sportsman will discuss his sport with the same fervour as an invalid listing his symptoms, and to the same stultifying effect.

  Noel Chard, who had served as master of the Lawdale Hunt during Sir Dominic’s absence, made small contribution to these equine enthusiasms, his attention absorbed by Blanche, his solicitude arousing in her an even greater helplessness than usual, a total inability to manage her napkin or reach her glass which clearly convinced Noel—if few others—of her frailty and her need, at all times, to be handled with care. Aunt Caroline too was silent, not really listening to the strident voices of her sons, not even calling them to order when one of them let slip an audible ‘damn’, a sure indication that her thoughts were very much occupied.

  ‘When does Aunt Faith return from France?’ she asked me, although Blanche had mentioned the date not an hour before, and when I said that it would be the week after Christmas, she sighed and muttered: ‘How inconvenient, since they could join us—’, without specifying who or where.

  The dessert over, there was a pause, my eyes and Venetia’s going automatically to Aunt Caroline for our signal to withdraw, Dominic too glancing sharply at his mother, who had never before kept the ladies in the dining-room so long, depriving the squire of his port and cigars and the freedom to say ‘damn’and worse than that if he had a mind.

  ‘Mamma?’ he said, puzzled and rather put out, revealing himself already as a gentleman who not only expected to get his own way but to get it at once, the very moment—as any fool could see—that he desired it.

  ‘Yes, Dominic?’ she replied.

  ‘Shouldn’t you—?’

  ‘No,’ she said. ‘Not I, dear—not now.’

  And even then there was a moment before Blanche, catching her husband’s irritable eye, exclaimed, ‘Oh goodness! Are you waiting for me?’, and started to her feet, her movement clearly requiring the assistance of Noel Chard if it was to be successfully completed.

  But Aunt Caroline, having scored her point and proved her daughter-in-law to be incompetent, shook her head, turning imperious again.

  ‘In a moment, dear. First there is a word to be said, and a toast to be drunk, I think.’

  ‘Oh yes,’ Blanche agreed, sliding back into her chair, assuming the toast was to be ‘long life and happiness to the bride’, so that she was unprepared and completely vulnerable when Aunt Caroline announced: ‘Dominic, as the head of the family, already knows what I have to say. I have his approval and am in no doubt of yours. The Duke of South Erin has asked me to be his wife—and I have agreed to it, which should surprise no one.’

  And through the sudden scraping back of chairs, the exclamations and the laughter as the little duke was shaken by the hand and the tall duchess kissed in turn by each of her tall sons—all three of them keenly alive to the advantages of a ducal step-papa—I heard Venetia’s clear voice say ‘Lord, what a lark! You’ve always been a duchess, Aunt Caroline’, while Blanche, feeling the weight of Listonby already on her shoulders, howled out her dismay. ‘You didn’t tell me, Dominic.’

  The match, of course, was altogether splendid, for while South Erin was not a great political duke, his family no older than the Clevedons and the Chards themselves, he was of the nobility, not the simple landed gentry as they were, and even Sir Dominic, whose view of his own worth must have been a great comfort to him, was impressed.

  There would be a tall, somewhat dilapidated house in Belgravia for Aunt Caroline to renovate, an estate in Devonshire for her to ‘improve’in her unique fashion, a presentation at Court, for although our Queen did not approve of second marriages, considering that the heart of any decent widow should belong, like her own, in her husband’s grave, she could hardly refuse audience to the new Duchess of South Erin.

  Aunt Caroline, in fact, had done far better than anyone had expected for the second time in her life, and there was no doubt that her sons—Dominic already contemplating a flirtation with politics, Noel eager for military promotion, Gideon ready to pick up power and influence wherever he found it—were very pleased with her. They remained a long t
ime in the dining-room with the pleasant, nut-brown little duke, to tell him so; and finding Blanche’s indignation hard to bear—having no answer to her ‘How am I to manage this great barracks of a place when everyone knows I have no head for figures and cannot remember names—when I just want to be peaceful and comfortable’—I soon made my escape.

  From the painted, panelled staircase rising out of the Great Hall one reached the ballroom, the darkness of a winter evening not really hiding its gilt and crystal splendour, and beyond it came the Long Gallery, lined on both sides with massively framed Chards, their stern faces registering no surprise, in this cheapjack modern world, that a tradesman’s daughter had first married one of their descendants and had now snared herself a duke.

  But I had seen these portraits too many times before to play the old game of deciding which ones reminded me most of Dominic, or Noel, or Gideon, and walking briskly from end to end, it seemed to me that in Blanche’s shoes I would have welcomed this marriage. In Blanche’s shoes I would have resented so powerful a mother-in-law as Aunt Caroline, would already have acquainted myself with every linen cupboard and china cupboard at Listonby, with the guest book and the menu book, with the staff and the tenants, with the formidable expertise of my predecessor, so that hopefully and in time I might do even better. But Blanche’s shoes—alas—included the sporting, self-centred Sir Dominic, and smiling as I realized how little I desired to acquaint myself with him—how little, indeed, there was in him with which to be acquainted—I turned to retrace my steps and encountered Gideon, amazing myself by the lurch my stomach gave at the suspicion—I would not call it the hope—that he had come here not by chance but to look for me.

  Amazed. And then, because it was absolutely necessary to be cool, I said coolly, lightly, ‘What exciting news!’, deliberately setting a tone of insipid and safe formality.

  ‘Yes indeed—although Blanche does not seem to think so.’

  ‘Oh well, there is no need to worry about Blanche. She will find someone else to look after her.’

  ‘I daresay—except that my brother Noel will be obliged to rejoin his regiment in the New Year.’

  And not wishing to answer this, finding it too personal, too apt to lead to other things, although I could not have named them, I turned back to the portraits, chancing on the one gentleman in that gallery who was not a Chard, a saturnine and undoubtedly handsome face reminding me strongly of Mr. Nicholas Barforth, although it was Sir Joel Barforth, his and Aunt Caroline’s father.

  ‘My manufacturing grandfather,’ Gideon said, half-smiling. ‘Do you know, I believe Dominic will take that picture down when mamma has gone to South Erin. We were made to suffer, somewhat, at school because father had married into “trade”.’

  ‘But Dominic has done the same.’

  ‘Yes. But Blanche is a generation away from the more sordid side of it. And she is very beautiful.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And very spoiled.’

  ‘Yes. And I am very fond of her.’

  ‘So are we all, for there is nothing of the heavy woollen district about her. One could take her just about anywhere. And, of course, she has such a lot of money.’

  I should have been very angry with him then. He had spoken, I think, with that intention. But there was something behind his words which caught and distracted my temper, something directed against himself which, instead of the sharp retort I could have made, caused me most astonishingly to enquire, ‘Is Dominic—displeased—that you have gone into trade yourself? Does he feel—?’

  ‘What? That I am a traitor to my class? Very likely.’

  ‘Well—I am sorry for that.’

  ‘How kind. But there is no need. He may well call me a money-grubbing tradesman the next time we quarrel, but if anyone else dared to do so you can be sure my brother Dominic would knock him down.’

  ‘And you would do the same for Dominic, naturally.’

  ‘Naturally.’

  ‘Gideon—’, and I did not at all wish to ask him this question, did not wish to offer him what he would see as sympathy—which was sympathy. ‘Gideon—have you found it very difficult—I mean, in the Piece Hall and the Wool Exchange?’

  ‘Oh yes,’ he said, very nonchalant, negligent almost. ‘To tell the truth, I find Cullingford difficult altogether. But then, difficulties exist to be overcome, don’t you know?’

  ‘Yes, I do know.’

  ‘I rather thought you might.’

  And having no answer ready—because he should not have been thinking of me at all and I should not have been so very pleased, so cat-in-the-cream-pot smug to know he had—I looked up into his face and for what seemed a long time could not look away again, held by something I was unable to name but which my body recognized as desire. And not his desire alone, not merely the narrowing of his eyes in sudden concentration, the faint air of surprise about him, his attitude of listening to his own body, the quickening of his own pulse-beat, the stirrings of heat and hunger. Not that alone but my own response to it, the feeling of new blood being somehow released inside me and flowing vigorously, rhythmically, towards an awareness not only of my own body but of the dark, hard, beautiful body of Gideon Chard, rushing me headlong towards the recognition, the expectation of physical pleasure.

  I had grown accustomed to thinking of myself as a young woman of sense and moderation, but what had awakened in me now—and how could I doubt it had always been there?—was a most immoderate sensuality. And although I had known of the existence of this phenomenon—natural, I had been led to believe, in men but wanton in women—I was unprepared for the sheer force of it, the enormity, this tempestuous arousal not of the feminine side of my nature but of the female; the deep-rooted, primitive urge to submit. How glorious! How appalling! How total the self-betrayal! How complete the self-fulfilment! How perilous! Yet that spice of fear was in itself desirable, and nothing in my glowing, expanding limbs nor in my dizzy head held me away from it. He had only to touch me—only that. I could not resist him, no matter what it cost me—could not—until the moment I did so and said in a quick, cool little voice: ‘It is very dark in here and rather chilly.’

  ‘Yes,’ he said, ‘so it is,’ his voice telling me nothing, a man not without experience of women, who knew when his moment had passed.

  It was over. I had come to no harm. But as I walked back down the painted staircase I was as careful on my feet as an invalid, aware that I had escaped not by my own resolution alone, for if he had touched me, if— And my thought could extend no further, cut out, veered aside, refusing, like a fractious horse at a ditch, to hazard itself.

  We were to drive to Galton Abbey the next morning, Blanche’s satisfaction in being a married woman who could now act as chaperone to Venetia and myself altogether swamped by her gloom at Aunt Caroline’s desertion. And as we negotiated the bare November lanes she had much to say on the subject of her mother-in-law’s ambition and duplicity.

  ‘She does not care a fig about the poor little man himself, you can be very sure of that. All she sees is a ducal coronet and being a society hostess in Belgravia. Not that she will even stay in London once she gets there. Oh no, she will be forever coming back to Listonby to satisfy herself that things were better in her day. And it is not my fault, for if she intended running off like this—as I am sure she did—then she should have said so. Dominic thinks it a small matter. Just carry on, he tells me, as mother does. Well—Dominic Chard has not the faintest idea of how those stupendous meals arrive on his table four times every day, and neither have I.’

  Nor much intention, I thought, of finding out, since by the end of the first mile she was considering how a secretary, a companion, and her cousin Grace Agbrigg, might be pressed into her service.

  ‘You could come over every Friday to Monday and stay on until Tuesday, or not go home at all. You would be glad to get away from Mrs. Agbrigg, and I would be glad of you.’

  But Venetia, dismissing this suggestion out of hand, made her own d
esigns on my future very clear by declaring, ‘Nonsense, Blanche, you must manage your own life as best you can, for Grace—if she would like it—could soon have a life of her own.’

  The house at Galton was quite small and very old, older indeed than the date of its construction, the first Clevedon having come here as a conqueror, a supporter of King Henry’s breach with papal authority which had allowed him, an English Protestant, to pull the Roman Catholic abbey down and use its ancient stones to build himself a manor. I had been here only once before in childhood, when the house had seemed dark and eerie, an emptiness about it of which I could not be sure, which did not seem, somehow, to be empty at all, so that I had spent a night of terror in a low-ceilinged chamber, a heavily curtained bed, plagued by the creaking of old wood and the unaccustomed noises of the open countryside, convinced that the room was dangerous, yet not daring to venture into the passage outside, that airless, pitch-black tunnel which might have taken me anywhere.

  But today, although the house was certainly low, its colour a shade darker than the November sky, its situation, on what in another season would be a leafy bend of the river, was very beautiful; the parlour where Mrs. Barforth awaited us furnished with over-stuffed chintz, a good fire burning, an ageing dog and cat lying on the rug in pleasing harmony.

  It was not a tidy room, the pewter jugs on the mantelshelf brimming over with odds and ends of letters and bills, a button-hook, a scrap of leather, a pair of riding gloves thrown down on the sofa, the sofa itself showing traces of animal hair. Nor was Mrs. Barforth a tidy woman, having come indoors, I thought, when our carriage wheels had reminded her she was expecting guests, leaving herself no time and probably no inclination to change her riding-habit for a morning gown.