The Sleeping Fury

MARTIN ARMSTRONG

Book I
Charlotte At Fifty

Book II
Charlotte Asleep
(Past History)

Book III
Charlotte Awakes
(Past History)

Book IV
Charlotte's second
awakening

Young Eric Danver, handsome, blue-eyed, and golden-haired, stood at the edge of the tennis-court unrolling the sleeves of his shirt and talking to John Pennington, who was doing the same. The two girls who had been their partners had moved away towards a group of onlookers who sat on deck-chairs ranged along the edge of the court. Two other chairs, detached a little from the rest, stood beside the two young men. Before the set they had just finished they had hung their coats on them, and now they unhooked the coats and began to put them on.

“Let us sit here,” said John to his guest. “I'm tired of talking polite small-talk. Besides, I haven't had a chance of talking to you since you arrived. I'm glad you managed to catch the earlier train.”

“I only just caught it,” said Danver; “snatched it, in fact, when it was already well on its way.”

“Well, a train in the hand is worth two in the time-table. You haven't, I hope, been very bored among all this crowd of strangers?”

Young Danver smiled. “Far from it,” he said. “Your mother kindly introduced me to lots of people. Besides, I've played tennis almost from the moment I arrived.”

“Then you haven't seen the place yet?”

“Well,” said Eric, “I
have
seen something of it. I walked about, after a set, with one of my partners.”

“A nice partner?”

“Very nice, thank you.”

“Young, charming, innocent?”

Eric laughed and blushed. “The trouble with you, John,” he said, “is that you want to know too much.”

John sighed deeply and made a gesture of profound despair. The pretence that Eric was a crafty and unscrupulous Don Juan was one of his pet jokes. “Would it be too grossly inquisitive,” he asked, “to enquire if, at least, you like the place?”

“It's marvellous,” replied Eric. “Almost too good to be true.” His eyes flitted over the courts towards the long, low front of the Manor House, half hidden among trees. On the lawns that stretched from its windows, shapes of bright colour moved slowly among the flower-beds and over the lawns. Other moving figures were to be seen through the gaps in a yew-hedge which enclosed a formal garden; there the colours of the women's dresses showed with a gem-like richness against the walls and pyramids of black yew which rose here and there to the stiff, fantastic shape of a peacock or a dragon.

“Your father must have been glad to come back,” he said.

“He was,” said John; “and so were all of us. We used to come here a great deal, you see, in my grandfather's time; but I was only seven when he cleared out and left the place. Couldn't afford to keep it up. It takes some keeping up, as you can imagine. My grandfather was, unhappily, somewhat too interested in the Turf. Not this turf”—he tapped the ground with his foot—“ but the Turf in
general. You understand? I thought perhaps, in your beautiful innocence … No? Forgive me. Well, my grandfather's interest in the Turf in general was such that he had no interest left, and precious little capital either, for this particular turf, those yew-hedges, the house, and so forth. So out he had to go, and, as you know, we've been recovering, with the help of my mother, ever since.” He paused, and glanced at Eric. “It was lucky that my father married money,” he said.

As he had hoped, this off-hand reference to his mother embarrassed Eric. “How nice of you, dear Eric,” he went on, “to blush for my mother. But it's useless to blink the facts: my father undeniably married money. Still, it was, I must admit, very
nice
money; don't you think so, Eric? And she, on her side, poor woman, thinks that
you're
nice, because I have never revealed your real character to her. I have spared her all those painful details of broken hearts, ravished maidens, inquests, and so on. No; as much for her sake as yours, I have always refrained from giving you away, Eric.”

Another four had taken possession of the tennis-court, and the game had already begun when Eric noticed with a leap of the heart that one of the two girls playing was that partner of his with whom he had walked round the grounds. He had been enormously attracted by her, so much so that he had been shy of speaking to John about her; and now, when he was dying to ask who she was and where she lived, he dared not, for he felt that his enthral-ment would betray itself at once in his eyes, in his voice, in the very manner of his enquiry. And so he
talked of other things, or listened to the gaily cynical chatter of his friend. But, whether he talked or listened, his eyes followed the playing girl in fascinated wonder. What was it, he asked himself, that was so enchanting about her? Her looks certainly were enchanting; the small face with its compact, neatly modelled features, the large, deep-blue eyes under the delicate, dark brows, the alert, confident expression of her face, like a little hawk without the hawk's fierceness. And the movements of her slim, well-knit body, alert and confident as the expression of her face, were enchanting too. But there was something that enchanted him still more than these things—something that he could not explain. Her sudden arrival on the scene had turned this garden-party into a delicious adventure for him. He sat now, his blue eyes absorbed in watching the small white figure. Shoes, stockings, and dress were all white. Even her hat was white except for the little bunch of bright blue feathers in it. He longed for her to take it off, so that he could see her hair. Gradually all talk between him and John ceased. John must have noticed his abstraction and have wearied of talking to one who refused him more than a fraction of his attention, for after a short time he got up from his chair.

“Let us walk about a bit,” he said, and Eric reluctantly rose and followed him. He heaved a deep, inaudible sigh. How wonderful life was! How wonderful this old garden, full of sunshine and shadows, shining lawns and blazing flower-beds, among which all these dignified, beautifully dressed people strolled and sat! A sudden intoxication seized him. He had
an irresistible longing to shout and dance and turn cartwheels on the grass. How surprised John would have been, he thought to himself. But, however great John's surprise, he would have shown none. He would have accepted the outbreak as if it were the most ordinary thing in the world. “Evidently, my dear boy,” Eric imagined him saying, “you are in need of a drink.”

They walked on over the close-cropped lawn until the trees drew back and revealed the whole long front of the many-gabled house, its weathered brick smouldering with a dark fire behind the massed colours of the flower-beds. It was the very essence of England, the rich, rural England which flourishes still through all the superficial changes of period, creed, and politics. For four centuries the old house had brooded benignly upon its green lawns, and dignified, leisured folk, in the various fashions of the various periods, had moved in and out of its doors and paced under its trees, among its flower-beds, over its flawless turf. The gay spectacle which the place presented to-day must be the counterpart of numberless others seen throughout the four hundred summers since the house had been built, all of them identical except for the differences of fashion in the dresses of the company and the addition, perhaps, or removal, of a door or window or chimney, or a small change in the disposition of the flower-beds. The spell of the place seemed to Eric almost too intense for common daily life. Surely, living in such a place, one would be absorbed by it; one's little self, with its desires and energies, swallowed up in the great ancestral self into which, like a single mote
in a great shaft of sunlight, one had drifted for a few brief years.

“Isn't it almost too beautiful?” he said, when they had strolled in silence for some time.

John turned his head sharply. Eric's remark had shocked him out of his usual impassiveness. “You don't like it?” he asked.

“Like it?” said Eric. “I'm entranced by it. That's just it. I feel it must be overpowering to have it always.”

“One gets acclimatised,” said John; “which means, I suppose, that one becomes less acutely aware of its beauty; but that surely is inevitable, and, in fact, desirable. You can't go about all day long in an ecstasy; neither body nor soul would stand it. Besides, one has not, I believe, reached the point of real appreciation until one has become habituated. At first the thing absorbs you; you resign yourself, and become a part of it. But after a while you absorb it and make it a part of yourself. You regain your self-possession. However, I may be wrong. I evolved the theory on the spur of the moment. What do you think?”

“I don't know,” said Eric. “With you it may be so, because you do love the place; but I feel that a good many of these people take it all for granted. They have lovely places of their own; they live surrounded by exquisite things, and take no more notice of them than I do of my mother's little house in St. John's Wood.”

“No, perhaps they don't; but the exquisite things influence them, for all that. Without them, these folk would not be what they are. Whether
what they are is of any value is, I suppose, a matter of opinion. It all depends on what value you attach to what we call refinement.”

Eric was silent for a moment. “How much do you include,” he asked at last, “in what you call refinement? Mere dignity of bearing, mere good manners, aren't worth much without goodness of heart. Nor is even refinement, in the sense of culture. They're very ornamental, I grant you, but little more than ornamental. The most heartless and inhuman creature I ever met had lovely manners, and was highly intelligent into the bargain; but, though he was very good company, when all's said and done he was an awful swine.”

“Oh, I quite agree that manners alone, and culture alone, and the two together alone, are not worth much.”

“And don't you think it possible that the acquirement of fine manners, and, in fact, all conventionality of behaviour, are rather apt to suppress feeling, to choke all heartiness and gusto?”

John smiled one of his acid little smiles. “Humph!” he said. “I'm not very keen on gusto. I fancy that eruptions of feeling generally explode the feeling itself. The whole thing goes up in noise and gesticulation. Besides, your very hearty man is generally an awful bore.”

Eric laughed. He remembered his impulse to dance and turn cartwheels on the lawn a few minutes before. Yes, certainly John would have been shocked.

“I wonder who the lady was who talked to me during tea,” he said.

“Is she a case in point or merely a change of
subject, Eric? Merely, in fact, another example of your shameless preoccupation with the sex? I like that expression ‘the sex,' don't you?”

“She is a case in point,” said Eric, “a superb case.”

“Describe her. Young? Beautiful?”

“Old, and … well … not beautiful; but prodigiously impressive. In fact, she's formidable. The manner and dignity of the proverbial duchess; but as cold as an iceberg—a beautifully chiselled iceberg. And yet,” he added, as if reflectively to himself, “she was awfully nice to me. And I liked her eyes. But I did feel horribly cowed. I felt, you know, that she would never condescend to express the smallest emotion, and I felt, too, that all the time I was under inspection.”

“And you probably were, my son. If you
will
mask the blackness of your soul under that blameless and prepossessing exterior. …”

But Eric was not listening. His eyes were turned to where the broad gravel walk which ran parallel with the front of the house ended in the formal yew-hedged garden. “There she is,” he said, “there at the end of the path, with your father.”

“That?” said John. “Oh, that's Lady Mardale. Ah! no wonder you felt as you did, my poor Eric. But Lady Mardale's tremendous. She's a national monument; and surely, Eric, you don't expect warmth from a national monument. All the same, she's an awfully good sort.”