The Sleeping Sword (65 page)

‘No,' he said, very sharply for him. ‘No, Grace, I'll not borrow your money. I thought I could do it when the time came, believe me—I fully intended to do it. You were a kind of insurance, I suppose, at the back of my mind— always there and always willing. But now—well—no, Grace. I won't borrow your money. It turns out that I'm too fond of you—quite a bit too fond of you—for that.

‘It makes no real difference,' Camille told me, speaking of her uncertain status. ‘Nicholas would marry me if he could, because then he could give me things and leave me things without interference from Duchess Caroline. But what exists between us could be made no deeper by a legal document. I wish you would fall in love, Grace.'

‘No, thank you. Is that all you can think of now, Camille?'

‘Do you know, I believe it is. It leaves me no room for anything else. One day you will see.'

‘I very much doubt it. I don't think I would care to build my life entirely around another person. Yes, I know women are supposed to give themselves completely in love and marriage, and I have seen some women dissolve themselves in their menfolk with obvious fulfilment. You, for instance, and Aunt Faith. It is certainly what Venetia
wanted
to do, and it would probably have saved her life had she succeeded. It seems dangerous to me. Perhaps it is not in my nature.'

But Camille dismissed my objections with the smile of a woman who no longer uses the word ‘perhaps'—a woman who
knows
.

‘I used to think that too, and I did not dissolve myself in my husband, you may be very sure. We were colleagues and companions, which was pleasant enough, and we thought it daring and very progressive to tell everyone we were no more than fond of each other. And “fond” was very nice, you know. Life was busy and various, quite complicated sometimes, and full of concerns and necessities, battles to fight and problems to solve—like your life, I suppose. Now there is Nicholas. I wonder, sometimes, what all the rest was really about.'

‘Camille, you are not so blinded as all that.'

‘I am.'

I did not entirely believe her, but no one, after two minutes in her company, could have been unaware of her bliss. Her house, set high and very lonely on the cliffs looking down on the Spa and, across the grey sweep of the bay, offering a view of the steep little town and its ancient castle, was not large, a square box merely of four rooms downstairs and four rooms up, but set in a shady, high-walled garden and furnished with a blend of luxury and cosiness that was essentially Camille.

‘A perfect little love-nest,' my Grandmother Agbrigg described it, although she had never been inside and in any case her experience of such establishments could only have been slight. Yet so it was, over-abundant in its splendours; the typical retreat of an elderly millionaire and a penniless woman, who apart from youth and beauty had also, surprisingly, brought him love.

Nor was she shy of expressing it whenever the mood overcame her.

‘I adore you, Nicholas,' she would tell him, leaning through the evening firelight or suddenly taking his arm and squeezing it during an afternoon stroll, a declaration made as naturally as a remark about the weather.

‘Excellent!' he would answer gruffly. ‘See that it continues.'

‘Oh, it will, for it does you so much good. Your sister thinks I shall very likely kill you, but in fact I have never seen you look so well. And I have not heard you cough once all winter, not even when you have been obliged to go to Cullingford.'

But his visits to Cullingford grew fewer and fewer, Gideon being called to Scarborough instead at regular intervals to give an account of himself, occasions which Camille found difficult, for although he was always charming and even treated her sometimes with the same teasing gallantry she found very acceptable in Gervase, he was nevertheless Aunt Caroline's son and she felt certain he shared his mother's belief that her involvement with Nicholas Barforth was solely for money.

‘He kisses my hand sometimes,' she told me, ‘and admires my dress, and he has a look at my shoulders while he is about it, and I know he is thinking what a clever little minx I am to have got myself so many diamonds and furs and a snug little place in Nicholas's will, but that when the time comes I had better watch out, for he will not let me have everything my way. Well, when
that
time comes I shall be too stricken to care or even to notice how they carve up the mills. They will have no trouble with
me
. How dreadful, Grace! Gervase never makes me feel like that, although I believe Duchess Caroline has accused him of worming his way into my favour. Heavens! I never expected to see the day when my “favour” counted for anything, although Gervase certainly has it and I am not ashamed to say so. What absolute hell these families are, for, as Nicholas says, there is plenty to go round and all we ask in return is that they leave us in peace.'

Yet, despite her understandable reluctance, she entertained Gideon and Miss Madeley-Brown to a celebration dinner shortly after their engagement was officially announced, Gideon considering it politic to introduce his chairman and his bride, although Aunt Caroline—who had brought Miss Madeley-Brown to Scarborough under her chaperonage—remained adamantly at the Grand Hotel.

‘She is very splendid to look at,' Camille told me, ‘and has a diamond solitaire quite as big as mine. She sat and watched it sparkle in the candlelight for most of the evening, being too refined, I suppose, for conversation. Certainly she thought herself a cut above me. When I took her into the drawing-room after dinner I was not at all sure what I would do with her, for I knew our gentlemen would stay a full hour over their port and cigars. But I had no need to worry. She looked at her ring again and arranged the flounces of her skirt and was perfectly content. She rides— that much I
did
discover—and Nicholas says she will be very accommodating in bed and what more can a Chard want in a wife than that? Caroline would not come here to dine, of course, but I am afraid Nicholas forced her to take tea with me at the Grand—told her absolutely straight that unless she did he would not even
discuss
Tarn Edge, which just goes to show what money can really do. Oh dear, that dreadful house! I wish Nicholas would just give it to them as a wedding present and have done, for I shall never live in it.'

But Tarn Edge was a valuable property not to be parted with lightly, and further complicated by the fact that if half of it might reasonably have been expected to pass to Venetia—and consequently to Gideon—the other half might equally well be considered as belonging to Gervase. Aunt Caroline made another journey to Scarborough, alone this time, abandoning her husband on his sickbed at South Erin in her determination to do her duty by the son who most resembled her. Gideon was to make a splendid marriage and needed a suitable home for his bride. He had lived at Tarn Edge now for nine years, had maintained and staffed it at his own expense this last year or two. Rent free? How dare her brother suggest such a thing. Or if he did suggest it, then perhaps he might like to consider his granddaughter, Claire Chard—who was no granddaughter of hers—and who had been maintained, rent-free, at Listonby virtually since her birth. Mr. Barforth did not wish to consider that. He did not wish to remind Aunt Caroline that her son's entry into the Barforth mills—bringing nothing with him but his ambitions—and his eventual shareholding had depended entirely on his marriage, in full knowledge of the circumstances and ramifications, to Venetia. He did not wish to remind her of any of these things, although he forced himself to do so.

For a moment brother and sister faced each other across a gulf which seemed likely to widen into a final breach, and then, because in their way they were fond of each other, they backed down, Aunt Caroline hastily, Mr. Barforth deliberately, having led her, I suppose, to the point he had intended. There might be a measure of right on her side, he conceded. Gideon had worked very hard and certainly his efficiency had made Mr. Barforth's own life much easier this last year or two. Yes indeed, it was a great relief to see the business in the hands of a man whose commercial acumen he could trust. But, looked at another way, where would that man be today without Nicholas Barforth? A country parsonage, perhaps? Some minor administrative appointment in India? And Mr. Barforth wished to make it very clear that, if Gideon Chard ever became the owner of Tarn Edge, it would be because such an arrangement was pleasing to Mr. Barforth, not on account of any pressure whatsoever from either his sister, his managing director or even from Camille. Mr. Barforth, as always, would decide for himself and when he had reached a decision he would let his sister, his managing director and any other interested party know.

A valuable house, then, full of valuable furnishings, silver, pictures, porcelain, built fifty years ago by Sir Joel Barforth to astonish the Law Valley with its grandeur. If Gideon wanted it, no doubt he could afford to buy it, since he drew healthy dividends every year, was the possessor of a princely salary and engaged in various profitable little trading ventures of his own from time to time of which his uncle—and his managing director—was supposed to be unaware. All circumstances considered, perhaps the best thing would be to have a proper valuation, after which Mr. Barforth could name his price, half the market value perhaps, which he would then most likely pay over to Gervase. That way Gideon would be getting Venetia's half of the house for nothing, which seemed fair enough. Mr. Barforth had felt obliged to provide a home for his daughter and for his son, but hardly for his son-in-law's second wife. And if the dowry was as handsome as one had been led to believe, then Gideon would be in easy street in any case.

‘How absolutely splendid!' remarked Gervase when I next visited Galton to inspect the progress of his prize Friesians. ‘I shall invest my share in land, of course. And then I shall buy our lovely Camille a rather ostentatious gift to convince Aunt Caroline more than ever that we have been conspiring against her. Perhaps we could go somewhere rather expensive, you and I, and choose it together?'

‘To convince Aunt Caroline of
our
conspiracy?'

‘No, Grace dear, for the simple pleasure of your company.'

‘I have no time for shopping trips, Gervase. I am not the squire of Galton with nothing to do but plant my crops and then wait for them to grow. I must be at my desk every morning, Monday to Saturday, at eight o'clock.'

‘Who says you must, Grace?'

‘I do.'

It was a rule I strictly kept, arriving so early sometimes that I was greeted only by the foraging of a hungry mouse, or, on one occasion, by a rat grooming himself serenely on my desk-top. I was becoming a strange woman, Miss Tighe said so, and I was to annoy her further that winter by a renewed interest in the women's cause. I had already stated on several occasions in the
Star
that women caught up on the treadmill of the factories and overburdened by large families could not be expected to care one way or another about the franchise, an opinion with which Miss Tighe definitely agreed, since she did not mean them to have it in any case, sticking to her belief that government, having been created to serve the interests of property, automatically excluded all those who, for whatever reason, did not possess it. Married women did not possess it, and I became aware that winter of the proposals for a new Act which, it seemed to me, would alter the entire concept of matrimony.

Former legislation—now over ten years old—had made no
real
difference, simply giving a married woman the right to keep her own earnings, which in most cases would be nothing at all or would be eaten up every pay-day by the demands of hungry children and a persistent landlord. But this new Act made the revolutionary and thrilling proposal that any women who married after the date of its passing should be allowed not only to keep, but to administer without the interference of a trustee, the money she brought with her; while as a concession to husbands who had long since spent or invested their wives' dowries, women already married might claim similar rights over any money acquired by them in the future.

It excited me and I transferred my excitement to the
Star
. What hope for fortune-hunters now? Doubtless the breed would continue to exist but at least, after the passing of the Act, they would be obliged to behave themselves, for the fortune they married would no longer be
their
fortune but would remain attached to the woman who came along with it. Never again would a man be able to spend his wife's money on himself and his mistress and leave her to starve. Perhaps few men had ever gone so far as that. One would be quite enough. But now, surely—if this new Act ever reached the Statute Book—a husband and wife would be able to look at each other differently? Surely the removal of total female dependence and total male dominion must imply that there was space for two individuals in a marriage, that it was no longer a question of master and servant but of two responsible and—if possible—loving adults? And moreover, if the vote was about property and married women were about to hold on to theirs, what objection could Miss Tighe and her party raise against their claiming the vote, on equal terms with those widows and spinsters so dear to Miss Tighe's heart? None, I declared and went on declaring it until Liam, harassed by yet another increase of rent, no nearer to finding new premises and increasingly uncomfortable in the old, requested me to devote at least part of my time to other things, such as a wedding in the family of one of our principal advertisers, who had little interest in votes for women.

I attended that wedding on a chill December Saturday and spent the evening cheerlessly writing all the flattering, tedious details of white silk and orange blossoms, describing the extreme elegance of the mother of the bride, the dignity and substance of the father, a saddler whose patronage was not only desirable but necessary to the
Star
. And when it was done—when I had tried to see the bride as a lamb going to the slaughter and had been forced to admit she had looked extremely happy about it—I wrote a letter to Camille putting off her invitation for Christmas, since I knew Gervase would be in Scarborough then and I was reluc tant—by fits and starts—to grow any closer to him.