The Sleeping Sword (20 page)

I knew it and would not believe it, worked hard to convince myself otherwise—for this was not the unique destiny I had imagined for her and I would miss her terribly—until her maid picked up her ball gown, thinking she might as well get on with her mending, and from its green gauze skirts fluttered Venetia's letter to me.

‘Darling, you did not think this of me, did you? And believe me, I would have preferred the parish church and all the family, and father to give me away. But you must know he would never allow it and I have told you I cannot stand up to him. Darling, I wanted to tell you. I even wanted to tell Gideon last night and to apologize to him because I have used him rather, to throw sand in father's eyes—not that Gideon will care for that. Gervase will understand that this is right for me, that I don't mind about the money should father decide to disown me. Dear Grace, I told you once before that this is the only life I have, my one chance to get it right. And this
is
right. Please tell Gervase and learn to be happy for me.'

I sat down on her bed and let a long time go by while I prayed, fervently yet without too much conviction: ‘Venetia, I do hope so'; then more time while I indulged myself in a few tears and a great deal of slow, brooding anxiety. And then I wrote a note to my father-in-law stressing how urgently I required to see him and had them take it to the mill.

I had no idea what I could say to him and, in fact, said nothing, simply handing him the note and waiting, not daring to look at him, while he read it. But no thunder bolts came crashing over my head, just a curt voice saying to me: ‘The man's name?'

‘Charles Heron.'

‘The schoolmaster?'

‘Yes.'

‘And where do you suppose they have run off to?'

‘To Scotland, surely—to be married?'

He glanced down at the letter, tapped it against his hand and then slid it into his pocket.

‘Scotland? Yes, that would seem a possibility. Grace, would you kindly send to Lawcroft Mills and ask Liam Adair to come here?'

I heard, of course, only later and very gradually the details of what next occurred, piecing together from the varying accounts of those most closely concerned a picture which seemed to be exact. A lesser man than Mr. Barforth, a warmer man, would, I imagine, have set off post haste for Gretna Green, where Scottish law so obligingly allowed runaways to be married. It was the obvious place to go, too obvious to Mr. Nicholas Barforth, who all his commercial life had sat straight-faced and keen-eyed while men far shrewder than Charles Heron and far more devious than Venetia had tried to hoodwink him.

‘Ah, Liam,' he said, greeting him in the hall with a brief handshake, ‘a word in your ear, and then a little job for you'; and twenty minutes later, while Mr. Barforth remained smoking a cigar in his library, Liam rode off to St. Walburga's School, where with the inbred charm of the Irish he acquired enough snippets of information to conclude that Charles Heron had probably not taken Venetia north to a speedy and foregone conclusion, but south where the implications were less obvious and rather more sinister.

North was a declaration of certain intent, marriage at any price, a race to the altar after which the irate father might do his worst. North shouted out loud: ‘Disinherit us if you must. All that matters to us is being together.' North was where idealistic Charles and headstrong Venetia
should
have gone, for once the matrimonial knot was tied, what could her father do to her except stop her money? And she had declared often enough how little she cared for that.

South was not quite so outspoken. South, in fact, might just be the direction in which a man might take a girl to be seduced rather than married, knowing that, since there is no place in the marriage-market for damaged goods, the father of a girl so damaged must be glad to take any man—even her seducer—as her husband, at a price the husband will feel entitled to dictate. Except, of course, that Charles Heron was not that kind of man.

‘Well, Liam,' said Mr. Barforth, having ideas of his own on that score, and very soon the carriage stood at the door to take them to the train, Mr. Barforth stern and quiet. Liam serious and concerned but with a flash of excitement in him too, for if a husband should be required for Venetia in a hurry this might be his golden opportunity.

They experienced no difficulty in finding Charles Heron's father, since vicars are not notably anonymous, and the reverend gentleman proving susceptible to the temptation of golden guineas and rather intimidated in any case by the generous muscular endowment of Liam Adair, they were soon apprised of all that was needful. And less than an hour later they had located the runaways sharing the one upper room of a singularly unattractive inn, Venetia's eyes terrified, not, Liam thought, of her father but of her own disillusion. For this was not what she had expected. This was not right. She had trusted Charles Heron implicitly, feeling him so much a part of herself that it would have been impossible not to trust him. To go north, he had said, would be too great a risk. North was the direction in which her father would first look with an excellent chance of finding her before the ceremony had taken place. And so she had put her hand in his and kept it there as they headed south, to that sure hiding place which had turned out to be a meagre inn, a narrow bed where he, two nights ago now, had asked her with tears to prove her love.

She had been most reluctant to comply, having cherished for a long time a dream of her wedding night which was very far removed from this. But the loss of her virginity, being the key to Charles Heron's whole plan, could not be delayed, and using the strength of her emotions as his best weapon he had somehow made her feel that to refuse him her body would be the same as withdrawing her love. And since he couldn't live without her love, she would be killing him.

Yet, having longed for months for his embraces, she found that she could not now enjoy them, her distaste being so apparent that she felt compelled to apologize for it and was persuaded by his show of hurt feelings to go through the sorry performance again. It was to have been a magical experience, a slow progression towards perfect physical harmony. It was, in fact, quick and clumsy, as half-baked as his revolutionary theories had really been, a mere stumbling along a road that had Charles Heron's orgasm at the end of it; and when, on the second night, he pressed his hand against her stomach and said: ‘Only think—you have very likely got my son in there by now', she turned away from him and wept.

She had expected him to cower with fright when they saw her father striding across the inn yard and up the stairs, but he had remained perfectly calm, his composure—or so she thought later—increasing her suspicions that he had wanted to be discovered.

‘Mr. Barforth,' he said.

‘Mr. Heron,' my father-in-law answered him. ‘And would this, by any chance, be Mrs. Heron?'

‘You might think it desirable that she should be. Perhaps we could step downstairs to discuss how best it might be contrived?'

‘No need for that, young man. It's straightforward enough, I reckon. You've seduced my daughter, by the look of her, and I'd like to know how much you think that ought to cost me. I assume you have the figure in mind?'

‘If we could step downstairs, sir,' said Charles, somewhat embarrassed. ‘I see no reason for Venetia to be obliged to listen to this.'

But although Mr. Barforth had never doubted his ability to find his daughter and bring her home, it was no part of his plan to have her spend the next few months of her life pining for a scoundrel and he shook his head.

‘I see every reason for Venetia to listen. And because it won't be pleasant for her and she's looking out of sorts, I'll make it short. There's no money, Mr. Charles Heron. Marry her, if she'll have you. But there's no money.'

‘I can't believe that, sir.'

‘Believe it. She thinks you can live on love. I reckon you know different. There's no money.'

A braver man than Charles Heron might just have taken the gamble. Cullingford was a small town, thirsty for gossip, where a scandal of this magnitude could never be lived down. Surely Mr. Barforth could not run the risk of taking her back there as if nothing had occurred? Charles Heron had been brought up to believe in female virginity, in the enormity of its value, the tragedy of its loss. So had I. So had we all. He knew that a girl who lost it would—unless her seducer consented to marry her—be better off dead. He knew that an unmarried girl who became pregnant had no real alternative but to die, and apparently always did so, since none of us had ever encountered such a person. But Mr. Nicholas Barforth seemed unaware of his own desperate situation, ignorant of the disgrace, and would do nothing but repeat, ‘Marry her, if you like. But there's no money'; while Venetia herself, instead of falling at his feet and begging him to save her from ruin—as she
ought
to have done—simply turned her face to the wall and said not a word.

‘Marry her, if she'll have you.' And glancing at her taut, poker-straight back, Charles Heron was no longer sure she would. And when he muttered something to the effect that his heart was broken, Mr. Barforth, in order that Venetia should be in no doubt at all as to her lover's true character, offered to compensate him for any damage to that organ with the sum of a thousand pounds. That, Charles Heron declared, was paltry, ridiculous. Possibly, Mr. Barforth agreed, but nevertheless his offer would hold good until three o'clock that afternoon, at which hour it would be reduced by half. And since the time was then approaching five minutes to three, Charles Heron, so as not to come away empty-handed, took his thousand.

‘Don't think I didn't love you,' he said to Venetia's blind back. ‘Don't think that. I never pretended to be strong. And you don't know—you just can't even imagine what it's like to be poor.'

‘Perhaps now you'd care to step downstairs with my friend here,' said Mr. Barforth, ‘who will explain to you exactly what I want for my money—which is exactly nothing, no words, no letters, no boasting one night when you've had a glass or two—nothing, Mr. Heron. Mr. Adair will make it plain to you.'

And whether or not it was done on Mr. Barforth's instructions, Charles Heron tripped and fell down those inn stairs with Liam Adair's boot behind him and was kicked out into the inn yard to be paid off and sent, slightly bleeding, about his business.

‘Come on, love,' Mr. Barforth said to Venetia, ‘let's go home'; and that was all he said to her, leaving Liam to distract her as best he could throughout the difficult journey, which passed for her in a confused haze.

She had been wrong about everything. She had believed completely in Charles and, having lost faith in him, she had lost faith in herself. The world had moved, somehow, out of focus, distorting her vision so that objects she had thought solid became thin air between her fingers, objects she had thought soft and yielding seemed suddenly possessed of the power to scratch and burn her hands. Yet her loss of faith had not, to her unbearable distress, brought with it a loss of love, for the clumsy stranger of the last two days had not really been her Charles Heron. She had lost
her
Charles and certainly she would never find him again—since he had never really existed—but she had loved him with her whole heart and now, totally disassociating him from the commonplace fortune-hunter, the commonplace trap into which she had fallen, she grieved for him. She could see no hope for herself, and had her father proposed some convenient, undramatic way of self-destruction she would have been glad of it.

She could not face me when they finally brought her back to Tarn Edge, hiding her face in her father's shoulder when I came running out to the carriage-drive, clinging to him with such desperate, drowning hands that I kept my distance as he lifted her up like the child she had suddenly become and carried her upstairs.

‘Liam?'

‘She'll be all right,' he said. ‘She'll mend.' And we went together into the drawing-room, Liam answering my questions absently, listening for Mr. Barforth's return so that the first steps on the landing took him out into the hall again.

‘Ah, Liam—' said Mr. Barforth, descending the stairs slowly, a vigorous, healthy man who even in the fiftieth year of his age made nothing of a sleepless night or two in a train. And Liam Adair answered him, ‘Yes, sir?', his whole body alert, excited yet cautious, knowing that his own future, which lay in the hand of this powerful man, had already been decided.

‘I believe I'm in debt to you, Liam.'

‘There's no debt, sir.'

‘That's what I thought you'd say. Good lad, Liam. But I've made myself free with your time. You'll be wanting to get home now.'

‘Is there—nothing else I can do for you, Mr. Barforth?'

‘That's very civil of you, Liam. If there should be anything I'll let you know.'

‘I'll be off then, sir.'

‘Yes—take the carriage.'

And as Liam accepted his dismissal and turned to leave, Mr. Barforth said: ‘Chillingworth, have this note sent round to my nephew, Mr. Chard.'

Once again my father-in-law had not only made up his mind, but had succeeded against all the odds in getting his way. Yet I wondered, as I went meekly back to the drawing-room, if he would find Gideon as biddable, as grateful, perhaps as greedy as he clearly expected. The seriousness of Venetia's position required immediate marriage. Everyone would agree on that. Liam Adair would have taken her with nothing but promises for his future and the present security of her dowry. Three days ago, Gideon Chard might have done the same. But now, with these new cards in his hands, he would drive a harder bargain and Mr. Barforth would probably think him a fool if he did not. He was being asked, after all, not only to avert a scandal with the power of his noble name but, just possibly, to give that name to another man's child. And, to that end, surely, important financial concessions would be required, specific guarantees which, as I contemplated their possible nature, gave me a sharp reminder of my duty to Gervase.