The Sleeping Fury (24 page)

About half a mile across the fields a little red village lay sunk under the skeleton domes of leafless elms. The squat Norman tower of the church rose, a solid grey block, out of the huddle of tiled roofs. The sight of it brought calmness and strength to her resolution. She was resolved that she must end their unendurable deadlock. If they drifted on indefinitely in their present state, who could say what might be the end of it? She must compel Alfred to give in. In the end, when he came to his senses, when he saw happiness restored to all of them, he could not fail to be glad. But, whatever the result was for Alfred, she was resolved to save the happiness of Sylvia and Eric before it was too late. It was her duty.

Her face resumed its usual impassive handsomeness; the firm line of her mouth, with its hint of bitterness at the corners, became even sterner than usual. With a resolute movement she turned from the gate, regained the path, and continued her way home. Before she had reached the gate into the outer park her mind was made up. She was determined at all costs to break Alfred's resistance. It was necessary, absolutely necessary, that he should yield, before their peace of mind was irretrievably ruined. There had been enough sacrifice to convention and moral principles; love and youth, Eric and Sylvia, were of infinitely more importance than all these dry bones. She would not hesitate. If she were to begin puzzling over the right and wrong of what she had resolved, nothing would ever be done. Was there not, after all, something callous in Alfred? Did not that adamantine goodness of his give him a certain immunity from human feeling? He could not have been suffering what she had been suffering in these last terrible days; if he had, his obduracy would have given way. The sight of Sylvia, of the sudden heart-rending change in her, would have melted a heart of stone.

She had reached Haughton at last; she entered the kitchen garden now through a door in the wall. Already the house, with its cornice and pillars and shining windows, was visible through the screens of leafless beech-boughs. Low in the west, bars of orange light showed where an invisible sun was setting. When she reached the house, Charlotte went straight to her room, took off her outdoor things, and, having put her hair into its usual faultless order
and washed her hands, went downstairs and opened the door of Alfred's study.

• • • • • • • •

Alfred, looking up from his writing at the sound of the opening door, saw Charlotte enter the room and come towards him. Her face was very pale, and set in lines of grim determination. It seemed to him, as he gazed up at it, that it was not a human face, but a face modelled in clay.

“Alfred,” she said, coming and standing at his desk, “I have determined to tell you something that I hoped never to tell you. You have driven me to it by your … your stubbornness towards Sylvia and Eric.”

“Stubbornness? You don't believe, then, that I have been trying, all the time, only to do what is right?”

“Yes,” she said coldly and sternly, “I still believe that, but I believe that in your present state of mind you are incapable of judging what is right. You have allowed too many bonds to bind you.”

He looked at her in fear. What new attack was she going to make on him now? He was almost at the end of his endurance.

Coldly and sternly she looked him in the eyes. “Alfred,” she said, “Sylvia is not your child.”

“Not mine? “His voice was thin and toneless. “Then whose?”

“Whose could she be, if not yours? Maurice Wainwright's.”

He stared back into her eyes, and his eyes were as stern as hers.

“Charlotte, I don't believe you.”

“I ought to be glad of that, I suppose. Why don't you believe me?”

“Because I don't believe you capable of deceiving me, in the first instance, and certainly not of acting a lie for twenty-one years.”

“There were very good reasons for both, Alfred. It would have ruined your peace of mind if I had told you, and thrown you into a dilemma as … as harrowing as the one that is tormenting us all now. When I decided, after I had left you and gone to London, to return, it is clear, isn't it, that I had repented of what I had done, and had resolved to be a good wife to you? It was a kind of conversion, Alfred—something like a revolution of heart. When I had chosen that course out of consideration for you and your position, how could I destroy the good for which I had sacrificed so much by telling you, when I discovered it a few days later, that I was going to have a child? Wasn't it better to say nothing, and leave you at peace? It seemed so to me, from every point of view.”

He scanned her face with that grey, penetrating gaze of his, but her eyes did not flinch. The only signs that she was not perfectly calm were the little quick expanding and contracting of her nostrils and the play of aslight tremor in the lines about her mouth.

“Charlotte,” he asked her solemnly, “are you telling me the truth?”

“Yes, Alfred. You remember the dates, don't you?”

He nodded. “Yes, the dates don't disprove it.”

“You remember that Sylvia was born earlier than was expected.”

“Yes. Charlotte, will you swear to me that you are speaking the truth?”

“By anything you like to propose, Alfred.”

He bowed his head, and, setting one elbow on his desk, propped his brow in the palm of his hand. “And you have told me this now to escape from the difficulty of my consent.”

“I thought that if you knew that Sylvia too was illegitimate, you would no longer see any reason in withholding it.”

“Whether I do or not no longer matters. If Sylvia is not my child, my consent is not necessary.”

Charlotte stared at him for a moment speechless, her mouth ajar. “Alfred,” she gasped, “that had never occurred to me. I didn't want to … to dispense with your consent. I wanted to give you a good reason for consenting.” She raised her hand to her forehead, as if dazed and exhausted. “I'll leave you now, Alfred,” she said. “We'll speak of this another time.”

Tall and upright, with her face of clay, she turned from him and went out of the room. The effect on him of her shocked surprise at what he had said was, for some inexplicable reason, to convince him finally that what she had told him was the truth.

• • • • • • • •

In the evening, when Sylvia had gone to her bedroom early, as she generally did now, they talked of it again.

“What do you feel about it now? “Charlotte asked with a tremulous anxiety in her voice.

He made a gesture of weary indifference.

“Do you feel,” she persisted, “that they may marry now?”

“There seems no reason why they shouldn't. I can't say. I don't seem to have any opinions left. It is as if … as if the whole house had crumbled about my ears. I'm afraid I'm too tired to think, Charlotte, or to care to pick out the … the ethics from so much wreckage.”

He heaved a deep-drawn sigh. His face had become almost as grey as his hair. His voice was the weak, muted voice of a dying man. “Does Sylvia know about this?” he asked,

“No, and I don't want her to know, Alfred.”

“You want her still to believe that she's … my daughter?”

“Yes.”

Leaning back in his chair, he shaded his eyes with his hand, and Charlotte saw that he was weeping. She rose from her chair and bent over him.

“Alfred, my dear Alfred,” she moaned, “what have I done?”

“Only what you thought was for the best, Charlotte.”

“Yes, God knows I thought it best. Oh, Alfred, if you could only feel as I do!”

He was too tired even to wonder what she meant.

Next morning Charlotte received a letter from Lady Hadlow's companion telling her that the old lady had been taken ill. The doctor believed that it was her heart, and had ordered that she must be kept absolutely still. At the time of writing she was already very much better, “and you can imagine, therefore,” wrote Miss Ley, “how difficult it is to keep her in bed. This afternoon she was determined to get up. ‘Doctors,' she said, ‘always exaggerate,' and it was only by being even more determined than she was that I persuaded her to wait for a day or two. The doctor has been again, and tells me that, though the heart action is undoubtedly much stronger, there is always the fear of another attack. I will telegraph to you and Mrs. Swyncombe tomorrow morning if he thinks it advisable you should be sent for. Perhaps, however, you will prefer to come in any case.”

Charlotte determined at once that she would go. The London train left Templeton in an hour and a half. She went to see about the packing of her things. While she was busy about her preparations, the telegram arrived: “Patient no worse, but doctor recommends your coming.” Alfred brought it to her in her bedroom. He had opened and read it to save her the agitation of doing so. How kind and helpful he was to her during that hour before her departure,
ordering the car, looking out her train from London to Fording, and sparing her as much trouble as he could.

“Alfred,” she said to him when he had delivered the telegram, “do nothing while I am away. I want to have your consent, your free consent, before they are engaged.”

“My dear,” he answered forlornly, “my consent doesn't matter.”

Charlotte looked at him earnestly. “It does to me, Alfred,” she said.

There was no time to say more, nor at the moment was there more to say. Mary, Charlotte's maid, came into the room to finish the packing, and Alfred went downstairs.

When the moment for departure came, Sylvia stole into her mother's room to say good-bye.

“My darling,” said Charlotte, putting her arms round her, “I wish I hadn't to leave you at present.”

Then, overcome by the pang of leaving Sylvia and an irresistible longing to comfort her, she said: “Don't be so despairing, my dearest. Listen; there's just a hope that everything may come right.”

Sylvia fixed wide-open eyes on her mother. “I mustn't say more, my child; I ought not to have said so much, for fear of disappointing you.”

Sylvia continued to gaze at her mother, her eyes alight with a burning question. “Mother,” she said breathlessly, “you wish it? You want us to marry?”

“Yes, darling. But you must be patient, and not too hopeful, my dearest. And don't say anything of it to Father while I am away.”

Sylvia gave her mother a long, enraptured kiss, and Charlotte left her feeling that she had called her child back to life. But ought she to have done so? Yes, the sudden marvellous change in Sylvia's eyes had put all her doubts to rest.

• • • • • • • •

She arrived at Fording several hours before Beatrix, whose journey was a much longer one. Miss Ley met Charlotte in the hall, and reported that the old lady was surprisingly better, and a few minutes later Charlotte, having taken off her travelling things, went to her mother's bedroom. At the first glimpse of the old face under its lace cap, against a background of pillow, Charlotte felt a pang, for, though she could not have said why, she was convinced that this was the end. And yet the old lady was as cheerful as ever.

“Well, Charlotte my dear,” she said, turning a smiling, birdlike glance on her daughter, “so you have come to keep me in order?”

“Yes, Mamma, and I expect implicit obedience.”

“You are very optimistic. However, with you here I shall find it less tedious in bed. Did Ley tell you that Beatrix is coming? I'm expecting her this evening. You'll have tea with me up here, won't you, my dear?”

She rang a bell that hung within her reach. In a short time a maid appeared with a tea-tray. “Elizabeth, her ladyship will have tea with me. Ah, you've brought a cup for her. That's right. You had better pour out, Charlotte; it's rather troublesome when one's in bed. I never was a great one for bed, you
know. However, I suppose we must humour Dr. Bridport for a day or two. If doctors relied on me for a living, the poor dears would starve, I'm afraid. Now tell me about Sylvia. How is she?”

“Very well, as usual, Mamma.”

“Not engaged to be married yet?”

“Not quite.”

“Not
quite
, my dear? Now tell me, who is the young man.”

“Well, Mamma, a young man called Eric Danver.”

“I remember him perfectly. A handsome boy. A nephew of Sir John Danver.”

“My dear Mamma, how do you know?”

“He played tennis with Sylvia at your last garden-party, Charlotte. A friend of young John Pennington. I asked Amy Pennington about him. I always believe in making enquiries early. It often saves trouble later. We don't want a repetition of anything like Beatrix's catastrophe.”

Charlotte sighed. “Mamma, I have come to think, nowadays, that nothing but love, so long as it is genuine love, matters.”

“My dear Charlotte! Well, thank heaven you didn't think so when Alfred proposed. If you had followed Beatrix's example, I really believe it would have killed me.”

“Really, Mamma!”

“Yes, Charlotte; sent me to my grave thirty years ago!”

Charlotte laughed, and the old lady smiled indulgently. “Dreadful child!” she said. “Even you are not a true daughter of your mother.”

When they had finished tea, Charlotte stood up. “Now, Mamma, I shall leave you to rest.”

“My dear, I've been resting all day and most of yesterday.”

“And a very good thing too.”

The old lady submitted with a sweet smile at Charlotte, and in her submissiveness and that smile Charlotte, with another pang, seemed to see the approaching end.

Two hours later Beatrix arrived, and spent half an hour before dinner with Lady Hadlow, and Charlotte did not see her mother again except to say goodnight. Miss Ley spent the night in the old lady's room. They had judged it better not to send for a nurse, so as not to alarm her, and had arranged that Miss Ley should take night duty, and Charlotte and Beatrix should take it in turns to be with her during the day. The doctor had given the necessary instructions and medicine in case of another seizure.