The Sleeping Fury (18 page)

Having finished her tea and lost interest in the drawing-room, she rose with surprising alertness from the sofa, and, accompanied by Amy Pennington, returned to her chair near the tennis-courts.

“Who is the old lady like a hawk, with your mother?” Eric asked John.

“That is Lady Hadlow, Lady Mardale's mother. She has been doing a little quiet detective-work about you, Eric. You had the presumption, you see, to play tennis with her granddaughter, and so it became necessary for her to enquire into your family history. Unfortunately, having omitted to do so myself during the six or seven years of our
acquaintance, I was unable to enlighten her. She, you must realise, was an Ebernoe, and when one is, or was, an Ebernoe, one cannot be too particular.”

“And what is an Ebernoe?”

“Sh … sh! If you wish, in a cathedral, to enquire who God the Father is, it is wiser to do so in a whisper, Eric. An Ebernoe, you must know, thanks God daily that he is not as other men. The rest of us, on the other hand, are more inclined to thank God that other men are not as Ebernoes. But she has her points, and, for eighty-two, she's a marvellous goer. She still turns up every year in London for the season.”

• • • • • • • •

Eric saw little that day of Lord or Lady Mardale, but, what was more to his purpose, he played two sets of tennis with Sylvia as his partner, and after the second set she took him to see the fine old water-garden, of which John had told him, which had been laid out at the time of the building of the house. How wonderful it seemed to them to be together, away from the crowd of guests; to saunter along the stone pavements between the formal ponds, each with its fountain and water-lilies, or to pause and watch the goldfish glide like small red torpedoes through the dark crystal of the water, visible between the flat green shields of the lily-leaves. They were entranced at the discovery of one another, and as they talked they glanced at each other with a shy wonder, as if each were the first human creature the other had seen. When they came to the little temple where, more than
twenty years ago, Charlotte had wept for Maurice, they went in and sat down. It gave them a delicious sense of intimacy to sit together in that secret place, with its stony chill and the faint smell of mould. When their talk flagged, the glassy noise of the fountains came through the half-open door like a musical, gently persistent rain.

“I suppose we ought to go back,” she said at last in a tone that charmingly admitted her regret, and, when they had returned to the crowd and she had left him, Eric felt that they shared a rapturous secret.

During the week that followed, he met Sylvia twice again. Then his visit to the Manor House came to an end, and he returned to his mother in London.

• • • • • • • •

At Christmas-time he was invited again to the Penningtons'. “I can offer you,” wrote John, “a dance in the neighbourhood and a luncheon-party here. In case these are not in themselves inducements, I beg to add that the Mardales—
all
the Mardales—will be at the luncheon and are certain also to be at the dance. I make no remarks; I merely proffer the information.”

Eric could only get away from London for three days. He arrived at the Manor House on the morning of the luncheon-party and spent two agitated hours looking forward to the arrival of the Mardales. They were the last of the guests to come, and during the hour and a half that they were at the Manor House Eric and Sylvia exchanged only a few sentences. They were shy of seeking one another
out and of talking in company, and each avoided the other, casting despairing glances from a distance and feeling, each, that they had drifted hopelessly apart since their last meeting in the summer. Eric's only consolation had been that he had sat next to Lady Mardale at luncheon and she had been very friendly to him, and this, he felt, would make it easier for Sylvia and him to meet in the future. He had almost got over his awe of Lady Mardale now. He had discovered that her coldness and austerity were only external: in all she said he was aware of an unmistakable sincerity, and she charmed him by talking to him without the least suggestion that he was a young man and she a middle-aged woman. And when her stern, handsome face relaxed sometimes into a smile, he saw in her a humanity and a beauty which he had not at first suspected.

And so the pain of his disappointment was comforted a little, and a still greater comfort came when, as the Mardales were going, Sylvia came up to him and, on shaking hands, asked: “Will you be at the Crofts' dance on Thursday?”

“Yes,” he said. “Will you?”

She nodded.

“Keep one or two dances for me,” he whispered as she hurried away to join her parents.

Charlotte Mardale sat watching the dancers. She had not danced herself, but she was far from being bored, for there were many friends to talk to and she enjoyed the spectacle of the many-coloured shapes sliding and turning kaleidoscopically against the white and gold walls of the pleasant Georgian ballroom. Especially she loved to watch the young people. With her own youth and all the emotions of youth so far behind her, youth seemed to her a lovely and flower-like thing. The energy and gay confidence of these girls and boys touched her deeply. Young John Pennington passed her. She raised her lorgnette; no one could call John handsome, and yet there was in him, too, the magic of youth as he danced past, tall and slim, with the tall, dark girl in green. There, too, was Molly Croft, the youngest of the Croft girls, a plump, laughing, light-haired little creature, very like her mother. And what a charming, comical boy she was dancing with, laughing like herself, with ginger hair and a quaint turned-up nose—the jolly, fox-terrier type, she said to herself. And then, searching the moving crowd for her own daughter, she caught sight of Eric Danver. She would recognise that clean, golden head anywhere, with its haunting likeness to Maurice. All but his head was hidden by the crowd, and she watched for him to turn at the end of the
room and come round in front of where she sat. Ah, it was Sylvia he was dancing with. They glided into view. Dress-clothes brought out still more his likeness to Maurice. “Clean,” she thought to herself, trying to define the quality in them both that so captivated her; “clean-cut; a clean-cut Englishman.” How lovely Sylvia looked in her jasmine yellow silk—that colour had been an inspiration. Beautiful, beautiful young creatures. Charlotte felt the tears rise to her eyes at the sight of them. What would life do to them? How would they be, twenty-five years hence? “O God,” her heart cried out, “be kind to them—kinder than to me.”

They glided past her, lost in one another, it seemed; or was it only that dancing had heightened their colour and made their eyes shine? There was something pool-like and flower-like in the eyes of children and young folk, a depth and purity which time dimmed too soon. They were lost now in the crowd. Again Charlotte felt that sense of reconciliation. Life, which had robbed her of so much, had somehow atoned for the robbery. Maurice, and what Maurice had meant to her, were in some inexpressible way still with her.

• • • • • • • •

Eric Danver and John Pennington, having in the small hours arrived back at the Manor House from the dance, declared that they were not sleepy, that they could not possibly go to bed yet, and retreated to John's study, just, as they said, for a drink.

John, handing a glass to his friend, stood gravely inspecting him. “Eric,” he said; “what exactly is the matter with you?”

“The matter?”

“The matter! Concealment is useless, even if it were possible. A dance, in itself, is not sufficient to transfigure a perfectly sane young man. Is it love, Eric, or a feverish cold? I insist on an explanation. Surely you haven't gone as far as …?”

“As it happens, I have,” said Eric, cheeks glowing and eyes shining.

“You proposed?”

“Yes.”

“To Sylvia Halnaker?”

“Well, who else would it be?”

“Oh, God knows. Hard-bitten
roués
like you, Eric, are quite unpredictable. And the answer, as occasionally in the House, was in the affirmative?”

“Yes. But I suppose we have to wait to hear what Lord and Lady Mardale have to say about it.”

“Unless you consider abduction simpler.”

“Sylvia asked me to go over to tea to-morrow, and I could, of course, if you wouldn't mind letting me have a car. I could catch my train, you see, at Templeton.”

“But of course we'll send you.”

“That's very good of you, John. But what do I do when I get there? That's what I want to know. Must I ask to see Lord Mardale and … ”

“And demand the hand of his daughter. Certainly. And Lord Mardale will rise from his study chair and either shake you formally by the hand or kick you formally downstairs. But here, now that I think of it, we are faced with a difficulty: his lordship's study is on the ground floor.”

“But seriously, John, I haven't a notion what to do.”

“It's useless, Eric, your trying to convince me that this is the first peer's daughter you have proposed to. But seriously; Sylvia, surely, in our immodest modern way, will have blurted the whole thing out before you get there, and Lord Mardale will, I suppose, have a talk with you. My dear chap, I do hope all goes well. I won't congratulate you now; but you must send me a wire at the first opportunity, and, if all's for the best, I'll come up to London for a night and we'll have a dinner to celebrate the occasion. And if all's for the worst, we'll still have a dinner, to drown our despair. Eh?” Then a dry smile lit up John's face. “By the way,” he said, “you haven't wasted much time, have you, when one comes to think of it?”

• • • • • • • •

It was half-past four in the morning when the Mardales got back to Haughton from the dance. Sylvia went to her mother's room to help her to take off her jewellery and dress. As she stood behind her mother's chair, unfastening the clasp of her necklace, she raised her eyes and saw her mother's reflection in the mirror before her, like a portrait in its frame. What a lovely portrait she made, with her grey hair and the soft pallor of her throat and neck and face, pearly above the lustrous, plum-coloured brocade. The necklace flashed and twinkled as she tried to undo the clasp. How sad her mother's face was! Why was it, she wondered, that she always looked so sad? The clasp yielded, and with a glitter of falling water the necklace dropped.

Sylvia stood still, holding it by one end. “Shall I tell you a secret, Mother?” she said.

Charlotte's heart leapt as if at the sound of a warning. She looked up at the mirror before her, and saw, in the gold dust of the reflected lamplight behind her own reflection, the blushing face of her daughter. “Do, dearest,” she said calmly.

“Someone proposed to me to-night.”

“My dear!”

Sylvia laughed happily. “And if he hadn't, I believe I should have proposed to him. You know who, don't you, Mother?”

“I could guess.”

“Oh, do say you like him, Mother.”

“But, dearest …”

“Oh, I know what you're going to say: I hardly know him. But that makes no difference, Mother, when you fall in love. I don't suppose you quite realise, because you and father had known each other so long, hadn't you? Mother, the first moment I saw him I felt that … that he was different—different for me, at least—from everyone else. Why, I spent the whole of October, November, and December thinking of him.”

“And never a word to me, you bad child?”

“But it might all have come to nothing, Mother. I wasn't even sure that he felt the same.”

“Do you know anything about him, Sylvia?”

“Not a thing, my dear, and don't care. I know he's a darling; that's enough. Don't say you don't like him, Mother.”

“No, I won't, dearest. I'll even say I like him very much indeed.”

“And think him very good-looking?”

“Very, very good-looking.”

“Are you saying this just to please me?” Sylvia seized her mother by the shoulders and stared into her eyes.

Charlotte smiled. “I'm saying it, dearest, because I really mean it.”

Sylvia gave her mother a loud kiss. “He has to go back to London to-morrow evening—that is, this evening—so I told him to come here to tea on the way, and catch his train at Templeton. You see, he will have to see Father about it. Oh, Mother, you do think Father will be pleased, don't you?”

“Yes, dear, I do; but I think he may very likely suggest that you wait a little.”

“Wait?”

“Just a little, before you are actually engaged.”

How old and cold and calculating she sounded to herself. And all the while she longed to throw her arms round her child and tell her that she thought Eric the nicest boy in the world, and that of course they should marry whenever they liked. But common sense restrained her. Common sense, she thought to herself, my besetting sin, that fatal poison that quenches all the noble fire of life. And yet it was not only common sense this time. It was caution, care for Sylvia's precious happiness. For, after all, they knew next to nothing yet about the boy. Alfred would have to make a few enquiries before anything was fixed. But in the end, of course, it would be all right; one had only to look at Eric to be sure of that.

Sylvia was watching her, a little crestfallen. “Oh,
Mother, you think Father will say that? Well, promise me, anyhow, that you won't put it into his head.”

Charlotte laughed. “Yes, I promise. But, if he does say so, you mustn't be disappointed, dearest. After all, you'll be able to meet just the same, when he can get away from his work. And now, off you go to bed, my dear. I can do all the rest for myself. One minute! Let me unhook your dress before you go.”

When the hooks were undone, Charlotte threw her arms around her daughter and kissed her. “My darling,” she said, “I do hope you will be very, very happy.”