Dance of the Years

by Margery Allingham

  Samuel was amused. “You’ll get on, James,” he said. “You’ve got the gift. You’ll cheat without knowing it.”

  “I shan’t!” James sprang up in sudden fury.

  “You will. You will.” Samuel avoided him deftly as he spoke. “You will, and I admire you for it. I do, really; I envy you. Keep away, James! It’s not gentlemanly to hit an undersized little jackdaw like me.”

  James stayed his hand. He was genuinely fond of Samuel, and he was grateful to him for having an actress for his mother, but he felt superior to him when he talked like that, although he could not quite see where he was wrong.

  Chapter Eight

  It was always a sore point with James, afterwards, that he could never remember much about the important occasion when old Lord Brett came to Groats to lunch. At least he could remember the occasion, and did so to his dying day, but the celebrity escaped him altogether. The distinguished author and critic made practically no impression on him, and it was another of the party who had such a remarkable effect upon him that it altered the whole course of his life.

  It was Libby who arranged the literary gathering, and Young Will never forgave her, for he said she did it “to give a pack of scribblers a chance to gloat over his father’s folly.” It was one of those very spiteful accusations which have one small grain of truth in them, for Brett was a lion in his way and would hardly have found time on his short visit south to come all the way out to Groats unless he had heard the tale and found it sufficiently romantic to take his fancy.

  Besides the celebrity, the party included Dorothea Barnum, the playwright, her brother, Libby of course, and Libby’s dull old husband who had the sensational wart on his nose; but none of these caught the imagination of the young James. Throughout the entire day his attention was absorbed by another of the visitors, and the tall young lady who was with him.

  He was a young man whose name was Edwin Castor, and the lady was his fiancée, a cold, unhappy-looking girl. Libby was chaperoning her, and she adopted a motherly attitude towards her, which James thought ridiculous and rather like a fat little hen trying to nestle a swan. However, it was the man who interested him, and nothing else that happened on that day or for many days afterwards, appeared to have any importance compared with that one, miraculous encounter.

  From the first moment that James set eyes upon Castor he venerated the man. There is no other word for his sudden, flaming admiration. He found out all he could about him immediately, and after that quite openly followed him about. Castor was a friend of Lucius, and his senior at the Bar. Libby whispered the information to James and told him to be quiet, for heaven’s sake. James did not notice her manner; he was enchanted and he edged round the little group which was sitting out in the sunlight after the meal until he could settle down near his hero.

  James never understood why Castor should have attracted him so unless it was that he was so entirely different from himself. There was no “cartyness” whatever about him. He was in the early thirties, not very tall but slenderly built, with a clear-skinned aesthetic face, a great dome of a head, and calmly intelligent grey-blue eyes. He was still golden-haired, and his hands, which delighted James, who could hardly take his eyes off them, were perfectly shaped. In one way, perhaps, they were horrible hands, almost conventionalized and inhuman, but James liked them because he had never seen any like them before. He sat on the grass and gaped at the man. Nothing he said or did escaped him, and his slightest movement and change of expression was noted and admired. He had such a remarkable ease; he seemed to be so free, so superior to all the emotional agonies which so bothered James in these days. It did not seem possible that he could ever be angry or ashamed; he had a grave, kindly smile, and there was a civilized remoteness about him which attracted the youngest Galantry out of all reason. James saw him as a sort of human ‘Eclipse,’ and he could not look away.

  The lady was interesting also. She, too, had much of the same quiet grace, but whereas Castor was obviously happy she did look discontented in spite of her beautiful face. Apparently she was kind, though, for she smiled at James with a sudden warmth which nearly made him faint, it made him so proud.

  Very little was said to him by either of them, and the really amazing thing is that he never saw either of them again, and yet they made such a difference to his life. However, it may be that it was that very fact which made the whole thing possible, for he never knew them well enough for them to become human and fallible in his eyes, and they remained to him a symbol of perfection.

  While James was having this emotional experience, considerably more far-reaching in effect than first love, of which it took the place, the party of course was continuing. James saw none of it, it passed over his head, and when Shulie entertained the distinguished guests he did not share in the general flurry of polite disappointment and embarrassment. He did not live until he was once again in peace sitting on the grass a few paces away from Castor’s chair. Most of the others had gone off to inspect the glasshouses, but old Will Galantry remained and so did Libby’s husband.

  Galantry’s gout was troubling him in these days, and once he was safely in his long chair he was very nearly immobile. Castor and Libby’s husband had remained with their host out of politeness, and James stayed because he could not bear to let his hero out of his sight. While the old M.P. was rumbling away to Galantry, Castor talked to James, and the whole familiar world of Groats was made new and glorious by his condescension.

  He had a very easy way with the child; there was a grave sensibleness in all he said, and James expanded beneath his charm. Encouraged to talk, he let himself go for one of the few times in his life. He told the stranger about his school and about the horses Jason bred, and betrayed his love of the countryside, his affection for Dorothy, and his tremendous admiration for his father.

  Castor nodded his head approvingly, and his cold eyes were kindly and encouraging. His comprehension was not quite sympathy though, his understanding was not emotional or intuitive. James felt the difference and was enraptured by it. The man was so different from himself; somehow so safe. He lived from his head. That seemed to James to be so much more reliable than always being bothered by one’s heart, as he was himself; so he went on talking to him for a long time, his dark face which would be swarthy later on became alive, and his eyes grew round and blacker in his excitement. Force and energy poured from him as he concentrated all the strength he possessed in an effort to tell, to express himself, to “put himself over.” He was not very good at it, and some people might have found him a rather overpowering young person. But Castor did not seem to mind or even to notice it.

  This thrilling conversation was broken up by Galantry suddenly ordering his son-in-law to take Mr. Castor to see the water-garden, sending James into the house to tell Richard and Donald to come and carry him indoors.

  When James had at last escaped from his errands, the two visitors had vanished. He sought them out promptly meaning to attach himself discreetly to the party, even if he was only allowed to watch the magnificent stranger in silence. He could not find them for a long time, for the grounds at Groats were laid out in a mazey fashion, but at last he did hear voices coming up the Yew Walk. There was no entrance to this leafy corridor save at the ends, and James had come upon it broadside. So he walked along on the wrong side of the hedge, meaning to join them at the top. He was not consciously eavesdropping, for it did not occur to him that their conversation might be private. Libby’s husband had hardly registered upon him as a human being at all. He had noticed his wart with interest, but that was all, and the M.P. had been talking for some time before James grasped what he was saying. The rambling, querulous voice came floating to him over the high green wall which smelt so pleasantly of aromatic dust.

  “A fool’s errand,” it said, “a fool’s errand, my dear sir, and no venture for persons of taste. An old man is entitled to his follies, but they are not an edifying exhibition. I told my wife I saw nothing in the least romantic i
n the story, and I said, too, that if the only way to coax a literary lion was to throw him one’s aged father’s weaknesses, then for my part I’d let the noble animal roar at a distance. I see nothing interesting in that poor slut, nor in the little horsey cub. But there was no stopping my wife; she’s a strong-minded woman, and she’s fascinated by literary talent. All families have linen of this sort in their presses, but damme if I see any good purpose in making a plaguey, uncomfortable pilgrimage to sniff at them.”

  A laugh from Castor fluttered over the hedge, and James with his ears burning listened for the words of the oracle, the sentence from the prince who had become miraculously in an hour the one person whose opinion really mattered in the world.

  “I agree with you that it was unwise and ungentlemanly of us to come,” said Edwin Castor, with sufficient sincerity to destroy at least some of the pomposity of the fashionable phraseology. “But to me it is remarkably interesting, quite an idyll in its way. Indeed, the only thing which makes the story pathetic, to my mind, is the fact that the old man should have married the girl. The child, you see, being no bastard, is in such an unnatural and unhappy position since the story of his birth is so well known. Had the whole affair taken the more usual course, and there had been no wedding ceremony, no one would have dreamed of commenting upon it, and your wife would then, if I may say so, have never gone out of her way to attempt to establish the alliance as a romantic love story. The boy would have run loose with those horses he loves so well, have had a little money, have married some good, hard-working country girl, and lived a very useful, happy life among simple people who would think all the more of him for being his father’s son. As it is, he must ever be at a disadvantage, for he favours his mother, and even if he escapes her influence, the recollection of her can never permit him to have quite the assurance and address which Society now demands of a man of position.”

  “He does not appear to me to lack assurance,” grumbled Libby’s husband. “He seemed to have quite enough to say for himself, if not too much.”

  “Oh, I beg to disagree with you!” Castor’s tone was authoritative. “He appeared to me to beg, even to implore reassurance. A disturbing child! Do you know it occurred to me when I was listening to him that both in a past and in a future age this tremendous insistence of ours upon the nice importance of manners and breeding, may well have seemed and still seem again to be absurd.”

  “Really?” The M.P. was interested. “You do see the revolution coming, do you? Some say it will, but for my own part I don’t. John Bull is not the same stuff as the Frenchies. I should not have taken you for an alarmist, Castor.”

  “I’m not, I assure you.” James’s oracle was laughing again. “I was merely moved to compassion by my talk with that disturbing boy. I was merely thinking that if by chance these very fine social distinctions should prove to be but a fashion, then how very unfortunate for that particular young man that he should have been born into the age he has.”

  Libby’s husband grunted. “Fashion or no, it’s a thing to which I subscribe,” he said. “You talk damned dangerously. You’re a young man and, if you’ll forgive a word from an old one, I should discourage myself from my compassions, if I were you. I can see that young whelp being a nuisance to my wife’s family the whole of his life. He may turn out well enough, but I doubt it. With a mother like that, what hope has he? The woman is not ill-bred, she’s scarce civilized. The devil knows what mountebank went into her making. The old man must be mad. The boy’s very nearly a blackamoor to start with. Fashion!” he repeated, as if the word had annoyed him. “I’ll wager it goes far deeper than fashion.”

  “Few things go deeper than fashion,” objected Castor. “As I see it, circumstances of that boy’s birth may destroy the happiness of his whole life, and yet they are purely artificial circumstances. In some other period they might easily not exist at all. I only say he is unfortunate. To me that is interesting, that is all.”

  Libby’s husband did not reply, and on the other side of the yew hedge James hesitated. Then, as was typical of him, he squared his heavy shoulders and plodded on his unaltered way to meet and join the two at the end of the Walk. Neither of them ever guessed that he had heard. It was typical of him, too, that his admiration for Castor was not in the least diminished. To James it had been ‘Eclipse’ speaking, and he was not unreasonable.

  Chapter Nine

  One autumn night, with a “God bless you, my dear, dear good girl” to Shulie, in whose arms he lay, old Galantry died. He had a melodramatic storm setting for his passing, and the trees in the park threw themselves about like old women mourners in weeping ecstasy against a blazing sky. The wind got into the house, and the bed was like a tent in a tempest; the curtains streaked with shafts of yellow candle-light, while outside the great drums of heaven rolled as though for a conqueror. It was a most unsuitable ending to a life which had never been exactly heroic. None of his children was present, for the moment came comparatively suddenly, after a long, mild illness. One minute he was his normal amused self, the next he was as grave and as nakedly sincere as Shulie had ever seen him, and the next he was no longer there. No one knew where he went to any more than they knew where a tune goes after it is played. His dying was that kind of loss but no more, for his ingredients, the notes as it were, which when played together made him old Will Galantry and no one else, persisted of course, as do anyone else’s, but many of them in little sequences which were unmistakably his own.

  All the things he had parted with consciously or unconsciously were duplicated and did not vanish with him. In Shulie, in his children, in his friends, enemies, servants and acquaintances he was divided and repeated and still alive. Anything constructive in these presents (say a sound digestion passed on to a son, or a trick of taking a tolerant view taught to a servant) had added its little to those forces for permanence and perfection in humanity, and so survived on earth.

  When his poor old body lay limp in Shulie’s arms it was no more like itself in full maturity than a withered laburnum pod in January is like the Maytime spray. It was done; finished with; empty, and no more use to him or anyone else. Old Will Galantry had had his tune played right through and was dispersed again, and his soul and score went into God’s great pocket to be kept no doubt, if it was good enough, for the Final Concert.

  When Shulie saw that he was dead, she drew away from him quietly and went into the guest-room where she had been sleeping for the previous night or two. There she washed herself very thoroughly and changed her clothes down to the skin before she even told anybody. This behaviour scandalized Dorothy and the rest of the servants, who saw in it something disrespectful and shocking. Shulie gave them no explanation, and indeed had none in her forward mind. They had a terrible time with her afterwards, a nightmare experience for them, for they were very nearly as worried and uprooted as she was.

  They got the special old woman whose privilege it was to attend to important layings-out down from the village through the storm, and Shulie was kept under lock and key until her work was done, and all was made decent and correct.

  But as soon as Donald had ridden off to the doctor and the attorney with the news, Dorothy sent the maids away and let the widow out again.

  It was to her eternal credit that no one ever knew exactly what happened next that night upon the first floor of the creaking old house, which lay cowering under the fury of wind and rain; but the old woman from the village, who was still downstairs refreshing herself, carried home a tale of the sound of a tremendous quarrel which had been heard right down in the kitchen. She also said that she saw the gypsy, impassive save for her little black eyes, which were quick and bright like a lizard’s, sitting on the top of the stairs with a lighted taper in her hand. Behind her, Dorothy stood like a sentinel across the threshold of the master’s bedroom, guarding the corpse, so the old woman said. None of Shulie’s descendants were told the tale, but generations of little village children were frightened by that strange picture, the ex
planation of which only the few who knew the gypsy habit of burning their dead in their caravans, could guess.

  Anyhow, when morning came and the bright day spread over the wreckage under the trees, and the birds plumed their feathers, and the wood animals scraped the twigs out of their silk fur, Galantry’s body lay stiff and at peace in the big, gilt bed, which was as tidy as a carved tomb.

  It was the maids clearing up after the funeral who found that the red curtains were charred in several places where the flame had touched them, and knew then that Dorothy had averted yet another scandal.

  There was one scandal though which Dorothy did not avoid. That day after the storm, before Young Will arrived, before James came from school, before even the officials appeared, Shulie went away. No one saw her go or knew if she stood for a moment with her arms spread out, letting the wind play round her, and then, since there was nothing any more to hold her back, plunged strongly out into the green and brown world as free and thoughtless as a blackbird out of a skep, or if she crept away sadly, or if she went in tears. Nobody at Groats knew anything about Shulie any more; her departure was as swift and extraordinary as a conjuring trick. At dawn she was sitting in the cold guest room, and ten minutes later she was nowhere in the house or grounds. It took them all some time to grasp what had happened, and then they were shocked.

  There had been an encampment of dark-faced people down in the hollow behind Jason’s house for some little time; since soon after Galantry had taken to his bed in fact. But none of the household had given them much thought until they noticed that as soon as the old man died they packed up quietly and went away. They disappeared as gypsies do; one moment they were there and the next there was no sign of them.

  The gay, narrow-waisted waggons which looked like rolls of parchment tied in the middle; the strings of horses and the squealing children had vanished, and with them had gone Shulie. And so had her finery, and a little iron box Galantry had had made for her some time before.