Dance of the Years (10 page)

James looked up with interest, but said nothing. There was a considerable mystery about Samuel. He himself gave several different versions of his home life, all highly coloured. At one time he had been badly bullied, but as the years had gone on he had gradually become accepted and had been left in peace.

Mr. Philby was never unkind to Samuel, but he contrived to keep him, as it were, at arms' length. James took a deep breath. He wanted to confide in somebody, and Samuel was very close to him.

“It worried me,” he said, “because I can't really help it. There's a sort of streak which keeps coming out in me. I've never told anybody, but my mother was a gypsy.”

“Pooh,” said Samuel, “that's only romantic. My mother's an actress; that's why old Philly keeps me so quiet.”

“An actress?” said James blankly. In spite of his fellow feeling for Samuel the information shocked him considerably. “I say! And your father's dead, isn't he?”

Samuel hesitated. His blue eyes looked almost black in their slitted sockets, and James thought they were smiling although the rest of his face was grave.

“My father was a noble soldier, my dear James,” he said. “Covered all over with gold and wounds, I shouldn't wonder.”

James was silent. He was not at all sure Samuel was serious. If he was, of course, it was a sad subject; if not, he was being indelicate. Still, if his mother really was an actress that explained much. Samuel was quite right. Mr. Philby was not a Non-Conformist, but he did live in a nest of them, and the Dissenter's view of the stage at that time was quite definite. It was Hell's own ante-room, and that was all there was to it.

James sat on his bed, his sticky fingers grasping his warm glass, and looked remarkably like Shulie. He was thinking how complicated it all was. The discovery that whole dozens of groups of adult persons honestly believed utterly different things filled him with that sense of mingled injustice and despair which must come once to every child.

Samuel appeared to be thinking on the same lines.

“Look'ee, James,” he said. “If I had gone to one of the big schools, I should have got on better, always providing my mother had kept a coach. That's the first thing they ask you at Westminster, you know. If you can say ‘Yes,' they leave you alone. I should have been all right because actresses are in fashion among the swells. All the best people marry actresses. Lord Thurlow, Lord Craven, Mr. Becher, Robert Heathcoat, Mr. Coutts; every one of them married a woman on the stage. It's only among the thick-headed John Bulls that the actress is not considered fit for polite society.

“So you see, had it not been that I have no coach, I might be quite in the mode. I tell you, James, one thing becomes very clear to me. It's silly.”

“What is?”

“All of it.” Samuel was enjoying himself. “It's all mad. The world is unreasonable, James, ain't it? There's only one thing for poor devils like us to do in it, and that's to find out what is the admiration of the company we happen to be with, and then to ascribe to it. That's what I say.”

James suspected he was quoting somebody, and was not so impressed as he might have been. “I shan't,” he said, “I shall be myself.”

“The Gypsy Squire?” said Samuel. “It sounds like a play, don't it? Let's write it.”

James blushed. He wished he had not told Samuel about Shulie.

“No,” he said angrily, “I'm not a gypsy. I shall be myself, my father's son.”

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.

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 in 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.”