Dance of the Years (11 page)

“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.

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 explanation 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.

No one quite realized old Galantry's part in this flight until afterwards, and then they could hardly credit it. Three days after he died, he was carried down the lane on a waggon and laid beside his first wife. Dorothy did not permit herself fanciful thoughts as a rule, but she did allow a grim smile to pass over her lips as she wondered what
that
lady would have to say to him.

Young Will and Lucius walked in front of the cortège, while James, looking as unlike them as a square, smooth-haired mongrel in a litter of spaniels, walked behind. All the time as the stones rattled under his shoes he was wondering with the wretchedness of forsaken youth, what in the world was to happen to him now.

When the practical earth had received all the part of old Galantry that was no use any more, his will was read over in his library, and apart from his elder children, the whole gathering was a trifle nervous. James noticed it in spite of his own alarm. He could feel the emotion in the room, and saw very vividly the sudden disintegration of the small world which had revolved round his father. The old man's power had never struck him so forcibly before, and in spite of his anxiety he noticed that he liked it, and was very grateful that it should have existed.

As old Galantry's plans became apparent nearly everybody present was surprised and impressed. The estate was fairly divided between the elder children, as was expected and thought proper, but the other provisions were not so conventional. The great surprise was the arrangement he had made for Shulie. It was not stated how much she had received, but it was made quite clear that she had been given her portion and was expected to retire with it to her own people. This legalizing and condoning of her abrupt departure was startling.
It put people in their places; all their worrying about “the woman” was snubbed and dismissed in a couple of lines.

Young Will's wife tortured herself for years with speculations about the jewels Shulie must be squandering, but she never discovered what they were, or even if there had been any.

James received fifteen thousand pounds, exactly half the sum left to the other younger sons, and to everyone's amazement Dorothy, of all people, was appointed his guardian until he should come of age. Dorothy herself was left a cottage, certain furniture, and one thousand pounds carefully invested. Jason received most of the horses under his care, and a stretch of pasture with a house upon it, and he wept with gratitude and probably relief at the intimation.

The two lawyers made it clear they thought it all very generous, and all the more responsible people present felt somehow that old Galantry had rebuked them each, personally, by being so intelligent and settling his affairs so neatly. The picture of him as a selfish old lunatic had been so well established for so long that this sudden evidence of his sense and discernment somehow made his behaviour seem even more outrageous, for it proved that he knew, and always had known, exactly what he was doing. Indeed, once his desires had been made known there was very little for anybody to do except for each man to take his portion. It was all arranged, there was nothing left to quarrel about.

There everything might have rested had it not been for Lucius. He was a lawyer himself, and was constitutionally incapable of leaving well alone. He was a smaller man than his father had been, rounder and with sharper eyes. He had made up his mind what was going to happen to Shulie and James as soon as his father died, long before the event happened. In his own mind he had settled the business in a way which appeared to him to be entirely logical; so to have his plans upset like this irritated him intensely. Although the matter was nothing whatever to do with him, he set about ‘putting things right' as soon as possible.

Where Shulie was concerned he could do nothing, of course, since old Galantry had forestalled any move of that sort. Undiscouraged, he continued his plans for James. After dinner on the night of the funeral, he went into the library alone and sent for Dorothy. James had not been asked to dine with his half-brothers, and had not done so, and over the meal Lucius had told his brothers what he had prepared for James and Young Will had agreed absently.

Once in the library Lucius told Dorothy very graciously that she was no longer a servant. He joked her gently about being now a woman of independent means, and asked her to sit down. Dorothy thanked him, but said she preferred to stand. Her face was impassive
as usual, and she permitted him to think that she had made up her mind to cling to the old ways. This, as it happened, was not true at all.

Lucius sat back in his chair. He looked lean and intelligent, quick-witted and self-important, and was quite unaware that she thought him an insufferable and dangerous little man, and was remembering, with contempt, certain unfortunate weaknesses he had had as a child. In her heart she was desperately afraid for her darling, and her wits were as sharp as cat's claws as she waited to defend him.

Lucius began to explain that he had been thinking a great deal about James. “Fifteen thousand pounds,” he said, “is a great deal of money for a youngster in that position. It is too much. Half would have been wiser. Still it has been done, and there it is. My dear father evidently had a very soft spot for the child; men do sometimes feel like that about the son of their old age.”

Dorothy made no comment, but seeing that she still looked respectful, if not very intelligent, he went on trying to make himself very clear.

“The important thing, you know, Dorothy,” he said, “is that this boy must be protected from himself. If he continues at school for another year and fritters away his time picking up undesirable acquaintances, until he comes into full possession of his little fortune, he'll run through it in a year or so, and will then have to fall back with God knows what encumbrances upon a family whose resources will not be at all what they once were. That must never be allowed to happen. You do understand that, don't you?”

Still she did not speak, and he began to treat her as if she was a dummy at which he was rehearsing a speech.

“Yes, yes,” he said, “you probably understand the situation better than I do myself. After all, you know the boy and you knew his mother, and you know how dangerous little traits do come out in children.”