Dance of the Years (14 page)

He gathered that Phœbe was going to play one of the little Princes in King Richard the Third that evening, and the rôle demanded, either that she should wear grown-up tights, which must bag and sag like skimpy breeches on her, or that she should paint her legs. Apparently her mother had decided on paint. Done well, she had assured them, Samuel said, no one could possibly notice it from the front. The measure seemed to James to be a terrible expedient, and brought home to him a sense of poverty and absurdity more vividly than anything else would have done.

As the interview went on his impression grew.

Samuel begged James to excuse him, and went on with the blackening
operation while he talked. Presently someone came up the stairs and was heard to enter one of the other rooms. Phœbe and Samuel exchanged glances.

“Methinks I hear the footing of a man,” she quoted in a totally unexpected voice, adding more naturally, “I said he would come. Mr. Paton always pays in the end.”

Samuel looked at James under his lashes.

“In this world, my dear fellow,” he said affectedly, “money has not quite the regular flow like light and air which you no doubt expect of it. Here it has a certain elusive quality; it comes and it goes. You may not believe me, but I find it a circumstance which adds considerably to the entertainment of life.”

James took the information as an explanation and a warning, and the talk continued, Samuel and the girl exhibiting a verbal dexterity which took the visitor's breath away as the pair no doubt hoped it would. They were both showing off; Samuel earnestly, and Phœbe in a more casual, easy fashion. She had more brains than her half-brother, and was also stimulated perhaps by James's magnificent appearance. By this time he had grown into a most attractive looking person, vital and masculine, and sleek with health like a young animal in the spring.

Eventually the Thorpes overstepped themselves, as they were bound to in this mood. It occurred just after James had enquired after their mother's health. He could not get the little woman out of his mind. It was because she had spoken to him directly. She had said very little, of course, but she had said it as if she knew he was at least a real somebody. It was a trivial matter, but it was an example of Mrs. Thorpe's charm. To her everybody was somebody and not just an object heaving into her vision.

James was really anxious to know if she was well and not overtired or distressed. When he put the formal question he betrayed the sincerity, and was surprised to see Samuel laugh and glance up at his half-sister.

“Everyone is concerned for Mama,” said Phœbe, as she turned her back to the light so that Samuel could see what he was doing. “It is her chief remarker, don't you think so, brother?”

“Undoubtedly.” Samuel bent closer to his task, but James could see that he was blushing. Suddenly he straightened his back and continued in the tone he kept for his more consciously outrageous statements: “Indeed, we are evidences of that concern, are we not, Phœbe? The living results of overwhelming if somewhat thoughtless compassion.”

She laughed. It was a spontaneous giggle of pure amusement, and James, who was by no means as green as they thought him, saw the
full point of the bitter and scandalous little joke. Two natural children of different fathers living openly with their mother was an odd state of affairs even in that day and age.

James found it extraordinary. His own situation was honourable compared to theirs; it made him feel slightly condescending until he remembered Lucius, and, of course, Edwin Castor, and got his balance again.

He said with apparent artlessness: “Are there any more of you?”

Both young people turned and eyed him with struggling respect. Phœbe was the first to recover her self-possession.

“No,” she said, “there's only the two of us. You must see us act. Are you coming to the play to-night? Samuel may be able to get you an order for the pit.”

James thanked her, but said he would prefer to pay for his own seat. He had not meant to create an impression, although they were all at the age when that would seem to be the most important thing in life; but he happened to do so, and was not sorry to notice it.

They were both interested. Samuel had assumed that James's flight was something to do with money, and had been wasting a fellow feeling on him. The fact that he was in funds seemed to fascinate them; they said so frankly, and James who had been envying them for the fun they appeared to be having, was driven by curiosity into frankness himself.

“What would you do with money if you had it?” he enquired.

Phœbe stretched herself and flung her arms above her head. Although James was not considering her much at that time, he never forgot that pose of hers. It epitomized her to him and remained in his mind as the secret of her attraction for him, whereas of course it was nothing of the sort. James needed Phœbe for her brains and her sophistication, but he never saw that until it was far too late.

“If I had money,” she said, bringing down her hand so that he could see the ring with the red glass in it, “if I had money, that would be a real ruby.”

He looked at it, and it was on the tip of his tongue to say that something or other was above rubies, but he could not remember what it was, and so escaped priggishness.

He stayed as long as he decently could, and took his leave, promising to come to the theatre in the evening. Both the Thorpes were very insistent on this, and they made a great fuss of him, as if they had decided he was worth cultivating. Samuel accompanied him as far as the street.

“We shall meet again, shan't we?” he said wistfully as they parted.

“Of course,” said James in astonishment. Yet as he went off
down the road, keeping a wary eye open for anyone who looked as though he might have something to do with Lucius, he felt slightly depressed by the whole incident, and found himself wishing that Samuel had turned out to be a different sort of person, even someone who had been too grand and too busy to have seen him.

It was typical of James that he realized why he felt like that. Samuel was his only friend of his own age, and it followed that if Samuel was so pleased and anxious for his company, then Samuel for all his talk was not so good as James. On thinking it over, it seemed to him that for Samuel's sake as well as his own he had jolly well better be something as soon as possible. It was the naïve Shulie in him walking hand in hand with old Galantry's intellectual honesty. Between them they had produced a rum, simple youth, very human and peculiarly strong.

James's new, unhappy feeling tended to increase as he sat in the theatre waiting for the play to begin. He had been idealizing Samuel for some time, and now after the sight of the dark, untidy room, the leg painting and the toiling bravura, the ideal was fading. It made him feel very lonely, for human ideals are companionable things like distant landmarks on a march; and once they are past the traveller has nothing to look forward to until the next tower rises in sight.

James was feeling this loneliness as he sat on the hard bench and sniffed the many odours of the playhouse. It was all much smaller and far more tawdry than he had expected. The notices about pickpockets were obviously necessary, and even the most attractive people round him looked silly and over-excited. Moreover, the lack of ventilation in the place almost stifled him. His childhood in the salt marshland had accustomed his lungs to large draughts of vital air, and now the little fœtid stream, lukewarm and mildly poisonous, scarce kept them going. He had half a mind to wash his hands of the whole business and go back to ‘The Golden Boar,' when the curtain rose.

A limping monster of a man, dressed in dusty black velvet and gold, came forward and said something which hit James squarely between the eyes.

“Now,” said Richard of Gloucester, in a huge, rich, three times life size voice, “Now is the winter of our discontent.”

James did not hear the end of the sentence, he was too astonished, for the words had said what he felt. They had expressed him. This was indeed the winter, the bare time, at which the only resurrection lies in new growth. The winter, yes, that was it; the winter of discontent. The words had snatched the feeling out of him and thrown it away in the air. It had been said, expressed, got rid of. He found the experience was astounding; it was like vomiting emotional poison.

After that his eyes did not move from the stage. The play was Cibber's version, of course, but even that consequential little hack could scarcely hurt it, nor could the woman who played Queen Margaret and muffed her lines in the very midst of her envy. James did not recognize her as Mrs. Thorpe. He had scarcely heard of Shakespeare before, but now as one country boy to another, he tumbled to his tremendous secret immediately.

James saw at once that the people on the stage were saying, not so much what they thought as did people in real life, but also what they honestly felt. They were doing it, too, in the most economical way possible, and never seemed to be at a loss for a word. These were immortal folk who could bring up the last flavour of the passions in their hearts. To listen to them, James found, was to be reminded of every imprisoned emotional pain he had ever had, and to give himself the glorious experience of having them all liberated one after the other. It was something quite new to him, partly a game or an exercise, and partly a sort of cleansing process; and all the time, of course, there was the rhythm, the beautiful, steady music timed to the heartbeat running strongly as an accompaniment to the sense.

James's head began to sing and his mouth fell open a little.

Phœbe came on to say her few lines, and the paint on her legs made her look only a shabby little Prince. James did not recognize her. To him she was the character, and he did not want to think of her as anyone else.

The end of the play found him exalted and exhausted. He did not stay for the after-piece because he did not think he could bear any more. He blundered out into the dark, cobbled street and the soft air from the river came up to caress him, while the stars danced among the pointed roofs above.

James knew he had made one of the great discoveries of his life. He also knew that it was quite all right and there was no catch in it, like there was in getting drunk. This new asset was a genuine one. If he had not the power of self-expression, he had discovered appreciation, which was the next best thing. He forgave Samuel everything, unconditionally. Samuel was justified.

In that first exalted mood, James even forgave Phœbe her painted legs.

He was striding down the narrow entrance to the Butter Market when somebody sidled out of a doorway and came towards him. Presently he saw Whippy's great shining moon-face appearing out of the dusk. He was pretty well speechless with mysteriousness, and James, who had been living in an earlier, more expansive age for the past few hours, very nearly kicked him off the footway, he was so annoyed with him.

It was a long time before he could get any sense out of him at all, but gradually he gathered that Lucius himself was in the town, staying at the ‘White Horse,' and that his man had already made enquiries for James at ‘The Golden Boar.' Whippy said that old Jed was most anxious to see James at once. At any time James was proud enough to resent being hunted down, but now in the first flush of his liberation he found it insufferable. He objected very much to the hole-and-corner way in which Whippy smuggled him into ‘The Golden Boar.' They went into a neighbour's garden, climbed over a stable wall, crossed a crumbling parapet, and entered a window on the first floor. James disliked it all intensely, and by the time he was ushered into the kitchen he was very angry, and in the mood to say so.

Jed listened to his outburst in silence.

“No, no,” he said at last, “no, no. Not that I don't like you for it, mind you. You don't want to goo down there and talk to he. He's your half-brother and he's a lawyer, and that's a wonderful strong kind of partnership. No, no. You be ruled by me. I've only come to the age I have by being wonderfully fly. I know his sort. Keep out of his way for half an hour and he'll get tired, and then he'll go off and mind his own business. Why should you be bothered by he? Now I'll tell you what I have in my mind.” He was being very conciliatory, and Whippy, who never had this sort of treatment from his father, was overcome. James was irritated by his expression of dog-like reverence, and looked at him coldly. Old Jed followed his eyes, and was apparently exasperated, too, for he suddenly reached out to the side of the fireplace and, snatching up a blackthorn stick, lunged at his unfortunate youngest. Whippy fled. As the door closed behind him the old man chuckled bitterly.

“That wouldn't do for you,” he said.

“No,” said James, “it would not.”

“That's right; that's right,” said Jed, unperturbed. “Different cattle take different handling. You go down to your half-brother if you're so minded and let him wriggle round you. Who am I to stop you?”

He rocked the top part of him gently in his tight chair, and closed
his eyes. The stratagem was obvious to James, but he was not to be made contrary by it.

Presently he said with a prophecy of his future manner, “I think you're my friend, Mr. Fletcher, and I know he's not.…”

“That he ain't,” said Jed, opening an eye. “He's doing nothing but going about the country advertising you for a good-for-nought.”

James grew red at the injury done him.

“What do you advise me?” he demanded.

Jed woke up at once. “Now you're being a sensible young gentleman,” he said. “Remarkably sensible for one of your years, if you'll forgive me for being so personal. Now, just you listen to me.”

He unfolded his plan with considerable energy, and reminded James strongly of his sister, Mrs. Jason. But whereas his excitability was liable to lead to mere well-meant confusion, Jed's had a great deal of sense within it. It appeared that his eldest son, Gustus, was on the eve of setting out on his annual visit to Appleby Horse Fair, far away in the north country. It was an enormous distance, hundreds of miles, and Whippy was going with him. They aimed to pick up ten or a dozen “young things” and to bring them back for quiet winter trading. They were going to travel light on “little old nags,” would sleep where they could on the way, and in all proposed to be out of Ipswich for six or seven weeks. Mr. Fletcher's suggestion was that James should accompany them. Gustus was an old hand, his father said, and he preferred “to travel cross-country wise through little back lanes, like a proper gyppo.”