Dance of the Years (15 page)

His eyes flickered as the unfortunate phrase escaped him, but James, who was quick to imitate anything he admired, did not appear to hear him.

He was attracted by the suggestion, he knew that he would enjoy the trip more than anything else in the world, for all his life he had heard of Appleby Horse Fair, where every gypsy, every coper, every dealer met to haggle, and thousands of pounds' worth of horseflesh changed hands every day.

He knew the journey was a wise expedient, too, for among the lanes Lucius would never find him; yet he felt very bitter about it. They were all pushing him back to Shulie, friend and foe alike. Chance herself conspired to lead him back to where she knew he belonged. Damn them for it, James thought.

He was still frowning when Jed spoke to him, answering his mind.

“Don't you worry, boy,” said the old man unexpectedly. “Blood's blood. Rant and rage and die and clip, you can't never alter it either way, so don't worry. However, I can have a remarkable
bad
thoroughbred that I wouldn't be pleased for anyone to see in my stable, and I can have a wonderfully
good
crossbred any man would be pleased to
own. Good and bad, that's what matters, and if any man tell you he don't know the defference, he's lying, or he's not safe about by himself. Blood's blood, but it's only blood; it ain't the whole boiling. I tell you one thing too,” he added, dancing about in his chair in excitement, “there's a lot too much importance put on to blood, and why? Because that can't be altered, see? Same as there's a lot too much importance put on the size of a man and the face of a woman. Them as is fortunate keep up the idea because it's them what benefits, and them as ain't fortunate keep it up because they know it's something they can't have, whatever they do. So they think it must be wonderful, same as any little old child do. I'm a very thoughtful old man, and I've seen a powerful lot of men and a powerful lot of horses, and I'll tell you about the blood horse, Mr. Galantry.

“A Blood is a horse what's been bred for a certain purpose, and for that work, if he's a good 'un there naturally ain't nothing to touch him. A lot of picked-out horses have gone to make him up, but put him to other work very likely he ain't so good as the next. He can't help it, he's bred so. But a good cross horse is a fine animal, a proper fit beast to live and die on the earth that's made for him. Don't go forgetting the king word, though. That's ‘good.' Be a good 'un and don't go worrying about blood. Now forgive me talking so round about, and go you off to bed. Three in the morning you'll be starting from here.”

This was one of the first of Jed's many homilies, and James could not help but be influenced by them.

He went to Appleby and learned there even more about horses than he knew before. He enjoyed himself, and betrayed powers of bargaining which brought respectful admiration even from Gustus Fletcher, who considered himself pretty good.

Lucius never caught James, and, as Jed had predicted, soon gave up the chase and fell to minding his own affairs.

James never knew exactly when he fell in love with Phoebe. At first she was just Samuel's half-sister, and then one of the three of them, and then one day he realized there was no woman in the world but she. That day came when he was nearly twenty-two and he could not welcome it. He put the thought of her out of his mind again and
again, but there was no killing it, and one evening some time after the first revelation he stood alone in the dusk leaning over a gate some little way down the lonely road outside the town, thinking of her.

It was very cold, and there was a heavy ground mist, but he did not stir for nearly an hour. His life was becoming a burden to him. All through the winter it had been growing difficult enough, but now that the spring had come searching into his blood there was no escape for him anywhere. Now he was suffocating in the grip of a deadly preoccupation, and had been forced to go off along like this hugging his love to himself like something alive.

He had not told her yet, and for some time now had done his best to keep away from the theatre. But it was very difficult. He had a problem which he saw no way of solving; it lay in his own peculiar position and hers.

The last seven years had been the happiest in his life, and in them he had found a background to replace the one he had lost for ever when old Galantry died and left him with fifteen thousand pounds, Dorothy to love him, and nothing else in the world. His new background was a curious one in all conscience, but he valued it enormously, for it was all he had, and he was a man who all his life felt the need of one. His present difficulty lay in the attitude taken up by Jed, Dorothy, and the Jasons.

These, since they had connived at his escape, had in Chinese fashion ever afterwards considered him their own responsibility. They were the people who for the last seven and most impressionable years of his life had been helping to makes James into the sort of person they thought he ought to be, and in this their hands were strengthened because their ideas coincided so nearly with James's own views on the subject.

Jed had done his honest best by James, and it was because he had been so very honest, and even idealistic about it, that he had never treated him as a son. Ever since James had first entered ‘The Golden Boar,' Jed had treated him as his master's son, and in the England of those days that was a very different thing altogether.

The others had abetted Jed, and thus James had grown up to fill a very definite position in the little world surrounding him. He had become a sort of squireling in exile, an East Anglian Bonnie Prince Charlie in miniature.

His adherents were possessive; he was grateful to be possessed, and the feelings of responsibility, theirs to him and his to them, had grown enormous.

It was an odd state of affairs, but inevitable in the circumstances.

James's present difficulty lay in the simple fact that, considered as a wife for him, a woman who was both bastard and play-actress was not
acceptable to any single one of the few people who were literally all the world to him. This in itself was unfortunate enough, but there was an even more awkward side to it. The true objection lay, not so much with Phœbe, as with himself. Jed and Dorothy objected to the alliance because in their opinion James's breeding could not afford it. There was no mere snobbery in the matter, they were far more practical than that. As far as they were concerned marriage was solely a means to an end, which is to say, to progeny, and that was their paramount consideration.

Jed had put it to James very plainly only a few days before.

“I hope you'll forgive me for being so personal,” he had said, using the opening with a certain amount of justification for once in a while, “but you want to be wonderfully careful how you marry. Wedding will be a terrible serious thing for you. You don't never want to think about gooing along with one of they old players, y'know. Some gentlemen is forgive if they takes one of they, but some ain't. They're a pretty little old lot, but they're nothing more than gyppos. We don't think much to they, we don't.”

He could hardly have put it more brutally, and now as James leaned over the gate in the darkness he knew there was no possible hope that he might have meant any less than he said. Worst of all, in his heart he could only agree with him. The real objection was little to do with Phœbe, the main weakness was his own. There had been one dangerous cross-breeding, and the risk must not be taken again. His position which they had built up for him so carefully was at stake.

He thrust his hands in his pocket and wandered back along the road. He thought it was a seriously foolish matter in a seriously foolish world, and the only person in whom he could imagine confiding was Phœbe herself, or possibly Samuel, and that was hardly possible in the circumstances. He cursed himself for falling in love with Phœbe; it had cost him his two best friends. Yet as he walked along in the darkness he knew he was in love with her, and that despite the grim commonsense of his training and temperament, he would have her if she cost him the world.

There was one way out of all the difficulties, of course, but he did not feel inclined even to consider it, although Jed had put it to him fairly plainly. Phœbe was too good to be a mistress, too dear. He had made up his mind to marry her; it was the question he had come out to decide, and having settled it he walked on more quickly for he suspected it was getting very late.

He ought to have gone to the theatre instead of wandering out on to the road, for it was to have been a great night there. Phœbe was taking the first great part of her career, and he should have been present. Indeed, had it not been for her little note asking him to be
sure and come, he might not have forced himself to take a decision so soon. But the prospect of seeing her again had made that imperative.

He had not been near the company for over a fortnight, but Whippy, who was the world's most industrious gossip, had kept him posted in all the details of the great occasion. It was to be “Romeo and Juliet,” he had reported, for Mr. Webb, the London actor who was honouring Ipswich for one week only, had insisted on including Mercutio in his repertoire. This inconsiderate move had embarrassed the stock company considerably, since Mrs. Venture the proprietor's wife, who normally played all the more important of Shakespeare's women, was within an ace of being brought to bed with her second child, and while it was considered seemly and even piquant for her to portray Lady Macbeth when in such a condition, her appearance thus as Juliet was thought to be unsuitable. There had been a great many conferences, so Whippy said, and finally amid a great deal of excitement, Phœbe had been given her chance.

James felt guilty about avoiding the performance, but he was glad he had. He did not want to have to think of Phœbe and tragedy in the same breath; he felt it incongruous. Phœbe was Beatrice, Rosalind, Kate Hardcastle, not Juliet.

As he came through the town he realized that he had missed the show altogether. Already most of the houses were dark and the streets almost empty. He went round to the back of the theatre and was just in time to catch Clover, the doorkeeper, who was locking up. The old man was deaf as an egg, but affable as usual. His first words were enlightening.

“She h'aint here,” he said, “don't suppose you'll see her again. Disgraceful! Mr. Webb couldn't contain himself when he spoke to her. He's got a wonderful voice, even I could hear him meself. ‘Madam,' he says, ‘in London tragedy is tragedy; in Hipswich I see you prefer farce.' She soon went off after that and her Ma with her. The old lady was a-crying and she was a-laughing; quite a comedy it was.”

James could get very little more out of him, but it seemed clear that Phœbe's début as a tragedy queen had not been an unqualified success. He stood at the end of the windy street hesitating for a moment or two before he turned to go up to the Butter Market. He had never become a part of the exciting, moonlit world of the theatre any more than he had ever really become a part of Jed's horsey fraternity. There as elsewhere he had always been but a half-brother. But he had seen a great deal of it and he could guess the kind of crisis which the present debacle would provoke.

James admired the Thorpes' sophistication and their lively fancies opened new vistas to him, but he had few illusions about either of
them. They belonged, he knew, to a very shadowy universe; a place of high-lights and darkness, of great exultations and wild despairs. He thought he had better go and see Phœbe at once.

The bonnet shop was in darkness when he arrived, and he threw pebbles up at the first floor windows until Samuel put his head out. To James's surprise he seemed in very good spirits.

“Galantry,” he cried, “my dear fellow. Just the man. Come in. Come in. Wait a moment and I'll open the door.”

He was still chattering when James followed him up the stairs, and his voice, which was still very nearly as squeaky as when he had been a child, sounded positively elated. Yet as far as James could gather the great night on which so many hopes had been builded had been something of a fiasco.

“Fantastic, my dear James,” Samuel insisted earnestly, as they turned into the large, untidy sitting-room. “Sublimely ridiculous. Juliet the clown. Juliet getting her laughs every time. An entirely new conception. We impressed the Londoner.”

James was not heartened by the information, he had seen Samuel in this mood before. He looked round anxiously for Phœbe, but there was no sign of her. He was about to enquire after her when she appeared.

The inner door, which led into the bedroom, was suddenly thrown open, and she stood on the threshold. It was a dramatic entrance for one in disgrace, but not a tragic one. She had hitched up her skirts to make a travesty of a doublet and trunk hose, and had twisted a black stocking round her head, so arranged that the toe flapped over her eyes not at all unlike the monstrous lock of which Mr. Webb was reputed to be so proud. Her arms were folded and her eyes peered at them from beneath the turban.

“Madam,” she said, and immediately the London actor, complete with all his eccentricities, stood glowering before James. “Madam, in the Capital we reverrre our trrragedy.”

It was a comic picture, for behind her there was a clear view of the bed in which Mrs. Thorpe sat upright in a mighty white night-cap. The lady held a steaming glass in one hand and a handkerchief in the other, and was protesting her shame at Phœbe's disgrace at the top of her voice. James began to laugh aloud and Samuel turned on him.

“That's nothing, my dear fellow,” he said, “you should have seen her in the tomb.”

At this there was a fresh outburst of wailing from Mrs. Thorpe, and Phœbe broke out laughing herself. Altogether it was a most hilarious gathering. James shut the bedroom door for their mother himself, and Mrs. Thorpe assured him in a stage whisper that she devoutly prayed that she should never see the morning light.