Dance of the Years (24 page)

Now at last she was going to have another baby, and all promised well. James was excited and very fond of Jinny in an entirely new way. The terrible inferiority complex which had made it possible for him to desire to father another man's child, was appeased, and he was as near that mood of long ago when he had felt god-like as ever in his life since. He longed to see the new baby and know it himself translated. He wanted to show it to Dorothy.

He had never taken Jinny or little William to see her when he went himself, and he knew she resented that. However, he dared not. He would not meet that odd look which he knew must come into her eyes when she should glance up at him from Frank Castor's child. She would see it all and would know why it had happened too.

James was thinking about that why now. It had been a good idea, he was certain of it. In spite of all the obvious disadvantages, in spite of unexpected emotional reactions in himself, it had been a good idea. The possession of Jinny and the house and the servants and the garden with the syringa tree, had given him the background he needed. The possession of that fair, intelligent boy had given him something else, something he was not going into even now, alone with himself. Sufficient was it, he felt, that he had conquered something; come out on top of a disability. Now he was the man he had always wanted to be. Next week perhaps he would have a child to continue him.

He was in an excellent mood by the time he reached the solicitor's office. The interesting words ‘of benefit' lingered in his mind. All the same he knew no one who could leave him money so he kept his hope in rein.

It was a very fair-sized firm, he discovered, evidently an old-established City business tucked into a narrow house in St. Mary Axe. The clerks in the downstairs room treated his broadcloth with deference, and upstairs the senior partner, a pleasant, roundish person called Dewsey, stared at him blankly when he first walked into the office.

It was a curious interview, for Mr. Dewsey was so uncharacteristically ill at ease. He made a great business of establishing James's identity, although this was necessarily something of a formality since much of the ground had been covered in tracing him at all. The more convinced he became the more uncomfortable he grew, until James was slightly irritated. Finally the lawyer sat back in his chair.

“Mr. Galantry,” he said, taking the plunge, “have you ever heard of a person called Blackberry Smith?”

James said he had not, but spoke cautiously now, suspecting one of his many horse deals.

“Well, it would appear,” said Mr. Dewsey, keeping his tone deferential, “it would appear, my dear sir, that he is your half-brother. A most honourable, a most exact young man.”

After a moment of bewilderment, during which his mind had gone to Lucius and Young Will and all the rest of old Galantry's sons, James suddenly comprehended. The colour came into his face, and he got up.

Mr. Dewsey, who was not unprepared for some reaction of the sort, rose also and stepped between his visitor and the door.

“Wait! Mr. Galantry! Wait, I implore you. It will not be an inconsiderable estate by any means.”

It was more the tone than the words which halted James, for it conveyed that he was expected to behave in an undignified manner, and was doing so. He turned back at once and sat down again with his legs wide apart and his hands, which held his hat and gloves, resting on the silver knob of his stick, so that his big dramatic head with the curls appeared to Mr. Dewsey just above them.

The lawyer dealt with him very cautiously, and his story when it came out at last after a deal of tissue wrappings was not entirely extraordinary, although it was so unexpected. Reduced to unlegal English it amounted to a couple of facts. Shulie was dying, and wished to leave James part of her possessions.

She had married again on rejoining her people, and by her second husband had surviving one son—Blackberry Smith. This young man had obeyed his mother's wishes to the letter and had instructed Mr. Dewsey to find his half-brother, so that James might receive his portion in the approved manner from his parent's hand.

James received the information in silence. He had never dreamed of such a thing happening, but he knew at once that it was not remarkable. He also knew something which Mr. Dewsey did not, which was that his half-brother must have been born in September and had not been much of an infant to look at so that his name had been given to him in explanation, as one might say a ‘blackberry kitten' or a ‘blackberry foal'; one not having much chance of survival since it had the winter to go through before it was weaned.

Mr. Dewsey, mistaking his visitor's silence, became suddenly defensive.

“You may be a little surprised to find a firm of this standing having a gypsy client,” he said.

“No, sir,” said James. “No, sir, I am not.” All the same he was surprised; surprised in the true sense of the word. Here in the very midst of London, hemmed in by the black buildings, shut down by the
fog pall overhead, held fast by the comfortable respectability of Penton Place, he was yet surprised by the green glade, by the red caravans, by the wood smoke curling up through the leaves.

Unfortunately Mr. Dewsey still felt bound to give an explanation. James was the sort of person to whom people did give explanations because he looked so informed.

“I inherited my father's practice in Norwich,” said Mr. Dewsey, “and among his clients there were several of these—these—ah—wanderers. One of them preferred to follow me to London than to trust anyone else, so it was quite natural for his son to come to me when in any difficulty. My father's client was Jacoby Smith, the second husband of Shulamite Galantry. He's dead, of course.”

James nodded absently. “Where are they now?” he enquired.

Mr. Dewsey was embarrassed to confess that he did not exactly know, but any letter he sent Blackberry Smith care of the landlord of “The White Lion” in Wych Street seemed to reach him in an unusually short space of time. Indeed, he said, there had been occasions when he had received an answer (written by some obliging parson and signed with Blackberry's mark) in as little as a week.

“If she is dying, they will not move if they can help it,” said James. “I think we should go down there wherever it is.”

Mr. Dewsey agreed that would be the wisest plan. He was puzzled by James, who had made no enquiries as to the probable size of his inheritance. His appearance had been unexpected, but his attitude was more so.

“I understand you have not seen your mother since you were sixteen years old,” he ventured.

“That is so,” said James.

It was going through his mind that he could wash his hands of the whole thing, could take nothing, and could, at the price of insulting his own blood, stay safely away from the thing he had been trying to escape all his life. Even before he considered it, however, he knew it would not do. James was too firmly planted upon the earth to believe in flight as a means of relief. There was in such matters, he considered, no escaping save in growing.

“Yes!” he said, suddenly getting up, “yes! We'll go down.”

More than once on the drive out from Halstead in Essex to the hollow of open ground under the hillocks above Sible Heddingham, James wondered why on earth he had brought Mr. Dewsey with him, although in all reason he could not very well have come without him.

It was a lowering day, and the plump lawyer was inclined to be apprehensive. He was a man who made a great virtue of being interested in everything and everybody, but he had not the true courage of real curiosity, and while he was entertained to think his calling carried him into many odd corners and situations, he yet wanted to make it quite clear to James that gypsies (their notorious dishonesty and lack of any social pretensions whatever being understood) were not a commonplace with him.

James did not care a tinker's dam for him or his habits. From old Galantry he had inherited the eighteenth-century belief that a gentleman only tolerated his attorney in the most difficult of moments, and that in all others he was bound to be but an unpleasant reminder of mortality or debt.

He was also worried about other things. There had been a nurse at Penton Place when he left, and also a highly secretive and self-important old woman with an ominous bag, and all through the drive his thoughts kept veering round to Jinny and the coming child.

As they turned down a lane, which was scarce more than a cart track between two high hedges, Mr. Dewsey gave up trying to talk, and James was very glad of it. He was not at all sure what he was in for, and was not looking forward to the coming interview. Their driver, who was a man from the town, was not easy either, since it was a lonely place and his fares looked well worth robbing.

At this moment they swung round a bend in the lane and came suddenly upon the hollow. The sight of it astonished James, and for the first time he was faintly apprehensive for their physical safety. In the back of his mind he had been carrying a picture of the wood behind Jason's house, and the half-dozen caravans there, the few poor horses hobbled nearby, the single fire, and the tinker's donkey hovering warily in the middle distance.

This was something quite different. There were nearly fifty caravans set in small groups on the poor turf; the horses were in droves, and everywhere there were fires with numbers of lean figures standing round each. It looked like a fair ground in the very early morning. There was squalor there, and colour, and much show. Everybody was in his best clothes. The caravan doors were thrown wide as they always were at Appleby, with everything at all valuable which each owner possessed pushed well into the foreground. Shawls and coverlets, embroidered waistcoats and skirts, household china, lamps, and bowls, and trays; everything, all put out to be seen.

As the trap slowed down and finally stopped, the whole gathering turned and stood silent, looking at them. It was a dramatic moment. The driver began to mutter that it would be wise to go back, and only then did it dawn upon Mr. Dewsey that if there should be some trickery hiding in the commission which had been entrusted to him, then he and his client might be in a very disadvantageous position at the moment. Two alone, and miles away from anywhere.

“God bless my soul! Who are they all?” he demanded nervously. “I had no expectation of anything like this. Who are they all?”

James rose without answering and began to climb carefully to the ground. He knew quite well who they were. All of them, every sharp-eyed man, every ragged child, must be a Smith and his relation. The best part of the whole tribe must be present.

He went forward stolidly. His shoulders looked enormous under his long coat and his tall hat sat squarely on his big head. In his dark face his strong white teeth showed in a faint irrepressible smile, for in spite of his embarrassment which was acute, the old Galantry in him was tremendously amused.

Blackberry Smith came out of the silent crowd to meet him. James knew him at once, he could hardly help it; they were very alike. They were not doubles, of course, there were many points of difference. The pure gypsy was a smaller man, and his skin unexpectedly was not so dark, while his eyes were those of his race, small and bright and wide open, without, of course, the Galantry hoods. But nevertheless, there was a very definite likeness.

Mr. Dewsey used to tell the story afterwards and always spoilt his tale by insisting that he could not tell the difference between them, which was absurd.

The thing which almost unbalanced James, and for which he never forgave Shulie, was Blackberry's costume. Everybody in the gathering was unconventionally clad, for best clothes in that company were nearly always remarkably old, not to say ancestral clothes, and James was surrounded by an array of archaic finery. But Blackberry was in a costume which he recognized. It dragged him back through the
years to Groats in candlelight. It was old Galantry's evening suit. James had never heard that Shulie had taken it with her, yet here it was, crumpled and still reeking of the wormwood in which it had been stored against the moth. The plum-coloured silk of the breeches clung to Blackberry's fine muscles, and the laced cuffs riding up his shirtless forearm, disclosed his dirty wrists. James had not set eyes on the suit for over thirty years, but he knew it at once and he took off his hat, not so much to Blackberry, as to his clothes.

The young gypsy held out his hand and said with ingratiating gentleness: “Welcome, brother.”

On seeing the situation was in hand, Mr. Dewsey had come bustling up by this time, and he used to relate this incident with great effect.

James accepted the greeting as a formal one, and said “Thank you.” Meanwhile talk had broken out everywhere, and there was a great deal of sibilant comment in a language Mr. Dewsey did not understand and found disturbing. Gradually, however, he gathered it was approving, and received the impression that it was James's physique which was being discussed. Only then did it occur to him that all his legal proofs of identity would go for very little in this community, and that James would stand or fall by his appearance. To his relief there seemed to be no question about this, nor, when he looked round from one dark face to another could he think there would be.

The whole scene impressed Mr. Dewsey. The rising land in the background was chocolate from the plough, and the trimmings of the brown and black hedgerows became more distinct as they crept nearer to the bowl of the hollow. Then came the bright caravans gaudy and defiant, and among them moved the ragged people splendid in their dirty finery, while lastly, in the centre, stood the square Victorian gentleman holding his shining and sophisticated hat.

Blackberry had a natural dignity himself, but at the moment it was handicapped. He was helplessly eager to show off before his kinsfolk, and anxious to ingratiate himself with his splendid half-brother. He was trying also to remember all the tricks his mother had taught him. Old Galantry had lived on in Shulie, or at least some of him had, and in her mixture he had undergone some odd changes.