Dance of the Years (35 page)

Walter ignored her comments which he thought ridiculous; he concentrated on the question.

“No, I haven't met her, but I saw a photograph. She's not nearly as handsome as you are. She's very young and simple-looking. She'd be a lady, of course.”

“Meaning I'm not?”

“My good girl, don't be an idiot!” His temper flared up again. “You and I do know each other. We're brother and sister, aren't we? You haven't got to impress me.”

“Mother was a lady,” said the woman with pathetic vulgarity. “She was a doctor's daughter, wasn't she? Father of course…”

“Our father was a miller's labourer; he couldn't read and he was a drunken brute,” said Walter spitefully. “And now for God Almighty's sake, drop it! You're jealous. You were jealous of my first wife, and but for you …”

“But for me she'd have died before she did,” said his sister warningly.

The man got to his feet and went over to put his arm around her. “I know,” he said soothingly, “I know, Mil. Sarah was a misery, poor wretched woman. I was a fool to marry her, and you were an angel to put up with her. Now look here, don't be difficult. See how I'm placed. You know I won't do anything silly. But it does look to me as if that might be how things are going. That might be the way out, and I might take it. I thought I'd put it to you so that it did not come as a surprise.”

Mildred did not speak immediately. She was thinking she had known something like this must come; she had known Walter would
never live without a woman for long. Although Sarah had driven him crazy with her illnesses yet he had liked to have her near him if it was only to have someone to nag.

“If I can't stand her I shall leave you,” she said.

He was so astonished that he betrayed it. “Why, what would you do?”

“I could always go as a cook,” she said with as much spitefulness as he had shown. “I'm not so very anxious to appear what I'm not. I loathe this insane pretending. Why can't you live small and safe like a respectable person?”

“Because I'm not that sort of a man,” he explained, allowing himself to be side-tracked. “Use you head, Mil, I've got brains. I'm clever.”

“You've got ideas,” she objected, “not brains. They're not the same things, my boy. How do you know this man, William Galantry, isn't making a fool of you? How do you know he hasn't seen the red light in Croucher Brothers' new move, and isn't trying to work the same safety catch trick on you? He thinks you've got money, doesn't he? His brother is only apprenticed to some paint works or other, isn't he?”

Walter was scandalized. “My good girl, you're being absurd,” he said. “You don't understand these people at all. They're not like that.”

“You mean they wouldn't do what you'd do?” she enquired viciously.

“I mean they're rather different people,” he said stiffly.

“You're idealizing them,” she screamed at him. “You're taken in by their voices and their manners and their silly sanctimonious airs.”

Walter was pouring himself a drink, and he did not answer for a moment. When Mildred became really abusive it was best to leave her alone. Presently when she had become paler, he began again.

“Galantry told me about that brother,” he remarked. “He's the black sheep of the family. When the old father dies they'll pay Master Tom out and ship him abroad, I fancy. You're quite wrong about Galantry; he's a very rich man. Besides, the girl will have money of her own, he told me so.”

“How much?” She was contemptuous. “I've got ten pounds a year myself. Mother got me that by selling everything she had just before she died, so you wouldn't collar it.”

“I don't know how much money Miss Galantry has,” said Walter, “but somehow I think it will be a little more than ten pounds a year.”

There was a long silence between them while he sat on the table sipping from his little glass.

“You'll be able to manage her, Mil,” he said at last. “She's only twenty.”

Mildred remembered her pie. It was not burnt and she took it out carefully.

“I hope sincerely she's got a fortune,” she observed, as she set the dish on the table.

“There's a lot of money in the family.”

“You'll need it. You've got the most difficult, finicky ideas.”

“I like things nice.”

“You like things grand, and you like things easy, and if anyone stands up against you, you scream until you get your own way. And if things aren't just so, you have hysterics.”

“Liking things elegant is a good fault,” he said. “You've got it yourself. If ever I went smash, I believe you'd leave me and go to some big house and work like a slave rather than live in ugliness. It's because we are as we are that this girl is such a good idea. Don't you see, any sister of Galantry's must be intelligent, and she's been to a very good boarding school. She'll be—well, you know—ultra-refined. Unlike Sarah, she's healthy and also she's young and manageable.”

“You sound just as if she were a servant you were thinking of engaging.”

He sprang up. “You say the filthiest things.”

Mildred stepped in front of him. “I'm getting as nervy as you are,” she shouted, her face very close to his own. “This is a mad way to live. We leap from precipice to precipice. You're a genius I suppose, and because of that you think you can afford it. But it'll ruin you, and so will those spirits. You drink when you're worried, and that's madness. That's like father!”

He struck her. The movement was involuntary, his hand only flicked her chin but it did touch her, and she began to cry.

He went out at that, slamming the door so violently behind him that all the crocks on the dresser rattled. Mildred wiped her eyes and began to tidy up the kitchen.

“Poor Walter,” she said aloud. And afterwards: “God help her, whoever she is. I shan't.”

One morning late in May James sat in the garden at Farthing Hall. He had a rug round his knees and his ashplant to lean upon as he sat upright in a high elbow chair, his curly white toupé keeping his head from chill.

He was due to die very soon now, he thought. Quite apart from the condition of his heart which, from a purely medical standpoint was likely to give him a sense of great foreboding, he gathered from events that he was nearing the end of his life. His story was rounding off; the threads were tying up. Here he was in a golden spring again with stars in the grass again, and all the mysteries of his childhood explained.

As soon as this final reflection entered his mind, he thought how damned pompous he sounded and what an untrue observation it was. There was much he had never unravelled, and now, as far as he could see, never would. He had no idea what he had been
for
, for one thing, nor if he had accomplished it.

James's life had been concerned with the deeds of men rather than with their thoughts, and therefore he did not quite understand that this was a question which no one could answer for him plainly. He had no illusions about his own ignorance; he knew he was an uninformed old man who had never had the skill or the time to make himself conversant with the accumulated knowledge of his species. Even now it occurred to him that he was not deeply curious as to the purpose of the human race but lately he had felt a desire to know what had been his own individual use, and then really only to see how he had made out. He had half thought of sending for a clergyman to explain it to him briefly, but he feared such a move would alarm Debby, and, too, he was afraid the man might preach at him, and he was too tired for that.

In this attitude he was typical of his class and period. He had lived in a swiftly improvised, materialistic age, and in it he had been a practical modern man with his feet on the earth he liked. He was brother to the ox and kin to the ass, and sometimes it must have seemed to the Eternal Watchers that he wore his tall hat to distinguish himself from them. But he had one saving grace: he knew for a fact he was not his own god.

He went on thinking on these lines in a speculative fashion for some while. He had plenty of time; all the time there was, anyway, and the sun was warm and pleasant. He thought he could see exactly what he had done with his life, and on the whole he was only partially satisfied with it after all. He had conquered obstacles, and he had been rewarded with William as a protector for his seed. He thought he could say he had been useful to Jinny and useful to William.

Jinny, of course, had done little with her life, but there was great hope in William. All the same, his own had not been a great career, he had not turned out to be the third most important person in the world, nor even important at all. As far as he could see the main lesson he had learned was that it took a tremendous effort to do very little.

None of this was particularly inspiriting, and his mind wandered to those more concrete matters in which it was so much more comfortable and experienced.

William had not been over to Penton Place since James had showed him the letter from Lucius, but he had written to tell James that Septimus Galantry had called by invitation at
The Converted World
office, and once there had been politely choked off. Debby had been extraordinarily upset when James gave her William's note; for some time afterwards she had gone about looking positively frightened, and she exasperated James. He could understand a girl being piqued by the loss of a man, or in extreme cases, even heartbroken, but he was damned if he comprehended one being frightened. She was a most unexpected and irritating child. It worried James. Since he had not seen Septimus himself he was bound to take somebody's judgment on him, and it seemed only intelligent to back William's good sense against Deborah's.

By all accounts the youngster had proved a sly, self-seeking fellow, so doubtless William had been very wise to get rid of him.

All the same, James was sorry about it and might have weakened before Debby's entreaties sufficiently to enquire further, had it not been for something else which made the matter distasteful to him.

Lucius had not answered the letter he had taken such pains to write. He realized it had not been a brilliant effort, but it had cost him much labour and in spite of its formality and echo of Mr. Philby, it had been friendly and inviting. If Lucius had really needed the solace of his own kin, James thought he would have replied. As it was, the incident left an unpleasant taste, and depressed him. As far as he could see he had expended his life in keeping himself an independent gentlemanly Galantry, and now it affronted him to find one of the pure blood
trying to curry favour with him who would never have curried favour in his life. It had been a blow struck at the very foundations of his building, and he turned from it wishing that Lucius had either made his gesture as genuine as it had first appeared, or had kept mum altogether.

He put the wretched business out of his head and fell to admiring the garden with its warm walls, its neat grass plot and dancing borders. Here at any rate was simplicity and no shame.

There was a young copper beech which he had planted himself over in the corner. It was growing well, and now its pink buds, gold-tipped, pained him they were so lovely, as they curled upward against the tear-filled blue. James assumed there would be trees in heaven; always provided he was going there, of course. The current theory favouring slightly music-hall adornments for the celestial regions had never appealed to him greatly, but neither had he considered the matter until recently when the subject had appeared more pressing. Now he was bothered if he could make out much about it. Once or twice lately in a shamefaced fashion, he had told Debby to lay aside
The Times Newspaper
and try the Bible on him.

On the whole it had been a disappointment to him; he had found it very remote and foreign, although every now and again Debby's youthful voice had produced a piece of thrilling sophistication from the thin pages. He had made her begin at the beginning, of course, and so far they had only reached the Book of Job. This last had impressed him most. There was one passage about a horse which delighted him, and he had made her read it over and over to him, although he realized his satisfaction from it was not entirely spiritual.

He could remember most of it and he tried it over now with great pleasure:

“
Hast thou given the horse his might?
Hast thou clothed his neck with the quivering mane?
The glory of his snorting is terrible.
He paweth the valley and rejoiceth in his strength;
He goeth out to meet the armed men.
He mocketh at fear and is not dismayed
Neither turneth he back from the sword.
The quiver rattleth against him,
The flashing spear and the javelin.
He swalloweth the ground with fierceness and rage;
Neither believeth he that it is the trumpet.
As often as the trumpet soundeth he saith ‘Aha'!
And he smelleth the battle afar off
The thunder of the captains and the shouting.
”

James had some ill-considered idea that the whole of the Bible was dictated by the Deity to a clerk or so, and he was comforted by this passage for it occurred to him that the author had not only made horses but had liked them, even for their stupidity, and if horses, then why not James? Particularly, he liked the line about the animal not believing the sound was a trumpet, but mistaking it for another mighty horse, so that he must answer it. Mandrake had cried ‘Aha' he remembered.

There was a gate in the wall leading into James's meadow, and through it he could just see a glimpse of poor old Pecker (the same joke as calling one's car ‘Knocker') munching at the new grass. Pecker was not much like the charger of the poem, nor had he ever been like Mandrake, about as much, James thought, as himself had been like Edwin Castor, but he was a kind old fellow, and viceless, apart from his failing. James had mentioned him in his will. He had worked it out carefully and reckoned that twenty-five pounds would be sufficient to ensure that he had an undisturbed old age. James had put it all down; the smith was to keep an eye on his teeth, and to rasp down the back grinders when they should grow to interfere with his cropping. Then when he should get too old to keep himself from poverty, he was to be shot and buried under a flower-bed to manure the ground. James did not want his carcase put to any other use. It need not be a
flower
bed, he told William, his executor, but in the garden somewhere where the ground was poor and needed enriching. William had agreed, smiling gently.