Dance of the Years

by Margery Allingham

  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.”

  He spoke fluently, for he had been trained to it, and certainly convinced himself. He was certain he was doing the right thing in the right way, and that he was deceiving himself and refusing his half-brother the protection and training of the family (an asset which, after all, was the boy’s by right quite as much as was the money which had been left him) never crossed his mind.

  Dorothy listened to him and her eyes were veiled with caution. He smiled at her, and felt as old Galantry had done, what a good old fool she was. He went on outlining his plans for James. The boy, he said, had only one hope, and that was to be apprenticed at once to a good, respectable trade. He was sure Dorothy would understand that. They must bind him now when he was fifteen, and then in seven years’ time he could probably buy a partnership, and still have enough money left to buy the other partner out when the right moment came. He was sure Dorothy would see that everything depended upon these first six or seven years, and upon them finding the right man to form the youngster’s character and to give him the necessary discipline. Fortunately Lucius did know just the man, a master tailor, his own tailor as it happened; a very sensible, respectable sort of person who would take the youngster into his house and give him the correction he needed while he taught him his trade.

  Lucius brought the suggestion out like a surprise present. He saw Dorothy flush, and assumed it was with pleasure. Again he asked her to sit down, and again she refused. He liked her respectful bearing, but the more he saw of her the more he marvelled at his father giving her the guardianship of so much money.

  “Don’t fret, Dorothy,” he said, “I’ll see to it all! I’ll talk to Crowther, the tailor, and have the articles drawn up. We’ll do our best to make a respectable tradesman of the little cub, and who knows, but he may grow to be as wealthy as any of us.”

  Dorothy bobbed, and went out. He was afraid she had not understood a word of his harangue, but he thought she
was grateful to him for making it. Once outside the library door, however, Dorothy became a different woman. Indignation blazed in her, and she became very purposeful. It had not occurred to her to express herself openly, and this was nothing to do with respect. Dorothy had little or no respect for Lucius Galantry; she did not suspect that he owed his tailor money, and therefore had every reason for wishing to present him with a valuable apprentice; she assumed this was so, and was as convinced as if he had told her in so many words. She was quite right, of course. A knowledge of Lucius and a clear view of the situation simply added up to that answer. She knew her own limitations also, though, and she saw herself in a difficult position. She knew that lawyers were remarkably tricky and she knew herself to be an ignorant woman who could not even read. So she went her own way to protect her trust, and behaved in a somewhat extraordinary manner.

  The first thing she did was to find James and pour out the whole story to him, allowing her anger full expression. They were up in his bedroom at the far side of the house at the time and were sitting together on the low seat under the casement, talking in whispers. James listened to Dorothy with his head sunk in his shoulders, and his face as expressionless as her own had been. All the same, she knew that he was deeply angry.

  The affront was actual, inasmuch as Lucius would no more have thought of apprenticing his own son to a tailor than Jason would have thought of breaking a son of Eclipse to the plough. The insult burned into James and he swore never to forgive Lucius or Lucius’ children. At this particular moment there was little time for dwelling upon it, however, for the danger was urgent, and already Dorothy had made up her mind what was best to be done. If James was out of the way, she thought, she could keep sullen and quiet and hold her ground.

  She explained this to James and very reluctantly he agreed at last to hide for the time being. The move went hard against his dignity, which was growing enormous, but he saw the sense of it for after all where freedom is concerned, possession, he saw, is the whole ten points of the law. He was also privately excited by the thought of going off alone into the mysterious outside world. The desire to get out and away had often tormented him in the past, but hitherto Dorothy had always discouraged it firmly and with a sort of superstitious fear in her face, as if she saw nomadic gypsy tendencies appearing in him before her eyes.

  Now that she was urging him to go he felt a little lost, and yet deeply stirred. All the same he was not quite the stuff of which lone adventurers are made; friends, human beings on his side, were the essentials of life to him. He had only one friend in the whole of the world beyond Groats, and he thought at once of Samuel Thorpe and the address he had given him.

  “I think I will go to Ipswich!” he announced, and if he had said to China it would hardly have sounded further away to either of them.

  “Very well,” Dorothy agreed. “It had better be to-night.” They were both being tremendously brave.

  Lucius and Young Will never realized how James came to run away, or dreamed that he had any inside help. While they were discussing the future over old Galantry’s brandy, Dorothy and James came quietly down the stairs, stole out of the back door into the mild rain, and across the fields to Jason and his wife.

  They held a counsel of war in the big, farm kitchen, and sat round the white scrubbed table with the children asleep in the box beds round the chimney, the black hams hanging overhead, and the dogs dozing amid the fresh sand.

  It was a picture James never forgot, for it had the elusive quality of high romance in it.

  Jason and Mrs. Jason were as shocked by Lucius’ suggestion as Dorothy had been. It was not that there was anything particularly frightful in tailors as a race, but it did infuriate them to think that James might be put down and robbed of the little birthright which was his own, and they took it very personally because they felt they had taken a great hand in rearing him.

  Jason sat at the head of the table. He was in his shirt sleeves, his buff waistcoat tightly buttoned over his wiry body, and his stretched skin shining over his cheek bones. He was extremely serious, and on either side the two women in their caps and fichus leant towards him earnestly. James always remembered them in that moment of arrested motion, with the lamplight from above falling on their foreheads, and the lower parts of their faces dark in the shadow.

  Dorothy had brought a soft, leather bag with her. It was bound round the mouth with string, and while she talked she emphasized her words by banging it gently on the table so that her tale was punctuated by the soft chink of gold. They made all arrangements very carefully, and in minute detail.

  James had sense enough not to mention that Samuel’s mother was an actress, but he did say he was a school friend; and in the end the choice of Ipswich as a refuge was approved, partly because of this, and partly because Jason’s wife had a brother who had an inn there. Mrs. Jason was delighted at the project, and she rushed upstairs to get a silver locket for James to give to her brother, so that the man would know he came from her. James had to listen over and over again to the messages he had to give, to an account of how to find the house, and how it was called ‘The Golden Boar.’ Mrs. Jason said he would know it at once by the sign of a beautiful hog with a crown on its head, which hung, not sideways, but flat over the door.

  She gave him meticulous instructions. He was to go into the coffee-room and look about him until he saw a thick, well set-up young man, with a face like Mrs. Jason. Then he was to go up to him and show him the locket, and when the stranger had got over his surprise, James was to step back and say: “I come from young Joan. Her who married Dick Jason who worked for my father. Give me the best room. I am a gentleman and can pay my way, but do not tell anyone I am here.”

  It was not quite the speech that James would have rehearsed himself, but Mrs. Jason took him through it very carefully, and insisted that if he only said it right, her brother Jed Fletcher would lay him down and die for James, which seemed handsome enough.

  It was all very homely and comforting, and was also, of course, something which no money in the world could have bought. Jason himself went up into the loft to find an old-fashioned riding saddle with pack hooks upon it, and he took this out into the darkness.

  James guessed which beast he was to be given, and understood that Jason was obeying a secret, dramatic sense in choosing it for him. It would be Red Betty, of course; the thick little mare which Jason had bred for an experiment; the daughter of Mandrake out of Bess, the little old no-account dam.

  Jason had grown very fond of the half-breed, and was being very generous in handing her over, but he knew he was doing the right thing. They were all very simple people.

  The farewells were said in the stables, just as the dawn was breaking and vivid yellow streaks were appearing below the indigo rain clouds. James and the mare had both been fed, they were both clean, both strong, and eager. James had sixty-three pounds, half of all Dorothy had in the world until the lawyers paid her, strapped under his belt.

  He was not too sure of the way, but was confident he could find it, and he carried their trust and all Dorothy’s heart with him.

  She put a great bony arm round his shoulders, with embarrassed tenderness, just before he mounted. “Send me word by the one I’ll send you,” she said, “and don’t do nothing I wouldn’t have you do. When this fancy idea is all blown over, I’ll come for ye. Look out for yourself, my little old boy.”

  James hugged her, and was appalled to feel her tremble in his arms. He turned away quickly lest he should weaken also; he scrambled up on the mare who slipped quietly out of the doorway and over the cobbles, as sure and light on her strong little feet as a dog.

  He was on the high road by the time the sun came up over the edge of the county, and he sat for a moment looking into it.

  Groats was a long way behind him. He could feel all its ties, all its warmness, all the sentiment and love of his lifetime lying there like bedclothes he had thrown aside.

  When he rode on again he was think
ing of Edwin Castor, now a transfigured image in his mind. Edwin Castor, he felt, would ride quietly into the future with dignity and an open mind, sure of his place in the world and certain of his ability to remain in it whatever befell. James did his best to imitate Edwin Castor.

  Chapter Ten

  In after life James forgot his first impressions of ‘The Golden Boar’ when it opened its greasy, leathery coat to him, and took him in; for ever afterwards he knew it so well that it soon lost the picturesque vividness of a strange place. In the back of his mind, though, there always remained a picture of the sign as he first saw it, dripping wet, and so mean and dirty beside his expectations.

  The pig in the picture was a comical, painted pig, pink on a blue ground, and the crown on its head was an ingenuous little crown made out of half a golden beer barrel. It looked very homely, not at all grand or dashing, as James had unreasonably assumed it would be; indeed, there was nothing grand or dashing about Mrs. Jason’s brother’s inn, its virtues were of a different sort.

  In many ways ‘The Golden Boar’ was a fortress, a shabby bastion scarred and tried, home-made and full of contrivances, but ever manned against the stranger without the gate. These are not the ideal attributes for any inn, of course, but then the Fletchers were not by nature publicans, and ‘The Golden Boar’ did its own kind of trade in its own obstinate way.

  James arrived in a downpour and turned the little mare into a yard which ran water like a ford. It was just on dark and the lanterns hanging under the stable roof were made brighter by the rain on them.

  The man who came out to meet him did look remarkably like Mrs. Jason, but he was too young to be her brother and he was not at all friendly. James let him explain that the inn had no accommodation, never had had any, and the chances were, never would, and then produced the locket and spoke his little piece.