Because of the circumstances his blood would be perpetuated otherwise; Debby must see to that, or else the two younger boys. His achievement was a patched business, a cracked vase of a structure, but in view of everything it was not too bad. In fact, when he looked at it and considered all the difficulties, he felt it was a damned miraculous performance. Had it not been for Phœbe and for a new, indefinable misgiving, he thought he should feel that he had cause to be very satisfied.
He was thinking this when he got out the documents and handed them to William. Meanwhile, that young man was seeing James for the first time as someone who was not his father. He saw a curious-looking person. James was still powerful, still mighty in the shoulders, but his hips had fallen away and his big head had sunk into his neck, giving him a top-heavy appearance. His black clothes diminished his size still further, and his luxuriant white wig darkened his thick eyebrows and the hollows of his hooded eyes.
William wondered where on earth he had come from originally.
James was slightly embarrassed when he handed over the money; a little anxious to hide his satisfaction. William, who was very used to business interviews, noticed it at once and thought he understood. The old man was cheating him, of course; he assumed he was keeping the greater part for the others and was a little ashamed of it. In his present mood William was inclined to forgive James. Poor old fellow, it was very human.
He took the securities gracefully, and James cocked an eye at him. The boy seemed to be taking the cash as if he had a right to it. James thought it a little surly in him not to protest; a long hidden trace of Shulie’s anxiety to try to please when rebuffed stirred in him.
“When I go,” he said, “you’ll have to look after your sister and the boys. They’re a pack of almighty fools, I’m afraid.”
William looked at James and his blue eyes were very cold.
“You can rely on me to be absolutely just, sir,” he said. He looked so like Edwin Castor when he spoke that he made James feel quite uncomfortable.
Chapter Thirty
One day Willitimson called in at “The Converted World” office, and feeling himself at a disadvantage in the face of so much fashionable Bible knowledge, tried innocently to compete. He startled William by observing that one of the best epitaphs he had ever heard had been placed on the tombstone of an old servant by James Galantry. Willitimson said that carved on the headstone of the grave of a certain Dorothy Holding in the churchyard at Sedgeford were the words: “She doeth him good and not evil all the days of her life.”
On the other side of the office Clemmie Johns looked up to say, “Prov. thirty-one, twelve,” but for once William did not notice him. He had heard of Dorothy vaguely, but had never had her explained, for James did not explain his affairs. But now with his new knowledge William thought himself enlightened.
The genuine feeling in the quotation impressed him, as did the account of the tombstone which sounded expensive for the careful James, and he remembered that James had brought several pieces of furniture into the house at Penton Place when the old woman had died. An explanation occurred to him immediately: Dorothy Holding must have been James’s mother, of course. He supposed that she had been a well-valued servant somewhere, perhaps too well valued, who had been left something in somebody’s will. He would have been astounded had it been put to him that he had an evil mind, he merely adopted the explanation as the probable truth. It was the sort of history which seemed to him to be both reasonable and likely. It was not a matter he wished to examine, and he did not consider the dates, which might have enlightened him. Nor, of course, did he tackle James; it was a point of purely academic interest as far as he was concerned. He was beginning to think of James as a sort of Saint Joseph in his own story, a useful but not particularly interesting figure.
The personal isolationism of William was quite extraordinary. Some people called it selfishness, but there was a good deal more to it than that. William saw himself as something quite apart, something as exclusive and alone as his own high walled house.
The incident probably explained why he was so surprised when he heard that a relation of James’s, introducing himself as Septimus Galantry, had called at Penton Place. James had been confined to his room at the time, and had not seen him, but Debby had. William was unreasonably angry; without a modicum of enquiry or any evidence whatever, he assumed that the man was an imposter come to look for money. He could not interfere but he was against the man, and this was unlike William, who was usually prepared to see absolutely anybody in case they might prove of some use to him.
It was interesting that Debby should have seen Septimus alone when he called first, for it was probably the one stroke of luck she ever had in her life. James and the Dorothy within him were doing their best with Debby in these days, but they had their hands full.
Julia, who was jealous of her, of her school training, of her manners and of her gentleness, told William quite sincerely that she thought the poor girl was simple-minded. She also said that she looked ridiculous in the quilted skirt and pork pie hat which James had bought her at Jay’s. This in all fairness to Julia was absolutely true, but most women were looking a little odd that year, and Debby was not alone.
The poor girl did not even notice Julia’s resentment. She had a trusting, affable nature, and she put the pork pie plumb on the top of her head, and had to have it rearranged by Boxer, or even the impatient James himself, trying to remember how it had appeared in the shop. Her excuse was that she had been told it was vain to look in the glass, as she had by someone who had underestimated her literal-mindedness. It was a fact that she was the most fearful fool, but the house was a dead fire whenever she was out of it; she would help anybody to do anything, she never minded the most menial or unpleasant work so long as it was for someone, and little Jeff regarded her as a sort of Mother Nature only on his side. Anyone could reward her completely with gratitude, real or feigned; she was not choosy and not acute. Like Jinny, she gave away all she had; and, like James, she never threw anything away.
When one thinks what happened to her later, and how Julia used to patronize her and give her old clothes, and what was in fact a day’s charring for her food alone, it is staggering that in the end the two women should have loved each other, and that it should have been Deborah who tended Julia when she was old and drivelling, and should have soothed her when she shrank from the eternal darkness, and should have closed her eyes.
But this is premature. It is only excusable here to point out that Debby’s qualities were real qualities, and were proved so. In Debby, even her faults combined to make her virtues strong; she was as obstinate as James, or as a mule, and she was always getting into such trouble that she clung to being good as a drunken man clings to a railing. Also, she had Jinny’s gift—the courage to endure, and she needed that, as it turned out.
From what Debby said afterwards, her interview with Septimus must have had points of interest. When Boxer told her that the master wished her to see the gentleman who was waiting in the drawing-room, the good-natured girl also suggested that she should pin up the curl which was hanging over one of her ears. She also offered to fasten Debby’s dress between the shoulder blades where it gaped, and in the end she went up looking more or less tidy.
A tall, fine-boned man of thirty-one or two turned from the window when she went into the drawing-room. He was not a schoolboy, and not the youngster who had blushed when Debby looked at him in church. The mistake was typical of Debby. She had noticed the wrong man, had eyed the pupil and not the master, who sat beside him. Miss Deveraux, who was much more fly, had not been so deceived.
If Septimus was not the fair-skinned, downy adolescent whose innocent stare had attracted Debby, he was by no means unhandsome. He was very much a Galantry. There was the faint air of weariness in his face, the same slenderness, and the same heavy lids and over-wise eyes. He was a self-possessed, disillusioned man, who was augmenting his patrimony by teaching in a fashionable school and
was managing to live a comfortable, bachelor life which was yet not altogether satisfying. He wrote a little light verse of a sophisticated type, not then in favour, and hearing from Miss Deveraux that these relatives of his were connected with publishing, he had considered it an excuse to look them up.
His main reason for calling, however, was to see more of Debby. He had said she reminded him of a wild moss rose. She did. James had not considered wild moss roses; Septimus had. The moss rose is not the dog rose; it is an untidy, cabbagy little bloom, pink and woolly and innocent, and very sweet smelling.
Septimus had heard his father, Lucius Galantry, tell the story of James, and to him it had appeared romantic. Hence the exciting word “wild” in his description.
When Debby came in to the drawing-room at Penton Place she was just exactly as he had imagined her. The curl fell down again just as she got in to the room, and a flicker of amusement passed under his hooded lids. Debby did not see it.
For all she knew he might have been the boy she had expected. Debby did not raise her eyes.
Miss Malagrowther, the deportment instructress at Miss Marchbanks’, had one edict which she drilled into her pupils with the same determination with which a sergeant insists that no man will forget his rifle. She said: “No nice young lady ever raises her eyes above a gentleman’s knees when she is first introduced to him.”
Debby learned her lesson painfully, but once there the habit stayed. She never did. She lived to be a hundred, and she never did. On this occasion she thought that Mr. Galantry had lovely boots.
Septimus was compelled to do all the work, and he was delighted. He introduced himself as her cousin, and said that he had brought messages of goodwill from Lucius, who was growing very old. Deborah hardly heard what he said; she only thought he had a very attractive voice.
She spoke her formal piece about her “dear Papa” being too unwell to receive him, and then stood so still and so shy, her face so pink and her lashes so black on her cheek, that Septimus, who was not quite so dashing in the ordinary way, became possessed of unusual boldness.
“Is it permitted for cousins to kiss?” he enquired, his eyes dancing.
Miss Deborah Galantry was startled out of her wits, but once again Miss Malagrowther came to her rescue.
“My hand,” said Debby, thrusting out a brown fist with more determination than grace.
Delighted astonishment passed over Mr. Galantry’s sophisticated face. He crowed. There was no other word in Debby’s vocabulary for that peculiar, triumphant sound, which was only half a laugh. He bent over her hand charmingly and said something she did not quite catch, but it sounded like “sweet.”
Having got the introductions over, Debby raised her bright, black eyes and was momentarily nonplussed to see a complete stranger. Septimus straightened himself to find her staring at him.
“That’s better,” he said. “What’s the matter, cousin? Am I not at all what you expected?”
“Oh, much better,” said Debby, involuntarily advancing out of her own safe ground away from Miss Malagrowther, only to retract immediately. “Please be seated, sir—I mean cousin,” she said. “I trust you do not find the weather too warm.”
It was midwinter and freezing, but the word had slipped out. It was the sort of silly mistake she was always making in class, and weariness came over her. It was no good; she was going to muff it.
Septimus was reading her thoughts; not a difficult proceeding, for Debby had the most expressive face which lit up and clouded every other minute.
“Suppose you sit down, too,” he suggested. “Now tell me, have you seen Miss Deveraux lately?”
“No,” said Debby, adding frankly, “Papa does not wish it.” She felt this was a dangerous statement to leave floating in the air, and yet was at a loss to explain it. The complicated machinery for polite conversation spread out in front of her like a tray of ivory bobbins, all of which she was expected to use at once. To her relief he nodded as if she had told him everything, and his eyes, which were beginning to fascinate her because they were so like her father’s, yet much more experienced although he was younger, rested on her face.
“Wealthy and fashionable friends can be a responsibility, and not greatly entertaining. Don’t worry, Deborah,” he said.
She could have taken it that she was neither wealthy or fashionable, but he did not mean that, and she knew he did not. He was very easy to talk to, almost an old friend.
Unfortunately they talked too long, and Boxer appeared to say that the master was enquiring for his daughter. This was serious. Septimus realized what a gaffe it was quicker even than Debby, and he made most sincere apologies. Debby was alarmed by James, but even more alarmed to lose Septimus. She made the prescribed parting speech.
“It has been most agreeable of you to call. I will inform my father of all your kind enquiries.” But added on her own account: “Oh, cousin, I do so hope you will come again.”
Septimus took her hand and pressed it. As old Galantry had felt the racing life in Shulie running through his arm, when he walked with it across her shoulder in the copse behind Jason’s house, so Septimus was aware of something unusual which was also something he needed very badly, when he first touched Debby, but the power was diluted in this generation, and the sensation was far less extreme. He had no idea what it was.
He guessed that he might very easily fall in love with her; he thought she was the dearest little muff, not too little, either, but strong and very healthy, and not too mysterious for comfort.
Debby felt he was romance miraculously made easy and without the intense embarrassment she usually associated with it. She felt bereft when he went away, and was nearly in tears she was so lonely, when she trotted up to James.
James said that three-quarters of an hour was a fantastic time for a first call, and asked her what the devil she thought she had been up to. All the same, he was pleased by the visit. Even as late as his middle age, any gesture from the first family would have found him disinterested, but that time had passed, and he had nearly forgotten the details which had led up to his flight to “The Golden Boar.”
He sat thinking of Lucius and Young Will with something of the same affection he usually reserved for Groats and Dorothy and his father. He could not remember much about them except, absurdly enough, Young Will’s very high waisted white breeches as he had sat in the candle-light talking about schools. It seemed a very long time ago.
James was not at all well. He had had a ridiculous accident. It was the kind of mishap which often took off a very healthy old dog, he reflected, and the thought brought out his little grunting laugh. He had had a fight.
It had happened on the first cold day of the autumn, about dusk. By this time the Walworth Road was fast losing its early respectability, and as he turned out of the main thoroughfare into the gloom of a side street a figure had snatched at the watch chain just visible between the swinging sides of his coat. The incident had happened very quickly. James whipped up his heavy ash plant and brought it down so savagely on the retreating arm, and with such tremendous strength behind the blow that the larger bone was fractured at the wrist. It was a tremendous swipe. The muscles of James’s back and shoulders were still mighty, and he still had no idea of their power. Also he was very angry. The watch was the one which he had bought to replace that which he had given to Blackberry. It had cost him fifty pounds, and he heard it drop on to the bricks of the road. In his rage he dived at the man, caught him round the hips just as he was darting away, and brought him down on the stones. He kicked James in the thigh, but the old man held on grimly until the crowd came up.
At the police station James had had his first heart attack. The excruciating pain in his chest astonished as well as frightened him, and the faintness which was the first he had ever known in his life, which followed it, warned him that the damage was serious.
The police had been very sympathetic, and the Charge Sergeant, who had seen the punishment done to the thief, could not
resist a word of congratulation.
“That was a werry fine blow, sir,” he said. “You’re a remarkably powerful man, if I may say so. Werry phenomenally strong, ain’t you?”
James felt the enquiry was an impertinence, but he recognized the compliment.
“Yes,” he said. “I’ve been very strong all my life.”
“Never done nothing wiv it, sir?” enquired the Sergeant, who appeared to be fascinated.
“No,” said James, thinking how ill he felt. “No, of course not.”
But on the way home in the shaky cab it occurred to him that there was no “of course” about it. It had been an asset which had not fitted into his scheme of things.
In his unnerved state, a fear which was part superstition took hold of him, and he thought there might well be something very wrong indeed about that. He was still considering it when they helped him out and got him to bed.
He was up again in a couple of days, but everyone could see the change in him, while he suffered from no delusion.
With no grace at all he submitted to an examination by the doctor who had attended Jinny. It was a depressing business, and James’s remark that the “vet.” didn’t seem to think he was “worth his fodder” was made before the man was well out of the room, and embarrassed William and Deborah, who were both present.
William did not like the vulgarity of the fight. He belonged to the new, more precious age, and he instructed Debby to speak of her poor Papa’s ‘accident’ and not of his ‘affray,’ which was the word she was using.
James thought they were both damned silly, and wondered aloud sometimes what would become of them all when he was in Hell.
“Hades, dear Papa,” said Debby mildly on these occasions.
James had not the heart even to swear at her. He kept to his room most of the time, sitting by his fire and thinking.
Dance of the Years Page 25
