Dance of the Years (22 page)

There had been a storm of terrible discoveries, about life; about physical facts until now too trivial and vulgar to be glimpsed and yet at the moment so terrifyingly important; about Frank's helplessness, who had seemed stronger than the world; about the loneliness of the deserted; and about the cruelty and impotence of the older half of mankind when it suddenly becomes afraid.

All these revelations were flying round her head like a scattered pack of cards. They were too much for her, there were too many of them. In the midst of the whirlwind of negation she seized on the one green bough, the one thing which was alive and constructive, and it saved her.

Along with the bread and the water she had been given the Bible, of course, but by this time the Lizzie who had planned so fiercely and adventured so recklessly was a mass of weeping misery and no longer in charge. This time the normal Lizzie chose her own reading and went to St. Paul. He had the truth for her in strange words, which once
their need is felt are probably the sanest, most enlightening in the world. Charity—not the mewing posture of patronage disguised, but charity herself, true spirit who alone can make another's weaknesses one's own and give to him a self's consideration, thus to reduce the cruelties of life to the little understandable shifts of a still young mankind.

“Charity suffereth long and is kind,” explained the saint to Lizzie; “Charity beareth
all
things, believeth
all
things, hopeth
all
things, endureth
all
things. Charity never faileth.”

Lizzie took the instructions and the promise as literally as if he had given them to her personally from his cell. Go on loving, she translated it; bear it, believe in the God in people, in Frank too; hope, hope hard; always, obstinately; unconquerably; foolishly if necessary; endure. Together these never fail; God promises.

So she of them all who suffered most, received most, as it happened.

The sensible thing to do is not always the pretty thing. No one can deny that what the Timsons and James did about Lizzie's disaster was highly sensible, but in many ways it was an ugly thing, and if in the end it was she who gained she certainly suffered very dreadfully first.

They conducted the whole affair from beginning to end as if nobody knew what had happened; nobody at all, not even those most closely concerned. It was a tremendous feat of self-possession, a masterpiece of looking a thing in the face and not seeing it. James played his part perfectly, as did everybody else.

He arrived at Dorothy's cottage one day in a new two-wheeler with a smart little chestnut between the slender shafts. After staying the night to rest the mare he got up early to put all in order, and later in the morning, dressed superbly in a new red-brown coat and the latest in grey hard hats, he drove down the road, the spokes of his yellow wheels winking like bayonets in the sun.

He took luncheon with Mr. and Mrs. Timson and a pale and terrified Lizzie newly decked out in a grey silk gown. After the meal he helped her into her jacket, saw the ribbons of her bonnet tied under her chin, and lifted her into the trap himself. When they were tucked in
together with the thick rug smoothed neatly across their knees, he gave the chestnut her pretty head and they went off together, the cob's tiny feet throwing up a splatter of gravel from the wet drive.

They trotted through the village and turned down the winding road which led through the water meadows. The jack-by-the-hedge was sere and rotting in the rain-soaked grass, the river was swollen and forlorn, and the willows, looking like petrified skeletons, raised spiky fingers to the sky.

Lizzie looked at them all and her hands hurt each other under cover of her muff, but she gave no sign of distress save that her face grew a little more pallid in its silk frame.

James, who did whatever he did deliberately, glanced at her stiff back approvingly and took her on to the next jump.

They passed the entrance to Quinney's at a walk, and saw through the naked trees the red blinds drawn at the windows. James looked at Lizzie again, but still her small shoulders showed no signs of drooping. Presently they passed Dorothy's cottage, and she peered at them from the window. When James took off his hat, Lizzie bowed, and the feather in her bonnet nodded in the wind.

James grew more satisfied. So far they had barely spoken, and he stirred himself to do something about it. He asked her if she was cold, and she said not at all, but that she found the freshness of the air very agreeable. She turned her head to speak, but did not raise her eyes and there could hardly have been any counterfeit in the colour which swept over her face.

He began to question her about her music of which he had heard so much from Mrs. Timson. Was it true, he enquired, that at school she had once played the piano before the Queen? Lizzie agreed it was so. It had been a great ordeal and she had made her curtsey with the other girls. Had the Queen noticed her particularly? No, there were many older and better performers than she, but it had pleased Mama.

James nodded approvingly, and was silent for a while. Manners excellent; self-possession good; modest; not forward, but also not awkward. Obedient? He did not know yet. There were one or two other points which had better be examined. To do him justice he was being very sensible. He was certainly behaving as if he were buying a horse, but why not? He was proposing to live in much closer proximity to this young woman than he would expect to have to with any horse. He meant to have her if it was feasible, but there were certain faults which he knew to be irradicable, and he had no intention of taking on the impossible.

He was still considering her when he pulled up at the trough outside the “Red Lion” inn, and while the chestnut sucked daintily at the
water a beggar came sidling up to them, his greasy hat held up imploringly. He made for the girl, and she sat blushing, her hands fast in her muff.

“Aren't you going to give him anything?” said James with interest.

“I can't,” she said, “I haven't any money.”

James unbuttoned his coat and produced a large knitted purse with strings, which he untied. He took out a sixpence and gave it to her.

“Throw it to him,” he said. But she took the money carefully, beckoned the man to come closer, and slipped the coin into his hand with a smile which was apologetic rather than condescending. It was very prettily done; James was taken with it.

He did his best to get her to talk on their way home, but provoked only formal answers. He could feel the fear in her just as he would have felt it in an animal. It came to him through the elbow with which she touched him sometimes when the trap jolted.

When they came back to the house, he drew up in the drive where the trees hung over the path, and sat silent for a moment looking at her. She was not much like the girl he had seen on his first visit as she had come dashing in through the hall doorway, her face alight with happiness. He rather wished he had not remembered that. Suddenly he laughed, with an impulse that was all old Galantry, and she, looking up at him, saw a fierce, dark face on which there was self-derision and yet enormous animal good humour.

“Kiss me, Jinny,” he said, “and I'll marry you.”

Lizzie closed her eyes and lifted her face to him meekly. Her nose felt like a little piece of ice on his cheek. It was only when he was lifting her out at the steps that she ventured to correct him.

“My name is Lizzie, Mr. Galantry,” she said.

“Elizabeth Jane, isn't it?” said James. “I like the ‘Jane' best. Little Jane is Jinny. Do you mind?”

“No,” she said, “of course not. But nobody else calls me ‘Jinny.'”

“That is what I thought,” said James, and he looked at her very steadily. She grew white and he offered her his arm to conduct her up to the door. It was all so utilitarian, so realistic, so cruel for the present, so sensible for the future.

When James drove back alone to Dorothy's cottage he was in one of his own peculiar moods. He was being himself and was obstinately clinging to the fate which being the man he had decided to be entailed. He had plenty of misgivings, however, for he was not a fool. They buzzed round his head like flies, but he was not turned back. He had made up his mind. His marriage to Lizzie was going to happen in the same sort of way that his marriage to Phœbe had not been going to happen. He still had free will, of course; even now he could escape a whole set of experiences which he knew would not all be pleasant, but he knew he would not change his mind.

Lizzie had passed the little test his prudence had set her; there was not much against her that he could see, and for a reason which he would not analyse he wanted the child. Everything else, therefore, every natural rebellion, he put out of his sight.

The following day, as soon as he arrived in London, he went round to Penton Place. He devoted his entire energies to the preparation of the house. Not only was Lizzie never consulted, but hardly even remembered save as an object around whom the stage was to be set. James did not think of Phœbe either; when she did come into his mind he put her out again. Yet a great part of her was there with him all the time.

It was Phœbe's sophisticated taste which James took with him when he went to see the upholsterer, Phœbe's gaiety which insisted on the wallpaper with the blue birds on it for the bedroom, and Phœbe's sense of fashion which advised the silk sashes for the plush curtains in the yellow drawing-room. And all this, although she had never seen or heard of the house, and was suffocating deep in the country.

Just for a moment it occurred to James that the stuff of humanity was soluble in love, and it dawned upon him that there was never any real escaping from anybody one had ever loved, or even liked deeply. Bits of them clung, he thought, although the individual was for ever striving to conserve and keep himself unadulterated. To be loved, thought James, is ephemeral gain, but to love is to acquire something
permanent. It was a rather terrible idea to an individualist, and James put it away from him.

After a while he was happily convinced that he was preparing his own house, quite alone, and without help from anybody. It was soon ready, and one day well before Christmas, James took the key in his hand and walked over his castle. It was very new, very cosy, and completely deserted, for the servants were engaged but not yet on the scene.

Bessie Fletcher had found him a pair of country sisters who had been well trained ‘at the house of a gentleman near Ipswich,' and Whippy was bringing them up himself at the end of the week.

James had thought a great deal about keeping a man, but had decided to postpone this mark of gentility until later, until he was quite sure how much everything was going to cost him.

At the moment, therefore, he was quite alone, and he went steadily through the house from hall to attic. He found it very satisfying. The crimson curtains, which had been so astoundingly expensive—twenty-five pounds a pair—gave the two parlours on the ground floor a note of ease and elegance which reminded him of Groats. The drawing-room above was satisfying also; the yellow flowers on the brown carpet were soft and rich looking; and the rosewood chairs, the striped silk sofa, and the piano which was a present to Lizzie from her father, all possessed an air of distinction. Behind this room was his own little sanctum, which possessed a small balcony outside its window; it had a grape vine on it which pleased James out of all reason. He did not go in there just then though, but continued to the top of the house, where there were six bedrooms; one large one, with the blue birds on the walls, and five small ones.

He went into the one that was to be the nursery and looked out of the window. He found he could see right across his own piece of land and over the high wall at the end to the Surrey Gardens beyond. He had not been actively aware of this popular playground before, but now there was movement there. The winter preparations for next year's fairs were being made, and among the waggons he saw a painted caravan or two. He was tremendously interested at first, and for a while watched them with genuine pleasure until suddenly he became very angry indeed, and wished he had not bought the house at all. It was a purely emotional reaction, of course, and when he brought old Galantry's mind to bear on it, he became amused at himself. The noise would not be very great at this distance, and the fireworks would entertain the women, and later, no doubt, the children. But it was certainly odd he had not noticed the place before.

He went downstairs, feeling vaguely surprised. It was queer, just
chance of course, but queer how there was never any real escape. Always there was a reminder. Life, he felt, was like driving an obstinate horse.

He turned his big shoulders and gave his attention to serious matters, like the quality of the paint, and the fact that in one corner of the landing the paper-hanger had patched badly. Once on the drawing-room floor again, he went into the room which so far he had avoided. It contained his own things: certain pieces of favourite furniture had been sent down from his lodgings and now stood round the wall smugly, as if they knew they were in a permanent home. James was very glad to see them, they belonged to an earlier and plainer period, and were quite different from anything else in the house.

Everything that could be locked was so: every cupboard, every desk, every drawer, had its key.

James sat down in an old saddle-bag chair and pulled open the top drawer of a tallboy, which let down, and made a small, uncomfortable accounts desk. Inside were half a dozen pigeon holes, flanked on either side by a nest of small drawers with white bone handles. He took out the third one on the left hand side, and reaching back behind it produced another and smaller still, which some thoughtful cabinet-maker had introduced for very private papers. This drawer contained his account book, half a dozen I.O.U.'s, and a snuff box with a very flowery inscription on it, a gift from Phœbe, which he had thought it prudent to give up using. There were some old letters from her, too, and one comparatively new one, which had never been answered.