Dance of the Years (20 page)

Leaning back against the bedroom wall, her shoulder against the panelling and one cheek pressed against it also, Phœbe heard him walking steadily away.

She did not move, but lay there crying until she had to laugh a little at herself. Then she sat down before the mirror and bathed her face, and put her throat against the air and prepared herself to go on in her own way with all the independence and the sophistication which was in her. But in her heart she knew, just as James knew, that it was a wrong thing, for James had a kindness, a solidarity and a common-sense on which her gaiety could do its little dance.

She married Sir Robin as she had said she would, and the old man carried her off to Bedfordshire to startle and mystify the natives. There he dried up the pure fount of gaiety with which he had been so fascinated.

James lived riotously and in an unusual fashion for him for three weeks after she left London. Then he settled down into dignified gloom.

It was in this mood that Mr. Timson found him when the horrified and unhappy man came to James as a possible saviour in his desperation. He brought an astonishing proposition.

To Mr. Timson's amazement and relief, James accepted the proposal after he had heard the full story, and agreed to marry little Miss Lizzie without delay.

Those who knew anything about the tale at all, and they were surprisingly few all things considered, attributed many disreputable
motives to James's unexpected behaviour. Some thought he must have done it for money, and some were certain he could only have done it for pique. But the real reason was far more extraordinary, and only comprehensible to those who knew James and knew his background, and knew just exactly what it had meant to him when his father's first family made it so clear that he did not belong to them.

James married Miss Lizzie to get possessive hands on Edwin Castor's grandchild, and he would not have done it for any other reason on earth.

Just before he married, he told Whippy that he felt like having a Blood in his stable, and Whippy thought it a peculiar remark, for at that time he had no thoroughbred nor did there seem, just then, any prospect of getting one. He said as much to James, and James laughed rather bitterly.

Never go back, they say, particularly never in telling a story. Yet since it is important to explain what James was really getting and not what he thought he was, it is necessary to record something of the two things which happened just before Mr. Timson made his desperate proposal. One of these is what Edwin Castor said to Mr. Timson, and the other is what he said to his son.

Until now the real Edwin Castor has not appeared in this story. Hitherto he has been represented by the effigy of himself to which James set up his altar, and has appeared only as one of the princes in whom James put his trust.

However, he did exist; a sad, cold man, who suffered secretly with a dyspepsia which his dignity would not permit him to own. He was ambitious, and he was genuinely superior in mind to most of the people about him. He was intolerant of fools and unreasonably irritated by the minor weaknesses of less perfect men. This irritation was born of a genuine mistake, a genuine ignorance of a part of life of whose existence he had no inkling. He was a cold man by nature, and had no conception of the force of the emotions possessed by warmer temperaments. He could reason his own heart out of any inclination it had ever achieved, and sincerely thought that it was laziness or naughtiness which prevented anyone else on earth from doing the same thing.

Moreover, nor did he ever dream that in priding himself on this strength of mind he might be admitting to a weakness elsewhere. It did not occur to him that it is all very well to take pride in a chain which can restrain a dog, but that the size of the dog should be taken into account. Never in Edwin Castor's life had his unwilling footsteps dragged him into a situation which he knew to be unwise.

The mindless power of desire was not in him, and he had no clear notion of the reality of its existence. Unfortunately he thought he knew practically everything. He had a fine legal brain and his experience at the Bar had taught him many facts about human frailty.

In all physical matters he was unusually fastidious and was faintly proud of himself for being slightly offended by the normal functions of the body. Vice amazed him, and it was vulgarity which made him most ashamed of the world. The older he had grown the more ashamed of it he became, and he kept himself and his own aloof with the care of a woman in an evening gown walking across a farmyard. This was nothing to do with snobbery, and not, as James assumed, a practical interest in breeding.

Castor was not interested in breeding, the mysteries of heredity had no fascination for him. It was not his subject. It was merely that he felt himself intellectually aloof. Necessarily he was a lonely man. It was true he had certain friends, men of his own age and eminence, but when he met them the clash of temperaments was apt to confuse the gentle interchange of brain and brain, and so most of his association with them was conducted by letter, and the Edwin Castor
Correspondence
, in three volumes, is a literary curiosity to-day.

His married life had been short and slightly unreal. His wife had always seemed to him to be a potentially disturbing person who was staying on a visit, and although he was startled by her early death, in his secret heart he knew it for a relief. Constant meeting, talking, sleeping with her had forced her too far into his life. She had come within an ace of blundering into his very self, and that was an intrusion to which he could not have submitted.

Frank was his only child, and in Frank he saw his own survival which was as near as he came to loving. Even so, he did not identify himself with the boy truly; he saw him rather as the “next person in charge,” and for that did his best to prepare him.

Edwin Castor was nearly fifty and was set and old in everything but mind long before his time when Mr. Timson called upon him one evening late in the year. Mr. Timson was in a considerable state, he was fresh in his misery and was spurred on by his wife, who had a hysterical eagerness in her manner which he did not understand at all.

Edwin Castor received him with that devastating politeness which sets the recipient instantly at a disadvantage, He put everything but
himself at his visitor's disposal, and then waited, not without mild curiosity, to see what he should do next.

Alfred Timson was a simple, unaffected man, far too capable of being hurt. His passage to success had contained so much agony that when he arrived at it, it simply comforted and did not overwhelm him. At this moment he was utterly vulnerable and was a wretched, ashamed and smarting soul nakedly in tears. To Castor who had not anything like the same capacity for feeling, and was subconsciously aware of his lack, he was repellent before he even spoke.

Mr. Timson produced the sad little story without art. He was sorry for Castor, sorry for Youth, sorry for Folly, sorry for his girl, sorry for Castor's boy, and fully aware of much of the desperation and hunger which had led to the sin. He saw it as a sin and a disaster, as sins are. He did not see the ignorance, for of all things that are difficult to understand, ignorance is the most elusive. It is not easy to imagine nothing. However, he possessed the insight of pity, and before he realized what he was doing he was interceding for the boy, who had broken into his garden and stolen and despoiled his daughter.

He was that sort of man in that sort of trouble. His tale was passionate, incoherent and utterly convincing; even Castor did not doubt for a moment that the story was true, and that, even although he only heard the facts and brushed aside the evidences of the other man's misery as some sort of weakness.

The intimation came as a tremendous shock to him, but it did not overbalance him as it had Timson. Ugly stories were a commonplace in his work, and in his time he had heard worse. Emotionally he was shaken, naturally, but that side of him was not a very highly developed or adult affair. Therefore so far as the actual interview was concerned he was at a considerable advantage.

They were in a big room which was cool only in colour and which smelled pleasantly of paper and the leather bindings of books. Castor was standing on the hearth-rug, and was framed in a mass of carved wood overmantel, and by the fine painting of a soldier in red and white behind his head. He made an impressive and judicial figure, while Timson, fidgeting before him, made no figure at all.

Castor made no attempt to impress, he merely brought out his mind and put it on the matter as if he were setting up a microscope. To Mr. Timson he appeared disconcertingly calm and remote.

When Castor was ready he began to take the other man through the story very carefully, exactly as if he were a client of his barrister days.

“Tell me, Mr. Timson, what makes you so certain that my son is the culprit in this abominable and degrading affair?”

Mr. Timson was only too anxious to explain, and to get the tragedy into the head of this other father who, beneath his calm, must be
suffering even as he was. He went off at a great rate, stammering over his story and repeating himself.

“Well, you see, it was the gardener, my dear sir, the gardener. A good, honest fellow, wonderfully astute. And discreet, too, I think, thank God! He noticed, or thought he noticed, that the garden was being entered from the fields at night, and that the temple—that's a summer-house, you know: stucco, ornamental, silly little place, romantic looking. Well, he thought, I mean he guessed, he saw in fact, certain things which made him think it was being used, and so he lay in wait and watched. You know how these country fellows do. I mean, they begin to feel the place is their own property—and so it is in a way almost—and he thought he was doing his duty I suppose, and then—then he saw the two children.… They're only children, my dear sir, only two silly children.… Oh my God …!”

Mr. Timson had to break off to blow his nose, and Castor considered him with contempt from behind his barrier of ignorance.

“Your gardener identifies my son?” he said, picking out the important fact. “Was the boy there on only one occasion?”

“Well, no; no, unfortunately.” Mr. Timson had got hold of himself again. “Webb says he did not like to come to me at first, and he seems sincerely upset, poor fellow. They are all, all the servants, very fond of my little Lizzie. She's such a simple, friendly little thing, poor silly girl. No, no; he waited several days, weeks I'm afraid, seeing them meet every night, and then he came to me and her mother, and I put it to Lizzie and we—we found out.”

“Her condition,” said Castor, without making it a question.

Mr. Timson's misery was embarrassing and even disgusting to him; it bothered him more even than the tale itself. He found himself disliking the man intensely. However, he was a disciplined person and went on steadily with the interrogation.

“Tell me,” he said carefully, “this man Webb, your gardener. Did he see no one else but my son?”

“No one else but Lizzie,” said Timson simply. “They were alone, you see.”

“So I gather. But so far as you and your gardener know your daughter had no other nocturnal visitors?”

Mr. Timson was one of those people who are so constructed that a really monstrous suggestion sounds literally incredible to them. It is as though they cannot believe that they have actually heard it. He looked at Castor blankly, his mind refusing to make sense of the words.

“No,” he said, “no.” He was quite convincing and Castor had not spent his working life in a court of law without being able to recognize the word that will be believed.

“Quite,” he said. “Now, how did these young people become acquainted?”

Mr. Timson did not quite know. It appeared that he had not thought about it. The fact that they had met and with such appalling consequences seemed to him to be sufficient. But Castor was not nearly so easily satisfied. With unhurried persistence he drew out every shred of the story from the bewildered and heartbroken man.

Miss Lizzie had met Master Frank on her walks. On her
walks
? Was she alone on these occasions? Apparently she was. Was not that very extraordinary? Mr. Timson did not think so. He imagined she would be perfectly all right. Indeed, he had never dreamed of anything else. She was a child. A little girl. Hair down her back. A child. They were both children.

Castor was politely incredulous at first, and after, when he was convinced, shocked. He went on questioning.

Had Miss Lizzie never mentioned meeting a young man on her walks? Surely she had said something? Surely the girl's mother had her confidence? Or was it that she was a deceitful child?

Faced with the direct question Mr. Timson blinked. From far back in the year the recollection of a conversation he had had with his wife did come creeping up to him. He fancied it had taken place at night, in bed perhaps. Yes, surely his wife had said something about Lizzie speaking of the Castor boy, and had added that he was noble or handsome, or was it delicate-looking? Yes, that was right; there had been something. He could not remember much about it, it had not made any very clear impression. Sleep must have intervened. Yet now with these fine cold eyes looking deeply into his own, a shadow of some such talk did recur.

“She may have done,” he said helplessly, “not to me, of course. Her mother may recollect her saying something. But it doesn't matter, does it? It doesn't matter
now
. Nothing matters now. The thing has happened; she's going to have a baby.”

He was so guileless, so transparent that his doubt showed through the words like a stain, and for the first time during the interview Castor's face betrayed something definite.

He smiled. To him, unhampered by most of the colours and shadows of the emotional picture, the hard drawing of the facts was vivid, and as it happened, slightly wrong.

He could see it all quite distinctly. First there were the scheming climbers, the father and mother. Then there was the pretty, possibly vicious little girl, and then there was the boy, ignorant and impressionable. He had a clear vision of a little fly in petticoats dangling seductively before a foolish young carp. It was quite evident to him and utterly evil and petty; an incident typical of a world made filthy
by the stupidity, the greed, and desire for self-aggrandisement of ninety-nine per cent, of the creatures who lived in it.