Dance of the Years (29 page)

Invention flowed from him. It trickled from his finger tips like dew from the leaves. He would invent a pudding if he had to feed himself for a day, or a game if he had to wait on a railway station, or a new kind of buttonhook if he bought a pair of French boots, or a device for drawing curtains if a lady asked him to shut the window, or an excuse if she asked him where he had been. He was, so he said in moments of expansion, not quite in control of his genius or of himself either, for that matter. The fact was that he had a great working mass of creative power in him, and only a wet brown paper vessel with which to hold it together.

Many people wondered if he was quite sane, but had he not been, then the various crises of his life would have sent him taking up the floor boards or putting straws in his hair, and even when he was drunk as a regiment he never did that.

On this occasion he was playing a little game with himself; he was pretending to be somebody else. He often did this, as, of course, do many other people. His rôle for the mealtime was the wealthy business man looking round Germany for ideas, and this character was not entirely untrue; there were elements of reality in it, but he was not wealthy, had no more idea of business than an artless child of six, and it was he and not the Germans who had the ideas. The confusion was typical of him. Nearly everything he said or did had something to do with the truth, but was never on the bull, never exact. It was very difficult to catch him out and he drove lawyers and precision craftsmen into hysterics.

On this occasion he did not want to talk to William but he could not stop himself, and as he talked he could not help inventing. His account of himself was like an impressionist painting; he hinted, threw in an indeterminate rose-coloured something in one corner, gilded with a single word the figure in the foreground, cast an exciting mist here, or a mysterious but inviting wiggle there. It was a good portrait, for he got away with it, and that in spite of his accent, his revealing slang and his ease, which was not ease at all.

He did not present all this picture in one post prandial go, at the first meeting he was becomingly modest, even reticent, but the three saw a good deal of each other in the next four days, and although he knew perfectly well it was not wise to cement the acquaintanceship, he
conducted William and Julia to the Fuggerei, to The Golden Chamber, to the Fountains, and so on. They even went to Munich together, and gradually his self-portrait grew and he became complete in their minds.

Walter Raven emerged as a pathetic, if very comfortably-off man of the world. William and Julia understood he was secretly brokenhearted by the circumstance of a hopelessly invalid wife. They gathered that his affairs were sufficiently important to necessitate him taking trips to nearly every country on the Continent, and found out that his house was large and lonely and was managed by a dear sister, who was a godsend to him. They also saw plainly that he was brilliant. He had half a dozen languages, his general knowledge was phenomenal, and his air of sophistication was fascinating to William, who was beginning to realize that his own outlook was tending to become narrow.

William and Julia took leave of Mr. Raven with regret. He had interested them and they hoped to see him again.

As Raven saw them leave in the station bus, his mood vanished and he wondered morosely what the hell he had been up to. He made a resolution never, never in his life again to go anywhere near these wealthy, respectable, upper class, honest and religious people; but he knew he would. He liked their lack of any streak of the “bohemian,” the absence of mystery surrounding him, their obviously unblemished family record, and their quick acceptance of all the little niceties of life which he had had to learn and to which he clung with all the avidity of the convert. He thought he saw them so clearly, even, while with one part of his mind he decided to avoid them for ever, with another, he was already planning just the right little dinner party to impress their well-bred monied innocence.

A young man who was spending his large patrimony financing a religious paper, which could hardly on the face of it be a profitable concern, touched a chord of wistful admiration in Mr. Raven's heart. It was the kind of thing he liked—wealth, and philanthropy, and nice people.

Meanwhile, in the “Express,” William thought shrewdly about Mr. Raven and wondered just what use might be made of him—in a perfectly nice way, of course.

It was soon after this that Jinny first began to grow uneasy about her William. She was glad he was successful, she forgave him his dignified arrogance, and whenever she saw him she felt young again and forgiven, but she did not like the faintly patronizing note which now came into his tone whenever he spoke to James.

It worried Jinny that William had no idea what he owed to James. She was only thinking of him and she wanted him to have every chance. William was very grand in these days; he was twenty-six or seven now, and things were booming.

The Converted World
had become so well established that even Willitimson sounded envious when he spoke of it. Julia's bonnets grew more and more expensive every time she called at Penton Place, and one blue and dusty summer's day she arrived in a Victoria of her own, with a liveried boy to drive her, and little Jeffrey, her son, nodding on the seat at her side. William himself was soberly splendid. His honey beard was as glossy as his silk hat, and his beautiful London-made boots. His face had not softened with the surprise of success; he looked keener now, and even colder. He treated his mother like a duchess and James as a bit of a fool.

As far as Penton Place could hear, Laurel Lodge was the scene of much respectable junketing. William and Julia made it clear that they had many interesting friends. They mentioned casually that they often dined at Westbourne Terrace with the Mr. Walter Raven who was so brilliant, and that their circle was large but exclusive. Always there was a very strong flavour of decorum and piety and solidarity in everything they did.

Jinny listened to it all and was very pleased. She was not well in these days, and she was glad that Debby was coming home soon. She was so tired. Her old friend the Rector of the church at the end of the street (he looked on her son's dissenting adventures with horror, but was too kind to say so outright) noticed a great change in her and wondered that James did not.

Jinny herself had no illusions. She felt that at forty-three she was old in body, and she thought it fair. All the same, as she became weaker, her anxiety about William grew. How could he be just if he
did not know? Anyone could have told her that to tell him about Frank was a mad idea, yet it would not be true to convey that weakness and illness made Jinny irresponsible, whereas in fact they made her firm. Jinny was thinking of William's good, or, to be exact, of that little in William which was good. That was all she was worrying about. Perhaps that was the explanation of Jinny and the reason why the Good seem so often the Daft.

As time went on she began to be nagged by her conscience, but it was for this reason and not because she thought she ought to make a confession of guilt. She put it off again and again, but she knew quite well that in the end he must hear the story and see where he stood.

By this time Deborah had returned from the finishing school, and James was observing her and thinking about men and horses, and the astounding mystery of living blood. He reckoned Deborah was about three parts Shulie, but superimposed on the structure were all kinds of new environment-taught attributes and defects. It seemed to James sometimes that Deborah was three parts Shulie and one part Jinny in a glass jar; a jar with fanciful designs moulded on its surface.

The fashion of the day was still aiming to present every girl as the popular notion of the male animal's ideal mother for his children, but there had been modifications in the original design. The gentler virtues were still at a premium, and health had been sacrificed for a clinging, delicate type both of form and mind. Innocence carried to the point of ignorance was still admired, and indeed with many another luxury it had become something of a necessity. So where circumstances made the genuine thing impracticable (when young ladies could not be kept on a lead) a very carefully designed substitute had been introduced.

Brains in women were still decidedly out of fashion; strong mindedness, intelligence, humour, all these possible menaces to male self-confidence, were still anxiously hidden, but were not entirely suppressed, since experience had already shown that a real absence of all of them in any woman was not a good idea. Now the fashionable girl put a great many brains into appearing as if she had none.

At the moment when Deborah returned from Miss Marchbank's Select Seminary for the Education of Young Ladies, the artificial fashion had touched its peak, perhaps just a month or so after its original object had been achieved, and the middle classes were wrestling with the enormous families which they still felt were at least half the secret of their ascendancy, but which were proving a tremendous strain on the other arm of their programme.

One day James sat in his chair at the head of the table in the dining
parlour and looked at Debby. She was a fine, handsome girl, with Shulie's strength and vitality, and much to her despair, James's own dark skin. She had the round black eyes of a gypsy, which were quick and intelligent and slightly naughty-looking; there was Jinny's good temper in her smile, James's own obstinacy in her mouth, and her general appearance suggested sense and ability, but at the moment she was talking unmitigated rubbish. James could hardly follow it, it was so silly and affected.

Apparently Julia recommended rosewater for the eyes, but no rose-water would turn brown eyes blue, would it, Papa? James said he had a very good recipe for turning blue eyes black, and laughed immoderately at his little joke, which Deborah did not see. Noticing that she was not pleasing, she turned with Shulie-like eagerness to something else.

She begged her “dear Mama” to take a rest before “dear Julia” called with her “dear little boy” (“He's not a bit like your side of the family, is he, dear Papa?”). “Dear Mama” looked very peaky, didn't “dear Papa” think so?

James looked at Jinny and knew better even than Deborah that Jinny looked more than “peaky,” and that there was nothing to be done about it. The average doctor was still slightly more than a skilful vet., and James had no faith in vets.

He said abruptly that he hoped Mrs. Galantry would always take a rest whenever she felt like one, and Jinny, to change the conversation which was distressing, asked Deborah who had written a letter which had come to her that morning.

Deborah was only too delighted to be asked. She said it was from “dear Madeleine Deveraux,” who had been her “dear friend” at “dear Miss Marchbank's,” and contained a most exciting account of a very elegant “pic-nic” in the Welsh hills, as well as a most romantic story of wifely devotion in the recent Crimean War. Apparently “dear Madeleine” had been introduced to a charming girl whose Mama had gone over in a friend's yacht to Scutari at the very height of hostilities, and had only very narrowly escaped the terrible storm which had capsized all the supply vessels, and even battered some of the new ironclads, to find her “dear husband” who had been wounded at Balaclava. However, the most interesting thing of all, and the real reason why “dear Madeleine” had written, was because the girl's name was Ethelinde Galantry, daughter of a Major Benjamin Galantry, and niece of a most distinguished gentleman called Sir William Galantry, down in the West Country. Was it not remarkable, and had “dear Papa” ever heard of such a person?

James was eating walnuts from Farthing Hall with his after-dinner wine at the time, and he took the trouble to skin a segment before he
replied. Then he said he did not think he had. He was thinking of the girl with the idiotic name; Ethel was bad enough, that suggested fancy history; but Ethelinde, Good God, what next!

She must be a grandchild of Young Will's, he supposed. Young Will must be dead. Now that Dorothy was gone he never heard any news of the family; not that he wanted to, of course, not that he wanted to. They need not have worried; he had never been an embarrassment to them, now they were not going to be an embarrassment to him, if he could help it.

He came out of his thoughts to find Deborah chattering on. “Dear Madeleine” had hinted that Miss Ethelinde and Madeleine's brother, Robin Deveraux, might be going to make a match of it. “Dear Madeleine” was excited by the prospect, and had hoped that her own “dear Deborah” and Ethelinde might somehow be cousins, although she had to admit that there was no likeness whatever. Gaining no response from this gentle prodding, Debby continued, artless caution very evident in every word she spoke.

Miss Ethelinde did have one cousin at the “pic-nic.” He was the youngest of a very large family, born when his father was quite an elderly man. His name was Septimus Galantry; his father was a barrister. Did “dear Papa” know that name by any chance?

Lucius, thought James. Lucius was just the man to call a child Septimus; so his spawn was still spreading its tentacles over the earth, was it?

Debby was too well taught to press her question, but she was looking at him enquiringly, while from the other end of the table she caught a flicker of curiosity in Jinny's face. James was amused by them. He had never explained his family connections, and did not intend to do so now. The Timsons, who alone might once have demanded an account from him, had not been in a position to do so at the time of his marriage, and all Jinny had ever understood from him was that he came of a second family and that there had been a quarrel.

“No,” he said quite truthfully, “no, Miss, I have never heard of Septimus Galantry.”

Debby sighed. “He's a most handsome young man,” she said. “He writes poetry, Papa.”

“No relation,” said James.