Dance of the Years Read online

  On this occasion she recognized his outburst of weeping as a premonition of the legacy of trouble his mother had bequeathed to him, and was furious and frightened. Her unreasonable behaviour frightened James still more and he fled howling; not only from the house but from the garden also, and out over the fields.

  He forgot his troubles in the bright weather. It was early June and the earth was tricked out in lace and coloured ribbons over her green gown. Her breasts were warm and damp, and her breath scented and voluptuous. James began to cavort in the meadow behind Jason’s house; he threw his arms up over his head, and snorted and stamped and heaved his top-heavy little body like a bull. Presently he rolled among the clover and the coltsfoot, and rubbed his forehead in the grass.

  “I am happy,” he shouted in the earth’s soft neck. “I am happy. Happy. Happy.”

  He strained his lungs to their utmost, and he felt it was like drinking a great pail of beautiful water, the soft kind, which came from the well at the basketmaker’s; not the thinner, harder sort they pumped in the kitchen at home. After a bit he scrambled up and began to walk sedately. A notion had come to him that his happiness was not quite a right thing; it was not a clear thought, but something to do with Dorothy, and his being the third most important person in the world. In this new and dignified mood he decided to go on to the stables. He had been round them several times with his father, and had been charmed by the animals. Also he had been made to feel proud and secure by the atmosphere of deference which had surrounded the two of them as they had walked among the smiling hat-touching fraternity gathered there. James had liked that, and now he had a mind to sample it again.

  He had to get through the hedge to reach the track, and because he could not straddle the ditch on the other side, he dropped into it, and walked along it for a bit, watching the clear water play round the soles of his sturdy, buckled shoes.

  When he reached the place where the bank was lowest, he came out and his dark head rose up from among the cow parsley like a foal. Jason himself was on the track talking to Larch. The old man was very shaky in these days, but he could still get about and give advice. Both men turned as the little boy appeared so suddenly, and then seeing he was alone, they began to laugh together. It was shrill, east coast laughter; not altogether kind and very informed. James felt uncomfortable, and for a moment he stood looking at them. Then he went forward steadily. Their faces did not harden as he approached; rather, he thought, there was a sort of knowing welcome in their eyes as though they had been expecting him for a long time. But they did not touch their hats, and the third most important person in the world noticed the omission at once.

  Chapter Five

  All the men working for Jason bore the names of common English trees, except one, and he was called Eucalyptus. This apparently incredible circumstance had a reasonable explanation. Jason’s grandfather had not been able to read, so the Galantry of the period who had wished to make him his overseer had invented a system whereby the man could keep a record of the labour done by each worker on the estate in spite of the disability; and the system entailed, among other things, the re-naming of all concerned.

  As a method of book-keeping it was wildly complicated, and much mental effort would have been spared the Jason family had they scrapped it and attempted straight scholarship. But this they preferred not to do, seeing, since they were free men, no reason why they should be reasonable. So when Jason “did his books” he took seven small flower pots for the seven days of the week and set them in order on a shelf. Every week into each pot he put as many bits of stick as he had men employed. He used a different wood for each man, and cut each twig square so that it had four level sides. For one whole day’s work he cut a corner notch in the wood; for a quarter day’s work he slashed one side; for half a day’s, two sides; for three-quarter’s, three sides; and for a full day and a quarter’s overtime, he cut only one side and a notch as well. At the end of the week he counted all the notches and slashes and paid out by the reckoning. Since the arrangement was apt to become confusing and had led in the past to many arguments, each man on entering Jason’s service was re-christened by the name of the wood of his tally stick as soon as he was hired, and was never called by any other name. As time went on all the commoner trees had their man, and so when the latest lad came to work at the stables, Jason begged a branch of the foreign tree from the Hall glasshouse, and called his new hand Eucalyptus.

  When the young James went down to the stables that day, these were the people who eyed him. They were not stupid people, not serfs, but shrewd, practical folk of great determination.

  After a brief greeting which was friendly, but not respectful, Jason and Larch walked slowly into the stable yard talking together, and James followed them, realizing he was forgotten. At first he was half a mind to go off in a rage and stamp in the field again, but a certain dogged control asserted itself in him. Galantry would just have recognized it, but it was not strong in him.

  James dropped into step behind the two men. He was biding his time. As the third most important person in the world he intended to assert his position as soon as a convenient opportunity should appear. He felt very strong physically, his shoulders and chest felt strong; all his life he kept that awareness of the strength of his body. Other people he found out afterwards were seldom conscious of their bodies at all, unless there was something wrong with them. He was not like this, he knew the whole time. His strength made him laugh sometimes; a little snort of secret pleasure. Even when he grew old he used to snort in the same way at the same thing; but by that time, naturally, his mind was so full that it had no leisure to remark what it was that pleased him.

  Just now, of course, he was at his green best. Adolescence was still far away, and he was fighting fit to tackle the elementary. His senses were beautifully clean and sharp, his emotional nature fearless; and his nice, simple brain new and sweet running. He felt a little god, not proud, just god-like.

  The yard they entered seemed so long that it made him think of the High Street in the town he had once visited, and he was gratified to think he had a third share in owning it. There was a square archway under a loft at the far end, and there the cobbles rose to make a little hill, so that he could only see a strip of green beyond. It looked like a very dull picture in a wooden frame.

  The air reeked of horses; a smell so very strong to his super-sensitive nose that it made his eyes water. But he found it exciting as well as unpleasant. There were horse sounds about, too; these were lumberings, the vicious noise of iron on stone, and vasty breathings and sighings, all horribly lovely. This nice nasty element which was new to his direct mind puzzled him a little. He hoped there was nothing wicked in it, and his next thought was that even so, it was worth it.

  At first he thought the place was deserted by people, but presently he heard voices coming through the archway. These were followed by a terrible sound. He had heard a stallion trumpeting before; no one living near Jason’s yard could have avoided it, but this time it was much nearer and the triumph in it was uppermost. God Almighty, what a sound! His face and head tingled in a sudden network of pain as his nerves jangled, and he squealed aloud.

  Larch turned round very slowly, as old men must.

  “Frightened?” he enquired.

  “No,” gasped James, and squealed again.

  Larch began to laugh. “You like it, don’t ye,” he asked roughly, “don’t ye? Blood’s coming out. That will. Nothing won’t never stop it. He likes horses, don’t ye, boy, don’t ye? You little old smith. You little old traveller.”

  The epithets were incomprehensible to James, but he realized they were not exactly unkind, and yet not complimentary. At any rate, they were insultingly familiar coming from this old person.

  Jason saw the child’s expression and let his eyes wander.

  “Best be quiet along of that together,” he said briefly.

  “No. No. I’m old,” said Larch, a triumphant quack breaking his voice. “I’m
old. No need for me to be quiet. I’ve always got me grave to goo to now. By the time you could harm me, little ’un, I’ll be in it, see. He likes the old entire, don’t ’ee, boy? I’ll tell yon somewhat; so do I. I love ’un. Give me your hand, you little old smith. You stand here with I. Now you watch. Loveliest sight in all the world. Loveliest sight between here and Chelmsford town.”

  James submitted to having his hand held. He found he could feel the excitement better that way. He felt more secure; less likely to be burst in pieces by the delicious goings on in his chest and stomach.

  “Where?” he demanded anxiously.

  “There,” said Larch, his eyes fixed on the opening under the loft. “Now!”

  James looked, and had one of the great experiences of his life. He saw no ordinary sight; it is not easy to explain this, because all that actually came through the archway was a sunburned, red-haired man, hanging on to the mouth of an excitable red horse, in an attempt to check its reckless clattering down the slippery incline.

  James saw animal strength in its most idealized and uplifted form. The lovely lines of bones and sinew of both man and horse rose up in a flurry of sparks, and seemed all cased in red gold, like fire blazing. It was a picture of pride and blood and natural pageantry. James was transported. In one moment he felt filled, satisfied, slaked. Immediately afterwards he was alarmed. Something alive appeared to have been born in him. Something expected to come out. He struggled for expression, and then as the realization that he had none, had no way of releasing the idea, which by passing through him could emerge a new, created thing, he began to cry.

  Old Larch’s grip tightened. He was a little rheumy himself, and Jason, who caught sight of the two of them, began to laugh in a high pitched, spiteful fashion. The spell was broken, but the ache remained in James. It was an ache of which he never did get quite rid in all the rest of his life, and from time to time during the years it was added to by other experiences.

  The little gift of expression which Galantry had given him was more than outweighed by the dumbness which was Shulie’s legacy, so he was never able to set free the pieces of created art which were conceived on those occasions. He never could tell anyone else in the world, ever, by any means at all, what exactly it was he had seen in the picture the archway framed. Yet they did not die in vain, for the blessed phoenix of desire rose out of them, and the desire to express was one of the things that James made in his life, and he passed it on, not only to his children, but to all sorts of other people whom he inspired.

  At the moment, however, James was far too occupied with the next thing to worry about the mysteries and complications contained in the adventure of being alive. The red-haired man brought the horse dancing down the yard, and a small crowd of men and boys followed them admiringly.

  “A rare ’un,” said Larch reverently. “Beautiful, ain’t he?”

  James did not know anything about the points of a horse, or even that an animal had any, but in the ten minutes which followed, he began to get a very vivid idea of what Larch and Jason meant by a “blood.”

  The stallion’s name was Mandrake, and in the background somewhere Mandrake had an ancestor called Poteightos. As far as James could gather, Poteightos was a heavenly steed, a sort of Jehovah horse, a Zeus. More than this, however, he in turn had had a sire whose name was so impressive that Larch could scarcely trust himself to mention it. “Eclipse.” James never heard the word afterwards without experiencing a faint, superstitious thrill.

  James was not a fanciful little boy by nature, but he was not deeply informed, and it did not seem to him unreasonable that horses should be a race co-equal with men, the bloods being as it were a divine, or at least angelic, strain among them. He felt he was fairly familiar with angels since Dorothy had assured him that there was always one in the wall just above the head of his bed. He had heard it scratching sometimes.

  The whole thing was highly peculiar, of course, but seven years of life had convinced him that there was nothing to wonder at in that. Life was peculiar. The more you heard about it the more staggering it became. He saw clearly though, that Larch must be a sort of Dorothy of the horse world, and would know what he was talking about, so he listened with deep attention.

  The hall-mark, the sign of Eclipse, Larch said, lowering his voice on the mighty name, was the dark spots on the chestnut rump of a horse. Always in the direct male line there were these dark spots in the fiery hide, just there, on the quarters.

  James found the male line so mysterious that Larch had to explain it. “On the sire side,” he said, “come down through the father, see? Now the dam side, or as you might say, the mother’s, that doesn’t never carry it.”

  “Mothers are not so good?” enquired James with interest, pouching another piece of information.

  “Mothers are wonderful tricky,” affirmed Larch, with dark reminiscence. “Seems they can spoil a good ’un, but they can’t never make one. A good dam will always throw to the sire, whatever he be, right or wrong, but a poor little old dam may do anything. She’s a right dangerous thing. No mistake about it. Son may be all right, grandson likewise, and then trouble starts in a whole line on ’em.”

  James was not much clearer after all this, but he did not forget the maxim. It remained in his memory for years, and he regarded it as gospel long after he had forgotten where he had learned it.

  The notion of the Sign interested him immensely. He looked at the dark, irregular patches on the stallion’s soft gold skin, which were like oil stains on satin, and a thrill ran through him; for glory of glories, had not he himself a great black mole on his own seat? At one time it had alarmed him slightly, but Dorothy had said it was quite common, and nothing to fidget about.

  So hitherto he had accepted it without interest, but now he was indignant with her. Nothing to worry about indeed! That was just like Dorothy; always hiding important things in case they might make him conceited. He, James, had the Sign, too. True, he was not a horse, but might not this mark of superiority be universal? Belong to men as well as horses?

  He was so delighted, so pleased, and so eager to see the admiration of the gathering transferred from the stallion to himself, that all other considerations went out of his head, and with a single-mindedness which was pure Shulie, he pulled open his breeches, scruffed up his shirt, and nudging Larch displayed his buttock proudly to him, pointing out the big mole which was nearly the size of a shilling, and black as a coal.

  The shout of laughter went up all round in one great brutal roar, the clap of it burst over his head like a storm. Realization poured over him, chilling him, almost taking his breath away, and after its cold came the great heat of shame.

  “Taking down your breeches before folk!” Had Dorothy appeared like an outraged goddess, he could not have heard and seen her more vividly.

  Death, eternal nothingness, he thought, would have been merciful in that instant of exquisite chagrin. The old Will Galantry in him was appalled. His instincts rebelled with a horror out of all proportion to the enormity of the crime he had committed against his own dignity. All through his life he suffered from the same sort of experiences, and gradually came to recognize his tendency to do for innocent reasons naïve things which shocked his own instincts. Fortunately for him on this occasion the laughter started the stallion, who let fly with his heels and began to plunge like a lunatic, taking the amusement off the faces behind him. But even so Jason had to hold on to a door post to keep himself upright, while Larch had to sit down on a mounting block, he was so overcome. They were still sniggering and James was still burning when they paused outside a loose box halfway down the yard.

  Jason was all for getting on and taking a look at “the mare” they kept talking about, but old Larch was quietly obstinate about the knee of a bay, which had suddenly cropped up in the conversation.

  James trailed after them wretchedly, and when they opened the half-door and stood on the threshold, peering into the warm, dusky interior, he followed.
r />   A coach horse leader, a very big Cleveland, was fidgeting in the straw, and Larch went forward discreetly to squat down in successive positions of vantage round it’s puffy foreleg. He surveyed it from all angles, but he did not touch it, and presently he came back to Jason shaking his head. While they were talking, James went in unnoticed.

  The salty warmth of the animal came up to meet him comfortingly. It smelt right and friendly to James, and as he bent over the enormous, iron-tipped leg, and prodded the short hairs over the joint, he felt a large muzzle blowing and lipping over his shoulder blades. He put up his hand to caress it, gratefully. Here, anyway, was one member of the co-equal race who was prepared to acknowledge his superiority on sight.

  The horse took his hand in its mouth, but deciding magnanimously not to bite it off at the wrist, thrust it out again with a powerful tongue. James went on prodding the knee. He was looking for the thorn he expected to find in the swelling, for when he had one himself, that was usually the cause. Finally he found it, and brought his other hand down to help squeeze it out. At the first pinch the brute snorted and reared away from him, a hoof passing within an inch of his eye. James was irritated. “Stop it,” he said angrily. “Stop it, I’ve just found it. Stand still, please!”

  It is an odd thing that most domestic animals seem to catch the meaning of remarks if the speaker for some reason or other honestly expects them to, and on this occasion the Clevelend clearly caught the drift of James’s statement, for he dropped his feet quietly and stood shivering. The small boy worked hard, but the pin-point of wood did not move. Presently he spoke over his shoulder to Larch.