Dance of the Years Read Free Page B

was sudden, overwhelming and pathetic.
    He dismissed Dorothy when she came running down in a flutter. She saw he was a little shamefaced at the weakness, but she went off obediently, still without any sign whatever on her tight-skinned face.
    Galantry was highly relieved. He put her down as even more the stolid, faithful fool than he had thought, and was grateful. He reflected that she probably thought he had gone a little mad, and for her own sake was being indulgently reticent about it. Meanwhile he had Shulie within his arm.
    All the same he had under-estimated Dorothy, who had not thought for a moment that he had lost his mind. Later that evening she told Richard what she did think, and they stood gloomily together considering it, one on either side of a barrel in the stillroom. They were two gaunt country people, and they had all the wisdom and perception of eight hundred years’ experience of simple, civilized living behind their hard, expressionless eyes.
    â€œBecause of the war he’s thought he could do what he likes,” said Dorothy, and Richard nodded in grave agreement.
    As a remark, it did not sound particularly fresh or profound, but they were neither of them people of much talk, and all the upheaval, all the dangerous unleashings and disintegrations of war passed as a fear through them when Dorothy spoke the word. When she said “what he likes,” in spite of her quick, flat tone, the phrase to Richard summed up all the lust, all the recklessness, all the impropriety and all the selfishness of generations of lonely old men.

Chapter Three
    All that was in the autumn of one year. By spring eighteen months later the reckless hour had passed completely. More and more evidences of the general trend which the social life of the land was taking so fast had filtered down as far as Groats. If the world was going to come to an end, it was going to do it in an odour of propriety apparently. Old Galantry damned it for its censoriousness, its narrow-mindedness, and its growing tendency to poke its nose into a gentleman’s private affairs.
    He was standing at the end of the drive at the time, under the oaks which were budding yellow and hopeful. Far down the cart track road a coach was lumbering away from him. In it sat Libby, his youngest daughter, and she was in tears, he knew. She was the last of his children to come and see if it really were true, and it was, so there they all were.
    When he was not infuriated by it, his children’s reactions to his second marriage amused Galantry, and made him feel young and mischievous. Certainly he had upset them all. The coming child had finished it. That had got under their skins, and their irritation was not all to do with their loss of money by any means.
    Poor Libby; he liked her the best of all his daughters, in spite of her mute reproach. Of all her mother’s children she had more of his mind. She did know a little about the Arts of which she talked so freely, and that, thank God, was a change.
    He was very glad he had had her so well educated. Her husband was an M.P. He was dull and considerably her senior, but he looked after her well and appeared to appreciate her. Libby was all right. What had she to cry about when she saw her father happy?
    To old Galantry the amazing thing was that he was happy; extraordinarily happy. He had even written a little again too. At first he had been inclined to suspect this particular aspect of his rejuvenation since it smacked a little of a pathetic second adolescence. And that embarrassed him even while it made him laugh. All the same, he remembered, he had never been without talent. His collected poems, published in his early middle-age, had been very successful. His youthful “
Why should I so soon despair
…” had been very much admired, and seemed likely to pass into the lighter verse of the language. Certainly this brief glory had been offset somewhat by the annoyance he had caused with the