The Ballad and the Source (3 page)

“Oh, Harry,” said Mrs.
Jardine,
“these are Edward's girls—my sweet Laura's grandchildren. Is not this a happy day for me?”

His eyes turned from the window and came down upon us rapidly yet with reluctance. His lips which were long and thin gave a twitch, the travesty of a smile, but he did not say anything; and the rest of his face was quite unsmiling. Almost immediately his gaze returned to the long pane.

He did not have a trace of any of the different kinds of manner—patronage, embarrassment, amusement, dislike, comradeliness—whereby grown-ups signalise their consciousness of meeting children; but we were prepared, and knew it was his shyness. Slender, upright, with military shoulders and a faultlessly-­cut, new-looking tweed suit, he had, as he stood on his own hearth, the most curious look of having no connection with his surroundings. He seemed absolutely exposed. Under crooked bushy grey eyebrows, the whites of his sad butcher-blue eyes were bloodshot; they looked as if they might brim over with tears any moment. Children find a naturalness in eccentric social behaviour; and though his isolation gave him dignity, he did not disconcert us.

April sun struck brilliantly off many pale surfaces of chintz, wood and mirror, and when Mrs. Jardine with her puffy cloud of white hair and her blue gauze, sat down by the window to the tea-table, she looked half-spectral, dissolved in silvery spring light.

Tea was on the plain side, tasty but not lavish, with little home-baked scones and queen cakes and shortbread biscuits. It was memorable for a delicacy of intoxicating flavour, called guava jelly, which we had never before tasted. Mademoiselle bade us speak French, since so remarkable an opportunity had been offered to us of profiting by Madame's knowledge of the language; but Mrs. Jardine begged for us with such tact, praising our accents but explaining that the Major was not so proficient a linguist as herself that Mademoiselle yielded gracefully, with apologies. We thought that possibly at this point the Major winked very slightly at us, but we were not sure. Little spasms and tremors, easy to mistake for winks, continually crossed his face. Certainly he took no other notice of us, and the meal passed without a word from his lips. Mrs. Jardine talked energetically, in French, to Mademoiselle, in English to us. She talked about the house they had somewhere in France, and said we must come and stay there one day. The word she used was
ch
âteau,
which we understood to mean castle, and we asked how soon we could come. She did not put us off with a vagueness and an indulgent laugh, which would have proved to us that the invitation was a false one, but said with seriousness that she was sorry she could suggest no definite date at present. This was Harry's old home, where he had lived as a boy, and they had only just been able to come back to it after years, and Harry loved it very much and wanted to enjoy it for as long as possible before the English winter should force them abroad again. Nowadays, she said, she was like our grandmother: she could not be well in a damp foggy climate. Harry could, of course, he was very strong and healthy, but he never let her travel without him. We were glad to think he loved and cared for her so tenderly, but troubled because his enjoyment of his old home was not more manifest. She spoke for him, she spoke about him: he remained to all appearances unconscious. Their eyes never met. Another thing I noticed was that she filled his teacup scarcely half-way up and leaned across the table to set it down beside his plate. I realised why when I observed how his hand shook when he lifted and drank from it. The tea rocked wildly, but he did not spill it.

Presently the door began to rattle, then opened to let in an enormous cat, orange tabby. It posed in the doorway, glared with tawny eyes, then went streaking, tail up, stiff-legged, to his side. He lifted it on to his lap, folding it in his arms and bending his head to murmur inaudibly to it. Mrs. Jardine poured milk into a saucer, placed it before him on the table and continued her conversation. The cat sat on his lap and stooped its neck to drink. We left our seats and came round his knee, awestruck, to stroke the fabulous creature.

“What's its name?”

“Peregrine,” we understood him to say. Then he did give us a rapid look, as if wondering whether he could trust us, and added: “He opens the door himself.”

His voice startled us. It was so light and flat it seemed not to issue from his throat, but out of the air, out of nothing. Sometimes in dreams voices speak suddenly like this, empty ventriloquist voices making trivial statements whose tremendous meaning appals us.

“Will you make him do it again?”

“He won't do it again, there's no reason for it,” he said rather snappishly. “He doesn't fool about—he plans his life. He opened the door because he wanted his milk. If I put him outside now and shut the door in his face, he'd sulk and I shouldn't see him again to-night.”

This was the longest consecutive speech I ever heard Harry make. He got up, and as he did so the cat leaped up on to his shoulder; and thus in silence they left the table and went out, closing the door behind them.

In this room there were two portraits to look at. One was a large, full-length portrait of a fair girl of about seventeen, dressed in white muslin with a blue sash tied round her small waist, and roses in her low bodice. Her arms were round and bare, and she sat with her hands loosely clasped in her lap on what looked like a blue glazed earthenware barrel decorated with a pattern of dolphins. Behind were tall trees; and there were some doves on the grass round her blue-shod feet. White, serious, piercingly beautiful, blue, full eyes staring out with fanatical directness, she was recognisably Mrs. Jardine. As I gazed, the hopeless wish to grow up to look and dress exactly like that caused me a wave of almost nausea.

The other portrait hung in an oval frame over the mantelpiece, and showed the head and shoulders of a wonderful young man in full dress military uniform. He had poetic, delicate features, a fair moustache and a wistful expression.

“That is Harry when he was a young man,” said Mrs. Jardine. “Harry was the handsomest man in London, and the best dressed. He was the handsomest man I ever saw, except perhaps your father.”

“He's changed rather, hasn't he?” I said in a tactful way.

“People change as they get older. They get more firmness, more character in their faces—if they are good people. For instance,” said Mrs. Jardine rapidly, in a matter-of-fact way, “Harry had an almost girlish beauty as a boy. As he grew older, and became such a brilliant soldier and led such a hard-working­­­­, responsible life, the quality of his looks changed. All the strength and manliness in him came out.”

“I didn't know he was a soldier,” I said.

“Of course,” said Jess. “What d'you suppose Major means?”

“Well, he is a retired soldier,” said Mrs.
Jardine,
stroking Jess's hair affectionately. “He had a terrible fall from his horse, and then his health broke down, and he had to give up the Army. It was a great grief to him.”

I pondered, realising for the first time that it was the strength and manliness coming out in men that gave them purplish faces with broken veins. Yet my father was not red at all. Possibly it worked both ways: one could start highly coloured and grow paler, and the cause would be the same.

As if reading my thoughts, Mrs. Jardine said:

“I dare say your father has changed a great deal from when I knew him. But I am sure he must still be a very fine-looking man.”

“Oh yes,” I said; and preoccupied as I was at this time with the problem of marriage, I added: “If he was the
very
handsomest man you knew, do you wish you had married him instead?”

“
Mais voyons donc,
Rebecca,” interrupted Mademoiselle sharply. But Mrs. Jardine smiled and said:

“Well—it would have been delightful, of course. But the question never arose.”

“I suppose he never asked you?”

“No, never. Apart from anything else, I was too old. As you know, men generally prefer to marry women younger than themselves. I am about half-way between him and your grandmother in age.”

“So you could be friends with them both?”

“It was your grandmother who was my darling friend. Of course I was very fond of your father, but he was often away, at school, then at Cambridge, and I never saw him much.” She paused, and added: “And then I lost sight of him altogether.” She drummed with her fingers on the back of a chair, tapping out a brisk tune, then announced abruptly: “I was frightened of your father.”

I felt myself colour violently with shock.

“Why?” said Jess, piercing her with an unblinking stare. But she was looking far away, over our heads and went on dreamily:

“
Such
charm he had!
…
Nobody could resist it.”

“Everybody thinks he's very kind,” said Jess.

“Perfectly true.” She spoke with decision.

“Then why were you frightened of him?”

“He had a terrible temper,” she said, still looking away, “when he was a young man.”

“He still has,” we assured her.

Mrs. Jardine seemed to come out of her dream and said in her most matter-of-fact way:

“Oh, he still has. What a pity.”

“He shouts a bit sometimes,” said Jess, dismissing his temper with a light shrug. “Mostly at Mossop. Not at us. There's nothing to be
frightened
of.”

She glanced at me, irritable: I was frightened when he shouted. I said nothing.

Mrs. Jardine turned to the window, so that only her bleached stone profile was visible to us, and as if declaring herself, alone, before the judgment of the world, said:

“I have never been a person to be frightened. Physically, I am exceptionally brave. I may say that I have never known physical fear. I have known great pain in my life, and great danger. Each time I have thought: ‘How interesting! A first class experience. Not to be missed on any account.' As for those ignoble anxieties which rule the lives of most human beings—they have never touched me. The world is full of unhappy men and women who have feared the opinion of others too much to do what they wanted to do. Consequently they have remained sterile, unfulfilled. Now myself—once I was convinced of what was right for
me,
that was enough! I might suffer, but
nobody
could damage or destroy me.”

I could have listened all day to Mrs.
Jardine,
for the sheer fascination of her style. She enunciated with extraordinary clarity and precision, giving each syllable its due, and controlling a rich range of modulations and inflexions. I wondered at first if she could be reciting from Shakespeare or someone. Then I thought: She's boasting: why? I had heard declarations somewhat similar in the nursery or the “hall” after a reprimand from authority. I thought also what an unsuitable way this was to talk in front of Mademoiselle; and hoped the latter's command of English was as inadequate as she sometimes for her own purposes asserted it to be. But Mrs.
Jardine,
true to her principles, was not bothering about Mademoiselle. She went on:

“But
violence!
—that I do fear. The lid blown off suddenly in your face—and oh! what comes out of the black cauldron
…?
” Her eyes dilated. “
Horrors!
—that don't shrivel up harmlessly in the air and light of day, and drop back into the stew they came from, but swell to
monsters
that nobody dreamed of and nobody can deal with. … Ravaging monsters that live for
ever!
…”
She turned to us again and changing her manner suddenly, said in a light bantering way: “Bad temper, I'm talking about, my darlings. Never let it get the better of you. Being angry is the same as being mad, and mad people can be dangerous.”

“Was he angry with
you?
” I said.

She looked at me, smiling secretively.

“I have made a number of people very angry in my life.”

“Why?” said Jess.

“Because I myself am so very reasonable,” declared Mrs.
Jardine,
touching her gauze scarf with light sharp flicks of her fingers. I noticed that her hands were shaking. “It is a knack I have never learned—to allow passion and prejudice to guide my behaviour. Better for me, I have sometimes thought, if I had.” She drew in a loud hissing breath. “I could have fought with more equal weapons. However, there it is—I am ill-equipped in some respects. Confronted with anger, I cannot get angry. This is sometimes a disadvantage; because the unreasonable cannot be met with reason—they are impervious to it. They understand only their own barbaric language.”

We were by now completely out of our depth. We could only concentrate upon her the whole of our attention, and wait. She was—yes, she was actually trembling all over, as if an electric storm were passing through her body.

“I never lose my temper either,” I observed.

“But you sulk,” said Jess. “That's worse. Some people say it's a good thing to lose your temper. It all comes out quick, and then it's over, and you feel all right.”

“Our baby brother has a ghastly temper,” I said. “He holds his breath and goes black in the face. Once Nurse had to dash him under the cold tap with all his clothes on.”

“Let us hope he will outgrow that,” said Mrs. Jardine gravely. She looked up in a brooding way at the Major's portrait and said: “Ianthe was a very equable child. And Harry has the temper of an angel.”

I was relieved; and wishing to be rid of the impression that Mrs. Jardine had trodden a path unremittingly beset by furious fiends, said eagerly:

“Then you are glad you married him?”

“Very glad,” she said briskly. “Oh yes. Yes, certainly.”

“And that Ianthe has such a kind father?” I relentlessly suggested.