The Ballad and the Source (37 page)

“I can't imagine anything more like heaven,” I said, with sincerity.

“Yes. I thought of you once or twice and wished you were with me.”

“Did you honestly?”

“Mm … Well, I had this bathe, it was a scorching hot morning, and afterwards I went in to the inn for lunch. They have it at twelve in France, you know, and can't they jolly well make vegetables taste good! After lunch I decided I'd go for a row. It was fun steering through the lilies, they lie like great rugs on the water and all their ropy stalks come gliding up on the oars; and I liked nosing around the midget islands of willows and guelder-rose and stuff, and looking at the freakish little castellated houses perched up on the banks. I came out of the inn; and as I went down to the landing stage I noticed a woman in a queer dress: a dark yellow bodice and a long, bright-coloured skirt, sort of magenta, not an English colour, and edged with a gold band, sitting in the summer-house and having her lunch. I couldn't see her face. I poked about on the river and came back about four, and had another swim. I gave Gil a shout, and he looked out of the window and waved to me. To my surprise the woman was still there. She had papers spread round her and she was writing. She didn't look up, but I saw her side-face and I thought she didn't look French. I looked in on Madame
Meunier
and asked her if someone had come to stay, and she said yes, an English lady had arrived this morning and taken a room. She'd said she was writing a book and wanted to be undisturbed. Madame
Meunier
said she was very
comme il faut
and spoke French like a native. I went back to the house. It was one of Sibyl's bad days. She couldn't breathe very well, but she was all serene, lying on the sofa. Gil turned up for supper and afterwards Tanya played.”

“Is that what she did all the time?—play the piano?”

“Not all the time, but a good deal. She did things for Sibyl when Sibyl was laid up, and was secretary to them both, and went for walks with Harry. He loved her dearly. He wasn't drinking nearly so much and he got quite interested in the farm
.
What's more, he went riding with her sometimes before breakfast; and a fine sight he looked too on horseback. He's an absolutely idyllic horseman. Otherwise she practised hours and hours a day. And she went to Paris twice a week for lessons. Her idea was to study and study till she felt she was good enough to give a concert and start being a real professional performer. Harry paid for her lessons, he insisted; and Sibyl—she depended a lot on Sibyl—she always said Sibyl was
the
ideal person to back anybody in any kind of artistic way. She knew what was first-class and what wasn't—Gil said this too—and she believed so passionately in going all out for the very best and not sparing oneself every refinement of torture to get to it. She seemed to charge Tanya up again when she got tired. In return, Tanya—well, she'd have drunk prussic acid for her without a murmur. It was a pity all that smashed up. Tanya's been teaching music to lumps of girlhood at my school, for her living, these last two years. It's a wicked waste of her. Harry wanted to go on giving her an allowance, but she wouldn't let him. I'll come to all that. Wait here a sec.”

She got up and left the kitchen. When after a few minutes she came back, she said:

“I took a peep at Jess and Malcolm. He was just winding up the gramophone again, and they looked very innocent and rosy. I told them we were in the kitchen if they wanted to find us. We might cook an omelette later.”

She sat down again, fished two apples out of her pocket, gave me one and demolished half the other in one bite.

“Tanya played,” I said.

“Tanya played. It was a wonderful night with the moon full. I mentioned that there was an English lady author staying at the inn.
‘
Yes indeed,' said Gil.
‘
She came to call on me. She wanted to know the way to the Post Office.'
‘
What an excuse!' I said.
‘
She could easily have asked the
Meuniers.'
There were some jokes about her having spotted Gil through the window. Sibyl asked what she was like, and I remember Gil said slowly: ‘A ruined beauty.' Up poked Sibyl's head at that, and she asked some more questions.
‘
Might she be an addition to our circle?
'
she asked, smiling. He said, on the whole he thought
not.
His advice would be to run a mile if we saw her approaching. We teased him some more about wanting to keep her to himself. Then he said quite seriously: ‘She's got a dreadful great pair of blood-sucking eyes, and caverns in her mouth.' That's the sort of way he talks.
‘
I don't know what she's up to,' he said,
‘
or who's responsible for her; but I have the impression that her book won't find a publisher.'

“Did she tell him what kind of book she was writing?”

“She told him it was her life story. He said he kept off inquiring into it. She wandered round the studio, he said, looking at things—at some drawings that he'd got pinned up round the walls, and three or four portrait heads in clay that he'd done in his spare time. She came to a new one of Sibyl that he was working on. It was covered with a wet cloth. She asked what it was, and he said it was a woman he knew.
‘
Beautiful?' she said.
‘
Yes,' he said.
‘
May I see it?' she said. He told her no, it wasn't finished, would she please leave it alone: because she would fiddle about and twitch at things and she didn't really seem to take anything in, though she talked, he said, as if she understood something about sculpture. Then she came and stood in front of Cherry's memorial, in the middle of the room. She stared at it; and she said how beautiful it was. You know it's carved out of a block of alabaster with marvellous half transparent bits in it. The upper part is like that—so that most of the child's figure looks shining; and her whole head shines. The block is so beautiful in itself it makes your mouth water to look at it. It took him six months to find it. She asked what it was, and he said it was for a dead child. She went on staring at it, then she asked him: ‘What was her name?' He said: ‘Her name was Charity Mary Thomson. She was called Cherry.' Then she did a peculiar thing. She put out her hand and touched the figure; and muttered something.”

Maisie paused. Watching her, I saw her eyes, fixed on the fire, dilate. After a bit she said reflectively:

“I think I guessed then. It's hard to explain. I'm
sure
I tumbled to the whole thing—such an extraordinary feeling went through me. And
then
I knew I'd known all along … from the first moment I'd set eyes on that woman in the summer-house. But why, at the time, she'd slipped quite casually on to my sight as if she was nobody in particular—why I didn't get the slightest conscious shock
then
—that's a mystery. … Anyway, while Gil was talking, I got a picture of her standing there in her long, bright-coloured skirt;
and I suddenly remembered that stuff.
It was some Indian silk, a sari. She brought home lots from India. I used to look at them in her drawer, and that was the one I loved best. I knew it … and yet … it was more like saying to myself: It's someone wearing Mother's sari … if you see what I mean.”

“Did Mrs. Jardine begin to guess?” I said shakily, my heart pinched by terror and excitement.

“No, she didn't. I'll swear to that. She says she always has instincts and premonitions; but this time she didn't. She was too wrapped up in Gil, I expect. She was seeing it all through him—the effect on him—and she was just interested, like you would be if any one you loved told you a strange woman had come to visit him, and behaved very queerly.”

“Did she—your—the woman say anything else to Gil?”

“She asked him his name. He told her. Then she said: ‘Did you know this child while she lived?'—and he said no, and tried to change the subject, because she began to get very agitated, and to talk about having lost a baby, and to say she knew now that women should stop having babies, it was too terrible to have them, and that sort of thing. He said she had a look on her like one of those crazy women who steal children out of prams. … Sibyl lay on the sofa with her eyes very blue and wide open, and I could see that she was worked up—that she'd never rest until she'd come face to face with this spectacular person and discovered if she really had lost her baby and if so, why, how and when, and done something about her. I heard her say some words under her breath: I couldn't catch them.”

“I suppose Gil hadn't guessed anything?”

“Well, that was the queer thing I was coming to. It had never crossed his mind, of course, before, or he wouldn't have talked about her openly like that.
But,
he told me afterwards, suddenly, when he heard Sibyl mutter to herself, something seemed to hit him a great slap across the forehead.”

“It all dawned on him!”

“Not exactly. It wasn't a thing anybody could be expected to
take in
at one fell swoop. It was the sort of smack, like a revelation, that I got; and afterwards you think perhaps you're unhinged too. He said it was hearing that mutter, it made a connection with the other one muttering. … He'd never heard Sibyl do it before. I had.”

“I have too,” I said.

“Anyway I did notice he suddenly pulled up short and was rather curt and silent. When Sibyl—or Tanya asked him some more questions, he merely said he'd requested her politely to go away, he was busy.”

“Did she go?”

“She went. He could see her walking along the bank, through the meadows, and stopping dead now and then to look at the water. He could see her a long way off in her bright skirt. Sibyl said in that lecturing way she has when she thinks she's been a lot sharper than any one else could be—she said: ‘Did it strike you that this unfortunate woman might be contemplating doing herself a
mischief?'”
Maisie grinned.

“Did she mean
—?”

“Yes. She meant just that.”

“What did he say?”

“He said in a casual, airy way, yes rather, it had struck him forcibly. Only, he said, experience inclined him to the conclusion that people like her were too bent on planning mischief to others to consider themselves. The only thing that had bothered him was whether he ought to rush and pull her out, or let her get out on her own. He knew she'd take care to jump within sight of his window—if she did jump. … He was grand with Sibyl when she tried to come it over him. He never let her.”

“And she didn't—didn't jump?”

“No,” said Maisie, her lip and nostril stretching. “Not that time she didn't.”

She tilted her chair back, extended her torso, folded her arms and sank her chin into her collar. At this unbecoming angle, her face looked extraordinarily heavy, masculine, magisterial.

“About eleven,” she went on, “Gil carried Sibyl upstairs to her room. Oh, how she did enjoy being carried by him!
…
Then he came down and said good-night to us and went away through the park. Harry went to bed—I suppose. … I suppose Harry goes to bed. His room's right at the other end of the house from Sibyl's. Tanya and I sat on on the terrace in the moonlight. Then Tanya said she couldn't go to bed on a night like this, she was going for a walk. I knew I wasn't invited.”

“Why not?”

“Because she was going to Gil, of course.”

“Oh!
…
they were—they'd fallen in love then?”

“She hadn't told me, but I'd guessed. At least I knew
she
was in love, from the way she couldn't look away from him whenever she looked at him. Also I knew she'd been flitting down to the river at nights fairly frequently—because I'd seen her from my window.”

“Did Mrs.
Jardine—
not mind?”

“She hadn't twigged, believe it or not. So much again for intuitions.” Maisie snorted; but after a pause added judicially: “But it's quite true—in some ways she's extraordinarily trusting and like a child—she can't see further than her nose: though in other ways she's such an arch-spider. You see, she thought she'd got it fixed up this time good and proper, all serene, everybody revolving round her like dancers round a maypole, without an eye or a thought to spare for anybody else. … Oh, she was so sure of Gil!”

“You mean—sure that he loved her best?”

“Exactly. That what she meant to him was so terrific and—different, so on some superior plane that only she could reach and he could understand, that—well, that there couldn't be room for any other woman in his life, in spite of her age, and everything.”

“You talk as if … she couldn't have been
…”

“I mean, of course, that she was in love with him,” said Maisie loudly.

“Good Lord! I didn't know it could happen,” I said, aghast. “Why, she's old. She might be his mother. Perhaps—surely—that's how she felt about him: as if he was her own son?”

“Perhaps,” said Maisie, dry, shrugging. “I haven't any experience of what mothers are like with their sons. I dare say you know best.”

“Oh
no,”
I said, abashed. “It's only that I got a bit of a shock.”

“Sibyl's capable of anything,” said Maisie, mollified. “As for Gil—oh, I don't know. I don't understand men.”

“How old is he?”

“I don't know. I never remember ages. He's about twenty-­eight, I think.”

Suddenly moved to confide in her my own experience of man's enigmatic nature, I said:

“He kissed me just now.”

“Oh, he did, did he?” She paused. “Where?”

“In the dining-room.”