The Ballad and the Source (41 page)

“How awful!” I exclaimed, deeply shocked.

“Oh, do you think so?” said Maisie, sharp, raising her eyebrows like Mrs.
Jardine,
as if surprised. “Why?”

Stung this time to defend myself, I said obstinately:

“It doesn't generally happen that way round, that I do know. I'm certain the gentleman usually does the asking.”

“Well, I don't know much about it,” she said mildly.

“In fact, till you told me about Tanya, I didn't know the—the lady ever did.”

It struck me that that made two proposals to Gil in one day: surely a phenomenon. I did not say so.

“Heavens, my good girl, that was absolutely different,” she said, still agreeable. “No. I did feel rather upset, as a matter of fact, when he told me. But he explained to me it was just part of her not being normal. I began to piece things together then.”

“What sort of things?”

“Things I remembered.” Her manner was abrupt, and I knew better than to press her. After a pause she went on: “At first, he said, she was just rather scatter-brained and embarrassing. But he dealt with her all right, and she dropped all that quite suddenly, and began to ask about his work in an intelligent way. She always had very good taste. She'd been brought up to know a lot about art. Then I suppose something went snap for good in her head: probably from the shock when he told her—you know, when he said the name Charity Mary Thomson. He said she looked scared then, and vacant; and then put out her hand like I told you and touched the figure; and then muttered something. He said he was pretty certain, when he got rid of her, that she'd be back again. He thought it was just a nuisance he might have to cope with until it flashed on him, up at Sibyl's, who she probably was; and then he was appalled. He explained to me that after she had left him her mind must have gradually got everything more and more mixed up: him and the statue and Cherry and the heads. She mixed it all with terrible experiences, he said, that she couldn't face remembering and kept deep down in her, corked up. And the cork blew out. Do you understand?”

“Like it does in dreams?”

“I suppose so—yes. Everything
turned into something else;
so she was quite lost. He said … you see, in one's mind an object can never be just itself: it connects up with other things that remind you of it for some reason, things you've seen or remembered, sometimes from years and years ago when you were a child. For instance, whenever I come into a dark room at night and see firelight flickering, I think of being ill in bed when I was little.”

“Oh yes! Me too.”

“Watching the patterns it made on the night nursery ceiling. So that, in a way, I'm in this dark room and back in the night nursery, both at the same time. I'm split. And if I'd been very unhappy or frightened in the night nursery, it would come over me again, although I was standing calmly years and years later in a different room, and had forgotten, perhaps, the reason for my fright or sadness. But because I'm sane it would be only for a minute, and I'd know what was happening and could sort out the links and brush it all aside. But when people go off their rockers, all the links get jumbled up or break altogether. Then they get real, complete delusions. Probably we'd never find out, he said, why that room of his should be the last straw for her. But I can see, can't you, that if you were barmy,
a
room full of cold, silent, absolutely still stone figures and casts and heads would be
terrifying?
It would be like the Chamber of Horrors. You'd think they were all threatening—or mocking—or keeping some ghastly secret behind their mouths and eyes.”

Maisie's eyes dilated, her voice sank low, vibrating. A sympathetic dew broke out on me.

“That's why she screamed out: ‘The heads!'” I said faintly.

She nodded.

“And there was Cherry in the middle of it, quite changed and turned to stone, or covered up with stone. But it was Cherry,
because he'd said so,
and she'd got that into her head. When she came back in the middle of the night, it was to get Cherry.”

I let out a groaning breath.

“Is that what he said?”

She nodded.

“That document I caught her with was really meant as a sort of blind—an excuse for getting in. And to—sort of
propitiate
this terrifically powerful person she thought he was. Partly a kind of—counter-magic to him, partly an absolutely water-tight justification,
so she thought,
of what she was going to do. At least that's how he explained it to me, but it was difficult to follow, and I can't make it a bit clear. I believe now she was only pretending to be quiet and go to sleep when I left her in the inn. Mad people are very cunning. Anyway, I felt—simply­­­­ terrible when he told me she'd come for Cherry. He said that figure I told you about in the group, the bowed down, shrouded, mother or death one behind the child, seemed to be the chief trouble. She thought it was—was holding Cherry prisoner, like under a deadly spell; and the reason why it was so terrible and so powerful was that
its face was hidden.
She was transfixed by terror of it. As if it was something too ghastly to show itself. She kept clutching him and pointing at it and panting out: ‘There! There!' And then she looked wildly over her shoulder—and she saw it again, on the stand.”

“How do you mean?” I cried, aghast.

“That head of Sibyl covered with a cloth that she'd asked him about. She thought it was the same Horror again,
pretending not to be there,
stuck up there to watch itself—to watch Cherry. … I can't explain. I suppose
two
of it made it doubly bad: if there were two of it, there might be hundreds of it, popping up wherever she looked. She was gibbering with fear. So he thought the best thing to do was to go in a very quiet, ordinary way and take the cloth off, to prove to her it was nothing but a harmless bit of clay modelling. So he did. He went and lifted the cloth off and showed her the face.”

Silence.

“Did she recognise it?” I said.

“She recognised it.”

“What happened then?”

“It was the finish. At the top of her lungs she shrieked out: ‘
There she is!
There! I knew it!
Kill her!
Kill her!'
And in a flash she'd seized up one of his modelling knives, and rushed at it and jabbed and jabbed.
…”
It must have been a good likeness anyway,' said Gil.”

Maisie burst into laughter, and I laughed too. We both went on shaking for about half a minute.

“Did she jab it to bits?” I said. “Spoil it absolutely?”

“Pretty well. It wasn't there any more. He said he'd broken it up afterwards: he thought it was best to destroy all trace of it. … He let her go on knifing it for a bit, and then he told her that that was about enough, she'd quite killed her off, would she give him the knife now, so that he could clean it? He had a nasty moment, he said, thinking she might start on
his
face; but she was more or less exhausted by her effort with Sibyl, and she gave it back like a lamb. He spoke to her by her name—Ianthe—in a cheerful, friendly way, and persuaded her into the other room and locked the door between. She got quite quiet. The only thing she said was: ‘Is she dead?' He wasn't sure if she meant Cherry or Sibyl. He said yes, she was. She said: ‘You swear it? You swear she won't ever come back?' So then he knew she meant Sibyl; but of course he had to swear it. They had a chat about this and that—very tricky for him, she was quite batty: he agreed with her how much more satisfactory things would be now. After a bit it began to dawn on her she hadn't got Cherry yet, and she started to boil up again—and went for the door, and then for the window, and him. … And then we turned up. The rest you know.”

“Yes,” I said, sighing. “Though I keep on wondering if I'm dreaming you're telling me such things.”

“I said to Gil: ‘Well, whatever Sibyl may have to be told, it's obvious she mustn't
see
her.' You see, what with Mother thinking she'd done her in, and having it sworn to by Gil, it would be unfortunate all round, I saw, if Sibyl rose from the dead and appeared before Mother, as fit as ever. I thrashed about with schemes for taking her away myself as soon as she was able to travel. But Gil said he counted on me to be sensible and not turn out one
more
of this family who thought she could bring off what was impossible. I saw the force of that. I said I really must apologise for the frightful nuisance and embarrassment we'd brought on him, and I did want to thank him. He told me to shut up.
‘
Not that I don't simply detest having your mother in my bedroom,' he said.
‘
But I guarantee my corpse in the last ditch.' We drank some lovely cold white wine; and then we agreed he'd better go up to the house, to Sibyl, and leave me. He said I needn't be afraid anything would happen while he was away. I wasn't afraid. We decided we must simply concentrate on keeping quiet for to-night, and make up our minds to-morrow what was to be done. He told me to help myself to eggs to make an omelette, and then he went away. I couldn't be bothered to cook, I ate some rolls and butter; and then I went softly into the bedroom, and sat in the armchair. … When he got back I don't know, because, though I tried to keep awake, I went bang off to sleep and didn't wake up till seven o'clock next morning. It was queer coming to with a start and seeing her half sitting up in bed, watching me. I said: ‘Hallo, Mother,' —I did say it then, I was sleepy; and she said—what do you think she said?”

“What?”

“She said: ‘Maisie, you shouldn't sleep with your mouth open, you've been snoring.'”

“She didn't!” I said joyfully. “Just like that?”

“Absolutely. Just having a long cool stare at me, and teasing me, like Malcolm or anybody might. I made some sort of a joke, and she giggled. I don't know
when
I'd last heard her laugh in that cheerful sort of way. It reminded me of that time in the London hotel, when that Tilly came. I heard her giggling in the next room with Tilly, while she was dressing to go out. She said she was hungry, so I got her some breakfast and she enjoyed it and polished off every scrap; and I washed her face and tidied her up a bit, and she smiled and chatted all the time. She complained that her head tickled, so I said would she like me to wash her hair, and she said yes, very much. So I helped her out of bed—she was remarkably spry—and I took her to the bathroom and washed it in the basin with some of Gil's hair-wash, and gave her head a jolly good massage. I said: ‘That'll clear away the cobwebs,' and she laughed and said it was what Tilly used to say. Then I took her out and sat her in the sun to dry it. I managed to take a peep through the studio window and saw Gil lying fast asleep on the couch. I put her chair round the corner, well out of sight of him. She looked like a little girl with her hair all loose over her shoulders. And that's how she behaved,” added Maisie, looking slightly grim. “She was a little girl of six, and I was her nurse.”

I said timidly:

“Did it seem—sort of—all right?”

“Yes—and no. No. She seemed a bit on the silly side. Silly and
placid.
Considering everything, it wasn't exactly natural to be so carefree. But I was so relieved, I didn't worry about that. I decided it was the first step towards recovery.”

“Didn't she mention anything? About what had happened?”

“Not a syllable. She looked at her bandaged hands in an interested way, but she didn't refer to them. She didn't ask whose house she was in or where Gil was or anything. It was as if the whole thing had been sponged clean off her mind and she was starting again from scratch.”

“Did she treat you as if—as if she knew she was your mother?”

“I can't say she did,” said Maisie, sardonic. “Merely as if I was familiar to her, and could be trusted to—to keep things bright and jolly.”

“She didn't talk about Cherry?”

“Oh, dear me, no. Never mentioned her. Nor Malcolm. And of course I knew better by this time than to refer to them. No, I just let her rip. She wanted to teach me German words—most peculiar. And she sang a little German song. In between times she sat staring, rather vacant, but not in the least dejected. She carried on as if she was having a nice holiday with somebody she took for granted would look after her. The only thing I didn't like was that now and then I felt her watching me when I wasn't looking at her; and directly I did, she'd look away. She wouldn't meet my eyes.”

“Oh yes—” I began eagerly, recalling the eyes of Ianthe, fixed, sliding aside, in Florence, in Bohemia. I checked myself.

“Yes,” agreed Maisie, unsuspicious. “It's a symptom. I realised it was queer, but all the same I didn't bother about it. The great thing was to feel so
certain
there was no violence left in her; and that I could keep up
my
part in this new sort of act, as easy as kiss my hand. After about an hour of it she said she wanted her own brush and comb, and wanted to put on a clean frock. So I decided to risk taking her back to the inn. I thought the
Meuniers
would probably be busy in the back regions; and as it was the middle of the week there weren't likely to be many people coming in. I looked in again through the studio window, and saw Gil still fast asleep. I told her to wait a moment and tiptoed in and scribbled on a big piece of paper to say where we were, and everything was perfectly all right, no need to worry, and left it propped up against a jar on his table. She never asked me what I'd been doing, or gave so much as a twitch of the head as we went by the door. She still had her hair down her back, and she would stop to pick wild flowers in the bank; and on the bridge she stopped for ages to look at the shoals of little fishes. She simply delighted in them. I told her to hurry up and change, and I'd take her on the river. If she couldn't manage to do up her dress by herself, I'd see to it when she came down. I thought I'd better not go up with her in case somebody saw us and thought it peculiar. I went and untied our boat and brought it up to the landing stage. While I was waiting, Pierre
Meunier
came down and said
‘Bonjour,'
and told me his wife had gone to the market. I told him I was going to take the English lady for a row. He nodded in what I
thought
rather a meaning way—but all he said was, ah, her health was re-established then; and I said yes, and that I'd made friends with her. And he said it must be agreeable for her to meet some compatriots; and then he said:
‘Alors, bon
voyage, Mademoiselle,' and went away. And what if anything the
Meuniers
saw, or guessed, of what happened before, or what came after, I know no more than the dead. … She came down in a blue embroidered muslin frock, and was as pleased as Punch when I admired it. I did her up at the back and she called me clumsy. She brought a blue ribbon for me to tie her hair back. She asked how she looked and I said lovely. She said rather petulantly she was sure I'd made a horrid bow. So I had. But she didn't look too bad. And off we went for a jolly row.”