The Ballad and the Source (8 page)

“Ask her if you can have it.”

“Never. I'll never ask her for
anything.”
She glared.

“Truly and honestly,” I said, “won't you ever stop hating her?”

What I had in mind was the awkwardness of my own position. Though by now I was prepared to think Mrs. Jardine might—must, somehow—be wicked, I was powerless to resist her magnetic influence. So soon as I was in her presence my whole being churned with passion for her. And now I had been elected best friend, and must receive suggestions detrimental to Mrs. Jardine. If only Maisie could have been indifferent to or bored by her grandmother I could have preserved my loyalty intact; but Mrs. Jardine obsessed her; she felt the pull as strongly as I did. Any day, any moment she might abandon the harsh, gruelling strain in the opposite direction, and collapse, and flow all yielding into her orbit; but she never would. Any hour, hate might tip over and become love; she would never permit it.

Setting her jaw, she said grimly:

“Not as long as I live. It would be letting Father down. He talked to us before we came. He said she'd been trying for years to get hold of us, but he wouldn't let her. But now he'd got to go into hospital for this treatment, he didn't want to leave us alone with Auntie Mack, because she was very run down from having such a lot to do after he got ill. And there wasn't enough money to send us somewhere for a nice holiday—so he'd decided we'd better come here for a bit.” She fell silent; then went on in a stifled but resolute voice: “He said he'd been feeling … if anything happened to him ever, it might be a good thing to have a rich relation to take an interest in us. He hasn't got any relatives, or any money.” She swallowed. “I said I didn't need anybody, but he said the others—Cherry anyway. … He said what I told you—never to believe anything she said. … He talked about Mother, he hasn't ever before. He said she had
ruined
her.”

A shiver went down me.

“How?” Ruin was a terrible word, almost as terrible as dead.

“She left her when she was a little girl.”

“What, ran away from her?”

“I don't know. But she did, he said. And then she tried to get her back, and she couldn't. Father said that ruined her. I don't quite know why, but it was something to do with her having to be brought up in a—in an unsuitable way. He said he wasn't going to have us ruined. I was all right, he said, and he was placing Cherry in my charge, and I was to watch out for her.” She brooded. “How I do wonder what happened when she turned up at the hotel that time.
…”

“Do you think … Don't you think perhaps
your
mother will turn up again sometime … soon?”

“It
would
be queer.” I could see her concentrating, as she must have concentrated a thousand times before, upon a vision of the meeting. “There's just
one
thing, one rather unkind thing I mean, I should have to say to her.”

“What?”

“That it would have been better if she'd taken Cherry. It wasn't fair on Cherry never to have had a mother. She was only a baby and she can't remember her at all. It wasn't so bad for Malcolm and me—we were a sort of pair —more on Father's side.”

“Didn't you love her then?”

“Yes, I did.” Her sudden anger wounded, alarmed and shamed me. “And she loved us. If you think she didn't, you're wrong. Anybody who thinks she didn't is a fool and I'll murder them.” After a few moments, she put the whole bag of toffee into my lap, and said mildly: “What I meant was, we take after him more—we're more his. Cherry's different.”

I said humbly:

“Yes. I see.”

“She didn't have the same start as us. She was born after we all came back to England. We never went back to India after that time. I don't quite understand what Father did out there—I know he was quite important. But he gave it up. I have a sort of feeling it was because Mother said she wouldn't go back. Anyway, he came home and we all went to live in Newcastle. We seemed to be rich in India, but since then we've been poor. Father got a new job, teaching in a big school—the one Malcolm goes to. Newcastle isn't very nice, but Northumberland's lovely. Oh, I adore it! In the holidays we go to the coast, or to a little farm in the middle of the moors. And I ride.” She glowed. “I wish I was there now. With you. I could never tell you how happy I am there. We could ride together.”

I was afraid of the very shape of a horse, and my riding lessons had been given up as a bad job, but I was ashamed to tell her so, and agreed with enthusiasm.

“It's the middle of September now,” she said. “Father told me he'd send for us as soon as he could. I wonder when he will. … He told me to write once a week, and of course I have. But I'm a hopeless letter writer—I never can think what to say. I just say we're all well and having a nice time. … Because we are. I said Harry was kind and the house and garden were very nice. I haven't said anything at all about
her.
As a matter of fact, it all seemed so difficult, I didn't know what to say… I told him about you.”

“Did you honestly? What did you say?”

“Oh—what you're called, and you came to play, and you were nice.”

The indistinct figure of Mr. Thomson appeared to me for a moment, fitted with the head of a plain sort of horse, receiving news of me in a hospital bed. Hitherto, my impression of him had been a gloomy, unsympathetic one, but now I began to warm towards him.

“He only writes back a few lines,” said Maisie. “It's ten days now since I had a letter at all.
… ”
She rolled over on to her stomach, and stretched herself out along the branch with her head laid sideways on her arms. “You know,” she said, “we can make anything happen if we want it to. Do you know that, or don't you?”

“No,” I said. “I didn't know.” I hesitated. “Do you mean—praying?”

“No, I don't mean praying. I mean
yourself!
If you want something with
every scrap
of you, you'll get it.”

The moment she had said it, the idea seemed my own. It had the simplicity of all great revelations. A megalomaniac certitude coursed through me like draughts of ginger beer. Of course!—I could, I would have everything I wanted! I had only to want it.

“For instance,” said Maisie, “I
know
Father will get better.”

She lay perfectly still along the bough for another few moments, then sat up. She was still holding the miniature in her hand, but now she thrust it into her pocket.

“I must put this back,” she said. “Cherry said she had toothache, so she's taken her to the dentist in the car, but they'll be back soon. Come on.”

We lowered ourselves from the tree and walked together over the lawn.

“I heard her tell Harry our teeth had been shockingly neglected and we ought all to be taken to a proper dentist immediately. There's nothing wrong with our teeth.”

“We're made to brush ours night and morning. Are you?”

I hoped my tone did not imply how unlikely, judging from appearances, this seemed.

“I brush them quite often enough,” she said. “Anyway, this everlasting brushing's all rot. Natives never brush theirs. She's not going to take
me
to
have
all my teeth pulled out by any of her dentists—with her standing over me and gloating.”

Part Two

It was not long after this conversation that Tilly came for her pre-autumnal visit. She had suddenly grown much thinner—even we noticed this—and her face was as shrivelled and yellow as the dried kernel of a walnut. The sickly smell of age that always hung about her was more than ever noticeable. She was so light now, we could lift her round the room as easily as we could our giant baby brother; but when we told our mother what fun this was, she forbade it, saying that Tilly had not been very well and we were not to bother her. After that we realised that everything pointed to Tilly's imminent death, and we avoided her for a bit, feeling that she emanated some nameless infection. Then, a few days having passed during which we saw her trotting up and down stairs to meals as usual, and kneeling to cut out a new cover for the schoolroom ottoman, the miasma that enveloped her faded away, and we mounted to her magnetic room to sit with her as usual. Never had her flood of reminiscences poured out in such unbridled spate.

She wore a crotcheted cross-over, grey with a border of violet, over her black alpaca while she sat and sewed. She said she was feeling the cold this year. This seemed strange to me, as I looked down from her high window at the parched lawn and the dull, prematurely shrivelled leaves of the grove of chestnut trees. September was wearing away, the drought continued; but she said the summers weren't what they used to be when she was a girl and our grandmother made her bring her sewing out under the trees of a hot afternoon. She wouldn't be surprised if those roasting summers weren't over and done with: our grandmother—she was a great one for a bit of education thrown in while you worked—had said that as time got on the sun would give off less and less heat. At the recollection of these bits of education, the chuckle rattled up out of her throat, more witch-like than ever.

“Tilly, do you remember a lady called Mrs.
Jardine?”

She was manipulating a sable collar of my mother's. She had been apprenticed as a girl to a Polish furrier and knew everything about the skins of animals. She dropped her work and considered. Her
tic,
so much more pronounced now, made her head shake above her boned collar with rhythmical violence, like one of those Chinese mandarin ornaments that you set nodding by a touch. No, she didn't recollect any such person. A film came over her eyes, clouding them with a sullen melancholy. I felt accused of forcing on her proofs of failing memory. She'd met a good few in her time, she said; it stood to reason she couldn't call to mind every Mrs. This and Madam That. …

“I only asked,” I said, “because she lives at the Priory now, and she's got three grandchildren and we've made friends and one of them, called Maisie, says when she was very little they lived in a London hotel with their mother, and you came and took them out in the Park.”

“
Me?”
She fairly squawked at me. “Take strange children in the Park? I never. The very idea! She can't be right in 'er 'ead.”

“And to the Zoo. Oh Tilly, I do think it was you. She remembers your name and what you wore and everything. Shall I show her to you next time she comes to tea? You might recognise her. Her mother was Mrs. Jardine's little girl, who had a funny name: Ianthe.”

At this word Tilly's little frame seemed suddenly to contract, then expand. I saw memory strike at her, then pour all through her.

“Miss Ianthe,” she said in a flat, automatic way. “Oh yes, she was godmother to
'er.”
I understood that “she” referred to my grandmother. “That was Miss Sibyl's child. … Mrs. Herbert, I should say. That was her married name. Knowing her as a girl, Miss Sibyl always come more natural. That's one of them Greek names, ain't it?—I-anthe? That's what
she
said.
‘
It's a bit of a tongue-twister,' I says.
‘
Nonsense, Tilly. It's as simple as it's beautiful. It's one of the most beautiful of all the Greek names. It means
—'
somethink or other, I forget now what she told me.
‘
Greek to me,' I says. She never minded a bit of a jokey answer. She knew it was just my way.”

Her voice trailed off. She looked vacant and foolish. The pouches under her chin wobbled, her earrings tinkled faintly as her head nodded, nodded up and down. I waited, digging pins into her red emery cushion made in the shape of a big bursting strawberry—immemorial part of Tilly's personal luggage.

“Now do you remember her, Tilly?” I ventured at last.

“Remember 'oo?” she said, rather querulously. “I dare say I do. What of it? I 'adn't 'eard yet my mem'ry's failin'—though there's some a bit nearer than Marble Arch would be glad to make it out, no doubt, to suit their book. It's peculiar what jealousy can demean a man to. But there!
Man!”

She pointed an unspeakable meaning with a venomous snort and chuckle. I saw the old dragon—her feud with our butler—about to rear its hoary head, and said hastily, to distract her:

“Tell me about Miss Sibyl. What was she like?”

“Oh, she was a Beauty, was Miss Sibyl. The Young Beauty of the season,” said Tilly, smiling, musing. “There was more beauties then too. There was Lily Langtry—the Jersey Lily. But she wasn't the only one. … I stood on a chair in the Park to watch
'er
drive by.”

“Who? Miss Sibyl?”

“Certindly not. Whatever would I want to do that for, when she was in and out of my room all day? Yes, and dressed 'er for 'er first ball. She did look a picture that night, I will say.
‘
I shall never care for Society, Tilly. It's all a trumpery sham. I want to do something different—something to show I've a brain as well as a face.
…'
She was 'igh-spirited, that was all. She needed guidin'. She was a orphan, of course. I dare say that 'ad somethink to do with it. She'd 'ad a funny bringin' up from all accounts. There was somebody was 'er guardian—the name's slipped me
—
no better than 'e should be. Well-connected­­­­ too. One night there was a ring at the front door and in she flew.
‘
Madrona, will you take me in?' That was the name she called 'er—Madrona. She'd run 'alf across London in 'er evenin' gownd and sating slippers. She did pant. I never 'eard the rights of it—there was a lot of talk. But there she stayed. Of course she'd often stayed before, just for short visits—the families 'ad been friendly a long way back, I fancy. She'd be goin' on nineteen then. Oh, she was a wild thing! She did what she pleased and she said what she pleased—but I never thought there was no vice in 'er—just 'igh-spirited; and didn't 'er eyes give a spark like, if anybody crossed 'er!”

At this evocative stroke. I felt my inside turn over. Oh yes, I knew Miss Sibyl. Something came up in my throat and almost suffocated me. Tilly went on:

“But she never tried no tricks with
'er.
It was: ‘Yes, darlin­' Madrona, certindly, sweetest Madrona
'—
as meek as milk. Talk of love and gratitoode—she went on as if she fair worshipped 'er.”

“You mean she fair worshipped Grandma?”

“That's what I said.”

“She still does!” I cried in triumph. “She's always talking about her. Oh Tilly, you
must
see her! Her name's Mrs. Jardine now. Did she have another husband who died?”

“Not as I know of.” A complicated expression crossed Tilly's face. “Oh, 'e died in 'is own good time, I dare say,” she added cryptically. “I don't know nothink about that.”

“But you said she was called Mrs. Herbert—”

“And so she was.” Tilly closed her lips sharply. “I'm not likely to forget that—considerin' she married 'im from your grandfather's house. Mr. Charles 'Erbert. I'm not one to put names on people that don't belong to 'em.”

I realised that my approach was faulty, and that I must be wily and devious until the tide flowed up again and overwhelmed such scruples as appeared to have arisen.

“Can I thread your needle?” I said.

She handed it over to me, and I threaded it and gave it back to her; and she told me to look in her left-hand top drawer if I fancied a fondant. When I had eaten it, I said:

“Did Grandma love her too?”

“She did.” Tilly laid down her work and mopped her eyes. Tears often rolled out of them nowadays—tears of age and weak-sightedness. I had got over thinking them tears of grief. “There are some natures,” she said, “that's treacherous all through. They bites the 'and that feeds 'em. They do it once, and it's forgiven and forgotten. But the time comes they done it once too often, and you can't forgive nor forget. Never trust no one, not even your own flesh and blood, that's once done you a wicked wrong. One day they'll do you another, you may be bound.”

“Did you ever know any treacherous people, Tilly?”

“I've come across one or two in my life. And so did your Grandma. To 'er scathe and sorrer.”

The rhythm was re-established now; the scratch of needle on thimble, the hands' unconscious, faultlessly delicate movement over and through their work, the voice tick-tocking on with a sort of regular rattling beat in it, calling up in the camphor and time-smelling room the presence of my grandmother, so sharp, so faint, so quick, so dead—a presence more composed of sounds—her laugh, her music, her way of putting a thing—than of images.

Once, long ago, at a Christmas party, someone turned out the lights and switched on a gramophone with a tin horn. A nasal goblin voice rasped out the words:
Edison Bell Record;
and then, with a shiver down my spine,
I
heard the voice of Henry Irving in
The Bells.
Tilly was like one of those antique gramophones—a shaky, trivial, wheezing medium reproducing skeleton dramas over and over again. The body of human life was drained out, yet a mystery, another, piercing reality remained.

“What happened?” I said. “Was she—treacherous? Miss Sibyl?”

“She brought 'er own ruin on 'er,” said Tilly. “And tried to bring down others in 'er fall.”

I leaned back, feeling weak. I tried to summon up Mrs.
Jardine,
with all her kind, considerate, fascinating ways, presiding at the tea-table, bandaging us, resting on her sofa with all the thoughts of her solitude, that I had so often tried to imagine, secret behind her calm, stern, noble face; or strolling with the gardener along the herbaceous border, round the kitchen garden, into the greenhouses, energetically discussing, as I had so often heard her, what was to be altered, what planned and planted. But this humane, matronly figure, with all her richness stored in her, distilling quiet, had vanished into limbo. Groping for her, I saw, instead, an icy fiend: Miss Sibyl. I saw her snaky arms coiled round the pillars of the house of my grandparents, great blocks of masonry cracking, about to crash down on her, on all. I remembered her stroking my arm once, saying: “Pretty arms”; adding: “When I was a girl, I had arms like white snakes.” Here was this word again:
Ruin.

“Ruin?” I said shakily. “How did she
…?
What did she
…?”

“She went wrong,” said Tilly in a stony voice. “That's what she done. She flounced off to lay down on a bed of red roses, and many's the time I've thought it turned out nettles and brambles under 'er. Many's the time I've said to myself I wouldn't be 'er, tossing in the watches of the night—not if the Emperor of India stepped down from 'is throne and offered me the ruby from the middle front of 'is crown.”

She was silent, brooding. No feed line occurred to me.

“Of course,” she went on presently, “'e was a sober sort of a gentleman. Methodical. All books, books, books, and fiddle, fiddle with 'is precious china, and tinkle, tinkle, tinkle on the 'arpsichord. Not like a real man—for all 'e was a 'andsome well-set-up sort of a feller. A good bit older than 'er. Very 'igh educated, and money—plenty of it. That was a lot to do with 'er takin' 'im, I wouldn't be surprised—though she would 'ave it it was 'is blessed mind.
‘
He's got the most distinguished mind I ever met, Tilly,' she says.
‘
A mind I can really respect. I can learn from him. I can look up to him. I could never have married a young man—they're all so silly.' She used to sit and chat as it might be you children—only she was more of a grownup young lady, of course—and I was a bit younger in those days.
‘
He's never cared for female society, you know, Tilly,' she says.
‘
He says women don't understand ideas.' ‘They understands one or two when it comes to gettin' married,' I says.
‘
After, if not before.' It was just my fun—though I 'adn't ought to of made so bold. Lor', she didn't know no more than this reel of cotton what I was after. She'd stare you straight in the face out of them great blue eyes of 'ers; they made you feel small—though it was only my fun. She was as ignorant as a blessed curate, for all her talk and 'eadstrong ways. That was 'er trouble—nobody couldn't never 'elp 'er nor teach 'er. She thought she knew it all. It was others 'oo needed teachin', accordin' to 'er way of lookin' at it. … Well, she married 'im, ideas and all.”

Tilly fell silent, and I timidly hazarded:

“Who was it she married, Tilly?”

“This Mr. Charles 'Erbert I'm tellin' you about. It was a lovely weddin'. Oh, she was a beautiful bride!—it made your inside work to see 'er. They went off to live in Paris. 'E was in the Dip—whatever the name is—Dippermatic. And that was the last 'appy sight we seen of her. No, she never run in to number fifteen all up on her toes and lovin' and sure of 'er welcome again.”