The Ballad and the Source (14 page)

“Yes, yes!” I said eagerly. “Maisie and Malcolm. I
know
them! And did you take
them
in the Park too? Like you used to take Ianthe?”

“Oh,
them!
…”
I saw some petrified layer break up in Tilly; something struggled up through it to the surface. Her memory, for the old days microscopically accurate, had well-nigh ceased to function with regard to the events of the last ten years; but I had somehow at last managed to tap where buried forms and voices could still be heard, alive, tapping and calling back from underground.

“Bless my soul,” she said rather weakly. “Fancy your mentioning them! They were a job lot—nice little things, though. Yes … I got a card one day. It 'ad been sent to yer aunt's address—of course, I'd retired then, but they forwarded it to my lodgin's.
‘
Tilly, do you remember Ianthe? Please do come along to the Somethink 'Otel and see me and my children.' So I thought I'd go. I asked for 'er at the desk by the name she'd gave me—it's slipped me now. And I was showed up. Oh, she 'ad got a lovely woman! But them two!—like something off of a jumble stall—to
look
at, mind you; they was nice-mannered children—I'm not sayin' different. I don't know 'ow ever she come by 'em.
'E
can't 'ave been no oil-paintin',
‘
Oh, Tilly dear,' she says,
‘
you haven't changed.' That was all my eye.
‘
I did want them to know you when they came to England. I've told them how you used to take me to the Round Pond when I was a little girl. I do want them to go in the Park with you,' she says,
‘
as I used to. Nobody knows how to make it fun like you do.'” Tilly chuckled. “She wanted them off 'er 'ands a bit, I think.
… ‘
Well, it's over twenty years back,' I says.
‘
I'm not so quick on my feet as I was. If they offers to fall into the Pond, I couldn't fish 'em out.'
‘
Oh, they can swim like fishes,' she says. She was off 'and with 'em—a bit abrup' … Well, I took 'em a few times, just to oblige 'er. She made a lot of fuss of me that time—but I didn't see much of 'er the other times. She'd be gone out, and them two sittin' waitin' in that dismal 'otel bedroom as good as gold. Of course they was like all children: they liked to be told what their mother done and said when she was a little girl. …
”
Tilly mopped her eyes. “Fancy them comin' up! I wonder what became of 'em, pore little souls.”

I hesitated. But the thought of repeating for the third time that I knew them, they were Mrs. Jardine's grandchildren and were at this moment but a mile or so away, made me feel hopeless; ill-mannered as well. I had only a moment or two left. It was my supper-time. I decided to go back to Miss Sibyl, and I said:

“So you never saw Miss Sibyl again?”

“Never,” said Tilly. She sighed. “When your grandmother was on 'er deathbed, she says to me sudden one afternoon when the nurse 'ad gone out: ‘Tilly,' she says,
‘
I've seen Miss Sibyl. I'm so glad,' she says.
‘
It was such a comfort. I thought you'd like to know.'
‘
I
am
glad, Madam,' I says. She was dozin' like; I couldn't bother 'er with questions. I've sometimes asked myself if she was wanderin'. … No, I never sor 'er with me own eyes again.” She mused. Then, once more a tremor ran over the hardening crust. “But that was a funny thing too,” she said. “It only shows
…”

“What was a funny thing, Tilly? Only shows what?”

“What a shock that time must 'a' been, to stick so in my mind. Believe it or not, one day when I was with them two by the Round Pond, bless me if I didn't fancy I see 'er again, watchin' from a little way off. … It was the way she stood.
…”

“Was it—was it just your imagination?”

“I 'ad to pinch meself,” said Tilly. “It give me quite a turn. I believe I'd always been on the look-out for that there blue cloak, ever since. … But this was … oh well, I dare say it wasn't nobody special. Just a grey-'aired woman—a lady, you understand. Pale complexion. Dressed very nice—”

“Nobody you knew?”

“Oh, but she 'ad got stout, though!” said Tilly. “I'd never 'ave credited … It's not always a 'ealthy sign, not by no means, when a woman gets stout.” Her head jigged up and down. “No,” she said vaguely. Then: “I did 'ear some time ago she'd married again and settled down respectable. I don't know what she changed 'er name to if she did.”

I said softly:

“Mrs.
Jardine.”

But Tilly seemed not to hear. She drew her cross-over round her, and said it was a chilly evening: she'd been glad of a bit of fire last night, and she'd be the same tonight. She told me to run along do, she never knew such a child for getting her talking.

I kissed her good-night, and felt that she was going to die soon, and that she knew it. I went downstairs with my heartache, and it was so horrible and so enormous, that it was like carrying a bag of stones tied on to the bones of my chest.

Part Three

Tilly left us a day or two later. She said she'd be more herself when she got back to her own place in London, where her landlady studied her ways and the girls were bright: it was the country made her feel low—she never could abear it. She was mulish, vacant, sullenly melancholy. My mother tried to persuade her to see the doctor, and after that Tilly refused to speak to her any more, and left without saying good-bye. There was nothing my mother could do except to write to the landlady, asking to be kept informed of Tilly's condition, and offering any assistance within her power. We were relieved to see the dolman and bonnet disappearing round the bend of the garden path towards the station. The garden boy stumped ahead of her with her portmanteau; and that was the last we saw of her. She was not our Tilly any more; she was an inauspicious old fairy, ill-wishing our hearth. Unable to rid myself of the suspicion that my afternoon with her was responsible for her final disintegration, I felt a double relief at her departure.

Maisie was to have come to tea that very day. I expected her at two o'clock, and we had planned to plot out the garden in Grand Variety Cycling areas. I was already practising my technique for Bicyclists' Dashing Hill—a piece of frantic momentum-gathering pedal work, then a free-wheel swoop from end to end of the long sloping path between the lawn and the kitchen garden—when I saw the large yellow car of the
Jardines
coming up the drive. I rushed; but when I reached the front door, there was no Maisie. The chauffeur had already delivered a parcel and a note, and was preparing to drive away again.

The parcel was addressed to me in Maisie's tumbledown, dashing but uncertain hand. The note was addressed to my mother by Mrs.
Jardine;
delicately branching, sharp-jointed coleoptera, transfixed upon a rectangle of violet vellum.

I opened the parcel. It contained a perfect specimen of ammonite wrapped up in a piece of paper, on which Maisie had written:

“DEAR REBECA.—I cannot come to tea to-day because my father is dead. Auntie Mack came yesterday to tell us and fetch us for the funerel. We are going by the night train, not Cherry, only Malcolm and me. It was her who said not Cherry, and then Auntie Mack quite agreed. She said to come back imediately after and Auntie Mack too, but I don't know. Here is a fossell for your musuem. I found it in the quary the day before yesterday and I was going to bring it to tea, so here it is.

“Love from

“MAISIE.”

I took the other note from Mossop and went to find my mother. She read it and laid it down and reflected, looking faintly wary and ambiguous. My father was in London. Her manner suggested that Mrs. Jardine had confronted her with a critical social problem. Then she said:

“Mrs. Jardine wants to come and see me. About her grandchildren, she says.”

“I've got a letter from Maisie,” I said. “Her father's dead, so she can't come to tea.”

“Poor children,” said my mother. “Poor Maisie.” She sighed. Maisie's orphaned state, her uncompromising simplicity, the kind of forlorn toughness there was about her made a special appeal to my mother. She was touched by her, and always took particular pains to encourage her when she came to tea. In return, Maisie bestowed upon her an almost reverent devotion; seeing her, no doubt, as a satisfactory embodiment of that Good Mother figure of which her life was deprived. Watching her glow and expand in response to my mother's welcome, it seemed impossible to believe that she was the same girl who twisted and shrank, physically shrank, in the presence of her grandmother.

“What is to become of them now …?” said my mother. She took up the letter again, and murmured it through disjointedly.
“
…
to whom you have shown so much
kindness, and whose affection and confidence you have won
…
your advice
…
Friday next at
3-30
,
should that day and time be convenient to you.”

“Shall you say yes?”

I felt tense. The time had come for Mrs. Jardine to advance, to establish another bridgehead. I was aware through all my being of her plan, her timing. We were in her house, but she not yet in our house. I saw myself in dual motion, running ahead of her, running to meet her, cutting a hopeful but rather feeble figure both behind and before.

“I'll see,” said my mother. “I have to be very busy this Friday.”

“When does Daddy come back?”

“Not till Saturday.”

She told me to run out and play, and I went and bicycled gloomily in the kitchen garden. Jess had gone riding, Isabel was out with Sylvia and the pram; a suddenly blank, lonely, mortal world oppressed my spirit.

About half an hour later, my mother's voice called from the drawing-room window. She had a note in her hand, and asked me if I would like to walk up with it to the Priory.

“What have you said?” I inquired nervously.

“That I shall be delighted to see Mrs. Jardine on Friday. Just ring, and when the bell is answered, say: ‘Will you please give this note to Mrs.
Jardine?'
That's all you need say. And then come straight back.”

I set off with mingled alacrity and reluctance, feeling that the magic grove would be different, disenchanted, and that I was coming with sadly diminished status to ring the bell and hurry furtively away again. But when I came through the blue door in the wall, whom should I see at the end of the herbaceous border but Mrs.
Jardine,
wearing a white cape embroidered in peacock blue and gold thread, and cutting dahlias. She kissed me warmly and read the note and said: “Ah!
…
Thank you, my darling;” and went on cutting dahlias. I held the big shallow basket, and she laid the red, tawny and lemon heads in one by one with love and care.

She looked replenished, full of energy and power, as I had not seen her since our first visit: as if she had thrown off something that had been muffling her, behind which she had been suppressed, though watchful. Latterly she had been of another, a remote generation—the children's grandmother; but now we were equals again, and the sense of a time barrier between us was once more abolished.

“Is your father at home?” she said.

“No. He won't be back till Saturday.”

“Ah! …” She held up a great crimson-black head, and murmured: “What a cup of beauty!” and laid it in the basket.

“Mummy was pleased when she got your note,” I said. “I'm sure.”

“Yes. We should meet.” She paused, staring into space, snipping the air rapidly with her scissors. “I want advice. She found the knack with that girl.”

“Maisie?”

“Yes. Maisie.” She repeated slowly: “Maisie—Thomson.”

“I think—I suppose—Maisie just sort of—took a liking to her.”

“Ah. Hmm …” She looked at me reflectively. “Yes. I failed with that one. It was inevitable. Yet it still seems odd to me. I cannot get accustomed to failure with human beings—particularly the young.”

“It seems odd to me too. I don't see how anybody could
not
—with you.”

“Could not?”

“Love you,” I said bashfully.

“Oh, do you feel that?” She spoke as if considering an impartial judgment. “My dear, as it happens, you are entirely wrong. I can be hated. As you have seen for yourself. No doubt,” she added casually, cutting another dahlia, “she discussed it with you.”

“Well, yes,” I murmured, embarrassed. “A bit.”

“She has violent passions, that girl. All torn up by the roots. All jangled. All destructive. Most dangerous. What is to become of her?”

“It's because—” I stopped.

“Yes. We must speak of these things.” She moved to the next clump of dahlias, and made as if to start cutting again. Then her arm dropped to her side, and she said in a voice of strong lament: “She has had too much to bear! And so shuttered a nature. So righteous, so dogmatic. She is not a vessel fitted to receive suffering. It will only corrode her, petrify her. How can I endure to be responsible for such a being?”

I said finally, with thumping heart:

“Do you think—now—perhaps—her mother might come back for them?”

“No.” She drew in a hissing breath; then began once more to cut and fill the basket. “No. Ianthe will not come back. She has never wanted her children.”

“But I thought …” I stumbled. “Maisie said …”

“What?”

“She loved them.”

She was silent; then said with compassion:

“Unfortunate girl. There!—you see again: the distortion, the violence of the will. Malcolm knows better. He has undergone the crisis, and surmounted it. He is safe. Boys have, on the whole, more moral candour than girls. He has a lot against him, that boy. Singularly undistinguished appearance. Impoverished outlook. He has been taught, my poor fellow, to see himself with dislike and shame. Once his confidence is restored his looks will improve. Besides, I shall deal with his jaw. My dentist appears to be the only man in this country with any grasp of bridge work. Oh, Malcolm is decent human material. He will do. As you know,” she added, “these three children are now, for all practical purposes, orphans. The charge of them devolves upon myself. … Upon Harry and myself.”

She squared her shoulders, flung back her cape, and, chin lifted, stared towards the house. Her eyes sent forth electric rays. At last! cried her heroic and challenging pose. At last she had snatched victory out of the long years of plot and counter-­plot, of ambush, espionage and surprise; of mortal episodes of frontal combat. She had outwitted and outlasted. She would bring her flesh and blood back into her home.

“Harry will want Malcolm to go to Winchester,” she said. “That is where he was educated. Cherry will, of course, remain here with us for the present. She needs the discipline of an intelligent, emotionally sane governess. It cannot be
altogether
impossible to find such a woman. Cherry is shockingly backward in every way. Later we shall take her to the south of France for the winter. Her health requires the sun. She troubles me, that child. Her vitality has suffered some natal or pre-natal injury. The source rises in her—then flags and wavers down again. It is not stable. That is
her
inheritance.” Again she drew in a sharp breath.

“The source?” I said, puzzled about the spelling, following her with the blossoming basket.

“The source, Rebecca! The fount of life—the source, the quick spring that rises in illimitable depths of darkness and flows through every living thing from generation to generation. It is what we feel mounting in us when we say: ‘I know! I love!
I am!'
Do you understand me now?”

Her voice vibrated as if speaking waters ran through it. “Yes,” I breathed, bewildered by a flying vision of streams and fountains, and myself borne along, dissolved in their elemental welling-up and flow.

“Sometimes,” she said, “the source is vitiated, choked. Then people live frail, wavering lives, their roots cut off from what should nourish them. That is what happens to people when love is betrayed—murdered.” Her eyes flicked. Then looking at me sternly, she said: “One day, Rebecca, women will be able to speak to men—speak out the truth, as equals, not as antagonists, or as creatures without independent moral rights—pieces of men's property, owned, used and despised. It may begin to be so in your lifetime. What am I saying?—it has begun. When you are a woman”—her smile broke over me, full and tender, “living, as I hope and believe you will live, a life in which all your functions and capacities are used and
none
frustrated, spare a thought for Sibyl Anstey. Say: ‘She helped to win this for me.'”

“Sibyl Anstey?” I said, trembling inwardly. “Is that you?”

“That is my name. We will speak of these things a great deal more one day. Look, these six dahlias are for you, for yourself. What colour are these two?”

“White.”

“No. Look more carefully. You must learn to be more accurate. If you were painting them you would mix green for them—faint, faint green that would make the white luminous. A green thought. Can you paint? When I was young, I painted flowers very beautifully. There, two of these. Two citron. Two blood-red. I hope you will grow up with seeing eyes, my love.”

I took them from her, and laid them in a corner of the basket by themselves, feeling grateful but abashed, as if I were under charges of inaccurate observation and lack of talent for flower painting, and therefore unworthy of the gift.

I followed her down the herbaceous border. She strolled and stopped, examining, casting busy speculative glances about among her plants, as though her mind were on them, and what she had been saying mere background accompaniment to practical horticulture. But I saw the electric storm passing through her, shaking her.

I said, timidly:

“I knew your name was Sibyl Anstey.”

“Ah, did you?” she said briskly. “It was my maiden name. Also my stage name, and the name with which I signed my books. When I was younger, I was a very well-known writer. I wrote three novels, and then I stopped. I had said what I had to say: I made room for others. My books are forgotten for the moment—but they will be read again. I suppose your father told you?”

“No. It was Tilly.”

“Who?” She stood still, looking at me in a startled way.

“Tilly. You know—Grandma's old maid.”

“Yes, yes, I know.”

“As a matter of fact, she told me a few days ago. She's been staying with us.”

“I thought she was dead.” She took a deep breath and walked slowly on again. “
Staying
with you. Tilly.
Well!
…”
She seemed agitated.

Once more I gave an account of our relations with Tilly, and concluded by saying: