The Ballad and the Source Read online

  Mrs. Jardine consulted her watch.

  “We will go in now,” she said. “I need my tea. And you, my poor child, are, of course, famished.”

  She led the way through the garden door which opened on to the loggia, and we walked together down the print-hung pot-pourri-smelling passage. We went into what she called the flower-room, a kind of closet next door to the pantry, and she took the basket from me, ran water into the sink and plunged the dahlias in. “I will deal with you later,” she said to them. Then she called through the pantry hatch a message to be telephoned to my mother; and we went back to the drawing-room. The tea-table stood spread in the bay window, a bright white and silver block in the subdued glow of chintzes, Aubusson carpet, polished wood, crystal bowls of roses, dahlias, Michaelmas daisies. She busied herself with the spirit lamp and said:

  “A few months later I got another note.”

  “What did it say?”

  “It said: Your relative called upon me this afternoon. In the absence from home of my husband, your daughter and I received him.”

  “What did she mean?”

  “I had a great friend.” Mrs. Jardine measured out tea from the caddy, poured boiling water from the kettle into the teapot, and allowed me to put out the flame with the

  long silver snuffer. “A man of rich experience,” she went on. “Brilliantly talented, extravagantly handsome. He had been devoted to me for many years. He was, as a matter of fact, a second cousin on my father’s side. He knew my life—my troubles. I confided in him … in a way I could not confide even in Harry. In a sense, Harry was too simple, too uncompromising a nature to take in what was involved. Honest men are no match for knaves. Indeed,” she added in a different key, “to see a typical English gentleman trying conclusions with a sinuous, subtle-witted adversary is one of the most painful, most ludicrous—”

  She broke off, bade me help myself to scones and guava jelly, then continued:

  “As I was saying, I laid the whole matter before this man, my friend. Whom I trusted.” She spoke these last three words with sudden brusqueness, almost with violence.

  “Was he old or—not old?”

  “He was—let me see, in the late thirties. In the prime of life. He found occasion to visit Florence. He thought it would be interesting—amusing is how he put it—and of service to me to … to spy out the land there.”

  I had never heard her use anything in the nature of a colloquialism before. It made me suspect—I did not know what. She went on speaking in this deliberately flattened way, lapsing occasionally into what, from her, amounted to a vulgarism, and still—since now the crisis of the drama seemed at hand—still, I did not know why. But now I know. Even she could not endure a high-level presentation for the last act; what scorched her heart must be slipped lightly, spitefully off her tongue. She must belittle the tragedy, and despise—not scorn—the actors.

  “Did you think,” I said, “it was a good idea?”

  “An excellent idea,” she said, with a peculiar little laugh. “Oh, excellent! Why not? An unusually attractive man, one to whom no woman could be indifferent; one who in addition to everything else could offer the tie of cousinship—such an ideal one between the sexes—covering as it does so much romantic emotion without arousing detrimental comment.” She laughed again. “The initial familiarity of blood is there—the mystery is not impaired. Oh, a cousin can provide most valuable experiences.”

  I thought of Alan and realised the truth of this.

  “What did he—what did you want him to do?” I timidly inquired.

  “Want him to do? I? Oh, my dear child, I am no cunning schemer and plotter. Do you imagine that I exploit human beings for my own ends?—set them cynically to partners—for sport, to see what will happen?”

  Snubbed, I felt the hot blood flooding over me.

  “No,” she said more gently. “Such sport corrupts the player. Besides, it is too dangerous. God knows what will be started up.” Her eyes gave a flick. She stared across the tea-table. “Dear me, no. Though naturally I was anxious to wean her away from the detestable and morbid influences surrounding her. Such a messenger, I thought, signed with such richness, such wit, such effortless prestige. … What a privilege for the girl! Not so much a messenger from me, you understand … though possibly I counted on his tact, his devotion to me to do me a bit of good with her. … Oh yes, that did occur to me!—but something in the nature of an appetiser… or a medicine, strong, sweet-tasting­­­­, to sicken her of her unwholesome diet. That was his function—if any function I proposed—to myself, I mean … we had too intuitive­­­­, too pervasive an understanding to—”

  She sounded agitated, almost confused. In the surprise and interest of observing this, I recovered from my humiliation.

  “Oh, and to teach her a few lessons—most necessary lessons!” she snapped out viciously. “I knew what he could do if he had the mind. I was reluctant to be socially embarrassed by a smug censorious little fraud. … In France, where the duties of parenthood are taken seriously, wise fathers personally select a suitable woman to educate their young sons. It is not left to casual and more often squalid opportunity. The result is that Frenchmen understand how to treat women, how to cherish them. Have you noticed how Frenchwomen put a natural value on themselves—as women?”

  “Well no, not really,” I murmured, realising that she had forgotten she was talking to me, but feeling that some non-committal­­­­ fill-in was required. I considered Mademoiselle. Perhaps­­­­, I thought, that accounted for her. Perhaps I ought to view her in a more reverent light.

  “What few Englishwomen have reason or occasion to do, poor wretches—few indeed! Englishmen dislike women: that is the blunt truth of it. I have no son. If I had, I should have seen to him all right. But why should a girl not receive a similar education? Oh, what an outrageous, what an indecent proposition! Do not you know that in England it is considered immoral to teach a girl the needs of her heart and body? … Dear me, dear me! Sometimes one is really led to conclude that maternal vindictiveness is at the bottom of it—imposed inferiority has bred it—as it will. ‘Let her go through what I did. Let her be unhappy, disappointed, shocked. She will get used to it. I had to: why should she not? ‘That seems to be the sort of idea. What a pass to be brought to! How long, I wonder, will ignorance spell purity and knowledge shame? … Ah, well! Why should I care? I do not, any more.”

  She fell silent, breathing deeply. Totally adrift in the storm, I continued to eat scones.

  “But in those days,” she continued, speaking as if with indulgent self-contempt, “I was still young, fervent, hopeful: I wished to equip my daughter with what at her age I had so pitifully lacked: some sense of proportion about the other sex. Women need men, you know. They cannot live without them. But are they taught their most important lesson—how to live with a man?—what to go for, what to avoid? How to please, how to keep their men? Oh dear me, ho! I was determined that my daughter, at least, should not be flung into marriage ignorant, unprepared.”

  “Oh, you wanted him to marry her! “ I said enthusiastically, light dawning at last.

  “No, I did not,” she said shortly. After a pause she added: “I wanted him to knock the nonsense out of her.”

  “I see.”

  “Take her out of herself. Shake her up. It was time she fell in love. Quite right and proper at her age.” Her manner momentarily heightening, softening, she went on: “It is the beginning of growing up. The hearts of the young are enclosed in a crystal case. It is this that breaks when they first fall in love. Then the heart is set free to grow, to be moulded into human material. Remember that later, when you think your heart broken by your first love. The heart does not break: only this cold isolating crystal. The heart is exposed for the first time, and of course that is painful: just as a baby finds it painful to be born and cries out in distress at its first nakedness. Oh no, no, no, you do
not break a heart with one stroke. …”

  We seemed together again, and I ventured to say, though diffidently: “You wanted them to—you hoped they’d get to love each other?”

  She shrugged her shoulders, and said lightly:

  “Love is a serious word. I should not have objected to a little romance. I was not planning a grand fireworks display. Heavens, I was not planning anything! The situation aroused his curiosity. So did she. Because she was my daughter. He never would believe in her,” she said, smiling in a way that made her suddenly seem like a girl, “although he heard of her often enough, God knows. He loved so to hear all my life. This meeting in Florence had so passionately interested him. I discussed her with him, of course.’ She is a frostbitten kind of creature,’ I told him. ‘And a minx besides. But beautiful—possibilities of great beauty. Intelligent. Not without temperament, judging from her eyes.’”

  “And what did he say?”

  “He laughed. ‘She shall be saved,’ he said.”

  A figure printed itself suddenly upon my sight. For an instant before it vanished, it was precise, actual as a distant figure caught in a powerful telescope. Though I could not have begun to describe him, I saw the man whose very words these must have been.

  “Oh!” I said eagerly. “He was going to take her away from those awful people—bring her to you?”

  What I thought an unamused smile crossed her face.

  “Oh, do you think so?” she said, with apparent seriousness, as if pondering the suggestion. “I wonder. I wonder if that is what he had in mind. It seems rather a naïve conception, and there was nothing naif about Paul. In fact, innocence was what he most disliked. It exasperated him. He accused me of it—many a time.”

  For a moment she seemed another person, speaking of herself dubiously, almost ruefully, as if for once permitting herself to be objectively reflected through the eyes of another person. In years to come I was now and then to hear her repeat strictures on herself, but always with a kind of surprised indignation, an immediate counter of dogmatic self-justification. This time, this once only, was different. She was recalling a memory with a taste at least as sweet as bitter.

  I know now what he meant by her innocence. He must have understood her well—the elemental paradoxes of her nature. Whether she also understood, whether she accepted, from him, the soft word’s double edge, I was never to know.

  But I told myself even then, floored though I was again, that they must have been great friends, very fond of one another.

  “No,” she said. “He was a man—a man of stature. He was not concerned with womanish interferences, apportionings of desert and blame—with Sunday School prizes for merit and black marks for bad behaviour. Ah, he belonged to a richer age than ours! An Elizabethan he was, all ferment, all fire. He wanted everything. The world was his oyster. How wonderful he was!—the curiosity, the exuberance, the prodigious appetite. …” Her eyes swam, grew luminous with tears.

  “Is he dead?” I timidly inquired.

  “He is dead. He shot himself one day. Just like that. Without one message, one single scribbled line to any one. So, to account for it, his friends exercised their ingenuity in the usual ways. But when I heard, I knew why he had done it! His was a nature that must always challenge itself—higher, higher!—and that was the last, the ultimate challenge. He must choose death, not wait for it.” She spoke with rapid intensity, almost with joy; then relapsing into quietness added: “One day I will show you the poem I wrote for his epitaph. But that is all another story. This thing of his in Florence—it was one of his side lines. He hated waste, you see, fumbling, vain expense of spirit—anything on a shoddy level. Struggles with cobwebs, shadows, echoes from the cruel hollow tyrannical dead: he would tear through all these. He wanted—one might say to burst open the furtive situation. He thought … he thought I was mismanaging it. He thought my timing fatally wrong.” She faintly smiled; and again the rueful look about her brows made her personality unfamiliar. “God knows! It may have been so. One should act always from one’s inner sense of rhythm. Sometimes I have asked myself: could that have received some damage, unknown to oneself? Could disastrous strokes have so impaired it that one’s actions—movements—have become … grotesque?” She tapped her fingers on the arm of her chair. Then she poured out a cup of tea, and said, as if suddenly remembering to answer my question: “No, no. He did not want to bring her to me. That would be an absurd view. He wanted her for himself.”

  I said: “Oh.”

  “That was it. Quite simple.”

  “Only he did say—I thought you said—about saving her?”

  “Oh, what he said! My dear child, that was a joke. People who are very intimate always tease one another. Surely you know that?”

  “Yes,” I agreed humbly. It struck me that she and Harry never seemed to tease one another. Perhaps they did when they were alone. “I wonder a bit, though, why he wanted her when he didn’t know her, did he?”

  “Mon Dieu, cela n’empêche pas,” she murmured, looking amused, though not in a pleasant way. Then, agreeably: “No. He did not know her. It was not simple. Nothing he did was simple. But sometimes it happens that a man—a person—can want two things at once: to do something out of love for another; and at the same time to do something out of—something against another. Both are something he must do for himself: perhaps to feel free again where he has felt bound; or to prove to himself, it may be, that he is master—still has power over the other. Perhaps to make up to himself for some deep hurt. Do you understand?”

  “Yes, I think so, ” I said truthfully.

  “I am speaking of him and me. Possibly he may have felt my marriage had—estranged us. Not that there had ever been question of marriage between us. Oh no! That would never have done. No, when I decided to be Harry’s wife, he wished me all happiness. Yet. … Who knows?” she said low, speaking her thoughts aloud. “Le coeur a ses raisons. … Were we blind? Were our eyes open? Both. Certainly we knew what we were doing. But, you see, we chose always to live at the tragic level. We took notable risks. ‘I shall lay dynamite,’ he said. ‘They will all be blown up. It will be a lot of trouble—all for your sake. I tell you now, beforehand, I lay the victims at your door.’ ‘Oh, my dear boy, victims!’ I said. ‘It is what they are waiting for. They are desperate characters, all of them.’ ‘You will do yourself no good,’ he said, ‘in your new life. I suppose that does not worry you?’ ‘Nor you,’ I said.” She uttered the ghost of a malicious chuckle. “‘I might get a shaking myself,’ he said. ‘That would annoy you frightfully.’ ‘On the contrary,’ I said. ‘I expect you to get a lot out of it. Would I be likely to send you on an altruistic mission?’ ‘You mean,’ he said, ‘you are prepared for anything?’ ‘I want it,’ was my reply. He looked at me—a peculiar look. I have often recalled it since. … ‘Very well,’ he said. ‘We will see what we will see.’ That was the last time we were together.”

  A faint wind began to agitate the listening room, breathing upon us through the open pane the first premonitory chill of autumn. She got up and closed the window, then stood in the embrasure, drumming with her fingers on the windowpane.

  “Yes—yes—yes,” she muttered.

  I writhed in my chair, pierced by a chilling thought. Could Mrs. Jardine be—not quite right in the head? … And I alone with her?

  There was an old woman in the village, Mad Mary the children called her, shouting it at her through the hedges, then running away with hoots and squawks. She lived alone in a filthy tumbledown cottage at the top of the village, and kept a lot of birds in cages. Sometimes one saw her padding up and down in front of her house with one or two perched upon her shoulder, wearing a long loose ragged burberry, smeared and stained with bird-droppings. Her feet were wrapped up in newspaper tied with scraps of knotted string; and a sort of skirt of sacking and paper crazily stitched together protruded in front and behind from the coat’
s gaps. Stabbing at the earth with a stick, impaling straws and scraps of refuse, round and round she went, talking to herself in a low vibrant monotone broken with shouts and chuckles. Sometimes she counted rapidly, running up the scale on an urgent mounting cry; sometimes she uttered a sort of humming snatch of tuneless song: exile as solitary, as absolute upon her patch of earth as any castaway adrift upon a raft in boundless wastes of ocean, never to be picked up, reunited with humanity.

  Isabel liked to walk that way. She would stop for a good look through the starved and broken hedge while I clutched her hand, half loth, half enthralled. Once I heard her mutter: “Yes. Yes. Yes;” and she struck the earth with her stick.

  “Pore soul, she’s harmless,” said Isabel placidly. “It’s only her daft fancies. She was done wrong to by her plighted true-love and it turned her brains. All in her bridal white she was, at the altar by his side, and when the parson come to just cause or impediment, up rears a veiled woman at the back and speaks out she was his lawful wedded wife. At least that’s the tale. If so, it was a good long time ago. But it stands to reason a shock like that would turn a person funny. It seems as if she couldn’t get no rest, like, with what’s working in her.”

  Frequently after these expeditions Isabel would render The Mistletoe Bough with strident fervour while she washed up the tea things.

  All this returned now to cause me anxiety: that threefold affirmation, that tranced monologue. …?

  She continued to stand at the window, watching the still sun-brimmed but now faintly troubled garden. All in a moment, it seemed, the first crack had run up the golden lustre bowl. The weather was going to change. As if a veil had been soundlessly rent, the transfixed archaic presences upon the lawn shook off their legend. They were two fine old trees, no more no less, subject to time, triumphantly, grievingly preparing to resist, to accept through all the intricacies of their giant organisms, one more ineluctable decay and death.