The Ballad and the Source

by Rosamond Lehmann

  “Harry is broken utterly. We can do nothing for one another. He adored this lovely child, they were inseparable. It would break your heart to see him. He has not even my wretched bare resource of speech. He cannot endure to speak of her, or to hear her name mentioned. Since her death he has only once broken silence: it was to say that he wished her buried in her place—a spot at the south end of the grounds where a small grove of willows by a pool make a kind of temple, and where she loved to play. Her almost daemonic imagination had named each tree with a name of her own invention, and made of them creatures with half-human, half-magical attributes. Harry—he alone—was the recipient of these fantasies, which once or twice I overheard, and which seemed to me to bear the wild stamp of visionary genius. So this was done. She was taken from beneath the coverlet of snowdrops which I picked and wove for her, and laid in a white coffin. It was the first spring-promising evening when Harry and Antoine, his faithful friend and valet, carried her through the garden and laid her in her place. In the autumn I shall plant winter-flowering cherries along the path that leads to her; and one day a sculptor—could I but find now a sculptor equal to the conception—shall make the memorial I have planned for her there. When, if ever, I am no longer physically prostrate, I shall go in search of him.

  Malcolm and Maisie did not come. What use? For Malcolm, better to remain where he is, among his new interests and activities. For Maisie best too, and in a more positive sense, to remain away from me. Shall I tell you what you will know already? She will blame me for this death. Indeed, as I lie here, the thought runs through: how far back and in what dark tangle of monstrous roots lies the undying worm—the GUILT? What expiations, for what crimes, are still in store? Here lies the innocent, the victim, born rootless, unearthly flower of disease and drought, blooming for a day.” Here two lines were scored out indecipherably. “These are bad thoughts. No more of them. Tanya Moore, the charming girl to whom I had entrusted a portion of Cherry’s education, went immediately to England at my request to visit the other two. She is a creature of unusual tact, insight, and sensibility. She has spoken to them of their little sister, of our life here; of all that was done and will be done. She is still in England. She will have been a comfort to them. She wishes to continue to live with me, to be of service to me in some capacity. We shall see. In the event of her being successful in winning Maisie’s confidence and affection, I might conceivably try the experiment of a long summer holiday here for both children, with Tanya as their companion. Tanya writes that she found the unhappy girl frozen at first and stubborn, but that by degrees she has penetrated to deeper feelings, that Maisie had wept natural tears at last, questioned and listened in a spirit of simplicity and trust, and accepted, she thought, her offered friendship.

  “I must relate to you a curious incident. The day after we had consigned our child to the earth, the village priest came to call upon me. He is an excellent man, shrewd, conscientious, well-loved in the parish: a man of some parts and education. Distressed as he was by the unconsecrated place and manner of the burial, he came to offer his condolences and to ask my permission to bless and say prayers above her grave. I gave the priest my permission. Why not? Prayers from a good heart will not make my darling’s sleep less sound. Harry, with his detestation of R.C.s would have peremptorily refused his consent, as I was obliged to make clear to him. In this one matter, I told him, you must share with me the responsibility of practising a deception. To be brief—and this is what I wished to tell you—he left me with these words: ‘Ah, Madame, consolez vous! Ne voyez vous pas que le Bon Dieu lui a épargné un destin funeste?’ There was that in his tone which arrested my attention. I inquired of him what could cause him to see in the cutting down of this beautiful, precious and gifted child a merciful dispensation. ‘Madame,’ was his reply,‘pardon my frankness. Is it possible that you with your acute and penetrating sensibility had not detected for yourself …?’ ‘What?’ I asked. ‘The symptoms in this child of abnormality?’ ‘Certainly,’ I replied. ‘She was conceived and reared in circumstances of ill-omen. I had undertaken it as the work of my remaining years to counteract the symptoms you perceived and restore her to a normal and a fruitful development.’ ‘Again pardon me,’ he said with sorrowful firmness, ‘you could not have succeeded. My young manhood passed in hospitals, in asylums, has made me familiar with many forms of tragic inheritance. Do not imagine that I seek to pry into the secrets of your family history. I saw this exquisite grandchild but once. It was enough. I could not be mistaken. She exhibited in her personality the seeds of a congenital mental instability. In one form or another, this would have increased in her, inevitably increased, as she grew towards maturity. Believe me, Madame, she and all who loved her have been spared untold grief and pain.’ He added, ‘There are many who would be mortally affronted by this directness of mine. You, I know, are made of a stuff that can endure the exposure of a cruelly wounding truth.’

  Was not this a curious experience?—an extraordinary thing to hear?—to be told? I have no reason to think him a charlatan: the reverse, indeed. He spoke with an earnestness as blunt as it was genuine. These things are for your ears alone.

  “Blessings, my dear, dear friend. I know you think of me; and I think of you: a patch of freshness for me in my parched heart. Keep your four safe beneath your wing.

  “Sibyl Jardine.”

  My first thought was: no wonder my mother had appeared dumbfounded. It was as if she had been obliged—she so temperate—to drain at one draught a bottle of spirituous liquor of stunning potency. These things are for your ears alone. I had heard these words before. In this letter, I thought, Mrs. Jardine was at her old trick of speaking her thoughts aloud; or speaking over my mother’s head, as over mine, or Jess’s or another’s, to that sole listener capable of all, equal to the drama’s whole extravagance: that listener she had once had … or never had? In default of him, it must be told out, to the vacant air; it must still be told. But in this case, I felt, Mrs. Jardine really should not have done it—not to my mother. It was all right to do it to me; but to attack my mother’s reserve and inexperience with such violence was almost outrageous.

  My mother locked the letter away in a drawer of her bureau, where she kept papers of particular privacy and importance.

  3

  They did not come back that year. Mrs. Jardine wrote saying that Harry could not face the Priory empty of his darling. He had fallen, she said, into a fixed melancholy, most painful to witness. But Malcolm and Maisie were to come out to them for the summer holidays; and perhaps the company of young people would raise his spirits. “Harry is a family man,” she said. “And he has no family. That is the tragedy.” Tanya was still with them, and the greatest comfort. It was almost like having a grown-up daughter about the house. She—Tanya—and Maisie were in regular correspondence. She appeared to have won Maisie’s heart; and it was entirely owing to her influence that Maisie seemed now prepared to consider the château as a possible home. “I hope much from the relationship,” wrote Mrs. Jardine. “I owe Tanya Moore a deep debt of gratitude.” For the rest, after exhaustive inquiry and research, she had discovered a young sculptor fitly equipped to carry out the memorial for Cherry. Born and brought up in South Africa, he was of mixed ancestry. Celtic and Scandinavian strains had combined to produce a being of genius. She had found him in Paris, working as pupil and assistant in the atelier of an old and dear friend of hers, one of the masters of modern sculpture. To this great artist she had, she was proud to remember, posed as model (for the head) in various symbolic groups some thirty years ago. “Directly I set eyes on this boy,” wrote Mrs. Jardine, “it was as if I recognised him. I told myself I had found the one I sought. We established an immediate sympathy—rare joy for me in these bad days when so often the sense overcomes me that all is falling into the sere and yellow—the leaves shrivelled, the branches brittle, hollow—and no fresh shoots in me or around me to put forth fresh buds. The contact with this
brilliant and fertile young intelligence was an exhilaration for me, and gave me food for hope that the breed I knew was not altogether departed from the earth. His work, what I have seen of it, has inspiration; and in addition, a power and certainty of execution far beyond his years. I ask myself what happy conjunction of stars has shaped him as he is, steered him to where he is—healthy, beautiful, confident—without confusion or disaster? What manner of person was—is—his mother? He will come to live in the old mill house, long disused, by the weir at the end of our property. There he will be quite independent, and will remain and work for a time; for I think the influence of the place will help to create for him the best conditions in which to produce what I hope for and expect: a masterpiece. There was much reconstruction and alteration to be done, and this I am personally superintending, with great enjoyment. I have designed for him an ideal studio.”

  At long but regular intervals throughout that year, budgets of news continued to arrive. She wrote of the successful outcome of the summer holidays: Malcolm greatly improved in looks and bearing, beginning at last to find himself, Maisie more considerate, more tractable. Affection was perhaps too much to hope for, but restraint and civility were not—and these Maisie had not withheld. She had actually permitted the wheels of family life to revolve without grincements or breakdown. For this blessing Tanya’s mollifying influence must be held responsible. She had attached herself to Tanya with all her customary violence of concentration upon one object. The days had been diversified with excursions, picnics. Harry had sometimes been persuaded to be of the party: this had taken him out of himself, and done him so much good. Gil Olafsen, the young sculptor, had taken possession of his studio, the stone was there—a glorious lucent alabaster block—the work in progress. He had proved a great favourite with the children—he had become like an elder brother to them: the benefit to them would be incalculable. She too was deriving true happiness from his presence and companionship. He had a radiance of life, a crystalline quality. It was a huge source of satisfaction to be able to provide him with such ideal working conditions. He had been living in Paris in poverty and deprivation: not that it was detrimental to young people to be poor—on the contrary; but he had reached a point where country air, nourishing food and temporary financial security were more than a luxury. Her heart was still troublesome, she was confined to her sofa. He carried her up and down stairs, he read aloud to her; for hours on end they would converse. “After many dark years” she wrote, “once more, miraculously, I have someone to speak to. I am not dumb by nature!” she gaily exclaimed. “You will understand what this means to me.”

  No, the end was not yet for Mrs. Jardine. Like the phœnix she was renewing herself. Beneath the chatty, matron to matron tone of this and subsequent letters, ran a stirring warmth, a glow, almost palpable to my fingers, as of embers about to break in flame, as I took the envelopes by stealth from my mother’s desk and spread out the fine rustling pages and breathed the mysterious fresh scent that came out of them. Perhaps, if I had asked permission to see Mrs. Jardine’s letters, my mother would not have objected. I did not ask. My passionate nostalgia and curiosity preferred a secret nourishment.

  The year passed. It was spring, 1914. They did not come back to England. Better not to risk it for Harry. He had taken a hopeful turn. Gil and Tanya between them had succeeded in giving him an increased sense of local attachment. Gil was a great gardener, and Harry had become interested in helping him to plant a garden round the mill house. Then, too, he liked to watch Gil at work; and to listen while Tanya played the piano. Tanya had persuaded her, too, to re-exercise her stiff fingers, so long disused, and sometimes in the evenings now they played duets for two pianos in the big music room. “One should never let any talent lie fallow” she wrote. “Invariably the time comes when one bitterly regrets it. I was once, I think I may say without self-deception, a first-class amateur pianist.” And Gil sang. He had an exquisitely true though untrained tenor voice, and he sang the old folk airs, English, Irish, Scottish, which so moved Harry. Apart from consideration of Harry, it would be excellent for Malcolm and Maisie to spend another summer in France. They had so profited last year in health, not to speak of the advantages to them linguistically. Could not my parents be persuaded to part with us, Jess and Rebecca, for a month? No need to say how joyfully we would be made welcome, with what care supervised. She thought she could promise us a happy time; and even our exceptionally good accent and vocabulary would be bound to benefit.

  My parents could not be persuaded. My father’s ruling brooked no appeal; our sense of grievance was bitter to the point of flagrant unfiliality. Then it was August, 1914. What a mercy, said my mother, that we had not gone to France and been caught there. We could not deny it. Equally, we thought, what a mercy that Mademoiselle had been caught in Belgium. Poor woman. More than a year later a letter reached us, describing the horrors of occupation, of bombardment and starvation, of weeks spent underground, in cellars. Jess said it was a judgment on her. We never saw or heard from her again.

  Time passed. Very occasionally, a letter arrived from Mrs. Jardine. Fragrance still came out of it; but that other emanation, that tingling current rising from the page—of that there was no trace. She had had a serious illness, a complete physical breakdown, she said, during the first weeks of the war. But she had made a satisfactory recovery. They had offered the château­­­­ to the Red Cross. It was now a British hospital. She and Harry had moved out into a tiny lodge in the grounds, and lived there a life of frugality and service. She did her own cooking­­­—an occupation she had always enjoyed. “Real cooking—skinning, trussing, stock-pot and all: not tying a wisp of frilled muslin round the waist and tossing up a soufflé once a week. I taught myself to do it, toute la lyre, in my young solitary, bare-cupboard­­­­ days. How thankful I am for a solid self-taught grounding in the art! How much I hope you will see that your girls are accomplished in this respect. Let them be good cooks: all the rest shall be added unto them.” (We were shocked at this low view of our future spheres of influence, and repelled when my mother said that she had always planned courses in domestic economy for us.) Harry chopped wood, dug and planted in their little garden. His health had greatly benefited. She visited the hospital daily, read aloud to patients, wrote their letters, spoke with them of home. She had sat by many a death-bed, performed the heavy task of transmitting many a last whispered message. There were little services that Harry too could render them. Often a few of the convalescents would walk across the park and drink a glass of wine with them. Such small acts of hospitality helped to prevent Harry from feeling that he was useless to his country. Gil had felt impelled to join up in the ranks during the first autumn of the war. So far he was, thank God, safe. He had been in the trenches, but was now back in England on a special course, and was to receive a commission. He had completed the figures for the memorial the week before war was declared; the base, the total design remained half-cut, unfinished. Nevertheless she had had it placed among the willows, where it shone in miraculous beauty.

  As for Malcolm and Maisie, she had good reports of them both. Convinced that war must break out, she had fortunately prevented Malcolm from crossing to France at the end of July, 1914. Maisie had actually been with her during the whole of that month, having been removed from school upon medical advice to convalesce after a sharp attack of measles. Luckily she too had got back to England in the nick of time, in the charge of that young woman, Tanya Moore by name, whom possibly she had mentioned in former letters as having been engaged as governess to Cherry, and who had continued at her own request as part of the household after the child’s death. Mrs. Jardine had, she said, sometimes regretted the impulse which had caused her to yield to the young woman’s importunity. The influence of the place had perhaps been too—how should she say?—un-commonplace­­­­ for a nature inherently weak and dependent. It had disorientated her from the path she must carve out for herself by stabilising her, one might put it,
at a higher level than she could support. She had attempted in the house a role to which neither birth nor quality gave her right. “There is no getting away from it, Mary Landon” wrote Mrs. Jardine. “BREEDING DOES TELL!” It had been a predicament. Fortunately the war had solved it. Mrs. Jardine trusted that she had seen where her duty lay, and was serving her country in some useful capacity as every able-bodied man and woman should.

  A hint—the merest—was thrown out that it would relieve Mrs. Jardine’s mind if Maisie and Malcolm were to pass a portion of their holidays beneath our roof. But my father’s ban was unrelaxing, and my mother, whatever her private regrets, was obliged to comply. The subject was not re-opened. They spent their holidays on the Devonshire farm, or with Auntie Mack; then in Malcolm’s case with a school friend, in Maisie’s with one of her schoolmistresses, one Miss Argemone Willis. “This seems,” wrote Mrs. Jardine, “an unusual woman of masculine force of intellect, a true scholar. In addition, she weaves upon a hand loom, has advanced views on women’s suffrage, and is a devotee of the nut and fruit diet. Maisie finds her outlook wholly sympathetic. An intense reciprocal attachment appears to have grown up between them.” Did I, did I not, hear a sniff, a crispness behind the violet ink? Impossible to tell.

  As the war dragged on, the letters grew fewer. I think it was towards the autumn of 1916 that they ceased. But by that time, though Mrs. Jardine still walked about in my imagination in many a guise, we did not speak of her any more. For us, too, life had taken on a fixed melancholy. My father had set out without complaint upon his slow heart-rending journey into the shadows. Here, there, on every hand, inchmeal, the view beyond the windows of our home contracted, clouded. Our friend’s brothers, the big boys who had partnered us in the polka, Sir Roger, the Lancers at pre-war Christmas parties, were being killed in Flanders, at Gallipoli; were being torpedoed and drowned at sea. An unrelenting diet of maize and lentils brought us out in spots, chilblains caused us to limp, the bath water stopped being hot at night.