The Ballad and the Source

by Rosamond Lehmann

  Tilly sank into reverie, as if amazed, half-incredulous all over again; then with a heavy sigh and a shake of the head went on:

  “There I stood gawpin’ at ’er, not knowin’ what answer to make to ’er. ‘Tilly,’ she says, ‘it was so extraordinary to see you two together. Yet so natural—so right. It was like waking from a fever and seeing the ordinary sweet day. My dear, dear Madrona! I knew she was the one person in the world I could trust—however long I had to be away.’ With that she steps inside and says: ‘Shall I go and find her, Tilly, or had you better prepare her? I don’t want to give her a shock.’ And at that very moment your grandmother come down round the bend of the stairs, just up from ’er afternoon rest, and see ’er. She stops like she’d been shot. ‘Sibyl!’ ‘Madrona!’ she cries out. And she lets ’er cape fall on the floor and runs into ’er arms.”

  I felt my eyes and throat smart intolerably, and saw Tilly’s tears fall down.

  “‘Five years,’ I ’eard one say; and the other: ‘I told you I’d come back.’ I see them sort of wander off into the drorin’ room with their ’eads down, leanin’ close, and not another word spoke. I ’ad to mop my own eyes, I can tell you. But all the time I was sayin’ to myself: ‘Thank ’Eavens, the child ain’t in the ’ouse.’”

  “Why?” I said painfully. “Didn’t you want her to see her?”

  “No,” said Tilly stiffly, “I did not.”

  “Did she see her?”

  “No. She didn’t see ’er.” She was silent; then: “It couldn’t be,” she said. For a moment, strong emotion charged her old crackling voice with depth and richness. “I’ll see ’er like that on my death-bed.”

  Silence. I stared out of the window and saw the chestnut trees lift, blow upward ecstatically all together in a gust of evening breeze. The setting sun was gliding their trunks from somewhere out of sight.

  “Like how, Tilly?” I said at last.

  “At ’alf-past five I was due to start to fetch back Miss I-anthe­­­­. It was just a little walk across the square, up into Oxford Street and over into Manchester Square; and we was to take a cab back, of course. I run up the area steps and come out on the pavement just by the front door—wonderin’ to myself would she be gone or not when we got back, but I’d ’ad my orders, and nothink different said. At that very momint the front door flies open—and out she comes.

  “She stands there at the top of the steps; and ’er eyes seemed to pierce right through me—enough to freeze your marrer. Talk of wild tigers—that’s what she put me in mind of. Glarin’. She stands there with ’er ’ead up—it was gettin’ on for dusk, but I could see ’er face all stiff and white. Then she comes down the steps and away she goes, like as if she was sleep-walkin’, in the opposite direction to me.

  “‘Gawd ’elp us,’ I thought. ‘There’s murder in that face.’ I was in two minds to go on, or to run back and take a look in the drorin’ room, but I says to myself: ‘Mind your own business,’ and puts my best foot foremost. Well, I got there and fetched ’er and back all right. She runs in to say ’er good-nights as usual. Then she comes up and I sees to ’er and puts ’er into bed like I always done. She was very good considerin’, a bit over-excited, but no trouble. Then my bell rings upstairs—meanin’ I was wanted in the bedroom. So I goes along. She was settin’ at ’er dressin’-table. I took one look and saw she was upset. She showed it very quick—she was always delicate. She looked wore out. ‘The black tea-gown, Tilly,’ she says. It was velvet with cream Valanceens lace in the neck. It suited ’er. So I brought it, and the slippers to match. ‘Well, Tilly,’ she says, ‘you were quite right, you see.’ ‘Oh, Madam,’ I says, ‘I been ever so worried. It’s been on my mind, per’aps I ought to ’ave said you wasn’t at ’ome.’ ‘No, no indeed,’ she says. ‘I should have regretted it bitterly if I had not seen her.’ ‘What a change in ’er!” I says. She lets out such a ’eavy sigh. ‘Since that time I saw her in France,’ she says, ‘she never sent me one single line or message—not one. I guessed it was because I’d warned her what would happen; and because my warnings had come true. I thought she had chosen to cut the whole past clean away from her, and turn forward to build a new life. I thought it would have been like her to root even Ianthe right out of her and bury her with the rest of her dead marriage; and pass on. She never could bear a failure. …’ I went on brushin’ ’er ’air, and after a bit she says: ‘For five years she’d had one idea, one, fixed in her mind: to get Ianthe back.’ ‘Ah,’ I says, ‘I knew it.’ ‘Did you?’ she says. ‘How little I understand people. I quite misjudged her.’ She stops there. I didn’t like to ask too straight out what ’ad passed; so after a bit I says: ‘Might she still be livin’ with that one, then?’ ‘Oh no,’ she says, ‘that finished long ago. And unfortunately she has not married again.’ I thought to myself: if not married, not livin’ in what you might call single strictness, not by a long chalk; but I didn’t like to say so. ‘She’s had a bad time, Tilly,’ she says. I looked at ’er in the glass, and saw tears in ’er eyes. ‘She told me she’d starved.’ Well, I thought, per’aps she did, per’aps she didn’t. What some calls starvin’ is a square meal to others. … All the same,” said Tilly reflectively, emerging from reminiscence, “per’aps she did. I wouldn’t put nothink past that one.”

  “I knew,” I said, in the ensuing pause, “she’d never forget Ianthe. Of course she wouldn’t. I knew she’d come for her.”

  “Ah!” said Tilly. “Fair means or foul. She’d lost ’er chance by the one—so she laid ’er plans to come at ’er by the other.”

  “How do you mean by the other?”

  “Accordin’ to what your grandmother told me—and it was strict confidence I’ve never broke—’er idea was—believe it or not—to see the child, secret from ’er father, whenever she come to stop with us; as she did, reg’lar. And ’ow was it to be kep’ from ’er father? You may well ask. ‘Why, Madrona, you wouldn’t betray me, and I know Tilly wouldn’t, and I shall explain the whole situation to Ianthe. I shall tell her her father must never know, and that I trust her. Children never, never betray confidences, if you give them serious reasons not to. Which I shall.’ So that child was to ’ave that burden put on ’er. Not to speak of the under’and ways she was to be brought up to till they was second nature. Nor to speak of the crookedness your grandmother and me for the matter of that was to be willin’ partners in. Oh no! All that wouldn’t trouble ’er. She saw just the one thing: what she wanted; and that was the right thing.”

  “Did Grandma think it was—it wasn’t the right thing?”

  “She knew it wasn’t. And so would any one else ’oo knew the meanin’ of the words actin’ straight, and wouldn’t stoop to deceit and all it leads to.”

  I was abashed; but I felt now, in my moral fog, so hopelessly committed to the side against the angels, to my partnership in obliquity and obsession, that there was nothing for it but to continue stubbornly in my shamelessness. A complex of feelings about Ianthe knotted itself within me; indignation on her account that she should be denied her chance of conspiracy; jealousy that so stupendous, so unique a chance should be offered to another. How unfathomably I would have kept the secret! How I would have thriven on it! What I would have discovered about truth, to strengthen and keep me straight in my crookedness!

  All through this maze I had held tenaciously to one thread: Miss Sibyl had clung to it, and so would I. I said almost tearfully:

  “But Grandma did tell her to come if she ever needed help. It was a promise. Grandma wouldn’t break her word.”

  “No, she wouldn’t,” said Tilly sharply. “She never broke ’er solemn word in all ’er life. But that’s what was laid at ’er door. … I never in all my days see ’er so shocked and ’urt. What come later was only the consequences of that day—and didn’t cut so keen. Though it went on gnorin’ at ’er, I knew, like somethink chronic in ’er vitals. But this was face to face. From one �
��oo’d been part daughter, part younger sister. And to come to such words straight on top of the joy of seein’ ’er again! …” Tilly drew in a hissing breath.

  “What words?” I said heavily.

  “‘She threatened me,’ she says. ‘But I hope and pray when she has had time to think it over, she will see I could do no other.’ ‘Of course you couldn’t,’ I says. ‘The idea!’ ‘She kept saying,’ she says, ‘“But I’ve not come to steal her or corrupt her. This is right. This is just. This is human. Not the law of cruel men. The law of humanity. My own child! …” Oh, Tilly, it was so terrible. It nearly broke my heart. …’ I thought to myself: ‘Trouble, trouble—and more trouble to come.’ I couldn’t a-bear to see ’er so grieved. It seemed she ’ad to out with it to someone. She couldn’t speak of it to your grandfather, see? ’E was strict in some ways. ’E wouldn’t ’ave ’er name mentioned after she run off; ’e’d thought the world of Mr. Charles. So I says to ’er: ‘Dear Madam, try not to take on so. You did what was right, may Gawd in ’eaven be your judge.’ ‘Oh, that’s so little consolation,’ she says. To see ’er face change from such joy to such dreadful disappointment and bitterness! “You too, Madrona!” she said. “I thought, no matter if the whole world casts me out, you would still be with me.” ‘And so I am, Sibyl!’ ‘She laughed—a terrible laugh.’ I says, to take ’er mind off the laugh, like: ‘’As she come to settle in London then?’ ‘I don’t know what she’ll do now,’ she says. ‘She arrived from America a fortnight ago. I don’t know what life she’s been living these last years, but she told me she was independent now. She had worked hard—and at last she had saved the money to come back and have a home where the child could visit her. …’ Ah, dear!” said Tilly. “Pore Miss Sibyl! She’d seen the seamy side all right. Toured all over the world in low-class theatrical companies, she ’ad—if she was to be believed; and writin’ things for the newspapers, and I don’t know what. As a girl, she was always one to go on about women’s rights—and they should all be trained up to perfessions like men, and be the equal of ’em. Equals! She got ’er bellyful all right. Ah, well. … There’s some people in this world you can’t ’elp; and she was one. She ’ad a kind, generous offer made ’er that time too. But no. …”

  “Did she?” I said eagerly. “What was it?”

  “Your grandmother says to me: ‘I told her,’ she says, ‘that although I could not allow her to come here or help her in any way to gain access, I would most gladly keep in touch with her—come and see her—tell her all I could about the child, write to her if she decided to go back to America; so long as she gave me her word not to interfere with her, or lay plans to see her behind my back. I told her I should make it clear to Mr. Charles I was going to do this; with a full sense of my responsibility,’ she says, ‘because I knew her word to me could be trusted; and because I wished to pave the way to a better understanding between Ianthe and her mother by the time she was grown up.’ That was on account she ’ad to sign a paper swearin’ she wouldn’t interfere with the child till she was growed up—like I told you.”

  “What did she say to Grandma about that offer?”

  “Scorned it! Thank you for nothink!—that was the way she took it. She didn’t want no charity news—bits and pieces as others thought it wouldn’t do no ’arm for ’er to know, and no power to influence the child ’erself, so’s she’d grow up into the kind of young woman she wanted ’er to be. … Pity she didn’t think of that a bit sooner. ‘Do you think,’ she ends up, ‘I want to hear from you— knowing, knowing, as I do now, that you are hand in glove with that cruel and con-temptible man?’ Well, that was the finish. ‘Go,’ says your grandmother. ‘Go. Go quickly, before more is said that you will regret for ever. … ’ ‘My worst fear was,’ she says, ‘that Ianthe would come running in. What then?’ ‘You could trust me for that,’ I says. ‘Well, Tilly, no more of this,’ she says. ‘We won’t speak of it again. It can never be put right. It’s all over between us, and I shall never see her again.’ ‘Not if I know ’uman nature,’ I thought. ‘Nothink’s ever over when it comes to this sort of a circus.’ Besides, I seen the look on ’er face. I knew she meant mischief.”

  There was a brooding pause. Tilly told me to switch on the light; she couldn’t see to work any more. I did so; and then said:

  “Did she mean mischief?”

  “Two or three years passed away,” said Tilly. “There never came no sign. I could tell she fretted sometimes, but she never spoke of it. Then there was a book wrote. …”

  Tilly’s voice was so ominous, the news she imparted on so totally different a plane from anything I was braced for, that my spine, latterly immunised to shocks, shivered again.

  “A book?” I bleated.

  “A wicked, shameful book. Wrote and printed. Signed with the name on the outside. Anstey ’er maiden name was, and that was what it was signed: Sibyl Anstey.”

  “What was it called?”

  “It slips my memory what the title was. I sor it owin’ to because your father brought it into the ’ouse. ’E was gettin’ on to be a man then, and ever so bright in ’s ’ead. ’E used to write bits about books for the papers, for all ’e was only young. ’E’d be at Cambridge College at the time. ‘Mother!’ ’e says. ‘What do you think I’ve been sent? A book by a woman called Sibyl Anstey. Surely it must be the same,’ ’e says. ’E’d recollect ’er from a child, see, though ’e ’adn’t seen ’er nor heard ’er name spoke for years. ‘Really?’ she says. ‘What is it like?’ It was up in ’er room. I was makin’ your aunt some little light frocks for the summer, and she’d come up to give an eye to the fittin’.

  “‘What is it about?’ she says. ‘I don’t know yet,’ ’e says. ‘It’s only just come. From the glance I’ve had, it looks like the intimate life story of a wronged woman,’ ’e says, jokin’ like. ‘I bet it’s auter—’what’s the word?—about ’erself ’e meant. ‘Hot stuff it looks like. She was a bit of a flyer, wasn’t she?’ ‘I must read it,’ she says, quiet. ‘Let me have it when you’ve done with it. I do hope it’s good,’ she says. ‘She was always ambitious to be a writer.’ Well … She read it.”

  “And what was it about?”

  “It was about a woman what was wronged all right,” said Tilly, with dramatic scorn. “Wronged by men. Wronged by a woman she trusted, one ’oo turned out a false friend, and stabbed ’er to the ’eart.”

  “Do you mean murdered her?”

  “No, I don’t mean any such thing. I mean: played ’er a treacherous trick. The smooth, double-faced kind she made ’er out, ’oo’d been a enemy in disguise from first to last.”

  “You don’t mean … you mean: made Grandma out?”

  “If you can credit it. I never read the thing. I wouldn’t of demeaned myself to open it.”

  “Did Grandma tell you about it?”

  “Never. Not one word ever crossed ’er lips. No, I ’ad it from Stevens. ’E was a reader. I never was. Oh, it was wrapped up cunnin’, of course, so you couldn’t lay your finger and swear that’s ’oo was meant. If she’d ’a been faced with it, she could ’ave acted innocent. ‘Why, Madrona, good gracious me, it’s only a story made up out my ’ead. You ’air’s dark, Madrona, and the one in the story’s fair. ’Owever could you fancy such a thing? ‘Ah, no doubt she would ’ave, given the chance. Yes, that was ’er thanks for all them years of love and care. That was ’er revenge; and I ’ope it come back to sting ’er like a viper. It was the first time I ever see your grandmother give in—the first and the last. Not even when your grandfather died, she didn’t. But she did then. It broke somethink in ’er. She ’ad an illness—not a long one; but when she got up from it she’d aged. She never looked ten years younger than her ’age again, like she done before.”

  Silence fell again. Two irreconcilable sets of facts confronted me. Miss Sibyl was an authoress; she had written something horrid and unkind about Grandma. Yet, turn the wheel,
and she was Mrs. Jardine, who loved Grandma so much that her voice altered when she spoke of her; who loved me for being her grandchild. I could only suppose that grown-ups were like that.

  “Lor,” said Tilly at last, “your grandfather did create. I don’t know what ’e didn’t want to do to stop the book and show ’er up. It went like ’ot cakes for a bit, I ’eard. It was wrote clever, and there was some spicy bits in it—not what a lady should know. But of course it was only dignified to turn a blind eye to the nastiness; which they done. ’E was a ’ot-tempered gentleman, like yer father. One thing she did let drop to me—she ’ad to: ’e forbid ’er ever to ’ave Miss Ianthe to stop in the ’ouse again. ‘You’ll rue it,’ ’e says. ‘If you don’t now, you will in a few years’ time.’ ’Is idea was, nothink but trouble ever come from ’avin’ anythink to do with the ’ole lot of ’em. ‘If it doesn’t change your feelings to her,’ ’e says, ‘knowing whose child she is, it will mine. I shall loathe the sight of her. See her where and when you choose, so long as it’s not here. She shall not come here.’ She wiped a few tears away when she told me, and I’m sure I did. I was fond of that child, and I felt it as much as she did pretty nearly—losin’ touch; more for the child’s sake, you understand. But no doubt ’e was right. Thank the Lord it was all took out of our ’ands. For Mr. Charles got wind through that book of ’er bein’ about again, and ’e saw ’ow it was with yer grandmother, and ’e give up the ’ouse and went off to Italy or some such foreign place to live. Where ’e died, some years after.”