The Ballad and the Source

by Rosamond Lehmann

  “So have I,” I said. “If you mean—staring at nothing—and Cherry’s eyes look black too, don’t they?—with blue round.”

  “Oh, you have noticed it too, have you?” she said, throwing me a sharp glance, as if my powers of observation were this time unwelcome. “Ah well—that can be dealt with. There is time, ample time. If I live—and live I must—Cherry shall have her freedom. It cannot be an irrevocable inheritance, a congenital …” Her fingers tapped violently. “No. … Such symptoms are the result of criminal mishandling; the ingrowing reaction of an exceptionally egotistical nature, obstructed in its development. Physical beauty makes, of course, for an additional menace. … But I have noticed with such natures that beauty itself, of a particular type, seems as it were an external symptom. They seem to put it forth mysteriously, abnormally, as consumptives do.”

  Taking the flower-basket from me, Mrs. Jardine lightly lifted and redistributed one or two dahlias.

  Presently I said:

  “Had she got a smiling sort of face?” And added hastily: “Or not?”

  “What would you expect?” said Mrs. Jardine, encouraging me to make a psychological judgment.

  “Not.”

  “Quite right.”

  “More sad?”

  “Unhappy. There is a difference. Sorrow can beautify. I have seen it regenerate and purify an old coarse face. But unhappy faces are merely distressing. Faces that cannot forget themselves and flow outward freely, generously to meet their fellow beings. One is apt to see that look on adolescent faces, but it is generally accompanied by something else, which makes it exceedingly moving: some passion of anxiety and longing, as of a prisoner struggling to be free, to communicate. Some hope, some question: ‘Is it time? When will the time come? Is this the way out of the tunnel? Can you be the person who will help to set me free? ‘… But in her face, that fitful spark, that young life gathering its forces to burst out was missing. Her mouth was a displeasing feature, although the lips were well shaped. It looked cramped, ungenerous, repudiating. Yes. I had to see my daughter preparing to repudiate life. To unfit herself. To be an invalid.”

  “An invalid? Ill?”

  Mrs. Jardine put her fingers to her forehead.

  “There.”

  She was silent, and so was I. It was the sign for insanity, I knew. Ianthe was a mad girl, then; was that what these accumulated hints portended? I saw her with a wreath awry on her dishevelled locks and a straggle of broken flowers in her hand, like the picture of Ophelia in my illustrated Shakespeare. Then suddenly the miniature Maisie had shown me slid before my mind’s eye. So concentrated had I been on the portrait Mrs. Jardine was building up, that this image had lain dormant. But now it struck me that this phantasmagoric Italian princess, that Christmas Annual mother were one and the same person. Between these two incompatible figures, where, apart from their equal mystery and fascination, was the connection?

  Almost in the moment of presenting myself with this dilemma, I found the solution. It came over me with the same huge wave of relief and pleasure that I had experienced when at the age of six, between one despairing hour of guess-work and the next, the power was granted unto me to make sums give the right answers, that obviously no person was one and indivisible—one unalterable unit—but a multiplicity; so that everything about a person might be equally true and untrue, and I need no longer be puzzled by the badness of good people, and the other way round; and so on.

  Confident that from now on I should be brighter, less dumbfounded, I was emboldened to say:

  “Do you think it was really true, what you saw—that she was like that? Or only that she looked like that to you—because—” I foundered. “Because—”

  “Yes?” said Mrs. Jardine, expectant.

  “Because you wanted—”

  “Because I wanted to think so?”

  “Well, not really, of course, but sort of.”

  “That is a perfectly legitimate point to raise,” she pronounced judicially. “A woman in my position might well, out of the bitterness and frustration of her feelings, create distortions. She might so have made up her mind beforehand that this influence she loathed was ruining her child that she would inevitably project her will in all its falsity upon the child. But no. I cannot be deceived. I have lightning in my eyes. It strikes without warning, often to my own discomfiture, into dark places—a blinding flash. And then I see! Doubtless the world saw her as a charming and interesting creature in her spring-time bloom. But beneath her young roundness and smoothness she was sick. Life sick. Love sick.” She drew a sharp breath that turned into a shudder all through her frame. “I saw the invisible worm.”

  She uttered the last words without emotion, but they exploded in me with a colossal reverberation. Compulsively I averted my eyes from the sky where, so it seemed, her fabulous gaze rested upon portents and monsters. Another moment, and its candid and impenetrable depths would be rent for me—me too; some dire apparition, some mythical reptile would appal my sight. I looked attentively into the loggia at some basket chairs piled with gay cretonne cushions.

  After a while I said feebly:

  “I wonder why she went like that.”

  “That is what I had to ask myself,” said Mrs. Jardine. “What I had to discover. What canker was eating at her adolescence. I had become cut off from any effective source of information about the intimate aspects of her life. My intuitions were strong—and I had never had reason to mistrust them. But it was not till later that I ascertained certain facts, and knew that my suspicions had been all too well founded.” She paused; then in a vibrating voice burst forth: “Wretched hallucinated creatures both! Sick indeed! Criminal father! Ah, there is one corruption above all that stinks to heaven, and that is the odour of sanctified perversion. Which he died in.”

  “What is perversion?”

  “Perversion, in the sense in which I use the term, is an abnormal love,” explained Mrs. Jardine in a painstaking way. “That is, a bad, a harmful love.”

  “Is that what theirs was?” I said, gloomy.

  “Yes. Any love whose demands are excessive is a bad love. I mean, when the aim of the lover is to swallow up its object and possess it entirely, body and soul. That is the sin against the Holy Ghost.”

  “Oh, is that the sin against the Holy Ghost?” I exclaimed with interest. “I heard Mr. Grigsby read it out in Church, and we both wondered. Why is it a sin? Is it because—because it’s wrong to force another person to do things they don’t want to do?”

  “That is partly the reason.”

  “Bad things, I suppose, they might have to do?”

  An analogy struck me: Alan, our handsome and admired boy cousin, urging us to steal peaches for him under threat of the disfavour he knew we could ill endure.

  “They might well. It is an abominable enough thing in a married relationship. But when the obsessed pair are father and daughter. … This subject cannot be ventilated. I touched on it in one of my novels.” She broke off, looking scornful and indignant. “The outcry!—laughable if it were not so menacing. ‘Indelicate,’ ‘outrageous,’—‘indecent’ even; those were the epithets. ‘Miss Anstey’s cynical pen does not spare the most sacred ties of human life. She dwells on them only to degrade and to debase them.’ That was the lofty tone of my male critics. Ach! Hypocrites! Humbugs! Yes, and abusive letters. ‘Having just removed a filthy contamination from my household by consigning your book to the flames—’” She laughed harshly. “Ah, but a few thanked me. That made the rest a gnat-bite—less.” She broke off again and laid a hand on my head. “Dearest! Do not trouble your head with all this. It is immaterial. I was speaking my thoughts aloud. I am so much alone—I speak so much to myself.” She added slowly: “The thought runs through—through—yes, through …” Then: “Later you will understand, though not, I hope from experience—I have no reason—oh none!—to think so—what crimes are commit
ted in the name of parental love.”

  She turned over her little watch and consulted it. “They should be back by five from the river,” she said vaguely; and I felt her beginning to make preparations in advance to readjust the equilibrium, to stabilise herself.

  “Oh, please go on,” I said anxiously, fearing to hear her say we would speak of these things another time.

  “As I was telling you,” she went on in a lighter way, “Ianthe’s father became a singularly abnormal man. Normal people send their energies and emotions out through a number of channels. He ceased to do this. He turned from life which had so disappointed him, and concentrated his whole being upon two objects; his daughter and his God. Naturally,” she said dryly, “the two got somewhat mixed up. The world was not to breathe upon her. It was to be a kind of spotless union—a Trinity. She was not to know any other fulfilment. He taught her that the natural love between a man and a woman, the love that makes them wish to live together and have children, was loathsome and degrading. Yes, he taught her that wickedness! He and she for God only and each for God in one another: that was how it was to be … every variation upon that theme. It involved—” She paused. “It seems that it involved watching over her day and night: a total absorption. Not one word or thought, not one instinct was to escape his possession. Waking or sleeping, she must be his—guarded—his miser’s treasure.”

  “Did he have her to sleep with him, then?” I asked, astonished at such intensity of fatherly concern.

  “Yes. That is what he did.”

  “Did he think—was he afraid someone would get in and steal her, do you suppose?” I asked, assuming incredulity; thinking of Tilly, of Paris, the nursery windows of Ianthe’s childhood barred—I knew against whom.

  We did not meet one another’s eyes. She gave no sign; but I felt her divination flicker over me.

  “It may have started,” she said calmly, “with some such fantastic notion. As she grew older, nearer to the time when a child normally begins to leave its parents’ care and influence, his crazed love grew. At all costs he must isolate her from any future she might reach towards for herself—or that might open out for her through me. That was at the back of it all, of course. So he devised this union, this marriage in God. Oh! on the highest plane of spirituality and innocence …” She was talking to herself now. Disgust made her lips thick and heavy. “The sleep of the blessed angels. Let me not appear to hint at a monstrous­­­­—” She stopped short.

  “She was rather old, wasn’t she,” I observed, “to sleep with somebody else?”

  “But in the ferment of adolescence!” she exclaimed, still thinking aloud, and disregarding my suggestion. “The awakening instincts of sex all crushed, distorted—” She broke off; then addressing me once more, continued: “Well now. Round about the time of Ianthe’s seventeenth birthday, his health began rapidly to fail. He had long been a sick man—but this was mortal. The time was at hand when I should have what is called, in terms of the law, access to my daughter: that is, when she was eighteen I was to be permitted to see her occasionally. You can imagine, Rebecca, how I was preparing myself, what plans I had made, hoping against hope that it was not too late, that I should be able to apply purges and balms to drain away fifteen years of poison and make her whole again. There is a great saying—it is in Latin but I will translate: I believe, because it is impossible. That has always been my faith. Now, knowing he must die, what weighed most upon this father’s mind?”

  “What would happen to Ianthe?” I hazarded; thinking how all the crises in this family history seemed to follow the same pattern.

  “Exactly. He saw the way open for Ianthe to come wholly back to me. A hideous dilemma for him. He was determined that his last act on earth should be to prevent that. He had already seen to it pretty thoroughly—but this was a practical act. He made a will. In this will he left all his money to various scholastic and ecclesiastical foundations, apart from a sum which would furnish Ianthe with an extremely modest yearly income—a mere pittance. This was to prevent the temptations of the world assailing her. She would otherwise have been an heiress—exposed, through me, so he chose to assume, to the predatory schemes of unscrupulous males. At the same time he appointed a guardian for her—an Englishman, a friend of his—not a friend, he had none—an acquaintance rather, one of the few regular visitors to his house. A man in whose high moral character and religious principles he recorded his utmost trust.” A violent snort came from her. “Now, I knew nothing of all this. Just at this time I had met Harry, and married him. I was far away, on my honeymoon voyage, when I received the news of Charles’s death.”

  “What was he like—the Englishman, the guardian?”

  “Oh, an interesting type. At some stage in a chequered and dubious career—I subsequently traced it—he had regularised his position by taking Holy Orders.”

  “You mean he was a clergyman?”

  “Yes. A clergyman of a sort.”

  Then surely it must be all right this time. This at least must be a good man.

  “He then proceeded further to advance his interests by marrying a rich woman—a doting, devout spinster, considerably older than himself. He had been some years in Florence and had established a reputation for charm, culture and saintliness—with a touch—oh, just that touch!—of worldly wisdom, of deep sensual experience now foregone which makes the blend so irresistibly attractive to women. And Charles had much of the woman in him. Yes, he had much, this man, to commend him to Charles Herbert. A taste for art. A collection of china. A knowledge of music. Besides, they shared and indulged together a passion for the sensuous trappings of devotion—images, candles, crucifixes and the rest. All that gave them enormous satisfaction.”

  I had learnt, I scarcely know how, when irony and malice were intended. Sometimes there was a sniff; but the edge of her voice never sharpened. Perhaps it became, if anything, a shade more matter-of-fact.

  “Well,” continued Mrs. Jardine with a light sigh, “he died and was buried. And I was on my wedding journey. Harry and I were travelling round the world. I was in a time of peace and hope. When at last the news reached me through my solicitor, I turned in my tracks and started with all haste for Italy. Terrible weeks those were of agita- tion and suspense, with no information but a bare few lines saying that she was under the roof and guardianship of this unknown man.”

  “Did Harry go with you?”

  “Harry naturally accompanied me.” She paused. “Arrived in Florence, I behaved with the utmost correctness. I wrote to the man’s wife asking for permission to call upon her.”

  “And she said yes?”

  “No. The request was refused. My letter was the appeal of one woman to another, for understanding, if not for sympathy. I received in return a cold, curt note, dictated, no doubt, by him, stating that no useful purpose could be served by such an interview. Their duty to Ianthe consisted in discharging their trusteeship in the letter no less than in the spirit: and this they were doing and would do.” Her lip curled.

  “And did they?” I said weakly.

  “Then,” said Mrs. Jardine, “I wrote again. I said I was aware that my first meeting with my daughter was not due for another few months, but as I had re-married and expected to be travelling abroad during the whole of the coming year, I should be grateful for one brief interview, in order to explain to her my new circumstances. If they could not see their way to acceding to my request, my alternative would be to write to her, fully explaining my plans for our future. I added that I should remain in Florence until this question was decided. They evidently concluded that my pen was more to be feared than my presence. Or possibly,” she added with a sardonic inflection, “they conceived the odd suspicion that I might cause them embarrassment if thwarted—make a spectacle of myself—get up to mischief. Be that as it may, the man appeared next day at my hotel to call upon me. I had fifteen minutes in which to sum him up. I saw him f
or what he was.”

  “Was he nice?”

  “Heat in his eye,” she murmured. “Aloes upon his lip. A mesmeric animal irradiation … one cannot mistake it, however veiled. … A dangerous man to women. Oh yes, we understood one another.” Something seemed to flicker in her eyes, in the long corners of her lips. “It was in its way a remarkable head—intellectual pride was in it, aesthetic sensibility, passion, the marks of suffering. But the effect was most distasteful.”

  “You didn’t like him?”

  “He proposed to me that he should bring Ianthe to my hotel and that the interview should take place in his presence. She was shy, he said. An ordeal for her, naturally. She would shrink. He would be able to oil the wheels, as he delicately put it. Her confidence in him was such … I answered that I preferred that his wife should accompany her. I should feel, I said, less artificiality and constraint with another of my own sex. I was curious, of course, having summed him up, to see the woman. He was obliged to acquiesce. That being arranged,” said Mrs. Jardine in a brisk voice, giving a few light busy touches to her dress, “he was prepared to stay longer.”

  “He’d got to like you!” I exclaimed triumphantly. He’d thought he wouldn’t, but of course he had. She had done it within fifteen minutes: I wondered by what words and looks.