The Ballad and the Source by Rosamond Lehmann Page B

them nowadays—tears of age and weak-sightedness. I had got over thinking them tears of grief. “There are some natures,” she said, “that’s treacherous all through. They bites the ’and that feeds ’em. They do it once, and it’s forgiven and forgotten. But the time comes they done it once too often, and you can’t forgive nor forget. Never trust no one, not even your own flesh and blood, that’s once done you a wicked wrong. One day they’ll do you another, you may be bound.”
    â€œDid you ever know any treacherous people, Tilly?”
    â€œI’ve come across one or two in my life. And so did your Grandma. To ’er scathe and sorrer.”
    The rhythm was re-established now; the scratch of needle on thimble, the hands’ unconscious, faultlessly delicate movement over and through their work, the voice tick-tocking on with a sort of regular rattling beat in it, calling up in the camphor and time-smelling room the presence of my grandmother, so sharp, so faint, so quick, so dead—a presence more composed of sounds—her laugh, her music, her way of putting a thing—than of images.
    Once, long ago, at a Christmas party, someone turned out the lights and switched on a gramophone with a tin horn. A nasal goblin voice rasped out the words: Edison Bell Record; and then, with a shiver down my spine, I heard the voice of Henry Irving in The Bells. Tilly was like one of those antique gramophones—a shaky, trivial, wheezing medium reproducing skeleton dramas over and over again. The body of human life was drained out, yet a mystery, another, piercing reality remained.
    â€œWhat happened?” I said. “Was she—treacherous? Miss Sibyl?”
    â€œShe brought ’er own ruin on ’er,” said Tilly. “And tried to bring down others in ’er fall.”
    I leaned back, feeling weak. I tried to summon up Mrs. Jardine, with all her kind, considerate, fascinating ways, presiding at the tea-table, bandaging us, resting on her sofa with all the thoughts of her solitude, that I had so often tried to imagine, secret behind her calm, stern, noble face; or strolling with the gardener along the herbaceous border, round the kitchen garden, into the greenhouses, energetically discussing, as I had so often heard her, what was to be altered, what planned and planted. But this humane, matronly figure, with all her richness stored in her, distilling quiet, had vanished into limbo. Groping for her, I saw, instead, an icy fiend: Miss Sibyl. I saw her snaky arms coiled round the pillars of the house of my grandparents, great blocks of masonry cracking, about to crash down on her, on all. I remembered her stroking my arm once, saying: “Pretty arms”; adding: “When I was a girl, I had arms like white snakes.” Here was this word again: Ruin.
    â€œRuin?” I said shakily. “How did she …? What did she …?”
    â€œShe went wrong,” said Tilly in a stony voice. “That’s what she done. She flounced off to lay down on a bed of red roses, and many’s the time I’ve thought it turned out nettles and brambles under ’er. Many’s the time I’ve said to myself I wouldn’t be ’er, tossing in the watches of the night—not if the Emperor of India stepped down from ’is throne and offered me the ruby from the middle front of ’is crown.”
    She was silent, brooding. No feed line occurred to me.
    â€œOf course,” she went on presently, “’e was a sober sort of a gentleman. Methodical. All books, books, books, and fiddle, fiddle with ’is precious china, and tinkle, tinkle, tinkle on the ’arpsichord. Not like a real man—for all ’e was a ’andsome well-set-up sort of a feller. A good bit older than ’er. Very ’igh educated, and money—plenty of it. That was a lot to do with ’er takin’ ’im, I wouldn’t be