The Ballad and the Source Read Online Free

Jardine. We watched her, responsive as any instrument she had ever in her life fingered and drawn the heart from, to play the part she had appointed.
    â€œThen you don’t know if they’re nice or not?” said Jess finally.
    â€œI wonder very much,” she said meditatively. “I often ask myself.” She went over to the mirror, took out her turquoise hat-pins and removed her hat, glancing at herself sidelong, as women do who think they have lost their beauty: repudiating a complete reflection. “I wonder what we should find to say to one another.” She dusted her face all over with powder, took from a drawer a scarf of sky-blue gauze and wound it round her throat, pushed her hair up and added: “I think I shall see them soon. I think they are coming to stay with me. Then you must come to tea and make friends: at least, if they are nice, as I hope.”
    Mademoiselle now appeared with an air of modest good breeding from the bathroom, where we had been bidden to leave her, and told us not to fatigue Madame with our chatter.
    â€œCome down now,” said Mrs. Jardine, stretching a hand out to each of us and drawing us close. “Tea will be ready. You are going to meet Harry now. You will like Harry. Everybody loves him. But he is a little shy.”
    3
    A tall man with a red face and thin grey hair was standing in front of the drawing-room fire, looking out of the window.
    â€œOh, Harry,” said Mrs. Jardine, “these are Edward’s girls—my sweet Laura’s grandchildren. Is not this a happy day for me?”
    His eyes turned from the window and came down upon us rapidly yet with reluctance. His lips which were long and thin gave a twitch, the travesty of a smile, but he did not say anything; and the rest of his face was quite unsmiling. Almost immediately his gaze returned to the long pane.
    He did not have a trace of any of the different kinds of manner—patronage, embarrassment, amusement, dislike, comradeliness—whereby grown-ups signalise their consciousness of meeting children; but we were prepared, and knew it was his shyness. Slender, upright, with military shoulders and a faultlessly-­cut, new-looking tweed suit, he had, as he stood on his own hearth, the most curious look of having no connection with his surroundings. He seemed absolutely exposed. Under crooked bushy grey eyebrows, the whites of his sad butcher-blue eyes were bloodshot; they looked as if they might brim over with tears any moment. Children find a naturalness in eccentric social behaviour; and though his isolation gave him dignity, he did not disconcert us.
    April sun struck brilliantly off many pale surfaces of chintz, wood and mirror, and when Mrs. Jardine with her puffy cloud of white hair and her blue gauze, sat down by the window to the tea-table, she looked half-spectral, dissolved in silvery spring light.
    Tea was on the plain side, tasty but not lavish, with little home-baked scones and queen cakes and shortbread biscuits. It was memorable for a delicacy of intoxicating flavour, called guava jelly, which we had never before tasted. Mademoiselle bade us speak French, since so remarkable an opportunity had been offered to us of profiting by Madame’s knowledge of the language; but Mrs. Jardine begged for us with such tact, praising our accents but explaining that the Major was not so proficient a linguist as herself that Mademoiselle yielded gracefully, with apologies. We thought that possibly at this point the Major winked very slightly at us, but we were not sure. Little spasms and tremors, easy to mistake for winks, continually crossed his face. Certainly he took no other notice of us, and the meal passed without a word from his lips. Mrs. Jardine talked energetically, in French, to Mademoiselle, in English to us. She talked about the house they had somewhere in France, and said we must come and stay there one day. The word she used was ch âteau, which we understood