The Ballad and the Source Read Online Free Page A

to mean castle, and we asked how soon we could come. She did not put us off with a vagueness and an indulgent laugh, which would have proved to us that the invitation was a false one, but said with seriousness that she was sorry she could suggest no definite date at present. This was Harry’s old home, where he had lived as a boy, and they had only just been able to come back to it after years, and Harry loved it very much and wanted to enjoy it for as long as possible before the English winter should force them abroad again. Nowadays, she said, she was like our grandmother: she could not be well in a damp foggy climate. Harry could, of course, he was very strong and healthy, but he never let her travel without him. We were glad to think he loved and cared for her so tenderly, but troubled because his enjoyment of his old home was not more manifest. She spoke for him, she spoke about him: he remained to all appearances unconscious. Their eyes never met. Another thing I noticed was that she filled his teacup scarcely half-way up and leaned across the table to set it down beside his plate. I realised why when I observed how his hand shook when he lifted and drank from it. The tea rocked wildly, but he did not spill it.
    Presently the door began to rattle, then opened to let in an enormous cat, orange tabby. It posed in the doorway, glared with tawny eyes, then went streaking, tail up, stiff-legged, to his side. He lifted it on to his lap, folding it in his arms and bending his head to murmur inaudibly to it. Mrs. Jardine poured milk into a saucer, placed it before him on the table and continued her conversation. The cat sat on his lap and stooped its neck to drink. We left our seats and came round his knee, awestruck, to stroke the fabulous creature.
    â€œWhat’s its name?”
    â€œPeregrine,” we understood him to say. Then he did give us a rapid look, as if wondering whether he could trust us, and added: “He opens the door himself.”
    His voice startled us. It was so light and flat it seemed not to issue from his throat, but out of the air, out of nothing. Sometimes in dreams voices speak suddenly like this, empty ventriloquist voices making trivial statements whose tremendous meaning appals us.
    â€œWill you make him do it again?”
    â€œHe won’t do it again, there’s no reason for it,” he said rather snappishly. “He doesn’t fool about—he plans his life. He opened the door because he wanted his milk. If I put him outside now and shut the door in his face, he’d sulk and I shouldn’t see him again to-night.”
    This was the longest consecutive speech I ever heard Harry make. He got up, and as he did so the cat leaped up on to his shoulder; and thus in silence they left the table and went out, closing the door behind them.
    In this room there were two portraits to look at. One was a large, full-length portrait of a fair girl of about seventeen, dressed in white muslin with a blue sash tied round her small waist, and roses in her low bodice. Her arms were round and bare, and she sat with her hands loosely clasped in her lap on what looked like a blue glazed earthenware barrel decorated with a pattern of dolphins. Behind were tall trees; and there were some doves on the grass round her blue-shod feet. White, serious, piercingly beautiful, blue, full eyes staring out with fanatical directness, she was recognisably Mrs. Jardine. As I gazed, the hopeless wish to grow up to look and dress exactly like that caused me a wave of almost nausea.
    The other portrait hung in an oval frame over the mantelpiece, and showed the head and shoulders of a wonderful young man in full dress military uniform. He had poetic, delicate features, a fair moustache and a wistful expression.
    â€œThat is Harry when he was a young man,” said Mrs. Jardine. “Harry was the handsomest man in London, and the best dressed. He was the handsomest man I ever saw, except perhaps your