The Ballad and the Source by Rosamond Lehmann Page A

descended from her flesh and blood. I did not realise then what poisons from what far-back brews went on corroding her; but not a drop fell on these children—fruit though they were of everybody’s misconceptions and misfortunes. Mrs. Jardine had so fine a respect for human life that she was able to bestow an entire, an objective, uncorrupted value upon every individual, even where her passions and prejudices might have made for most distortion. That was her grandeur.
    Malcolm had unpleasing traits in his character. He was deferential, almost obsequious, to any form of authority, as if he wished—awkwardly enough, poor Malcolm!—to ingratiate himself as a precaution against detection. He cheated just a little in all the games, and did not share his sweets all round, but kept them secretively among the hairy, clogged grey debris of his jacket pocket and consumed them rapidly, on the sly; though sometimes he did offer the bag to Jess, whom he was keen on. He liked to swing with her, standing face to face, on the swing the gardener put up in the walnut tree. Owing to the violence of his exertions, they swooped to dizzy heights. Also he used to wind her up tight in the swing and then let her go. Eyes tight shut, squealing, she would spin round with a whirl of legs and skirts to a bucketting conclusion. He would never be bothered to wind up Maisie or me. Then he would place a cushion for her on the bar of his bicycle and invite her to mount, which she did demurely, side-saddle. Gruffly bidding her to lean against him, he would wobble away with her for secluded rides in the lime alleys.
    In those odorous, subaqueously-lit tunnels, he would share his sweets with her; and once suddenly kissed her cheek. She was flattered by his preference for her, but not reciprocally attracted; and I think his strangled brooding sensuality, the furtiveness of his advances and withdrawals caused her a bored uneasiness.
    Maisie could not be won, so Mrs. Jardine behaved towards her as a sovereign might towards a Communist MP at a royal garden party: she extended hospitality to her, avoided any field of controversy, serenely ignored all treasonable insinuations. Never, in my presence, after that one time, did she permit the battle to be between equals and in the open. Their strategies ran on contradictory lines and never engaged one another for the show-down; but all the same Mrs. Jardine gained the advantage. Maisie’s integrity quickly took on the appearance of mere pig-headedness and ill-breeding.
    Maisie was always falling off objects and falling down, and Mrs. Jardine tended her injuries with exquisite skill and kindness. A relationship might have developed from this, — though it never did—for the sight of blood was Maisie’s heel of Achilles and reduced her to green-faced shuddering sickness and paralysis. It was curious in one so bent upon physical hazards, and so particularly tough to outward view. I got a fearful shock the first time I saw her sitting on the ground, staring with gasps and whimpers at her flowing knee. Mrs. Jardine attempted neither to sympathise nor to stiffen her morale by a bracing attitude. She simply bathed, bandaged with her strong light certain hands, and sent her to lie down for an hour with a hot drink and a book. Each time Maisie fell down the process was repeated. Her surrender was total, abject, but no advantage was taken of it.
    Cherry she treated with indulgent yet somehow remote tenderness. She watched her a good deal, but as it were from the other side of a glass shutter, which she only opened to call her to her side for practical reasons: for instance, when Cherry looked too flushed or too white. She was a delicate creature; what colour she had ebbed and flowed between one hour and the next. Sometimes she had a bluish unearthly pallor. She had constant colds and stomach upsets, and Mrs. Jardine made her rest a lot, and, sick or well, kept her in bed one whole day each week.