Free The Ballad and the Source by Rosamond Lehmann Page A

permit it.
    Setting her jaw, she said grimly:
    â€œNot as long as I live. It would be letting Father down. He talked to us before we came. He said she’d been trying for years to get hold of us, but he wouldn’t let her. But now he’d got to go into hospital for this treatment, he didn’t want to leave us alone with Auntie Mack, because she was very run down from having such a lot to do after he got ill. And there wasn’t enough money to send us somewhere for a nice holiday—so he’d decided we’d better come here for a bit.” She fell silent; then went on in a stifled but resolute voice: “He said he’d been feeling … if anything happened to him ever, it might be a good thing to have a rich relation to take an interest in us. He hasn’t got any relatives, or any money.” She swallowed. “I said I didn’t need anybody, but he said the others—Cherry anyway. … He said what I told you—never to believe anything she said. … He talked about Mother, he hasn’t ever before. He said she had ruined her.”
    A shiver went down me.
    â€œHow?” Ruin was a terrible word, almost as terrible as dead.
    â€œShe left her when she was a little girl.”
    â€œWhat, ran away from her?”
    â€œI don’t know. But she did, he said. And then she tried to get her back, and she couldn’t. Father said that ruined her. I don’t quite know why, but it was something to do with her having to be brought up in a—in an unsuitable way. He said he wasn’t going to have us ruined. I was all right, he said, and he was placing Cherry in my charge, and I was to watch out for her.” She brooded. “How I do wonder what happened when she turned up at the hotel that time. …”
    â€œDo you think … Don’t you think perhaps your mother will turn up again sometime … soon?”
    â€œIt would be queer.” I could see her concentrating, as she must have concentrated a thousand times before, upon a vision of the meeting. “There’s just one thing, one rather unkind thing I mean, I should have to say to her.”
    â€œWhat?”
    â€œThat it would have been better if she’d taken Cherry. It wasn’t fair on Cherry never to have had a mother. She was only a baby and she can’t remember her at all. It wasn’t so bad for Malcolm and me—we were a sort of pair —more on Father’s side.”
    â€œDidn’t you love her then?”
    â€œYes, I did.” Her sudden anger wounded, alarmed and shamed me. “And she loved us. If you think she didn’t, you’re wrong. Anybody who thinks she didn’t is a fool and I’ll murder them.” After a few moments, she put the whole bag of toffee into my lap, and said mildly: “What I meant was, we take after him more—we’re more his. Cherry’s different.”
    I said humbly:
    â€œYes. I see.”
    â€œShe didn’t have the same start as us. She was born after we all came back to England. We never went back to India after that time. I don’t quite understand what Father did out there—I know he was quite important. But he gave it up. I have a sort of feeling it was because Mother said she wouldn’t go back. Anyway, he came home and we all went to live in Newcastle. We seemed to be rich in India, but since then we’ve been poor. Father got a new job, teaching in a big school—the one Malcolm goes to. Newcastle isn’t very nice, but Northumberland’s lovely. Oh, I adore it! In the holidays we go to the coast, or to a little farm in the middle of the moors. And I ride.” She glowed. “I wish I was there now. With you. I could never tell you how happy I am there. We could ride together.”
    I was afraid of the very shape of a horse, and my riding lessons had been given up as a bad job, but I was ashamed to tell her so, and agreed with