The Spring of the Tiger Page 2

  "Come up from nothing," said Meg disparagingly.

  Of course I defended him. "All the more credit," I pointed out. *Tou have to be clever to get to something when you've come up from nothing."

  "It's never the same," said Meg.

  Janet had her terse comment. "Clogs to riches, riches to clogs."

  "She means," explained Meg, "that them that comes after him will lose what he's made and be back to clogs."

  "I can't see Toby in clogs," I said giggling. "And as a matter of fact Mr, Mander never had them either. He used to sell newspapers at Piccadilly Circus. Toby told me."

  "It's a figure of speech," said Janet grandly. "And mark my words it's a true one."

  Toby laughed when I told him. "No return to clogs for this family," he said. "My father will get it all too tied up. He's a financial wizard."

  "You're not one of those, Toby."

  "Oh, I'm not so bad. Hardly a wizard—a sort of lively sprite."

  We laughed a great deal, Toby and I, but we could be very serious over books. He told me about his family. He was the only son —a bit of a disappointment to the Old Man. I consoled him. "The Wizard would be satisfied with only a more wily wizard than himself," I assured him.

  His father became the Wizard from then on. He was a gruflF old man. A rough diamond, said Toby. I called him the Diamond after that.

  "He seems to have a genius for accumulating things," I pointed out. "Wealth and now nicknames. The Wizard. The Diamond. What next?"

  "Work became a mania with him," commented Toby. "My mother would have been content with less, but once he had started he had to go on."

  "And so he made his vast fortune. I suppose he's a millionaire."

  "I beheve so."

  'Tou'll be rich one day, Toby."

  "All tied up in trusts and things for my children and their children and so on for the next thousand years."

  I was greatly amused. I suppose I laughed very easily in those days. I pictured money securely tied up in bags handed out little by little to Toby and his children and his grandchildren. But the idea of Toby's having children was even funnier than the money bags.

  He was a little hurt when I told him this. I had never before seen him so put out.

  The Wizard, it seemed, was not such a bad sort. His name was Toby too, but he was always known as Tobias, which I was sure suited him. It was simply that he could not think or talk about much besides money and how to make it multiply while Toby liked to talk about Greek drama and the philosophers and Shakespeare's special genius. The two did not mix well together so Tobias the Wizard and Toby the son did not see as much of each other as would have been desirable in a more compatible relationship, though I understood when they met they were polite to each other, respected and liked each other, and the Wizard hid his disappointment while Toby tried to hide his ignorance and lack of interest in the processes of becoming rich.

  Sitting in the schoolroom, riding in the park, looking at the show bills of theaterland, talking endlessly, one day was so like another that they slipped by unnoticed.

  The Colleen Bawn had come to an end after an exhausting run. The papers had said that Irene Rushton was at her enchanting best.

  The last night had been a great success. There had been congratulations, flowers and a special supper party. That was over and it was now rest time.

  It went according to pattern and the first days would be wonderful.

  On the morning after the party I begged to be allowed to take in her coffee and rolls at noon.

  She was sleeping and I put the tray on the table and looked down at her. She was very beautiful. Her hair was brown with chestnut Hghts in it; she had a small heart-shaped face and her lashes when her eyes were closed lay fanlike on her pale skin. She looked very young, asleep—almost like a child.

  I had similar coloring but lacked those delightful contours. My face was, as Meg put it, inclined to be lumpy. My nose was too long and my mouth too big, and there was of course that unmanageable hair. One thing I had inherited were her thick dark eyelashes and brows. In fact mine were thicker than hers, which must have been an asset for she used a pencil to thicken and darken her own.

  She had opened her eyes and was laughing at me.

  "What are you doing, Little Siddons?"

  "Standing and admiring. You look so pretty and so . . . young."

  She was all delight. She loved compliments and never tired of them although she must have had a surfeit. I had chosen the right word when I said she looked young. It occurred to me that her life was a continual battle against the years, and I thought it was a mistake to bring out so much artillery to wage war on an enemy who had hardly yet put in an appearance—and when he did would inevitably be the victor.

  "Coffee!" she said. "Oh, you're an angel."

  "Shall I pour it out?"

  "Oh yes, please." She stretched herself. "Ah. Luxury! What a night it was! Have you seen the flowers?"

  "I can't see the drawing room for flowers. There are forests of them."

  "Beautiful!"

  "Janet says they'll drop on the carpet and Meg is sure they harbor insects."

  "Tell her I hope they're full of spiders, tarantulas who will sidle into her bed at night."

  "So beautiful and so cruel," I mocked.

  "Tom Mellor says there are at least half a dozen scripts for me to see. It looks as though my rest will be a short one." She smiled complacently. "I'd like a good tragic role, I think."

  She talked awhile about roles and her successes. Then she suddenly seemed to notice me for the first time. "You've put your hair up," she said. Her face hardened.

  ''Don'tyoulikeit?"

  "No, Sarah, I don't."

  She was really put out when she called me Sarah.

  I took out the pins which held it and shook it out.

  "That's better. You're far too young to put your hair up. Why, it will be five years before that's necessary."

  My hair had definitely depressed her. The happy glow which talking of her successes had given her was gone. She looked anxious, as though she were peering into a future where a daughter with her hair up was proclaiming to the world that Irene Rushton was getting old.

  I shall be nineteen then, I pointed out, for it was an irritating habit of mine that when a fact occurred to me I had to give voice to it. I should try to grow out of that, Meg had warned me.

  It was a foolish thing to have said. She wanted me to stay fourteen forever. I felt a great tenderness towards her then, for it would have been easy for her to have left me with the shadowy Ralph Ashington so that with the passing of the years I need not have become an embarrassment to her.

  She was thoughtful for a moment. Then she said solemnly: "Is that really so. Nineteen." She spoke the words as though my reaching that age was a major disaster like the Crimean War or the Indian Mutiny. I tried to think of something to comfort her and sought for some of Toby's homilies or even Meg's or Janet's.

  Didn't someone say that experience was one of the rewards of old age or something like that? But I felt such an observation would hardly bring the necessary comfort.

  Then she said slowly: "So it was fourteen years ago . . ." Her eyes took on a dreamy look and I could see that she was back in that day when I had been born. I had pictured it many times, my birth in that strange place where insects abounded and Mr. Ralph Ashington presided, and which my mother had been unable to endure so that when I was two years old she had walked out of it with me.

  Perhaps it was the fact that I had appeared with my hair pinned up—merely to keep it from falling into my eyes—which had made her feel it was time I knew a little about my origins. Or it may have been that she was in one of the pessimistic moods which made her want to exacerbate her feelings by recalling that time. I was not sure, but she started to talk, and that morning I learned more of my beginnings than I ever had before.

  "Fourteen years ago," she mused. "So it is fifteen since I first met your father."

  She
sipped the coffee thoughtfully and I kept very quiet so as not to divert her thoughts.

  "I was barely seventeen," she went on as though talking to herself. That was an admission which showed she was off her guard. Although my mathematics were not good, I did know that fifteen and seventeen did not make twenty-six, the age she admitted to.

  "They were exciting days," she said. "I was noticed right from the first. There was not a girl who had more admirers than I did."

  "Of course not," I said soothingly.

  "I was young and frivolous. When I think of the match I could have made . . ."

  Lord Lummy, I thought. The Duke of Denton Square, the Earl of Edmonton, the Prince of Putney . . . Yes, I was sure she was right.

  "Many of the girls married into the peerage," she said. "I wonder I didn't."

  I wondered most what I should have been like with an aristocratic father instead of Mr. Ralph Ashington. Different, of course.

  "It all happened so quickly," she was saying. I leaned forward. I didn't want to miss a word. Hadn't I been trying to find out for as long as I could remember!

  She was silent, and I prompted gently: "What was he like , . . my father?"

  "Different," she replied. "Not a bit like the others. There was a sadness about him ... a tragic look which began to fascinate me.

  "Did you find out why he looked tragic?"

  "His wife had died not long before. He had come to England to try to get over his sadness. Then one night a friend brought him to the theater. I noticed him in the stalls. His eyes were on me all the time. And the next night he was there . . . and the next too."

  There was nothing very unusual about that. I heard often of these men who went night after night to gaze on the adored one. It was one of the dich's of the Theater Johnnies, as Meg called them.

  "But there was something different about him," I prompted.

  ''Oh, very different. He was quite distinguished-looking. His skin was bronzed, and his hair was bleached with the sun. It made him look. . "

  "Outstanding," I supplied, "and very attractive."

  She did not seem to have heard that interruption. "We went to supper."

  "At the Cafe Royal," I breathed.

  She nodded. "He talked. He was a good talker when he roused himself and he was eager to talk to me. There was a family estate near Epping Forest, but he was rarely there. He owned a tea plantation in Ceylon and he was in England for only a short stay. He talked a great deal about the place and ... in two weeks he had asked me to marry him."

  "It was very romantic," I said.

  "Romantic! No one thought so. Meg was really spiteful. She didn't approve at all. She had only been my dresser for a year and you would have thought she'd made me . . . and owned me. She reproached me bitterly. 'All my ladies married into the peerage,' she kept saying." My mother began to laugh and I joined in with her. She went on: "I said to her: Tm sorry, Meg, but even if it spoils your record I shall marry whom I wish.' Sometimes I think I rushed into it just to spite Meg."

  "I'm sure you didn't. You must have loved him dearly."

  "Sentimental Siddons! But J am not in the least sentimental, my child. I rushed into it without thinking clearly. I was fascinated by that hot and steamy land of which he talked so much. I wanted to see it for myself. The color and the glamour, the turquoise seas, the coral reefs and the waving palms. He had a way with words. Sometimes I think you have inherited that from him. They all said I was throwing myself away. But I went out there. I can remember so clearly ... all the excitement of getting ready, the ship which took us out. Dark nights with stars like gold on midnight-blue velvet. . . just like that velvet gown of mine. You know the one. I always think of the ship we traveled out in when

  I wear it. It was all so romantic and exciting and then ... I was there. I remember seeing the house for the first time. I shivered as I entered in spite of the heat of the tropics. It was seven o'clock in the evening when we arrived and the sun had gone . . . suddenly. The dark comes quickly . . . not like it is here. There's no twilight. It's day one moment and the next . . . night. There were lanterns on either side of the door. The house was white and the air seemed full of the hum of insects. It was surrounded by bushes and trees. Everything grows so much faster than at home. There's a sort of steamy smell coming up from the earth. It's like a hot damp blanket."

  "It must have been thrilling," I whispered.

  She was silent for a few moments, then she said vehemently: *T grew to hate it. I kept thinking about what I had never cared particularly about at home. The rain . . . the gentle rain, not great downpours. I wanted to hear the hansoms going by; I wanted to see the horses pulling the buses, the flower sellers and the fruit stalls. I wanted the shops and the noise and the traffic . . . even a pea-soup fog would have been welcome. I wanted to come home. I felt caught . . . that was it. . . trapped. Why am I telling you all this, Siddons?"

  "I should be told," I said. "It's part of my life too. I was bom there in that house, in that air like a hot steamy blanket."

  "I had made a great mistake," she went on. "A terrible mistake. When I knew that I was going to have a child I didn't know what to do. I would have come away before if it hadn't been for that Three months would have been long enough for me to stay there."

  "I'm sorry. It was my fault."

  She laughed. "Well, you didn't have much say in the matter. You were a good child, once you'd appeared. Old Sheba had prophesied that I was lucky and you weren't going to give me much trouble."

  "I'm glad I was so considerate."

  "No credit to you, my child."

  "Who was old Sheba?"

  "A wicked old woman. I hated her. She ran the household. I would have got rid of her but she was too useful. She crept about quietly. . . . They were all so quiet, watching, spying. You'd look up and find her standing there. 'Missee call?' she would say. She gave me the creeps. But she was useful. I couldn't have managed the place. I'm sure she went through my things looking for ... I don't know what. Something to discredit me, I was sure. I felt I should go mad if I couldn't get back to the theater. Ralph was away from the house a good deal. The plantation dominated everything. There was a club in Kandy and some English people, but not the kind to approve of me. Siddons, I felt as if I was going mad. I used to pray every night. You can guess I was pretty desperate to do that! Make something happen, I implored. Something did happen. You!"

  "Well, that was something."

  *'Open that drawer, Siddons. There's a bunch of keys there. Get them. That's it. The little one there. Here, bring them to me. That one. Open that bottom drawer and you'll see a package wrapped up in tissue paper. Bring it to me."

  Tliis was an exhilarating revelation. I had never known her so talkative about the past. When resting periods began, she always seemed closer to me, and that lasted for a week, sometimes longer, before she began to pine to be back at work and forgot about me. But she was now more revealing than ever before. It was as though seeing me with my hair up made her want to talk.

  I brought the wrapped package to her and she opened it slowly. I sat on the bed watching. Underneath the tissue was a picture of her. It was not large but it was beautiful. The coloring was exquisite, and although the miniature stopped at her waist, I could see that she was wearing a sari. One shoulder was bare and over the other fell cascades of lavender-colored tulle spattered with silver stars. I had seen many pictures of her—she was constantly being photographed—but I had never seen one more beautiful than this.

  "Three months after your conception," she said. "Can you see the maternal brooding in my eye?"

  "No," I answered.

  "It came later. At that stage you were beginning to become a discomfort and an encumbrance. You were a little monster at that time. It seemed like years before you condescended to make your appearance and put me out of my misery."

  "1 daresay I was obliged to wait until the appointed time."

  She laughed suddenly. "When I saw you I thought you must b
e the ugliest child on earth. Red-faced, wriggling, you were like a little toad."

  "You should have had a seraph," I said. "A little angel with golden curls."

  "You improved, though not to seraphic levels. Do you know, I began to grow quite fond of you."

  "It was the miracle of motherhood," I said. I picked up the picture and looked at it. "Those pearls become you. You never wear pearls now."

  "Pearls!" she mused. "Those are the Ashington Pearls."

  "Pearls of great price?" I said lightly.

  "You are right."

  "Where are they? I've never seen them."

  "They were not mine. I just wore them. They're part of a family legend. I didn't want them, I assure you. I did for a time and then. . ."

  "Tell me more about these pearls."

  "It's a long story. You've no idea of the pride of these Ashing-tons. You would think they had descended from royalty. Not Ralph so much . . . the others. I soon became acquainted with the story of the pearls before your father and I went out to Ceylon. I spent three weeks at Ashington Grange, the family home near Epping Forest. I can tell you those were not the three most contented weeks of my life. I was crazy to get away from the stifling atmosphere of virtue and family pride and the incessant reminders of my good fortune in becoming an Ashington. It was there that I first heard of the pearls. My elder sister-in-law—the more formidable of the two—told me most solemnly. You would have thought I was taking some religious vow. The pearls are the sacred possession of the Ashingtons. They had come into the family a hundred years before. A Colonel Ashington had served in Ceylon when there was some trouble between the English and the Dutch and they were fighting in Ceylon. Martha Ashington spoke her lines as though she was well rehearsed. So she was. She must have played that scene a hundred times. It was all about the virtues of the British, particularly Colonel Ashington. It was some-

  thing about the kings of Kandy being so despotic and so hideously cruel that the Singhalese yearned to be under the British flag and that was what the valiant colonel was doing out there . . . putting them under it. Saving the Singhalese. I didn't listen to that part. I just wanted to know about the pearls."